Rename (New crowner 15/5/12): Ridiculympics

Fictional Sport and Ridiculympics seem to be essentially the same thing. Ridiculympics makes a little bit of noise about relative plausibility and absurdity of the rules, but contains a real life example, and Fictional Sport itself makes the case that an inherently absurd and fantastic game like Quidditch can be successfully defictionalized, undermining any sense of difference.

Fixed the tag. You can only tag one article per thread.

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of overlap in the examples, but the descriptions do seem to be describing the same trope. Hmm.

Neither is very heavily wicked, 19 vs. 25, so perhaps this is just an underexposed trope getting duped.

Actually, they both have real life examples, which is even weirder.

We could differentiate them like this, and move the examples over:

• Fictional Sport: new supertrope
• Pod Racing League: Fictional sports that can't be played because they rely on magic/future-technology: Blitzball, Quidditch (the actual flying kind)
• Ridiculympics: Fictional sports that could be played, but probably shouldn't: Baseketball, Star Trek's 3-D chess, defictionalized sports
• Calvin Ball: Sports that are played, but aren't really sports; fantastic sports that don't really have rules.

Or we could just merge Ridiculympics into Fictional Sport. I'm ambivalent.

I'd say merge this into Fictional Sport, they're the same trope.

Am I the only one who thought that "Ridiculympics" was specifically about Olympic Games references/parodies (in the same manner that Scout-Out is to Boy/Girl Scouts) ?

Nearly all the examples are specifically about various things called Olympic Games, not fictional sports in general.

Brent Laabs: "Pod Racing League" sounds a bit like it could be confused for Wacky Racing. The offered distinction between Pod Racing League and Ridiculympics doesn't seem tenable because any fictional sport with fantastic elements (whether supernatural or superscientific) with a basic rule structure could be defictionalized via metafictional Doing In the Wizard even if it probably shouldn't be played.

Stratadrake: While that seems tropepable, since looking at the examples they all seem to fit your definition, Ridiculympics general description seems to dither into a more general Fictional Sport territory. Maybe Ridiculympics' definition should be narrowed to reflect your idea, and "compare with's" Fictional Sport/Ridiculympics , Gladiator Games, Game Show Appearance and Wacky Racing should be stuck in both articles. I really don't understand why either trope is so relatively unhealthy.

Eh, Pod Racing League was just the first thing that came to mind.

Now that you mention it, Stratadrake, they are all Olympics. And it's not even a subtrope of Fictional Sport, because Olympic Duck, Duck, Goose is just as valid as Olympics IN SPACE!. It sounds like we should just rewrite the description to reflect the examples.

In the meantime, I'll go organize Fictional Sport.

Ridiculympics seems to be "parodies of or silly analogs of the Olympics", which seems separate enough from Fictional Sport to be its own thing.

I'm mulling over why these aren't getting attention. Am I wrong in wondering if we aren't missing a sort of Games and Sports (or Competition) super-index? Sports Story Tropes covers a lot, but not Absurdly High-Stakes Game, The Bet, Deadly Game, Gladiator Games, Wacky Racing, Duel to the Death, Rage Quit or Professional Gambler.

There's Cooking Duel, which is pretty well linked, which is where some of the more absurd sports live, like the Martial Arts Pairs Figure Skating competition in Ranma ½. It lives on Dueling Tropes, which isn't really going to work for a general competition index. And there's a Game Tropes index, which is (mostly) tropes used in game mechanics, not tropes about characters playing games themselves. Kwyjibo probably belongs on the list above, too.

edited 16th Apr '12 8:21:52 PM by BrentLaabs

I could see the idea of creating two sister tropes, one for possible-but-probably-not-reasonable sports (like the titular sport in Baseketball) versus ones that are impossible due to needing magic or technology to have (like Quidditch or Blitzball). The former would be along the lines of Fictional Sport while the latter should probably be Fantastic Sport.

That said, if there aren't enough examples to split, lump them all into Fictional Sport. Regardless, Ridiculympics should be cut (the name doesn't help).

edited 17th Apr '12 12:03:40 PM by 32_Footsteps

Proposed rewritten text for Ridiculympics:

When it comes to the wide world of sports, no place is so lofty — no athlete so honored — than at the Olympic Games. So how the heck did these competitions get to be part of the Olympics?

This is the idea that any competition or game, no matter how silly, fantastic, or non-athletic, can be an Olympic Sport. And each may have their own teams, sponsors, and leagues, despite minor technicalities like not being scorable or not based on skill. The most egregious examples may even be Fictional Sports or Wacky Racing.

Typically Played for Laughs, but it can also be used to help build a fantastic setting. For example, a Science Fiction story could have a zero-G relay race at the Olympic Games IN SPACE!

This is also Truth in Television, because many sufficiently motivated groups have gotten their sports and games included in the Olympics and are now considered a normal part of the competition.

For weird sports that aren't part of the Olympics, compare Cooking Duel, Wacky Racing, Fictional Sport, Gladiator Games, and Game Show Appearance.

edited 18th Apr '12 2:34:24 PM by BrentLaabs

An improvement.

To be fair, pretty much anything can become an Olympic sport, if organizers are willing to put in the effort. I was once part of the American Contract Bridge League, and I remember the efforts trying to get duplicate bridge entered into the Olympics. One hurdle that the ACBL hit was arguments over performance-enhancing drug testing - it's required of Olympic sports. So folks who had to take steroids for medical purposes (like preventing organ transplant rejection) ran into the prospect of not being able to compete, despite the fact that about the only drug that is going to help you perform better in bridge is the quite-legal caffeine.

The bridge issue is a really good point, and I've edited the proposed description to reflect that, and also decrease the 'ridicule' in Ridiculympics. Bridge would probably be a good Real Life example.

If we go this way, I think the title should probably change as well, because it's not always played for laughs, it's not really an easy to remember Tropemanteau. But let's decide what the trope is first, lest we put the cart before the horse.

Hmm... if we are making a trope about parodying the Olympic Games in some way out of this (which I give you full credit for - that is a good trope, and I eat my words about cutting it), maybe we need to make it a broader, more easily remembered name. I like Olympic Parody. Though as pointed out, due to the way the Olympics are structured, it's not quite so farfetched as it seems. I've actually only barely scratched the surface of how silly it can get, all related to duplicate bridge.

If there's no objection, I'll go ahead and move my new description into Ridiculympics, and we can have a crowner to rename.

I'm fond of Olympic Hide And Seek myself. I was going to suggest Olympic Tetherball, but on reflection of the comments about contract bridge, that seems too plausible.

Went ahead and moved in the new description, since it: solves the duplicate trope problem, makes the examples match the trope, and no one complained in a week. Feel free to edit it, as I'm not attached to the phrasing.

Okay, can we get a rename crowner in here? It should be renamed because:

• Ridiculympics is a bad tropemanteau, not easy to remember, and could just as easily refer to "ridicule" as "ridiculous".
• Only 15 wicks, and it's existed for at least a year (although the description might have been a factor in that).
• As rewritten, it doesn't have to be a played for laughs, though it usually is: any fictional use of a sport/competition not currently in the Olympic Games qualifies. So its not necessarily ridiculous, either.

Aiguille mentioned a missing supertrope on competition earlier, so we should keep that mind too.

What about putting parodies of the Olympics here?

Edit: Also fix the laconic to suit the new definition.

edited 25th Apr '12 5:21:42 PM by spacemarine50

I thought Olympic Parodies was the new trope. Is that not clear?

Also, bump for votes.

Laconic nows says that, but the description is less parodies of the Olympics than sports that don't "belong" in the Olympics, but are somehow there. (setting irrelevant)

Bump for votes.

I still go for rewrite the description, and then adding more examples. Rename is maybe, but no the problem here.