Words that break immersion.

[Talakeal]

People all have things that will break their verisimilitude, and it differs based on their knowledge and expectations. Some will cry "but dragons!" as if this proves theirs are universal. I am one who has seen it used far more to decry any magic they dislike than inconsistencies. If there are poorly-written inconsistencies, say that, don't parrot the eye-roll-inducing "but dragons!".

In my experience people DO point out the inconsistencies, and are then told to shut up by someone using a variant of “but dragons”.

[Bohandas]

They are not contradictory at all. I think you guys are confusing "science" as a concept with "science" as a set of discovered truths in one specific universe/world/whatever.

That's a very good point

[TexAvery]

In my experience people DO point out the inconsistencies, and are then told to shut up by someone using a variant of “but dragons”.

I have never seen "but dragons!" invoked by anyone doing anything except assuming that a fantasy world is exactly like the real world. Often misunderstanding the real world, or not wanting to eliminate the inconsistency so much as push it to a place they're more comfortable with.

It annoys me to no end when I'm reading a setting and the stars are other suns, there's a moon just like ours, a week is seven days, and so on. "More dragons, please", in other words. Don't tell me it's a rich, vibrant, interesting world only to serve me up a Spam sandwich of my own life with a wizard hanging around somewhere. I'd rather have Discworld than something that pretends to be realistic when it obviously isn't.

Another example is Star Wars vs Star Trek. I prefer Wars. Trekkies will laugh and say it's not really science fiction and full of wizards, while Trek is realistic. Except, of course, for Q. And the Borg. And the holodeck and transporter working as the plot demands this week. Give me something that feels great and fantastic, or give me a real story, but don't pretend you can mix the two and spackle the holes. And especially not act as if it's obviously superior.

And if I may rerail the thread, I'm almost through episode 3 of Willow. I lost count of the "kinda"s. There's a "really sorta", several "yeah"s, "Cashmere", "Saracen Pass", and the "Lux Arcana", so obviously Latin is magic. Or magic is Latin. And "Bruenhilde" is a name girls make fun of. I can't imagine how you get through that and get offended by a "gesundheit".

[Batcathat]

It annoys me to no end when I'm reading a setting and the stars are other suns, there's a moon just like ours, a week is seven days, and so on. "More dragons, please", in other words. Don't tell me it's a rich, vibrant, interesting world only to serve me up a Spam sandwich of my own life with a wizard hanging around somewhere. I'd rather have Discworld than something that pretends to be realistic when it obviously isn't.

While I have similar issues with some settings (though mine is mostly about how magic is added to the world, but doesn't really change much about it), I'm not sure what alternative is here. Is it better that stars are, I don't know, a god's tears that just happen to look like the distant suns in our world?

[PhoenixPhyre]

While I have similar issues with some settings (though mine is mostly about how magic is added to the world, but doesn't really change much about it), I'm not sure what alternative is here. Is it better that stars are, I don't know, a god's tears that just happen to look like the distant suns in our world?

Or stars are dots painted on the crystal sphere. Or large balls of glowing crystal, like lamps. As long as you don't demand that they follow all the exact same patterns as on earth, you can get real creative. Heck, you can have worlds without discrete stars in the sky, whether black or swirling patterns.

[KorvinStarmast]

Or stars are dots painted on the crystal sphere. Or large balls of glowing crystal, like lamps. As long as you don't demand that they follow all the exact same patterns as on earth, you can get real creative. Heck, you can have worlds without discrete stars in the sky, whether black or swirling patterns.

Or you can have stars that are sentient beings. (Spec Fiction, A Wrinkle in Time, if I recall that story correctly after many decades...)

Spoiler: who? What? Which?

Show

(I refer to Mrs Whatsit)

[TexAvery]

While I have similar issues with some settings (though mine is mostly about how magic is added to the world, but doesn't really change much about it), I'm not sure what alternative is here. Is it better that stars are, I don't know, a god's tears that just happen to look like the distant suns in our world?

Holes in the shroud of night, nameless gods, whatever. Yes. I do not need the assumption they are other stars. I do not need the assumption that electrolysis works (if I could harness a lightning bolt spell or whatever). My point though is, once I've accepted that we're in a fantasy world, I'm not going to throw a fit because I discover that my dragon tale also involves ghosts. Or that the world is in fact actually flat. The creator is allowed to add more fantasy, and doing so is not always papering over inconsistency.

Another example is the people who stopped watching GoT when Melisandre summoned the shadow, offended at the inclusion of magic. Because apparently that was the bridge too far, not the actual dragons or wights or the million other impossibilities. Including the ability to determine parentage by looking at hair color.

[Batcathat]

Or stars are dots painted on the crystal sphere. Or large balls of glowing crystal, like lamps. As long as you don't demand that they follow all the exact same patterns as on earth, you can get real creative. Heck, you can have worlds without discrete stars in the sky, whether black or swirling patterns.

Sure, I'm not saying a fantasy world has to be "realistic", but I don't see why having stars as distant gas balls is inherently worse or less realistic than having them be anything else. I'm fine with it being completely different under the surface (and often prefer it, since for a genre called "fantasy" its authors are often remarkably uncreative in my experience) but I'm also fine with it being the same under the surface, as long as it doesn't clash with anything else.

[Satinavian]

Heck, you can have worlds without discrete stars in the sky, whether black or swirling patterns.

Sure, you could do that. But that certainly is not "no difference on the surface level".
But what is more important is that you should consider how that changes navigation by the stars or how you won't have astrology or horoscopes anymore without stars and how you can't have magic rituals demanding that the stars are aligned in a certain way etc.

Most of the time people change such things because it is fancy and forget the implications.

[TexAvery]

Sure, I'm not saying a fantasy world has to be "realistic", but I don't see why having stars as distant gas balls is inherently worse or less realistic than having them be anything else. I'm fine with it being completely different under the surface (and often prefer it, since for a genre called "fantasy" its authors are often remarkably uncreative in my experience) but I'm also fine with it being the same under the surface, as long as it doesn't clash with anything else.

And I'm agreeing that it also doesn't have to be different... but I'd be upset if I were writing a fantasy story, partway in mention that stars really are the Valkyries waiting for the dead, and someone cries that I just "but dragons!"ed them. And I'd rather have a fantasy setting (and consumers) open to introducing new elements rather than being limited to "reality + narrowly-defined magic". Which, as mentioned, usually also falls apart if you think about it hard enough, but also comes at the cost of fewer interesting elements.

[Batcathat]

And I'm agreeing that it also doesn't have to be different... but I'd be upset if I were writing a fantasy story, partway in mention that stars really are the Valkyries waiting for the dead, and someone cries that I just "but dragons!"ed them. And I'd rather have a fantasy setting (and consumers) open to introducing new elements rather than being limited to "reality + narrowly-defined magic". Which, as mentioned, usually also falls apart if you think about it hard enough, but also comes at the cost of fewer interesting elements.

I would say it depends. Yes, an author should be able to introduce previously unknown elements in a story, but do it too much or go against whatever "rules" you have established and people are likely to have a problem, whether the world is "reality, but..." or completely made up from scratch.

[Elkad]

Communicate in a way your players will understand, maybe leave out the pop culture references.

My table is FULL of pop culture references, including in direct character conversations, and I can't see ever wanting or trying to change it.

The players doing that simply reflects what any tight-knit group does naturally - develop their own semi-secret communication language based on mutual past experiences.

One recent example.
A player said "Pop Quiz Hotshot!" and everyone knew what it meant, without communicating that to the bad guy holding a valued NPC hostage.

Some of the others really are based on our own group of players - so they are personal culture rather than pop.
Overwhelming challenge - which hadn't quite turned to combat yet. One player said "I'll be the sorcerer."
That has a specific meaning based on a session from more than a decade ago. And the player who said the line hadn't even been in our group then, but it's part of our table lore.
The same if someone yells BACON! - based on a session from more than FORTY years ago - a character of mine is the one who originally said that.
Or an exaggerated "NINE". Or more other things than I could possibly list.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I would say it depends. Yes, an author should be able to introduce previously unknown elements in a story, but do it too much or go against whatever "rules" you have established and people are likely to have a problem, whether the world is "reality, but..." or completely made up from scratch.

I, personally, want people to approach stories with only the assumptions the author gives them. If I'm inconsistent within the rules I've established, that's on me. If I'm inconsistent with rules I never said I was following...that's not my problem.

[TexAvery]

I would say it depends. Yes, an author should be able to introduce previously unknown elements in a story, but do it too much or go against whatever "rules" you have established and people are likely to have a problem, whether the world is "reality, but..." or completely made up from scratch.

Well yes, breaking a previously-established rule for the setting/game is of course bad. What I'm talking about is breaking a rule from real life that had not been "confirmed" in the setting.

But again, my experience is usually people will accept almost anything from a setting they like, and complain bitterly about anything from a setting they don't. With whatever excuse is ready at hand.

[PhoenixPhyre]

But again, my experience is usually people will accept almost anything from a setting they like, and complain bitterly about anything from a setting they don't. With whatever excuse is ready at hand.

Yeah. This.

[GloatingSwine]

Well yes, breaking a previously-established rule for the setting/game is of course bad. What I'm talking about is breaking a rule from real life that had not been "confirmed" in the setting.

But again, my experience is usually people will accept almost anything from a setting they like, and complain bitterly about anything from a setting they don't. With whatever excuse is ready at hand.

Depends how early you do it, and how far it deviates from the real-life rule.

Like if you're four books deep into your fantasy magnum opus and that's when you reveal that humans in this world actually have three heads, that's probably not going to do down very well.

[TaiLiu]

But it's even harder (ie impossible) to have everyone stay consistent inside a system that's already inherently inconsistent with itself. Which is what you get if you combine modern scientific understanding of reality + magic.

The best solution is to stay agnostic as long as you can. Don't make any assumptions about what's going on beneath the surface. As a player, only play with knowledge your character would have, don't import any real-world understanding that goes beyond about a smart 10 year old and don't go looking for inconsistencies/loopholes (no matter if you're trying to exploit them or not) unless you're willing to bear the consequences[1]. As a DM, only worry about things at the naked-eye observable level. At least until you have to dig deeper. And then find a consistent way to answer the question at hand. Because 99.99999999% of the time...it ain't gonna matter and ya ain't gonna need it.

I, personally, love thinking about physical systems and metaphysics. So I develop speculative ones all the time, just for fun. Sometimes, those speculative metaphysics help explain various things in games, so they get grafted in...if they fit. But it always stays behind the scenes--as long as the players don't go searching for these "deeper truths", it all works just fine if you think of it as "mostly like the real world, at least on the surface" (ie the things @Jay R brought up). And if you have opinions on the deeper stuff as a player, I'm all ears. Maybe I'll like your answer better than the one I may have come up with already.

[1] because if you look for inconsistencies between any game world and the real world...you'll find them. Or even inconsistencies inside the real world. Just like looking for shapes in the clouds, what you find there is much more a function of who you are and what you're looking for than anything about the world itself. So any breakage from looking for loopholes/inconsistencies is entirely on your own shoulders.

Yeah, I guess we don't disagree. Maybe where potential players and DMs may clash is re: their surface-level understanding of the world. People, including smart 10-year-olds, just seem to have different notions about physics and social interactions and whether or not you can make a flour explosion. And also re: loopholes and exploits, but those can be resolved ad hoc.

Also, I know very little about contemporary physics. But isn't our modern scientific understanding already inconsistent? Something something general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible?

[TexAvery]

Depends how early you do it, and how far it deviates from the real-life rule.

Like if you're four books deep into your fantasy magnum opus and that's when you reveal that humans in this world actually have three heads, that's probably not going to do down very well.

Well yes, but that's quite a bit more extreme than anything I've seen happen in the situations people whip out the "but but dragons" fallacy and make me roll my eyes.

[Bohandas]

Also, I know very little about contemporary physics. But isn't our modern scientific understanding already inconsistent? Something something general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible?

Yes. I touched on this in one of my earlier posts. Quantum mechanics produces bizarre unrenormalizable results when you try to factor in the effects of gravity.

[Talakeal]

I have never seen "but dragons!" invoked by anyone doing anything except assuming that a fantasy world is exactly like the real world. Often misunderstanding the real world, or not wanting to eliminate the inconsistency so much as push it to a place they're more comfortable with.

It annoys me to no end when I'm reading a setting and the stars are other suns, there's a moon just like ours, a week is seven days, and so on. "More dragons, please", in other words. Don't tell me it's a rich, vibrant, interesting world only to serve me up a Spam sandwich of my own life with a wizard hanging around somewhere. I'd rather have Discworld than something that pretends to be realistic when it obviously isn't.

Another example is Star Wars vs Star Trek. I prefer Wars. Trekkies will laugh and say it's not really science fiction and full of wizards, while Trek is realistic. Except, of course, for Q. And the Borg. And the holodeck and transporter working as the plot demands this week. Give me something that feels great and fantastic, or give me a real story, but don't pretend you can mix the two and spackle the holes. And especially not act as if it's obviously superior.

So, it seems that the problem is the fallacy has taken on multiple meanings, some of them directly contradictory, in a case of "literal means figurative".

The way I use it is to label statements that boil down to "In a setting with fantastic elements, one should not expect any form of logic or consistency." Which is usually used to silence criticisms of plot holes or inconsistencies.

But, doing a google search, I also see people use it to mean "In a setting with fantastic elements, I refuse to accept any mundane elements" or "In a setting with fantastic elements I like, I still reject other fantastic elements I don't like on the basis of realism".

I recall seeing the phrase first coined on this forum ~2011, and I whole heartedly supported it as it was something I had experienced many times before, my dad loves using to dismiss my love of genre fiction and overly analytical nature, and I often saw it used in online debates, the earliest clear example being people defending the Matrix ignoring thermodynamics in 1999. But, it is wholly possible that my memory is faulty or I misunderstood.

As I said above, I still don't actually understand where the fallacy is in "guy at the gym" despite being able to read and reread the original post.


In your case, I don't really disagree with you, as long as you are upfront about it. Allowing the audience / players to believe something is mundane and then suddenly pulling the rug out from under them can easily come across as a screw-job or a deus ex machina. Heck, in RPGs even something as simple as a surprise genre switch (pitching a game as a spy thriller and then having it turn into an alien invasion / superhero / zombie apocalypse story is a common one, the fantasy world is post-apocalyptic / prehistoric Earth is another) is something I have never seen not end in a player revolt. Heck, I had a player revolt because I introduced a lone plane-traveling cowboy NPC in a D&D campaign as, afaict it broke their ideas of genre (or maybe they were just pissed than an NPC had guns and they didn't?).

Like, you have seen the whole argument about taking the eagles to Mordor, right? Imagine how much worse it would be if, in the last fifty pages, Frodo had just decided to flap his arms and fly the ring up Mount Doom and then carry Sam back to the shire at supersonic speeds. After all, it is a fantastic setting with dragons and wizards, and nobody ever said that hobbits COULDN'T fly, so why not?

And if I may rerail the thread, I'm almost through episode 3 of Willow. I lost count of the "kinda"s. There's a "really sorta", several "yeah"s, "Cashmere", "Saracen Pass", and the "Lux Arcana", so obviously Latin is magic. Or magic is Latin. And "Bruenhilde" is a name girls make fun of. I can't imagine how you get through that and get offended by a "gesundheit".

Interestingly enough, "Cashmir" is actually a place mentioned in the original movie. Though it is a homophone for Kashmir (a region in India) or Cashmere, a fabric named after said region, it is spelled differently and is, presumably, merely a fantasy kingdom with no relation to either aside from a similar name.

I know this because one of the ancient kingdoms in my setting is called Cashmir as a homage to Willow.

Pedantry aside, yeah, the dialogue in that show just feels so terribly off.

[Bohandas]

Interestingly enough, "Cashmir" is actually a place mentioned in the original movie. Though it is a homophone for Kashmir (a region in India) or Cashmere, a fabric named after said region, it is spelled differently and is, presumably, merely a fantasy kingdom with no relation to either aside from a similar name.

Much in the same way thay the Candy Kingdom from Adventure Time is wholly unrelated to the Kingdom of Kandy in renaissance era Sri Lanka

[TaiLiu]

Yes. I touched on this in one of my earlier posts. Quantum mechanics produces bizarre unrenormalizable results when you try to factor in the effects of gravity.

Makes sense that someone said it already (and better)!

[Witty Username]

Yes, obviously the laws of nature can't work quite the same if a setting includes magic or something else that doesn't work within them, but I don't think that's mutually exclusive with the assumption of "everything works the same, unless otherwise noted". Well, I suppose there might be an issue if the players wanted to explore the setting's physics in extreme detail, but that seems rather unlikely.

Everything works the same unless otherwise stated is a pretty good description of CSI, which has things that could be described as actual magic.

[Witty Username]

I, personally, want people to approach stories with only the assumptions the author gives them. If I'm inconsistent within the rules I've established, that's on me. If I'm inconsistent with rules I never said I was following...that's not my problem.

I actually don't agree, internal consistency I feel is overvalued by fantasy writing, especially with magic systems.I feel it trends towards overly simplistic writing.
I recognize it is a bit different for games because players need to interact with the game, but much like when our set of assumptions are found to not conform with reality, we change our assumptions, not call reality inconsistent.

Magic should, at least sometimes, work in a similar way, false assumptions that are disproven by apparent results.

[animorte]

Magic should, at least sometimes, work in a similar way, false assumptions that are disproven by apparent results.

And thus the transition from theory to law.

[TexAvery]

So, it seems that the problem is the fallacy has taken on multiple meanings, some of them directly contradictory, in a case of "literal means figurative".

The way I use it is to label statements that boil down to "In a setting with fantastic elements, one should not expect any form of logic or consistency." Which is usually used to silence criticisms of plot holes or inconsistencies.

But, doing a google search, I also see people use it to mean "In a setting with fantastic elements, I refuse to accept any mundane elements" or "In a setting with fantastic elements I like, I still reject other fantastic elements I don't like on the basis of realism".

I recall seeing the phrase first coined on this forum ~2011, and I whole heartedly supported it as it was something I had experienced many times before, my dad loves using to dismiss my love of genre fiction and overly analytical nature, and I often saw it used in online debates, the earliest clear example being people defending the Matrix ignoring thermodynamics in 1999. But, it is wholly possible that my memory is faulty or I misunderstood.

As I said above, I still don't actually understand where the fallacy is in "guy at the gym" despite being able to read and reread the original post.

I think much of my issue with the "but but dragons!" argument is that, as with most "fallacies" bandied about on here, it is treated as a gotcha that is expected to be an auto-win when presented (as with a true logical fallacy), but is just a phrase for "something I disagree with". It is then weaponized as "thing X is objectively bad" as opposed to "I do not enjoy thing X because it does not match my expectations".

Someone could, for example, have Conan as their only fictional background and reject the concept that in D&D, magic can be used without driving the mage insane or evil. As in, "I can accept magic, but not easy magic". Someone who came from Harry Potter might, by contrast, find Conan difficult to accept. Both people could say "but dragons!" in an attempt to "prove" their opinions are objectively correct. Both would be better served by saying "this is a form of fiction I don't enjoy".

The Matrix issues, as well, are an example of poor writing I'm willing to ignore for an otherwise great story. I rapidly mind-caulked it to compute power rather than electrical power and continued enjoying it. If that had been the point of the story (say, the machines searching for a solution to their electrical needs and finally settling on using humans as generators) I'd have had a harder time.

In your case, I don't really disagree with you, as long as you are upfront about it. Allowing the audience / players to believe something is mundane and then suddenly pulling the rug out from under them can easily come across as a screw-job or a deus ex machina. Heck, in RPGs even something as simple as a surprise genre switch (pitching a game as a spy thriller and then having it turn into an alien invasion / superhero / zombie apocalypse story is a common one, the fantasy world is post-apocalyptic / prehistoric Earth is another) is something I have never seen not end in a player revolt. Heck, I had a player revolt because I introduced a lone plane-traveling cowboy NPC in a D&D campaign as, afaict it broke their ideas of genre (or maybe they were just pissed than an NPC had guns and they didn't?).

Genre switching is just being dishonest with your players, or other audience. No spoilers, but I enjoyed 10 Cloverfield Lane. I understand why others did not, however. Your players are noted as being unreasonable by the standards of most around here.

Like, you have seen the whole argument about taking the eagles to Mordor, right? Imagine how much worse it would be if, in the last fifty pages, Frodo had just decided to flap his arms and fly the ring up Mount Doom and then carry Sam back to the shire at supersonic speeds. After all, it is a fantastic setting with dragons and wizards, and nobody ever said that hobbits COULDN'T fly, so why not?

As opposed to the sudden wings in The Dark Crystal, beloved by most?

Interestingly enough, "Cashmir" is actually a place mentioned in the original movie. Though it is a homophone for Kashmir (a region in India) or Cashmere, a fabric named after said region, it is spelled differently and is, presumably, merely a fantasy kingdom with no relation to either aside from a similar name.

I know this because one of the ancient kingdoms in my setting is called Cashmir as a homage to Willow.

Pedantry aside, yeah, the dialogue in that show just feels so terribly off.

I, ah, did mention that in my first post in this thread. The captions even spell it "Kashmir" in the movie (And while I'm in the captions-always camp, I still wouldn't accept them as proof that "Kashmir" is a coincidence while "gesundheit" is not. Particularly since the movie also spelled the name "Arik" rather often. If I'm misremembering either of those, I apologize, as noted below I watch while on the exercise bike.). And I didn't even mention the denim on the woodswomen. I'll finish watching the show (it's something to have on while working out) but it's disappointing compared to what I'd hoped.

If I missed those quotes, I apologize - I usually can't stand wall-o-text posts but wound up creating one myself.

[Jay R]

The best solution to the unanswerable questions is not to ask them.

Back in the 1970s, when I first started playing D&D, I tried to invent a background that fit everything.

I posited a mundane world, exactly like ours, until the light from the super-nova in the Crab Nebula was first seen on Earth, in 1066. It brought manna with it – the raw stuff of magic, which can be manipulated by mental effort.

At first it had little effect, except on children. If adults think their minds don’t change the world, then they don’t. But children believed the stories they were told, so they actually began seeing bogey-men, exactly as described to them. Over time all fictional beasts in European legend started existing.

Europe quickly went to ruin and civilization collapsed. A very few great heroes were able to maintain little pockets of order, because their wills were strong enough to hold people together and to keep the world as it was. Eventually, these great heroes died, but their spirits joined together, and became the Archetypes of the Fighter, the Magic User, the Cleric, etc.

People could start to attune themselves to these archetypes, but only at certain quantum levels. These became the levels of each character class. [This explained why somebody one point away from third level was still entirely second level.]

Native Americans lived closer to nature than Europeans. Their world view was to live with nature, rather than to conquer it, so their world changed less, and they became even closer to nature – and eventually became the first elves.

The world's technology cannot grow. If your mind affects the world, then the scientific method doesn't work. A Newton-level scientist who carefully measured falling objects would conclude that gravity is not universal, and that bodies stopped falling faster after 200 feet. Once he saw a fireball or lightning bolt spell, he would conclude that mass and energy are not conserved.

Meanwhile, phenomena are not repeatable. If the fighter does exactly what the wizard did, nothing happens.

I eventually explained character classes, levels, experience points, monsters, level limits for non-humans, weapon restrictions for magic-users, individual magic spells, why the culture and technological development is medieval, and a host of other things. It was carefully constructed and extremely detailed, and I was quite proud of my structure.

Until I realized that it changed nothing. Not one aspect of the game was affected for the players. This was all stuff happening inside my head.

I eventually realized that the best solution to the unanswerable questions is not to ask them.

Is the world run by the laws of modern physics until somebody casts a spell? The answer is that it doesn’t matter. One player can believe one answer, another player can believe a conflicting answer, and the DM can know the truth is something entirely different, and it doesn’t change the game at all.

Gross effects of these laws do matter and they are what people expect. Rivers flow downhill. It gets warmer when the sun is up. Poison hurts or kills people. But the details of how this happens? I won’t describe it, because I don’t know – or care.

[Similarly, I don’t describe the skin color of my NPCs at the table. (My players comprise two different races.) If one person thinks they are all one color, and another player thinks they are another color, and a third player thinks they are mixed, no problem. It doesn’t affect the game. If somebody asks, I would answer, “I don’t know – or care.”

So beyond a very basic level, if a player started asking questions about the scientific background of the world, I would answer, “How many points of Knowledge (modern physics) does your PC have?”

Your character doesn’t know these answers. Your character doesn’t even know these questions. The important question is how to stop the marauding giants, not how does the sun shine.

We’re playing Dungeons and Dragons, not Theories and Theses.

[TexAvery]

Lordy.

"Wanna"
"got the hots for each other"
"vermathrax(sic)"
"dog-sitting"
"groupthink"
"Fibonacci hex"

And there was more I can't remember in that 75 minutes. I think the reviewer mentioned in the OP just doesn't like German, because there's no other way that that word crosses a line the rest of this hasn't.

[Talakeal]

I think much of my issue with the "but but dragons!" argument is that, as with most "fallacies" bandied about on here, it is treated as a gotcha that is expected to be an auto-win when presented (as with a true logical fallacy), but is just a phrase for "something I disagree with". It is then weaponized as "thing X is objectively bad" as opposed to "I do not enjoy thing X because it does not match my expectations".

I totally agree that whether or not something is fallacious has little bearing on whether it is correct.

I actually think we are coming from similar places though. You appear to be tired of people saying an opinion is invalid because it is fallacious, and I am tired of people saying that an opinion is invalid because it pertains to a work with fantastic elements. Same argument, different direction.

[Witty Username]

The Matrix issues, as well, are an example of poor writing I'm willing to ignore for an otherwise great story. I rapidly mind-caulked it to compute power rather than electrical power and continued enjoying it. If that had been the point of the story (say, the machines searching for a solution to their electrical needs and finally settling on using humans as generators) I'd have had a harder time.

This is an example for me of the internal consistency is valuable, to a point.

Matrix was written to have humans as a power source for a few reasons but there is one I want to highlight:
For its original draft and pitch, the idea was that the matrix and the humans plugged into it were essentially a massive computer processor for solving complex problems. But this was thrown out for being to difficult a concept to grok for an average movie goer.

Whether this would be a better/worse solution is not what I want to highlight, but that the solution is perfectly compatible with the movie, if you assume that it is true that this would be a difficult concept for people to understand and articulate.

And once you start entertaining the idea that some of these people are talking out of their ass about things they have no knowledge base to comprehend, the movie suddenly doesn't have the plot problem, its just dumb humans trying to fight against forces they don't understand and looking cool doing it.

First rule of "Laws of Magic", don't assume any exposition given by a character is infallible. They can be wrong, lying, giving the short version, etc.