When a creator answers a question about their work, should they provide an
In-Universe answer or a
Real Life answer? The former is the Watsonian perspective, the latter Doylist.
Watsonian or
in-universe commentary restricts itself to making statements that are sensible within the story's reality. Watsonian explanations are things like "Character X was lying", "He had plastic surgery over the summer", and "The main character fell off a cliff". A more precise technical term for this is
intradiegetic. Tropes which take a generally Watsonian perspective include:
Doylist or
out-of-universe commentary considers the work as a created object, and prefers explanations based on the real-world motivations or circumstances of the creators. Doylist explanations are things like "The author had a better idea", "The actor died, so they had to hire a new one", and "The author got sick of writing those books, so he killed off the main character". A technical term for this is
extradiegetic. Doylist tropes include:
The terms reference
Sherlock Holmes: Watsonian commentary relates to the
in-universe author Dr. Watson, while Doylist commentary relates to the
Real Life author Arthur Conan Doyle. However, they seem to have originated (or at least been popularized) on the
Bujold fan mailing list.
A modern example might be the proliferation of
Rubber-Forehead Aliens in
Star Trek. It is revealed in a
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that an ancient humanoid race "seeded" the galaxy with their genes, thereby causing humanoid intelligent life to evolve independently throughout the Milky Way. This is the Watsonian explanation. The Doylist explanation is that
Rubber-Forehead Aliens are cheap to produce, require relatively little imagination, allow the audience to easily read the emotions of alien characters, etc. (And budget was always a concern for
Star Trek; when Klingons first exhibited the
Rubber-Forehead Aliens trope it was an
improvement on their previous make-up!)
When
Playing with a Trope, note that sometimes a Doylist explanation is interjected purposely into a narrative; for example, in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail the Knights of the Round Table (or what is left of them) are chased by the Legendary Black Beast of "AAAAAAAARGH" in the common surreal
Terry Gilliam style transitional animation, and are eventually cornered with no chance to escape. What saves them? The animator suffers from a fatal heart attack. On a less absurdist note, the
Literary Agent Hypothesis is a way of smuggling Doylist explanations into a Watsonian paradigm by introducing a fictional author. And finally, most creators don't stick to strictly one interpretation, as the pagequotes from PTerry suggest.
In German-speaking fandom of Disney's Duck comics, the two ways of analyzing the stories are called
Donaldismus literaricus (which treats the work of Carl Barks and others as works of art and literature) and
Donaldismus archaeologicus (which treats them as factual reports from the Earth-like planet called
Stella Anatium - the Star of the Ducks). In the D.O.N.A.L.D. (
Deutsche Organisation Nichtkommerzieller Anhänger des lauteren Donaldismus = German Organization of Non-Commercial Adherents of True Donaldism) the latter tends to dominate.
Donald Duck comics are
Serious Business, definitely.
