Rec me metamour fics?
Jun. 3rd, 2019 11:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breathedoutI was thinking in the shower today about the (well-earned, from what I gather) hatred in fannish circles for the seemingly obligatory romantic V plots, often mislabeled "love triangles," that proliferate in YA novels and elsewhere. You know the ones; everyone talks about how boring they are: the main character must choose between two potential love interests and the readership is supposed to root for one or the other. Yawn. But I was thinking about how there actually is an aspect of the V that I would love to read more thoughtful explorations of, both in original fiction and fanfic. And that's the relationship between the two legs of the V, or what folks in the polyamorous community call "metamour" relationships: the relationship one has with the lover/partner of one's lover/partner, a person with whom one is not partnered oneself.
A great example of the kind of thing I'm thinking about is Every Day's Most Quiet Need, the Miss Fisher story that![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
tiltedsyllogism wrote me for Fandom Trumps Hate. The fic is about Mac's developing (or reigniting) sexual relationship with her long-time best friend Phryne, but even more than that it's about the ups and downs of navigating her relationship with Phryne's other (serious) lover, Jack. Mac & Jack are the first tagged relationship, and the story lives up to that: their dynamic, more than Phryne's relationship with either, is really the focus, and Syllogism gives it tremendously careful and insightful attention. One of the things that I really love about this story is that there are ways in which Mac and Jack understand each other better than Phryne understands either of them. Their dynamic is uneasy, and neither of them are exactly comfortable with the other—typical ugly emotions do surface. But there are also emotional currents that are really lovely in their unexpectedness. For example, the thread of protectiveness that Mac feels toward Jack, whose fundamental emotional monogamy she recognizes, and who she fears will be hurt by Phryne's breezy, exuberant free love ethos—even as that freedom is one of the things that both Mac and Jack love about Phryne.
Now I'm trying to think of other examples of stories where the focus is on metamour relationships specifically, and the explicitly romantic one(s) are backgrounded. In Syllogism's fic Mac and Jack have no interest in a sexual relationship with one another, but I'd also be interested in stories about characters who do have some level of sexual connection, yet who remain pretty firmly metamours rather than partners. Arguably, my Bloomsbury RPF fic The Obvious and Proper Sense qualifies, although it's really a grey area because Keynes and Strachey's preoccupation with each other far eclipses either of their connections to their shared object of affection, Hobhouse. A story about the era of their lives when they were successively dating Duncan Grant would be more squarely in this metamour category, I think, since Grant was an extremely long-standing shared passion for them both. (Shockingly, I already have an outline for this story.) The process-object-lesson Rambouillet story, in which female rivals for a single man's affection devote every waking moment to thinking eroticized malevolent thoughts about each other before, in later life, becoming close friends, also fits the bill. (Will I ever actually write this one? Only time will tell.)
Do other fics that fit this pattern leap to mind? In various Holmesian fandoms I would think there might be stories that focus on the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Mary Morstan Watson; in The Magicians maybe fics spending time on the dynamic between Quentin & Margo during a period when they're both heavily, though differently, involved with and invested in Eliot; or between Eliot and Alice when they're both in some way involved with Quentin. In Black Sails this might be a story that focused on the relationship between Max and Jack. Killing Eve's Anna dies before this really has a chance to develop, but in some kind of AU situation I can definitely see a fascinating relationship evolving between her and Eve, since they are set up by the show as so directly parallel in terms of what attracts them to Villanelle/Oksana, and the role of V's impulsivity and violence in giving expression to similar elements in their own personalities. They would be able to see that in each other in a way that Villanelle... isn't blind to, but has a much different perspective on.
I'm sure there are many more examples, and would love to hear about them. (As a note: I prize emotional realism over unremitting optimism, which is a problem I've encountered with some fictional depictions of polyamory: I'd prefer stories that don't pretend away the difficult emotions that come with relationship negotiation, but instead address them and work through them. I don't consider myself poly as an identity, but I am non-monogamous and have dated a lot in the poly world, and much like every other kind of human relationship, it is not all sunshine and rainbows. Non-monogamy shouldn't have to prove its validity by pretending that jealousy, insecurity, and time management just... aren't things that anyone struggles with.) ANYWAY if you have recs, leave 'em in my comments!
A great example of the kind of thing I'm thinking about is Every Day's Most Quiet Need, the Miss Fisher story that
Now I'm trying to think of other examples of stories where the focus is on metamour relationships specifically, and the explicitly romantic one(s) are backgrounded. In Syllogism's fic Mac and Jack have no interest in a sexual relationship with one another, but I'd also be interested in stories about characters who do have some level of sexual connection, yet who remain pretty firmly metamours rather than partners. Arguably, my Bloomsbury RPF fic The Obvious and Proper Sense qualifies, although it's really a grey area because Keynes and Strachey's preoccupation with each other far eclipses either of their connections to their shared object of affection, Hobhouse. A story about the era of their lives when they were successively dating Duncan Grant would be more squarely in this metamour category, I think, since Grant was an extremely long-standing shared passion for them both. (Shockingly, I already have an outline for this story.) The process-object-lesson Rambouillet story, in which female rivals for a single man's affection devote every waking moment to thinking eroticized malevolent thoughts about each other before, in later life, becoming close friends, also fits the bill. (Will I ever actually write this one? Only time will tell.)
Do other fics that fit this pattern leap to mind? In various Holmesian fandoms I would think there might be stories that focus on the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Mary Morstan Watson; in The Magicians maybe fics spending time on the dynamic between Quentin & Margo during a period when they're both heavily, though differently, involved with and invested in Eliot; or between Eliot and Alice when they're both in some way involved with Quentin. In Black Sails this might be a story that focused on the relationship between Max and Jack. Killing Eve's Anna dies before this really has a chance to develop, but in some kind of AU situation I can definitely see a fascinating relationship evolving between her and Eve, since they are set up by the show as so directly parallel in terms of what attracts them to Villanelle/Oksana, and the role of V's impulsivity and violence in giving expression to similar elements in their own personalities. They would be able to see that in each other in a way that Villanelle... isn't blind to, but has a much different perspective on.
I'm sure there are many more examples, and would love to hear about them. (As a note: I prize emotional realism over unremitting optimism, which is a problem I've encountered with some fictional depictions of polyamory: I'd prefer stories that don't pretend away the difficult emotions that come with relationship negotiation, but instead address them and work through them. I don't consider myself poly as an identity, but I am non-monogamous and have dated a lot in the poly world, and much like every other kind of human relationship, it is not all sunshine and rainbows. Non-monogamy shouldn't have to prove its validity by pretending that jealousy, insecurity, and time management just... aren't things that anyone struggles with.) ANYWAY if you have recs, leave 'em in my comments!
Yes yes yes
Date: 2019-06-03 08:22 pm (UTC)body next to another, by introductory - I love this v-shaped relationship fic. X-Men First Class: Erik and Moira share Charles. It goes well, for a certain value of well.
Re: Yes yes yes
Date: 2019-06-03 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-03 08:33 pm (UTC)Until by gala_apples has a lot of Darcy's feelings about Thor as they are separately dating Jane.
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Date: 2019-06-04 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 12:11 am (UTC)Now I want to write that Killing Eve fic.
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Date: 2019-06-04 04:53 am (UTC)(And yes, I too kind of want to write that Killing Eve fic now, LOL)
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Date: 2019-06-04 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 03:49 am (UTC)I do agree with you that fandom/tumblr types are sometimes too quick to act as though polyamory necessarily "solves" the problem of the love triangle. I think poly triads, whether V shaped or a true triangle, can be just as rich in angst and conflict as a supposedly "hetero-monogamous" one.
Which brings me to point 2, which is that arguably no love triangle is ever really hetero-monogamous, which is part of what makes them so fascinating. Isn't this what Eve Sedgwick is all about with her homosociality argument? That when two literary men are fighting over one woman, what they are really exposing is their passion for each other? And I think your Colette story is very much the same idea, with the genders reversed -- the man is basically superfluous to the relationship between the women, which quickly takes center stage.
(I'm not quite ready to say this is true of EVERY love triangle, but it's not an uncommon dynamic, certainly -- at least in subtext.)
I'd also argue that even the most standard form of love triangle takes on more dramatic weight if we consider it in the context of the 18th-19th century "marriage plot"... where if you make the mistake of marrying the superficially charming cad, you could doom yourself to a life sentence of brutality or poverty or similar such misery. That's basically a horror show, I mean.
(Okay now I want to take a slight detour to talk about that most reviled of contemporary texts: Twilight. Twilight is one of those books where people are so sure they already know what's in it, that they miss how fucking weird and delightful it is. I mean, caveat: it is indeed very blandly written, hyper-problematic trope filled nonsense. But hiding in there is a vein of perversity, especially in the fourth book. I bet no one ever told you that in book 4, Bella's lover (now husband) Edward seeks out Jacob and asks him to plead with Bella to get an abortion! No one ever mentions that. AND THEN, for an encoure, he suggests that since he can't safely impregnate Bella, Jacob should have a go at it. And then they she can either stay with Jacob, or Jacob and Edward can "share" her, whichever she prefers. It's amazing, not least because it's so unexpected in this book that is supposed to be a hetero-mormon fantasy.)
As for slightly more serious recs, by coincidence I just read this article about about Ann Reinking and Gwen Verdon not fighting over Bob Fosse, and it's pretty great.
I'm also going to tentatively rec DestinationToast's Disregard the Danger. It's mostly a story about Mary and how she deals with the events of S3, but it does end with Sherlock, Mary, and John in a V-shaped triad. Splix's The Green Gown features Sherlock and Mary both in love with John but with a special, complicated understanding between the two of them... but it's not really the focus of the story, which is ultimately Johnlock.
Honestly, though -- I know it's considered bad form in fandom to praise the source material, but... I really love the way BBC Sherlock handles the Sherlock-John-Mary triangle. It's neither the cliche of jealousy and resentment, nor is it a saccharine fantast of a perfectly balanced triad... It's much more interesting and complex. Sherlock and Mary click from their first meeting, and their bond only grows over time, to the point where, when she betrays John (and nearly murders Sherlock), Sherlock is the one pushing John to take her back.
And when the relationship picks up again in S4, we get to see them all happily devoted to each other, with Sherlock coaching Mary through childbirth, and Mary helping on cases... but just when it starts to seem like tooth-rotting poly fluff, we see John's simmering resentment over the fact that his best friend and his wife make jokes at his expense, etc., which drives him to start seeing someone else on the sly. And just when they're about to make up, Mary dies saving *Sherlock's* life, which... drives both John and Sherlock to very dark places. It's just such a rich take on the dynamic.
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Date: 2019-06-04 04:45 am (UTC)As applied to the V formation with POV center, you are of course right that any plot can be gripping in the right hands. That said, I stand by my personal distaste for/lack of interest in it, by and large. I just looked over my bookshelves, and while there are novels I love that involve the POV-V—Pride and Prejudice has Darcy-Lizzie-Wickham, for example, and even Mrs Dalloway has Peter-Clarissa-Richard—I can't find a single case where the POV-V is actually my source of delight or interest in the book, rather than a sort of scaffolding on which to build the interesting and delightful stuff, whether that be hilariously biting social satire or existential isolation delivered in mind-blowingly beautiful point-of-view pyrotechnics. I agree that the economic stakes were higher in 18th and 19th century marriage-plot type novels, and I've read my share of those but in general they're not where my interest lies these days. I can still be convinced, but there has to be something about the setup or execution that's novel or thought-provoking; the POV-V alone strikes me as neutral to negative.
Whereas it would take a lot less to convince me to read a book focusing on a thoughtful metamour relationship, because there are just so few of those stories around. And in that case the existence of the metamour relationship itself would be a draw, rather than being tangential to whatever drew me to pick up the book.
Anyway, that DestinationToast fic has been on my radar for ages, but I've never picked it up! I should give it a try; I like their other stuff that I've read. And I'm intrigued by your selling of Sherlock S3 & S4, which I haven't seen. You make a compelling case...
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Date: 2019-06-04 01:11 pm (UTC)I wouldn't have thought to put it that way, but that's probably a good rule of thumb for what separates interesting love triangles from boring one. Like the song Jolene! Haha. Though I think even a story that focuses on the metamours can be boring if it's presented as nothing but justified jealousy and resentment.
What do you think of stories where women team up to "teach a lesson" to their man for two timing them both? That's a not uncommon trope.
As for Sherlock, I think a lot of the negativity about s3 and s4 came from people who had gotten very invested in the john-Sherlock dynamic. Even people who weren't expecting canon johnlock were accustomed to the focus being on John and Sherlock, and were understandably thrown by this other person destabilizing the dynamic. But I only started watching after s3 aired, so I knew just what I was getting into, and I think that made it easier for me to accept and enjoy the addition. (Of course it helps that I am very interested in these three person dynamics, when done well!)
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Date: 2019-06-04 10:11 pm (UTC)I quite like the "women team up to teach their no-good two-timing man a lesson" trope, but it doesn't really scratch the same itch as what I was talking about above (at least... the ones I can think of don't, though I can see how one could write a version that did). It's usually a more straightforward, cathartic pleasure, rather than a complicating one.
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Date: 2019-06-04 02:32 am (UTC)Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: the end of the war, Weddings, Pregnancy issues, drag racing, barbeques, Suburbia, Spy Stuff, Catastrophe, Science Fiction, Sacrifice
Summary:
"Because everything's all right, isn't it?" Bucky said. "Everything's great. I'm so happy; I never thought I could be this happy. You're happy, too, aren't you, Peg?"
While I am a firm believer in and a delighted consumer of triads/OT3s, I do enjoy a good metamour fic. This one fits exactly into the dynamic you’re talking about here: Peggy and Bucky both love Steve, and so they form an alliance to protect him, which leads to them recognizing their own similarities and forming their own friendship.
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Date: 2019-06-04 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 03:02 am (UTC)The Glass Half Full, by Garonne: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115835
(canon Holmes)
Sorrow, Not Remorse, by icarus_chained:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/677795
(Ritchie!Holmes)
And I don't know if you're familiar with the Vorkosigan Saga, but Dira Sudis's The World That You Need" series, while mostly focused on the developing relationship between Aral/Jole, does devote some time to the Cordelia & Jole arm of the relationship, particularly in "Everything That You Can Keep." I also like this series for showing how the established Aral/Cordelia relationship changes to make room for the Aral/Jole relationship, which is not exactly about Cordelia & Jole, but is a related dynamic, I think?
Series link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/4569
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Date: 2019-06-04 09:58 pm (UTC)I am not familiar with the Vorkosian Saga, but I do like Dira Sudis, so maybe I should peruse the Wikipedia article & check that one out as well. Thanks again!
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Date: 2019-06-05 12:53 am (UTC)Interestingly, Aral/Cordelia and Aral/Jole are both canon, and there is a whole book about Cordelia and Jole's relationship. But... literally no one I've ever talked to thinks it's a good book? And I haven't read it myself. So I don't think I'd recommend the canon version of the relationship! Dira Sudis wrote the series I recommended several years before Bujold made it canon, and I'm kind of afraid to read the Cordelia & Jole book because there's pretty much no way it's as satisfying as that fic.
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Date: 2019-06-04 10:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 08:22 pm (UTC)You'd think Leverage fandom, given its focus on an OT3 would have at least SOME fics with this dynamic, but I can't think of any. Odd One Out kiiiind of has it though.
I'm definitely going to read some of the fics you've mentioned! I really like to read realistic poly, and it's so damn rare.
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Date: 2019-06-04 09:28 pm (UTC)It's funny, I can also go for extreme soft, but only if it feels legitimately reciprocal and believable to me? Like, a lot of the time when I encounter (what reads to me as) overly fluffy stories, I feel like either (a) the writer is short-changing Character A by having them caretake and/or compromise for Character B while not requiring Character B to caretake or compromise at all for Character A, which is a dynamic that sits really poorly with me because like... what, Character A just has no personal needs, now?; or (b) the writer, when confronted with canonical trauma or even just canonical challenge, wants to skip over the part of the healing/negotiation process that's messy and unpleasant, and just go straight to the part where there's cuddling. Which, relatable! And if that kind of story works as a soothing or cheering mechanism for some folks, then I fully support them. But for me it tends to just make me sadder, because more than anything it reminds me of times I've tried to skip over those messy/unpleasant parts of my own processes. Those attempts have never ended well, and it hurts to be reminded of being in that place where I'm trying to deny that I need to actually live through my shit, and that denial is not working.
Anyway! I really admired your Kady/Julia story for finding some places for believable softness in amongst the (also very believable) pain. <3
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Date: 2019-06-05 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-05 09:36 pm (UTC)I know what you mean about thinking through character psychology around caretaking. My last long novel project involved a lot of mutual caretaking around healing from trauma (and healing from results of bad behavior stemming from past trauma), and it's a difficult line to hit. I wanted a core of deeply-felt tenderness and compassion, but I also wanted, as an author, to be honest about the messy and sometimes ugly feelings everyone was feeling, and to give characters space to feel them (and sometimes, because they're not perfect, act on them). And I also wanted also to hold characters accountable for acknowledging their mistakes and starting to make amends with one another.
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Date: 2019-06-06 07:56 pm (UTC)Your long novel project sounds like an ideal mixture of compassion and realistic emotions, and something that's certainly hard to capture. I often struggle with writing real arguments or hurt between characters, and tend to shy away from it, even when it would be appropriate and emotionally true for the story: I admire people who can grapple with it, because it's such an important dimension of our lives to explore.
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Date: 2019-06-04 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-04 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-05 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 03:41 am (UTC)Tony Stark/Pepper Potts/James Rhodey Rhodes and to be fair they end up as a triad, but the reason why I still rec this is 1 they do it in a more emotionally realistic way and 2 the triad part doesn't necessarily feel like the necessary outcome. It builds up to that, yes, but their relationship before that is noteworthy initself. https://archiveofourown.org/works/509367
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Date: 2019-06-08 03:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-08 06:00 am (UTC)And it's delightfully funny.
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Date: 2020-01-13 02:01 pm (UTC)