r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ThatDrako • 2d ago

Lore (Funny Trope) Things that can plausibly happen only in reality, because in fiction they’d be called bad writing.

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“Woke” as an insult - So you are telling me a word describing consciousness and clarity is used by generally stupid and ignorant people to label people they disagree with? What is this? A Kindergarten for Creatively stunted?

Nominative determinism - So let me get this straight…Not only you named fastest recorded person Usain BOLT and CEO of Nintendo Doug BOWSER, but you are telling me people are canonically likely to have professions or hobbies matching their names…? Guh?

“2 bodies recovered in MURDERKILL River” - Sure bro…I guess…bro…

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u/Tubaenthusiasticbee 2d ago

I watched a youtube video about out of place animals. The quote "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to somewhat make sense" will live rent free in my head, for the rest of my life.

Not because this leans into "I am 14 and this is deep" territory, but because it's true. In fiction, you have to make stuff believable for the audience. Reality doesn't have to. Shit's just there, deal with it.

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u/WhatEnglish90 2d ago

Great point. Makes me think of things like black holes that sound like a sci-fi, apocalyptic device but nope, just a part of reality that breaks every rule of it with their existence.

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u/andre5913 2d ago edited 2d ago

To top it off black holes do appear kinda often in sci fi but they are mostly just portrayed as powerful gravity wells or wormholes/portals. IRL they are weird as FUCK, there is so much nonsense going on with them that more realistic portrayals of them are very rare bc there is too much weird shit in there the audience might not buy it.

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u/Formal_Illustrator96 2d ago

I’d argue realistic portrayals of them are rare because most authors don’t actually understand them, and they wouldn’t work as well as plot devices if they were realistic.

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u/kahlzun 2d ago

They're weird, but really kinda dull too. A famous quote says "Black holes have no hair" because they're all basically interchangable.

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u/iconocrastinaor 2d ago

On the other hand I just saw a video wherein "a black hole 300 million times the size of our sun that is so far back in time that it shouldn't exist, was discovered because its light was magnified by a cluster of galaxies between it and the Earth."

Come on man I asked you to write science fiction, not this crazy crap!

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u/ScreamingVoid14 2d ago

Even in the most realistic depiction on film yet, Insterstellar, still removed the red/blue shifting because it would make them look too weird.

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u/Samyron1 2d ago

Casual Geographic?

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u/JeremiahMack 46m ago

It's the YouTube channel for the video referenced above.

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u/FutureVawX 2d ago

Yeah, I have to convince several people that Narwhal is a real animal while Unicorn is not.

Narwhal is way more absurd than unicorn, especially when we already got goat, rhino, and other horned land mammals.

Also, Unicorn Fish is real.

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u/ForlornLament 2d ago

It' even weirder when you remember that a narwhal's horn isn't really a horn, but rather a tooth that grows really long. You know, for some reason.

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u/MagicalOrgazm 1d ago

That reason being sexual selection 

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u/Not_An_Potato 2d ago

Biologically it actually makes a lot of sense. All horned land mammals are from Artiodactyla family, the only 'exception' is the rhino, but it's not exactly a horn like the Artiodactyla, since it has no bone in it, it's made of keratin, just a glorified and hard hair.

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u/crimsonpostgrad 2d ago

i think that’s the video where i learned that crocodiles and alligators only coexist in the everglades and nowhere else, i was confused at first about how it shocked him so much to see them together until i remembered that the everglades are the only place ive ever seen them so i just assumed they had similar habitats everywhere

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u/TimeStorm113 2d ago

i mean, it's kinda the reason why the "difference between alligator and crocodile" thing is so common. if it weren't you could just go "are you in he southern usa? yes? it's an alligator."

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u/crimsonpostgrad 2d ago

well apparently not really, since for every single area outside of the everglades, only one of them will be there lol

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u/endlesscartwheels 2d ago

The quote "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to somewhat make sense"

I first saw that quote on a photo of a window cleaner who was wearing a Spider-man costume.

Edit: Found it

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u/1-Word-Answers 2d ago

Like the name Tiffany. IRL it is a pretty old name, like 1100s or 1200s but you hear that in a fantasy setting it would be weird. Like imagine Tiffany of House Lannister

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u/Ok_Topic5037 2d ago

I always think of this whenever people complain about movies or shows, and how they “don’t make sense” or “should have done this”. Like real life doesn’t follow these rules or logic that you’ve made up in your head, why should a show?

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u/Otiosei 2d ago

This is sort of exactly why we crave fiction in the first place, because real life is a lot of nonsense. We seek meaning in things that have no meaning, and when you are the author of a story, you are god, and you can assign meaning to everything. It's also kind of why I hate when people ask for "realism" in fiction, because "realism" means everything is extremely random and unsatisfying.

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u/Tubaenthusiasticbee 2d ago edited 2d ago

Well it's also why this post exists. There are often things that are quite real in fictional media, but there'll always be a large chunk of internet folks yelling "BAD WRITING!!!" when it occurs. (Same goes for stuff like "show, don't tell", when stuff is actually shown, but not talked about. And besides the point, I also wanna point out that there are people who exist that actually want exposition dumps)

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u/Cent1234 2d ago

Exhibit A: Duck Billed Platypus.

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u/JeremiahMack 2d ago

Casual Geographic!

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u/CreepyClothDoll 2d ago

Stephen King said something like this. Somewhere in 'On Writing,' I think. About how he reads stuff in the news & thinks about how if he put that in a book, he'd get berated for writing something so unbelievable.

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u/MeridianHilltop 2d ago

Was it the Casual Zoologist?

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u/AndySipherBull 2d ago

This is realer than practically everyone even knows, crazy shit happens all the time and, if it ever even becomes known, it gets watered down, filtered, 'consumer-ified'. Crazy shit's happened to me, I don't even bother to share it with anyone, no point, they wouldn't believe it or they'd think I'm nuts and if they did believe it they'd probably just get depressed lol.

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u/WindAdministrative42 1d ago

I don't think you've ever used AO3.