Explain a Plot Badly

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

1 minute ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

The Three-Body Problem

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In the far future of 2015, an elderly woman's angry social media posts from the Cultural Revolution lead to the partial detonation of three nukes. Also, Skynet is a proton now.

The Dark Forest

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The three most qualified people in the world to come up with a good plan utterly fail to come up with a good plan; meanwhile, a random university professor discovers that aliens are kinda jerks and a navy commander does The Day of the Jackal roleplay.

Death's End

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After somehow surviving three xenocides, humanity makes several idiotic mistakes and gets turned into a painting. Meanwhile, a dead navy commander's totalitarian space state discovers the fourth dimension and an incompetent scientist mails a book.

@KaladinsSenseOfHumorSpren

 

Spoiler

I did like Tyler's plan though. Better than destroying the entire Solar System, at least. Also I hate the fact that they didn't try and leave the Solar System earlier.

Where I'm up to, Cheng Xin just reawakened in the Bunker Era. There was the Europa fly-by.

 

[Just_a_Fan he/him]

Fallout Equestria 

Spoiler

Applejack's granddaughter is addicted to breath mints, slaughters many cannibals, trades her virginity with a cowboy she's in love with, nukes a fallen angel, then becomes almost horse Jesus. (Horse... Clover?)

 

Edited July 10, 2025 by Just_a_Fan

[The Great Wyver She/Her]

Deltarune

Spoiler

You posses an innocent teen to force them to basically turn on the lights in a really, really, dark room. Optional friendship (mostly), and also they are working with the enemy, whose job is to turn off the lights on the whole world. Basically.

 

[Spencer Nightshade]

Here's a REALLY long one which might intrigue the history buffs out there (or horrify them with all the historical distortions and anachronisms). Hopefully it'll be obvious what story I'm representing with these historical figures, but we'll see! Most people will probably already know this story, so the spoiler risk is low, but not zero.

Spoiler

Albert Speer kidnaps J. Robert Oppenheimer and forces him to help build a nuclear arsenal for the Nazis. As the nukes near completion, Oppenheimer convinces a guy named Itnom Semaj Nitram to deliver a message--addressed to Oppenheimer's daughter--to John Paul Jones, who he knows took in his daughter when he was kidnapped (but who, unbeknownst to Oppy, has since abandoned his daughter to fend for herself). Meanwhile, the Allies, hearing that Nitram plans to leak secrets over to them from their enemies, send an iron golem to go rescue Oppenheimer's daughter so they can try to contact John Paul Jones, who has been hiding out in Jerusalem.

A well-respected captain (who was trained by Francis Marion the Swamp Fox) takes Oppy's daughter (we'll call her Ginny) to Jerusalem, where they meet a couple of Knights Templar: David son of Jesse and Richard Gatling. But Jerusalem being the hotly contested territory that it is, all of them end up swept up in a skirmish against German Stoßtruppen as John Paul Jones's crew initiates a raid on the Nazis in Jerusalem. Ginny and the captain who was the Swamp Fox's mentee (let's call him Diego) are captured by John Paul Jones's pirates and taken directly to Jones himself, who has since concluded that Nitram's message is authentic after Nitram didn't crack under torture. Jones, knowing he can trust Ginny, gives her Oppenheimer's message, which states that if the Allies bomb a specific part of a certain building in the Manhattan Project complex (which is, of course, controlled by the Nazis; don't you know your history?), it will cause all the nukes to suddenly detonate at once, destroying Los Alamos, Germany. To find that spot, however, would require them to steal top-secret intel right from under the Germans' noses.

Meanwhile, Albert Speer decides to nuke Jerusalem. Ginny and Diego manage to get to their plane and escape just in time with David, Nitram, and Richard Gatling, but John Paul Jones is killed by the nuclear blast, and the entire city is destroyed. Heinrich Himmler then takes over the Manhattan project, and Speer is sent to the Bermuda Triangle to confront Oppenheimer about the leak.

Diego, Ginny, David, Gatling, and Nitram also head to the Bermuda Triangle, disagreeing about whether to rescue Oppenheimer or kill him, but they get caught in a storm and their plane crash-lands, so the US Air Force makes the decision for them. They swoop in and bomb the Nazi base where Oppenheimer lives, killing him, and Speer unfortunately escapes. Bad day for Ginny. Her team then hijacks a German aircraft and escapes.

They return from the Bermuda Triangle, and an urgent meeting of all Allied leaders is assembled, but to Ginny and Diego's chagrin, the only evidence they have to convince the Allies that there's hope to fight against an enemy with nuclear capabilities, is Ginny's word. The Allies are unwilling to undertake the insanely risky reconnaissance mission that it would take to gain a detailed knowledge of the Los Alamos complex and destroy it (that is, assuming that Ginny is even telling the truth and it CAN be destroyed in one fell swoop). The answer to Ginny's proposed mission is a hard no.

Ginny and Diego, unwilling to take "no" for an answer, carry on the roguish legacies of their American Revolution war hero mentors by leading a mutiny. The mutineers access the plane that Ginny and Diego's team hijacked earlier, and proceed to hijack it again, this time out of the hands of the Allies. They then use it to gain access to a remote Nazi island fort with a huge library of top-secret science and engineering data.

The mutineer team attacks the fort from the inside to draw the German troops away from the library while Ginny and Diego sneak in. Meanwhile, the Allied generals, seeing the mutineers' courage to attack the Nazi fortress on their own, and realizing this will be their one shot at getting the intel while the Nazis are caught off-guard, dispatch several battleships to attack the island. Ginny and Diego find the necessary information while the iron golem sacrifices itself to keep the German troops away from them. They have to resort to climbing the bookshelves to get to the book they need because the ladders are faulty, all while exchanging fire with Albert Speer himself and his personal guard. Diego is wounded in the firefight, but he manages to buy Ginny enough time to get to a fax machine to fax the detailed map of Los Alamos to the Allies. However, the intricate radio signal is blocked by the thick concrete walls of the fortress. Nitram, David, and Gatling are killed while hijacking enemy comms to inform the naval forces of Ginny's predicament. They just manage to get the message out before they die. The Allied naval forces receive the message and act quickly: because the walls of the fortress extend out into the ocean itself near the main gate, they manage to make an enemy battleship crash into said wall, causing a big section of it to collapse, opening a gap for the signal to get through. Ginny--joined by a battered Diego as he wards off Albert Speer's last attack--faxes the crucial map to the Allies. A German bomber plane then arrives, and on Himmler's orders destroys the Nazi base with a nuke, killing Ginny, Diego, and Speer.

As the overwhelmed Allied navy attempts to retreat, some soldiers aboard a doomed Allied aircraft carrier hastily print out the fax just as Wilhelm Keitel himself arrives, wielding a sword like a madman, chopping up soldiers left and right aboard the Allied ship. The beleaguered soldiers flee toward the nearest plane, narrowly managing to take off and escape with the map facsimile, bringing the world hope of being spared from a nuclear fate.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2025 by Spencer Nightshade

[Eluvianii he/him]

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni:

Spoiler

The protagonist is a kid who repeats the same events over and over in order to prevent a series of murders taking place during a specific season in a small town during the 80s. In one arc the MC's group of friends bands together to save a little girl from her abusive parent figure.

Erased:

Spoiler

The protagonist is a kid who repeats the same events over and over in order to prevent a series of murders taking place during a specific season in a small town during the 80s. In one arc the MC's group of friends bands together to save a little girl from her abusive parent figure.

 

[IronMistborn]

Spoiler

1. What not to do if a bird craps on you. (Bonus points if you know who said this lmao) 

(Rime of the Ancient Mariner)^^^

 

ATLA

Spoiler

2. A monk, two siblings, a disabled person, and a burn victim must stop a weirdly attractive man from nuking everyone. 

Better Call Saul 

Spoiler

3. The funny lawyer is much more complex than we previously thought. 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2025 by IronMistborn
I can’t follow directions lmao

[CoderDrag0n8 He/Him]

3 hours ago, IronMistborn said:

ATLA

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2. A monk, two siblings, a disabled person, and a burn victim must stop a weirdly attractive man from nuking everyone. 

Thats a great one.

[Usseewa ✾ She♡Her ✾]

Wind and Truth:

Spoiler

A depressed former slave plays therapist by helping a bald suicidal former slave kill a bunch of his closest friends and family.

 

Edited January 21 by Theory

[Just_a_Fan he/him]

A cry in the dark

Spoiler

Dog eats baby, and confusion follows.

Bride of discord

Spoiler

Perverted!Discord manages to induce Stockholm syndrome in Fluttershy. Is surprisingly not slain by dr. Whooves siccing some anti-hero on him.

 

[Adonalsium Will Return He/him]

Mysterious Benedict Society: 

Spoiler

Four kids and an old genius try to stop the old genius’s twin brother from mind-controlling the world.

 

[Kansas Stormcursed he/him]

1 hour ago, Adonalsium Will Return said:

Mysterious Benedict Society: 

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Four kids and an old genius try to stop the old genius’s twin brother from mind-controlling the world.

 

Too good

That is just what the plot is

[Keke They/he]

BSD

Spoiler

an orphan furry meets a suicidal doom yaoi lover and they work with the gay club to fight rats and fruity vampires. 

 

[NerdyAarakocra They/Them]

RJB summary dump time! If you've just read the first book in a given series, you can open the spoiler for the series, since the book summaries are contained in nested spoilers. The boxes for each series are just there to save space.

Founders trilogy

Spoiler

Foundryside

Spoiler

Inej from Six of Crows steals a talking key and underestimates the power of an incendiary device, leading to the further inclusion of women in STEM, Inspector Javert having an identity crisis, an inversion of the GBF trope, Defining Gravity (the song Wicked wishes it had), the creation of a black hole (it's probably fine), and the release of an ancient god (less fine). Meanwhile, the Military-Industrial Complex misuses ancient artifacts and discovers human sacrifice.

Shorefall

Spoiler

While forshadowing is paid off in an incredibly rewarding and downright terrifying fashion, a cute gay couple in STEM is too busy fighting one or more gods at any given time to have a proper romantic subplot. Inspector Javert's identity crisis continues, mind-melds are invented, and the quantity of magical nukes in the series continues to scale exponentially.

Locklands

Spoiler

With Inspector Javert having fused with a literal Deus Ex Machina to form the embodiment of human greed, the wise mentor is revealed to have caused every single problem in the entire trilogy, another precursor civilization is discovered, and a key piloting a gravity-altering mechsuit fights a massive spider robot that's also a prison for a literal god. Reality is broken (again) by a villain whose plan is initially described as "have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?" but this fails to get God to come and fix the mess he left. The cute gay couple avoids a potential third-act breakup cliche by virtue of being composed of responsible and emotionally intelligent adults, but still doesn't get a happy ending.

Shadow of the Leviathan (I cannot wait until book 3)

Spoiler

The Tainted Cup

Spoiler

In a world where the blood of eldritch horrors is used instead of CRISPR, autistic female Sherlock Holmes and dyslexic hypermnemonic body horror Dr. Watson attempt to discover who planted a tree, accidentally revealing two distinct conspiracies in the process. Meanwhile, Attack on Titan happens and Roman history is misrepresented.

A Drop of Corruption

Spoiler

In Fantasy Puerto Rico, dyslexic hypermnemonic body horror Dr. Watson can't stop thinking about his boyfriend. Unfortunately, this happens while a cunning murderer commits murders cunningly, some really creepy body horror occurs, and boffins who dissect eldritch horrors to harvest CRISPR are on the verge of discovering how to dissect eldritch horrors better.

Mr. Shivers

Spoiler

Man hates Death, gets tortured, meets the Fates, murders friends, becomes Death, nothing changes (insert Hadestown joke here).

American Elsewhere

Spoiler

A grizzled ex-cop's mommy issues are solved when she enters Levittown for mad scientists and slowly figures out why some eldritch horrors are mysteriously being killed by other eldritch horrors. She's helped when Gene Kelley and a slightly elitist ghost scientist exposit very heavily on the nature of the multiverse and a drug dealer unwittingly brings about the apocalypse. Meanwhile, C U B E.

 

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

17 minutes ago, NerdyAarakocra said:

Founders trilogy

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Foundryside

  Hide contents

Inej from Six of Crows steals a talking key and underestimates the power of an incendiary device, leading to the further inclusion of women in STEM, Inspector Javert having an identity crisis, an inversion of the GBF trope, Defining Gravity (the song Wicked wishes it had), the creation of a black hole (it's probably fine), and the release of an ancient god (less fine). Meanwhile, the Military-Industrial Complex misuses ancient artifacts and discovers human sacrifice.

Shorefall

  Hide contents

While forshadowing is paid off in an incredibly rewarding and downright terrifying fashion, a cute gay couple in STEM is too busy fighting one or more gods at any given time to have a proper romantic subplot. Inspector Javert's identity crisis continues, mind-melds are invented, and the quantity of magical nukes in the series continues to scale exponentially.

Locklands

  Hide contents

With Inspector Javert having fused with a literal Deus Ex Machina to form the embodiment of human greed, the wise mentor is revealed to have caused every single problem in the entire trilogy, another precursor civilization is discovered, and a key piloting a gravity-altering mechsuit fights a massive spider robot that's also a prison for a literal god. Reality is broken (again) by a villain whose plan is initially described as "have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?" but this fails to get God to come and fix the mess he left. The cute gay couple avoids a potential third-act breakup cliche by virtue of being composed of responsible and emotionally intelligent adults, but still doesn't get a happy ending.

 

 

I haven't read Six of the Crows. Who's Inspector Javert? 

[Treamayne]

5 hours ago, KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren said:

Who's Inspector Javert? 

The Inspector in Les Miserables (all versions) - Picture Nale with even less humor and flexibility of thought

Spoilers

Spoiler

He commits suicide when the fugitive (Valjean) he's hunted all his life saves his life and he cannot reconcile the idea that all criminals are bad and people never change with the evidence of his own experience
- "Once a thief, always a thief"

 

Edited January 22 by Treamayne
SPAG

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

Just now, Treamayne said:

The Inspector in Les Miserables (all versions) - Picture Nale with even less humor and flexibility of thought

Spoilers

  Reveal hidden contents

He commits suicide when the fugitive (Valjean) he's hunted all his life saves his life and he cannot reconcile the idea that all criminals are bad and people never change evidence of his own experience
- "Once a thief, always a thief"

 

Ah okay.

I wouldn't say Gregor goes that far.