Love & Marriage in Fiction

That's okay, not everybody likes the same stuff. I've certainly seen Heinlein do some creepy things, and I think other writers have handled creative marriage dynamics much more charmingly; but he's a really popular writer and some people love his stuff.

>>I think Maureen's straightforward attitude about sex inoculated me against being squicked by much of anything very early on.<<

Yes, that can be helpful.

>>My apologies for hijacking your thread! <<

That's okay. I don't object to sideline discussions.

>>We were talking about different forms of marriage! I'm actually fascinated by the topic, that's the embarrassing thing, the social/biological pressures that create certain types.<<

Yeah, I've seen a lot of interesting variations in speculative fiction and anthropology. Some from my work:

"Courting on the Porch" describes the relationships inherent to an alien species with 2 sexes and 3 partners required for reproduction. A marriage includes one mobile sibling, one sessile sibling, and one mobile stranger. The two mobiles provide the genetic material, which is combined in the sessile (they actually have sex inside the sessile); the sessile incubates the young and has some influence over which genes get expressed (usually favoring those of its sibling, but not always).

The Tazha have two gender roles, provider and nurturer. (Their ancestors got peeved at the gender structures available, and dismantled them all for spare parts. This was what they reassembled.) The tribe expects a provider to partner with one or more nurturers. Two interesting quirks: a newly adult provider travels through the settlements in a specific direction until finding a mate(s). They're not supposed to pick a partner from the local settlement nor go against the flow. And a provider gets first choice, but the nurturers get final choice -- someone who doesn't pick a partner will find that nurturers take matters into their own hands and move in without an invitation. You can throw them out again, but it's not easy.

On the SF side, the Freedom System has a freeform option for marriage in the sense of officially recognized sexual arrangements; plus other options for formalizing social units such as households or D/s relationships, which have many of the same functions as a marriage.

>>I suppose "cross generational relations" is as kind a euphemism I can come up with for what his characters are portrayed as doing.<<

One interesting thing about Torn World is that Northerners track everyone's genetics, so there is no risk of accidental incest. This makes wide age gaps in relationships perfectly safe. They also have a casual custom, which is readily accessible but not required of anyone, for more experienced people to teach the joys of sex to novices. It's common for new adults start by choosing a partner from their own age-set or another set that just passed the adulthood tests, but then shortly thereafter they're likely to pick up an older lover to learn not just sexual techniques but relationship skills. That's actually part of a story I've been working for a while, "From Dark to Bright," showing the months that Fala spent studying with Karavai.

>> (Ironically, David Gerrold's "The Man Who Folded Himself" gets less flak, perhaps because the protagonist was sleeping with a future self and not conveniently gendered clone(s), let alone relatives. <<

By my standards, masturbation facilitated by technology or magic is still masturbation.

Yeah, early exposure can make people really attached to things.

I sometimes find Heinlein's handling of female characters to be off-putting. But I think he's bored me more often than actively offended me. Some of his writing has been interesting to me, though.

I find Heinlein's female characters unrealistic (and the male ones not great either) but the gap is widening. They were probably less absurd-looking when they were first written, in the context of culture at the time. *ponder* Although given the recent shift towards barbarism, that gap may be narrowing again. Yeesh.

I'm happy to be of service. My interest is more in original fic, but the main conversations are over in fanfic, so I'm borrowing discussion and information material from there. It generalizes fine.