its more fun and creates good drama imo

penbrydd:

Your reminder that fictional characters are not always expressing the objective truth about themselves or their world, and the author is under no obligation to explain that, when the character speaks.

‘They’re lying’ and ‘they’re wrong’ are totally valid plot twists, and they’re not necessarily retcons.

I mean, for fuck’s sake, in the real world, we’re still learning new things about actual history all the time, to the point where like, some books published fifty years ago, about things that happened a thousand years ago, are no longer considered correct. Or shit where people published ‘studies’ that were improperly reviewed total bullshit and it took thirty years for anyone to question it and then actually do the studies to find the actual results. We didn’t retcon shit. We just gained new information that straightened out earlier bad assumptions. Fiction can also work like this. You can build human fallibility right into the story.