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preferred outcome since making everyone happy is not possible i had one of two choices 1 i could write to market and choose the narrative option that would please the greatest number of readers or 2 i could write the story as it has unfolded in my imagination and as the characters themselves have driven it the thing is i m not very good at writing to market alsea has always been about representation i started writing science fiction because i was sick of sci fi that was all dudes all the time i wanted to see lead characters that looked like me then i wanted to see lead characters that loved like me then i realized that if i wanted to see this other underrepresented people surely did as well sigourney weaver blazed a trail by playing an action hero with gasp a female body in 1979 almost forty years later people still questioned whether wonder woman would make any money at the ticket office what better world to show families and loves that don t correspond with most definitions of standard than alsea which has no sexism no racism except against voloth no rigid gender definitions and a culture that sees sharing of emotions as more intimate than sharing of bodies so we have families with two fathers or two mothers or one of each we have a female character who made a family with a male partner lost that family and made a new one with a female partner we have an asexual main character we have significant characters of color in both straight and same sex partnerships we have a disabled man with a chronic illness living a full and active life with his bondmate in books 9 and 10 we add a heterosexual interspecies relationship with a rather unique twist and in book 9 chapter 9 polyamorous folks joined the list of minorities given full representation polyamory remains taboo even in cultures that have enshrined equal marriage rights for gays adjusting to the idea that we can t choose who we love is one thing while adjusting to the idea that we can t choose how many we love is a very different ball of wax we have all grown up in cultures that valorize monogamy and view any departure from it in pejorative terms cheating betraying unfaithful but as we gays know very well taboo doesn t translate to nonexistent it translates to invisible remember when we used to say that if every gay person suddenly turned blue everyone would realize they knew a gay person the same applies to polyamorous folks i didn t intentionally set out to portray a polyamorous relationship the narrative arc and the characters themselves drove it starting with andira s three way sharings with ekatya and lhyn at the end of the caphenon as we learned early in the second book those sharings created a partial tyree bond between tal and ekatya in the fourth book catalyst salomen explicitly rejected tal s assertion that this bond wouldn t change anything but the truth is that you and ekatya are not just friends and if this little piece of a bond has survived seventeen moons of separation then you will never be just friends you created something permanent i know tal said i just don t know what to do about it and this is where you keep making the same mistake it s not for you to do anything not by yourself this isn t about you it s not even about you and ekatya it involves all four of us and we will all decide if anything needs to be done we also learned in catalyst that andira tal wasn t the only one feeling the effects of that bond i ve never had a friend like you but we re not just friends are we that bond ekatya took another breath and said what she had been afraid to i missed you every day andira every damned day the fifth sixth and seventh books didn t push this narrative in any direction because they were about other characters and relationships but then came book 8 uprising here is where we saw salomen walk out on tal for a perceived betrayal not of loving ekatya but of doing something for her that she wouldn t do for her own bondmate the threat was never the bond the threat was the quality of the bond which seemed to put salomen in second place here is also where we saw the beginnings of the relationship between lhyn and salomen followed by the latter s new understanding which she shared with tal upon her return to the state house i realized something last night we all have our own connections all four of us perhaps i just needed to know that i have a place in that besides the one i have with you because salomen was the one questioning her place she was the first to recognize the importance of balance in their connections she and lhyn also acknowledged during their laughter choked imaginings of tal and ekatya sharing a bed that those two wouldn t do anything without written permission from us in triplicate as lhyn put it any change would have to be driven by salomen and lhyn because their honorable tyrees would never ever take the first step we saw the relationship between lhyn and salomen deepen during the three days they hid away before the uprising we also had a preview of the new powers these bonds enabled when salomen heard ekatya laugh during that nighttime mind to mind visit finally during the uprising itself tal and lhyn realized that their foursome sharings were having unexpected effects and that they would have to decide whether to let it happen or try to put on the brakes if they were finding their own interconnections tal could no longer coast on a primary position she hadn t even realized she held not until the possibility of losing it was staring her in the face she didn t know what the four of them were creating but if she was too afraid to speak her truth the others might create it without her i know what i don t want she said i don t want to stop me either lhyn s relief felt like the first breath of air after being underwater too long i don t ever want to stop and ekatya sometimes i think she needs it more than i do now here is where i make a confession before alsea rising the various clues pointing toward this arc were subtle if you didn t notice or did notice but read the clues a different way that doesn t mean you were inattentive or in denial it means i succeeded in giving myself an escape route because right up until book 9 chapter 9 i wasn t certain i d go through with it i knew the polyamory arc would be controversial i expected and have received negative book reviews as a result while i never wrote that tyree bonds were the equivalent of soulmates in fact dr wells genetic explanation of these bonds explicitly argued against it i m aware that some readers consider this to be the case even aside from that many readers are invested in these great loves and don t want to see two loving hearts become three they firmly believe that to love more than one person at a time physically or romantically is a betrayal our cultures tell us that practically from birth it is powerful messaging and for most people it s not just belief it s reality i did not want to upset anger or sadden readers moreover i did not want readers to lose respect for characters who are my beloved friends people i ve lived with and shared my mind with for nearly ten years to prevent that i seriously considered compromising the artistic vision of this series at the end of uprising i could still have chosen the safest path forward but the narrative arc of alsea rising doesn t truly work without completing the plot arcs that began all the way back in the caphenon to back away from my vision and avoid controversy would have felt like a different betrayal mine so i made my choice and brought the narrative full circle the series begins with a collision of cultures and follows its ramifications through our four main characters two alseans and two gaians among the ripple effects are restoration of the divine tyrees the breaking of fahla s covenant on ekatya s advice and the combination of both in the final battle tal s strategy to fight the voloth in alsea rising was made possible by the changes brought to alsea via lhyn and ekatya but as we eventually learn that strategy requires more than tal expected or planned for the gaians can t beat this foe alone the alseans can t beat them alone the two forces working together are far more powerful and that is represented by our four leads if you are now thinking the polyamory is a metaphor then you are right but it is also a natural endpoint over and over again throughout these books we ve seen how our four leads help and even save each other the most important aspect of this has always been the power of their tyree bonds tal mended ekatya and lhyn s relationship at the end of the caphenon via a three way sharing and many more after which established both her initial tyree bond with ekatya and a new connection between ekatya and lhyn that new ability saved lhyn in catalyst salomen s tyree power saved tal in her death duel in without a front in uprising the power provided by both salomen and tal shifted lhyn and ekatya s bond from something more to full divine that is why lhyn s attempt to light up the molwyn tree with ekatya didn t work in the caphenon but did work during their bonding ceremony the four of them working together healed lhyn s brain damage and then their powers began to merge as did their hearts without that certain important events in the seventh star could not occur including a critical rescue some may feel that all of these balanced and ever increasing powers were equally possible without the polyamory to my view attempting that would have been like building a four legged stool with one leg an inch shorter than the others though i was still tempted see above reference to subtle clues and an escape route taking this down from metaphor level to character level tal was polyamorous the moment she fell for salomen that she didn t act on her love for ekatya doesn t negate the fact that she loved two women the same held true for ekatya though it took her longer to realize it leaving these bonds unbalanced would have meant these two women denying a part of themselves for the rest of their lives as for salomen what single force drives her more than any other love for her family it is completely within her character to embrace a larger than normal family and take joy in loving and being loved so deeply in without a front she told tal that one of the things she appreciated about their bond was that for once she knew she was wanted for herself and not her land to experience that twice is for her a true gift all she needed was the assurance that she was ascendant in one of those bonds lhyn is very like salomen in that regard though she comes to it from the opposite direction she was a child who competed unsuccessfully it seems for parental love and grew into a solitary nomad who didn t trust romantic love as she revealed in uprising ekatya s abandonment broke her trust so badly that she would never have recovered had tal not initiated that sharing it was therefore enormously significant when she told salomen i don t think your love comes in rations the irony is that lhyn s career made her uniquely open to a non standard relationship but her distrust of romantic love limited her ability to hold even one heart let alone two salomen s unwavering nature broke through that as an interesting side note polyamory was present in this series as of the end of book 3 when micah confessed to tal that he had loved her mother so deeply in fact that tal had to ask him whose daughter she really was that this was already in tal s family history was a significant clue it is also another completed circle tal succeeded where her mother and adopted father did not intriguingly readers view that instance of polyamory as tragically romantic and completely noncontroversial is this because it was in the past perhaps because it wasn t one of our four leads i don t know there is one more aspect of these interlaced bonds that i could not cover in the books because the results won t play out for some time for those who read this arc with a sense of sadness and loss i hope this final reveal will offer a salve without some intervention ekatya and lhyn would die long before tal and salomen we know from the books that alseans can easily live to 120 even if gaians can reach the same number of years the difference between a standard year and an alsean cycle means that when an alsean hits 60 cycles of age just half their lifespan a gaian is nearly 90 we also know from a clue glimpsed at the end of book 3 that ekatya and lhyn suspect tal s tyree bond has a reverse aging effect we learn in alsea rising that the healing of lhyn s brain damage made structural changes in all of them and we know that sealing a tyree bond via a two way sharing creates a physiological connection in the next few cycles dr wells will discover that her friends are not aging at the normal gaian rate this is not because of their own divine tyree bond it s because each of them also holds a tyree bond with an alsean ekatya and lhyn will live out extraordinarily long lives with their friends and loved ones aging at the same rate and for those who believe in an afterlife someday these blended bonds will ensure that four women who loved deeply are never ever separated share this share email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr like loading posted in writing tagged books chronicles of alsea polyamory 10 comments the good the bad and the ugly posted on 3 september 2020 by admin finally watched the good the bad and the ugly for the very first time after my son requested it good god that movie takes forever for those of you who don t want to lose three hours of your lives for a film that could have been done in 80 minutes here is my synopsis theme music squinty eyed man stares into sunlight different squinty eyed man stares into sunlight third squinty eyed man stares into sunlight theme music dust horses more dust tumbleweeds dusty men who haven t seen a bath in two years if the film hadn t helpfully labeled the ugly i would never have guessed who it was supposed to be token female character with zero words of dialogue playing subservient mexican wife gunshots theme music more gunshots cannon fire second token female character with about ten words of dialogue playing town prostitute whose sole point in the film is to be brutally beaten in order to reveal a name dust horses hanging noose theme music desert sun sand squinty eyed man with chapped lips confederate soldiers union soldiers cannon fire theme music satisfying bridge explosion after two characters carry a wooden crate helpfully marked explosives through an active battle zone with soldiers falling all around them and somehow nobody notices or shoots at them man running in circles through a graveyard squinty eyed man with a shovel and gun second sq...