Dear Diary

We've all seen that movie. Action Guy and Action Gal or Damsel Gal do not get along for the entire firkin movie. Except near the third act when they kiss for no good reason and then suddenly have sex.

Sometimes, they don't even kiss. They just go at each other in a sudden and unexpected display of lust.

It's so far out of left field that it's circumnavigated the globe and come in from the right field.

And it's supremely annoying.

Especially when the female lead keeps treating Our Hero with open hostility for 90% of the film, until they start ripping each other's clothes off for no reason.

It plays into Rape Culture, showing people repeatedly that no means yes, open hostility means yes, and even a kick to the nuts can mean yes if he's just "dominant" enough. Stop being so firkin creepy, Hollywood.

Half of the "romances" on our screens don't have any preamlble towards the sex scenes. No expressions of interests beyond the male protagonist's interest in the female lead. Open disgust or hostility on her part until the One Redeeming Feature is exhibited and suddenly all objections are over.

It's ridiculous to think that if a man "just tries hard enough" then he can have any girl he wants no matter what. That doesn't happen in real life and it certainly shouldn't happen in our entertainment. Even romcoms pull this shit, though it's more likely to be a hug and kiss than a sex scene.

And don't get me started about the age gap between the leading man and the leading lady in romcoms. In fact, that might be the next thing I could rant about.

Next time.

For those who haven't realised the predominance of dead Tokens, read here first in which the token black guy [and sometimes black gal] gets a target drawn on them the instant the Big Bad is out to get the good guys.

Running along side Bury Your Gays, the audience is pretty much trained to expect anyone not cis, het, and white to bite the big one when the stakes are raised. They apparently deserve it for not being cishet white people.

It's

Here's the link to educate yourself, but if you don't want to be bothered with the wiki walk: It begain in the Heteronormative 40's and 50's when people realised that women (a) actually do have sex drives, and (b) those spinsters sharing a house and a bunch of cats were doing way more than knitting and watching television together.

This is around about the time that Tragic Girl Romances began to come out in the pulp zines¹ in which the heroine

It's usually a feature of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but sometimes your Action Gal explains her usually manly feats with "I have brothers". The brothers are almost always older, and numerous, and our female lead has learned to hold her own against them as some form of survival skill.

Sometimes, there are no brothers, the mother is usually out of the picture¹, and the father "didn't know how to raise a girl" so did all the boy stuff with her.