Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

The Tragedy of Love Triangles

Where have I been? Away. But Tuesday I ran a marathon with my best friend. And no, you're not mistaken. I did run two marathons in two months. And a year ago I could barely walk. So yeah, if you work your ass off, you can do something great. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

But that's neither here nor there, so let's rant, since it's been forever. Today I wanna talk about: The Tragedy of Love Triangles

(On a side note, am I the only one that finds it mildly strange to refer to a situation where one person is in love with two others as a triangle if the other two aren't, in turn, in love with each other? It's more of a love angle...like...acute or obtuse, y'know. Whatever. Moving on.)

I have three main points I want to cover here, so let's get started:

1. The love interests are always drastically different

It's always the bad boy and the childhood, nice-guy best friend. And I get it to an extent. You don't want two interchangeable characters, but come on. How is it possible that they're the total opposites?

I know I said I didn't date in high school, but I did have flings (as we all know by now) and even though I was known for not having a type, the guys I had flings with did have some similarities.

I mean, I had flings with tall guys, short guys, older guys, younger guys, dark hair, light hair, red hair, dark eyes, blue eyes, smart guys, dumb guys, all kinds of guys. But they had things in common. Out of the six guys I'll admit to having flings with, three were very smart, five were athletes, four were into the arts, and all six enjoyed partying. I could pair any two and find at least three similarities to them.

But these stories are crazy. The bad boy drinks and smokes and parties and treats women poorly and has her breaking the law and going to wild get togethers and stripping naked at every chance they have.

Then the good guy is taking her to fancy dinners, holding the door for her, treating her like a princess, and just rolling out the red carpet.

I feel like we sacrifice too much of the male character when we try to make them such polar opposites. They have to fit so carefully into this strict mold and I don't like that. For once, I don't want the love interests to be classified as a type. You should not, under any circumstances, be able to classify your character into one category if you say they are well rounded.

To me, a well-rounded character has more focus on their personality than their role. They might be a nice guy, but nice guys don't always have to play by the rules. Bad guys don't always have to be on the edge of insanity.

Let's focus more on the characters and the experiences than the labels.

2. It's obvious who the MC will end up with

It's going to be the bad boy. I'm telling you that right now. Why? Two reasons: 1. Bad boys are in, and 2. The childhood, nice-guy best friend can always go back to being just the best friend (because he cares so much about the girls' happiness) and it becomes a win-win for everyone.

I hate that. Not just because it's so common it's not even fun anymore, but because the bad boy becomes this artificially reformation of his former self.

It's not cute when a guy who's been a dick to you forever (calling you names, constantly controlling you, always giving you orders, controlling your life (as most of these bad boys do to the MCs)) finally does one nice thing. It's not. If he opens a door for her, everyone in the comments is saying "awwwwww, that's so cute" and totally ignoring the comment he's almost inevitably making about her "tight ass".

I hate that. So much.

I remember the thing my best friend and I fought about the most when I was with the guy that was a real jerk to me was just that: he was a jerk. And I remember we were sitting in my car one night talking about him (after, probably the eighth time I'd broken up with that guy and was thinking about getting back together with him) and my best friend pointed to the pennies in my ash tray and said "if you keep on like this, that's the only change you have coming". (And that's just a perfect example of why he's the professional and I'm not)