Discarded and Feeling Blue
It depends on if the setting is trying to be realistic. Using, say, Artistic License – Law for a completely fantastic world doesn't make sense since we don't know if the laws actually conform to our own.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Right, and if Artistic License – Law pops up in-setting, then that's called a Plot Hole. So fantasy lit has Artistic License need not apply, as well as your super soft sci-fi like Star Wars.
Discarded and Feeling Blue
It's not a Plot Hole, it's just art not matching reality.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
If a work is clearly taking inspiration from the real world and uses a recognizable system, but is adjusting it according to the needs of the story and setting then Artistic License is still applicable. It's important to recognize that the Artistic License tropes(s) are not simply about factual mistakes but also intentional deviations. So if Star Wars has a story utilizing what appears to be standard common law practices, you can still point out where it changes the rules.
That said there is also when clear fictional constructs are being employed, thus there is a difference between Artistic License – Martial Arts and Fantastic Fighting Style.
Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!
Captain of USS Bajor
Colloquially, the term Artistic License describes cases where the creator changed things intentionally and we know it, c.f. Destroyermen author Taylor Anderson deliberately using ships that never saw combat in World War II for his Portal Fantasy series so as not to insult the memory of real-life sailors who lost their lives.
In practice, on this wiki we've decided it's too much of a pain in the tuchus in most cases to try to determine where the author really did know better, so all the pages in that trope family are really just "work contains X counterfactual thing", with the colloquial meaning being the Enforced Trope variation.
Most of the Artistic License tropes used to be called You Fail X Forever or otherwise were implicitly for complaining about inaccuracies in works, and were renamed to get rid of a bad snowclone pattern and try and curb complaining by implicitly reminding tropers that inaccuracies can be intentional.
...at the cost of suggesting that unintentional examples don't apply. This is an issue we discuss every few years.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Sorta out of curiosity, would you say that there are any genres where adding examples of Artistic License tropes would not be warranted? I guess my question pertains more to when it'd be appropriate to add those tropes too. Probably very dependent on what caliber of Willing Suspension of Disbelief we're talking.
Edited by Lightbearer77 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 12:41:38 PM