[LINK] "Superheroes and Gods Just Ain't All That"

[rfmcdonald]

What Andrew Barton said at Acts of Minor Treason. Building fiction universes which make sense, and which--when they diverge from the world we know--do so in ways that are readily comprehensible, is something that's not only important for science fiction, either. Plausible characters and settings and plots count everywhere.

Sometimes it's difficult to really wrap one's head about why this is important. Recently I came across an article on Gizmodo regarding the Pentagon's withdrawal of support from the movie The Avengers. As author Spencer Ackerman put it, their reason was that "the Defense Department didn't think a movie about superheroes, Norse Gods and intergalactic invasions was sufficiently realistic in its treatment of military bureaucracy." Presumably, the implied conclusion we're supposed to draw is that this is ridiculous, hair-splitting stuff, and that the Pentagon is just being a bunch of jerks who want to cramp the movie's style.

You know what, though? The military is right. According to the Defense Department, their main problem is that they couldn't figure out where the US military stood in relation to S.H.I.E.L.D., which Wikipedia describes as an "espionage and secret military law-enforcement agency," which really narrows it down - and, hell, I imagine it's easy as hell to maintain secrecy over something like a giant flying aircraft carrier. S.H.I.E.L.D. has, from what I understand, been the subject of fan debates over just what it is for a good chunk of the last fifty years.

Answering questions like this is important. They define what you can and cannot do in a story, and as such reduce the unmanageability of everything being possible into more restricted channels that can guide the flow of a narrative. Something that is shadowy, nebulous, and ill-defined even to the people writing it does not lend itself well to the best writing. Creators need to know how their creations work, even if that information never filters down to the audience.