#ultimate solution: polycule

[cervinae-canine]

i hope it's okay to say this here because i saw the post you made about heavymedic shippers but as a woman who selfships with them as a polycule it honestly hurts me alot when people say that women are not allowed to ship themselves with medic or heavy because they're gay and wouldn't like them back. these characters make me happy. why am i not allowed to find comfort in them? because it goes against your made up headcanons? i don't understand why people have such a superiority complex over something as up to interpretation as fictional characters' sexualities.

it's the misogyny.

[drdemonprince]

ENM/Poly circles explicitly discourage real talk around jealousy, and practical considerations around nonmonog in ways that routinely exclude and excise POC and disabled people.

ENM/Poly expects everyone involved to act as though “love” is the reason for every relationship choice. Cliche #1: love isn’t finite. Which… sure. Maybe love isn’t finite, but attention and time sure are— and those are at a premium.

Cliche #2: Love is all you need/love is what makes a family. I am familiar with criticism of this from a family abolition, anticapitalist standpoint, but I have seen this be uncritically repeated by ENM/Poly people. It’s not true that love is what makes a relationship work or not work. It’s also about dumb shit, like geographical proximity and practicality. Good luck being ENM if you can’t regularly host because you have roommates or live at home. Good luck being the gold standard of ENM (out to everyone, including family and maybe even the workplace!) if you are any kind of marginalized. Love is simply not enough. There’s real world shit to consider.

Most ENM/Poly people are white gen x’ers and older millenials for a reason. It’s a framework that works awesome if you have abundant spare space, disposable income to blow, and free time. Plus most ENM/Poly people are heavily in therapy, and just have a fuckton of time to deal with their various baggages… or at least like to posture as though they are doing those things.

Non monog can be liberatory— disabled polycules caring for one another. QPRs! Multiparent households! But ENM/Poly is very lodged in a liberal, hyper-independent Super Good Boundaries Thank You Very Much world of its own, and so most of the “resources” like More Than 2 or Polysecure have hella flaws in that respect.

COME OFF ANON SO I CAN FOLLOW YOU! Because you just said a whole word.

I find "ethical nonmonogamy" and polyamory circles to be viscerally unpleasant and alienating to be in as a crazy, chaotic antipsych person who does not always make choices for carefully therapized, restrained reasons -- and who doesn't believe that most other people do either, no matter how much they claim to.

I don't fuck multiple people to serve some higher purpose; I do it because I'm horny, impulsive, and have a variety of niche fetishes that are really difficult to satisfy.

I didn't choose to be openly nonmonogamous because I nurtured my soul and found that it was abundant with love that I just had to give -- all my relationships already were nonmonogamous at one point or another, either because I cheated or the other person did or both, and I eventually decided to move with my feelings rather than against them, and to stop denying all that is inside me -- all of the hunger and darkness as well as the light.

And I can't say that my nonmonogamy is inherently "ethical" either -- just like my monogamy sure wasn't! I'm a human being, and a crazy one at that, I get jealous, I have emotional blowups, I lash out and fuck other people to make myself feel better or to affirm that I am desired, I make big demands of the people I date, I fail to show up for people consistently, I get hurt, and I hurt others, and I will continually have more to learn. I will also continually have wild animal emotions and triggers, and I won't always deal with them in the way my partner(s) might want me to. I try to avoid hurting other people needlessly, of course, but sometimes your own needs are incompatible with another person's, and hurt is inevitable.

When there is only so much time and attention available in our lives, it's true that somebody's often going to come up short. And ultimately the person that I choose above all others is me. And so, no, I can't say I'm always doing nonmonogamy in some caring yet dispassionate way, or that love is the solution to all problems -- I am driven by passion and need, and sometimes being alive in those ways means getting hurt, or hurting in turn.

I would echo essentially all that you've said. We need time and resources and spaces to enjoy privacy with other people, and if you're not some rich work-from-homer, that shit's all in short supply. I hate the sheen of calm positivity that "ENM" and polyamory folks tend to place on everything -- as if no choices they make are fueled ever by bitterness, dislike, resentment, or hell, fucking white hot irrational DESIRE. With how fair and measured so many of them make their polyamory sound, I don't even see what's fun about any of it.

Sometimes you want to upend your whole life because you're so down bad for a person. Sometimes you hate the shit out of your partner's partners and you say and do little manipulative shitty things to convey those feelings, or to try and blow the relationship up. Sometimes the hours just don't add up and somebody gets shafted. Sometimes you make a promise and then you can't follow through, or just don't WANT to anymore because you have changed.

These are real human realities whether we like it or not, and I find it terribly unrealistic AND unsexy to refuse to acknowledge all the darkness and frustration that comes out in any relationship. I think a lot of the ENM/poly crowd that is white and middle class and heavily therapized is so averse to naming anything edgy or prickly in themselves that they make their spaces actively hostile to anybody who openly expresses negative feelings. That means Black & brown people get tone-policed a ton, "mad" people like me get no-true-scotsmanned out of "ethical" nonmonogamy for ever doing anything messily, and all the romance and sexiness of relationships gets sanded down into a Canva-graphic beige blandness of weekly polycule meetings and processing sessions.

In this world of self-optimization, even fucking and loving other people has to be cast as therapuetic -- our desires must justify themselves by somehow making us better, more capable, more controlled people, But fuck that. Sometimes sex or love is worth exploding your whole life over. The ENM/poly crowd says their way of loving makes them more even-keeled but it seems like a kind of death to me.

[fallenrocket]

Some Random Galinda/Elphaba/Fiyero Thoughts

Note: This is mostly based on the musical, looking at the movie in particular--while I love the book, Fiyero is so different between the two versions that he needs to be viewed as two separate characters. Also, my shipping thoughts go hand in hand with my neurodivergent headcanons. For the purposes of this post, we have Elphaba (autistic,) Galinda (high-masking autistic/ADHD,) and Fiyero (ADHD.)

For as long as there have been love triangles and shipper wars, there have been fans who've pointed out the obvious solution of "So-and-So has two hands!" I've certainly seen the appeal of various OT3 ships in the past, but after watching Wicked: Part 1, I'm not sure if I've ever seen a love triangle as much in need of an OT3 resolution as Galinda/Elphaba/Fiyero.

Any way you look at it, it's clear that Elphaba is the apex of this triangle/polycule, so let's start there. The Elphaba/Galinda and Elphaba/Fiyero ships are both rock solid. Both have certain similarities, the popular hottie paired with the gorgeous outcast whose beauty can only be seen by them. But the road to how they get there in each case is a little different, so we'll take them one at a time.

Elphaba/Galinda

We have to talk about them first, obviously. That's why we're all here, right? The relationship so iconic, you can build a whole marketing campaign purely off the colors green and pink. These two have a classic love/hate setup, the old I Hate My Roommate, Oh No I Love Them! routine. But with both characters, it goes so deep. Being seen as a good person is crucial to Galinda's sense of self, and from the moment she meets Elphaba, who sees through her self-aggrandizing vow to use her not-yet-developed sorcery skills to "help" her, that sense of self is challenged. The image Galinda presents to the world is so carefully controlled and precise--her popularity is thanks in part to the fact that she's constantly performing "personhood" for those around her. But Elphaba immediately sees through her performance, calling her out in front of everybody.

That, I think, is at the heart of their early conflicts. It's not just that Galinda is pretty and popular and Elphaba is green and weird. It's that Elphaba has no issue pointing out that Galinda isn't what she pretends to be, and that rattles her. At the same time, it probably burns her up that Elphaba refuses to give in to what other people think about her, at least giving the impression that she doesn't care about their opinions. That isn't true, of course, as Galinda rightly recognizes at the Ozdust Ballroom.

When Galinda steps forward to dance with Elphaba, it's a revolutionary moment for her character. It's an unspoken acknowledgment that she had been cruel in giving Elphaba the hat, willingly admitting that she's not as "good" as she likes to think she is. But at the same time, this dance is the first truly kind thing Galinda does in the story. Like Elphaba, she hasn't stopped caring what people think about her, but for the first time, doing something right means more to her than just giving the appearance of it. So she stands with Elphaba among the stares and whispers, following her lead and doing her dance regardless of how it looks.

"Popular" is more than just a recompense, a genuine way to try and help Elphaba after tricking her earlier with the hat. Even as Galinda tries to make Elphaba more like her--ultimately giving up when she realizes how lovely Elphaba already is as herself--this is Galinda at her most unmasked, which actually makes her a little more like Elphaba. She is extra as hell throughout this whole song, delightfully goofy and hyper and excited. It's in stark contrast with Elphaba, who doesn't know what to think here, but this is who Galinda is when she's not performing for everyone around her. Elphaba is always 100% herself and never lets anyone take that away from her, and in "Popular," Galinda lets Elphaba see her.

When the break happens between them in "Defying Gravity," it has nothing to do with how they feel about each other. Their angry/frustrated accusations of "I hope you're happy" give way to their sad/wistful farewells of "I hope you're happy." Their essential breakdown is about, not who they are but how they are. Elphaba doesn't know how to go along to get along, even for the sake of playing a long game, so she immediately blows everything up with the Wizard and Madame Morrible because she knows how wrong this all is. She shows her hand without a second thought and is instantly prepared to throw everything else away for her ideals. Galinda, meanwhile, has spent her life being who other people expect her to be, and she doesn't really know how to give all that up--including her dreams of becoming a sorcerer and her chance for real power and influence--to take what feels like a shortsighted stand. Elphaba has no plan beyond "I won't do this" and "We have to get out," and as much as Galinda loves her, she's not ready or able to take that leap. They're both caught on diverging paths, reaching out for each other even as they're being pulled apart. Gaaaaah!!!

Elphaba/Fiyero

Even though Elphaba/Fiyero plays with similar archetypes and some similar themes as Elphaba/Galinda, their interactions and relationship are different, which is valuable. This isn't just a case where the canon M/F ship gets to "go there" while copying the F/F ship Because Compulsive Heterosexuality. I will say, the movie in particular gives me lots of Fiyero feels that I don't necessarily have with the stage show, so my thoughts on both Elphaba/Fiyero and Galinda/Fiyero rely heavily on Jonathan Bailey's interpretation of the character. In this version of the story, Fiyero does feel important to me, not just a shoehorned-in love interest for the sake of it.

Like Galinda, Fiyero is a character who masks/performs a lot. A key difference between them, I think, is that Fiyero has much more self-awareness about his. He knows what he's doing when he plays the role of the shallow party prince, essentially "giving the people what they want." But as hard as Galinda works to maintain the image she projects, I'm not sure if she entirely realizes that it isn't the real her. Both characters are trapped behind the masks they've made, but Fiyero definitely knows it, and I'm not sure if Galinda does.

At any rate, that's what we're working with when Fiyero meets Elphaba. In this instance, he clocks her before she clocks him--Fiyero easily defies her expectations when she rattles through her standard "no, I'm not seasick" list, and he immediately treats her like a person, something that not many people in her life do.

Elphaba quite can't see that at first, though. I don't know if she initially buys the performance Fiyero sells everyone else, but she's pointedly unimpressed by it. While everybody else is tripping over themselves falling for his charms in "Dancing Through Life," Elphaba huffs and rolls her eyes, even when Fiyero specifically meets her gaze in the middle of the number and gives her a little "hey, I know you!" wave.

So even though we get a bit of a love/hate trajectory again, it's not mutual this time. Fiyero is intrigued by Elphaba from the start, though not particularly because of her greenness--rather, he finds it interesting that she's immune to his charm. He likes that she speaks her mind and causes "commotion," and post-"Popular," he tells her she doesn't need to change herself. The unspoken implication? He likes who she already is. Elphaba is the one who holds back here.

It's not clear exactly where and how the change happens for her. Obviously, the rescue of the Lion cub marks the moment where Elphaba realizes her feelings for Fiyero, voiced in "I'm Not that Girl." But her opinion--and understanding--of him had already shifted. As he points out, some part of her chooses not to knock him out with the poppy spell, recognizing him as a potential ally to help the Lion. And it's in that scene where she acknowledges that he just pretends to be shallow and self-absorbed, adding that he's unhappy within that performance. So she's already made those observations about him. But when did it happen? For me, that's the part I'm not seeing on the screen, and it's an interesting question to wonder what causes Elphaba to reevaluate Fiyero in the first place.

With both Galinda and Fiyero, I think it's important to note that loving Elphaba doesn't change who they fundamentally are. This isn't character growth via The Love of a Good Woman. Both of them already are the people Elphaba comes to know and love, but the parts of them that she values are the parts that they tend to hide. Loving Elphaba makes them want to let themselves be seen, at least by her. By the end of the movie, Fiyero's feelings about how he wants to show himself are already changing, while Galinda is torn, breaking her own heart as she's dragged back into other people's expectations.

Galinda/Fiyero

Mileage on this one varies, I know. Plenty of fans will argue that this "triangle" really only has two sides, that it's Elphaba/Galinda and Elphaba/Fiyero. That Galinda/Fiyero is purely fake performative comphet. If that's your interpretation, that's cool.

For me, though, I do think there are real feelings there, on both sides. Galinda lamenting, "I don't even think he's perfect anymore, and I still want him!" feels major for her character, and I see Fiyero's care in how gently he responds when Galinda is knocked out by the poppies. And it's just more interesting to me if they both care about each other. I'm not saying their feelings for each other are the same as what they feel for Elphaba, or as intense. But in a hypothetical OT3 resolution for this story, I think their relationship would add up to more than just passing each other coming and going from Elphaba's bedroom.

I find Galinda/Fiyero very interesting because, even though they're the only "official" couple within the triangle by the end of the movie, there's far more potential in what their relationship could be than what it actually is at this point. In an OT3 scenario, I feel like their dynamic requires the most speculation or imagination. It's very clear what Elphaba/Galinda or Elphaba/Fiyero would be like romantically. But what would Galinda/Fiyero be to each other?

The way I see it, their canon relationship is hampered by two chief points: masking and outside expectations of monogamy.

Because both of them are performing most of the time, that extends to their relationship. Fiyero and Galinda start dating because each is very much The Sort of Person I'm Supposed to Date. When they flirt with each other, it feels like you're watching a play, two master performers "yes and-ing" their way through a relationship that's far more about the image they want to present than what they themselves really want.

Again, they're both drawn to Elphaba in part because she sees them for who they are and makes them want to be who they are. Fiyero's mask makes him actively unhappy, and at minimum, Galinda's puts her under a lot of pressure to maintain it and forces her into heartwrenching choices. So as they date one another--largely because other people expect it of them, because they're "perfect together"--their relationship is tied up in this thing that brings them misery and stress.

Furthermore, they're not really dating one another, they're dating one another's masks. We know that the real Galinda and the real Fiyero are both great--Elphaba wouldn't like them if they weren't! But in in their relationship, they don't really get to see the parts of each other that Elphaba loves.

That brings me to their other main hindrance. If Galinda and Fiyero are artificially forced into monogamy, then of course it's not gonna happen for them. They're just not it. Neither of them would choose the other over Elphaba, and if only one of them can be with her, than one person's happily-ever-after is the other one's loss.

In that way, I think a real Galinda/Fiyero relationship could only be possible inside an OT3. If both of them were free to date Elphaba, free to love and be loved by her, that could give them space to love each other, in whatever form that would take. Maybe it'd be romantic, maybe not (Lesbian!Galinda truthers, I see you!)--maybe they'd both have a romantic/sexual relationship with Elphaba and be platonic partners for each other. I'm not sure. But I do think they genuinely care about each other, and I think they'd be able to figure out what that looks like for them if they were both comfortable and secure in their relationship with Elphaba. If they didn't 1) feel forced to compete for her or 2) feel that, not being with her, they were one another's "consolation prize." And since I also think being with Elphaba would help them both feel more comfortable in dropping their masks and being their authentic selves, they'd have a much better opportunities to actually get to know one another.

[ultimate-polyship-tourney]

Ultimate Polyship Tournament:Round 13|Side A

Propaganda under the cut:

Mew/Shin/Neo

One of the few canon polycules I know. A perfect combo of a beautiful, smart woman, bisexual himbo and a sad gay. All on a run from a mafia boss who just happens to be the sad gay’s dad.

I just love them

Just look at them. Look at them hug and tell me they aren't the best

First off- they're canon. Secondly, Mew is a gogo bar hostess who kills a mafia guy that was trying to kill Neo, a stripper having an affair with the mafia guy's boss's new wife, and the mafia boss is Shin's dad. That's episode 1. They spend the rest of the series on the run and being bisexual.

Nerdy son of a mafia boss, strip bar hostess and a male prostitute are together on the run because they accidentally killed someone from the mafia during an attack. Which binds them together and they fall in love with each other while trying to find a solution to their messy situation. One of the best poly themed series out there.

Xiao Yao/Tushan Jing/Xiang Liu

Xiaoyao just wants to love and be loved. Tushan Jing has the biggest heart and is willing to be with her forever, and she loves him too! Xiang Liu... I feel like yes, a big part of him not being with her is because he wants to prioritize the war, but I genuinely feel like he wanted to know so badly who she liked most, because he was seriously considering being with her and what consequences he might have to work out for that to happen. If he didn't sincerely believe Tushan Jing could be there for her in ways that Xiang Liu couldn't, I think it would have been very different. For him to just have the option to allow both of them to be with Xiaoyao, who clearly liked both of them, I think it would have ended in a relationship that would have been great for them all.

[fictionfolk-safehaven]

We prefer your Techno and Ranboo to not read this ask, as it could cause discomfort ^^' /very-lh

So we found this blog all love that there's some beings who are more open-minded about sensitive stuff, so we wanted to share our experiences!

We usually pretty strict (in the best words) about forming fictives because of 1) online bias around them and their sources and 2) we're anxious about source-trauma as we don't know how to deal with them nicely yet.

But when we read a fanfic about Technoblade and Ranboo, who are turned out to be romantic, and even more, partners in that fic and made us make the "surprised pikachu" face because we never learned to read AO3 tags lmao. But the fic was so fire, it was so well-written we instantly got both of them into our system.

In one hand it's worrying because if anyone hears about them, we're toast. We are aware of this and so they are. But in other hand it's nice because they're happy to be together in our system where none of us judge them from who they are or the fact that they're mates. They already experienced a lot from the beginning and ending up here with us was the best outcome for them.

At first we thought of separate them from their sources, but it wouldn't be the best for their sake so instead we leave them to ourselves, let them live their happily-ever-after in our system without judgement.

-enderlin couple

Post Author: Kokichi

CW's: implicit mention of death if you have context for it.

So... I'm fucking giggling at this, actually, anon. I appreciate your concern for our Techno and Ranboo very much! However! Guess who's in a relationship in-source in our canon too? Yup. Techno and Ranboo. Actually, they're part of a pretty big polycule in-source. They haven't worked out how that translates to our system yet, as our Techno struggles with that sort of thing because of the content creator sharing a name and voice with his source character, and that whole situation.

Techno and Phil are.... Well, technically they're in an "undefined" relationship right now. But I bring it up because that's less because it's not romantic, and more because "dating" or "married" doesn't describe whatever the hell they are well enough and they feel like the labels they've seen just don't cut it. I have permission to use them as an example of our own system having a romantic relationship that'd be considered problematic for similar reasons. And frankly, while our Techno and Ranboo would never fucking say it, they might as well be together. /half-joke (I got permission to say that dw lol. I only bully them when it's fun for everyone involved.)

We totally feel you on the "oh fuck, if anyone hears about this we're toast." Ranboo is a frequent fronter, it seems, so he's very relevant to us. Neither of them separated from their source at all- none of our fictives have, really. We have a blog that's a lot more serious than our plural blogs, and we hide our sources there for a reason. We hope, someday, to be a genuine voice within the plural community- though we're not sure what form that will really take. This blog- this post even- is the sort of thing that people put in callout posts. We're sort of just waiting for the day someone tells us we got put in the system cringe reddit. A lot of people internalize this idea that it's all secretly voluntary (with the layer underneath it being "you're all secretly one person, therefore you choose who forms and how they feel about each other") and... lol no. Voluntary formation is valid, it's just not how our collective works. I think that, ultimately, is where the hatred of problematic fictives comes from. The idea that somehow, it's a identity (or relationship) we've chosen.

Oh, also, we don't know how to deal with source trauma either. Our current solution has been "uhhhHHHHH maybe it'll go away if I don't look at it too much" dw. Sometimes that shit's hard to navigate, and we have yet to find exactly how that will work for our system. You're definitely not alone in that!

And, as a final note: You calling them "mates" had our Techno suddenly having an existential crisis (/silly /j) in the background because "Oh. OH. Oh no that term feels right. Huh. Maybe that's why I don't like the idea of having a boyfriend/husband/wife/whatever. Alterhumanity go brrrrr-" so thanks for that! /silly /gen This post is a huge ramble, but I thought it was very fun and silly that we happen to have such a similar situation with even fictives from the same source. That's fucking wild, I'm convinced there's no such thing as a unique experience. I wish you and your system well!

[loganwritesprobably]

Peter Hale Dating History

My personal headcanons

Chris Argent Peter and Chris dated while the two of them were in high school and it was a huge secret. They had to keep things under wraps because Gerard finding out would be dangerous, and Talia would hardly approve of it either. They split up after Kate discovered them and threatened to snitch, glad to have one up on her older brother

Corinne Peter and Corinne didn't date, but this is where she goes chronologically. He slept with her once before starting to regularly hook up with Deucalion

Deucalion Peter dated Deucalion a few months after splitting up with Chris. They slept together first, a friends with benefits situation, and then after a month or two got together. Again, this was a secret. Peter liked the thrill of it, and ultimately he also liked the privacy. You don't get to keep much private when you live with your entire family, and you're all Werewolves.

Whore era Peter Hale is nothing else if not a whore, and spent the time between Deucalion going blind and the fire being a slut. He deserves it. Notable inclusion: Bobby Finstock.

Melissa McCall They went on one date, but I stand by the idea that after his resurrection he's mad that they went on a fake date because that means she won't be interested if he did try to genuinely pursue her.

Post S1 After season one, I like to flip flop about who I'd like him with. Pairings I enjoy: Peter/Noah Peter/Chris Peter/Parrish Peter/Deucalion Best solution? A polycule Notable inclusion here is Melissa also

[nat20dyke]

would just like to say that about a year ago one of my favourite episodes of riverdale aired, in which veronica, who is in the tail end of a full tilt spiral, accidentally kills her one night stand because she has become venomous (wizard curse, not relevant here) and by the end of the episode owns her power and performs a stunning rendition of britney spears’ “toxic”. this is juxtaposed with a scene in which she meets with archie and betty, who are dating and posit a solution to her problem of not being able to kiss anyone: veronica and archie will make out while betty watches. and they do so. after this episode i became convinced that riverdale would end in a polycule endgame, which my friend thought was funny but wholly unlikely. i maintained this as my ultimate endgame for the entirety of the rest of the show, and when the reveal happened in the final episode i fully lost my mind. everything since the riverdale polycule endgame reveal has been a fever dream to me. nothing matters, everything matters. riverdale will never end

[dalesramblingsblog]

Brief Thoughts on Judge Dredd Novels, Part VII: The Hundredfold Problem by John Grant

The Hundredfold Problem is in many respects the odd one out when it comes to Virgin's Dredd novels. It's the only book in the series not to be written by an author who went on to cross over to their Doctor Who line, and the only one to later be republished as a standalone novel with the Dredd/2000 AD elements taken out.

As you might expect, it's a rather strange beast of a book. I certainly didn't actively hate reading it, and it rarely outright bored me; in fact, there's an appealing number of appropriately gonzo ideas crammed into the novel's pages, not least of which is the Big Dunkin Donut, a Dyson sphere populated by transported Neanderthals millions of years ago.

As a certified enjoyer of The Also People, I'm always a sucker for Dyson spheres, and Grant captures the BDD in enough detail that it makes for a suitable first off-world excursion for the novels - and, depending on how Silencer and Wetworks shape up, possibly the only such excursion. The culture of the Skysouls is fascinating, and doesn't really feel derivative of the People at all. The exploration of colonialism is perhaps not as elegant as it could be, but it's basically functional. And, well, as far as nineties explorations of a hypothetical "War in Heaven" go, I suppose I've got to give it points for originality in being the only such piece of media where the solution to said War is to get involved in a lesbian polycule with a deity.

So y'know. It's got that going for it?

But equally, there are numerous little things that don't quite annoy, but definitely make for an odd reading experience. Petula McTavish is a reasonably solid character with a good arc, but the way the novel consistently sexualises her left me feeling more than a little uncomfortable.

The exploration of faith - a perennial nineties theme, this being the decade of "I Want to Believe" - through a heated theological conflict between two rival atheist sects named after Oliver North and Margaret Thatcher of all people is an amusing premise, but the decision to give all the preachers comically thick Southern accents really starts to grate after a while, even if it makes sense for 1994 and the era of Pat Robertson's ascendance.

Similarly, the idea of Heidegger's possession by a force opposed to Korax fades completely into the background for much of the novel, rendering its eventual importance to the climax borderline incoherent until the final chapter just relentlessly infodumps to explain everything with a handful of pages left to go.

So ultimately, thinking about it, we're left with a deeply mixed bag. It's more coherent than something like The Medusa Seed - though coherence never seemed to be Stone's primary goal with that book, or arguably ever - and fleshes out its setting better than Dread Dominion, while its ideas are far more adventurous than anything in Cursed Earth Asylum.

And yet, thinking back on it, the various little annoyances really do start to pile up and colour my perception of the book, so I can't really put this above second-last. There's still a pretty sizeable gap between this and The Savage Amusement, as barring the climax it was generally pretty easy to keep track of the plot's motion from point A to point B, though Grant does have a tendency to elide what would seem to be rather crucial details in the timejumps between chapters.

So yeah, ranking so far looks like this:

Dreddlocked

Deathmasques

The Medusa Seed

Dread Dominion

Cursed Earth Asylum

The Hundredfold Problem

The Savage Amusement

[indiefox]

the ultimate solution to the scott-wilbur-sparklez love triangle is a polycule. clearly

of course theyre a polycule. scott has two hands

[quinnlarrabee]

2023's subversive relationship trend: monogamy

Last year, if you were in a stylish social setting and you asked anyone remotely relevant - e.g. under 40, not quite employed, technically residing in the more expensive parts of Williamsburg, Greenpoint or Bushwick but actually flitting between CDMX, Lisbon and Nosara - about their relationship status, they’d launch into they-splaining why having two or many more significant others was vastly superior to having just one. They’d tell you that being with just one person was an unrealistic construct forced upon us by religion and habit, and that humans evolved to have multiple meaningful partners concurrently. After pausing to do a bump of k and ask someone what deep house set was playing on the Sonos, they’d go on to assert that the more evolved and secure one becomes, the more natural it feels to be in an open relationship, a throuple or a polycule. Jealousy is a sign that it’s time to do more self-work and yoga, they’d conclude, eyeing you for signs of dissent. You might have reflected on your many failed relationships and wondered if they’d have been more fulfilling if there’d been a bunch more people in them. But along with higher prices and much higher anxiety, 2023 has brought a much lower body count within the average relationship. The coolest people in the world are now experimenting with a concept called monogamy. 

Unlike polyamorous relationships, which have no boundaries and impose vague, capricious rules that mean different things to each member of the relationship, which isn’t actually a relationship, monogamy is when two people decide to be together and aren’t with other people at the same time, either openly or secretly. Monogamy is what happens when two people don’t feel like they’re settling and don’t need to hedge their bets, and actually like each other enough to be with just each other, potentially for a long time (i.e. greater than three months).

Before digging further into this new concept of monogamy, it’s worth taking a look at the origin of polyamory. Like everything that was once creepy and weird that ultimately becomes breathlessly cool and globally on-trend, polyamory was born in Brooklyn. 

There were a number of factors that led to the ubiquity of polyamory in Brooklyn. 

There was a time - prior to 2008 - when no one in Brooklyn was attractive enough to have sex with more than a few times without introducing lavish distractions, such as lots of other mildly attractive people in the same double bed. People would meet each other at coffee shops that only sold drip coffee with cow milk and unethically sourced sugar in granulated format, talk about their favorite Proust passages  or quote their favorite lines from the movie, Sideways, and then find themselves having mediocre, clenched-eyed sex in someone’s double bed with beige sheets and foam pillows followed by bodega burritos and Seinfeld reruns on their medium-blue sectional sofa.

These furtive pairs rarely woke up together, partly because of double beds, but also because of large pores in unforgiving morning light. Inevitably, they would grow to like each other enough to spend time together, but would need additional stimulation to continue having sex. This is why the sadly discontinued Craigslist Personals was invented: to find other people to spice up these three- or four-week-old relationships that had gone stale because of terrible facial hair choices and cankles. Polyamory became a way for couples, who had the same obscure interests and could share a unisex American Apparel wardrobe, to tolerate their sex life.  

Polyamory was also a practical solution to the resource scarcity that defined Brooklyn up until the past few years. There were no restaurants that served mezcal negronis or truffle fries, so dates were exceptionally dull, and since everyone in Brooklyn was a freelance urban planner, a Human Design practitioner or a spoken-word poet, no one really had the money to go out on dates anyway. The residents of Brooklyn resorted to neighborhood potluck dinners, which featured rice and beans in various shapes of yard sale pots, and all different shades of dark homemade beer. These parties were ostensibly low-cost ways to socially eat, but everyone knows that potluck dinners always were and still are just wholesome pretense for polyamorous play parties where throuples are born of attrition.

Another less obvious cause of polyamory is ayahuasca. For those of you who don’t live in Brooklyn or California, ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic tea made from the bark of a Peruvian tree that makes you regret your entire life and compels you to torch everything the moment you get back from the jungle or Upstate. Taking the medicine has many prerequisites, chief among them interrupting one’s dependence on brain and nervous system medications - like SSRIs and attention-deficit disorder prescriptions. Everyone in Brooklyn is on one of these, because everyone in Brooklyn thinks they have anxiety, depression or ADHD. Around 2012, everyone in Brooklyn started sitting in ayahuasca ceremonies, and after being forced to stop taking their meds by their shamans, they decided prescription medication was for people who hadn’t seen the secrets of the universe in a yurt after throwing up for 90 minutes. Fueled by their new delusions of wisdom and entirely unsedated, having sex with lots of people at the same time and talking openly about it with everyone except for their parents suddenly seemed correct, transcendent and essential. Hence, ayahuasca as a root cause of polyamory. 

So, because Brooklynites were poor, ugly and attention-deficient, polyamory became de rigeur. 

But when attractive people who lived in Manhattan lost a lot of money in 2008, they moved to Brooklyn in shell-shocked droves, and they brought their facial symmetry, yoga bodies and shiny hair to these potluck-dinner-cum-play-parties. Like spiking rusty-pipe tap water with Spindrift, Brooklyn got incrementally hotter, but the romantic constructs remained the same, because migrating Manhattanites are always desperate to ape whatever is indigenously cool in the lower-cost place to which they retreat. Good looking people kept moving to Brooklyn even after white collar incomes stabilized, which meant not only synthetic mylk lattes, truffle fries and mezcal negronis but also shockingly attractive polycules all over Brooklyn…but especially in the more expensive parts of Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick. 

Because Brooklyn was suddenly the coolest place on the planet, polyamory became cool. 

Fast forward to today. Everyone in Brooklyn is poor again, because its sources of prosperity have evaporated: crypto was revealed to be one massive ponzi scheme, NFTs are now understood to be worthless jpegs, you can basically buy weed at CVS, no one can afford a new logo, and the rates of Human Design practitioners have plummeted to zero dollars an hour because it was dumb to begin with. With Brooklyn’s sweeping gentrification and soaring prices, dating multiple people has become far more expensive than the humble days of beans and rice potlucks, and everyone has become ridiculously good looking (except in Park Slope). The pandemic eliminated hallucinogenic tourism, so people stopped taking ayahuasca and needed a drug to tell their friends they were taking on the reg, so they renewed their Adderall and Zoloft prescriptions. 

With the three root causes eliminated, polyamory is no longer necessary, and its many challenges are suddenly more apparent and seem super stupid when recreational drugs wear off. Monogamy offers a practical solution to all of them:

It’s way cheaper

Only one name to remember

Only one that-one-thing-that-gets-them-off to remember

Only one name to shout when you (pretend to) come

Agreeing on the rules is pretty intuitive and don’t require a 5-day workshop in Rhinebeck with a $300/hour moderator to write

Max of two types of milk / mylk in the fridge

You know you’re the primary partner

Holidays with family who don’t live in Brooklyn or Santa Cruz are slightly less of a cortisol-bath dumpster-fire sham-fest clusterfuck

Only one person whose IG stories you are required to ❤️ / 😂

Only one person to dump when it get boring 

Polyamory had a good run, right alongside chlamydia, that quirky little bacteria that rose to prominence underneath Z Cavaricci jeans and neon boy shorts in the 90s and was passed around modern Brooklyn like a dodgeball in gym class. But these sobering, penurious times require a simpler, more efficient romantic container for a more beautiful, gym-fit, botoxed and face-lasered population. We thank polyamory for the wild memories, ceaseless drama and poorly edited art films, but the next few years will find bleeding edge hipsters walking the gangplank above the perilous waters of a flailing economy and detonated geopolitical climate into the Noah’s ark that is their parents’ Greenwich guest house in pairs of only two. Long live monogamy…at least long enough for the favorable terms of the prenup to kick in.  

This essay was made possible by a generous donation by the Divorce Attorneys Special Interest Association (DASIA)

[electron-bitch-boy]

Speaking as someone who is poly as well, a lot of people need to unpack why they think their hypothetical partner asking for a polyamorous relationship is insulting/disrespectful because this kind of bias will absolutely carry over into situations that aren't about them and their romantic partnerships directly.

A lot of what i notice this stems from is the bias within a monogamist society to think that a relationship a poly person has with their partner(s) is inherently lesser than the relationship two monogamous ppl have with each other. In this view a polyamorous relationship will always be secondary to a monogamous one. This can look like thinking of poly relationships as less serious, lacking in commitment, being inherently short-term, being exclusively sexual, or without emotional investment. So a lot of what people hear when their partner suggest polyamory is their partner suggesting that they want to downgrade the type of connection they have to them.

This is more than just having a preference for what kind of relationship you want (including to the point of it being a deal breaker), here are of other examples of casual bigotry that can manifest as a result of this bias. Keep in mind these are things I've either see or directly experienced.

cautioning peers against entering a polyamorous relationship for no reason other than it being polyamorous.

starting conversation with polyamorous people with assumptions or doubts about the duration of their relationships. This can look like asking if you're "still together" every time you converse even if a relatively short time has passed or acting surprised when someone says they've been with their polycule for a long duration of time.

being quick to tell a peer who is poly to break up or leave their relationships relative to how they would give advice to their monogamous peers.

asking invasive questions about a poly persons sex life in ways they wouldn't talk to people in monogamous relationships.

Making assumptions on the sexual health of poly people. Most commonly thinking that poly people are more likely to have STIs.

making assumptions on the maturity and psychological health of poly people i.e. thinking they are immature because they "lack commitment" and thinking that mental illness or an unhealthy view of relationships/commitment is driving them to be polyamorous.

Assuming that a poly person will always be open to dating anyone.

not treating poly people's relationship status the same as a monogamous person's in social situations.

thinking it is unwise for a polycule to commit to large financial decisions as a unit, such as buying a house together, because of the assumption that polycules are unstable and thus these kinds of investments hold greater financial risks.

thinking that raising a child while being polyamorous is either dangerous or unhealthy for the child's development. This can either stem from a similar bias as the previous point about instability or biases about the "sexual nature" of poly relationships exposing the child to sexual topics/acts.

You obviously do not have to want to be in a polyamorous relationship; If the solution to your partner asking about entering one is to ultimately break up and end the relationship that is fine. However, you should analyze if the reason why you are adverse to poly relationship's is a result of personal preferences or bigoted assumptions OR some combination of both. Because i cannot stress this enough, for most people there will be an ingrained cultural bias against anything other than monogamy and working though that bias is important if you want to be accepting of polyamorous relationships outside of the context of your own relationship

fucking hell i forget that some people violently hate polyamory and are way too proud of admitting it :/

[hel-phoenyx]

OHOHO I HAVE TIME IN MY HANDS AND NO ACCESS TO MY GAMES, LET'S HAVE THE INFAMOUS VILLAIN RANT

Huge ass spoilers for La Peste Moderne, Lysara IbRu'Ael and Azilis Chronicles ahead

Ah, villains. An interesting subject, for that matter. I am very well known among my friends and polycule for being the Notorious Villain Fucker, but aside from that villain psychology is something I find utterly fascinating, and the way people write their villains is very, very often telling of their own opinions about life.

There are many archetypes of villains. Some I came across in my mates' stories are, for a non exhaustive list, the iredeemable bastard just here for the laughs, the person with a goal and ready to do unfathomable things to reach it, while knowing damn well he went too far, the broken beyond repair that can't or won't pick himself up because finding redemption is so scary, the endoctrined man who never knew anything else than evil, mundane cruelty.... And of course, evil parents, but evil parents are less antagonists and more backstory-related, so I won't dive into it.

Personally, I realised my main antagonists fall into two main categories : One which is less about being a villain and more about being morally grey, being broken beyond repair in excruciating need of hope, but still able to love, still able to feel, and wanting to feel; or, the absolute bastard, iredeemable fucker, but with a knack for show.

There are exceptions, of course. The Ultimate Empress, for example, falls into the inbetween of those two archetypes. There's Yuuki, too, which is antagonistic on her very role but not on her behaviour. Or Shizuka, who falls more into the bastard category but has no interest for show. But these two are more secondary, and less villainous than the other people I will talk about.

Main antagonists share a caracteristic : They are FASCINATING to write about. Taking for example my boy Mairù. Mairù evolves in two very different persons depending on the universe : In Lysara, he starts out not as a villain, only as an antagonist : He is moderate, tries to keep in control the excruciating pain his body is inflicting to him, only joins the antag's side because of a genuine want to make things better... He is the enemy, yes, but he is not a villain per say. In fact, he is more than happy to help the protagonists once they share an objective : Stop a third party wrecking shit up.

It's after that that he gets into his villainous arc. Mairù is, fundamentally, a broken person : His trauma defines all his life, all of who he is. He is a prophet, he is a weapon, and even his own family can't see him as a person. He tried, for a long time, to find people who make him feel like he isn't a monster : The problem, or the problems, in fact, is that these people always end up, one way or another, leaving him behind.

Lina broke up with him. Kal threw himself into his attempt for redemption, something he was very good at, and Mairù was very bad. So, to try to salvage what little mental health he has left and not hurt the last person he has left, Asura, he left for his training arc, hoping to come back stable and worthy of her affection.

She didn't wait for him.

That was the last straw, the last hit in his already fragile self. He became the villain of the story, leaving all forms of selflessness behind him. At this point, he is tired of waiting, tired of trying, only for scraps. It expresses itself in his love for Asura getting insanely unhealthy, borderline yandere, but fundamentally it is a visceral reaction to being left on the road one time too much, and his resentment also expresses itself towards Lina, Baku, or even Kal.

Fundamentally, despite doing atrocities, all he needed to put himself back in the right path was a held hand and a solution. The moment he is helped, the moment he is loved, he changes for good. He is the living example of how a single ounce of understanding and genuine help can change a person, bring him back from the hole he was crawling into, pushed voluntarily or invonluntarily by all others before.

He is a villain, he is an antagonist, he is broken and thought it was beyond repair, but affection mended the cracks he was desperate to fix.

That's where he is different from his azilian version. Mairù at Azilis starts already broken, in a world far less accepting of people like him. he is already at the point where lysarean Mairù breaks down. The problem is that there is no Kal to follow : Mairù creates his own path, his own revolution, and is responsible of his own downfall.

Unless this time he picks up the pieces of him himself. He realises brooding won't do him any help, that the people he has left need him to pick up the pace. He was the instrument in his own downfall, so he will be the instrument of his own redemption.

In fact, I think the huge difference between lysarean Mairù and azilian Mairù is that lysarean Mairù is the victim of his world, while azilian Mairù is the actor of his own story.

They're the same and different at the same time. Same basis, same cracks in the shell, same pain, same will to be important in the eyes of people. They just had a different story, one as a puppet and one as an outsider, but still yearning to be good, yearning for understanding and acceptance. They are in the concept morally white-gray : Not wanting to hurt peoble, screaming for help, but still to be held accountable for shit they do.

Both of them are a narrative foil somehow for their other sibling, and boi do I have things to say about them : Akira.

Akira is a peculiar case. They started devoid of emotions each time, except for a deep longing for revenge and a craving for what they lack : But as the two Mairùs, their path changes drastically to the point where azilian Akira falls out of both the archetypes I was talking about earlier, while lysarean Akira is the epitome of the showman bastard.

They start the same way. Akira, despite being emotionless, is the first of his siblings to fall in love with Lina. Like, the very first, starstruck and all. This is a bit cliché I'll admit, having all three of those fuckers infatuated with my protagonist, but Mairù gets over it each time, Baku ends up marrying her and as for Akira, Lina acts as a narrative foil for everything they want.

Lina is the embodiement of the first strong emotion he ever felt. She is love in his eyes. She represents everything he longed for : To FEEL. So naturally, he pursues her to the point she becomes quite the obession. The problem being each time, whe he awakens, she is already taken and can't be fully his.

He loves her like a man would love a prized possession. He wants her to be only his, no matter the cost, no matter if Lina prefers to be her own. That sounds obsessive, because it is, but it finds its roots in the fact that Lina embodies his emotions.

And then the game branches.

In Lysara, Lina becomes queen, and Akira is able to use Baku as his anchor to try and obtain her. He thinks about nothing else, the rest of his life is filled with empty cruelty in an attempt to feel something he knows will never be satisfying enough. Knowing his plan needs patience, he delves into the darker part of his personnality, channeling his need for adrenaline in absolute cruelty. In this iteration he's a complete and utter sadist, feeling pleasure in other's pain and not seeing any wrong in his way of acting.

She believed she would just play the long game, take possession of Baku before revealing the imposture to his beloved and either pose as the king or snatch her away, completing his lifelong goal of feeling that emotion entirely. The only problem is that Lina is polyamorous, and ends up falling in love with Shera next to Baku. Thus shattering her plan to take her peacefully.

At this point, Akira becomes more cruelty than love. And the birth of Carolyn gives him a new opportunity to obtain his full being, separated from Baku.

Her plan is completely separated from his love. Not to get into details, but once again she plays the long game, up until she gets completion and discovers her new emotions are... Not all positive :D

She is now completely defined by her cruelty and sadism. Still, she is motivated by her love for Lina, but now it gets overly bloody, and she finds more pleasure in shedding blood than in completing a goal she knows is doomed to fail. She is the kind to do dramatic reveals, enjoys presentation, because the fear people feel towards her is delicious. She loves being venerated, and in fact, there may be more than one cult in Lysara dedicated to the Angel of Death, cruelest nightmare harbinger ever known in this era. Her arc is one of complete bastardisation and reeling in blood and gore.

Azilian Akira, on the other hand, sees Lina dying before he can even prepare an erzatz of plan. So his arc is about grief, and about his own freedom far earlier than lysarean Akira. His cruelty has little time to nurture, and is replaced by ruthlessness and dedication for his objective. And since he has no one to direct his love unto, it quickly dies into regret.

This Akira is still a bastard, but an emotionless one. He knows what he wants and does whatever it takes for it. Only the results keep him going. He does find new people along the way, but his heart is closed to every last one of them and, even if he feels comfort in their presence, he doesn't love them per say. His emotions are sparse, some rush of adrenaline when he fights or kills, some kind of pleasure when he is in bed with people, but nothing else but regret and determination.

He knows on a intellectual level what he does is seen as wrong. He doesn't care. His goal is the only thing that matters. He has no time for pizzazz, showmanship or anything that will make him lose time. And his goal is completely selfish since it's about becoming more than a god.

So there you have it. Iredeemable, in no way wanting redemption, still cruel and destructive, still a bastard. But a bastard done with life rather than a bastard who takes the most of it.

The "bastard who takes the most of life" is actually the most fitting of Artist. Artist, my second Monokuma, is the secondary antagonist of The Art of Creating Hope. He is the fulfilled kind of bastard. He doesn't have a goal per say, or rather, he already achieved it, and is still living it : Living Art with a capital A, without limitations or rules or care for the world.

That goal led him to trial, but he carried on, and ended up among the Monokuma. There, he finally fulfilled his lifelong dream : Creating a work of art in a new medium that will revolutionnize the world. That medium being the killing game.

He acts as a narrative foil for Emerens in many ways. Their shared hate, thir shared past in the link created by Adelheid van Heel, but also in their shared goal. They couldn't be anymore different.

Artist is cruel to the last degree, and has no limits, no barriers. He only lives for Art, and to create again and again and again in his own twisted way. He doesn't care for anyone, likes to see suffering, and lives a show in any moment of his life.

Emerens, on the other side ?

Oh boi. Do I have things to tell about my little bastard.

Emerens is the embodiement of grey morale. He started as an innocent boy, that got broken again and again and again, picking all the pieces of himself down the road while forgetting some (too many). He has too many coping mechanisms that make him go from bullied at school to Mean Girl Archetype(tm). He commits legit atrocities during his killing game and even before, blackmailing, manipulating, gaslighting his way into a comfortable life.

To modern worlds standards, he is irredeemable. Many of his acts are worthy of life prison. But the problem with Emerens is that he CARES. He cares way too much. His parents opinion at first, then his beloved's safety, or his despair plaguing the world (something that can and DID happen way before the beginning of the story). He does what he does because he cares.

He is a bitch that can be unnessesary cruel at times, detached from reality because he is hiding behind his cocoon of hypocrisy, false security and coping mechanisms. He has the skill to subjugate or walk all over people and he does, more than once. Both before and during the killing game he is pictured as selfish, independant and secretive, following his own agenda. Many of his acts are nurtured by a hate rooting in his own traumatism.

But at the core of his being he is just a little boy who didn't grow up hidden behind a whole persona, a boy he refuses to look in the eyes, that didn't learn right or wrong properly and as a result has a twisted sense of morale. He is a man that wants desperately to love people no matter the form, no matter the cost, who throws himself in every crumb of affection ANYONE gives him, sex, friendship, relationship, no matter. He is someone that is ACHING for softness and security, the kind that won't get tainted by betrayal.

So of course he acts rather unhinged. Of course there is nothing worth suffering the loss of his love. Of course he would do anything for the first one that showed him genuine affection, or even the ones that followed.

Emerens is full of love that he does not know how to direct properly. His devotion make him act... Rather unkindly towards the masses. Unlike Akira or even Mairù, he is not desiring possession or even reciprocation : The only thing that matters in the killling game is getting Thibault to safety. No. Matter. What. Even if he would reject him. Even if he would hate him. His life is the most important thing in Emerens's perception of the world.

He is not a kind man or a victim of his own story. His convictions are twisted no matter how you look at them. Misguided is very far from the truth of his core. His feelings are spilling everywhere in such a way that he manages to distract the attention of everyone else from them. But he is not evil per say. Just broken beyond repair in a broken world that didn't allow him to find the help he needed, and fed his hate instead of nurturing his love.

There is no coincidence he is so different in the AU without killing games. He's still the same little bitch, but far more moral and kind to people than his TAoCH version, with a system that helped him instead of bringing him and people like him to slaughter.

The best, or worst, part, in my opinion, is the fact that, would have he gave in to his despair, he would have just killed himself without hurting anyone. But he met people he loved, found again people he loved, and threw himself in that connexion and that deep desire of protecting them to a point nothing else mattered other than makng sure NOTHING could hurt them.

He is a villain because he loves.

And that's a point I find quite a lot in my favorite antagonists.

[disasterhawke]

omegaverse in here at the edge of the moon

I had a lovely comment on petrichor and patchouli asking for me to talk about my non-standard version of a/b/o and how it’s set up and why. I have absolutely loved exploring this trope, especially in terms of its queer potential, and some of the decisions I made are very much linked to that. This is going to be a rambly exploration of those decisions, so I'm sorry for not giving you something more organised.

Note: Below the cut there is discussion of sexual practices, sometimes graphic, as you'd expect for talking about a sexual trope!

There are a few kind of core tenets to how I wanted to set things up. The main one is that I wanted things to be personal to each character. I didn’t want all the alphas to be dominant and all the omegas to be submissive, necessarily. Equally, designations are very much separate from gender, which is pretty standard for omegaverse but I’ll talk more about how I interpret that further in a bit.

In terms of peoples’ sexuality this was a separate choice - I am personally uncomfortable with countering the declared sexualities of the MCYT personae/players. For example, I would never feel comfortable showing Scott or Gem as straight. Beyond that, though, I tend to make everyone bi/pan because it just opens up more shipping options and I bloody love a polycule.

It was also super important to me that people retain consent no matter what. I have included alpha voice as a concept, but with the caveat that it’s possible to resist it if you truly want to. I also built into the world building that both the Secret Life server and Hermitcraft have protections on them to prevent any abuse. But it goes beyond just being able to resist alpha voice - I wanted a world where everyone respected one another’s boundaries, especially in representing an acespec Gem.

I have chosen to make mating non-permanent, because I think it’s more realistic and means you can show a greater range of how relationships work. Especially since I have, essentially, made everyone either poly or in an open relationship of some kind. I personally practice relationship anarchy and this is something I try to represent in my fics. This includes exploring that even in pack relationships like with Gem, Etho, Cleo and Grian, there are differences in their relationships with each other and the fact that they’re having sex doesn’t necessarily mean they’re involved romantically. Similar, Gem’s relationship with Pearl is just as pivotal and important as her relationship with Etho.

I also wanted peoples’ relationships and mating to not be limited to alpha/omega and beta/beta. I didn’t want this to undo the trope entirely - so you will see that Grian and Mumbo are mates but as an omega/omega couple they often need to seek outside help for getting through their heats. With all that said, mating is still not a small thing, it’s still very significant and is difficult to undo.

This links to another pivotal non-standardness that I wanted to include: that knotting is not the sole solution or magic wand to solving heat/rut. This is obviously partly linked to wanting alpha/alpha or omega/omega pairs to be possible, but it’s also because I didn’t want peoples’ sexual preferences to be limited by the requirement to knot. There are many people who do not like, or cannot have penetrative sex, for example, and I wanted there to be a way for those people to exist. So in this world, knotting is a ‘more powerful’ way of relieving heat/rut symptoms, but not the be all and end all of it.

When it came to writing a cis female alpha in Pearl, I thought a lot about how I wanted to do this. Traditional a/b/o tends to give them a clitoris that inflates to the size of a penis, which can then be used for penetrative sex and to knot people. I ultimately did decide to use this, but I wanted Pearl’s relationship with her sexuality to be more complex than “I’m a female alpha so I penetrate people”. So I made it important to her rut to both receive and give penetrative sex. I wanted to avoid the alpha = (cis) male, omega = (cis) female equivalence and make it all very personal to the character(s).

It will also be noticed that a lot of what makes this interpretation of a/b/o more non-standard is the inclusion of preferences or unique sexual experiences. Whether that’s Gem’s asexuality, Cleo’s preference to not have penetration, or Pearl’s difficulty with orgasm, these experiences fundamentally queer the narrative because it introduces a complexity that you don’t always see in “alpha gets real horny and rails their omega” style a/b/o - which, to be clear, I do also love, it’s just not what I wanted to write!

One aspect of a/b/o that I did not include is the more furry/animalistic side of the trope. I have nothing against hybrids or that side of things, it's just not my kink! So I have taken a very human version of a/b/o - at least in the sense that no one is walking round with ears or a tail. This is probably an unusual take in this particular fandom too because there are so many fandom interpretations of the characters that DO make them hybrids in some form. I am sure others have explored that better than I ever could/would!

With all of those things said, let me talk to you about the piece of the omegaverse trope that I have most loved writing: scents.

I love sneaking poetry into my writing and holy shit does scenting let you do that. At this point I might as well have tagged these fics with ‘scent kink’ because it’s me, I’m the scent kink. I am very sensitive to scent personally, and I have really strong emotions that I associate with scents, and sometimes strong memories. So I wanted to have peoples’ scents in this be more than just literal scents. This really grew organically as I was writing, too. It just felt right to have Pearl describe Gem as smelling like running wild through the woods, or for Etho to describe her as a storm at sea. Something you’ll notice about this is that everyone smells different to everyone - including that what they smell like to themselves isn’t what they smell like to other people. Because I wanted this, like everything else, to be personal and to reflect the emotions they feel about that person. And to be all about the feels, of course.

I lastly wanted to mention that the way I set things up, the Secret Life server itself is a non-standard representation of a/b/o in the world I have created. Because it’s not normal to have suppressants to be banned, or mating to be unravelled for the time you’re there. I wanted the presence of a/b/o in the Secret Life setting to ultimately be an extension of that wildness, that chance to let loose and be free, that we love about the series and that in this story, the characters go there to experience.

I'm working on more entries in the series, and I know I want to explore disability in this context as well as having at least one trans character, and I'd also like to look at some more angsty takes on things because, you know, angst is glorious. As I keep going I'm sure I will find more ways to juggle the trope like the glorious pick and mix that it is.

So there you go - a rambly overview of my interpretation of the omegaverse in here at the edge of the moon.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

In honor of May 25th, aka Mario Santos indignantly asks a man why isn't he wearing a national ribbon, I'm gonna write a few words in English about how Mario Santos is an homage to Chesterton.

Damián Szifrón said one important element of inspiration for Los Simuladores was Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades; these men, are, in a sense, the Argentinian version of one of these trades. There's also that Easter egg of the bank employee reading Father Brown stories in 1x09 (Fuera de Cálculo), but I'd argue that the biggest homage to Chesterton is the character of Mario Santos.

Santos is presented to us superficially as a man out of the past, picky and of particularly aristocratic tastes, cold and calculating. And yet, Santos is in a real sense the moral compass of the team. To him falls the choice of accepting a case or not most of the time, and the others trust his gut. Very often Santos is disgusted by the things his prospective clients do or say, and his solutions tend to try and restore a sense of justice and compassion: when Sarasola wants to get rid of his wife ("Do you love her? I guess I do, like one loves a pet"), the plan becomes about how to give Sarasola's wife a compensation for the selfishness and coldness of a husband she loved. Milazzo that tricked people into giving him money under the promise of making them famous, ends up being tricked into thinking he's famous. At the end of the day the plot against Mr. Garriga is about him accepting himself and extending that kindness to his models as well.

But Santos being an agent of chaotic good doesn't make him as Chestertonian as the fact that he's ultimately a rebel. Superficially speaking Ravenna the polycule man and Lamponne the renegade fit the bill better; and yet Santos' speech about the business of rebellion show that his aristocratic tastes were an act of rebellion all along: in a world where punk aesthetics have been commercialized and made profitable, rebelling means getting a tailor to make you a suit if you can afford it. In a world where rock has become a music industry, listening to live orchestra playing works in the public domain is an act of rebellion. And so, paradoxically, to rebel he has to appeal to the past rather than the future. And I think that's very chestertonian of him.

[polyamoryfacts]

Polyamory writing tropes

Because I forgot that tumblr dot hell’s solution to spam bots is straight up hiding replies with too many links, here is a manual repost of my certainly incomplete list of polyamory tropes.

(I had originally posted it as a reply to an ask that was posted to @writingquestionsanswered - you should check them out!)

I will assume that A is into B, B is into A and C, and C is into B. B and A are not into each other. Furthermore, I will assume that everyone has agreed to being part of the arrangement as described. If B is dating A behind C’s back, that’s not polyamory, that’s cheating.

This constellation is commonly called a V or vee, because if you draw it, it kinda looks like a V. The partner “in the middle” B is called the hinge.

A and C are metamours to each other (meta + amour). They share a partner.

The most common trope with polyamory is the topic of jealousy. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find a story which does not focus on it, to the point that I would say it has been done to death, plus you can find plenty of guides how to write it, so I am not going to focus on that.

Instead, there are other interesting tropes specific to polyamory you can use:

Compersion is a word for a warm feeling of fuzziness you get when your metamour makes your partner happy. Imagine that, like, I am A, and B is really into underwater basket weaving. I, on the other hand, do not care for underwater basket weaving at all, and while I can empathize with B’s enthusiasm for it, ultimately I am not a good person to discuss underwater basket weaving with. But then, one day, B meets C! And C is also into underwater basket weaving! Now B can discuss water currents and sprig flexibility with C and is elated! And B being happy with C makes me happy! (In fact, it may be that I was getting a bit tired of the topic, so it benefits me as well. Cue crisis about whether I am a good person or if “dropping” B on C is selfish! So much delightful angst potential!)

One side effect might be that when B is out on a date with C, I finally have time for myself and my favorite hobby of chocolate teapot sculpting, which B somehow never seems interested in :/

Of course, depending on the person, this feeling might extend to more intimate topics and activities. It does not have to be limited to things A does not enjoy – A might just be happy that B has an additional person to do these things with.

However, it can also lead to establishing new couple activities. The common cliché is of the polyamorous person who is fine with their partner having sex with someone else – but don’t you dare watching “our” Netflix series with someone else.

The flip side of this is B being happy when A and C get along. As far as I know, we don’t have a specific word for that (we really should, though).

When metamours get along, they might delight in scheming to do something nice for their hinge together. For example, they might plan a surprise birthday party for B together (cue all shenanigans associated with surprise party and birthday party). They might also become great friends and share vulnerabilities with each other that they don’t even share with their mutual partner.

A might have actively pushed B to get with C. In this case, feel free to pull all the ShipperOnDeck tropes.

A and C might have felt apprehension towards meeting each other. B might have felt apprehension towards them meeting each other. What if they don’t get along!? You can borrow from the “meeting the parents” tropes here.

A and C might also get together over time. This might cause unexpected jealousy in B because of the change in relationship dynamics. It can be all the anxiety you get when your partner has a new partner… but multiplied by the fact you get it from both sides.

Incidentally, polyamorous people get to observe this “my loved one is freshly in love” theme often enough we have our own name for that “I have butterflies in the stomach and the world is made of gingerbread rainbows” feeling B gets – NRE or New Relationship Energy.

Ideally, A, B and C have all discussed what their relationship dynamics are to be. For example, whether it is okay to take on other partners or if there is the expectancy that A and C will remain exclusive to B. Also, if B is allowed to start further relationships with D, E and so on. (If it is to stay at the A/B/C constellation, it is called a closed relationship or possibly a closed triad.) And they hopefully have discussed how much everyone wants to know about the details of the other relationship and how much they get to know. They also have hopefully discussed how out they are to their social circles. (If people have conflicting needs on that, there may be some tension.)

In practice, I believe the most common setup is not a closed relationship (I have only personal anecdotes, though). It is more commonly like this (listed are everyone’s partners):

A: B

B: C, D

C: B, E

D: B, F

E: C

F: D

The set of all people in this network is called a polycule (a portmanteau of poly and molecule). In the above scenario, F might not even know about E. F is with D, D is with B, B is with C, C is with E. If this was a familial relationship, they would be something akin to distant cousins, with comparable dynamics – they might find it an amusing bit of trivia, but ultimately it doesn’t affect their lives much. They might, however, be in the same circle of friends, or even roommates. Which leads to amusing shenanigans like

B: C, I know you are visiting E [your partner] and F tonight?

C: Yeah?

B: D asked me to pass along this thing F forgot at D’s place [because D and F are partners]. Could you give it to F [because you are visiting F’s roommate]?

C: I think F is not at home tonight, but I will give the thing to E!

This can be somewhat confusing to the reader, because it gets you a large cast. If you ever find out how to solve this, let me know.

Also, Long Distance Relationships. So many Long Distance Relationships.

Of course, there are some people who will go to great lengths to chart their polycule, with the same diligence someone might employ while researching their ancestry.

Because marrying multiple people is not possible in most places, people may employ a similar ritual for a particular partner. Their are hand-fastening ceremonies, for example. Or other rituals - I know a person who texts all of their partners goodnight before going to bed.

There are some clichés about the polyamorous community. Polyamory is said to enable you to always have a group ready for board game night, for example. Or Dungeons and Dragons night – I reference this in my most shared post which apparently people can relate to.

Also, we are really good at scheduling. Shared calendars are frequently employed.

And we really talk a lot about our feelings. Which is… somewhat inconvenient for writing drama.

And we love large beds. Some of us don’t. (I feel too hot with even one other person in the bed. How some people deal with three is an utter mystery to me).

If you have made it this far, congrats! Thanks for researching our community! Seconding the recommendation for @polyamorouscultureis for more.

If you wish to check out my blog, you will find a list of helpful resources, and will get a mix of

me assuring people they are valid like this

polyamory memes like this

polyamory shitposts disguised as facts (which are not to be taken seriously for the purposes of research) like this

and general polyamorous tomfoolery.

[twigstarpikachutroll22]

random Fuzzbert headcanons I’m coming up with on the spot for the heck of it because we don’t talk about Fuzzbert enough

He really likes peanut butter.

Once in awhile he takes baths in peanut butter just because.

He can sing opera very well and has been known to bring other trolls to tears when doing so.

He was raised by like four or five trolls. Maybe two of them were in a relationship and the rest were friends, maybe they were all friends, maybe they were a polycule, I dunno. In any case he had multiple parental figures simultaneously.

If trolls played Among Us, he would be a scarily good impostor. 

He has a double life as a secret agent and his code name is Agent Fuzz. He’s very good at it and they call him for the most important things. He used to be a lot more active in that field but at some point decided to take a step back to not have it take over his life and give himself more room to hang out with his friends and do other fun things.

He likes pineapple on pizza. 

He’s nonbinary and is okay with any pronouns. His gender is “idk lol call me whatever you like.” He’s like that one thing where a character asks for another characters pronouns and gets increasingly frustrated by that character not knowing what pronouns even are, eventually being told by a third character “oh, we use he/him pronouns for him but he doesn’t really care.” 

He’s broken a bunch of world records.

His only known major pet peeve is wet socks.

He enjoys chasing butterflies. 

Because he’s a very good listener, he’s the go-to person for every member of the Snack Pack to rant and vent about their troubles to at length. This always ultimately leads to either him pointing them to a solution or them coming to it on their own after enough rambling without him having to say or do anything.

He has never encountered and will never encounter a song or genre of music he doesn’t enjoy. He likes everything. From classical to metal, from The Amazing Devil to Mitski to Parry Gripp to Blackpink.

He can walk in high heels like a boss if you ask him to.

He collects rocks.