If a certain work is found to be off topic, are questions on Sci-Fi elements also off topic?

Question

I would like for this question to be reopened: How does Snoopy stay balanced on top of his doghouse? Shouldn't he fall down?

Although the meta seems to have concluded that Peanuts are off-topic (a conclusion with which I agree) I remain unsure why my specific question is off-topic, seeing that Snoopy's doghouse is clearly scifi. Any cursory glance at later Peanuts comics confirms this. I am also unsure why Peanuts should be treated differently than Calvin and Hobbes in this regard (which is also not mainly scifi, yet questions with very light scifi bias - Hobbes - are allowed to remain open.)

Answer 1

In the past, we've exempted talking animals from topicality. I propose we extend that to all cartoon physics, unless otherwise on-topic.

For example, all of the following questions would be off-topic:

• How can the characters in Spongebob light a fire underwater?
• How can the Loony Tunes characters survive the exploding piano joke?
• How does Charlie Brown get knocked out of his clothes when he gets hit by a baseball?
• Where do [numerous characters] keep their giant hammers and other random items?
• How is the Acme Corporation still in business, given that its products don't work?

Yes, these incidents are contrary to real-world physics, but that doesn't make them fantastical. They are included for humor value, and do not have some deeper meaning that we can usefully analyze.

On the other hand, questions involving (say) Marvin the Martian or in a clearly SFFnal setting would be on-topic. For judging the topicality of individual elements, it's difficult to formulate a concrete test, but here are some considerations:

• Is the element a one-off joke, or an ongoing part of the story?
• Are the characters surprised by the element?
• Is the element relevant to the plot?
• Does the story go to any effort to explain the element, or to suggest that it has an explanation?
• As a last resort, if the element fails all of the other tests, does it at least resemble or conform to any traditional SFF genre convention (e.g. aliens with ray guns and UFOs, wizards with wands and pointy hats, etc.)? This may seem an arbitrary loophole, but conventions are shorthand. They allow authors to "skip over" the above steps, while still assuring the audience that there's a there there.

This is not an exhaustive list of criteria, nor does passing one of these tests imply that a question is automatically on-topic. Close-voters are expected to use common sense and if necessary to take individual questions to meta for more specific discussion.

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Now, of course, the material question here is whether Snoopy's doghouse qualifies as "cartoon physics." Based on past meta voting patterns and my own understanding of Peanuts, I lean towards "yes." Although it does recur regularly throughout the comic, it is never seriously suggested that this element needs any explanation (other than the occasional aside glance, which don't really count because those are fourth-wall gags rather than part of the plot), nor indeed are we ever given one. We can contrast that with Calvin and Hobbes, which regularly takes the story to "traditionally" SFFnal settings and so is on-topic.