Avistew

I was confused for the same reason. I didn't read "child-like" as "looking like a child" but "childish". I was confused why Pandora thought he meant "looking like a child" at first.

I failed to recognize Pandora. I thought it was a new character, or maybe Grace. I'm terrible at recognizing characters >.> At least there are commentaries to help me with that.

I got the impression that she cared about him not getting hurt because she had started to like him, not because she cared that much about everyone. Either way, I'm rooting for them. They're already cute together. I hope Adrian's father is going to fall in love with her too and not something darker, but with this comic things don't usually get very dark, they mostly get very cute, so I'm not too worried.

Ooooh I thought that voice wanted them to go play the game Bastion. I didn't realise there is a character named that. (My only exposure to Overwatch has been these NP comics and I haven't kept a tight track of the names if Bastion was mentioned before).

I didn't recognize Rich or Larry at all until I read the commentary. Oops?

Gandalf says that in Lord of the Rings, so it's a famous wizard sentence. She's mispronouncing it because she's a baby.

Interesting. As always, I love the little explanatory drawings Dan uses. Grace as a Gandalf baby is adorable.

I see. Well, I'll be happy to give more details about any of my relationships if you're interested My boyfriends are definitely pretty different from one another. I also used to date only one of them, then grew close to the other, so the relationships are of different lengths as well. All three guys have things in common two, though, for instance they're all nerds and they're all programmers.

Actually, I hadn't posted since your previous post. Do you maybe mean pfc?

I was using the word "relationship" for "romantic relationship". There doesn't need to be sex at all (many poly people are asexual, and some of those don't have sex). But I was indeed not including other forms of inter connectivity such as close friendships for that purpose, because I was still responding to the initial definition by Dan. Obviously, Grace, Tedd and Sarah are close regardless of who is "in a relationship" with whom. But only Grace and Tedd are "in a relationship" per that definition. Dan is saying he won't answer about the possibility of Grace, Tedd and Sarah being in a relationship, and if he included things like close friendship that would be a moot point because they would already be in a relationship from that definition (as well as the rest of the main characters, as they're all close friends). That does not mean that people cannot be extremely close to their metamours. I agree that it can be an amazing kind of relationship (this time using the word without the "romantic" aspect) to be close friends with someone and both be in a relationship with the same person (or people). My point was never meant to be "What Dan is talking about doesn't describe any polyamorous relationship, ever" but "What Dan is talking about only describe some poly relationships, and not a huge subset of them". I was merely trying to express how absurd it would be to say that in every polyamorous network, everyone can consider themselves to be in the same relationship. Many networks are complicated and involve people who, while aware of one another's existence, aren't close or may never have met. I don't think those networks are inherently less stable, by the way. I think the more relationships are involved, the higher the chance that one will end, but I don't think those relationships being spread out rather than condensed make it inherently unstable. Not everyone follows the relationship escalator or see living together, having a marriage-like ceremony, raising children, sharing finances, etc as things to aspire for. Being solopoly does not mean your relationships are come and go, there are solopoly people who have been in the same few relationships for decades, they just don't have a need to live together, among other things. And I think living together is one of those things that you're thinking about when you're thinking people who are in a committed relationship with the same person who have to know each other well. That's certainly true if they're living together. Anyway, it seems like you were not arguing that this kind of network doesn't exist, but that not all networks are like this. That's certainly true. There is a huge variety. I myself am part of a closer network, and that's my preferred dynamic. But I also know it's not the "one true way" or something. As for poly vs open, I think those are two different axes. A poly relationship can be open or closed (a closed poly relationship would be polyfidelity, where nobody is "allowed" to seek new partners) and an open relationship can be poly or not (it's poly if romantic relationships are involved, it's not if only sexual relationships are allowed). But there is an overlap between the two, although I agree that generally speaking, the connotations of "open" are more casual due to how the word is perceived by the general population (as in, people generally have in mind the non-poly version, were only sex is acceptable). Of course, someone can be poly (have several romantic partners) and also have casual sex partners with no romance involved. They're not suddenly less poly if they have casual sex. You can be interested in one, the other, or both. (Or neither, of course).

Hello there, Old Hack I've just barely come back. I've been wanting to and then polyamory got mentioned in the comic and I figured I just had to It's nice seeing you again <3

Oops. Well at least I have an excuse for mixing the two of them

Ellen looks pretty surprised to be there Dan did say he would post a rectification page, he did not disappoint.

That sounds like a weird way for me to say it. I'm part of a triad, but that triad is made of three relationships, two of which include me. I'm also married, which is another relationship. So, three relationships for me, out of a network that includes 4 different relationships at the moment. Saying the triad is a single relationship because it has its own name sounds to me a bit like saying a class is a single relationship or something. You can have a word that describes a group of people without meaning it's all one relationship. Anyway. I understand the idea that some people will consider that if a bunch of people are all in a relationship with everyone else, then it's one big relationship. Let's say that's true (although I think some people would phrase it that way and some would not). But the most common configurations in polyamory are Vs and Ns and the like. So it's exactly "one person having two separate partners" in a lot of cases. Dan probably thought that only a subcategory of polyamory was called polyamory, which happens. Triads are represented extremely often in the media despite being comparatively rarer as a configuration (again, one big reason is that if there are more than two people involved, the maximum number of straight people when everyone is involved with everyone is 1. But heterosexuality is the more common orientation.) What I meant was that I couldn't say with certainty it never happens, because I've seen weirder. Not that the two things are exactly the same. No, I'm part of three relationships. My network, taken in its entirety, is what I call a P. You have to imagine the loop of the P is actually a triangle, though, rather than a half circle. It's kind of traditional to use letters but there wasn't one perfectly suited to this dynamic, so I improvised. I have three male partners. I'm married to one of them and the other two are married to each other. My husband currently has no other partners, but he used to have a girlfriend. My boyfriends have two partners each (me and each other) and nobody else. So it's a relatively small network. Anyway, as I was saying above, it's not that I have a problem with people saying a triad is a single relationship, it's that it's pretty common for people not to all date one another. The reason people use the word "polycule" is because usually, the network takes weird shapes with branches everywhere, like a family tree of sorts, with people who don't all know each other (because you're not going to spend that much time with the partner of a partner of a partner of a partner) and so it's unlikely that they would consider themselves to be in a relationship with each other.

That's news to me. Even when you' re in a triad or a quad or something, all the poly people I know consider each relationship its own thing (and sometimes extra ones for combinations of more than two people. For instance, people a triad may consider that the triad consists of four relationships: three dyads and one trio). While there are words to refer to the whole network such as, well, " network" or "polycule", those consists of multiple relationships. Heck, several of the definitions for polyamory (including Merriam-Webster) include the words "several/more than one romantic relationships at the same time". I'm not saying nobody ever says that it's all one big relationship (heck, I know couples who have a shared Facebook profile and never say "I" but "we" to everything, I can imagine a nonmonogamous equivalent to that), but that doesn't seem to be the standard to me. Even if it were, the phrasing here is misleading. But at any rate I contacted Dan on twitter and he said he'd clarify in the next page and that he's aware that his definition was inaccurate. I agree. There is a broad range in polyamorous relationships. For instance, I have a husband, and I'm also part of a triad with a married couple. People tend to assume I'm bi, but I'm straight. My boyfriends are the ones who are bi. And even though we're all really close to one another (although my husband is straight and not romantically involved with either of my boyfriends) I can't imagine saying I'm in one relationship rather than in three.