Fandom phrases I hate to hear:
Feb. 7th, 2003 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
"It's only a TV show" and "you should just suspend your disbelief."
These are typically used to keep people from discussing GIANT FLAMING PLOT HOLES and trying to figure out any way for things to make sense or to keep people from examining totally out of character behavior. When the only reason I can come up with for characters behaving in a certain way is "because the writers needed them to," that makes the writing what we here call "crappy."
I mean, I can suspend my disbelief. I can believe that there are vampires, and that they concentrate at the Hellmouth in Sunnydale. I can believe that in every generation, one girl is chosen to kill the vampires. I can believe that magic exists, that people summon demons, and that no-one seemed to notice that Giles was, in fact, very hot.
But I expect continuity within the show. I expect the show to exist in a world that, while not our own, has rules and laws and behaves in a certain way. I mean, can anyone explain to me how magic works on Buffy right now? Can anyone explain why in hell Kennedy kissing Willow solved Willow's problem? Is there any prior evidence on BtVS that Willow would take that as forgiveness, or that magic would work that way, or anything? Or, then, take Slayer mythology. Until season 7, I was pretty sure I'd worked out the rules of being a slayer. But can anyone explain them to me now? Can anyone explain why everyone seems so sure Buffy's in the slayer line when they were so sure, season 6, that she was not? Can anyone come up with any plausible explanation, beyond "the writers had to do it for the drama," that Giles would never have hugged, shook hands, made food, sipped tea, research, read a book, handed anyone a weapon, ordered airplane tickets, or picked anything up in the presence of the Scoobies for weeks? It. Makes. No. Coherent. Sense. And that's the kind of thing I pick on when I'm talking about a show, and then people are all "Well, just suspend your disbelief." Pah.
And the X-Files! I could believe that there were 97 kinds of aliens, and that the government conspired to cover them up. I could believe that they waived height requirements for the FBI, that Krycek could work out who he worked for, and that Mulder could afford Armani. But by later seasons? My god, those aliens made no sense. They've been plotting to take over the world, but they're doing it from an undersea oil bed where they've been waiting for 1000 years! The only way we can explain why oilens do different things to people all the time is by inventing more and more slightly different kinds! (Or, why isn't Krycek dead of radiation poisoning.) And so on. Man, that show gave up even pretensions of consistency in later seasons.
Even my Favorite Show Ever had a few bad moments. I accepted a space station, two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. I accepted Old Ones with special powers, jump gates, quantium-40, and time travel, and telepaths (and thanked god that jms refused to let them be a deus ex machina). But I still can't work out how someone could poison an energy-based lifeform, and the practicalities of killing a Vorlon are a little wonky from season to season. As is the process of how soul hunters and imprisoned souls work. Just sayin'. But it's less noticeable on B5, which has an almost perfect "world" -- except for a few cases, physical laws and rules and characters are consistent, or change in ways that make sense for more than "we wanted to work in this cool scene" reasons.
These are typically used to keep people from discussing GIANT FLAMING PLOT HOLES and trying to figure out any way for things to make sense or to keep people from examining totally out of character behavior. When the only reason I can come up with for characters behaving in a certain way is "because the writers needed them to," that makes the writing what we here call "crappy."
I mean, I can suspend my disbelief. I can believe that there are vampires, and that they concentrate at the Hellmouth in Sunnydale. I can believe that in every generation, one girl is chosen to kill the vampires. I can believe that magic exists, that people summon demons, and that no-one seemed to notice that Giles was, in fact, very hot.
But I expect continuity within the show. I expect the show to exist in a world that, while not our own, has rules and laws and behaves in a certain way. I mean, can anyone explain to me how magic works on Buffy right now? Can anyone explain why in hell Kennedy kissing Willow solved Willow's problem? Is there any prior evidence on BtVS that Willow would take that as forgiveness, or that magic would work that way, or anything? Or, then, take Slayer mythology. Until season 7, I was pretty sure I'd worked out the rules of being a slayer. But can anyone explain them to me now? Can anyone explain why everyone seems so sure Buffy's in the slayer line when they were so sure, season 6, that she was not? Can anyone come up with any plausible explanation, beyond "the writers had to do it for the drama," that Giles would never have hugged, shook hands, made food, sipped tea, research, read a book, handed anyone a weapon, ordered airplane tickets, or picked anything up in the presence of the Scoobies for weeks? It. Makes. No. Coherent. Sense. And that's the kind of thing I pick on when I'm talking about a show, and then people are all "Well, just suspend your disbelief." Pah.
And the X-Files! I could believe that there were 97 kinds of aliens, and that the government conspired to cover them up. I could believe that they waived height requirements for the FBI, that Krycek could work out who he worked for, and that Mulder could afford Armani. But by later seasons? My god, those aliens made no sense. They've been plotting to take over the world, but they're doing it from an undersea oil bed where they've been waiting for 1000 years! The only way we can explain why oilens do different things to people all the time is by inventing more and more slightly different kinds! (Or, why isn't Krycek dead of radiation poisoning.) And so on. Man, that show gave up even pretensions of consistency in later seasons.
Even my Favorite Show Ever had a few bad moments. I accepted a space station, two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. I accepted Old Ones with special powers, jump gates, quantium-40, and time travel, and telepaths (and thanked god that jms refused to let them be a deus ex machina). But I still can't work out how someone could poison an energy-based lifeform, and the practicalities of killing a Vorlon are a little wonky from season to season. As is the process of how soul hunters and imprisoned souls work. Just sayin'. But it's less noticeable on B5, which has an almost perfect "world" -- except for a few cases, physical laws and rules and characters are consistent, or change in ways that make sense for more than "we wanted to work in this cool scene" reasons.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-10 10:36 am (UTC)::nods fervently:: amen to that. when the phrase "It's only a TV show" appeared on willow_tara, in a discussion about the recent will/kennedy on BtVS, i really wanted to find someone to smack; that is so very obviously what this writer was trying to do, probably because she couldn't for the life of her explain how W/K makes *sense.* *especially* not the way it was done in "killer within."
(and then i indulged in a bit of onlist ranting...
hi all,
i've been thinking a lot about this willow/tara vs. willow/kennedy
discussion we've been having here, because i had a strong negative reaction
to "killer within" and its W/K plot. however, i don't believe that it's
because i don't want willow to be happy, or because W/T are soulmates and
that will is therefore doomed to lead a tragic, lovely life. when sheet
wrote, "It's all too raw, fast, unrealistic and too soon," though, that
encapsulated my objection to will/kennedy perfectly.
i honestly think it's way OOC for willow to go for *anyone* else less than
a year after tara's death -- considering that, y'know, she seemed to be
pretty darn serious about tara -- and especially OOC for that someone to be
kennedy. i mean, primarily what i've seen this season up till "killer" is
kennedy hitting on willow with all the subtlety of an anvil, and willow
looking disturbed and sorta queasy. and while i think kennedy has had some
cute moments, overall i find her immature, impetuous and rather too used to
getting her way. frankly, i think willow has better taste (seeing as her
two ex-sweeties are oz and tara, my two all-time favorite scooby SOs.)
even if i can believe that willow is so overpowered by grief that her
judgement is massively impaired, though, W/K makes me wince all the more.
if that's the case, it's verging on non-con or coercion, and is tres
dysfunctional at the very least.
i've conclided that the reason W/K bothers me so much is that, in my mind,
it's either badly OOC or just plain squicky. either way, it makes me
unhappy and bitter, and leaves me with an intense desire to personally kick
the writers. *sighs*
-shell )