The Fallacy of Equivalent Badness

[itsnotmymind]

A fallacy that I have on occasion encountered in fandom:

When a person or character doing something bad is used as an argument for them doing an unrelated bad thing.

At its extreme, the fallacy looks like this:

Person A: I think it's OOC for character X to get a speeding ticket.
Person B: I think it's in character. After all, X gets tickets for driving too slowly all the time.

Usually it's not quiiiite so extreme, but the two bad actions can certainly be contradictory.

The assumption seems to be the if someone does bad things, they are morally tarnished and are more likely to engage in other morally tarnishing actions, even if from the character's PoV they are completely unrelated. Engaging in bad actions makes a person bad, which means they engage in (all) bad actions. For this to make sense, the fan's PoV about which actions are wrong, and how wrong those actions are, must be universal: Not just objectively true, but also true from the character's point of view.

I need a name for this fallacy. I keep think "fallacy of equivalent badness" (since all bad actions are equivalent), but I'm not sure that's clear to anyone who isn't me.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

alara_r once wrote a post about this tendency a couple of years ago; in her case, it was about the use of rape and/or torture, which in various sci fi fandom we share had (and has) a tendency to be used independent from the villain's character, on that same justification - X is a villain who did Not Rape Evil Deed, therefore he'd also commit rape. I don't remember what she called this, so. It was, and is, incredibly annoying to me when I find it in fanfiction.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Hello, I hope you enjoyed your fandom break.

That is the kind of fanfiction I avoid. I feel like if I'm going to read something someone else wrote based on a story I enjoy it should be about more than the writer playing out their darkest fantasies without regard for context.

It's very black-and-white thinking.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Break: it served its purpose.

Black-and-white thinking: absolutely. If the summary of a story gives away it's this type, I avoid it as well, but unfortunately it doesn't always. I'm usually a bit sceptical about warnings, but in that sense they serve their purpose. Back when I first came across the phenomenon, ten, fifteen years ago, they weren't nearly as common, and the summary wasn't always a giveaway, either, so when I found a story about a Babylon 5 character who didn't get many, and the summary only said a far more popular character would encounter him (who never met him in canon), I wasn't yet wise enough to the ways of fandom to guess what "encountered" might mean.

To use a Buffy example: imagine a fanfic scenario where the Mayor would for some reason meet Jenny Calendar and would promptly proceed to capture and rape her. Never mind that it would be completely ooc for the Mayor, never mind that the Buffyverse offers enough villains who would serve the purpose if you absolutely want to write a story where Jenny gets sexually menaced. And never mind how much more interesting (and ic) an encounter like that would be if the Mayor, wholesome family man that he is, decides what Jenny needs is a nice adopted uncle to counsel her through her relationship problems with Giles and what he, the Mayor needs, is a techno witch on his side. No, the Mayor is evil and capable of mass slaughter (absolutely!), therefore, he clearly must have a sideline in rape as well. And that's the kind of rationale fanfic employs all too often.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I don't read a huge amount of fanfiction, so I generally only read fanfiction that's either been recommended by someone, or if it's by an author I'm familiar with. I get irritated when people say fanfiction isn't as good as professional fiction, because it so very much can be. But of course professional fiction has barriers that fanfiction does not have, which keeps out the worst and the weirdest. So I let other people go first and bring back recommendations.