fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6267 ]

[ SECRET POST #6267 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6267 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Genshin Impact]

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[Star Trek: Lower Decks and Discovery]

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[Ghosts UK]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 33 secrets from Secret Submission Post #896.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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07. https://i.imgur.com/5tUw1Zo.png

I’m pretty big on suspension of disbelief. I like for there to be at least some in-universe explanation of why things happens and why characters do stuff, beyond the out-of-universe reason that it’s part of the genre. I suppose it’s a restrictive outlook—I didn’t like The Order or the Stick, for instance—but it’s just how I see stories, as little snow globes with whole worlds suspended inside them.

I'm not sure I understand the complaint here. Are you talking about people trying to apply contemporary morality to characters on genre works?

So, disclaimer, I think I might be OP but I genuinely can't remember whether or not I am. But with that said!

Basically fictional works exist within genres. They do things certain ways because that's the purpose of the genre. That's what readers/viewers are interested in the genre for. If you're reading a classic Golden Age whodunnit, you are there to see the detective investigate the crime in the big country house and then call all of the suspects together to lay out his theory. That's the basic structure of the genre.

And I think nerd fandom in the Internet era has a real bad habit of analyzing media as though it's a real world and forgetting that, and not acknowledging that's what they're doing. So for instance, you look Batman and Superman and you try to analyze them as characters and you say "why do they run around punching out costumed bad guys, that doesn't make any logical sense." But costume superhero action is the genre that they're in. Their world is constructed around having superpowered people in costumes punch each other. That's why people consume the genre.

Of course, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this. It can be a fun game (like the Sherlockian game in ACD Sherlock Holmes fandom) or an interesting deconstruction (like for instance Watchmen). But I think nerd fandom discourse has taken it to an extreme and does it to a fault, to the point where it often feels like people aren't even aware that's what they're doing.

I agree and I think you’ve summed this up well.

I have also noticed adult readers of children's literature getting exceedingly worked up over tropes of children's literature (like absent/dead/ineffectual parents or other adult authorities.) They get mad that the children are put in a position to have to save the day, instead of the adults doing so. Like, what do they think the child readers want to read about? And what the hell kind of books did *they* read when they were children??

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(Anonymous) - 2024-03-04 04:18 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-03-04 05:47 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-03-04 07:49 (UTC) - Expand

I'm intrigued but I hope you expand in the comments, secret maker. Do you have some examples to share?

Not OP, but as I said below, it's rife in horror fandom.

'Why would they read a random book they found in a cabin?!' Because a) the story doesn't happen otherwise, and b) they have no way of knowing they're living in a horror movie until after it goes wrong.

As a horror fan, good lord, do I agree.

'Why would they do that?'

Because there'd be no story, otherwise!

(Also, half the time, what they did was 'stupid' only because they exist in the genre. Genre savvy only works if you realize what genre you're in.)

As Cleolinda (there's an LJ memory!) says, "People in Dracula don't know they're in Dracula."

Precisely!

Though it's always fun when you get one character who does know the genre rules! Freddie Lounds in NBC Hannibal, for example.

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(Anonymous) - 2024-03-04 00:27 (UTC) - Expand

Yes definitely this is along the lines I'm thinking!

I do love to make fun of terrible choices madeby characters in zombie-media, but at the same time it's easy to just presume that the characters exist in a world where zombie movies don't exist. Also there was a zombie show I watched where zombie movies did exist and the in-universe zombies specifically didn't work like zombie-movie zombies in order to trick the characters, ie: going for the head doesn't work. Or in the case of another it's set in the past so of course the characters don't know what's going on or what to do off the bat.

So it can work.

Yep, horror tropes in the first thing I thought about (also thanks to the picture, but I'm just a huge horror buff).

If I'm watching/playing/reading horror DUDE I WANT THE TROPES!!! I want people to be stupid and do silly things that probably would never happen IRL because that's the fun! it's a fantasy!!!
The important thing is how those tropes and characters are used to further the story. If it's too derivative and predictable "YAWN", but if it's inventive, fun and smart (even if it's just people reading an abandoned book written in bloody Sumerian) then "COME ON, YEAH!!!"

>>What they did was 'stupid' only because they exist in the genre. Genre savvy only works if you realize what genre you're in.
eheh the first Scream movie with that horror movie fan speaks for itself regarding this. that is still one of the best meta commentary of the genre and this phenomenon IMHO

YES!

Like... if Hamlet and Othello switched plays, they would be fine-- the story happens because they make the wrong choices for their circumstances, but *they can't know they're wrong*. So it goes with the guy picking up the cursed amulet!

I read somewhere on the Internet that a DM told the players they were doing an action plot or something, but he actually did Alien and all his players made the same cliched horror mistakes.

I’m willing to get past a lot that happens in horror by assuming people would do any kind of senseless thing when they’re terrified.

I get this, but also, making fun of the poor decision-making of characters in late 20th century slasher sequels is half the fun. Why yes, there is a murderer on the loose and people keep mysteriously disappearing. Definitely bypass the gun and the axe in favor of bringing the flashlight downstairs to investigate the strange noise in the cellar.

I get what you're saying but, omg. Can't we have a horror movie (or zombie movie or whatever) where people are SMART and kinda PREPARED and do things that MAKE SENSE, but still get fucked over because they're facing something they just don't know how to deal with/is inherently bigger and badder than them/is supernatural or extraterrestrial or magic or whatever?

My only gripe about 'why did they do that?!!!' type stuff is when the characters are being extra special stupid because otherwise the plot would fall apart (I hate that in regular stuff, too) - just gimme smart people still getting eaten by zombies!

Same.
I agree sometimes people want ridiculous awareness from characters (for example I want to bite everyone who asked why certain characters do not remember boy from 30 years ago in Dark (show with time travel). Bitch, does your first instinct is to think about time travel if you are having mild deja vu?)
Buuuut some movies just aren't that good and they make their characters absolutely stupid for a plot. And it's so weak and boring

FOR REAL. Or when they're like "maybe she's mad! She thinks the demons are there but they aren't! Why would there be demons!"

...idk maybe because it's a horror movie

i do think this is somewhat related to pieces of media becoming more "realistic" so now that's an expectation and then characters are now "genre-savvy", but i don't know which came first.

i'll say that i halfway agree. characters should be allowed to be stupid and still likeable or relatable or heroic. they shouldn't have to think through 9000 different issues in their wolrdview to fulfill a trope or get to a story beat. but i do think authors need to write the character as they've written them. please present an in-world reason for actions that wouldn't have been in-character a couple of pages ago...please. i'm begging for a thin veneer at least.

Right I mean I think part of the point is also that a genre still has rules and patterns and structures. And characters do still have to follow those! They're just a different set of rules and expectations than the real world.

i can't wholeheartedly agree with this. any rules, patterns, or structures of genre as so loosely defined and so subject to change (by zeitgeist alone. by publishing standards that may or may not have anything to do with veteran audiences) that they are more expectations than anything else. it's vibes and as with vibes all we can do is check and argue about them. but if an author is doing something with the genre, it's okay to let them do it without filling in every "hole".

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