this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

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.

[–] Burninator05@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] kossa@feddit.org 4 points 2 days ago

~~Science~~ Fantasy.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

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.