Sedoretus: It's just as complicated as it sounds, but aren't most marriages?
Some people in tumblr fandom have declared July 1 polyshipping day, a celebration of all sorts of ships involving more than two people. I wrote some meta to post over there, but I thought I'd post it here too to take advantage of LJ's ability to have a conversation in the comments.
July 1 is polyshipping day, so this seems like a great opportunity to talk about my favorite underused polyshipping trope: the sedoretu.
So what's a sedoretu anyway? It's a type of four-person marriage invented by SF author Ursula LeGuin, mentioned in her short stories "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," "Unchosen Love," and "Mountain Ways," all set on a planet called O. On O, all people belong to one of two halves of the population, or moieties*. The two moieties are called the Morning and the Evening. Children inherit their mother's moiety. Sex between people of the same moiety is regarded as incest, even if they aren't close biological relatives. Relationships between people of any gender are fine as long as one is Morning and the other Evening. When it comes time to settle down, the unit of marriage, the sedoretu, consists of four people: a man and a woman from Morning and a man and a woman from Evening. Each person is expected to have sex with both the man and the woman from the opposite moiety, but of course not with the spouse from the same moiety. The quote in this post's title ("It's just as complicated as it sounds, but aren't most marriages?") comes from LeGuin's introduction to the concept in "Mountain Ways."
*I initially assumed that the word moiety was made up for the stories, but google informed me that it's an actual word meaning "one of two equal parts." There are real cultures, primarily among the native peoples of Australia and North America, that divide society into moieties, though to my knowledge none of them use four-person sedoretu marriages.
A society with sedoretus sounds outrageously complicated for the people who have to find the right mix of marriage partners, but it leads to all sorts of fertile ground for a fanfic writer. Got a favorite character with two potential romantic interests and also a platonic life partner? Maybe you can combine all four of them for a sedoretu! Love the sort of fic where a pair pines after each other for ages and then finally gets together joyfully? You get so much more pining and so much more eventual joy when you've got to wrangle four people into Admitting Feelings! Got a four-person team? Perfect sedoretu! I love that the sedoretu values both sexual relationships and deep but non-sexual relationships. Sedoretus are well known enough in fandom to have a fanlore page and some search results on AO3, but there is plenty of room for more of this trope. If fandom can embrace a concept like the Omegaverse, I can certainly imagine sedoretu fusions taking off.
While a traditional sedoretu is two men and two women, the people of O are willing to be flexible on the subject of gender as long as the marriage has two Morning and two Evening people (see "Mountain Ways"). You can make your sedoretu with whatever gender mix suits your characters. (This is probably the time for the anecdote about the time I read a sedoretu fic that included an illicit sexual relationship between two characters I normally ship but who in this fic were of the same moiety. I nearly nope-d out of there thinking "Too kinky for me!!!" Then I laughed at myself for getting so squicked by the violation of a taboo from an imaginary culture; apparently the worldbuilding in the original stories and the various sedoretu fics I've read was strong enough that sex with a person of the same moiety set off my incest squick.)
I've got loads of sedoretu ships and headcanons from various fandoms that I want to squee about. I'm including a letter M or E with each character, designating Morning and Evening, to make clear which characters I think ought to be banging. (Recall that Morning/Evening pairings are sexual, while Morning/Morning and Evening/Evening are platonic.) Assigning characters to Morning or Evening was done by considering my gut feelings about whether any one character resonated particularly strongly with the concepts of morning or evening, and assigning the others from that based on which relationships I want to be sexual. By the way, any writers out there who feel inspired should feel free to use these as prompts.
July 1 is polyshipping day, so this seems like a great opportunity to talk about my favorite underused polyshipping trope: the sedoretu.
So what's a sedoretu anyway? It's a type of four-person marriage invented by SF author Ursula LeGuin, mentioned in her short stories "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," "Unchosen Love," and "Mountain Ways," all set on a planet called O. On O, all people belong to one of two halves of the population, or moieties*. The two moieties are called the Morning and the Evening. Children inherit their mother's moiety. Sex between people of the same moiety is regarded as incest, even if they aren't close biological relatives. Relationships between people of any gender are fine as long as one is Morning and the other Evening. When it comes time to settle down, the unit of marriage, the sedoretu, consists of four people: a man and a woman from Morning and a man and a woman from Evening. Each person is expected to have sex with both the man and the woman from the opposite moiety, but of course not with the spouse from the same moiety. The quote in this post's title ("It's just as complicated as it sounds, but aren't most marriages?") comes from LeGuin's introduction to the concept in "Mountain Ways."
*I initially assumed that the word moiety was made up for the stories, but google informed me that it's an actual word meaning "one of two equal parts." There are real cultures, primarily among the native peoples of Australia and North America, that divide society into moieties, though to my knowledge none of them use four-person sedoretu marriages.
A society with sedoretus sounds outrageously complicated for the people who have to find the right mix of marriage partners, but it leads to all sorts of fertile ground for a fanfic writer. Got a favorite character with two potential romantic interests and also a platonic life partner? Maybe you can combine all four of them for a sedoretu! Love the sort of fic where a pair pines after each other for ages and then finally gets together joyfully? You get so much more pining and so much more eventual joy when you've got to wrangle four people into Admitting Feelings! Got a four-person team? Perfect sedoretu! I love that the sedoretu values both sexual relationships and deep but non-sexual relationships. Sedoretus are well known enough in fandom to have a fanlore page and some search results on AO3, but there is plenty of room for more of this trope. If fandom can embrace a concept like the Omegaverse, I can certainly imagine sedoretu fusions taking off.
While a traditional sedoretu is two men and two women, the people of O are willing to be flexible on the subject of gender as long as the marriage has two Morning and two Evening people (see "Mountain Ways"). You can make your sedoretu with whatever gender mix suits your characters. (This is probably the time for the anecdote about the time I read a sedoretu fic that included an illicit sexual relationship between two characters I normally ship but who in this fic were of the same moiety. I nearly nope-d out of there thinking "Too kinky for me!!!" Then I laughed at myself for getting so squicked by the violation of a taboo from an imaginary culture; apparently the worldbuilding in the original stories and the various sedoretu fics I've read was strong enough that sex with a person of the same moiety set off my incest squick.)
I've got loads of sedoretu ships and headcanons from various fandoms that I want to squee about. I'm including a letter M or E with each character, designating Morning and Evening, to make clear which characters I think ought to be banging. (Recall that Morning/Evening pairings are sexual, while Morning/Morning and Evening/Evening are platonic.) Assigning characters to Morning or Evening was done by considering my gut feelings about whether any one character resonated particularly strongly with the concepts of morning or evening, and assigning the others from that based on which relationships I want to be sexual. By the way, any writers out there who feel inspired should feel free to use these as prompts.
- Sherlock (BBC): Sherlock (E)/John (M)/Mary (E)/Molly (M). I initially decided I wanted to post about sedoretus because I realized that this is my heart's ultimate Sherlock ship. It's got Johnlock! It keeps the tiny blond cuddly deadly sharpshooters together! All the hotness of that Sherlolly kiss from The Empty Hearse no longer confined to Anderson's brain! Molly and Mary sharing blouses with whimsical prints, slightly macabre senses of humor, and lots of sex! Sherlock and Mary communicating in glances and half-finished deductions, accepting each other hard edges and all! John and Molly desperately trying to enforce the house rules about No Human Body Parts Or Explosives In the Kitchen! I apparently lose the ability to hold back exclamation points when talking about this ship, because it is just hits all of my buttons so well. For those fans who aren't keen on Sherlolly, you could substitute Janine or Irene for Molly and still have a super satisfying sedoretu.
- Doctor Who: Doctor (E)/Rose (M)/Donna (E)/Jack (M). I normally ship Doctor/Rose/Jack as an OT3, but Donna is so fantastic as the Doctor's platonic best friend that I hate to leave her out of the TARDIS, and making Donna just the fourth wheel feels a bit unfair. A sedoretu keeps my favored ships of Doctor/Rose and Doctor/Jack, lets Donna and Captain Jack get into each other's pants (which I'm sure would please them both to no end), and provides the intriguing prospect of Rose/Donna. I could easily see Jack and Rose as cuddly platonic BFFs rather than a sexual relationship.
- Leverage: Parker (E)/Hardison (M)/Eliot (E)/Sophie (M). It's the whole team together! Except Nate. Nate's an asshole, bless his heart. He doesn't get to be part of this marriage. But really, as perfect as the OT3 of Parker/Hardison/Eliot already is, picture the hotness that would be Sophie/Eliot and Sophie/Parker.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: There are so many great possibilities here, but I think my favorite may be to put the main Cap 2 gang together with a sedoretu of Steve (M)/Bucky (E)/Natasha (M)/Sam (E). I am especially intrigued by what happened to our heroes whose identities were stolen to mold them into assassins in a world where one's moiety is such a fundamental part of personhood. Does Natasha even know her moiety? Where in the process of recovering himself does Bucky remember his? Alternatively, a sedoretu of Clint (E)/Laura Barton (M)/Natasha (E)/Bruce (M) would make Age of Ultron more satisfactory. Or for a fusion of the MCU and the 616 comics, Clint (M)/Natasha (E)/Kate Bishop (M)/Darcy Lewis (E). Or in an AU where Steve and Bucky survive the war without getting iced or brainwashed, imagine the perfection of Steve (M)/Peggy (E)/Angie (M)/Bucky (E). (Or imagine the heartbreak of Peggy, Steve, and Bucky planning on getting married when the war ends and they can find the right Morning woman, but Peggy loses Steve and Bucky and only then finally meets the perfect girl.) Over in the Daredevil corner of the MCU, a sedoretu of Matt (E)/Foggy (M)/Karen (E)/Claire (M) fits the way I see the characters' relationships so well.
- Merlin: Merlin (M)/Arthur (E)/Gwen (M)/Morgana (E). The great thing about sedoretus is that if you started shipping an OT4 during early seasons of the show and then later found out that two of the characters are half siblings, you can still ship them all getting married because the two siblings are the same moiety and thus never get it on. Take that, canon. Also, my favorite sedoretu fic is from this ship: An Ever-Fixed Mark by imperfectcircle.