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Unpopular opinions we have on fiction

"Let's go! open up, it's time for Unpop!"
Alright, time for my mandatory Unpopular Opinions Post. Let's get this over with.
"You're late. You know the deal. You can Omelaspost for a Funny, or you can make an interesting post for an Insightful."
Here in Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation, no one chooses to make interesting posts. It's better to make the one joke everyone knows for the Funny, rather than risk your entire life for just one Insightful rating.
"Tomorrow you better not be late, or I'll have you posting for Informative reactions as punishment."
"Yes sir, sorry, I won't be late next time."

Down here, us Omelasposters only get one Rating a day. One Funny rating is just enough to get your post:reaction ratio to the next day. But that's the life of Unpopular Opinions Poster Civilisation. If you wanna survive, you have to Unpopular Opinions Post. Every Omelasposter has the same goal, and that's to make it to the top thread, where all the Brothers Karamazovposters live. Except, most Brothers Karamazovposters are born on the top thread. If you're an Omelasposter, there's only one way up, and that is through the Temple of Unpopular Opinions. The Temple of Unpopular Opinions is the only structure on SV that combines the bottom thread to the top thread. To make it up, you have to post an impossibly hard Unpopular Opinion Reply that no Omelasposter has ever completed. And that's assuming you even get the chance to post the reply in the thread. The inside of the Temple is protected by a barrier and the only way an Omelasposter gets past the barrier is if they've earned a gilded post. I've never even tried getting a gilded post before, but if I'm going to rank up to a Brothers Karamazovposter one day, I'm gonna have to.
 
Shounen manga is way, way, way, way, way, way, way better at actually managing serialized storytelling than the majority of Western superhero comics as far as I can tell, reading only a bit of both these days, and often times is better at handling the same narrative needs to the point where it's laughable. Best example recently being, of course, everyone's new favorite My Hero Academia.
 
Rook said:
Shounen manga is way, way, way, way, way, way, way better at actually managing serialized storytelling than the majority of Western superhero comics as far as I can tell, reading only a bit of both these days, and often times is better at handling the same narrative needs to the point where it's laughable. Best example recently being, of course, everyone's new favorite My Hero Academia.
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I'm not sure that this is unpopular? Having one writer inherently leads to more internal consistency, even if the demands of writing on a weekly basis causes over the long run. Individual runs can be good, but over the long run comics are universally a mess.
 
Okay so this is coming from the pet peeves in fanfic thread but it extends to the actual comics so I will say it here. I hate Batman in team books. I am sure this is partially due to his popularity and I am sure it feeds into itself like some awful hydra of bad writing. But I can't stand him moat of the time in Justice League comics or shows or whatever. His entire shtick seems to be being the smartest coolest most prepared badass in the room no matter what. And it gets tired. I get it. I really do. Having a non powered guy one up superman or wonder woman is neat. But when it's all the time it's just boring. Combine this with how Bats is usually a paranoid jerk to his supposed friends and it makes the above harder to stomach. I like Batman as a character. But I can't stand the endless wanking of how great he is when he is on screen with another hero.
 
Alex said:
Okay so this is coming from the pet peeves in fanfic thread but it extends to the actual comics so I will say it here. I hate Batman in team books. I am sure this is partially due to his popularity and I am sure it feeds into itself like some awful hydra of bad writing. But I can't stand him moat of the time in Justice League comics or shows or whatever. His entire shtick seems to be being the smartest coolest most prepared badass in the room no matter what. And it gets tired. I get it. I really do. Having a non powered guy one up superman or wonder woman is neat. But when it's all the time it's just boring. Combine this with how Bats is usually a paranoid jerk to his supposed friends and it makes the above harder to stomach. I like Batman as a character. But I can't stand the endless wanking of how great he is when he is on screen with another hero.
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I think the problem is fundamentally rooted in the power-level difference. Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, etc., are all heavy hitters...and then there's Batman, arguably the flagship character of the DC universe (debating whether he or Supes is isn't the point here, though), who in a straight fight would be wiped off the floor by any of them in three seconds flat. So merely to justify him being in the room (and he basically has to be in the room, because how do you have "the greatest heroes in the DC Universe" without Batman?) he has to be able to think his way around any of 'em. The structure of any Justice League story with Batman demands that he be that way, or else the rational response of the rest of the League is, "Bruce, just go home and cut us a check to pay for the toys before you get yourself hurt."

(The alternative option, which is even worse writing, is to give Batman all kinds of Bat-Science-Fiction-Technology, basically making him Iron Batman, which then raises the problem of "Why didn't you put that thing on when you fought Bane, Batman? You've got a battlesuit that lets you go toe-to-toe with Superman and you let a pro wrestler on steroids break your back?")

See also Aquaman, who spends most team-ups just being there (unless in one of the incarnations when the logical extent of his powers lets him play with the heavy hitters) because "World's Greatest Detective" isn't one of his superpowers.

The Avengers sort of have this problem, but they blunt it a bit by having a larger proportion of their lineup be squishier: Black Widow, Hawkeye, the Wasp, Ant-Man, the Falcon, etc., as well as a larger mid-tier (Captain America, the Beast, etc.), plus the Hulk is inherently unreliable. (They also have the advantage that their low-tier members don't have to carry their own books at their own power scale the way Batman does, so there's no problem with giving them bigger guns when needed.)
 
DezoPenguin said:
I think the problem is fundamentally rooted in the power-level difference. Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Martian Manhunter, etc., are all heavy hitters...and then there's Batman, arguably the flagship character of the DC universe (debating whether he or Supes is isn't the point here, though), who in a straight fight would be wiped off the floor by any of them in three seconds flat. So merely to justify him being in the room (and he basically has to be in the room, because how do you have "the greatest heroes in the DC Universe" without Batman?) he has to be able to think his way around any of 'em. The structure of any Justice League story with Batman demands that he be that way, or else the rational response of the rest of the League is, "Bruce, just go home and cut us a check to pay for the toys before you get yourself hurt."

(The alternative option, which is even worse writing, is to give Batman all kinds of Bat-Science-Fiction-Technology, basically making him Iron Batman, which then raises the problem of "Why didn't you put that thing on when you fought Bane, Batman? You've got a battlesuit that lets you go toe-to-toe with Superman and you let a pro wrestler on steroids break your back?")

See also Aquaman, who spends most team-ups just being there (unless in one of the incarnations when the logical extent of his powers lets him play with the heavy hitters) because "World's Greatest Detective" isn't one of his superpowers.

The Avengers sort of have this problem, but they blunt it a bit by having a larger proportion of their lineup be squishier: Black Widow, Hawkeye, the Wasp, Ant-Man, the Falcon, etc., as well as a larger mid-tier (Captain America, the Beast, etc.), plus the Hulk is inherently unreliable. (They also have the advantage that their low-tier members don't have to carry their own books at their own power scale the way Batman does, so there's no problem with giving them bigger guns when needed.)
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I guess that leads to another unpopular opinion of mine. I would split the dc universe in half. One side would be the darker more grounded detective comics. And the other would be the crazy fun time traveling super apes of Action comics. Dc would be about fighting mobsters and thieves and low level super villains. While AC would be all the high powered adventure.
 
Rook said:
Shounen manga is way, way, way, way, way, way, way better at actually managing serialized storytelling than the majority of Western superhero comics as far as I can tell, reading only a bit of both these days, and often times is better at handling the same narrative needs to the point where it's laughable. Best example recently being, of course, everyone's new favorite My Hero Academia.
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Ehh... I'll argue, in that they're doing two different things. Shonen fight manga is often telling a single story arc, with different stories in it sure and released chapter to chapter, often with poor pacing, and how good it is varying highly writer to writer- and keep in mind most of the ones that come over and get big are among the best of the best. There's a ton that last a short time and don't make it, and plenty with boring boilerplate endings where suddenly everything get ultra-big and power of love and blah blah everyone's fine. And/or starts ok then suddenly fast-forwards into a sudden end in a few chapters, or the reverse, starts dragging out badly. I read a lot in the manga boom, plenty sucked, and even the non-sucky stuff often had pacing issues.

Superheroes is telling a truly ongoing, shared-universe not revolving around a single character, and where stories last from 1 to 12 issues normally. And where plenty of them are self-contained stories and so on. When talking superhero comics, a lot of people are talking about the endless series of big name character, and not even, like, one prestige run from them, and certainly not the smaller books that make up a good chunk of things. And there is the tendency to compare the best of shonen fight to the average of superhero comics.

My Hero Academia is great, but is it better than, say, Astro City? They're two different things with excellent grasps of heroism, and I think reading them side by side would make someone appreciate the difference and the advantages of both.

I can name plenty of superhero writer/runs that handle the narrative needs very well- it just has to be a fair comparison, one to one, not best examples of one vs all of another.

I mean, going to My Hero Academia, part of what makes it great IMO is a much faster pacing that the writer gets more from his superhero influences. All Might vs Nomu is much more a superhero fight than a shonen fight fight.
 
Realism in fiction, any fiction, is unimportant for one very simple reason:

It's not real.

Verisimilitude is a very different beast, but the urge to choke all of fiction under the miasma of reality is just terrifying to me.
 
Voikirium said:
Realism in fiction, any fiction, is unimportant for one very simple reason:

It's not real.

Verisimilitude is a very different beast, but the urge to choke all of fiction under the miasma of reality is just terrifying to me.
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Except almost every time someone is talking about realism what they mean is verisimilitude.
 
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Well I was gonna post this in the Controversial Gaming Opinions thread but it's locked so....

Karma was good in Fallout 3 and New Vegas fucking it over was stupid. It should have been removed entirely and replaced with Reputation because, as it was, it just kind of made the game silly. Like, I was a Good Karma Courier who sided with the Legion and even the ending slide notes the apparent contradiction.

And removing Karma from Fallout 4 was dumb because the game heralded this "new age" of WRPG's where you can't actually have fun. People complained about "stupid evil choices" (essentially any choice that doesn't involve hugging bunnies) and FO4 and MEA responded by not letting you do what you actually wanted to do.

Also, in spite of its reputation for "RUINING CLASSIC RPGS FOREVER!!!!" Fallout 3's Karmic requirements for Companions was good and hearkened back to the days of Baldur's Gate where a Chaotic Evil hero couldn't get a Lawful Good Paladin as a companion...BECAUSE DUH. FO3 recognized this fact. Jericho doesn't want to be with some uptight panty-waist and Fawkes doesn't want to be with some psychopathic nutjob. That's only good storytelling and immersion.

FO4 though marks the age of "WE MUST SEE EVERYTHING." So Cait and Hancock will come with you, even if you are a halo-wearing violence-hating little shit. 'cuz that makes sense. [/sarcasm]
 
Voikirium said:
It's not real.
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Alright, unpopular opinion of my own (well, it's unpopular among the general public, but not so much here I guess): I loathe this excuse, and all its variations ("It's just a movie!", or one line that exceptionally angers me, for an ERB: "The genre's called fantasy, it's meant to be unrealistic").
 
Vyslanté said:
Alright, unpopular opinion of my own (well, it's unpopular among the general public, but not so much here I guess): I loathe this excuse, and all its variations ("It's just a movie!", or one line that exceptionally angers me, for an ERB: "The genre's called fantasy, it's meant to be unrealistic").
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"You myopic manatee!"

I think realism is more important in terms of character. Human beings are human beings, and regardless of whether they live in the real world, a historical setting, a setting with dragons and magic, or a setting with FTL travel and virtual-reality computing, they remain human beings. Therefore, they should act and react something like real humans would. (This is, I think, one reason among several why I dislike transhumanist fiction, because it's basically dedicated to turning the characters into something fundamentally other than human and makes them unrelatable from my point of view.)

In general, though, the problem with "It's just a movie!" is that too many realism-breaking incidences remind me that I'm just watching a movie, and that whatever events happen next on-screen will be wholly dictated by the whim of the writer(s), not as the natural sequence of events based upon the choices of the characters and the forces at work.
 
Vyslanté said:
That's the one — I know it's just for comedic effect and whatever, but the formulation is just... :rage:
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I think the line is less about how fantasy has to lack depth or should be totally divorced from reality, and is instead more about how focusing completely on the worst aspects of human nature and calling that realism is stupid and self-defeating. The intent is about how fantasy should be uplifting and hopeful rather than getting mired in the gritty darkness. That's my issue with "realistic" fiction. Often it simply has everyone being an asshole and the worst people getting ahead. That's not any more realistic than the good guys always winning.
 
Vyslanté said:
Alright, unpopular opinion of my own (well, it's unpopular among the general public, but not so much here I guess): I loathe this excuse, and all its variations ("It's just a movie!", or one line that exceptionally angers me, for an ERB: "The genre's called fantasy, it's meant to be unrealistic").
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I think Voikirium's variation is a pretty good one- stressing that verisimilitude is more important than reality, since verisimilitude is, basically, something's *internal* reality. If something is internally consistent and fits well with it's own points, then it'll work well even if it doesn't resemble reality.

I do share your dislike of the excuse, because it's often used on things that trash internal verisimilitude too.
 
Cosar said:
Except almost every time someone is talking about realism what they mean is verisimilitude.
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I realize it's a bit late to be talking about this, but I did not mean a lack of internal logic.

I meant the people whining "but how does Batman, a regular dude, train himself enough to do it, and run a business? it's impossible."

Or "why do [literally any characters] wear (bright, colorful, distinctive) costumes instead of (droll, black leather, tacticool) armor? How am I supposed to take that seriously?"

Or "how does the magical world stay hidden from technology?" for plenty of urban fantasy.

When the answer is pretty fuckin' obvious: It's not real.
 
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Voikirium said:
Realism in fiction, any fiction, is unimportant for one very simple reason:

It's not real.

Verisimilitude is a very different beast, but the urge to choke all of fiction under the miasma of reality is just terrifying to me.
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I'd like to add something more to this...I hate, hate, hate hard sci-fi snobbery.

There's this attitude I encounter quite frequently, that faithfulness to current scientific understanding is the sole marker of quality in a work of science fiction. This (very poorly organised) article is an example of what I'm talking about - while the author makes some good points here and there it's drenched in so much smugness and nerdy posturing that I want to go out and write the most unscientific sci-fi novel imaginable just to spite him. (And the article is also filled with "SCIENCE, FUCK YEAH!" memes and Sagan quotes, because of course it is)
 
The Victorian said:
I'd like to add something more to this...I hate, hate, hate hard sci-fi snobbery.

There's this attitude I encounter quite frequently, that faithfulness to current scientific understanding is the sole marker of quality in a work of science fiction. This (very poorly organised) article is an example of what I'm talking about - while the author makes some good points here and there it's drenched in so much smugness and nerdy posturing that I want to go out and write the most unscientific sci-fi novel imaginable just to spite him. (And the article is also filled with "SCIENCE, FUCK YEAH!" memes and Sagan quotes, because of course it is)
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You seem to have adopted the opposite position, where something that's faithful to what scientific knowledge looks like when it was written is bad.
 
As a writer there's nothing more freeing than closing a bajillion chrome tabs on orbital mechanics and physics and shit you need a degree to understand because you finally realize the only ones who will give a shit about that over the characters and plot are anal retentive nerds.

It's such a palpable moment of relief when you turn that corner.
 
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