#so she can't make Murderbot a disposable plastic cup for real. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rjalker · 9 months ago

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just because you can sometimes purposefully pretend that bad writing is just due to characters acting a certain way--

(IE: "This mixup of the holiday dates is clearly the author's fault for not paying attention to their own worldbuilding, which isn't even complicated, and she literally just had them correct not even twenty pages ago, but for the sake of my sanity I'm going to pretend this character is just lying to be an asshole")

--does not mean that bad writing is always "the character's fault". And the above "for the sake of my sanity I'm going to pretend this is the character's fault" is for your sake only. It's not to be brought up to defend the writing itself, which you know is filled with inconsistencies and wouldn't know the meaning of "continuity" if it bit them on the nose.

If someone is specifically asking for in-universe explanations for the glaring and painfully obvious continuity errors, then you should feel free to offer all the convoluted explanations you've come up with.

but these are not a substitute for actually acknowledging that the author has made mistakes and there are in fact a ton of continuity errors in the text, not because "it's the character's fault", but because the author wasn't paying attention or didn't understand what they were saying, or just straight up doesn't give enough shits about their own setting to bother with silly things like not screwing up timelines in ways that make no sense. (*cough* Jaxom *cough)

You can come up with in-universe explanations for the continuity errors.

But you shouldn't let those get in the way of admitting "Yes, the continuity errors exist because the author wasn't paying attention/doesn't understand what they're saying/doesn't take their own story seriously/has a problem with making all the protagonists Mary Sues/Ect.".

#this is about many things #most NOTABLYYYYYY #The Dragonriders of Pern #Rjalker reads The Dragonriders of Pern #and there's too many examples to list. Like them contradicting themselves on whether whers can fly or not like five times in the SAME BOOK #The book that wasn't even that long!!!! and so many more examples. Like the doctor telling people to swim in the ocean to heal their injuri #but then he knows that there's parasites in the ocean that are attracted to open wounds???? and it literally keeps going back and forth??!?#AND SO MANY MORE I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THE TIME TO WRITE OUT. ALSO:#Rjalker reads The Murderbot Diaries #The Murderbot Diaries #Martha Wells #We're simultansously expected to believe that SecUnits are disposable plastic cups you throw away after a single use #but are also at the exact same time fine china so expensive that when it breaks you glue it back together with gold because the pottery its #itself is so expensive you can't afford to throw it away even when it's broken.#And this is not ''murderbot's fault''. It's Martha Wells' fault.#because she really painfully clearly wanted to mimic The Imperial Radch. But also cannot stand the idea of her protagonists NOT #being The Most Specialist Person In The Room.#so she can't make Murderbot a disposable plastic cup for real.#She'll just say it is when it can cause it some angst.#SecUnits #SecUnit #Murderbot

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