This week I finished my re-watch of the Netflix Marco Polo series. Given that it ended on a cliffhanger, it was a bummer that it was canceled after only two seasons, though it’s not like it was brilliant television all the time anyhow. Next on Netflix will be… I dunno, Mr. Robot, or something?
The tummy felt a bit crappy through most of Friday, but seems to have recovered nicely.
Almost wrote about The Dragon Prince and its continuation Kickstarter, but this came up and I’m afraid I’m going to forget. So. Here we go.
Love Triangles Have Always Sucked
Earlier this week I stumbled upon an article in Slate titled “We’re Losing the Art of the Love Triangle”. The focus of the author’s ire is the Amazon Prime series The Summer I Turned Pretty and the love triangle that forms the basis of that show’s drama. I don’t watch it, so I couldn’t say that I agree with her assessment of the protagonist’s options there. I can however take issue with the insinuation that bad love triangles are evidently a problem that’s crept up recently, that a decade or so ago even, we were getting our fill of benevolent love triangles that were written with care and all the fans could agree were delightful.
I’m sorry, no.
We’ve seen a weird revision of the last fifteen years or so of pop culture and it’s starting to really get on my nerves. “The Pirates of the Caribbean sequels were good, actually! The first two, anyway!” No, they certainly weren’t, they were a bloated but fun mess that happens when you start filming movies without a finished script. “The only reason people hated Twilight was sexism, they were actually good!” They emphatically were not, and you need to stop vomiting nonsense on my shoes.
But this? This?? No. Absolutely not. I am putting my foot down. We’re not doing this anymore, okay?
Love Triangles were a blight on fiction.
It is difficult to overstate how many times an unnecessary love triangle ruined, or helped to ruin, an otherwise fine story by being forced in where it wasn’t wanted. Some people somewhere got it into their heads that what people really loved about fiction, the thing that made the juiciest drama, was a love triangle, and so if we wanted to get people to care about a story, we had to put love triangles in it.
People thought it was a requirement for fiction. I don’t know how they got the idea. Maybe they saw how big the ‘Team Edward vs. Team Jacob’ thing had gotten and decided that it was what every story needed.
Hey, do you remember how Evangeline Lily joined the cast of The Hobbit as Tauriel under the strict promise that she wouldn’t be part of a love triangle, because she was tired of them? And how Warner Brothers turned around and made her do one anyway for the reshoots? Yeah, that was A Thing.
I understand that the use of love triangles goes back further than the last fifteen years or so–of course I do! But that was when we were all sick to death of them, when we were tired of them everywhere, and now this chuckmuffin has the audacity to act as if just now is when they’re getting obnoxious.
Yes, in theory, a love triangle can be done well. I’m sure there’s a good one or two out there that you can think of when pressed (I sure can’t). But usually it’s not–usually, there’s an obvious choice, and the fake choice, the one you know is fake, just to pad out the love story of our two leads for as long as possible. Either you wonder why our protagonist would ever choose that second option, or the second option is great until the writer catches on that the fans like that character too much, and is re-written into being a jerk, or an idiot, or already taken or however else the writer can make this person not the option.
It’s just trash. Padding. The way to pad out a romance arc in the most cliched way possible. Maybe you enjoy them, but that doesn’t mean that they’re good. They’re usually not.
Pro-tip: if you’re thinking of making a love triangle in a story, read Limyaael’s advice on it. That essay also gives us the amazing quote, “An idiot I’m not supposed to regard as an idiot is intolerable,” which I think is one of the best pieces of criticism/life advice I’ve ever seen and I want to have it as a stamp.
We suffered through so many terrible love triangles. I am not going to stand by and pretend that actually, they were fantastic and they’re only now becoming trash. No! I refuse! I denounce it, and this evil will not stand! I will not let people wax nostalgic for the Love Triangle Plague of the 2010s!
Let that trend remain dead and buried!
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