love triangles poll!

[kindkit]

I've been thinking about that ever-so-common plot device, the love triangle, and wondering if I'm especially weird in how much I hate them. So, a poll! It asks only about the "two men in love with and competing for the same woman" kind of triangle, because that's by far the most frequent kind and the kind that especially puts me off.

Everyone is welcome to vote--you don't have to know me or subscribe to my journal or whatever. And if you'd like to elaborate on your responses in the comments, that's great.

ETA: The second question is meant to be pretty flippant and silly, so don't feel like you're answering it "wrong"!

Poll #15018

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 79

View Respondents

1) You learn that a book/film/TV show features a love triangle of the "classic" sort: two men who both love the same woman. Are you:

View Answers

More interested in reading/watching than you were before
0 (0.0%)

Less interested in reading/watching than you were before
60 (75.9%)

Neither more nor less interested in reading/watching
19 (24.1%)

2) Love triangles can be resolved by:

View Answers

Duels
8 (10.5%)

Fistfights
4 (5.3%)

Flipping a coin
5 (6.6%)

Heroic renunciation on someone's part
15 (19.7%)

Kidnapping
2 (2.6%)

Plot-convenient death
11 (14.5%)

Polyamory
64 (84.2%)

The two competitors behaving as though the love object's own feelings mattered
67 (88.2%)

The vertex/love object declaring "a pox on both your houses" and running away
62 (81.6%)

The two competitors realizing they're actually triangulating their forbidden love for each other
55 (72.4%)

Comments

[naraht]

In the poll I answered "neither more nor less interested," because I think it depends very much how the triangle is presented. If it's "two men who both love the same woman" that does tend to position the woman as very much the love object and not of interest in her own right. But if it's "a woman has to choose between two men," or something along those lines, then I'm all over it. And have written it in original fiction as well.

I've keenly shipped some love triangle pairings where the men in question were good friends. Jean-Luc Picard\Beverly Crusher/Jack Crusher (Star Trek TNG) and Cigarette Smoking Man\Teena Mulder/Bill Mulder (X-Files). But in both cases I was really primarily interested in the woman - having her desired by more than one man seemed to reinforce how interesting she was - and therefore I would have had little motivation for cutting her out of the equation.

Basically, if there's a woman in the triangle, then I'm pretty much only interested in seeing the apex of the triangle filled by a woman.

I know it hasn't got the gender proportions you specified, but out of interest: were you bothered by the love triangle in The Charioteer?

[pocketmouse]

I watch so little media that my most likely way in is by finding the threesome fic first.

[magnetic_pole]

I'm not much of a fan, either--in fact, none of the choices in the second question sounded even vaguely appealing. Insofar as I can drum up any interest, I invariably find myself sympathizing with the "losing" party and getting frustrated... M.

[lilacsigil]

Two men "competing" for the same woman is the key for me - the creator sees it as a competition rather than a group of relationships. Even when the two men are equal prospects (surprisingly rare) and each a symbol of a different way of life for the woman, it's annoying because I'd much rather see her choosing between, say, being a starship pilot or a revolutionary IN SPACE than dating a starship pilot or a revolutionary, even IN SPACE.

An example I have been watching recently: Kira on Deep Space 9 has a choice of two men. One is a religious figure on her planet, the other is Security Chief Odo. She has a long history of friendship with both. Whenever the plot was about her interests or her and man-of-choice spending time together, it worked well. Whenever the plot was about Odo's (at the time) unrequited feeeeeeeelings and how he could never speak of them to Kira, it was terrible and treated her like an object. Now that Kira/Odo is happening, Kira's interests and philosophies and bad-ass battle strategies are again leading the plot and Odo is supporting her decisions and isn't doing any mooning around. This indicates to me that writers have a really strong idea of how a love triangle should work and shoehorned their characters into it without thinking about what the characters might actually do.

[james]

I would just be happy if the love triangle acknowledged the woman as a person, and not "of course she would be happy with whichever man wins." Most love triangles would stop if they just asked the woman who she liked better, and accepted her answer as though she has a right to having an opinion.

Also, polyamory is awesome. More polyamory!

[gehayi]

As soon as I see the term "love triangle," I instantly know that 99% of the time, the story is going to be boring and pointless. While I do know people who can and do write fanfic love triangles well, the same cannot be said of published works. And I know that as a rule, the triangle will break down this way:

1) The two men are both going after the same woman.

2) One is an old friend of the woman. The other is a new guy with a dark and mysterious past.

3) The old friend (or current fiancé) is generally kind, or at least less abusive. The Extraordinary New Guy With a Mysterious Past is generally an abusive jerkass.

4) Both are handsome. However, the old friend will be from a different race or culture than the ENGWAMP. If the ENGWAMP is white, the old friend will be the Ethnic Third Wheel. If the ENGWAMP is from a particular ethnic group (Rom, Native American, Latino, Sicilian, Greek, etc.) the old friend will be pure white bread.

5) The woman, as a rule, has little to no personality. Her primary value seems to be her beauty. She often also has Informed Abilities; that is, the narrative tells us that she has wonderful traits, such as brilliance, perception, compassion, understanding, etc., but we never see her display them. In fact, she will do demonstrably stupid things on a regular basis, probably because the author can't think of any other way to keep her in the vicinity of the ENGWAMP for more than two seconds.

6) The woman will blame the old friend for every fault he commits and will absolve the ENGWAMP of everything.

7) Unless the non-fanfic story is being written as published/filmed erotica or as part of a menage line of romances, no one will consider resolving this with a consensual polyamorous threesome. (In fact, don't be surprised if the ENGWAMP is pretty homophobic.)

8) The ENGWAMP will win. This is a given; ENGWAMPs always win, because writers and publishing houses think that they are the epitome of masculinity. Some publishing houses (like Harlequin/Mills & Boon) even pride themselves on having nothing BUT alpha heroes (read: abusive, controlling, rude jerkass male protagonists).

It's a very boring formula. And since I don't like reading stories (or watching them) in which rude, controlling dickwads are romanticized, I do my damnedest to avoid them.

[shadowvalkyrie]

I really love poly narratives, and a canonical love triangle is often the only available starting point for poly fic, unless you're willing to ignore canon altogether, which I'm usually not.

And of course every trope can be written either well or badly, and most of my enjoyment hinges on that. :)

[sallymn]

I'm rarely interested in triangles, but - like pretty much any literary plot device - it all comes down for me to the specific characters involved. Every case depends entirely on its own merits, therefore...

With the second question, seeing as we're talking fiction, any of the answers can be satisfactory in a literary sense (even the ones that I really dislike - if it works for the characters and the time and place, I'd rather that than a resolution I would like in real life but which doesn't work in the specific story). Likewise, every one of them can be ghastly if they feel imposed...

[oursin]

It's possibly the 'competing' thing here that I particularly don't like, because it's positioning the woman as a trophy rather than a person.

And as others have commented, spare me the plot about the (usually) young woman trying to choose between two men, both of whom should probably be shot sent to gender re-education boot camp or at least smitten in the face by a large codfish.

[lilliburlero]

I strongly dislike the two-men-compete-for-a-woman love triangle--for similar reasons to given by other commenters--but I do end up writing rather a lot of 'two men and a woman' triangulations, and at the moment a 'two women and a man' (unfinished). Usually the dynamic is that one of them feels only same-sex desire, one only other-sex, and the third's bisexual. There's sometimes a polyamorous arrangement. All of them are set between 1387 and 1416. I don't really know either, except Shakespeare histories fandom.

(Excuse my flippancy about flipping a coin--couldn't resist.)

[genarti]

(Here via naraht's mention of this poll.)

I am deeply sick of love triangle plots, such that the mention of this kind of triangle will immediately make my interest in the canon drop waaaay down, whether it's from a friend warning me or from seeing the narrative signs looming as I read or watch. (Mostly read; I don't watch a lot of tv or movies.) It's not a total dealbreaker, but I have to really enjoy the rest of the canon or be assured that the love triangle is only a minor part in order to push through it.

It's the competing thing; it's the idea that romance is a prize; it's the idea that the most important question is who's going to end up sleeping with whom. All other plot and all the characters' other relationships tend to take a backseat next to the all-important question of who she's going to date -- and it's worse when the story, as it so often is, is framed as a question of one man "winning" the woman. I wouldn't mind it so much if it weren't so ubiquitous and so prone to taking over the story, but since it is, it very much decreases my interest in something.

I'm a little more kindly disposed to stories where the solution is polyamory or where at least one leg of the triangle is queer in some way, just because that's questioning the standard formula in ways I find interesting. But even then I'm not particularly interested by the whole love triangle plotline.

(Edited to say that in the second question of the poll, I picked every option, but that was probably unnecessarily flip. What I really meant was "anything that resolves that plot so we can get back to the stuff I'm interested in, like their other friendships and saving the world and whatever else." Obviously in some works, the love triangle is meant to be the primary plot and is advertised as such all along, but I'm clearly not the intended audience for those.)

[mllesatine]

I honestly don't remember seeing the two men compete for a woman trope. I'm pretty sure I have but I can't think of examples. The closest I have is "Bridget Jones' diary" (the movie) where it looks like the two male leads are in competition and actually start a fist fight. But that movie is from Briget's perspective and she had already left jerk#1 before liking guy#2. And it's all her decision and in the book we only get to see both guys through her eyes.

Oh, yeah and maybe Gangs of New York. Leonardo diCaprio and Damian Lewis have that mentorship thing going and Leo falls in love with Cameron Diaz but she was with Damian before. At first Leo rejects her for that and all the other men (she was a prostitute). That was an interesting triangle because there were more layers than love.

I'm not a fan of love triangle in general. I wouldn't purposefully seek out fiction. If I stumble across it (like in Gangs of New York) and it isn't the main focus, then that's fine.

I also don't like threesome or polamory fic so I can't even bend my head-canon if I encounter love triangles I don't like.

Guess I'd choose the plot-convenient death. :)

[elaineofshalott]

I like The Philadelphia Story, which is kind of a love quadrangle--or modified triangle? Three men all vying for the affections of one woman (Katharine Hepburn). It's pretty predictable whom she'll end up with, and her degree of agency in determining the outcome is debatable, but. Fun shenanigans, Jimmy Stewart, and poly fic all won me over.

I also liked Wuthering Heights but less for the "love story" (if such it can be called) and more for the bleakness and despair.

I loved the House/Cuddy/Wilson married triad when it turned up in fic. The show itself had overtones of a love triangle, for a given value of "love"--a caring triangle?--among the three, with House at the apex and friendship between Cuddy and Wilson. In another universe, the show might have been really interesting/good. (It looked promising for awhile...and then it went places and now it is dead to me. Sigh.)

I ticked the "duels" box in the second question because who doesn't like duels? THE ANGST when the rivals are friends (or at least not enemies) & are set to try to kill one another! I'm thinking of Onegin and Lensky here (I've only seen the 1999 film version, not read the novel).

...so, yes. I find love triangles fascinating in many instances. I avoid cheap romcoms like I avoid nasty-looking insects, though, so I'm not as familiar with the garden-variety love triangle as I might otherwise be.

[ten]

I loathe what published fiction calls love triangles. (They aren't even triangles most of the time, they are Vs.)

I have been poly to the core all my life, so this whole underlying idea of 'one choice' just feels extremely unnatural and forced to me. (Just like I'm sure the idea of polyamory feels forced to naturally mono people.)
On top of that, the hinge-person, especially when not of the same gender as the other two and especially especially when female, is so often objectified, disrespected and silenced.

If it were an actual triangle, aka a mutual relationship between all three participants, I may still be a little wary, but much more inclined to give it a chance.

[diony]

I am reminded of the Hong Kong television drama The Sweetness in the Salt, which has one of the few mmf love triangles I have found endearing, because the obvious solution is polyamory -- the men are best friends -- and the woman sees that, but they are in 18th century China and she cannot wave a magic wand to change the culture. It also has a very fine scene in which she loses her temper at both of them for not asking her what it is she actually wants, which is taken seriously by both of them and by the show itself.

In general, though, the love triangles do not please me.