Misused: Everythings Better With Cows

If this isn't tropeworthy, a disambig works for me. But if we decide to retool as "cows are funny", maybe a rename could be "Cow-mical Cattle".

It seems like redefining as cows being Played for Laughs, renaming if it's redefined, and disambiguating between Garnishing the Story and Animal Stereotypes are the options to go with for a crowner, so I'll get to work on that tomorrow.

Sorry, was on mobile when I initially said disambiguate. Even if we 'rename' there's no reason we can't keep EBWC as a disambig.

That's true, but I don't think it needs to be separate from the disambig-only option, since multiple recent renames have had the old names turned into disambiguation pages instead of redirects without the crowner being involved.

That, and there have been times when options that said to cut a trope completely were toned down by making a disambiguation page instead for the sake of preserving inbounds.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 7th 2022 at 11:51:17 AM

I took care of Main/ (except for the obligatory Ambiguity Index wick) plus every namespace up to Characters/ (going in alphabetical order).

I've been trying to figure out why the idea of cows being played for laughs feels tropeworthy to me, and I think at least part of it is "random" humor. So maybe Surreal Humor should be added to the disambig?

As for why cows in particular... they're recognizable, but not something most people are likely to encounter in their daily life. Still, that could apply to a lot of animals. Elephants. Sheep. So again, why cows? To which the best I can come up with is that it's a Trope in Aggregate. Perhaps someone out there did it first, and it started a trend. And it does feel like there's a trend to it.

Another thing that comes to mind is that cows are large and heavy enough to get in the way and be hard to move.

• In Wayside School Is Falling Down, Mrs. Jewls ringing her cowbell ends up inadvertently summoning cows from miles around the school, causing them to fill up the building. And so, the school is temporarily closed while Louis the yard teacher is left with the task of trying to get them to leave.
  Only one person stayed behind. He was there all day and all night trying to get the cows to go home.
  "C'mon," pleaded Louis, the yard teacher, as he pushed and pulled on the cows. "Go home. Please? Pretty please?"
  Everybody mooed.
• In The Terrible Two, Miles and Niles play a prank by leading the town's cows into the school. Since the main door has stairs leading up to it and the cows will walk up stairs, but not down them, this results in great difficulty in removing them.

Edited by Twiddler on Apr 12th 2022 at 1:09:49 AM

I added Surreal Humor. Feel free to change the wording if I missed anything.

Also, anyone (i.e., all users and not just mods) can add to the disambiguation page. The "and possibly other tropes" part of the disambiguation crowner option was meant to allow the addition of tropes other than the two that are explicitly listed.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 12th 2022 at 4:54:19 AM

Should Brutish Bulls be added to the disambiguation? Bulls are male cattle, the same species as cows, after all.

Also, my favorite out of the name suggestions for the "funny cows" trope is Bovine Comedy, as it's a beautiful wordplay on The Divine Comedy.

Edited by Snicka on Apr 12th 2022 at 12:01:37 PM

I've addressed some of those points in this thread here, but the Trope Talk thread unpacks the issue in more detail. Since a decision has been made on this trope, I recommend going over there to discuss further

Edited by amathieu13 on Apr 12th 2022 at 6:42:00 AM

Yeah, Brutish Bulls can be added.

As I said in the Trope Talk thread you linked to, I can't help but wonder if a lot of our "animal + joke" tropes are actually arbitrary combinations in the vein of the "badass + trait" tropes that were cut in the past.

On the subject of the pages brought up in that thread's opening post, Everything's Better with Penguins strikes me as the least tropeworthy for at least two reasons: 1. It doesn't make much of an attempt to give meaning to the penguins' presence, and 2. One paragraph in the description gives me the impression that whoever launched it saw that several works in 2007 featured penguins (the page was created in 2008) and assumed that there was a trope behind what was probably just a fad.

Also, I neglected to bring up Everythings Better With Platypi in this thread and the Trope Talk thread. That was cut for being Chairs because it didn't amount to anything more than "this work contains a platypus", and shows that being unusual doesn't make an animal a trope.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 12th 2022 at 7:12:57 AM

"Cow" makes me think of characters like Otis from Barnyard, "bull" makes me think of characters like Ferdinand. I wonder if we could make a separate disambiguation called "Everything's Better With Bulls" and put Brutish Bulls there.

i don't think we need to. Or rather, i think you're conflating the purpose of a disambig with the purpose of an index. Disambigs exist to solve the specific problem of what to do with now defunct tropes whereas indices are just general purpose lists of existing tropes organized around a particular topic for navigation purposes.

If a bull trope hasn't been removed/replaced, then there's nothing to disambig.

Sure, cows and bulls have different cultural context (very much paralleling Clucking Funny vs Cocky Rooster). But since this is is a disambiguation, there's the possibility that someone links / potholes Everything's Better With Cows to an entry about cattle where Brutish Bulls would be more fitting.

Down to 99 wicks, but one is for Ambiguity Index and another is for Sandbox.Trope Report Dummy Edition, so there are 97 wicks left to remove. I might be able to knock the rest out soon.

Closing since dewicking is done.