#kamo rambles

[welkamoalreadyexists]

he/him lesbian The Batter in Tomodachi Life

[welkamoalreadyexists]

I am not expecting Tomodachi Life Living the Dream to have polyamory I feel like I've already been spoiled too much by the universe with nonbinary/ceterosexual/bisexual/aromantic Miis.

HOWEVER, if I am wrong, and if Tomodachi Life Living the Dream does have polyamory in some shape or form, I will draw Bubbles the Clown/Hugh Morris mpreg. The most tenderly crafted oil pastel/watercolor/gouache/fuck it all three Bubmorris mpreg.

[welkamoalreadyexists]

Thinking about polyamory in Tomodachi Life and how it could work on the off chance that Nintendo were to add it, and it's got me thinking about how coding polyamory in life sim games is kind of. Hard. Okay maybe not hard, but it's more complicated than just "allow people to fall in love with everyone". Because polyamorous people are equally complicated. There's couples in open relationships, where they're in a primary coupling but are okay with seeing other people to fulfill some kind of need or want they can't get with just each other. There's polyfidelity triads, where it's three people exclusive to each other. There's V relationships, where two people are dating the same person but not each other. There's non partnering solo poly people. There's hierarchical polyamory. There's non hierarchical polyamory. There's polycules where not everyone is dating everyone else. There's polycules with a myriad of sexual, romantic, platonic, and queerplatonic relationships within it. And so on. Too often when I see people (monogamous and polyamorous) discussing polyamory, they have a very specific "type" of polyamory in mind, when in reality there's a million+ ways of doing it.

As I've said before, Tomodachi Life isn't explicitly polyamorous, but it at least feels poly-adjacent, if that makes sense. Like in monoheteronormative society, everyone is expected to prioritize their (exclusive) romantic relationship (with someone of the opposite sex) above their friendships, live only with their (exclusive) romantic partner (of the opposite sex and to whom they are married) and their children (that they had with the romantic partner in wedlock), and so on. The fact that Tomodachi Life allows platonic friends to move in together, allows romantic partners to live together before marriage, allows a Mii to live with their romantic partner AND their friends AND their family all at the same time, it's very philosophically polyamorous. Like, I need to emphasize how anti-cohabitation laws are still a thing in many places even today, so the fact that Tomodachi Life normalizes housing situations beyond the nuclear family is a huge step forward. And it's one that's adjacent to the polyamorous struggle of recognizing relationships beyond the romantic and sexual couplings enforced by monoheteronormative society.

But back to polyamory in video games, this is all easy to navigate in something more linear, like a linear narrative or even a dating sim where all of the characters come from the game itself. Because you can explore any one, two, or all of those types of polyamory with the different characters. But in a game where the point is to make your own characters and customize them to your liking...

It reminds me a bit of how The Sims 4 handles polyamory, with the jealousy mechanic. A Sim can be fine/not fine with their partner(s) being romantic/Woohooing with other people, and these boundaries can be discussed or set in stone. And this allows for, as an example, open relationships or relationship anarchy, but what about closed triads? How do you define relationships in terms of a hierarchy? (Sarah Richter and Lauren Morton wrote a very good article about this for PC Gamer, and it's partially the reason why I've been thinking about all this lately.) A lot of mods in the Sims 4 community, most of which came out before polyamory was added to the game officially, also have a mindset of "all polyamory is free love" (although Open Love Life takes on a different approach that I really like, and even allows for exclusive triads.)

To be clear, I think that The Sims 4 model of polyamory works for what it is, and I am happy to see any kind of model of polyamory in gaming; polyamorous representation is so rare that any model is a step forward. I also very much want (romantic) polyamory in Tomodachi Life. I want my Miis to be in explicitly romantic relationships of more than two Miis, and I want the game to acknowledge more than two Miis being in love, where I'm not just seeing three Miis watching TV together and blushing and then filling in the details with my imagination alone. I also want to say to all the game developers and modders coding polyamory in games: whatever model or approach you go with, I see you, and I love you (in a "I love all humans but I especially acknowledge you for everything you do" kind of way). Coding is hard. Humans are complicated creatures, and programmers try to take the complicated in humanity and try to fit it in the mathematical confines of computer code.

I don't really know what the point of typing this all out was, because I don't really have a thesis on how Tomodachi Life/games in general should approach polyamory. And maybe that's a thesis in and of itself, because maybe there isn't any right or wrong way of doing it. I think the main point is that, whether you're writing or coding or playing or whatever and polyamory comes to mind, just know that the possibilities are endless.

(Also, like, to any programmers or writers out there: don't forget about compersion. Please give me more compersion rep.)

(Addendum 1: It all sort of reminds me of the topic of media with explicit depictions of gay couples who just so happen to be gay VS media that has for whatever reason been interpreted to have queer themes even if there's no explicit representation. Both kinds of representation are important. And for that matter, so is "explicit depictions of gay couples where queerness is the point". Give me three cakes.)

(Addendum 2: I think one advantage The Sims 4 has in comparison to Tomodachi Life is that the modding community is bigger/actually supported by EA, which means holes in representation can be filled in more easily. Whether you interpret that charitably, cynically, or something else, it is important to acknowledge that it means that, in turn, Tomodachi Life's base game rep is gonna have a lot more weight, if that makes sense.)

[welkamoalreadyexists]

I don't want to be "valid af" I wanna be accepted for all of the many facets of my being

[welkamoalreadyexists]

I want my silly fellas to be cuddled and put in warm blankets but also afflicted with illness and pain but also inflicted with illness and pain so they can be cuddled and put in warm blankets but also

[welkamoalreadyexists]

I do feel like even if the full game doesn't have Miis being able to have more than one crush (which I'm still skeptical of, given how the demo also doesn't have marriage), there is something at least poly-adjacent about, like, living with 8 other people without everyone necessarily being blood related or romantically involved. In the sense that it goes against the monoheteronormative idea that everyone only lives with their blood family and, later, their (one, opposite sex) spouse and their blood children. This idea hurts not just poly people, but also unmarried couples living together, or friends living together (see: anti cohabitation laws), or any other family dynamic that isn't the traditional nuclear family dynamic.

So even if the game doesn't have polyamory in the "three Miis all love each other" way, it still feels poly in the "there's more than one way to make a family" way.

(Also like, even from a needless conflict monogamous soap opera perspective, having more than one crush at the same time is like. A cornerstone of needless conflict monogamous soap opera plots.)

[welkamoalreadyexists]

Writing an alloaro character rn and I am finding it very difficult as an alloaro person lmao. Because the character is supposed to be aro in a "knows what romance is and does not want it" way and I am aro in a "does not know the difference between romance and friendship" way. It's like trying to write a character who doesn't like ultraviolet colours as a person who cannot see ultraviolet colours.

[welkamoalreadyexists]

I am quite fond of your fiction. your fanfic has been an inside joke inside the TikTok rh community for months and I decided to read the thing I have been Clowning on for months. It was good. I would say never cook again, but the cooking tasted good. update the pregnant hakuko fanfic. please

Okay so I've honestly struggled a bit to answer this lol. Because I did not realize I was an inside joke in those circles. (Is it a good thing to be an inside joke? A bad thing? A neutral thing?) (I am horrible at reading tone.)

My hope in writing (and this might be a silly hope for RH fanfiction writing) is that I can somehow inspire someone else to write the stories they want to write, no matter how different, weird, cringe, or bad it may be. Because there's a lot of safe art out there in the world, a lot of art that only aims to appease as many people as possible. And maybe that art is well made on a technical level or looks nice or is "normal" or whatever, but it doesn't challenge the reader's perspective. It doesn't speak to any emotion or experience beyond the surface level. If you try to make art for everybody, you end up with art for nobody. If you make art for yourself, you at least have someone who enjoys it (yourself), but you also realize that there are other people who enjoy it, and that other people are more similar to you than you thought.

Maybe that's kind of pretentious coming from someone who writes about rhythm game characters fucking and being queer and getting pregnant and whatnot. But like... there's no harm in writing about rhythm game characters fucking and being queer and getting pregnant and whatnot. So like, make weird art! Not even just writing or RH fanfiction! Make weird art with your own human hands and soul! Because whatever you make, no matter how different, weird, cringe, or bad it is, it inherently has value because a human made it! If someone's actually angry or cringed-out that you making weird shit, that says more about them than you. There's about a billion problems on this planet and weird rhythm heaven fiction is pretty low on the list.