December Daily: fake dating

[resonant]

runpunkrun - "fake dating: yes or no"

Yes! It's one of my favorites!

I like it as simple as "they can't ID us by our faces if we're kissing" and as elaborate as "the board of directors won't consider me mature enough to run the animal shelter unless I have a live-in partner."

I like the "Oh, no, I fell in love. Now I have to break it off" moment. And I like the "Oh, no, I fell in love. I'll just have to fake it twice as hard so that even while we're being photographed kissing in front of the Valentine's Day florist display, my partner won't ever suspect that I have Feelings."

I occasionally see a flip side, too, which I like a lot, where two characters who are long-time lovers or possibly even married have to pretend to be strangers or pals. Something I haven't seen with that trope, but would enjoy, is a scenario where they were dating/married but on the verge of splitting up, and having to pretend they're not together revitalizes the relationship.





Specify a date if you want; otherwise I'll just answer them whenever.

This year, in addition to the usual kinds of questions, I'd also love to get storyish prompts. Storyish meaning you never know what you might get: two sentences of a story, or a description of a story that will never exist, or a love song about how much I like that trope, or a rant about my pet peeve about that trope, or I know nothing about that canon except what I see on social media and here's what I think it might be about, or Ten Reasons Why I Love/Hate/Am Indifferent To that character, canon, or trope, or ...

As always, I'd love to hear about it if you're doing the meme too.


21. minoanmiss - "One of my favorite tropes is Then Let Me Be Evil. What do you think of it/have you explored it/so on and so forth?"
22. hypertwink - "21. Now that you've come back, is there a fandom that you want to dip your toe into? (Follow up: Are you apprehensive/excited about it?)"
23. slvrbld47 -- "MCU, Tony lives through Endgame: Miraculously. As a Consequence, versions of Tony Stark are flung through the Multiverse, ending up in every Fandom. Including Your Favorites. Tony Stark is the new little black dress. I would love to see Tony Stark a werewolf in TeenWolf..."
24. runpunkrun - "John and Rodney in 2020"
25. wychwood -- Favourite Due South secondary character?
26. ride4ever - "for any dS or C6D pairing that you ship, how that ship is doing in 2020."
27. reginagiraffe - "Hermione/Harry/Ron from Bed and Board in 2020"
28. laurenthemself -- "What grammatical (or punctuation, spelling) hill would you die on?"
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Comments

[lunabee34]

I love that trope, too.

I don't think I've seen the must pretend to be apart variant, but now I would like to. LOL

[resonant]

I"m almost sure I've seen it in The Old Guard, but I've looked and looked and couldn't find it.

But, I mean, it makes sense. Perfectly good extended relationships can go dormant for lack of fun, and having a shared secret project is fun. And you never want to kiss someone so much as you do when you know you can't.

[lunabee34]

I completely agree.

I'm going to put this on the list of things to maybe try writing myself.

[resonant]

Eeee! I'm excited now.

[runpunkrun]

Mmm, all of that sounds delicious. I recently read an m/m novel where the couple had to pretend to be strangers while working a case, and I was surprisingly into it! Surprising because it was part of a series and I had never really cared about their relationship before. So it revitalized all of us. It's not something I see very often in fic.

[jesse_the_k]

I'm dying to read that in a fic (I somehow feel like I'm too old to read my first m/m romance novel. Fic seems cozier somehow.)

[resonant]

My first was K.J. Charles' The Magpie Lord earlier this year, and it was ... OK, I guess. Leaned heavily on some kinks that are not my tomato. The short magician dude was excellent and I wanted more of him; the powerful, loud, dominant nobleman was just like the hero of every het romance and I got bored with him very fast.

My library is beginning to stock m/m ebooks, which means that they're now at the same expense and trouble level as fanfiction -- but without (1) the fannish infrastructure that helps me find things that are to my particular taste, (2) the shared characters that I already love at the start of the book, and (3) the level of trust that I have in fannish authors, which I think may be similar to what you mean when you say "cozier."

[jesse_the_k]

Thank you!

You have exactly captured what I mean by "cozy"!

But then you're a writer, so of course you're good at capturing things.

Very soon my memory will be so bad that I'll be able to re-read fanfic and be delighted each time.

[resonant]

Ooh, I'd love to take a look at that, if you'd like to share the title!

[runpunkrun]

Here's my review of the book: Murder House (PsyCop #10), by Jordan Castillo Price. It's a paranormal series with ghosts and such.

Here, in addition to the established couple pretending to be strangers, two co-workers have to pretend to be married.

[jesse_the_k]

Two! Two! Two tropes in one.

[mergatrude]

I feel like I've seen every possible variant of this trope while reading extensively in Les Mis fandom (mostly Enjolras/Grantaire), but as nothing jumps out of my memory to say, "Me! Me!" I don't know that I can recommend anything.

It's also a favourite trope of mine.