fannish5: Monogamy Is Not For Everyone

[selenak]

Name five characters who probably shouldn't try to be monogamous.

1.) Chiana (Farscape). Actually, to clarify that: not because the early s3 incident, which was mostly Chiana panicking and self-sabotaging. Not to mention being very young. But I think even a mature Chiana under optimal cirucmstances would not be happy in a monagamous

Comments

[kattahj]

So, in order for Daniel to avoid his Morphean catastrophe of a love life, I'd suggest non-monogamous relationships, in which case the train wreckage might not be so bad or could be avoided.

I have no problem at all with Daniel having non-monogamous relationships, but I do think his personality is different enough from Morpheus that he might be able to pull off monogamous ones as well. Morpheus had a pig-headed streak that doesn't seem as pronounced in Daniel.

[gehayi]

Morpheus had a pig-headed streak that doesn't seem as pronounced in Daniel.

Yeah. Daniel seems more mature and more forgiving. I don't see him tossing a lover into Hell for ten thousand years because she--or he--or zie--said "No."

[wee_warrior]

Morpheus had a pig-headed streak

That's putting it kindly... :)

[kattahj]

Oh dear, am I doing a variation of "But Agamemnon kept the slave girl, and that didn't make Achilles very happy"? *g*

Oh, and selenak, I forgot to say, I really enjoyed this post.

[buffyannotater]

The first person that comes to mind for me with this meme is Nate Fisher. And at the start of the series, I'd say Brenda, too, though I think that changes a great deal by the end.

[kalypso_v]

I dunno, I think Nate Fisher thinks he's a monogamist, it's just that he can never make up his mind whether he wants to be a monogamist with Brenda types or Lise types, and he was always going to spend his life lurching between the two, which made him a bigamist in practice, but I don't think he understood that...

[selenak]

Hm, I'm between you and Kalypso in that I agree with her that Nate is more a serial bigamist than anything else, and that if he had died, he'd have kept upon wandering between Brenda types and Lise types (if Brenda wouldn't take him back, otherwise just between Brenda and the Madonna of the moment), but I also agree with you that he should not consider monogamy - for that very reason. You don't have to be prone to screw everything that moves in order to be unqualified for for monogamy. Inability to commit to one woman instead of two counts

[moon_custafer]

Given what we hear about the Centauri anatomy, they probably concluded (reasonably enough) that their gods had never intended them to be monogamous...

[selenak]

Verily. Mind you, they're also a patriarchy (we never hear of women having several husbands), so equal polygamy is something they still need to work on after the revolution. :) But it makes biological sense for them.

[silvia_duchessa]

I wrote (or am still writing, it's epically long) a DW fic in which Jack is in a monogamous relationship, and since doing that I definitely see his relationships and capability for different types differently. Most of the time, I reeeaaally can't see it, but I feel there's more depth to Jack's character than just can't-commit-to-one-person, shown in flashes like his love for Estelle or his marriage. I don't think it would ever be totally conventional, but Jack in a monogamous relationship is something I really want to see explored more, because I think that's far more interesting than whatever man/woman/alien he's doing at some point.

[selenak]

It's certainly territory waiting for exploration by fanfiction. (Though for all I know it's already been covered - I haven't read much, if any, Jack/Ianto - usually only if it's in the background in a story about something else - which means I haven't read 98% of the existing Torchwood fanfiction.)

Though I don't think if you interpret Jack as non-monogamous you also declare him as not deep, or the relationships in question as somehow shallow. Estelle is a good example. He clearly never lost his love for her, and kept in contact posing as his grandson instead of staying away so they could still meet on occasion. This did not stop him from having a lot of other relationships over the decades, not to mention his continuing thing for the Doctor. So what Jack felt for Estelle was certainly strong and went deep without being exclusive.