I would find it unhelpful to describe as a “Muggle Plot” any plot that depends on believing one side of an issue where there is serious, legitimate, disagreement.
(Of course, you may argue that there is no serious, legitimate disagreement on theories of identity, if you wish.)
I also find it odd that polyamory counts but not, for instance, plots that fail when you assume other rare preferences of people. Why isn’t a plot that assumes that the main characters are heterosexual considered a Muggle Plot just as much as one which assumes they are monogamous? What about a plot that fails if incest is permitted (Star Wars could certainly have gone very differently.) If a plot assumes that the protagonist likes strawberry ice cream, and it turned out that the same percentage of the population hates strawberry ice cream as is polygamous, would that now be a Muggle Plot too?
I also find it odd that polyamory counts but not, for instance, plots that fail when you assume other rare preferences of people. Why isn’t a plot that assumes that the main characters are heterosexual considered a Muggle Plot just as much as one which assumes they are monogamous?
I think the idea is not so much “rare preference” as “constrained preference,” where that constraint is not relevant / interesting to the reader. Looking at gay fiction, there’s lots of works in settings where homosexuality is forbidden, and lots of works in settings where homosexuality is accepted. A plot that disappears if you tried to move it to a setting where homosexuality is accepted seems too local; I’ve actually mostly grown tired of reading those because I want them to move on and get to something interesting. I imagine that’s how it feels for a polyamorist to read Bella’s indecision.
To use the ice cream example, imagine trying to read twenty pages on someone in an ice cream shop, agonizing over whether to get chocolate or strawberry. “Just get two scoops already!”
Excellent reply. I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same way if I was reading a story where A wants to be with only B, B wants to be with only A, neither of them want to be with C, but it’s just never occurred to them that monogamy is an option.
Better to say “B wishes A would not sleep with others, A wishes B would not sleep with others, but..”. Monogamy is the state of disallowing other partners, not just not having them.
I’ll accept this definition, but would like a word to describe my marriage in that case.
I’m quite confident that if we ever wanted to open the relationship up to romantic/sexual relationships with third parties, we would have that conversation and negotiate the terms of it, so I’m reluctant to describe us as disallowing other partners. But I currently describe us as monogamous, because, well, we are.
Describing us as polyamorous when neither of us is interested in romantic/sexual relationships with third parties seems as ridiculous as describing a gay man as bisexual because he’s not forbidden to have sex with women.
So how ought I refer to relationships like ours, on your view?
I’d describe that as monogamous. You’re saying that you think you’d be able to negotiate a new rule if circumstances arose, but the current rule is monogamy.
Mm. OK, with that connotation of “disallowing”, I would agree. It’s not the connotation I would expect to ordinarily come to mind in conversation, and in particular your statements about “B wishes A would not sleep with others” emphasized a different understanding of “disallowing” in my mind.
Have you (implicitly or explicitly) promised each other to not have sex with anyone else for the time being (even though the promise is renegotiable)? For example, would it be OK with you if your husband went to (say) a conference abroad and had a one-night stand with someone there without telling you until afterwards? That’d sound as a stronger condition than “B wishes A would not sleep with others”—I wish my grandma didn’t smoke, but given that she’s never promised me not to smoke...
If he had sex with someone without telling me until afterwards, I would be very surprised, and it would suggest that our relationship doesn’t work the way I thought it did. I wouldn’t be OK with that change/revelation, and would need to adjust until I was OK with it.
If he bought a minivan without telling me, all of the above would be true as well.
But it simply isn’t true that I wish he wouldn’t buy a minivan, nor is it true that I wish he wouldn’t sleep with others.
And if he came to me today and said “I want to sleep with so-and-so,” that would be a completely different situation. (Whether I would be OK with it would depend a lot on so-and-so.)
It’s possible that, somewhere in the last 20 years, he promised me he wouldn’t sleep with anyone else. Or, for that matter, buy a minivan. If so, I’ve forgotten (if it was an implicit promise, I might not even have noticed), and it doesn’t matter to me very much either way.
If he had sex with someone without telling me until afterwards, I would be very surprised, and it would suggest that our relationship doesn’t work the way I thought it did. I wouldn’t be OK with that change/revelation, and would need to adjust until I was OK with it.
If so, I wouldn’t consider it much of a stretch to call it monogamous.
What I considered a stretch was accepting ciphergoth’s definition of monogamy, given that my marriage is monogamous, because “We disallow other partners” didn’t seem to accurately describe my monogamous marriage. (Similarly, “We disallow the purchase of minivans” seems equally inaccurate.)
Then came ciphergoth’s clarification that he simply meant by “disallow” that right this moment it isn’t allowed, even though if we expressed interest in changing the rule the rule would change and at that time it would be allowed. That seems like a weird usage of “disallow” to me (consider a dialog like “You aren’t allowed to do X.” “Oh, OK. Can I do X?” “Yeah, sure.”, which is permitted under that usage, for example), but I agreed that under that usage it’s true that we’re not allowed other partners.
Explaining it as a complaint about a constrained preference does negate the heterosexual example, but I could easily tweak the example a bit: I could still ask why “Muggle Plots” doesn’t include plots that assume a character isn’t bisexual. And my incest example applies without even any tweaks—I’m not pointing out that Star Wars would be different if characters accepted incestuous relationships and no other kind, I’m pointing out that Star Wars would be different if characters accepted incestuous relationships in addition to the ones they do now—that is, if their preference was less constrained. So why is it that a plot that depends on the unacceptability of incest doesn’t count as a Muggle Plot?
Having read the rest of the conversation… I’d say that yes, I have a mild “dammit, aren’t condoms invented in this universe long ago enough to these issues to have gone away?!” to Starwars, but only after reconsidering it in the light of Homestuck. Which by the way, provides an excellent example in the alien Trolls considering both heterosexuality and incest-taboos in the kids to be trite annoyances.
I’m going out on a limb here, and saying that Muggle Plot is not a property of a plot, or even a plot-reader pair, but rather an emotion that can be felt in response to a plot, and which is scalar, with a rough heuristic being that it’s stronger the more salient the option that’d make the plot go away is in whatever communities you participate in.
I’d say that yes, I have a mild “dammit, aren’t condoms invented in this universe long ago enough to these issues to have gone away?!”
Why? Remember adaptation executors not fitness maximizers. And if condoms have been around for long enough for people to adapt to them, the first adaptation would be to no longer find condomed sex pleasurable or fulfilling.
So why is it that a plot that depends on the unacceptability of incest doesn’t count as a Muggle Plot?
I suspect the constraint against incest seems relevant to Eliezer. (The concept as I outlined it is subjective, and I suspect the association with “transhumanism + polyamory” is difficult to pin down without a reference to Eliezer or clusters he’s strongly associated with.)
I also find it odd that polyamory counts but not, for instance, plots that fail when you assume other rare preferences of people. Why isn’t a plot that assumes that the main characters are heterosexual considered a Muggle Plot just as much as one which assumes they are monogamous?
Because poly evangelism? It certainly seems like something people decide is a good idea rather than some sort of innate preference difference.
But if that were true, I would have to admit that monogomy is probably a bad idea, and that would be sad :(
(shrug) My husband and I live in a largely poly-normative social environment, and are monogamous. We don’t object, we simply aren’t interested. It still makes “oh noes! which lover do I choose! I want them both!” plots seem stupid, though. (“if you want them both, date them both… what’s the difficulty here?”)
So, no, acknowledging that polyamory is something some people decide is a good idea doesn’t force me to “admit” that monogamy is a bad idea.
Admittedly, I’m also not sure why it would be sad if it did.
Actually, I was pretty tired when I wrote that, but thats what I think I meant.
(I’ll note that most monogomous people whose opinions I hear on this think polyamory is almost always a bad idea, although possibly OK for a rare minority. But if relationships are usually a good idea, and polyamory isn’t usually actively bad, then polyamory=more relationships=good, goes the 1:00 AM logic.)
I would find it unhelpful to describe as a “Muggle Plot” any plot that depends on believing one side of an issue where there is serious, legitimate, disagreement.
(Of course, you may argue that there is no serious, legitimate disagreement on theories of identity, if you wish.)
I also find it odd that polyamory counts but not, for instance, plots that fail when you assume other rare preferences of people. Why isn’t a plot that assumes that the main characters are heterosexual considered a Muggle Plot just as much as one which assumes they are monogamous? What about a plot that fails if incest is permitted (Star Wars could certainly have gone very differently.) If a plot assumes that the protagonist likes strawberry ice cream, and it turned out that the same percentage of the population hates strawberry ice cream as is polygamous, would that now be a Muggle Plot too?
I think the idea is not so much “rare preference” as “constrained preference,” where that constraint is not relevant / interesting to the reader. Looking at gay fiction, there’s lots of works in settings where homosexuality is forbidden, and lots of works in settings where homosexuality is accepted. A plot that disappears if you tried to move it to a setting where homosexuality is accepted seems too local; I’ve actually mostly grown tired of reading those because I want them to move on and get to something interesting. I imagine that’s how it feels for a polyamorist to read Bella’s indecision.
To use the ice cream example, imagine trying to read twenty pages on someone in an ice cream shop, agonizing over whether to get chocolate or strawberry. “Just get two scoops already!”
Excellent reply. I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same way if I was reading a story where A wants to be with only B, B wants to be with only A, neither of them want to be with C, but it’s just never occurred to them that monogamy is an option.
Better to say “B wishes A would not sleep with others, A wishes B would not sleep with others, but..”. Monogamy is the state of disallowing other partners, not just not having them.
I’ll accept this definition, but would like a word to describe my marriage in that case.
I’m quite confident that if we ever wanted to open the relationship up to romantic/sexual relationships with third parties, we would have that conversation and negotiate the terms of it, so I’m reluctant to describe us as disallowing other partners. But I currently describe us as monogamous, because, well, we are.
Describing us as polyamorous when neither of us is interested in romantic/sexual relationships with third parties seems as ridiculous as describing a gay man as bisexual because he’s not forbidden to have sex with women.
So how ought I refer to relationships like ours, on your view?
I’d describe that as monogamous. You’re saying that you think you’d be able to negotiate a new rule if circumstances arose, but the current rule is monogamy.
Mm. OK, with that connotation of “disallowing”, I would agree. It’s not the connotation I would expect to ordinarily come to mind in conversation, and in particular your statements about “B wishes A would not sleep with others” emphasized a different understanding of “disallowing” in my mind.
Have you (implicitly or explicitly) promised each other to not have sex with anyone else for the time being (even though the promise is renegotiable)? For example, would it be OK with you if your husband went to (say) a conference abroad and had a one-night stand with someone there without telling you until afterwards? That’d sound as a stronger condition than “B wishes A would not sleep with others”—I wish my grandma didn’t smoke, but given that she’s never promised me not to smoke...
If he had sex with someone without telling me until afterwards, I would be very surprised, and it would suggest that our relationship doesn’t work the way I thought it did. I wouldn’t be OK with that change/revelation, and would need to adjust until I was OK with it.
If he bought a minivan without telling me, all of the above would be true as well.
But it simply isn’t true that I wish he wouldn’t buy a minivan, nor is it true that I wish he wouldn’t sleep with others.
And if he came to me today and said “I want to sleep with so-and-so,” that would be a completely different situation. (Whether I would be OK with it would depend a lot on so-and-so.)
It’s possible that, somewhere in the last 20 years, he promised me he wouldn’t sleep with anyone else. Or, for that matter, buy a minivan. If so, I’ve forgotten (if it was an implicit promise, I might not even have noticed), and it doesn’t matter to me very much either way.
If so, I wouldn’t consider it much of a stretch to call it monogamous.
Nor would I, as I said initially.
What I considered a stretch was accepting ciphergoth’s definition of monogamy, given that my marriage is monogamous, because “We disallow other partners” didn’t seem to accurately describe my monogamous marriage. (Similarly, “We disallow the purchase of minivans” seems equally inaccurate.)
Then came ciphergoth’s clarification that he simply meant by “disallow” that right this moment it isn’t allowed, even though if we expressed interest in changing the rule the rule would change and at that time it would be allowed. That seems like a weird usage of “disallow” to me (consider a dialog like “You aren’t allowed to do X.” “Oh, OK. Can I do X?” “Yeah, sure.”, which is permitted under that usage, for example), but I agreed that under that usage it’s true that we’re not allowed other partners.
I hope that clears things up.
Right, but those are the obvious circumstances where a couple who were not monogamous might become so.
(The more plausible reason being that C is just coercing them both.)
Explaining it as a complaint about a constrained preference does negate the heterosexual example, but I could easily tweak the example a bit: I could still ask why “Muggle Plots” doesn’t include plots that assume a character isn’t bisexual. And my incest example applies without even any tweaks—I’m not pointing out that Star Wars would be different if characters accepted incestuous relationships and no other kind, I’m pointing out that Star Wars would be different if characters accepted incestuous relationships in addition to the ones they do now—that is, if their preference was less constrained. So why is it that a plot that depends on the unacceptability of incest doesn’t count as a Muggle Plot?
Having read the rest of the conversation… I’d say that yes, I have a mild “dammit, aren’t condoms invented in this universe long ago enough to these issues to have gone away?!” to Starwars, but only after reconsidering it in the light of Homestuck. Which by the way, provides an excellent example in the alien Trolls considering both heterosexuality and incest-taboos in the kids to be trite annoyances.
I’m going out on a limb here, and saying that Muggle Plot is not a property of a plot, or even a plot-reader pair, but rather an emotion that can be felt in response to a plot, and which is scalar, with a rough heuristic being that it’s stronger the more salient the option that’d make the plot go away is in whatever communities you participate in.
Why? Remember adaptation executors not fitness maximizers. And if condoms have been around for long enough for people to adapt to them, the first adaptation would be to no longer find condomed sex pleasurable or fulfilling.
I suspect the constraint against incest seems relevant to Eliezer. (The concept as I outlined it is subjective, and I suspect the association with “transhumanism + polyamory” is difficult to pin down without a reference to Eliezer or clusters he’s strongly associated with.)
Because poly evangelism? It certainly seems like something people decide is a good idea rather than some sort of innate preference difference.
But if that were true, I would have to admit that monogomy is probably a bad idea, and that would be sad :(
(shrug) My husband and I live in a largely poly-normative social environment, and are monogamous. We don’t object, we simply aren’t interested. It still makes “oh noes! which lover do I choose! I want them both!” plots seem stupid, though. (“if you want them both, date them both… what’s the difficulty here?”)
So, no, acknowledging that polyamory is something some people decide is a good idea doesn’t force me to “admit” that monogamy is a bad idea.
Admittedly, I’m also not sure why it would be sad if it did.
Because social norms, of course.
Actually, I was pretty tired when I wrote that, but thats what I think I meant.
(I’ll note that most monogomous people whose opinions I hear on this think polyamory is almost always a bad idea, although possibly OK for a rare minority. But if relationships are usually a good idea, and polyamory isn’t usually actively bad, then polyamory=more relationships=good, goes the 1:00 AM logic.)