It's the little details on which verisimilitude hangs

[brown_betty]

Me: This fic is totally implausible! There's no way they wouldn't beam down with some kind of first aid kit, obviating the need for emergency medical buttsecks.

Robyn: Yes, that's the implausible part.

Comments

[neery]

It's always the little things that trip you up, isn't it? I was reading an awesome badfic yesterday, people crying at the drop of a hat, why not, manly men discussing their feelings for five pages, bring it on, healing buttsex, awesome, but antibiotics don't work that way, what the fuck! >:(

[brown_betty]

Yeah. I think it's because we expect to suspend one sort of disbelief, going into the story, but we're not necessarily prepared to suspend another as well.

[rubynye]

*nod* I think that's exactly it.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

For some stories, it's just safer to avoid the suspension play, and leave your disbelief bound and gagged and blindfolded in the trunk for its own safety. I read Sharon Shinn novels that way.

*laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith]

I have to admit, the lack of basic safety precautions in speculative fiction tends to amaze me. Not to mention the number of alleged heroes who haven't got the brains to wear a jacket up a mountain or stick a granola bar in their pocket.