"Stock X Name": A New Snowclone?

Ok, so on the Stock Japanese Fantasy Hero TLP draft, troper Theriocephalus brought up a valid concern with the "Stock X" naming convention. It seems to be heading down the Snowclones route, and considering many new tropes like Stock Light-Novel Calamity Princess, Stock Light-Novel Everyman and the aforementioned Stock Japanese Fantasy Hero have either launched or are planned to be launched with those names, should we stop this trend before it gets out of hand per Everything's Worse with Snowclones policy?

Edited by DivineFlame100 on Jun 22nd 2021 at 10:29:23 AM

Do they cause misuse? Our Monsters Are Different is listed as an exception to the "snowclone bad" policy because it doesn't.

Well, the concern is overuse. It seems to be the default title people automatically go for if they can't think of something unique. I don't know if that counts as misuse, though.

I wouldn't consider this a "snowclone" because each one means something specific- "Stock" is just a necessary word to use here.

Note: We have Stock Room

A snowclone is a trope name referencing another trope's name. They're problematic because they assume familiarity with the original name and they're often non-descriptive. That's not the case here. "Stock X" is a description, not a reference. It expects no familiarity with any other "Stock X" trope. It's not a snowclone, but a naming pattern, like "X Is Y" or "X Equals Y".

Snowclones are taking a popular trope name and giving it a twist for a new trope, sometimes related sometimes not. Gunship Rescue used to be called Big Damn Gunship because of Big Damn Heroes, we hit a problem of editors treating it like Cool Car and just listing heavily armed vehicles. Real world terminology is different, as sometimes we want to direct readers to know literary terms like Chekhov's Gun, so while the "Chekhovs X" names are a little excessive it's far healthier than similar indexes.