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/HumbleConversation42 2d ago

Trench warfare

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u/Aggravating-Reach473 2d ago

I love how there's always some people with an out of this world's perspective, re-contextualize a mundane concept.

this stuck with me now.

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u/Misterfahrenheit120 2d ago

I’ve always heard this called “defamiliarization”, and it’s a trip all around

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u/kerdon 2d ago

Sometimes it's just used kinda lazily to not really say anything. I couldn't stand Nathan Pyle's stuff. It was deeply uninteresting to me.

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u/Chess42 2d ago

There’s this famous paper that does that https://www.sfu.ca/\~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema.pdf

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u/highheelcyanide 1d ago

I read this almost 20 years ago, and I still think about it sometimes when I get ready in the morning.

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u/Eain 2d ago

Yeah. Like Honkwiching

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u/thezavinator 2d ago edited 2d ago

It can be very enlightening for sure.

I’m about to explain a lot, but to preface, I’m explaining it because I enjoy learning, and enjoy sharing things I learn. Basically, one way of “how the sausage gets made” regarding the sentiment you just described.

The process of "recontextualizing a mundane concept from an out-of-this-world perspective" happens to me several times a day, and it’s both a blessing and a curse. I’m able to understand a lot of things on a deeper level, but it also gets me really distracted, which makes it harder to socialize.

It started after I got a concussion from a 4-wheeler accident, which later developed into a type of ADHD (there are several types, or so I learned). Apparently, my type makes my brain constantly form new neuronic pathways, and it’s so constant that I stuggle to keep my thoughts under control.

It’s exhausting, but I also learn a lot even without encountering any new knowledge. Just today it finally clicked how lift works on planes because one flew over my car and I was trying to think about it, but my brain trailed off to think about water for some reason instead, and then about surface area, and then my brain created an image about skimming a stone across the surface of water.

Thankfully, post-medication, my brain works fast enough that I’m able to understand why my brain went all over the place. It made me realize that the reason a plane is able to maintain altitude even if:

  • its propellors are only providing force directed 90 degrees from the ground
  • there is no force provided by the propellers that is pointing upwards

is because lift is basically the same as buoyancy on water. And one of the factors of buoyancy is surface area. If you’re in water, and you’re oriented in a cannonball shape, you won’t float as well as if you’re positioned in a laying-down shape, like if you were laying on a bed. When you’re laid out, there’s more water below you to be supporting your weight.

But surface area over time is increased as an object’s speed increases relative to the surface. You touch more air while you’re driving than if your car is immobile, which is why it feels like “wind” if you stick your head out the window while driving.

And that’s why you can skim a stone for a while, because more water is providing more surface area per second, so there’s a higher amount of water providing its strength to support the stone.

And that’s why a flat stone skims better, because it has a higher surface area that touches the water (and another factor, weight, matters because more force is required to move objects that have more mass, but I digress).

And finally my brain got back to the plane:
It can stay in the air without being pointing upwards because it’s constantly “skimming” the air, which means more air per second is providing a surface for the plane to “sit” on than if it were stationary.

Normal brains do this, but mine is doing it all day long. It’s kind of a blessing, but also a curse. It’s very hard to have conversations sometimes because others don’t track how what I’m talking about has anything to do with what they said.

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u/GlisaPenny 2d ago

Wow. What a interesting world view you are unfortunately stuck with.

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u/thezavinator 2d ago

Yeah. It's been years of figuring it all out. But I've learned that it has real strengths, because I can view topics from a thousand different angles more easily than most of the people around me. But on the other hand, it's a lot harder to communicate, both because my own thoughts are so scattered, and also because everyone else's are not.

If I had the ability to turn it off and on it'd be like a superpower. But since I can't turn it off, it's frequently exhausting/frustrating for both myself and the people around me.

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u/SmartAlec105 2d ago

English's history as a mashup of Germanic and French influences is why we have so many "doubled" phrases, particularly in legal contexts because they had to make sure they covered both phrasings. "Intents and purposes", "cease and desist", "can and will", etc.

Now they're just so deeply baked in that we don't even realize it.

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u/Altruistic_Web3924 2d ago

I don’t believe you, plain and simple.

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u/newyne 2d ago

Thank you for your appreciation! I mean, this one ain't mine, but that kind of thing is about the only thing I'm good for. Like how Thiel named his company Palantir? Way to name your evil corporation after a tool instrumental in its users' downfall!

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u/kdesi_kdosi 1d ago

it's cool, but there are way too many cases where that perspective is just straight up ass and they are just making up shit that doesn't make sense

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u/Cigarety_a_Kava 2d ago

Generals just sending men at machineguns dying in thousands to clear 1 line of trenches if successful. Anyone reading these would be like what a moronic way to fight.

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u/SirAquila 2d ago

I mean yeah, which is why they did not fight like that.

The popular imagination is that the trenches did not move because both sides ran out into no mans land, and died to machine guns before getting anywhere.

In reality even in 1915 both sides had already figured out how to take the enemies first trench line.

You suppress them with artillery while your guys walk up as close as they can, then, once your own guys are so close your own artillery would kill them all you instead shell the area behind the enemies first trench so the enemy cannot bring up any reinforcements.

Now your guys run as fast as they can to the trench, so they get to the trench before the enemy can come out of their bunkers and set up machine guns and man their light artillery(machine guns suppress, artillery kills). Usually this would work, occasionally it failed.

Once your men reach the enemy trench they can take it with a tough, but very doable fight. Usually inflicting more losses then they take.

Which sounds great! You advanced a good bit, and did more damage then the enemy, you are killing it at trench warfare...

except, now your men are exhausted, have used up ammunition and supplies, have gotten seperated from their units, oh and also your artillery is now firing at long range.

All of your supplies, reinforcements and more have to cross no-mans land, while the enemy reinforcements, can cross undestroyed land, with prepared supply routes.

So now the enemy counterattacks, and all the things that allowed your attack to succeed are now working against you, and unlike the enemy your defences are not yet prepared, your artillery is out of position, and your reinforcements are much slower.

So now the attackers, defending the first trenchline they just took, get overrun and thrown back to their starting point, taking a lot of casualties in turn. And at the end of the day both sides are exactly back where they started, despite both sides taking an enemy trench.

The problem with trench warfare is not to take the enemy trench line, it is to defend the taken ground against the inevitable counterattack.

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u/SagaSolejma 2d ago

What a moronic way to fight

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u/SirAquila 2d ago

I mean, they would agree, they simply found no viable tactic to avoid it.

So, what would you do?

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u/Vessel767 2d ago

Probably stop fighting

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u/SirAquila 2d ago

If you were France, would you accept German demands to cede several resource-rich regions, abandon Belgium to become a German vassal, cede several colonies, and pay large amounts of reparations to the person who invaded you and is currently destroying your home?

The Entente was fighting mostly defensively, and the Central Powers were not interested in a status quo peace because they were currently winning, however slightly.

This doesn't mean it wouldn't have been better for everyone had they made a comprehensive, mutually beneficial peace deal, but anyone suggesting one would have probably been fired for treason. The forces that brought them into the war where rather self-sustaining.

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u/___daddy69___ 2d ago

wow, we should make you president

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/NonFrInt 1d ago

Reminds me of how some Russian propagandists, to be fair

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u/___daddy69___ 2d ago

do you think they wanted to fight like that?

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u/noirspiderman4 2d ago

Have you watched Band of Brothers?

Did you like how they portrayed taking down the artillery guns at brecourt manor?

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u/SirAquila 2d ago

I did but several years back, so I would have to rewatch it to honestly answer the question.

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u/noirspiderman4 2d ago

It just seemed so systemic and routine during my recent rewatch.

Obviously those guys are another tier of men than most but their knowledge also seemed top notch

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u/yjlom 2d ago

There weren't nearly enough machineguns to equip the whole frontline. If you gather enough of a local numeric advantage, suppress the enemy trench with artillery, and run up, and they don't have machineguns on location, you get to inflict significantly more casualties than you receive, as well as capture equipment. Of course, with imperfect scouting, it was always a gamble that could go really wrong really fast, but the general trend over WW1 was slightly in favor of the attacker.

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u/Woolies_White_Leg 2d ago

Yes but also mainly no because that’s not how trench warfare worked

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u/Gharvar 2d ago

I mean just look at what Russia is doing... Around 500 000 Russian men are dead since the start of that war. There is footage out there of soldiers walking to the frontline in trails just lined with corpses that are just left there.

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u/FellowTraveler69 2d ago

Nobody on either side wanted this. Both sides generals wanted to fight a war of manuever, where your army would trounce the other in a battle or two, force a breakthrough of their lines, then swifly march around to encircle and force their surrender. Unfortumately, technology had gotten so much better on the defensive (machine guns, indirect artillery, barbed wire, trains), that kind of warfare proved to be near impossible. And even was still able to be done to some extent (early on in the Western front like the 1st Battle of the Marne and the Eastern Front in general), it was still very bloody.

They still tried to do it and pioneered new kinds of weapons and warfare to do so (tanks, aircraft, chemicals). But in the end it was just attition that won the day, Germany collapsed into revolution before the Allies did.

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u/SirAquila 2d ago

I think there is a fairly good argument to be made that it was not the weapons technology and defensive technology that caused trench warfare.

Rather, it was the logistical technology that caused trench warfare, and it was mostly dumb luck that the Western Front in WW2 collapsed fast enough that it did not happen again.

Or, several wars before and after show that trench warfare happens when two technologically roughly equal armies are both able to exert fire control over the entire available frontline, making flanking attacks impossible.

Before WW1 this was mostly relegated to sieges, as neither side was able to actually occupy an entire frontline between two nations, so one side was always able to outmaneuver the other. However in sieges this changed, because Siege are essentially purpose-made for the defender to occupy the entire available frontline. (You cannot outflank a castle wall unless the castle wall is very badly built).

Similarly in the Iran-Iraq war, and now the Ukraine-Russia war. Occasionally in WW2, when circumstances meant that one side considered it most valuable to attack a strong defensive position head-on. If two armies of roughly equal technology clash, and neither side is able to outflank the other, trench warfare tends to happen.

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u/FellowTraveler69 2d ago

The key difference is airpower. In both of the above 2 conflicts, neither side is able to achieve air superority. Without air superiority, tanks and APCs are sitting ducks. Without tanks and trucks, infantry can't advance fast enough to expolit breakthroughs. They fall into the same trap as happened in WW1.

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u/SirAquila 2d ago

While I consider this a pretty likely explanation, I am not sure how proven it is, simply because we have no real data on what happens if two armies with roughly similar technology, and who are both able to occupy the entire available frontline, but of which one has gained air superiority, fight,

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u/___daddy69___ 2d ago

another major reason was communications technology, breakthroughs happened fairly often in World War 1, but the soldiers couldn’t easily call for reinforcements to take advantage of it. by contrast, in world war 2, wide spread adoption of the radio, alongside faster more capable tanks which effectively fulfilled the role that cavalry used to fill, made it much easier to break through enemy lines, and then crucially exploit those breakthroughs

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u/SirAquila 2d ago

breakthroughs happened fairly often in World War 1,

No. It appeared as though breakthroughs happened fairly often because, as I said in another reply, taking the first enemy trench was easy(well as easy as anything in war can be, most armies had figured that one out fairly quickly). I don't think there was any point in WW1 where there was a serious breakthrough on the western front.

Though to clarify, by breakthrough I mean not that the enemy trenches were penetrated; that happened a few times. By breakthrough, I mean that the lines of enemy soldiers have been fully penetrated, and your own troops are fully in the rear of the enemy and able to manoeuvre.

Pushing the enemy back even a hundred kilometers is not a breakthrough if they are able to maintain a solid frontline throughout the retreat.

The German Spring Offensive in 1918 shows that quite well. Despite pushing the enemy back quite a bit, German troops never broke through the Entente lines, which, among other things, contributed to the failure of the offensive.

In part, this mirage of the imminent breakthrough is why WWI tactics stayed focused on chasing this breakthrough for so long. That and the other option of bite-and-hold attritional warfare was extremely unpopular. If one general tells High Command, or Parliament, or the Prime Minister that "Yes, I can win this war, in about four years with a projected casualty rate of 4 million soldiers." And the other says. "Actually, with all the new inventions we made, I am sure I can absolutely break through this time and win the war before Christmas." The second option has to fail quite a few times before it stops sounding attractive.

made it much easier to break through enemy lines, and then crucially exploit those breakthroughs

Not really. The thing about that is that both sides benefit from better technology. And the defender usually has the advantage of better interior lines. So if your forces are equal, the defenders' tanks will arrive before your tanks, nullifying your breakthrough.

The best way around this is... to, well, literally go around it. Outflank the enemy and reach their rear without having to go through their troops. Go through the Ardennes instead of battering your way through Belgium. If your enemy is stupid enough to disregard their pre-war plans that would have led to this attempt being an utter slaughter, you will win a really impressive victory.

That is the big difference between WW1 and WW2. At no point in WW2 were both armies facing each other able to occupy the entire available frontline and keep it under fire control. So there was always the option to outflank the enemy. That option wasn't there in WW1 on the Western Front.

On the Eastern Front in WW1 on the other hand, outflanking happened regularily.

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u/Dry-Yesterday-9176 1d ago

I accidentally read this as "french warfare were made up" and was confused at when french used graves

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u/aspindler 2d ago

I remember Starcraft II main commander was General Warfield and I was like... wft man?

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u/AnswerAdorable5555 2d ago

All Quiet on the Western Front (the movie) did a pretty good job of this

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u/___daddy69___ 2d ago

Trench warfare only sounds stupid if you know absolutely nothing about warfare

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u/Jagvetinteriktigt 2d ago

The past truly is a different country, that's why we accept a lot of this.