carapace (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} carapace) wrote,@ 2008-02-13 02:33:00 |
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In Which the Suspension of Disbelief Snaps
Gunsmith Cats is essentially a big dumb action movie in manga form. Guns! Cars! Races! Of cars against guns! All as done by scantily clad girl-women with frankly impossible bodies! And one giant guy with an even more impossibly-er body!
All of which is cool by me. It's what Gunsmith Cats is about. It's what I read the book for. I don't expect character development, or respect for the laws of physics, or anything. GC exists so Kenichi Sonoda can draw all the cool cars and guns he lusts after. And also disturbingly prepubescent women with boobs, and I refuse to connect those two thoughts. I'm sure he's a very nice man. Anyway.
Reading along, totally behind people shrugging off bullet injuries (ha!) and magical internet research abilities and all the other standard action movie stuff, when all of a sudden the main character walks on panel from a strangely unshown shower scene.
In her bra and underwear.
Toweling off.
And my disbelief suspension, which is adequate to supporting elves, flying monkeys, and the innate decency of humanity, snaps like a cheap rubber band.
Because *nobody does that*. Oh, there might be some sort of towel fetishists who walk around that way, but as a matter of mundane routine, which it was clearly supposed to be, no. Women walk around naked toweling off, walk around in underwear toweling off, walk around *fully clothed* drying their hair, but not in underwear and a bra. This is not some weird cultural taboo; bras are uncomfortable, they take forever to dry if they get wet, and the body parts they cover are frankly prone to damp anyway. Any woman who needs a bra puts it on towards the end of dressing, which is several steps away from toweling off.
And don't try to say she was getting ready to relax. Bra + relax = fail.
It's a little thing, but it rankles, because it is little and it is mundane. And Sonoda, who presumably does not live in a hideous dystopia where women and men are separated by law and bred only in silence by their evil alien masters, could have frigging asked, or observed his wife if he happens to have one.
And that's the sort of thing that wads up SOD and throws it on the floor The big details can be ignored, or never known; the little details are intimate and familiar and really, really striking when ignored.
(True in art, too, of course. You can screw up and screw around with drawing unicorns and elves and flying cities built on clouds. Draw a twisted tree and even botanists aren't likely to complain. But get a human body the least little bit off, draw one eye slightly bigger than the other, and it will distract your audience to the point they don't even notice that your crooked main character is standing in a cubist nightmare of perspective failure. )
Do you remember getting chucked out of a story by some piddly little detail? What did it for you?
Gunsmith Cats is essentially a big dumb action movie in manga form. Guns! Cars! Races! Of cars against guns! All as done by scantily clad girl-women with frankly impossible bodies! And one giant guy with an even more impossibly-er body!
All of which is cool by me. It's what Gunsmith Cats is about. It's what I read the book for. I don't expect character development, or respect for the laws of physics, or anything. GC exists so Kenichi Sonoda can draw all the cool cars and guns he lusts after. And also disturbingly prepubescent women with boobs, and I refuse to connect those two thoughts. I'm sure he's a very nice man. Anyway.
Reading along, totally behind people shrugging off bullet injuries (ha!) and magical internet research abilities and all the other standard action movie stuff, when all of a sudden the main character walks on panel from a strangely unshown shower scene.
In her bra and underwear.
Toweling off.
And my disbelief suspension, which is adequate to supporting elves, flying monkeys, and the innate decency of humanity, snaps like a cheap rubber band.
Because *nobody does that*. Oh, there might be some sort of towel fetishists who walk around that way, but as a matter of mundane routine, which it was clearly supposed to be, no. Women walk around naked toweling off, walk around in underwear toweling off, walk around *fully clothed* drying their hair, but not in underwear and a bra. This is not some weird cultural taboo; bras are uncomfortable, they take forever to dry if they get wet, and the body parts they cover are frankly prone to damp anyway. Any woman who needs a bra puts it on towards the end of dressing, which is several steps away from toweling off.
And don't try to say she was getting ready to relax. Bra + relax = fail.
It's a little thing, but it rankles, because it is little and it is mundane. And Sonoda, who presumably does not live in a hideous dystopia where women and men are separated by law and bred only in silence by their evil alien masters, could have frigging asked, or observed his wife if he happens to have one.
And that's the sort of thing that wads up SOD and throws it on the floor The big details can be ignored, or never known; the little details are intimate and familiar and really, really striking when ignored.
(True in art, too, of course. You can screw up and screw around with drawing unicorns and elves and flying cities built on clouds. Draw a twisted tree and even botanists aren't likely to complain. But get a human body the least little bit off, draw one eye slightly bigger than the other, and it will distract your audience to the point they don't even notice that your crooked main character is standing in a cubist nightmare of perspective failure. )
Do you remember getting chucked out of a story by some piddly little detail? What did it for you?