Recently I'm watching this serial on TV called Giant from Korea, and it's actually halfway decent except for the political intrigue part, where people always get framed and fall for any random plot. This made me remember a long time ago I saw a discussion on One Piece which basically says all attempts to frame someone in OP works 100% of the time because nobody will ever doubt you're lying. But that's surprisingly true in general. And I don't mean like 'did you X is talking smack about you behind your back?' which is hard to verify. It's more like "I heard Zeus is actually a double agent for Microsoft" and then people immediately kick him out of the Nintendo club because it's not like you need proof or anything for an outlandish claim like that. I remember this random show I saw a long time ago the main character is pretty much framed as responsible for killing literally every single person that died, and each time his name got cleared up it'd literally take 5 seconds before someone else say, "I heard this guy is a bad guy" and people immediately start doubting him again.
Sometimes I wonder if things are this way because it'd actually take some effort to come up with a good plot that involve intrigue. I mean I can claim to have a body double for Zeus that is an agent from Microsoft, but that's about the same as saying 'a wizard did it' and while that certainly can work, maybe people think they can come up with an explanation that's better than 'a wizard did it', but it seems like most guys writing plot can't do better than 'a wizard did it'. I guess in order to come up with an elaborate plan that actually sounds plausible to frame someone you'd have to be a pretty sneaky and smart guy, which most writers aren't going to be, so instead we get these cases where nobody will ever doubt whatever lies you made up. I remember back in high school I had a history teacher talking about he's got this great plan to topple the US government in a terrorist act. Either this guy is way smarter than all the terrorists groups in the world put together, or he had no idea what he's talking about, but I'm sure he thought his plan was awesome. I remember another guy who swear he can assassinate the president of the United States, so maybe he should've been giving tips to the whole mess of guys who would like to get rid of the POTUS. It reminds me of the parody The Onion had on the debate between the Al Queda operative and the 9/11 denier, and the Al Queda operative said something along the lines of: "Look, I don't appreciate we going through all these massive efforts and blowing our own guys up and you armchair guys think you know it all!"
Sometimes I wonder if things are this way because it'd actually take some effort to come up with a good plot that involve intrigue. I mean I can claim to have a body double for Zeus that is an agent from Microsoft, but that's about the same as saying 'a wizard did it' and while that certainly can work, maybe people think they can come up with an explanation that's better than 'a wizard did it', but it seems like most guys writing plot can't do better than 'a wizard did it'. I guess in order to come up with an elaborate plan that actually sounds plausible to frame someone you'd have to be a pretty sneaky and smart guy, which most writers aren't going to be, so instead we get these cases where nobody will ever doubt whatever lies you made up. I remember back in high school I had a history teacher talking about he's got this great plan to topple the US government in a terrorist act. Either this guy is way smarter than all the terrorists groups in the world put together, or he had no idea what he's talking about, but I'm sure he thought his plan was awesome. I remember another guy who swear he can assassinate the president of the United States, so maybe he should've been giving tips to the whole mess of guys who would like to get rid of the POTUS. It reminds me of the parody The Onion had on the debate between the Al Queda operative and the 9/11 denier, and the Al Queda operative said something along the lines of: "Look, I don't appreciate we going through all these massive efforts and blowing our own guys up and you armchair guys think you know it all!"
