I've written about this before - my celebrity crush and hyperfixation regarding Dan Stevens has really been inspiring so far. I want to watch "Permission", where he plays one of the main characters and the film (no spoilers follow) is basically about a long-term couple who want to marry but then a friend suggests to them to go on dates with others or open the relationship before they do the big deed (that is, marry).
And now here's my problem: I don't dare to watch the film, at least not now, because I bet I want to write a fanfic afterwards, possibly with polyamory as a topic, because I want to have more polyam representation.
And atm, I do not have the time to dive into working on a fanfic, because I am working on original fiction and I cannot do both. 😅Admittedly, this is a luxury problem.
The IMDB page of the film:
https://www.imdb.com/de/title/tt5390066/
Being Polyamarous is an extremally important part of me. Having had multiple partners for many years now, lasting, loving relationships that have made me the woman I am it's important that the art I create also reflects this. However, I've failed many times to kind of capture the polyamorous spirit in my work and it's something I think is complicated to capture in the shorter narrative work I used to do. Now that I am mostly working in TTRPGs I am presented with a new questions of how to do this kind of representation.
While I've done several TTRPG projects over my couple of years of having moved into this space I think the biggest examples of me working poly forward design are my Story Synth game The Polycule's Grand Multiverse Adventure! and my work on Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
[Art from Thirsty Sword Lesbians by Matte Bat]
A thing that really attracted to me to Thirsty Sword Lesbians when I was just a fan of it and not yet brought on to write Yuisa Revolution and The Matriarch was how polyamorous the game itself was. Getting smitten was never limited to one person at a time, you could finally kiss in a dangerous moment with multiple people, you could exchange strings for people, The Scoundrel's one in every port had serial monogamy that could easily bleed into polyamory. As far as I know a lot of like how polyamarous the game was at the time wasn't intended but sometimes the simple act of just not placing limits and making something feelings forwards makes something more polyam than most.
When I was working on Yuisa Revolution I was trying to make a setting that encourage polyamory but never like made you feel pressured into being polyamorous. I made sure to really encourage open love as a part of the culture of Yuisa. I was looking to create a little anarchist utopia in this setting.
With The Matriarch I took a different approach which was the Family Mechanic. While the gut instinct is to go mom for the playbook I mention in the information section that your family can be a Polycule. I designed the core mechanic to not just work for a caretaker type relationship but equals meaning your family could be two partners and a dog, two partners and a kid, three partners, or whatever kind of orientation you want to do. I wanted a lot of room for The Matarich to be more then one thing and to hold the level of flexibility that other playbooks had.
With The Polycule's Grand Multiverse Adventure! I was taking For The Queen's formula then shifting it to become a player lead force of curiosity. It's a fairly simple game but one I put a lot of thought into. The biggest concern for me was the end point of the game, I didn't want to make it feel like now everyone get peer pressured into picking one universe. So I made sure to include a reassurance that everyone could pick the universe that felt like home to them and it would be easy to visit each other. The little ending section serves as a little way for the players to also debrief about what they enjoyed, what they didn't and things like that.
This moves me to the present where in Thirsty Sword Lesbians: Falling Deeper the biggest focus of the expansion is on long term relationships. These kinds of relationships are really important to me. I've been with my Fiancé for over 14 years, been with some of my GFs now for over 7 years, and been with my most recent GF for over a year. I'll probably talk more about this specifically later but it's relevant here because notably I am polyamorous and in relationships of various forms of long term. Yet, most narratives around relationships are monogamous and creating polyamarous mechanics that are less like "no one is stopping you" and more like supporting the actual relationships presents a requirement to actually really consider how to "gamify" the relationships.
As of now the direction we're going is to do coupling but basically allow unlimited amounts of using these mechanics. Focus on the individual dynamics between particular partners as opposed to the widder Polycule's interactions. I think they can be tweaked though to allow for the whole table to engage in them, it's just currently designed with the pairing in mind. Which is consistent with how TSL works in general anyway. I am really happy with how it looks so far but I want to see in playtesting how it looks for a polycule with a few relationship playbooks in action.
The way relationship playbooks work right now is they push a drama for the characters based on their type of relationship or a particular conflict the players want to see. So seeing how a player has a few of these plus their playbook will really be the test for this kind of system.
Outside of this I want to experiment with ways to do polyamory mechanically, in my card game, Soul Of The Hero, that is currently in development right now I am playing with a polycule symbol and that indicates a character is part of a particular polycule and that also gives them a bonus. Where as individual extra strong relationships might be mention the character by name.
If you know any games that have done polyamory in a neat way please let me know, I would love to study some more polyamorous games and see the other ways people use the medium of games to express polyam life.
I don't know if you've watched it, but the Thai Tv series 3 Will Be Free has a poly main couple and is free to watch on the official GMMTV Youtube channel.
I love how the new Gossip Girl is handling polyamory. A lot of popular media sensationalizes throuples as just being about sex and being “scandalous,” but Gossip Girl is taking great care to emphasize how the emotional aspect of it is important to the characters. Not that throuples based on sex alone are wrong by the way- it’s just important to show a wider variety of them
And commitment’s not about all the people you stay away from, even if you want them. It’s about the one person you’re always there for, whenever he needs you.
So much of the Penumbra Posting I see around is Juno/Peter and like. I get it. I too am a mentally ill transmasc non-binary bisexual disaster in love. But was no one going to tell me of the polyamorous rep in the Second Citadel??? I just finished S2 and I'm so happy 😭😭😭 this was such a good season finale give my favourite thrupple more love pls
Just three more days til we reveal the trailer and release date for Seven Deadly Synths live on Twitch, Monday 2PM EDT. Follow us here to get notified when we go live.
Thanks for all your patience as I polish the film ^_^ In the meantime, enjoy this pic of the “OT3″ Mag, Seth, and Jared as they toast to someone’s destruction, probably.
Seven Deadly Synths is a short fantasy comedy film from the creators of Detroit Evolution, about a bisexual musician named Seth (Maximilian Koger), who realizes his rival ex bandmate Brian may have come into the possession of a mystical, fabled synthesizer. It is set for release on Youtube this August.
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Urban Fantasy with a couple of witchy, poly boys, 3k.
Cw: swearing, non-pov injury and unconciousness, anxiety, animal skulls, blood, nail biting, imagery of death, necromancy-like magic
The incantations didn’t have to be said out loud for them to work, but it felt more natural to Noah than sitting and staring in silence. So he had been chanting his throat raw, only stopping to soothe the ache with one of his herbal teas whenever he felt he couldn’t go on. His client – for lack of a better word – had dutifully brought him whatever ingredients he’d asked for, but had refused to drink any of the tea himself. Privately Noah thought that a calming drink might have done the guy some good; with every hour that passed, the dread that Noah felt seeping out of Damiri had gotten more oppressive. In all fairness, Noah suspected that his own emotions probably weren’t having a particularly calming effect on Damiri either right now. Being an empath had to be hell at times. Maybe that was why he barely spoke. Noah was sure he wouldn’t even have told him his name if Noah had not insisted on it.
Noah felt his voice give way, cracking hoarsely in the middle of a sentence. It made Damiri start upright in his chair in the corner. He had been biting on the skin around his nails, slowly ruining them.
“Did something happen?” His voice sounded almost as raw as Noah’s.
“No,” Noah shook his head, taking a sip from the strangely dainty cup Damiri had brought him. “Nothing bad, just me.”
Damiri let out a shaky breath and glanced down at the still body on the makeshift bed. It looked very out of place in the strange basement room that Noah had been forced to make into his crafting space. He only knew the name of his patient because he overheard Damiri mutter it to him. Aiden. Noah had a vague notion it meant ‘fire’. But he was trying not to think about that, because the way Aiden was lying there, with Noah’s treasured skulls placed carefully around him like clusters of pale flowers, he looked like he had been laid out on a funeral pyre. He was like a fairy tale stuck in a tragedy, all pale skin and black hair draping down…
In his corner, Damiri had begun to bounce his leg. “It’s been ten hours.”
Noah made an effort to meet his eyes and tried not to see the despair glittering in the brown. “It often takes time.”
“Ten hours?” There was a sharp edge to Damiri’s voice and Noah looked away.
He still hadn’t been able to find out exactly how Damiri and Aiden were connected. He was pretty sure there was at least one other person present in the house, but he hadn’t seen them. Damiri was the one that came to fetch him, and to tell the truth, for anyone else he might not have come along willingly.
Because he didn’t appreciate people lying in wait for him at his home, and he hated to be called a necromancer, but the unrestrained fear in Damiri’s eyes had been enough to make him hesitate.
And then the love had changed his mind. He had met several empaths since the time he learned to pick up on other people’s magic, some of them extremely bad at shielding themselves, but he had never felt that much love pouring out of a single person. Nor that much terror.
So he had allowed Damiri to escort him to this unnerving basement and the two of them had been here since. It had to be nearing sunrise now.
“That means we still have the eleventh hour,” Noah said finally. He didn’t believe in giving false hope, but he didn’t believe in giving up either.
Damiri muttered something under his breath and brought his hand to his mouth again to bite at his nails. Then he winced, fingers cramping up, and let out a hissing swear.
“You alright?” Noah asked, hastily getting up and walking towards him.
“Fine,” he grunted, wiping his middle finger on his trousers. It was bleeding, the nail-bed bitten raw.
Noah sighed. “Will you let me help with that?”
Damiri stared blankly at him for a moment, but then he silently held out his hand.
Noah held it for a moment to assess the damage, his skin looked oddly pale against Damiri’s warmer shade of brown. Silently he reached into his pocket and took out a small, delicately built skull. A field mouse. He pressed his thumb into the sigil he carved on the top of it before placing it carefully on Damiri’s palm. He had barely finished murmuring the incantation before the sigil cracked, splitting the skull in two. Noah winced slightly – he always did, he couldn’t help it – but he smiled seeing the raw edges of skin on Damiri’s fingers mend and heal.
Damiri seemed afraid to move his hand, staring at it like he had just seen it burning. “What did you do?” he breathed, his eyes darting up to Noah’s face. “Is- Is that what you’re…?”
Noah nodded, taking the cracked skull out of his palm and slipping it into a different pocket of his coat. It was truly dead now, not a shred of life left clinging to it. He would give it a proper burial as soon as he could.
“But how-” Damiri studied his fingers incredulously. “How does it work?”
A faint smile overtook Noah’s face. Ten hours of healing rituals to pull his significant someone back from the brink of death and only now did Damiri ask.
“Death is a straightforward thing,” Noah replied, sitting down on a nearby crate, close enough so he could look at Damiri properly. “But life is not. When a living being dies, not all of it dies at once. Sometimes something of the lower life force lingers and the right magic can bind it to its vessel. That is what I do.”
Damiri looked at the clusters of skulls placed on the low bed. Those belonged to larger creatures, nothing smaller than a cat, and they all bore the same sigil. “Your skulls crack when the life in them is spent,” he concluded slowly.
“Yeah,” Noah hummed. He would never learn to like that part, but it was inevitable.
“Then…what is keeping it from working?” A low note of dread was slipping back into Damiri’s voice and Noah wished he knew a way to quiet it.
“I can only offer help,” he explained soberly. “I cannot force it. He was hurt by magic…” He glanced at Aiden’s motionless form. Apart from the hollowness of his eyes, he did not look hurt. He was barely breathing and his heartbeat was so faint that Noah couldn’t catch its rhythm to chant in time with it, no matter how hard he tried—but his body seemed unharmed. “Perhaps he does not know how to mend what is broken in him.”
“But you-”
“I do not mend anything,” Noah interrupted Damiri firmly. “What you just saw, was your own body healing itself because I gave it the opportunity to do so.”
Damiri looked from Aiden’s still face to Noah’s, and back again. “And you can’t— Can’t you help?”
Noah shook his head. He didn’t even know what happened to Aiden. He knew nothing about him apart from a muttered name and his importance to Damiri. He didn’t even know his magic. “I have found that healing blindly usually does more harm than good.”
Damiri let out a hollow laugh. “What more harm could you possibly do to him now?”
The chill Noah felt sliding down his back must have been evident to Damiri, because he met his eyes again. “You do not want me to answer that,” Noah replied solemnly.
A heavy silence fell between them. Noah didn’t feel up to breaking it, so he tried to continue with the incantation in his mind. Perhaps if he weaved Aiden’s name into the words, he would hear him. It was hard to speak to someone he’d never even looked in the eye.
“Damiri, what is Aiden’s magic like?”
He had been wanting to ask that question ever since he’d first laid eyes on his patient. Even now, weakened as he was, Noah could nearly feel Aiden’s power humming underneath his skin. It didn’t feel familiar though. It was unlike anything that Noah had ever felt.
Damiri hid his face, rubbing his forehead and temples with tense, nervous movements. The more his shoulders sagged, the younger he looked. “That is a question you don’t want answered,” he said darkly.
“You mean you don’t want to tell me,” Noah sighed. “Just like you didn’t want to tell me about your magic.”
Even without seeing Damiri’s facial expression, Noah knew it was resentful. He had been able to feel the familiar pattern of emotion manipulation as soon as Damiri had gotten close to him. Damiri hadn’t been pleased when he guessed his gift correctly. Not pleased at all.
Damiri gave no response and suddenly a thought slipped into Noah’s mind.
“Do you think I’ll no longer want to help him if I know?”
A moment before Damiri had been fidgeting in his chair, now he was sitting near-frozen.
Noah looked at him attentively. “Because it’s far too late for that, you know.”
At last the dark eyes lifted up again. “What?”
“I decided to help when you asked me,” Noah explained calmly. “I don’t change my mind.”
He wanted his magic to work. He wanted to see Aiden’s eyes open, wanted to see the handsome face come back to life. Even if he had not fully decided to help on the strength of Damiri’s plea, he would have lost any hesitation upon seeing Aiden. Because he agreed with Damiri, and with the words he had whispered to him on his doorstep, more than ten hours ago. “He can’t die.” Noah didn’t know why, but he couldn’t help but agree. Aiden could not die. And perhaps that was a solely selfish wish, because when he looked at him, and felt that strange magic just out of reach, Noah couldn’t bear the thought of never actually meeting him.
“Would it help you heal him?” Damiri broke into his thoughts. “If you knew what his magic was, would that help?”
Noah shook his head regretfully. “It would help me if I could understand his magic, but I do not recognise it and there is no time to teach me.”
Damiri made a strange noise and Noah gave him a questioning look.
“If you really wanted to know, you could have lied,” he said.
Noah’s lips curled slightly in distaste. “I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
Another nondescript sound at the back of his throat.
Noah was ready to turn away and give him his space again, but Damiri suddenly slumped forward, dropping his head into his hands and burying his fingers in his dark hair. “You have no idea,” he grunted. “How badly I want to force all this on you.”
Noah could feel the truth of it. At times he could sense Damiri’s anxiety almost snaking towards him. Damiri was desperate not to feel these things. Anyone would be. But unlike most people, Damiri actually had a way to get rid of it all.
“I appreciate the self-control.”
This time Damiri nearly laughed. But his head stayed in his hands, and Noah decided to leave him be. He got to his feet and quietly walked to the bed. With loving attention he rearranged the skulls into their repeating patterns of threes. He made sure not to touch Aiden, and he really tried not to stare at him.
Aiden… Aiden… There was nothing in the name that matched the humming he felt in the distance. And still his heartbeat was too weak, his breathing too shallow. What if he couldn’t hear him calling? What if he simply couldn’t find the gifts he brought…
“His name is Aidan.”
Noah nearly jumped. He had not heard Damiri move, but suddenly he was standing beside him. He was tall—even when he leaned forward Noah had to look up slightly to see into his face. The sadness that trickled out of him was getting so thick it was almost tangible.
“Aidan Yeoh.” Damiri tore his eyes away from the motionless face. “And his magic is thievery.”
“Thievery?” Noah repeated in confusion.
“The gentlest thievery you’ve ever encountered,” he muttered. “He doesn’t even need physical contact. And he can take almost anything. Memories, feelings, thoughts…”
Noah felt a tightness closing around his chest. There was a reason he didn’t like being called a necromancer. Necromancy was frowned upon. But magical theft… He made no reply and Damiri said nothing more. He stood over Aidan a moment longer, staring at him like he wanted to touch his face but wouldn’t for fear of crying, and then retreated back to his corner.
When Noah started chanting again, Damiri closed his eyes.
Noah waited until the rhythmic breathing of exhausted sleep filled the room before he started changing the words of the incantation. He circled the bed on silent feet and took back his cherished skulls. One by one he took them away from Aidan, weighing them in his hands for a moment before placing them gently on the ground. Not in threes this time, but in a circle. Circles in circles, all of them side by side, each one guarding the other. Until they were all gathered together and Noah sat down, placing himself between Aidan and his treasures. He had forgotten about his tea, but he was still chanting. Still calling out to Aidan. But this time it was a different chant. What was offered freely could be taken back.
An entire night he had been here. More than a night. This was the eleventh hour and the sun was rising. It was early in the year, the sun would be shy about it. But it would rise, and sunrise is powerful.
Noah didn’t notice Damiri waking. He was still chanting, tired words tumbling stubbornly from his lips and his body rocking in time with the rhythm.
“What have- What are you doing?”
Damiri was beside him in an instant, his hands reaching out for the skulls, stopping just short of touching them. He looked back towards Aidan, who still lay sleeping like the dead.
“What have you done to him?”
Noah shook his head, bowing down low enough to nearly double over, chanting possessive words that wanted to stick to the inside of his mouth.
Damiri backed away from him, footsteps unsteady on the tile floor. “If you—” His voice was only a breath away from breaking. “I swear—”
A nauseating crack rang out like a shot and the last syllable slid mercifully off Noah’s tongue.
Another crack. Another. Noah turned away from the breaking skulls so he did not have to see. They all split right through the middle, straight though the sigil, and in the sudden quiet that followed, Aidan drew a stuttering breath.
Damiri seemed to be by the bed with only a single step. “Aidan—”
Noah got to his feet just in time to see the fine lashes flutter up and the thin lips move. “…Dami?”
The sound that escaped from Damiri’s chest echoed inside Noah’s mind as loudly as the breaking of bone. Shuddering, Damiri sank to his knees and slumped forward, his fingers grasping at the fabric of Aidan’s shirt and his forehead pressing against his side.
Aidan reached for him with a movement that was so controlled it made relief come alive in Noah’s entire body. He had done well. Aidan’s body was undamaged.
“You bastard,” Aidan muttered weakly, his fingers digging into Damiri’s shoulder for a moment before combing through his hair. “That’s the last time I let you design the balancing charm.”
“Fuck off,” Damiri breathed and he raised his head, his voice choked and thick with emotion.
Noah felt himself sway on his feet. Damiri's relief, a mix of joy and wild affection, filled the room like thick smoke. It was almost hard to breathe. And it was impossible not to smile. He blinked, slowly looking from Damiri to Aidan, just in time for Aiden’s eyes to meet his. Noah had been prepared for them to be dark and attentive. He had not been expecting them to be this alive.
There wasn’t a single mark of hardship left in them.
For a moment Aidan just looked at him, but then his lips formed into something very like a smile. When he next spoke, his voice was noticeably smoother than it had been before. “Are you the one that chanted?”
“Yes,” Noah said, his hands trembling slightly and an involuntary smile playing around his own lips as well. “And you are the one that can’t see what is given freely, but will take what is guarded against him.”
The fascination on Aidan’s face was as genuine as Damiri’s exasperated exclamation of understanding. He got to his feet, rubbing violently at his face.
“Why didn’t you fucking tell me?” he grunted, doing a bad job of hiding his tears.
“You might not have trusted me,” Noah replied, apologetic but not remorseful. “I told you I wouldn’t lie, but that doesn’t mean I have to tell you the truth.” He wasn’t sorry. He felt almost giddy. He felt light. He had saved a life.
“Yeah, you know what, I don’t care.” Damiri let out a broken laugh, shaking with relief and gratitude. “I really don’t.” He swallowed. "Thank you."
“I—" Aidan interrupted, sitting up with the grace of a cat woken from nothing but a comfortable slumber, before Noah could even open his mouth for another reply. "—have two things to say.”
His eyes were fixed on Noah so intently that he felt his face heat up in spite of himself.
“The first—” he said smoothly, entwining his fingers with Damiri’s.”—is that you’re being incredibly rude not introducing me to the person you got to save me, Dami. And the second—” A grin graced his face as his eyes darted to Damiri before settling firmly on Noah again. “—is that you’re more than welcome to try and kill me again if you want. Clearly it was worth it.”
