Polyships.

[rogueslayer452]

This is inspired by verdande_mi who was talking about polyamorous relationships in fiction.

I'm happy that there's been more visibility to poly relationships in media, as it's not always an option many writers in mainstream media take, whether they themselves don't want to or from the higher ups who push back against the idea, so it's a pleasant surprise whenever I see it happen.

The most recent one that I deeply enjoyed, and had a lot of focus on, was in the latest season of The Expanse where a group marriage was formed with a recurring character and their pirate crew, they have multiple husbands and wives (affectionately nicknamed the Polyam Belter Fam by the fans). It's not really surprising considering that one of our main characters has eight parents which is viewed as pretty common. Of course with these examples, it makes me think about the different types of polyamorous relationships and how different they are, and why it's important to note that not all of them operate the same way. There's obviously a lot of misconceptions about polyamory in general, since it's not really of the "norm" that the majority of people see on a daily basis, so it makes me appreciate it whenever things in media do portray polyamorous relationships respectfully without making them a cheap gimmick.

And of course being in fandom I see polyships on the regular (often as a way of solving the dreadfully overused love triangle trope), so it's not really that surprising to me to see three or more characters being paired together. I have several myself, canon and non-canon. Here are some examples of them:

Canon Polyships

* Polyam Belter Fam (The Expanse)
* Lito/Hernando/Dani (Sense8)
* Kala/Rajan/Wolfgang (Sense8)
* Caprica Six/Gaius/D'Anna (Battlestar Galactica)

Non-Canon Polyships

* Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen/Song Lan (The Untamed)
* Richard/Kahlan/Cara (Legend of the Seeker)
* Nathan/Audrey/Duke (Haven)
* Holden/Naomi/Amos/Alex (The Expanse) (kinda technically is sorta canon since in the books Holden suggested they all get married, which again makes sense considering his upbringing)
* Eliot/Hardison/Parker (Leverage)
* Bo/Tamsin/Dyson (Lost Girl)
* Harry/Cho/Cedric (Harry Potter)

These are just ones that I can think of from the top of my head as I'm sure there are more. Some of these I ship more heavily than others, but mostly I like entertaining the idea especially with the non-canon polyships because I think the dynamics would be really interesting, thinking about how they would interact with each other, the kind of relationship they would have, the conflicts or issues that would arise, how they would manage to work things out, etc.

Comments

[wretched.livejournal.com]

I've always been a fan of polyships and have often thought that instead of ship wars with my favorite characters, I could just ot3 them. As a fic writer, I'm such a fan of being able to play with that dynamic between the characters and relationships and hope to work that into original fiction at some point. As far as canon ships go, I was surprised and pleasantly so when they brought them to Sense8! Non-canon, Duke/Audrey/Nathan will always have my heart, as well as Eliot/Parker/Hardison ♥

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

As far as canon ships go, I was surprised and pleasantly so when they brought them to Sense8!

Yeah, same! I mean, given the nature of the show it shouldn't really be surprising but we hardly really see canon poly relationships, but I liked how the show managed to feature a few, and the surprise of Kala/Rajan/Wolfgang in the series finale! It's funny because I actually didn't think about that possibility before, but once it was introduced I was like, "oh yeah, I dig this, I really love it!" Had the show gone on longer as intended I'm sure we would've gotten a more gradual development of it, but I enjoyed what we got regardless and how natural it just seems. :D