On Believability

[holland]

When we are interacting with some artificial world -- whether it be that of a novel, game, or illustration -- our ability to judge it in good faith and become genuinely engrossed is largely dependent on how believable it is to us.

Something being believable doesn't mean it's a perfect match for reality. Most listeners to our stories aren't actually expecting that. They understand (if only subconsciously) that we are always abstracting away from reality as creatives. And as a form of play, they are fine with engaging with the strange worlds we create, so long as it maintains a sense of internal consistency. That is (largely) what makes it believable.

The listener needs to trust that we developed this world with intention. Once we start to contradict rules we've already established or stray away from expectations established by our genres and such, they begin to doubt the validity of the world and our ability to take them to their desired destinations.

Believability is tightly related to trust in the storyteller.

Because of that, something being internally consistent won't always be enough. For example, if you give all of your characters short upper arms and long forearms, it might still break the viewer's suspension of disbelief. Not because it's inconsistent, but because they don't trust that you actually know how to draw humans. It is disruptive enough to the experience that it doesn't feel like an intentional decision.

If there were some normal humans as well, and a line was drawn between who has natural proportions and who does not, that trust can be earned back, as now the viewer can see you do know how to draw and that was an intentional choice. But you might still lose their suspension of disbelief on the worldbuilding side if there isn't a believable explanation for why those humans look different than all the other characters.

On the other hand, if you had simply elongated the arms without messing with their relative proportions (as we see in Sailor Moon), you'd have a similarly distorted art style that reads as much more believable. The character's motions would seem human enough that it doesn't set off immediate red flags.

As you can imagine, there are many spoken and unspoken rules around what needs to be kept somewhat logical vs what you can go wild with, without negatively impacting the believability. And these will vary depending on the audience you're creating for. Depending on their age, sex/gender, interests, politics, etc. different things will set off red flags that reduce their trust in the creator and thus snap them out of their suspension of disbelief.