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As I understand it, the trope is about supernatural events happening in small, obscure locations, and Boston is far too large and well-known to qualify. Then again, I've seen several examples referring to metropolitan areas like London, Marseille, Buenos Aires and Johannesburg, so yeah, the page definitely needs a clean-up.
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I think this trope is like the city version of Seldom-Seen Species...
EDIT: From the same page:
- In El Día de la Bestia, by director Alex de la Iglesia, the birth of the Antichrist will take place on Christmas Day in Madrid, capital of Spain. - Madrid is NOT an obscure city. Another misuse
- Jam is set in Brisbane, Australia, which while it is still a large city in its own right is nowhere near as populated or well-known outside of Australia as say Sydney or Melbourne. - Brisbane is voted the 10th most liveable city in the WORLD. NOT this trope...
The example betrays itself in the second sentence. It's not an example; delete it.
And seconding a possible clean-up.
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The trope description doesn't say anything about "small locations only", and in fact explicitly mentions Johannesburg and Singapore as examples. So what you're proposing, while reasonable, is a change in the scope. I believe this sort of thing requires TRS?
The laconic mentions small, real locations. The main entry makes it sound like "not well known locations" but the tone is very western-centered and has examples that basically say "not America? Who could possibly know about this?"
I'll cut the Godzilla entry, cite this thread and try to bring it up in TRS later.
Edited by ArthurEld
I'm not sure the title of the trope does itself any favor when it's named after a capital city of a country.
Like, it makes drawing the line a bit fuzzy.
^ i tend to agree, but that's a discussion for TRS.
I mean, TBF, Aliens in Cardiff probably needs TRS. I have no idea what do with the OP's entry specifically for that reason - I think Boston as an "unusual location" sounds ridiculous but so does much of what's there already.
Edited by nrjxll
Ok, I'm gonna cut the example and then do a Wick Check later before bringing it up in TRS.
A while back, I cut an example in Aliens in Cardiff (which probably needs a clean-up, but that's for another time):
My reasoning was that it was silly to debate whether Boston or San Francisco is more notable than the other, and that I didn't think Boston really qualified for the trope. This was in November, 2021.
The entry was added back in April of this year, by a different user (Derv0s B 2, the OP was Radja) with no edit reason and only a slightly modified example, here it was that San Francisco and Hong Kong (cities from the previous and succeeding Godzilla movies) were "major iconic cities."
I'm not gonna cut it again without some consensus so I wanted to bring it here to see what other people think. Your thoughts?