To the people telling me to "turn my brain off" and "go with the flow": F*** you. A good story must be internally consistent.
If it's a hammy power fantasy, it must be consistently tongue-in-cheek and ridiculous (Dragon Half, The Eminence In Shadow) with any serious bits limited to being accents for the silliness. If it's a serious story (God of Blackfield, A Returner's Magic) it must be consistently serious with limited comedy bits. And if it's a "realistic" setting that bases its people and world functions on historical sciences, histories, and economics, the people must be intelligent and the sciences / economics must conform to real-world realities.
This is a story where the author is an ignoramus who knows nothing about science, history, or economics. So instead of doing actual research, they browsed 4chan, wikipedia, and reddit for a half-hour or so until they had a bunch of sound-bites which they promptly shit out on the page. The end result is an MC who only succeeds because the world is infected with a Second Order Idiot Plot.
Case in point:
Now, that's how it goes in the real world; people react to market changes and imbalances fix themselves unless an outside force is actively screwing it up. But in this story, every single farmer and merchant in the nation is an idiot, so only the all-knowing MC is capable of issuing a royal decree to make all the stupid people do the right thing.
I could give many more examples, but the point is; this story is the equivalent of the village idiot handing you the shit you just watched come out of his ass and telling you it's an antibiotic.
If it's a hammy power fantasy, it must be consistently tongue-in-cheek and ridiculous (Dragon Half, The Eminence In Shadow) with any serious bits limited to being accents for the silliness. If it's a serious story (God of Blackfield, A Returner's Magic) it must be consistently serious with limited comedy bits. And if it's a "realistic" setting that bases its people and world functions on historical sciences, histories, and economics, the people must be intelligent and the sciences / economics must conform to real-world realities.
This is a story where the author is an ignoramus who knows nothing about science, history, or economics. So instead of doing actual research, they browsed 4chan, wikipedia, and reddit for a half-hour or so until they had a bunch of sound-bites which they promptly shit out on the page. The end result is an MC who only succeeds because the world is infected with a Second Order Idiot Plot.
Case in point:
The country's famine problems. The author's explanation is that the increased demand for cotton caused by the Demon King's expanding territory resulted in a increase in the price of cotton. As such, farmers stopped producing grain and started producing cotton which resulted in a famine.
This is nonsense. As the supply of grain falls just as with cotton the price of grain would increase. The inverse would then occur with cotton. As the farmers flood the market with cotton the price would fall. When this happens the farmers would start producing gain again. Unless the government or equivalent authority was actively ruining the market for some reason (see: US Dust Bowl and Agricultural Adjustment Act), there is no way that simply growing cash crops would ever result in a famine.
This is nonsense. As the supply of grain falls just as with cotton the price of grain would increase. The inverse would then occur with cotton. As the farmers flood the market with cotton the price would fall. When this happens the farmers would start producing gain again. Unless the government or equivalent authority was actively ruining the market for some reason (see: US Dust Bowl and Agricultural Adjustment Act), there is no way that simply growing cash crops would ever result in a famine.
Now, that's how it goes in the real world; people react to market changes and imbalances fix themselves unless an outside force is actively screwing it up. But in this story, every single farmer and merchant in the nation is an idiot, so only the all-knowing MC is capable of issuing a royal decree to make all the stupid people do the right thing.
I could give many more examples, but the point is; this story is the equivalent of the village idiot handing you the shit you just watched come out of his ass and telling you it's an antibiotic.
