#but I don't think i'd get all of them

[idiiiiiiiiiiidit]

I just had the greatest dream of my entire life.

It was a big fight to the death.

So many things happened at once, and yet it also had a (somewhat) cohesive story.

A story of betrayal. A story of humor. A story of drama. But most importantly, a story of violence. So much violence.

The main antagonist was an evil nigh-omnipotent being and the main protagonist changed every second.

It was like one of those huge crossover fanfics you'd see on AO3, but somehow bigger.

It was truly beautiful.

What was this dream, you may ask?

Well...

Let's just say...

It was an ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

[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.

[lotus-pear]

got like five asks requesting aku or chuuya so i just drew them together🗿

[icewindandboringhorror]

I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol

[dailymanners]

Being civil =/= being two faced. If you have to regularly see and deal with someone, such as a roommate, co-worker or other type of work associate such as a supplier, classmate, etc. If you don't like them or have personal qualms with them, for the sake of everyone around you be civil with them.

Of course this isn't about abusers or people who make you feel unsafe. This is about people who you just don't get along with or you just find to be annoying.

If you're uncivil with someone you regularly need to be around, you are making the environment worse for everyone around you including the co-workers and classmates you might actually like and get along with. Few people find it comfortable to even have to be in the vicinity of people being uncivil with each other.

Why make the whole atmosphere of your home, workplace, classroom, etc. uncomfortable for everyone there just because you don't like someone or have personal qualms with them? Don't drag others into your personal mess with your co-worker or roommate etc.

Of course you can still assert boundaries while being civil with someone. In fact you should, in a civil manner, keep your boundaries up. That's the difference between "Sorry Guðmundur, I appreciate your offer for me to join you for lunch but I'll have to pass" vs "Oh like hell am I going to join you for lunch after what you said about me at the staff party Guðmundur!" the former is just being a civil adult, while the latter is making an uncivil environment that is likely going to make your other co-workers uncomfortable.

[silusvesuius]

testing out drawing maormer 🪸🐚🪸 and a nelvas 🧣📜🩷 i'll ramble about maormer a bit in the tags

[mazken]

brush test slash rendering practice with ayem

[hellamorte]

do you ever think about how lucanis keeps losing and losing and losing — his entire life? losing his parents, losing his childhood because of the crow training, losing his freedom, his sleep, and one year of his life due to imprisonment. then the maker smiles upon him, and he's discovering something good (rook, the veilguard team, purpose), acquiring something back (his family, his life, his freedom, his job, his city), finding some peace in mundane things (coffee, cooking, taking care of others). it feels like the scales are finally moving, balancing — only for him to lose again. he loses caterina, he can lose his city to blight, he loses at weisshaupt, he loses grip on himself (thanks to spite), he loses control — he loses himself, piece by piece. rook can help lighten the load on his chest (thanks to spite), he gets caterina back, and breathing feels a little bit easier. but loss is not done with him. he loses illario, and it feels like losing a limb, a large piece of himself violently torn away. he's visibly shaken, but no one truly knows what it takes to string the assorted pieces of himself together and keep functioning. and then loss deals what seems like the final blow: some of his friends are dead or lost, and rook is gone, too. he failed; he only knows death, doesn't he? life only takes, and takes, and takes, giving only to tease and take it back. at that moment, he's falling apart completely — until they find rook, and there's a sliver of hope once again. the scales are moving, the team wins, they eventually go back to their lives — and that's when he realizes that the final blow is the life as the first talon.

[jq37]

Just to throw my two cents on the Rat Grinder discourse: They weren't worth the Intrepid Heroes' time. We didn't get the full picture of what's going on with the Grinders until the last quarter of the season. Before that they were just this other clique that hate the main characters, so in-character why would the Bad Kids bother giving them so much attention when they've got so much of their own crap going on. Kristens quest to get Cassandra back and her presidential campaign, Gorgugs courseload, Riz's million and one plates that he's been spinning all season, Adaines financial problems, Figs curse and her doubts about what she wants to do with her life. Fabian's the only one who might have had the time, but he had to be Maximum Legend. There genuinely was no time or even an incentive on the IH's side to develop the Rat Grinders characters.

I still think it's fucked up that these teenagers got taken advantage of by adults they trusted, but we didn't learn any of that until we only had two roleplay episodes left. Too little too late to even try anything diplomatic even if they didn't spend all their time after the Last Stand in hiding.

And a thing about Ivy that no one is roasting her about and really should: An elven archer? Really? Wow, never seen that before.

Yeah totally. Like, from a meta level, I see where the players themselves could have been more curious about the Rat Grinders. There are obvious plot threads that could have been teased out there (though, in fairness to the cast, the adult manipulation aspect didn't become clear until way later in the season--the rivalry and foil aspects were more obvious). This final confrontation could look really different if they'd played that all the way out all season.

But in character? The Bad Kids really didn't have a good reason to waste time on the Rat Grinders. They came into this school year already burnt out from their Night Yorb quest and wanting a break. But they don't get that because they immediately are beset by problems they have to deal with--Kristen's god is on death's door from neglect and she's on the brink of expulsion, Riz is running himself ragged trying to boost his resume for college, Fig is having a whole ass existential crisis, Adaine is struggling with money issues she doesn't want to talk about, Gorgug is taking FOUR YEARS of school at the same time, and Fabian is multiclassing and dealing with his empty house/not having parental support (or Cathilda's support) for the first time. They are dealing with SO MUCH high stakes, personal stuff before the plot even kicks in. And, mechanics-wise, this is represented with the downtime system that means that any time they spend on the RG's is time they can't spend on something that matters more to them. IMO, not prioritizing your haters is actually pretty mature. Like, they weren't proactively using their free time to bully them or anything (except for arguably Fig). They were snippy with them when they crossed their paths and that was it. As opposed to the Rat Grinders who literally had to be told by Jace to stop antagonizing the Bad Kids (though they must have been pretty ineffectual at it because the Bad Kids hardly noticed, which I bet stung considering they were so obsessed).

And also, it's not like they didn't try at all with the Rat Grinders. Early Insight checks on Kipperlilly just got, "This is a polished steel orb of a personality" which doesn't sound very worth interacting with in a sympathetic way if at all and then the next big thing they learn is that she had hated Riz since Freshman Year and that she wants Riz and Kristen dead. And that's AFTER we saw her smile and kill her party cleric. In their position I'm not spending further time trying to empathize with this person, I have made my judgement and it's up to the Jawbones of the world to find if there's something in there to be rehabilitated.

And that's not the only case. Adaine straight up saved Ruben from disintegration during the Frosty Folk battle when she easily could have saved the spell slot, but that didn't soften him towards the Bad Kids any. Adaine also was really keen to Scry on the Rat Grinders to find out what was happening at their meetings. But, in scene at least, she was never able to do that so we never got a scene of them, huddled together, clearly unsure about the path they're on but not feeling like they can walk it back or say no to the authority figures in their lives. She didn't get anything humanizing that would cause her to rethink their position on them the way that she did with Aelwyn for instance. So why would they think they're anything but gleeful co-conspirators?

Hell, the one RG Adaine was even slightly curious about was Oisin and now we know that he was feigning interest in her which, man, can you imagine how much worse that would have felt if she'd actually taken the bait and pursued him beyond just thinking he was cute? Of course, it's possible that her interacting with him more along with some good charm rolls could have changed the narrative in some way but we can only go off of what we know to be true in canon and those facts are (1) He tried to get closer to Adaine while actively planning the downfall of her and her friends, (2) he (along with Ivy) was mean to Buddy behind his back while tricking him into a plan that would force him to go against his religious beliefs, and (3) he called his KVX related dragon ancestors to try to kill the Bad Kids and endanger the entire student body population. Three strikes, you're out. If I'm a Bad Kid I'm not super interested in whatever else is going on with him. And again, literally all of Adaine's friends (except Riz) gave her help to do an Insight check on him during their confrontation in the hallway so she was looking for something there worth engaging with, but she didn't get much.

Fig was fully doing CIA, MKUltra, Fantasy Geneva Convention violations on Ruben to try see if she could get information or flip him. I think she did it in an objectively insane way so I'm not entirely shocked that it didn't yield the exact results she was looking for. But she never found the smoking gun (or whatever the opposite of that is) in his head that would absolve him/show the Rat Grinders were being controlled and her messing with his dreams never flared his conscience enough to make him try to break free (as far as we know) which is what I assume she was going for. If I was Ruben looking for a way out but scared of the repercussions, I might go to Adaine who saved me from certain death earlier the same year and has helped saved the world 3 times with her party and their friends in high (and low) places. Maybe that's what Fig thought might happen but it didn't so from Fig's POV? Gave him a chance. Time to start blasting. And again, at that age, if I walked in to the first day of class and the first thing this random boy does is sneer at me and flaunt his musical success, I'm popping up on his Nemesis Alert at that moment. Doubly so after he tries to trick me and my friends into doing drugs so we get expelled. I'm surprised she tried at all with him.

Fabian absolutely tried to interact with Ivy--in large part for self interested reasons of course, but that doesn't change that he did it. And she came across as callous and unkind from the jump. Their final conversation before the latest episode is the one where she talks about wearing Mazey like a sweater and then says that Fabian missed his chance with her before stalking off. That's a pretty open and shut interaction. No way 17 year old me is like, "Hmm, but why is she acting so mean? Perhaps I should examine that more closely to further understand her." Nah, I've decided she sucks.

And Kristen has tried with Buddy literally up until the last moment. She rolled an Insight check on him right before the fight started and she got a 1. She got nothing from him.

Mary Ann is actually the only Rat Grinder who hasn't done anything to make a bad impression on the Bad Kids--the only thing she did was have a really good Bloodrush tryout. So no reason to hate her specifically (and, in fact, she is also the only Rat Grinder that at least half of them are positively obsessed with), but no reason to explore her further. And Kristen still tried giving her a stuffed animal and her response was that she already had that one and that she was going to give it away. What are they supposed to do with that?

Even when they tried, they didn't get information that was worth chasing when they were so busy and had to manage their free time. Gorgug didn't even slot in downtime to talk to his bio parents when they visited. Why would he spend any time on Mary Ann to figure out her deal? Maybe if they were given more explicit opportunities to interact with them in passing. If Mary Ann was shown at Bloodrush Games. If during class time Oisin tried to interact with Adaine. If Kristen ran into Buddy and Bucky talking. If any of their forays into talking to them or looking into them yielded anything actionable or that piqued their interest--they opened the door for Brennan to give them something more than once. But they never got anything that was worth investing more of their limited time into.

(And also, they didn't learn that Porter was involved until WAY into the last quarter of the episodes. Which absolutely could have changed things since, as far as they knew the RG's were working alone to raise this god which isn't crazy for them to think because Kristen literally did that last year and it was of her own free will. If they knew early that the RG's were smaller players in Porter's plot then maybe they would have been in more of a rescue mindset--especially since Fig has always mistrusted him--but that's not information they had and by the time they got it, the RG's were in deep hiding, like you said.)

And so, coming into the last few episodes, that's who the Rat Grinders are to the Bad Kids. A group of kids who they first heard about in the context of, "they famously hate you," even though they'd never interacted before. A group of kids who they already thought sucked even before they tried to kill the entire study body an hour ago. A group of kids who are trying to doom all of Elmville to eternal rage and who are willing and ready to kill them to do it.

With that context, yeah I think their actions are pretty understandable.

(Also, lmao. Yeah, I think calling Ivy basic would probably hurt her more than most things you could say to her.)

[celtrist]

I just vented out a whole rant about how aromantisim is treated within Hazbin/helluva. I'm not really sure if I should post it for multiple reasons, one of which being I don't want anyone to feel targeted about it or take it the wrong way (like I honestly dont have beef with Al shippers. Gripes, but no beef as I also ship him on occasion).

There was just a sudden burst of frustration I had with it that I think was in part just came from built up frustration from other things. There's things I'd like to have out there, but I don't really think it'd get far or, again, be just taken the wrong way. I don't see a point in posting if people are gonna ignore it, plus it wouldn't change how things are now. If anyone has any thoughts or are curious let me know, but I don't wanna make anyone feel like shit or put a pointless rant out there no one wanted to see. I also wanna keep rants to a minimum as I know people aren't always into that sort of stuff, especially if you don't follow someone for that and you just get an influx of posts of them complaining. And I still want to keep things relatively light hearted around here, at best maybe just some critiques on things here and there.

It's late, I'm on my phone when I should probably just sleep it off, so sleep it off I will.

[raiiny-bay]

finally finished cricket's group

[ironworked]

Given the reasons behind 911's move from FOX to ABC (x, x), its ratings and viewers for this season so far, the currently developing spin-off, its year to year evolution, 911 vs its timeslot rivals and other ABC shows (shown below), and this ranking of this year's broadcast shows so far

911 year-to-year evolution:

vs ABC shows (this season):

vs timeslot rivals:

...

[blackhholes]

teen wolf meme: [2/6] creatures -> banshees

It's not the scream that gives you power... All the scream does is help drown out the noise, allowing you to hear what you really need to.

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

debate

(topic: how many and what configuration of kids do they give off vibes of having (either at present or in the future)(partner is irrelevant in most cases, some could be single parents for all i care))

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

I never really share anything personal on here because I'm a pretty private person, but there's something so profound about getting passed down my Grandpa's old camera collection.

Like what do you mean he took pictures of my Grandma with them 30+ years ago? That the A-1 Canon that's now in my room was the camera that took my parents' wedding photos? I stuck a roll of film into the same place he did? The thought of him loving photography as much as I do is the most tear-jerking emotion I've ever experienced even if we're not that close.

I just got the A-1 Canon working again after upwards of 20 years of being unused and sitting in a cupboard. Hearing the shutter go off as I took a picture of my dog was something special, and I don't even think I can describe it in a way that makes sense. It was like I was holding my own family history in my hands.

I was genuinely surprised it was in such good condition in the first place - I barely had to do anything other than look over it to make sure nothing was broken and mess with a few areas of concern. My grandpa kept his A-1 in immaculate condition despite his pretty bad health; the same with his other cameras as well.

As much as I want to keep them all in a glass case and have them stay perfect, I can't imagine not using them the same way he did. Of course, up until I have to retire them for my own kids to use one day in just as pristine a state.