The answer to 90% of "plotholes" is that fiction is about drama, theme, and emotion, not about watching a perfectly logical character do the most optimal thing in any given situation, or whether or not the made up lore is 100% consistent and scientifically accurate.

Just really sick of this idea that media criticism is about figuring out a more effective thing the character could have done so you can prove you're objectively smarter than the dumb author, who was more concerned with silly things like character development and plot structure.

Wow this blew up. Just want to clarify that I'm not saying plotholes can never be a problem, but just that if you're always looking for them and they're at the center of your criticisms, you're kinda not seeing the forest for the trees. Fiction isn't a logic puzzle to be solved.

Sure bad writing can break your suspension of disbelief, but even when a plothole is a problem and not just a minor nitpick it's still the least interesting part of a story to talk about imo, and it's frustrating how often people bring them up as a gotcha for why something is bad

There are so many interesting conversations to be had about fiction, and I just hate that so much of it is dominated by these extremely surface level observations that only serve to make people feel smarter for pointing them out.

For example, Avengers Endgame is a film I have mixed feelings about for a lot of reasons I won't get into, but "the time travel doesn't make sense" is a tiny droplet of a problem compared to say, Gamora's entire character growth across the two GotG movies being reset back to zero