Odd things that annoy you from bad works of fiction

[Zontar]

Bad works of fiction often make those who consume them become annoyed at one thing or another, but sometimes those things are not exactly what you'd expect. What are some of the odd things that annoyed you when consuming bad works of fiction?

For me, when (trying) to watch GATE, one thing that really annoyed me (in particular, that show was unwatchable) was the ranks and ages just not matching up at all. The protagonist is a 33 year old who due to what happened in the first episode got promoted to Second Lieutenant from Warrant Officer. This is quite odd to see because other episodes make it clear he has been in the force for more then 1-3 years and that is basically how long it takes to get that promotion just by virtue of existing.

Then there are his subordinates. There's Sergeant First Class Akira who has the opposite problem: he's only 27 yet has a job that'll take a good 15 years to reach in rank. This is bad but the one that really took the case was Sergeant Takeo, a 21 year old doing a job that takes a good bloody 9-12 years to reach. Given what was shown in the series, I don't for a second believe he was fast tracked through the ranks due to his abilities.

Given the long, long, loooooooooooooooooooong list of problems that show has from the atrocious animation outside of fight scenes, downright garbage story, lazy framing shots and everything that isn't bad being boring, it's odd how much of an annoyance this one subject had for me.

 

[Erttheking]

Knights of Sidonia having absolutely awful character design. And I don't just mean they look like shit (Which they do, as it turns out all CGI works great for fight scenes and horribly for everything else) but, and this is true, there are two characters who I thought were the exact same person. The backstory reveals that a lot of cloning had been done after the population of the ship had been reduced to a few hundred, but come on! I should've been able to tell them apart somehow! Hell, I only realized that they were two different people when one of them DIED and the other was still walking around.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Most of Games Workshop's campaign stories are absolutely terrible and that's the main reason I don't do their expansions, play in Tournaments or go to the Cons. They have no sense of scale or impact. Like I'll go with genetically engineered hyper violent all male super soldiers with a fused ribcage, bones stronger than steel, and an almost instinctual desire to hit things bigger than them with swords, all inside a massive suit of armor with a fuck me raw atomic reactor on its back. That's fine.

But a hundred of them conquered an entire world?! In a week?! NO!
You couldn't conquer the United States with 10,000 Space Marines in a year. Its simply too big. There's too much land, too many places to store equipment and personal. And nukes. And lots of crazy people with crazy big guns.
Or even when GW writes in Imperial Guard support, oh wow. A full million of them? On crusade to conquer an entire subsector of space? Gee, that's almost 10 whole guys per planet!

Or when they try to add a false sense of threat and doom by inventing an entire new Space Marine Chapter, just to immediately kill them off. Oh, check out how badass Ork BadGuy is. He killed all the Obsidian Glaves! Basically its them saying "Oh, you know that chapter you've never heard of, has never been in a codex, has no novels or characters attached to them and indeed was invented two minutes ago? Yeah, they're dead."

OR or when they try to make things seem all heavy and threatening, like what they're doing with the Space Wolves right now. Fenris is basically over-run with demons and the Dark Angels are here to kill all the Space Wolves(for reasons I think). And that's how they leave the narrative off, because they want people to play the campaign. But gee, I wonder what will happen. I'm sure GW plans on killing off their 2nd most popular army after Generic Marines, and arguably the most fun chapter out there, especially after creating new models, rules and a codex.
Oh, the suspense is killing me.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I think the existence of Slaine as a character in Aldnoah.Zero was just a horrible mistake. Nothing he does makes any sense and then he ends up pulling a retarded cliffhanger ending that is resolved instantly with no consequences the second Season 2 starts. Then he starts again.

Also what the fuck is... what's his name's mechanical eye supposed to be? He's sitting on the surface of Earth watching a one on one duel between two guys who are fighting in mechs in space. What? A convenient plot item is supposed to have its limits y'know?

Visuals are good and the action is fine though. Not a bad time killer if you have nothing else to watch and you want to see a character just derail horrendously.

The way I see it, there's two types of hate for characters. The good kind like say, Erika in Umineko who is just an insufferable little ***** but she's such a good villain. She makes me want to say "Battler, body this *****" and I will cry with joy when she finally gets destroyed. Man she makes Chiru incredibly interesting just by being herself, it's great.

Then there's the bad kind, Slaine, a character that just loses all coherence and I hate him because his actions make no sense.

 

[DefunctTheory]

But a hundred of them conquered an entire world?! In a week?! NO!
You couldn't conquer the United States with 10,000 Space Marines in a year. Its simply too big. There's too much land, too many places to store equipment and personal. And nukes. And lots of crazy people with crazy big guns.
Or even when GW writes in Imperial Guard support, oh wow. A full million of them? On crusade to conquer an entire subsector of space? Gee, that's almost 10 whole guys per planet!

They do kind of get weird with the Space Marine numbers. At least in the 'old' stories, when they say '100 marines conquer a world,' they make it pretty clear that its not so much that they conquered it, and more '100 genetically engineered monsters fucked the place up so much the world called uncle, and now they're willing to play ball with the rest of the Imperium and the incoming Imperial Guard.'

OR or when they try to make things seem all heavy and threatening, like what they're doing with the Space Wolves right now. Fenris is basically over-run with demons and the Dark Angels are here to kill all the Space Wolves(for reasons I think). And that's how they leave the narrative off, because they want people to play the campaign. But gee, I wonder what will happen. I'm sure GW plans on killing off their 2nd most popular army after Generic Marines, and arguably the most fun chapter out there, especially after creating new models, rules and a codex.

Wait, again? What is this, the 7th time Fenris has been under siege from other Imperial Forces/Daemons?

EDIT: Also, Dark Angels? For fucks sake. Unless someone on Fenris has figured out their secret, that's retarded. But if someone on Fenris has figured it out, I'm game for this. That could actually lead to something interesting. It's always fun when the two first founding legions with the most secrets start a pissing match.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Its very convoluted, but here's the premise. (DEEP BREATH)

The Dark Angels have figured out about the Wulfen(actual Werewolves) and have convinced the Iron Hands, Ultramarines and like a dozen other Chapters that its time to bring the Space Wolves to heel and what not.

Meanwhile, the Grey Knights have come to Fenris because they heard there were demons mucking about, so the Grey Knights and Wolves are spread over all the Fenris system worlds fighting demons and are too busy to fuck with the Dark Angels.

Also, the presence of a Warp storm has triggered a Wulfen outbreak and hundreds of Space Wolves are howling at the moon.
But the Grey Knights, unbeknownst to the Dark Angels, are actually totally cool with werewolf space vikings because they're insanely resistant to Chaos and stupid good at killing demons.

BUT both Drago and Grimnar are missing(presumed dead, but you know how these things go. Death for named characters in 40k is like DBZ. They'll be back next season) and Bjorn's spirit has been ambushed in his slumber by demons so he can't wake up, so there's no one in high authority to call off the Dark Angels.

AND THEN it turns out that the Grey Knights are also here for the Dark Angels because through...magic or something, they found out a changeling of Tzeentch has infiltrated the Rock and is posing as a Dark Angels officer who's egging the Angels on to bomb Fenris.

AND THEN the Alpha Legion and Black Legion showed up and started defending Fenris from the Dark Angels, making it look like they're in league with the Space Wolves.

So there's actual potential! So many things could happen. Grey Knights invade the Rock and find out about the Fallen. Or Alpha Legion mans pose as Space Wolves and blow up the 1st Company battle barge of some chapter and trigger an all out war. Or Fenris is actually destroyed. Or Bjorn dies. Or the Space Wolves stave off disaster at the cost of Grimnar and most of their chapter and are forced to recruit from their satellite worlds, leading to the first Midgardian or Frostheimers to join the Wolves since the Heresy.
Or Russ himself comes back for the 'Wolf Time' and breaks into the Rock, finds the Lion(who is apparently awake and trying to find a way out of his cell) and being the Bros they are(which again apparently happened after the Heresy. They're constant fueding led to a pretty great hate fuck, and now they're bros but no one remembers that, so Angels vs Wolves grrr), decide its time to permanently curb stomp Abaddon.

But no. That's too cool, too interesting and too not status quo for GW. What'll happen is the Grey Knights call everything off at the last minute, an uneasy truce will be reached and the Space wolves will be "greatly reduced in number" without ever specifying which Wolf Lord dies because on the off chance someone in the world actually has an Engir Krakendoom army, GW doesn't want to alienate them.

(Breathes out. Passes out)

 

[Zontar]

That's too cool, too interesting and too not status quo for GW

Which is kind of funny because an offhand part of the story (that got so entirely glossed over many missed it) was the fact entire worlds are falling to a sudden Daemon invasion on an apocalyptic scale that no one bothers to ask "hey, maybe that requires our attention?" and now a lot of fans are scared shitless that GW are going to do to 40k what they did to Fantasy and put in through End Times. I mean they already destroyed that while adding Space Marines to Fantasy in the form of Age of Smegma, and they took the internet joke of making Space Marine Space Marine in the form of a Space Marine inside a Space Marine a reality (I don't care that Centurions are cute, they like the half-Eldar where born of a place of Heresy), so doing End Times for 40k wouldn't be beyond them.

 

[balladbird]

I was actually just thinking about this today! Bravo, escapist, for helping me feel topical.

I wouldn't necessarily say either of these gripes are specific to bad fiction... Plenty of fiction that's otherwise really good will use them, but they're really been bugging me lately because of certain shows or games I've encountered recently.

The first thing is what's come to be known as "the pronoun game": when a character uses an ambiguous pronoun instead of a proper noun in order to either force another character to ask what they mean, or to keep something secret from the audience. It's something that media from all countries likes to do, but I've noticed that Japanese media really, REALLY likes this one. I don't know if it's a language thing... Like, maybe in Japanese it's not so stilted and unnatural, but each of the last three jrpgs I've played, all of which I've enjoyed otherwise, featured scenes with dialogue like:

"Does this mean that 'THEY' have begun to move?" Or "*gasp* it couldn't be "HIM", could it?" And it never fails to distract me because no one who speaks English in real life ever talks like that ever. *sigh*

The second one is a horror/mystery trope. This is another gripe inspired by a Japanese story I otherwise really liked, but I was watching the anime series titled "Another", and this trope stuck out to me because that particular series used it no less than 6 times in its 12 episode run.

It's the cliche of having someone begin to reveal key pieces of information, only to have them be cut off at juuust the millisecond they were about to make the big reveal, usually by an explosion or a phone call or sudden death. It's another thing that's fine in moderation, but easily tiresome otherwise

 

[DefunctTheory]

Spoiler: Uber Spoiler Snip

SNIP

Its very convoluted, but here's the premise. (DEEP BREATH)

The Dark Angels have figured out about the Wulfen(actual Werewolves) and have convinced the Iron Hands, Ultramarines and like a dozen other Chapters that its time to bring the Space Wolves to heel and what not.

Meanwhile, the Grey Knights have come to Fenris because they heard there were demons mucking about, so the Grey Knights and Wolves are spread over all the Fenris system worlds fighting demons and are too busy to fuck with the Dark Angels.

Also, the presence of a Warp storm has triggered a Wulfen outbreak and hundreds of Space Wolves are howling at the moon.
But the Grey Knights, unbeknownst to the Dark Angels, are actually totally cool with werewolf space vikings because they're insanely resistant to Chaos and stupid good at killing demons.

BUT both Drago and Grimnar are missing(presumed dead, but you know how these things go. Death for named characters in 40k is like DBZ. They'll be back next season) and Bjorn's spirit has been ambushed in his slumber by demons so he can't wake up, so there's no one in high authority to call off the Dark Angels.

AND THEN it turns out that the Grey Knights are also here for the Dark Angels because through...magic or something, they found out a changeling of Tzeentch has infiltrated the Rock and is posing as a Dark Angels officer who's egging the Angels on to bomb Fenris.

AND THEN the Alpha Legion and Black Legion showed up and started defending Fenris from the Dark Angels, making it look like they're in league with the Space Wolves.

So there's actual potential! So many things could happen. Grey Knights invade the Rock and find out about the Fallen. Or Alpha Legion mans pose as Space Wolves and blow up the 1st Company battle barge of some chapter and trigger an all out war. Or Fenris is actually destroyed. Or Bjorn dies. Or the Space Wolves stave off disaster at the cost of Grimnar and most of their chapter and are forced to recruit from their satellite worlds, leading to the first Midgardian or Frostheimers to join the Wolves since the Heresy.
Or Russ himself comes back for the 'Wolf Time' and breaks into the Rock, finds the Lion(who is apparently awake and trying to find a way out of his cell) and being the Bros they are(which again apparently happened after the Heresy. They're constant fueding led to a pretty great hate fuck, and now they're bros but no one remembers that, so Angels vs Wolves grrr), decide its time to permanently curb stomp Abaddon.

But no. That's too cool, too interesting and too not status quo for GW. What'll happen is the Grey Knights call everything off at the last minute, an uneasy truce will be reached and the Space wolves will be "greatly reduced in number" without ever specifying which Wolf Lord dies because on the off chance someone in the world actually has an Engir Krakendoom army, GW doesn't want to alienate them.

(Breathes out. Passes out)

That's... actually a pretty interesting set up. It's busy as hell - Probably too busy. But it's got some potential to go places.

My only specific remarks would be that...

1. Grimnar actually has a pretty good chance to stay dead. Ragnar Blackmane, while not quite the fan favorite that Grimnar is, is still well liked, and there are probably a dozen books hinting at his rise to Chapter Master. This seems like a good a time as any to make the switch. I just hope Grimnar gets a proper send off, and not a 'He ded' line somewhere in a text block.

2. I really hope Bjorn doesn't die. Not that I wouldn't approve of his death, of course - It would be a game changer, and could make for a really interesting story in and of itself. But 'ambushed by daemons in a dream' is a lame ass way to go for the oldest Space Marine ever to live, especially for one that almost killed a Primarch. Bjorn, perhaps more then any other character in 40K, even more then Grimnar, deserves a better send off.

 

[Zenja]

It's the cliche of having someone begin to reveal key pieces of information, only to have them be cut off at juuust the millisecond they were about to make the big reveal, usually by an explosion or a phone call or sudden death. It's another thing that's fine in moderation, but easily tiresome otherwise

And no one bothers to ask "OK, now what was that super important thing you were about to tell me before this happened?" Yet, they will spend many moments after together fleeing, fighting, taking cover, driving somewhere, etc. That one bugs me too.

The top most annoying one for me is the "will they or won't they" relationship. At this point everytime I see this relationship in a story I am convinced the writer doesn't actually know how to or have the balls to write and actual relationship. My big problem with this is that I am not the type to sit by "hoping" the two of them get together. Only in very few circumstances could I see this type of story working well and its usually due to "should we be together" morally, not "I am so nervous and awkward around them and I hope they like me but I don't want them to know I like them" stuff. Its actually so rare, I like any story that just hooks two characters up and keeps them together and I get to watch the relationship mature and grow. Rather than watch it wax and wane in a constant stalemate of status quo.

 

[Chanticoblues]

Over-the-shoulder shots in film. Basically what this is, is a close-up or sometimes medium shot used in 'coverage' direction that includes the shoulder of whoever is across from or talking to the subject of the shot. It's used for spacial orientation and establishing eyeline.

I hate these shots. I really can't think of a more boring, less expressive frame. The 'dirtier' (meaning the more of the non-subject there is) the more it bugs me, and on long lenses I think it looks really ugly; like "what the hell is that out of focus blob?... Oh. It's shoulder and ear of the person the star is talking to". These shots just signify a kind of laziness to me, that a production is doing this because it's easy. Wide, over, over, close, close, closer, closer, inserts---bam we just shot ourselves an intense dialogue scene.

Yuck.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Realized I never answered the original question.

In general, my most hated fiction device is 'Conflict through misunderstanding,' whether it be comedic or dramatic. If the only reason conflict is happening is a fundamental inability to use a shared language to communicate (Obviously doesn't cover situations where it makes sense, like people who speak different languages), then your conflict is lame and stupid.

 

[Belaam]

Physics.

The Hobbit movies were particularly terrible about it. A liquid gold metal statue has the mold knocked away and holds its shape like it's made of cotton candy before suddenly shooting liquid gold out like water from a fire hose. Then that whole "rebuild a ballista by sticking parts of it to a building" thing was terrible as well. Would have decapitated the kid even if the rest of its absurd physics somehow did work.


Also, I read The Life of Pi after working on a commercial fishing boat for two months, never sleeping on dry land, and its descriptions of the ocean at night and what being at sea for a long time was like both infuriated me as they were often wildly incorrect. I don't even remember specifics now, just reading it and yelling, "no." often. Ocean currents do not work that way!

Oddly, I have no problem with many of the obviously goofy things (flying dragons, lightsabers, Ant-man's mass, etc.), it's when something is presented as normal and just not how things work that I get annoyed.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Realized I never answered the original question.

In general, my most hated fiction device is 'Conflict through misunderstanding,' whether it be comedic or dramatic. If the only reason conflict is happening is a fundamental inability to use a shared language to communicate (Obviously doesn't cover situations where it makes sense, like people who speak different languages), then your conflict is lame and stupid.

So I'm guessing you weren't a huge fan of Batman Vs. Superman?

 

[Asclepion]

But a hundred of them conquered an entire world?! In a week?! NO!
You couldn't conquer the United States with 10,000 Space Marines in a year. Its simply too big. There's too much land, too many places to store equipment and personal. And nukes. And lots of crazy people with crazy big guns.
Or even when GW writes in Imperial Guard support, oh wow. A full million of them? On crusade to conquer an entire subsector of space? Gee, that's almost 10 whole guys per planet!

A large section of worlds in the Imperium are literally medieval. I would expect a Space Marine Company to quickly destroy any opposition on a Feudal World, especially with their vehicles and support elements.

 

[Zontar]

A large section of worlds in the Imperium are literally medieval. I would expect a Space Marine Company to quickly destroy any opposition on a Feudal World, especially with their vehicles and support elements.

Destroying something doesn't mean you're taken the land. Lightning Warfare actually had issues when applied to Russia when compared to Western European nations because while the tanks could smash through enemy lines, supply lines had to be defended by infantry. While 100 Space Marines could systematically destroy their military, they couldn't actually take the planet.

Though it's a moot point because taming a feral world would be left to the Imperial Guard to send a contingent of lucky Guardsmen to put it down and take up garrison duty, the best duty a Guardsman can hope for.

 

[Queen Michael]

I was actually just thinking about this today! Bravo, escapist, for helping me feel topical.

I wouldn't necessarily say either of these gripes are specific to bad fiction... Plenty of fiction that's otherwise really good will use them, but they're really been bugging me lately because of certain shows or games I've encountered recently.

The first thing is what's come to be known as "the pronoun game": when a character uses an ambiguous pronoun instead of a proper noun in order to either force another character to ask what they mean, or to keep something secret from the audience. It's something that media from all countries likes to do, but I've noticed that Japanese media really, REALLY likes this one. I don't know if it's a language thing... Like, maybe in Japanese it's not so stilted and unnatural, but each of the last three jrpgs I've played, all of which I've enjoyed otherwise, featured scenes with dialogue like:

"Does this mean that 'THEY' have begun to move?" Or "*gasp* it couldn't be "HIM", could it?" And it never fails to distract me because no one who speaks English in real life ever talks like that ever. *sigh*

You're right on several counts, mate. It is indeed annoying, and it is indeed a language thing. In some ways, Japanese is a way more gender-neutral language than English. You can listen to two people talk about somebody called "Takahashi-san" for half an hour, and still have no idea of the person's gender. Obviously, this can put the translator in a pickle. A character will say something like "I don't think that person would want this..." The translator needs to answer these questions:

1. Did the original writer want to keep the person's gender a secret, or is it just hidden because the Japanese language doesn't automatically reveal gender?
2. Is there a way to make a gender-neutral phrasing sound natural? (After all, nobody ever says "that person" in daily conversation. And using "they" about a man whose gender both parties know about seems weird.)

 

[FalloutJack]

The second one is a horror/mystery trope. This is another gripe inspired by a Japanese story I otherwise really liked, but I was watching the anime series titled "Another", and this trope stuck out to me because that particular series used it no less than 6 times in its 12 episode run.

It's the cliche of having someone begin to reveal key pieces of information, only to have them be cut off at juuust the millisecond they were about to make the big reveal, usually by an explosion or a phone call or sudden death. It's another thing that's fine in moderation, but easily tiresome otherwise

And no one bothers to ask "OK, now what was that super important thing you were about to tell me before this happened?" Yet, they will spend many moments after together fleeing, fighting, taking cover, driving somewhere, etc. That one bugs me too.

Hey, guys. I have this anime, actually, aaand I can clear up why it happened HERE, at least.

Spoiler: Another

The curse upon the town is shown to actually remove most information in regards to the center of the curce, that being the dead person walking around like they're alive. So really, it's not exactly this cliche', but the curse actively fucking with the characters.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

The word "must." The only time hearing the word "must" in fiction doesn't bother me is if immediately proceeded by the word "have" or if the setting is ye olde and antiquated. It's one of the cornerstones of stilted dialog writing, because it's a very commonly appropriate word that almost no human being in this day and age actually SAYS. Doubly awkward if the character isn't at least grey haired and sagely. Absolutely fucking unforgivable if the movie takes place in the GOD DAMN FUTURE. You know who you are.

Worst offender of this is "Prometheus" where in the climax of the movie the main character is trying to (spoiler but I assume nobody cares) convince another character to crash the ship to stopo the threat instead of flying away and says something like "IF YOU DON'T DO IT THERE WON'T BE A HOME TO GO BACK TO, YOU MUST" really emphasizing the must as if that is something that a human being would ever say.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Physics.

This is a good one. Internal consistency is important, because otherwise it's like watching the Looney Tunes- you're sure the good guys will win by pulling something out of nowhere, because you have no idea how anything in the setting works and they might as well be using giant anvils.

OT: Carrying on something past it's end point. Nobody seems to want stories to end anymore, they just stretch it out forever with a constant stream of, "But this time, the world is going to end in a different way!" You hit a peak, and instead of coasting down the other side to a conclusion the show tries to build a bridge to the horizon. I'm looking at you, Supernatural; it was fine when it was a monster-of-the-week deal, it was fine when the apocalypse started and ended in Season 5, but when every season is either "There's something that going to destroy the world!" or "One of the brothers made a deal for his soul, and this time it's serious!" only for both things to not occur, it wears thin.