Useful Notes: States with Snowclones

Forces with Firepower is a UsefulNotes/ index for state militaries, and is fully committed to almost every page having a title of the form "[demonym]s with [unique alliterative weapon that may or may not be representative]". (I believe this started with Reds with Rockets and Yanks with Tanks.) Many of them are obtuse to anyone who is not already familiar with military or political slang, which as it happens is also the primary target audience of Useful Notes.

Taking my own experience as representative, I'd say the worst example is Armos with Armor (that's Armenians, not minor enemies from Zelda games). I don't know what these are, either:

• Belarusians With BTRs
• Bolivarians with BMPs
• Danes With Drakens
• Indians with Iglas
• North Koreans with Nodongs
• Pakistanis with Panters
• Ossis with Osas

There is also a secondary pattern of highly poetic names, mostly for the sub-pages of nuclear powers; I personally find this less annoying but it's certainly not any clearer. (And I imagine I'd be as annoyed by Ultimate Defence of the Realm as I am by The Hooves of Chollima if I weren't already familiar with 'the realm' meaning the British Empire; neither page actually explains its title.)

• The Bite of Dracula
• The Dragon's Teeth
• The Ultimate Resistance
• The Third Eye of Bharat
• The Samson Option
• The Sound of Martial Music
• Peace Through Superior Firepower
• Warriors of Desert Winds

Finally, Pak Attack is a letter away from a serious slur and I'm unsure if it makes a difference.

Not all of these need changing - Swiss with Army Knives is my favourite - but I think this shows how wrapped up in itself most of the index is.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Sep 8th 2022 at 10:03:23 AM

No knowledge of military myself but I will say that it's a bit odd to call Venezuelans "Bolivarians". Didn't that term first get used with Hugo Chavez?

That stuck out to me too; I don't know any of the history, I just assumed the writer couldn't think of a weapon that started with V.

I think it's okay if I don't recognize the weapon as long as I recognize the country...which is to say I am fine with not changing Indias With Iglas, but do please change Ossis With Osas and Armos With Armor. "Ossi" is a really culturally specific term ^{Saving you a google}  Ossi is a slang term for "East German" so it's not intuitive.

There's also Canucks with Chinooks, but you get the idea.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Sep 8th 2022 at 8:29:36 AM

These snowclones are really tiresome after a while and frankly, I wonder exactly how much value they bring to writers and how much they are excuses for people to wank off over military topics, which is something we have to deal with a lot on this wiki.

Sure, it's cool, but if it's not relevant to storytelling we don't really need it.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 9th 2022 at 1:19:13 PM

I can see the value for writers in these pages, in the sense that there's many stories that involve a country's military in some form. And admittedly, titles like "The Bite of Dracula", "The Dragon's Teeth", "The Third Eye of Bharat", and "Warriors of Desert Winds" do sound cool, they'd make great titles for pulp adventures. But they seem very unsuited for the educational purposes of Useful Notes.

Meanwhile the "[X] with [Y]" snowclones just never worked for me, as someone who first found out about them through the various Russia and Ukraine pages getting locked the after recent events in those countries. They just sound very silly ("North Koreans with Nodongs"?) and the alliteration can feel forced when there's no exact letter match and it can only rhyme, including the one for my own country! (UsefulNotes.Kiwis With Carbines)

Edited by harryhenry on Sep 12th 2022 at 10:55:04 AM

(I did finally look up what The Hooves of Chollima are, by the way. Chollima was a mythical horse used as an inspiring symbol of North Korean national ideology starting in the 1950s. So actually slightly more appropriate than The Bite of Dracula, who is simply the only legendary Romanian anyone has ever heard of. Still completely non-indicative, though.)

I just ran into the Yanks with Tanks page for the first time a day or two ago and I think the idea of a Useful Notes page having such a not-straightforward title threw me off so much it took a minute for my brain to register what the point of the page was. I had no idea there was a whole series of these.

There are a few other groups of tropes that I think have naming schemes too clever for their own good, but Useful Notes definitely shouldn't be doing that.

Edited by Jokubas on Sep 14th 2022 at 12:42:44 PM

That's what threw me off as well, though I don't know how widespread this reaction is to see if it's worth changing or not.

I have no problem with getting rid of the snowclones.

Also, why is this on Trope Talk and not Wiki Talk?

[Edit]

I have no strong attachments to the snowclones. Some are cute, but others are leaning too much into witty over clear.

Edited by Tabs on Sep 28th 2022 at 9:56:43 AM