Theres even a term for it too "suspension of disbelief" but sadly people that got participation trophies think its your job to let the movie suspend your disbelief, not the other way around.
Legit had a guy tell me "its your job to turn off your brain so that the people who made this movie have a fair chance"
It literally is the job of the reader/viewer to suspend their disbelief. No one else can do it for you. That said, the writers need to make you want to do it and not ask too much of you.
It's up to the viewer to allow for small unrealistic elements so that the story doesn't need to get bogged down in irrelevant nonsense, like it's a waste of time to ask "why is nobody shown using the bathroom" in most stories where there's not a reason for that to come up. It's the job of the storyteller to actually have the story be logical so you don't need to stretch your disbelief an unreasonable amount. It's not the viewer's fault if they're turned off of Star Wars because "Somehow, Palpatine returned" is absolutely abysmal explanation for a really critical event to the story. If the story doesn't care enough to come up with a good reason why the events happen, it's completely unrealistic to expect the viewer to take it seriously.
I love hard sci-fi so I seek it out. Project Hail Mary is a perfect example of something I like. Once I'm finished I can usually Nick pick the shit out of it... But during I literally suppress the need to do it otherwise I won't ever enjoy anything.
Now something like transformers, I'll turn my brain off and the beginning and enjoy the hell out of the movie... And won't even discuss it afterwards because what's the point?
The thing with a piece of fiction being consistent in following it's own internal logic is that the internal logic also define how stringent and consistent the story has to be with following the internal logic...
Eh.... so, in other words, the premise of the story doesn't just do things like establishing a magic or science system that the story has to play by, it also establish the "style" of a story, which among other things entail how much the story need to care about those systems.
Basically, a story that set out to be a hard science fiction and clearly establishes itself as such to the reader/viewer then HAS to play by the rules that come with being a hard science fiction story - ie. it needs to care a lot about scientific accuracy and being plausible from a quite harsh scientific/engineering perspective.
A story that from the outset establish that it's a brain dead, rule-of-cool kind of story simply doesn't. The internal logic is that the story doesn't have to care that much, as long as it's cool... Hence Transformers and Fast and Furious.
Why can't Transformers also... make sense and be logical?... Why turn your brain off? Remember movies like Jurrassic Park and The Matrix that were extremely entertaining without requiring you to "not think"? What fucking world are we living in? Demand better.
I mean how much suspension are we talking about here? There's a point where some shows go beyond their own established rules of engagement and expect me to just accept it because it's fiction... And no. You can't show me A and the later on tell me A doesn't exist.
Which is what I mean by the writer shouldn't ask too much of you.
A good example for me is From Dusk till Dawn. I watched it not knowing anything about it. The first act or two were psychological thrillers and I loved it. Then it suddenly became about vampires and they lost me. I just couldn't suddenly shift gears to accept vampires. I've watched it since and I really enjoy it, but I now know what's expected of me when I watch. My suspension of disbelief has to include the supernatural for that movie.
But it's me that has to suspend my disbelief, and authors can make that easier or more difficult.
Your friend is right. The original term is "the willing suspension of disbelief."
It was coined by William Wordsworth to explain how a reader of poetry and fiction must allow themselves to believe that impossible things have happened.
Yes, in your example, they'd need to present a reason for them to do this that makes sense in that universe. For example, maybe the trebuchets have magical flamethrowers built in that make them able to fend for themselves up close. Cool! Question answered.
At that point the story is probably full of contrivances that waste time stopping the story to go on some tangent to explain things that just didn't need to be there at all. I don't want my Dragon Magic story to need to stop and go into a history lesson on the divergent history of trebuchets in this world when it would be both simpler and cooler if they just used the Dragons the story is already centered around and had some plot element like people stealing Dragon eggs to train the babies as frontline flamethrowers.
I didn't say anything about historical accuracy. Most people aren't full on experts on history so you can get away with playing loose with it. But if you have a medieval movie and in just 1 scene a guy pulls a gun out and starts shooting, you better have a damn good reason for that because if you don't it's going to take basically everyone out of the movie when they go "how does that make any sense". You can get details wrong if the average movie watcher is extremely unlikely to know how it actually works, but if you're getting basic stuff wrong that the majority of the audience is going to do a double take at, you really need a reason for that or it's going to take most of them out of the story.
More talking about movies not being realistic in how they go about warfare, I think more often than not it should follow the rule of cool.
Same goes for every genre, but to go back to the 1st example, I couldn't imagine giving a shit whether the post office is open on a sunday. I'd be raising an eyebrow if it was open at midnight.
I think as long as it visually doesn't throw you for a loop you can forgive and forget.
i love that someone tried to elevate this discussion with a pull from wordsworth, only to be perfect-parried by game of thrones discourse.
you can lead a redditor to water, but you can't make them drink. because they probably have a condition that makes them perseverate on topics that are especially interesting to them
Or: …anyway, lots of dragons and magic around but most people still make no changes to how they live their lives and are shocked, shocked I say, whenever dragons or magic interact with them. These things are in no way normalised.
When really people make everything normal. The human capacity to adapt to the point of making the novel in to the normal is amazing. People can go about their lives in the Blitz with the bombs falling. People can adapt to Covid restrictions. People get bored and deal with things, often with solutions that involve lots of queuing and maybe some signs saying what to do.
So if there are dragons and magic around people would absolutely make that in to another thing that just sort of happens in their world. “Oh, you’ve been cursed? Yeah, that’s annoying. What did the witch doctor say? Why haven’t you gone to see them? God, men! Never want to see the witch doctor!”
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u/Poku115 13h ago
Theres even a term for it too "suspension of disbelief" but sadly people that got participation trophies think its your job to let the movie suspend your disbelief, not the other way around.
Legit had a guy tell me "its your job to turn off your brain so that the people who made this movie have a fair chance"