where the heck did "verisimilitude" come from?

[Draconi Redfir]

So... up until about two months ago, I'd never heard of the word "verisimilitude", which, as far as i can tell, just a really complicated and mouth-full way of saying "immersion" or "losing yourself in a story". As far as i can tell, it just sort of appeared out of the either sometime in the past two or three months, and has been used by a handful of GITP users as a really complicated way of saying "I'm invested in this story." But... why? Did some semi-popular media bring an obscure ancient word into the common tongue? i sure as heck don't know!

So where exactly did use of this term even come from? wouldn't Immersion be an easier to pronounce, and more understood way of saying the same thing? "verisimilitude" sounds like something you'd see in Homestuck, which uses terms like "Abscond", "Atheneum" "Dotesmite" and "Aggreive" which (to my knowledge at least) are all technically words, but who the heck uses them in a sentence? How many syllables does verisimilitude even HAVE!?


Why the sudden appearance of the vocal equivalent of spaghetti on the forums? Where did it come from?:confused:

[Willie the Duck]

It's been around in TTRPG (and related sci-fi/fantasy/superhero fandom culture) discussion circles for a lot longer than that. In general, I think it became a thing because people would call something 'unrealistic,' and someone else would come back with, 'you're talking about a game where firebreathing lizards battle spellcasters/comic where someone can violate every law of physics/etc.' One can go back and forth on a 'you know what I mean'-style argument, or you can change the term used.

[Fyraltari]

It's not a recent word in any way. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verisimilitude)

Etymologically, it just means "truth-like". Oh and it's a synonym with "realism", not "immersion".

Edit: Oh, and six syllables.

[Glimbur]

It's one of the words you can choose to know in Ogg, the caveman RPG (or is it Ugh?). Not a very useful word compared to Bang or Thing, but it is an option.

[Draconi Redfir]

It's been around in TTRPG (and related sci-fi/fantasy/superhero fandom culture) discussion circles for a lot longer than that. In general, I think it became a thing because people would call something 'unrealistic,' and someone else would come back with, 'you're talking about a game where firebreathing lizards battle spellcasters/comic where someone can violate every law of physics/etc.' One can go back and forth on a 'you know what I mean'-style argument, or you can change the term used.

h'uhh... literally never heard it used in that kind of discussion before... but alright.



It's not a recent word in any way. (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verisimilitude)

oh i had no doubt that it was a real, old word. i just meant that it seemed to pop up pretty recently here on the forums, i didn't even know it existed until about two months ago when i saw it thrown out in an honest sentence somewhere around here.


Etymologically, it just means "truth-like". Oh and it's a synonym with "realism", not "immersion"..

so it's believing the world is real VS believing you're in the world itself? Doesn't sound all too different to me.:smallconfused:

[Eldan]

I remember it coming up in RPG discussions for at least 20 years, now, it's Nothing new.

Here, for example, 2009 (http://www.rickneal.ca/?p=308)

Or this, also 2009. (https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-new-perspective-on-simulationism-realism-verisimilitude-etc.253804/)

It even Shows up in an aside in the SRD, on Gestalt Characters, of all things:
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm

[Willie the Duck]

so it's believing the world is real VS believing you're in the world itself? Doesn't sound all too different to me.:smallconfused:

All of it is going to be hair-splitting. 'This world holds up for me' compared to 'I feel drawn into this world' I guess.

[InvisibleBison]

Verisimilitude doesn't mean "believing the fictional world is real" and it's not a synonym with realism - it's perfectly possible to have a totally unrealistic world that is highly verisimilitudinous. Verisimilitude refers to a fictional world being plausible, both in that it resembles the real world except where explicitly noted and in that it maintains internal consistency, especially among its fantastic elements.

[Fyraltari]

h'uhh... literally never heard it used in that kind of discussion before... but alright.




oh i had no doubt that it was a real, old word. i just meant that it seemed to pop up pretty recently here on the forums, i didn't even know it existed until about two months ago when i saw it thrown out in an honest sentence somewhere around here.
Your experience isn't everybody's experience. If you learn a new word that doesn't mean it was just invented, it just means you've never encountered it before. Or maybe you did but didn't pick up on it, biases are weird. That word doesn't get much mileage out of literary criticism but still.




so it's believing the world is real VS believing you're in the world itself? Doesn't sound all too different to me.:smallconfused:

"Immersion" is the state your are in when you pretend the characters of a given work are real so you can emphatize with them. This is necessary for every single work of fiction ever. Verisimilitude is the attempt by the work to to mimic the real world or some aspect(s) of it. A break of verisimilitude often leads to a break of immersion but the two are not the same.

The Super Mario games make no attempt at verisimilitude, but are immersive nonetheless, because you care about the characters.

[Draconi Redfir]

Your experience isn't everybody's experience. If you learn a new word that doesn't mean it was just invented, it just means you've never encountered it before. Or maybe you did but didn't pick up on it, biases are weird. That word doesn't get much mileage out of literary criticism but still.

Well... yeah? i never said it was a new word though. i even said i was sure that it WAS a real word, i'd just never encountered it until recently on this forum, so i was wondering where it came from in terms of use. i figured some podcast or livestream or something started using some old obscure word (like Homestuck with Abscond) and people just started picking up on it.

at no point did i ever day "This word only came into existence two-ish months ago" only that "I only ever learned of it's existance two-ish months ago."




"Immersion" is the state your are in when you pretend the characters of a given work are real so you can emphatize with them. This is necessary for every single work of fiction ever. Verisimilitude is the attempt by the work to to mimic the real world or some aspect(s) of it. A break of verisimilitude often leads to a break of immersion but the two are not the same.

The Super Mario games make no attempt at verisimilitude, but are immersive nonetheless, because you care about the characters.

okay, this makes sense, i can understand this. Still think Verisimillitude is a bit of a mouthful and could probably be replaced with something a bit more possible to say, but hey, if it works it works right?

[Khedrac]

At this point I have to throw in a quote from the operetta 'The Mikado' by Gilbert and Sullivan which I think will illustrate the meaning of the word verisimilitude:

"Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

Said by a character trying to justify his contribution to a fake story about events that hadn't happened - said by the one who gave the lease plausible story...

[Willie the Duck]

Well... yeah? i never said it was a new word though. i even said i was sure that it WAS a real word, i'd just never encountered it until recently on this forum, so i was wondering where it came from in terms of use. i figured some podcast or livestream or something started using some old obscure word (like Homestuck with Abscond) and people just started picking up on it.

at no point did i ever day "This word only came into existence two-ish months ago" only that "I only ever learned of it's existance two-ish months ago."

You are correct. You did not. You suggested that it appeared to have popped up with great frequency recently in the forum, and no more.

I don't think any specific podcast or livestream instigated it. I think it has lived endogenously within the forum verbal flora and fauna, floating to the surface to feed every once and a while. I think you're just the guy who never noticed, pointed it out saying 'huh, what's that, is it new?' and perhaps a few too many people* responding with 'what are you talking about, that's been here since forever. I'm surprised you never noticed it.'
*we nerds are, as always, just a bit too eager to look knowledgeable, or better yet more-knowledgeable-than-others, in front of our peers.

I confess I am part of that group, but for a specific reason -- I thought I remember you partaking in the General Roleplay section, and there's at least one person present there who is kind of a mad prophet of the concept, keeping a reference to it in their sig and once getting into a massive slugfest thread on the subject. It seemed to me to be something of a forum staple or go-to slightly obscure term.

[Jasdoif]

As far as i can tell, it just sort of appeared out of the either sometime in the past two or three months, and has been used by a handful of GITP users as a really complicated way of saying "I'm invested in this story." But... why? Did some semi-popular media bring an obscure ancient word into the common tongue? i sure as heck don't know!I'm reasonably sure the Giant making two posts about verisimilitude are a big part of it; they (and the term) tend to come up whenever criticism of the current Order of the Stick comic coalesces around what readers are able to accept as "believable".



If you create a society that differs enough from mine that I cannot readily identify with it, then I ask you to explain it to me. You don't need to spend half the novel doing so: I'm not as dense as you may think. However, so far the only reason given is, "Because D&D says so." Well and good. For the sake of verisimilitude, I would ask you to explain in a bit more depth than a simple resort to authority.

Allow me to explain it in sufficient depth:

It's a comic strip.

No other explanation is necessary, because unless you have some weird mental disorder that prevents you from understanding the concept of fiction, you already know the "explanation" for any aspect of any story that differs from reality: Because the author wrote it that way. Because you are a real person in the real world reading a made-up story in a made-up world, and the real person who made up the made-up story decided to make it up that way for a variety of real world reasons.

Do you need an explanation for why there are dragons when the real world doesn't have dragons? Because it's a story. Do you need an explanation for why those dragons can fly when logically a creature of that size shouldn't be able to do so? Because it's a story. Do you need an explanation for why a human wiggling their fingers and saying certain words causes lightning to shoot out of them and fry that dragon to a crisp? Because it's a story. Do you need a reason for why that finger-wiggling human is a gay woman and not a straight man? No, you don't, because it's the least absurd thing in this paragraph and you accept all of the others without question. But if you do, then it's because it's a story.

Grant Morrison once said in an interview with Rolling Stone:

"Kids understand that real crabs don't sing like the ones in The Little Mermaid. But you give an adult fiction, and the adult starts asking really ****ing dumb questions like 'How does Superman fly? How do those eyebeams work? Who pumps the Batmobile's tires?' It's a ****ing made-up story, you idiot! Nobody pumps the tires!"

"Verisimilitude" is a highly overrated concept. If it is not a requirement for the many things that don't exist in the real world and could never exist (dragons, wizards, zombies, time travel), then it certainly has no power to prevent things that do exist in the real world from making an appearance.

What's even worse is this idea of statistical verisimilitude that I keep seeing—where the numerical percentage of characters with certain traits must match the "likely" percentages in the real world, based on whatever filter the proponent chooses to determine what is likely. This argument is utter unadulterated garbage. It's garbage because stories are about protagonists and protagonists are usually unusual. There are only like 4 Force-wielders in a galaxy of trillions at the start of Star Wars, yet by the end of second movie they've all appeared as part of the narrative. Is anyone complaining that Star Wars breaks verisimilitude because such a small minority group is so over-represented? No, because it happens to be a story about those people who belong to that group. Likewise, if a story has a percentage of LGBTQ+ characters that is higher than the statistical occurrence of LGBTQ+ people in the real world, does that break verisimilitude? No, because it happens to be a story about those people who belong to that group.

The inherent garbageness of the statistical verisimilitude argument cuts both ways, incidentally. It's not really valid to say, "Half of all the people in the real world are women, therefore half of the characters in your story must be women or it breaks verisimilitude." Not true; it might happen to be a story about people who are male—say, a love story between two gay men. A much, much better argument is, "Half of all the people in the real world are women, and those women buy comic books, too, so you better get your thumb out of your ass and draw some women."

An all-male (or predominantly male) story might be a valid artistic choice but doing so opens one up to an assortment of social and economic pressures in the real world. The artist then needs to decide how much he or she cares about those reactions and what it says about them and their work. It's totally valid to then say, "Screw it, my story doesn't have any women in it, deal with it." However, if one does that, one needs to be prepared to accept the consequences of that decision, which may include low sales, poor critical response, being labeled a sexist (or worse), etc. If one believes in one's artistic vision enough to weather that storm, then hey, have at it.

Me? Not only do I not want to sail into that particular tempest, I wasn't even aware I was on that course until it was pointed out to me. And it's tough to turn a ship as big as OOTS around, especially at this late date in the narrative's journey where there are so few characters left to enter the story, but I'm still trying. It would have been totally valid, artistically, for me to plant my flag and say, "No, OOTS needs to be predominantly male for Reasons," and then it would have been equally valid for people to say, "OK, well, that's not really my cup of tea so I'll go throw my money at some other more diverse comic strip." I have no reason to die on that particular hill, however, as I happen to agree with the general notions of representation that have been raised and am somewhat embarrassed that I didn't notice the problems involved sooner.

When you say (earlier in your post) that you have expectations about gender, what you're really saying is, "I expect a story to cater to my existing worldview," or, to put it another way, you're saying that you want it to be your cup of tea. So if I have some readers whose cup of tea is more diversity and some readers whose cup of tea is less diversity, then how do I decide which type of tea to brew? Easy. I brew my cup of tea and let the chips fall where they may, and that happens to be a narrative with plenty of diversity. If I got the tea recipe wrong before, I guess I'll just have to put a new pot on now.



Verisimilitude is not without any value whatsoever; it is simply not the sole overriding concern of writing that some readers would like it to be. It is one tool in a very full toolbox of writing techniques that can be pulled out when it's useful and put away when it isn't. The main purpose of verisimilitude is to allow the author to focus the reader's attention on the things he or she wants them to pay attention to. Story elements with a high degree of verisimilitude tend to fade into the background while those without it stand out.

The error is in thinking that "standing out" is a negative thing that must be avoided at all costs; sometimes, the very point of an element's inclusion is to stand out. People include dragons and wizards in stories precisely because they stand out and make the story into something it otherwise wouldn't be—fantasy instead of historical fiction. Breaking verisimilitude can also be used to deliberately create suspense or provide foreshadowing, causing the reader to notice an odd detail that will later become crucial to the plot.

If an author writes a medieval fantasy story with more women than men, or with a higher number of LGBTQ+ people, or a black man in the lead, then because of the current homogenous nature of the existing body of fantasy literature, those choices will stand out. However, if standing out is the point—if these choices are being made partly because the author wishes to actively challenge the existing literary landscape—then providing no explanation in fact furthers that purpose. It forces the issue into the reader's mind and then, by refusing to address it at any point, normalizes it. It makes a statement that this is not something that needs justification, and hopefully by the end of the work, any reader who initially balked will no longer think anything of it. Coming up with an explanation for such demographics in fact strengthens the argument of those people who feel intolerance in the real world: "Oh, he's saying that in their world, women evolved differently, and that's why they're equal. But in the real world, we all know they're not, right? Right."

So I suppose if an author really wants to pander to everyone, they can both include a lot of women and then rationalize their equality away as being some mysterious quality of this wacky fantasy world, but that's essentially saying women aren't equal with a wink and a nod. Not to mention wasting a perfectly good opportunity to possibly effect real change in the minds of that author's readership.

And make no mistake, the real couter-argument to the idea that any wavering from historical demographic verisimilitude needs to be explained or it impugns the quality of the story is Roy. Have I ever provided any reasoning or tortured logic on why a medieval fantasy world has a family of black characters living in and adventuring in a decidedly European-flavored region of the world? Have I resorted to some clumsy kludge about how he comes from another region than everyone else? No, he's just there, from strip #1. His existence does not need to be justified, and it would be catering to the worst worldviews for me to rationalize his presence in the text of the story. Sometimes, heroes are black. Sometimes, they're women. Sometimes, they're gay. Sometimes, they're gay black women. Who captain airships. As an author, stooping to provide an explanation for any of those things in the story is to tacitly acknowledge the belief that they are Other that have no business being in the story without a good reason. And **** that.

Verisimilitude has its place, but it is wholly subordinate to authorial intent. The point of writing stories is for the author to communicate his or her views out to the world, both through what is said and what is left unsaid. If breaking verisimilitude helps that happen, then smash away.

[Draconi Redfir]

You are correct. You did not. You suggested that it appeared to have popped up with great frequency recently in the forum, and no more.

I don't think any specific podcast or livestream instigated it. I think it has lived endogenously within the forum verbal flora and fauna, floating to the surface to feed every once and a while. I think you're just the guy who never noticed, pointed it out saying 'huh, what's that, is it new?' and perhaps a few too many people* responding with 'what are you talking about, that's been here since forever. I'm surprised you never noticed it.'
*we nerds are, as always, just a bit too eager to look knowledgeable, or better yet more-knowledgeable-than-others, in front of our peers.

I confess I am part of that group, but for a specific reason -- I thought I remember you partaking in the General Roleplay section, and there's at least one person present there who is kind of a mad prophet of the concept, keeping a reference to it in their sig and once getting into a massive slugfest thread on the subject. It seemed to me to be something of a forum staple or go-to slightly obscure term.

makes sense to me. pretty sure I've been on both ends of that example before.

[Silly Name]

Verisimilitude has been a thing when discussing fiction since the early 17th century, where it was mostly applied to literature and theatre. It's the objective of writing fiction that feels and seems believable, if not necessarily real. It was talked about by Tolkien, by Dumas, by Hugo, by Manzoni and Pirandello, by Cechov and Stanislavskij, and many others.

It's also been a thing in RPG discussions for a long, long time: from strictly realistic intent, to internally-consistent created worlds, passing through running sessions and campaigns in a "believable" way (meaning NPCs react in ways that make sense, the PCs' actions receive adequate reactions...), people have talked it for decades. To increase immersion, because they like it, even against it.

Note that verisimilitude does not require realism, nor is it an enemy of the suspension of disbelief. Most people can accept magic and dragons or teleportation and FTL spaceships, even though those things are absolutely unrealistic. We can simply and implicit accept those things are real and work inside of the fictional world for whatever reason, and need not bother with analysing every minutia. People, however, will readily criticise a story when they feel the plot or the premise make no sense.

Take, for example, an hypothetical world where the sun has gone out and the planet is left in constant darkness, illuminated only by stars. Now, such a world would be accused of lacking verisimilitude if everyone in the story sported a nice tan thirty years after the sun went out, because it doesn't make sense. We can accept the eternal darkness, assume people grow food thanks to lamps and artificial illumination even if it may not be actually enough, but things break down when the world stops being self-consistent. And that's usually bad for both fiction and RPGs, because the audience then stops taking things as seriously as you'd like.

Of course, many people who play RPGs don't particularly care about verisimilitude: they want to break in the door and beat up the evil necromancer and have fun with their friends rolling dice, trying clever or funny ideas and never bother about why the necromancer was raising an army of skeletons or where all those skeletons came from. People had different tastes, some may unconsciously let slide details that irk another, and so on.

Why not use realism? Because realism means other things. A "realistic" world has no dragons because dragons break the law of physics and aerodynamics, which isn't realistic. Something possessing verisimilitude doesn't mean it's true: if I told you "Yesterday I went fishing with my uncle" you could very well take it at face value - but it's not true. It's just plausible.

[Gravitron5000]

I think this is topic adjacent, but close enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

My most notable encounter is with encountering a reference to Washington Irving for the first time while reading Catch 22, which dedicates some time on pontificating on how good a name it is. The next book I read was Moby ****, in which Washington Irving was a footnote in. That opened a floodgate of Washington Irving in my perceptions. I can't turn around without him popping up somewhere. It's enough to make me doubt the verisimilitude of this world we are all on.

[Rakaydos]

Consider the star wars sequels, notably the infamous hyperspace ram. Is it plausable that accelerating to lightspeed could turn a ship into a horiffic superweapon? Sure. Does having that be a thing that can happen in the Star Wars Universe fit with... the entire rest of the star wars universe, in any way? That's a lack of verisimilitude. (Personally I'm in the camp of "there's an easy countermeasure that the first order was too incompetent to implement" probably involving firing all guns into the path between the ships)

[Draconi Redfir]

I think this is topic adjacent, but close enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

My most notable encounter is with encountering a reference to Washington Irving for the first time while reading Catch 22, which dedicates some time on pontificating on how good a name it is. The next book I read was Moby ****, in which Washington Irving was a footnote in. That opened a floodgate of Washington Irving in my perceptions. I can't turn around without him popping up somewhere. It's enough to make me doubt the verisimilitude of this world we are all on.


oh hey! I've experienced that illusion firsthand plenty of times throughout my life! didn't realize their was a term for it, neat!

Like i had a classmate in high school who was obsessed with people like Chris Angel and David Blane, both of whom I'd never heard of before then, but were already pretty big stars at the time. Next thing i know a TV channel i watch is advertising mindfreak, Odd job jack is doing a mind freak parody, south park makes an entire episode around David Blane, mom unprompted pays for one of those "Chris angel spells out your phone number with playing cards and calls you by name" youtube videos while i was visiting my grandad. whole bunch of stuff like that.

[Imbalance]

Not only has verisimilitude been in my vernacular for more than twenty years (I also use terms like abscond and aggrieve), but it's been in pretty heavy rotation on these here boards since at least 2004 (https://forums.giantitp.com/search.php?searchid=529782). Maybe you read it as something else?

[Rynael]

I'm surprised this hasn't come up yet, given the forum we're on, but I first learned the word as a child from a D&D handbook. A quick search shows it definitively used in the "Metagame Thinking" sections of the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide, and I remember it in other D&D editions as well. Obviously, they didn't invent the word from whole cloth, but given the community, I'm sure most uses of the word in the D&D community either directly or indirectly root back to its use in the D&D books, whether the people using the word realize it or not.

[Willie the Duck]

I'm surprised this hasn't come up yet, given the forum we're on, but I first learned the word as a child from a D&D handbook. A quick search shows it definitively used in the "Metagame Thinking" sections of the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide, and I remember it in other D&D editions as well. Obviously, they didn't invent the word from whole cloth, but given the community, I'm sure most uses of the word in the D&D community either directly or indirectly root back to its use in the D&D books, whether the people using the word realize it or not.

Maybe, but only indirectly, I think. A lot of use of the term showed up in the Usenet* discussions that evolved into the Forge*, which would have pre-dated 3e. I don't remember the term showing up in AD&D or BECMI, so I don't know that those Usenet discussions would have taken if from D&D book. Mind you, it was discussions of TTRPGs, so D&D's approach to verisimilitude would have come into play.
*side note: good god are there still a lot of people grinding their axes over the Forge!

I think a lot of it also just comes from the tendency of... online nerds who like to hash over things (I don't have a good word for our group)... to use what I call '$20 words*' -- those words that just maybe one is using to prove one has a big vocabulary.
*or sometimes '$19.95+s&h words' for those words that keep popping up that actually make me assume worse of the user, like the latin fallacies, using 'qua' in a natural-language conversation, etc.

[Xuc Xac]

So... up until about two months ago, I'd never heard of the word "verisimilitude"...

Why the sudden appearance of the vocal equivalent of spaghetti on the forums? Where did it come from?:confused:

This is the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. It's always been around but you've just noticed it and now that you've seen it, you're seeing it everywhere.

"I've just learned a new word and suddenly everyone is using it!" is actually the textbook example of it.

[halfeye]

The word itself comes I think from latin roots, "in vino veritas" means something like drunk people tell the truth and verify means something like "check the truth of".

[Fyraltari]

The word itself comes I think from latin roots, "in vino veritas" means something like drunk people tell the truth and verify means something like "check the truth of".

In vino veritas = in wine truth [is found].

Veritas, atis is latin for truth.
Similis, meanwhile means "alike". Verisimilitude = the state of being like truth.