Collapsing Marriage Stories

Stop me when you think this sounds familiar.

Four friends who’ve known each other for years.

They’re married. Brother/Woman, Sister/Man. Dinners every week. Holidays together. Kids. The whole nine yards.

The Woman and the Man are the main characters.

She’s a prosecutor. He’s a high-ranking cop with family money. Brother’s Number Two in the family business. Sister’s a newspaper section editor. Big houses. Select schools.

Late thirties. Not young. Not old. All attractive, of course.

The marriages aren’t okay. Brother/Woman are on “birthday only” sex. Sister wants to hold a big new year’s bash: live band, celebrities, top politicians, etc. etc. Man’s… unsure.

Man’s arrested one of his guys for police brutality… one kid in a coma, one kid mostly okay, wife’s memory’s iffy, husband permanent brain damage.

It’s a popular guy. In the department. With the public. With Sister. The family’s from a politically unvalued class.

Woman’s prosecuting. Gets death threats. Gets attacked… it’s bad, but it’s a warning.

Man assigns protection officers.

The stress of the case is making her ill…

…

The specifics might not sound that familiar, but it’s a pretty classic sounding set-up, right?

You’re probably thinking it’s a miniseries.

Things weren’t fine to start with but then there’s this case with the crooked cop. Man and Woman, working closer together than they’ve been for years. He’s got to look after her safety… the professional and personal concerns getting even more blurred after the Attack. She’s independent, but unhappy to start with. Doesn’t want the protection officers. He says they can have breaks when he meets Woman.

Brother and Sister just don’t seem right for these public servants. He, a private business executive. She, writing and chasing headlines.

And everyone’s busy. But Man and Woman have this case…

It still sounds vaguely familiar, right? Something with great production values. A few big name actors. Probably for Man and Woman + a few others. Maybe even all four of them. Or maybe they’ve got key side-characters… Woman’s boss, the politicians, the crooked cop… and they’re the big names. You know the sort of thing, yeah? Probably think you know how it plays out, right?

There’ll be a vague attempt to save the marriage.

There is. Brother gives Woman opera tickets. Man wants to go. And then Brother confesses… it was mother-in-law’s idea, invites Man to make it a double date. Sister doesn’t want to go… until she’s told she can dress up.

There’ll be moments of near-affair, you’re sure.

And with good reason. There are! Provocative jogs with deeply intimate conversations and flirtatious ends. Man and Woman’s exclusive contact with the family the cop attacked creating meetings they don’t keep their spouses up to date with. A strange dinner party which ends in a kiss that was planned, but then Man and Woman kiss again. And then Brother and Sister come down the stairs.

There’ll be some school/kids related drama, no doubt.

Right! Again! It’s a Christmas play… sort of. All the kids dress up as heroes from history. Someone’s gonna leave early. You know it.

And the new year’s bash comes about half way through, right? Everything’s going to come to a head. The near affair, always on the verge of starting… will be interrupted, probably by a protection officer (since there are too many people to justify the “she’s with me, it’ll be fine” argument)… you’re just not sure if it’s before or after it gets anywhere?

It gets pretty far.

But not all the way.

Man tries to find her downstairs… but he can’t.

And then there’ll be the trial…

You don’t know how it ends, though.

• bittersweet? the two marriages destroyed, the relationship with the in-laws/previous spouses ruined, the kids (all five of them) in a state of turmoil… but the Man and Woman can be happy together?
• maybe it’ll go the other way… the affair never starts, and the Man and Woman remain unhappy, but everyone else is okay

You’re not even sure if that’s what you’ll remember. Perhaps it’ll swing on the case? But if it did, which way would it go? Blast! Still can’t tell…

• a successful conviction, but the exercise of getting it destroys the marriages anyway… and with the ruins of their lives around them… and maybe they were leaning into kiss before it went black
• pretty much the same, but they don’t get the conviction… but now you wonder if maybe one or the other of Man and Woman would take the law into their own hands (sequel hook!?)
• or, maybe, it’s kind of both… they’re on the verge of going the whole way and you know it’s going the whole way since the marriages are destroyed… but someone knocks on the door and says the jury’s in so out they go… and when they close her office door they cut to black

…

I’m probably making whatever I’m talking about seem pretty formulaic. And it is because all these things follow pretty much the same formula. But that’s not why we’re interested, is it?

We don’t know how they’ll end. They might follow a standard pattern, but they have lots of available endings. If the characters aren’t cops and lawyers, they’re probably doctors, right? And instead of a trial… someone’s gonna be sick or there’s going to be an operation…

And they’re going to be cops and lawyers or doctors. Sometimes they’re writers. Sometimes some politicians get to be main characters. It’s just how it works.

And, of course, it’s very well made. It’s always easier to keep going when it just feels like quality.

…but what if I told you the main characters were called Harry, Ron, Ginny and Hermione?

Well, as a reader of culture, you’d know I’d be talking about the great but unfinished fanfiction Unlike A Sister.

I mean, it’s a damn shame it’ll probably never be finished (started in 2010, last updated March, 2015… time of review? Jan 2019) but if you’re willing to accept that it only gets as far as the New Year’s Party, a couple of pretty substantial deviations from canon setting (the author is clearly American it clearly affects a lot) and so on… it’s worth the read.

And, yes, I know I kind of just spoiled it all… but did I? There’s a little beyond the Party. And the author tells you that it’s (a) Epilogue Compliant and (b) Harmony all the way… right at the start!

Of course, this reflects the way fanfics work. Usually you’re looking to see a particular conceit executed. What would Harmony look like if it has to acknowledge the Epilogue in Deathly Hallows? Well, Unlike a Sister is a very well done illustration of that conceit. And… I think it shows what this statement from Rowling was getting at:

In some ways Hermione and Harry are a better fit and I’ll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent!

People read fanfictions, in other words, because they want to see how not what. Usually, anyway.

And how (even with what I’ve outlined) is exactly what the genre to which Unlike a Sister belongs is all about. And I’m calling that genre collapsing marriage stories.

Which is why I don’t think I’ve ruined it by telling you all these “spoilers”. You don’t know how. You know what. And not all the what. So… go read it. And write a continuation fic for Unlike a Sister so I don’t have to invent an ending for it myself!