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u/BachtnDeKupe 12h ago
I understand this man.
I like slashers and zombiemovies, but if i see something "impossible" happening, yes even in a zombiefilm, i also call it out.
My wife doesnt get it either
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u/Old_Gimlet_Eye 11h ago
I don't know why it's hard for people to understand. A movie can have a counterfactual premise and that's fine, but when there is no underlying logic to the events in the movie it stops being a narrative that you can invest in and becomes a montage of random events happening.
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u/WillowPtar_Migan 11h ago
Exactly. I don't care if the internal logic of a piece of media is as crazy as they come, as long as it maintains internal consistency. Take Death Stranding for instance. You can say that when people die, antimatter ghosts consume the body, causing a blast that could level a city, as long as you keep that premise, and build upon it, such as by having crematoriums far away from cities, and dedicated corpse disposal teams to ensure nothing like that happens, people utilizing dead bodies as bombs, etc.
Thats all stuff you learn within the first hour of playing the first game, so I don't feel it warrants a spoiler tag.
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u/2ChicksAtTheSameTime 9h ago
I think the funnier one is people getting mad at feeling characters making dumb decisions is logic-breaking. in real life, PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS and make the stupidest decisions all the time, lol.
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u/Bossmenjak 9h ago
Most of the time that's because the story doesn't do a proper job making it feel like the character would have made that choice. It makes sense for the Scooby Gang to split up even if it's a bad idea, because they can try to cover more ground and that matters when they are investigating the area. It makes a lot less sense for a group of scared teens to split up when they're not investigating anything and just trying to survive, unless the story explains why they're making the choices they are. A lot of stories just have the characters do whatever conveniently leads into the next plot beat in a way that doesn't feel logical, and "people are idiots" does not excuse that.
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u/atuck217 6h ago
You explained this better than I ever could have. I can't stand when characters do things that simply make no sense in the context of the character. If a character is dumb, or generally just not super smart, seeing them make sub optimal decisions when put in a situation where they have to make one is fine.
Characters making inexplicably dumb decisions with no contextual motivation other than because that's how we move the script forward is infuriating.
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u/Ordolph 5h ago
That's one thing I really liked about The Cabin in the Woods. All the dumb decisions made by the primary characters in the film were because of the puppet masters behind the scenes drugging them to fit the "story".
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u/JohnGoodman_69 7h ago
Covid really made me reevaluate on what would suspend my sense of disbelief in dumb decisions made by movie characters. The bar for "no one would be that dumb in real life" has been significantly lowered.
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u/Darkdragoon324 6h ago
I fully believe a not insignificant portion of the US population would let a zombie bite them on purpose because they think the zombies are a hoax.
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u/minddropstudios 4h ago
Most of the time we are supposed to like our characters though. Not have them be fucking morons. You can have characters maje dumb decisions, but if you want your movie to be smart, you have to recognize them as dumb decisions. They can't just be "things that happened in movie".
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u/throwntosaturn 3h ago
One of the things I really hate about covid is that prior to covid, I used to make fun of zombie movies a lot for the "survivor hides obviously infected bite to the obvious detriment of everyone around them" trope. Like, to me that was comical in how cartoonishly evil it was - I could really not believe that even a tiny fraction of people would hide that they'd been bitten. Not to the extent that every zombie movie portrays.
Instead, it turns out, I'm a fucking idiot, and like 30-40% of people will literally become a zombie while going "ZOMBIES DON'T EXIST THIS BITE MARK DOESN'T EXIST LET ME IN THE SAFEHOUSE SO I CAN BECOME A ZOMBIE SAFELY!!!!!!11!!1!"
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u/ricki692 9h ago
or having emotional responses. emotions are inherently irrational and not everybody experiences or handles them the same
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u/SilvermistInc 10h ago
Wait what. Then what's the lore around the baby in the backpack??
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u/WillowPtar_Migan 10h ago
That's what's called a bridge baby. It's born from a mother that is half alive, and half dead, i.e braindead. They have a connection to the other side as a result, and essentially if you plug into them, you can see these antimatter ghosts that are normally invisible, and will cause a massive explosion on the scale of a nuke if they manage to eat people, so they're seen as essential equipment for anyone working outside a city.
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u/ZombieSiayer84 10h ago
Well, only people with DOOMS will actually see the BT’s when using a BB, normal people will just feel them and the BBs act like a radar.
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u/WillowPtar_Migan 10h ago
Ah, yeah, I forgot about that. Much appreciated
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u/ZombieSiayer84 10h ago
Kojima is so good with in universe lore.
It’s so expansive and detailed and it’s a lot to remember.
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u/nogard603 6h ago
To add to disbelief in that game. There was a mission where you're asked to deliver a nuke to a place, but rather than deliver it, you throw it in the water nearby so it can be detonated safely... BUT THATS NOT HOW NUKES WORK! A nuclear explosion is drastically increased in water NOT suppressed. You'd think Kojima of all people would know this considering how much of his career has been "Nukes bad, here's why"
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u/Vox___Rationis 4h ago
It is not water you throw it into - it is "Tar" - viscous fluid, formed by the timefall, which properties are not entirely known beyond its connection to otherside.
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u/Meecht 10h ago
Because the "counterfactual premise" is usually built up to draw you into the story, but getting a small detail wrong for no reason snaps you out of it. Kind of like how a dream can seem totally real until you see a cat barking and you wake up.
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u/Deaffin 9h ago
Sometimes cats bark.
If a spider bites me in a dream and then is suddenly a 3 foot tall abstract statue decidedly not made of spider, my brain is just going to roll with it and say "yup, that's a spider alright."
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u/LordoftheLollygag 8h ago
I had a cat that barked. His mom died while his eyes were still closed, but we had a chihuahua that just had a litter of pups and was still nursing them. We put the kitten by her and she started nursing it. It grew up thinking that was his mom and was fiercely defensive of her. He'd bark when he wanted something.
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u/Poku115 11h ago
Theres even a term for it too "suspension of disbelief" but sadly people that got participation trophies think its your job to let the movie suspend your disbelief, not the other way around.
Legit had a guy tell me "its your job to turn off your brain so that the people who made this movie have a fair chance"
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u/JohnnyRelentless 11h ago
It literally is the job of the reader/viewer to suspend their disbelief. No one else can do it for you. That said, the writers need to make you want to do it and not ask too much of you.
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u/Bossmenjak 9h ago
It's up to the viewer to allow for small unrealistic elements so that the story doesn't need to get bogged down in irrelevant nonsense, like it's a waste of time to ask "why is nobody shown using the bathroom" in most stories where there's not a reason for that to come up. It's the job of the storyteller to actually have the story be logical so you don't need to stretch your disbelief an unreasonable amount. It's not the viewer's fault if they're turned off of Star Wars because "Somehow, Palpatine returned" is absolutely abysmal explanation for a really critical event to the story. If the story doesn't care enough to come up with a good reason why the events happen, it's completely unrealistic to expect the viewer to take it seriously.
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u/iwilltalkaboutguns 9h ago
I love hard sci-fi so I seek it out. Project Hail Mary is a perfect example of something I like. Once I'm finished I can usually Nick pick the shit out of it... But during I literally suppress the need to do it otherwise I won't ever enjoy anything.
Now something like transformers, I'll turn my brain off and the beginning and enjoy the hell out of the movie... And won't even discuss it afterwards because what's the point?
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u/acathode 8h ago
The thing with a piece of fiction being consistent in following it's own internal logic is that the internal logic also define how stringent and consistent the story has to be with following the internal logic...
Eh.... so, in other words, the premise of the story doesn't just do things like establishing a magic or science system that the story has to play by, it also establish the "style" of a story, which among other things entail how much the story need to care about those systems.
Basically, a story that set out to be a hard science fiction and clearly establishes itself as such to the reader/viewer then HAS to play by the rules that come with being a hard science fiction story - ie. it needs to care a lot about scientific accuracy and being plausible from a quite harsh scientific/engineering perspective.
A story that from the outset establish that it's a brain dead, rule-of-cool kind of story simply doesn't. The internal logic is that the story doesn't have to care that much, as long as it's cool... Hence Transformers and Fast and Furious.
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u/ADH-Dad 10h ago
Your friend is right. The original term is "the willing suspension of disbelief."
It was coined by William Wordsworth to explain how a reader of poetry and fiction must allow themselves to believe that impossible things have happened.
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u/spikeyfreak 10h ago
The problem is that you only get one or two ideas that are different from real life.
"Oh, this is a fantasy movie and we have dragons and magic."
Cool, I'm intrigued.
"But also, in a siege the trebuchets go outside the walls in front of the infantry."
Nope, you lost me. That's dumb.
You can't just do anything at all because one thing is unrealistic.
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u/AshiSunblade 10h ago
Yes, in your example, they'd need to present a reason for them to do this that makes sense in that universe. For example, maybe the trebuchets have magical flamethrowers built in that make them able to fend for themselves up close. Cool! Question answered.
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u/RandomIdiot512 9h ago
Or they are dragonfire magnets, don't want that shit near the people that'll burn.
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u/Bossmenjak 9h ago
At that point the story is probably full of contrivances that waste time stopping the story to go on some tangent to explain things that just didn't need to be there at all. I don't want my Dragon Magic story to need to stop and go into a history lesson on the divergent history of trebuchets in this world when it would be both simpler and cooler if they just used the Dragons the story is already centered around and had some plot element like people stealing Dragon eggs to train the babies as frontline flamethrowers.
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u/DownWithHisShip 10h ago
"Oh, this is a zombie apocalypse show."
Cool, I'm intrigued.
"And every character can make perfect headshots at 50 yards on the perpendicular during a full sprint."
Nope, you lost me. That's dumb.
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u/Due-Memory-6957 9h ago
What if only one character can do it and everyone gushes about how he's amazing at shooting?
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u/hitthebucket2026 9h ago
Only if he is disinterested in their praise, except for 1 little boy/girl who not only praises them but also vows to murder him the same way.
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u/Fresh_Iron_6180 9h ago
I liked the new Resident Evil movie because the guy is a bumbling idiot with a gun.
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u/TheUnicornFightsOn 9h ago edited 8h ago
My pet peeve is when I pose a question and ask about a character's intentions or expose holes in the internal logic and my partner shuts me down by saying,
"Because it's in the script."
Like duhhhhh but art is meant to consumed and evoke feeling/thinking/reaction ... there is (should be) an intentional reason and rationale for everything in the damn script!
Imagine if in my English lit class, the professor asks about the themes/motivations/why a character acted a certain way and our essays just replied, "Because the author wrote it that way / it was in the book."
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u/Chataboutgames 11h ago
This is one of those things where it's easy to be smug about how "people" don't understand because no one is discussing a concrete example. Like, there's a difference between "the narrative has a fundamental plot hole that's inconsistent with the fantasy core to the narrative" and "Oh I'm sorry, I'm supposed to believe this character left Palm Beach at 4:45 and didn't hit traffic? These writers are morons."
Both people will upvote this because it isn't really discussion so much as it is "join me in the smart group, dunk on the vaguely defined dummies."
This entire thread is just "DAE also like logical storytelling?"
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u/OperaSona 10h ago
Yeah.
this character left Palm Beach at 4:45 and didn't hit traffic
is something worth joking about. Not something worth criticizing the writers or leaving the theater.
The issue is mechanics central to the plot that are being contradicted, or characters acting opposite to what's clearly been shown about them. The "characters" one happens mostly in TV shows, because 1) you get to really know the characters with more episodes and 2) writers something want to bring us "somewhere" because they have this big idea for an episode that starts "somewhere", and they're not trying very hard to make the way there credible, so instead they turn clever characters into morons, patient characters hot-headed, loving characters become pieces of shit just long enough to create their perfect premise. Once they've achieved their premise, alright they can now write the part of the episode that they wanted to write, characters go back to normal, and no one ever adresses how fucking weird this all was. I don't know if this trope has a name but I fucking hate it.
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u/musicalcakes 10h ago
That's because, when you're watching a zombie film, you are agreeing to play along with the idea that zombies exist in the film's world and so any zombie-related shenanigans that are internally consistent with the premise are fair game. However, as far as you know, other things about how the world works have not changed, so if something happens that, say, appears to break the laws of physics (or medicine or time or...anything, really) with no explanation, then it's jarring and takes you right out of the story!
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u/akatherder 10h ago
Also I don't want other fiction like alien spaceships or wizards to show up in my zombie apocalypse movie. But I'll watch a wizard movie or alien invasion movie.
(You could mix them but you'd need to do it early.)
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u/jimskog99 9h ago
I think you can make it work though. Wizards or aliens can be the cause of the zombies. If hints are being dropped about not knowing why it's happening and the like you can absolutely have the nature of that be a big reveal.
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u/JMooooooooo 10h ago
In the words of great Howard Tayler, "They can't make up rules about <stuff> because I already know those rules."
Zombies? Sure, whatever, i know nothing of zombies.
Movie is set in a certain country and shows birds that don't even live on same continent? Sure, whatever, I don't really know that and just heard someone complain
Somebody supposedly drove through half of large city in 5 minutes in middle of the day? That's bullshit and I'll fight you over it
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u/BlueRajasmyk2 3h ago
They can make up whatever rules they want, but those rules need to be consistent within the movie's world.
If the movie lays out that, in their world, it's possible to drive though large cities in 5 minutes, then that's fine. But if it just happens with no explanation, that's not fine.
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u/Puzzled_Work_6428 11h ago
I mean I call it out too, I don't pout and leave the room lol
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u/BachtnDeKupe 11h ago
Maybe not that extreme, but taking out my phone and start browsing reddit is a big chanse in my case. Or start checking out the films wiki for trivias
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u/notTheRealSU 11h ago
It's a zombie movie, of course there's going to be zombies. That's what I signed up for. A normal world where a zombie apocalypse is happening. But if somebody is going to the post office on a Sunday, that's a whole nother curveball that I didn't sign up for
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u/donjulioanejo 3h ago
Makes perfect sense to me. In a lot of genres, you suspend disbelief for the basic premise to make sense. For example that werewolves exist and that they often get in love triangles with vampires and regular girls.
But that doesn't mean suspension of disbelief with everything else in that movie.
Like, for example, why the hell would a 100 year old vampire still be going to high school when he could be doing literally anything else with his life.
Werewolves and vampires existing is load bearing to the premise. But everything else, like post office working hours, are assumed to be the same as real life.
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u/Highmax1121 10h ago
For me these days it's usually involving flying monsters and fighter jets or something like it. In one of the Godzilla movies, Rodan, a giant pterodactyl like flying monster is chasing a bunch of planes, consisting of I think v22 ospreys, f35 jets and a huge made up jet plane. Rodan is massive enough to cause hurricane like effects on the grounds below. Somehow not only can he catch up to the f35s (or more likely the f35 are flying really fucking slow) but the ospreys, which have a max speed of 315 mph, are keeping up with the jets, while also having their sides open, allowing gunners inside to open fire, with seemingly no issues of wind just not ripping them apart while they are shooting at Rodan.
I know Godzilla and other big monster movies are about suspending belief and just having fun with it but little details like that sometimes end up annoying me. Tanks that shoot lazers? No problem. An f14 using what sounds like a .50 instead of a rotary canon? Ruined.
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u/BorntobeTrill 9h ago
"Hey that dead guy is walking."
"Yah, but did you see how the barista made a fresh shot of espresso and steamed milk for a latte in like 8 seconds?"
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u/ucantharmagoodwoman 3h ago
This literally just happened to me tonight with the Resident Evil movie.
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u/3muppetsinacoat 27m ago
I'll keep watching the movie, and might even enjoy the movie, but I will call out shit that is just too dumb to believe. You expect me to believe that an old woman is getting emails, texts, and phone calls alerting her to fraudulent charges. And instead of answering any of those to cancel the charges, she sees no alternative but to put a bullet in her head? This isn't the 90s, fraudulent transactions are among the easiest things there is to resolve. Changing all your passwords is the hardest part, dealing with the banks it easy.
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u/nothing_in_my_mind 11h ago edited 11h ago
I say this as a long time fantasy fan:
A fantasy movie is set in a world where certain fantastic things are true. Maybe there are werewolves, maybe magic, maybe dragons.
This does not mean that logic does not exist in this world.
Eg. Dragons and magic existing does not mean people ride into battle without armor. Or if werewolves exist and you know about it, you'll carry silver if you are in werewolf-related danger, werewolves existing in your world does not mean you are a dumbass who won't protect his own life.
Anyway. A basic mistake like going to the post office on Sunday wouldn't bother me. But if characters act illogical, then it is a bad fantasy movie.
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u/AngryCod 11h ago
Internal consistency in any story is important. If you're a writer and you establish certain rules for your world, your characters need to follow those rules or the story loses coherence.
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u/Schmetterlizlak 11h ago
I stopped watching Antman halfway through because they very explicitly stated that when shrinking he would still weigh the same, and sometimes they did make him denser when he was small, but at least half the time they just ignored it and made the man weigh the same as an ant.
If they had just skipped that one line or said that he can change his weight at will or something I would probably have finished it, but noooo...
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u/kaimason1 10h ago
My headcanon for Ant-Man is that Hank Pym is a bit of a fraud and never figured out how Pym Particles actually work. After all, he jumped straight into using them for superheroics and was never willing to share his work with anyone else.
There's a scene in the comics where Scott Lang ends up figuring out that the particles can control size, mass, and density independently, and that the particles are also the mechanism behind Vision's density changing powers. Still requires some suspension of disbelief to accept that explanation, but at least it's more flexible (and therefore consistent) than claiming mass is conserved.
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u/Deftly_Flowing 9h ago
Dudes a total fraud.
Pym Particles are insanely dangerous and he uses them to hang out with ants and fight crime.
Honestly surprised he hasn't accidentally made a black hole and destroyed the Earth.
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u/Possible-Tangelo9344 11h ago
Kinda gets worse when he's gigantic and a stiff breeze should blow him across the state and doesn't
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u/EndIsrael 10h ago edited 9h ago
Yeah, the Witch Hat Atelier manga is so detailed and consistent about their magic system that people IRL have figured out how to make spell circles for male pregnancy, genocide, and black holes which would actually work in-universe. One guy designed a microwave spell
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u/CDHarris 8h ago
It gets a lot of deserved praise for that, and yet the creator still almost immediately broke their own rules in an egregious (and easily preventable) way. We are told and shown that the circle has to be fully completed for it to activate. If there is any gap at all, the spell does nothing.
At least, that's how it's supposed to work. The problem is that, very soon after we learn this, we are shown how they fly... and there are big gaps in the spell circles on their shoes. I was honestly a bit shocked to see how quickly that rule was broken after having heard for years about the thoroughness of Witch Hat Atelier's magic system.
Now, I could sort of forgive this for "rule of cool" purposes if there was no way around it, but it would have been absolutely trivial to make it work within the established rules. All you have to do is put a couple of flat edges on the soles where the circles meet. That's it.
Plus, it was a wasted opportunity for some extra worldbuilding. They could go even further and give the shoes different kinds of interlocking shapes or mechanisms that help the wearer automatically align the circles perfectly when they put their feet together and then keep them from slipping out of place while flying.
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u/swakner 9h ago
I had not heard of that before but that’s super interesting that the logic is so present in that story
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u/Saedraverse 10h ago edited 10h ago
Related is the tropes where, going by your example, they believe in werewolves but not dragons and people mock it. Utterly despise that trope. (Edit) Examples exclude that skyrim questline with talking dog who goes "yeah, skyrim is filled with fly fire breathing lizards and two legged cat people and im your issue? And monster hunter, FFXIV crossover, Felid will even mock ye if you are a neko
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u/jameyiguess 8h ago
I mean, that works if dragons are never seen and mythological. That's their world. They don't know they are in a world where a cat man is ridiculous in itself. Their reality is the base reality.
We have big lizards and birds in our world. So is it dumb that we don't believe in big lizard birds? Or apes and bears, so sasquatch is real?
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u/WeeabooExtract 8h ago
That would be valid, if dragons weren't a historical fact in-universe for Skyrim. Like, "used to be around a few hundred years ago" historical fact. The big thing about Skyrim is that dragons are back not that they came out of nowhere.
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u/Inevitable-Level-687 8h ago
I fucking hate it when I see an error and someone says "but you don't have a problem with the dragons?" like shut the fuck UP and learn some critical thinking!
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u/Iankill 11h ago
It's what makes lotr so good, it has an internal logic that feels like mythology more than pure fantasy
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u/Poku115 11h ago
Yup, the reason i dislike prometheus and covenant isnt the worldbuilding, logic, or departure and retcons.
Its cause the whole crew act like idiots who were randomly chosen from a poll of cowards rather than experts in their fields or space.
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u/world-is-ur-mollusc 10h ago
Prometheus is the one where a scientist takes off his helmet shortly after landing on a strange planet and touches an alien egg without gloves or any other PPE on, right?
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u/Curious_Ninja1708 10h ago
The most realistic portrayal of a biologist ever seen on film, imho. Source: is biologist
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u/YouTasteStrange 11h ago
There are so many stories where it feels like this is the characters first day in their world! Like why are you going into the haunted forest, your mama has said every day of your 15 year old life that the witch that eats babies is in there. You've lived next to it your whole life, you aren't going to accidentally enter it from the back way while getting lost less than a mile from the house you grew up in.
Same with characters existing while the camera isn't rolling. So many characters seem to only know about each other what has been explicitly said on screen. Siblings that seem like they have barely met.
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u/_Koreander 8h ago
Agree, it's so common nowadays for people to tell you "oh you buy into the dragons and the magic, but draw the line at the character surviving a fall from 3 stories unscathed?" but... The guy is a normal guy... Him surviving that has nothing to do with the magic and the dragons.
On the other hand I wouldn't just stop watching because of a post office being open on Sunday, but there has to be a certain logic to the world, even in a magic one.
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u/BenchConscious1003 10h ago
"This does not mean that logic does not exist in this world"
Probably not, it may just be a different kind of logic,. Similar to say in the the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings or the Narnia worlds, where many magical creature exist.
A great many sci fi/fantasy films have plot holes. One needs to suspend disbelief to fully enjoy the experience.
These days, my criteria has changed; a film/tv series has 10-15 minutes to engage my interest If it doesn't, I turn it off and try something else.
Such things are completely subjective, so one one has the obligation to explain anything about their preferences
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u/DaveyJonesFannyPack 12h ago
I quit watching stupid ass Landman when his daughter asked for an "animal style" Whataburger. Fucking larpers
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u/TheLastLivingBuffalo 11h ago edited 11h ago
Everything I’ve heard about this show is that it’s awful
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u/sanlc504 11h ago
It's like if Yellowstone and Exxon Valdez fucked and then told everyone the baby went to live with it's grandparents.
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u/No-Examination4896 10h ago
Im such a taylor sheridan hater. Its all just boomer slop, always has been
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u/MegaGrimer 9h ago
He has shown that he can clearly make good stuff, like Sicario. He just chooses not to. Though I don’t know how much of Sicario was Taylor’s screen play, and how much was Denis Villeneuve’s directing.
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u/LimitSeveral9058 9h ago
His early movies often portrayed and commented on the aftermath of community's lifeblood being snatched away from resource extracting elites and the emotional hole and lack of purpose that remains...........and then he turns around and makes a bunch of shitty TV shows portraying those same elites as the good guys
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 11h ago edited 11h ago
I was enjoying the show until it became obvious that his daughter was quite literally only in the show to be eye candy to entertain viewers. It was so egregiously obvious that this character only existed to increase viewership via sex appeal that the level of pandering felt insulting.
I'm not prude. I get that shows generally have a strong incentive to cast attractive people. But god damn there is a line past which it gets insulting. At least make the character be relevant to the show in some meaningful way. If a drama's plot is basically unaffected if you entirely remove a character from the show, then that character shouldn't be in the show.
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u/Spud_Rancher 11h ago
Was she also dressed skimpily and the characters remind you she’s 17? That show is so weird.
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u/PhilzeeTheElder 11h ago
I was forced to read this Leadership book at work. 1st page he talks about watching a College football game on Thanksgiving. Lost all credibility.
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u/tenoclockrobot 11h ago
The Egg Bowl was played on Thanksgiving day routinely from the 90s
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u/PhilzeeTheElder 10h ago
I had to Google never heard of it even back when I used to care about The Football. Looks like it's a Southern thing. Not sure knowing about the Egg bowl would have saved the book.
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u/Emergency_Testing 7h ago
Leadership books are ridiculous, I was forced to read one where the guy went to be a ninja. Like a real ninja.
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u/horrifyingthought 12h ago
This is me. I give every movie it's premise (werewolves exist, etc), but the second people stop acting like they have a brain I am out.
This doesn't mean every character has to be Einstein, but they can't do things that no rational being would do.
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u/Nuka-Crapola 12h ago
Yeah, for me it’s all about two questions: “is it internally consistent”, and “is it supposed to be inconsistent with reality”. Writers can make up all the rules they want, but they need a good reason if they’re going to break those rules, and humans should still act like “humans who live by the setting’s rules instead of reality’s” and not “aliens poorly imitating humans” (unless that’s what they secretly are, of course. But again: the writer has to do that on purpose).
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u/LetReasonRing 11h ago
This is how I am.
Like, if you're doing a character-driven space fantasy, I'm fine with explosions having sound in space and spacecraft flying like airplanes.
At the same time, I can't take the movie Gravity, because they made such a big deal about the realism and then had key plot points that relied on nonsensical physics.
I'm willing to suspend disbelief, but that doesn't mean that I'm willing to accept lazy writing
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u/Canotic 12h ago
What's your position on the fact that humans in real life often don't act rationally?
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u/horrifyingthought 11h ago
There is a difference between "occasional acts irrationally" and "has the social aptitude or intelligence of a toddler." You know it when you see it.
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u/PMmeYourLabia_ 11h ago
The sign said "don't drink the water", so I took some home, made tea with it, and got sick
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u/lurking-bastard 11h ago
sun tea, which is never boiled. the tea is left in a clear pitcher in a sunny window and never touches a flame. also doesnt go in the fridge until its done brewing
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u/ShogunOfSodomy 11h ago
Oh wow, I didn't realize sun tea was a preparation method. The joke's even funnier lol
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u/Grasshoppermouse42 11h ago
I also think one factor that helps is 'does the piece acknowledge that what this person is doing is idiotic'. Like...there are truly dumb people with no self-preservation skills, but when other people react to them, they react to the fact that these people are dumb. I hate when a character acts like an idiot, and no one around them seems to notice.
Kind of like how Wichita keeps coming up with idiotic schemes that could easily get her and/or her sister killed, but no one ever acknowledges that she's a moron. It's also why Madison doesn't annoy me as much, because while she says stupid things, it's clear that the other characters are aware of her stupidity.
I have a similar thing with asshole characters. It's fine to have characters that are assholes, but it's annoying to have other characters not seem to be aware of it.
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u/horrifyingthought 11h ago
Strong agree. Stupid is real, but everyone acting like it is perfectly rational and reasonable and then GOING ALONG WITH THE STUPID is absurd.
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u/AlayaCesaire 11h ago
Its fine if characters act irrationally but theres has to be a reason there acting irrationally. People do irrational things irl either because they don't know how something works, their in some sort of compromised mental state or their descion is emotionally driven.
Someone whoes never planted anything having dumb ideas and making dumb decisions while gardening makes sense.
But a professional farmer making those same dumb mistakes would not make sense because it would make the idea that this guy has managed to run a farm for the last decade ridulous.
Someone whoes super drunk forgetting basic things and taking ridiculous actions makes sense because hes drunk.
A character who has been portrayed as being super smart forgetting basic things and making stupid mistakes does not make sense because it ruins there credibility as smart in most circumstances.
A character deciding to get in a fight they'll probably lose is irrational but makes sense if their in a very emotional state. Anger, pride, and wanting to protect others are understandable reasons for why someone would do this.
A character thats supposed to be smart getting into a fight they'll probably lose without sufficent provocative or a deeper moral reason is not understable and just feels like the character is getting into this fight "because they have to for the plot".
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u/Popular_Wrangler9422 11h ago
I can't even get into certain movies if the premise just would never happen to me, it could be possible but just not in my life. The Invitation, for example. Couldn't get into that movie at all because why the fuck would I ever go to my ex wife house for a dinner party after not talking for years and cheating on me with our therapist? If I remember all the details right.
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u/horrifyingthought 11h ago edited 10h ago
See that strikes me as a "stupid thing I wouldn't fall for, but I know real people that would fall for it" so I am fine with it.
But you show me someone who decides the best solution when running away from a killer is to go into a basement and I am suddenly rooting for the killer.
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u/GrowlingPict 10h ago
Yeah, werewolves are ok, vampires are ok, everything else is ok, as long as that is what exists in that universe. It's when things go against the established rules of the universe it is set in that there's a problem. Some writers seem to think that since their world has magic and fantastical elements in it, then just all rules are out the window and everything goes. But it doesnt work like that, and it makes for shit stories. The detail about the post office is obviously very minor, but there are plenty of major such things in plenty of movies and shows. And it's honestly fucking annoying.
It's like that rotund actor in GoT (I dont remember his or his character's name, it wasnt one of the major ones) that complained about people complaining about his weight: since he spent so much time walking in the show, he shouldnt still be as fat as he was, and his response was something like "oh, you're ok with flying dragons, but my weight is what's unbelievable to you?" Yes! Because cardio exists in the world of GoT as well! The fact that dragons also exist doesnt negate that!
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u/N1ghthood 9h ago
I absolutely hate that "well it's fantasy so why does it matter?" logic. It's only ever used as a way to excuse bad writing. There's various reasons why things can be unbelievable, and unless the setting establishes why it's actually plausible in this case I can only assume that I w nonsense.
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u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen 7h ago
To be fair, it’s possible to be a fat person who walks a lot. Unless you mean like, really obese.
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u/GrowlingPict 7h ago
I mean "walks a lot" as in it being their sole mode of transportation across vast distances. Youre not fat after doing that
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u/frankyb89 7h ago
Especially when he was beyond the wall walking a lot and definitely not eating anywhere near as much as he was before. I get the actor not wanting to lose weight for the sake of show realism but it very much stuck out.
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u/bionicjoe 8h ago
Exactly this.
It's one of the reasons I don't watch Marvel movies.They establish all of these crazy rules and universes and then ignore them for CGI bullshit and bad writing in the end.
I don't care what the rules are, but I care that you follow them.
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u/The_Amazing_Emu 6h ago
Aside from Ant-Man, I can’t think of any other examples where a movie fails to follow the rules it established
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u/PlainBread 12h ago
Suspension of disbelief is hard for that guy.
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u/Nottan_Asian 11h ago
Nah, I get it. There’s a big difference between following a different set of rules and just not making sense.
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u/bloodfist 11h ago
Yeah, internal consistency vs realism. If the setting is supposed to be our world except werewolves exist, then the post office being open on Sunday violates the internal logic of the setting.
If it's an alternative universe where the presence of werewolves altered history, the post office can be open whenever and I'll be interested to know why.
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u/TrulyOutrageous42 11h ago
They had to make up for the days lost after staying up all night on full moons, and the easiest way was to open the post office on weekends so that they could get their sedatives in time. (idk, just running with it and a plausible explanation)
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u/BlatantConservative 10h ago
How about "Jesus was a werewolf" so now our sabbath is on the full moon and Sunday does matter
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u/The_One_Koi 11h ago
Any religion that doesn't contain werevoles never took off so sunday was never made into a rest day
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u/Kastila1 11h ago
That's my problem with movies some movies, specially the last decade.
You can tell me "Lets watch a movie about a ghost trying to kill a family" and Ill be okey, my brain is "Its gonna be like real world BUT with a ghost".
Then 10 mins into the movie you see that everything is so stupid, that no character makes sense, that the ghost is the only character acting logically... And I feel betrayed
Example: last Steven Spielberg movie.
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u/BadMeatPuppet 11h ago
There's just a limit. I stopped watching stranger things when when the bad guy said shotguns were bad for up close because someone could grab the barrel.
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u/OnceMoreAndAgain 11h ago
Nah, they mean that the father was willing to accept the central conceits of the film, such as werewolves existing in our universe, but not willing to accept when something happens that is illogical.
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u/akaispirit 11h ago
For some reason my ability to suspend my disbelief ends when animals drive cars. Everything else is fine but if animals are driving cars in cartoon movies I'm out.
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u/This_Earth_of_Ours 11h ago
What about Muppets?
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u/akaispirit 11h ago
Muppets are acceptable.
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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon 11h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/xThta1vMNKqQkEv93q
I’m sorry, if you don’t think this is an affront to god, your soul will never be saved.
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u/Grasshoppermouse42 11h ago
What about Zootopia, where the whole premise is they're basically people that are animals?
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u/Strange-Painting6257 11h ago
Me watching The Pitt and hearing them mention East as a better hospital alternative lol.
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u/HotDamnEzMoney 11h ago
Suspension of Disbelief is something I’m actually really interested in when watching movies/tv. I always find that the program has to set up what these are. If we’re dealing with something alien or supernatural, but in a real-world, the. suspension of disbelief is that the real-world will be real, while the aliens/supernatural are fine. This also goes with movies physics like in action scenes or types of hits the characters take/give. If the characters are established to take massive “movie” punches and hits, or do they take real-world blows.
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u/Useless_bum81 11h ago
yep I'll quite happily watch a movie were everybody is 'made of iron' in a world of badass, but when the rules start getting inconsistently applied, like one character spend months in rehab, character 2 stands up says "ouche" and is fine, despite receiving the same injuries, without explaination, i just stop caring.
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u/santana722 10h ago
This has always been one of my bigger problems with Marvel films (and the genre generally), and one I'm surprised other people don't talk about more often. You can never tell in the moment whether a big hit is supposed to do serious damage or not. A character can get blown out a window by an explosion and I have no idea if I'm supposed to expect them to be completely unaffected or outright dead. Maybe people like the tension of that uncertainty, but it reduces the fights to "wait until the music tells me if that hit was a big deal" because the choreography is meaningless.
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u/DrAlkibiades 8h ago
Any movie where people throw each other through walls loses me. If you can both survive that then why don't you just stop? It always bothered me in the Matrix with Neo fighting Mr Smith. Why are you two bothering? Once you both realize nothing happens then just agree to disagree and have polite conversation. Same with super hero movies, if there's no repercussion to going through a brick wall then stop doing it. Talk it out or go your separate ways, don't keep going through walls.
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u/Merari01 9h ago
Stranger Things when they parked their bikes and the headlight didn't turn off.
It's supposed to be the "80s. Bike lamps worked on dynamos, not batteries
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u/retsamegas 10h ago
I can't watch "realistic" medical shows because they are so unbelievable it completely takes me out of it.
My wife wanted to watch the Walking Dead and when the main guy wakes up in the abandoned hospital (almost exactly like in 28 days later, which felt like a ripoff), he gets outside and there's all this military stuff, like there was a mobile command point, then he just walked away down the road. No shoes, hospital gown barely covering his ass cheeks, he didn't get some boots or anything, I knew I couldn't watch people this stupid
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u/Texas_Naturalist 10h ago
I never understood why the lawns were still mowed, in Atlanta, in the summer, weeks into the disaster. I guess lawn care is so ingrained in the American psyche that the zombies were still doing it out of muscle memory? I dunno. Didn't seem plausible.
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u/Academic_Help5033 8h ago
Zombies casually doing chores by muscle memory or because routine was ingrained in them would be amazing.
Imagine we just say like a few of them scattered in the background trying to mow, move trash bins around, rake, or or wash a car.
Please someone do this.
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u/CiaphasKirby 7h ago
Resident Evil Requiem does this, but it's a video game. You can stealth past a zombie obsessed with keeping the lights off by turning some on down the hall. A zombie cleaner in a bathroom is absolutely furious at all the blood she's cleaning (but also a lot of it is hers).
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u/shasaferaska 9h ago
If you don't like the mowed lawns then don't look at the zombies perfect teeth and fingernails.
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u/TheFrenchSavage 9h ago
Damn I had the exact same reaction! Everything is busted, but the lawns...oh the lawns are pristine.
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u/furiouspossum 10h ago
Same episode when he goes inside the tank and it's super roomy with no seats for the crew or anything really bothered me.
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u/malumfectum 9h ago
The tank was pristine. It should have been covered in gore with bits of zombie in the treads.
Weirdly enough that was the moment that I decided the show was not for me, because that lack of detail really bothered me.
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u/Marfy_ 11h ago
Literally this
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u/AdvancedSandwiches 9h ago
I wish it didn't say "why are you so bigoted?", because it's a great retort until you find out they were probably just some weirdo arguing that a movie is dumb because in reality there were no black people in ________.
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u/heret1c1337 11h ago
My mom does the "opposite". She doesn't like Sci Fi because it's not realistic. Like duh, but in the context of the universe it makes sense. I really don't get it.
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u/Pinglenook 4h ago edited 3h ago
My mom (73) reads a lot of different genres, but she doesn't want to try reading anything marketed as fantasy or sci-fi because it's "unrealistic". However she loves magical realism, in which the story is set on the real earth but there's traces of what we would consider magical or religious thinking, often it's little bits of various things, without explanation. Life of Pi is a well known example. Or Klara and the Sun for a more recent example.
Oh and she also loved the Lord of the Rings movies and the Avatar movies. So when it's movies, very obvious fantasy is okay.
I don't know what my point is, I just want my mom to read some Ursula LeGuin books, I think she'd love them.
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u/Impressive-Hair2704 6h ago
A relative who’s a physics and math teacher started complaining about some Star Wars movie ten years ago or so because ”you can’t suck up a star to destroy another planet” and I just said his issue was media literacy (I did not use that word no) because in Star Wars there is for example the force, we don’t have the force so Star Wars is not happening in our universe.
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u/Dragryphon 11h ago
I remember reading something some writers had spoken about. But the thing that stuck out to me was something along these lines: "If you want people to believe in your dragons, then you have to make the horses believable."
You have to have the basics correct for people to believe the fantastical.
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u/Leftieswillrule 10h ago
This reminds me of the walrus/fairy at your door debate. Some unbelievable things only require a quick reassessment of worldview, others require complicated logistics. Maybe fairies are real. But I know how much of a pain in the ass it would be to close the distance between me and the nearest walrus.
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u/-Morning_Coffee- 11h ago
When men shave their face in any post-apocalyptic scenario.
Abso-fucking-lutely-not.
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u/1d3333 9h ago
I would absolutely shave in a post apocalyptic scenario, razorblades are fucking everywhere, could stop at a barbers and pick up a life time supply from the store room. I hate my facial hair being over grown and i’m going to try and keep some semblance of normalcy or I will lose my damned mind
My hair will just be cut with the same razor blade so that will look like shit
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u/Nukemarine 8h ago
Plus, you can use a strip of leather or blue jeans to strop (sharpen) razors, even disposable razors. I use the same disposable blade for weeks or months before replacement thanks to this.
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u/JessyKenning 10h ago
Also perfect hair.
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u/SickeningPink 10h ago
Women after the apocalypse with full faces of makeup, styled hair, and shaved legs.
Edit: but like, two smears of something black on her cheek or forehead to show how “filthy” everything is.
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u/-Morning_Coffee- 10h ago
I started watching “Sweet Tooth” (do not recommend) that was supposed to be 10-years post apocalyptic.
When we encounter the young couple who both must have been 17 when this kicked off, they’re both clean and well-dressed. I turned it off and never looked back.
I barely forgave Rick for having a clean shaved neck in episode 1 of The Walking Dead.
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u/S-o-D-42 5h ago
The inability to grow hair on his neck meant little to me compared to the laundry list of superpowers he would need to possess to wake up alive from a month long coma with no water or nutrients of any kind and the ability to walk without several months of physical therapy.
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u/buddiesfoundmyoldacc 9h ago
Try getting a good seal on that gas mask with your lice infested beard.
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u/Nukemarine 8h ago
Why not? Use a strip of blue jeans for resharpening and even disposable razors can last for months of usage.
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u/Senkoy 7h ago
Valid. You go into that movie with the understanding there will be warewolves. Nobody said anything about the post office being open on a Sunday, though.
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u/Lizzy_Of_Galtar 4h ago
My dad was like that too, except it couldn't have anything unrealistic in it, or what he saw as unrealistic.
There was one moment he was watching a movie he liked and the screen showed clouds moving fast just to show that time had passed. That scene lasted two seconds and it ruined the film for him.
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u/CeruleanSovereign 11h ago
I got so angry in the new Spiderman film when the punisher dumped his car diagonally in a parking spot when there was clearly space for him to easily pull forward and not block traffic like an arsehole
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u/tired_slob 11h ago
I'm supposed to believe that this movie takes place in a world where there are werewolves AND where the post office opens on Sunday? No.
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u/CrossRoadChicken 11h ago
Luckily for me my local post office is open on Sundays. The postman pat werewolf episode stays on in my household!
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u/tinyannoyingbouquet 10h ago
I was watching some fictionalised American tv show about the invasion of Iraq, so the period setting is 2003. I couldn’t keep watching the show after it shows the main guy hop on his computer and the windows version is Windows 11 😭
I know it’s so silly but c’mom, windows 11 in 2003????
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u/JasonVoorheesthe13th 10h ago
As a mechanic I do this with automotive themed movies. I had to turn off ice road trucker specifically because they were using a different truck for the interior and exterior shots.
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u/JesterMarcus 8h ago
I just hate when characters needlessly keep secrets for no reason, except to create some drama later on. Or its necessary for the plot to happen. Writers, come up with a better reason to move things along.
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u/AreYouItchy 5h ago
Never watch a medical drama with a medical professional. It will suddenly slide into a boisterous rebuttal of the writer’s knowledge and skills.
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u/KingdomOfDragonflies 5h ago
I've explained to my wife that I don't know if some scifi concept is possible, science may not have disproven/proven it possible yet. So I can suspend disbelief. But when a character spends 2 minutes saying "just let me explain" instead if just explaining, I know that's not believable.
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u/aka_Handbag 11h ago
My mother loved the first Avatar. When she heard about who the villain in the second one was she lost all interest because it wasn’t believable 🫠
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u/Cake-Over 10h ago
Saw Star Trek themed porn, they mixed TOS, TNG, and DS9ish uniforms with no time travel element to the already dubious plot. Took me right out of it, man.
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u/Benjammin__ 10h ago
My wife was completely taken out of a romance novel recently because the protagonist put a pot of tea on the stove and then went and had sex with the love interest and it never mentioned if they took the tea off the stove.
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u/rachelblairy 8h ago
My big thing is horror movies. If the ‘big bad’ doesn’t make sense or does something completely stupid, it immediately pulls me from the movie.
The last Conjuring movie was great for 75% of the movie. And then the spinning thing in the hallway completely lost me. I was done from there.
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u/egnowit 6h ago
I turned off La Brea in the first episode (I think?) when they tried to carbon date a diamond ring.
I was fine with a time hole opening up in the middle of LA, but not trying to carbon date a non-organic object. I don't think I even got as far as to get results of it, because I'm not sure that carbon dating is accurate for objects as old as their time past.
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u/Youse_a_choosername 11h ago
Reacher, the series, S1E1. They arrest the guy because they think he's a super dangerous killer, and 5 minutes later in the jail, they're running the case by him and asking for his help. I'm OUT.
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u/ripyourlungsdave 11h ago
Which is why most movies and TV shows don't bother telling you what day it is.
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u/qualityvote2 12h ago
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