Nit Picking (Probably spoilers from everything)

[SaintEaon]

Inspired by Cinemasins

 

Do you guys just have stuff in stories, games, movies, or books that just drive you up a wall? Like in Castaway when Tom hanks is looking at the Island from the top of the mountain and all the waves are crashing into the island from all sides? Or plot devices that don't make sense, like In Dexter what if they hadn't tripped on the trip wire that killed the angel chick during the doomsday killings? What then? Is the plan just over? Or how about in that same scene when they let the locusts out of the closet? Don't they know locusts are Cannibals? Or how about in the Avengers when Tony Stark breaks into SHIELD's mainframe and steals all their dirty little secrets, then neglects to tell Captain America that Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD? Or how Hulk learned to control his powers because...reasons? Or how Thor's hammer stops working for some reason that never gets hinted at or explained? Or how Loki's staff turned that one dude who's name I didn't even bother remembering into a servant but that staff on Tony Stark didn't turn him into one? 

 

What are some of the most annoying little nit picky things you've found in stuff? 

 

I think the one that bothers me the most right now is that in Breaking Bad the only two Black characters sell friend chicken and meth.

[Sylentmana]

A lot of what you described often annoys me as well. It also really annoys me when details are changed when a book is adapted for film or TV, like the over-emphasis of combat in the Hobbit movies, or the aging up of many characters in Game of Thrones. When I first watch the show I was like "Why is Catelyn so old? In the first book, she is, like, 28?!"

 

I'm also sick of people injecting "gritty realism" into everything. If I want gritty realism I'll watch the news, thank you very much. That's why I like things like Final Fantasy. They can deal with mature themes without sacrificing the stylized visuals and over-the-top elements (except Type-0 which had gritty realism leaking from every orifice).

[Aaron]

What annoys me is how stupid the villians are in almost every piece of media.

 

If you KNOW the hero is a threat you do NOT let him/her GO after your first encounter. You do not lavish the moment and torture them nor do you monologue em. Once you beat them for the FIRST time you WIPE THEM FROM EXISTENCE IMMEDIATELY.

 

Sure a lot of stories would be shorter if that happened and I get that 100%. It's just a personal issue I don't like. If it were me for example that caught the WoL after the Bismarck fight I wouldn't have ignored them once I got the key. I'd have flung they ass off the rock without a second thought and been done with it.

[Kurt S.]

What annoys me is how stupid the villians are in almost every piece of media.

 

If you KNOW the hero is a threat you do NOT let him/her GO after your first encounter. You do not lavish the moment and torture them nor do you monologue em. Once you beat them for the FIRST time you WIPE THEM FROM EXISTENCE IMMEDIATELY.

 

Sure a lot of stories would be shorter if that happened and I get that 100%. It's just a personal issue I don't like. If it were me for example that caught the WoL after the Bismarck fight I wouldn't have ignored them once I got the key. I'd have flung they ass off the rock without a second thought and been done with it.

 

And then Cid comes out of nowhere with an airship to catch em mid air.

[Aaron]

What annoys me is how stupid the villians are in almost every piece of media.

 

If you KNOW the hero is a threat you do NOT let him/her GO after your first encounter. You do not lavish the moment and torture them nor do you monologue em. Once you beat them for the FIRST time you WIPE THEM FROM EXISTENCE IMMEDIATELY.

 

Sure a lot of stories would be shorter if that happened and I get that 100%. It's just a personal issue I don't like. If it were me for example that caught the WoL after the Bismarck fight I wouldn't have ignored them once I got the key. I'd have flung they ass off the rock without a second thought and been done with it.

 

And then Cid comes out of nowhere with an airship to catch em mid air.

Well at least I made a genuine EFFORT to kill them. Unlike SOME PEOPLE *Cough* Sephiroth *Cough*

[Caspar]

I'm not bothered by logical inconsistencies such as those so much. What matters is spectacle. However, I don't like it when you can clearly discern writer fiat in the story. For instance, in a romance, the audience comes to empathize with suitor b instead of a, which is clearly not the writer's intention, so to "force" viewers to come around to their tastes, they sabotage b with the sudden revelation that they were a jerk all a long, or go out of character long enough to sabotage their likeability permanently. 

In other cases, the author creates a charcter as a straw man of a philosophy or belief they dislike, and is appalled when the audience dares to like said character, and kills them off or dramatically restructures their behavior to cast them in a bad light.

[Chris Ganale]

In fairness, Loki's scepter didn't work on Tony because the arc reactor in Tony's chest blocked it from having a direct physical access to his heart. So apparently, whatever metal Tony's arc reactor is made out of blocks Chitauri magic. \o/

[Dravus]

I usually nit pick when it's clear that a character only endures due to the existence of plot armour. I'm willing to overlook it happening once or twice but when it happens constantly to the point where there's no actual risk of them ever enduring a major injury or death? That's when I tend to grow weary of them.

 

I try not to nit pick too often though. I can sit back and enjoy a horror movie easily enough without pointing out how stupid the characters are being for the sake of the plot. It's usually settings that I'm very interested in and passionate about that risk making me nit pick.

[Steel Wolf]

I'm not sure this qualifies as a nit-pick since the device I'm discussing is a pretty major tool...but I hate when a writer kills off a character for no other reason than to be "edgy" and "shocking".

 

George R.R. Martin is a master at this, though a couple of times it did make narrative sense. Joss Whedon is another. I just get so annoyed at this crutch because the outcome of those stories likely would have been the same had the character been left alone.

 

It's trite as hell and smacks of lack of imagination.

[SaintEaon]

Probably necroing this but sorry, been a crazy few weeks . 

 

As for the comment on Tony Starks Deus Ex Machina and the sceptor. You don't get to change the rules midway through the game, granted the powers involved were so strong a bump on the head cured Not-Green-Arrow of his ailments but still. 

 

During my prolonged absence I got some time to review another season of Dexter, and in this season they're dealing with the Doom's Day Killer. There's at one point a scene where Dexter walks into the church looking to kill Gailer who he assumes is the mastermind. During this scene Travis is either unconscious or tied up or something vaguely contrived and Dexter hears some shuffling on the floor above him. He looks up, see's Gailer see him, goes "He saw me." Then makes a mental note about how stalking him will be harder. Like two episodes later its revealed that Gailer is dead, and has been dead for two years prior which means, that entire scene from that episode 2 episodes prior was total bullshit and upon some investigation Dexter could have learned quiet easily that Travis was the killer the entire time and ended the season. 

 

Also since we're talking about story inconsistancies, the amount of times in the MSQ you win because someone knows some never before mentioned character, or they happen to know some spell or whatever deus ex machina happens drives me insane. The most comparable thing I can think to compare it to is like Naurto or Bleach where in both these super long series the main characters never feel in danger. There's always some other new jutsu or upgraded sword thing that they can unlock that has just enough power to win. It feels incredibly cheap to watch something like that happen, its like when a story introduces resurrection and you're like "Well there goes all the stakes." 

 

I think of a show like say Full Metal Alchemist which had a few simple rules for how Alchemy worked and then a few forbidden things and then you find out why some things are forbidden and the rest of the world for the most part follows those rules. I think its the same reason why Game of Thrones can be terrifying because when you see someone get stabbed, that's probably it for them. They don't usually survive and because there's no reason to think "oh well maybe they came back!" you have this constant feeling of tension. I feel like the opposite is true with the MSQ, in the times when I'm not the chosen one (which I also hate), someone always know something, or some contrived reason exists that will always bail us out of every solution, and making up Lore based around your contrived solution isn't a good answer. I remember right after HW lost I got in an argument with some dude in /shout in Coerthas Western because I made the comment "Hey this zone has the Northern Lights like every other frozen landscape in every other game." and they were like "Actually its Aether that's been twisted from the Calamity I just ran into an NPC who told me that." And its like, no what happened is they put the Northern Lights into a place that isn't super far North, realized it didn't make any sense because Coerthas used to be lush, then wrote some lore to justify that design choice.

 

I think as a general nitpicking though, drama/tension/romance in general has gotten to a point where when I'm reading it, it feels like the only reason problems arise is because no one behaves like a normal person. I'll use the movie Hitch as an example, at the end Will Smith walks in on whoever the lead actress was (I know who she is I'm just too lazy to type her name out), and finds a guy sleeping over at her house and assumes she's sleeping with someone else. Prior to their break up like 2 days before, considering everything was all good, I think its reasonable to expect the person you're in a relationship with might have mentioned they were having family over for a wedding sometime soon and this huge sad leaving scene gets totally negated. 

 

Another example would be the entire conflict in Man of Steel. Zod shows up demanding Superman and planning on Teraforming the Earth. One, he could just go to fucking Mars and accomplish the same shit without risking conflict with Superman and thus saving the Kryptonian Race. Two the problem with growing up on Earth was the Sun's Radiation. Just because you change the Atmosphere doesn't mean you change the Sun's Radiation. Our atmosphere does not determine the Sun's Radiation. Secondly instead of threatening people if the Kryptonians had just been like "Hey, UN, we need a new place to set up and rebuild our people." They would have probably responded "Well, you don't need oil, so if you'll let us have all the oil in the Middle East, we haven't been able to control that shit in ever, so uh have a ball. Mind sharing some of that space flight stuff? Maybe tell us where we can get your first officer because Damn she's fine." But instead they show up and insist on killing everyone and destroying everything and any intelligent, strategic mind could have handled that better. 

 

And finally, Saw One, how the fuck does a dude lie on the floor pretended to be dead for hours and the fucking Doctor in the Room doesn't notice is breathing? This old fucker had cancer, he wasn't exactly fit enough to hold his breath for hours. 

 

Hollywood, Writers, get your shit together, come on!

[Warren Castille]

Stark didn't change the rules. The scepter relied on skin contact, likely something sub-dermal, to activate. Stark's got a big ol' mini reactor where his skin should be. It's not an asspull, it's a technicality.

 

Thor's hammer stopped working in Thor 1 because he was no longer worthy. That's how the hammer works.

 

Hulk learned to control his powers to a limited degree because Black Widow was helping him between movies, and he cares deep enough for her to let her have some sort of control over the Big Guy.

 

Saw 1 had a pair of kidnapped, slightly panicked and traumatized people in a cell with a corpse. Your first thoughts will generally not be "hmm, better examine it to make sure" but instead "holy shit I'm going to fucking die, we've been kidnapped by the Jigsaw killer."

 

Zod wanting to terraform earth wasn't just for the practical nature, it was to exert dominance over weak humans, and to strike a blow at Kal for thinking they were worth anything but subjugation or extinction.

 

Not all motivations have to be stated to be clear.

[SaintEaon]

Stark didn't change the rules. The scepter relied on skin contact, likely something sub-dermal, to activate. Stark's got a big ol' mini reactor where his skin should be. It's not an asspull, it's a technicality.

 

Thor's hammer stopped working in Thor 1 because he was no longer worthy. That's how the hammer works.

 

Hulk learned to control his powers to a limited degree because Black Widow was helping him between movies, and he cares deep enough for her to let her have some sort of control over the Big Guy.

 

Saw 1 had a pair of kidnapped, slightly panicked and traumatized people in a cell with a corpse. Your first thoughts will generally not be "hmm, better examine it to make sure" but instead "holy shit I'm going to fucking die, we've been kidnapped by the Jigsaw killer."

 

Zod wanting to terraform earth wasn't just for the practical nature, it was to exert dominance over weak humans, and to strike a blow at Kal for thinking they were worth anything but subjugation or extinction.

 

Not all motivations have to be stated to be clear.

 

Its an asspull to say this power that can change minds only works in the exact center of a chest and also cares if whatever its touching naturally belongs to the person or not. I mean starks was metal and Not-Green-Arrow's was fabric, how come it worked on one but not the other. That's an arbitrary poorly defined rule. 

 

Thor's Hammer may have stopped working because he wasn't worthy, but they do a bad job of explaining it and an even worse job of why he instantly became worthy again with no real redemption for having been unworthy.

 

Hulk learning to control his powers between movies doesn't help him learn to control his power mid movie when he previously showed no ability to do so at any point prior. He still also stole a motorcycle. 

 

And I'm not so sure about that with Saw. I could understand it for the guy who didn't saw his leg off, but the other guy was a doctor, handling stress is what he does for a living. There are plenty of times when they could have noticed the guy breathing or in general not being dead

[Chris Ganale]

Hawkeye was wearing cloth, Tony was wearing an advanced metallic alloy that was also a power generator. Slight difference between the two.

[Warren Castille]

Its an asspull to say this power that can change minds only works in the exact center of a chest and also cares if whatever its touching naturally belongs to the person or not. I mean starks was metal and Not-Green-Arrow's was fabric, how come it worked on one but not the other. That's an arbitrary poorly defined rule. 

 

Thor's Hammer may have stopped working because he wasn't worthy, but they do a bad job of explaining it and an even worse job of why he instantly became worthy again with no real redemption for having been unworthy.

 

Hulk learning to control his powers between movies doesn't help him learn to control his power mid movie when he previously showed no ability to do so at any point prior. He still also stole a motorcycle. 

 

And I'm not so sure about that with Saw. I could understand it for the guy who didn't saw his leg off, but the other guy was a doctor, handling stress is what he does for a living. There are plenty of times when they could have noticed the guy breathing or in general not being dead

 

You must not own cats. Tiny little razor points will go clean through a shirt, or pants, or skin, without much care for what they are. They make a point of having a sound effect when Loki taps Stark's reactor, and then emphasize the confusion. It requires skin contact, you just don't know it until they pull back the curtain a bit in the late movie.

 

Thor became unworthy because all of the things he was doing he was doing for himself; Attacking the Frost Giants' home was an act of hubris and he didn't understand at all why he was being called out for it. When he is acting strictly for someone else's benefit in the finale of the movie, he is doing so out of wanting to protect someone else, not for his own benefit. Ergo, Thor worthy.

 

Hulk went berserk mostly so we could have access to the Hulkbuster scene, but if you're talking about A1 it was because he was being convinced that everyone around him was trying to use him. Anger directed at anyone and everyone is much different than anger directed at one person deserving of it: Hulk's control is less about "being angry at everything" and instead "being very angry at the bad guy."

 

You can slow your breathing to not be heard and if I remember right, the corpse was pointed at the reporter, not the doctor. It's been a while though.

[Aaron]

Probably necroing this but sorry, been a crazy few weeks . 

 

As for the comment on Tony Starks Deus Ex Machina and the sceptor. You don't get to change the rules midway through the game, granted the powers involved were so strong a bump on the head cured Not-Green-Arrow of his ailments but still. 

 

During my prolonged absence I got some time to review another season of Dexter, and in this season they're dealing with the Doom's Day Killer. There's at one point a scene where Dexter walks into the church looking to kill Gailer who he assumes is the mastermind. During this scene Travis is either unconscious or tied up or something vaguely contrived and Dexter hears some shuffling on the floor above him. He looks up, see's Gailer see him, goes "He saw me." Then makes a mental note about how stalking him will be harder. Like two episodes later its revealed that Gailer is dead, and has been dead for two years prior which means, that entire scene from that episode 2 episodes prior was total bullshit and upon some investigation Dexter could have learned quiet easily that Travis was the killer the entire time and ended the season. 

 

Also since we're talking about story inconsistancies, the amount of times in the MSQ you win because someone knows some never before mentioned character, or they happen to know some spell or whatever deus ex machina happens drives me insane. The most comparable thing I can think to compare it to is like Naurto or Bleach where in both these super long series the main characters never feel in danger. There's always some other new jutsu or upgraded sword thing that they can unlock that has just enough power to win. It feels incredibly cheap to watch something like that happen, its like when a story introduces resurrection and you're like "Well there goes all the stakes." 

 

I think of a show like say Full Metal Alchemist which had a few simple rules for how Alchemy worked and then a few forbidden things and then you find out why some things are forbidden and the rest of the world for the most part follows those rules. I think its the same reason why Game of Thrones can be terrifying because when you see someone get stabbed, that's probably it for them. They don't usually survive and because there's no reason to think "oh well maybe they came back!" you have this constant feeling of tension. I feel like the opposite is true with the MSQ, in the times when I'm not the chosen one (which I also hate), someone always know something, or some contrived reason exists that will always bail us out of every solution, and making up Lore based around your contrived solution isn't a good answer. I remember right after HW lost I got in an argument with some dude in /shout in Coerthas Western because I made the comment "Hey this zone has the Northern Lights like every other frozen landscape in every other game." and they were like "Actually its Aether that's been twisted from the Calamity I just ran into an NPC who told me that." And its like, no what happened is they put the Northern Lights into a place that isn't super far North, realized it didn't make any sense because Coerthas used to be lush, then wrote some lore to justify that design choice.

 

I think as a general nitpicking though, drama/tension/romance in general has gotten to a point where when I'm reading it, it feels like the only reason problems arise is because no one behaves like a normal person. I'll use the movie Hitch as an example, at the end Will Smith walks in on whoever the lead actress was (I know who she is I'm just too lazy to type her name out), and finds a guy sleeping over at her house and assumes she's sleeping with someone else. Prior to their break up like 2 days before, considering everything was all good, I think its reasonable to expect the person you're in a relationship with might have mentioned they were having family over for a wedding sometime soon and this huge sad leaving scene gets totally negated. 

 

Another example would be the entire conflict in Man of Steel. Zod shows up demanding Superman and planning on Teraforming the Earth. One, he could just go to fucking Mars and accomplish the same shit without risking conflict with Superman and thus saving the Kryptonian Race. Two the problem with growing up on Earth was the Sun's Radiation. Just because you change the Atmosphere doesn't mean you change the Sun's Radiation. Our atmosphere does not determine the Sun's Radiation. Secondly instead of threatening people if the Kryptonians had just been like "Hey, UN, we need a new place to set up and rebuild our people." They would have probably responded "Well, you don't need oil, so if you'll let us have all the oil in the Middle East, we haven't been able to control that shit in ever, so uh have a ball. Mind sharing some of that space flight stuff? Maybe tell us where we can get your first officer because Damn she's fine." But instead they show up and insist on killing everyone and destroying everything and any intelligent, strategic mind could have handled that better. 

 

And finally, Saw One, how the fuck does a dude lie on the floor pretended to be dead for hours and the fucking Doctor in the Room doesn't notice is breathing? This old fucker had cancer, he wasn't exactly fit enough to hold his breath for hours. 

 

Hollywood, Writers, get your shit together, come on!

It's called Plotkai & Plot no Jutsu.

 

You generally watch em for the action more than the fighting.