I once thought up a phrase for the absurdity that throws you out of a work full of absurdities: "Flying Snowman." It was based on the fact my wife could accept a kid's book with a snowman running, walking and eating soup, but when it started flying she was out:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/12/11/the-flying-snowman/
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/12/11/the-flying-snowman/
Comments
It doesn't have to be a snowman.... 🎶🎶
When i consulted with an astrobiologist for one of my books, I said improbable is okay, even implausible. What I want you to to put the brakes on is impossible and tell me why.
Magic's rules are unknown until the story tells us. Our world's rules are mostly not and ppl dealing with the edge cases are mostly doing so on purpose.
...Okay, not really, but wouldn't that be a great ending to the story? 😉
Their response was to snark about how it featured a talking dog 🙄
I'm going to have to remember Flying Snowman.
That you can usually sell one impossible concept to the audience and have them accept it into the worldbuilding (as long as the rules are consistent), but once you start throwing in too many more, suspension of disbelief starts to fail.
(Admittedly this doesn't cover the snowman flying.)
I had no problems with that. But the idea that a dentist with kids had no life insurance? That I couldn't handle,
Shit I totally forgot the X-ray vision, the heat vision, and the ability to breathe out a tornado or blizzard.
He is literally invulnerable (spare me your kryptonite blather; that has never worked) so there are no stakes and he cannot lose.
I figured that he'd either exist or not exist.
Snowman comes to life? Cool, cool. Snowman flies? Nope, that wasn’t part of the deal.
I wonder if they're still together. 🤔
And Tolkien is pretty consistent about his physical environment (gravity, temperature). I don't know enough about lava for that to be jarring, but I get it.