| abstract
| - Works heavy on speculative elements, such as Science Fiction and Fantasy, often have an assortment of fantastic intangibles we cannot even dream of encountering in Real Life -- yet act in a completely consistent way, as if governed by imaginary rules of physics. Or at least, they do, if the writer knows what he's doing. No matter how fantastic the events in a piece of fiction, their Internal Consistency is what makes or breaks the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. You can have the tech guy of La Résistance explain in oblique terms involving the word "nano" why the Evil Empire's fairy dust superweapon needs an hour to recharge after activation, and the audience will nod its collective head and smile; but if you later have that superweapon fire twice in succession, you just made a Plot Hole and they'll all be at your throat. This is such a fundamental part of an audience's perception of a story that if you establish a fictional "rule" that isn't quite like reality, and then later break this law to make things act the way they actually would in Real Life, people will likely be distraught. Whether it's realistic doesn't matter. Even whether it's explained at all doesn't matter: depending on your audience, even "it's magic!" can be a satisfactory explanation, as long as the magic behaves consistently. The substitution of mere internal consistency for a bona fide logical explanation is a Necessary Weasel of Speculative Fiction. Without it, any instance of a wizard casting a fireball would quickly degenerate into an Info Dump of quasi-physics and pseudo-science. However, much like any other trope, too much of it can be unhealthy. If a plot-significant element behaves in a consistent yet markedly unrealistic way, you can expect even the most patient audience member to eventually want some answers about why it does, if only because they assume things are Like Reality Unless Noted. Consistency itself, too, can be taken too far; or rather, it can be misapplied. It's too common to see rules being "overdone" to the degree that it's their spirit, rather than their letter, which cannot be broken, essentially as if the universe was playing favorites. This is how you get phenomena like Plot Armor: Saying that no weapon can break through the Armor of White Legend is one thing; having a whole battalion of enemies surround the wearer of this armor and futilely shoot volley after volley of arrows at them, without stopping to think of any other strategy at all, is something else entirely. It's possible to break consistency without damaging the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. It takes work- basically, the work of making a believable case that the violation did not happen out of nowhere. One way is to have the characters themselves notice the inconsistency; this only reinforces that it is unusual and there might be an explanation for it somewhere. If none ever ends up being offered, at least it relegates a glaring Plot Hole to mere Fridge Logic. After all, if Magic is actually like science, then the theory will likely be wrong sometimes and will have to be revised in the same way earth science. This trope derives its name from Aristotle's Law of Identity, which claims that "a thing and itself are the same thing" and marks an important contribution of Captain Obvious to modern rational discourse. The title references the law's well-known symbolic formulation, "A = A", which is probably due to German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Related to Wrong-Context Magic, when someone explicitly has the ability to circumvent it. See also Beyond the Impossible where internal logic is broken for some reason. See also Minovsky Physics, which is a fictional physics with extremely detailed laws that makes it look like real physics, as well as the Cool of Rule. Contrast New Rules as the Plot Demands and How Unscientific; also contrast Gameplay and Story Segregation, which is an entire category of notoriously common Video Game violations of this trope. Examples of Magic A Is Magic A include:
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