Non Sequitur Scene/Literature: Difference between revisions

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* In ''[[Around the World In 80 Days]]'', Fogg, Passepartout, and Aouda land at America. This passage proceeds:

{{quote|Passepartout, in his joy on reaching at last the American continent, thought he would manifest it by executing a perilous vault in fine style; but, tumbling upon some worm-eaten planks, he fell through them. Put out of countenance by the manner in which he thus "set foot" upon the New World, he uttered a loud cry, which so frightened the innumerable cormorants and pelicans that are always perched upon these movable quays, that they flew noisily away. }}

* There's that uncomfortable and unnerving "Vodka" chapter that comes the eff out of nowhere late in ''[[His Dark Materials]]''. Will, a 12 or 13 year old boy, is traveling alone. He stops at the house of an old priest to ask for directions. The priest pushes him into accepting a drink of vodka, chats in an overly friendly manner, is very touchy-feely, tries to convince Will to stay a while and is just generally creepy. After few pages of this, Will insists on leaving and the man gives him a hug and lets him go. There is no mention of the incident or the old man ever again.

* In addition to a number of [[Wacky Wayside Tribe]] incidents, one can probably find a number of Big Lipped Alligator Moments in [[L. Frank Baum]]'s [[Land of Oz|Oz books]]. The first book, ''[[The Wonderful Wizard of Oz]]'', has the China Country, where all the inhabitants are made out of china. Some of them, such as the singing china clown, have been broken and mended several times. They neither help nor hinder Dorothy and her friends, they are introduced out of nowhere and have nothing to do with the story, and they're never mentioned again in the book afterward (or in any of the later Oz books, for that matter). Things like this add to the unnerving dream-logic of the story. [[Word of God]] all but admits that the China Country only exists to pad out the length of the journey from Point A to Point B.

* There is a particularly [[Narm|narmful]] scene in ''[[Of Mice and Men]]'' where [[Gentle Giant|Lennie]] hallucinates that he is being berated by a talking rabbit. And his Aunt Clara.

* [[The Lost Symbol]] has a chapter where the hero is unconcious... literally. Not mentioned again, not used, nothing, whole chapter = sleeping hero.

* The episode of the dinner of Trimalchio in Petronius' ''[[Literature/Satyricon|Satyricon]]''. It also happens to be the only passage that survives intact.

** Earlier in the work, there's a scene where the main characters get drunk, are (forcibly) involved in an orgy, pass out, and wake up with their faces covered in soot. [[Let Us Never Speak of This Again|They vow never to speak of the incident again.]] Several other scenes might also qualify - the fragmentary nature of the work makes it hard to tell what is and isn't relevant to the plot. Or even what the plot is.

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** A commonly accepted theory is that Bulkington was intended to be a central character in a mutiny plot Melville originally planned but later dropped.

* Oh course, this happens in [[Thomas Pynchon]] novels all the time, in fact, BLAM's may get more page space than the novel's "plot" itself, leading one to wonder whether it is, in fact, the plot of any Pynchon novel that is a BLAM to be compared against the self-consistent cohesion of the otherwise unrelated, ubiquitous absurdities.

* As it goes on, Stephen King's ''[[Dark Tower]]'' series starts to have more and more of these. One that springs to mind is in the scene where Roland and Eddie ''meet'' Stephen King, who is a character in his own book. Now, that may sound Blammy but it all makes sense in the series' metafictional context. The BLAM here comes when Eddie comments that if King-the-character keeps smoking, [[No Fourth Wall|he won't live long enough to complete their story]]. Roland then insists that smoking is good for you as long as you wait until you're an adult to start. Apparently it keeps away everything from insects to evil spirits that cause disease. It seems like it could maybe be a [[Chekhov's Gun]], but it's never mentioned again. Maybe it was just a way of placating [[Moral Guardians]] incensed that Roland was smoking?

** Fans of the ''[[Dark Tower]]'' series were worried that King would die before he completed the series because he kept taking too long between books and he was a heavy smoker. Eddie is serving as a stand in voice for the fans who want their story to be completed and Roland is a stand in voice for King, who politely but firmly rebukes Eddie.

*** Hmm. That makes some sense, but the scene on the whole comes so out-of-the-blue and is never mentioned again and has so many bizarre touches (does King really believe that smoking is good for him? Is what Roland says true in the [[Dark Tower]] universe?) that it's a BLAM. Just having Roland say something about whatever Ka wills would have been more in tune with the feel of the series and would distract far less from the story.

** There are a LOT stranger scenes than that. Mrs. Tassenbaum starts out as a Big-Lipped Alligator, coming out of nowhere with a long backstory. Then she finally meets Roland, and it becomes a [[Big Lipped Alligator Episode]] when they eat fried chicken and have sex in a hotel room. She doesn't really help Roland, and I guess I can infer that her only purpose in the story was to get him to a hotel room where he could see a television and not be able to see anything but scan lines. There are more scenes like that, especially in the last three books.

*** Didn't help Roland? Who drove him to the two important places he needed to be? I doubt the ancient Roland knows how to drive a stick.

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* [[Diary of a Wimpy Kid|Greg]] lampshades this in The Last Straw with Fregley coming out of nowhere with icing on his face and saying '''''"BOOGIE! BOOGIE! BOOGIE!"'''''

* The Philosophy Club scene in the novel version of Gregory Maguire's [[Wicked (novel)|Wicked]]. It seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but no one knows what.

* A lot of Louis De Bernieres' ''Birds Without Wings'' could be said to be a patchwork of BLAMs. There is one scene where you see the sack of Smyrna from the point of view of one of the minor characters as he drowns, and the chapters about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk contribute to a feeling that the whole book is merely filler with a few relevant chapters pasted in. Even the character through whose eyes we see much of the Ottoman experience in [[World War ~~One~~]] is not the character who then goes on to go mad and {{spoiler|kill his girlfriend}}.

* A lot of Louis De Bernieres' ''Birds Without Wings'' could be said to be a patchwork of BLAMs. There is one scene where you see the sack of Smyrna from the point of view of one of the minor characters as he drowns, and the chapters about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk contribute to a feeling that the whole book is merely filler with a few relevant chapters pasted in. Even the character through whose eyes we see much of the Ottoman experience in [[World War I]] is not the character who then goes on to go mad and {{spoiler|kill his girlfriend}}.

* After an assassination in the [[Vietnam War]] novel ''War Dogs'', the group's leader is returning from his watching post and is suddenly attacked by a tiger. After an extended river tiger fight, he regroups with his team and almost no time is spent discussing his fresh wounds.

* The two-dimensional planet stop in ''[[A Wrinkle in Time]]''. The heroes [[Our Wormholes Are Different|"tesser"]] to a weird place where the children feel squashed and can't see anything, one of the adults mentions something about the kids being unable to exist properly on a two-dimensional planet, and they warp away. It was probably supposed to be related to the four-dimensionalness of their teleporting method, but no actual explanation is given for why they went there, what the heck a "two-dimensional planet" even is in a three-dimensional universe, why the kids weren't crushed to death, or how the adults apparently ''are'' able to survive on such a planet.

** To be fair, there actually ''is'' an explanation for a couple of these: the "adults" are actually {{spoiler|an unspecified kind of supernatural creature which doesn't even need to take a corporeal form,}} therefore making it perfectly reasonable that they wouldn't suffer the same ill effects as the children. In fact, the adults find it "amusing to be flat" and it's implied that the person in charge of the tessering just plain forgot that the children would be harmed by it. The other points still stand, however.

* [[Harry Potter]]'s dreams and [[Imagine Spot|mental images]] can be downright WEIRD. Take, for instance, the dream Harry had in book 5 right before [[Mood Whiplash|the attack on Arthur Weasley.]] In summary, Cho Chang tells Harry that Cedric {{spoiler|[[Sacrificial Lion|(who's dead, by the way)]]}} bought her tons of Chocolate Frogs, Hermione suggests giving her his Firebolt, he explains that it's currently locked in [[Tyrant Takes the Helm|Umbridge's]] office, and he's trying to hang up Christmas ornaments shaped like Dobby's head. [[Mind Screw|Yeah.]]

** On the other hand, they all lead to the scenes were Voldemort's point of view and thoughts seep into his mind. Perhaps it only works during REM sleep, or when his mind is particularly unfocused?