Honor/Hamish/Emily

Galactic Sapper wrote:One of the unspoken corollaries of severely expanded life span like prolong is that the probability of dying violently goes up a lot. Even with no other changes, a 1 in 10,000 chance of any given person dying of accident or hostile action means about 0.7% chance of a person dying violently in a 70 year lifespan, vs 3% for a 300 year life span, trending toward 100% the longer the lifespan is (thinking Poul Anderson's Boat of a Million Years).

Ie, prolong life boils down to long, boring stretches of years interrupted by short bouts of violent screaming.

Galactic Sapper wrote:One of the unspoken corollaries of severely expanded life span like prolong is that the probability of dying violently goes up a lot. Even with no other changes, a 1 in 10,000 chance of any given person dying of accident or hostile action means about 0.7% chance of a person dying violently in a 70 year lifespan, vs 3% for a 300 year life span, trending toward 100% the longer the lifespan is (thinking Poul Anderson's Boat of a Million Years).

I've often mentioned to others that death statistics are skewed. As we cure diseases or find ways to "save" children which would have died in child birth, we continually skew the numbers of the effects of a disease on humanity.

If child illnesses go down, the number of children who survive with genetic predispositions to heart disease, stroke, cancers, etc goes up. Just because you kept a kid from dying from the mumps, just means there is one more kid running around with a weak immune system; guess what, he'll probably get pneumonia, or else he will die from cancer or another disease early, skewing those #s.

And since EVERYONE dies from something, with everything we cure, the stats for every other disease goes up - so a fewer # of causes still equal 100% of the human pie. And since accidents are one of the reasons people die, without other causes, stastically, the chances will continue to rise.

Joat42 wrote:long, boring stretches of years interrupted by short bouts of violent screaming.

...Wait, were we still talking about marriage?

locarno24 wrote:

Joat42 wrote:long, boring stretches of years interrupted by short bouts of violent screaming.

...Wait, were we still talking about marriage?

If the shoe fits...

These kinds of conversations really annoy me. On the one hand, many of you constantly show an impossible ability to become the character, to place yourself in the character's shoes. OTOH, you accuse me of capital offenses ranging from preconceived notions to failing to read the book, because I can do exactly that, walk in a character's shoes. I am constantly berated for exposing the human element.

I'm hearing notions like. . .Honorverse canon and Honorverse values. It's enough to make me want to puke. It doesn't matter people. Five thousand years into the future will not change human nature. And it hasn't changed it in the Honorverse either.

As a collective, people may come to accept completely divergent values. But, as individuals, they remain the same. Why? Because of. . .individuality.

Humans all over the Honorverse may have come to accept the unacceptable by today's standards. But that does not mean there aren't others whose values remain the same and old fashioned. The very fact that the sanctity of marriage still exists proves that. Look how different Honor is from her mother, and how different Allison's mores diverge from the average Beowulfan.

Emily and Hamish entered into a traditional marriage under the blessings of God in a traditional church. Just like many of us. Therefore, their values are more traditional.

But. As usual. Many of you are ignoring the human element altogether. You seem to think that "Canon" is the fairy godmother who makes people inhuman. Please.

Poor Emily. Life really threw her lots of curves and hard balls that slide right past most of you. And, by inference, most of you seem to be saying -- indeed are saying, whether you realize it or not -- that you would be quite peachy with the idea of allowing the same sex in your marriage. Even if the conditions are the same. Let's take you men for instance . . .

If you are a married man, you would welcome, without jealousy, another man into your marriage. It would be okay because you're in a wheelchair. A wheelchair made in the future. There's a button on it that inhibits jealousy.

Besides, life has thrown you lots of fast balls and curves. You're as strong willed as Emily. Strong willed seems to give you super powers, hear most of you tell it. Super, inhuman, powers. Just like Emily, life has taken away your biggest passion and livelihood. You are paralyzed and don't regenerate like most people. You can no longer make love with the woman you love. On top of that, life brings another man into the picture. Oh, you've had lots of time to "get used to it" because you've known for quite some time she was lifting her skirt around town here and there. But you love her, and you sympathize with her needs, so you look away and let it go. You turn the other cheek. See what turning the other cheek gets you? It gets the other cheek slapped. Hard.

Before you know it, she's married to him, and you're married to him. Emily probably took more time just to think about getting married the first time before she actually accepted a long engagement. How much elapsed time before being presented with Honor marrying Hamish marrying her? And all of it complicated with the human element of saving face amid the embarrassment of the tabloids upon her legacy of being a beautiful, accomplished actress with a fairytale wedding which everyone adores and respects. Emily was reduced to salvaging a little self-respect, dignity and solving the professional and social problems caused by her husband's infidelity. And she had until the clock strikes 12.

How much time are you going to get with your wife now? She has a passionate, physical relationship with a new man. Let's say out of a 3 day weekend, a rare 3 day weekend, you normally got 2 of those days, minus time for sleeping and the normal demands of life. Now that another man is in the picture, how much of that time is available for you? How much time does your wife spend stroking her lovely hands across your face, like she used to do? And how much of that quality time is spent stealing furtive glances at her new lover, leaving you to try and ignore it. How much time spent with you is simply going thru the motions out of obligation, instead of love?

I'm not going to bother playing back the many varied sounds and cries of lovemaking that you stumble upon. It'll make you kill over in your sleep. Most of you are as honest with yourselves as a box of politicians.

I believe that a couple of people on here are really projecting their own rigid beliefs on to the discussion.
My wife's family had a successful menage au tois about 70 years ago. Her uncle, aunt and step uncle. Lasted decades.
Ancient Greek aristocracy males had a male life partner, and female "brood mares" to produce children.
In western countries formal marriage between a male and a female from the lower classes is a relatively new concept. The aristocracy owned property so had to regulate it by marriage contracts. This often led to child marriages.
I personally know of a couple of "open marriages" whose members are permitted to wander.
When I worked for our Defence Department we had a recurring problem with our staff who were posted to the US on exchange or training. Many, possibly the majority, were not officially married, some had gay partners. Yet to live on base in the US they had to have a marriage certificate. There were even threats of criminal adultery charges. So we had to quickly arrange shotgun weddings, to many's disgust.

It is amusing that RFC who is reputably a lay Baptist preacher, has no problem with this concept, and went to some lengths to legitimise the marriage in question. If he is OK enough to actually create the scenario, perhaps we should accept it.

Daryl wrote:I believe that a couple of people on here are really projecting their own rigid beliefs on to the discussion.
My wife's family had a successful menage au tois about 70 years ago. Her uncle, aunt and step uncle. Lasted decades.
Ancient Greek aristocracy males had a male life partner, and female "brood mares" to produce children.
In western countries formal marriage between a male and a female from the lower classes is a relatively new concept. The aristocracy owned property so had to regulate it by marriage contracts. This often led to child marriages.
I personally know of a couple of "open marriages" whose members are permitted to wander.
When I worked for our Defence Department we had a recurring problem with our staff who were posted to the US on exchange or training. Many, possibly the majority, were not officially married, some had gay partners. Yet to live on base in the US they had to have a marriage certificate. There were even threats of criminal adultery charges. So we had to quickly arrange shotgun weddings, to many's disgust.

It is amusing that RFC who is reputably a lay Baptist preacher, has no problem with this concept, and went to some lengths to legitimise the marriage in question. If he is OK enough to actually create the scenario, perhaps we should accept it.

No one ever said life doesn't always supply a heaping helping of scatter points and skewed data to plot on the graph.

Even in the Honorverse, the author can't remove the fact that his characters are human. Neither can anyone else.

cthia wrote:These kinds of conversations really annoy me. On the one hand, many of you constantly show an impossible ability to become the character, to place yourself in the character's shoes. OTOH, you accuse me of capital offenses ranging from preconceived notions to failing to read the book, because I can do exactly that, walk in a character's shoes. I am constantly berated for exposing the human element.

You only think you are "walking in a character's shoes" which is evidenced by the simple fact that you project feelings on characters which has no basis in the books.

We can only judge the characters from the information available in the books. We can speculate what other things they are feeling but [i]we cannot[/b] with certainty say that "character X actually felt like this and that means character Y is a bad" which you frequently do and that has very little to do with the "human element" and more with your notions how the characters should feel.

The "attack" on Hamish and Honor in "defense" of Emily is something that's purely born from peoples notion of what's appropriate or not and it doesn't take Emily's feelings into account. Anyone saying they are taking Emily's feelings into account and at the same time attacking Honor and Hamish isn't, as evidenced by what Emily herself says in the books.

What is more important? Three people being unhappy or three people gaining happiness. It's a very simple question with a very simple answer, which makes any discussion about whats appropriate or not extremely superfluous.

I should add that no one has ever said or suggested that Emily wholeheartedly agreed with everything that happened, but judging by what she said and did in the books, she chose the path that led to more happiness for everyone involved.

Joat42 wrote:

cthia wrote:These kinds of conversations really annoy me. On the one hand, many of you constantly show an impossible ability to become the character, to place yourself in the character's shoes. OTOH, you accuse me of capital offenses ranging from preconceived notions to failing to read the book, because I can do exactly that, walk in a character's shoes. I am constantly berated for exposing the human element.

You only think you are "walking in a character's shoes" which is evidenced by the simple fact that you project feelings on characters which has no basis in the books.

We can only judge the characters from the information available in the books. We can speculate what other things they are feeling but [i]we cannot[/b] with certainty say that "character X actually felt like this and that means character Y is a bad" which you frequently do and that has very little to do with the "human element" and more with your notions how the characters should feel.

The "attack" on Hamish and Honor in "defense" of Emily is something that's purely born from peoples notion of what's appropriate or not and it doesn't take Emily's feelings into account. Anyone saying they are taking Emily's feelings into account and at the same time attacking Honor and Hamish isn't, as evidenced by what Emily herself says in the books.

What is more important? Three people being unhappy or three people gaining happiness. It's a very simple question with a very simple answer, which makes any discussion about whats appropriate or not extremely superfluous.

I should add that no one has ever said or suggested that Emily wholeheartedly agreed with everything that happened, but judging by what she said and did in the books, she chose the path that led to more happiness for everyone involved.

Now we're getting somewhere. Of course she didn't agree with everything that happened. The question is where to draw the line. I draw it at the invasion of her marriage by a Sphinxian body snatcher. YMMV.

I agree with your final argument. She chose the path that led to more happiness for everyone else involved. Not exclusively for herself.

You only think you are "walking in a character's shoes" which is evidenced by the simple fact that you project feelings on characters which has no basis in the books.

Oh really? Isn't Emily's domestic help, who has known and been by her side for decades also part of the characters? Didn't they themselves also have a problem with it?

Which implies that Emily wasn't exactly jumping up and down about the whole sordid mess in their presence, now was she?

"Oh wow, my husband is going to bring another woman into our marriage, even though I didn't sign up for this years ago. But I think that's wonderful! Don't you too, guys?"

She wasn't exactly dancing a jig around her domestic help, Trusted help that becomes very close to you after awhile. And in her crippled condition, I'm willing to bet the farm that she would dance every opportunity she'd get.

Please, I'm fresh out of swampland, but I do have a C-130 on its way!