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Posts in a couple of different threads today made me decide to start this new thread.
Obviously, one needs to suspend one's disbelief in order to enjoy LnC. There are a myriad of impossibilities and implausibilities in the show. What is the one that is hardest for you to swallow?
I am guessing that I am going to be alone in my choice of hardest thing to suspend disbelief on: Even harder for me to deal with than things like an alien looking and functioning so much like a homo sapien, a baby surviving the journey to earth, a man flying under his own power, time travel, and all of the other more glaring scifi/fantasy elements of the show, the hardest thing for me to deal with is the way Clark's super-hearing only kicks in when it is convenient for the plot. My reason for this is rather personal.
When I was a girl, my hearing was unusually keen. For example, when I would be at one end of the house and my parents would whisper or speak in very low voices at the other end of the house, I could hear their conversations clearly. Many was the time that they would start to speak about me only to have me shout out to them that I could hear them. (They were always amazed at my ability to hear; had I been less scrupulous, I would have learned a lot of interesting things, I am sure...Obviously, I am not at all like Lois in that regard!) I could also hear many things that other people could not, both in terms of low volume and frequency range. (For example, I could hear dog whistles.) As I grew older, my hearing worsened to the point that it is now no better than that of my peers.
But as much as I loved having such acute hearing, it was sometimes a liability. For example, I distinctly remember attending a band concert my sister played in...Well, I sort of attended it. I had to leave the auditorium as soon as they started playing. The volume was agonizing to me; even when I covered my ears with my hands, I was in physical pain. So I did not get to *see* the concert, but I did enjoy *listening* to it...I stood out in the lobby, with the auditorium doors closed, during the entire concert. The volume was quite comfortable for me there. The point is, there was no way for me to turn the sensitivity of my hearing up or down. I wish there had been.
This brings me back to LnC. It seems to me that loud volumes ought to bring Clark to his knees as surely as kryptonite. The one bit of realism in the series in this area was in DLW, where Clark asks Lois to pipe down because when she talked so near to him while he was trying to super-hear, it was as if she were sticking a knife in his ear. (I'm paraphrasing here.)
I could hypothesize a partial explanation: Perhaps Kryptonians have something similar to eye lids covering their ear drums. If the "lids" are closed, they hear human-normal; if opened, they super-hear. But if that were the case, how could Clark hear cries for help when he wasn't purposely super-hearing? And how come he wasn't in agony all the other times that he and Lois were speaking and he suddenly super-heard something? And why was his experience of super-hearing never like that of Lois when she was Ultra Woman -- i.e., hearing multiple cries for help all at once?
I realize that in the grand scheme of the LnC universe, the way Clark's hearing works is a relatively minor implausibility; but I guess because it hits so close to home for me, it is harder for me to swallow.
So that was me. What do you find hardest suspend your disbelief about?
cheers,
Lynn
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