What common thing always causes plot holes?

[Frustration he/him]

So list what you find causes plot holes a lot, and maybe someone that did it right.

So mine is time travel, almost always plot holes. Brandon Mull, does it brilliantly and despite all but one of his series having some form of time travel, none of them cause problems.

[Karger he/him]

Time travel is the obvious one.  Super speed without aging is another and it really bugs me.  Flash + Superman just become an expert on everything.  You have the time.  Then when Lex shows up you know more then he does about what he is trying to do and why.   Also badly defined magic, and badly written geniuses.

[Mat he/him]

Time Travel mess-ups bug me SO BAD. It's like my fantasy pet peeve. I agree Brandon Mull does it spectacularly. However, this is one of the MANY reasons I hated the Cursed Child, the Harry Potter screenplay continuation. It just doesn't work at all.

[Frustration he/him]

Another thing, Mind control, I don't know why there isn't more panic whenever it's involved

[Use the Falchion]

While not a fan of using time travel, I do like it in certain stories since it does allow for interesting character interaction (T2, Fire Emblem Awakening, Avengers Endgame) or fun alternate universe shenanigans (Flashpoint paradox). 

Erratic behavior of characters or the erasure of entire arcs for no reason other than "new writer, new direction" or "we need to shake things up" really bugs me (see The Rise of Skywalker, Arrow Season 4, and Marvel's Ultimatum). Superheroes are an exception to this for the most part due to how slowly they age in comicbook years and how most of them are iconic/static heroes instead of characters with character arcs, but even then there are limits and fans WILL become upset (see: Spider-Man: One More Day and One Moment In Time; Tom King's current Batman run, and the infamous Havok/Polaris issues).

[Orlion Blight he/him]

On 6/14/2020 at 9:39 PM, Frustration said:

So list what you find causes plot holes a lot, and maybe someone that did it right.

Fans that fancy themselves to be analytic critics even though they conflate the plausibility of a narrative in comparison of "objective reality" with narrative device and purpose.  

 

Fans that frequent TV tropes.

CinemaSins.

[Frustration he/him]

2 hours ago, Orlion the Platypus said:

Fans that fancy themselves to be analytic critics even though they conflate the plausibility of a narrative in comparison of "objective reality" with narrative device and purpose.  

 

Fans that frequent TV tropes.

CinemaSins.

I fail to see that plot holes.

Are you saying I should just ignore them for the sake of some nebulous 'themes?'

[Gak he/him]

when the author doesn't hold true to a characters personality or philosophy.

[danex he/him]

I’ve never found a time travel system that I couldn’t find a plot hole in, (except for maybe Primer) so I’m interested in this Brandon Mull time travel, if all of y’all are saying it’s pretty solid. How does it work?

Speaking of time travel, I think the WORST example of it that I’ve seen is the CW Flash show. I honestly like the show, but whenever time travel happens, I just have to ignore it. Not only does it not make any sense at all, it doesn’t even stay consistent. If you’re going to have nonsensical time travel, at least make it consistently nonsensical. 

[Frustration he/him]

16 minutes ago, Dannex said:

I’ve never found a time travel system that I couldn’t find a plot hole in, (except for maybe Primer) so I’m interested in this Brandon Mull time travel, if all of y’all are saying it’s pretty solid. How does it work?

Going back in time only causes the past to play out in a way that makes you go back in time.

Basically you can't change the past, because it always was the way you make it.

[Bejarden he/him]

 

4 hours ago, Dannex said:

Speaking of time travel, I think the WORST example of it that I’ve seen is the CW Flash show. I honestly like the show, but whenever time travel happens, I just have to ignore it. Not only does it not make any sense at all, it doesn’t even stay consistent. If you’re going to have nonsensical time travel, at least make it consistently nonsensical. 

The worst thing about CW Flash is how fast he can go

He can simultaneously run around the world in less than a second but also can’t catch Captain cold 

Which makes no sense as the time it takes the Cap to pull the trigger he should already be dead a few times over

Just get the bad guys the second you see them don’t wait

It takes him an hour for an A-bomb to explode but when he sees someone bad it takes him like an hour to move a foot

It’s really annoying 

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him]

20 hours ago, Dannex said:

I’ve never found a time travel system that I couldn’t find a plot hole in, (except for maybe Primer) so I’m interested in this Brandon Mull time travel, if all of y’all are saying it’s pretty solid. How does it work?

The best time travel story, with an homage to the inherent contradictions of time travel in the name of the short story itself, is "By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein. 

There's a great radio drama version of it starring Richard Dreyfuss that was part of the 2000x: Tales of the New Millenium collection of radio dramas produced by NPR. 

https://archive.org/details/2000x

It's episode 20 in the list. 

The production of the Machine stops by E. M. Forrester is fantastic too, really the whole collection is a ton of fun. The intros by Harlan Ellison are great too. 

[danex he/him]

1 hour ago, Hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

The best time travel story, with an homage to the inherent contradictions of time travel in the name of the short story itself, is "By His Bootstraps" by Robert Heinlein. 

I just finished reading it, found it in a PDF. It was really quite good, thanks for the recommendation. I’ll listen to the radio drama version now, maybe look through the rest of that collection.

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him]

18 minutes ago, Dannex said:

I just finished reading it, found it in a PDF. It was really quite good, thanks for the recommendation. I’ll listen to the radio drama version now, maybe look through the rest of that collection.

Great, glad you liked it! 

If your PDF has a collection of Heinlein stories, I would suggest also reading "And He Built a House on a Crooked Hill", which is another of the very best science fiction short stories. 

Richard Dreyfuss' performance is perfect in By His Bootstraps, and there are some other really good SF stories in that collection. Honestly it's worth listening to all of them just to hear the Harlan Ellison intros. 

[aneonfoxtribute]

I have two very good uses of time travel. Sadly one of them is a major spoiler for the series in question so I can't mention it. I can mention the other, however. Steins;Gate! It's my favorite time travel story of all time, its time travel mechanics are very smartly written. I'm gonna give some minor spoilers on the mechanics in the tag but it's really nothing huge, this is more just a courtesy. (Hold that thought, I actually remembered another really good time travel story that I liked a lot. It uses bootstrap paradoxes and justifies their existence in the world even though they should realistically be impossible and it's actually really good, it's a visual novel called Remember11, check it out)

Spoiler

Basically, it's mental time travel based in multiple universes. The characters send text messages back to the past using a microwave (it's explained), and that changes the past by putting them on a different worldline where that text message was received, and the butterfly effect happens and creates some large changes, including what was directly messed with. Though nobody but the main character Okabe actually remembers the changes (also explained). They eventually make a machine that lets them travel back in time mentally by up to three days before the creation of the machine, at which point the timeline changes on the fly as you act and react different. There are also certain things that can't be messed with, incredibly major events that whole worldlines revolve around that have massive ramifications for the world.

Anyway as for things that cause plot holes other than time travel, it's making up the plot on the fly, or at least aspects of the plot on the fly. Dragon Ball surprisingly averts this despite being completely made up but it still comes up now and again, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure does this a lot, and even One Piece, despite how tightly plotted it is, creates some plot holes by aspects that weren't initially planned (most notably with haki and certain characters seemingly not knowing about haki despite the fact that they were well should).

[Spren of Kindness she/her]

I think time skips can cause plot holes, and occasionally having set dates for when things take place.  (If I could make a calendar in Excel or something, I would be so powerful.)  Mostly because even when writing things down, something will slip through the cracks.