The Geometry of Romance: Quartets and More
Long, long ago, writers started realizing that if one pair of lovers is fun, two or more pairs can be even more fun. The most common geometric result of this realization is the quartet. It has long been a convention of plays, movies, and musicals to have the lead pair and the supporting pair, the serious pair and the comic pair, the mature pair and the juvenile pair, Harlequin/Columbine and Pierrot/Pierrette.
A quartet can be built in many ways: two sisters and their suitors, two male friends and the women they court, two aristocrats and their servants, a brother and sister and another brother and sister, a mismatched couple and their two outside love interests, etc. The main pairings in the Harry Potter series end up as a quartet: a brother and sister (Ron & Ginny) and their friends/love interests (Hermione & Harry).
A classic quartet can be seen in the movie White Christmas: two friends and business partners played by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye meet a pair of sisters played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Bing and Rosemary are the serious/mature pair and Danny and Vera-Ellen are the comic/juvenile pair. In the play/movie Oklahoma Curly/Laurey is the serious pair and Will/Ado Annie is the comic pair. In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice/Benedick is the lead/comic pair and Hero/Claudio is the supporting/serious pair. Beatrice and Hero are first cousins and Benedick and Claudio are friends and comrades in war.
None of these works includes cross-flirtation or cross-courting between the pairs but it is very common to have that element. A wonderful example is the movie When Harry Met Sally where the two friends Harry and Sally set up each other on blind dates with their two same-sex best friends Jess and Marie, only to have Jess and Marie pair up, leaving Harry and Sally to do the same much, much later. The play Arms and the Man starts with the heroine engaged to a soldier and her two servants engaged to each other. An enemy soldier takes refuge in the heroine's bedroom, shaking up everything until the heroine ends up with the enemy soldier and her original fiancé ends up with the female servant. The male servant drops out of the geometry, revealing himself to care much more about money than love. In other works, such as the opera Cosi Fan Tutti and the film Enchanted, the two pairs actually switch partners.
Possibilities for cross-flirtation/cross-courting are greatly enhanced if you go from a quartet to a sextet or an octet like Cotillion. Jane Austen's Emma is an excellent example. Emma is romantically linked to Mr. Elton, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightley. Poor Harriet is linked to Mr. Martin, Mr. Elton, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightley. Jane Fairfax is romantically linked to Frank Churchill and suspected to be romantically linked to Mr. Knightley and Mr. Dixon. Mansfield Park is similar. Henry Crawford flirts with Maria Bertram, Julia Bertram, and Fanny Price. Edmund Bertram courts both Mary Crawford and Fanny Price. Of course, cross-courting brings in a much greater potential for fan disagreements with the authorial pairings and the possibility of ship debates. There are many people who think that Fanny Price would have been better off with Henry Crawford and quite a few who think Frank Churchill was a better match for Emma. The Jo/Professor Bhaer and Laurie/Amy pairings in Little Women have also left many unhappy readers shipping Jo/Laurie or Jo/nobody instead.
The quartet/sextet/octet/etc... pattern is deeply heteronormative, as the players line up girl/boy girl/boy girl/boy in breeding pairs like animals marching on board the ark. However, it doesn't have to be. For instance, Reginald Hill in his novel Pictures of Perfection--which is a deliberate homage to Jane Austen--includes three heterosexual pairings mostly resolved or revealed somewhat unexpectedly at the end of the novel, as is suitable for a mystery. The main pairing, however, is a homosexual one. An important ongoing supporting character in the series bickers with another character throughout the book and the reader gradually realizes what that means (or, if they don't, is quite surprised when they get together at the end). In the realm of fanfiction, we see many mixed quartets, including thousands of Harry/Draco-Ron/Hermione and James/Lily-Remus/Sirius fics.
Obviously, Jo Rowling employs a quartet geometry in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The lead character Newt and his chance-met friend Jacob meet two sisters, Tina and Queenie. The supporting/comic pair Jacob and Queenie start flirting immediately, leaving the lead/serious pair Newt and Tina to court at a much shyer but more action-filled pace.
It looks like Rowling went to quite a lot of trouble to prevent viewers from shipping "wrong" in her movie series (at least when it comes to het pairs). For one thing, we have all known since we first heard of the movie that Newt Scamander will end up marrying and growing old with a woman named Porpentina, who is obviously the Porpentina "Tina" Goldstein in the movies. But that's not all she did. Newt and Tina meet when Jacob is not around and they have an extended sequence together before they get back together with Jacob. Then, when Jacob and Queenie meet, Newt is looking out the window uninterested and Tina busies herself cleaning up some clothes and taking off her shoes. After that, Rowling breaks them up into the "proper" couples repeatedly: drinking in the speakeasy, when they are escaping from MACUSA, and during the climactic final battle.
And all this has worked perfectly. I haven't seen any criticism of the two romances in Fantastic Beasts. On Archive of Our Own, there are 855 Tina/Newt fics, 538 Queenie/Jacob fics (it surprises me that the number is this low, because I fell for this pairing HARD), and 0 Queenie/Newt or Tina/Jacob fics. I did find two or three Newt/Queenie fics over at fanfiction.net, but they are greatly outnumbered by Newtina (97) and Jakweenie (36). As in the Potter fandom, slash ships are the most popular at AO3:
This is hardly surprising, considering the seductive way Graves treats Credence.
Rowling may be still smarting from criticism of her bickering lovers in Harry Potter, or, at least, she has not created another such pairing since. Jacob and Queenie are extremely sweet to each other at all times. Newt and Tina were set up in a situation that could have been confrontational, but Newt's personality prevents it from being combative, no matter what Tina does or says. Newt is more likely to mumble something and try to slide out of the room than to argue or fight. However, it is possible that the introduction of Newt's old friend Leta Lestrange in the next movie may prompt jealousy and possibly even combativeness from Tina. We shall see.
Though they are extremely common in romance novels, musicals, and comedies, I believe Rowling made an unusual move in setting up a two-couple quartet as the protagonists in an action-adventure movie, or at least I am having a hard time thinking of examples. Frozen has two females and two males, but only one romantic couple. If you stretch a bit, you could count Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which has Jack Sparrow and Penelope Cruz's character, as well as the mermaid and the missionary, but it is not a tidy quartet. Can anyone remind me of any examples?
It is done more often in adventure and mystery books. Lois Bujold does it in the novel Captain Vorpatril's Alliance with Ivan/Tej and By/Rish, and also in The Curse of Chalion, with Cazaril/Betriz and Iselle/Bergon. Elizabeth Peters does it in Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first Amelia Peabody novel.
Other geometries are much more popular for action/adventure stories, including the romantic pair (see the previous post, plus Bonnie and Clyde, The Hunger Games, Beauty and the Beast, and many more), the non-romantic pair (the old man and the boy in Up, Merida and her mother in Brave, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, Sherlock and Watson, Thelma and Louise, The Shawshank Redemption, Paper Moon, Rush Hour, and Men in Black), and the ever-popular "lots of men and one token woman" geometry (many, many movies, including The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Phantom Menace, and the rebooted Star Trek). There is also the "lots of men and no women" geometry as seen in the first Hobbit movie and many war movies.
However, possibly the most popular geometric arrangement for action/adventure and other "plotty" movies is the same arrangement Rowling chose for her Harry Potter series: the taut and dramatic triangle of the trio.
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Pairs
--
Part Four: Trios
Part Five: Conclusion
A quartet can be built in many ways: two sisters and their suitors, two male friends and the women they court, two aristocrats and their servants, a brother and sister and another brother and sister, a mismatched couple and their two outside love interests, etc. The main pairings in the Harry Potter series end up as a quartet: a brother and sister (Ron & Ginny) and their friends/love interests (Hermione & Harry).
A classic quartet can be seen in the movie White Christmas: two friends and business partners played by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye meet a pair of sisters played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Bing and Rosemary are the serious/mature pair and Danny and Vera-Ellen are the comic/juvenile pair. In the play/movie Oklahoma Curly/Laurey is the serious pair and Will/Ado Annie is the comic pair. In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice/Benedick is the lead/comic pair and Hero/Claudio is the supporting/serious pair. Beatrice and Hero are first cousins and Benedick and Claudio are friends and comrades in war.
None of these works includes cross-flirtation or cross-courting between the pairs but it is very common to have that element. A wonderful example is the movie When Harry Met Sally where the two friends Harry and Sally set up each other on blind dates with their two same-sex best friends Jess and Marie, only to have Jess and Marie pair up, leaving Harry and Sally to do the same much, much later. The play Arms and the Man starts with the heroine engaged to a soldier and her two servants engaged to each other. An enemy soldier takes refuge in the heroine's bedroom, shaking up everything until the heroine ends up with the enemy soldier and her original fiancé ends up with the female servant. The male servant drops out of the geometry, revealing himself to care much more about money than love. In other works, such as the opera Cosi Fan Tutti and the film Enchanted, the two pairs actually switch partners.
Possibilities for cross-flirtation/cross-courting are greatly enhanced if you go from a quartet to a sextet or an octet like Cotillion. Jane Austen's Emma is an excellent example. Emma is romantically linked to Mr. Elton, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightley. Poor Harriet is linked to Mr. Martin, Mr. Elton, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightley. Jane Fairfax is romantically linked to Frank Churchill and suspected to be romantically linked to Mr. Knightley and Mr. Dixon. Mansfield Park is similar. Henry Crawford flirts with Maria Bertram, Julia Bertram, and Fanny Price. Edmund Bertram courts both Mary Crawford and Fanny Price. Of course, cross-courting brings in a much greater potential for fan disagreements with the authorial pairings and the possibility of ship debates. There are many people who think that Fanny Price would have been better off with Henry Crawford and quite a few who think Frank Churchill was a better match for Emma. The Jo/Professor Bhaer and Laurie/Amy pairings in Little Women have also left many unhappy readers shipping Jo/Laurie or Jo/nobody instead.
The quartet/sextet/octet/etc... pattern is deeply heteronormative, as the players line up girl/boy girl/boy girl/boy in breeding pairs like animals marching on board the ark. However, it doesn't have to be. For instance, Reginald Hill in his novel Pictures of Perfection--which is a deliberate homage to Jane Austen--includes three heterosexual pairings mostly resolved or revealed somewhat unexpectedly at the end of the novel, as is suitable for a mystery. The main pairing, however, is a homosexual one. An important ongoing supporting character in the series bickers with another character throughout the book and the reader gradually realizes what that means (or, if they don't, is quite surprised when they get together at the end). In the realm of fanfiction, we see many mixed quartets, including thousands of Harry/Draco-Ron/Hermione and James/Lily-Remus/Sirius fics.
Obviously, Jo Rowling employs a quartet geometry in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The lead character Newt and his chance-met friend Jacob meet two sisters, Tina and Queenie. The supporting/comic pair Jacob and Queenie start flirting immediately, leaving the lead/serious pair Newt and Tina to court at a much shyer but more action-filled pace.
It looks like Rowling went to quite a lot of trouble to prevent viewers from shipping "wrong" in her movie series (at least when it comes to het pairs). For one thing, we have all known since we first heard of the movie that Newt Scamander will end up marrying and growing old with a woman named Porpentina, who is obviously the Porpentina "Tina" Goldstein in the movies. But that's not all she did. Newt and Tina meet when Jacob is not around and they have an extended sequence together before they get back together with Jacob. Then, when Jacob and Queenie meet, Newt is looking out the window uninterested and Tina busies herself cleaning up some clothes and taking off her shoes. After that, Rowling breaks them up into the "proper" couples repeatedly: drinking in the speakeasy, when they are escaping from MACUSA, and during the climactic final battle.
And all this has worked perfectly. I haven't seen any criticism of the two romances in Fantastic Beasts. On Archive of Our Own, there are 855 Tina/Newt fics, 538 Queenie/Jacob fics (it surprises me that the number is this low, because I fell for this pairing HARD), and 0 Queenie/Newt or Tina/Jacob fics. I did find two or three Newt/Queenie fics over at fanfiction.net, but they are greatly outnumbered by Newtina (97) and Jakweenie (36). As in the Potter fandom, slash ships are the most popular at AO3:
- 1473 Credence Barebone/Original Percival Graves
- 1268 Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
- 855 Tina Goldstein/Newt Scamander
- 538 Queenie Goldstein/Jacob Kowalski
- 478 Credence Barebone/Percival Graves!Gellert Grindelwald
- 437 Credence Barebone/Newt Scamander
- 188 Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald
- 94 Original Percival Graves/Theseus Scamander
This is hardly surprising, considering the seductive way Graves treats Credence.
Rowling may be still smarting from criticism of her bickering lovers in Harry Potter, or, at least, she has not created another such pairing since. Jacob and Queenie are extremely sweet to each other at all times. Newt and Tina were set up in a situation that could have been confrontational, but Newt's personality prevents it from being combative, no matter what Tina does or says. Newt is more likely to mumble something and try to slide out of the room than to argue or fight. However, it is possible that the introduction of Newt's old friend Leta Lestrange in the next movie may prompt jealousy and possibly even combativeness from Tina. We shall see.
Though they are extremely common in romance novels, musicals, and comedies, I believe Rowling made an unusual move in setting up a two-couple quartet as the protagonists in an action-adventure movie, or at least I am having a hard time thinking of examples. Frozen has two females and two males, but only one romantic couple. If you stretch a bit, you could count Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which has Jack Sparrow and Penelope Cruz's character, as well as the mermaid and the missionary, but it is not a tidy quartet. Can anyone remind me of any examples?
It is done more often in adventure and mystery books. Lois Bujold does it in the novel Captain Vorpatril's Alliance with Ivan/Tej and By/Rish, and also in The Curse of Chalion, with Cazaril/Betriz and Iselle/Bergon. Elizabeth Peters does it in Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first Amelia Peabody novel.
Other geometries are much more popular for action/adventure stories, including the romantic pair (see the previous post, plus Bonnie and Clyde, The Hunger Games, Beauty and the Beast, and many more), the non-romantic pair (the old man and the boy in Up, Merida and her mother in Brave, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, Sherlock and Watson, Thelma and Louise, The Shawshank Redemption, Paper Moon, Rush Hour, and Men in Black), and the ever-popular "lots of men and one token woman" geometry (many, many movies, including The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Phantom Menace, and the rebooted Star Trek). There is also the "lots of men and no women" geometry as seen in the first Hobbit movie and many war movies.
However, possibly the most popular geometric arrangement for action/adventure and other "plotty" movies is the same arrangement Rowling chose for her Harry Potter series: the taut and dramatic triangle of the trio.
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Pairs
--
Part Four: Trios
Part Five: Conclusion