Complaining: Extreme Sport Excuse Plot

Extreme Sport Excuse Plot is a trope about when extreme sports are used instead of, or shoehorned into, the plot. The description is very negative—as is the definition. It was listed on Tropes Needing TRS with the description:

• Extreme Sport Excuse Plot: As noted in the complaining cleanup thread, the definition is overly negative, and it's possible the title could use a touchup as well. A good solution could be a rename to just "Extreme Sports Plot", without the "excuse" and subsequent complaining.

I labeled the last part in green since I added that part.

I decided to do a wick check to see what the complaining patterns were. I checked all wicks except those in sandboxes. I tried to use a strict definition of complaining, which is explained in the wick check itself. The quick results were as follows:

• 34/72 examples, or 47.22%, were correctly used in a non-complaining way/not used to complain
• 22/72 examples, or 30.56%, were used to snark or complain in some way
• 12/72 examples, or 16.67%, were either ZCEs, unclear cases, or other, and
• 10/72 examples, or 13.89%, were unsorted, being in indexes or similar situations.

I was surprised that the complaining wasn't as bad as I thought. However, after combining the complaining and ZCE/unclear examples together, they equaled 47.22% of the wicks, the same number as the correct examples. This indicates that there still is a serious problem here.

As for the solution, I have a pretty good one IMO that the Tropes Needing TRS entry already mentioned. Simply drop the "excuse" from the name and make the trope Extreme Sports Plot. This takes the complaining angle out of the trope, and is a legitimate concept. After all, many plots heavily feature extreme sports in them (especially in The '90s and the early part of the Turn of the Millennium), which the correct examples pretty much already are.

What does everyone else think?

Opening.

I'm okay with a rename / retool.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 28th 2021 at 9:05:49 AM

Bumping for more opinions on my proposal

Yeah, we can rename.

I am not sure about the idea of a rename. The idea of an Excuse Plot for extreme sports media is a valid concept since a lot of extreme sports media have a really basic plot that is only there to justify the extreme sports aspect so while renaming it might reduce complaining it is actually less indicative of what the trope is about. Though yeah the definition could definitely be fixed.

Extreme Sports Plot sounds like a good name.

to renaming to Extreme Sports Plot.

Rename.

By the way, Excuse Plot is specifically a game trope, where the plot is just a handwave to justify why a plumber is jumping on turtles, or a hedgehog is running through robots, or whatever. In this trope, it sounds like the extreme sport is the plot of the episode.

Excuse Plot isn't for games only:

I was going to say that the plot not being the main focus is too important to the trope to shorten it to just Extreme Sports Plot, but the trope's description says that

Which implies that it doesn't even really need to be an Excuse Plot in the first place.

Rename and improve description

Edited by Hellboy33 on Dec 30th 2021 at 10:58:42 AM

I feel like my concerns about the new name being less indicative are being ignored. I don't mind if people want to rename it despite that but I feel my concerns are valid.

Well, per Zuxtron's point, the description outright admits that this trope doesn't require an Excuse Plot at all.

Oh really. Though that brings up another concern I am not sure if "Plot of an Extreme Sports media" is a tropeworthy concept. An Excuse Plot of one definitely is but I am not sure if any plot is.

I'm curious—how is "Excuse Plot with extreme sports" any more tropeworthy than "Excuse Plot with non-extreme sports" or "Excuse Plot with cars" or "Excuse Plot with animals"? They all seem to be The Same, but More Specific to Excuse Plot.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 30th 2021 at 3:04:08 PM

Well because a lot of extreme sports media have plots that are only there to justify the Extreme Sports.

I'm curious—is this the case with anything besides extreme sports? If we can answer that question/identify examples then we can answer the concern that Extreme Sport Excuse Plot is more tropeworthy than Extreme Sports Plot.

Extreme Sports Plot doesn’t sound tropable, but Extreme Sports Episode does.

Good point. I was about to comment that I'm starting to doubt whether Extreme Sports Plot is a good idea, but I like your idea Synch.

How, though, would this apply to movies, like An Extremely Goofy Movie? Would those count?

I think the broader idea of an extreme sports plot can be plenty tropeworthy, for a few reasons:

• Sports like these are dangerous; the work is bound to touch on that danger at some point for dramatic reasons
• There's some inherent action involved in extreme sports that are unique to them, and the works do take the time to indulge the audience in just seeing cool athletes do cool things
• The plots are usually some sort of underdog thing, and since these are individual sports most of the time there's more focus on the one specific character overcoming the odds, rather than an entire team like in other sports underdog movies

And the reason I prefer the "Extreme Sports Plot" version is indeed because of how many movies follow this pattern. While I can think of a few episodic shows that do it too, the number is wayyyy smaller, at least based on what I can think of.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 30th 2021 at 3:08:30 PM

Extreme Sports Episode would need to be separately though as it is totally different concept.

Maybe a subtrope?

Perhaps it could work as that.

Eh maybe I could see Extreme Sports Plot working as a trope (though still not sure). However, I don't see how Extreme Sport Excuse Plot with my definition couldn't work as a trope, since as I said a lot of extreme sports media only have a plot that is there to justify the extreme sports.

Edited by Ordeaux26 on Dec 30th 2021 at 12:21:40 PM

Eh, but in that instance you could just call it an Extreme Sports Plot with an Excuse Plot. It doesn't warrant being a separate trope when other genre-specific Excuse Plots aren't singled out.

How about restricting the trope to actual excuse plots, and then rewriting examples to be less negative?

Speaking of which, actually looking at the wick check, a lot of the examples in the "complaining" category don't read as excessively negative to me. Maybe a little snarky, but well within what I consider to be okay. Does the trope even really have an excessive negativity problem?