why are you so obssesed with poly ships? i've been lurking around your blog and you seem to put a lot of characters from your fandoms in poly ships, you even have a sideblog with polyamory in url and i'm curious why

ik you might just be poly yourself and looking for representantion which is valid even when you have to make it up bc there's not much of those relationships in media

but if your mono then what exactly about those ships interests you?

sorry if it's rude to ask or sth, i don't want to offend but i was seriously wondering

ohh that's interesting haha but im glad you're not mean

welp, it's just one of my interests, ya know. My bachelor's thesis was about polyamory representation in media and just overall - it's history, how people are seeing it, how they react to it, how this kind of relationships works. Like, idk it's just interesting to me. Also, poly is kinda part of lgbt+ community, but it isn't exactly popular in media or and lgbt doesn't really talk about it as much as about trans or other orientations. Lately, people has taken an interest in polyamory, and not only in a sexual way but also as a romantic, beautiful relationship, and I guess im just part of this group.

and representation in media? Oh lord, don't let me start on that. There's like one or two good representation in movies/shows, while others are just toxic and all are doing are harden negative stereotypes.

Also, ive been a shipper since i was a little kid. Idk men, I just like idea of people loving each other. Movies and tv shows in 20's were all about love triangles, and honestly why? I mean, if you both love one person, and that person can't seem to chose because she also loves both of you, then... don't you see a solution? I mean, obviously, it isn't that easy in real life, but in a movies? Why not just let them love each other without drama.

Oh yes, another thing: fandom dramas. I hate those, truly. Ive been in many fandoms before, and in most of them there is that discourse 'ship A vs ship B" usually having "G+K or G+N" and people are literally throwing insults and kys at each other just because they can't accept that other people like different dynamics than them. That's stupid all in itself, but welp.. I guess polyamory is some kind of way of remis? I mean, in poly you can ship both ships without argument. They can be in open relationship or close, they can be triad or just one person loving two others. Like, in a fictional world, it's the best solution, isn't it? It's us who create characters' thoughts, dynamic, emotions... We *can* make it work!

So hm that would be that, I think? Love is beautiful and you can make it that way if u want to!

I hope it answers your question ahaha

the thing is i don't think ben and ryn don't work on their own, i think they have a real connection and definitely deep feelings for one another and always have (i'd even argue ryn developped romantic feelings for ben awhile before she developped those for maddie) and i think the fandom acts like they don't work or don't have chemistry because it's the "hetero" leg of the triad which makes zero sense to me

ryn being involved with ben even without maddie doesn't make her any less queer and the same can be said for maddie's involvement with robb. they're both still queer women and they're also and that's something the fandom can't wrap their heads around for some reason but they're both polyamorous. i could see maybe maddie being happy in a monogamous relationship but ryn is polyamorous so i don't understand this fantasy that's been pushed of maddie/ryn and ben completely pushed to the side

if the both of them weren't in love with him just as much as they're in love with each other i could maybe see it but the fandom needs to reckon with the fact that ben pownall is a part of this triad and even though he has acted all kinds of reckless and shitty right now (he can thank the song for that really) he is still at his core a good person. it's just funny to me how quick fandom wants to turn on him

to me the siren fandom sometimes acts when it comes to ben's addiction the same way maddie does when it comes to susan, by that i mean hostile, no understanding and no support. and god bless maddie, i love her but her views on addiction really aren't something to emulate because she doesn't even seem to understand it as the illness it is which makes it all the more understandable why she's the last person ben would reach out to for help unfortunately

Okay, since these are long, I will again attack each ask separately if I can and this will likely get long again, so I will also put it under a cut again.

These asks are starting to sound a little bitter, so while I do love discussing the show, let’s maybe keep the “the fandom needs to do this” to more of a minimum. It’s not my job to police how the fandom ships people together on this show.

Okay, so starting with Ben/Ryn. I think Ben and Ryn COULD work on their own and HAVE in certain episodes/scenes. The issue that comes up with Ben and Ryn that’s always been there and has never been there for Maddie/Ryn or Maddie/Ben is the Song and Ben’s long-term addiction to it. Ben and Maddie were in love long before either of them ended up addicted to the Song and Maddie and Ryn were able to build a relationship away from it, too. But Ben’s feelings for Ryn, while I believe the show when it tells us that his love for her was not CREATED by the Song, has certainly been influenced by it a bit. And even if we, for the sake of argument, say that the Song has not influenced his feelings at all, it’s still influenced his BEHAVIOR. Ben gets really erratic when Ryn isn’t around, really restless. His impulsivity and obsessive nature gets amplified due to the Song and so his behavior regarding Ryn is really really different than we used to see in his relationship with Maddie or what we see in Maddie’s relationship with Ryn.

Personally? Since it was unclear for a while how much of Ben’s feelings were influenced by the Song or not, their relationship has always been somewhat questionable. Ben becomes less and less predictable the longer he’s addicted to that Song to the point now that he’s lying to both the women he loves about really big things that he knows they won’t like and/or will be uncomfortable with. And that’s something I think IS a side-effect of the Song because Maddie got involved in the mission with Ryn pretty quick, he TRUSTED Maddie to be his partner in whatever he had gotten himself into. They WERE partners.

And I think Ben and Ryn have had some really cute moments, I do. I think that Ryn and Ben are also both super fucking impulsive, though, and Ryn is only just starting to learn how to think things through a little more while Ben is steadily LOSING his ability to think things through so by Season 3 their relationship to me seems super dysfunctional and not necessarily super healthy. It’s starting to feel like Ben is getting almost POSSESSIVE of Ryn and is clinging to her as the only thing keeping him going, the only thing that’s keeping him SANE (as much as he even can be right now). And that’s not ideal. Whereas Maddie and Ryn are SUPER open with each other still, we’ve seen them have several conversations about their relationship and how Robb fits into that and Maddie’s break-up with Ben, etc. The ONLY conversation we’ve seen like that with Ben was when Ryn calls him out on the injections. And even then he doesn’t open up about where he’s getting the injections or the fact that he’s re-addicted himself to her Song. He’s still lying to her, he’s still not being open and honest with her.

So while I don’t MIND Bryn as a ship, I don’t they’ve gotten to a really unhealthy stage in their relationship and it needs to fall apart before it can get better. Because while Ben is obviously dealing with a sickness none of them know about, he still needs to be held accountable for some of the things he’s done and Ryn will have every right to be upset about BOTH of the things he’s still hiding from her.

And finally, (wow still on the first ask) Bryn are NOT the only “hetero” leg of the triangle. I think you’ve entirely forgotten that Maddie and Ben are ALSO a “hetero” leg of the triangle. Obviously they’re broken up at the moment, but if we’re considering Polymarine as a closed triad, then there are TWO “hetero” legs to that triangle. I’ve loved Ben and Maddie as a couple since episode 1, they were SO GOOD in season 1, they were an incredible team that was so open and honest with each other and complemented each other’s flaws and virtues really well and had such similar values and just clearly really loved each other. Ben and Maddie were AWESOME.

Okay, moving on to the second ask.

I agree with you, all THREE people in that relationship are canonically polyamorous and Ryn and Maddie are both wlw, as well (I’d definitely headcanon Ben as mlm as well, but that’s not technically canon yet). And those things remain true no matter whether they’re in a monogamous relationship or a heterosexual relationship or not. I have in fact posted SEVERAL things to that exact effect, so you’re sort-of preaching to the choir with this one.

THAT BEING SAID. People are allowed to ship who they want to ship, that’s really none of your business. Lots of people really like Maddie/Ryn but maybe aren’t so solid on Bryn or just Ben as a character and that’s FINE. He’s certainly not my PERSONAL favorite of the triad, but I’ve liked his relationships with Maddie and Ryn in the past and he’s been really cool as a character individually in the past, too. I wouldn’t ship Polymarine if I didn’t like Ben. But ship and let ship, it’s not a terrible thing that people prefer Maddie/Ryn on their own to Polymarine and would prefer Ben not be in the picture so much. As you say yourself, even if they ship Maddie/Ryn without Ben, it doesn’t actually take away from either character being polyamorous. Polyamorous people CAN be in monogamous relationships.

As for Ryn and Maddie still being wlw even when they’re given male love interests, I think the issue here is that wlw in main character roles of a show like this are still relatively uncommon and it’s frustrating to all the wlw who watch this show to have to see Ryn and Maddie only get a couple cheek kisses while Ryn and Ben go on a romantic underwater swim and get full on-the-mouth kisses and sleep in beds together. Ryn and Maddie’s romantic scenes this season have definitely been diminished and PALE in comparison to what we see with Bryn and even with Robb/Maddie recently. I want to believe it’s because they’re just that solid and so we don’t “need” to see them be super romantic to remind us that they’re together and in love, but I can understand the frustration and the worry that the queer polyamorous representation is going to get sidelined so that Bryn can take center stage and Maddie can get shoved off with someone else. While I don’t believe it will happen and I’m choosing to stick with my theory that it’s just another obstacle for Polymarine to have to overcome in order to be stronger, there’s enough precedent in media for me to understand why people are VERY worried about this.

This third ask is mostly just bitterness, so I don’t want to spend super long on it. I’ve put down a bunch of reasons why people are less into Bryn than they have been into Raddie or even Baddie. Also, he is being super messy this season. The thing that’s difficult with just blaming the Song for all of his actions, though, is that they’ve told us that the Song doesn’t just create feelings, it simply seems to amplify them. Ben’s been impulsive and obsessive long before he met Ryn, it was just something he had a better handle on. Now, though, he doesn’t have a handle on it, but that facet of his personality has always been there. So we can’t blame the Song for all of it, we know that, while this is likely something he wouldn’t have gone through with pre-Song, the Song isn’t turning him into someone he’s not, either. Personally, I don’t feel like I can just exonerate Ben entirely by going “the Song made him do it.” I think Ben needs to take responsibility for his actions and recognize the effect that it’s had on other people in order to atone for them over time. He let a man die, that’s something he’s going to have to contend with. He disrespected the body one of Ryn’s tribemates, that’s something he’s going to have to contend with.

I feel like you’re being kind-of unfair to Maddie in this last ask. Maddie and Susan are MOTHER and DAUGHTER. Susan was supposed to take care of Maddie, not the other way around. Susan’s drug addiction likely caused Maddie to feel super abandoned and unloved as a child and it could even have brought her into dangerous situations the way it did in Season 2. And from what I remember, Susan didn’t seek help for a long time, something I can totally understand Maddie being upset about. Addiction is a disease, for certain, but if the person isn’t willing to even try to get better, I think that’s now on them. And, again, Maddie would have been a CHILD through most of this and is totally allowed to hold some bitterness about how she didn’t get a mom during her childhood the way she should have.

And the same is true of Ben. What happened to him originally with Ryn’s Song is by no means his fault, obviously, and I don’t think Maddie ever treats it like it is. But expecting her to remain in a relationship with him when she KNOWS how she’ll react to it due to her history with addiction seems super unfair. She’s choosing not to remain in a relationship where she might end up feeling abandoned and unloved again. And you know what? She ends up BREAKING that rule in Season 2 ANYWAY. She gets back into a relationship with him (and starts one with Ryn) while he’s still under the effects of the addiction and there’s no cure in sight. And then she gets addicted herself and they BOTH go get a cure when it becomes available. She stands by him as he struggles through the jealousy over Ryn’s mating season, as much as she stands by Ryn who is wary of Ben’s jealousy and how that may make him react.

What she’s doing now is acting hostilely to something that she has no idea is even RELATED to an addiction. It might be raising some red flags in her head that she’s got due to her mother’s issues with it, but as far as Maddie knows, the addiction didn’t cause him to let a man drown. If your partner that you thought you knew and believed was 100% NOT addicted to anything just suddenly let someone die when they could’ve saved them, would that NOT raise red flags for you? Or if you found out your partner who you KNOW got cured of their unwilling addiction just suddenly started exhuming graves for science experiments, particularly graves of people that are IMPORTANT TO HIS OWN GIRLFRIEND? Ben is doing some REAL shady stuff right now and while WE THE AUDIENCE know that Ben is sick and addicted to the Song, Maddie does not. That’s really important to remember. I’d go back and look at how Maddie and Ben interacted in late Season 1 and early Season 2 for how Maddie reacts to Ben when she KNOWS he’s addicted to the Song and compare that to her behavior now when she believes he’s been completely cured, the way she has. It’s not like it’s an assumption on her part, either, she had to get cured WITH HIM and she knows that she is fully cured, they saw the brain scans, so she has no reason to believe that Ben isn’t doing these things entirely of his own volition.

Ben isn’t choosing not to approach Maddie because he thinks she’s too hostile to ever want to help him through his illness/addiction. He’s choosing to lie to her and not ask her for help both because deep down he knows he’s in the wrong, and because of a combo of hurt over the break-up and what appears to be a clear attempt to give Maddie some space. It’s why he doesn’t tell RYN, either, he’s not just not approaching Maddie about this, he’s doing the exact same thing with Ryn, even though she DIDN’T break up with him over Ian’s death or get angry with him. He knows that what he’s doing would upset her, so he’s saying nothing. Maddie is not some hostile villain. She has her flaws, I’m not saying she doesn’t, but her decision to not want to be involved in a relationship with someone who has substance abuse issues due to a difficult past with a loved one who has substance abuse issues is not one of them. Expecting her to fix Ben while he’s being super dishonest with her and becoming a person she can’t even recognize anymore seems super unfair.

TL;DR I don’t think Bryn work right now any more than Baddie do and that is entirely on Ben for not being honest and open in his relationships and making BOTH “hetero” legs of the triangle become unhealthy and dysfunctional. Maddie and Ryn obviously are both able to be queer and polyamorous no matter who they’re dating or how many people they’re dating, so let people ship what they want if it’s what makes them feel good and isn’t hurting you. Ben’s actions are not all able to be blamed on the Song any more than his love for Ryn is a product of the Song, so even though he definitely is a good person at heart and can come back to that, he’s super annoying right now and I don’t blame people for being less interested in him as a character. Again, if it’s not hurting you, let people ship whatever they want. I think if you want people to be more compassionate towards Ben as a character, maybe you should think about being more compassionate towards Maddie and not call her “hostile” for being upset with her mother for not being able to truly be there for her and for abandoning her when she was young. Maybe you should not be blaming Maddie for not being a mind-reader and realizing that Ben’s still addicted to the Song instead of doing what’s best for her own mental health.