I’m very accommodating when it comes to fiction. Give me a car chase that ignores several basic laws of physics, and I’ll go along happily. Someone survives injuries that should have ended the story? Fine. There’s more plot to get through.
Dragons, magic, elves, aliens—I can make room for all of them. Whether I’m reading, listening, or watching, I don’t need everything to resemble the world I know. That’s part of the pleasure. For a while, I get to accept another version of how things work.
Then a man actually desires his partner, and apparently we’ve gone too far.
That’s where my generous suspension of disbelief gives out. Not at the impossible escape or the creature that doesn’t exist. At a man wanting the person he’s with.
I can hear how that sounds. There’s something almost funny about having such a specific limit after accepting everything else. My imagination will approve a dragon without requesting further documentation. Ordinary desire gets a much tougher review.
But underneath the absurdity is something I don’t find funny. Being wanted has become so unfamiliar to me that I struggle to recognize it as believable, even in a story. I understand what the scene is showing. I just can’t seem to feel that it could be real.
The dragon, meanwhile, has my complete cooperation.
