plausible human sexual behavior

[anthrodisiac]

It does. In the second version, you need some additional precipitating incident at:

to force reveal of this unknown family relationship without the DNA test. That's an extra contrivance in the form of independent event, so it does, in fact, make the second variant more unlikely.

I mean, fair point. In order to find out they're related without the test, you do have to have both of them submit to a genetic heritage screening. But that could be as easy as, "I think I want to find out my heritage, in case I don't make it." "You know, I always wanted to do that. I'll do it, too! Solidarity, bro!"

Which, admitted, is fairly contrived and... shut up I hate you

Damn your... logic... Spock!

You win this round, Lobster...

 

[ConsiderateBeast]

I think logical consistency is part of something broader here. In storytelling, miracles can happen, but they have to be earned, and often "this is unrealistic" actually translates to "this is unearned".

There's a story I read recently, where a woman escapes an abusive relationship and moves to a desert town somewhere around New Mexico and discovers that spirits are real. She interacts with a powerful spirit or maybe a small god that becomes hostile, things get bad. She ends up asking some of the other local spirits to intercede, and Scorpion (among others) goes in to bat for her.

Presented like that, it's a pretty unsatisfying deus ex machina: she can't save herself, so this powerful spirit that she's only just met comes in to help her.

But back in the first couple of chapters, when she's just moving into this town and still emotionally wrecked by her past relationship, there's a scorpion in the stove of her new house. Rather than just light the stove and kill it, she picks up this scorpion with a spatula and lets it go outside. A couple of other times along the way, she finds another scorpion in the house and takes it outside; even though she's barely functional enough to feed herself she still has time for kindness to a creature that will never understand it. So when she gets to that scene later in the book, Scorpion remembers that she was merciful to its children, and takes her side.

One can frame this as making it more "realistic" that this spirit would help her, and at one level that'd be true. But at a deeper storytelling level, what's happening here is that her salvation is earned through her own actions and that's generally a much more satisfying resolution to the reader.

In fantasy you can have dragons. But a hero who wants a dragon buddy, they can't just go down to the dragon shop and buy a pet dragon all trained and ready for heroics. They'll have to put in a lot of work so the reader feels they've earned it.

Although, the flip side of this is that you *can* have off the shelf mass production dragons if you're willing to go through with the consequences. e.g. having a dragon isn't a reliable edge in itself, constant dragon incidents, unruly teenagers with dragons, having to tell grandpa he's got to stop dragoning, Dragons Inc being a major force in society but a big grey organization man bureaucracy, dragon shit on the sidewalk....

(Of course this is one version of the distinction between fantasy and science fiction)

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I'm fine with real world implausibility, fantasy and sci-fi, but I'm pretty sensitive to whether or not a human body can do the things described. If I can't figure out how you can get this part in that part while simultaneously caressing in this way, that takes me right out of the story.

Unless it's Reed Richards and Helen Par.