idiot plots

[marycatelli]

Idiot plots!  I have a particular hatred of them.  I hate it when the hero acts like an idiot, I hate it when the villain acts like an idiot, I hate it when the comic sidekick acts like an idiot, I hate it when the bystanders act like idiots. . . .

Ran across an example lately where the opening was all the characters acting like idiots.  All of them were given the swollen heads necessary to explain why they all underestimated each other -- but to explain or even justify something is not to make me like it.  One of them acts like he has acquired a great insight into the universe, and then we had some characters not acting like idiots, but the idiots killed them -- and at the very end, the characters learn they were idiots because the mastermind is idiot enough to reveal himself, expecting them to greet him with great glee now that they learn they were lied to.  It gets him killed, but while the idiot who kills him momentarily feels guilty about having killed the non-idiotic character, before the kill, as soon as it is done, he forgets the guilt and still acts like he has a great insight in the universe.  He doesn't even feel the need to atone. . . .

Not that I like it even in small doses.  And even motivated stupidity can be very hard to take.

Comments

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

This sounds like Watchmen.

[marycatelli]

the movie or the book? I read the book, and it wasn't as bad as this one.

[marycatelli]

To expand -- in Watchmen idiotic behavior often -- usually -- stemmed at least in part from invincible ignorance. Vincible ignorance is less valuable. Indeed, what is called "affected ignorance" is in aesthetics as in ethics an aggravating factor not an extenuating one.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

That sounds like the worst book ever. Generally, when the idiot behavior strikes, I throw the book across the room and don't pick it up again.

[marycatelli]

I'm very bad at stopping reading bad books. Partly because there's a certain horrified fascination and partly because I don't want to leave characters trapped. (better a horrible ending than horrors without end)

And sometimes because I'm angry that there's a good idea in there that really could stand to be chiseled out, have the serial numbers scrubbed off and new ones engraved, and turned into a good story.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

I used to be that way. Bt now that I read a lot of books just to keep up with the market rather than out of love, I don't havce time. So I just let the characters suffer.

[marycatelli]

eh, reading to try to keep up to the market seems (for me) to be a good rule to hit on some very bad books. Ones with different problems that do inspire me to put them down and walk away. Maybe I just don't know what to select.

And idiots in the opening can be an ugly beginning to a good story, which I may give the benefit of the doubt if I have read other works by the author and liked them. Though they may not deserve it. Especially when I'm reading backwards to their first novels.

Oh, well.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

"eh, reading to try to keep up to the market seems (for me) to be a good rule to hit on some very bad books."

How right you are. Now I'm trying to cure myself of that habit.

"And idiots in the opening can be an ugly beginning to a good story, which I may give the benefit of the doubt if I have read other works by the author and liked them. Though they may not deserve it. Especially when I'm reading backwards to their first novels."

I usually go at least 100 pages. Unless it's a prose problem. Then I can't get ten.

A major exception for me

[notr.livejournal.com]

is stories about idiots where the whole point of the story is about institutionalized idiocy. Granted, those are mostly satirical, but sometimes (though I'm not managing to produce any examples at the moment) they're true Everyman stories. At the far end of the satirical range, I enjoyed the movie Idiocracy quite a bit last week.

Re: A major exception for me

[marycatelli]

While I admit that it's aesthetically appropriate -- satire is usually not my cuppa.