OGIHR
New member
I am working on an adventure story with a four-person romantic group (three up front, one more joining during the story proper) in the main cast, and it is my intention to present their relationship as happy, stable, loving, and mutually-supportive; not as a fountain of angst for the sake of angst. However, I do not have experiences from my own life to draw upon to write any sort of groupsome romance in an authentic manner. Thus, I am seeking the input of this forum's community.
Warning: the following wall of text is not for the faint of heart.
The story is a science fiction reinterpretation of Norse Mythology (set FAR earlier on the mythic timeline than most works based on the sagas, with Tyr still being King, Odin having only just returned a changed man by his ordeal in the branches of the Yggdrasil, and Thor not even being numbered among the gods yet, so Ragnarok isn't even a glimmer on the horizon). Only two of my main characters coming from mundane modern Earth, while all other significant characters being native to my fantastical Asgard. And in that fantastical world, there shall be no social stigma within the setting applied to the polygonal nature of the relationship. No angst just for the sake of having angst; in case you can't tell, I prefer writing happy stories.
In terms of the shape of the romantic relationship, I'm diagramming it as a pair of overlapping Vs, with additional connections developing over time. One of the component Vs is derived directly from the fact that in the mythic sagas, Thor's sons were evidently raised in the same house despite explicitly having different mothers (yielding a F-M-F arrangement). But since the latter two characters come from a modern American setting, I chose to add another V (F-F-M; note the F hinge) up front to establish the cultural precedent for such a polygamous arrangement to be legally recognized in the Aesir culture of my fantastical world.
Specifically, in their culture, it is the woman's prerogative to propose marriage to the man she chooses to be the father of her children. If that man is already married, it's not a dealbreaker but rather a calculated risk, weighing his value as a gene-source and provider against his obligations to the other wife and her children. Similarly, if a woman chooses not to (yet/ever) offer her arm-ring to any man, then that is her choice to make as well.
The counterpoint however is that the ancient Norse culture was quite sexist in associating specific virtues with each gender, which factors in to their practice of citing a close familial relationship to receive the benefit of the doubt on any given matter; placing children raised by either a single parent or a same-sex couple at a severe handicap at earning the respect of their community. It is a double standard which I do not approve at all, but as a writer I have the integrity not to whitewash over the flaws of their society.
So, in the simplest possible nomenclature, I have four characters in this story's romance: A, B, C, and later-joining D.
A is Hnoss, the daughter of Freyja by Odin, and a character who conspicuously appears only as a child in the preserved sagas. I have chosen to interpret this as evidence of selective editing, and cast A as a lesbian. She has no particular dislike of male people/anatomy; it's just that what A's actively attracted to are women like her mother (gender-flipping a classic trope). She defines herself as a career soldier first (specifically a Valkyrie, fully qualified on all the Aesir hypertech gear that accounts for their folkloric capabilities) and a woman second. She has no desire to birth children of her own (her younger sister Gersemi having already provided the grandchildren for Freyja), and is quite happy to be stepmother-since-conception to her wife B's children.
B is Sif, who is Thor's wife of record in the mythic sagas (a connection I'll be obscuring by having her state that it's a very common name for girls among her people), but is A's primary in my story. Unlike her wife however, B actively enjoys both sides of the menu, and is enthusiastic about the full experience of motherhood, including having a husband in her bed. B's skillset in the adventure story is that of a Vanir Sorceress (with a focus on prophecy, weather control, and fertility), while her role in the romance is that of the "harem seeker", being the character who actively pursues each expansion of the relationship, from two partners to three and then later to four.
A+B have been together happily and healthily for years (maybe even decades, given A's ready access to the golden apples of immortality) , and they spent a long time looking for their own variety of unicorn. A man who would be both worthy of being the father of B's children and able to accept being her secondary lover despite them having children together. A man who understands that his wearing A's arm-ring doesn't mean she'll ever feel the same way her wife does about him, but rather A+B's matching arm-rings are a symbolic gesture of their marriage to each other, above and beyond their bond to the husband they share.
They found their unicorn in C, my version of Thor, an Earthling young man named Tony Saxon. Having grown up learning about social values from Star Trek (including both Will Riker and Jadzia Dax's parables about the validity of non-straight romance), C couldn't understand why anyone could think less of a child for having two mommies or two daddies instead of one of each, and his incredulity at this double standard in Aesir culture is what made A believe that the superhumanly strong visitor from a heavy-gravity world called Earth would be worth introducing to her wife.
Introductions led to approval, to wooing, and to contingent proposals. And since at the time C had no leads toward any way back to his homeworld, he accepted their arm-rings (custom-made to interlock on his arm for added symbolic value), and the three of them are officially married by the laws of Aesir society.
And let me be clear on this, while A does define herself as not a fan of the beefcake, she does feel a great love and respect for her husband (otherwise she'd have exercised her veto rights and not let him become their husband), both as a warrior she can rely upon to always do his superhuman part in the thick of combat, and as a genuinely good person away from the battlefield. Neither of which qualities have anything to do with his gender. And so there will be moments, during groupsome intimacies, when A feels inclined to make their relationship a little more... equilateral than she is normally comfortable with. While C understands that it's only in those moments that there's a sexual (rather than chastely-romantic) component to his relationship with A.
However, A+B know that it's not really fair to their husband C, that he doesn't have anyone to be truly in love with him like the way they are with each other. So when C finally has the opportunity at the start of the story proper to go back home and let his loved ones know he hasn't been dead for the past nine months (just a visit, as he takes seriously both his marriage and his career as a super-strong giantslayer), that's when my story proper begins.
TO BE CONTINUED
Warning: the following wall of text is not for the faint of heart.
The story is a science fiction reinterpretation of Norse Mythology (set FAR earlier on the mythic timeline than most works based on the sagas, with Tyr still being King, Odin having only just returned a changed man by his ordeal in the branches of the Yggdrasil, and Thor not even being numbered among the gods yet, so Ragnarok isn't even a glimmer on the horizon). Only two of my main characters coming from mundane modern Earth, while all other significant characters being native to my fantastical Asgard. And in that fantastical world, there shall be no social stigma within the setting applied to the polygonal nature of the relationship. No angst just for the sake of having angst; in case you can't tell, I prefer writing happy stories.
In terms of the shape of the romantic relationship, I'm diagramming it as a pair of overlapping Vs, with additional connections developing over time. One of the component Vs is derived directly from the fact that in the mythic sagas, Thor's sons were evidently raised in the same house despite explicitly having different mothers (yielding a F-M-F arrangement). But since the latter two characters come from a modern American setting, I chose to add another V (F-F-M; note the F hinge) up front to establish the cultural precedent for such a polygamous arrangement to be legally recognized in the Aesir culture of my fantastical world.
Specifically, in their culture, it is the woman's prerogative to propose marriage to the man she chooses to be the father of her children. If that man is already married, it's not a dealbreaker but rather a calculated risk, weighing his value as a gene-source and provider against his obligations to the other wife and her children. Similarly, if a woman chooses not to (yet/ever) offer her arm-ring to any man, then that is her choice to make as well.
The counterpoint however is that the ancient Norse culture was quite sexist in associating specific virtues with each gender, which factors in to their practice of citing a close familial relationship to receive the benefit of the doubt on any given matter; placing children raised by either a single parent or a same-sex couple at a severe handicap at earning the respect of their community. It is a double standard which I do not approve at all, but as a writer I have the integrity not to whitewash over the flaws of their society.
So, in the simplest possible nomenclature, I have four characters in this story's romance: A, B, C, and later-joining D.
A is Hnoss, the daughter of Freyja by Odin, and a character who conspicuously appears only as a child in the preserved sagas. I have chosen to interpret this as evidence of selective editing, and cast A as a lesbian. She has no particular dislike of male people/anatomy; it's just that what A's actively attracted to are women like her mother (gender-flipping a classic trope). She defines herself as a career soldier first (specifically a Valkyrie, fully qualified on all the Aesir hypertech gear that accounts for their folkloric capabilities) and a woman second. She has no desire to birth children of her own (her younger sister Gersemi having already provided the grandchildren for Freyja), and is quite happy to be stepmother-since-conception to her wife B's children.
B is Sif, who is Thor's wife of record in the mythic sagas (a connection I'll be obscuring by having her state that it's a very common name for girls among her people), but is A's primary in my story. Unlike her wife however, B actively enjoys both sides of the menu, and is enthusiastic about the full experience of motherhood, including having a husband in her bed. B's skillset in the adventure story is that of a Vanir Sorceress (with a focus on prophecy, weather control, and fertility), while her role in the romance is that of the "harem seeker", being the character who actively pursues each expansion of the relationship, from two partners to three and then later to four.
A+B have been together happily and healthily for years (maybe even decades, given A's ready access to the golden apples of immortality) , and they spent a long time looking for their own variety of unicorn. A man who would be both worthy of being the father of B's children and able to accept being her secondary lover despite them having children together. A man who understands that his wearing A's arm-ring doesn't mean she'll ever feel the same way her wife does about him, but rather A+B's matching arm-rings are a symbolic gesture of their marriage to each other, above and beyond their bond to the husband they share.
They found their unicorn in C, my version of Thor, an Earthling young man named Tony Saxon. Having grown up learning about social values from Star Trek (including both Will Riker and Jadzia Dax's parables about the validity of non-straight romance), C couldn't understand why anyone could think less of a child for having two mommies or two daddies instead of one of each, and his incredulity at this double standard in Aesir culture is what made A believe that the superhumanly strong visitor from a heavy-gravity world called Earth would be worth introducing to her wife.
Introductions led to approval, to wooing, and to contingent proposals. And since at the time C had no leads toward any way back to his homeworld, he accepted their arm-rings (custom-made to interlock on his arm for added symbolic value), and the three of them are officially married by the laws of Aesir society.
And let me be clear on this, while A does define herself as not a fan of the beefcake, she does feel a great love and respect for her husband (otherwise she'd have exercised her veto rights and not let him become their husband), both as a warrior she can rely upon to always do his superhuman part in the thick of combat, and as a genuinely good person away from the battlefield. Neither of which qualities have anything to do with his gender. And so there will be moments, during groupsome intimacies, when A feels inclined to make their relationship a little more... equilateral than she is normally comfortable with. While C understands that it's only in those moments that there's a sexual (rather than chastely-romantic) component to his relationship with A.
However, A+B know that it's not really fair to their husband C, that he doesn't have anyone to be truly in love with him like the way they are with each other. So when C finally has the opportunity at the start of the story proper to go back home and let his loved ones know he hasn't been dead for the past nine months (just a visit, as he takes seriously both his marriage and his career as a super-strong giantslayer), that's when my story proper begins.
TO BE CONTINUED
