It is fiction; it just feels like bad world-building. The more familiar I am with a world, the less immersive it will be when a writer or producer plays fast and loose with the rules of that world (physical, cultural, whatever) to tie a plot together. This goes for “the real world” obviously but also applies in other cases: e.g. a long-running sci-fi show, despite having made up its own bullshit physics system, suddenly pulling a grand new quirk out of thin air in the finale to let the protagonist snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s lazy, just like the use of tech in crime dramas has always felt lazy, because they’re not trying to build a new world for you - they’re trying to suck you in by telling stories that you can imagine happening in the real world, and anything jarringly unrealistic can pull some people out pretty quickly.
If they’re going to break from reality about understood biological processes or physics or whatever, they should do it on purpose and be more fun about it. It takes ten minutes to skim a Wikipedia page to make sure you don’t sound like an idiot on the show that millions of dollars and lots of labor are going in to making
Yes, but not all fiction is fantasy and it is hack to inject fantasy elements into an otherwise reasonable story. Like, the conflict is about some magical pseudo reality so I can’t emotionally give with the stakes and enjoy the work.
Breaking news: fiction is fictional
It is fiction; it just feels like bad world-building. The more familiar I am with a world, the less immersive it will be when a writer or producer plays fast and loose with the rules of that world (physical, cultural, whatever) to tie a plot together. This goes for “the real world” obviously but also applies in other cases: e.g. a long-running sci-fi show, despite having made up its own bullshit physics system, suddenly pulling a grand new quirk out of thin air in the finale to let the protagonist snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s lazy, just like the use of tech in crime dramas has always felt lazy, because they’re not trying to build a new world for you - they’re trying to suck you in by telling stories that you can imagine happening in the real world, and anything jarringly unrealistic can pull some people out pretty quickly.
If they’re going to break from reality about understood biological processes or physics or whatever, they should do it on purpose and be more fun about it. It takes ten minutes to skim a Wikipedia page to make sure you don’t sound like an idiot on the show that millions of dollars and lots of labor are going in to making
Yes, but not all fiction is fantasy and it is hack to inject fantasy elements into an otherwise reasonable story. Like, the conflict is about some magical pseudo reality so I can’t emotionally give with the stakes and enjoy the work.
Fictional Copaganda still works tho.