Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Mission Monitor Board BS things that take you out of the story...

Okay, this has probably been mentioned elsewhere, but....

Bionics letting people do physically impossible things. Steve Austin, Winter Soldier's bionic arm...great stuff. However, they are attached to HUMAN BEINGS. I don't care how strong that arm is, the body it's attached too could not stand the pressure needed to lift a car.

Steve, your legs are great, but you jump down from a five story window and you are gonna get spinal compression that will leave you bedridden or dead.

Such are the facts of reality.

This is what turned me off of the Iron Man movie. He is flying away from the terrorists in his prototype suit. Tony's at least 1000 feet in the air when the suit conks out and he falls to the ground. He should have been paste inside the suit. Was the "soft" sand suppose to cushion his landing?

I thought the same thing, too. And it wasn't a matter of the softness of the landing, it was the sudden and abrupt STOP! Yeah, I get there's a certain suspension of disbelief, sure. I mean, Batman should be a walking wreck of a human. For a time there in the seventies it was "Aaagh! My ribs!" with him. They even made jokes about it.

And then you get someone like Grant Morrison saying something along the lines of "their comic book characters, morons" or something like that. Sure they are. But if you aren't invulnerable, a human that drops at terminal velocity and suddenly stops, or a bionic steel arm attached to human bone and muscle tissue...no.

Now, Tharok? Sure, there's science mumbo jumbo there, but he isn't shown lifting cars on his human leg as far as I know, and as a scifi geek, I'm giving advanced 30th century tech the benefit of the doubt. But that's okay because we assume that 1,000 years of scientific advancement will take care of these things. But we don't have that now, so within the framework of your story you have to be consistent.

When you create the characters and the world they inhabit, you set the framework. When you break your own framework, you take the reader out of the story.

That's the way I see it, anyway.

Total agreement. What, IMO, makes a hero heroic and inspiring and impressive is when they succeed *despite* human limitations, or have to use cleverness to get around situations that normally would be damaging or deadly (or have to fight and win *despite* some sort of injury or damage).

If they just sort of arbitrarily prove capable of surviving falls or gunshot wounds or blood loss or whatever, then where's the drama of seeing them in these situations?

I like *smart* written stories, that don't ignore physics or limitations, such as the story in which Gwen Stacy died, after being 'saved' in a way that the Flash or Superman do all the time (which would result in chunky bits of human salsa, if attempted in the real world, as human bodies don't react well to being 'caught' while travelling at terminal velocity). That was amazing, and a powerful moment, and hammered home that there were situation where Spider-Man simply couldn't save everyone.

Scenes that pulled me out include stuff like Cyclops using his eyebeams to generate force to slow a fall, or propel himself in a certain direction. His eyebeams have never had any sort of 'pushback' (he's never shown having to brace himself before blasting, to avoid 'recoil,' for instance) because, if they did, his eyeballs would shoot out of the back of his skull every time he blasted. Slowing a 185 lb body by shooting the ground as you fall? Just imagine for a second what 185 lbs of pressure *on your eyeball* would feel like, even if it didn't cause instant decapitation!

Ow!

I get you with bionics. Without skeletal reinforcement, which we can assume someone like Deathlok has, but the Winter Soldier?, the arm would shear right off at the shoulder before being able to lift a car or something the body / attachment point couldn't handle.

It's smart writing to draw within the lines of what is possible, so that when the character *does* rise above and succeed, despite their limitations, they look heroic and brave and clever, and not just like the recipients of a luck-lottery, as the writer hands them unearned victories by having things they do just arbitrarily work, even if they shouldn't have.

This is the sort of attitude that takes me out of a story moreso than anything that happens in a story. Violate the rules of logic and physics if you must, explain it away if you have to, but don't show lack of respect for your story or audience.

Word. I recently dropped a blog I was reading because the author kept antagonizing commenters who disagreed with him.

Impossibility vs. Improbability:

Case in point: James Bond

I love me some James Bond books and movies, but sometimes, the impossible becomes the ridiculous. Paragliding off a collapsing iceberg? C'mon, man. That's the thing, yes, even Fleming had some goofy ideas, like the octopi in Dr. No. But, a character has a set characteristic that shouldn't be violated. James Bond was always a narrowly improbable man. Something else else that was improbable to accomplish, but not "impossible bordering on ludicrous.

The Roger Moore years had a bit of camp, but that was okay because it fit the actor and the times. But when you had a re-invention like the one that had taken place with Brosnan and turned it into a silly parody of itself, you take me out of the movie.

Not respecting your material. It's the problem I had with Flash this second time around at the beginning. The writing was veering close to "a very special episode" at times. Fortunately, they pulled back away from that. Well, luckily for me, cause I was considering dropping it.

But when you head into unintentional emo claptrap, instead of intentionally cheesy, that takes me out of the story.

The annoying best friend. "Hey, lets give them a goofy, kookie friend that occasionally says something unintendedly wise, but is really the "comic relief".

Urgh.

Do I really need to mention this again?

The vast difference between how men are dressed, vs. how women are dressed. Not to mention how often women are drawn in poses that are obviously borrowed from p*rn videos.

However, as relates to rickshaw's original complaint, I think that once a single element like that gets lampshaded, it's okay as long as everything else is, too. Once you point out that one element is scientifically impossible, it leaves the door wide open for every element of the story being the same.

When males do anything correctly without female guidance.