Let's Do The Twist!

[rachelmanija]

I know it all depends on execution, but in general...

Poll #26831 Do the Twist

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 114

View Respondents

What is your favorite twist?

View Answers

Two or more characters are actually the same person.
20 (18.7%)

One or more characters are actually imaginary or hallucinations.
9 (8.4%)

One or more characters were dead all along.
12 (11.2%)

Someone is secretly God.
5 (4.7%)

It's all taking place in virtual reality.
2 (1.9%)

It's all a dream.
1 (0.9%)

What you think is the future is actually the past or vice versa.
38 (35.5%)

The narrator misunderstands something.
48 (44.9%)

The narrator is lying about or deliberately omitting something.
42 (39.3%)

Someone is secretly related to someone else.
22 (20.6%)

A character is a woman.
21 (19.6%)

A character is queer.
19 (17.8%)

A character is trans.
14 (13.1%)

A character is [some other surprise marginalized identity].
12 (11.2%)

A character is a cis man. (Has anyone ever seen this one? I can't think of an example.)
3 (2.8%)

Someone the protagonist trusts has been secretly manipulating them all along.
27 (25.2%)

The entire story was all deliberately planned by a character.
40 (37.4%)

Someone is a mole.
22 (20.6%)

The narrator is in a mental hospital or otherwise delusional all along.
3 (2.8%)

The apparent victim is actually the perpetrator
22 (20.6%)

Everyone in the story is actually pigeons/aliens/dolls/etc.
14 (13.1%)

Something else I've forgotten to mention, so please explain in a comment..
6 (5.6%)

What twist do you HATE?

View Answers

Two or more characters are actually the same person.
8 (7.5%)

One or more characters are actually imaginary or hallucinations.
25 (23.6%)

One or more characters were dead all along.
23 (21.7%)

Someone is secretly God.
26 (24.5%)

It's all taking place in virtual reality.
48 (45.3%)

It's all a dream.
73 (68.9%)

What you think is the future is actually the past or vice versa.
4 (3.8%)

The narrator misunderstands something.
4 (3.8%)

The narrator is lying about or deliberately omitting something.
17 (16.0%)

Someone is secretly related to someone else.
4 (3.8%)

A character is a woman.
6 (5.7%)

A character is queer.
9 (8.5%)

A character is trans.
13 (12.3%)

A character is [some other surprise marginalized identity].
10 (9.4%)

A character is a cis man. (Has anyone ever seen this one? I can't think of an example.)
0 (0.0%)

Someone the protagonist trusts has been secretly manipulating them all along.
20 (18.9%)

The entire story was all deliberately planned by a character.
10 (9.4%)

Someone is a mole.
4 (3.8%)

The narrator is in a mental hospital or otherwise delusional all along.
66 (62.3%)

The apparent victim is actually the perpetrator
11 (10.4%)

Everyone in the story is actually pigeons/aliens/dolls/etc.
14 (13.2%)

Something else I've forgotten to mention, so please explain in a comment..
2 (1.9%)

Please mark spoilers for recent canons in your comment headers, or encode with rot13.com.

Comments

[sholio]

It intrigued me, answering the poll, to realize that I generally enjoy "it's all VR!" twists but absolutely hate "it's all a dream!" twists. I think this has something to do with the VR twist usually coming at the midpoint of a canon and still affecting the events. Having it in the last couple of pages would suck, but it's usually not done that way. The VR ones are usually revealed through a series of small inconsistencies leading up to figuring it out for themselves and then having to find a way out of it, which is usually pretty cool, as opposed to "And then she woke up."

[rachelmanija]

My issue with VR is that it often feels low-stakes, sometimes even if there's rules like "You die in the real world if you die in VR."

scioscribe and I watched a noir movie where it turned out to be "It was all a dream!" We were astonished, and not in a good way.

[sholio]

One of the few times that I've ever returned a Kindle book for a refund was when I bought a single-author collection of horror short stories based on the intriguing setup for the first one in the Look Inside and my need to know how it ended, got to the end and found out that it was all a dream. Back to the Amazon store you go!

[sholio]

... and also, I will never not be a sucker for *rips off helmet* I WAS A WOMAN ALL ALONG!! reveals. I know it's dumb and probably problematic in a dozen ways, but the girl-pretending-to-be-a-boy twist is going to be imprinted on my id until the day I die.

[swan_tower]

<high-fives you>

[sholio]

*fistbump* :D

[telophase]

That was such catnip to me through so much of my life that I developed a good sense of when that twist was coming. Over-sensitive in fact: I Knew Hen in The Thief was hiding something from the get-go and was very disappointed when it turned out to be something else!

[sholio]

Oh man, thinking you're going to get a favorite trope and then getting something else is so disappointing! There are some perfectly innocuous canons that I've hated for that reason alone, even though I know it's a me problem and not a them problem.

[telophase]

Whoops my phone typing is even more terrible than usual. XD

[ethelmay]

Yeah, I thought the same about The Thief. I remember waiting for pronouns to occur.

[sovay]

It intrigued me, answering the poll, to realize that I generally enjoy "it's all VR!" twists but absolutely hate "it's all a dream!" twists.

I am not generally a fan of dream-twists, but I leave this film here because its approach to the trope is so gloriously batshit.

[sholio]

I gotta say, a canon being willing to gleefully indulge in its own batshit-ness can make a lot of tropes palatable that otherwise wouldn't be.

[sholio]

And now having read your review (of what does sound like a very entertaining movie) - yeah, I think actually, the one thing that can make "It was all a dream!" work for me is when the narrative dodges between the dream world and reality, leaving you a little unclear on which is which. I typically really like "some aspects of what you were just told was real actually aren't real" twists - like the Fight Club-eseque tropes we were talking about in Rachel's previous post, or certain kinds of unreliable narration about canon events. I think it can come under that heading for me when it's mixed into the flow of the plot.

[sovay]

I think it can come under that heading for me when it's mixed into the flow of the plot.

Makes sense to me. It can irritate me if it disappears completely up its own cloud of unknowing, but I am generally at home to unreliable narration.

[swan_tower]

I loathe the "it was all a dream" twist with such a fiery passion that I wrote an entire screed about it. Basically it makes me feel like my investment in the story was a narrative junk bond: yes, I realize it's all fiction to begin with, but when it turns out wasn't real even for the character, I want to fling the book/movie/whatever across the room.

[asakiyume]

Upvoting this.

Why make something all a dream, writer? Are you afraid of what you're saying? Why? Why do you want to erase what you've created?

[eruthros]

I was thinking about how much I dislike that twist overall, and then I realized that it also describes The Matrix. That is, I dislike the trope when the twist is "it's VR and the characters knew it all along" - who cares, why didn't any of them mention it, what are the stakes - but I enjoy it as a trope when the characters are also surprised by it, have to escape, have to bend the genre or hack the system, etc.

[swan_tower]

Right, with The Matrix the fact that it's VR is the plot. As opposed to being the thing which suddenly undermines the plot.

[sholio]

Actually, I think that really nails the difference for me between the version that works and the version that doesn't! Most of the "it was all VR!" stories I can think of that I liked involve the protagonists figuring out that it's VR about halfway through due to inconsistencies in the world or other factors, which is basically the second-act twist (sometimes the end-of-first-act twist) that kicks off figuring out how to get out, find who's doing it to them, and deal with that. I definitely get that some people hate this because they were invested in the VR world, but for me the "your reality is a lie, now how do you deal with it?" aspect is really interesting and pleasantly mindbending. Laid out like that, I can totally see why this appeals to me when "It was all a dream!" stories don't, since nothing changes in the character's external universe.

[sovay]

Laid out like that, I can totally see why this appeals to me when "It was all a dream!" stories don't, since nothing changes in the character's external universe.

Yes! It's weightless otherwise.