Common Sci-Fi tropes that annoy you!
- Thread starter wulf3n
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I find it a bit odd when the enviroments aren't... Lived in. When everything works perfectly and everything is clean and well maintained. Of course, it's no wonder that a luxurious cruise ship, touring the magnificent rings of Rielle VI is clean and tidy, or the offices of GlobeCorp, but not every spot of the universe would look like a MacForum shop, now would it?
It's a good opportunity for contrast, too. The luxurious spires above the clouds are clean and lovely, until you head into the maintenance ducts and corridors. Or, gods help you, visit the surface.
I also find it rather odd that in many universes, laser weapons are ubiqutous when they don't have a clearly defined advantage over mechanical weapons. Give them a clear advantage, like easily rechargable batteries or more reliable accuracy, both of which would make sense as an advantage to laser weapons that makes them worth using over regular ones. It's when all of the perks of energy weapons seems to be missing that it gets rather odd. If they are just going to run out of ammunition, miss or harmlessly plink off the target's armour (or carapace), why not just whip out an ancient Terran AK-47 instead?
It's a good opportunity for contrast, too. The luxurious spires above the clouds are clean and lovely, until you head into the maintenance ducts and corridors. Or, gods help you, visit the surface.
I also find it rather odd that in many universes, laser weapons are ubiqutous when they don't have a clearly defined advantage over mechanical weapons. Give them a clear advantage, like easily rechargable batteries or more reliable accuracy, both of which would make sense as an advantage to laser weapons that makes them worth using over regular ones. It's when all of the perks of energy weapons seems to be missing that it gets rather odd. If they are just going to run out of ammunition, miss or harmlessly plink off the target's armour (or carapace), why not just whip out an ancient Terran AK-47 instead?
I don't really mind made up curse words, they even make some sense, language evolves, so the future will have new curse words. My two favorites are Frak(Battlestar Galactica, though it's perhaps a bit too obvious that it's just a disguised f*ck) and Smeg(Red Dwarf, and it's damn near perfect).wulf3n said:
What really annoys me is how humanoid most of the aliens are, especially when they do the "sexy aliens" thing, and especially when interbreeding is possible and you get half-alien-half-human crossbreeds(Star Trek I'm looking at you).
ive recently been watching The Next Generation on tv and it kind of bugs me every time the doctor uses her "futuremajiggy" healing device. it kind of saps the danger out of the show when any injury can be healed just from her waving her magic wand over the site of the damage.
New curse words are fine, but it becomes silly when they completely replace old ones. We've had curse words like 'shit', 'fuck' and '****' for centuries, I don't see them suddenly disappearing.Cerebrawl said:
And smeg is a real word. It's short for smegma, which is something gross that builds up on dirty genitals.
This irritates me too. Esp. what the franchise can't stay consistent with what time travel rules are in play. Stargate, I'm looking at you.Zhukov said:
'Explosive decompression', or more explicitly when its used as 'being exposed to vacuum makes you literally explode'. Its bad science, seems to be an excuse to throw unnecessary gore in there, and got so prevalent that an internet reviewer who's whole schtick is 'he reviews sci-fi stuff' criticized a movie for painting the scenario realistically and having characters survive brief exposure to vacuum.
Especially annoying in that it could easily be done that way. I mean, simply being exposed to vacuum won't do that, but if whatever put the holes in the spaceship also put lots of holes in the people, then it's possible.Windknight said:
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Another thing, when people report the aliens, and their superiors don't take them seriously. So common that a movie gets serious points if the military/police/whoever just try doing their job when people point out a problem. OTOH, Doctor Who would get away with this, because an awful lot of people in authority pretended not to believe them, when they'd really turn out to be in with the aliens.
This gets really bad when they're speaking english when there's no non-aliens around. Why would they be speaking english amongst themselves? Also if they're speaking english and not though some sort of Universal Translator, wouldn't they have some sort of accent?Shanicus said:
Yeah but even a brief trip into vacuum might blind you unless you've got sealed eye protection on. Freeze-dried or boiled eyeballs is no fun. Also if you hold your breath your lungs will probably burst(this is why it's the #1 rule in scuba diving, don't hold your breath, breath hold ascents, ie: to lower pressure, can burst your lungs), and even so if the change is sudden you'll probably get lung damage from explosive decompression(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression#Explosive_decompression). Similarly you might get the bends, decompression sickness. You might pop your eardrums from the sudden pressure change too.Windknight said:
Oh and the saliva on your tongue can boil!
If the pressure change was much more drastic than 1 atmosphere to none then we might see actual exploding, but we're talking tens or maybe hundreds of atmospheres. If you were pressurised to ambient at the bottom of Mariana's Trench and teleported into orbit(assuming teleportation being possible) then you probably would explode.
Captcha: Outlook not so good (so relevant!)
EDIT: Oh so looking a bit further into the wikipedia article, there's been one recorded case of a diver actually exploding from a sudden pressure drop from 9 to 1 atmospheres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_accident
Something that seems to be common, at least in the Star Wars expanded universe, is that people from the same planet have almost the same personality, like how Han Solo doesn't like being told the odds because he's Corellian AND NO CORELLIAN LIKES BEING TOLD WHAT THE ODDS ARE. There's a difference between having similar frames of reference and whatever the hell this is.
This is one of the things that 1970s George Lucas got right in Star Wars--everything looks like it's lived in and used, with all kinds of wear and tear on it. Mos Eisley looks like a grubby run-down outpost settlement, for instance.Muspelheim said:
Tropes I can't stand, although they're more common in fantasy: prophecies and Chosen Ones. At this point I'd find it refreshing to have a story be about someone who finds a magic sword or saves the galaxy not because he's destined by fate, but because he was just some schmuck who wandered by at the right time.
The general concept of "pure energy", "energy beings", "energy shields", etc.
A ridiculously uneducated presentation of "energy", as if it would be just a glowy, blue, very hard type of matter, rather than an entirely unrelated concept, an attribute that matter can have. A "sword made out of energy instead of steel", makes about as much sense as "a sword made out of sharp instead of steel", or "a sword made out of quick instead of steel".
At best you could be talking about objects with very high energy levels, (and then a speccific type of energy; heat, nuclear, chemical, kinetic, etc) but not "pure energy".
A ridiculously uneducated presentation of "energy", as if it would be just a glowy, blue, very hard type of matter, rather than an entirely unrelated concept, an attribute that matter can have. A "sword made out of energy instead of steel", makes about as much sense as "a sword made out of sharp instead of steel", or "a sword made out of quick instead of steel".
At best you could be talking about objects with very high energy levels, (and then a speccific type of energy; heat, nuclear, chemical, kinetic, etc) but not "pure energy".
Apparently the writers were unaware of this at the time. Though at the moment the wikipedia article has a 'citation needed' flag, but I'm sure I've seen in an interview somewhere that they were sure it wasn't an actual word. Regardless, it sounds great, and is a very good litmus test for British geeks.Genocidicles said:
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The lack of linguistic change in the future always gets my goat. Considering how much the English language has changed in 500 years, do you really think that it would remain totally unchanged after 3000? I realize that asking writers to create a modern-language-derived conlang for every futuristic story is unreasonable, but so few even attempt to address it.
On a related note, single-culture species. Look at humans. See how many cultures they have? Yeah. If you can't give multiple species a reasonable degree internal diversity, stick to one species for now. This is especially bad if they're clearly identifiable as actual human cultures. This is part of what makes the Guild Wars 2 setting so much less memorable than the Guild Wars 1 setting. The former used different species where the latter would have used different human civilizations, and was poorer for it.
On a related note, single-culture species. Look at humans. See how many cultures they have? Yeah. If you can't give multiple species a reasonable degree internal diversity, stick to one species for now. This is especially bad if they're clearly identifiable as actual human cultures. This is part of what makes the Guild Wars 2 setting so much less memorable than the Guild Wars 1 setting. The former used different species where the latter would have used different human civilizations, and was poorer for it.
I doubt that. There's too much trepidation about changing who we are, and too many ethical, philosophical and religious cans of worms. Go and see what they think technology would be like in 50 years in the 50s. Or heck, cyberpunk from the 80s about what technology we'd have today.T3nno said:
