bad!logic: an explanation for cheating bastards fic?

[cimorene]

So browsing through back posts of badfic, I've encountered, just recently, a rationale for Cheating Bastards Fic and its rather sweet but horrifically deformed cousin The Wives Know And Don't Mind At All Fic. This is a rationale that never would have occurred to me, personally, but it was voiced by more than one badthor and several badreaders in the discussion post: basically, in essence, they think that an implausible-to-the-point-of-impossibly-convoluted explanation that nonetheless agrees, on the surface, with observable reality, makes for more plausible (and thus inherently "better") fiction than a plausible alternate universe.

This is why it's more likely that passionately political characters with decisively un-homophobic politics would be closeted, or embroiled in years of deception and lies and partner betrayal, than that they would have failed to get together with said partner while otherwise remaining more or less in character. Apparently. (The tone in which this argument was delivered was actually rather condescending.)

I mean. I just. WHAT? These two deformed clichés are some of my biggest RPS rage-buttons (in any RPS fandom, and I include especially bandom because it's my primary right now, but the post in question came from a Daily Show community) - the former much more than the latter in the case of characters who don't strike me as cheating bastards, but the latter can be even more maddening when you get too used to the flippancy with which it's handled.

So by this logic, for example, a genderswap story (these usually conflict only with the laws of physics, and not with the available information about the celebrities we're slashing!) is far more plausible than, oh, a universe where a character was gay from the beginning or even a universe where their career simply didn't take off.

In other words... it's the exact opposite of Occam's Razor! Conclusive proof of the squirrelly twistedness of the badthor mind?

Comments

[emmuzka.livejournal.com]

Soo.. if the character is married in the real life, our aim should be to write it in because it's canon, and then explain it with some obscure cheating-open-relationship logic? Sure. No prob...

And btw, as I'm fallen for MCR fic, could you point me to some rec pages with, like, good fics. There have to be some. Seriously.

[fairestcat]

That's... remarkably convoluted thinking there.

Cheating Bastard fic is one of my massive pet peeves in any fandom, not just RPS. Why would I want to read about people being assholes? It makes no sense to me.

The Wives Know And Don't Mind At All on the other hand, is something I really like if it's done well. Part of that comes, I think, from the fact that reading too many The Wives/Girlfriends Don't Exist stories in a row sometimes makes me feel like I've suddenly been transplanted to the weird Planet Without Women. (Which is not to say I don't like a lot of The Wives/Girlfriends Don't Exist stories, just that I have to be careful not to overdose on them or it starts to really creep me out). Mostly, though, I think it's just a consequence of being poly. I'm in a long-term relationship with a married woman, so The Wives Know And Don't Mind scenarios feel more comforting and familiar than wildly implausible.

That said, when they're done badly (as is the often, but not always the case when written by bad authors) they make me want to tear my hair out and that's because they treat the women really kind of crappily, diminishing and dismissing their relationships so as to elevate the slash relationships as OMG Special And One True Love.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

What I really hate is when people get all high and mighty about how if you don't write the SOs, it means you're either mysoginistic or completely OC or both. Maybe it's because I don't care to write open relationships or cheating all the time! A little bit of either I don't mind, but I'd prefer a universe without SOs when I'm writing RPS (or hell, RPF, too; I've written stories with Carrie-Anne Moss and Rachel Weisz and I'm pretty sure both have husbands or boyfriends).