#(well I'll write more obviously)

[crimeronan]

i've seen a couple people in the notes of this very good post about fictional polyamory by @thebibliosphere say things along the lines of "oh, i've been doing it wrong :(" or "how do i know if i did this right??" or "i should probably give up and start over, i wrote this badly :(" and. no!!!!

(i AM seeing far MORE people say "oh, this clarified and helped me so much, i think i know how to fix issues i've been having with my own story" which. YES!!!!)

listen. if you're a monogamous person who's writing a polyamorous relationship, and you've been focusing mainly on The Triad and All Three Together All The Time as the endgame, that's literally fine. that's a perfectly acceptable and strong starting point for your plotting, imo. you do not need to give up on a story that you've started like this.

but the things discussed in the post Can and Should improve your execution!

you can keep the same plot beats and overall relationship arc 100%. polyamorous relationships are infinite in their formations, every one is unique. "basically a monogamous romance but with three people" Does exist, as a relationship type. you're not hashtag Misrepresenting (TM) poly people with it

BUT i do think it will help to read up on some poly people talking about how their relationships Differ from monogamous ones.

so i have outlined some basic important concepts about polyamory.

MORE IMPORTANTLY though, i've broken down some questions that you can answer throughout the writing process to strengthen your individual dyad relationships, your individual characterization, & your characters' individual feelings/experiences. this is a writing resource have fun

future kitkat butting in to say i spent over two hours writing this and it definitely needs a readmore. it is also NOT comprehensive. but everything should be pretty simple to follow! feel free to reblog if you find it helpful yourself or just want to reward me for how gotdan long this took KSLDKFJKDL.

i've grabbed quick links for a couple of the important concepts, some have SEO pitches in them but the info largely seems to be good. (if i missed anything Egregiously Gross on these sites i should be able to update the links with better ones later, since they're under the readmore.)

sidenote: this is NOT meant to be overwhelming, despite the length. if you can't read all of this, that's Okay. you do not need to give up on your writing.

here we go:

compersion!

compersion is a BIG thing in a lot of polyamorous relationships. it's joy derived from seeing two (or more) of your partners happy together, or joy derived from seeing your partner happy with someone else.

compersion is really important as a concept because it highlights that every individual relationship within a polycule is different -- and that that's a GOOD thing. it's sort of the inverse of jealousy.

by the "inverse of jealousy," i mean that instead of feeling left out and upset and possessive, you feel happy/joyous/content.

i can use personal experience as an example: it's a Relief for me when my partners receive joy/support/sex/romance/etc that i can't (or prefer not to) give them. and i love seeing my partners make each other laugh and be silly together.

it's 100% okay for a poly triad not to be together 100% of the time, it doesn't mean that the third member is being left out or not treated equally when two people do things alone together.

(i have individual dates with my partners all the time! PLUS larger 3-and-4-person date nights.)

if the third member DOES feel jealous or left out, then the polycule can have a conversation to figure out what needs/wants aren't being met, and solve that. this happens semi-regularly in my polycule, as it will happen in any relationship (including monogamous ones)! it's just part of being an adult, sometimes you have to talk about feelings.

metamours!

a metamour is someone who is dating your partner, but ISN'T dating you. this may not be relevant for people writing closed three-person romantic sexual triads, but it's a super helpful term to know.

the linked article also lists different types of metamour relationships with some fun phrasing i hadn't heard before. the tl;dr is: sometimes you'll be domestic cohabitation friends, sometimes you'll be buddies with your own friendship, sometimes you might not interact much outside of parties, every relationship is different.

there's no one-size-fits-all requirement for metamour relationships. sometimes polyamorous people will end up dating their metamour after a while (has happened to me), sometimes polyamorous people will break up with one partner for normal life reasons, but remain friendly metamours.

the goal of polyamory is NOT for EVERYONE to fall in love. it is 100% okay if this happens in your story, it happens in real life too! but it is also 100% okay for characters to be metamours without ever becoming "more than friends."

(sidenote: try to kill any internalized "more than" that you have when it comes to friendship. friends are just as important and special and vital as partners.)

of course there are a million ways for messiness to occur with metamours within a complex polycule, exactly like with close-knit platonic friend groups. however this post is not about that! there's enough "here's how polyamory can go wrong" stuff out there already, so i'm focusing on the positives here :)

open versus closed polyamorous relationships!

i'm struggling to find an online article that reflects my experience without directly contradicting at least SOME stuff. so i'll give a quick rundown

google has a bunch of conflicting definitions of open relationships and whether open relationships are different from polyamory. the general consensus seems to be that an open relationship prioritizes one partnership (often a marriage), but that each partner can have extraneous flings or long-term commitments (most often sexual in nature).

this is not typically how i use the term wrt polyamory. the poly concept is pretty simple. a closed polyamorous relationship is one with boundaries like a monogamous one. there are multiple partners in the polycule, but they are not interested in having anybody new join said polycule.

an open polyamorous relationship tends to be more flexible -- it just means that IF someone in the polycule develops mutual feelings for a new person, it's fine for them to become part of said polycule if they want to! the relationship/person is open to newcomers.

some groups will need to negotiate this all together, others will just go "haha, you kids have fun." just depends on the individuals!

with open AND closed polyamorous relationships, the most important thing is making sure that there's respectful communication and that everyone is on the same page. but there's no one-size-fits-all way to do that.

i wish i could give you guys a prescriptive "You Must Do It This Way" guide, but that's.... basically the opposite of what polyamory is about, HAHA.

feelings for multiple people!

i was gonna tack this on to the previous section but decided it warranted its own lil bit.

a defining feature (....i'm told?) of monogamous relationships is that a monogamous person only has feelings for One individual at a time. they only want a relationship with one individual at a time. or, if they DO have feelings for multiple people simultaneously, they're still only comfortable dating one person at a time & being exclusive with that one person.

this is perfectly fine!

the poly experience is generally different from this. but once again..... polyamorous people all have different individual perspectives on this.

for me, i have never been able to draw hard boxes around romantic vs sexual vs platonic relationships, & i love many people at once. my personal polycule lacks many strict definitions beyond "these are my chosen people, i want to forge a life with them indefinitely, whatever shape that life takes"

some poly people feel explicit romantic or sexual attraction to multiple people at once, some poly people feel almost no romantic or sexual attraction at all. i'd say that MOST poly people feel different things for different partners, which is not a bad thing!

some poly people are even monogamous-leaning -- they have just chosen one romantic partner who is themselves part of a larger polycule. (so this monogamous-leaning person has at least one metamour!)

or alternatively, they might have one romantic partner AND a qpr, or other ways of defining relationships. (this is a factor in my own polycule!)

i made this its own point because if you're writing a straightforward triad, this is unlikely to come up in the story itself -- but it's worth thinking about how your characters develop/handle feelings outside of their partnerships.

like, is this sort of a soulmateship, 'these are the only ones for me' type deal? in which they won't fall in love with anyone else, and can be fairly certain of that?

that's pretty close to typical monogamous standards but you Can make it work. just be thoughtful with it

alternatively, can you see any of these characters falling in love Again after the happily-ever-after? and how would the triad approach it, if so? what would they all need to talk about beforehand, and what feelings would everybody have about the situation?

it's worth considering these questions even if the hypothetical will never feature in your actual canon, because knowing the answers to these questions will help you understand all of the individuals & their relationship(s) MUCH better.

i've been typing this for nearly two hours and there's a lot more i COULD say because... there's just a lot to say. i'll close out with some quick questions that you can ask yourself when developing the dyad dynamics within your triad

first, take a page and create a separate section for each individual dyad. then answer these questions for every pair:

how does each pair act when alone?

how do they act differently alone compared to when they're with their third partner?

are there any elements of this dyad (romantic, sexual, financial, domestic, etc) that these two people DON'T have with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

are there any boundaries or hard limits within this dyad that aren't shared with the third partner?

if so, what are they?

partner 3 goes out of town alone for a few weeks. what are the remaining two doing in their absence?

(doesn't have to be anything special, it's just to get a sense of how the two interact on a day-by-day basis without the third there)

what is something that each partner in the dyad admires about the other -- that they DON'T necessarily see in the third partner?

what problem do These Two Specifically need to solve in the story before their relationship will work?

how is that problem DIFFERENT from the problems being solved within the other two dyads?

doing this for ALL THREE dyads is VITAL imo. that way, you develop complex and nuanced and different relationships that all have unique dynamics.

those questions should be enough to get you started, i hope

then After you've charted the differences in relationships, you can start to jot down similarities in the overarching triad. what does one person admire in Both of their partners? what are activities that all three like to do together? what are boundaries or discussions that all three share?

but the main goal is to figure out how to Differentiate each relationship!

a polycule is only as strong as the individual relationships within it. if two people are struggling with their own relationship, adding a third person won't fix that.

(UNLESS the third person is the catalyst for those two to, like, Actually Communicate And Work Their Shit Out. i just mean that the old adage of "maybe if we just add a third-" works about as well to fix a miserable non-communicative marriage as, uh, "maybe if we have a baby-")

AND FINALLY.

if you're not sure whether your poly romance reads organically to poly people, you can hire a sensitivity reader with poly experience. if you can't afford that, you can read up on polyamorous resources like a glossary of terms & articles actually written by poly people. (and stories written by poly people!)

you can also just.... ask poly people questions, if they're open to it. i like talking about polyamory and my own relationships so you're welcome to send asks if u want, i just can't guarantee i'll answer bc my energy levels fluctuate a lot and i don't always have time.

polyamorous people are in an uphill battle for positive representation right now & so the LAST thing i want to see is authors giving up on their stories bc they're worried about getting things Wrong. well-meaning and positive stories that treat this kind of love as normal, healthy, & aspirational are So So So Needed. even if you guys end up with some funky-feeling details.

seriously, if you're monogamous then you probably don't have a full idea of Just How Nasty a lot of people can get about polyamory. i wish it DIDN'T mean so much for you guys to want to write nice stories about us, but it does mean a lot. and it means a lot that you want to do it WELL.

in conclusion. this is not a prescriptive guide, it's just a way to raise questions. and also, you all are doing FINE.

[welcometogrouchland]

I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

[ruvviks]

In the fourth and final season of All That's Left, Mac and Layla and their friends are left with one final job; travel back to fallen Opportunity, the city where it all began, to gather evidence of Matrix Corp creating the virus that led to the end of the world, sabotaging cure research, and being responsible for the destruction of the megalopolis. Hunted down on two fronts, having lost dear friends along the way, and faced with hordes of nearly unkillable mutated ghouls, the group is slowly but surely starting to run out of time. One last journey, to expose the truth about Matrix and shut them down once and for all— but who will live to tell the tale? [SEASON ONE HERE] // [SEASON TWO HERE] // [SEASON THREE HERE]

taglist (opt in/out)

@velocitic, @deadrlngers, @euryalex, @ordinarymaine, @gurathins;

@mojaves, @shellibisshe, @dickytwister, @mnwlk, @rindemption;

@ncytiri, @calenhads, @noirapocalypto, @florbelles, @radioactiveshitstorm;

@strafethesesinners, @fashionablyfyrdraaca, @radioactive-synth, @katsigian, @estevnys;

@elgaravel, @aezyrraeshh, @carlosoliveiraa

[contagious-watermelon]

tomboy trans girls ily <3 by the law of equivalent exchange, there's got to be a masculine trans woman out there that i switched places with gender-wise. hope she's doing well

[thaliagrayce]

y'know what we don't talk about enough? Hazel died. We talk about how she grew up in the 30's and 40's and we talk about how out of place she feels in the modern world, but! She died! She was dead! She has spent more time dead than alive, and not by a close margin!

How does that effect a person??? We got some of it in the flashbacks, but once those caught up with her present timeline and she shared them, they just kind of... disappeared. And she was a regular girl with some weird past experiences. That's one way of doing it, sure!

I think it would have been a lot cooler if she was just a touch creepier. If she felt a little bit Wrong. Yeah, in general she's more approachable than her brother, she's more sociable and less closed off, but. If you actually spend any time with her, it can be difficult to tell which child of the underworld is actually more unsettling.

Hazel is bright of personality and has a dazzling smile, but sometimes she'll just... shut down. She'll go completely blank for like half an hour and nobody knows what to do with it. Sometimes she forgets she's alive. Sometimes she'll spout the grimmest shit you've ever heard like it's nothing, she won't even notice it's weird until the room goes quiet. She spent decades in Asphodel, which is designed to make people forget about themselves and wander around for eternity, only she didn't have the luxury of forgetting! Wild! After she comes back to life, sometimes she forgets that she's allowed to Do Stuff now. She can spend so long sitting and staring at nothing. Sometimes she'll start crying on cloudless days because it hits her again that she can actually feel the warmth of the sun on her skin and she can hear birdsong. Every little mundane experience is a blessing and she will make you remember that in the most foreboding way possible.

[marinette-buginette]

Sokkla Saturdays - Day 9: Pluto

Summary:

The last thing Sokka remembered was dying. He certainly did not expect to wake up in the body of his 15-year-old self.

Read on AO3

[icewindandboringhorror]

finally finished all of one character's entire quests/optional dialogue/questions/etc.... 100,000 words... .... aughhh

[thegreatyin]

And with that, The Doomed Scientist has completed his ambition!

Part of it, anyway. We're gonna have to wait for the epilogue. But oh, what an epilogue it will be. What an epilogue indeed.

As I said when I completed Heart's Desire- thank you all for following me on this adventure. And my condolences, as always, for clogging your Tumblr dashboards with Fallen London posting.

I'm not sorry. It will happen again.

I have a lot of thoughts on Nemesis as a whole and what this ending will mean for Caeru, but. Well. I'll save all of that for when he receives his reward. There's gonna be... a lot to unpack. Both in meta and RP terms.

And, of course, now that Nemesis is done...

...it's time to have a lark. And steal a very special diamond.

[djosephqueery]

We talk a lot about Steve getting into Eddie's interests- playing D&D, listening to metal, having Eddie read LotR to him- and some people have written about Eddie getting into Steve's interests, but there's still quite an imbalance. So here are my thoughts on what aspects of Steve's life Eddie gets excited about.

Eddie really enjoys listening to music with Steve. While he may be a metalhead, that doesn't mean that's the only genre he listens to, and to limit him to that would be an injustice to his character. First and foremost Eddie likes music. He likes music that pushes boundaries and experiments with sound and makes people think. What a hypocrite he'd be if he refused to listen to anything outside his preferred genre.

One of his favorite things to do with Steve is swap music. They'll sit and alternate playing Slayer and Electric Light Orchestra, Dio and Billy Joel. They'll pick up new tapes from artists neither have heard of and talk about what they do and don't like about them. They like discovering tapes they have in common in their collections- Fleetwood Mac, Queen, and Led Zeppelin, to name a few.

They go to concerts together regularly as dates. Mostly local groups neither has heard of before, but always enjoyable.

Eddie figures out early on in their relationship that Steve likes to sing. That he's good at it. That he thought about a musical theatre career but decided he didn't want to deal with all the rejection that comes with auditioning. Eddie decides to learn all of Steve's favorite songs- pop and otherwise- on guitar so Steve can sing along when he plays. So that when Eddie is mindlessly strumming while trying to get out restless energy, Steve will know some of the songs. He even gets Steve onstage a couple times for some slower songs after they've been together a while.

Eddie listens to Top 40 hits with Steve (though he'd never admit that to the kids. Not because he's ashamed, but because they would never stop teasing him about how gone he is for Steve if they knew), and learns Steve's favorite tracks so he can play them for him.

It took a very long time, but after seeing how legitimately excited Steve gets over sports, Eddie decided to give that a try too. He watches games with Steve, tapes them for him when Steve has a long shift and can't watch it live. He still doesn't quite understand the rules and mixes up terms, but he can admit that it's fun to try and follow along and predict strategies and bemoan bad ref calls.

Steve has even gotten Eddie to go to a few games in person with him. It didn't take much convincing, Eddie talks a big talk, but he's a sucker for spending time with Steve and seeing him happy. He's come to the conclusion that being in a crowd at a sports game isn't all that different from being in a crowd at a concert (as far as people gathering to watch a common interest goes), and energy is infectious. He ends up liking the first game he attends much more than he anticipated.

It helps that he likes trying to get the Kiss Cam to show him and Steve.

[orcelito]

While I was amassing the word count estimates I ended up rereading some parts of discacc. Couldn't help it. I got distracted.

I reread the part where Goro pretends to be Ryuji while talking on the phone with Akira's sister. Still laughed out loud at that part. GOD I miss writing Goro so much.

I admit I did grow disillusioned with the fic given its large kudos count yet comparatively pitiful number of comments per update. Not the fault of the people who Did comment, obviously. I still treasure every comment that I did get. But idk it was just hard to write 15k+ word chapters for a fic that has 1.4k+ kudos... but only get Maybe 7 comments per update. If I was lucky.

With some exceptions. But overall it just felt like the vast majority of my readership was reading it thanklessly. And so I lost my passion for it. It just didn't feel like my work was appreciated enough (minus the handful who Did comment, you guys are lovely)

I've had to do some soul searching since I stopped updating. I'm going to be a different person entirely whenever I start writing again. And I WILL write again. Even if it takes me time.

I just need to write from a place of love and passion for the story Only. I need to not let the wish for recognition get into my head. Bc that's what killed my passion before. And I don't want to let that happen again.

I truly do love Discordant Accord. Someday, I'll continue it. And I will be writing it for *me.*

[reminiscentrainclouds]

You guys ever feel trapped? Yea I'm well-acquainted with the feeling of being trapped.

[aerithisms]

i think maybe i need to replay rebirth some time to look at this diplomatically because aerith is My Favourite and i might be biased but i think my biggest story critique of rebirth is that i wish they'd done a little more with her. given that this is the game she dies in i found it strange that they didn't push her into the foreground a little more since this is their last real chance to do that with her as a living member of the party (i'm sure she'll show up in some limited capacity in part 3 but dead lifestream!aerith is pretty different to alive!aerith i think).

i know that sounds like a weird thing to say when you consider stuff like them giving her the game's theme song to sing during loveless and the fact that the last chapter is basically The Aerith Movie but there is a strange lack of focus on her in moments where it feels like we should get more from her throughout the narrative. this game pushes tifa and cloud's relationship more in the mandatory story segments, and i LOVED what they did with that relationship in this game, but it felt odd that the same focus was not given to cloud's relationship with aerith throughout the story given that the ending hinges on him being so devastated by her death that he enters a delusional state of grief. and this isn't even a shipping thing bc as far as shipping goes i'm an aerti truther and i feel pretty equally neutral about both cloti and clerith as romances (if anything i prefer cloti!). it's about giving proper narrative buildup to the relationship that the game's tragic ending hinges on - a lot of aerith's most interesting scenes with cloud in the bulk of the game are optional, which i think is a weird thing to do given what the game is building to.

i also wish they did more with her being a cetra! again, the last couple chapters put focus on this but prior to that aerith is weirdly quiet about it. particularly in cosmo canyon, while we do get the lovely bonfire scene, aerith otherwise has a weird lack of dialogue when it comes to the lore dump scenes with the gi and bugenhagen. i expected her to feel some type of way about these revelations but any indication of that is at best subtext and she doesn't really say a lot about it. and for all that they emphasise aerith and nanaki's connection early on as beings closer to the planet, once you get to cosmo canyon there's a weird lack of payoff for it. same with tifa's dunk in the lifestream - i kinda thought aerith might have something to say about it as a cetra, and in fairness i think it's possible she did and the game is withholding some of aerith and tifa's offscreen interactions for part 3 (i swear this isn't even just an aerti cope lol i think the fact that they deliberately show them talking without us getting to hear it might be something they come back to), but i also wish we got to connect with this part of aerith's character more NOW, while she's still here, so it can inform our understanding of her choices and feelings at the end. i just find it kind of a bummer because aerith's complicated relationship to her heritage is a fascinating aspect of her character and her tragedy that i think goes a little untapped in this game, which means it's likely to go untapped in the story as a whole since she's. you know. dead.

[gardensnakie]

How’s life? No pressure question ofc, but if you want to share please feel free to do so with this ask :3

Eh, it doesn't feel all that great right now. I'm tired and hungry a lot, but I just have to get a routine together. My sleep has been wonky, I've been waking up too early, but I feel fine then but it also feels like I can't rest completely- I have dreamless nights mostly. And I also just get annoyed a lot, but it feels better being around people I like.

[batsplat]

heyyy so you’ve probably been asked this a gazillion times before, but how is your moto gp knowledge so impressively vast? was there a specific moment where you decided to REALLY get into its lore? tysm for all of your hard work btw(pulling articles, explaining things, etc)!!! 💖🥺

very kind + appreciated!! it honestly just sort of happened over the years... I do always feel like a bit of a fraud when discussing motogp because my understanding of the actual sport is inevitably pretty limited,, like at the end of the day this is very much my second sport. didn't grow up watching it, haven't competed in it myself, don't have the same knowledge base to fall back on. which means I do kinda feel extra compelled to try and actually understand what I'm watching lol, do my due diligence and all that. plus, research is fun!! my level of investment in motogp has definitely ebbed and flowed over the years, obviously currently it's more flowing than ebbing...

but yeah,, anyway, much of this lore research happened during the pandemic, partly because it was the first time I felt like I could splurge on the videopass and 'watching twenty seasons worth of motorcycle racing' is an extremely pandemic-flavoured activity. so that's probably the answer! blame covid. I also think the sport is very rewarding to do lore research for because relatively speaking they do make it pretty easy for you. a few websites/blogs that are leagues better than the equivalent you'd get in Certain Other Sports, some judicious use of the wayback machine and an assortment of invaluable books - plus you actually have a working video archive!! I would shoot someone to have a videopass equivalent in Certain Other Sports, like I get all the complaints and I have plenty of minor quibbles but honestly it's fantastic. for all this talk about motorcycle racing and whatnot, really the most important thing about motogp is that it's the archivist's dream

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Okay so I'm only 6 episodes into w.bg so needless to say I have absolutely no idea what to expect regarding the actual narrative arc of the show, but one thing I can say for certain is that Mike Walters is definitely a Character who makes Decisions.

[seriousbrat]

I feel like I'm not especially good at or interested in prose tbh but I've always found it fairly easy to write natural-sounding dialogue. I could happily write pages and pages of nothing but dialogue like it feels like I can Hear These People speaking in my head and I know exactly what they'd say