Is figure skating a tropeworthy medium?

You all might remember this ATT, which was about troping champion figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu as a real person. Obviously this was problematic and the page was run over with a lawnmower. However, the ensuing discussion sparked the question on whether or not competitive figure skating (not ice shows, which are theatrical) by itself is tropeworthy, and should it have Creator/ pages at all. I'm asking because if it is tropeworthy, there is pretty much no other place to put tropes about performances except the creator page, since it is all individual/pair based, and if not what to do with pages like that.

In terms of what could possibly be troped, uhhh not much really. Costumes, for example Johnny Weir's famous swan costume. Shout-Out, for music that they use in routines or stuff like Evgenia Medvedeva performing as Sailor Moon◊. Homage as there are some routines that are based largely on something fictional, like Astakhova/Rogonov referencing La La Land in their music, choreography, and costumes. Everything's Better with Sparkles and Spectacular Spinning are universal. But besides that, really it's 3-6ish minutes of an aesthetically eye-catching sport.

We do have a page for Tonya Harding under Tonya Harding, although I guess it was mainly made in the wake of I, Tonya and is fairly superfluous otherwise. And proper Creator/ pages for those who do have other creative careers, like Sonja Henie. Ice shows like Disney on Ice are akin to theatrical productions, so productions like those done by ice dancers Torville and Dean probably go there.

(As an aside: when I went and wrote the Figure Skating page I noticed a lot of bad creator/ pages that trope real life, like Creator.Rika Kihira.)

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 22nd 2020 at 12:54:56 PM

Well figure-skating (and notable athletes) is already listed under Sporting Event and I can guess that it is under the sports section, but if you want to create an entire page, then go for it!

Edited by antenna_ears on Oct 22nd 2020 at 6:09:13 AM

I already did. The question is if pages like Yuzuru Hanyu are valid.

Oh, sorry. Well, as a precedent, theres already Creator.Tom Brady. I guess sports stars can be considered creators, as they provide entertainment.

But we do need to be consistent on how we treat famous athletes on this wiki.

Edited by antenna_ears on Oct 22nd 2020 at 6:39:00 AM

I don't think sports people need entries here. Our site isn't just about entertainment but creative entertainment- which sports don't qualify as. Useful Notes articles on sports might be helpful for writers, but otherwise...

Creator.Tom Brady also tropes real life. There are pages for sportspeople in the Useful Notes namespace.

Hmm... so should all athlete pages be changed to Useful Notes?

As long as they don't trope their real lives. Figure skaters have some artistic value to trope, however.

What, besides their costumes?

Music and choreography, but it's still pretty hard. Not impossible but hard.

Okay, so I was actually going to make a separate thread about the entire Sportspeople index because it's a whole-ass mess (inconsistent Creator/Wrestling/Useful Notes, why are there so many wrestlers when they have their own index..., duplication with the Sporting Events index), but I wanted to space it out . One thing at a time.

In general, athletes' creator pages should not trope their sports careers like it's a plot or them as people. We could probably do with a cleanup project about this since a lot of them are very guilty of that — see Rafael Nadal for an example. Valid creator pages are for those who have a creative career besides it (like Terry Crews).

Really, Useful Notes should be for things that have relevance to fiction. As far as athletes go, Muhammad Ali, for example, is valid because he appears frequently in media.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 22nd 2020 at 2:57:53 PM

Figure skating is a sport, not a tropeworthy medium, and I say this as a fan of the sport. There is no narrative, not even an Excuse Plot, and no characters other than the figure skaters' own "personas". Insofar as these personas exist, they have the same amount of fictionality as any other celebrity (most of it is based in press coverage and gossip). We don't allow the troping of actors' personalities, and we should't allow it for figure skaters. The same thing goes for any other sport.

I am generally pro real life examples on Trope pages — I think they are useful for illustrating how tropes work and where they come from. Some tropes, like Dark Horse Victory or Disqualification-Induced Victory, have plenty of examples from sports, and that's fine. But real life athletes are not fictional characters, nor do they create works. They should not have a list of tropes describing them, because these are not intentionally crafted by them but due to random chance. It feels objectifying and creepy to have pages treating real life people like fictional characters.

Music and choreography are the only aspects of figure skating that are creative and that individual skaters have control over. These do not have good coverage on our wiki because they are very abstract and difficult to describe in plain English. Existing music tropes often suffer badly from ZC Es, and there has been discussion elsewhere about whether even basic concepts like melody are within the scope of this wiki. I think it would be very difficult to properly trope these elements of figure skating. And keeping the pages around is just inviting creepy gushing.

Ice shows are different - they have plots and are a type of theater, and are included in that namespace.

Professional athletes, if covered on this wiki, should go in Useful Notes just like any other public figures. The only exception would be if they make or appear in creative content independently of their athletic careers. To justify an article, such persons should have at least some relevance to creative media, such as being mentioned in a work or appearing As Himself. Otherwise we're just replicating Wikipedia.

Sports in general are not tropable. They do not contain an intentional narrative structure and their participants are not characters (Professional Wrestling being a notable exception). They may have Useful Notes pages that serve the same function as any other such page: to inform people who want to write accurately about them. That said, the marketing around sports may qualify for Advertising tropes.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 23rd 2020 at 7:38:32 AM

Yeah...

Would anyone object to a Sportspeople cleanup project?

Seems good. We have one for musicians, after all.