Magic A Is Magic A: Difference between revisions
m
pretty sure it works, or did work, that way with all natural science disciplines, not just earth science.
Superjerk29 (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Goo Monster (talk | contribs) m (pretty sure it works, or did work, that way with all natural science disciplines, not just earth science.) |
||
Line 15:
Consistency itself, too, can be taken too far; or rather, it can be misapplied. It's too common to see rules being "overdone" to the degree that it's their ''spirit'', rather than their letter, which cannot be broken, essentially as if the universe was playing favorites. This is how you get phenomena like [[Plot Armor]]: Saying that no weapon can break through the Armor of White Legend is one thing; having a whole battalion of enemies surround the wearer of this armor and [[Shooting Superman|futilely shoot volley after volley of arrows at them]], without stopping to think of ''any other strategy at all'', is something else entirely.
It's possible to break consistency without damaging the [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]]. It takes work- basically, the work of making a believable case that the violation did not happen out of nowhere. [[Lampshade Hanging|One way is to have the characters themselves notice the inconsistency]]; this only reinforces that it ''is'' unusual and there might be an [[All There in the Manual|explanation for it somewhere]]. If none ever ends up being offered, at least it relegates a glaring [[Plot Hole]] to mere [[Fridge Logic]]. After all, if Magic is [[Sufficiently Analyzed Magic|actually like]] [[Fantastic Science|science]], then the theory will likely be wrong sometimes and will have to be revised in the same way
This trope derives its name from [[wikipedia:Law of identity|Aristotle's Law of Identity]], which claims that "[[Shaped Like Itself|a thing and itself are the same thing]]" and marks [[Tropes Are Not Bad|an important contribution]] of [[Captain Obvious]] to modern rational discourse. The title references the law's well-known symbolic formulation, "A = A", which is probably due to German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz.
| |||