(As long as poly includes harem) I'd argue that most love triangles are primed for poly endings. So poly shippers coming into them makes perfect sense.
Like, you have multiple characters who are romantically involved with each other all of whom are usually treated as equals by the narrative. Which leads the poly route to feel like a very natural progression, no?
Are you defining love triangle as everyone being interested in each other, or any type of love triangle? If two people are interested in the same person, that doesn't imply poly route to me. Most stories also assume monogamy is what the characters want, so most stories don't usually imply that everyone will get involved.
I guess it depends on the story, but most of the times it feels like jealousy and wanting to monopolize a lover feels anathema to a poly route. I also just don't buy into any harems. Poly I get, but wish fulfillment isekais with harem endings seem silly and with underwritten characters.
Usually I define it as any type of set up where three people are romantically entangled but in this case I was specifically talking about Vs where two characters are in love with one person. Hence why I also compared it to harems (the set up) where two or more people are in love with one person.
And two people being interested in the same person doesn't necessarily make poly feel the most natural. I'm talking about very simple and straightforward stories like this one, which in my experience includes most triangles (although I don't have much experience. All the ones I actually like aren't these simple stories and most that are/seemed to be I dropped).
Here's how I see it:
Most of these simple stories don't specify the MC's feelings all that well nor do they specify if the MC specifically wants a mono relationship or not. They just have two or more people in love with the same person.
If these stories don't put much focus on the MC's feelings then that would imply that the amount of time the MC/narrative spends with any given character reflects their feelings on that character. So if every character gets equal treatment then the assumption is that the MC loves each of these characters equally. And if they do then I think it'd make way more sense that they'd want to date all of them instead of just choosing one.
And if this doesn't sit with the love interest then I think it should be brought up early on (like, actually show that they want to monopolise the MC and won't compromise on that instead of just having it be assumed). And also, if the MC wants a poly relationship but the love interests don't that should be a source of conflict!
If the story ever addressed any of these things directly, if it ever clarified the MC's feelings, clarified the love interests' jealousy/desire to monopolise, etc then poly wouldn't be the natural conclusion. But if it doesn't then poly tends to just feel like a much more sensical ending considering the story never actually made any of the love interests into the "main" love interest.
Essentially, this kind of poly route would work in a story that failed to setup any kind of ending. Poly at least makes sense in that case because it doesn't pull plot points and/or feelings out of it's ass to justify a mono ending.
Anyway, this discussion is starting to get off topic so if you wanna continue maybe we ought to move to either Love Triangle's or Polyamory's discussion pages?
last edited at Jan 13, 2022 7:15PM
