Chapter Text

These are all the ships I was able to find that have three or more people, 500+ works overall, and 99+ works using the “Polyamory” tag or the “Threesome” tag -- or one of their subtags, like "Foursome" or "OT3." There may be some large poly ships missing. Counting polyamorous ships is tricky due to unpredictable tagging practices:

"Polyamory" and "Threesome" (and their numerous subtags -- see below) are often used in fics featuring poly themes, but not always. Sometimes the author will tag a fanwork with a 3+ person ship without adding any tags related to polyamory. And there's no way on AO3 to only search for ships with 3+ characters. So I may have missed a number of 3+ person ships that don't use any of the poly-themed tags I looked for.

There are probably also many poly arrangements where multiple overlapping couples are tagged, but not all the characters together. E.g., a fic tagged "Polyamory" in which Steve/Tony and Steve/Bucky were both tagged, but the three were not tagged together in a single ship, would not be reflected here.

I recognize that this slide is harder to read than many of mine. You can read the complete list here. But also, here is the text version of the ships on the slide:





SHIP MOST TAGGED FANDOM TOTAL WORKS James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark Marvel Cinematic Universe 2017 Castiel/Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester Supernatural 1696 Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer Leverage 1339 Keith/Lance/Shiro (Voltron) Voltron: Legendary Defender 1301 Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V/Park Jimin 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS 1299 Jeon Jungkook/Jung Hoseok/Kim Namjoon/Kim Seokjin/Kim Taehyung/Min Yoongi/Park Jimin 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS 1291 Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey Star Wars Sequel Trilogy 1115 Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku/Todoroki Shouto 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia 1077 James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies) 1068 Elizabeth Burke/Peter Burke/Neal Caffrey White Collar 1064 Gavin Free/Ryan Haywood/Michael Jones/Ray Narvaez Jr./Jack Pattillo/Geoff Ramsey Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF 1061 Anxiety | Virgil/Creativity | Roman/Logic | Logan/Morality | Patton Sanders Sides (Web Series) 1018 Niall Horan/Zayn Malik/Liam Payne/Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson One Direction (Band) 1009 Gladiolus Amicitia/Prompto Argentum/Noctis Lucis Caelum/Ignis Scientia Final Fantasy XV 903 Allison Argent/Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall Teen Wolf (TV) 865 Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin NCT (Band) 804 Jung Hoseok | J-Hope/Min Yoongi | Suga/Park Jimin 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS 681 Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling 659 James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson Captain America (Movies) 640 James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers Marvel Cinematic Universe 636 James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Reader Marvel Cinematic Universe 585 James "Bucky" Barnes/Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers Captain America (Movies) 565 Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler Stranger Things (TV 2016) 563 Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens/Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette/Hercules Mulligan Hamilton - Miranda 560 Sherlock Holmes/Mary Morstan/John Watson Sherlock (TV) 535

Looking through the top 100 ships that I was able to find got me curious about what categories the common poly ships fell into. There are more M/M/M than anything else, but there are also a lot of F/M/M ships. There are also a bunch of boy bands where the entire band is shipped, falling somewhere in the M/M/M/M+ category.

The above is based on my own hand categorization of each of the top 100 ships. Later on, I'll look at which AO3 tags people most commonly use to describe their work's poly configuration.

But first -- let's look at which fandoms have a lot of poly.

These are the fandoms I could find with a relatively high percentage of works using the "Polyamory" tag -- mostly over 2%. There are almost certainly a number of smaller fandoms missing. Many of these fandoms contain over 100 works using the tag, but there are a few smaller fandoms here that don't pass that threshold; the smallest, The Promised Neverland has only 36 works tagged "Polyamory."

Edit: the above graph was edited to add a missing fandom, Black Sails, and also to correct a statistical error with Castlevania.

full list

Edit: This graph and the accompanying commentary have been updated to include a number of fandoms that were erroneously omitted from the initial version.

The fandoms I found with the highest use of the "Threesome" tag has some overlapping fandoms with the previous graph, but also a lot of differences. The bands and groups of bloggers who are often all shipped together are, unsurprisingly, lower on the "Threesome" list than the "Polyamory" list. But there are other notable differences, as well.

Not that we should expect the two lists to be identical; for one thing, not all threesomes are happening within a polyamorous relationship, of course. (Though I would guess that most people don't deeply think through their choice of tags, and instead follow the tagging convention they see most often.) And AO3's current organization of the different tags is (to my mind) a bit quirky. AO3 has grouped all the "Foursome"+ and "OT4"+ tags under "Polyamory," while "OT3" is under "Threesome," and so "Threesome" and "OT3" are the only ones that aren't part of "Polyamory."

full list

There are a lot of different ways that AO3 users tag polyamory and related situations. Here are all the related tags I found with 1000+ works. I found most of these by looking through subtags of "Polyamory" and "Threesome."

Here are the smaller subtags of "Polyamory" and "Threesome." There are undoubtedly other tags out there related to polyamory, but these are the ones that AO3 has made into canonical tags and grouped under those two tags.

Some fandoms have developed their own fandom-specific polyamory tags. Again, there are probably others out there, but these are the ones that AO3 has made into canonical tags and grouped under "Polyamory."

Edit: Additional notes

People have asked some good questions in the comments, and I've added explanations and even graphs. I'm copying some my responses into the main body of the post for easier reference, but see comments for conversational context.

In response to some cool questions/hypotheses about how people use the "Multi" tag, and whether it's influenced by the genders or number of participants:

link to bigger image It looks like threesomes with a mix of genders (including F/M/M) are indeed far more likely to be tagged Multi than single-gender poly ships! But they are still quite likely to also be tagged F/M. (The red bar includes just the category that is most often tagged besides Multi -- which turns out to be M/M in the case of M/M/M+, F/F in the case of F/F/F, and F/M in the other cases.)

In response to an excellent question about why I only showed 3+ person ships as poly ships, even though a lot of poly involves overlapping pairings but not triads, quads, etc: