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Idiot Ball/Playing With: Difference between revisions
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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:PlayingWith.IdiotBall 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:PlayingWith.IdiotBall, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
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{{trope}}
'''Basic Trope''': Characters are stupid whenever the plot requires it, even when this contradicts established characterization.
* '''Straight''': Alice and Bob are seasoned cave explorers in an unfamiliar location with limited food and supplies. When faced with a Y-intersection, Alice suggests [[Let's Split Up, Gang!|they split up]].
* '''Exaggerated''': Alice is an award-winning cave explorer with several PhDs in geology, but when she sees a load-bearing stone column, she breaks it with a hammer just to see what will happen.
* '''Justified''': Alice is in a mentally-altered state due to exhaustion, oxygen-deprivation, or strange chemicals in the cave.
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* '''Averted''': Alice's actions reflect her intellect and experience as established up to this point, and her errors are all understandable and in character.
* '''Enforced''': "I know they have to be master explorers to navigate that far into the Caves of Doom, but we need an excuse for them to go into the deeper tunnels, so let's hand Alice the Idiot Ball."
* '''Lampshaded''': "[[Let's Split Up, Gang!|Split up]]? Alice, let's not pick right now to do something incredibly stupid."
* '''Invoked''': Alice and Bob go through several intersections without making the [[Idiot Ball]] decision of splitting up. Then they come across yet another Y-intersection, they suddenly decide to split up for no reason, or, worse yet, the two of them just absent-mindedly walk into the two different tunnels, splitting up without even noticing it.
* '''Defied''': The author takes pains to make sure that everyone takes the best decision at the time given what the character knew and would be reasonably expected to know.
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