"i hate love triangles" is such a common thing to hear, but we never really think about why.

sure, some people are just extremely decisive and hate watching the slow, painful indecision of love triangles. and the idea of stringing two people along when (generally) you can only have one is silly and a little unkind a lot of the time. plus it can be really frustrating to watch 1 single character wreck relationships (i'm looking at you, love triangles that pit siblings/best friends against each other), and mess things up around them through their own indecisiveness

another very frustrating thing about love triangles is that they're actually not as common as they feel. the media pushes love triangles all the time because they're marketable and a surefire way to get engagement by pitting fans against one another and putting them on a "team" and making it personal.

a storied example is the hunger games. suzanne collins made the point in the story about how katniss's romance with peeta was pushed to distract from the horrors of the games, and in the real world, lionsgate/the marketing team pushed the "love triangle" to distract from the heavy themes and political messaging of the story. but there was never really a love triangle. yes, katniss kissed 2 boys. yes, there was a point where she saw them both as viable options. but the narrative tells us she was never going to be able to pick anyone but peeta - gale is simply not ideologically right for her, and that is made relatively clear relatively early on. and yet the "love triangle" was pushed, when (unlike other stories like the summer i turned pretty or the vampire diaries) it never really existed.

but love triangles don't have to be bad if they service all the characters. in 'never have i ever', devi gets something completely different from each of her 2 main love interests (sorry des and ethan, i'm not counting you. neither of you lasted more than like 4 eps lol), and more importantly, even when broken up with her they get something from their relationships with her. she ends up pushing both ben and paxton to achieve their academic potential, as just one example.

doing love triangles correctly is hard. there probably isn't necessarily a "right" way. but if you can present an equally strong case for both characters, resolve the triangle without assassinating or throwing away the development of one of the characters, and keep the integrity and likeability of person in the middle, you might just be on the right path.

now reblog with examples of good/bad love triangles because my mind's gone blank and i can't just keep using nhie/tsitp/tvd