Too Dumb to Live/Literature: Difference between revisions

* Victor [[Frankenstein]] of [[Mary Shelley]]'s [[Frankenstein (novel)|original novel]], decides to run away from, and afterwards basically forget about, his ''completely successful'' [[Frankenstein's Monster|experiment in the creation of new life]], after he decides that the result is uglier looking than he expected. He is then surprised when said creation feels epically neglected and decides to kill him.

** Not only that, but all the monster wants is familial love at first and then a female companion. Victor starts making one to appease it, then gets afraid the two of them would spawn a race of monsters, so he destroys the unfinished female, which prompts the monster to commit new murders in revenge. Victor never considers that he could just leave out some of the plumbing. ''Not only that'', but despite knowing the monster has a history of killing the people that he, Victor, loves, despite knowing that it considers him guilty for the death of its 'bride', despite its explicit warning that it will "be with you on your wedding night," when Victor marries Elizabeth he assumes that ''he'' is the monster's next target, and sends his new wife away to wait in her room completely unprotected. The results are predictable.

** They did so ''before'' they were that dumb. They were tribal warrior primitives before they overthrew the spacefarers and stole their tech. Then they used the biotech they'd stolen to genetically engineer themselves to be perfect - as defined by a primitive tribal warrior culture, i.e. massively aggressive, status-conscious, and utterly truthful. They actually rebuilt their descendants to be ''unable'' to [[Rules Lawyer]] their honor code. This doesn't change much until evolution kicks back in... once they attack humans.

* ''[[Discworld]]'': [[Terry Pratchett]] explores this being intentional in ''[[Carpe Jugulum]]''. [[Fridge Logic|Why are there so many anti-vampire items in a classic horror vampire's castle?]] [[Genre Savvy]] vampires engage in [[Contractual Genre Blindness]], being [[Affably Evil]], and sometimes even limiting themselves to [[Poke the Poodle]]-levels of evil, in order to ensure that nobody ever decides to go out of their way to utterly destroy them.

:* The modern version rubs salt in the wound by producing an awful mixture of [[Deus Ex Machina]], [[Unexplained Recovery]], and [[Bowdlerise|Bowdlerisation]]. Not only does she suffer nothing for her impressive stupidity, but the original version's moral of "don't trust strangers" is completely dropped in favor of a happy ending.

* T'Lana from the ''[[Star Trek]]'' pocket books is a very short-lived character in the current{{when}} Borg [[Story Arc]] for just this reason. From the first book she is introduced in she immediately questions the judgment of practically everybody on board the ship who isn't a [[Fantastic Racism|Vulcan]], she objects to nearly every action anyone ranked above her takes, and spearheads a mutiny with other members of the senior staff against [[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Picard]], only to give command back to him refusing to simply admit that she fucked up majorly. Even [[Star Trek: The Original Series|Spock]] eventually just walks away during a conversation with her, after calling her the Vulcan equivalent of a dim-witted jerkass. At the end of the second book she appears in, Picard wants her gone, which means something when his current first officer once defected to the Klingon Empire and thus could, ''very technically'', be called a traitor. Her ultimate fate? She's replaced with [[Genki Girl]] T'ryssa Chen, a [[Half-Human Hybrid|half-Vulcan]] who prefers her human side and roleplaying as an elf, and gets blown into powder when the Borg partially glass Vulcan.

* The trolls in ''[[The Hobbit]]'' spend all night arguing about how they're going to cook Bilbo and the dwarves, apparently forgetting [[Taken for Granite|what happens when sunlight hits them]].

** Of course, the implication was that Gandalf successfully got them so busy arguing that they simply lost track of the time and didn't notice it was getting to dawn. Of course, one would assume that with such a weakness, the trolls would have the sense to take better care, but yeah...