conuly | I'm so over love triangles in fiction.

I know that polyamory isn't actually the solution to all of life's little romantic ills, but at least it means authors would have to come up with some way to keep their characters moping and pining other than the thorny problem of "I love both of them, and we're all BFFs, and choosing one will tear our little semi-platonic trio apart!"

Also: This is especially ridiculous when fiction, particularly that ostensibly aimed at teens and young adults, tries to give an impression that the ONLY choices are "single" or "in an exclusive relationship". What about a middle ground where you date different people and none of them are particularly serious and anyway forever is a very long time for people who are really too young to be making major life decisions?

**********

Endangered baby pangolin takes his first steps after rescue from poachers (The species is endangered, but probably not the baby specifically, not anymore.)

World’s first airport therapy pig hogs the limelight at San Francisco airport

Picturing Manhattan’s Shortest Buildings From the Ground Floor

4 unexpected recipes from pine cones

Teaching Sex Ed Via Cellphone

China Has Been Slow To Embrace #MeToo. Pop-Up Sexual Consent Workshops Might Help

Emoji aren’t the problem, but a symptom of an enduring truth: People are always going to find a way to be horny online.

Portland, Oregon, paramedics learn self-defense amid attacks

Airbnb, Chobani among companies to oppose U.S. asylum work permit slowdown

Robots aren’t taking warehouse employees’ jobs, they’re making their work harder

How Scientology doubled its downtown Clearwater footprint in 3 years

A white Southerner confronts her schooling at a segregated private ‘academy’ and challenges others to do the same

A warning for parents of teen and tween white boys: If you don't pay attention to their online lives, the white supremacists will.

They Are Racist; Some of Them Have Guns. Inside the White Supremacist Group Hiding in Plain Sight.

Anger on campus: Behind the student protests that have rocked Indonesia

Forged in Fire: California’s Lessons for a Green New Deal

Pacific bird refuge struggles as ocean garbage patch grows

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sabotabby

Especially with teenagers, omg. As if the person you date in high school is going to be end game.

From:

landofnowhere

I just finished reading "The Name of All Things" by Jenn Lyons, book 2 of the Chorus of Dragons series. It has a love triangle that the author describes as "equilateral" on her website, and one of the vertices has mentioned that poly is a thing where she comes from, so I have hope for an OT3 working out in future books (or maybe an OT4).

From:

8hyenas

I will never forget the hallelujah when I was reading a YA book (Rachel Brown) and the solution to the love triangle was the two BFFs agreeing to a timeshare. And it remained absolutely clear that the strongest relationship was the friendship between the two girls, not the mysterious hot boy who just rolled up.

From:

gwydion

Poly usually seemed to solve hese problems for me.

From:

larryhammer

Both those. So both those.

(Janni did specifically end one of her YA novels with the dating different people solution.)

Edited (wrong word) Date: 2019-11-12 04:25 pm (UTC)

From:

hebethen

Sure, it's not a real-life panacea, but in this time and place, it certainly seems like a desirable solution to the readerly problem of "ye gods, try something new already"! I think the only love triangle (or love polygon, anyway) that I've really actually enjoyed was the entanglementing in the Inda quartet -- it wasn't front-and-center, they all had other things to be worrying about, and even though they fucked things up sometimes they still valued each other as people more than as romantic objects.

Have you played Nowhere Near Single, btw?

From:

maju

Oh, how come I didn't see the therapy pig when I was in SF airport at the beginning of this month?

From:

conuly

I know.

And this goes DOUBLE if you don't go to high school because of abuse or the end of the world or being the chosen one or whatever. There is entirely too much on your shoulders. Wait until you've grown up a little and hopefully fixed your dystopian hellscape (personal or otherwise).

From:

conuly

Oooh!

From:

conuly

Yes!

(Though he's awesome too, I mean, they're all great.)

From:

conuly

I know it comes with its own range of potential problems, but at least it's a different set.

From:

conuly

I have not.

From:

conuly

IDK, bad luck?

From:

8hyenas

Loved his bewildered acceptance of such a great thing that had just happened to him

From:

cloudsinvenice

When you put it that way, it does seem really weird that so much of YA is invested in treating ships as if they're true love/endgame for the protagonists' lives (or even their high school careers). The world is full of parents worried that their kid is getting too serious with one paramour too young, so even the idea that it's an appeal to old-fashioned morality (i.e. supposed loyalty to one person, the bullshit idea that your personal goodness is diminished if you've dated a lot of people) doesn't seem to hold up.

Also, if the crush phase is both fun to write and fun to experience, you'd think more relationships would = more fun...

From:

conuly

Of course, a lot of YA protagonists don't have good relationships with their parents - if those parents are even still living/around - so there's nobody to really say "You have your whole life to figure this out!"

From:

conuly

Seriously, it doesn't have to be a huge deal if today you went out with Bobby and then tomorrow you ate lunch with Tom.

From:

spikethemuffin

PREACH. Especially when the viewpoint character's "choice" in the end is really a projection of who you are or want to be as a person. "You are just a projection of me," is just... well, it's unhealthy. Which you know.

I have redacted my "What the Hunger Games trilogy was really about in Jungian terms" hypothesis, but if anyone wants to talk to me about it, let me know.

From:

larryhammer

I know, right?

From:

landofnowhere

The series so far is quite good, and the first 17 chapters of the first book are available on Tor.com.

From:

greghousesgf

I didn't even date in high school.

From:

conuly

You probably also didn't lead a successful rebellion against the evil despots that rule your land either.

From:

conuly

Hit me with it.

From:

greghousesgf

no, I was too much of a wimp.

From:

spikethemuffin

Oh, thank you. Mighty nice of you to give me this place to put my soapbox!

From some scribblings about six months ago:

'The Hunger Games trilogy's archetypical theme is about choosing your tactics and the Team You for dealing with FOO dysfunction. First the viewpoint character Katniss figures out how to pull off a technical "win" within that power dynamic, then she escapes it without agency, then she rejects both the power-trippy AA group leader [Coin] and the chance to be the "boss" in the toxic culture she left (or re-create it), then she chooses the person who is broken by the system but chooses to fight back over the person who always had one foot out the door and may have learned to turn the tools of abuse toward the "enemy."

"The "real or not real" game is SO on the nose for this. So is Snow's cloaking the poison he literally breathes with white roses (symbolically "innocent love")."

I have other textual supports, but that's the crux of it.

From:

nodrog

As you might expect, TV Tropes has something on this: “Marry Them All”

Happens at the end of M.A.R. Barker's The Man of Gold with Hársan, Eyil, and Tlayesha.

(Props for giving the diacritic /á/ ) It’s a good book, and a good example; imagine if Archie Andrews of the eponymous long-running comic were told by his leige lord not to bother him with trifles - just marry both Betty Cooper and Veronica Lodge?

“‘One pillar cannot hold up a roof.’ Marry them both and
raise yourself up a dynasty!”

The two women stood appraising one another…

Historically this does not often turn out well - but there are usually great differences in age, comeliness, &c., which are not factors here.

From:

nodrog

That business of “going steady” started in the 1950s, for sociological reasons. Before then, as you say, was a different story: In the 1940s a high school girl’s calendar could be color-coded like a polychromatic chessboard to remind her of who was taking her out tonight - and a popular girl could indeed be booked up for weeks in advance! She was not viewed as “fast,” either, because those dates were thoroughly chaperoned. It was just the fashion of the time.

[There were several customs of that time that would be pleasant to experience. Medieval kings and their courts travelled about the country, settling upon (and exhausting) one feudal lord after another; just so, in the fashion of trick-or-treaters the young set would do a processional on holidays, going from house to house, snacking on something (and warming up) and being sociable, then moving on… They were welcomed as if each house was their home, and in a real way they all were.

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” ]

From:

nodrog

That has a Gene Wolfe flavor: No one has ever seen the God-King and the would-be usurper together in the same room because, well, y’ know, as King Osric said, “There comes a time… when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison…”

You gotta get your kicks somehow. Besides, it keeps your security people on their toes.

From:

conuly

I read a blog by a woman who was raised in purity culture bullshit, a lot of "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" nonsense, "dating is just preparation for divorce" and she wrote once that she was surprised to meet a woman who was young in the 1940s who wasn't allowed to go steady as an adolescent but was instead encouraged to date multiple boys so long as she never saw the same one twice in a row.

From:

nodrog

I’ve read what survivors of that
“True Love Waits” nonsense have said. They’re often quite bitter. On the other hand, former ’70s kids now mothers themselves have qualms about letting their daughters run wild as they did. That, too, did damage.

It seems like there’s a proper path, if it could be found.

From:

author_by_night

Love triangles just irritate me on so many levels, not the least how they'll end up bringing the worst out of seemingly sympathetic characters. "Oh, she stole this girl's boyfriend, but she's nice so it's okay." No. It's not "nice" to steal someone's boyfriend.

Also, there are lots of teens who never date at all in high school. I was one such teen, so I know. It isn't a necessary part of being a teen. Only dating one person in high school isn't necessary either.

As far as polyamory goes, it reminds me when a friend of mine in the HP fandom originally shipped Remus/Sirius, but started to like Remus/Tonks. So she shipped them all together. There you go! No love triangle or ship war necessary.

Edited Date: 2019-11-13 12:05 pm (UTC)

From:

zesty_pinto

You may bring up a good point that nothing pushes polyamory as much as the love triangle thing. Or, in anime terms, the harem ending.

From:

conuly

Okay, but seriously, Tonks is super young for Remus. He's the least immature of the Marauders, too.

From:

maju

I didn't really have time to see anything much because I barely made my connecting flight, but it would have been nice if the pig had been at or near my gate.