Talk:Polyamory

Changing the page name to "Poly"?

Per this discussion about privileging fic, I think this term should be changed to the more inclusive "Poly". As a poly shipper, I would never have thought to look for the definition here, and there are links all over the wiki to the nonexistent "Poly". the old briar pipe 06:25, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

There is already a Polyamory page, currently a redirect. We could just reverse the redirect? I don't think that requires a gardener. --MegR 16:37, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, I was thinking if we changed it to Poly, we could add a definition for polyfandom, but maybe that should be a whole other glossary term. --MegR 16:49, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Most of the information about fanworks in general on this topic is on the Threesome page. I know I added some stuf to that page, just because that's where the discussion was, and it was linked from the fanfic page. I didn't actually know that polyfic page existed.--facetofcathy 17:41, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe the pages should be merged in some fashion? Although some threesomes are not really considered polyfic, I would assume, being more a pairing with an optional extra or the like.--MegR 21:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Hm. I think I disagree? It depends on how the threesome is written (OTP+extra or OT3), but most poly shippers count threesomes as poly in the fandoms I've been in. But I agree with the idea of reversing the redirect.the old briar pipe 17:05, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

So... was it ever decided whether to rename the page to Poly or Polyamory? The attention gardener tag is still hanging out on the page, but I can't tell what the page should be renamed as.--æthel 03:42, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved it to poly since that was the original suggestion. Feel free to move it again, but I couldn't stand to see polyfic hanging out there, being inaccurate. :) --æthel 02:06, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Polyrific fandoms

I was going to add something about how while legions of fandoms have *some* polyfic, in very few is a poly relationship one of the more popular ships. In fact, I can't think of a single one. (On White Collar, I am going by the AO3 stats, where Peter/Elizabeth/Neal looks about even with Peter/Neal, but it may not be as popular elsewhere? and I have no idea with PotC.) Anyone got any fandoms which are really big on a polyship? (Big Love maybe??)--MegR 16:49, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

On the White Collar roundup on DW, we've just started using diigo to tag fic (AO3, LJ, DW, ff.net) so the stats are only for about three weeks, but the p/n/e is at 51 and the p/n is at 77. I would call White Collar unique in media fandom, because the threesome stuff gets written as much as it gets talked about which is very much not the case with Leverage. --facetofcathy 17:55, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Cool! That was my sense, but part of me still doesn't quite believe you when you say Parker/Eliot/Hardison isn't that big, so I wasn't sure my perception was accurate ;). Plus I'm not deep in the fandom. Which comm is this? Could the stats be added to the page do you think?--MegR 21:33, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

We do the roundup on the Dreamwidth comm, and it is the closest thing the fandom has to a newsletter. I put a reference to it on the White Collar page, next to the comm listing. I'm not too certain of stats taken over such a short time, but there is some stuff on the page now on the popularity of the threesome. Do you think we should we renaming this page polyamory in fanworks or something and moving some of that threesome content here, or just linking to it? --facetofcathy 21:42, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess the stats should wait for now, three weeks is possibly not statistically significant! I'm not sure what to do about moving the content. It would really mean reworking both pages which, um, I'm not volunteering to do ;/. Still. I know not all polyfic involves a threesome, and not all threesomes are polyfic, but it seems to me like Poly/Polyamory/whatever it ends up being called, should have most of the information.--MegR 21:56, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this would be easier to do by way of a project to de-ficify all the trope pages first with some sort of agreed upon format, and then rearrange content as required. A lot of the shifting would likely just be big C&P jobs, but that post on Fanlore on DW just sort of trailed off without any decision. --facetofcathy 22:35, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

So, I wanted to reopen the discussion about this section because, as per the discussion thread above, it was created to list fandoms where "a poly relationship [is] one of the more popular ships" or even canon. But I think it's sort of turned into a list of "here are the most popular poly ships in various fandoms" rather than "these are fandoms where poly ships are really prevalent". For example, in Sherlock fandom, Sherlock/John/Mary doesn't even make it into the top 10 ship tags on AO3 (below various minor and platonic pairings) and only has around 500 fics. The Merlin OT4 of Arthur/Merlin/Gwen/Morgana also doesn't rank in the top 10, and the same with Sam/Dean/Cas for Supernatural. I know that AO3 stats aren't everything, but I think they're reasonably representative in the fandoms I mention; I can't speak for many others on the list.

My feeling is that we should apply stricter criteria unless we want this to effectively turn into a list of every poly ship with more than a handful of fics in their respective fandoms, or remove the list from the page if we don't want to get bogged down in debating what does and doesn't constitute "polyrific". I like the idea of listing fandoms where polyfic is particularly prevalent, but there's always going to be some degree of haranguing over what does and doesn't belong on the list - otherwise there's no real point to having it. --enchantedsleeper 15:23, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

i think the problem is that for larger fandoms like spn and merlin, there's much more variety in the types of polyamory being depicted. merlin fic pretty frequently has gwen and arthur married, as in canon, but with an open relationship so they can individually also be with merlin and lancelot. that's still polyamory, but it's not as easy to track in the sense of being popular in ao3 tags. so my impression of merlin, at least, is that poly is fairly common but the specific ship you've mention is, as you say, perhaps not. as far as spn goes, if you remove all of the relationships featuring readers or original characters in the same way AO3 Ship Stats does, cas/dean/sam comes in at 10th most popular. since xreader and oc fic are traditionally in a somewhat different category than "popular ships," i feel that's a fair concession to make. i don't necessarily know enough about later sherlock to comment on that particular case, but i do generally feel like the ao3 sherlock fandom activity and the lj/dw fandom activity were quite different so that may be a source for the discrepancy too. - flyingthesky (talk) 23:08, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

That's a good point, flyingthesky - I hadn't considered filtering out those types of ships. I've tweaked the wording in the intro to that section so that it reflects the content a bit better, which I think should be enough. --enchantedsleeper 22:28, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Change title to Polyamory?

There is a movement to leave "Poly" to mean Polynesian peoples, and use "polya", "polyam", or "polyamory/polyamorous" instead. http://aidamanduley.com/2015/09/01/stop-saying-poly-when-you-mean-polyamorous/, https://web.archive.org/web/20170610011811/https://medium.com/guerrilla-feminism/poly-means-polynesian-not-polyamorous-by-lily-stone-2e401e5338f6 Assassin J (talk) 16:17, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree that it would be good to retitle this page "Polyamory" and add info about the abbreviations to the page. —caes (talk) 16:02, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure if we should change it or not, just because there was a push by many to change the term, doesn't mean it really stuck. I still the term "poly" to talk about polyamorous relationships quite often, in fact I would argue it is still quite common. Either way, we should probably have a section in the article highlighting the campaign to change the term. -- Kingstoken (talk) 15:35, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm also in two minds about this as it would be an exception to our naming rule on Fanlore to reflect the most prevalent usage in fandom. On the other hand, we're not proposing a change to "polya" or "polyam", so there's no implication that those terms are more prevalent. I would also submit that "polyamory" is technically the name of the concept that the page is about, while "poly" is the adjective form. So maybe "polyamory" is more appropriate as a general page title?

I'm happy to go with what the majority decides on this, as I think there's a case to be made in both directions. I also agree that we should have a section on the page talking about the push to change the term (I've seen posts about it on Tumblr), especially if we do go ahead with a name change. -- enchantedsleeper (talk) 15:52, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

i agree with polyamory being the concept and poly being the adjective form. "poly" should probably still be a redirect, but much like how Alternate Universe is the page title and AU is a redirect even though i would definitely say "AU" is much more predominantly used in fandom terminology, the title of this page can be "polyamory." the initial change seems to have been from "polyfic" to "poly," which was indeed confusing but poly vs polyamory is much less so and i would say i'm equally likely to say either depending on the situation. - flyingthesky (talk) 23:08, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm in favor of calling changing the article name to Polyamory since it's gives a better idea what the article is about and is also the tag currently used by AO3 to categorize these kind of fanworks. --WhatAreFrogs? (talk) 11:37, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

It looks like we have a consensus around this (though I feel obliged to bang on my "we don't need to follow AO3 tag naming conventions on Fanlore" drum once again ;3) so I will rename the page accordingly. If anyone wants to also add a section about the movement to change the usage of "poly" to "polyam" and its impact on fandom, I feel like it's worth documenting. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 13:30, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Polyamory V

I want to write about the practice of polyamory v relationships where two people are both consensually in a romantic/sexual relationship in with the same person, but they are not in romantic/sexual relationship with each other. I've found some examples of this in a few fandoms. I'm just wondering if it should be added as a subsection in this article, or if it should have it's own article. What do you think? -- Kingstoken (talk) 11:20, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I think here or on the Threesome page. I have definitely encountered V relationships that became OT3s after much angst, so its relevant to both pages. It may depend on the fandoms you're looking at, and if they are using a specific tag, it may be deserving of its own page, and with links to both poly and threesome. --Auntags (talk) 12:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Most recently I've been finding it in Supernatural fandom with Sam/Cas/Dean, where both the boys are in a sexual relationship with Cas, but not with each other, thus avoiding Wincest. However, I've also seen it in Boy/Girl/Boy pairings, where the girl gets both guys, but the guys don't have a sexual relationship with each other -- Kingstoken (talk) 13:32, 1 June 2020 (UTC)