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

[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).

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I'm exactly of a mind with you. If it were handled well, my irritation would be minimal, and if it were done well ENOUGH I'd like it either way, but either because most people have so little notion of how open relationships could work or because they don't care (since the wives/gfs are still just an obstruction to them, however they decided to get rid of them), those almost never turn out well! I can't see at all how a story where they just happen to carry on an affair with someone other than their life-partners is preferable to an au. Even if that's an open relationship, it just seems bizarre and pointless if the third person doesn't have some significant characterisation as well. You can't devote pages to the one dude's mouth and eyes and poetically sexy posture and the heart-warming and affirming nature of having sex with him, and then 3-15 lines of dialogue to the supposed life partner. I've never seen any merit to the argument that alternate universes without SOs are inherently misogynistic. They're homosocial, yes, but that doesn't imply misogyny. Now, if there are no female characters in existence at all, and the story has much scope, you might have a point...

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm sure there are no-SO AUs where there are no women. There are plenty of stories like that in FPS, too, where the female characters just mysteriously disappear.

And yes, you've really hit the nail on the head there with the so-called open relationships. It would be one thing if the SO was a fully-realised character and it was shown that yes, this guy really does love his wife/girlfriend just as much as the dude he's waxing rhapsodical over, but you can't have the sort of OTP that fandom loves and have them be married to someone else. It reads like cheating, even if it's supposed to be an open relationship.