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Comment by Dudeman112 | Hacker News Reader

I mean, George Lucas transformed his magic into counting magical mitochondria while people looked away and that universe is still as successful as ever

Popular fiction doesn't give a shit about contradicting itself

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The root of this thread is a comment about "not contradicting yourself too much" yet there are a couple of comments within the thread that seem to imply that because we can find some examples of contradiction in fiction then uncontrolled/unlimited contradiction should be fine. This "I can think of a counterexample - let's make it a rule" seems to appear more frequently now but maybe that's just me.

>in fiction then uncontrolled/unlimited contradiction should be fine

I'm not saying it's fine in general. I'm saying it doesn't matter for pop fiction

Popular fiction gets retconned all the time. I'm fundamentally disagreeing with "not contradicting yourself too much" mattering at all for fiction that's successful with the masses

If you ever feel tempted to think that quality writing matters for popular success, just remember that lewd Twilight fanfic has sold more than a hundred million copies

On the other hand, the thread is a comment about the challenge of not contradicting yourself too much, not a claim that doing so is going to substantially impact the work.

Pretty much every creative work has contradictions and discontinuities that people gloss over, even (or especially) stark ones in critical success. The people who really get riled up about it are a very particular kind of person and not one I even meet outside of internet forums.

The Star Wars Mitochondria revelation was unpopular, but it didn't contradict anything. The original movies never address whether you could detect force users with a blood test.

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