(no subject)

The first thing in my Pillowfort feed right now is a meta post discussing Girl Genius in the context of the genre of Rationalism Fic. While I first saw that post in the context of the Fandom Meta community, I'm not sure of the etiquette of posting this as a comment--not when the author didn't reblog the post to the community and seems to have written it for her own page--so I'm going to talk about it in my personal space. Besides, the conversation I want to have is quite orthogonal to hers, and it feels rude to derail it in comments. (And hey, I can crosspost from over there to DW that way--I like being here, too.) 

Here's the thing: I loathe the genre of Rational Fic. I had several friends who were very enthused by Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, many of whom tried to get me avidly to read it. This... probably didn't work very well, because the attempts at realism in the story fell badly flat to me in the very first point: the characters seemed to me to certainly not be developmentally realistic for eleven-year-olds, and to a greater or lesser degree sympathetic protagonists appear to be... look, put it like this: the genre abandons emotional realism for me. I can't work out how this kid becomes this obnoxious, biochemistry professor stepfather or not--and I'm perpetually astounded by the absence even the emotional weaknesses I associate with highly logical gifted kids given their head in the context of academics. 

Of course, this isn't surprising, given the conceits of rationalism: the idea that the emotional is the enemy of rationalism, that emotions are the primary source of mistakes in logic, and that pure dispassion would allow us to best understand and predict the chaotic world around us.

(I think this is silly. We know empirically what happens when you lose emotionality: you also lose the ability to make any decisions at all. I also find that the result of striving to minimize all potential emotional reasoning is to... muddy the water where emotions hide, making illogical decisions and behavior more likely than it would be if people would just acknowledge their emotional position outright and move on with asking whether those emotions are justified or ethical or whatever.

I would have so much fun yelling at Vulcans over the poor logic of their position, is my point. I love Vulcans, but I don't think they're right about the approach to emotionality and kohlinar, particularly.) 

The big problem with this kind of "Rational Fic" is that I'm reading fanfiction heavily for emotional continuity. I don't think it's a surprise that the Fanlore collated criticisms of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality focus heavily on the contentions that the characterization is bad. Because many people explciitly enjoy fandom as in ways heavily focused on emotional continuity and characterization, of course a genre driven by a philosophy that totally fears emotional reasoning and engagement would mesh badly for many people. 

But I do find it interesting and wryly amusing that I find this "hyperrationalistic" genre of writing so completely frustrating because I parse and perceive it as completely emotionally unrealistic and incoherent.