The Case of Robin Buckley: how to subvert the Mandatory Hetero Romance Plot (MHRP)
The beginning of season 3 was clumsy, but the ending was fantastic.
Edit 2026: Forever pissed off because of what happened at the end of season 5
Warning: spoilers/discussions over the ships in Stranger Things, Brokeback Mountain, 50 Shades of Grey, Harry Potter, MCU, Star Wars, Now You See Me, The Mummy, It, The Vampire Diaries, Mad Men, La Casa de Papel (Mind Heist).
My other metas here
La maldición de las cuatro brujas here
Una novela romántica de esas con un macizorro sin camiseta en la portada here
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Do you know one of the concepts that angers me most? The “forced gay character” bullshit.
Excuse me? ARE. YOU. FUCKING. KIDDING. ME.
Tell me just one book, movie, show or videogame that DOESN’T show a hetero romance. Problems thinking in one? Of course. Because the MHRP is so pervasive that even in stories when your Main Character is gay, of course there will be a MHRP, sometimes even involving said gay character. Or to attract chicks, because women won’t read/see anything without romance (hahaha, the gender gap in Captain Marvel’s reviews says hello with her female/male friendship, the female/female friendship, and the cat).
Real poster advertising Brokeback Mountain. You know, the movie about two cowboys in love with their wives.
You know the dynamic: your Male Character sees her, the only Smurfette in the thing and by the end of everything, they are together. Like most horror movies, you endure the forced scenes of the love story, wanting to (finally) be done with it.
The plot is always the same: they see each other, the female make some acid remarks about the male (because we are in the XXI century and otherwise the male fantasy would be so much blatant) but they got together in the end. The Female Character Version of the MHRP written by a female writer is (slightly) better: at least your female character is pining for someone who is more interesting than the Smurfette (slightly again, and not always, but a jerk is more interesting than Generic White Dude). This is a direct consequence of two reasons: most writers are male (the ones who has good PR, at least), misoginy (against female writers and a ratio of 50% of characters of both sexes), homophobia (because gay is not nooormaaal and perverts our childreeeen), and the check points of “how to create a best-seller” (even those check points are proven to be incorrect and not useful to sell long time ago).
The forced necessity to introduce the MHRP
The MHRP always follow this steps, so it is easy to spot:
1. The Cool Girl Factor
The Smurfette is younger, cooler, hotter and funnier than your male hero. But she falls in love with him because… I really don’t know. Sometimes the guy is not even a nice guy.
Look. I understand why Anastasia Steele wanted to fuck Christian Grey. After all, he’s the better version of Mediocre White Guy Protagonist, and she doesn’t know anything better. But come on. Don’t tell me Ramona Flowers and Knives would want to fuck Michael Cera. And stay with him.
Or a twenty something woman would want to fuck a grey haired man old enough to be her father, because mature men are the hottesttm. Dear writers, the only who says that are women who are also grey haired, stop trying to project how much you want to bang your daughter’s friends, I assure you as a woman and a former daughter friend, we don’t find you attractive at all.
No example included but this chart.
Or the idea of the younger, cooler, hotter and funnier female character who simply ends attracted to… no one. Seriously. If you don’t pair your younger, cooler, hotter and funnier female character with someone in the end, is not the end of the world.
Remember when JK Rowling said she paired Hermione with Ron because she wanted to subvert the dynamic of pairing the main female character with the male protagonist? This was a baby step in the right direction, but not the right question. The right question was not which whom she should be paired, if Harry, Ron or even Draco, but why she has to be paired at all?
Victor Krum Team btw, bitches. Despite the age gap.
2. The No Homo Message
Your male character has meaningful conversations with his best (male) friend? They spend a lot of screentime together? They have a preestablished relationship before what is happening in the story? The chemistry of both actors is terrific? Ok, let’s going to pair her with the Smurfette who just happens to appear conveniently for the plot.
In the MCU movies they had to stream storylines of thousands of comics in barely 2 hours per movie, so of course details would be deleted. Peggy Carter was The One for Steve Rogers. But time passed, Peggy died and now you have Captain America having a full saga of angst over Bucky Barnes. Okay, you don’t want to pair Cap with the Winter Soldier? Well, you can leave Steve alone and not make him kiss Peggy’s niece, who most of us are not able to remember her name and appeared for like 2 uneventful scenes before having a Big Damn Kiss with our Commited Virgin Hero.
Most blatant was the case with Black Widow. The actress had chemistry with almost everyone in the cast, and meaningful plots with almost everyone. Black Widow was the only Smurfette for a long time and was in a lot of franchises. There are real reasons to ship her with said Captain America, Tony Stark, Hawkeye… and she gets in the end with Hulk. Because reasons.
They broke up in Endgame and no one really cried.
Oscar Isaac was onboard with the StormPilot ship. Finn was meant to be with Rey at first (or at least be the False MHRP in the Reylo ship, depending on your view), but Poe appeared and started to stare Finn. The actor trolled Lucas Arts/Disney/China bootlickers executives so much that they added that ultra side character (the whatever smuggler from whatever planet) to be Poe’s ex. You don’t want to lose your conservative audience? Ok, money is money, but at least don’t pair your blatant queer coded character with extra #174. This is exactly what “forced” means.
She barely has a face, ffs.
3. You can erase the MHRP and the story and characters are the same.
Hell, even if you do that, maybe the story and characters would improve. You will have time to develop better the plot, or at least your audience won’t be scratching their heads asking why those two are together (or even worse, why she deal with his bullshit). The Big Bad kidnapped the Princess? Okay, your Mario will be more heroic if the just rescue the Princess because is a person, not because she is the girl he wants to fuck. Remember: sex<friendship/some random. Your character will be better if he or she improve by themselves, not because they want to impress the Designated Love Interest. I know, love and OTPs are very subjective, but even the most fluffy shippers recognize that context matters.
Remember Now You See Me saga? In the second, the girlfriend of the protagonist has to go because reasons (the actress was pregnant) and they added a new Smurfette. Who (at least) ended with the only other character not old enough to be his father.
Sassy redhead old love vs Darkhaired sassy new love. But still unnecessary. We came here for the magic!
The Mummy had Rachel Weisz as Evelyn Carnahan in nº1 and 2, but for the threequel, they recasted the actress. Like. WTF. If you cannot have Evelyn, then kill her. But this is was “disposable” means, because we all ready know Rick cannot be alone. Because reasons.
The Mummy 3 doesn’t exist. Like Batman’s 3rd gf in the Dark Knight saga.
Do you remember the guy from the right in Deadpool? Yep, he did everything in the plot for his fridge dead wife and child. Do you remember the names of said women? Of course not. The writers didn’t even bother to give them a name!
This was the magic of Stelena. In The Vampire Diaries, Elena was the reincarnation (or something) of the lost love of Stefan. Stefan was new, mysterious and charming. They got together before the reveal of “I am a vampire”. Where is the magic then? They admitted they just were horny for each other, like most teens (I have the theory of vampires maintain the maturity of the age in which they were killed), and roll with it. They kissed and all that jazz and later became friends and reliable partners. Like a lot people do in real life. First bang, then partners. But admit you were in for the sexy times like Stelena did, damnit.
4. The time and timing
You can’t have a story that lasts less than a week and have said pairing declaring love forever. Shakespeare already parodied this in Romeo and Juliet that was… you know. A parody. You can’t have a demon possessing your house/zombie apocalypse/mafia war/meteor coming and having your pair invested in bang each other. Is just not the time. If you do that is just ridiculous.
I get why Kylo Ren would be rooting by Rey. After all, she resisted him, her actress is Daisy Riley, and he has abandonment issues. But why she rooted for him? I mean, just more abandonment issues (after all she adopted a robot) is not enough to feel taht much pity and sympathy to the point of “hey, this is The One”. From her POV, the guy tried to kill her (several times) in around seven hours, killed father substitute Han Solo, is a Nazi Emperor, when they meet they fight to death and the only redemption he had was help her to fight Zombie Palpatine. That’s not enough. Even if somehow they manage to survive both, I suppose Kylo would be in some martial court and send to prison forever for all the things he did. And most of us distance (and years) kill a relationship. The writers even invented the resurrection power of the Force to pull off Reylo. I know that “consistency” is not a word in Star Wars world, and both characters are the superpowered versions of their sides, but come on. I don’t even get why Kylo Ren would want Rey as his student. There are more people around... and he has a fucking army, he doesn’t really need her. Seems an unnecessary complicated evil plan to me.
It can happen but not like it finally happened.
The ending would have been better if they did a Rogue One: you saw the MHRP coming, but the movie ended before the protagonists could start something. And these protagonists were young conventional attractive people, who didn’t try to kill each other when they are together. Just for your information.
But hey, the MHRP was so forced in the Star Wars saga that we had Padmé losing her pants for a stalker whose pick up lines were about sand, and two 1st grade siblings kissing each other, so…
It doesn’t matter how hot John Hamm is, I seriously doubt there would those parade of women in the 60s ready to bang Don Draper. Specially during the times with the rampant misogyny and slutshaming, and the almost inexistent birth control and legal abortion. Also, I doubt the sexually liberated hippies would fuck the Supreme Yuppie.
Of course, you can have a non Stockholm Syndrome love story during a robbery that last less than a week.
5. Actors’ chemistry
Rule number one: if you have actors, make them work with the chemistry as much as they can. Or write the things more smoothly. Just don’t give them the “romantic” interactions to other pairings.
There is a reason why the Jonsa shippers increased exponentially in the 2-3 seasons Jon and Sansa Stark were “together”, even with people who didn’t ship them before fell for them. And people who shipped Jonerys rolled their eyes to the back of their skulls when Jonerys occurred (and some of them jumped the ship). Kindly reminder this people of the gif above are brother/sister (well, cousins).
Hell, I thought Billy in his first scene was going to pull a Love Square with the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Teen Team (StevexNancyxJonathan), or force something on Nancy that will solve the UST finally, or start the dynamic NancyxBad Boy (even if wasn’t canon but you know how viewers are) and instead of that… you have the Sex Walking Machine shirtless and sweating grinding Steve in a basketball practice. Twice. And later in a shower. Writers, I know that shippers will ship what they want, and will take any hint, but try to don’t fuel the ship machine so caressly. I don’t want to know what would have happened if you put them in the coffee shop AU or the “and there was only one bed!” scenes. FFS, the scene above ended in Pornhub in the “Jock obliterating twink” category.
6. The dark side of the Smurfette: the Love Triangle
This is the usual ratio of male vs female in everything:
1 male, 1 female
2 males, 1 female
3-4 male, 1 female
4-5 male, 2 females (one of them usually is a sibling, but fucking your siblings is allowed since Game of Thrones became mainstream).
And so on. One of the deleted scenes of It was the gang bang (obviously), but yet we have Beverly, launcher of ships. At least here we have some more gay ships, and I’m not talking about the canon Reddie.
This is when we have with the MHRP2, the cancer version of the MHRP. Same everything, but even more forced, because you want the main female character to kill the other 2 males, to bang her best female friend instead, or have the male ones banging each other and dumping the female.
The Stranger Things Case
Stranger Things is not immune to this. We have Mileven. Mike chose her because she is the Smurfette. She chose Mike because reasons, because even in season 1, we can agree Dustin is an awesome scene stealer, Will is gay a cinnamon roll, Lucas is black in the 80s. So basically the writers make her chose the Generic White Guy (his name is fucking Mike even) instead of Anything That Can Subvert Expectations. Nancy had the Teen Love Triangle, and you knew since the beginning Joyce and Hopper will be something.
The MRHP was even more forced in season 2. Max arrived as (another) Love Triangle and to be the 6th ranger of the Party (see the ratio above). Because apparently, you cannot introduce a female character without being a love interest. Even if said character would be getting along with our protagonists anyway, because they share nerdy interests and she is also a misfit. Max could have been the Zoomer without the MRHP2 . The writers even forced Max in another Love Triangle with Mileven (combo, 2 MRHP with one character, where are my points?) with Eleven being jealous of her relationship with Mike. Not the Party, only with Max. Kali didn’t count since she didn’t interact with any main character or plot.
In season 3, we were introduced to Erica (sibling and still too young to have any action) and all the Love Triangles were finally resolved (except for the forced drama of Joyce ignoring Hopper for a second to stay with Mr Clarke).
Enter Robin, the MHRP for Steve. She has been working with Steve, who is at its peak of loser and also, single. She is a loser but a cool, smart, snarky one. She was supposed to exist in Hawkins since some time before, but conveniently was erased from existence by King Steve. She tried to help Steve to get girls, she mocked his Mom Status, and… that’s it. Then, she helped to enroll Erica in Scoops Troop, she resolved the Russian code, they break in, they get tortured, and they set the Mind Flayer on fire. I just listed all their scenes together during 8 hours of screentime, in the 5 days around the season 3 plot happened. And we were supposed to ship them because both are young, hot, white, and they shared 2 snarky scenes and later, a crazy plot about Evil Russianstm.
At least Suzie was a plot device, part of the “growing up” theme of the season, a Chekhov Gun and gave us an iconic scene.
But luckily for us, Joe Keery and Maya Hawke are millenials so hetero is not granted, they read their chemistry onscreen, Maya is a woman so she has already dealt with being the sexy lamp before disappear from lead roles because she will turn 35, they understand about writing, and how the tumor plot that is MHRP existed and convinced the writers midseason to stop the MHRP to happen (again). And instead of said MHRP, we received a beautiful (and meaningful) friendship in the show about friendship, and an organic and realistic coming out scene.
Thank, actors. We need more Joes and Mayas in the world. Or, at least, less MHRP. And this goes for you too, fellow writers and creators who are reading this.
How to troll your audience by subverting their expectations: Black Sails aka “Welcome to the Bi Island of fuck gender roles”, and also “this guy was dicked so hard and well that declared a war on England because of the death of his boyfriend”.
