#franpen

polins can understand and agree that people who ship colin and marina use the idea of the couple as means to hate on penelope. we see all the time in the few fanfics that make their way into the polin tag on ao3 or on how people use marina to talk about colin and his attraction and love for penelope.

but why doesn't this understanding translate into people seeing that those who ship penelope and anthony, penelope and benedict, penelope and eloise or penelope and francesca and etc hate colin when that's also clear as day?

these ships are always made light of, like they aren't built on this idea that colin is stupid or an idiot (either because he didn't know right away that penelope was in love with him or because they think he's not intellectually her equal), that he's the worst person in the world for saying a single thing out of turned (which he apologized for) or simply because he's 'boring'. Not to mention the fanfics where colin gets over-vilified to justify penelope choosing one of his siblings over him, making sure to add a final scene of him suffering alone and miserable as penelope lives her happily ever after with somebody else.

I see and understand that crackship is part of fandom culture but I don't engage with it when It comes to bridgerton because I'm not particularly interested in it, but I can't help but question: why penelope is a crackship wildcard, free to be shipped with whoever in the bridgerton universe (and yes that includes edmund and gregory), having had not one but TWO events created especially to inspire people to write and draw crackship content of penelope with everybody but the simple mention of colin with anyone else is enough to descend the entire fandom in discourse hell?