rather be a bitch than be an ordinary broken heart

My wife went on a cute date this week with a partner she hasn't gotten to connect with recently and they both brought each other flowers. My boyfriend is completely overcome and being a useless lesbian (their words) about a cute enby who has been flirting with them via text for months but is finally in town this week.

When I have done educational work around non-monogamy a question I get a lot is basically how I cope with the overwhelming terrible feelings associated with imagining my partner having sex with other people. I struggle to answer this question because I do not have overwhelming terrible feelings when I imagine my partner having sex with other people but also I do not choose to imagine this very often. I do not have either curiosity or horror about this topic. Mostly I feel that it is generally not my business.

Most often when people say "I couldn't do that!" my answer is then you shouldn't. If you are not interested in non-monogamy you shouldn't do it. I love that my wife and her partner gave each other flowers and I love that my boyfriend is a useless lesbian. I think this is adorable. I'm having my coffee and feel warm inside because it reminds me how in love I am with both of these sweet humans. But there are many people who do not have this response and are still attracted to non-monogamy, and "just have the correct, enlightened feelings" is a shitty and too-common answer.

Another answer to this question is that I most often relate to my partners' other relationships from the stance of being their friend, rather than their lover. When my wife tells me she's in a dry spell with another partner, I am concerned because I want my friend to have a healthy and satisfying relationship, and when she tells me the dry spell is over I am excited because I want my friend to have a healthy and satisfying relationship. I do not think about what that means mechanically in the same way I also do not imagine in detail any other friend having sex.

Another answer to this question is that I think of my relationships as existing within an ecological space in which all relationships affect one another. My girlfriend's other relationships being in a good place means that our entire relational ecosystem is healthier. Her being in conflict with someone, whether it's a partner or her mom, introduces conflict into the ecosystem, so I have an interest in supporting her other relationships being healthy. Her peace and security and satisfaction are my peace and security and satisfaction. If that comes from her getting railed by some dude on Grindr, her need is my need.

Another answer to this question is that I am extremely comfortable with my own jealousy and can let it arise and pass without leaving a mess. I am not afraid of jealousy or anger or other big feelings and can acknowledge them to myself and to partners without a sense of terror or obligation or shame. I will note, good management of big feelings does not make these feelings smaller or more pleasant. I feel like I have done a good job managing a big feeling when I react in a way that does not generate a new, avoidable second problem.

Another answer to this question is that I understand jealousy as pointing to an unmet need that I have and I can generally address that unmet need without reference to the other relationship and usually without conflict. If I'm jealous that my partner is seeking casual hookups rather than having sex with me, I'm actually upset that we aren't having more sex--that ultimately has nothing to do with whether she is also cruising on the apps. I can address that by saying "I'd like us to have more sex" and then if she's amenable to that, doing things that make space for us to have more sex, like being more flirtatious and scheduling dates in ways that increase the potential for sexual connection. Reframing jealousy as actionable desire reduces resentment dramatically (this is also something I'm working on generally--what if desire is not painful deprivation but in fact the first ingredient to basically all pleasure???).

Sometimes it's not actionable. Sometimes my partner is having sex with someone else and does not wish to have sex with me. Sometimes my partner is publicly attached to another partner but unwilling to be public with me because they are not out to their parents yet. Sometimes my partner is moving in with their other sweetie and would not wish to live with me. Sometimes my partner is married to someone else and would not marry me even if it were legal or they would, but it's not. And in that situation I most often privately validate that there is grief about not having sex or domesticity or validation that I want, and I decide whether the relationship overall is something I want given that it has that feeling in it. I am clear with myself about which unmet needs I am willing to leave permanently unmet in a given relationship and overall, and I hold the responsibility for that decision, which allows me to relate to each partner on the level of what they are actually offering, without resentment. If I do not want what they are offering, I leave.

Another answer to this question is that I struggled a lot more with jealousy and resentment when I dated people who treated me like shit, and when I hated myself and felt like I was worthless. Now that I am in the habit of forming secure, trusting relationships with people who treat me with respect, difficult jealousy just doesn't come up very often. A lot of what drove my unpleasant reactions in earlier relationships was that I genuinely could not rely on my partners to be honest or kind. Now that I can, it's easier to relax.

Another answer to this question is I have worked pretty hard to base my sense of self worth on something other than being sexually desired by others and to construct relational spaces where everyone feels like they can assert their genuine needs, even when it means not connecting intimately. When I felt like my entire worth as a person was whether I was fuckable (to everyone at all times), sexual or romantic rejection felt like being totally worthless as a person and a dry spell was catastrophic to my well-being. So did anyone's interest in not-me, because why aren't they interested in me? Now I am able to accept someone declining sex or rescheduling a date or not wanting to date me at all or wanting someone who isn't me without it feeling like a total judgment of who I am as a person.

Another answer to this question is that there are times when jealousy clouds issues in ways that make it difficult to judge what to do, especially in the case of abuse within the relational ecosystem. Controlling relationships seem to generate more jealousy than healthy ones--jealousy can justify isolation tactics, and isolation can generate jealousy. But subjectively it's hard to distinguish "I feel jealous about the time you're spending with this person" from "this person is intentionally undermining your relationship with others, and I happen to be one of those people." The best answer I have for this is that I try to cultivate relational spaces where jealousy and fear and unmet needs can get discussed without generating blame or obligation, and where there's a high level of trust that a person is raising issues honestly and not to manipulate. But honestly, when there's an abusive relationship in the ecosystem, it fucks everything up for a while, and there's probably no way to respond that makes that not happen.

Good Girl feat. Actiranger Pink

i don't know what you were trying to accomplish here but if its to make me feel bad or guilty for enjoying a fictional character in a fictional setting with like 10 minutes of screen time and no real background information or lore well

Anon, you're the weird one and everyone that thinks like you do are the weird ones.

Fiction plays an important role in our psychosocial development, both as children and adults. It acts as a psychological safety net allowing us to explore other traits, characteristics, acts, actions, or any other number of themes including morality that we can't explore in our real lives. And when you have characters with such little canon development, the sandbox opens up even more, allowing for even more exploration.

To assume morality based on a character or story someone enjoys is not only stupid, but it's also stunting your own psychological and emotional growth. By shying away from exploring things you enjoy that the status quo, in group, or social justice clique du jour would criticize, you're losing the opportunity for some incredibly rich and important personal development.

These next few sources and quotes refer to reading, but it's the focus on fiction and how we use fictional stories that is most important.

Indeed, research has demonstrated that when relating to a character or a story, readers may recognise or realise something new about themselves and change their self-concept, beliefs and/or behaviours, such as changing their attitude towards characters whose identity and perspective differ from theirs (Kaufman & Libby, 2012). Narrative fiction also allows readers to understand and connect to different characters’ experiences and perspectives, allowing them to ‘fictionally’ experience situations and feelings they may never have experienced themselves.

When readers read fiction, they know they are encountering human-constructed characters, settings, and situations. This necessary suspension of disbelief—of having to entertain the possibility of other realities—means readers of fiction aren’t merely learning to understand the world as it is, but, also, how to imagine a different one. And it is this act of imagining that makes alternative futures possible—a future without endless, violent conflict, for example.

Most human beings above the age of three know how to differentiate between fiction and reality. And because they know that, they are able to suspend their disbelief and explore the thoughts and feelings they have when they think about characters like Dum Dum and groups like Maelstrom. (In this sense, I would recommend anon that you see a neuropsychologist to ensure your psychological development is on par with however old you are and not stuck at that of a 2-year-old).

A quasi-emotion contains all the elements of an emotion, except the cognitive element and the motivational element. Emotions generated by real-life situations are based on a belief that something is the case, which prompts not only a quasi-emotion but also certain motivations. Emotions generated by engagement with a work of fiction, on the other hand, are based on make-believe that something is the case, which prompts a quasi-emotion. Hence, the quasi-emotions generated by make-believe in fiction reading do not stimulate us to action, the feelings and sensations may have a different intensity, and their duration can be different.

Walton in his work Mimesis of Make Believe identified the fundamental difference in how we process the feelings generated by fiction and how they do not stimulate us to action.

William Golding, in the above linked article, goes further and discusses how we use those emotions and the experiential memories associated with those strong emotions, for personal development. We do not read stories about terrible people doing terrible things and go on to do terrible things ourselves. That is such a profoundly, absurdly, incomprehensibly simplified idea about human behavior that makes anyone who has ever read even a low quality think piece about psychology fucking laugh.

When a reader empathizes with a fictional other, she feels for the fictional other from the inside. She enters the fictional story and the fictional world – up to a point. Ricoeur says that ‘reading itself already is a way of living in the fictitious universe of the work; in this sense we can already say that stories are told but also lived in the imaginary mode’. What exactly does this ‘way of living’ in the imaginary mode entail? Some of the limitations the reader encounters while imagining the fictional other from within are straightforward. First of all, the reader cannot act in the fictional world (although in cliff-hanger scenes, for instance, the reader might imitate the action of the fictional other by grabbing the table or clenching her fist). Second, and following from this, the reader cannot suffer any real-life consequences from what happens in the fictional world. The climber in the story may fall to his death; although we suffered inside him until he died, we continue to live. In spite of this divergence, some things happen in parallel during the reading process: the fictional climber is released from his life, and we are also released from the fictional climber’s life. The other-narrative of the fictional climber comes to an end simultaneously with our self-in-other-narrative. If the story continues after this, we see the deceased climber from the outside.

With this, I actually argue that people who can not only enjoy but continue to explore, create, and transform "evil" characters or groups has an immense amount of and skill for empathy. To like a character like Dum Dum isn't to condone what he's done, it's to see the inner goodness. Which is actually confirmed by a study! (I am so glad I dropped out of college because I do not want to put all of these links in APA style citations LMAO).

More specifically, across the ages studied participants more often reported that villains were inwardly good, than that heroes were inwardly bad.

In conclusion

Eyes of Queen Teesh

...

First and foremost, try saying it. Queen Teesh. QueennnnTeesh. Kwiiiinnnntiiiishhhh. That's right. Isn't it fun?

I've drawn her once before, all the way back in 2021. An entire month of painstaking labor to pixel every detail. Literally my most effort-intensive drawing ever. Sometimes I wonder what I could make with that level of commitment and my current skill.

I even made music for her

Lore drop, Lord Diana used to make music

Anyways.

She's quite an old character, but a lot of her design details have been really vague for a long time. To be fair, her presence in the worldbuilding is vague and distant. She doesn't do much on her own, and there is no one in her context who could explore what kind of person or creature she is. She is just... A distant presence with power and will. Not the greatest in the world. But the biggest fish in the farthest depths of the ocean where the Celestials would not care to challenge her, and the closest her world has to a politician. You could probably know that she exists as a being of flesh and bone, and more than that, a Queen. And that she has the most notable eyes. But that is all.

Her design has been later inspired by the single scene in Lovercraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" where the protagonist ponders a majestic tiara that is obviously unfit for a human head (though it remains unclear in what particular way). In a way, she is an exploration of such inhuman undersea royalty with inhuman regalia. Successors are overall inspired by the book and are an attempt to push the idea of fishpeople further, into a more grounded, more strange and less racist territory. Again in comparison to Lovecraft, Queen Teesh is akin to Dagon - in that she is out there, she is royalty and likely powerful and possibly scary; that she is similar to her subjects in a more grounded way than some kind of cosmic elder god, but also tangibly greater than them; and that she will NEVER HAVE DIRECT PLOT RELEVANCE.

With that said, last year I doodled her again and also sketched out a few key points to codify her design a bit after all.

1) Akin to other Successors, limbs and fins form from a single "shoulder" or "thigh" joint, with the fin on top of the limb. Queen's pectoral fin runs across her entire humanlike arm though, with areas of varying length and stiffness, akin to a draping cloak and fancy sleeves. No webbed fingers;

2) Her head is less of a moray eel (I think that might be the feel of the drawing above), and more of a hinged jaw. The jaw is held tightly enough in its closed state to allow the illusion of a small human mouth on the flat "face" in the front;

3) Eyes turn on and off. Like flashlights. Why not;

4) (not pictured) She is very tail-heavy, with her more human parts being comparably small. Because a Successor's tail = their asymmetric legs clasped together, that means she is very legs-heavy. Think proportions of an outstretched frog, but streamlined like a fish;