Fantasy Does Not Excuse Impossibility - Magic Systems and Limitations in Fantasy Settings.

This is why I hate people who said, "there are dragons and ice zombies and you are bitching about how illogical it is for characters to traveling very fast?"

"You can ask an audience to believe the impossible, but not the improbable" is one of my favorite quotes.

One of the things that irks me most is when discussing continuity and realism in a story is when someone says "well it's fantasy." One of my pet peeves lol.

I like Tolkiens gap between Ilúvatar & Ainur as mythology base: "Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor, but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined."

We prefer probable impossibility over improbable possibility - Aristotle's Poetics.

Limitations are the breeding ground for creativity so it's a great way to show a characters intelligence and discipline.

To give an example where this totally failed: Suicide Squad. Enchantress is established to be enormously powerful but her heart is her weakness. However she manages to get her heart back, which would imply she is pretty much undefeatable... Until the plot suddenly decides she isn't and a normal human just kills her. There was no explanation given to how they manage to beat her, no plan to circumvent her power or to outsmart her.

The title of this video describes my entire movie going experience. Thank you.

The Most important point here is that no one should ever be "all powerful" and when a character has "god mode" and cant fail at anything - there is no threat to that character and the whole movie becomes boring and we stop dont care ...

That's what I love about Sanderson, Mistborn has one of the most beautiful Magical Systems in its simplicity and adherence to physical laws, ok we're not debating where metals go when you burn them; they're just energy, but you can't push something that weights more than you, you'd be propelled and other examples of cool limitations to it that makes sense!!! and the Stormlight Archive is just awesome!

My issue with the new Star Wars has less to do with "magic systems" and more to do with contradicting universe physics. Between the Interdictor Cruiser in Rebels, the hyperspace jumps while in a gravity well during Rogue One and TFA, and the FTL ram in TLJ, the rules of hyperspace are really broken.

Excellent argument. Another really annoying apologist argument is that since all of the star wars movies follow the same formula then it is okay for Star Wars 7 to do the same thing. The problem with that is that criticism of star wars 7 is a rip off is not simply that it followed the formula but rather that it followed the formula in a way that created a story that made no sense, relied more on call backs to the original three movies than contributing any thing new (the only meaningfully new thing was Finn), and failed to advance the plot of the star wars universe.

I've only seen a handful of your videos thus far, but I have to say that I appreciate the logical approach you take in explaining your viewpoint. Well done sir!

some people define science fiction as a story taking place in possible worlds, and fantasy as a story taking place in impossible worlds. The problem with some fantasy is that it's inconsistent within its own established rules

"I can break a man's leg with a chicken bone." "Do you have any chicken bones?" "No."

The important bit is that the magic system is sufficiently defined and consistent that the reader can treat them like physics in the book-world, in the same way that the characters need to be sufficiently defined and consistent that the reader can treat them like real people.

Great Vid - Really enjoying your content m8 i agree you cant just say "well its fiction" there fore anything is possible " thats not how things work

Interesting point about Star Wars being a fantasy. When selling the idea of Star Wars to Twentieth Century Fox George Lucas made a point to call Star Wars a Space Fantasy. Although the plan was to make the movie for about 8 million and bank on the Sci-fi crowd to spend about 10-11 million at the box office using 2001: A Space Odyssey numbers as a benchmark. Well the movie ended up costing 11 million to make and suffice to say the box office numbers weren't at all what they predicted.

love the magic in LOTR very balanced and not over powered I.e two towers when saurumon (prob wrong spelling) got weak after the trees totally destroyed the tower.

So I was today looking around some vids about storytelling, narrative and that sort of thing, when I saw a bearded guy on the side of my screen and thought "might as well hear what this guy has to say about such a wonderful narrative genre". And here I am borderline hitting the subscribe button right now. PS: very nice title, caught my attention immediately.