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

[someblazingstar.livejournal.com]

I haaaaaate CheatingBastards!Fic, because, like fairestcat said, why the hell would I want to read about people or characters I like being jerks, just for the sake of cheezy drama? Reminds me of a horrible Duran Duran Mary Sue I read ages ago (which I read because the summary promised slash, which actually only occured in the sense that Simon and Nick like, maybe kissed once during the sex scene with them and two best-friend Sues, UGH) where the whole point was that Simon Le Bon is a heartless scumbag who uses his fans for sex, but then two of the fans get revenge. Like, why would anyone who likes that band at all ever want to read that?

But I'm torn on "The Wives Know and Don't Care" fic. Because, as it's usually written, as an easy out for the author so they don't have to actually deal with the emotional complications of such a thing, it sucks. But... Two guys that I've dated have had this very intense love/hate relationship with each other since high school. I'm one of, like, 6 girls that they've both been involved with, they talk about each other incessantly, and one even spent about an hour elaborating on a very detailed sexual fantasy about the other once while we were in bed and he was very drunk. (Which was, um, really amazingly hot. I'm a perv, what can I say.) I'm not dating either of them now, but if they ever actually just went ahead and fucking did it like they've been wanting to for, like, 20 years? I would (and would have been) SO ON BOARD for that train. SO ON. I would much rather see them just get over their weirdness with each other than keep lying to themselves and the girls they date, seriously. Dating and now being friends with them is like living in a fanfic.

But um, I know that my situation and mentality are not normal - so while it's an understandable thing to want to write, the problem lies in writers assuming that the people's actual wives would think and react just like slashers would, which is possible, but not necessarily likely. But not impossible. Oh, I don't know.