How many marriages can you really have?

I just read an actual paid professional writer ask 'how many marriages can you really have'.
Context doesn't help.
They just... how many?
As many as there are combinations of people times situations you put them in.

It's not like marriage is a single thing that you hand to characters at the end of a story.

It's a complex ongoing negotiation that commits to turning two lives into one shared life, and somehow promises to balance every priority so they can continue to pull together.
How many marriages?
No marriage is the same marriage as last year, unless I suppose their life is epically repetetive. I mean I just had two years of sitting in my flat reading homes magazines, I suppose a life like that remains shareable without much reconfiguration.

But homes magazines are like mini epics in how to do marriage, home, family. Because every single time somebody ends up in there showing off their bathroom they went through a whole decision process where they balanced the needs and desires of two or more people. If two people wouldn't end up with the same bathroom (and I've been looking at housing websites for a few years now, there are no two same bathrooms) then they wouldn't end up with the same whole shared existence.

And okay, I read/watch F&SF genre stuff, the bathroom redecoration rarely comes up. ... Dining room, recently, kitchen, full copper repipe, basements, flat hunting, and pretty sure there was something about plumbing on a spaceship, but rarely. But if you've got two people who have resolved enough of their differences they've decided to share a life together, and then demons, then you just take every worry and argument that can possibly happen and turn it into metaphor demons. Rich vein right there.

Marriage doesn't limit a character's possibilities, it multiplies them.

That seems like it should be pretty obvious.



but then I read mostly fanfic, and we spend many many iterations looking at the same relationships from a great many angles, plus occasional plot. Figuring out how lives fit together in the midst of all that F&SF stuff is pretty much what we're here for.

Some people read too narrow.

Equality in animation

I'm on Volume 3 of the Avengers Earth's Mightiest Heroes DVDs
where they introduce Mockingbird (yaay)

her costume has wings which glide!
wings, but no leggings.
priorities.

I'm getting really *very* creeped out with how they animate Black Widow, and now Mockingbird. They get special treatment no other character gets. And by special treatment I mean butts.

After I noticed how they were framing Natasha (from behind, close up, butt crack wiggling on a black catsuit) I spent the rest of the episode checking for other butts (yes I know how that sounds shush serious crit is serious) and no, nope, no other butts, except for Mockingbird.

Guys do not have behinds. Let alone behinds in skintights.
Black Widow and Mockingbird mostly have behinds.

And it's really jarring compared to the quality of some of the other animation. Sometimes facial features don't even make sense, they're kind of awful in off moments, but someone went through lovingly animating every line of the butt wiggles.

Creeping. Me. Out.

Yes I am fully aware of how comics do this kind of thing. I just... really? Everywhere? This now? Blergh.

I admit it makes Widow a lot more mysterious, since there's only so much you can learn about someone from that angle, but really.



I am liking the plots.

And they don't do this to every female character. Carol and Jan wear actual clothes so far.

It's just once I notice something I keep noticing, and, creepy.



In other news it's cute how Tony still thinks he's the leader while everyone else ignores him more and more.

Also I was vaguely pondering how Hawkeye in this 'verse starts out as a SHIELD agent and Black Widow's partner. Like, compared to the MCU. EMH Clint mentions the circus, which is more backstory than we have on MCU Clint. EMH is 2010 and Thor with brief Clint cameo as SHIELD agent is 2011. While in 616 he was an Avenger first? Variations.

Here it's mostly so he can make pouty face about Widow betraying him and remain deeply perplexed about it and also be rebellious against two completely seperate organisations, SHIELD and the Avengers.

He's stubborn and not quite bright, but good at thinking sideways for his job, like tactics stuff. Also funny and quippy and brave.

... the way they draw him makes me think his nose is on upside down, it sticks out weird like here, it's unfortunate, and then there's the pointy mask on top of that.

But the stories are all making a complex universe full of conflicting motivations and they're quite fun.

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes volume 3

I like it. Twisty plots are twisty.

Also, Ultron!

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Basically, nice story, but these are not the characters I've been hanging out with in my head, even when sharing many of their characteristics. Which is interesting.

And I find myself liking quite different people than expected.