Pet Peeve Plot Holes

[Shadsie]

If you enjoy fiction - books, movies, television shows, animes, games, etc. and you've been an audience to many fictions, you've met Our Friend, the Plot Hole.

Some plot holes are tiny and easily mended with a little bit of reader or viewer imagination. Occasionally (very occasionally) an author might actually thank his or her fans for finding what they and their editor did not (didn't J.K. Rowling thank her fans for finding something amiss in one of the Harry Potter books? - It was just a tiny, nitpicking thing one cannot blame the writer of a massive series for overlooking by mistake)...

And then there are those you can hole-in-one a Death Star through. These are the ones that seem so obvious, so common-sense that the creators / characters not even attempting to explain them just will drive one nuts.

I have a specific pet-peeve plot hole that shows up in multiple media: THE APOCALYPSE IS HAPPENING ALL AROUND US but the lights are on, the water's running and the trains are running on time.

It annoys the poo out of me! I guess some people don't want too much squalor to distract from the exicting story about zombies and/or war or whatever, but there is just a part of my brain that says that if mankind has fallen, there shouldn't be an infrastructure.

I was reminded of it today when reading a certain blog that lays into a particular book series-that-shall-not-be-named that I'm actively ashamed of having read some of. It's been many years since I read it, but there was one part of one book highlighted today / in the recent post that showed main characters living and thinking quite casually even though the major city they'd been in had just been nuked that week. This is actually a recurring lack of common sense through the book series: Horrible things are happening, yet there are roads to travel, airports to land in that *should not exist after a nuclear boming raid,* technology is working, main characters are not much worried about the death going on around them because they're absorbed in themselves, whole passages are dedicated to how ugly someone's borrowed car is while the deaths of millions are given a sentence or two. People might know what books I'm talking about... Anyway, annoying main characters aside, the utter-mundane of their world where *things still work that should not be* that is a *jarring* juxtaposition to what is *supposed* to be happening...

Theroies from the anti-fans of the series that they might be a hallucinated-by-the-main-characters thing make it make a lot more sense. Being reminded led me to be reminded of another piece of fiction where I found this prominent...

"Zombieland" is actually a pretty fun movie. I enjoyed it. Horror/humor and geekiness - also a cross-country survival-fantasy... However, it is noted at several points that "The Virus" has been ravaging the world for a number of *weeks* - as in, it didn't just get started *weeks* ago, it actually has taken over and destroyed most people as of *weeks* ago. MOST of the human race is made up of zombies or has become food for them. The survivors the story follows, however, find *everything* working. Grocery stores have their lights on. When they visit a certain surviving celebrity's house, it makes sense that he'd have generators, but, honestly, the grocery stores and the amusement park I just can't see getting a power-feed for that long. (Even generators run on gas). Being a "near-future" situation rather than far-future, I doubt most of the shops and homes are running on solar power or are hooked up to wind-turbines. (if "Life After People" is any indicator, even hydroelectric power isn't going to last more than a few days because living humans with working minds are required to keep the power from surging and things genreally regulated at the dams and plants). Anyway, it did sap my enjoyment just a bit when I was mentally screaming "WHY IS EVERYTHING STILL ON?"

There are places where this is justifiable. In one of my short stories, the disapperance of all the people in a city (and apparently the world) while the lights and water were still on were a Twilight Zone-style weirdness-tipoff. The protagonist noted it. "Majora's Mask" has everything working during the apocalypse - not only is it video game and games tend to take leaps of logic so the player can do fun stuff - it's justifyable in that the plot is a "Just Before The End" thing. People are oblivious or in deinal and defying what is coming by keeping everything running.

For the most part, however, if you're crafting an end of the world style story, please do your research and don't just assume that the world will keep turning for your protagonists just because they're the heroes.

That's my recurrent pet peeve plot hole. What are yours?

 

[Castle]

You want the definitive example of as many jarring juxtaposing plot holes that a hack writer could possibly cram into 10 mins of pre-rendered cutscene? Look no further than the ending of the Mass Effect series in Mass Effect 3. That ending goes out of its way to completely disregard established series convention, makes absolutely no sense in context, and utterly contradicts long running thematic aspects of the series. There is nothing that it doesn't completely turn on its ear. It's like it completely ignores everything that came before it. It's like the ending of a whole different story.

Characters show up in places where they do not belong. They are shown taking actions that make no sense in context. Self contradicting circular logic is forced crammed down viewers throats. The whole thing is a bloody infamous mess.

 

[Mamono101]

My main pet peeve is in horror movies where the protagonist(s) enter a room or house and they decide it would be a good idea to leave the lights off whilst they squint around for the antagonist. And why do they only look left, right and down? Last I checked, your neck can turn your head in four different directions!

 

[Shadsie]

My main pet peeve is in horror movies where the protagonist(s) enter a room or house and they decide it would be a good idea to leave the lights off whilst they squint around for the antagonist. And why do they only look left, right and down? Last I checked, your neck can turn your head in four different directions!

Yeah, that one's pretty annoying, too.

I've seen something like it on "reality" type shows. Have you ever watched "Ghost Adventures" on the Travel Channel or "Paranormal Kids" on Biography? Is there a "scenitfic" reason that ghost-hunting can only happen in the dark? If it's just there to spook the audience, it's a rather silly convention. "Ghost Adventures" I'll dismiss outright - it's very silly. The people just scream at the screen a lot and doesn't do anything but tell a historical ghost story tied to a historic location and have the guys run around in the night looking for weirdness. I suppose "dark" *might* be necessary here for the sake the cameras/film being able to capture specters or something...

The "Paranormal Kids" thing, however, bothers me in that its basic premise makes the skulking around in the dark unnecessary. The young people profiled apparently see and hear stuff at all hours of the day, at random times and *don't need darkness* to supposedly see ghosts. So what happens? Mr. Psychic-Guy comes in to try to help the interviewed kids make peace with their powers and put away their fears by going on ghost-hunts - in the dark - which they never apparently even *needed* before. Maybe they do this becuase it's what the audience expects, the whole "spooky darkness" effect, but it's not like they're trying to capture film evidence, just supposedly councel disturbed children and film them screaming a lot.

This trope is so prevalent I even did an "Ask Jeeves" on it regarding "Why do ghosts only come out at night?" and the answer most people gave is "No, they don't. I've seen 'smokemen' and shadow-figures in broad daylight." So, even assuming that people are not lying, letting their eyes and minds play mild tricks on them, or schitzophrenic, the whole "We NEED darkness to look around for ghosts!" is kind of an annoying horror-movie knockoff.

... which becomes even more obnoxious when characters are dealing with a physical threat such as a serial killer. So, yeah, I hate this one, too.

 

[Mamono101]

Have you ever watched "Ghost Adventures" on the Travel Channel or "Paranormal Kids" on Biography?

I have never seen Ghost Adventures but I have seen Paranormal Kids and the really terrible (supposedly unbiased) Ghost Hunters International

The "Paranormal Kids" thing, however, bothers me in that its basic premise makes the skulking around in the dark unnecessary. The young people profiled apparently see and hear stuff at all hours of the day, at random times and *don't need darkness* to supposedly see ghosts. So what happens? Mr. Psychic-Guy comes in to try to help the interviewed kids make peace with their powers and put away their fears by going on ghost-hunts - in the dark - which they never apparently even *needed* before.

I have felt the same way about this show for a very long time. I know the adage of facing your fears in order to gain control is the basic premise of this show but the adult helpers on this show almost always seem to go out of their way to put the children into situations that would seem terrifying to any child.

Maybe they do this becuase it's what the audience expects, the whole "spooky darkness" effect, but it's not like they're trying to capture film evidence, just supposedly councel disturbed children and film them screaming a lot.

I agree with this too. I feel that the producers have the need to create a specific type of atmosphere on these kinds of shows and for me, that's when they begin to lose their credibility. Let's just say that when it comes to the paranormal, it is probably the only thing I'm not very open minded about and tactics such as the ones used on Ghost Hunters international ie filming in the darkness using various camera filters or listening to the supposed audio of a ghost speaking so inaudibly it takes a human to manipulate the file so that the dialogue (if it wasn't planted in the first place) can be heard over the crackling feedback of the microphone that did the recording and my first inclination is to disbelieve everything and dismiss it as an elaborate plant for entertainment purposes (and to fool the gullible into thinking that the show's events are real). Don't get me wrong though, I am in no way denying the possibility that ghosts exist I just don't believe what the show wants me to believe.

This trope is so prevalent I even did an "Ask Jeeves" on it regarding "Why do ghosts only come out at night?" and the answer most people gave is "No, they don't. I've seen 'smokemen' and shadow-figures in broad daylight." So, even assuming that people are not lying, letting their eyes and minds play mild tricks on them, or schitzophrenic, the whole "We NEED darkness to look around for ghosts!" is kind of an annoying horror-movie knockoff.

On modern television shows such as Ghost Whisperer and Meduim the trope of "seeing ghosts at night" seem to be subversed as the protagonists are able to see them whenever it is convenient for the plot to advance...and now that I think about it, this too annoys me. In movies, TV shows and books: The protagonists conveniently manage to find a book, item, person etc at exactly the point in the [___] that they need it such as extremely rare novels sold only to private collectors by private collectors which the character needs to explain what's going on or how to find the weak point of their tormentor.