Claire wrote: Fri May 15, 2026 8:34 am
@AdmiralPiet Finally got to reading this topic.
I saw it before the hack, then assumed it was lost during the hack because I couldn't find it in the book club. I really think this topic belongs in the book club.
Yes, in hindsight that would have been the better choice. I will move it after this reply.
I found interesting what you said about the level of detail the world building goes into. And you are obviously right that you can't explain everything, and neither should you. In a fantasy world, you might want to distinguish between democracies and absolute monarchies as you said. But I think in most cases you don't need to go into the details of how a fictional democracy works, like the intricacies of the exact voting mechanism that's being used, unless that aspect is of crucial importance for your story.
Yes. In most cases I think it would actually be conterproductive to establish too much if you don't need it (yet). Once it is established you have to stick with it or actively undo it if it hinders the story.
In the example with the voting system it could just have changed in the meantime. Apparently in Japan the size of their voting districts and seat allocation change relatively often. But if it is not important at the moment, save it for when you need it.
However: Some types of stories have to include it. In Peter F. Hamiltons “Nights Dawn” trilogy he is burying the reader under mountains of exposition and lots of details that play no purpose for the actual main story, like technological and political backgrounds, but it breathes life into the world and I applaud the man for how he did it.
But there is of course quite a difference between a short story and a 6000 page Space Opera. He had the luxury to use 1/6 of his work just to establish the world and the characters before the actual threat even manifested itself.
The one thing that I find most interesting to think about is under which conditions audiences are likely to get upset about inconsistent world building or let's say world building based on loose rules. And I think that depends heavily on the expectations the author sets. I want to go through two examples.
True. With Warhammer 40k I am willing to forgive a lot more than with many other universes, even though I appreciate any author who is willing to go for internal consistency. It operates on the “Rule of cool” Like: Dude, don’t worry about the details, just enjoy the fanatic space nun in power armour bathing the heretic in holy flame.
But that relies on the author creating a cool story, for the “Rule of cool” to work.
It is true what you say about TLJ: Had it been a otherwise great movie people would be more willing to forgive its shortcomings
2) I think people primarily talk about this and the hyper jump crash at the end being nonsense because they dislike the movie for more fundamental reasons and then go into nitpicking mode.
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Because Star Wars' world building, while extensive, never revolved around whether the large space battles made any sense from the perspective of military strategy
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So I firmly believe that if the consensus among fans surrounding The Last Jedi was "Oh my god, I love what they did with Luke in this movie!", then 99% couldn't care less about the world building issue you raised because Star Wars always prioritized a more fairytale like approach to world building than one that cared about whether the logistics of what's happening make sense if you truly think it through.
But not so sure about that. Surely there are things in there that are ripped apart and it is really nitpicking. But going with the idea that the audience is more willing to forgive depending on the setting, the expectations and the execution, I would say there comes a point where it abuses the privilege.
The best thing to come out of the new Star Wars movies was (for me) without a doubt “Rogue One”. I greatly enjoyed that movie, and of course I don’t spend any thought about the real life physics of space battles. It is a modern movie that does manage to pay respect to the old Star Wars.
The two Star Destroyers over Scarif seem to do little to affect the battle but Vaders ship fucks up the rebels easily. Ok.
Slightly bumping one star destroyer into the other rips both of them apart. Yeah, ok.
CGI Tarkin was creepy, and CGI Leia was not needed, but ok.
Thing that bugs me the most is actually that the Rebels needed just minutes to reach Scarif or the imperial facility on Eadu. If travel times are measured in minutes, why isn’t the whole imperial fleet jumping in once Scarif raises the alarm?
But those are my main problems with it.
Kinda like the damage on my front bumper. It is there, and I can not deny that it is there, but you normally can’t see it, there will be no rust as modern bumpers are plastic, and the rest of the car is alright.
There is a Warhammer book “Battle for the Abyss”. It is about a titanic Warship, the “Furious Abyss”. It could have been a good book, but the author made so many blunders along the way as to destroy my goodwill. The “Abyss” is stressed to be an absolutely titanic ship, capable of destroying entire fleets on its own. It’s armour almost impenetrable. It was using a cruiser as mere “targe practice”. Then why can the good guys fleet of three cruisers and some escorts hassle her? They manage to to heavy damage (described as a lucky shot, but still impropable). Solar winds will completely clow away heavy pieces of wreckage fut the plasma wake of the “Abyss” stays? It is stated that Vox won’t work once they are in the Warp, minutes later they try Vox anyway (without success, what a surprise) and then even later the other ship is hailing them anyway??? And so on…
Many people criticise the character of Rey, and her skills. Others counter with Luke who could fly a fighter and destroy the Death Star. He is just a farmboy, however is less criticised than Rey is.
But with Luke we get some hints that he has flown before: He tells Han he is a good pilot, he tells the other Pilots how he shot some native fauna on Tatooine from his T-16.
With Rey the movie hammers it home that she is very poor and has never been more than a scrap salvager all her life. The Falcon is said to not having flown in years. At first she is hyping herself up when starting the ship, and then she flys on a level of skill that would be hard to believe had it been Han Solo it his prime.
As for The Last Jedi:
RapeU wrote: Sat May 16, 2026 1:15 amThe Holdo Maneuver and the events that led up to it wasn't bad writing. And the fuel problem makes perfect sense.
The First Order had done something nobody thought was possible: track and follow a ship through hyperspace. The characters in the resistance literally explain in the movie it was thought to be impossible but then bounce ideas on how they could have done it since it was actually happening to them at that moment.
The hyperdrive doesn't use conventional fuel when traveling through hyperspace. It uses coaxium which is explained in universe and explained in the movie. Since the First Order can chase the ship wherever it goes, fuel is absolutely a concern because they can't get away cleanly like they otherwise would have.
A lot to unpack here.
First of all: Yes, ships needing fuel makes sense. Throughout Star Wars we also see ships being fueled up, but I think never really adressed, and it is logical they need some form of fuel/energy source. That is not the problem.
In addition: We are not talking about the hyperspace fuel. In TLJ the entire chase happens in realspace. But that is ok too, because the sublight-engines as well need some energy source.
The problem is the timing of when this becomes relevant. In all the movies fuel never has been a big issue, neither for big ships nor X-Wing fighters.
But suddenly all three ships that are chased are in a state of running out of fuel within hours? It is very obvious that Ryan Johnson needed a timer working against his heroes and couldn’t think of anything better.
Like in “Top Gun” where the captain wanted more fighters in the air, but coincidentally both catapults were out of order for a few minutes, and we ignored the fact that “USS Enterprise” had four of them.
Additionally, people shit on the Holdo maneuver as terrible writing and "why don't they just do that every time" but look at what it took to even be able to do that. Someone had to stay behind and bypass navigation safety protocols. You can't get a droid to do it without extensive reprogramming. And even if you could get a droid to do it, you'd have to either be ok with the possibility of flying into a star because you disabled navigation safety protocols or you'd have to reprogram the droid as soon as you were out of hyperspace.
Droids are reprogrammed all the time. Where is the issue?
Took Holdo a few seconds to disable safety protocols. Where is the issue?
It would not be feasible for every space battle. But a squadron of X-Wings or some freighters piloted by kamikaze-droids against the Death Star? Even if just a few make it through and blow some fat craters into the Superlaser it will have been worth it. The cost of some smaller ships measured against a functionality kill of the Death Star?
Like I said in the opening post: You have to think about how what you describe will affect the world. Clearly the writers of “Rise of Skywalker” wanted it gone too. Because one of the guys suggested to “pull a Holdo maneuver, do some damage” because that was so obvious an answer to a galaxy threatening fleet. Poe shot him down with: “That shot was one in a million” And I think people could live with it being a lucky shot. But General Hux knew what Holdo wanted to do and panicked as soon as she turned the “Raddus” around.
It could have gone like this:
Officer 1: “Sir! The enemy cruiser is coming about!”
Hux: “Oh, NOW they want to fight!”
Officer 2: “Energy buildup detected. Their Hyperdrive is becoming active!”
Officer 1: “The ship is lining up with us. Is she intending to ram us at lightspeed?”
Hux: “Don’t be ridiculous! She will go into hyperspace and skip right through”
And then it hits.
Make it so you would need someone at least somewhat force sensitive, completely at peace with themselves (as Holdo, resigned to die, was) to get the right moment. Like Luke trusting in the force instead of his targeting computer. Still problematic for me, but better than nothing.
If success chances are so low, why would Holdo even attempt it? But as an absolute last ditch effort? Would however been embarrassing if she missed and came out of hyperspace alone to be killed later.
Like
@Claire said: Had it been an otherwise perfect movie I would be more forgiving, but this would still bug me, like the travel times in “Rogue One”
As for the TIE fighters being backed up by the big guns: In The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch episodes, we see Grand Moff Tarkin be all about expenditure and cost effectiveness. TIE fighters may be pawns, but in the game of Chess you don't just throw all of your pawns forward with no strategy. Why bother sending TIE fighters too far out when you've got your enemy fleet on the run? That's the equivalent of having two queens on the board in chess with the only thing left as the enemy king and you deciding to advance a pawn to promotion. They didn't need them! Sure, TIE's are expendable, but not wildly expendable.
The problem starts sooner: How would the guns even begin to cover them?
Close or far, the only things the guns could do for Kylo is to keep enemy fighters busy. Like in real life where a machine gun operator could force the enemy to keep their heads down and give their own guys more opportunities to move.
But there are no fighters. I just watched that shitshow of a space battle again. Big gun shots are repelled by the shields, but they do nothing against fighters. Fine, shields had never had that much consistent use in Star Wars anyway.
But it is Kylo and three TIE fighters. One is shot down, the other three, Kylo in particular, fuck up the Rebel fleet. No fighters as they are all whipped out by Kylo in one shot to the hangar. There is barely anything the Mon Cal cruiser can do. The bridge is taken out as well. Then they are called back. I get that even the baddies wont throw away squadrons of good fighters for no reason, or reward. But even if we pretend that the big guns could actually do anything to help against the turrets of the Rebel ships: It is a cruiser for the cost of at most a handful of TIEs. This is exactly what TIE bombers are for. Any one of the six Resurgence-Class star-destroyers could have finished the job, not to mention the "Supremacy".
It is, again very blatant that Ryan Johnson needed the attacks to stop here, but because he left his heroes no resources at all he needed to come up with something, or rewrite the beginning. And sadly: This was the best he could come up with.
And it still leaves the question unaddressed: Why wouldn’t one or two of the Resurgence-Class ships fly ahead via hyperjump and come at them from the other side? There is no reason for that. There was a french Admiral who ignored a chance to attack Admiral Nelson when he had superiority, later he refused to attack even on direct orders from Napoleon. Only when his replacement was already underway did he move. But I doubt something like that was the reasoning here. Maybe Ryan just forgot, most likely he ignored it to be able to tell the story he wanted.
To stay within that chess analogy: It is a huge, 1000x1000 chessboard, you have 6 Queens and two bishops on the field. The bishops almost have the sole remaining enemy king, but because of the slight chance the king could beat one of the bishops you pull them back and have all 6 queens follow the king at the pace of one square a turn instead of boxing him in using their greater mobility.
Less people would complain about Star Wars lore and plot points in the movies if they would watch the tv shows as well because they compliment the movies.
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So essentially, if you're hating on Star Wars but haven't at least given the TV shows a watch, then you're just wrong.
I am with
@Shocker here. If I can’t watch
and enjoy a movie without also watching the show, or reading the book, you did something wrong in storytelling. Sometimes movies and the other media are connected, like Serenity and Firefly. But the basic story of the movie should make sense if you publish it as a standalone.
Shows and books may compliment the movie: as far as I know the (old) extended universe tells us that the X-Wing and Luke’s T-16 are made by the same corporation and use similar controls.
Lucius wrote: Sat May 16, 2026 11:09 am
World-building is important for me, but I'm inclined to let fantasy authors slide -- 'Whatever, you can't take the eagles to Mount Doom!' J.R.R. had his reasons for hating on air forces.
Yes. Professor Tolkien should have come up with some explanation in the books why the eagles couldn’t do that. There are at least some hints. I think the main eagle tells Gandalf that he is “not a cargo carrier” or something like that.
With historical smut, I try to be as accurate as I can. I like to think that I'm writing between the lines of history books, and it takes a lot of research. Inaccuracies and howlers interfere with my enjoyment of historical writing in a big way. Like there is a subgenre of Regency writing where aristocratic girls just go wild — like no, there were rakes like William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley (AKA Long Pole, and no, it wasn't because of his quadruple-barrelled surname!)
, there were married ladies having sexy fun, there were courtesans, there were girls running off to Gretna Green, but like promiscuous premarital sex wasn't really on the cards for an upper-class maiden... Okay, I'm rambling.
It is kinda funny: Worldbuilding is much easier here, because the world is already built for you, but moving in it is much harder, because you can not move the building blocks.
For some reason with that story idea I have, set in 1571: I wonder how a galleass works, and how the rowing works because I want to be somewhat accurate, on the other hand: Much of the story has nothing to do with history. There is always alternate history, but then again you have to think about reasons and implications…
