fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2343 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2343 ⌋

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

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[not a repeat, was too big before]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 055 secrets from Secret Submission Post #335.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

... Why is this limited to Sherlock Holmes? Does this not happen to you with most crime/detective canons, then?

As an aside, not that it's necessarily a bad thing to be able to guess the criminal in advance. I still remember the first time that happened to me: with a Secret Seven book involving a criminal on stilts. That warm little glow a few chapters later when you go "Hah! I was right!"

I can see wanting to be ~shocked~ and ~amazed~ but being right about fictional plots always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Even when it's obvious as hell, I still enjoy it.

I don't usually turn to mysteries for my shock and awe quotient. Sci-fi and horror are my go-tos there. I get the desire, yeah, but mysteries it's more about the slow burn towards a satisfactory conclusion, at least for me.

Can you think of any books/shows/movies then that have that 'shock and amazement' factor? Plots that you didn't see coming but still made sense in hindsight? (Because I often find that the other problem with the crime shows: that they're trying so hard to be impenetrable that the solutions end up seeming random and WTF).

I knew so many people who were "shocked" and "amazed" by the plots in Donnie Darko, Fight Club, and The Prestige. I figured all of them out pretty quickly on.

I've only seen two of those (and Fight Club wouldn't do me much good as a mystery now, I'm spoilered to hell and back). Donnie Darko I was half-convinced for years that I'd dreamed.

The Prestige, though, I thought working it out was most of the point? That was the whole theme: the amount of hard work that went into one effect, and how the thrill of magic was mostly in trying to figure out how it was done. The central debate around Angier's 'using real marvels to create fake ones' vs Borden's use of more mundane trickery, what the methods cost and how the audience reacted to them ...

Actually, on a thematic level, the film is pretty much perfectly suited to this comment thread, now that I look at it.

fingersmith by sarah waters is the only one that come to mind for "shock" value.

Personally I find any mystery that manages to unobtrusively plant all the necessary clues really satisfying, but those are't usually shocking or amazing. It's more like "OH RIGHT... oopsy...". I read a J2 fic like that recently and was really impressed.

Uhhhhhhhh...I'm coming up blank. I know I've experienced some but...yea. Sorry.

Most of the shock and awe experiences I've had have been with video games. Most recently BioShock Infinite, which in hindsight I should've saw coming...

Metal Gear Solid is good with shock imo (though some of those moments are so WTF that I'm not sure they fit with your 'on hindsight' bit).

I was going to say Mass Effect but...that still came out of nowhere to me, so I can't recommend that either.

Hopefully you get lots of responses on the books/shows/movies front!

joanne harris' gentlemen and players

the murder of roger ackroyd by agatha christie
and then there were none also by ac
the big sleep by raymond chandler

How about the first Saw? Every movie after it you know the twist is coming, but the first one, man.

Oh, thank goodness, I'm not alone!

This is the internet, you're never alone!

Unless you're this guy.

I walked right into that.

Me and my bf often high-five each other when we correctly guess a plot point in a TV show/movie/book, it's silly but the enjoyment of getting that kind of thing right is nice.

Oh man, I agree. I don't mind figuring out the "twist" early. I love it because I love that moment of being right.

Not silly to me at all, it's a satisfying feeling!

I'm sure I'm wrong about many things so being right is a nice change of pace.

It bothers me most with Sherlock because he's supposed to be the world's greatest detective, and as such, smarter than me. It bothers me in any show when we're told over and over again how incredibly brilliant and singularly clever the protagonist is, yet they can't seem to puzzle out the simplest mystery. I agree with the anon about Study in Pink being one of the worst - from the opening scenes it was clear it was a cab driver (who else would all these disparate people in need of a ride go with?) and watching it take Sherlock SO FREAKING LONG to have the idea dawn on him put a damper on the series for me.

If the show or film portrays its protagonist as smart but not Better Than Everyone, and gives him or her an engaging personality, I don't care how simple the mystery is, I enjoy the ride.

Of all the Sherlocks I've seen, only one episode of Elementary fooled me - like the OP, not because I'm especially smart, but because I've read and watched a hell of a lot of mysteries and know the rules. Even then I knew what the end result would be, I just couldn't see the trick until it was spelled out (it was the one with the woman with the flowers pushed in front of the train - very Jonathan Creek).

Yeah this is pretty much what I meant. It's not really the stupidity of the plots that bugs me more the ''omg he is such a genius for knowing this''

Most other detectives surprise me a least once but these just never do.

... Have you read the originals? I ask because they're, ah, not the same. Some of the solutions might still be obvious to a modern reader, but the original Holmes was 'the world's greatest detective' for the most part because a) he could think outside society's clear strictures on who could be considered a criminal and who couldn't, b) in a world without even much of an idea of forensics he could use physical evidence at scenes to help him, c) he wasn't part of a police force that was still suffering the stigma of having failed to catch the Ripper and therefore garnering a reputation for inefficiency, and d) he could do the 'Sherlock scan' of looking at someone and telling minute details about them.

He was arrogant, yes, but the whole 'genius detective' thing is mostly in adaptations, for whom an avant-garde forensic ability and a lack of care for society's strictures don't quite mean the same thing. It all weights onto the 'Sherlock scan' part, which is essentially just a faster and more mobile forensics lab, so they need to try and ramp up his 'genius' attributes to compensate. The results can be ... hit and miss.

[ SECRET POST #2343 ]

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