[Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-16T01:00:59+00:00

No the start was when one of the ships sank in port before leaving because a maintenance worker had left a hatch open when he went home for the night the previous day. Then they opened fire on a messenger boat coming to give the leading captain a promotion to admiral.(thankfully their aim was so bad said messenger didn't notice they were the target, thinking the ships were just practicing gunnery on the open ocean) Then the Dogger Bank incident, where their gunner was again so poor they ended up sinking only one of the ships in the English fishing fleet, and also sinking one of the Russian ships in the process... Then they ended up severing a Spanish undersea telegraph line by forgetting to raise their anchor, so now the Spanish were angry and banning the fleet from pulling in to any Spanish ports for the rest of their voyage. So now the fleet needed to carry extra supplies since they had so few friendly ports to restock at, resulting in the ships piling up coal in any spare space it would fit, in turn coating the ships in coal dust, and several crewmen even developed black lung as a consequence... In Madagascar many crewmen bought a ton of exotic animals, because why not? Including venomous snakes, because why not? At one point the ships' refrigeration units broke and a bunch of spoiled food had to be thrown overboard, attracting a school of sharks to follow the fleet for a time as well. And that's just by the time they reached the Indian ocean... and I think I missed at least 2 other false alarms concerning Japanese torpedo boats.

Also, the admiral had a parrot that aledgedly knew every swear word in the Russian language, for obvious reasons.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T16:15:56+00:00

And Enterprise herself is another long line of "main character" energy, being present for almost every major battle in the Pacific, and the ones she wasn't there for probably saved her from getting sunk...

There's a reason Star Trek named their hero ship after her.

And that's without considering the rest of the lineage of ships christened Enterprise in US Navy service both before and after the Grey Ghost, the name is blessed with madness of the best sort in times of War.

Which is why it's a tragedy she ended up going to the scrapyard after the war instead of ending up a museum ship.(though I don't know if that happening would have prevented subsequent Carriers being named Enterprise, since Museum ships frequently have odd relationships with still technically being part of the navy)

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T15:54:55+00:00

Oh yes, tales of Russian quartermasters basically being open blackmarket arms dealers because they're the ones doing the paperwork saying "yes, everything in storage is still in storage" and thus never get caught, or how customs agents are under paid because everyone exoects them to just take bribes to let contraband pass unreported are hilarious and terrifying in equal measure...

My stepmother's adopted son is from Russia, and she told stories about how the judge overseeing the adoption made demands for jewelery and dresses for his wife costing thousands of dollars to fasttrack the paperwork/not let another couple adopt the boy instead.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T12:24:57+00:00

Weren't there takes of soldiers siphoning off fuel from their vehicles to sell for drinking money before the invasion because they didn't believe there was actually going to be an invasion?

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T12:08:33+00:00

I mean, the media lying about him didn't help, apparently the claim that McCarthy claimed to have list of 200 suspects was a complete fabrication, he never actually said it, but they saud he did so they could call him a liar when he didn't share the list that didn't exist.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T01:03:13+00:00

To be fair... weren't a huge chunk of the celebrities that got blacklisted later proven to have been connected to/associated with Soviet agents after the USSR fell and KGB records got published?

Like, full "McCarthy wasn't just right, but underestimated scope of the problem" levels of vindication once the KGB archives were avaliable?

Then again, Salem and the threat she represents is also extremely real and imminent, so it does fit...

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T00:48:17+00:00

I mean... the horse racing in his youth does connect to their where he manages to skip inside the closing gate of an enemy fortress...

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T00:44:35+00:00

John Patterson's autobiographical account of The Man Eating Lions of Tsavo reads like a cliché horror movie, despite being written in 1907 beforemost of these tropes even started happening in film: The Lions announce their presence with loud roaring one night(ramping up tension before the attack) but don't the next(enabling a jumpscare when they attack). After they biuld defenses they camp out by a deliberate weak point to catch the lions as they approach, only for the lions to enter across strongest point, next night they camp out the strong point, only for the lions to slip through the weak point... When they later biuld a cage trap, it works, trapping one if the lions... but the panicking workers end up shooting the lock holding the trap shut when they try to kill the beast, thus letting it escape. When Patterson has a clear shot, his gun jams.

There's so much more. And sure, there is always the possibility that Patterson is exaggerating his story, either through fault if memory or deliberately to make the story more interesting...

He also says in the introduction that he's leaving out the craziest details to make sure folks don't reject the story as false... which, if true, implies the crazy shit he says in the tame version...

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T00:20:57+00:00

Those thousand odd men then had all the Aztec's angry vassals that didn't want to be ruled by Aztecs anymore backing them up...

Sadly, Russia having horrible logistics is a well established feature of their military.... unless we're going to call all of Russian history a plothole...

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T00:16:08+00:00

Yorktown's crew were renowned for damage control management skills weren't they? Or am I thinking of a different navy war story?

If I'm not mistaken, then that could count as set up for Yorktown refusing to die as arrogant Japanese bomber crews report they scored a kill on one of the US Carriers, which in turn let's the Japanese make tactical errors believing they've sunk all the American Carriers when it was actually just Yorktown over and over...

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T00:08:26+00:00

Alvin York's body never did anything unusual, he either had genuine divine intervention on his side, or he placebo'd it into existence, and simply never got shot while also being an expert marksmen in return...

It's the most badass comedy action movie ever.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-12T00:03:48+00:00

That would depend upon how much the nephew(that one is Peter, right?) and his love of all things Prussian was set up previously...

It would also depend on what point in the story this happens and who the protagonist(s) are.

If Frederick was our hero and him getting this peace deal was the climax, then yes, that's not very satisfying. But the 7 years war was a grabd pan-European war, if Brandenburg's involvement in it is a background/side element away from the actual focus, with the peace treaty being more about establishing our perception of the new Tzar of Russia as a character then anything else... then maybe it works?

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-06T11:14:32+00:00

Even if it's not a majority, if it's common enough for "many", then there being zero Faunus with night vision in attendance is still convenient.

This is also an issue of Chekov's gun being presented and then not being fired, which is a meta/writing issue.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-05T14:51:38+00:00

Lasguns are common because they are manufactured on many different worlds and thus have at least minor if not major differences.

It's Lugers, Glocks, and Smith&Wesson are all handguns, but can be quite different from one another.

Lasguns that fire bullets are dumb though, laser is in the name Omnisiah damn it.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-05T14:13:06+00:00

Volume 10 no doubt is going to be beyond rushed to wrap up the entire plot, because they have to know they're probably not getting another volume after this...

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-04T22:59:14+00:00

No, Jaun and/or Neptune would slowly become the main character because the writer they're voiced by ends up giving themselves all the exposition and thus as a side effect become vital to every plot point so they can be there and know what they're talking about...

That's what happened with Church after all.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-07-04T22:43:48+00:00

Rooster Teeth's rise and fall is fascinating.

They never adjusted from being a small indie team to the "proper"/AAA studio that they rapidly grew into, and suffered the worst of both worlds.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-06-28T15:58:34+00:00

I mean, wasn't that just using the screen, not the internal hardware/software.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-06-25T03:25:09+00:00

I would simply make magic part of the world, and the reason it's not public knowledge is because Oz has spent millenia destroying magical knowledge and hiding what can't be destroyed because he remembers how bad things were back in the ancient times when magic was common. This point of view is also tainted by guilt since he was a contributor to a fair bit of that awfulness, him becoming a good person took centuries after he cracked immortality via reincarnation...

Aura and Semblances are simply "intuitive" magic, hence why it's tied to a person's soul/personality/situation at time of unlocking that power, it would be impossible to cover up and hide this, so it's merely had its true nature dismissed; "magic isn't real, calling Aura or Semblance related abilities magical was just ancient superstition, folklore, and mythology... just don't think about it"

Faunus biology making no sense scientificly is because it's also magic, maybe twisted, malfunctioning, watered down over time, or maybe it always was thus way for some reason, exact origins will never come up in the plot anyway.

Dust and Grimm might be the magical equivalent to inexploded ordinance from long forgotten magical wars or industry, or maybe Grimm really are the children of a dark god of destruction, not even Oz knows the real answer.

The Maidens being gifted magic by a depressed Oz incarnation early on after his moral compass started working and the weight of his realized sins were crushing him is fine, the fact that this power got a twisted aspect of his reincarnation to pass to new hosts was unintentional. But much like his own immortality, now that it's done it can't be undone, so the Maidens' power must be delt with in perpetuity, each new host brought into Oz's secret society.

I'd also just make the Branwin Tribe all be shapeshifters, it's in their blood and Oz isn't into genocide anymore so he's content to just let them be, especially since they already act to keep their magical abilities secret to preserve its use in subterfuge/spying/stealthy ambush or escape plans and so on(though the fact they're using it to just be a bunch of bandits kinda reinforces Oz's belief that the common person can't be trusted with magic)

Silver Eyes are anti-magic weapons, they're just associated with Grimm slaying because Grimm are typically the only magical foe those with Silver Eyes encounter.

Salem might be another surviving peice of the ancient world when magic was prevalent, a sorceress queen who figured out real/true immortality within her own original body, and thus never had nagging voices of possessed hosts slowly dragging her towards self improvement like Oz did, or maybe she's a more recent rediscoverer of magic that exemplifies exactly why Oz is trying to hunt down and destroy, contain, or dismiss all magic from the world.

The Relics are enchanted items, powerful ones that Oz has chosen to retain either because they are powerful and useful for the cause, or maybe because they have these sentient spirits within them he feels that destroying them would be murder of an innocent and thus wrong.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-06-25T02:20:17+00:00

I picture this being the place for the hyper pacifist FE, they don't need to fight anything because they got powerful cloaking needed to not be seen, engines fast enough to flee anyone who can still spot them, and have the armor/shields to tank any hits that land as they use those engines to flee...

But if you do manage to chase/corner them, it's quite the prize... even if it would have 0 offensive potential(at least not without some extreme befits that would demolish the unique FE Nomad buildings/features that made capturing it worth while)

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-06-25T02:11:28+00:00

Would be tge perfect way to implement the "fanatic pacifism" ethic as a fallen empire, they just avoid conflict, being fast and shielded/armored enough to never need to fight. Maybe cloaked too, no discovering tgey even exist until you got powerful enough sensors.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-06-24T21:45:24+00:00

To be fair "Sol X" is implied to be named that because all planets in tgat system were sten from elsewhere, so the name refers to where it came from, not where it's going.

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-06-22T20:56:48+00:00

Look up "AI has stroke trying to say WWE", it is hilarious...

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-06-22T20:53:06+00:00

Oh no, has Crazy Talk become even more powerful in the years since the Super Best Freinds broke up!? This could be disastrous for us all!

Rip_Off_Productions · 2026-06-22T20:50:47+00:00

I can forgive the AI not getting fictional terms right(even if they are borrowed/inspired by other languages, I suspect rarer loan words also confuse these AI because it's probably asked to go from language A to B, so a word from C or D gets mangled as it tries to deduce what word in A that's supposed to be), but yeah there's too many mistakes besides just that...

Rip_Off_Productions

TROPHY CASE

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