There is so much Inception fic out there already, and while I know that I still have problems following the rules of shared dreaming as depicted in the movieverse, I do know that some things just don't work according to it... and it's so annoying to be faced with lovingly detailed plots that even slow me can see are totally against the canonical rules of dreamscaping.

For example, there's no way two rival teams after the same job could ever meet in the same dreamscape. Team A would hook themselves up with their mark in their own created dreamscape, and team B would only ever be able to access that selfsame dreamscape if, in the real world, they snuck into team A's hideout and hooked themselves up to the same PASIV device. Which would be stupid. If you managed to make your way into your rivals' hideout, you'd - I don't know - shoot them, or at the very least drug them, and snatch their (and your) mark in order to abduct him to your hideout and throw him into the dreamscape your team had prepared for the extraction, not park your asses in the lawn chairs next to them. Duh.

Also, having to rescue a teammate in a dreamscape after he'd been abducted? Impossible.

• Your teammate has been abducted in real life. You can't join him in whatever dreamscape he's in, because you have no idea where he, physically, is hooked up to a PASIV device. So you have to first find him in reality. Once you've achieved that, it's sensible to assume that his abductors have fled the scene and left him behind, still hooked up. But... Wait. Dreamscape. It requires, after all, to be created by someone who's not your teammate, someone on the abductors' team. Once that architect has fled the dreamscape (and the scene), the dream would unravel and kick your teammate out and back into the real world. Oops. No rescue necessary. Too bad.
• Your teammate has been abducted by a rival team in a dreamscape created by your own people... how? Again, in order to enter your team's dreamscape, the abductors would have to have access to it, and unless they can sneak in (see above) and hook themselves up to your PASIV device, they're out of luck. So? Not an option.
• Your teammate has been abducted by projections. Not only does that credit projections with far more individuality, personality and capacity for independent thought than the movie has ever shown them to possess (even Mal's shade was never a behind-the-scenes evil mastermind adversary, but rather an in-your-face antagonist - apparently whenever Cobb felt particularly overcome by guilt), but also you'd only have to pull out your architect and/or your dreamer in order for the dream to unravel and your teammate to wake up again in the real world.

In short? Heroic rescues from a dreamscape are stupid, as in: not possible. Unless we're speaking of limbo, of course.

Authors, go check your stories for logic fail before you post them, okay? Otherwise it's just like the magical two-way wormhole in SGA fanfic that allows travel in both directions. Ouch.

/blah

I'm wasting far too much thought on this. Help.