#well i have problems with saphne but that’s a different conversation

[waltricia]

I had a thought. Apropos of nothing, really. Please don’t give me shit for it.

For a long time, I didn’t understand Polin. I think there are certain tropes, like enemies-to-lovers or forced proximity, that are quite straight-forward. The attraction is always immediate and evident. Friends-to-lovers is more complicated because it’s layered with history and platonic feelings. But I think that Polin is even more complex than the typical friends-to-lovers pairing. It seemed to me, and I’m sure it still seems to many people, particularly unrequited. Particularly unbalanced a dynamic. Particularly impossible to everyone around them and to audiences. ‘How could he ever be interested in her?’ The possibility of their love is not believed. I didn’t believe it. And, of course, as is probably the case with many Polin fans, I relate to Pen more than any of the other characters.

I thought about it and I came to realize that the not-believing actually came from a more insidious place than I had been willing to consider. It came from conditioned bias and internalized fatphobia. Purely. Because it’s one thing to see a love story that you don’t know the ending of and to not believe in its possibility because it starts out as unrequited. It’s another thing to know where it’s going and still not believe. The seeming impossibility of their love story comes from a deeply-rooted societal flaw.

I want all Polin fans to know that to love Polin, to truly believe in it, is to be a radical. It is truly to say, ‘fuck everyone’s expectations.’ The non-believers are brainwashed. I want all Polin fans to know that we are right and they are wrong. Maybe they’ll come to understand. Maybe they won’t. Whether or not they choose to try to understand is up to them. But we must not ever let them put any doubt into our minds or our hearts about the possibility of this kind of love. I know they’re a fictional couple. But they are representative of something very real.

I’ve been rewatching the show and there’s something else I’ve come to realize. It’s easy to fixate on the scenes in which Pen feels rejected by Colin. They’re devastating. But those moments are just loud. They scream at us, whereas the moments of mutual feeling whisper. But they are there.

They’re here.

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