LW Notes: The Martian Slut Ray

The Martian Slut Ray

Copyright 2023 by B. Watson

The Martian Slut Ray is that rarest of unicorns: Genuine, reader-generated literary analysis. For most fiction writers, reader feedback is a rarity, but on Literotica it often comes quickly and enthusiastically. This is especially true on Loving Wives, where the readers are ravenous, widely-read, and pretty blunt about what they want.

Not surprisingly, Loving Wives readers have also developed their own terms for analyzing trends in stories. The most popular terms, "BTB" and "RAAC," generally focus on the resolution of a story--whether the couple ends up back together, and what kind of punishments are heaped on the heads of bitches (or bastards) who were involved in the cheating. The Martian Slut Ray, on the other hand, refers to the actual story construction and character development.

Before we get to the heart of the Martian Slut Ray (MSR)--what it is, why it exists, etc.--it's worth taking a sec to think about the fact that this is something readers generated. That's pretty cool. It points to a readership that has spent a lot of time analyzing trends, evaluating stories, and developing opinions about how a story is supposed to go. Commenters often use MSR as a criticism, suggesting lazy storytelling and a lack of character development--and I'm going to argue with that opinion a bit--but the very fact that it exists as a concept speaks to the incredible engagement of LW readers.

How the Martian Slut Ray Works

In a standard MSR story, the main character is skipping along, happy in his marriage, when he discovers that his wife is either cheating on him or intends to cheat on him. This is generally a complete surprise to the protagonist, who has previously viewed--and described--his marriage and his wife in glowing terms.

To play up the impact of the wife's infidelity, the main character will often give a quick review of the high points of his relationship. He'll talk about how he and the little lady met--usually something like "she spilled her coffee on me"/"I gazed on her in class"/"She dipped her chocolate in my peanut butter." In short order, the pair dates, becomes exclusive, gets engaged, (usually) has a couple of kids, and gets started on building the American dream. The stopping point of this stroll down memory lane varies, depending on whether this is a "I'm tired of being a housewife," "I'm going back to work after the kids" or "I'm dealing with an empty nest" type of cheating story.

Once in a blue, the wife says something like "I need to get this out of my system before we settle down," but those stories are less common, as the absence of children lowers the stakes of the wife's affair. Without kids, the narrator has the option of easily walking away--splitting things 50/50, selling the house, taking a job transfer to another city, and starting his life again. If children are involved, the wife's affair leaves the narrator with a bleak choice: Accept becoming a cuckold or face economic ruin, alienation from the kids, and loss of the home.

Sometimes, the MSR strikes completely out of the blue, when the main character either walks in on his wife (the ubiquitous "car in the driveway" story) or his wife hits him with the "Honey, we have to talk" conversation, in which she tells him she's seeing (or about to start seeing) someone else, is unwilling to reconsider her course of action, and doesn't want a divorce (and will completely screw the husband if he tries to get one). Sometimes, she'll offer to open the marriage; other times, she'll tell her husband that he either is incapable of attracting a woman, or that she'll cut his dick off if he tries.

More often, though, the narrator has a couple of hints about his wife's affair. Maybe she's going out with the girls from the office too much, or she's buying too many new clothes, or the sex is slowing down from 4-5 times a week to 1-2 times a week to (eventually) once or twice a month. Regardless, something clues him in and he starts investigating, only to discover that the perfect woman he married is now a duplicitous whore.

Having set up the background of the story--the great relationship, the economic realities of the marriage, and the betrayal--a Martian Slut Ray story then proceeds into the meat of the action. Namely, how the husband is going to get revenge and reclaim his manhood. We'll talk more about that later.

Why Do Writers Deploy the Martian Slut Ray?

Here are a few theories:

Bad Writing: As I noted before, many commenters approach the MSR as an indication of bad writing, arguing that MSR writers either haven't taken the time or don't have the ability to create compelling female characters that have depth, purpose, and agency. Personally, I'd argue that, while some unskilled/beginning writers fit into this category, many of the best writers on the site have also deployed the Martian Slut Ray. For example, GeorgeAnderson--one of the better wordsmiths on Literotica--used the MSR in his famous "February Sucks." Think about it: A great relationship and happy marriage that is broken in a blink of an eye when the wife is asked to dance by a famous man and drops her husband's hand "like a hot potato."

Sounds like there might have been a Martian Slut Ray in that dance club...

Misogyny: Another perspective is that the Martian Slut Ray indicates a misogynistic streak on the part of some Loving Wives writers. This perspectives argues that the wife's susceptibility to seduction is meant to suggest that all women are easily seduced--and, presumably, must be constantly monitored by their loving husbands. The wife's willingness to lie to her husband suggests that all wives are liars--and that a smart husband will take every utterance with a grain of salt. The wife's dismissal of her husband suggests that all wives have the potential to be disrespectful--and that a smart husband will always approach his marriage with a distrustful eye.

Again, there's something to be said for this analysis--if you read enough MSR stories, it's easy to get in a mindset that every marriage is built on shaky ground and that every wife is teetering on the precipice of becoming a sociopathic liar. In the same vein, many writers present the signs of a wife's development as an independent character--things like getting a job, getting a new haircut, buying new clothes, picking up new interests, and going out with the girls--as red flags, indicating a potential affair. In this context, the development of anything that would flesh out the character is immediately characterized as a danger to the protagonist and his marriage.

Overall, though, I'd argue that MSR stories are not indicative of a pervasive misogyny. With a few exceptions (Saddletramp's Fort Apache comes to mind), most Loving Wives writers don't seem to be advocating for a male-only utopia, or suggesting that every marriage is doomed. In fact, many MSR stories end with the main character falling in love with a better woman and having a happy second marriage--a development that suggests optimism about marriage, monogamy, and heterosexual relationships.

An Unreliable Narrator: One reason that the husband might never have had a clue about his wife's fall is that he is an unreliable narrator, and was unable to read the signs, was neglectful of his wife, or couldn't come to terms with his own responsibility for the failing relationship. Again, there's something to be said for this perspective: Readers of MSR stories will notice the fairly large percentage of husbands working in engineering--a group not noted for their ability to read social cues. Kidding aside, MSR stories are almost always told from the husband's perspective, so when it comes to his ability to observe his wife and the amount of attention he pays to her, we have to take his word for it.

Another side is that husbands in these stories often focus on the time they spend at work, supporting their families--suggesting that the narrator sees his time on the job as part of his family relationship, while his wife may view it as an impediment to his relationship. In other words, the things that a husband might consider supportive of his family could be positioned as destructive, if we were see things from the wife's perspective. The narrator's inability to see how his devotion to his job could contribute to his wife's unhappiness could, in this perspective, suggest a lack of empathy or a general blindness to the world around him.

As for culpability, the unreliable narrator explanation holds less water. The relatively simplistic morality of MSR stories means that the responsibility for the affair must rest squarely on the wife's shoulders. Even if the husband makes mistakes, the wife's mistakes must--almost by definition--be far worse.

These Are Stories About Male Development: My preferred theory is that the Martian Slut Ray exists because, title aside, Loving Wives stories aren't about the wife--they're about the husband. In MSR stories, the focus is usually on the husband's discovery, revenge, and ultimate rebirth following his wife's affair. We see how the husband processes his grief, humiliation, and anger, and rebuilds himself. Does he get revenge on his wife? On her lover? Does he leave his job? Move away? Have a revenge affair? Get in shape? Join a religious order?

In this context, the MSR wife is not a fully-formed character; rather, she's a narrative device that is designed to upset the husband's world and, ultimately, set him on a path to evolution. Think about it: When the narrator talks about his wife, his focus is on her relationship to him. How her body looks to him. How he won her heart. What he does to keep her happy. How she relates to his kids. How their marriage made him content and satisfied. From this angle, the wife exists largely to serve the husband's story. Even in her cheating, this trend continues: Her betrayal is ultimately a tool for his evolution.

When we see the MSR wife's perspective, it's either as a fairly shallow lead-in to her affair (the "Honey, we need to talk" angle) or as a follow-up after her husband unleashes hell. In the first case, the wife's motivation is presented as an ultimatum: Give in to my desires or face the loss of your happy life. We see very little of her decision-making process, her consideration of options, her weighing of potential profit against potential loss. Rather, we usually get something along the lines of "When Mavis gets an idea in her head, it's hard to shake it loose."

In the case of post-cheating wrap ups, these usually come after the main character threatens divorce/files for divorce/sends video to her family/sues her boss for alienation of affection. The narrator and his wife sit down (often in a lawyer's office, right before the signing of the divorce decree) and discuss her perspective...long after such a discussion had a potential to save the marriage. Even then, the wife's perspective generally boils down to "I wanted to cheat and thought you loved me enough to forgive me," indicating a level of entitlement and lack of logical thinking that most of us grow out of by the time we enter middle school.

In either case, the wife's desires don't have independent meaning or value. They either function as a spur to the husband's actions ("Honey, we need to talk") or as a way of seeking closure/catharsis. Taking it from another angle, the MSR wife is similar the villain in a bad 1980's action flick. Like most MSR wives, '80's villains are fairly interchangeable: They're usually either thieves (Eurotrashy guys clad in suits or slick black activewear) or terrorists (vaguely Mediterranean guys with curly black hair, five o'clock shadows, and camouflage fatigues). Their motivation is usually ego, greed, or mindless devotion to a cause. We rarely got to see their families, their homes, or any context that would raise them above the level of a basic plot device. When motivation is given--as in the case of Die Hard's Hans Gruber, who is both a former terrorist and a current thief--it's generally shallow, and is designed to serve the protagonist's development.

(Look, I know you love Hans Gruber. We ALL love Hans Gruber. But that has a lot more to do with Alan Rickman's acting than Jeb Stuart's scriptwriting. Incidentally, the same goes for Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves' Sheriff of Nottingham.)

The reason for these underwritten characters is clear: Nobody goes to a movie to see Hans Gruber (at least the first time!). They go to see John McClane jump off a building, walk through glass, and say "Yippee kay yay, motherfucker." More to the point, they go to see a sympathetic main character adapt to situations, evolve his perspective and emerge victorious.

From this angle, anything more than a basic characterization for the villain is a waste of time; worse yet, it's a distraction from the central plot. We don't need to yawn through scenes of little Hans Gruber making models and talking to his uncle Helmut. Similarly, we don't need to see the MSR wife as a kid, fishing with her aunt Kitty, or getting her first kiss. We don't need to delve deeply into her fears of growing old or losing her attractiveness. We don't need know what complex calculations led her to decide that her husband would accept humiliation over divorce or a dishonest relationship over freedom. For the purposes of the MSR story, the wife burst into existence when she spilled her coffee on the protagonist at college, and everything between that moment and the body of the story is designed to build up the emotional impact of her infidelity.

Burning the Martian Bitches

Another key aspect of Martian Slut Ray stories is that they tend to become burn the bitch stories, rather than reconciliations. The simple reason for this is characterization: If the wife doesn't rise above the level of plot device, it's easier to justify cruelty against her and harder to justify sacrifice on her behalf.

In terms of cruelty/punishment, there's a pretty simple process at play: The more we get to know the wife, the more we'll sympathize with her, and the more intensely we'll feel her pain. If we've really gotten to know her--if we intimately know her dreams, her well-justified reasons for cheating, and the insecurities she struggles with--then the idea of punishing her feels cruel. All of a sudden, the fun revenge scenarios that fuel BTB stories--framing her for a crime, giving her an STD, humiliating her with videos of her affair, selling her into sexual slavery--start to look a lot like kicking a puppy.

On the flip side, a satisfying reconciliation requires that the husband have a REASON to reconcile. After all, forgiving a disloyal spouse is hard work--it forces the husband to overcome a lot of insecurity and humiliation, rebuild his confidence and trust, and work hard on shoring up his relationship. To make that work, the writer needs to give us something to justify the effort--something like the main character having enough extramarital sex to regain his pride, the boyfriend getting severely punished, and the wife sincerely repenting for her sins. Most of all, the wife has to be worth the effort--she has to be someone that the reader can recognize as a high-quality, worthwhile human who made a mistake and sincerely wants to get past it.

Obviously, a MSR wife doesn't fill the bill. Because she was hit by the ray, she can't satisfactorily explain the reason for her crime, making it impossible for her to atone for it, much less promise that it won't happen again. She also probably lacks sufficient character development to make her appealing to the narrator (and the reader). Simply put, her character doesn't have enough integrity to overcome the main character's fears of future mistakes. Basically, the only remaining reasons to stay married are her beauty (which is now tainted for the narrator, as she's shared it with another man), their shared history (which she has tarnished), their shared finances (in which case, staying with her makes the main character a wimp or a gigolo), or their shared offspring (which, while compelling, can also lead to household tensions that could warp the kids).

Again, this is not necessarily a storytelling flaw of the MSR. If the point of the story is to highlight the main character's growth and development, then his refusal to sign up for another dose of infidelity and his confidence to seek a new future outside of his marriage suggest that he has achieved that. If we measure a story by whether it accomplishes what it has set out to do, most MSR/BTBs are successful.

But when the MSR becomes the basis of a reconciliation story, we start to have problems.

Martian Slut Ray Reconciliations

In BTB stories, writers create a satisfying narrative by balancing the level of the crime against the level of the punishment--put simply, it's okay if terrible things happen to the husband, as long as equal or greater terrible things then happen to his wife and her boyfriend. Reconciliation stories, on the other hand, face a steeper climb: For a reconciliation to feel satisfying, an author has to balance the depth of the wife's character against the ultimate outcome of the story. Consequently, the wife is the key--for a satisfying reconciliation, she has to feel like a real character (and, consequently, is probably not the victim of a MSR).

If you've spent enough time on Literotica, you've probably come across a couple of these stories. You also may have come across that rarest of beasts: A satisfying reconciliation story that ends with the main characters divorced. A particularly good example is "Imbalance," by Javmor.

SPOILER ALERT! IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS, CLICK AHEAD TO THE STARRED LINE BELOW.

In "Imbalance," Javmor spends a great deal of time setting up the strengths and weaknesses of Frank and Claire his main characters. Frank is caring, but neglectful: He works 80+ hours per week at his engineering job, ignoring the needs of his wife and daughters, even as he tells himself that he's working overtime for them. Meanwhile, Claire is loving, but lonely: She reads her husband's absence as a lack of love, and pursues an affair.

In the course of the story, we see both of these characters unsuccessfully try to come to terms with Claire's affair. Eventually, Frank acknowledges his culpability in his wife's cheating, and Claire admits that she didn't handle her unhappiness well. In the end, the pair divorces, but Frank moves close to his family, Claire invites him to regularly join her and the kids for dinner, and the ending, while realistic, feels sad. Many commenters noted that they wished the characters had found a way to reconcile--a rarity in Loving Wives.

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The key to Imbalance's ending starts at the beginning, where Javmor creates a character who is almost the anti-MSR. Unlike the basic Martian slut, Claire has fairly reasonable and relatable justifications for her infidelity. In fact, Frank eventually acknowledges that he was a bad husband, and bears some responsibility for Claire's actions and the loss of their marriage. Faced with the impact of her affair, Claire attempts to preserve the marriage--a process that she began long before she cheated, and which she continues post-cheating, despite Frank's intransigence. Finally, when reconciliation becomes a clear impossibility, she repeatedly tries to find a way to connect with her ex and preserve some aspects of their former relationship.

In short, Claire has justification, agency, a sense of responsibility, and real remorse. It's almost like she's a real person!