How to Address Bad Tech that Works In Universe

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Karza
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Post by Karza »

Setzer wrote:I have this image of a character who's like a 40k ork in reverse. He sees something that works in universe, even though it shouldn't. He makes it stop working through sheer conviction that it shouldn't work. Might be interesting to write a story with a character like that.
Been done. In some Mickey Mouse fantasy story, he and Goofy got transported into an alternate dimension that was a fantasy land. Goofy became a huge hero there, because his conviction that the evil overlord's spells weren't possible actually neutralised them :) .
"Death before dishonour" they say, but how much dishonour are we talking about exactly? I mean, I can handle a lot. I could fellate a smurf if the alternative was death.
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SilverWingedSeraph
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Post by SilverWingedSeraph »

PainRack wrote:However, there are times when the author is just speaking bullshit.

Micheal Stackpole in one of the Btech novels had this gem. Dr Lear felt that a man was "lucky", with a good prognosis of survival from a gunshot wound because he was not allergic to penicillin and had O- blood.

It even made the blatent statement that O-Blood was good to have, suggesting that it was the universal recipient blood ground. This as opposed to its universal donor group, and being utterly unable to accept any other ABO RH type blood.

A retcon here would had have the medical centre having just received a large supply of O- blood, IOW, using the unknown facts approach.
Mistakes like that are just... wrong. It takes all of five seconds to look up "blood group" on Wikipedia (which isn't always as inaccurate as people claim it is, although it is at times) to find out that O- is a universal donor, and that AB+ positic is a univeral recipient. Little factual inconsistancies like that are annoying.

<sarcasm>Of course, bloodtypes might be different in the world his story is set in.</sarcasm> <-- I've actually heard fans make excuses like this for such stupid inconsistancies. It's nigh on infuriating.
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