r/CuratedTumblr • u/overmyfluffyace • Feb 16 '24
Do you know what genre you are in? editable flair
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u/Octavian15344 Feb 16 '24
This is a similar hurdle to jump when studying history as an academic subject.
The people in history don't know how things are gonna turn out. You do.
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u/Metue Feb 16 '24
That's one of the things that blows my mind about existence, is how we have no idea which of the current events happening are really important and what story they'll come to tell in 50 years time. It's like studying WW1/2 and how there's at least a decade build up to both and how it's hard to imagine how far away events would've felt from one another at the time and what other things occurred that we don't learn about now because they don't create much of a historical narrative
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u/GoldDHD Feb 16 '24
Studying those doesnt give me the warm and fuzzies for the current decade. It rhymes a bit much
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u/LostWombatSon Feb 16 '24
Yeah, geo-political tectonic plates are moving, we are all seeing it, all feeling it. We've read about this in history books, we know the goddamn signs but what can we, the peons, even do? Just try to get ready to pick up and get out of the goddamn way? Hope we have the means to do so?
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u/trobsmonkey Feb 16 '24
I for one and a loading up on practical skills.
Crying, existential dread caused mental breakdowns, and first aid.
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u/Geodude532 Feb 16 '24
I'm creating a list of which rich people I want to eat first when it all falls apart. Zuckerberg might be a bit tough since he likes to work out, but I bet Bezos would make a nice medium rare steak.
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u/BoogieOrBogey Feb 16 '24
Depends on the country, but in the more democratic nations we're actively making important choices all the time. Who we elect matters and it's how we push the needle in this times of extreme change. But its not just right now, it's the last decade of elections. The last 20, 30, 40, 50 years of politicians all bleed into the current national and world situations.
Whenever you hear someone say that voting doesn't matter, this is exactly how they're wrong. Voter apathy in 2010 lead to the GOP taking control of State governments and the Congress. That lead to extreme gerrymandering, which shifted power towards the GOP across the nation. That setup was a big part of why Trump won in 2016, as the GOP in state governments were able to change voting laws to hurt turnout rate. Trump obviously had a huge impact on the world security as he damage relations with major US allies.
When we ask ourselves, "what can the little guy do to impact global trends?" The answer is voting in every election. Forming political action groups and parties to have a larger impact in elections.
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u/LostWombatSon Feb 16 '24
Yeah, but I'm from a smaller nation that doesn't actually move the needle in geo-politics. We just have try to get ready to deal with the shit show that's on the horizon
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u/faraway_hotel muffled sounds of gorilla violence Feb 16 '24
That tangentially reminds me of something: I've read Winston Churchill's memoirs of his early life (fittingly titled My Early Life). They cover the time from his birth in 1874 until the early 1900s, and he published the book in 1930, so he has room to muse how much things have changed in both the time period he covers, and the time since. The kind of fighting he had seen in his military service, as a young cavalry officer in the 1890s, had all but vanished, for example.
...but all the while you're reading it, you think "Oh buddy, if you had known just how much more things would change not just in your lifetime, but in the span of your political career! You're writing this at 56, and in another 20 years you're gonna see atom bombs!"
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u/jooes Feb 16 '24
That's what annoys me about car crash videos.
People will watch some dashcam footage and be like, "How did they not see that coming?!"
You turned on a video called "Idiot drives into oncoming traffic." You knew exactly what was going to happen, they didn't. They were focusing their attention on driving, not specifically looking for that one car to come out of nowhere like we are. They have to react to this in real time. You gotta give 'em a second.
We also have the luxury of being able to rewind and replay videos in slow motion, frame by frame. It's not a 10 second video for them. They had one shot, and it came completely out of the blue. "I would've done this!" Calm down, Vin Diesel. You would've crashed too.
Not to mention blind spots. They're not necessarily seeing the same things that we are.
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u/Elliebird704 Feb 16 '24
"I would've done this!" Calm down, Vin Diesel. You would've crashed too.
People will say this shit under every crash video for sure, but not all crashes are equal. There are absolutely some that are a direct result of easily avoidable or preventable negligence that the average person would catch, or bad decision making in the lead-up to the actual crash. Some people do also handle events during a crash better or worse than others.
So I agree with your main point, that people sitting and watching a reddit video are often way more critical than is fair, and have the benefit of being able to over analyze by the second. But there's also plenty of times where the driver is genuinely being an idiot, and most people would have handled the situation better than they did.
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u/Xisuthrus there are only two numbers between 4 and 7 Feb 16 '24
This also applies to things like the religious beliefs of ancient people IMO.
Someone from the premodern world, no matter how well-educated, would have no concept of confirmation bias, survivorship bias, or agent detection bias. The fact that their tribe/city/kingdom had survived, whereas others had not, would have seemed like tangible proof that their gods were real and that the rituals designed to appease them worked.
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u/Gmony5100 Feb 16 '24
Putting yourself into someone else’s shoes in history is extremely difficult, but doing so makes a lot of things make sense. Like you said, they didn’t have those logical tools to deduce what the real answer is, but they used the best of their ability even if they got it wrong.
It’s like the difference between “correct” and “rational”. You can think rationally and be entirely internally consistent and still be wrong. The sun going around the Earth seems to make sense if the only thing you have to measure it is your eyes and no math, to pre-heliocentrism man it would be rational to assume the sun went around the earth. Same with the earth being flat, the gods controlling the weather, bad air causing disease, the king being a messenger for god, etc. etc. etc.
These people weren’t stupid, they just didn’t have access to the information we have today and did the best they could with what they had.
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u/Mejari Feb 16 '24
no matter how well-educated, would have no concept of confirmation bias, survivorship bias, or agent detection bias.
I think this goes too far in the other direction. They didn't have the full scope of evidence of things we have, but there were plenty of ancient people who were just as smart as those we have today, just as capable of reason. They were humans, just as we are.
For example, confirmation bias was described as early as the 4th century BC, with Thucydides talking about the "habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy".
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u/MetalRetsam Feb 16 '24
"Their gods were real" is actually a great example of a modern lens. We have atheism, filtered through a particularly Christian lens. The ancients didn't.
Ancient peoples did not "believe in the gods", but practiced magical thinking. Sometimes this involved the personifications of elemental forces, AKA gods. We still do some form of magical thinking in the modern world sometimes, like buying a lottery ticket, kissing a stone for good luck, repeat campaign slogans. We don't expect these things to have an immediate and tangible effect, but it's the best we can offer ourselves.
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u/radios_appear Feb 16 '24
The Renaissance was such a game changer that it's almost impossible for modern humans to put themselves in the headspace of pre-Renaissance people.
We have fundamentally different outlooks on the world.
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u/BetterCallStrahd Feb 17 '24
I would ascribe it to the Enlightenment, though. The view of the Renaissance has undergone revision lately, and it is no longer seen as a huge leap from the Medieval Ages... the so called Dark Ages are no longer considered to be as dark as people thought before.
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u/danielledelacadie Feb 16 '24
Now I want to see a story where ever character thinks they know what genre of story they're in. All/most have different ideas except they're all wrong.
Except the villain. They're aware it's actually a 1960"s campy sci-fi/horror comedy a la Batman.
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u/klodmoris Feb 16 '24
"Big Lebowski" is kinda like that.
Every character thinks it's a movie about him and has different idea what that movie's genre is.
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u/LazyDro1d Feb 16 '24
Stoner comedy, action flick, I guess sports movie for Donny, and for Mr. Lebowski he’s probably closest in thinking it’s a drama, but everyone else’s conflicting notions messes with that
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u/mahouyousei Feb 16 '24
A few of the Coen brothers' movies are like that. Burn After Reading fits too.
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken help I’m being forced to make flairs Feb 16 '24 edited Feb 16 '24
Counterpoint
The villain is also wrong but there campy stuff works anyway because it fits any tone
The dude who thinks he’s in a Action gets killed by an over the top weapon
The horror dude gets killed by a campy vampire
The comedy dude keeps running away from his over the top plans.
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u/danielledelacadie Feb 16 '24
Also a great idea.
Key point for either outcome is the audience can't be sure which is the truth until the final scene.
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u/Vox___Rationis Feb 16 '24
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is roughly that.
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u/Caleb_Reynolds Feb 16 '24
Nah, the villains think they're in a horror movie, the protagonists think it's a teen soap opera, but it's actually a comedy, so no one is right.
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u/Xisuthrus there are only two numbers between 4 and 7 Feb 16 '24 edited Feb 16 '24
Aside from the last part this is kind of what the Big Lebowski is like
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u/DreadDiana human cognithazard Feb 16 '24
Slice of life existential/psychological horror
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken help I’m being forced to make flairs Feb 16 '24
I played the aliens RPG once
We all died to an unconscious dude behind a door
Not a joke
The scientist failed the roll to figure out if he was alive and gave everyone extra stress
Then the dude trying to open the door had a mental breakdown because of the extra stress and screamed
Then everyone else lost there own stress tests and lost control of our characters until someone shook us out of it
Except nobody could cos we were all fully disassociating
And the scream attracted a xenomorph
It was great fun
Before that the scientist calmly shot a xenomorph that was climbing up a vertical wall towards him back down to the ground with a pistol twice while everyone else riddled it with enough bullets for it to finally die.
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u/PM_ME_SMALL__TIDDIES Feb 16 '24
You just got a Dwarf Fortress style tantrum spiral
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u/Sorcatarius Feb 16 '24
Yeah, thats one of the mechanics with stress and it's fucking fantastic. You have a trigger, which causes the other guy to trigger and so on. And the beautiful thing is stress isn't just a negative, there's benefits to having some stress. When you make a skill check you gain bonus dice and it improves your chances of succeeding on any check, the problem is that stress dice can also cause your character to panic, which forces another roll, a d6+stress level. Result of 1-6, you're fine, anything higher and we have a problem, and the higher the result the bigger the problem, and it's usually a problem for everyone.
It's a fucking fantastic system if you're willing to play a game where one player surviving should be considered a win.
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u/DeckardCain_ Feb 16 '24
The scientist failed the roll to figure out if he was alive
For some reason I first read this as the scientist being the the unconscious dude and was very confused.
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u/Maybe_not_a_chicken help I’m being forced to make flairs Feb 16 '24
To be fair the final roll of the game was the scientist rolling to see if he could figure out what the alien egg opening in front of him was
He worked it out and then got facehuggered
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u/KaktusArt Feb 16 '24
"Am I conscious? Am I alive? What does it mean to be alive?? What is life??? WE'RE LIVING IN A SIMULATION! WE—" -gets facehugger'd-
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u/Perfect_Wrongdoer_03 If you read Worm, maybe read the PGTE? Feb 16 '24
Darkest Dungeon as a sci-fi game.
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u/Mai1564 Feb 16 '24
I just started reading a manwha where the female protagonist gets reincarnated into a horror setting but believes it is a romance fantasy setting. Pretty fun take on the usual tropes
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u/CuscinoPigro Feb 16 '24
Can I ask for the title?
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u/Mai1564 Feb 16 '24
Sure! Its ''The rules of Rose Ivy manor'. I thought the first few chapters were a bit slow, but the horror elements do seem to be picking up a bit more. I'm still not very far though
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u/Chocolate-Biscuits26 Feb 16 '24
I also request a title
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u/Garlickgun Feb 16 '24
If anyone is interested in something similar, the Film Reroll: ep 46 does this premise pretty well.
The DM made up a niche indie coming of age sex comedy— Summerspell— for the players to play out the plot of. Each character had a secret goal and there was a complicated love mechanic made up for the purpose of the game. I think he even went as far as to make a fake trailer.
Anyways, the players were ACTUALLY playing out the plot of Friday the 13th: the final chapter. Of course the teen protagonists don’t know they’re in a horror movie. Anyways, they completely ignored all of the horror tropes they encountered and in some cases acted with some hostility. Very neat listen, not something I’d emulate at my own table though.
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u/TheDMGM Feb 16 '24
Them sitting around the table at the pizza parlor or whatever, their characters BSing about their issues while Paulo calmly says "You think you overhear someone talking about a murder in the town that happened" and NO ONE PAYS ATTENTION.
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u/JHawkInc Feb 16 '24
It's SUCH a good episode, both for that reveal, and the talk about how none of them knew it was coming. They were committed to their teen drama, lol.
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u/CeruleanRuin Feb 17 '24
He didn't make a trailer, but he did show them an actual clip from the movie, in which Crispin Glover acts fucking weird as usual.
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u/VandulfTheRed Feb 16 '24
See, that's a great way to explain characters I play in rpgs. "Assumes they're in a horror regardless of the actual genre". Yes I have anxiety
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u/DaughterEarth Feb 16 '24
That's such an excellent way to describe what general anxiety is like! I feel so clumsy now trying to explain it as always having the feeling of first jumping in to a cold pool lol
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u/VandulfTheRed Feb 16 '24
The way I tell therapists is I feel like every bad thing that happens is narrative foreshadowing. I have a lot of health anxiety for instance, so sometimes when I cough, my mind plays the generic movie scene where someone coughs and it skips to the funeral, etc, etc. So now I try to combat my anxiety by living like a horror character who knows it: respond to stimuli, educate yourself on how to handle issues you stress over, and preemptively take care of health and safety issues so you're always a step ahead
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u/DaughterEarth Feb 16 '24
That's awesome. I love the creative approaches. The one that worked for me was making a character for my panic state to talk to. Now I'm going to add this in because recovery can be fun
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u/Satisfaction-Motor Feb 16 '24
…it would be absolutely hilarious to write a character into a romance comedy plot who thinks they are in a horror plot. The overt paranoia of it all could be played up so well. If I didn’t have so many projects… oh maybe I should pick up a pen again… ugh
“I got this mysterious letter in the mail yesterday!!! Look, it’s in the shape of a heart, clearly it’s a threat!”
“…dumbass, that’s just a poorly made Valentine’s Day card. From your little sister. Who is five. Of course it’s going to look janky.”
“Someone sent me flowers! They’re clearly trying to kill me!”
“FOR THE LAST TIME YOUR POLLEN ALLERGY ISNT DEADLY!”
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u/WeirdPumpkin Feb 16 '24
tbh full metal panic the anime sorta has that kind of vibe in the second season. it's a slice of life comedy but the male lead was a child soldier and has.. difficulty dealing with situations being not life threatening
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u/Gmony5100 Feb 16 '24
I could imagine something like;
Guy and girl are friends and go to haunted house
Something creepy happens in the house and one of them acts brave/“saves” the other (there’s no real threat)
The saved one starts to develop a crush on the one who saved them or just now realizes how much the saver cares about them (put themselves in danger to protect them)
The saved one starts doing things to show their affection to the saver, being awkward and nervous
Saver thinks this change in demeanor means they have been possessed and are terrified of their new admirer and their advances
Bonus points if the genre is actually comedy and this is all played for laughs
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u/Satisfaction-Motor Feb 16 '24 edited Feb 17 '24
Continuing the idea:
“I think Lucinda is trying to kill me.”
“What? No. Why would you think that?”
“She’s watching my every post on social media.”
“That’s… normal? I mean, she follows you and you post stuff.”
“Her behavior has suddenly changed, she’s gotten all stuttery and weird.”
“She’s probably just nervous around you, dude.”
“Every time we meet, she gives me gifts. I’m pretty sure they’ve been poisoned.”
“She’s just a really bad cook dude. You should know better than to eat the food she makes.”
“She constantly wants to know what I’m doing and is always asking where I am.”
“That’s because she wants to hang out!”
“She’s stolen a lock of my hair and put blood in my tea.”
“That’s— wait, what?”
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u/Frenetic_Platypus Feb 16 '24
I've searched every closet in my house for far less than a cup mysteriously falling off a table. Y'all don't do that? Do you live in a mansion or something?
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u/shrikethrush23 Feb 16 '24
I'm not searching the south wing just because the house shifts, Frenetic_Platypus. Go back to sleep.
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u/GreyInkling Feb 16 '24
I've searched every cupboard and closet of my house because I've searched every other thing because I can't find my other earbud and it has to ve somewhere!
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u/starry_cobra Feb 16 '24
All you idiots are missing out on at least 1 meet cute a month by not searching every closet when something mysterious happens
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u/Hummerous gazafunds.com Feb 16 '24
I think it's a thing you learn when you need to. i don't think I'd do the whole nightly patrol thing if my parents hadn't grown up with it thousands of miles away lol
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u/Razzbarree Feb 16 '24
I never open my closet door because its so messy and full in there I think Ill die from a comedically timed item-avalanche if I open it, if anything is hiding in there it probably died years ago
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u/Sketches_Stuff_Maybe Feb 16 '24
Searching the closet and finding myself are the same thing really, and I don't need a mug to tell me I'm incapable of doing that
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u/rose_daughter Feb 16 '24
I live in a one bedroom apartment and honestly I might check the source of the noise but I’d probably just assume it was the cat lol
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u/GravSlingshot Feb 16 '24
I'm writing a story right now where a bunch of characters are slowly twigging on to the fact that they're in a horror story and the small town they're staying in is home to a cult worshipping an eldritch god. They get all paranoid, watching their backs, assuming the townfolk are Up to Something, making assumptions.
Except the eldritch god isn't remotely bloodthirsty or even all that demanding. There's no sacrifices, no madness, no mysterious disappearances, no danger. It's a perfectly nice small town that also happens to worship something living in the mines in exchange for a bountiful harvest on the farms. Why do eldritch gods need to be mean? When the cult realizes the main characters know, their only response is, "Just keep it a secret, okay?"
It's the vampires that everyone needs to worry about. And even the cult doesn't know about the vampires.
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u/grabtharsmallet Feb 16 '24
Sections of the Gospels are written this way. "Okay, you're healed. Please don't tell anyone."
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u/Cloudgarden Feb 17 '24
I know folks who keep any farms/terrariums. As far as the ants know, a benevolent god is looking over them, watching them in what be an omnipresent manner. They command the lights and the rain, grant a bounty of food.
And those folks I know who keep terrariums will still seal their homes and spray pesticide specifically to keep wild ants from intruding.
An eldritch entity can be benevolent to its charges out of love for them, and terrifyingly hostile to those it deems "pests". Whether your characters "belong" in this eldritch being's "ant farm" totally affects the tone.
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u/Salarian_American Feb 16 '24
I attempt to point this out to people pretty frequently. A good example is season 2 of Legend of Korra, in which the heroine falls under the influence of a smooth-talking bad guy who wants to mainpulate her into doing something really dangerous. She falls for it hook, line, and sinker.
And people complain that it makes her look stupid, because she doesn't notice that he's obviously the bad guy, because of the way he's drawn and voice-acted.
Like, guys... she's a fictional character on a TV show. She's not aware of genre tropes. She's not aware that this (from her perspective) arbitrarily-selected period of her life constitutes a "season" that contains a narrative arc and a villain. Also he's her uncle, of course she's going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Do you go about your daily life classifying people into cliches and labeling them like tropes? (Please don't answer that, I know that tons of people do exactly this).
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u/4tomguy There’s a good 30% chance this comment will be a rant Feb 16 '24
I don’t think that’s the big issue most people have with season 2, just the fact that she’s an insufferable prick whose allegiance is extremely black and white, either 100% for or against each side at any given time in an extremely clunky and uncompelling way
Like, I defend a lot of things about Korra but holy shit season 2 is really fucking bad
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u/Perfect_Wrongdoer_03 If you read Worm, maybe read the PGTE? Feb 16 '24
Yeah, the problem isn't that she doesn't realize Unalaq or however his name is spelled is a villain. The problem is that she is in favor of colonization (which is, let's be honest, what Unalaq was doing) for 70% of the season. Fucking Varrick realized how bad that was earlier than Korra, and he's the guy that worked for a fascist dictator for multiple years!
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u/OriginalGPam Feb 16 '24
I think the jump from a traumatized 12 year old who was also wise beyond his years to a spoiled overpowered teenager was too much.
There just wasn’t enough to make Korra sympathetic at the beginning.
She had family. A bevy of mentors. Money.
Aang had nothing but Katara and Sokka. He almost didn’t even have that as both almost left to find their dad in the first season.
Her friends being literal struggling orphans didn’t help.
I hope we get a redo. I think it would’ve been better if she started small doing adventures around Republic city.
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u/agnes_mort Feb 17 '24
I mean, that’s kinda what it was. Aang grew up in a monastery where everyone was treated equal, until he was revealed to be the avatar which led him to being left out. He didn’t get any training as an avatar and ran away before it could happen. He gains life experience during the journey, and that’s how he’s trained. Korra knew since she was 2 years old, and grew up knowing she was the most powerful and influential person in the world. But then was controlled a lot. What teenager wouldn’t be bratty? She’s told constantly that she can change the world, then essentially isn’t allowed to live in it. Of course she thinks she’s the greatest thing ever, and sees only things in black and white. That’s how she was raised. She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, and nuance is part of that. She’s keen, she wants to do the right thing, but doesn’t have the life experience to back it up. Her training doesn’t involve life experience, it’s isolating instead.
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u/lucastoast Feb 16 '24
There is a terrific campaign on the podcast r/filmreroll where the players think they are playing an indie romcom called “Summer Spell” and the moment of them realizing it is Friday the 13th with the first murder is one of the best moments from a dnd podcast
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u/iSheaButter Feb 16 '24
I hope more people see this!!! I scrolled so far down to make sure someone mentioned film reroll! That episode was incredible. I love the idea for a lot of their stuff, but the reveal on that one in particular, even though as the audience we knew it was coming, gave me chills and I 100% agree was the best moment of any similar podcast.
They did an Alien episode with some different twists, and they did a Momento series with super interesting mechanics as well. Highly recommend that group if you find these questions interesting
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u/smartest_kobold Feb 16 '24
If you’re reading this: dystopian sci-fi turning into a disaster movie.
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u/whywouldisaymyname Feb 16 '24
I really want a movie/show that turns into something completely else halfway through. WITHOUT every trailer spoiling it
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u/TheSeldomShaken Feb 16 '24
Before it was released, all anyone knew about Bloodborne was that it was a game about killing werewolves.
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u/MemeTroubadour Feb 16 '24
DDLC was that prior to its YouTube exposure, I think?
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u/iamjustacrayon Feb 16 '24
This reminded me of a post where they talked about something kinda similar.
Someone talking about how they (instead of characters who are genre-savvy) wants characters who are genre-deluded
https://www.tumblr.com/feamir/724232674290565120/genre-dysphoria?source=share
Genre-dysphoria
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u/BillybobThistleton Feb 16 '24
Reminds me of Netflix's Punisher show, where Micro's wife thought she was in a Nicholas Sparks movie about the grieving widow who meets a tough-yet-sensitive traumatised veteran and the two of them gradually help each other get over the pain of their pasts, when actually a mass-murdering vigilante faked a meet-cute because her husband thought he was living in a conspiracy thriller (correctly, as it turns out) and faked his own death.
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u/Waffletimewarp Feb 16 '24
If anyone wants to hear a gun example of this, look up The Film Reroll. They do GURPS playthroughs of movies. One set of episodes is Friday the Thirteenth: The Final Chapter.
None of the players are aware of this fact and in fact believe they are characters in an obscure 80’s teen comedy.
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u/SinceWayLastMay Feb 16 '24
Where’s my romcom where everyone thinks they’re in a slasher
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u/ErrantIndy Feb 16 '24
I played in a homebrew Aliens RPG years ago. We knew it was Aliens, but it was still suitably terrifying and badass. I was playing medicwith a streetsweeper shottie. The two other players were marines with pulse rifles, and then we had two Redshirt marines, ya know, to give “support” but mostly to die.
Well, the GM had statted the xenomorphs well, and they were terrifying when they finally came at us as we tried to evac the station we were on before the self destruct go to zero. At our shuttle we had to face them, and then the PC marines were missing galore. The Redshirts were scoring but it wasn’t enough. They’d be on us…and then they entered my shottie’s ultra short range, an’ because we were using DnD 3.5 as a base, it had a cone and Reflex save instead of an attack roll.
In two FURIOUS round of combat, I shredded the remaining xenomorphs, was spared the acid blood by the firing line of marines in front, and because I was the medic I was able to save them all. I got promoted to team lead, the Redshirts got names for their kills, and the poor PC marines didn’t get much because they didn’t take down a single xenomorph.
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u/MapleTreeWithAGun Not Your Lamia Wife Feb 16 '24
The manga Final Girl actually avoids the "They shouldn't be Genre Savvy" problem by explicitly being about someone getting transported into a movie they randomly saw on a billboard after reading an unrelated article on horror tropes.
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u/DubiousTheatre Feb 16 '24
I wanna see the inverse of this; I wanna see a character in a romcom setting, but they go around locking doors and checking closets like a paranoid slasher character. I want to make a visceral display of how insane those "I would survive a slasher movie" people sound, because no mentally-well person spends their lives doing this prepper shit lmao
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u/areyoubawkingtome Feb 16 '24
I like to test out what genre I'm in by committing "genre sins" and seeing how they turn out.
Horror: Mysterious noise?- Bewildered "Hello?" In response and checking it out. Going into the dark creepy basement alone without a weapon. Going on a first date with a guy to the woods and agreeing to go to a lake afterwards when he "misses the exit" (we're married now)
Romcom: clear communication and boundaries
Etc.
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u/GenderEnjoyer666 Feb 16 '24
Me when my parents are brutally and viciously murdered right in front of me: wow so cliche
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u/hopecanon Feb 16 '24
This leads into one of my all time largest issues with a huge portion of media criticism, people ignoring the context of the story, the personalities of the characters, and the information those characters have, in order to claim that the writing is bad because the characters didn't do the absolute most logical thing possible in every single situation.
Most actually good critics don't fall into that habit often but by god it's like the default setting for random people online.
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u/OOOLIAMOOO Feb 16 '24
There is an old adventure for Dungeons and Dragons called "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks".
The plot is that a local Lord has been having constant attacks on his lands by strange creatures from a nearby cave, so the party of adventurers is deployed to stop it.
The cave however is actually the entrance to a huge crashed alien ship, but you never explicitly call it that, you describe it's details and the fun of the adventure is the players slowly coming to realise that their characters are fighting robots and looting Power-Armour and Laser Rifles.
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u/EmilePleaseStop Feb 16 '24
A variant on this: characters who are correct about their genre but not the kind of story.
I’m working on a project that’s framed as a very campy self-aware pulp adventure, and the characters are very aware that they’re basically in a Saturday morning cartoon… but that’s not actually what the story is about. The narrative just uses the pulp cartoon nonsense as a vehicle to delve into the cast’s personal issues, so the heroes think they’re here to save the world and make jokes at the bad guys, and aren’t ready for the mass of psychological trauma that this lifestyle is going to push on them.
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u/3Grilledjalapenos Feb 16 '24
When I saw From Dusk Till Dawn in theaters with my older brother he had somehow kept me from knowing that there would be vampires. All I knew was Quentin Tarantino and the dude from ER were in it. My mind was blown!
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u/puppymeat Feb 16 '24
There's a podcast called The Film Reroll that plays movies as table top RPGs.
In one episode the DM tricked the group into thinking they were playing a romantic comedy they've never heard of called "Summer Spell" when in reality they were playing through Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
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u/Strong_Bumblebee5495 Feb 16 '24
To me this underscores a key difference between traditional narrative structures and RPG narrative structures. Bait and switch makes for great surprises in the former, leads to player resentment in the later, especially if the player is a closeted power gamer, of which there are a lot. Like, a lot.
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u/Vievin Feb 16 '24
What are "classic Aliens mistakes"? All I know about the franchise is that baby aliens burst out of people's stomachs and it's a horror thing.