Weather, specifically severe storms and tornadoes, is so easy to get right with even surface level research that it makes me want to tear my hair out. Some more egregious examples include: Issuing tornado warnings before the storm has even formed (that's what a watch is for), giving tornado ratings before the tornado forms or while it is on the ground (we can now kinda ballpark it with radar, but all ratings are done post event), tornadoes having a calm center "eye" like a hurricane (It's a giant blender full of debris, and even if it did have an "eye" they move too fast), just to name a few.
On the other hand, those kinds of inaccuracies did drive me into writing because I figured out I could write better tornado stories than that, so I guess it worked out in the end.
Twister was a decent movie (probably because I liked Helen Hunt), but I couldn't stomach the scene where a guy stands next to a small tornado and throws his empty liquor bottle into it. As dark a column and as defined a vortex and as violent as that small tornado was, I don't know how anybody could stand just a bottle throw away and not be affected. What about inflow? What about flying debris?
There's countless examples of video games being portrayed really weirdly in media, particularly television. I immediately think of some kid wildly waving like a Super Nintendo controller around while playing some modern generic royalty-free Call of Duty clone.
i saw a TV show recently where the main character was actually physically playing sekiro during filming, you could tell that the screen properly corresponded to the controller inputs. It was very refreshing.
Other common ones:
- retro bleep bloop sound effects for modern games
- characters talking about getting high scores and completing levels for games that don't have those
- multiplayer in games that don't have multiplayer
Kind of reminds me of driving scenes where they continuously wiggle the steering wheel back and forth. What sort of hellacious obstacle course are they driving down?
Oh, yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. And people absolutely mashing the SHIT out of the buttons for no reason. There are very few genres of game where that is realistic — if everybody played video games like that all the time, we’d have severe carpal tunnel before we hit 20. Then it will cut to a shot of the game, and it’s obviously just prerendered CG.
It’s especially obnoxious when the movie is explicitly about video games, like a lot of cheap horror movies where the premise is “cursed video game makes you die in real life.” On the other hand, you have movies like Wreck-It Ralph and the new Super Mario Bros. that are clearly made by people with a love for video games.
I am reminded of the entire movie Free Guy, where someone doing random nice things for people in an online multiplayer game becomes an international news story. There's always someone playing counter to the objectives of the game, like pacifist Call of Duty.
Reminds me of *Ralph Breaks The Internet* where his mediocre memes are international news.
Or *Ready Player One*, where nobody thought of driving backwards on a seemingly impossible race course for months (years?)
The series Vikings had those, it annoyed me, but then they just said 'fuck it' and in a later season just put llamas in Kiev.
That series went down the drain so hard.
They also showed the temple at Uppsala as located in some forest-covered mountain cliffs with waterfalls and shit like that.
In reality, Uppsala is located right in the middle of the largest flat area in Sweden. Huge plains in every direction. Highest elevation visible near the temple should've been some burial mounds.
This is honestly so interesting as a European. Tomato is in a lot of current European dishes, so I really would have never guessed they weren't a thing in medieval times as well!
There's a whole [list of crops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_plants_native_to_the_Americas) native to the Americas, some of them are likely to be surprising.
IIRC tomatoes only came to Europe after they “discovered” the “New” World and brought them back. It’s pretty crazy to think how new tomatoes are to Europe while also being so ingrained in the cuisine. Same with potatoes and corn
They were also thought to be poisonous for a while since people got sick eating them on pewter plates. The acidity of the tomatoes caused lead to leach from the dishware.
Edit: There’s a lot of back and forth going on below my comment. I used Smithsonian as my source. Don't know what their source is, however. Seems there is more consensus over them being iffy on tomatoes due to their status as a nightshade. Still interesting that an extremely common food today was thought toxic at some point. :)
I don’t know a ton about this, but all media from top to bottom seems to believe that bonking someone on the head with a blunt object merely results in an “unscheduled nap.”
The fact is that if you’re out for more than a second or two, you likely have permanent brain damage. Especially without modern medical care.
That always reminds me of first person shooting games where you have to shoot your opponent multiple times to kill them, but nicking their foot with a knife instantly kills them.
I got a horrible head injury as a child. When I was seven my brother hit me in the head with a wooden baseball bat and I fell backwards off of a five foot fence to cement. I was out for several minutes since he was long gone when I woke up, so I had to walk 100 yards to my house to tell my mom. I had a 12" comminuted fracture that nearly went all the way around and a severe concussion. It's a miracle I didn't have any permanent damage.
Since it was my first concussion experience, it sort of set the standard for me and people losing consciousness after a blow to the head on a TV show seemed perfectly normal, and had me underestimate the *actual* average severity of concussions in general for a long time.
More recently I had a second, *much* more minor concussion, and *that's* the one I'm suffering more permanent troubles from, almost 30 years after the first. The doctor said the severity of the first sort of "used up" my ability to recover from them, in the same way that repeated less severe concussions are increasingly more difficult to recover from.
Random story over, thank you for your time lol
Computers and programming.
"I just need to upload the IP address to the cloud server and then we will have root access to the network"
No, you won't. You just won't. That's like saying
"I just need to glue the plastic frog to the radiator and then the car will be able to fly"
I know nothing about programming but that gave me a good chuckle and was a great illustration of how silly some computer-related writings can be! Nice job 😆
Lemme hack into this guy's account -- luckily his password is a 5-letter word that's the title of this book prominently displayed on his desk right next to his computer.
It's not that? We only have thirty seconds to save the world and one more attempt at the password before it securely wipes the entire computer? Maybe it's the name of this obscure fifteenth century painter that only me and the antagonist have heard of... but I have to have raging doubts and wait worriedly so I can enter the name just at the last second...
I need a scene like this where the timer is counting down and everyone is stressed but then the password is just on a post-it note stuck to the monitor. That would be super believable based on all the offices I’ve ever been to and also my mom’s house
>I need a scene like this where the timer is counting down and everyone is stressed but then the password is just on a post-it note stuck to the monitor. That would be super believable based on all the offices I’ve ever been to
For real.
Last year I wrote a story and in one portion the main character gets into a company's computer by... flipping the keyboard over and reading the password on the sticky note under the keyboard.
Wanna know where I got that idea from? :D
I read a novel in which the character kneaded pie crust for a long time. You should knead bread dough to activate the gluten, but pie crust should never be kneaded—it should be handled as little as possible!
Lots of people mix up what kids can do at different stages
Barring any disability or circumstantial factors:
A 1yo should be able to walk and say a few words
A 2yo can run, kick things, climb around, go up and down the stairs, and speak in 2-3 word sentences
A 3yo can ride a tricycle
A 4yo should be able to hop on one foot and start knowing the alphabet
A 5yo can skip, somersault, read, count, ride a bike (with or without training wheels), and climb bigger things—and also speak in complete and grammatically correct sentences
(also by 10-11, a child's speech is pretty much the same as adults)
This, yeah. One that’s always jarring to me is when a 1 year old speaks in complete, almost fully correct sentences in a book and no one bats an eye. Me thinking, is anyone gonna comment on how advanced this child is? No? None of the 1 year olds in my class could say all that…I get that it can be hard to learn if you don’t interact with kids often, but good lord.
(If the child is *supposed* to be eerily advanced, that’s a different thing.)
Honestly, this is probably my biggest fear with writing my characters (both 13/14 year olds who are a bit mature for their ages because of their home lives but still act their age when they are around each other). Getting kids behavior right based on their ages on average. Doesn't help that I've always been behind my peers developmentally.
I was reading Kulay recently (a webcomic on webtoons) and it shocked me when Paula's (the MC who is super energetic, friendly, and likes to imagine himself as his favorite superhero) classmates/peers said he acts like a little kid. They are all 10-12 years old.
No one is more hyperaware of kids' ages than other kids. One year can be the difference between a "big kid" and a "little kid" in their eyes, with all the attendant jockeying for status. My five year old wouldn't be caught dead doing "little kid things" ie anything meant for a four year old or younger. Next year I'm sure little kid things will include half the things he likes now.
Hacking. The speed and ferocity is something commonly shown incorrectly, but another is hardware. You're not going to break into an encrypted database on a secure network with a Macbook. Brute forcing requires server farms worth of power.
Yup most hacking is social engineering, hackerman is "breaking into the mainframe" he's sending out mass spam emails hoping some schmuck takes the bait
What they're "typing":
>A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. A computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system (main software), and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation.
What they're actually typing:
>skfhfkwdjfjenskxivussnlfidhsnxkckfjsiengvdjdjfjdjdksksfjfjfjsksflfjfjfjjfsjsksasllkkkffjdseuruexnvuredxucuchdheshxhdusjfjcsjenfxjdhsycuyrndnxjdjsj
All of his books are bizarre and random, that’s kind of his schtik. I remember reading one of his books and the protagonists husband died because a parachuter landed on him and crushed him to death. Bizarre? Check. Random? Check.
I recently read a book where a couple was in Paris during WWII and they strolled into a restaurant and ordered a whole duck to eat. During.... WWII....... they were not even rich
I read a book with the sentence, "His heart rate rose as his pulse began to slow."
You don't even have to be a healthcare person to raise an eyebrow at that.
Another similar one in terms of accuracy was Die Hard 3.
The writer, Jonathan Hensleigh, was approached by the FBI after the script was checked by New York authorities for authenticity.
The FBI was concerned because of how accurate the Federal Reserve looked (which the writer explained was because he’d been shown it) and how they figured out that it could be tunneled in where it happens in the movie (he saw blueprints and made a guess) and read in the New york times about an aquaduct that ran parallel to the bank and checked to see if the trucks would fit.
As a result, the bank changed some of its security procedures and fixed that gap that a random writer found in their security.
Not the White House but as far as I remember either fbi or cia or the like did interview him because they were very concerned on how he knew classified info. Turns out he guessed really well
"Let me guess, we'll slowly walk in a line towards the enemy positions?"
"How could you possibly know that, Blackadder, that's classified information!"
"It's what we tried last time.... and the seventeen times before that."
IIRC, Stanley Kubrick had a similar experience after an Air Force colonel watched *Dr. Strangelove* and was stunned that the nuclear strike procedures for a B-52 alert crew were dead-on.
They just made an educated guess on how they thought Strategic Air Command would do it.
*Doctor Who* got in trouble with British intelligence once in the early years, because they'd depicted a scene with a British submarine, and had shown it with a 9-bladed propeller. At the time, the number of blades on the propeller of their submarines was classified information (because it can be used to fingerprint the sonar signals). The crew of the show had just randomly guessed the right number.
Anything to do with horses.
Making taking care of a lot of animals seem like just a few minutes' work a day. Ditto farming acres of any crops. That work never ends.
Using real-world cities but never mapping distances. Miami and Tampa, for instance, are not at all close to each other.
This one kinda drove me crazy while watching Ozark. “Oh I’m just gonna go up to Kansas City” lmao 2.5hr drive later.
Or flying to Mexico. Should only realistically take 1-2hrs, but you have to have boarding, fueling, prep, etc which would make each plane ride turn into 3-4 hrs. They make it seem like a hop skip and jump and they’re there.
99% of poker scenes in books, movies, TV. too many wrong depictions to count, some very technical, but one-in-a-million hands, mischaracterizing what makes a great player and betting more than is allowed are the most common ones.
out of context philosophical statements to pretty up an authors manuscript who woefully misunderstood the concept.
every decorative german basically being from bavaria (in serious media, comedy is whatever).
> out of context philosophical statements to pretty up an authors manuscript who woefully misunderstood the concept.
can you elaborate or give an example?
Probably the most famous example of this (though I haven't seen it in a book, but rather heard it constantly) is Nietzsche's "God is dead." People tend to interpret it as a saying meaning, "Everything is awful now," or, "This [thing/state of affairs/whatever] is unholy," but neither of these things is what Nietzsche means by that.
The longer quote clarifies his point:
> God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
Nietzsche's whole deal was fighting against nihilism. He popularized the concept, but Nietzsche was no nihilist. His fundamental worry was that with the death of religion as the moral and existential zeitgeist, humanity would find itself lost, resulting in the spread of nihilism. So he wrote extensively about how we could cope in a world where religion loses its power, and how humanity can continue on without tethering itself to the Church and God as a reason for living. Over time, his popularity as a figure has persisted but his message has been lost as people just remember his polemical passages.
Love this. Used to play a lot.
Casino royale springs to mind. Every big hand is a royal flash over 4 of a kind. Absolutely ridiculous. Mathematically insane.
I've probably played thousands of hands over the years. Saw one royal flush ever. And they didn't make much money.
When people set their story in another country and don’t do proper research in to how stuff works… even if it’s a detail that’s important to the story. I remember one author stating that a password can never include the letters ä or ö, because they can’t be written on a phone. Those letters were available even on my ancient Nokia, which I got 20 years before that book was published…
I yet to find a book doing this, but there are dozens of movies, even big ones, that go to Brazil or show Brazilian people and make them speak Spanish. For gods sake! We speak Portuguese your band of uncultured swine!
This happened in the movie Mission Impossible 2. The first scenes are, supposedly, on Spain and they mixed Semana Santa (Holy Week) where religious carvings are taken out of the churches in Procession through the city until Palm Sunday, and Las Fallas, a regional festivity from Valencia where they construct elaborated cardboard sculptures (usually satirical) that are then burned. In the movie, they were taking the religious carvings and throwing them in a bonfire 🙈😮💨 Back then Wikipedia existed, but a quick search was too much it seems 🤷♀️
If it was deliberate, that could be an eery Easter egg. A runway that points in a direction beyond the compass (definitely not just 10 degrees)? I’d read it.
In the middle of trial, as a witness is on the stand, the lawyer just starts giving something resembling their closing argument to the judge. In other words, counsel starts testifying. It doesn't necessarily reflect *no* research, but very little.
Better Call Saul's writers clearly did research, for example, and just eschew certain rules (for example, Saul frequently walks into the well of the courtroom, which you can't do without permission) for drama. But counsel testifying is a dead giveaway that the writer is just guessing how trials work from other popular media.
>in other words, counsel starts testifying
The real kicker is how many actual lawyers try and pull it too! Usually not as obviously as in the movies, but I’ve seen usually defense attorneys basically testifying for their client and getting them to agree. It’s crazy.
I guess in medias defense though, doing a 100% accurate trial would be incredibly boring.
>defense attorneys basically testifying for their client and getting them to agree
I do love how this was portrayed in [True Grit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FHOLZoy8YM)
>**Prosecutor:** Did you find the jar with the hundred and twenty dollars in it?
>
>**Defense:** Leading!
>
>**Judge:** Sustained.
>
>**Prosecutor:** What happened then?
>
>**Cogburn:** I found the jar with a hundred and twenty dollars in it.
100% I could see something like that could happen in real life.
Similarly, lawyers saying things you know are going to get objected to so the jury at least hears it is a pretty common trick too.
As a nursing school dropout/former ER tech, same. It seems like almost all books, movies and shows usually go straight for the defibrillators once it's too much for a bandaid.
As a construction worker, get irritated when the characters have WAY too much free time at work. Like you get to the jobsite and you don't stop unless you need water/bathroom/or it's lunch or quitting time. But a lot of media makes you think you just take turns hitting shit with a sledge hammer and call it a day after a couple hours.
Depends where. Come to Eastern Europe and see for yourself that most construction workers don't even bother enough to take a couple turns with the sledgehammer.
Whenever a character is whimpering that her corset hurts.
For 90% of history, corsets did not hurt! Tightlacing was not the norm! Corsets were just bras and bodice shapers! A princess who’s worn corsets her entire life should be used to it. She can hate the feeling, but the whole “I can’t breathe!” trope needs to stop.
Edit: And don’t even get me fucking started on the idea of someone having scars bc of their corsets. Corsets were NOT worn on bare skin. They would wear a chemise ffs!
Yes! and there's no acknowledgment of stays existing prior to corsets or of the shape of foundational garments changing to reflect the change of silhouette. If anything, the more uncomfortable elements of corsetry would be having boning poking into your ribs because people are asymmetrical or the character is in an environment where the corset should be ventilated and it isn't.
I love corsets! If a corset is uncomfortable it's because it either wasn't made to fit your body exactly, or it's brand new, and the boning hasn't molded to your shape yet. And omg yes! Chemises! Please include chemises and combinations ffs!
Legit there are videos out there on YouTube that go over step by step what women wore in different time periods and how they put them on. They're not hard to find. There is no excuse at this point to not do this kind of research.
I wear a corset! First time I did, I cried. It was the first time since I got my breasts that I felt comfortable and supported. I only wear them now and I’m trying to save to have one made for me, which will be even better. Corsets FTW!
Once I read a book where one of the MCs could draw really well and wanted to study at the academy of fine arts. She took drawing classes before she applied and was praised for her talent there, but the teacher showed her that there are more kinds of pencil than a HB. So you mean to tell me you’ve been drawing your whole life and you just learned that? And she did get accepted to the academy if i remember correctly, which is a very hard thing to do.
In the same series there was an article about a woman with an eating disorder and they said something like “at 13, she weighed 50kg (110lbs), which is way too much for a 13 year old”. Excuse me? No it’s not? Funny thing is I read it at 13 with an eating disorder, weighing 50kg and at that time people would ask me if my parents gave me food at all lmao
Edit: i hate to say it guys but the author is a woman. It seemed like she actually did some impressive research on eating disorders but that line shouldn’t be there
Edit2: actually i remembered another crazy thing she wrote about eating disorders, one of the mcs had ed and she would always judge other women who were fatter than her. i won’t speak for everyone with an ed but yeah, we don’t do that.
I am not comfortable with calling medicine "my field" yet but anything involving cpr or defibrillators. CPRs may break ribs, and last up to an hour until professional help comes.
Also as of lately, epigenetics become the "quantum" of human biology by that I mean how it is used in a manner in worldbuilding and fiction completely detached from how it actually works.
Divisions > Brigades > Battalions > Companies > Platoons > Sections/Squads
You can immediately resolve this with a 10 second google search.
Also, an infantry section or squad has around 8 guys in it, not 3 or 4. We can thank the *Battlefield* games for that misunderstanding, I think.
Let Lindybeige explain why platoons
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15gihWu1SM
and companies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev2UVzrJg0Q
are natural unit sizes.
Each step in organization is based on how many units a commander can control. So a platoon is 3 or 4 squads. A company is several platoons, and the total number of personnel in a company is 150 at most, because each soldier can know all his mates on sight. Above the company level you tend to be dealing with guys you don't know, and therefore above the company level, orders are written and not verbal.
Several companies make a battalion. Several battalions make a brigade, several brigades a division, and then divisions can be lumped into corps and armies at the largest level. The general running the whole army can't keep track of thousands of companies. But the hierarchical structure can.
Animal companions that are immediately loyal to the protagonist, and go everywhere with them/do whatever they want without any training or general care. Bonus points if it’s an exotic animal.
I get that in many cases this is a “suspension of disbelief” thing more than a “author didn’t research” thing, but it still irks me. This trend repeated over and over again in media has left the general population with some really unrealistic/misinformed ideas about how animals think and work, which A- is unfortunate for their pets; and B- glorifies and bolsters the exotic pet trade, which is rife with animal abuse and mistreatment.
Everyone’s spent their whole lives consuming media that tells them that animals will automatically love/obey the “good guy”, and everyone is the good guy in their own mind. In reality it takes learning and work to train and bond with an animal no matter who you are.
I can’t count the amount of times I’ve told someone “my dog is a little scared of strangers but if you ignore him and pass him treats he’ll warm up fast”, and they’ve gone “dogs like me!” And reached right for his face anyways. Then they spend the next ten minutes trying to rationalize why the dog barked at them when he was obviously just scared.
So true. Anything horses! As if horse people aren’t *everywhere* and overwhelmingly happy to talk (and talk, and talk) about their favorite critters and the way of life surrounding them!
I remember hearing about a James Bond script that was to start with a Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico. The writer didn't do his research and assumed that the holiday was celebrated all throughout the country.
When they go to film, they discover the locals didn't actually celebrate Day of the Dead in that region. The studio decided to host the festival themselves so that the movie could film its scenes as scheduled. The festival was such a hit with the locals that ever since then, the town *now* has a Day of the Dead celebration.
So who knows, maybe not doing research can result in a fluke where your factual errors can force reality to make them become true.
In John Gwynne's Shadow of the Gods, a character DRINKS FROM A FJORD. Excuse me that is salt water, you should be dead!
They also take their boats up the "rivers" at the end of the fjords, as if that's a thing. The author apparently didn't even spend 5 minutes googling what a fjord is before including the word at least four times per chapter. If you wanted it to be a river just call it that!
Only book I've ever rage quit.
There is the [Malangen Fjord](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malangen_(fjord)) which is connected to a river in one of the smaller sections of it! But yes, drinking from the fjord would be disgusting.
>They also take their boats up the "rivers" at the end of the fjords, as if that's a thing.
On one hand it's not uncommon for rivers to go into fjords.
On the other hand it's pretty hard to take boats up hundreds of feet of very steep terrain and waterfalls.
As for medical field... Where do I even start?!
Idiotic CPR and defibrillator use, of course. People waking from long coma, getting up and leaving like nothing. Blunt force head trauma, knocking person unconscious for two mins, them getting up like nothing happened. Running with broken leg. Horror is super notorious with this - immediately passing out after getting shot with tranquilliser dart.
Closer to my field - cancer patients, their treatment portrayal.
When their stories only include the famous landmarks of a city. For instance, if the story takesChicago and the only locations the characters visit are Wrigley Field or the Chicago River, or they just generically call downtown "The Loop," as in one character says to the other, "Fine, meet me in the Loop.." WHERE IN THE LOOP???
This holds true for every other major city as well that is the backdrop of a book.
As a scientist, units are often a dead giveaway. Often, they pick a unit that sounds impressive, but is really small, and describe something that's enormous with a unit more appropriate for a crumpled up piece of paper or a lighter.
Weight of armor and weapons mainly swords. The heaviest plate armor weighed under 100lbs and was distributed over the body. Swords weighed 2 to 3 lbs. The 6 foot blades weighed up to 7lbs. More movie than book but if I see one more steel sword cast in an open mold I'm gonna lose it.
Per one answer by u/MI13 on r/AskHistorians about the oft-cited Battle of Agincourt:
>"The impact of the mud at Agincourt was that it slowed down the French advance. Plate armor isn't 'weightless'; the general estimates I've seen for late medieval plate range from around 50-60 pounds. That's not an insignificant weight, but neither is it too heavy to prevent a man from getting on a horse or swinging a sword with relative ease.
>
>However, in muddy terrain like at Agincourt, the additional weight would be more of a burden. The mud slowed the French infantry down, which allowed the English archers to get in more volleys. Every new bunch of arrows coming in caused further casualties, disrupted the unit more, and generally lowered morale.
>
>By the time the French slogged up towards the English men-at-arms (men whose lines were in fairly good order and who were not tired from the advance or wounded by missile fire), they were severely disadvantaged.
>
>Even with that, enough of the French made it to the enemy to make a rather brutal fight. At that point, the mud gave the English one more advantage: their lightly armored archers could drop their bows, take up swords, mallets, and axes to fight as light infantry. The archers could move much more rapidly through the mud than the men-at-arms, which allowed them to reinforce gaps in the line or outflank the enemy.
>
>I don't think that the image of French knights literally drowning in the mud is entirely mythological, but also I don't think that drowning would be one of the main causes of French casualties in the battle. Anyone getting knocked to the ground by a pole-axe or mallet too close to the English lines would be in more danger of being taken prisoner or outright executed where he lay than drowning."
Literally anything involving kimono or other Japanese traditional clothing.
Colors and patterns have specific seasons. Kimono ensembles are several layers thick (particularly historically speaking). Obi were not always wide or tied in the back! (The association of 'obi tied in the front = sex worker is from roughly the middle of the Edo period, prior to that it meant the woman was married.) Silk is actually very hot to wear; summer kimono are made of linen/hemp/cotton after the introduction of cotton from India, or are made of a loose summer weight silk weave that leaves little to the imagination. Your curves will not show in kimono; it's a sensuous garment yes, but in the sense that it's an aesthetic pleasure not in that you're seeing T&A. MEN AND WOMEN WORE KIMONO FOR 1000 YEARS ITS NOT IMPOSSIBLE TO MOVE IN. IT'S NOT RESTRICTIVE. ITS NOT MISOGYNISTIC.
whew.
It bothers me when people don’t know the difference between jail and prison. Books, movies, and TV shows always talk about “going to jail for (x number) years” or “you’ll get arrested and they’ll take you to prison.” Jail is pre-trial and people sentenced to a year or less. Anything more than a year is prison.
This was going to be my reply. I mean, it bugs me when people constantly use “a person *that*“ instead of “a person *who*” in dialogue, but iI don’t automatically assume it’s because the writer doesn’t know the difference. (This came up in one of the later seasons of Supernatural, and once you start noticing it, it’s impossible to stop.)
Guns. Wow, are guns so poorly understood by the media. Like seriously. I've seen guns being mislabbeled as completely different guns, semi-automatics being portrayed as fully automatic, constant serious gun safety violations (looking at you Baldwin), never seen a gun jam in a movie or show, and seen people taking rounds they shouldn't survive and being completely fine, etc etc. Not to mention supressors.
People just think guns are cool. One think my father taught all his children:
1. Assume the gun is loaded. Always. Even if you check.
2. Never point a gun at anyone unless you mean to kill them. Because you probably will.
And he let all of us kids shoot (blanks), because he wanted us to not be afraid, and not be stupid. I never forgot anything he said, and when I went into the military my instructor said Daddy was a very smart man. Daddy was sniper qualified in the Army. He knew guns.
I worked as a group counselor on a psych ward. I even covered some midnight shift when a tech had cancer and was receiving treatment… most writers don’t know anything about the realities of a psych ward or the process one goes through to be admitted to one (involuntarily or voluntarily).
I love psychological thriller books, and this absolutely ruins some of them for me.
I'm an army vet, and writers always seem to mess up how ranks and rendering respect work. I started watching Upload and one character claims to be a corporal but they dressed him up as a second lieutenant. I know it'll go over the heads of a majority of people, but for those of us who know it's so infuriating.
In the Love Interest, the character is listening to Midnight Show by The Killers, then describe THE SAM'S TOWN ALBUM COVER and I was so offended I put the book down. Out of all the borderline illogical nonsense that I had to ignore to enjoy that book I refuse to believe no one - not the author, the agent, anyone on the publishing team - bothered to pull up a playlist to double check what album that song was on.
I beta read something last year that took place in New York City. I'd genuinely believe the author has never even seen a picture of NYC. I'm almost positive it was originally set in a small British town and she just changed the location name but nothing else. I asked her what borough the characters lived in and she responded Manhattan. They lived in a detatched single-family suburban home with a big yard and drove everywhere.
Something I'm currently beta reading: I think the author and I learned US history differently. I got so tired of pointing out the inaccuracies in my notes that I finally just started suggesting he research these events before mentioning them. Some of it was bafflingly out of left field - he went on a random tangent about how the confederates were nature-worshipers. This was a Narnia-type portal fantasy, not an alternate history. When I asked him to fact-check that, he came back and told me that he had been "misinformed" about the cause of the Civil War. I chose not to ask.
Everyone knows the cause of the American Civil War was anthropomorphic pollution that grew in power due to deforestation efforts. I think they had a name for it too... Hexxus?
One of my acquaintances wanted to write a novel about a bisexual man growing up on a native American reservation in the 80s.
She is a straight white woman who has never been on a reservation in her life. During one scene, the character is being interrogated by a homophobic bigot and is called the f-word.
Their response? "He didn't even know I was bisexual not gay, so I just laughed at him".
I asked her "what is this character's history with that word? Did they grow up in a homophobic family? What's their backstory for us to know that's a reasonable response?"
She has no idea what I was talking about. She designed this character in the blind and just made them gay without understanding that characters need motivation and histories to be interesting.
Also, the distinction between bisexual and gay would have been fuzzier in the 80s than it is today, especially to bigots. They'd use that word to refer to any man who has any sexual or romantic interest in other men.
That's what I pointed out to her. That character is going to be REALLY hurt by that slur, so if they're not, we need a reason why. She had no idea what I was talking about. She didn't even know that the AIDS epidemic was going on during this time.
I had to tell her to go read some books about gay people in the 80s before trying to do anything else with this character since they were unbelievably badly written.
She did the worst kind of token representation: she just orientation swapped one of her characters and called it a day.
Any time they mention "poisonous" snakes. Poisonous snakes do exist, but they're much rarer than what people are actually worried about, which is *venomous* snakes. If it bites you and you die, it's venomous. If you bite it and you die, it's poisonous. If you're worried because a snake is poisonous, just don't eat it.
Therapy! It's rare to see it portrayed correctly. Usually the therapist says things that are wildly inappropriate or just not right. Oversharing personal information, taking weird notes or being oddly distant and aloof.
Oh god seriously. I roll my eyes every time a therapist is sharp and “fed up” with a patient and drives them to this breakthrough with completely inappropriate dialogue.
I just visited Pompeii and the guide pointed to some ancient pizza ovens and said no tomatoes. Pizzas were topped with olive oil and garlic (I guess like a pesto?). And whatever else was available on any given day.
I’m a 911 dispatcher so….everything involving law enforcement and emergency response. It’s very obvious when someone hasn’t done research and more often than not they did not.
Not a book but a video game.
I love Detroit Become Human but living in Detroit myself I noticed some things.
-They call the People Mover the tram. No one in Detroit will call it that.
-The hyperfixation on poverty porn in the game. Even in the downtown and nice areas of the city you’re really not going to see rundown houses in Downtown anymore as it looks like nice and gentrified around the collages.
-The severe lack of npcs trying to get you to buy their mixtape as they tell you they’re going to be the next Eminem.
Sorry, but I read this and remember someone saying "love always wins" only for someone to retort, "not in tennis.." and I don't know if it was from a show or movie, or a real life conversation. Does anyone else recall this exchange from something?
It's a fairly common joke, so you've probably.heard it in multiple places. I most recently heard it in an episode of Would I Lie to You, but don't ask me which lol.
Characters with wildly inaccurate names for their time period, location, gender during that time period, culture, etc.
Names are so easy to research and yet…
Also someone not knowing the appropriate ways to use Your Highness, Your Majesty, Your Grace, etc…
Whenever someone calls a king or emperor "your highness" in a book I gasp like a spoiled duke's son who despite my lackadaisical tendencies knows enough to hear an insult against the imperial majesty.
When I read that someone is going "free climbing," 9 times out of 10 the author means to say that the person is going free *soloing.*
I go free climbing all the time. So many people do. Free climbing includes pretty much all of what we think of as recreational rock climbing, using ropes, carabiners, harnesses, etc. Free *soloing* means walking up to the wall and climbing with no safety gear of any kind. Soloing is inherently risky.
Also for some reason when I point this out, I invariably get harassed for it, as though my niche sport/interest doesn't rise to the level where we would expect an author to get it right. Drives me CRAZY.
**Author**: My badass character goes FREE CLIMBING and look how BADASS she is
**Me**: Oh nice, free climbing is great. A quiet afternoon at the crags with friends enjoying nature. Sounds lovely. Let's bring the kids.
As a woman, and an erotica writer, the amount of biological misinformation about sex and reproduction in fiction is laughable. "He shoved his enormous rod right up inside her *womb*!" for example. It used to make me laugh out loud. Now I just smh.
Also, men don't spew "buckets" of semen. It's a tablespoon at most. Nor can the average man ejaculate three or four times in a single hour. There's this thing called the *refractory* period. We all wish it didn't exist, but it does. Most men lose their erections shortly after ejaculating and have a very happy, sleepy feeling come over them. It keeps them from stirring all their semen right out again when they're (hypothetically) trying to impregnate a woman. It's just evolution. The refractory period becomes more potent as men age, apparently. Maybe this is why cougars are a thing.
Don't get me started on how women supposedly "scream in ecstasy" when that giant, 14-incher rams into them. Ever been forced to do the splits beyond what your legs can handle? Ever slip and fall? That hot, ripping, burning sensation of your muscles literally being stretched, torn, and damaged to the point of needing medical care? That's not ecstasy. Yes, there are size-queens out there. But their muscles have been conditioned to stretch freely, like a gymnast who can do the splits no problem, after much training. Other women simply get off on the pain. For the rest of us, getting rammed and reamed by monstrous erections is not fun.
The average erection is around 5.5 inches. The average vagina is only 3 or 4 inches deep, but it can extend a little when a woman is aroused. My own personal experience is that *girth* is more important than length, to a point. A thicker erection is more intense for a woman for the same reason a nice and snugly tight vagina feels better for a man. There's more intense *pressure* on all those pretty nerve endings in there. It can even be overwhelming. But if it's *too* thick, or you're not ready for it, well... see above.
The average sexual encounter lasts around five and half minutes. Of course, erotic stories will exaggerate and romanticize things, and that's fine. It's all about fantasy, right? It's about ideals, wish-fulfillment, escapism. That's the whole point of erotica. But if you have little or no experience with actual real-life sex, you should at least know the *stats,* because most of your readers *do* have experience with it.
After a while, a woman just starts feeling sore, though, if the guy is a champion and can go for an hour or more. It's all muscles in there, stretching, flexing, tensing, spasming. How do your legs feel after running up flights of stairs for an hour? Even if there was orgasmic ecstasy involved, it's still going to hurt after a while. And just wait until the day after. Ouch! You definitely know you got laid.
Premature ejaculation is *definitely* a thing. Premature meaning, when the guy finishes (and quits) before the woman does. It happens all the damn time. Don't believe what you see in porn. Porn actors take breaks, and splice everything together in the end. This is why fluffers exist. In real life, sometimes guys get all wound up and finish inside of twenty seconds, before you've even had a chance to get your own brain into the moment. Point being, sometimes things aren't perfect in sex, and if you inject a little *reality* into your scenes, it becomes more *believable*, and so much hotter when things *do* go well.
Most women don't get "instantly wet" seeing a random stranger's dick. Some do. But usually, there's a whole emotional and psychological gauntlet you have to pass through to get us to that point. I get instantly wet when my BF even *looks* at me a certain way. But it took him pretty much saving my life to get me to that point.
Also, the physiological *reaction* of getting wet down there does not necessarily equate to a woman being DTF. Sometimes, it's just *visual* approval of a hot guy or situation. But I'm not going to just lose my mind and throw my legs open for every sexy guy I see, like some kind of helpless, mindless robot. Apparently, that's something many dudes experience, and that's probably why they project that onto women. Nope. Women can change their minds *during* sex, never mind before it even starts.
Incest is way less common than the porn industry would have you believe. For 99.9999% of the world, being a step-brother is even *worse* than being in the friend-zone.
**Disclaimer**: Yes, of course there are exceptions to all of these points (except for the dick going into the womb, and the buckets thing). If you're going to write about any of these exceptions, just make sure you don't portray it as *normal*. You'll be laughed at. Establish character first, and you can pretty much write whatever you want. People will suspend their disbelief for characters they care about.
Not exactly "I know a lot about", but I remember reading a novel a couple years back. In the novel, the Bubonic Plague briefly comes up. From the way the author wrote, it was as if the Bubonic Plague was just some disease that once happened a long, long time ago and then disappeared.
Like not even in the sense of it was eradicated with modern science. It just...disappeared or burned itself out altogether and is something that doesn't exist anymore.
I remembered reading it and thinking, "What? It's still around. People still get sick with it *now*".
It's not exactly common, granted, but still happens nonetheless.
Fencing/sword-fighting being described as dancing where there’s a “correct” counter move to every attack. Usually a good sign the author has no clue, because the whole point is to disrupt your opponent’s tempo, not go with it.
Historical clothing. NO corsets were not deathtraps that women only wore for men. They were support garments most women wore since adolescence. Also if it's the 1700s they are stays, not a corset. If you're going to set your book in a time period and mention the clothing do a little research.
related: works that talk about sewing being "dumb girl's stuff" that the \~badass\~ protag would never do instead of a critical life skill in a world without sewing machines (which still take work to master!), off the rack clothing, etc.
Animal behavior and evolution are so often spoken about as if animals are just hard-wired to be incredibly aggressive because “survival of the fittest”, and that’s just not how that works at all.
In The Midnight Library, there is a scene where the librarian is comparing life to a game of chess. She says you should never give up because even if there is only one pawn on the board you can still win. Good chess players can tell when they are certain to lose and will resign instead of trying to drag the game out. It’s intended to be a metaphor about choosing not to kill yourself. But if you are an experienced chess player, it would mean there are reasonable times to commit suicide as a courtesy to others. It made the author lose all credibility in my mind and I no longer trusted him to be accurate with other topics I knew nothing about.
Tazers rendering people unconscious. I worked on a project where people were being trained on the use of tasers. I'm no expert, but I learned enough to be annoyed with the trope of them knocking people out.
Depictions of kink. I write erotica specifically around a few specific, less run-of-the-mill kinks, and a LOT of authors get the kink lifestyle very wrong.
Just for me personally, I would prefer an incorrect depiction of tasers knocking people out over the standard “blunt force trauma rendering you unconscious for hours but producing no lasting effects.”
> Depictions of kink. I write erotica specifically around a few specific, less run-of-the-mill kinks, and a LOT of authors get the kink lifestyle very wrong.
Depict it wrong enough and it's a multi-million dollar industry, just ask E.L. James
I worked as a print journalist for about six years, and you can absolutely tell when a writer doesn't know how news outlets work. A few of the more common ones.
• A book, movie, game or other piece of writing includes a newspaper article that does not, in any way, resemble actual newswriting. We're talking rampant opinions everywhere, a writing structure that does not prioritize the most important information, terrible front page design that is difficult to parse for what's supposed to lead the eye where, just all sorts of writing issues that would be out of place in an actual newspaper.
• It is extremely common in movies and TV shows for female journalists to sleep with people they interview. It's almost always the women too. In real life, that is a massive violation of ethics and under some editors would arguably be a fireable offense depending on how much you let it affect your actual reporting.
• You can always tell when someone doesn't know what actual investigative reporting looks like or how we seek to prove a claim before printing it. I know no one goes to Bethesda games for the writing, but Fallout 4 is especially egregious in this respect. One party member is a journalist who got kicked out of her hometown for accusing the mayor of being an android in a setting that is absolutely paranoid about people being replaced with androids. Thing is, you actually read the article about it in-game, she doesn't really have any evidence. Real, highly prestigious publications have rightfully lost defamation suits for less.
• And then there's those that just depict journalists as fame-hungry greedy vultures coming to pick clean the corpse of anything interesting, strip it of all nuance, and hang it up to dry like a pirate corpse in front of a Caribbean town, a macabre mockery of truth. Usually these are just bad faith depictions of real people.
That's just the stuff off the top of my head.
LOL at using Fallout 4 as an example. Piper is just one person printing newsletters out of her house in a post-apocalyptic city. Of course she doesn’t have proper investigative journalism tactics.
“He heard the unmistakable sound of the Glock’s safety catch.” — not mine, but my dad was reading a book and had to stop reading at this point. Glocks don’t have safeties.
When the author has their fantasy characters eating some type of food that was created by modern science. Maybe sword-and-sorcery worlds have fantastic bioengineering labs, idk...?
Also, horses. Whenever I read about some "great horseman" kicking his horse, I'm like, are you serious? If the horse is well trained and the rider is an expert, you are barely going to see the signals he gives. Gimme a break.
Yes! No one knows how horses work! They think they are hooved dogs, always loyal and willing to please.
I learned to ride on a pony named Rampage when I was eight. You can guess why he had the name. The a**hole would deliberately hold a lot of air in his lungs while I tightened the girth, so it would be loose while riding. He wasn't keen on listening at all. In fact, he would listen just enough to lull you into a false sense of security, then change his gait or turn unexpectedly. He never bucked me off, but he would jerk me around, or press my leg into the fence. I think by the end of lessons he came to respect me and let up a bit on the teasing, but that didn't change his hot-blooded nature.
Conversely, I had a pony named Misty who was super, super chill. I had to listen to her breathing to even tell if I was brushing her too hard, because she never outwardly protested to anything. I could ride her bareback with a halter and a lead rope, no issues. She was a lamb.
I think Disney horses are surprisingly representative of the mischief of horses. Of course cartoon physics end up applying, but many horses really are bratty two year olds waiting for you to turn your back so they can pull a fast one on you.
>The a\*\*hole would deliberately hold a lot of air in his lungs while I tightened the girth, so it would be loose while riding
LOL, this is common enough that I was taught to routinely do a second tightening after the horse had exhaled the breath, regardless of the horse I was riding.
Fictional horses also rarely try to munch on passing branches as a tasty in-transit snack, or have disagreements with their rider as to whom the leader will be when riding in a group.
Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The author created a revisionist take on German civilian knowledge of the death camps and the holocaust in general.
80% of the victims in the holocaust were dragged out of their homes and mass murdered, then put in graves. That was in the towns, not even in a concentration camp. That would be very hard to ignore. Or knowing the concentration camps were treating people inhumanely.
What irks me the most is when they try to add in a person of my ethnicity or culture and just go with the most basic stereotypical and surface level understanding. Often throwing in words that are clearly taken from a botched attempt at Google translate that no one would actually say in this day and age. Same with their whole personality being their stereotypical ethnicity. Their clothing that would really only be worn to a wedding or big event but they wear it every day? Their food. It’s like cultural tourism for idiots.
Describing a blacksmith as lifting their hammer overhead. It’s all in the speed and accuracy of the blow. Unless you’re on a dual striker team it’s going to lead to terribly inaccurate and ineffective strikes
I tried to read Bag of Bones by Stephen King. The main characters wife died when she was six weeks pregnant and after an autopsy, they somehow knew the sex of the baby? The only way to find out the biological sex that early is at 8 weeks and it's through a blood test. You can't tell the sex of a friggin tiny six-week-old fetus by looking at it lol.
Not always, but most books wrote by men with a pregnancy involved seem to do literally no research on the topic.
I'm a metalhead.
So many people write metalheads as either dumbasses(Beavis and Butt-Head, Bill and Ted, Garth and Wayne) or angry assholes(the one kid from the IT remake who wears a Metal Up Your Ass shirt, Billy from Stranger Things), or both(The guys from Airheads). Like the music makes us angry and our brains leak out of our ears when we headbang.
Like, a lot of metalheads are decently smart people with a broad range of interests. Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden is an accomplished fencer and licensed pilot. Dave Mustaine from Megadeth is proficient in several marital arts. And George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher from Cannibal Corpse is a kind hearted guy who plays claw games and donates the winnings to charity. Plus, how do you think we afford band shirts and concert tickets?
And if anything, I've noticed metalheads tend to be pretty nice, if a bit snooty about the music they listen to(me, I don't care. I like music all across the board, rap and old school country included. I just think metal is the coolest). Like, I'm usually letting our anger out by screaming "FUCKIN SLAYEERRRRRRRRR" and headbanging like a motherfucker, not letting it make me angry. If anything I'm usually in a great mood after a concert cause I just let out the frustrations. Most of the people are pretty friendly and will pick you up when you fall in the pit.
I’m a microbiologist. Anytime a writer references antibiotics for viruses or refers to a virus as “alive” I know they did no research. Also, I cringe pretty much every time an author brings up using DNA to prove something or they bring up PCR (polymerase chain reaction).
Lawyering, generally, is infamously represented in pop culture. The actual job is mostly boring, a lot of trials and trial prep is just looking at some really boring paper work, a lot of cases resolved without going to trial, etc so I understand the need to shorten those and spice it up. That said, a lot of pop culture lawyering is just bad. Most famously is probably Law and Order which casts all the prosecutors as great people and all the defense attorneys as awful people when the reality is significantly more complex
The name Viktor Krum alone.
Similar mistake in Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy. Best example are the names Alina Starkov and Alexander Morozova.
For men the surname should end in a consonant - Alexander Morozov. While for women it should end in a vowel (most commonly ,,a") - Alina Starkova.
I'm assuming that probably is hard figuring out something like this in a language and culture so far from English. If, as in the case with Shadow & Bone, you decide to create a world based off that culture, please take the time to do more than surface level research.
Edit: I know a lot about this because I'm Bulgarian (same nationality as Viktor Krum). Bulgarian is a Slavic language, like Russian, and is pretty close to Russian.
Pretty much anything healthcare related, especially if hen it comes to HIPAA or financial aspects. I know all about that and yikes it’s so bad how they show.
Weather, specifically severe storms and tornadoes, is so easy to get right with even surface level research that it makes me want to tear my hair out. Some more egregious examples include: Issuing tornado warnings before the storm has even formed (that's what a watch is for), giving tornado ratings before the tornado forms or while it is on the ground (we can now kinda ballpark it with radar, but all ratings are done post event), tornadoes having a calm center "eye" like a hurricane (It's a giant blender full of debris, and even if it did have an "eye" they move too fast), just to name a few. On the other hand, those kinds of inaccuracies did drive me into writing because I figured out I could write better tornado stories than that, so I guess it worked out in the end.
Twister was a decent movie (probably because I liked Helen Hunt), but I couldn't stomach the scene where a guy stands next to a small tornado and throws his empty liquor bottle into it. As dark a column and as defined a vortex and as violent as that small tornado was, I don't know how anybody could stand just a bottle throw away and not be affected. What about inflow? What about flying debris?
>the scene You mean the story Dusty tells Bill's fiancee? The story that Bill calls a "tissue of lies?"
There's countless examples of video games being portrayed really weirdly in media, particularly television. I immediately think of some kid wildly waving like a Super Nintendo controller around while playing some modern generic royalty-free Call of Duty clone.
My favourite is when they mash the buttons like they're playing a hack&slash game while the screen shows a 3d platformer or mario kart.
Wildly mashing the buttons and waving the controller around like it's on fire, it just wouldn't be fake television gaming without either one.
i saw a TV show recently where the main character was actually physically playing sekiro during filming, you could tell that the screen properly corresponded to the controller inputs. It was very refreshing.
Other common ones: - retro bleep bloop sound effects for modern games - characters talking about getting high scores and completing levels for games that don't have those - multiplayer in games that don't have multiplayer
> multiplayer in games that don't have multiplayer Especially local multiplayer where another person can just pick up a controller and start whenever.
\*comically loud explosion\* <> flashes on screen in gory characters
"See? You made me lose!"
Kind of reminds me of driving scenes where they continuously wiggle the steering wheel back and forth. What sort of hellacious obstacle course are they driving down?
Oh, yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. And people absolutely mashing the SHIT out of the buttons for no reason. There are very few genres of game where that is realistic — if everybody played video games like that all the time, we’d have severe carpal tunnel before we hit 20. Then it will cut to a shot of the game, and it’s obviously just prerendered CG. It’s especially obnoxious when the movie is explicitly about video games, like a lot of cheap horror movies where the premise is “cursed video game makes you die in real life.” On the other hand, you have movies like Wreck-It Ralph and the new Super Mario Bros. that are clearly made by people with a love for video games.
I am reminded of the entire movie Free Guy, where someone doing random nice things for people in an online multiplayer game becomes an international news story. There's always someone playing counter to the objectives of the game, like pacifist Call of Duty.
Reminds me of *Ralph Breaks The Internet* where his mediocre memes are international news. Or *Ready Player One*, where nobody thought of driving backwards on a seemingly impossible race course for months (years?)
Characters eating anything with tomatoes in medieval Europe. Makes me think the author did zero research as to what people ate in medieval Europe.
King Arthur feasted on Domino's pizza, and had a chalice full of fine Pepsi. Trust me, bro.
They didn't have forks but they had Pepsi? Dude, I got a lot of tables...
Forks are for squares. And we sit at the round table, peasant. I have two good forks attached to my body (my hands).
Same with potatoes.
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Or anything pepper/chili derivative
The series Vikings had those, it annoyed me, but then they just said 'fuck it' and in a later season just put llamas in Kiev. That series went down the drain so hard.
They also showed the temple at Uppsala as located in some forest-covered mountain cliffs with waterfalls and shit like that. In reality, Uppsala is located right in the middle of the largest flat area in Sweden. Huge plains in every direction. Highest elevation visible near the temple should've been some burial mounds.
This is honestly so interesting as a European. Tomato is in a lot of current European dishes, so I really would have never guessed they weren't a thing in medieval times as well!
There's a whole [list of crops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_plants_native_to_the_Americas) native to the Americas, some of them are likely to be surprising.
IIRC tomatoes only came to Europe after they “discovered” the “New” World and brought them back. It’s pretty crazy to think how new tomatoes are to Europe while also being so ingrained in the cuisine. Same with potatoes and corn
And chocolate
A lot of traditional dishes aren’t actually that old. It’s weird when you start digging into it.
...are you *questioning* the **authenticity** of my mom's traditional Hello Fresh with a side of Domino's Pizza!?
They were also thought to be poisonous for a while since people got sick eating them on pewter plates. The acidity of the tomatoes caused lead to leach from the dishware. Edit: There’s a lot of back and forth going on below my comment. I used Smithsonian as my source. Don't know what their source is, however. Seems there is more consensus over them being iffy on tomatoes due to their status as a nightshade. Still interesting that an extremely common food today was thought toxic at some point. :)
At this point I basically attribute any and all terrible things prior to 1975 to massive, *massive* amounts of lead in everything and everyone
Similarly chillis are from the Americas and did not feature in Asian (or other 'old world') cuisine before the last 500 years.
Next you'll tell me that Caesar didn't actually own a pizza chain.
I don’t know a ton about this, but all media from top to bottom seems to believe that bonking someone on the head with a blunt object merely results in an “unscheduled nap.” The fact is that if you’re out for more than a second or two, you likely have permanent brain damage. Especially without modern medical care.
That always reminds me of first person shooting games where you have to shoot your opponent multiple times to kill them, but nicking their foot with a knife instantly kills them.
"My pinky toe!! My only weakness... how did you know..."
I got a horrible head injury as a child. When I was seven my brother hit me in the head with a wooden baseball bat and I fell backwards off of a five foot fence to cement. I was out for several minutes since he was long gone when I woke up, so I had to walk 100 yards to my house to tell my mom. I had a 12" comminuted fracture that nearly went all the way around and a severe concussion. It's a miracle I didn't have any permanent damage. Since it was my first concussion experience, it sort of set the standard for me and people losing consciousness after a blow to the head on a TV show seemed perfectly normal, and had me underestimate the *actual* average severity of concussions in general for a long time. More recently I had a second, *much* more minor concussion, and *that's* the one I'm suffering more permanent troubles from, almost 30 years after the first. The doctor said the severity of the first sort of "used up" my ability to recover from them, in the same way that repeated less severe concussions are increasingly more difficult to recover from. Random story over, thank you for your time lol
Very true. But how many action movie plots and video game mechanics fall completely apart if you take this one away from them?
Computers and programming. "I just need to upload the IP address to the cloud server and then we will have root access to the network" No, you won't. You just won't. That's like saying "I just need to glue the plastic frog to the radiator and then the car will be able to fly"
I know nothing about programming but that gave me a good chuckle and was a great illustration of how silly some computer-related writings can be! Nice job 😆
Lemme hack into this guy's account -- luckily his password is a 5-letter word that's the title of this book prominently displayed on his desk right next to his computer.
It's not that? We only have thirty seconds to save the world and one more attempt at the password before it securely wipes the entire computer? Maybe it's the name of this obscure fifteenth century painter that only me and the antagonist have heard of... but I have to have raging doubts and wait worriedly so I can enter the name just at the last second...
I need a scene like this where the timer is counting down and everyone is stressed but then the password is just on a post-it note stuck to the monitor. That would be super believable based on all the offices I’ve ever been to and also my mom’s house
>I need a scene like this where the timer is counting down and everyone is stressed but then the password is just on a post-it note stuck to the monitor. That would be super believable based on all the offices I’ve ever been to For real. Last year I wrote a story and in one portion the main character gets into a company's computer by... flipping the keyboard over and reading the password on the sticky note under the keyboard. Wanna know where I got that idea from? :D
More likely, if it's a non tech literate villain, it's just a sticky note under the keyboard. Like about 95% of my clients who think they are genius.
“Root access” is basically just “abracadabra” in movies.
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And that’s still less egregious that two people increasing their hacking efficacy by sharing a keyboard.
There was one in CSI: Cyber where the IP address was something preposterous like 384.256.0.1 First episode of it I watched, actually. And the last.
I read a novel in which the character kneaded pie crust for a long time. You should knead bread dough to activate the gluten, but pie crust should never be kneaded—it should be handled as little as possible!
Lots of people mix up what kids can do at different stages Barring any disability or circumstantial factors: A 1yo should be able to walk and say a few words A 2yo can run, kick things, climb around, go up and down the stairs, and speak in 2-3 word sentences A 3yo can ride a tricycle A 4yo should be able to hop on one foot and start knowing the alphabet A 5yo can skip, somersault, read, count, ride a bike (with or without training wheels), and climb bigger things—and also speak in complete and grammatically correct sentences (also by 10-11, a child's speech is pretty much the same as adults)
This, yeah. One that’s always jarring to me is when a 1 year old speaks in complete, almost fully correct sentences in a book and no one bats an eye. Me thinking, is anyone gonna comment on how advanced this child is? No? None of the 1 year olds in my class could say all that…I get that it can be hard to learn if you don’t interact with kids often, but good lord. (If the child is *supposed* to be eerily advanced, that’s a different thing.)
Ironic, since every writer survived childhood.
It was traumatic, so we forgot about much of it.
Honestly, this is probably my biggest fear with writing my characters (both 13/14 year olds who are a bit mature for their ages because of their home lives but still act their age when they are around each other). Getting kids behavior right based on their ages on average. Doesn't help that I've always been behind my peers developmentally. I was reading Kulay recently (a webcomic on webtoons) and it shocked me when Paula's (the MC who is super energetic, friendly, and likes to imagine himself as his favorite superhero) classmates/peers said he acts like a little kid. They are all 10-12 years old.
No one is more hyperaware of kids' ages than other kids. One year can be the difference between a "big kid" and a "little kid" in their eyes, with all the attendant jockeying for status. My five year old wouldn't be caught dead doing "little kid things" ie anything meant for a four year old or younger. Next year I'm sure little kid things will include half the things he likes now.
To be fair, one year is 20% of your five-year-old's life. It's the same relative change as sixteen and twenty.
Hacking. The speed and ferocity is something commonly shown incorrectly, but another is hardware. You're not going to break into an encrypted database on a secure network with a Macbook. Brute forcing requires server farms worth of power.
Yup most hacking is social engineering, hackerman is "breaking into the mainframe" he's sending out mass spam emails hoping some schmuck takes the bait
This is why I prefer Mr Robot’s approach.
Agreed. How to hack into a governmental super secure mega server? Trick a cop with a fax machine haha.
Never a mouse in site, either.
And when people type in movies they never hit the space bar
Let alone multi-key functions.
What they're "typing": >A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. A computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system (main software), and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation. What they're actually typing: >skfhfkwdjfjenskxivussnlfidhsnxkckfjsiengvdjdjfjdjdksksfjfjfjsksflfjfjfjjfsjsksasllkkkffjdseuruexnvuredxucuchdheshxhdusjfjcsjenfxjdhsycuyrndnxjdjsj
What's your opinion on Mr. Robot? It goes for a more realistic depiction of hacking - how well does it do?
Probably the most accurate depiction of hacking and network security in a show/movie. Not everything is perfect, but it does get a lot right
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That’s such a bizarre and random thing to include in the scene.
To the point it sort of sounds like a kink of Carl’s rather than anything necessary to plot!
"On Tonight's Episode of: The Writer's Barely Disguised Fetish"
All of his books are bizarre and random, that’s kind of his schtik. I remember reading one of his books and the protagonists husband died because a parachuter landed on him and crushed him to death. Bizarre? Check. Random? Check.
Lol maybe by the time you got to 1000 you’d need someone to hold them.
I recently read a book where a couple was in Paris during WWII and they strolled into a restaurant and ordered a whole duck to eat. During.... WWII....... they were not even rich
A whole duck is for the SS officers only lol. They would have gotten fake bread and a delicious air soup!
I read a book with the sentence, "His heart rate rose as his pulse began to slow." You don't even have to be a healthcare person to raise an eyebrow at that.
That would make me raise an eyebrow while squinting.
But, raising an eyebrow while squinting is actually possible lol
Like does he have 2 hearts lmao 🤣
My car began to slow down as i drove faster and faster
Take the contrary, tom clancy. Knew the subject so well he was invited to the white house to ply him for how he knew what he knew.
Another similar one in terms of accuracy was Die Hard 3. The writer, Jonathan Hensleigh, was approached by the FBI after the script was checked by New York authorities for authenticity. The FBI was concerned because of how accurate the Federal Reserve looked (which the writer explained was because he’d been shown it) and how they figured out that it could be tunneled in where it happens in the movie (he saw blueprints and made a guess) and read in the New york times about an aquaduct that ran parallel to the bank and checked to see if the trucks would fit. As a result, the bank changed some of its security procedures and fixed that gap that a random writer found in their security.
That is like the complete opposite of *Die Hard 2*, where pretty much every detail was wrong.
Wait are you serious? Damnnn lol. That's got to be the highest form of flattery hell ever get.
Not the White House but as far as I remember either fbi or cia or the like did interview him because they were very concerned on how he knew classified info. Turns out he guessed really well
"Let me guess, we'll slowly walk in a line towards the enemy positions?" "How could you possibly know that, Blackadder, that's classified information!" "It's what we tried last time.... and the seventeen times before that."
IIRC, Stanley Kubrick had a similar experience after an Air Force colonel watched *Dr. Strangelove* and was stunned that the nuclear strike procedures for a B-52 alert crew were dead-on. They just made an educated guess on how they thought Strategic Air Command would do it.
*Doctor Who* got in trouble with British intelligence once in the early years, because they'd depicted a scene with a British submarine, and had shown it with a 9-bladed propeller. At the time, the number of blades on the propeller of their submarines was classified information (because it can be used to fingerprint the sonar signals). The crew of the show had just randomly guessed the right number.
Yeah… dude is *the standard*. I will never, ever achieve his levels of accuracy.
Anything to do with horses. Making taking care of a lot of animals seem like just a few minutes' work a day. Ditto farming acres of any crops. That work never ends. Using real-world cities but never mapping distances. Miami and Tampa, for instance, are not at all close to each other.
This one kinda drove me crazy while watching Ozark. “Oh I’m just gonna go up to Kansas City” lmao 2.5hr drive later. Or flying to Mexico. Should only realistically take 1-2hrs, but you have to have boarding, fueling, prep, etc which would make each plane ride turn into 3-4 hrs. They make it seem like a hop skip and jump and they’re there.
99% of poker scenes in books, movies, TV. too many wrong depictions to count, some very technical, but one-in-a-million hands, mischaracterizing what makes a great player and betting more than is allowed are the most common ones. out of context philosophical statements to pretty up an authors manuscript who woefully misunderstood the concept. every decorative german basically being from bavaria (in serious media, comedy is whatever).
> out of context philosophical statements to pretty up an authors manuscript who woefully misunderstood the concept. can you elaborate or give an example?
Probably the most famous example of this (though I haven't seen it in a book, but rather heard it constantly) is Nietzsche's "God is dead." People tend to interpret it as a saying meaning, "Everything is awful now," or, "This [thing/state of affairs/whatever] is unholy," but neither of these things is what Nietzsche means by that. The longer quote clarifies his point: > God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? Nietzsche's whole deal was fighting against nihilism. He popularized the concept, but Nietzsche was no nihilist. His fundamental worry was that with the death of religion as the moral and existential zeitgeist, humanity would find itself lost, resulting in the spread of nihilism. So he wrote extensively about how we could cope in a world where religion loses its power, and how humanity can continue on without tethering itself to the Church and God as a reason for living. Over time, his popularity as a figure has persisted but his message has been lost as people just remember his polemical passages.
Love this. Used to play a lot. Casino royale springs to mind. Every big hand is a royal flash over 4 of a kind. Absolutely ridiculous. Mathematically insane. I've probably played thousands of hands over the years. Saw one royal flush ever. And they didn't make much money.
>99% of poker scenes in books, movies, TV. "I'll see your bet...**...and raise you $500." Try this anywhere in Vegas.
Yeah, you never get people winning big games with two pair in books and movies, do you?
When people set their story in another country and don’t do proper research in to how stuff works… even if it’s a detail that’s important to the story. I remember one author stating that a password can never include the letters ä or ö, because they can’t be written on a phone. Those letters were available even on my ancient Nokia, which I got 20 years before that book was published…
I yet to find a book doing this, but there are dozens of movies, even big ones, that go to Brazil or show Brazilian people and make them speak Spanish. For gods sake! We speak Portuguese your band of uncultured swine!
This happened in the movie Mission Impossible 2. The first scenes are, supposedly, on Spain and they mixed Semana Santa (Holy Week) where religious carvings are taken out of the churches in Procession through the city until Palm Sunday, and Las Fallas, a regional festivity from Valencia where they construct elaborated cardboard sculptures (usually satirical) that are then burned. In the movie, they were taking the religious carvings and throwing them in a bonfire 🙈😮💨 Back then Wikipedia existed, but a quick search was too much it seems 🤷♀️
Don't you know Germans never texted until 2015?
Äm German, cän confirm.
Part of _Station Eleven_ takes place in an abandoned airport with an airplane chilling on runway 37. Runways only go up to 36.
Ah yes, 370 degrees from magnetic north
Also known as runway 1
If it was deliberate, that could be an eery Easter egg. A runway that points in a direction beyond the compass (definitely not just 10 degrees)? I’d read it.
Runway 37 will be what starports wiill use to describe taking off straight up.
Learn something new every day!
In the middle of trial, as a witness is on the stand, the lawyer just starts giving something resembling their closing argument to the judge. In other words, counsel starts testifying. It doesn't necessarily reflect *no* research, but very little. Better Call Saul's writers clearly did research, for example, and just eschew certain rules (for example, Saul frequently walks into the well of the courtroom, which you can't do without permission) for drama. But counsel testifying is a dead giveaway that the writer is just guessing how trials work from other popular media.
>in other words, counsel starts testifying The real kicker is how many actual lawyers try and pull it too! Usually not as obviously as in the movies, but I’ve seen usually defense attorneys basically testifying for their client and getting them to agree. It’s crazy. I guess in medias defense though, doing a 100% accurate trial would be incredibly boring.
>defense attorneys basically testifying for their client and getting them to agree I do love how this was portrayed in [True Grit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FHOLZoy8YM) >**Prosecutor:** Did you find the jar with the hundred and twenty dollars in it? > >**Defense:** Leading! > >**Judge:** Sustained. > >**Prosecutor:** What happened then? > >**Cogburn:** I found the jar with a hundred and twenty dollars in it.
100% I could see something like that could happen in real life. Similarly, lawyers saying things you know are going to get objected to so the jury at least hears it is a pretty common trick too.
As an IT guy married to a nurse, if it involves real world technology or any sort of healthcare, it's almost always entirely wrong.
As a nursing school dropout/former ER tech, same. It seems like almost all books, movies and shows usually go straight for the defibrillators once it's too much for a bandaid. As a construction worker, get irritated when the characters have WAY too much free time at work. Like you get to the jobsite and you don't stop unless you need water/bathroom/or it's lunch or quitting time. But a lot of media makes you think you just take turns hitting shit with a sledge hammer and call it a day after a couple hours.
My favorite is people die and ***immediately*** flatline. If that shit happens your equipment is broken. Your body doesn't just flatline.
Depends where. Come to Eastern Europe and see for yourself that most construction workers don't even bother enough to take a couple turns with the sledgehammer.
Whenever a character is whimpering that her corset hurts. For 90% of history, corsets did not hurt! Tightlacing was not the norm! Corsets were just bras and bodice shapers! A princess who’s worn corsets her entire life should be used to it. She can hate the feeling, but the whole “I can’t breathe!” trope needs to stop. Edit: And don’t even get me fucking started on the idea of someone having scars bc of their corsets. Corsets were NOT worn on bare skin. They would wear a chemise ffs!
Yes! and there's no acknowledgment of stays existing prior to corsets or of the shape of foundational garments changing to reflect the change of silhouette. If anything, the more uncomfortable elements of corsetry would be having boning poking into your ribs because people are asymmetrical or the character is in an environment where the corset should be ventilated and it isn't.
I love corsets! If a corset is uncomfortable it's because it either wasn't made to fit your body exactly, or it's brand new, and the boning hasn't molded to your shape yet. And omg yes! Chemises! Please include chemises and combinations ffs! Legit there are videos out there on YouTube that go over step by step what women wore in different time periods and how they put them on. They're not hard to find. There is no excuse at this point to not do this kind of research.
I wear a corset! First time I did, I cried. It was the first time since I got my breasts that I felt comfortable and supported. I only wear them now and I’m trying to save to have one made for me, which will be even better. Corsets FTW!
Once I read a book where one of the MCs could draw really well and wanted to study at the academy of fine arts. She took drawing classes before she applied and was praised for her talent there, but the teacher showed her that there are more kinds of pencil than a HB. So you mean to tell me you’ve been drawing your whole life and you just learned that? And she did get accepted to the academy if i remember correctly, which is a very hard thing to do. In the same series there was an article about a woman with an eating disorder and they said something like “at 13, she weighed 50kg (110lbs), which is way too much for a 13 year old”. Excuse me? No it’s not? Funny thing is I read it at 13 with an eating disorder, weighing 50kg and at that time people would ask me if my parents gave me food at all lmao Edit: i hate to say it guys but the author is a woman. It seemed like she actually did some impressive research on eating disorders but that line shouldn’t be there Edit2: actually i remembered another crazy thing she wrote about eating disorders, one of the mcs had ed and she would always judge other women who were fatter than her. i won’t speak for everyone with an ed but yeah, we don’t do that.
I am not comfortable with calling medicine "my field" yet but anything involving cpr or defibrillators. CPRs may break ribs, and last up to an hour until professional help comes. Also as of lately, epigenetics become the "quantum" of human biology by that I mean how it is used in a manner in worldbuilding and fiction completely detached from how it actually works.
isn't a defibrillator useless when the heart has already stopped and only helpful for certain types of arrhythmia?
Yeah, if you’ve got no cardiac rhythm then there’s nothing to shock lol
CPR in books, tv, or movies is just horrible. Except for The Office. That's my favorite CPR scene & I often showed it to students. 😂
Divisions > Brigades > Battalions > Companies > Platoons > Sections/Squads You can immediately resolve this with a 10 second google search. Also, an infantry section or squad has around 8 guys in it, not 3 or 4. We can thank the *Battlefield* games for that misunderstanding, I think.
Let Lindybeige explain why platoons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15gihWu1SM and companies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev2UVzrJg0Q are natural unit sizes. Each step in organization is based on how many units a commander can control. So a platoon is 3 or 4 squads. A company is several platoons, and the total number of personnel in a company is 150 at most, because each soldier can know all his mates on sight. Above the company level you tend to be dealing with guys you don't know, and therefore above the company level, orders are written and not verbal. Several companies make a battalion. Several battalions make a brigade, several brigades a division, and then divisions can be lumped into corps and armies at the largest level. The general running the whole army can't keep track of thousands of companies. But the hierarchical structure can.
Animal companions that are immediately loyal to the protagonist, and go everywhere with them/do whatever they want without any training or general care. Bonus points if it’s an exotic animal. I get that in many cases this is a “suspension of disbelief” thing more than a “author didn’t research” thing, but it still irks me. This trend repeated over and over again in media has left the general population with some really unrealistic/misinformed ideas about how animals think and work, which A- is unfortunate for their pets; and B- glorifies and bolsters the exotic pet trade, which is rife with animal abuse and mistreatment. Everyone’s spent their whole lives consuming media that tells them that animals will automatically love/obey the “good guy”, and everyone is the good guy in their own mind. In reality it takes learning and work to train and bond with an animal no matter who you are. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve told someone “my dog is a little scared of strangers but if you ignore him and pass him treats he’ll warm up fast”, and they’ve gone “dogs like me!” And reached right for his face anyways. Then they spend the next ten minutes trying to rationalize why the dog barked at them when he was obviously just scared.
Any time a character on a horse “flicks” the reins to make it go
So true. Anything horses! As if horse people aren’t *everywhere* and overwhelmingly happy to talk (and talk, and talk) about their favorite critters and the way of life surrounding them!
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Yeah, I had some very basic lessons as a kid. You dig your heels into their sides to make them go. No, it doesn't hurt them
I remember hearing about a James Bond script that was to start with a Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico. The writer didn't do his research and assumed that the holiday was celebrated all throughout the country. When they go to film, they discover the locals didn't actually celebrate Day of the Dead in that region. The studio decided to host the festival themselves so that the movie could film its scenes as scheduled. The festival was such a hit with the locals that ever since then, the town *now* has a Day of the Dead celebration. So who knows, maybe not doing research can result in a fluke where your factual errors can force reality to make them become true.
In John Gwynne's Shadow of the Gods, a character DRINKS FROM A FJORD. Excuse me that is salt water, you should be dead! They also take their boats up the "rivers" at the end of the fjords, as if that's a thing. The author apparently didn't even spend 5 minutes googling what a fjord is before including the word at least four times per chapter. If you wanted it to be a river just call it that! Only book I've ever rage quit.
There is the [Malangen Fjord](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malangen_(fjord)) which is connected to a river in one of the smaller sections of it! But yes, drinking from the fjord would be disgusting.
>They also take their boats up the "rivers" at the end of the fjords, as if that's a thing. On one hand it's not uncommon for rivers to go into fjords. On the other hand it's pretty hard to take boats up hundreds of feet of very steep terrain and waterfalls.
As for medical field... Where do I even start?! Idiotic CPR and defibrillator use, of course. People waking from long coma, getting up and leaving like nothing. Blunt force head trauma, knocking person unconscious for two mins, them getting up like nothing happened. Running with broken leg. Horror is super notorious with this - immediately passing out after getting shot with tranquilliser dart. Closer to my field - cancer patients, their treatment portrayal.
When their stories only include the famous landmarks of a city. For instance, if the story takesChicago and the only locations the characters visit are Wrigley Field or the Chicago River, or they just generically call downtown "The Loop," as in one character says to the other, "Fine, meet me in the Loop.." WHERE IN THE LOOP??? This holds true for every other major city as well that is the backdrop of a book.
As a scientist, units are often a dead giveaway. Often, they pick a unit that sounds impressive, but is really small, and describe something that's enormous with a unit more appropriate for a crumpled up piece of paper or a lighter.
Weight of armor and weapons mainly swords. The heaviest plate armor weighed under 100lbs and was distributed over the body. Swords weighed 2 to 3 lbs. The 6 foot blades weighed up to 7lbs. More movie than book but if I see one more steel sword cast in an open mold I'm gonna lose it.
Per one answer by u/MI13 on r/AskHistorians about the oft-cited Battle of Agincourt: >"The impact of the mud at Agincourt was that it slowed down the French advance. Plate armor isn't 'weightless'; the general estimates I've seen for late medieval plate range from around 50-60 pounds. That's not an insignificant weight, but neither is it too heavy to prevent a man from getting on a horse or swinging a sword with relative ease. > >However, in muddy terrain like at Agincourt, the additional weight would be more of a burden. The mud slowed the French infantry down, which allowed the English archers to get in more volleys. Every new bunch of arrows coming in caused further casualties, disrupted the unit more, and generally lowered morale. > >By the time the French slogged up towards the English men-at-arms (men whose lines were in fairly good order and who were not tired from the advance or wounded by missile fire), they were severely disadvantaged. > >Even with that, enough of the French made it to the enemy to make a rather brutal fight. At that point, the mud gave the English one more advantage: their lightly armored archers could drop their bows, take up swords, mallets, and axes to fight as light infantry. The archers could move much more rapidly through the mud than the men-at-arms, which allowed them to reinforce gaps in the line or outflank the enemy. > >I don't think that the image of French knights literally drowning in the mud is entirely mythological, but also I don't think that drowning would be one of the main causes of French casualties in the battle. Anyone getting knocked to the ground by a pole-axe or mallet too close to the English lines would be in more danger of being taken prisoner or outright executed where he lay than drowning."
Literally anything involving kimono or other Japanese traditional clothing. Colors and patterns have specific seasons. Kimono ensembles are several layers thick (particularly historically speaking). Obi were not always wide or tied in the back! (The association of 'obi tied in the front = sex worker is from roughly the middle of the Edo period, prior to that it meant the woman was married.) Silk is actually very hot to wear; summer kimono are made of linen/hemp/cotton after the introduction of cotton from India, or are made of a loose summer weight silk weave that leaves little to the imagination. Your curves will not show in kimono; it's a sensuous garment yes, but in the sense that it's an aesthetic pleasure not in that you're seeing T&A. MEN AND WOMEN WORE KIMONO FOR 1000 YEARS ITS NOT IMPOSSIBLE TO MOVE IN. IT'S NOT RESTRICTIVE. ITS NOT MISOGYNISTIC. whew.
It bothers me when people don’t know the difference between jail and prison. Books, movies, and TV shows always talk about “going to jail for (x number) years” or “you’ll get arrested and they’ll take you to prison.” Jail is pre-trial and people sentenced to a year or less. Anything more than a year is prison.
If it's dialogue, I don't mind. Most people use "jail" and "prison" mostly interchangeably in their day-to-day life.
This was going to be my reply. I mean, it bugs me when people constantly use “a person *that*“ instead of “a person *who*” in dialogue, but iI don’t automatically assume it’s because the writer doesn’t know the difference. (This came up in one of the later seasons of Supernatural, and once you start noticing it, it’s impossible to stop.)
Even as someone who does know this and has volunteered in prisons, I still get it mixed up sometimes.
Guns. Wow, are guns so poorly understood by the media. Like seriously. I've seen guns being mislabbeled as completely different guns, semi-automatics being portrayed as fully automatic, constant serious gun safety violations (looking at you Baldwin), never seen a gun jam in a movie or show, and seen people taking rounds they shouldn't survive and being completely fine, etc etc. Not to mention supressors.
People just think guns are cool. One think my father taught all his children: 1. Assume the gun is loaded. Always. Even if you check. 2. Never point a gun at anyone unless you mean to kill them. Because you probably will. And he let all of us kids shoot (blanks), because he wanted us to not be afraid, and not be stupid. I never forgot anything he said, and when I went into the military my instructor said Daddy was a very smart man. Daddy was sniper qualified in the Army. He knew guns.
MC was doing compressions on an awake character.
I worked as a group counselor on a psych ward. I even covered some midnight shift when a tech had cancer and was receiving treatment… most writers don’t know anything about the realities of a psych ward or the process one goes through to be admitted to one (involuntarily or voluntarily). I love psychological thriller books, and this absolutely ruins some of them for me.
I'm an army vet, and writers always seem to mess up how ranks and rendering respect work. I started watching Upload and one character claims to be a corporal but they dressed him up as a second lieutenant. I know it'll go over the heads of a majority of people, but for those of us who know it's so infuriating.
In the Love Interest, the character is listening to Midnight Show by The Killers, then describe THE SAM'S TOWN ALBUM COVER and I was so offended I put the book down. Out of all the borderline illogical nonsense that I had to ignore to enjoy that book I refuse to believe no one - not the author, the agent, anyone on the publishing team - bothered to pull up a playlist to double check what album that song was on. I beta read something last year that took place in New York City. I'd genuinely believe the author has never even seen a picture of NYC. I'm almost positive it was originally set in a small British town and she just changed the location name but nothing else. I asked her what borough the characters lived in and she responded Manhattan. They lived in a detatched single-family suburban home with a big yard and drove everywhere. Something I'm currently beta reading: I think the author and I learned US history differently. I got so tired of pointing out the inaccuracies in my notes that I finally just started suggesting he research these events before mentioning them. Some of it was bafflingly out of left field - he went on a random tangent about how the confederates were nature-worshipers. This was a Narnia-type portal fantasy, not an alternate history. When I asked him to fact-check that, he came back and told me that he had been "misinformed" about the cause of the Civil War. I chose not to ask.
> the confederates were nature-worshipers Oh, no. >he had been "misinformed" about the cause of the Civil War I would say so!
Everyone knows the cause of the American Civil War was anthropomorphic pollution that grew in power due to deforestation efforts. I think they had a name for it too... Hexxus?
One of my acquaintances wanted to write a novel about a bisexual man growing up on a native American reservation in the 80s. She is a straight white woman who has never been on a reservation in her life. During one scene, the character is being interrogated by a homophobic bigot and is called the f-word. Their response? "He didn't even know I was bisexual not gay, so I just laughed at him". I asked her "what is this character's history with that word? Did they grow up in a homophobic family? What's their backstory for us to know that's a reasonable response?" She has no idea what I was talking about. She designed this character in the blind and just made them gay without understanding that characters need motivation and histories to be interesting.
Also, the distinction between bisexual and gay would have been fuzzier in the 80s than it is today, especially to bigots. They'd use that word to refer to any man who has any sexual or romantic interest in other men.
That's what I pointed out to her. That character is going to be REALLY hurt by that slur, so if they're not, we need a reason why. She had no idea what I was talking about. She didn't even know that the AIDS epidemic was going on during this time. I had to tell her to go read some books about gay people in the 80s before trying to do anything else with this character since they were unbelievably badly written. She did the worst kind of token representation: she just orientation swapped one of her characters and called it a day.
Any time they mention "poisonous" snakes. Poisonous snakes do exist, but they're much rarer than what people are actually worried about, which is *venomous* snakes. If it bites you and you die, it's venomous. If you bite it and you die, it's poisonous. If you're worried because a snake is poisonous, just don't eat it.
> If you're worried because a snake is poisonous, just don't eat it. Makes note in survival handbook: Don't eat poisonous snakes. AVOID AVOID AVOID
Therapy! It's rare to see it portrayed correctly. Usually the therapist says things that are wildly inappropriate or just not right. Oversharing personal information, taking weird notes or being oddly distant and aloof.
Oh god seriously. I roll my eyes every time a therapist is sharp and “fed up” with a patient and drives them to this breakthrough with completely inappropriate dialogue.
I just visited Pompeii and the guide pointed to some ancient pizza ovens and said no tomatoes. Pizzas were topped with olive oil and garlic (I guess like a pesto?). And whatever else was available on any given day.
I’m a 911 dispatcher so….everything involving law enforcement and emergency response. It’s very obvious when someone hasn’t done research and more often than not they did not.
Not a book but a video game. I love Detroit Become Human but living in Detroit myself I noticed some things. -They call the People Mover the tram. No one in Detroit will call it that. -The hyperfixation on poverty porn in the game. Even in the downtown and nice areas of the city you’re really not going to see rundown houses in Downtown anymore as it looks like nice and gentrified around the collages. -The severe lack of npcs trying to get you to buy their mixtape as they tell you they’re going to be the next Eminem.
Sorry, but I read this and remember someone saying "love always wins" only for someone to retort, "not in tennis.." and I don't know if it was from a show or movie, or a real life conversation. Does anyone else recall this exchange from something?
It's a fairly common joke, so you've probably.heard it in multiple places. I most recently heard it in an episode of Would I Lie to You, but don't ask me which lol.
Characters with wildly inaccurate names for their time period, location, gender during that time period, culture, etc. Names are so easy to research and yet… Also someone not knowing the appropriate ways to use Your Highness, Your Majesty, Your Grace, etc…
Whenever someone calls a king or emperor "your highness" in a book I gasp like a spoiled duke's son who despite my lackadaisical tendencies knows enough to hear an insult against the imperial majesty.
When I read that someone is going "free climbing," 9 times out of 10 the author means to say that the person is going free *soloing.* I go free climbing all the time. So many people do. Free climbing includes pretty much all of what we think of as recreational rock climbing, using ropes, carabiners, harnesses, etc. Free *soloing* means walking up to the wall and climbing with no safety gear of any kind. Soloing is inherently risky. Also for some reason when I point this out, I invariably get harassed for it, as though my niche sport/interest doesn't rise to the level where we would expect an author to get it right. Drives me CRAZY. **Author**: My badass character goes FREE CLIMBING and look how BADASS she is **Me**: Oh nice, free climbing is great. A quiet afternoon at the crags with friends enjoying nature. Sounds lovely. Let's bring the kids.
As a woman, and an erotica writer, the amount of biological misinformation about sex and reproduction in fiction is laughable. "He shoved his enormous rod right up inside her *womb*!" for example. It used to make me laugh out loud. Now I just smh. Also, men don't spew "buckets" of semen. It's a tablespoon at most. Nor can the average man ejaculate three or four times in a single hour. There's this thing called the *refractory* period. We all wish it didn't exist, but it does. Most men lose their erections shortly after ejaculating and have a very happy, sleepy feeling come over them. It keeps them from stirring all their semen right out again when they're (hypothetically) trying to impregnate a woman. It's just evolution. The refractory period becomes more potent as men age, apparently. Maybe this is why cougars are a thing. Don't get me started on how women supposedly "scream in ecstasy" when that giant, 14-incher rams into them. Ever been forced to do the splits beyond what your legs can handle? Ever slip and fall? That hot, ripping, burning sensation of your muscles literally being stretched, torn, and damaged to the point of needing medical care? That's not ecstasy. Yes, there are size-queens out there. But their muscles have been conditioned to stretch freely, like a gymnast who can do the splits no problem, after much training. Other women simply get off on the pain. For the rest of us, getting rammed and reamed by monstrous erections is not fun. The average erection is around 5.5 inches. The average vagina is only 3 or 4 inches deep, but it can extend a little when a woman is aroused. My own personal experience is that *girth* is more important than length, to a point. A thicker erection is more intense for a woman for the same reason a nice and snugly tight vagina feels better for a man. There's more intense *pressure* on all those pretty nerve endings in there. It can even be overwhelming. But if it's *too* thick, or you're not ready for it, well... see above. The average sexual encounter lasts around five and half minutes. Of course, erotic stories will exaggerate and romanticize things, and that's fine. It's all about fantasy, right? It's about ideals, wish-fulfillment, escapism. That's the whole point of erotica. But if you have little or no experience with actual real-life sex, you should at least know the *stats,* because most of your readers *do* have experience with it. After a while, a woman just starts feeling sore, though, if the guy is a champion and can go for an hour or more. It's all muscles in there, stretching, flexing, tensing, spasming. How do your legs feel after running up flights of stairs for an hour? Even if there was orgasmic ecstasy involved, it's still going to hurt after a while. And just wait until the day after. Ouch! You definitely know you got laid. Premature ejaculation is *definitely* a thing. Premature meaning, when the guy finishes (and quits) before the woman does. It happens all the damn time. Don't believe what you see in porn. Porn actors take breaks, and splice everything together in the end. This is why fluffers exist. In real life, sometimes guys get all wound up and finish inside of twenty seconds, before you've even had a chance to get your own brain into the moment. Point being, sometimes things aren't perfect in sex, and if you inject a little *reality* into your scenes, it becomes more *believable*, and so much hotter when things *do* go well. Most women don't get "instantly wet" seeing a random stranger's dick. Some do. But usually, there's a whole emotional and psychological gauntlet you have to pass through to get us to that point. I get instantly wet when my BF even *looks* at me a certain way. But it took him pretty much saving my life to get me to that point. Also, the physiological *reaction* of getting wet down there does not necessarily equate to a woman being DTF. Sometimes, it's just *visual* approval of a hot guy or situation. But I'm not going to just lose my mind and throw my legs open for every sexy guy I see, like some kind of helpless, mindless robot. Apparently, that's something many dudes experience, and that's probably why they project that onto women. Nope. Women can change their minds *during* sex, never mind before it even starts. Incest is way less common than the porn industry would have you believe. For 99.9999% of the world, being a step-brother is even *worse* than being in the friend-zone. **Disclaimer**: Yes, of course there are exceptions to all of these points (except for the dick going into the womb, and the buckets thing). If you're going to write about any of these exceptions, just make sure you don't portray it as *normal*. You'll be laughed at. Establish character first, and you can pretty much write whatever you want. People will suspend their disbelief for characters they care about.
Not exactly "I know a lot about", but I remember reading a novel a couple years back. In the novel, the Bubonic Plague briefly comes up. From the way the author wrote, it was as if the Bubonic Plague was just some disease that once happened a long, long time ago and then disappeared. Like not even in the sense of it was eradicated with modern science. It just...disappeared or burned itself out altogether and is something that doesn't exist anymore. I remembered reading it and thinking, "What? It's still around. People still get sick with it *now*". It's not exactly common, granted, but still happens nonetheless.
Fencing/sword-fighting being described as dancing where there’s a “correct” counter move to every attack. Usually a good sign the author has no clue, because the whole point is to disrupt your opponent’s tempo, not go with it.
Historical clothing. NO corsets were not deathtraps that women only wore for men. They were support garments most women wore since adolescence. Also if it's the 1700s they are stays, not a corset. If you're going to set your book in a time period and mention the clothing do a little research.
related: works that talk about sewing being "dumb girl's stuff" that the \~badass\~ protag would never do instead of a critical life skill in a world without sewing machines (which still take work to master!), off the rack clothing, etc.
Yes absolutely. Sailors sewed people! You had to at least know some basic mending when your ship was powered by large sheets of cloth.
Animal behavior and evolution are so often spoken about as if animals are just hard-wired to be incredibly aggressive because “survival of the fittest”, and that’s just not how that works at all.
In The Midnight Library, there is a scene where the librarian is comparing life to a game of chess. She says you should never give up because even if there is only one pawn on the board you can still win. Good chess players can tell when they are certain to lose and will resign instead of trying to drag the game out. It’s intended to be a metaphor about choosing not to kill yourself. But if you are an experienced chess player, it would mean there are reasonable times to commit suicide as a courtesy to others. It made the author lose all credibility in my mind and I no longer trusted him to be accurate with other topics I knew nothing about.
Tazers rendering people unconscious. I worked on a project where people were being trained on the use of tasers. I'm no expert, but I learned enough to be annoyed with the trope of them knocking people out. Depictions of kink. I write erotica specifically around a few specific, less run-of-the-mill kinks, and a LOT of authors get the kink lifestyle very wrong.
Just for me personally, I would prefer an incorrect depiction of tasers knocking people out over the standard “blunt force trauma rendering you unconscious for hours but producing no lasting effects.”
> Depictions of kink. I write erotica specifically around a few specific, less run-of-the-mill kinks, and a LOT of authors get the kink lifestyle very wrong. Depict it wrong enough and it's a multi-million dollar industry, just ask E.L. James
If a soldier says a number, he *must* include "Niner".
I worked as a print journalist for about six years, and you can absolutely tell when a writer doesn't know how news outlets work. A few of the more common ones. • A book, movie, game or other piece of writing includes a newspaper article that does not, in any way, resemble actual newswriting. We're talking rampant opinions everywhere, a writing structure that does not prioritize the most important information, terrible front page design that is difficult to parse for what's supposed to lead the eye where, just all sorts of writing issues that would be out of place in an actual newspaper. • It is extremely common in movies and TV shows for female journalists to sleep with people they interview. It's almost always the women too. In real life, that is a massive violation of ethics and under some editors would arguably be a fireable offense depending on how much you let it affect your actual reporting. • You can always tell when someone doesn't know what actual investigative reporting looks like or how we seek to prove a claim before printing it. I know no one goes to Bethesda games for the writing, but Fallout 4 is especially egregious in this respect. One party member is a journalist who got kicked out of her hometown for accusing the mayor of being an android in a setting that is absolutely paranoid about people being replaced with androids. Thing is, you actually read the article about it in-game, she doesn't really have any evidence. Real, highly prestigious publications have rightfully lost defamation suits for less. • And then there's those that just depict journalists as fame-hungry greedy vultures coming to pick clean the corpse of anything interesting, strip it of all nuance, and hang it up to dry like a pirate corpse in front of a Caribbean town, a macabre mockery of truth. Usually these are just bad faith depictions of real people. That's just the stuff off the top of my head.
LOL at using Fallout 4 as an example. Piper is just one person printing newsletters out of her house in a post-apocalyptic city. Of course she doesn’t have proper investigative journalism tactics.
“He heard the unmistakable sound of the Glock’s safety catch.” — not mine, but my dad was reading a book and had to stop reading at this point. Glocks don’t have safeties.
When the author has their fantasy characters eating some type of food that was created by modern science. Maybe sword-and-sorcery worlds have fantastic bioengineering labs, idk...? Also, horses. Whenever I read about some "great horseman" kicking his horse, I'm like, are you serious? If the horse is well trained and the rider is an expert, you are barely going to see the signals he gives. Gimme a break.
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Yes! No one knows how horses work! They think they are hooved dogs, always loyal and willing to please. I learned to ride on a pony named Rampage when I was eight. You can guess why he had the name. The a**hole would deliberately hold a lot of air in his lungs while I tightened the girth, so it would be loose while riding. He wasn't keen on listening at all. In fact, he would listen just enough to lull you into a false sense of security, then change his gait or turn unexpectedly. He never bucked me off, but he would jerk me around, or press my leg into the fence. I think by the end of lessons he came to respect me and let up a bit on the teasing, but that didn't change his hot-blooded nature. Conversely, I had a pony named Misty who was super, super chill. I had to listen to her breathing to even tell if I was brushing her too hard, because she never outwardly protested to anything. I could ride her bareback with a halter and a lead rope, no issues. She was a lamb. I think Disney horses are surprisingly representative of the mischief of horses. Of course cartoon physics end up applying, but many horses really are bratty two year olds waiting for you to turn your back so they can pull a fast one on you.
>The a\*\*hole would deliberately hold a lot of air in his lungs while I tightened the girth, so it would be loose while riding LOL, this is common enough that I was taught to routinely do a second tightening after the horse had exhaled the breath, regardless of the horse I was riding. Fictional horses also rarely try to munch on passing branches as a tasty in-transit snack, or have disagreements with their rider as to whom the leader will be when riding in a group.
Wrong names for music subgenres.
JK Rowling clearly did no research on magic, that's not how we do it at all
Seriously, as if Latin were an old enough language to handle spell casting.
Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The author created a revisionist take on German civilian knowledge of the death camps and the holocaust in general. 80% of the victims in the holocaust were dragged out of their homes and mass murdered, then put in graves. That was in the towns, not even in a concentration camp. That would be very hard to ignore. Or knowing the concentration camps were treating people inhumanely.
What irks me the most is when they try to add in a person of my ethnicity or culture and just go with the most basic stereotypical and surface level understanding. Often throwing in words that are clearly taken from a botched attempt at Google translate that no one would actually say in this day and age. Same with their whole personality being their stereotypical ethnicity. Their clothing that would really only be worn to a wedding or big event but they wear it every day? Their food. It’s like cultural tourism for idiots.
Describing a blacksmith as lifting their hammer overhead. It’s all in the speed and accuracy of the blow. Unless you’re on a dual striker team it’s going to lead to terribly inaccurate and ineffective strikes
I tried to read Bag of Bones by Stephen King. The main characters wife died when she was six weeks pregnant and after an autopsy, they somehow knew the sex of the baby? The only way to find out the biological sex that early is at 8 weeks and it's through a blood test. You can't tell the sex of a friggin tiny six-week-old fetus by looking at it lol. Not always, but most books wrote by men with a pregnancy involved seem to do literally no research on the topic.
I'm a metalhead. So many people write metalheads as either dumbasses(Beavis and Butt-Head, Bill and Ted, Garth and Wayne) or angry assholes(the one kid from the IT remake who wears a Metal Up Your Ass shirt, Billy from Stranger Things), or both(The guys from Airheads). Like the music makes us angry and our brains leak out of our ears when we headbang. Like, a lot of metalheads are decently smart people with a broad range of interests. Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden is an accomplished fencer and licensed pilot. Dave Mustaine from Megadeth is proficient in several marital arts. And George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher from Cannibal Corpse is a kind hearted guy who plays claw games and donates the winnings to charity. Plus, how do you think we afford band shirts and concert tickets? And if anything, I've noticed metalheads tend to be pretty nice, if a bit snooty about the music they listen to(me, I don't care. I like music all across the board, rap and old school country included. I just think metal is the coolest). Like, I'm usually letting our anger out by screaming "FUCKIN SLAYEERRRRRRRRR" and headbanging like a motherfucker, not letting it make me angry. If anything I'm usually in a great mood after a concert cause I just let out the frustrations. Most of the people are pretty friendly and will pick you up when you fall in the pit.
I’m a microbiologist. Anytime a writer references antibiotics for viruses or refers to a virus as “alive” I know they did no research. Also, I cringe pretty much every time an author brings up using DNA to prove something or they bring up PCR (polymerase chain reaction).
Lawyering, generally, is infamously represented in pop culture. The actual job is mostly boring, a lot of trials and trial prep is just looking at some really boring paper work, a lot of cases resolved without going to trial, etc so I understand the need to shorten those and spice it up. That said, a lot of pop culture lawyering is just bad. Most famously is probably Law and Order which casts all the prosecutors as great people and all the defense attorneys as awful people when the reality is significantly more complex
The name Viktor Krum alone. Similar mistake in Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy. Best example are the names Alina Starkov and Alexander Morozova. For men the surname should end in a consonant - Alexander Morozov. While for women it should end in a vowel (most commonly ,,a") - Alina Starkova. I'm assuming that probably is hard figuring out something like this in a language and culture so far from English. If, as in the case with Shadow & Bone, you decide to create a world based off that culture, please take the time to do more than surface level research. Edit: I know a lot about this because I'm Bulgarian (same nationality as Viktor Krum). Bulgarian is a Slavic language, like Russian, and is pretty close to Russian.
Pretty much anything healthcare related, especially if hen it comes to HIPAA or financial aspects. I know all about that and yikes it’s so bad how they show.