I don't get it. You're explaining how that story has consistency and internal explanations yet you find the idea of some expectation of rough, because all we're asking for is rough, consistency to the style of a chosen setting inexplicable? You don't get why people wouldn't expect that?
Why they didn't do anything with it requires explanation? Logical implications and questions being followed through? Sorta like consistent setting style and technology level, whether mixed from our perspective or not, makes the story more sensical? Well whadya' know.
IMO, it's not alternate history, because it's only faintly inspired by history. If I moved the whole thing to another planet and gave it high tech, yep, it could be science fiction. Not really science fiction, because it doesn't explore any science-fictionish 'what if', but where there is stainless steel and spaceships, there is a genre label of science fiction. I have seen the term "second world fiction", I think, but it's not a label you'll see in a bookstore. I think if I don't want to add the spaceships, I'm stuck with "fantasy".
Superman doesn't kill Lex (or his other villains) because, at the end of the day, he doesn't want to. Because using his considerable power to kill would erect a barrier between himself and the humanity he so deeply wants to be a part of. That desire is part of why he bothers with being Clark Kent when he could just be Superman 24/7 Likewise, I doubt Flash wants to be doing speedster things all the time. And his powers have potential dangers if used in the wrong way. That brings up a point relevant to the thread at large. Character traits, of an individual or an entire species, can be a rule just as much as laws of magic and the like. Why doesn't this society use magic to power flight? Because they have an ingrained attitude that it's not possible. Why doesn't this extremely powerful character intervene and get rid of all evil? Because they believe in the value of free will. Why haven't we in the real world colonized the Moon, even though we have the tech to do it? Because we've decided other things are more important. On and on, the possibilities of limitations are almost endless.
I wasn't referring to consistency/fantasy errors. I was speaking to the conscious disregard of the fantastical and pseudoscientific elements within those universes.
I'm not quite sure I understand the question, are we talking about rules the author creates withing their fantasy world, or rules that someone who is writing fantasy must follow?
Because the original question is so vague it makes it easy for those in disagreement to talk past one another. The more precise question, imo, would be: are there subsets of fantasy that can get away with little or no consistency in regards to their fantastical elements? And I would say, yes.
Ah, well in that case I would say yes. All fantasy stories have to have established rules of some kind, otherwise the world would spin into madness. Although, as has been recognized, comic books are usually wildly inconsistent, but in my opinion that makes them more enjoyable. I enjoy seeing what wild thing will be in the next issue, it keeps me coming back. However, these comic book worlds still have "rules" of some sort. You don't see Captain America flying, do you?
Fictional worlds with no magic or other elements commonly associated with fantasy are still shelved in fantasy (at least the number of ones I have read) and their authors considered fantasy authors. E.g. Guy Gavriel Kay and KJ Parker.
I don't think it was coincidence you selected one of the least fantastical characters in the Marvel universe. But why not look at his most supernatural element - his vibranium shield. Do you imagine there are well-defined rules about the limits of said shield? As a Captain America reader, I feel comfortable saying there aren't. If you dare to move over to a magically powered character, for instance, DC's Zatanna, you're going to have an even harder time pinning down the rules of her powers.
The Lions of Al-Rassan, and most subsequent books by fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay. The Company, and other books by KJ Parker. One might argue Gormenghast also falls into this category.
I think it would be easier having started with the accepted rules list for Fantasy and scratch the ones that can be reasonable broken. I do believe that if you want to write a particular genre is because you like it, for that genre comes with a full set of accepted rules you find amusing somehow. I guess subgenres are Genres with broken/altered rules. If you feel you'd like to read your story, break all the rules you need to. The next question would be if the fans of that genre are willing to accept your changes or not, and why. I find this debate more interesting.
@XEquestris Well that's a whole different issue lol The "Clark Kent" nonsense was created in the 1930s back when we we're supposed to give a crap about superheroes having "secret identities" and the idea that an alien god with nearly omnipotent power will pretend to be some cuck reporter at the 30s equivalent of TMZ seemed like a logical course of action...not even diving into the inanity of Lois Lane's "character" which seems to be a combination of Resting Bitch Face and an inability to tell human faces apart from one another if you put glasses on them. My mother, who also read comics a lot and was alive in the olden days, tells me the general consensus among comic book fans EVEN THEN was that Lois Lane must either be insane, or the glasses were some alien Kryptonian technology that cloaked his face, since no other logical answer was ever provided by the writers as to how "Clark Kent" allegedly looked so different from Superman. Now, looking back, its become a trope and a point of mockery to even assume that Superman would want or care or attempt to be "Clark Kent", and that Lois Lane seems unable to discern the seven-foot tall alien deity because every so often he puts on a pair of fake glasses. The term for the trope is "Plot Induced Stupidity", the idea a character does or says something idiotic because if they behaved in any way remotely logical, given the circumstances, the story would end before it began. IF Lois could break herself away and tell Superman and "Clark Kent" were the same person, like any normal person would in seconds, then his "secret identity" evaporates in an instant. If Superman acted the way an alien being with DOCUMENTED omnipotence and omniscience acts in any way like such a being actually would, he would rule over Earth and humanity would either be worshiping at his throne or dead at his feet. As for the "he doesn't want to kill the most vicious dictator since Hitler" argument is also a now well known trope, two in fact, "Why Don't You Shoot Him" and "Plot Armor". The idea is that, again, if Superman acts like a normal human would given the chance and the power, Lex Luthor would be the most impotent, worthless villains in DC comics. Ten Eyed Man and Arm Fall-Off Boy would be more dangerous, at least the latter has actual superpowers.
Neither you or I know how a being like Kal-El would turn out if raised on Earth by the likes of Ma and Pa Kent. Also, Superman isn't omniscient.
A fantasy writer (I forget who) once said something to the effect of: the extent to which you have rules for magic in your fantasy world is proportional to the extent to which you can use magic to resolve the plot. I think that's pretty good as a general rule. Setting aside anime and other cartoons, comics, and the like, modern fantasy tends to have a more solid set of rules than older fantasy (in particular, the pulp works of yesteryear). At least if we're talking about novels. If you look at the old pulps, though, magic was ill-defined and mysterious, and almost always a tool of the antagonist. Conan didn't resolve a story's central conflict by randomly casting some terrible spell to kill his enemies. His enemies did with magic whatever the plot required them to do (or R.E. Howard desired them to do), but Conan had to overcome it via brawn and ingenuity. There are still plenty of books where magic is vaguely defined and open-ended. Those books tend to either 1) have a whimsical or fairy tale quality; or 2) be comedies. In those books, particularly in the former which may have a more serious tone, you don't see that open-ended magic suddenly use to resolve the plot. That's a deus ex machina, and readers won't put up with it these days. In other books, from writers like Brandon Sanderson, the magic system has detailed and sometimes complex rules. In those books, you may very well see magic being used to resolve important plot points, because the author has already firmly established what magic can and cannot do, what it costs, etc., and now the author is bound by those rules just as a writer of non-fantasy is bound by ordinary rules of physics. It's not so much a matter of whether you can do x, y, or z. You can do all of those and more. If you want the work to be effective, and don't want your readers throwing their Kindle at the wall, you have to think about what you're doing and why. If you want a world with an ad hoc magic system, OK. You're going to get a certain type of world and story tone, and that's fine. But if you use that ad hoc magic to suddenly resolve the plot, readers are going to be understandably irritated. If you're going for more realism and seriousness in terms of tone, I think it is more effective to set some firm rules/boundaries around what goes on in your magic system, or in the fantasy world generally, and then make sure everything you're doing is logically consistent with the framework you've established.
Let me put it this way: if you have a setting, like say D&D, where it is EXPLICITLY established that you have healing magic, magical wards and weaponized sorcery, and as far as I know it can be bestowed on others (cast a healing spell on someone, boost their stats, etc) then why don't you use it? Combine it? If you have EXPLICITLY shown in this same setting that interdimensional and time travel are not just possible but practiced magical arts, and you can grant flight to yourself and others, which as far as I know is also practiced as a magical art, then why not combine them too? Why not explore and colonize other realities and worlds? Because if you did it wouldn't be D&D it would be armies of soldiers with regenerating health and magical shields fighting with lightning swords in the shadow of city-sized flying warships as they travel to parallel realities, which would be...well it would be a brilliantly epic fantasy series that gets turned into a multibillion dollar movie series directed by JJ Abrams, so that's my idea don't steal... The point is that you can obviously maintain the setting ad ifinitum, but that's a plot hole, a trope, it's called Status Quo Is God--it's everlasting and unchanged and can in no way be defeated or altered. That's why MiddleEarth has a history longer than human civilization but has never developed technology beyond the Viking Age, that's why Superman is still the cuckold boytoy of Lois Lane, and keep in mind there is NOTHING wrong with this. But it is a trope, and you have to admit that is what is happening or else the readers will see through you. Give some reason, some idea as to why this is the case, beyond just "I really like Ancient Rome so I figured the series would be set there forever". I can totally imagine with the constant magical civil wars between Gods that MiddleEarth has gone through a few dozen cataclysms that make Mad Max look like Disneyworld but if that is the case, say it, say "they never advanced forward because their world is a seething radioactive hell after God and Satan had a fistfight" because otherwise it just seems like you're stalling for time. I can to a degree imagine that an alien being may want to blend in with humans and may want to pretend to be one but you need some kind of reason as to WHY other than he wants to rest his spectacles upon his square jaw and pretend he's filming a sequel to Daddy's Home while Lex Luthor annihilates a country or three and he just sits there twiddling his tumbs saying "I just don't know what went wrong" like Derpy Hooves' humanoid cousin because otherwise he...well he seems like Derpy Hooves' humanoid cousin. So yes a setting has to advance, characterization has to advance, or else it's irrelevant.
Minor quibble here: I see you've joined whimsical with fairytale. I understand those two concepts can be, and often are, combined, but they need not be. I happen to be a fan of suspenseful and dangerous fairytale inspired stories. And in those stories the magic is often loosely defined.
Alright, I see your point, sometimes stuff like that gets made up as the writers go along. I suppose that is true within comic books. Novels, however, I would venture to say are slightly different, as they are usually expected to be consistent and have more thought out and established rules. That doesn't mean you couldn't write a book like a comic book though, just that it probably wouldn't be very well received imo.
@Bone2pick Well...idk, I would argue an alien being wouldn't even think like us so "he was raised by two sterile old people" was always a kinda lame origin, but fine. I'll concede that Superman, raised by humans, may want to I guess play dress up and pretend to be human--God only knows why, but as a lifelong comic fan I have to just clinch my fists and accept that Siegel and Shuster couldn't come up with a better origin story than ripping off the Nativity and replacing Virgin Mary with Blanche from Golden Girls. The fact remains though that yes he is effectively omniscient, and effectively omnipotent. In the former case, he has been documented as having superhuman intellect on an astronomical scale, such that he equals Captain Marvel who is stated to LITERALLY be omniscient, as in "he just knows everything" is literally a power granted to Captain Marvel by the Knowledge of Solomon, one of his powers. This power is described as, explicitly, the power to simply know anything he needs to know at any given time and it is shared by Black Adam, his main nemesis. That's omniscience, and Superman is supposed to be as smart or close to it, also if memory serves they said something along the lines of "he can process information in picoseconds", which means he could realistically absorb all the information on Earth in an instant, literally. So yes one of Superman's powers is either nigh-omniscience or actual omniscience, interpret "he's as smart as the God of Knowledge" as you will. As for omnipotence, I think that speaks for itself but Superman has MOVED STARS and can obliterate planets with a punch. He can breath hard and trigger an ice age, or look angrily at you and vaporize a city. Dr. Manhattan thinks this guy is overpowered. So yeah.
