I constantly think about the part in Sherlock where Sherlock says a scratched USB port means the old owner of the phone had a drinking problem and how I didn't immediately notice what a pile of bullshit that was
@noiob Yeah, generally I'm not keen that show because it bungles up the whole premise of a detective story:
BBC's Sherlock does not draw plausible deductions, the writers picked a conclusion and wrote backwards until they had the clue.
(i.e. if one has a drinking problem, one might be more likely to have a scratched up USB port, but it has no predictive power: if you have a scratched up USB plug, it might just be that USB is shite and you need four times before managing to plug something in)
that seems to be a common shortcut for writing "genius" characters: character jumps to wild conclusions on scanty evidence and turns out to be right
it only works because the author is in complete control of the story world, and so gets to declare that the character is right in-universe, even if it makes no sense
another example that comes to mind is Artemis Fowl
@kellerfuchs I accept this name.
@magical @noiob Oh, yes, Artemis Fowl is definitely a case of that sort of “intellectual Mary Sue” (is that a good name for it?) but it can make sense if the character being a genius is an excuse for the actual plot and wild adventures (it's a fantasy book after all, though that's still kinda-lazy writing), as opposed to deductive investigation being the premise of the whole genre.