"No Recent Examples Please" cleanup

Right, I've got some time today, so will get the Crowner updated with all of that...

All of these are now on the crowner:

Should we try to discuss Chuck Cunningham Syndrome again?

Sounds like a plan.

I'm still keen to choose an approach that doesn't contradict The Bus Came Back, if we can.

Calling these three:

• Propaganda Machine (50 years for Real Life examples): rule of cautious editing judgment. Discussed here. Added to Crowner August 17, 2023. 13 votes (Yeas:11 Nays:2) & +9 when called, 5.50:1 in favour.
• Win Back the Crowd (6 months): to avoid knee-jerk reactions. Currently 1 week NREP. Discussed here Added to Crowner August 17, 2023. 12 votes (Yeas:9 Nays:3) & +6 when called, 3:1 in favour.
• Fandom-Specific Plot (1 month): to avoid knee-jerk reactions and allow fandom time to write the fic. Discussed here. Added to Crowner August 17, 2023. 13 votes (Yeas:9 Nays:4) & +5 when called, 2.25:1 in favour.

Now that the No Recent Examples, Please! page has been updated, I've made the RL cuts on Propaganda Machine.

With hindsight, as it's an ongoing campaign rather than a single event, we could have been clearer about the cutoff rule - for the moment, I've mirrored La Résistance (which was compared to it in the thread) so that we're looking at the end date for campaigns.

For the moment I've cut North Korea and China, which were focused on very modern examples, but have left the USSR and East Germany, regimes which only ended in the 1990s, but seem to have examples focused on their earliest days (>50 years back).

Let me know if anyone has concerns or a better approach to this!

question about My Adventures with Superman

• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Jimmy Olsen has been increasingly ignored and disliked by fans in the comics starting in the 2010s, with his role increasingly being diminished or taken over by Lois or Clark's son Jon. This version of Jimmy makes him an equal to Lois and Clark as well as making him a Properly Paranoid conspiracy theorist to help distinguish him from Lois, all of which has brought more positive fan responses to the character. Additionally, while some fans had been a bit annoyed at his habit of cluelessly playing Moment Killer between Clark and Lois, a lot were won back by the reveal at the end of "My Adventures With Mad Science" that he knew all along that Clark was a superhuman but kept quiet about it because Clark was his friend.

The show debuted on July 6. Is it too soon or is Jimmy Olsen technically a long running character?

This seems to be positioning him as a long running character - but the Scrappy Jimmy wasn't the same one in the show?

Which, potentially, also means the Scrappy Jimmy in other media is still a Scrappy, not rescued within that work/continuity?

I'm wondering if there's an Adaptation trope that might be a better fit for that.

It's not even really arguing that "main" Jimmy is a Scrappy, TBH, just that people don't regard him as a particularly relevant character anymore. I'm inclined to cut.

So...

Big Bad and Arc Villain are currently giving me a bit of a headache on pages for episodic works.

Episode one of a series comes out, or issue one of a comic, and immediately someone lists the antagonist as one of those tropes. Which is a bit speculative, at best.

Should the rule be that Arc Villain can't be listed until at least one arc is complete? And that Big Bad in a story with many antagonists needs a season, or maybe a year (or end of work, if that's sooner) for works with no season breaks?

Edited by Mrph1 on Sep 1st 2023 at 6:05:44 PM

May be a good idea. Big Bad is someone who's behind the entire plot, so preemptively labeling someone may be a trap when someone is a Disc-One Final Boss, Big Bad Wannabe or working for The Man Behind the Man.

There's currently an ATT regarding RL examples of Hoist by His Own Petard, which isn't currently NREP - and is attracting examples about the war in Ukraine etc.

We put a 20 year NREP on Won the War, Lost the Peace, which feels like it might be appropriate here too? Any views?

On a different note, with apologies for the double post -

Oppressive States of America has a fixed NREP cutoff in the 1960s, for the civil rights movement. But it also has this example (emphasis added by me):

• In the North, meanwhile, segregation was carried out through means that were less blatant, yet arguably more insidious and harder to root out through government action. Most often, it was economic segregation, with black people being forced into ghettoes through discriminatory housing and real estate policies, and a thick glass ceiling preventing them from getting decent educations or careers. Affirmative action policies were created in The '70s in order to mitigate the effects of this 'soft' discrimination, but they weren't without controversy, to the point where a conservative-led Supreme Court eventually outlawed the policies in 2023.

I'm tempted to cut the bold text, which feels like it's sneaking past the NREP rule. Any concerns?

Yeah, that passage should be cut.

I think we might have to go with a case by case basis instead of a blanket fixed-length moratorium for every single example. As another troper pointed out on the ATT, several of the examples that had been removed were already resolved, or wouldn't cease to be an example even with further developments. That being said, totally fine with war-related examples being added a given number of years after said war ends.

If the consensus is to add a RL NREP rule that's years or decades, we usually cut existing examples that don't meet it (e.g. La Résistance).

Even if the event's resolved, there tends to be scope for ROCEJ issues and political sniping with the recent stuff.

In most cases it's been simpler to say "X years" rather than "X years unless xyz...", usually because the conditions for xyz tend to be subjective and open to rules lawyering.

But if there's a clear proposal we can put on a crowner, we'll let the consensus decide as normal.

Edited by Mrph1 on Sep 4th 2023 at 12:21:29 PM

Calling/closing Comic Book Run - rejected.

• Comic Book Run (run must last a minimum of 1 year or 12 instalments, whichever comes first): to ensure that the series and its creative team last long enough to be considered a run.

Discussed here. Added to Crowner August 17, 2023. 14 votes (Yeas:6 Nays:8) & -2 when called

Clearly no support for that one, and it's been on the Crowner almost three weeks. It's on the TRS queue anyway, so let's see what that decides when it eventually gets a thread.

Arc Villain is now on the Crowner as well - I've gone for a simple "end of arc" NREP, as discussed above.

This thread and this thread have both discussed adding a time restriction to And You Thought It Would Fail because measures of success/failure often take time to be apparent. For example, something could be a Sleeper Hit, or make a splash its first week and then drop off, or do poorly in theaters but then do gangbusters on streaming/home media.

Six months seems to be a commonly cited time period here. Other opinions?

I'd prefer to go for three months. That definitely seems like a trope that needs a decent waiting time, but not that long.

Three months works for me. I'd happily go for six as well, if there's a wider appetite for that.

Not sure I'd want to drop below three, though.

Edited by Mrph1 on Sep 6th 2023 at 6:17:49 PM

Three months sounds like it could be enough to me.

Any more views on Hoist by His Own Petard RL?

I'm still thinking 20 years sounds good, and I'm not personally convinced we need to write exceptions into that for obvious/resolved recent examples. Even if the event's clearly over, recent RL stuff still carries extra potential for controversy and ROCEJ.

Looking at the Crowner, I'm thinking maybe we add that and And You Thought It Would Fail in the next day or so (if there's no immediate challenge to the proposals), then let them run a week & ask for a new crowner once they're called. Once we're past 10-15 items it starts to look cluttered.

(Also conscious that the status of Big Bad means that, although there's a strong argument for NREP on episodic works, there are likely to be a lot of tropers with views about how that should be implemented. Might be a good discussion to kick off while waiting for the end of the current crowner?)

Edited by Mrph1 on Sep 6th 2023 at 6:26:56 PM

Chiming in for And You Thought It Would Fail, I agree with a three months waiting period for kneejerk reactions to subside, and the honeymoon phase to pass.

And You Thought It Would Fail and Hoist by His Own Petard are now on the Crowner.