this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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Yeah, not to yuck anyone's yum, but this has been one of the reasons why I always thought fiction in general, but in particular superhero stories, anime etc., wasn't that interesting.
Like, wow, you thought of some arbitrary description for how the villain is by far the strongest. Except for that other villain in the next episode, of course, who's even strongester. Oh, and did I mention that our hero is a total weenie, but somehow also stronger than these guys? Crazy, isn't it?
I know, you're supposed to indulge these stories and not question them too much, but pattern-recognizing brain says no. 🫠
It's not so much a problem plaguing fiction in general, but fiction that runs a long time.
If it's a contained story with defined end that comes relatively soon enough, the stakes can be relatively fixed, arcs can run through to a logical conclusion, etc.
If you have unending, soap-opera like story, then you hit problems. Characters can never actually be fully realized, they have to have their development paused. Any romantic 'will they/won't they' gets ludicrously drawn out. You usually get tougher plot armor because fans are really attached, or a revolving door of characters that you don't get attached too, or people inevitably managing to be alive after having died. You have power creep where insurmountable challenges get overcome through progress and then something has to reset the new capabilities to table stakes.
Not a big dragon ball z fan, I take it.
A super-powered character could have boring stories like that. What matters is the writers coming up with interesting questions that make readers think. Having super-powered characters simply opens the door to different questions.
It's why Superman has endured. Interesting stories
isn't that just a problem of looking for bad authors?
"Holy Generalizations Batman! That guy just yucked our yums! Doesn't he know fictional worlds allow writers unprecedented freedom to explore the human condition!?"
"No time for that now Robin! The Joker just broke out of Arkham again, and he's practicing unlicensed dentistry!"
This is basically the plot of all of Dragonball Z
It was certainly one of the examples on my mind when writing that, yeah. 😅
I think, it was One Piece where I first noticed this, because I actually tried to watch that regularly on TV as a kid, but Dragonball perfected it with the whole "Power level over 9000" meme...
That's fair lol. One Piece is I think one of the best tests of if someone actually likes shonen. It's got a plot, it's got characters that are likable, and character growth isn't just getting stronger, but yeah it's also deeply in the genre and contains lots of the shonen plot loop: meet new op villain who wants to do bad things, get rekt, explore/train/character development/make friends, fight again, learn more about the villain and protagonist, protagonist ekes out a victory, story advances towards new villain…
I like good shonen, but it's definitely a genre with clear formulaic plots for the most part, and it's the story that happens between and beyond those plots, the execution of the loop, and character design and power interactions and such that make it good or bad. I personally think that Dragonball sucks because it's very "and then, and then, and then…" without much of a plan or a story outside the loop, as compared to One Piece being the story of Luffy trying to build a crew, sail to the end of the world, become king of pirates, and take on the government.
Formulaic genres are ultimately all about execution, message, and just the general comfort of the fact that a lot of these genres tend to allow themselves to be media junk food. A whodunnit is unlikely to surprise you in plot, you know the first suspect didn't do it, you're trying to figure out why and who's being set up to actually have done it. This is why BBC Sherlock sucks in retrospect but so many people loved it at the time.
Think another example of ludicrous power escalation was when in Loki they just had a drawer of assorted infinity stones. Yes, played for laughs but the problem of escalation suggested is real.
Some stories use hyperbole for dramatic effect, so clearly this is a flaw in the fundamental concept of all narrative fiction. What a dumb take.
That's an awfully broad brush. A lot of the better science fiction (and there is an awful lot of really good SF) speculates on what would happen if a particular technology existed. You could say the same for super hero stuff, though that's often closer to fantasy. Yes, there are lots of examples of sloppy writing, and super hero franchises that go on for decades tend to have at least moments of ridiculous ability creep, but it's inane to say that things like More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, Blood Music by Greg Bear, or To Sleep In A Sea Of Stars by Christopher Paolini aren't really good fictional stories about people with special abilities.
Wouldn't Marvel cross the line from Science Fiction into Science Fantasy? Ignoring the metal debate for a minute, we've got litteral gods, a sapient tree, a rock man, a guy who shoots lasers from his face, and a thousand other absolutely nuts things.
~~Science~~ Fantasy.
I think the real problem is trying to keep a story going too long, and the need to escalate everything constantly serves to ultimately undermine how that progress feels.
The stories tend to be repetitive, end up where a villain gets a new MacGuffin and the hero has to get some new capability to overcome only for the next villan to have an even bigger MacGuffin, rinse and repeat with each time being portrayed as some impossibly large leap over the last. To keep characters going they time jump, they get cloned, they come back from the dead, they cross over from some alternate universe.
Basically, most genres of fiction have a risk of overstaying their welcome if you try to make it go on a long time.
Most of the fiction I’ve been exposed to (which is a lot, I enjoy it very much and always have) isn’t like that. They don’t just describe someone as strong or evil, they describe actions and events and emotions from a specific perspective and let you come to your own conclusions.
I guess if you like stuff made for kids, teens, and young adults, you’ll run into that problem a lot more, but it’s not actually an overall problem with fiction as far as I’ve noticed. I’ve never really liked young adult fiction though, because it’s lacking in depth, much like you describe.
I mean there are definitely good works of fiction intended for younger readers. Off the top of my head there's the edge chronicles, skullduggery pleasant, mortal engines, a series of unfortunate events. All things I read when I was younger and from what I remember they never did any of the "this person is eeeeevil" things, I guess skullduggery pleasant had some things verging on that but it was usually eldritch horror type unknown evil than straight up "bad because I say so". And all of those series had depth.
You're clearly trying to do this.
Holy crap I was about to use the same yuck someone’s yum phrase to make the same point. Keep up the good work hive mind.
Edit: To clarify, in response to the shit storm of replies you got, I meant specifically that’s my issue with Marvel movies, and I assume that’s more what you meant, not all fiction ever.
Eh, I was kind of punting towards all of fiction there. With something like Scrubs (if we count that towards fiction), it doesn't bother me, because the situations are realistic and then as many others said, it's about the stories that unfold in that scenario.
But even copaganda or trash TV will play up each new case, e.g.: "Jeremias has not touched grass in 17 years. Will our team succeed in changing that?" and "The police has been on the hunt for this serial killer for 5 years. After 378 victims, will Shirley Holmes finally catch him?".
I guess, yeah, it is also a matter of bad writers, though. It is far too easy to come to a point where you need drama and to then just make up big numbers with no credibility.
There’s a lot of that out there. I’ve definitely become jaded to the point where I will rarely adopt a new show unless I know it’s a limited or finished series, and one that didn’t just keep renewing until they couldn’t make money one upping themselves.
Yeah, I think you just might just hate formulaic genres. Let me guess, you also don't like hero's journey stories.
How do you feel about LeGuinn's writing?
Definitely possible. I remember being genuinely appalled when our teacher casually told us that most stories can be divided into three acts (Setup, Confrontation, Resolution).
Rationally, I've understood that it's almost like a law of nature. You kind of have to tell stories this way.
But on an irrational level, I'm thinking, great, they've spoiled the end of most stories. If they all end with a resolution, why even bother listening to them?
...that is somewhat of a hyperbole, but there are further subdivisions that make this even more obvious. Like hero's journey that you named, where you can tell that they're going to survive at least until the final conflict, and even then there's a pretty good chance for a happy end, because people like those. If my brain latches onto one person being the hero, it feels like I know the remaining story arc already.
And I have to admit that I don't read much, so this is the first time I'm hearing of Le Guin.
But it's not just the writing either way. I do also always feel like I might as well read about the real world before I read about fictional worlds. I don't need to know about aliens and dragons, when ants exist and are so much cooler.
I kinda get it, I found myself frustrated as a student learning about story structure because it felt like it spoiled all stories too. But rather than the framing of these things as laws of nature I think it's better to see it as more like known formulas for making a story compelling. The three act story is so common because it's relatively snappy while containing all the things necessary to make a story work. Like, there is avant-garde storytelling (especially in theater and film) that completely says "fuck you" to story structure, but at its best it's not something most people will enjoy. It tends to revel in the fact that it's unsatisfying or confusing, it looks at the structure of its media and asks what if I did something different. And it really teaches you the reason for convention.
But yeah LeGuinn's big thing is using what if scenarios to shine light on society. The main books people recommend are The Left Hand of Darkness which is about a man from earth serving as the initial ambassador of a union of planets to an ice world where everyone is both male and female, which is used to explore gender relations in the real world, and The Dispossessed which serves as more of an imagining of the problems and struggles of a free thinker who grows up in an anarchist society as he visits a far more geologically fortunate world engaged in a cold war style conflict.
I bring her up because her fiction isn't subtle about its exploration of real world ideas and themes. Ultimately I don't think anyone should have to like fiction, but I do think it's valuable to understand why people like it and the intellectual value we can get out of some of it