I hate when they get easy things WRONG
CW for discussion of bodily injury, law enforcement tactics, and other touchy subjects.
Ranty today because I am watching too much TV (shocker) and in the show I’m binging, the whole “keep concussion patient awake/wake them very hour” thing came up. And that happened right after I was reading something that propagated the even worse advice of “slice open poisonous reptile bite to “drain the poison” procedure. And THAT happened RIGHT AFTER I saw a movie that portrayed the horribly, grotesquely, injuriously wrong routine of “slap a hot blade across a fresh wound to stop the bleeding.”
I’m not going to get into a medical “what’s the right way?” discussion here. This isn’t a medical advice blog. Just…those are all the wrong things to do, and in the case of field cautery it’s potentially making a simple injury into a complex hard-to-fix disaster. Ten minutes of search engine use will cough up the current medical advice for treating concussions & lacerations, not to mention field treatment of snake bites or other toxin-involved injuries.
Getting basic facts wrong in fiction is bad writing, and it BUGS me. I’m not talking about “superheroes flying” or “magic exists” or so on. Premise level differences in reality are not errors. They are elements that have to be accepted before interaction can happen.
But putting premise-level reality differences into a work of fiction is NOT a permission slip to be lazy about the rest of reality. A lot of writers seem to think it is, but it is not.
Medical stuff isn’t the only thing writers get wrong, either. I watch a fair amount of police procedurals (it’s research, I swear!) and the one thing the shows all have in common is a loose relationship with the legal system as its seen In The Real World.
Maybe it’s unreasonable to demand meticulous attention to legal side from a show involving characters who moonlight as cryptic-hunting vigilantes, but…I’m not asking for that. I’d just them to be more emphatic about the ways their legal system is NOT real, because being arrested and interrogated is NOTHING like the way they present it (most TV cops would be so fired for protocol violations so many different ways not even counting the absence of lawyers or cops beating suspects, which is—sadly—not as unrealistic as it should be.)
Again. Not a low enforcement blog, not interested in debate online, not going to provide specific instances and rebuttals. Use your favorite search engine. Read up on your rights after being detained by police, arrested, and/or arraigned and compare that to how it’s shown in Any Given Show or Book involving police characters. (May I suggest the Pot Brothers At Law videos?)
And as an aside, in the current dumpster fire timeline, “know your rights” is actually just good advice period.
ANYWAY. I have a deeper objection to a lot of media portrayals of “reality”— namely that media, especially VISUAL media, short circuit past our judgement brains and leave lasting impressions, so the presentation of stereotypes is actively dangerous and undermines society as a whole.
But that’s a rant that’s hot and deep enough for its own post. I think this was enough grump for one post.
You got this far, have some pretty pictures!
I like the way this one came out.
Pretty clouds. That is all.
Ta for now. Until later!