Pros Fic Reading Challenge - Orpeus Turns Around by Halotolerant

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd read all this author's fic, but I don't remember reading this one before - thanks tinturtle for the rec!

There were a few inconsistencies that made me blink, and a few places that seemed a bit overwrought, and I'm not entirely sure I can believe that the lads speak fluent Italian (!), but I enjoyed it in general. It's a post-Diag story too, which somehow always appeals. *g*

Comments

[tinturtle]

Hum. I am trying to remember at what point in the story the lads are depicted speaking fluent Italian. That is something I would have found implausible had I noticed it.

A string search for "Italian" finds Bodie following the overall topic of an Italian conversation he overhears, Doyle ordering food in "accented Italian", and Bodie "chatting to the shopkeeper in the best Italian he could muster." Those passages might give Bodie more language skills than he ought to have without some explanation, but they hardly suggest he is fluent. Doyle's skills don't sound like anything you couldn't get from a guidebook (or a pre-mission language tape). Are there relevant bits I have forgotten?

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

might give Bodie more language skills than he ought to have without some explanation
I'm fine with that as a description rather than "fluent" - basically both lads are getting on very well and easily with the language, and I don't see any evidence in canon that they would be (they both use high-school level half-forgotten languages in a half-forgotten way in various eps, Doyle shows that he can mimic accents, and Bodie shows some knowledge of Afrikaaner slang from his time in Africa - explained by his time in Africa, not by his being a polyglot of any kind considering his level of German!), so that part was slightly AU for me. If we'd seen them picking up languages more easily in the eps, rather than stumbling over them, I could have believed it more easily.

[tinturtle]

These are good points.

My failure to be bothered by the issue on my first reading may be down to years in MFU fandom, where suspending disbelief at unlikely language skills is an important competency. *g* (Not that some fics don’t try for realism in that area. As I think I’ve told you before, MFU fanfic as a whole is much more complex and realistic than the show itself.)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

MFU is definitely a very different show than Pros! *g* And I know that there are parts of canon-Pros that are fundamentally unrealistic, but I'm able to gloss over/justify by providing my own backstory in some way. An atom bomb in a bowling bag?! The lads just happen to come across villains during their weekend in the country? And so on... but I guess for me the eps are the basis for our fanfiction, and any author has to justify what they want me to believe, or else I just can't go there. Some author stretch my belief almost to breaking point - I love Sebastian's writing, but don't think Doyle is quite the narcisstic little sod that she makes out - and others just smash through it in the first paragraph, by making the lads too soppy, or too American or (occasionally) Australian or something.

I was able to keep reading through my disbelief of this one though, so all was good! *g*

[tinturtle]

Then there the things that seem unrealistic but maybe aren’t, such as the prodigious amounts of tea the lads drink in some fics.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Lol - drinking prodigious amounts of tea doesn't seem at all unrealistic! *g* What gets me in some fics is when they put away two or three bottles of whisky in a night!! *headdesk*