(no subject)

[pantryslut]

You may have guessed that there's not a lot to be done at work today.

Elsewhere in my vanity search, I came across notes on a panel I ran at Wiscon a few years ago, called "Polyamory and Plot." (elisem and wild_irises were on the panel as well, fwiw.)

In the follow-up comments (yes, this was LJ), one person said:

"The guys may love it, but if you're trying to get non-poly female readers to buy your stuff, launching a poly plot will turn them right off."

??!!

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I bet that wasn't the response to (for example), Vonda McIntyre's Starfarers series ...

Well....

[thomasroche.livejournal.com]

Well, I think an awful lot of romance novels concern two or more men competing for one woman....a poly plot is kinda the same thing, except they get to fuck....

Besides, as someone who *hated* STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, I am always horrified how when they hear I read a little science fiction, people of every gender, but particularly women, want to talk about how SIASL changed their life. That's pretty poly, as I recall.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

It depends how you go about it. Joan Aiken has been putting poly subplots into YA novels for decades, and nobody seems to mind. (Sometimes I think nobody notices. But they're incredibly pervasive.)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

This on the assumption that poly plots are all thinly-disguised egotripping male fantasies, I presume. Ick. Of the people I know who seem to seriously believe that's all that poly is, both of them are female - I don't think that's statistically significant, but I wonder whether the person in question is coming from either thinking that themselves and not understanding this as an area where people vary or having a view of gender relations such as to assume this is true of most women. I think the second is ickier, but neither are nice.

Though mind you, of the poly exposure I had as an adolescent, senile-period Heinlein was it, and I'd not try to defend any of that against a charge of being egotripping male fantasy. 'Twould have been nice had there been saner models out there then; I get the feeling there are now.

[redbird]

Or, at least on the assumption that it's always polygyny. *sigh* And now I'm wondering what a novelist would make of my personal/emotional life, and reminded of papersky's poem that observes that "three people loving quietly is not" the material of a plot.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should run the panel again. It's the "quietly," not the three people, that makes such material difficult for a plot, after all.

[redbird]

Oh, definitely. People loving quietly isn't a plot, whether it's two or three or more, and regardless of gender: romance plots are about difficulties.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing that it's based on the gender canard that men like to sleep around, women want security, thus.

Ick, indeed.

[srl.livejournal.com]

Which invites the question of what people with some other gender might want.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I don't think this person was ready to go that far without their brain melting. But I may be projecting.

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

I suspect this comment was made by someone who thinks poly = seventeen hot bi babes panting to get into the hero's spacesuit, and his condescending assent to their keeping each other's engines running while they wait for his mighty rocket thrust.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

If that were so, I don't think it would be the poly plot per se that turned the female readers off...

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

You owe me a keyboard.