Too Dumb to Live/Literature: Difference between revisions

* This is a long standing complaint of fans of Romance fiction who use the abbreviation TSTL (Too Stupid to Live) to describe any heroine (or hero) who drives the plot by sending all reason and common sense on sabbatical while pursuing the love of their lives.

* [[Older Than Print]]: ''[[Little Red Riding Hood]]''. [[Terry Pratchett]] said it best in ''[[Discworld/The Wee Free Men|The Wee Free Men]]'':

** 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 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.

* Bella Swan of ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]''. Bella ''NEEDS'' to be changed over so she'll have the strength to lug around that big-ass [[Idiot Ball]] she's been strapped to ever since she saw Edward Cullen walk into the school cafeteria.

** A dedicated [[Spork|Sporker]] put it best while describing the cliff-diving incident in ''New Moon'':

** [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Alice in ''New Moon'' (film ''and'' book):

** Bree and Diego from ''The Short, Second Life of Bree Tanner'' would surely count as well. They both know that they're being kept in a basement by a Riley, who (A) has been kidnapping other teenagers to make into vampires and (B) clearly doesn't care if they kill each other. Later on, they discover that the story they had been fed about how sunlight burns them up was a lie. They also learn that they were all being used as canon fodder and Bree remembers that the night she had been turned into a vampire, she had been kidnapped and tricked into it. They ''also'' find out that Riley is discussing plans with [[Big Bad|Victoria]]. So of course they come to the conclusion [[What an Idiot!|that Riley is completely innocent and will surely help them if they tell him everything they know]], so Diego decides to meet him alone, to tell Riley that [[He Knows Too Much|he knows all of these secrets]], without telling anyone except for Bree where he is going. Needless to say, Diego does not return. Bree qualifies as this trope because after all of that, she doesn't realize that Diego is dead until Riley has run off and left her and the other vampires to be killed by the Cullens. [[Sarcasm Mode|What a brilliant pair!]]

* The unnamed SMERSH agent who executes Le Chiffre and his crew at the end of ''[[Casino Royale]]''. This has the interesting side effect of saving Bond's life. Despite knowing that Bond is a resourceful, and therefore dangerous, foreign service agent, he declines to kill him, basically giving the reason that his superior did not file the paperwork that would give the order for him to kill any opposing spies that he happened to encounter over the course of his mission. He also acknowledges that, under ordinary circumstances, he'd be under orders to kill Bond. But, that order wasn't specifically given, so he's just going to carve a brand onto Bond's body (to help them identify Bond in the future, a randomly dickish move that serves no purpose other than to make Bond hate SMERSH just a little bit more) and leave him be. Come on!

** I took dragontaming 101, how hard can it be to tame two dragons? Well, how hard is it, Quentyn?

* In [[No Country for Old Men]], Llewelyn Moss literally gives this trope to the dead gangster he tries to bring water to when he comes back by night to the scene of the shooting. Apparently the said gangster (though he was indeed wounded) just sat there waiting for the man who ultimately cames and finish him off, and therefore...

* In ''[[The Long Walk]]'', a walker who dies early on was wearing sneakers, despite the rulebook that the contestants were given in advance explicitly telling them not to do so, as no other type of footwear will help develop blisters faster on long distances. Predictably, he develops blisters pretty soon, and is ticketed after walking at the required speed becomes too painful for him one time too many. Garraty even [[Discussed Trope|discusses it]] in his internal monologue.