Wall Banger/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Turns out the Stranges were hired by the park to see if the kids would reveal the secrets of [[Amusement Park of Doom|Horror Land.]] Since they were willing, they'll have to die. Um... what? So established TV personalities would be willing to get involved in the needlessly complicated murder of three children? I know most of these books contain their own internal logic and you can't really question plot motives, but this book is so brazen in its ineptitude that it makes the first ever case '''for''' illiteracy."''|'''Troy Steele''', ''[[Blogger Beware]]'', [http://www.bloggerbeware.com/2008/10/series-2000-13-return-to-horrrorland.html Return to Horrorland]}}

 

 

Examples here are highly subjective. Read at your own risk, and if somebody rants about a show you like, please refrain from making [[Justifying Edit]]s. If they're wrong, just delete it.

* The [[Artistic License Physics|misuse of ballistas]] in ''Eldest.'' They were firing the ballistas ''into combat'', guaranteeing massive friendly casualties. (Dear [[Christopher Paolini]]: they're called "'''siege''' weapons" for a ''reason.'') And then they ''lit the bolts on fire''. Newsflash: lighting arrows on fire has limited applications. Lighting ballista bolts on fire is not getting the concept of ballistas.

** Magic bolts. Move along, nothing to see here.

** Exactly-they outnumbered them ten to one and still had massive casualties. Plus they had the advantage of having a village to fill with traps and barricades and the like.

** The Ra'zac are supposed to be [[Elite Mooks]] and are implied to be unbeatable by a normal person in a fight. They didn't take part in the "battle" at Carvahall at all because they were swept away by the retreating soldiers.

** Even giving Meyer the benefit of the doubt and agreeing that she never said that vampires couldn't mate with humans (and ignoring all the biological mess outlined above), it still makes no sense that none of the vampires even know that it's possible and that there's only one or two other half-vampires running around. Most of the vampires are bad people—you can't tell me that not one vampire ever raped a human and wanted the resulting child or even that Edward is the only vampire to ever fall in love with a human and vice versa. And even if we go with the idea that most of the human victims either aborted the pregnancies or died from them, the vampire community should still know that mating with humans is possible as long as vampires are around to restrain the mothers and perform teeth C-sections.

*** Hell, ''the resolution of Breaking Dawn'' centers around {{spoiler|an adult half-vampire showing up and mentioning his vampire father's building a half-vampire army}}! But that opens an entirely different barrel of rotten fish...

* Even the rabid fans have noticed the amount of [[Purple Prose]] in ''Twilight'' and its sequels. "Chagrin" can now be used when someone wants to make their prose all [[Buffy-Speak|purpley]], even if it doesn't make sense.

* In the first ''Twilight'' book, Bella repeatedly mentioned that she had already read everything on the reading list and done essays on the books. She repeatedly says how she got blank stares from the other students when she tells them her paper topics, and so forth. She might as well jump up and down and say, "Hey look at me! I'm smart and everyone else here is an idiot!" And the narration—oh God. Listen, people are reading the books for the fantasy and the vampires and the romance! No one cares what the temperature is, nor what the weather's like, nor how many clouds are in the sky, nor what Bella's wearing, nor what she's fixing for dinner, nor what her carry-on is.

**** There's also this quote from Bakunin (referred also in article for [[wikipedia:V for Vendetta|V for Vendetta]] in [[Wikipedia|The Other Wiki]]):

{{quote|"Liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality."}}

* [[Carl Sagan]]'s ''[[Contact (Literature)|Contact]]'' has a [[Government Conspiracy]] cheat ending. Fortunately, [[The Film of the Book]] changed this.

* Nancy Stouffer's ''[[The Legend of Rah and the Muggles]]'' contains so many that the wall in question probably has a hole in it by now. In the intro alone, we have an [[Anvilicious]] rant about government corruption, a [[Unfortunate Implications|casual use of racist terminology]], a nuclear holocaust (did we mention that the book is [[Paranoia Fuel|aimed at primary school kids]]?), "radiation" used to refer to [[Artistic License Nuclear Physics|radioactive material rather than the energy it emits]], a cloud opaque to sunlight that lets moonlight through, seawater curing ''second- and third-degree burns'', and humanity [[Hollywood Evolution|evolving into ersatz Teletubbies in 500 years]]. And just to drive the Wall-Bangingness home, the author claims it was the inspiration for ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'', solely due to the use of the word "Muggles".

*** It should be noted that the impossible promotion and impossible headshot were from the ''[[Mary Sue|same character]]''.

* Similarly, the ''[[Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell|Splinter Cell]]'' novelizations (except Splinter Cell: Checkmate, which has a different author) because of massive [[Character Derailment]]. Sam Fisher turned from a gruff if likeable and extremely competent stealth operative with a love for his country into a [[Cluster F-Bomb]]-throwing, overtly sexual fool with an unrealistic dislike for the army (''why did he volunteer and/or stay then?'' would be the question) and a penchant for screwing up.

* Philip Pullman's ''[[His Dark Materials|The Northern Lights]]'': This excellent, exciting story full of magic and mystery and suspense gets abruptly paused so the ''villain'' can [[Anvilicious]]ly [[Character Filibuster|lecture the reader]] about the evils of Christianity. This stays the theme for the next two books: God = evil, sin = good, church = lie, childhood = sucks. Considering how awesome the first book started, all this griping seriously ruined the mood.

** And then there's [[Diabolus Ex Machina|the ending]], where we learn where Spectres come from and why Dust is in peril. Every part of it [[Ass Pull|comes out of nowhere]], and it's riddled with so many [[Plot Hole]]s that it looks like Swiss cheese. The origin of Spectres is not foreshadowed breaks the rules of magic given elsewhere in the series. The author and the angels go out of their way to prevent a [[Happy Ending]].

** Can you really wallbang one of the most abstract, experimental books in modern English literature for being nonsensical? It's famously more mystic experience than novel, and I can't imagine why you even picked it up if that wasn't what you were looking for.

** Burroughs' thinly-fictionalized memoir ''[[Junky]]'' is one of his few books that make any kind of sense at all or attempt to tell a story. ''[[Naked Lunch]]'' is borderline-intelligible but needs to be read extremely closely to follow what plot there is.

** She also seems to forget that she is legally a U.S Marshal who probably shouldn't be getting too involved in vampire and lycanthrope politics. Of course the implications of a public servant helping armed factions and setting up defense treaties for these factions on U.S soil also never gets addressed.

* In another example of [[Video Game Movies Suck|Video Game Books Suck]]: the ''[[Baldur's Gate|Baldurs Gate]] II'' [[Novelization]]. The main character is a stupid, unsympathetic thug who sleeps with any woman; [[The Eeyore|Xan]] - the intelligent cynic - died because he argued with a ghoul; the author did not get the point of Minsc being an [[Affectionate Parody]] of [[Boisterous Bruiser]]s; [[Lovable Traitor|Yoshimo]] became a fat, cowardly turncoat who was only useful for the magic sword he has... The thug-hero just killed people because he was told to, and then there was [[The Woobie|Imoen]]'s [[Suddenly Sexuality|sudden lesbianism]] around a drow female. Oh yeah, and [[Did Not Do the Research|drow eat spiders]], which is like Hindus eating cows. And [[Big Bad]] [[Badass]] [[Magnificent Bastard]] Irenicus isn't even in four-fifths of the book and [[Smug Snake|wasn't even close to magnificent]].

** LeGuin, brilliant as she can be, ''does'' have the worst time when she tries to "[[Author Tract|send a message]]". See: ''[[Changing Planes]]'', specifically the chapters "The Royals of Hegn" and "Great Joy". Most. Blatant. [[Author Tract]]. Ever. (This is sad, because "The Building" is freaking great.)

** And The Other Wind is even worse. In the first three books, the Dry Land is presented as a relatively dreary afterlife that's been there since as long as anyone can remember, a place that it makes sense to want to avoid except that doing so is messing with the laws of nature and has too many consequences. In The Other Wind, it's revealed that {{spoiler|it used to be a pleasant place for dragons only, but the earliest wizards stole it, but in the process [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|accidentally made it a dry land, and prevented humans from reincarnating, which was their former fate-after-death]].}} [[The Reveal|Dark secrets and lost knowledge]] like that are often a good plot device, but then LeGuin turns the Roke Wizards into [[Straw Character]]s defending the actions of these people and calling it the crowning achievement of humanity, ''when according to continuity they shouldn't have even known about it''.

** Given the interdependence of the Canadian and American economies and infrastructure, especially when it comes to energy and defense, the idea that the US would take "No" for an answer is laughable. That goes double when American bases are destroyed. If they refused after that, then America would treat ''them'' as the enemy.

* Every time [[Piers Anthony]] takes up one of his previously "finished" universes, Walls shall be banged. While ''[[Xanth]]'' may have become a [[Hurricane of Puns]] with panties thrown in, the [[Apprentice Adept]] series suffered much much worse. In particular: the unexplained alteration of the totems of Adepts Green, Tan, and Yellow, in the second "trilogy". When we first met Green in ''Juxtaposition'', he used mystic gestures and hand signs to work his magic. When he re-appears in ''Out Of Phaze'', he's a fire mage. (Apparently, Anthony remembered the scene where a wall of green flame warned Stile and Lady Blue off his territory, and didn't look further). Tan's Evil Eye had been shown to be capable of damn near anything as long as he had direct line of sight on his target. In ''Out Of Phase'', it's shown to be mind control and nothing but. (Damn good mind control, mind you; but he had to make eye contact and could only zap one person at a time). Yellow, who was the potions mistress of the Adepts, suddenly gets a [[What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?|demotion]] to controlling animals (her secondary niche in the original trilogy... and she used potions to do it).

** While we're talking about "Incarnations" - everyone's relationships for the first three books are forced, contrived, or rape-based. Zane hooks up with Luna because Luna's dying dad's last will was that they hook up. Norton and Orlene hook up because Orlene's husband's postmortem wish was that they get Orlene pregnant. Niobe and Cedric have a forced marriage while he was still a minor; she fell in love with him only after he rescued her from a gang-rape. What's-her-face the "liberated feminist" and Samurai (yes, a Japanese martial artist NAMED Samurai. Argh, that ALONE is a wallbanger!)...he practically rapes her. It turns out he's accepted a deal from Satan to bomb the UN; the payment is a martial arts technique to painfully, slowly cause a victim's organs to fail. When Fate shows up to talk Samurai out of it, he immediately assumes she's a prostitute - what other reason can a woman have to speak to a man? Naturally, she calls him a pig, and so he tries to rape her on the spot. She escapes to a public place, throws a flowerpot at his head, and gets away. He says that, because she dishonored and embarrassed him, she owes her virginity as payment. They bring in War to beat Samurai fairly in combat to pacify him, AND War agrees to teach Samurai the fatal technique instead of Satan. Samurai STILL demands her virginity. She agrees. And the next day, has "a flush to her face that might have been love". BOOK TO WALL.

* Regrettably, Elizabeth George finally did it in ''With No One As Witness''; about three-quarters into a readable (if coincidence-heavy and bordering on the Thomas Harris) installment in the [[Inspector Lynley]] series, {{spoiler|Lynley's (pregnant) wife}} [[Stuffed Into the Fridge|gets shot and winds up brain-dead on a respirator]]; what's more, the shooting turns out to have been ''completely unrelated'' to the case at hand, or to anything other than a borderline [[Author Tract]] on the horrors of gang violence among disenfranchised youth. Moreover, the rest of the book is derailed by the [[Wangst|angstfest]]. At least it wasn't {{spoiler|Havers}}.

** ''Hurrah for Little Noddy'', the second of her [[Noddy]] books. Noddy has been working at the local garage to earn money. On his last day there, he forgets his hat and goes to collect it at night. At the garage, he witnesses goblins driving off with all the cars that were stored there. Problem: the garage owner, upon discovering all his cars are gone, accuses Noddy of theft and uses Noddy's hat as 'evidence' that the little wooden man committed the crime. It never occurs to him or to Mr Plod that Noddy couldn't have stolen EVERY SINGLE car from the garage by himself. Book, wall. Wall, book.

** Another example occurs in ''Well Done, Noddy!'' Big Ears gets into an accident which ruins his bicycle, and Noddy decides to save up and buy him a new one. He receives a request for some delivery work, and off he goes to collect some sacks and take them to Red Goblin Corner. Unfortunately, he wasn't supposed to take the sacks, and Mr. Plod fines him as punishment. There's one ''HUGE'' problem with this: Noddy was given the request by Mrs. Tubby Bear, whom he trusts, who in turn received the message from a goblin. Mr. Plod KNOWS that goblins love mischief, and he KNOWS that Noddy had no reason to doubt Mrs. Tubby. But he acts as though Noddy deliberately stole the sacks, when in truth the only thing the little nodding man can be accused of is being tricked! What makes this frustrating is the ending: Noddy manages to catch the goblin, and makes that goblin create a new bicycle for Big Ears. Now, if Mr. Plod had dropped the [[Idiot Ball]], then he could have staked out the goblin alongside Noddy; the ending would be the same! NOTHING justifies Plod's actions, not even [[Values Dissonance]].

*** He couldn't have ended with the "I'll go to hell" speech? <sigh>

** I liked the ending. Well, I hated what it did to Huck, but it was a good comparison about what Tom was doing (the same as he acted in all his books) with what Huck had become. Huck had grown up, while Tom had not. You want to reach out and slap the idiot. I would have much preferred it if Huck had given up entertaining Tom and gone off to properly rescue Jim after two or three days, and then Tom deliberately messed it up for drama. The rest plays out as is up to Jim saving Tom's life. As it is, we have the hero of the book taking backseat to the most EVIL actions of the entire book. While all the other villains had motives and reason, Tom was torturing Jim [[For the Evulz]].

** [[Never Live It Down|Backflipping Terminators.]] That is all.

* Not even dictionaries are immune! ''The American Heritage Dictionary Fourth Edition'' defines [[Anime]] as "a style of Japanese animation characterized by a bright, stylized art, futuristic settings, violence, and sex." [[Sarcasm Mode|Because every anime is]] [[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]], ''[[Transformers: Robots in Disguise (anime)|Transformers Robots in Disguise]]'', ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'', ''and'' [[Bible Black]].

** [[All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles|At least they didn't bring up the]] [[Naughty Tentacles]]...

** The funny thing is, the book's characterizations and ideas are internally consistent. The villains weren't [[Straw Feminist]]s. The protagonist wasn't a [[Kavorka Man]], just [[Mr. Fanservice]]. The [[Humans Are White|complete lack of nonwhites]] wasn't intended as racist—after all, why should a fantasy world mimic our own in racial diversity? Then the main character's sister {{spoiler|[[Face Heel Turn|joined the villains]] and promptly turned into a [[Depraved Bisexual]]}}. Arrgh! And this is the first of a series, and the sequel is out now...

* ''[[Dexter]] in the Dark.'' The events of this book bring in forces that had not been hinted at before and are barely hinted at later.

** When Joshua Calvert and his crew find the Artifact they were searching for, Calvert asks, "How do I use this thing?" {{spoiler|He is told, by the thing in question, "You ask".}} Fitting in its way, but startling nonetheless.

* Yes, ''[[Penny Arcade (Webcomic)|Penny Arcade]]'' have already done this, but ''Legends of [[Dune]]: The Butlerian Jihad''. It's not worth reading twice because at least 75% of the elements in the original novel are forced by the narrative to come into existence in less than a decade. Melange. Shields. Atreides. Harkonnen. The first flickers of high-speed [[Casual Interstellar Travel]]. The Bene Gesserit. Seriously, are the authors playing [[Chubby Bubbies]] with Duneiverse elements?

** The last card contained the easiest tasks. While the other ones sent our main character to distant places to diverse, usually hard-to-understand tasks, the last one was basically solved this way: {{spoiler|"you, get a job. You, talk to your daughter. You, dance with me".}} End. So much for the "greatest challenges", huh?

*** Just because they were accomplished with easy actions does not mean they are easy tasks. When's the last time you convinced someone to change the way their life was going?

* [[Terry Pratchett]]'s novel ''[[Discworld/Monstrous Regiment|Monstrous Regiment]]'' has one [[The Reveal|reveal]] too many.

** Er.. Wasn't that the point...?

** Speaking of Orson Scott Card, he really shouldn't try and write characters smarter than he is, it's annoying to us who are actually smart. When Bean can't think of a reason for humans to have evolved morality, I was sitting there, mentally listing off, like, eight.

* ''[[The City of Ember]]'': Why did the scientists give the mayor the instructions on how to leave the city, which would just arouse his curiosity sooner or later? Couldn't they have hid it in some kind of time-activated safe in the center of the city or something? And what was the point of the third book, besides the subplot of that one guy {{spoiler|making contact with the aliens that serve no purpose in the story whatsoever}}?

** Is that the book's fault, or the fault of the ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' setting's metaphysics?

*** It took the book to make the catch in the metaphysics clear. Remember, independent GMs can override anything they like. This shows what happens when there is no override.

**** Uh, no... "[[The Bad Guy Wins]] ''if you let him set up an evil totalitarian government to begin with.''"

** On the subject of ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'', the finale of that book featured the tyrant giving a long, detailed and perfectly reasonable justification for the totalitarianism of the World State. We're clearly not ''supposed'' to agree with him, but you potentially ''could''. And what defence does O'Brien offer? None - all that matters is power. This is a book which is praised for providing a deep insight into the totalitarian mindset, and yet it reduces the advocates of authoritarianism to Saturday morning cartoon villains.

*** Hell, if you're sharp enough to realize a couple paragraphs in that it tells you shit you already knew, you could skip it with no effect.

*** Goldstein's book is essentially the ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' equivalent of John Galt's speech in ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]''; it lasts forever, completely disrupts the flow of the book and just explicitly states everything that was being inferred beforehand.

* ''[[Tales of MU]]'' gets this kind of bad. It's established early on that most characters are either inexperienced with social dynamics, have some form of mental issues, or both. This generally allows for a pretty big stupid discount. However some characters just blow right through that. Steff generally gets it the worst, because no one expects the words "raped at a young age", "guro fetishist", and "free magical healing any time" to produce a sane or mentally healthy individual. Her friend needs a knife for weapons practice and there's a nice obsidian one no one will miss, she takes it. Out of the necromancy department. Fair enough, since she's training in necromancy and nobody ''did'' miss it. One of her first reactions? ''stabbing herself in the chest''. Turns out it's a vampric dagger, an the damage done is repaired because she heals herself with it. No harm done, except she stabs herself again. And again. She misses her friends birthday party and all her classes to stab herself until her ''soul is torn in half''. Most people think thats stupid of her, but perfectly in character and fine. Then another character gives her a <s>breast enhancement</s> turn-a-male-body-perfectly-female-with-the-sole-exception-of-retaining-a-penis potion. She has it explained to her repeatedly that that mass needs to come from ''somewhere'' and it will probably have other side effects for a long while, so be very careful and talk it out with friends and lovers. Immediately recovering from tearing her soul in half through sheer stupidity she downs the potion with no preparation despite having plans and classes for several days. Unsurprisingly she winds up near dead for the second time in a week and no one thinks of it as a particularly enormous lapse of judgement by her standards.

** It is seen as an enormous lapse of judgement on the part of Dee, the student who gave her that potion and really, REALLY should have known better.

** Wasn't that his excuse to {{spoiler|get Steve and Flame off the island and onto a real racetrack}}?

*** Yes, but you wonder that ''aliens'' was the best thing he could come up with. Couldn't he have just said they found a new passage in the tunnels or something?

** ''"He was no prude, but Rayford had never been unfaithful to Irene,"'' we're told in the first part of the first chapter of the first book. But just a few lines later, we're told that ''"He had long felt guilty about a private necking session he enjoyed at a company Christmas party more than 12 years before. Irene had stayed home, uncomfortably past her ninth month carrying their surprise tagalong son, Ray Jr."'' That's right, he had a "private necking session" (and why add the word "private?" As opposed to what, exactly?) with another woman while his wife was at home pregnant with their soon-to-be-first-born, but he "had never been unfaithful to Irene". The Swedish translator, who realized how moronic this was, simply removed the words "private necking session he enjoyed at a", making the translated result this: "He had long felt guilty about a company Christmas party more than 12 years before." No actual reason is given as to ''why'' he felt guilty. And it's ''still'' better than the idiocy of the original.

*** Also, the book tries to sell Buck as a worldly-wise rogue, in the same paragraph in which it mentions that he's a 30 year old virgin (but then if he wasn't a virgin, he wouldn't be "pure" and therefore a minion of Satan)

* Licia Trosi's ''[[Chronicles of the Emerged World]]'' (official English title can be something else, if someone can correct me, please do) is painfully cliched Eragonesque fantasy trilogy. It hit wall in about 1/3 of first book. [[Doomed Hometown]] of [[Mary Sue]] heroine is a city - tower. It's implied to be really tall with multiple windows. It stands in the middle of plain, plain that is flat as a table. Attacking army of Orc-like creatures is not noticed by anyone until it's by the gates. 'Cause armies are something that moves stealthy.

* I '''love''' [[Jane Austen]], but... Anne Elliot's "[[I Regret Nothing]]" speech at the end of ''[[Persuasion]]'' -- [[Anvilicious]], [[Values Dissonance]], [[Double Standard]], [[Broken Aesop]], and blatant [[Hypocrite|hypocrisy]]. Either Anne or [[Jane Austen]] is trying to "have it both ways." If Anne had defended her decision eight years ago on grounds such as "I now realize that Lady Russell was right for keeping us apart, but for different reasons, and it wouldn't have been safe to get married under such circumstances," it would have at least been fair and consistent. But Anne admits that her own reasoning is that the advice was wrong, but she (Anne) ''was right to yield to it for no other reason than because it's a woman's "duty" to yield to the advice of friends!'' Anne asserts she was right to take what she has since learned to be bad advice, not on the grounds that it turned out to be right in the long run or could have turned out so just as easily, but because she was yielding to persuasion period. Either Anne or Austen just can't bear to have Anne admit she was wrong, and since Wentworth agrees with her completely, and since this is completely consistent with the [[anvilicious]]ness of Louisa Musgrove's accident, it's not meant to be ironic. Instead of treating the theme of persuasion maturely (that may not have been Austen's title, but it ''is'' a prominent theme nonetheless), Anne turns it into a black-and-white issue: not yielding to persuasion (like Louisa) is always wrong, and yielding to persuasion (like Anne) is always right... if you're a woman. A man should be firm, or they'll suffer like Wentworth for yielding to Louisa and Mr. Smith for yielding to Mr. Elliot. I'll take my Austen novels with [[Mansfield Park|subtlety]] and my Austen heroines who [[Sense and Sensibility (novel)|actually apologize]] for [[Pride and Prejudice|their error]] and [[Emma|learn something]] besides never to doubt their own perfection, thank you very much.

** There's also the fact that the novel [[Retcon|calls the predecessor as "nothing but lies"]]. [[Flat What|WHAT?!]] And don't forget about the massive [[Character Derailment]], the portrayal of Bram Stoker himself, the {{spoiler|"[[Luke, I Am Your Father]]"}} twist, the blatant sex, and ugh, this is making my head hurt.

*** There's a tendency among revisionist literature to deride the canon which it is revising, which just seems a bit cheap.

** Especially when in a situation like that, you don't even have to use math. Just realize that each possible combination is a different number, going from 000 to 999. That requires almost no thought at all, and yet super genius Artemis Fowl was off by a magnitude of 3 or 4. Then again, 1000 combinations is still too many to test out when pressed for time, but still.

* ''[[World War Z]]'' was a good book, but the zombies are pretty transparently engineered to overcome traditional zombie weaknesses so they can't be killed. Take a look at [http://www.cracked.com/article_18683_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html this Cracked list]. Solanum zombies are poison to animals,<ref>which wouldn't necessarily keep animals from ''trying'' to eat 'em, but the strange ability of every species ''except'' humanity to somehow know not to tell Zombies are toxic would</ref> can freeze and thaw and still function, have no noticeable effects from heat, can apparently spread via black-market organ transfers<ref>Note that every infectee who dies rises as a zombie a few minutes later, regardless of how they died. Which means that people died in hospitals, yet somehow ''didn't'' rise in the middle of a crowded ward, which would provoke a health scare.</ref>(which makes sense), the barriers are all ignored(including closing and locking a standard frakking door, which will stop most people in full control of their cognitive functions, much less zombies), and the military somehow can't find it's butt with both hands, making tactical decisions a third-world militia would be too smart to make. In addition to that, zombies somehow don't need senses to see. And they can survive at the bottom of the ocean, with the interviewees pointing out that between the pressure and salt water, they should be paste.<ref>They can walk along the sea floor, which is weird, cause not only do most dead bodies float but the ocean bottom is about as flat as the Himalayas.</ref> It basically stops one bit short of declaring the zombies "magic". And if this deck-stacking weren't enough, humanity is a bunch of complete idiots who have apparently ''never seen a zombie movie in their lives''. Also, against all logic and real-world behavior, the mainstream news suppresses the news of the dead walking because they don't want to cause an economic downturn. IIRC, it was because the placebo Solanum medicine was so popular, they didn't want to reveal it didn't work. Which means that the "African Flu" was well known enough to have a large portion of the economy dependent on a medicine for it, but not enough for significant amounts of people to actually know what it is. The vast amount of legal and illegal guns circulating in the US alone? Ignored entirely. Also, one blog is mentioned before the outbreak. One blog. The entire nerdy blogosphere would crap their pants over the news that zombies were real. And then we find out that it was tearing up the message boards, but ''only in Japan''. Said otaku were members smart enough to hack the emails of gov't officials, yet none of them apparently located a news service or published it on their fricking blog. In fact, the story we hear is from an otaku who relates how the other posters just started dropping off, with the implication that they were either dying of self-neglect, trying to get to safety, or being killed. The narrator's parents had actually left for some time before he was spurred into action by running out of food. Basically, the [[NEET]]s knew exactly what was going on, but ''none of them told anybody'' until it was far too late.

** Apocryphally, Heinlein wrote that novel with the specific intent of writing the worst novel he possibly could and seeing if it would still sell. Apparently, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

** Also, its arguable if the book whose entire premise is 'a man invents a time-travel device that turns out to also allow access to the entire multiverse of possibility, including ''fictional'' worlds' was ever intended to be "serious" science fiction.

*** On a more practical level, licensing concerns limited Heinlein to using only fictional worlds of his own creation or that are in the public domain, and sales concerns limited Heinlein to using only fictional worlds his readers are actually familiar with. Add in that it was a plot point that his characters find a safe haven with magical help available, and pretty much the only place on the Venn diagram where all three of the sets above overlap ''is'' Oz.

* Steven Wakefield in ''Sweet Valley Confidential''. Or, more specifically, his [[Suddenly Sexuality]]. Especially when he had married one woman (Cara), was engaged to another (Billie) until shortly after she miscarried, and had a nervous breakdown over Tricia's death (to the point where he broke up with Cara ''twice'' to pursue [[Identical Stranger]]s who looked like her. It wasn't until one of them called him out on it that he snapped out of it.). This makes no sense if you followed the ''[[Sweet Valley High]]'' series.