I remember seeing this thread as a lurker long before, and it's a good thing too because it combed away a lot of ideas that would've been a pain to write and an even bigger pain to write
off in the long run otherwise. I mean if I went through my life and noticed I have a lot of pleasant surprises that happened all at nearly the same time and all with little explanation besides how I am just lucky, I'd be very suspicious of
why everything is suddenly all going my way. (Of course, this may sound more like the most extreme case than what it seems).
It also made me remember a bit about coincidences in real life, for that matter. Just about everyone has had a coincidence happen in their lives. Often they happen more than once, although not necessarily for the same topic or problem.
However, one thing that is forgotten a lot in story telling is that there are just as many
bad coincidences as there are
good ones. Some lead to convenience, others lead to a whole 'nother can of worms launching up your nose and all over the place.
Although it's not really "forgotten", per say, a lot of the times it feels easier to move the plot along to just air-drop an answer rather than sit down and think "there's got to be something more to this...". Often this comes off as lazy, but sometimes not. In fact, there may be other reasons or even deeper answers. "I love my character
that much and want to make it easier for them, maybe toss them a freebie once in a while. I just want to get it over with because I am getting bored of this plot point and just want to get on with it.
I don't have time to bother with this plot point, and since I probably long forgot what happened, I'll just slap together whatever I feel will get the ball rolling faster." These reasons and more will go on and on.
Of course, again, not everyone is the same and it could be for something else entirely, and I admit I could be wrong and I definitely am
not saying that every writer who decides to make things easy and convenient for their character on more than one account are doing it for these reasons.
Seeing this topic, however, it also makes me realize the little link between realism and fiction. Sure, we authors have all the almighty powers of our universe at our fingertips and can justify whatever happens in any way we choose, with or without spoken reasons. However, if you take a step backwards, you start to wonder "If I was (insert character name here), how often will things like these happen to me? How likely will all these happen between (insert one event that happened) and (insert the other event that happened)? Even with my super awesome/sucktastic ability of being extremely lucky/a total spazz/ a klutz?" Not to say that it's a bad thing if the character is prone to have a lot of things happen to them, even if those things are mostly good or bad. I personally thought it was all about timing and how well it fits with the flow of the story.
Because otherwise I will have a hard time believing that the last surviving member of the holy order of lolcats who can save the world of Invizible Spork-ika turned out to be not only Bob's long lost father, but also was
conveniently in his party when needed,
conveniently holding the Sacred Golden Relic of Cheezburgerz that is the great god Happeh Catz's most favorite relic thingie and just so
happens to be just the thing needed to summon Happeh Catz to destroy teh ebil bukkit thieves that
just so happens to be what was needed to save the world.
that kind of airdropped string of coincidences would call for head-desking.