Suspension of Disbelief

[Darkhawk]

When the suspenders, overstrained by too much weight, snaps, and, pow, the walls of my brain are covered in splattered disbelief:D:.

 
I wish I could remember where I got this line, but I quote it often:

"'Suspension of disbelief' does not mean 'by the neck, until dead.'"

[victoreia]

My biggest bugaboo is whether or not the characters ever drop character for the sake of the story.

I remember that happened once in the Harry Potter books and I was just SCREAMING about how that was just dumb and he wouldn't've done that.  Characters doing what they do for the plot drives me NUTS.

 
Just out of curiosity, who and where in which book? (Only because I've read all seven so many times....)

[Melamphoros]

Just out of curiosity, who and where in which book? (Only because I've read all seven so many times....)

 
Not Sunflower, but I heard many people make that claim about Deathly Hollows (the Crowning Moment of Stupid being them taking turns wearing the locket).

[victoreia]

Not Sunflower, but I heard many people make that claim about Deathly Hollows (the Crowning Moment of Stupid being them taking turns wearing the locket).

 
Oh, yeah. There were times when I'd just shout out to "stop wearing the bloody thing!"

[Lokabrenna]

My biggest bugaboo is whether or not the characters ever drop character for the sake of the story.

I remember that happened once in the Harry Potter books and I was just SCREAMING about how that was just dumb and he wouldn't've done that.  Characters doing what they do for the plot drives me NUTS.

I started yelling at Harry back in Order of the Phoenix. I understand that he's very, very angry (and has a couple of good reasons to feel that way) but it seemed like he was angry ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME!

[SunflowerP]

Not Sunflower, but I heard many people make that claim about Deathly Hollows (the Crowning Moment of Stupid being them taking turns wearing the locket).

 
You're not Shad, either:dwink:.

Sunflower

[SunflowerP]

I wish I could remember where I got this line, but I quote it often:

"'Suspension of disbelief' does not mean 'by the neck, until dead.'"

 


Sunflower

[SunflowerP]

Another thing that's bothering me is the way that verb tenses are being used. There's a word to describe it but I can't think of it, basically, a lot of sentences look like this:

"It's a nice day outside," smiled _____.

or (and this is a direct quote from the book):

"I believe it was you who would chase me," corrected Caroline.

 
I may be misunderstanding, because I'm not seeing any issue with tenses per se, but it looks like what you're bugged about here is someone who is taking the advice about, "don't use 'said' all the time; find synonyms," too far?

Sunflower

[HeartShadow]

Just out of curiosity, who and where in which book? (Only because I've read all seven so many times....)

 
It was Harry and .. I think Azkaban.  Everything's going to hell, and he goes "hey, I think I'm going to sneak out wearing my invisibility cloak!  yeah!" and it just ....

he wasn't that stupid or impulsive.  It FELT forced.

[RandallS]

Not Sunflower, but I heard many people make that claim about Deathly Hollows (the Crowning Moment of Stupid being them taking turns wearing the locket).

Sadly, there is quite a bit of HP fan fiction that is better than Deathly Hallows. Rowling seemed to start "losing it" (I'm not sure what "it" is: interest, coherent plot, ) in HBP and by DH it stuck out like a sore thumb. I had to force myself to read DH all the way through.

As for the locket, even Ron should have figured out that wearing the locket was a really bad idea. That should have should have been obvious to Harry, let alone to Hermione. I sometimes think a lot of characters accidentally took a large dose of a potion of permanent IQ loss just before HBP started.

[Darkhawk]

 
FWIW, Google appears to attribute it to MZB.