Ahhh yes, the old idiot plot. Where would we even be as a culture without it
Comment on How original. Fucking Shakespeare over here.
AngryishHumanoid@lemmy.world 2 days ago
On the other side of this, the cliche of “Simple misunderstanding we could have resolved if one party hadn’t said “I don’t NEED to hear your explanation!” before storming off” can fuck right off and die.
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
mika_mika@lemmy.world 2 days ago
All scripts of Shakespeare’s comedy category that I’ve read are idiot plots. The characters constantly explain to the audience, but never to each other. It enables all the hijinks to unfold. So, it’s been around at least that long.
For example, twins separated at birth. If the twins in the Comedy of Errors explained who they were, or if the cast once questioned either of them on their strangeness, everything could be clarified.
It extends to outside comedies, even the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet could have been avoided if Romeo had confirmed Juliet and Friar’s plan, or had checked to see if she was still alive before offing himself.
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
We would probably have a much higher (and more incorrect) opinion of ourselves. We’re all fools, and recognizing our own foolishness reflected in art doesn’t make it not so. Just makes it easier to think about.
sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
Maybe? I don’t think that’s where I learned to introspect from. But maybe the stakes are lower learning to socialize from stories
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
A lot of narrative stories (fiction and non) are in the format “person in situation X makes decision Y and experiences consequences Z” with the moral being “if you are in a situation like X, doing Y will have Z consequences” ("moral” in the sense of being a generalizable life lesson). I think they’re an important part of how we discuss life experiences as a community, both extraordinary and mundane. And it is a lot easier to learn from stories than to experience consequences in real life. The problem is that storytellers are all humans and sometimes bad at storytelling, so care must be taken when learning from stories, and they all have to be validated against real life experience.
And then before you know it, you’ve become an art critic.
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
People do that all the time though, often to disastrous effect. Once it stops happening IRL we’ll stop making art about it*.
* while it does happen all the time IRL, I think some writers use it as a shortcut to get to the plot they want to pursue without going through the character development that establishes why a character might act this way. That is lazy and annoying writing, but it doesn’t invalidate the whole trope. People really are like that. Clear communication is hard work and a lot of people just don’t do it a lot of the time.
NekoKoneko@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Sure, sometimes people are like that, but even if it meets the absolute minimum standards of plausibility, why on earth would I waste my time watching/reading it? It’s just bad writing either way.
Relatedly: everything is art, but not everything is good.
queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
I don’t think it’s an automatic “bad writing” if a character does something that a human might do, even if it’s a monumentally stupid thing to do. Humans are just like that sometimes. Sometimes it adds to a story, sometimes its incidental to an otherwise fine story, sometimes it’s a lazy device to help a writer deliver pages on a deadline. Whether it’s bad writing is contextual.
Re: your relatedly: I highly recommend bad art. We’re appallingly bad at classifying art as “good” and “bad” to begin with, and even when we have an agreed-upon standard, most art is a mix of the two. I have found that not taking other people’s opinions on art at face value has led me to some very enjoyable art.
joshcodes@programming.dev 1 day ago
There’s a somewhat horrific show on Netflix called Bloodlines which I thought made a point of not using this trope. There’s a character who for half a season listens to everyone, does what they tell them to, tries to make things work in a dysfunctional environment, and falls back into old habits because no one trusts him when anything goes wrong. Its a show filled with very human interactions, almost like the writers asked “what would actual people do” in every scenario, but also push the plot along.
Highly recommend it because this shit annoys me.
idunnololz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Gotta love the “this season wouldn’t have even happened if everyone had been upfront and honest with each other.”
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 2 days ago
No, wait, it’s the other thing.
Gotta hate with the burning rage of a thousand suns…