251 - Polyamory in Science Fiction with Kevin Patterson
Although we’ve covered polyamory in media before, this time, we’re specifically focusing on representation in science fiction with Kevin Patterson, author of the For Hire novel series and a member of the Philadelphia polyamory community.
Throughout this episode, we’re exploring books (including comic books!), movies, TV shows, and video games, including polyamorous representation and discussion in:
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
The Expanse
Marvel’s X-Men
DC’s Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy
Steven Universe
Futurama
Star Trek Enterprise
Sense8
Mass Effect
Fallout
Give the full episode a listen to hear what we have to say about polyamorous representation in the above media. Additionally, Kevin reads from his book Operator, the first book in his For Hire series, which also includes its own themes of polyamory.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Dedeker: Hey, all. Welcome to a very special episode of the Multiamory podcast.
Jase: Yes, a special live episode.
Dedeker: Yes. It's the end of the year. We recorded this live at the Naked Heart Literary Festival in Toronto. We were joined by a friend of the podcast, one of our favorites, Kevin Patterson, to discuss science fiction and portrayals in non-monogamy in science fiction everything from books to movies, TV shows, and video games as well.
Jase: I do want to say that we played video clips throughout this. We don't have a video version of this, so you'll have to use your brain's imagination to imagine seeing the movies and the TV shows as we talk about it. Honestly, I don't think you really need to see the visuals to be able to get it, but hopefully, you've seen some of these things and then you'll have a good reminiscence about having watched them.
Dedeker: Sit back, relax, and we hope you enjoy.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about representations of non-monogamy in science fiction books, comic books, films, TV shows, and video games. A few years ago, I guess two years ago, we've covered representations of non-monogamy in media before more generally, but this time we're focusing specifically on science fiction, and we're very excited to be joined by author Kevin Patterson to help us have that discussion.
Dedeker: To open things up just very broadly at the beginning here, I guess I want us to discuss a little bit of like do we think that there's a connection between people who are drawn to sci-fi and people who are drawn to non-traditional relationships. Basically, what I'm trying to ask is why there are so many polyamorous nerds, because there's a ton of you out there. You're all here tonight.
Kevin: Yes. Definitely, if for no other reason when you're in the sci-fi, when you're into fantasy, when you're into just that media, you see a world that's often idealized, and that gives you the license to want to customize your own world around you. I'm not rich enough to be Batman, but I can be Talia and Catwoman at the same time, if that's what I want to do.
Jase: I think there's also, I guess two things. One, is I think with science fiction specifically, or if you want to call it speculative fiction, it all starts with that question of, "Well, what if X? Well, what if the world was just a little bit different in this one way, how much would everything else be different because of that?" I think that, at least for me, that was what my journey to non-monogamy was, was this by asking the question of like, "What if there was a different way to do this?" Then that just one thing built on another, whether you think if it is like unraveling all the stuff I thought before or building new things, but either way, I think that question is so related to the central question of sci-fi.
Dedeker: Right. I think when I think back to my childhood when I was first getting into sci-fi and to fantasy and to speculate of things and the things that portray these very different worlds, I realize now looking back that these were the worlds where there was exploration of alternative family structures, or different ways of loving someone, or different ways of having sex essentially.
This is also at the time I was raised evangelical Christian, really fundamental evangelical Christian, where the media that I was supposed to be consuming very much was not that, very much portrayed this one particular model of how it was that is supposed to be. I recently realized looking back that when I started reading vampire novels like Anne Rice when I was in middle school and high school, that was a really early exposure, to first of all homoerotic love, that was maybe not necessarily sexual. Also, the idea of genuinely romantically loving multiple people over the course of your life and at the same time. It's funny that when I read about that at the time, it didn't strike me as this like really, "So shocking, so scandalous." because it's modern vampires. I've been handed a book where it was like, "Real life people doing this." then my tiny little Christian self probably would have been much more shocked and traumatized, but there was something about this hiding sense that made it an easier pill to swallow essentially.
Kevin: Similar to that, I was shy. When I had my sexual awakening, I was too shy to do anything about it, but I could fantasize all the time. I was a big reader of comic books, especially X-Men books. Something that I love about the X-Men is that everyone is really tied in it, and there are so many conflicting romances that have happened over the course of the X-Men's 57 years, that there's a lot of combinations that read as natural or normal in my head that I could just keep in my head without having had awkward conversations with actual people about what my desires were.
Dedeker: You're saying that your fantasy life is all X-Men up there?
Kevin: Yes, 100%.
Jase: Awesome. Let's start talking about some content here. As we're getting to that, I do have two disclaimers. First of all, is that this is not an exhaustive list. I'm sorry that probably your favorite sci-fi thing with non-monogamy and it won't get covered tonight. I'm really sorry. I wish we could cover everything.
Dedeker: You can angry tweet that us later.
Jase: Yes, please do. Then the other one is spoilers. We are going to be showing some clips, and we are going to be talking about some books and comic books and things. We will give you a warning about what the thing is we're going to talk about. If you need to take the moment to go to the restroom, or you just want to sit in your chair and plug your ears and hum to yourself, that's fine. Honestly, people have done it before at shows when we've covered TV shows that they haven't finished yet. The people left and then came back. Don't feel that, if that's you.
Dedeker: We're going to start out talking about books. I suppose the way we even referring to it is the elephant in the room that we have to talk about first and foremost, is a Strangers in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Has anyone read that out there? A couple of people.
Jase: Wow. Has anyone heard of it?
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Okay. A lot of us have heard of it.
Dedeker: Yes, definitely. Do we have a book cover for that one?
Jase: Yes, sure do.
Dedeker: It's been republished so many times over the years. There is a kajillion different book covers. Stranger in a Strange Land was published in 1961. It's pretty old. Because of the time that it came out, it's sometimes credited with being a foundation of the counter culture movement of the '60s. Some people think it was that influential for sure. Now, you came across to really interesting post-mortem interview, or maybe actually--
Jase: Let's talk a bit about the book first and then we'll get to that.
Dedeker: Yes, we'll give a rough version of what the plot is, A Stranger in a Strange Land.
Jase: Yes. The reason why this book is brought up a lot, is the fact that it was won the Hugo award that year for best novel, it was a New York Times bestseller, even though Heinlein had to fight his publishers to get it published and to get certain things left in the book, which we'll talk about in a second, and that also it was a mainstream commercially successful science fiction book that had non-monogamy in it. This is in 1961. This is particularly shocking that that happened.
That, and also some terms from it and some ideas from it, really resonated with people at the time when there was this sexual revolution going on at the same time that it messed with that.
Dedeker: Has anyone heard the term grok, G-R-O-K, to grok something? Yes, that comes from Stranger in a Strange Land. The rough part of it is that there is this human baby who is raised on Mars. You're going to have to help me out
Jase: No, I love -
Dedeker: There's this human baby who's raised on Mars. He's raised by Martians. He comes back to Earth. The Martians have taught him all these mystical, powerful abilities, essentially. All the governments are fighting over wanting to study him, but he ends up going on to create what, I think in 1961, it sounded of a really cool commune, nowadays it sounds like a cult. He goes on to collect these people to himself, and they all become like this huge polycule essentially. They refer to each other as water brothers because that's how you become intimate essentially, is by sharing water together.
It becomes this massive commune where it's this huge polycule, everyone's free to sleep with each other. It was really progressive for the time in kind of really embracing women's sexuality and really de-shaming and counter-shaming women's sexuality. Then it ends with some subtle, weird, Christ like metaphors and stuff like that.
Jase: I think one of the key things that-- this book was very significant for me in discovering non-monogamy, and that I read it when I was in college as a senior in college. I read this book, and for me, also coming from a fairly conservative Christian upbringing, I think the fact that he was writing something that was progressive in 1961, meant that for my brain at that time, it was just enough progressive for me to keep up with it, and I really appreciate that about it. However, I do want to have a disclaimer that if you go out and go, "Oh, that sounds really cool", and you read it now, there's some problematic stuff in it, because it was written in 1961, and that doesn't forgive those things, but understand there's a context for it.
In it, one of the main characters, Michael is the Martian guy that he is talking to a friend of his who's a human who's not part of the religion/cult/commune with them. He says to him, “Oh, you like this woman too. You should go be with her because I know she likes you as well.” Then the response is, “What? I thought you loved her. Why would you want her to be with me if you loved her?” Then in response, he says, “What are you talking about? If I love her, that means that her happiness is related to my happiness, and why would I want to stop her from doing something that made her happy?” For me, that was that like mind blown moment, and I think it was for a lot of other people, which is why it became this hallmark of the free love movement of the ‘60s.
Dedeker: Do you found that Heinlein had a touch point to this in his--?
Jase: Yes. Heinlein was in an open marriage. His second and possibly third marriage were both open marriages. I don't believe that the first one was, but his second wife was actually involved in the writing of this book. It took him like 10 years to write it. A couple of interesting things I found about it was this quote from him, where his publishers wanted him to remove the whole non-monogamy aspect of it, they're like, “Just get rid of this part where everyone have sex with each other. That's not important to the story.” His response in a letter to them was, “Monogamy is merely a social pattern used to certain structures of society, but it is strictly a pragmatic matter, unconnected with sin. A myriad other patterns are possible, and some of them can be under appropriate circumstances, both more efficient and more happy making.”
I like it when an award winning author said happy making. It's just nice.
Dedeker: Yes. I just pulled one other quote. We can move onto other books after this. This is a quote directly from Stranger in a Strange Land. This is actually a different character, Jubal. He's human. He's not Martian, but he's--
Jase: He's supposed to be kind of like our voice as the reader.
Dedeker: Right, right. I really appreciate in this quote, Heinlein kind of making this point of, I mean really, really cutting to the heart of the counterculture movement, I think at the time. This character Jubal says, “Most philosophers haven't the courage for questioning this. They swallow the basics of the present code, monogamy, family pattern, continents, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse and so forth. But mostly they debate how we can be made to obey this code, ignoring the evidence that most tragedies they see around them are rooted in the code itself, rather than the failure to abide by it.” I love that quote. It feels very relevant today. Again, if you want to read the book, go ahead and read the book, just know that it's not always these gems necessarily.
Jase: There are a few problematic things that Kevin brought up with the community of people who are fanatics about this book.
Kevin: Yes, there's a lot of people who really hold tightly to like the Stranger in a Strange Land. A, a lot of them feel like they have ownership over polyamory in terms of naming themselves like founders and originators and so on. It feels like some real colonialism. Also, some of them don't separate the harem based misogynistic aspects of polyamory. It feels like they found their Bible and they won't hear anything other than that, and they won't learn and grow, which I feel is like an aspect of non-monogamy that we all should have.
Jase: That's very well played. It's like reading the writings of someone who is very progressive for their time, and then being like, “Yes, they’re right. I'm just going to stick to that,” and ironically end up being very conservative yourself when trying to be progressive, or when thinking you’re progressive.
Dedeker: Right. Let's move on.
Kevin: Can we just describe the Bible?
Jase: I wasn’t going to say it, but yes, we have another podcast about the Bible, and that subject comes up a lot.
Dedeker: Kevin, you're the one who brought up also the Broken Earth trilogy as well as another example of non-monogamy in science fiction.
Kevin: Yes. If you’re unfamiliar, the Broken Earth trilogy is by N. K. Jemisin. Like Heinlein’s book, it won the Hugo Award. It won it three years running, because it's a trilogy. N. K. Jemisin is only author to have won it three years in a row. The basics of it is that there is a fifth season, and like every indeterminate amount of years, like a season, a fifth season happens and it's basically a series of cataclysms. There are superhumans called orogenes who can either quell or start this fifth season. They've got powers that can control nature, mostly around Earth, almost like earthbending in the Avatar series. They're strictly controlled by the government. They're bred and controlled and managed. The story of the Broken Earth trilogy is essentially about three women. A young woman who has these powers who was being adopted into the government and the training academy. A woman who has found her peak in the academy and is now finally going out to the world to be what the government wants her to be. Then an older woman who is done with academy schooling, done with government control, and just trying to live her own life, hidden away from the rest of humanity. This second woman, Syenite, she's assigned to a mission with a top level student named Alabaster. They don't like each other, but they're also designated as partners to procreate, so they can create more of these orogenes that the government would then control.
Dedeker: I hate when that happens?
Kevin: They don't like each other, but they're doing their job. Then all hell breaks loose, a bunch of things happen, and they're broken away from their mission for the first time ever. They find themselves amongst a group of pirates. They both fall in love with the captain of these pirates. At first, it's like, “Well, what do we do with these feelings? How do we reconcile this?” Then they just do. They don't really discuss like, “What are we going to do if we both love the same person?” This pirate captain is like, “Well, I love both you, and it's cool." They go with that flow for as long as they can.
Something that I really love about this, is that it's not an identity book. The shit that I write is like really identity focus. This isn't that. They're non-monogamous in the first book, and then circumstances pull that union apart by the time they reach the second and third books. They don't find a way to make that. They don't find a way to make it stick. It's like it's functional while it's functional. It works while it works. When it doesn't, they don't try to keep it together. There are other identity things that do get brought up amongst other characters over the course of the trilogy, but that's not what the focus is. The focus is the story and these identities informed rather than defined.
Dedeker: Yes, that's really interesting. The idea of this relationship forms, but then over the course of the greater arc of the whole series, that that's not the key relationship that needs to stay together and needs to be that identity glue that keeps everything together.
Kevin: Exactly.
Dedeker: Nice. Excellent.
Jase: We also wanted to acknowledge briefly the Expanse. Has anyone read that or watched the show? No? Okay. Maybe a hand. The Expanse is a book series and ended up getting turned into a TV series that I believe is still on now. This one, it gets an honorable mention, I guess, because none of the main characters are non-monogamous, but one of the main characters, his parentage is that he's the product of eight people who pooled their resources both financially and genetically to create this child.
Dedeker: Which is basically how any of us Millennials are going to start a family in the future, whether we want to be non-monogamous or not.
Jase: Right. When I've asked people like, “Oh, what shows or books or things have had some non-monogamy?”, it usually comes up as of mentioned, just because it's very popular. I won't spend too much time on it, because that's all we get, it's just that acknowledgement of, "I guess that could happen." ]laughs]
Dedeker: It's interesting though that I feel like I get news articles sent to me all the time about there's this family in Sweden of five adults, of two gay couples and this fifth person, and they're all pooling their resources in order to raise a family together. They're not all sexual or romantic with each other, but that's what they're doing. I'm seeing more and more of that, I guess these queer family relationship anarchists chosen family make ups, and so I think it makes sense that this shows up in fiction as well.
Jase: I will say that it's really anything that offers some normalization by just throwing that in there and not having that be a point of contention or something that's treated as a bad thing. It's just a fact that that is good. Anything we can get is good. That's just what I'm saying.
Dedeker: Kevin, you briefly alluded to the shit that you write. We are going to do a little bit of a reading from Kevin's book towards the end of the episode later on, but can you talk a little bit about-- Because you count also as sci-fi and the portrayal of non-monogamy in sci-fi as well.
Kevin: Yes. My book series for hire, which I write with Allie Phelan who goes online by the Polyamorous Librarian, we created a universe that's not too distant from our own, but the way it works is I'm always talking about how for oppression to be addressed, to be seriously addressed, people with power, people with privilege, people who can push the needle have to give a fuck, and they have to be the people who actually push the needle, who actually turn the ship. In this universe, those people are actually superheroes.
1960s, during the civil rights movement, a black superhero breaks up a race riot, and basically issues a demand to the local city like, "Hey, look, I can use my powers and I can change things here. I can keep people safe, but also you've got to get all these racist white cops off our streets." Superheroism gets closely tied to social justice, and that pushes the needle of the universe. We wanted to make things like polyamory, and queerness, trans identities, people of color to normalize in a very specific way, because a lot of science fiction, a lot of secular fiction, what they do is they just say, "There's no racism here." They don't explain, A, how we got here, or, B, why the story still follows a cishet white dude. We wanted to make sure that we did that in a way that it doesn't create a utopia of a lack of oppression. It's still there but it's lessened and there's a legit reason why it's lessened.
Dedeker: Excellent. Let's keep moving along. We're going to move on to comic books now. Comic book fans, Marvel, DC. Anybody? Do we hate comics? People love comics. Thank goodness. Kevin, I think you brought to our attention about the recent thing that showed up in DC Comics with Harleyquinn and Poison Ivy.
Kevin: I'm going to pivot and go to the recent things that happened in X-Men, actually. I'm an X-Men kid. X-Men's been around since 1962. I've been reading it since 1991, and I'm more excited now about the X-Men's current story line than I've ever been about my favorite universe. Something that they really did was that they've basically created a mutant nation. Everybody's welcome. It's a nation away from humanity. They have made friends of enemies and so on. Because of the way it's set up, they can create their own living situations.
Jonathan Hickman, the person who wrote these, likes using info graphics all over the place. One of them shows the living situation of Cyclops, and Jean Grey, and Wolverine, and they're connected.
Jase: You can see the rooms around the right side of the diagram there, have these little hallways interconnecting them. None of the other rooms do that.
Kevin: Jean is the 12, Cyclops is the 11, and Wolverine is the 10.
Dedeker: She's just nestled right in the middle there.
Kevin: Yes. They don't actually call it what it is, but they allude to it a couple of times, and it's really well-done. There's a celebration that happens early in the series called Dawn of X. They show Wolverine going over grabbing a couple of beers throwing his arms around both of them handing off some beers. They show Jean Grey go over to Emma Frost, who she normally has a contentious relationship with through their shared relationship with Cyclops, and tensely handing over a beer as well.
Jase: I don't have a picture of that one. I'm sorry.
Kevin: It's fine.
Dedeker: Imagine it.
Jase: It's cool too that in a lot of the articles about this, they've brought up the fact that if you think about how long the history of X-Men is, and I remember growing up, and it was more of this contentious relationship between Cyclops and Wolverine. A lot of the articles I was reading are like, "If you think about it, this is a world where these people have been forced to bond together to create this safe place for other mutants. It's this like, "We can either be miserable forever or we can find a way to work with this.
Dedeker: Or we could finally make rooms with connecting hallways and just deal with it.
Kevin: She gets such different things out of each people. Jean gets to be a lover and a nurturer and a family person with Scott. She deserves to be that, but she also gets to be a warrior. She gets to be sexualized in a really consensual way with Wolverine. That's something she can't get from Cyclops. It's not something that we really talk enough about where just polyamory in general. We each get something different out of our individual partners. One partner's going to bring out the academic in me, or one's going to bring out the activist in me.
I'm, at this moment, kinkier than I've ever been, and it's because I have a partner who is drawing this out of me in a way my other partner's, through no fault of their own, has really been able to do. It's awesome seeing that addressed even if it's in a marketable and palatable to mass audiences sort of way.
Dedeker: Do you think that as far as with this X-Men story line, do you think it's only a matter of time before there is someone who is just like, "This is what it is. This is what they're doing."?
Kevin: Marvel has been really good about pushing the issue from time to time. Not as well as any of us would like, but as far as the medium would allow, they've pushed the issue. I remember when DC had a queer character, Alan Scott, who's one of the Green Lanterns. Everyone made a big stink about it. No, it wasn't a stink. They were like, "Look. Alan Scott. He's Green Lantern and he's gay." I'm like, "Northstar has been gay for decades over in Alpha Flight." Marvel's done that. I think with the reception that people are giving this whole Scott, Jean, Cyclops thing, I think Marvel, they're not going to hesitate to jump in there. If they feel like it's something reasonable, if it feels like it's something they can actually sell, I don't think they're going to be, "The comic code prevents this from happening."
Dedeker: The comic board of directors.
Jase: I also heard someone recently, when talking about this episode, bring up that in the comic books, it's almost like the companies are testing what might come to the films and TV shows maybe 10 years down the line.
Dedeker: That makes sense.
Jase: That it's like the comic books are where they can test this. They can push the envelope a little bit, probably because the cost of making comic books is so much less than making Hollywood movies that they can afford to have people not buy stuff.
Dedeker: Yes, that's true.
Jase: They can afford to take some time to find their audience. I think that's something though that is really cool, that I feel like I've noticed much more of a move toward just clear comics in general and more clear comic fans being a part of that scene, and clear and dungeons and dragons players. All these things that at least when I was a kid I would never have associated with that, it was much more the Gamgergate guys that now it's like, "This is our place now."
Dedeker: That is the weird thing that I notice in the nerd community, and I feel like I don't want to get us on a tangent here, but it's true, especially with the gaming community, and we'll get into that a little bit later, that it does seem to be home to these very two extremes of communities. I've seen the gaming community at times be the most accepting and the most embracing of a wide variety of identities and sexualities and things like that, while at the same time also hovering just some of the most awful, vitriol and acrimonious sentiment and conservative sentiment. It's really surprising to see both of these things contained in the same interest.
Kevin: That makes me really, really sad. On a personal level, one of Gamergate's targets is a friend of mine, Brianna Wu. I literally cried tears when I saw the composite character they made of her in the Gamgergate SVU, Law and Order SVU episode. On a larger scale, I grew up into a lot of geek shit. I played lots of video games. I read lots of comic books.
For me, it was like, "Okay, well, I would have killed for young women to be into comic books with me. Maybe they were or maybe they were hidden and I just didn't see them, but I felt I was shun by women and not bullied by guys because I could fight and they didn't want it with me. I would have killed for that to be a thing. To see that gatekeeping, it irks the hell out of me. We're not oppressed as geeks anymore.
Dedeker: Yes, 100%.
Kevin: Big Bang Theory is crappy as it is. It's like a super popular television show. An Avengers movie is the top movie of all time right now. We're the culture. We're not counter-culture. We're it.
Dedeker: I have a lot of late resentment that comes up every time I see a trailer for the new Star Wars because I just remember my days of being a young child and being bullied for being into Star Wars and being made fun of. Now, everyone freaking loves it. Of course, I appreciate that, but I have a lot of baggage that's still attached to that. Anyways, let's talk about Harley Quinn.
Jase: Right. Now, on the other side of the metaphorical pond, the DC Universe. DC, like Kevin was bringing it up with Green Lantern, they're maybe not quite as up to speed as Marvel as on being progressive on these things. Something that for a long time now has been fan canon, is this relationship between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. The two of them have been, one, in some same-sex relationship, and then two, that maybe it's non-monogamous. That those have been things that have been tossed around in the fan community for a long time, and there are little things here and there to into that or acknowledge that.
Kevin: One of my favorite pictures is Batgirl talking to Harley, and she's like, "How close are you and Poison Ivy?" Harley is like, "Well, you mean the rumors about you and Supergirl?"
Jase: That acknowledged the fourth wall kind of thing. They bring down that fourth wall of like, "Yes, we're talking about you, fans, out there. We know what you say about these characters." More recently, though, this did get a little more interesting in that there was a Twitter conversation, sort of an ask me anything type thing with a couple of the writers for DC. Basically, the fans asked them about the relationship between Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, and their answer was, "Yes, they have a very special relationship." Then the fans were just like, "No, that's not enough." They're like, "But really, though, what's their relationship like?" They had to press them a few times, but finally, they did actually say very clearly like they're in-- Do I have the quote here? I didn't write the quote. Shoot. Basically, what they said was that they're in a relationship that's free from the confines of monogamy, or something like that. I was like, "Okay, cool. They actually came out and said it."
Dedeker: Throwing about it, I suppose.
Jase: I did pull one panel from this that I liked, which was-- There we go. You don't have to read all of that. I know the writings are pretty small up there. What's important is that Harley Quinn is hugging this guy-- What do you say his name was? Harvey or something?
Kevin: Mason.
Jase: Mason. Close enough.
This guy, Mason, she's hugging him and then they're kissing, and Poison Ivy standing there watching and Madame-
Dedeker: Madame Macabre.
Jase: - Madame Macabre?
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: These are new characters to me, asks Poison Ivy if she's jealous, and she says, "Never. I'm happy when she's happy." The answer is beautiful and wise. Who wouldn't be attracted to that? There's not shock, there's not ridicule, there's not something awful about this. It's just stated and there it is.
Dedeker: Now, you notice that Batman is having none of it, unfortunately.
Jase: I just thought that was his normal resting Batman face.
Dedeker: I noticed that the first time I saw--
Now, interesting thing about this though with Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, is the fact that they are villains. We did a show a couple of years ago that was talking more broadly about non-monogamy representation in media, and we covered House of Cards, where the main characters in that show are non-monogamous, but also they're villains. On the one hand, it adds this layer of like, "Well, yes, they are the weird bad guys. They can get up to weird kinky stuff." Maybe it even adds to their evilness perhaps, the fact that they don't respect monogamy or traditional relationships.
There is the other theory though that in some of these universes or some of these fictions, only the villains can find satisfaction in something like non-monogamy because the fact that we can't have our heroes actually be happy, which is the case in a lot of fiction and a lot of comic books, is the hero has to be conflicted, or the hero has to be struggling at something. If the hero finds happiness in a relationship with someone or multiple someones, that immediately puts them at risk, that person might die, that person might be targeted by the villains, and so some people make the argument that it makes more sense for these two villains especially to find this happiness and fulfillment in non-monogamy because they're allowed to be happy ironically being the villains.
Kevin: Yes. I know Marvel did. I think DC might have as well. They actually had a ban on marriages in their stories for that reason, where they were like, "Well, we can't have Spider-Man marry Mary Jane because then he'd be happy and settled, so we always have to have her completely in danger, the damsel in distress. He needs motivation to keep saving her over and over and over.
Dedeker: She has to be just out of reach.
Kevin: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes, that makes sense.
Jase: Yes. Shall we move on to TV shows?
Dedeker: Yes, let's do it.
Jase: Okay. In TV shows, we're just going to start out with the best, and then we can go home after that. No, just kidding.
We're going to start with talking about Steven Universe. Steven Universe is great, and we had to work him into this show as well. We also talked about him in our last show a couple of years ago. We have, I guess two episodes were mentioned briefly here. Our two plot-lines. I'll just talk about the first one here, which is Fluorite. Has anyone here watched Steven Universe? Are we familiar with this?
Dedeker: No.
Jase: Unfortunately, this clip takes a lot of backstories. Let me just real quick. Steven is a gem, which are these--
Kevin: I can do it, Jase.
Jase: Yes, you do it.
Kevin: Steven is a human hybrid of gems, and the gems are basically anthropomorphic space rocks that appear and present as women. Steven is the son of a leader of a galactic space war. He's special. Nobody really knows what to do with him because he's half-human and a half-gem. He's got a bunch of weird powers. Also, these gems, because they're not really people, they're light constructs, they can actually fuse together to form other gems. One of the main characters, Garnet, is the fusion of a Ruby and a Sapphire. They fell in love, they fused, and now they are Garnet and they stay together as Garnet all the time because being Garnet is a symbol of their love.
Jase: Right. This clip here is from Fluorite who-- Basically, the director did later confirm this, but people right away were like, "Is this polyamory that's happening?" I'll just play this short clip for you here.
Rhodonite: A fusion like me is unforgivable. When our Morganite found out, let’s just say, "We were replaced." My story is nothing. Fluorite, how many gems do you know?
Fluorite: Six. Maybe more if we meet the right gem.
Jase: Then the other clip, do you want to talk about that one, with the zoo?
Kevin: Yes, which is harder to set up because it's weird. This intergalactic space war happened thousands of years ago and that somewhere towards the beginning humans were taken out of Earth and put in basically a human zoo, and on the gem homeworld. They've procreated, they've last these thousands of years basically procreating with one another over the course of several millennia. The way that they are paired together is by something called a choosening. Basically, a voice tells them, "Hey, you, you're together now." Knowing nothing but having their needs met, they don't know any conflict, they're just, "Cool. We're together now." and then they procreate, and that's how they create for their generations in this human zoo.
Dedeker: That's probably the context.
Jase: I'll play this clip for you here. Yes.
Voice: You have been choosened for each other.
Greg: Wait a second. Is this some kind of matchmaking thing? There's always a catch to these utopias.
J-10: Greg, whoever is choosened for you will be very lucky.
Voice: J-10, please step into the center of the circle.
Greg: Oh, boy. Steven, help me.
Steven: Don't worry, Dad. You're new here, so maybe you won't get choosened.
Greg: Right.
Voice: Greg, please step into the center of the circle.
Greg: Hold on. Maybe there's been a mistake?
Y-6: Greg, J-10 is waiting for you.
I see what is going on here.
Greg: You do?
Y-6: You are just shy.
Greg: Huh?
Y-6: Do not worry about it. Now touch hands.
Greg: Hold on. This isn't how it works on Earth. I don't want to be told who to be choosened with.
Y-6: Ga-reg, this makes no sense. Why wouldn't you want to be choosened?
Greg: Look, back on Earth, there was no voice to tell you who to be with. It was your own decision.
Steven: My mom and dad didn't get together because someone told them to. They spent time getting to know one another and fell in love. They choosened each other because that's what they choosed.
Y-6: Hmm, I see. If that's how it's done on Earth, then-- I choose Ga-reg.
J-10: And I also choose Ga-reg.
All: I choose Ga-reg as well.
Greg: Wait. I get a say in this, too. You're all very nice, and I'm flattered, and yes, you get to choose whoever you want, but I also get to say I choose, none of you.
Dedeker: Yes, that's been my dating life the last year or so.
Jase: Also, I just want to give a quick shout out to Stephen's dad who is just one of the awesomest examples of positive masculinity anywhere on TV.
Kevin: He's my favorite character of any show right now.
Jase: Yes, he's amazing, but yes, I also love that they throw concepts and consent and things like that into his kids' show. It's great.
Dedeker: That's a line that you can pick up now as, “I don't choosen you,” or, “I choosen no one. Sorry.” Let's talk about Futurama.
Jase: Okay, let's talk about Futurama. We've talked about this one before but Dedeker just loves this clip so much-
Dedeker: I love this clip so much.
Jase: -that she insisted--
Dedeker: This is on the Futurama movies. Anyone seen that one?
Jase: The Beast with a Billion Backs?
Dedeker: Yes
Jase: Yes. All right. Here, it is.
Colleen: Come here, winner. Come here, loser.
Fry: Colleen, what are you doing? My face is over here.
Colleen: This is my boyfriend, silly.
Fry: I thought I was your boyfriend.
Colleen: You are.
Fry: Well, how can you have two boyfriends?
Colleen: Oh, I don't. I have five. Fry, meet Chu, Bolt, Ndulu, and Shlomo.
Chu: Nihow.
Ndulu: Greetings.
Bolt: Pleasure.
Fry: But-- But--
Colleen: Shlomo and Ndulu will help you move your stuff into my apartment tonight.
Ndulu: Welcome to the relationship, buddy.
Fry: Hmm?
Chu: There's my butterscotch.
Dedeker: It doesn't end up turning out super great-
Jase: No.
Dedeker: -because, obviously, just being roped into a five-person relationship without your consent and being moved in, doesn't tend to work out super great in what I've see.
Kevin: Definitely, could have used yesterday.
Dedeker: Yes, definitely.
Jase: One of the things that we did want to give props to this for is the fact that it's a movie from several years ago now, and that it's a non-monogamous relationship with multiple
male partners and one female partner, which you also don't see a lot of. It was cool that they, even if it is a bit played for yucks, that there is still some representation of that, that it
is a little bit different, at least, than what we've seen a million times, with more of the Harem fantasy type thing.
Dedeker: Right, yes. What do we got next?
Jase: What do we got next? Okay. Do you have any Star Trek fans out there in the audience?
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: In Star Trek, this actually is an interesting way to talk about one of the other things we didn't mention before, about the relationship between sci-fi and non-monogamy. I think the same is true with fantasy. It's that the things we're talking about are often not, “normal humans”. They're aliens or they're elves or they're humans who lived in a zoo for a 1,000 years on their own. They're somehow not us. I think that what I love about that is it allows us to explore things that we don't get to have in our normal lives here on Earth.
At the same time, I think it makes it easier for us to explore these things with them, because it's like, “Well, yes, we can think about these things and entertain these ideas and they're less threatening and less scary because there's someone else.” That's what someone else does, somewhere else. In this case, not just another country, but a whole another galaxy, far, far away. It's a wrong series. Anyway, this is from Star Trek Enterprise. Angry texts, I see them being written right now.
This is from Star Trek Enterprise from back in 2003.
Phlox: Well, at least he has his other wives.
Feezal: Not wives, wife. Kessil moved to Teerza Prime to be with her third husband.
Tucker: Did I do this right? Why is there no image?
Feezal: You forgot to enter the frequency parameters.
Phlox: Which one was her third husband? Oh, was that Klaban?
Feezal: Bogga. Klaban was Forlisa's husband. Her first, I think.
Tucker: There you go. Why isn't it sharp?
Feezal: You forgot to stabilise the aperture. That's just a reflection of the imaging filament. That's all right. We'll reinitialise the neutron stream and start again.
Phlox: Forlisa. Forlisa. Oh, my, my. I thought about asking Forlisa to be my second wife. Turned out she already had three husbands.
Archer: Archer to Doctor Phlox.
Phlox: Yes, Captain.
Archer: Could you report to my ready room?
Phlox: Certainly. I'll be back as soon as I can, my beloved. Commander.
Jase: Go.
Dedeker: Go. This really make me really uncomfortable.
Jase: Yes. This one's interesting because on the one hand, it's 2003. It's showing these people who are happy and very nonchalant, talking about not being monogamous. On the
other hand, the human character, who's there with them is, “This is weird.” These are the denobulans, by the way, for those of you who are wondering. That's the name of this race. You know that he's a little uncomfortable with it. It's a little weird. She's coming on strong to him, and he's not really reciprocating that.
The whole thing plays it, still a little bit, like, “Look at these weirdos,” but one thing that is cool is that a little bit later, in this episode, because he turns her down, that later in the episode, one of the other characters is like, “Geez, you should have gone for that, buddy.” There is at least an acknowledgement of that, that he wasn't praised, I guess, for being prudish or whatever about this.
Dedeker: Right. No praise for prudishness.
Jase: Apparently.
Dedeker: Just the name of my new band.
Jase: What kind of band is that?
Dedeker: Praise for prudishness.
Jase: Was it, “No praise for prudishness” or “Praise for prudishness.”
Dedeker: No praise for prudishness, I think, yes. I think, it's probably some kind of shoe Daisy. Yes, I'm into it.
Kevin: A sex metal or something?
Dedeker: Yes, I like that. Actually, I like that. In the interest of time, can we move on to talking about Sense8?
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: Does it sound okay? Kevin, do you want to introduce Sense8 for us?
Kevin:Yes, because I love it. It's like Sense8 functions in a universe where eight people are born in a cluster. It's like they're all born in exactly the same moment. They're basically telepathically linked and to the extent where they can share one another's skills, where if I've got a skill with guns and Dedeker's got a skill with driving, we can swap that out, whenever necessary. It features a pretty healthy amount of orgies.
Dedeker: A healthy amount.
Kevin: Yes
Dedeker: A healthy amount, a reasonable amount. Directed by the Wichowski, also, produced, written, all of those things?
Jase: Yes, written and produced, directed by the Wichowskis, which is great because it's the first good thing they've done since the first Matrix movie, in my opinion.
Dedeker: Jeez.
Kevin: I'm trying to argue with you, but yes.
Jase: Yes, as well. It's interesting because they're almost the opposite of what I thought about Joss Whedon before, which is Joss Whedon makes all these really interesting, cool TV shows people get into, and they all get canceled. He just has a hard time keeping a TV show going. Then, he gets into movies, and they're great. The movies that he's been involved with, have been really great. I think that perhaps the Wichowskis are the opposite, but maybe TV is more a medium for them to get to explore some of these things in a longer timeframe. This is just my armchair psychologist for directors and writers.
Dedeker: It's also a show that it has a lot of same-sex couples. It produces some interesting, unique angles on non-monogamy. It actually has a trans-character play by trans-actress, and trans-directors, so things like that.
Jase: Yes. We have two different examples of non-monogamy when we want to talk about here. The first one that I want to talk about is a triad that happens between Lido, who is one of the Sense8, he's part of the cluster. He's also a very famous actor who stars in action, romance. He's like an Antonio Banderas kind of a character. He is gay, but is totally secret about it. He has a long-term partner named Hernando, who he keeps secret.
Then, basically, his agent sets him up with this other actress named Daniella or Danny to be his beard. He chooses her based on a head shot, like that type of thing. Essentially, what happens in the story is that she doesn't know that that's the reason why she's being set up with him and they're also trying to keep that secret from her, but she ends up finding out one night. Rather than reacting with horror, she's like, "Oh my God, this is perfect." They end up living together.
It turns out that there's this whole much more involved thing with her trying to escape from an abusive relationship and that that's part of why this is perfect for her but also the fact that she does really develop feelings for both of them even though she doesn't have a sexual relationship with either of the men and they do with each other but she does like to watch so there's that. It is a really interesting example of a triad on television where those woman is the one not having sex with the man when we tend to see the women being the ones who are overly sexualized in any of these roles that we talked about.
I just think that's a really neat example and it's also coming from a relationship anarchist point of view. A really cool example of how in real life, triads that can be very stable and very loving and caring are often not just this, "Everyone has sex with each other in equal amount and they're all romantically involved in equal amount." It's just really cool. It just flew by under the radar when this all came out a couple of years ago.
I do have one clip from that and what sets this up is that Danny has gone back to be with her abusive ex because he was blackmailing them with photos of him with his male lover and that was going to ruin his career. She went back to the abusive boyfriend because that was his like, "You come back to me or I'll release these photos about your friends." She ends up going back and Hernando ends up breaking up with Lito over this because he's like, "You can't let someone that you care about do something like that even if it's for your career." This is the scene that happens after that a little bit.
Hernando: What happened to you?
Lito: I got in a fight.
Hernando: What? A fight? Are you stupid? Look at your face. You won't be able to shoot tomorrow.
Lito: You do still love me.
Hernando: Well, I know how important your career is to you.
Lito: Can I come in? Please? You were right, Hernando. I was a coward. I cared too much about things that aren't important. I took for granted all the things you gave up in life to be with me. Many of these things became clear because of Daniela. I understand why you reacted the way you did. I made a terrible mistake. But I fixed it.
Hernando: Dani?
Daniela: Ay.
Hernando: I don't understand.
Daniela: Lito saved me. He saved me. Joaquin tried to stop me from going, but Lito fought him. It was It was unbelievable. It was like a scene from one of his movies.
Hernando: And what about the pictures?
Lito: I don't care.
Jase: Someone has actually put together a playlist on YouTube of only all of the clips that involved these three characters and it makes its own beautiful little story. I recommend Googling that, checking it out. I definitely had some tears while putting this together and refreshing on that story.
Dedeker: Kev, there was also another section, another scene in Sense8 that you were telling us about?
Kevin: Yes. The character of Kala is getting married. It's not quite an arranged marriage but she's not 100% checked into it. She's with a guy named Rajon who is perfectly adequate which is exactly the quality you want in a fiery romance. She's also in her head falling in love with her cluster mate, Wolfgang. Kala is in India and Wolfgang is in Germany but they're falling in love with one another. As it goes, she has to reconcile that she's got a settled and lovely marriage to a perfectly adequate guy, but also she's got this fiery thing happening with a guy who was basically in her head.
Jase: This moment here is an example of how they can share skills like Kevin was mentioning earlier and that Wolfgang is a criminal badass kind of guy and so he lends his gun shooting skill to Kala here.
Rajan: Hurry up. This staircase leads to the top floor.
Kala: Got it.
Rajan: Was that Nomi? What's happening?
Kala: Didn't you listen to the plan? We don't know where exactly they're holding Whispers. We're all covering different sections.
Rajan: Yes, but what if.
Rajan: My wife. You're a killer.
Kala: I'm sorry.
Rajan: Can you teach me?
Wolfgang: Okay, first, this isn't a real gun.
Kala: It's a Taser.
Wolfgang: This is a gun.
Rajan: All right.
Wolfgang: Here's the safety.
Rajan: All right.
Kala: Do not point unless you're sure about the target, okay?
Dedeker: It really warms my heart when metamours get together like that.
Dedeker: Shares skills.
Jase: Share killing people.
Dedeker: Teach each other about guns, things like that. We want to move on to talking about video games briefly. We also want to leave enough time for Kevin to be able to read some of his books. I think that we're probably not going to be able to go do as many games as we wanted to talk about just in the interest of time. Other gamers in the audience? Yes? Great, excellent. I'm definitely a gamer. You're a gamer, you're a gamer. Love games. Great.
Now non-monogamy in games has a been a really interesting thing. There's a lot of games. At least for the last 20 years or so, there have been a lot of games especially major title RPGs that do allow you to have some kind of romance track often with another party member. Often, you'd get a variety of choices of party members of who you want to pursue the romance track with.
The problem being that in the majority of games, you can start pursuing romance tracks with multiple characters at some point. When it reaches some certain level of seriousness, it will prevent you from pursuing romance with multiple people at the same time. It will force you into a choice essentially. That means that opportunities for consensual non-monogamy in games tend to be pretty rare. Tends to be really rare actually.
We're starting to see it a little bit more similarly with media that we're starting to see it creep in, more games starting to acknowledge it, things like that.There's, of course, a lot of indie games that are talking about this now or starting to that are making head waves there. As far as big budget titles, I think what we're going to talk about today is Mass Effect and the Mass Effect Series.
Is anyone familiar with Mass Effect, played Mass Effect? Yes. It's a Sci-Fi series. Basically the player is controlling this main character, Commander Shepard who can be a man or a woman depending on the player's choice. Shepard always has multiple potential romantic partners available to you in your party, but you can only seriously pursue one at a time. There's generally a variety of options as far as whether or not you want to have Shepard pursue a queer relationship or a straight relationship or things like that.
Now, we have a clip for you from the first Mass Effect game where basically this happens where if you're playing Shepard and if you pursue these two characters at the same time romantically, it comes down to this confrontation scene. What's interesting is that in this scene as you'll see, one of the romantic interest is human, one of them is an alien and the way they respond tho this situation is a little bit different. Let's go ahead and play it.
Ashley: Ms. Williams, Commander, we need to talk. If we do not resolve this situation now, I am afraid things might become awkward.
Liara: Awkward, huh? I hope we can keep this civilized. I do not want things to become unpleasant.
Ashley: Because it's been so pleasant between us lately. Look, somebody in this room needs to make a choice, it ain't me and it ain't you.
Shepard: Maybe we should try to work this out.
Liara: I think we must. I may not know much about human relationships, but I understand the concept of jealousy.
Ashley: Jealous, of you? You're not even our species.
Liara: Perhaps that is why you feel threatened. I am arrival unlike any you have faced before. Hostility is a common reaction to the unfamiliar.
Ashley: Doctor, you keep smart asking me, I'll show you what my hostile reaction is like.
Man: I won't have my crew fighting.
Liara: I agree Shepherd. Which is why you must choose, Ashley or me.
Ashley: We're not married Shephard, you want to get involved with some alien, go ahead, it's one of my business.
Shepard: You're special to me, Ash.
Ashley: Yes, kind of hard to feel special while you're always chatting with your little blue friend on the side, or is that my role?
Liara: This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. I never should have told you of my feelings, Shepherd. I have put you in a terrible position, I am sorry.
Shepard: You were right to tell me, Liara, I feel the same way.
Ashley: I've heard enough, we're resolving this now Shepherd, me or her.
Shepard: Why do I have to make a choice? Maybe the three of us could--
Ashley: In your dreams, Commander. I hope you too, or however many you end up with will be happy together. If you don't mind, I need to clean my gear.
Dedeker: Such a bitch, jeez.
Liara: I feel bad for her, Shepherd.
Jase: I feel bad for her
Dedeker: Liara goes on to the like, "We probably shouldn't continue this conversation in the Comms Room in front of everyone like we have this entire time basically." What's interesting about I think it's interesting that Liara, the alien, she expresses this idea of like I understand jealousy that her concern about this situation is less about I'm worried that this won't work, I'm worried that says bad but more of I'm just worried about this other human is going to react because I know how jealous you human types get rather than having any kind of inherent objections to non-monogamy itself.
The interesting thing is in this situation, it's the player continues to push like it's always Ashley the human who is the one who breaks it off and the romance track ends with her and Liara is like, "Whatever, that's fine, you propose a triad, whatever, that's okay." Again, it's kind of the same trend of maybe this is more comfortable because Liara is clearly other, she's an alien. She doesn't understand the way that humans tick and things like that. In later Mass Effect games, Liara still sticks around. She does suddenly develop the ability to feel jealous and possessive, so that's the thing.
Kevin: Cool.
Dedeker: She gets socialized, I suppose, and let's just briefly acknowledge Fallout.
Kevin: Yes. The Fallout games, you play somebody traveling across the post-apocalyptic wasteland, getting into adventures. Along the way, you can actually have companions. You meet people who have aligned goals and you can travel with them. When you switch one companion for another, it might just be something as simple as you're going somewhere where there's a lot of radiation. You can travel with a companion who's a super mutant and who's powered by radiation versus somebody who isn't.
When you swap from one companion to another, there's a little bit of commentary that happens, it's always just like, "All right. Well, let me know when you need me. See you later." If you develop sort of a romantic connection with multiple companions, they'll say something referencing it. They won't call it what it is, but it'll be something like, "Have on you too."
Where there's a little bit of innuendo that happens and it's about as close to like non-monogamy as you're going to get in a big-budget game.
Dedeker: This is something that we came up against the last time we did a media survey like this is that there's so much media that will show consensual non-monogamy, but they really don't want to drop the P-word. They're really like, "We can't quite call it what it is." That was the same that was, of course, one of the criticisms that Fallout got. It was words like, "Well, this is kind of polyamory. No one really talks about it or acknowledges it, but it's really the closest that we've gotten in a big-budget game."
Kevin: Yes, when you don't have open jealousy, open judgment, then like, "Okay, well, then this is being accepted, so we have to accept it as the stepping stone to what we're actually looking for."
Dedeker: Right. Well, I think that we're going to end up the evening by giving space for Kevin to do a reading from his book, For Hire. You're reading from he first?
Kevin: Yes, the first one.
Jase: Then we'll do questions after that about all this.
Kevin: Awesome. Just a little bit of setup, the For Hire universe is set up in a way where if you've got superhuman powers and you'd like to use them in an official capacity, you can be either a superhero or an operator. Superheroes are essentially like state-sponsored police with powers, whereas operators are more independent contractors, like if Batman or the Punisher accepted paychecks. Our main character, Sana, is sitting in a bar, having just taken a look at a magazine cover with her girlfriend.
Sana is the one in the dark and Marcella is the one in the purple. She just saw her girlfriend on a magazine cover. She's flipping through and somebody new walked into the bar where she's hanging out. There were three paths to the type of superhumanity them up. Also, there is a ranking system for people like a power ranking for who's doing awesome. It's superheroes, superhumans. It's like a celebrity structure.
People with superpowers are the ones with the energy drinks in the endorsements and power ranking shows off who's popular, who's doing the job, and who isn't. There were three path to the type of superhumanity that might get you ranked. Genetic Variants Syndrome, or GVS, is an unexplained phenomenon that gives a small percentage of humans a randomized set of enhanced attributes. Marcella runs into criminal variants all the time. She described them like video games and bosses.
She beats her way through a gang before encountering the variant at the top, for the most part, their abilities are never a match for hers. Marcella and I invented the second path of superhumanity, though nobody knows that but us, well almost nobody. Her fans assume her powers are a function of the armor she wears. If I had a more public persona, my fans would assume the same. Truth is, as teenagers, Marcella and I created something called Supercell, programmable nanotechnology that can accurately mimic human biological function on the cellular level.
As a result, our strength, speed, intelligence, and regenerative abilities are all off the charts powerful. Me and Marc are the only ones on the technology path. The third path is magic, which up until recently, I didn't believe it. I set the magazine aside with one lens glance at the cover before setting my sights on the sources of the pub's sudden buzz. The newcomer was loud, handsome, and covered in tattoos, short and slight, but with a huge presence. They had an easy smile and boisterous charm that I could spot even from a distance.
Everyone at the bar recognizes them the second they walked into the pub, I did too, but not for the same reasons. The chances that they were here by coincidence were slim. I ran a quick stock of my protection. Under my clothes, I wore my favorite set of light armor, it hugs my curves like spandex, nothing bulky like that unwieldy crap Marcella wore. It was breathable and flexible and had just enough defensive tech to ward off the most blows that might hinder me as I fought or escaped.
On my left hip with a silenced pistol, on my right thigh a long knife. I could also conjure a hard light shield from either hand. I took another sip of my drink, no use letting it go to waste. After a round of selfies with the other patrons, the pubs newcomer looked directly at me, the chances that they were here by coincidence dropped to none. For the pocket, I slit up my cell phone, toggle over to the Supercell app and double-check the settings on my nanites ready for action if it came to that.
The newcomer said something to the bartender and motioned to my direction. The last time I'd seen them they were wearing a mask, but I had no doubt it was the same person. Two or three months ago, they were magicking a sort of portal into existence while standing over a frightened man named Stanton, a man I'd been hired to kill. It was the first time I'd ever seen what could have only been magic, but I'm a professional, no time for gawking.
I did what I was there to do before they could do what they were there to do. Long-range, big gun, away without a trace, or so I thought. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that they found me right next to the superhero rankings for higher keeps a power ranking for operators and they were number three in the country.
Under the alias JC though, I'm number one. In the magazine wearing the mask, they're simply called vos 13, to the rest of the general public and definitely to the slobbering fans at the bar. There will famous as the major as the amazing magisteria Marcella's favorite performer should be pleased to know she was right about the magic being real. Voss, as I'd come to think of them, picked up two frothy mugs from the bar and walked over to my booth. They set one in front of me and sat down and just there to the magazine I set aside.
"You know Double M is my biggest fan," they had a thick Australian accent. If overconfidence was an accent, they had that too. There was a fearless, almost careless grace to their movement as if they'd never found a situation they couldn't charm their way out of. Even their look was crafted to draw people in. Thrift store aesthetics crafted with top tier designer labels. The illusion of relatability. Facade or no, it was pretty hard and there was no way they didn't know it.
It was obviously they felt in complete control of the situation, but so did I. "Really," I said, ignoring the new mug and sipping the drink I already had on hand. If they felt anyway about the slight, they hit it well. Absolutely, they took a huge belt of the mug they were holding and set it down and brush back their short dark hair. She's been following my career from the very beginning. She comes to see my show whenever I'm here in town.
I even took her backstage a couple of times and showed her the real magic, if you know what I'm talking about, they winked. I've never seen someone so pleased with themselves, but I guess banging a famous superhero like Double M is a pretty huge accomplishment even when you're already a colossal superstar. Of course, other than the fact that Voss and Magisterial are the same person, none of this was new information to me.
Marcel and Magisterial had been rolling around with each other for at least a couple of years now, as many times as availability could afford their full-time mega-celebrity schedules. "Them real magic, huh? Like what you were doing to Stanton." "Uh-huh, I knew it was you JC and I knew you would know it was me. Cheers." They raised their glass in a toast and returned it. No need to be overtly rude. I still didn't know the nature of this visit. I wasn't exactly sure which one of you best that's foul-up my contract, though I guessed. Suddenly the gleam was gone from their dark eyes. The intensity almost made me miss a breath.
"I wanted to talk to you about what you saw in your scope. I know tech and what I saw wasn't tech." Then the great magisterial themselves comes walking into my bar. What other conclusions am I supposed to be drawing here? Voss nodded thoughtfully. Look at me over may be coming to a decision I tensed. "Most people don't believe in magic." They said slowly. "I only showing mine to the rubes who think it's fake. They hiked the thumb at the people at the bar or the poor sides who won't be around long enough didn't tell anyone it's real. Which leaves you and I in a bit of a predicament."
Dedeker: Thank you, Kevin. You just released the second book in this area?
Kevin: Yes. We just released the second book, Audition, just earlier this month. With the polyamory, though, something we really tried to do here it was we tried to subvert the love triangle because it's such easy low hanging fruit sort of thing to do in fiction where it's like, "Wow, these three people are into each other," or more likely, "This one person is into these two other people. How do we handle this?" In this one, we wanted to make it that the presence of attraction between three people wasn't the conflict. The conflict is that each of them is hiding aspects of themselves from the other people that they're with. The fact that they're all into each other is just fine.
Jase: It's also one of the things I really liked about For Hire: Operator is the fact that there is this non-monogamous relationship and it's not perfect all the time. There is drama, there is conflict in it at times, but none of that drama or conflict comes from the fact that it's non-monogamous, it comes from other aspects of their lives, things that are going on in their careers or in their personal lives.
Kevin: In Operator, the driving theme is the difference between secrecy and privacy and how that strains a relationship. In Audition, the driving theme is this general malaise and fighting through an empathetic approach to life. Also our characters are queer and trans and polyamorous and also super-powered and that determines the pathways that they take without it being the thing that defines the story. You're not going to find a coming-out narrative. Auditions' main characters is a trans woman, but you're not going to find a bunch of trans pain that we're trying to dwell into. Also we made it a point to hire people to check out our book, people who have these identities to make sure that we weren't fucking it up basically.
Dedeker: Where can people pick up your book?
Kevin: Both books are available online and Amazon. I'm signing copies here if you're interested. I've got several copies of both Operator and Audition and my other book, Love's Not Colorblind, which is like the book about how race impacts polyamory. It's a nonfiction book. I've got a bunch of here. I'm down to sign as soon as we're done here. Both books are available as paperback on Amazon eBooks everywhere but Smashwords is probably the optimal place to get it.