Things happen because the plot says they should. All fictional realities have this underlying principle to one degree or another.
It is the reason why
Plot Technology and
Plot Armor work. It's why it seems like
the world's out to get the protagonist. It's why the reasonable explanation is almost never true. Reality itself is mutable before the will of the plot.
In stories where this is strong,
tropes may as well be laws of physics.
Named for the principle laid out in
Terry Pratchett's
Discworld novels, in which this phenomenon is not only an explicit physical law, but has been codified, studied, tested, and may be the local equivalent of the strong nuclear force. In fact, it's also an element, narrativium. For example, if three brothers set out on a quest individually, and it claims the lives of the first two brothers,
it is physically impossible for the third brother to not succeed.
(Incidentally, you know how we've said that
TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life? Compound this theory with reading too many Tropes and one can get downright paranoid...)
This is at the base of things like
Genre Savvyness,
Invoked Tropes and
Tempting Fate, to name but a few.
Warning: May not apply if you've found a missing
shaggy dog.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- A discussion of this idea bookended a two-part episode of Suzumiya Haruhi. Just because you're in a setting that's perfect for a murder mystery, doesn't mean one is going to happen, right?
Comic Books
- Briefly discussed in the first issue of the DCU Crisis Crossover Final Crisis. One Monitor says to another, "Behold: we monitors who were faceless once... We all have names now, and stories. There are heroes and villains... secrets and lovers." Translation: Nothing happened to us as long as they didn't write us into the stories. Now we're in them, and all hell is breaking loose.
- Comics example: In JLA: Earth-2, Grant Morrison's Post-Crisis reimagining of the DC Universe's Mirror Universe (Earth-3), the twist was that even narrative causality was inverted, so that all good deeds were doomed to failure in the mirror universe (just as evil was doomed to ultimate failure in the regular DCU).
- A sequel had the Earth-2 supervillains realizing that the narrative causality law had failed, giving them a chance to win in their alternate's world. Of course the heroes, once they quickly figured it out, went on the attack themselves on Earth-2.
- In Marvel 1602, Reed Richards attempts to formulate this theory. "Benjamin Grimm won't be changed into man, since he is much more interesting as a monster."
- Morpheus in The Sandman, as Anthropomorphic Personification of dreams and storytelling, is obviously aware of it.
Film
- This is subverted in Galaxy Quest, where the man who played a Red Shirt in the original program is terrified that he's going to get killed horribly at any moment. Not only does he not die (was also the only one who wasn't shot during the Big Bad's rampage), when the tv show starts up again he becomes a full-fledged character.
- That's because, as one of the main cast informs him, he's not a Red Shirt, but actually a plucky Comedy Relief character.
- The Genre Savvy protagonist in Last Action Hero tries to exploit the rules of the action-movie universe he's in to his advantage, playing chicken with the bad guy's car on his bicycle. Just in time, he realizes he's the Plucky Comic Relief, not the hero, and swerves out of the way.
Literature
- Like Discworld, the world in Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series is governed by this trope (named "The Tradition" in this instance). The characters are aware of this and spend a great deal of time trying to manipulate/subvert/redirect this force as needed.
- Also from the Discworld novels, is the assertion (frequently demonstrated) that one-in-a-million chances crop up nine times out of ten.
- In the Science of Discworld books, the wizards of Unseen University examine "Roundworld" (i.e. Earth) and are surprised to learn that it contains no Narrativium - this being scientifically impossible, by Discworld standards.
- Also neatly subverted in Guards! Guards! when Nobby and Colon get all Genre Savvy and try to adjust the odds such that they achieve a Million To One Chance; it doesn't work. Presumably the wizards have an explanation for this too...
- Sure, they didn't adjust the chance to exactly million to one. Apparently, they got it a few hundreds wrong...
- However, the explosion they cause by missing had odds of survival that were exactly a million to one, which is why they don't die.
- Don't forget Lady Lilith de Tempscire from Witches Abroad, who tries to rule a whole city state according to the laws of narrative causality.
- The most blatant users of Theory of Narrative Causality would be the Silver Horde, a group of elderly barbarians, who call it "The Code". It culminates with The Last Hero's climax with the group of well armed, battle experienced geriatric warriors who only a few years ago conquered the China surrogate using the code to determine the odds if they could win a fight against a simple city guard armed with a worn sword. Who may be a long lost heir to the throne. They determine that it would be impossible to defeat him, so they do not fight.
- Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time: The three main characters are said to be ta'veren, which indeed roughly translates as 'Main Character'. This is (part of) the in-universe reason given for all the nasty coincidences that keep happening to them.
- George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire: Sansa Stark lives her life according to the tropes of bardic poetry. She gets utterly screwed.
- Her sister Arya lives her life according to the meanest streetwise cynicism, she also gets utterly screwed.
- ...but to be fair, in Westeros all kinds of life philosophy will lead to you getting utterly screwed.
- In A Feast for Crows, Sansa ends up poised to inherit two separate thrones (The Vale of Arryn and Winterfell) with an arranged marriage. Not perfect, but better than many fates in Westeros. Unless her luck turns yet again later on in the unfinished series.
- The Cineverse Cycle
Tabletop Games
- The Fair Folk from Exalted live their lives according entirely to what's dramatically appropriate. Their Shaping Combat works entirely by "rewriting" someone or something else's story. The Wyld even has paths known as "waypoints" which operate not by distance, but by where a person is in a particular story.
- Creation works like this in some ways, too. Many Sidereal effects work by setting someone in a particular role in a story...a role that happens to fit with the Sidereal's plans.
- Why do things keep getting worse in Warhammer 40000? Aside from massive inertia, mostly because the writers say so.
Webcomics
Live Action TV
- In Babylon 5 Marcus knows exactly the right time to hide and set up an ambush before some guards appear. When asked how he knew, he says it would have been the most inconvenient time to be discovered, so of course that's when it would happen.
