Fictional games and sports

[melannen]

What's your favorite fictional game or sport? Fictional portrayals of real sports and games also allowed!

I have a soft spot for 4D chess from Star Trek, and Sabacc from Star Wars (though I play with the old Legends rules), and of course fizzbin.

I also love every sport played in zero-G and wish there were more of them.

Jeeves And Wooster: Differences Between The TV Show And The Books

[cuddyclothes]

One of our members, the estimable wotwotleigh is writing a detailed episode by episode breakdown of the difference between the Jeeves books/stories and Jeeves and Wooster TV show! The entries are on their Tumblr and the links are on give_satisfaction .

TV Show Vs. Books Comparison Masterlist

Stroll over and enjoy.

Hanahaki Disease

[primeideal]

Hanahaki Disease (花吐き病 (Japanese); 하나하키병 (Korean); 花吐病 (Chinese)) is a fictional disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It ends when the beloved returns their feelings (romantic love only; strong friendship is not enough), or when the victim dies. It can be cured through surgical removal, but when the infection is removed, the victim's romantic feelings for their love also disappear. (Fanlore.org)

 

There are lots of variations on the setup, but in its basic form, this trope interacts with a lot of broader themes/plot devices, any of which could be reasons for its popularity:
-unrequited love literally kills you
-body horror
-color/flower symbolism
-uncomfortable confessions and misunderstandings
-sometimes leads to angst with a happy ending
-sometimes ends in tragedy

Unfortunately, for me, the most common formulation ("have your love returned, have surgery to remove the flowers and all memory of your loved one, or die") doesn't really work for me. Usually, when I'm in the mood to read something about "A loves B but thinks B will never love them back, but then, B actually does come to love A romantically, and they get together and live happily ever after, yay!" I don't need an added supernatural trope or raised stakes--I usually want to read about A and B doing things in their canon-typical setting with their love lives also going on.

However, sometimes I'm in the mood to read about "A is dying, but not of a bullet wound or real-world disease, but of a creepy magical illness, and there's lots of angst and woe." So Hanahaki should be just the thing for me. Except, I usually can't get over the suspension of disbelief required to buy "there's a cure for the disease, but A will lose their memories of B." Heartbreak is sad, yeah, but in most cases not as sad as dying, and it winds up reading like "this character is dying because they're too stubborn to imagine life without someone who doesn't love them back." In the case where, like, A and B are the only two people with knowledge of the villains' super-secret plans, and A forgetting B would also cause them to forget all the time they spent cracking those codes, then maybe I could buy it, but it usually doesn't play out that way.

So, does anyone have any subversions/alternate premises/related tropes that make more sense to them than "traditional" Hanahaki? Or, if you like Hanahaki just as it is, any recs?

This is definitely not me doing research for some original worldbuilding, why would you ask.

Wingfic/Creaturefic

[arcanetrivia]

Talk to me about wingfic and/or creature-inheritance fic. (To me they're similar, but feel free to tell me I am a shortsighted pleb with no sense of nuance ;) ) I don't really get these tropes, especially in fandoms that don't already have magical or supernatural elements. (Not intended to disparage - to each their own!) If this is a kind of fic you like to write or read, I'm curious what draws you to it? What "spot" does it hit for you?