Up to a point I agree that most fictional stories, especially sci-fi and fantasy, are kinda inevitably gonna be “the story of what happened after a weird and unlikely event started it all” because that’s what makes a story interesting enough to be worth telling

And mostly, I’d agree that such a weird unlikely event gets a pass on suspension of disbelief. Because the fact that it happened in this scenario is the whole reason why the author is picking this story to tell, instead of any of the vastly more common and plausible and boring other timelines where nothing like that happened.

But

when I was a teenager, circa 1996ish, before it was well known what a homophobic anti-choice religious nut Orson Scott Card was, I ended up reading a book co-authored by him and someone else

in which the premise on which the story was built, was something like…

In the future, people who are considered really important are expected to have their whole lives monitored and recorded for posterity. this is a theme that also shows up at the beginning of Ender’s Game, except instead of the little monitor machine they put on Ender to observe his life, people in this world instead get their monitoring devices implanted in… a genetically engineered animal. Which monitors them by following them around everywhere and watching them.

And no it’s not a small compact simple animal. It’s not even always the same kind of animal. And definitely NOT chosen for convenience. One guy literally has a pig. Main character is a monkey. Yes, is the monkey. Narrating in first person. because it is augmented to the point that it is basically as smart as the human it’s assigned to watch. Why is it so smart, if all it has to do is contain a recording device inside it? Who knows.

Also, it’s a fairly important plot point that the animals are conditioned with automatic pain responses as punishment for having sexual feelings. Why not just neutered? Because “some aggression is considered a good feature.” Why is it better for your monitoring device to be an aggressive monkey than just any monkey? (assuming for some reason it can’t just be, y'know, a monitoring device?) They’re not at war or anything. They’re traveling on a colony ship. And, if there is somehow a reason it should be an aggressive monkey, but shouldn’t be a horny monkey, then why is it better to leave the balls intact for the sake of aggression and program out the horny, instead of the other way around? …No. Not giving the reader any more explanation. That’s just how it is.

anyway my point is. Yeah, in most cases, just accept the catalyst. But…. there is, sometimes, a point at which enough WTF can pile into a story’s catalyst and premise that you just might start to lose me.