Degrees of dissonance

[graculus]

In the six or seven years I've been in fandom, I've read widely in a number of fandoms. I'm wondering if my tolerance levels are the same as they were, or whether it changes as new fandoms gain my interest, or is dependent on the fandom itself.

I've been reading a lot of Harry Potter fic recently. Some of it is excellent and some of it can only be described as god-awful. In essence, no better and no worse than any other fandom, as far as I can see. But where it differs in one respect is the couple of fics I've given up on early on because they just don't work - there's some fundamental flaw to the story premise that is only evident to me because I have a knowledge of the law and mores of the culture the stories are based in (not the wizarding world, of course, but mid-90's England).

So, I was wondering about this - I know there are people reading this entry that read in an equally wide variety of fandoms, or focus intently on one to the exclusion of all others, people with a wide variety of life experiences and areas of expertise. Can you get past a glaring error in something you have knowledge of and move on to read the rest of the story? Are you someone who, once they've started reading something, have to finish it? Or is it dependent on the quality of the tale, that if it's good enough then you can ignore something you know to be incorrect?

Inquiring minds and all that...

Comments

[xochiquetzl]

I must be easy. I stopped up short at Quinn's AU fic where Jack is given a dishonorable discharge and told Daniel will be fired if Jack ever sees him again, ground my teeth, and soldiered on because I was curious about the story.

It was a good story, but the premise was terribly flawed by a factual error. DADT does not apply to Daniel. Period. The end. And for Hammond to threaten to fire Daniel under DADT--well, civilians are protected from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, so Jack could have gotten Hammond in a lot of trouble. A LOT of trouble.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I must be easy.

*cough*

It was a good story, but the premise was terribly flawed by a factual error.

And that's always galling. Because essentially if you have to pummel or amputate reality (however reality works in that universe) in order to make your story viable, then maybe you're working a little too hard?

[xochiquetzl]

Yeah. It's always a shame when that happens.

I considered emailing her to tell her, but she pretty much would have had to do a massive rewrite. I mean, her initial incident wouldn't happen.

[graculus.livejournal.com]

The more extreme versions of this behaviour leads to all sorts of character mangling as you try and shoehorn characters into a particular plot idea.

Besides which, Hammond is a nice guy and wouldn't be mean to Daniel... ;)

[xochiquetzl]

She actually had an interesting take on that. Jack thinks to himself that Hammond was almost reacting like he'd laid hand on one of his granddaughters. And he doesn't threaten Daniel directly, he just uses the threat of firing Daniel as a STAY AWAY FROM HIM. So it was more a homophobic protective grandfatherly Hammond who thought Jack had seduced Daniel to the Dark Side the gay side.

[xochiquetzl]

P.S. Forgive my unclear referents. ;)

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Well, Jack is extremely gay... ;)