For the polyamships comm's 3weeks4dreamwidth:

27 April: How did you discover poly ships? What makes you write/read/draw them?

Overlooking a few dabblings, I arrived in online/LJ fandom in mid-2004, in Due South. It was after the Ray Wars had mostly settled, in the time of Pax Speranza, which is to say that Ray Kowalski had mostly won, but it was outre to bash Ray Vecchio or be rude to Fraser/Vecchio fans. By and large, we shared the same comms and fannish events, etc. To start with, I fell in with the majority and was exclusively Fraser/Kowalski. But within a year, I was dabbling in other sides of the Fraser-Kowalski-Vecchio triangle, particularly keen on Kowalsi/Vecchio AKA Ray/Ray. And then pearl_o prompted "strange and uncomfortable threesomes", and because my brain was a petri dish, I wrote it: Canoes and Taxidermy (F/K, K/V, F/K/V, angst).

But that wasn't really poly so much as cheating/failing to communicate, and an ill-advised falling into bed that ended badly.

Four months later, I wrote my first real threesome get-together: Soft Arithmetic (F/K/V). And from there, all bets were off. The OT3 fic flowed thick and fast. *ahem*

So when I transitioned into White Collar fandom, it felt only natural for Peter/Elizabeth/Neal to be my primary ship. I'm a slasher at heart, but I loved Elizabeth, and they all clearly cared about each other. I found El's inclusion in the ship made it more stable, that the guys would be careful of her when they might not commit as fully to just each other (given all the trust issues, etc). Peter/Elizabeth/Neal was my main focus for the five years I was in that fandom.

I also started watching Kdramas, and I found that in love triangles where they all care deeply about each other, my preferred solution was to smoosh them all together. I acquired some tiny fandom loves: a vee-shaped threesome for Love in the Moonlight (the crown prince/his trusted head guard & the crown prince/the female lead) and a more equilateral threesome for While You Were Sleeping (Han Woo Tak/Jung Jae Chan/Nam Hong Joo).

My current fandom, Guardian, is a drama based on a Chinese m/m novel, so it's super super slashy for the main pairing. But I'm a poly-shipper now, as well as a slasher, so after a while I inevitably started looking for threesome possibilities and exploring those (usually inspired by others' exchange/fest prompts): Chu Shuzhi/Guo Changcheng/Ye Huo, and Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan.

Things I love about threesomes:

• when it comes to love triangles, no one gets left out
• interesting/complicated dynamics
• they force characters to communicate
• so many different kinds of first times!
• the "obstacle" of assumed monogamy making someone believe the already paired-off objects of their affections aren't available/don't return their feelings
• *smooooosh*

(Wow, this took me ages to write; I got lost in the forest of old Due South posts and debates about characterisation for which there would be much more useful language these days. :-)