Cleaning up general examples

As we all know, Examples Are Not General. As the Administrivia page the link points to says:

Unfortunately, many examples on this wiki end up being general examples anyway. Instead of pointing to specific instances of a trope in the work, they make broad claims about how all X had this trope, this trope often appears in X genre, etc. Along the way, potentially valid standalone examples can get lost in these general examples, which may be able to be split into their own entries. There is also the problem of pages with lots of general examples that need cleanup.

There was a thread for this, but it wasn't very active and it was recommended that a new thread be made. So, with that in mind, here's the new thread. Let's begin.

Bump. Found this on Interspecies Friendship:

• Just about any series in which the main cast are all Funny Animal types of varying species will be this, though the distinction is blurred, given that the nature of the characters is such that most of the time they act human anyway. Arthur, Franklin, Llama Llama and Timothy Goes to School are all prominent examples. Arthur is an aardvark whose circle of friends includes a rabbit, a monkey, and a dog. Franklin's the turtle's best friends are a bear and a snail, and other friends include a rabbit, a beaver, and a goose. Llama Llama is best friends with a gnu (wildebeest), as well as friends with a sheep, a goat, and a giraffe. Timothy is a raccoon who is best friends with a cat and his other friends include a badger/skunk, a pair of dogs, and two mice.

Should I just delete this for being general or try to break it up into separate examples? If the latter, is there enough context to do so?

Animation Age Ghetto has general examples for almost every single folder.

For many tropes with the problem of general examples, many of them can be moved to their respective Analysis pages.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Nov 3rd 2022 at 11:12:24 AM

Is this still active? I recently tried to find out what happened to the former trope Society Marches On and found Future Society, Present Values (which actually doesn't seem like it's quite a great replacement, but that's a separate issue), and while reading that page noticed this 'example':

And as someone who's familiar but not encyclopedically familiar with the series, I'm not 100 percent sure whether it counts - I think, for example, the trilogy's progressively-less wimpy Gay Options are clearly more an out-of-universe thing than any sort of in-universe values, but OTOH I do vaguely remember a really weird dialogue choice in Liara's romance in ME1 that might fit - but I can't really tell one way or another because it's absurdly vague and general. What should be done?

That's not technically a general example^note general examples are "examples" that either point to more than one work, or no particular subject in general, while this at least has a specific subject, but it's definitely a bad example of Future Society, Present Values. Mostly because it never explains the "future society" part. And also yeah it's not explained if it's an in-universe value or just a product of the time.

(I'm also very curious to know what your issue with FSPV is because that's quite literally the exact definition Society Marches On was supposed to have, misuse aside, so I'm not sure what makes it a poor replacement)

Edited by WarJay77 on May 14th 2023 at 1:51:13 PM

This is, again, completely off-topic, but: it feels like it's lost some nuance. Like, the specific thing I was actually remembering gets touched on only in passing (the main body of this entry is instead talking about medical consent):

I remember an original example talking in more detail about this whole notion that women astronauts would exist only so male astronauts wouldn't go celibate, which as insane as it looks as I write it was definitely a thing in 50s sci-fi written by dudes. But it was very much not a present value at the time, and the example talked about that too - both how it was an actual argument advanced against having women in space at the time, and the very characteristic blind spot of these (male) writers having an easier time imagining societal attitudes towards casual sex loosening then imagining society coming to regard women as people.

Now, to be clear, I read this a while ago and don't know if it was actually on Society Marches On or another page, although I dunno what that other page would be, but I do feel like it's a better fit for the former concept than the current definition.

Edited by nrjxll on May 14th 2023 at 1:09:20 PM

I didn't mean that we had to get into it here, but I should've specified that. Really, though, the usage you're remembering is the misuse, Society Marches On was never meant to have that "nuance". (You may also want to read the TRS thread... started by me... as it explains things a little more.)

Edited by WarJay77 on May 14th 2023 at 2:10:20 PM

Found this example in Main.Damsel Scrappy.

• Older Than Television: In the era of Pulp Magazine action stories, their teenage male readers would frequently complain about the very existence of female characters, because they were almost inevitably flat characters whose only role in the plot was to get into trouble, be on the receiving end of vague threats from the villain, and be rescued by the hero. Were it not for the need to put a scantily-clad woman on the cover to boost sales, these stories probably wouldn't have had any women at all.

Dear Lord, the Mass Effect example is utterly dreadful. It is incredibly vague, bashy and was clearly written by someone with a grude against the franchise. Now while I am not going to deny that some portrayals of real world minorities in the games have not aged well(Mass Effect 1's use of Discount Lesbians comes to mind), any future Mass Effect example should to be more specific and respectful than this.

I say cut.

(x6) I'm leaning on removing it; it feels like complaining to me and I feel it's too vague.

Besides it being too general, it reads as bashing to me. So, I agree with cutting it.

I don't where else to ask so here we go.

So I want to write an entry regarding Nihon Falcom on No Port For You (specifically the subversion folder) since many of their games since the mid-2000s were PlayStation exclusives (with ports to others consoles done by other companies like Clouded Leopard and Nippon Ichi) and they started making games for the Nintendo Switch around 2021, both due to their games not selling well as well as the declining sales of Sony consoles in Japan (according to the JRPG thread, Sony games don't sell too well unless they are a jauggernaught franchise like Final Fantasy). But I was wondering if listing an examples from an entire company would be a General example. Hence why I am asking here.

From Recycled Title:

• In the Comic Book industry, recycled titles are a common method for companies to maintain trademarks, especially Marvel Comics and DC Comics. When a new series is introduced with the same title as an older series, it will share the same title and be known as the next volume of that series, but the numbering may reset at a later date as if it were continuing the numbering of the earlier series, so the series is alternately presented as both a newer series and an older series. This can be played with further when the series changes its title to something else during its run, and later spinoffs and mini-series are introduced based on the different title while the original title resumes. The titles of spinoffs and miniseries may be further recycled, sometimes with little to no connection to the prior story.

This feels as if it might be a decent addition to the article introduction, but not an example in its own right?

Just Train Wrong's Western Animation folder has an entire split of general examples and common mistakes, and I don't know if they should be worked into the trope description or just cut.

ProductPlacement.Live Action TV has an "in general" folder of general examples. Is this allowed? And if not, should I remove the whole thing?

Narm.Riverdale has a bunch of examples under an "In-General" folder:

• The storylines revolving around the entire core four. While Riverdale itself has always had quite a mature tone despite the characters being teenagers, season two escalated the plots into downright outrageous levels. Keep in mind that these are supposed to be high school sophomores: Archie aspires to being a vigilante and briefly flirts with becoming a mobster; Jughead is currently the leader of a motorcycle gang; Betty has pretensions of being a great detective; Veronica has essentially become a businesswoman. In stark contrast, the supporting characters are often far more believable, which only increases the narminess. Kevin is a lonely gay teen looking for love. Reggie is a classic Dumb Jock. Cheryl is the epitome of the Cruel Cheerleader. Josie aspires to be a great musician but only plays local gigs. Many viewers have started to turn away due to the ridiculous degrees of melodrama.
• There are a number of obstacles to taking the fictional Jingle Jangle drug as seriously as everyone in the show does. First there is the cheesy name. The drug is packaged to look like pixie sticks out of all things. The seriousness of the drug rests largely on Informed Wrongness: Nobody using them is shown to display any effects distinguishable from being slightly intoxicated, nor does anyone explicitly tell what the effects of using the drug are. The Serpents deal weed but won't touch Jingle Jangle, and it is mentioned in the same breath as heroin like it is equally serious, but there is no indication why that is.
• It gets kinda hard to take this show seriously as a dark drama when you have characters named "Geraldine Grundy", "Edgar Evernever", and "Principal Featherhead".
• In Season One, some of the parents having unhappy marriages was understandable and tragic, but by Season Three, when every marriage in the show has been revealed to be deeply unhappy (all of which also including one parent pining after another they dated in high school), it runs right past ridiculous territory into the hilarious zone.
• The town of Riverdale itself. In season one it was depicted as a quiet small town rocked by the shocking murder of maple syrup heir Jason Blossom. From season two onward it has become an epicenter of organized crime, supports multiple gangs, has serial killers, cults, rioting in the streets, been quarantined for weeks... In-universe all of this has happened within about a year and half, which is the fastest community decline you would see outside of a war zone!
• Cheryl's immortal line of "I'm coo-coo bananas for you, Humphie." What?
• Veronica telling Cheryl, "Betty and I come as a matching set. You take one, you take both. You want fire? Sorry, Cheryl Bombshell. My specialty's ice" - bonus points that Betty's actress looks like she's going to start laughing in the background.
• The very fact that a character in this series is a respected organized crime boss named Papa Poutine.
• Between Season 3 and Season 4, people start to call the town of Riverdale "Murder Town of the World" which sounds overdramatic.
• Every time Veronica calls Hiram "Daddy" or Archie "Archiekins".
• Every time someone says an in-show couple is "endgame".

So I have to ask does "animal species acts in this way" count as a general example.

Because I cut all of the real life examples at Sickeningly Sweethearts, but I am wondering if the lovebirds example can be readded.

For another example HoistByHisOwnPetard.Real Life has "cuckoos imitate Sparrowhawks only to get attacked by real Sparrowhawks".

I don't want to interrupt anyone, but I found this example on It's Popular, Now It Sucks! (which also doesn't explain why it qualifies):

• Nearly any online community, forum, or game.

That's the sort of thing you can just snip on sight.

...Circumstances (wiki-walking from a redlink to its "What links here" page) led me to the "Brother–Sister Incest" — Fan Works page. And there are a lot of "general" examples for various fandoms.

I've sorted out and alphabetized the examples I found of this type by the parent series. Should these all just be cut, or some at least moved to Incest Yay Shipping?

Gah, fanfiction sections are some of the worst for generating general examples on this wiki.

I suggest cutting them all, maybe put some in Incest Yay Shipping if they represent strong trends (I'm not too familiar with that page). If anyone wants to add actual fanfics containing these ships, they're welcome to.

General examples moved as necessary, and fic-specific examples all alphabetized.

From Sgt. Pepper's Shout-Out:

• Some examples can be found here