Warning: There are TV Tropes links in this post. Don't say I didn't warn you.

In one form or another, I have spent a lot of time complaining about fanfics that have plots that simply don't make sense. Fics where characters, fan or otherwise, are seriously menaced or gravely injured and it occurs to precisely nobody to call the police or an ambulance. Fics where four professionally paranoid men let a stranger move in with them at five seconds' notice because she's hot. Fics where Ken (it's almost always Ken, for some unknown reason) is the only member of the team present who seems to remember he is an assassin, and as a result is treated by every other character in the story as if he's somehow managed to totally miss the point.

I have never, though, come across a fanfic that so completely defines and describes exactly what readers and viewers are complaining about when they use the term 'idiot plot' as the subject of today's expression of abject horror.

So, what is an Idiot Plot? TV Tropes, of course, has the answer:

Idiot Plot
Popularized by film critic Roger Ebert, a term for a plot that hangs together only because the main characters behave like idiots. It's not so bad if the characters are supposed to be acting like idiots, but it's very bad if the Idiot Plot depends on a character suddenly acting stupid enough for the plot to work. A much more grating form is the "second-order idiot plot", in which the plot can only function if every character involved, including side characters, suddenly loses about 50 IQ points.

This would be bad enough, but that's not where it ends. Supplementary tropes contained in this fic - usually related to ridiculously contrived stupidity - would include Idiot Ball, Conflict Ball, Poor Communication Kills, Rule of Drama, Amateur Sleuth and, as a corollary, Impersonating An Officer, Always Murder and - at least up until Chapter Four, which is all there is of this thing at the moment - All Love is Unrequited, with only Always Murder even vaguely justified by the canon setting and the fact these are assassins we're dealing with.

In short, if these characters actually talked to one another from time to time instead of bitching, complaining, jumping to conclusions and randomly keeping secrets for absolutely no reason, this story would have been half the length and half as stupid. Poor characterization plays a part in all this horror as well; I would be remiss not to mention that at all, as the awful characterization is so very much a part of what makes this fanfic so painfully stupid. However, the characterization - for once - is not really the point. The point is how unbearably stupid the plot is, and how unbearably moronically the characters have been forced to behave in the service of it.

So, to move onto the story itself...

Chosen » by Kurai Shukujo
'A recent string of gruesome murders and a fateful mission lead Youji into the world of a satanic cult with Aya, his current obsession, playing a key role. Revised!'

About the only positive thing that can be said about this story from the summary is 'well, at least it's not pedophiles again'. As to all the rest of it, it's pretty much business-as-usual levels of awful, complete with Aya randomly being specially special because He's There and something about a 'gruesome string of murders' which, this being about a group of guys who are responsible for the longest and most gruesome series of murders Tokyo has seen for quite some time - I'm talking, of course, about Weiss themselves - I would have thought a reader could comfortably take as read without having to waste summary space on it. Either way at best this is going to be horribly samey, and at worst... well, it's at worst. Now read on.

From the minute this story started, I knew I was in trouble... not least of which because there's no clear demarcation between the author's notes and first paragraph, and it took me a few seconds to realize, oh wait, the fic's started. It took me a few seconds more to realize that the character narrating the story,. who sounds like nobody any of Weiss should ever have met, was Youji. Not a promising start, and it got worse. Oh, how much worse.

As to what comes after that, in an attempt not to be here all night I'm going to resort to bullet points.

( They're behind here. )

In short: this is an Idiot Plot. If any of these characters were allowed to behave like normal human beings - still less like the (for the most part) intelligent and capable people they are - the plot would become completely unworkable. There is absolutely no reason for all the secrecy, and still less is there any reason for Youji to try to solve a case of ritual serial murder all by himself. It's just happening because it is, because if Aya was allowed to know about this cult of stupid he wouldn't make the perfect bewildered and innocent victim later on - and he's inevitably going to become one as the minute the cult clap eyes on him and Youji they're murmuring about Messiahs and Chosen Ones as if Aya had wings and a halo.

On the few occasions the characters actually sit down and talk, do they actually try and clear up any of this confusion? Do they Hell. Conversations quickly degenerate into games of Idiot Volleyball, as characters bat the Idiot Ball back and forth between them, and the few lengthy conversations the fic contains so far are largely irrelevant: one takes in the entire backstory of Bloaty McCorpseGuy; one is Birman ranting about how awesome Aya is; and the rest are Youji talking to some bottle fairy of a Gary Stu bartender about how annoying Goths are.

Sadly, that's not the end of it. There are several supplementary irritations not actually related to the plot to consider, too.

( Which means more bullet points, naturally. )

The worst thing about this fic is how plain it is that even the characters are too smart for it. Youji spends a fair amount of time wondering why he has to conduct an investigation into a Satanic cult by himself - and why does he? Did the entire Tokyo Metropolitan Police fall down a hole or something?

My final question as regards the cult is this: what the Hell kind of self-respecting satanic cult has a central prophecy built around the person of a perfectly ordinary-looking random guy in his early twenties? Yeah, I think I'm going to start a cult called The Cult of Steve, and we will worship the personification of the Great Steve in the form of Steve the Graphic Designer, and we will know Steve the Graphic Designer by his narrow glasses and his amazing collection of ironic tee-shirts and his fondness for lattes, and until the Coming of the Great Bloke we shall keep Steve alive in our hearts by going to Starbucks wearing Thundercats tee-shirts and each sacrificing a small biscotti in His holy name.