valarltd | latenight rambling

Tomorrow will be a day of some small exertion.
So of course I sit up late, finish a book I've read often enough that I can quote long passages of it, and count it on Goodreads.

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I was watching Supernatural today, when it hit me:

It's the little things that damage suspension of disbelief.
I'll swallow a camel and strain at a gnat.

I will buy killer scarecrows, women in white, ghost trucks and demons. But don't tell me US 6 is in Cape Girardeau MO. The closest US 6 gets to Cape is Council Bluffs, Iowa, 540 miles away.

I will buy flying teens, heat vision, x-ray vision and Native American cave paintings about aliens. But do not show me a native Kansas girl getting back into her wrecked truck in the face of tornadoes. Heading for the ditch should be automatic.

There are ways the universe works. If your fictional world is exactly the same as ours, barring the paranormal element, I expect it to work like ours. US highways indicate how much of the US is north or east of them. Interstates indicate how much of the US is south or west of them. Odd numbered highways run north-south and even numbered run east-west.

To quote Jean Kerr:
"It is perfectly all right with me when a character in a post-modern play points at a realistic iron bed and says, 'this is a piano.' It's all right when he sits and plays the Blue Danube Waltz on the springs. But I expect that thereafter, no one will lie down on the piano."

~~~~

Autumn party mix

Spoon sized shredded wheat
teddy grahams
pretzels
autumn mix
peanut butter M&Ms
caramel corn

toss and cover with melted almond bark

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

beckyblack

Hah, tell me about it. I hypothesise that every episode of Sherlock after the first one actually takes place in an elaborate delusion of John Watson's, after he went mad from guilt after failing to save Sherlock from the killer. Because he must have failed, as there was no way in hell he had a handgun. Not in the UK. That's not how it works here.

I can't stop thinking "Anna would not still be working as a maid after she got married," when watching Downton Abbey. Turkish diplomats dying in the wrong bed and being relocated, I can go along with. But I know my grandmother had to leave her job as a maid when she got married. That's the way it worked!

From: (Anonymous)

Little things that damage suspension of disbelief, like say... Being held prisoner in a Wild West traveling show that has horses, which are strong enough & therefore used by the villains to pull heavy wagons, but which are somehow (unbelievably) too feeble & decrepit to carry a single rider if the hero and heroine wanted to use a pair of these animals in an escape attempt? ...Because the heroine has to have an (unbelievable) excuse to be the first person in unofficial history to invent the motorcycle? ...Which the villains are (unbelievably) too dim-witted to imagine or foresee could possibly be utilized by the hero and/or heroine to maybe escape their clutches with (presuming it would even function) or attract the curiosity of Law Enforcement by making a whole lot of unusual, loud noice once started--that should spook just about every animal nearby?

...Or maybe a pirate captain who would give a near total stranger, and a recently taken prisoner no less, free and total access to the ship's engine room to fix a crucial piece of machinery while a warship that would be friendly to this prisoner--whose noble crew would rescue the prisoner and see the prisoner safely home--is bearing down and closing in on the pirate ship? This prisoner, who is just a backyard tinkerer, can fix this crucial piece of machinery better and/or faster--with more advanced knowledge & skills--than the professional engineers & machinists already and necessarily aboard this pirate ship?

...Or perhaps a private investogator who solves a crime in a matter of hours, which has been stumping the local police for better than two months, using nothing but a computer search engine, because apparently the police don't have computer access and/or would never think of doing the same? The result from this computer search, incidentally, provides the one and only possible culprit?

Little stuff like that?

From:

valarltd.livejournal.com

Just finished a Criminal Case game where the perp ate the victim's liver. Anyone with sense knows you shouldn't eat an herbivore liver, let alone an omnivore one. The liver cleanses toxins from the blood. Omnivores and carnivores are not really edible in the organ meat department because of that.

From:

valarltd.livejournal.com

Care to back the hell off already?

Every time you rag me about this stuff, you kill any desire I have to fix it. Or to write anything else. I know what the problems are. Finding time and wherewithal to do anything about them is the problem. And things like this sap whatever momentum I've built up.

I get it. I'm a lousy writer. You keep saying I'm better than this. Well apparently NOT!

All you're doing is delaying any of the three getting fixed.

You're thinking too big. You're balking at the kid having x-ray vision, metaphorically speaking.

I'm talking little things. I'll swallow the x-ray vision, but don't have Kansans--with storm cellars!--be idiots about tornadoes.

Edited Date: 2014-09-26 05:58 am (UTC)

From: (Anonymous)

Interesting logic spool:

~ You know the problems, yet you don't fix them. Somebody sees that you're not fixing them, calls you on it, maybe keeps calling you on it because you do not fix them after several months/notices, and this annoys you, therefore inspiring you to leave the problem(s) unfixed (which does nothing to silence the critics) and/or abandon the project(s) just to spite the critic(s).

~ You know the problems, yet you leave them in place & just continue on with the story, knowing (in theory) that anything that comes later will be built on a shaky foundation. If you make things implausible from Point A into B, readers will probably not care to see what else follows from Point B-C-D-E-F... because they will likely be just as implausible. This apparently doesn't register with you. "I'm writing a fantasy. I want it a certain way. Don't bother me, especially not with reality or credibility."

~ You can't find the time nor wherewithal to fix problems with existing stories, yet you can find the time & wherewithal to start writing new stories, thereby probably adding new problems to new stories, thereby adding to your burden... yet you do not see this?

~ I DO believe that you are a better writer than this. I've seen some of your finer works.

The difficulty seems to come from you wanting certain things to be a certain way, and when little inconveniences like common sense crop up to bar the way, you force them--like putting square pegs into round holes--and then you seem mystified when readers don't like it when they can see pegs that glaringly do not belong in the holes you've forced & pounded them into to make them fit. You put the pegs in order of colors, as you wanted them, not in order of color, size AND shape, as they need to be. Things look wonky, but you think the pegs look prettier the way you have them; nevermind some of the pegs are not fitting flush with the table top because of how you stuck & forced some of them into the holes. You want people to just accept & appreciate that you made a pretty design with the colors.

You, my dear, just don't like being told what to do.
You, my dear, are an artist, trying to be an architect.

You prefer mythology & magic to science & mechanics, which is all well and good, until you try fitting your stuff into a world where science & mechanics hold sway.

You want to build a beautiful, towering house of cards.
You do not care to be bothered with the mechanics of it.
You build your house of cards, then get grumpy when people notice the obvious blobs of glue that you used to force things to stay, and wonder why people can't just accept what you have built as a genuine house of cards.

Once you get on a roll, you can DO excellent work!
The bulk of the 2 stories I have interest in, which are currently down for repairs, is indeed impressive. It's easy to focus on the smaller percentage that is lacking, rather than the larger percentage that went right, and which you did do well, as it is the flaws critics focus on. So it is with every work of art.

Ragging on you?
What do you do when you call somebody on a problem, and they just leave it? ...And leave it? ...And leave it? When you know if the problem remains, then something isn't going to work, which you want to see work?

Size is relative. To me, it's a little thing to have horses strong enough to pull heavy wagons, but too weak to carry a rider in an escape attempt... so therefore it's smarter to gather up all the materials to invent a costly & noisy & improbable machine... which the villains, who are clever enough to run a long-standing kidnapping operation, are too stupid to imagine could be used as a means of escape.

Big stuff would be airship-to-airship combat, where NOBODY apparently has the foresight to see that the easiest way to deter, disable, or down an enemy airship would be to simply shoot holes in or set fire to its balloon.

You are only a lousy housekeeper if you don't clean things up when you know or get told there's a mess. You are only a lousy cook if you don't change a dish that people can't stomach the way you keep making it. You are only a lousy writer if you don't... Hmmm.

From:

valarltd.livejournal.com

So the long and short of the problem is that I'm doing this on MY time table and to MY energy level and not to yours.

You know what? It is my time table. It is my energy level. And I will keep working to it. Because otherwise, you and