The Irony of "Logic" we apply in Fantasy/Sci-fi Videogames/Movies/Comics/Etc.

SweetShark

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Jan 9, 2012
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You know, I had always had this question in my mind, but I never get said it for unknown reasons.

The question is very simple:

Why we questioning the logic of some Fastasy/Sci-fi Worlds we watch/read/play?

Here a specific example:
Lets just say we watch a film that is about a Medieval Fantasy World full of Dragons, Animated Skeletons, Wizards using magic, Impossible landscapes,etc.
Most of the times we accept that, because "Magic", right?
But when we see someone falling from a cliff and fall down to the ground and he/she survives we immidiadly we say "Bullsh*t! This is not realistic. He/She should had died from this fall!".
Or if a Hero get stabbed ,like, 1000 times but he still going, we say once again this is impossible.

We accept the impossible in Fastasy/Sci-Fi Worlds, but we can't accept when someone survive when he/she get stabbed or fall from a cliff? Why?

Sure, I am not a hypocrite, because me too sometimes think like that.
However with that said, should we overthink how a Fanstasy/Sci-Fi worlds works?
 

SweetShark

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Jan 9, 2012
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Pluvia said:
People don't complain as long as it doesn't break the rules of the universe.

Falling off a cliff in a world of dragons doesn't mean you can survive better than falling off a cliff in a world of instant global communication transmited through space.
The big error is we assume the rules of the universe work the same in every single Fantasy/Sci-Fi world we see and know.

Take for example the most Anime Action TV Shows we know.
Most of the heroes are like sh*t when they finish a fight.
But Do-Pe-Do, they are just fine after only a few day of rest.
[Naruto,Bleach, you name them...]

You get the idea.
 

Henrik Knudsen

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Apr 15, 2013
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It's called willing suspension of disbelief. Dragons are probably explained earlier, magic is explained earlier.

Just randomly surviving a fall from a cliff breaks the willing suspension.
 

Lieju

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It needs to have it's own internal logic.
Especially if it's plot-related. If the story pulls out some Deus ex Machina with some previously unexplained magic/science the audience is going to feel cheated.


SweetShark said:
Take for example the most Anime Action TV Shows we know.
Most of the heroes are like sh*t when they finish a fight.
But Do-Pe-Do, they are just fine after only a few day of rest.
[Naruto,Bleach, you name them...]

You get the idea.
And?
That's something that's established within universe, we know that unless you're dead, you'll be fine.
Now, if it broke it's own rules, like it had been established that you needed a lot of energy for a technique, and a character with no energy did it anyway, that's a problem. cough*Sasuke*cough

(And it has become a problem with Naruto and Bleach that the rules are unclear.)
 

Knight Captain Kerr

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It is due to belief in the other world the story takes place in. Just because fantastical things can happen in said world doesn't mean that anything can happen. These worlds have some manner of internal consistency to them. The rules of the universe may be different but that doesn't mean there are none. This isn't to say you can't make a work of fiction with very loose rules in its universe. You can and such stories are often very good. However if you establish rules and then break them you damage internal consistency. By breaking the rules of the universe the story takes place in you shatter the audience's suspension of disbelief and threaten their investment in the fictional world.
 

SweetShark

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Henrik Knudsen said:
It's called willing suspension of disbelief. Dragons are probably explained earlier, magic is explained earlier.

Just randomly surviving a fall from a cliff breaks the willing suspension.
What if the writer of his/her own Fantasy world don't want to explain how exactly a world work?
He/she want the audience to figure the rules by themself.
A really good example I have is the game "Yume Nikki".
The game literally never explain a A LOT OF THINGS about this specific world, but this doesn't stop the audiences to speculate possible theories for the game.

Sure, this will be very obscure for the audience, but for sure it will make it more interesting, don't you think?
 

TheRightToArmBears

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Pluvia said:
People don't complain as long as it doesn't break the rules of the universe.
Pretty much this. In fantasy worlds we're asked to accept that magic exists as part of the world, and we can accept that. However, we still expect things like gravity to act the same way, and as it's never explained that it doesn't, it breaks the immersion pretty badly to randomly survive a 100ft drop on to stone. Sure, it could be established that the universe has different physics, but it seems pointless and it would still be pretty jarring every time it was shown because we'd still be expecting things to fall the same way because that's what we're used to.
 

SweetShark

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Henrik Knudsen said:
Then the writer failed. Sure some might like it but I've never heard of Yume Nikki and I bet neither does at least 95 % of those who play games. And there would be a reason for that.

A good story needs logic to follow real world logic, unless it can be explained by magic. Mostly, some "magic" are just too stupid.

Anyway I also think you're debating what you don't really believe in, just to pad post count or just to troll. I'm not really wasting anymore breadth talking about this.
No problem, I understand.
I just had this question to my head for so long and I wanted to make a Thread about.
Also doesn't mean because a Videogame/Movie doesn't give clear answers to many questions is bad.
Yumme Nikki is one of the most popular Indie games in Japan and in general around the world.

Or even movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Donnie Darko, etc.
Good movies, they never explain nearly nothing.

Neon Evangelion, the ending.....one of the biggest WTF in Anime History.
But this TV show was awesome.

You get the idea.

Anyway, back to the discussion:

You said earlier this is a big failure for the writer. Sure, if only apply to the heroes of a story.
What if these broken rules apply as well to anyone?
What if the bad guy also is super powerfull and only got kill after 2000 stabs or hits?
What if a small child survived a big fall from cliff?
And you know what? These specific examples happens a lot.
Sure, not the best writting, but at least the "broken" rules of universe of a Fantasy/Sci-Fi world apply for everyone.
 

Da Orky Man

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Apr 24, 2011
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Internal logic.

Basically, if something is different in this universe, there should be a good reason for this and they should establish it. For example, I'm fine with FTL travel in sci-fi because it serves a purpose, to allow the characters to visit various worlds and such. What I am not ok with, as everyone is saying, is if a character, for no apparent reason, survives a 100 metre drop onto jagged rocks with nary a bruise. Sure, you could say that gravity is a bit weird here, but if that was the case, then birds should fly different, planes would be of a completely different design and so on.
 

Lieju

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SweetShark said:
Henrik Knudsen said:
It's called willing suspension of disbelief. Dragons are probably explained earlier, magic is explained earlier.

Just randomly surviving a fall from a cliff breaks the willing suspension.
What if the writer of his/her own Fantasy world don't want to explain how exactly a world work?
He/she want the audience to figure the rules by themself.
A really good example I have is the game "Yume Nikki".
The game literally never explain a A LOT OF THINGS about this specific world, but this doesn't stop the audiences to speculate possible theories for the game.

Sure, this will be very obscure for the audience, but for sure it will make it more interesting, don't you think?
It depends on what the story is about.

Philip K Dick is one of my favourite authors, and he just throws in stuff like androids or time-travel to get the characters into situations he wants.
One of the books has a drug that let's you time-travel and it's not explained at all. But you don't have to understand it because the point is that the main character can travel to meet his future self and this is used to depict his self-hate and inability to get away from the destructive marriage to a drug-addict.

But if this story was about the technology and the plot was about time-travel, it wouldn't work.

if the author explains nothing (especially if the characters know things the audience doesn't) it becomes easily frustrating and difficult to get invested.

SweetShark said:
Neon Evangelion, the ending.....one of the biggest WTF in Anime History.
But this TV show was awesome.
Because, much like with Philip K Dick, the fantastical elements weren't the point, but the human relationships. And in that case, those needed to be realistic and consistent.
 

Rob Robson

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Feb 21, 2013
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SweetShark said:
Why we questioning the logic of some Fastasy/Sci-fi Worlds we watch/read/play?
Because suspension of disbelief is an instrumental prerequisite for any immersion into a story, and without it you can not have motivation, unless suspension of disbelief is replaced by something that removes the need for suspension of disbelief, like comedy.

To your example: You can not change gravity for plot armor reasons if you portray how gravity works in a work to be similar to our day-to-day gravity on Earth.

Thread over.
 

Slycne

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Feb 19, 2006
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Because often the best fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural settings have clearly defined internal consistencies. If the author constantly pulls "because magic" to explain everything this is the crutch of weak writing and will usually lead to a worse story.

A scene or situation being out of character for the setting is no less jarring than a character acting out of character.
 

Vegosiux

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May 18, 2011
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Here's the thing with fiction.

It doesn't have to be realistic. It just has to be believable.

Slycne said:
Because often the best fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural settings have clearly defined internal consistencies. If the author constantly pulls "because magic" to explain everything this is the crutch of weak writing and will usually lead to a worse story.

A scene or situation being out of character for the setting is no less jarring than a character acting out of character.
And this is pretty much what I wanted to say, yes. A fictional story has to have internal consistency.
 

hermes

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Its about internal consistency. The public can accept that a character falls several feet and lands fine, but only if you previously established that. If you showed than the world works in similar ways (meaning people just doesn't jump buildings on single leaps), or the character does not have superhuman agility, they might be put down when it shows abilities that he didn't have a few minutes earlier.
 

darkstarangel

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I think we tend to call bullshit if the exceptions to the rule aren't explained or demonstrated. When we see dragons it becomes appearent that dragons are apart of this universe because they arent in ours (as far as we know) but if someone takes a huge dive off a cliff & lands or hits the ground but brushes it off like a trip then we impose our understandings of this worlds rules onto the rules of the fantasy universe, unless it is explained that this is the case or demonstrated by everyone doing it like its a normal thing. Remember how the characters in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon just suddenly flew & glided all through out the movie? Thats because, despite there being no explanation, everyone did it & was casual about it. Not one person in the movie looked puzzled when they saw it, unlike everyone in the audience seeing it in the first scene it happened. If it just happened once in the film everyone would be like WTF was that?!

Unlike Iron Man. As much as I love these movies they are so filled with physics violations, such as the first suit Tony makes in the cave. He flies off into the air & suddenly lands smack bang right into the sand, without any injury or broken bones. The exception to the rule in these movies is the suit itself, functioning totally on science, but without any explanation as to how the suit can protect a human body from the force & momentum of such an impact. Therefore, being based on science, all rules in that movies universe are subject to the sciences of our own universe unless exceptions to those rules are elaborated upon.

Communication is the key.
 

IronMit

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SweetShark said:
The big error is we assume the rules of the universe work the same in every single Fantasy/Sci-Fi world we see and know.
That would not be the viewer's error, it's the film/game's/show's error, if an audience member makes that error then the movie/director/writer has failed. If Hans Solo got shot through the head instead of carbon frozen and survived that would be a problem

Throughout a straightforward film, weather it be fantasy or techy, the viewer will be told the rules and limitations of the universe (eg. technology/ magic). What happens after the fundamentals have been established must follow the fiction's own rules.

If someone gets stabbed a million times and doesn't die and that part has a crap explanation then that is the part that stands out....not the fact their happen to be alien's in that same film.

One example is nobody has a problem that superman having superpowers. That is the suspension of disbelieve we accept for that film. The 'what if'. However some people find it stupid he can disguise himself with glasses and nobody even comments on the resemblance.

Obviously, you get film where unexplained things happen and it's about how the character deals with it ALA Donnie Darko.

Next time you wonder if something is a plot hole/poor writing ask yourself if the plot hole is covered in the 'what if' suspension of disbelieve scenario of the fiction; If it hasn't been addressed in the first act then it's poor writing.
 

DrOswald

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SweetShark said:
You know, I had always had this question in my mind, but I never get said it for unknown reasons.

The question is very simple:

Why we questioning the logic of some Fastasy/Sci-fi Worlds we watch/read/play?

Here a specific example:
Lets just say we watch a film that is about a Medieval Fantasy World full of Dragons, Animated Skeletons, Wizards using magic, Impossible landscapes,etc.
Most of the times we accept that, because "Magic", right?
But when we see someone falling from a cliff and fall down to the ground and he/she survives we immidiadly we say "Bullsh*t! This is not realistic. He/She should had died from this fall!".
Or if a Hero get stabbed ,like, 1000 times but he still going, we say once again this is impossible.

We accept the impossible in Fastasy/Sci-Fi Worlds, but we can't accept when someone survive when he/she get stabbed or fall from a cliff? Why?

Sure, I am not a hypocrite, because me too sometimes think like that.
However with that said, should we overthink how a Fanstasy/Sci-Fi worlds works?
We accept certain things within fantasy/sci-fi, etc. because they have been explained in universe. Basically, all fictional worlds are based on our world. Changes can be made to that base but the universe should still remain consistent. Skeletons animate because there is magic involved. This breaks the normal way things work but it does not break the rules of that world.

On the other hand a person falling from a high cliff without injury may break the established rules of the world. Then again it may not. It all depends on tone and what has been established. In many anime I would expect people falling from great heights to survive because usually the setting and tone allows for it. I never wonder why falling off a cliff does not kill Wiley Coyote. But I do wonder how batman and Rachel fell off that skyscraper onto a car without so much as a scratch (Dark Knight).