worldbuilding

One thing that I wish we saw more of was how things work when they're not functioning, like what can go wrong and how, and the janky ways people go about fixing it. I remember when the first trailers for Force Awakens came out, and people were bitching about how Rey's hoverbike was a shitty design and my reaction was like: yeah. She's on a desert backwater sifting through garbage. She doesn't find a Mercedes, she finds a fucking Gremlin, and patches it together well enough to get around. I want stuff that's poorly designed or that's old and falling apart. I want antigravity packs that are clearly held together with duct tape and bondo. I want magic mirrors that flicker and shriek until you hit them just right, because there's a defect in the scrying array that lets Hell bleed into the feed. Janky cybernetic arms that are discontinued and need DIY fix-its because the parts aren't made anymore.

It makes the world feel more real. People don't go for the perfect thing, they go for what's cheap, and spend their money on booze and junk food. The Murderbot Diaries do a pretty good job of this, with Murderbot bitching about how nothing produced in the Corporate Rim really ever works right. It's great.