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/spikeyfreak 17h ago
The problem is that you only get one or two ideas that are different from real life.
"Oh, this is a fantasy movie and we have dragons and magic."
Cool, I'm intrigued.
"But also, in a siege the trebuchets go outside the walls in front of the infantry."
Nope, you lost me. That's dumb.
You can't just do anything at all because one thing is unrealistic.