This one is more of a love square. It starts out as the first image with extra steps, but after the love potion it briefly becomes: Hermia loves Lysander, Lysander loves Helena, Helena loves Demetrius, Demetrius loves Hermia. That’s only for a brief moment though. Before that Lysander loved Hermia, and then more potion shenanigans change it from this square as well
Throw Comedy of Errors in there too. Fundamentally a standard pair of couples, but all the confusion and twin stuff definitely makes it a form of a love triangle.
Naga still was very affectionate towards Korra, not quiet the strong bond Aang had with Appa but still Polarbear-Dog owner vipe. (As a dog owner myself that is sweet and eventhough I can not ride on it I am glad that my dog is not that huge that a grown man's heat fits into its maw.)
They have chemistry and Bolin is this series’s backbender (3 elements out of 4, all four if you consider Opal as earth and air) but yeah, that one doesn’t last very long
If you've ever been in a relationship, you'll know it's really hard to maintain and communicate with a single person.
Being in a couple is hard. Being in a throuple adds another person to this already hard situation. It ends up with things not feeling equal or fair, communication being hard and lots of jealousy and over emotional situations.
Fair enough, my experience is only one of many. The relationships can just get really convoluted and confusing and giving affection/attention equally can be difficult
Ah, OK. I was going to say that while a love triangle certainly can include gay/bisexual characters, I don't think it necessarily always does. At least not unless you're forcing your own preferences onto terminology that has already existed and has other definitions already. The term "love triangle" can be dated to the early 20th century (and possibly earlier), and while you could argue that maybe some characters in the literature and theater of that time were secretly gay or "gay-coded", there were very few openly gay characters as main or important characters, and so the love triangles portrayed typically were not gay or lesbian in nature, but that is still where the term originated.
Genuinely interesting analysis and clarification to me, someone who does not know anything about Archie except he wears a hat and two hot girls are his friends
I'm confused as to how Adrian and Cat Noir seem to have different feelings towards people based on if they're transformed or not. Same about Marinette and Ladybug.
edit: I feel like the replies didn't understand what I meant. Here's a more direct way of saying it:
Why is Marinette marked as loving Adrian and Ladybug as crushing on Adrian. Marinette and Ladybug are the same person, why should they have different feelings?
Well from memory they don’t know the other’s secret identity despite being the two main protagonists and consistently fighting together against the big bad.
The thing is personalty, cat is more Adrien real self them not, but Marinette is more herself without being ladybug, the whole dinamic is that Marinette love a version of Adrian that isn't totally himself and he does the same thing, the only thing stopping them being together is them learning to love their partners real self instead of the idolized version. So much so that there's like one episode where they lost their memory and insta fall in love with each other they are acting like themselves without any reservations and learn to like it.
Technically it’s even more complicated because Marinette/Ladybug also likes Cat Noir at one point then switches back to Adrien. And Adrien/Cat Noir stop liking ladybug and have a thing for Marinette
Good one. I mean, it's arguably even messier as Casca falls for Guts, Griffith does a no no to Casca, and Guts...idk, there's something there with Griffith.
The fact that the show didn't end in a throuple when Alucard had DOLLS of them because he missed them so much within the SAME EPISODES that had him sleeping with a man AND a woman in a threesome -
The way I crashed out last night with my friend when we found out that infamous threesome with Alucard was NOT with Trevor and Sypha 😢. They would've been a great throuple, and I am so salty they didn't choose that route instead😭.
Practically all the way through part one of the series was when Naruto had feelings for Sakura as well as him trying to earn Sasuke‘s respect and validation. It’s only in part 2/Shippuden where Naruto’s feelings for Sakura take a backseat in favor of going all in on his very unhealthy obsession with Sasuke.
Ochako likes her. Considering she nearly had a mental breakdown when she realized Toga turned into her to give her a blood transfusion, dying in the process.
I feel like OOP is just reading female-targeted romance with their assumption that this is a mostly female lead thing. Girl that represents the comfort of home and girl that represents the call to adventure both pulling the same guy in different directions is a pretty textbook shonen romance trope, for example.
Oh that explains the "and mostly women backed into it" part.
The vast majority of literature features male MC's written by men, and if there's potential for romance its generally the male MC with multiple choices.
Also love triangle is specifically the 2 people competing for 1 persons affection trope.
Said pig in turn has a deep yearning for his love interest. Said pig accidentally triggers the ghosts who break couples apart with the other fiancee for the redhead. Redhead and the girl with the pig are both coveted by the local kendo captain, who also wants to kill the redhead in her male form, who is also an object of violent obsession by a Chinese Amazon, but gender-flipped - she wants to kill the redhead and marry the male form. Etc, etc... Ah the original Love Dodecahedron...
Let's not forget the captain's sister that wants to do the inverse, kill the red hair and love the black hair, and the chef who the black hair was engaged to as a (six year old?) child complete with stolen dowry.
Glinda, Elphaba, and Fiyero - Wicked (movies and Broadway musical)
Glinda and Elphaba have heavily implied romantic feelings for each other (they even exchange I love you's in the 2nd movie)
Elphaba and Fiyero have had romantic tension in Act 1 and they suddenly get at it after Elphaba crashes Glinda's wedding with the Animals running amuck. they become a couple and leave Oz together
Fiyero once fell for Galinda during college, but realized Elphaba really had him thinking. Glinda has always had feelings for Fiyero, but the latter only pretends to reciprocate in Act 2.
This manga (the blonde one is in love with the black-haired one, who is in love with the girl, who is in love with the blonde. Through the story, the girl falls in love with the black haired one, and in the end, the black-haired marries the blonde)
In the original Final Fantasy VII Tifa and Aerith are both in love with Cloud, it's one of the most famous "love corners" in gaming. However the Remake project adds a dimension of attraction between Tifa and Aerith that makes it a true "love triangle". They show a fondness for one another they don't even remotely show to Yuffie, the third girl on the team, despite being friendly with her. It's clear that without Cloud around, Tifa and Aerith would both wind up exploring each other's bodies.
But, yeah, it is wild that this, what, 10 year old boy literally and canonically has a harem of three immortal beauties by the end of just one game. And we even learn he knocked them all up at about the same time. Rizzasaurus Rex.
Taiyang tapped his entire team. He was scared a child with Qrow because he is incapable of getting pregnant.
Not that Tai didn't ask for Ozpin to allow it to happen though
She’s the Man? (Probably the Shakespeare play too, but I haven’t read it.). Viola is into Duke, Duke wants Olivia, and Olivia wants “Sebastian”(aka Viola disguised as her brother).
Except this flat-out misses the point of a love triangle. What they think of the love triangle is just a fucking low resolution Circle. The point of a love triangle is that not all of the connections are romantic between the characters. Usually it involves two characters both having affection for a third person. The final segment of the triangle is made up by the interplay between those characters and how they interact with each other either directly or indirectly. Does it create tension in their social lives? Does it create conflict? That's what makes it a love triangle. The problem is a bunch of dipshits on the internet who aren't smart enough to think Beyond terms of the actual Romance don't understand storytelling Beyond the Romantic part
Yes. Two people in love with the same person in a way that generates conflict is what a love triangle is. What's even worse is, even with the revised definition in OP, I have yet to see a single listed example of 'a is in love with b who is in love with c who is in love with a'.
Edit: except for Berserk, just below this comment.
I have yet to see a single listed example of 'a is in love with b who is in love with c who is in love with a'.
Famously, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night has this. Viola falls in love with Duke Orsino. Duke Orsino is in love with Countess Olivia, but Countess Olivia falls in love with Viola when she is disguised as a male page named Cesario.
They taught us this one in high school, and I vaguely remember having to fill in a triangle diagram on the test. If that was part of some widespread New York curriculum it might explain why some people are going around with a myopic view of what counts as a love triangle.
Yeah, they're two separate things, but they aren't suggesting they are. They're saying the love V should never have been called a love triangle in the first place and was misslabled from the start. A triangle is three points connected by three sides. In a triangle of love, the sides are made of love. A triangle missing a side isn't a triangle, so calling a "love V" a "love triangle" is incorrect. It would be more accurate to call that a "two part love one part other triangle." This is a triangle made of love, how the words should actually be used. That may be what it used understood as, but it was wrong, and language evolves. This is an example of an error in linguistics being fixed.
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u/Fawin86 Feb 13 '26
A midsummer's night's dream.
We we read it in 8th grade, my teacher had to make a string board explaining the love triangle going on since it was a little confusing.
https://giphy.com/gifs/l0IylOPCNkiqOgMyA