Six dogs, four elk (one of whom I’m pretty sure was a bull whose horns recently fell off, and he didn’t like us being near his cows), three cats and one dumbass deer.
4d printing is not a thing we cannot access dimensions higher than the third
The 4th dimension is time. Here, an object is printed in 3 dimensions but is constructed so that the stresses and strains in the material that occur when interacting with some environment it is in (such as water), will cause it to move in a predicted way. So it is 4D printed. This isn’t the only research group studying this. It is what it has been called for a few years now.
oxford was built and operational as a college before the rise of the mayans and cleopatra lived in a time nearer to pizza hut’s invention than to the pyramids being built
I need a noncomprehensive history book that covers Known World History in time periods, like “in this century, all this shit was happening concurrently” and not just all spread out so I have to piece it together like some unpaid uneducated scholar
Mongols were fighting Samurai in Japan and Knights in Europe at the same time.
Star Wars a New Hope came out the same year as the last execution in France by Guillotine.
Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allen Poe were friends in their early 20′s.
When the Great Pyramids were being built there were areas that still had Woolly Mammoths roaming.
Harvard University didn’t teach calculus in its first few years after being established because calculus wasn’t invented yet.
Nintendo was founded two years after the Eiffel Tower was constructed
This is the book you want: The Timetables of History – going year by year (or in the earlier sections, at least century by century) and showing you what was going on in various parts of the world in several categories (e.g. Politics, Literature, Science, etc.) Super useful for visualizing what events were happening at the same time.
Does anyone else have that one friend whose sleep schedule is like an ever-evolving mystery? One day they’ll appear to be asleep for the entire 16 hours that you’re awake, but the next three they won’t appear to actually sleep at all. Sometimes they appear to be on Australian time, other times their schedule has adjusted to somewhere in the middle of the Pacific ocean. (I call this Cthulhu time.) You go a week without seeing them and you have no idea if they’re just really busy, dead, or if their sleep has simply synced up to the exact hours you’re awake and online. The only indication that they’re still in this mortal coil is vague posts about grocery shopping that pop up on their blogs at 4:12AM.
I’m horrified at myself because I randomly decided on 4:12AM for an obscure and horrible hour in the morning, but after I posted I glanced down at the clock and
did i just vaguepost about myself
There are two things I love about this post:
the number of people who are, with apologies, That Friend
the fact it keeps getting splorts of notes every day at 4:12am
Replaying Alice: The Madness Returns, and now that I’m on a proper TV I’m seeing creepy shit at the orphanage. All the kids are wearing numbers. Which… Yeaaaah. Given what I know about the game…
So I assume by “realistic” you mean depicting materials on screen that could be reasonably, scientifically happy in the real world. There are also big issues fandoms can have with continuity, in which the story does not align between all parts of its franchise (or even within one part of the same story). But let’s talk realism.
Realism in many ways is overrated. As you say, it’s fiction. It doesn’t ACTUALLY matter, and so long as you’re having fun, that’s what matters!
I do think fiction not feeling realistic can be a constructive criticism, though, depending on how the story is written. All modes of fiction have settings and worldbuilding that create a set of “rules” for what is or is not “plausible.” And if you fall too far outside of what is plausible within that worldbuilding… there are serious problems in how the story is written, and that’s fair to say.
For some types of fiction like Alice in Wonderland or Scooby-Doo or Animaniacs, the point isn’t to be realistic at all, so any zany event that happens audiences will take as a matter of course. It’s part of how this fictional world “goes” – it’s MEANT to be far-removed from the laws of physics, biology, reason, and practicality. That’s the way the type of entertainment here was designed. In this type of fictional WORLD, the laws are that there are no laws. Characters in Animaniacs are pulling pianos out of their pockets, but no one cares because that’s just the way this world is “built” to be.
But other types of fiction are meant to be taken more seriously. They’re still entertainment, and they’re still meant to be obvious fiction, but how they present themselves is different. They’re not meant to be zany “anything goes.” These fictional worlds have their own internal logic and structures – that’s part of the worldbuilding. For instance, in Avatar: The Last Airbender, there’s lore set up about the Avatar who will reincarnate every generation and who can control all four elements. All other people in this world can bend only one element (if they can bend any element at all). This worldbuilding lore teaches us audience members what is and isn’t plausible in this world. We’re given internal rules setting up this fictional world to make it feel like a real, plausible world.
Because of how stories like these present themselves, one character can’t smash the other on the head with a mallet and everyone turns out okay. This isn’t Looney Tunes. The fictional world isn’t designed to “accommodate” this sort of event. Nor would it make it sense to break the lore that was built around this fictional world. Otherwise, why would you have made that lore in the first place? You’re the writer of the story; you should remember what you did and didn’t say was “okay” for the rules of this world. Breaking the lore rules means breaking the very structure the story’s made for itself. That’s not good.
Ergo, for stories like this, the framing isn’t written the same way where “anything can go.”
Last, there’s other fiction that takes place “in our world” – to some degree. Historical fiction, science fiction, superhero movies in the modern day setting, etc. all may more or less use “our world” to tell fictional stories. Since it’s our world, and the worldbuilding is such that it’s supposed to be able to happen in our world, that gives us our perspective of what is plausible or implausible for the story, too. The writers are intentionally framing this story to feel like it could have actually happened.
So what happens when people are upset that fiction isn’t “realistic”? It’s often the case that what is seen on screen isn’t matching what the world told us what should be (or should not be) permissible. No one’s going to care about the physics in Looney Tunes. It doesn’t have to be accurate. But if you’re watching something like How to Train Your Dragon, where the setting is made to be like “our world + dragons,” then seeing really obviously incorrect physics feels off. We were given a world with a certain set of “rules” – once those rules get broken, we feel jolted, removed from immersion in the story’s world. What is seen on screen isn’t matching anything logical for this internal world’s consistency, so it takes us out of the magic of the moment. It feels… distracting.
That’s even moreso for things like a historical fiction. If the story is trying to present itself as “close to our actual past,” then not having the correct period props feels like ignorance or skimping on the genre. If people didn’t actually dress like that, or the technology is anachronistic, then the creators of historical fiction made mistakes in their own world! Those are mistakes. It’s not creating the type of world it’s purported to be creating.
Continuity in story can feel the same way. If a storyline doesn’t feel contiguous when it’s supposed to be the same timeline, then it jolts you out of the moment. No writers are perfect, but presumably a well-thought story will take the plot events into consideration and try to make them consistent with one another. Otherwise, that’s the sign of a poorly-written plot. I think continuity is overrated or over-emphasized lots of times in large franchises (that’s not how large franchises are structured), but there’s something to be said about a story feeling unsatisfying if it’s not able to connect its own dots.
Outside of worldbuilding plausibility, there’s character realism. Characters are “people” we attach to. Characters are meant to be personalities that feel like they’re… well… real animals and people. But if characters’ emotions are really poorly written and they’re acting in ways that no logical human being would actually emote… it can again jerk you out of the storytelling moment. It’s again possibly poor writing.
There are laws that need to be followed in fiction. Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it can go without logic or internally-consistent worldbuilding structures. We still need characters to be reasonable in how they emote, think, and respond to situations around them. However the worldbuilding is structured, we can expect certain things of how that setting will work with the story. If things are inconsistent between what the story “says” it should be, and what the story actually does, it throws us out of the moment and makes the fictional world unsuccessful.
Fiction is successful because it engages our imaginations in relevant ways. Fiction can be how we find inspirations from heroes. Fiction can be how we find strength through trying times. Fiction can be a release where we release our negative emotions through story. Fiction can be how we find humor. Fiction can be a way to get us thinking about morality. Fiction can be a way to help us engage with the real world’s history or present-day problems. Fiction can be a way to let us escape into consequence-less imagination. But the point is… fiction is applicable. Fiction is relevant. But it can’t be relevant if there’s no sense of internal logic to the story (insofar as the story is written to have its internal logic).
I’ll get pulled out of a story and give constructive criticism when fiction fails the realism front here. There are times when a story should have been more realistic and it’s worth saying.
Of course people can overdo the desire for “logic, logic, logic” in their fiction. There are the fandom nitpickers. Youtube is filled with videos of people trying to pick apart “plot holes” in Disney movies, which are simple fairy tales meant to engage in magical imagination for an hour and a half. It’s not the biggest deal what age the Beast was when he turned into a Beast in Disney’s animated classic. It’s not the biggest deal if we don’t know where the king and queen (the Beast’s parents?) are. It’s not the biggest deal if the people of the village don’t pay much attention to the enormous castle near them. That’s not the point of the story, it doesn’t detract from the enjoyability of the story, and trying to argue Beauty and the Beast isn’t “realistic enough” is ignoring the genre and intent of this type of fiction. These things don’t need nitpicking.
And even in cases like a show like DreamWorks Dragons: Race to the Edge, it’s not optimal if the dragons are doing flight maneuvers that are obviously physically impossible for their design. But at the same time, it’s not the focus of the universe or storytelling. I’m more interested in having fun in a world with dragons and Vikings with cool adventures. That’s what matters to me. I can live with occasional impossible dragon flight physics just fine and still enjoy the show. It’s such a MINOR thing. Pointing it out everywhere would be focusing on material that’s nowhere close to the center of the show. It can warrant a valid constructive critical construction point or fandom discussion on what could have been more optimal, but if that’s the only reason people are pillorying a show, then that’s not focusing on the main intent of why Dragons was made.
That’s where people get a little too concerned with realism in fiction. And I agree with you – it’s fiction, it’s not a big deal, it’s about having fun and engaging in our imaginations.
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