a deep dive into the "fake dating" trope

hello everyone welcome back to the channel my name is leonie i am a huge book nerd and a huge fan of romance and this is another episode of leone analyzes things that nobody asked for and that definitely do not need to be analyzed as much with today's useless topic being fake dating so i've consumed my fair share of fake dating media books and movies i really love it and today i just want to talk about when is it done well how can it be done very not well and also just answer the question why do we like this trope so much and we'll also be ranking some very popular fake dating story lines on how ridiculous their setups actually are now why are we talking about this if anywhere in the last year you've walked into a bookstore you've probably come across a little table with a little cute little stand made by the bookshop owners with book talk books or tick tock book recommendations especially romance books have been doing really great online lately because apparently we are all starved for anything with a little bit of spice now here are some of the books that have been pretty popular over the past year not even just on tick tock also everywhere else and when i say everywhere else i mean everywhere else on the internet because i am chronically online anyway all of these garnered between like 60k and 700k reads on goodreads for context conversations with friends a book that has been out for five years and has a tv show made out of it has 200k reads in total on goodreads so these books are popular what do all these books have in common wow you guessed it correctly i'm so proud of you you definitely didn't infer from the title of this video and the topic it's fake dating so i'm not not gonna lie i really thought that the fake dating trope was more popular than it is i really thought every romance book coming out in the last year was like fake dating but from the nominees of the romance goodreads award in 2021 only 4 out of 20 were fake dating so apparently it's not as common as i thought that it was but i guess the ones that do have fake datings really blow up and become very popular so fake dating we have two people they probably don't really like each other but they both have a problem in their life that really could be solved by being in a relationship so out of all of the options of all the things that you could do in the situations the character decide obviously the best solution here is to fake a relationship and it's amazing i love it [Music] i'm really excited to do another discussion video i've done discussion videos in the past this one's not as well structured as those i just wanted to have a fun conversation but i promise in the future we will have more structured and even more discussion videos once i am freed from the shackles that is getting my neuroscience degree speaking of neuroscience degrees you know who also has a neuroscience degree ellie hazelwood the author of the love hypothesis and this would have been a really great segue right now but unfortunately we're not going to be talking about the love hypothesis until later in the video let's start with the anatomy of fake dating how does the truth work how do couples usually go from fake dating to real dating in order to explore the general anatomy of a fake dating storyline i want to look at a case study a prime example just basically i just want to talk about one of my favorite episodes of brooklyn nine-nine this episode contains fake dating and i think it's a perfect example of just all the beats that a fake dating should have right 79 is a dv show about cops and two co-workers jake and amy are in a rivalry with each other they really don't like each other so of course we ship them they are actually kind of into each other but of course they would never admit that to each other really the only thing standing between them kissing is their own big ego but in one episode they are on a mission to spy on this big bad guy together and the big bad guy goes into a fancy restaurant so jake and amy have to go into this restaurant so they can continue spying on him unfortunately the restaurant is full so they have to pretend to be a newlywed couple in order to convince the hostess to give them a table cue fake dating step number one which is the classic scene where someone asked them oh why are you how did you get married like what do you guys like so much about each other and these two people who've only expressed their strong dislike for each other so far have to start saying nice things about each other and of course they start saying things that they genuinely mean later in the episode the big bad guy is in a park probably doing shady stuff and they're still spying on him but when the big bad guy looks around they don't want to seem too suspicious like what are two people randomly doing in a park so in order to not seem suspicious they have to kiss don't question it okay they it's romance logic and ooh they kiss and they're kinda into it they kind of into it so via the vague dating plotline they both realize that they're actually more into each other than they thought they also show each other a little bit of the feelings that they have which they never would have done without the fake dating scenario because showing your feelings for something is scary and this is how usually two characters go from fake dating to relating one of the biggest part of the fake dating trope is the setup because why on earth would two people decide to pretend to be in a relationship with each other and lie to everyone around them in romance logic it usually doesn't take that much to get to that conclusion so what i find so funny about fake dating and the whole setup is this collective acceptance we've all just collectively accepted that although we know that this is not something people do in real life it's it's normal in books we don't really question it it's just something that characters and real humans alike have all just accepted fake dating that's just something that can happen regularly and is a very normal solution to problems sometimes it's ridiculous and that's what i love about it so i thought it would be fun to take a look at some well-known fake dating books and movies and take a look at the setup for their fake dating and then rank them based on how ridiculous that setup would be in real life and this also really works as giving you recommendations for fake dating stories and also it's a great way to give you a bit of a synopsis of some of the books that we'll be talking about later you know you see how this is all wow like a great setup for the rest of the video wow this is a very very well thought out video so we have a list of some popular books and movies that completely revolve around the fake dating story the example i just gave with brooklyn nine-nine is how the trope is often incorporated into non-roman genre so in fantasy or just like comedy usually the fake dating is something that's only a small part of the story like it'll come up in maybe one episode as like a fun little plot point for that episode but in romans books and movies it's usually the entire plot revolves around the fake dating trope and that's what we'll be talking about so i have i've created a few tiers for their setups the top we have would actually consider like i would actually do this myself then we have ridiculous but cute i'll accept it why would you agree to this um blame it on the parents why communicate when you can be petty that's the bread and butter of fake dating romances and lastly restraining order first off we have written in the stars we follow darcy and elle complete opposites l's an astrology girl and darcy is more of a cool strict black and white wearing type a person they were set up on a date by darcy's brother who was also elves business partner and although the date went horribly wrong darcy's family was so happy that darcy was finally finally had someone to date that darcy convinces elle to continue the fake relationship just to make the parents happy so this is a very clear example of the very common setup which is just blame it on the parents just easy like that and for a movie we have the duff i don't know if anyone remembers this movie the setup is very similar to the book the deal by l kennedy but i haven't read that one and it's we have the unpopular girl and the popular guy who strike a deal that she will help him with his homework if he fake dates her so she can increase her popularity in her social capital which is of course absolutely ridiculous but i'm gonna say it's kind of cute because it's clearly both people are getting something out of this and also they're teenagers so i'll give them a little bit more leeway for being stupid then let's go with she drives me crazy which is a why a book the romans between the cheerleader and the jock girl we love the opposites attract basically the reason for them to start fake dating is because our jock girl wants to make her ex-girlfriend jealous because she's not really over her ex and you know why communicate when you can just be petty and make people jealous the un honeymooners by christina lauren okay how do i explain this one so olive sister is getting married but unfortunately the couple cannot go on their honeymoon because they get extremely sick at the wedding so the only people at the wedding that didn't get sick are our main character olive and her her nemesis ethan so they get the opportunity to go on this all inclusive luxury honeymoon together the only catch is that of course they have to convince everyone at the resort that they are the people on the ticket and they really are the newly wed couple that is supposed to be there now although i would always say that fake dating is a bad idea in real life this i would do no doubt in my mind i would 100 do this honestly when i was reading this book i did not understand why olive was making such a big deal out of this i don't care if i hate someone i will gladly pretend to be married with you if i can just go on all expenses paid for free all-inclusive resort holiday oh let's do another very famous one to all the boys i've loved before which was a ya book originally but of course has been turned into the netflix show with our favorite fake dating guy noah centineo our main character accidentally sends a letter to her sister's ex-boyfriend that she used to have a crush on him which is of course extremely awkward so in order to convince him that she's not actually into him anymore she of course needs to be in a relationship and she does so with peter who also wants to be in a relationship to make his ex girlfriend jealous so this is a double case of the why just communicate about your feelings when you can be petty about it let's talk about the love hypothesis um do you have some time to strap in because this is this is quite the extravagant setup so we follow olive another olive a phd student at stanford so olive's friend has a crush on olive's ex which olive is completely okay with but her friend just keeps thinking that she can't make a move or do something about it because she keeps thinking that olive actually does have a problem with it so in order to convince her friend that she is definitely completely okay with her dating her ex she decides to talk to her friend about it no of course not silly why would you think that she decides she needs to be in a fake relationship because if her friend sees that she's in a relationship she might finally truly be convinced that olive will be okay with her dating her ex so in order to choose said fake relationship olive decides to just kiss the first men she sees and that will be her fake relationship this turns out to be adam her senior researcher at the stanford lab who agrees to fake dating a phd student because he has trouble getting grand money from stanford because stanford is afraid that adam will leave for harvard so adam thinks if i'm in a relationship they will think i'm settling down and not leave for harvard so they'll give me the grand money restraining order then we have the kiss quotient the setup for this story is that our main character has no experience with relationships and sex and doesn't want to go into the dating life without any experience so she hires an escort like she basically pays him to pretend to be in a relationship with her and do relationshipy things so she can practice and that's the setup which is absolutely ridiculous but just a very cute romantic setup i think the spanish love deception this is another case of our main character has to go to spain to i think her sister's wedding and she's somehow convinced her parents that she has a date because they keep nagging to her that she needs to have a date and for some reason her co-worker who she hates agrees to this to come with her so yes it's blame on the parents but i think this is an excellent example of why would you agree to this there's clear motive on one side but on the other side it's just why we should do this like they're we lacking in we are lacking in motive now another one that i put here as an example of another blaming on the parents is the holidays the christmas movie where two people who meet at a mall just decide to be each other's fake dates for holidays just to ease their parents anxiety about them having a relationship so we can blame it on the parents famous movie the proposal a boss played by sandra bullock forces her employee to fake marry her no to real marry her so she can keep her visa and stay in the u.s restraining order i think they actually could go to jail for this i'm pretty sure that's illegal great movie though and then last but not least we have taken danny brown in this one danny and zarif at first don't actively decide to go fake dating it's just that a photo of them blows up on the internet and everyone ships them and they decide hey actually this internet clout maybe we should play into because zarif notices that all this internet clout around this supposed relationship between them two really helps him with fundraising for his sports charity and danny agrees to continue the fake dating another one where i'm like very great motive on the reef side didn't really fully understand why dany would agree to this okay and that is that is my ranking of all the all the weird kinds of setups that fake dating story lines can have so before i move on to my theory on what i think makes the fake dating trope so popular i want to make a little little detour a little quick side note because i think there are two things that make the fake dating trope so popular but there is a subset of fake dating storylines that don't have these two things that i'll be talking about and because of that these this subset of fake dating storylines are also less likely to derail into bad territory and it is fake dating without the forced romantic scenes so no fake kissing and realizing they're actually into it um no force being nice to each other no force touching each other and getting all flustered none of that those aspects are not present in this subset of fake dating and this subset of fake dating completely relies on the forced proximity that comes with it forced proximity is is another romance trope where it's basically well the two characters are forced to be in each other's proximity usually two people that don't like each other are forced to spend a lot of time together that's the forced proximity and because of that you get a lot of scenes with them together and they slowly fall for each other right and there are some fake dating story lines that pretty much solely rely on this on the forced proximity that comes with fake dating of course but don't give you all the like forced romantic scenes between two characters it's kind of like a high risk high reward thing it's like like the more forced romantic scenes like the higher the likelihood of the story becoming really bad example of this subset of fake dating i think is she drives me crazy and she drives me crazy we follow a jock basketball girl um and a cheerleader which of course makes them natural enemies like explained during the ranking they start fake dating uh mostly because the jock girl wants to make her ex jealous the fake dating really only means that they end up spending a lot of time together i think the most forced romantic scene is that they have to change in the same room that's the only thing i can think of and through spending so much time together and going on dates together they get to know each other and they overcome the prejudices that they have for each other and that's how they fall in love so it's a little more um focused on i guess the natural progression of their romantic relationship and not as much forced sexual tension but that out of the way most fake dating storylines do include these forced romantic scenes between characters to really like amp up the sexual tension between them and let's talk about that my theory why fake dating stories are so effective and why we love them so much and that is because a fake dating story lines allows the characters to bypass the two things two stages in romance and seduction that usually our society deems a little awkward and preferably skippable and that is vulnerability and consent let's start with vulnerability now usually in real life when you're about to kiss someone or you're about to ask someone out on a date you have to go through a very vulnerable moment and that is showing the other person that you're kind of into them either because you're going in for a kiss or you're literally about to ask them out and that moment is vulnerable ew it's scary because what if they don't like you back then you've just admitted to someone that you like someone and you feel like a loser admitting that you have positive feelings about someone cringe anyway i think that is why fake dating often seems like such an attractive idea because you can always hide yourself behind the fake dating you can just flirt freely without having to be vulnerable because you know it was just fake dating it wasn't real if the other person turns out to not be into it well you can just say like it was fake it was fake it wasn't real also from a narrative perspective this is very interesting because it postpones the ultimate vulnerable moment like you know as a reader that in the end of course they're going to end up liking each other and there's going to be this vulnerable moment at some point in the story where they do have to tell each other it was real for me you know and then they find out that the feeling is actually mutual and the tension is relieved right you know in the end the two characters are gonna have to be vulnerable and admit that they're into each other how things usually go in a roman story is that throughout the entire book or movie the characters don't know from each other that they're into each other and there's this tension build up between them and then towards the end they find out their feelings are mutual and the tension is relieved right and usually in a movie or a book you don't really get to see the characters be together and be cute and do relationshipy things with each other because at this point the tension has already been relieved there's no will they won't day anymore there's no tension buildup anymore because both of the characters already know that they're into each other we don't want to watch a fully functioning relationship but the fake dating plot line is a fantastic loophole for this because you can have two characters do relationshipy stuff and be cute together all while retaining the tension build up and retaining this will they won't they because they haven't passed the being vulnerable and actually admitting that they're into each other's stage yet and i think that's why fake dating just works really well for romance stories so we know that fake dating allows the characters to bypass the vulnerability moment the other thing that i think fake dating allows the characters to bypass is the consent stage if you think of romance stories we love sweeping scenes of characters just in the moment deciding to kiss each other out of the blue giving in to their desires characters insisting that they're not into each other but actually they are rarely in media will there be a moment where the characters actually take a moment to consider if the other person actually also wants the thing that they want aka ask for consent and unfortunately we live in a society where the message people need to ask for consent more is usually met with but that will kill the mood no ben you just have no game now in fake dating it's also super easy to kind of conveniently bypass this consent stage bypass the moment you have to kill the moon to ask for consent examples of how this can be done well later and in order to keep up this illusion of the relationship the characters can usually just do anything to each other at any moment usually under the guise of it'll benefit the moment and it's not just that it's not just that the characters don't ask for consent because the fake dating often happens in public it even goes so far that the characters can often not reasonably say no to something without shattering the illusion of the relationship and outing themselves as a liar to all of their friends and family and this is why i think fake dating would be absolutely horrible in real life because you're creating an environment where people cannot reasonably say no to advancement that make them uncomfortable so please please just don't do fake dating in real life please just don't i don't think people are doing it that often but if you're if you if anyone's considering it don't just don't however of course we're talking about fiction not real life and usually when you're reading a book you can clearly tell both characters are kind of into it you can clearly tell because you're reading their thoughts that none of the involved people are actually uncomfortable and want to say no but can't usually they're both secretly really into it so no one's doing things that they're uncomfortable with usually so this for me is a breaking point of whether i'll like or dislike a fake dating romance because fake dating if done wrong can be a breeding ground for just uncomfortable murky consent situations example i want to illustrate this by talking about the love hypothesis because although this is an extremely popular fake dating romance i did not like this partially because of this so i want to give an example so the love hypothesis you may remember follows olive a phd student fake dating a senior researcher called adam this book includes a lot of those forced romantic moments in public in front of all their co-workers because they have to convince all the co-workers that they're in a relationship forced situations that they get themselves into include and i guess these are mild spoilers for the book having to rub him in with sunscreen publicly at a park outing with with work and also sitting on his lap publicly during a conference because there were no seats available anymore and another important detail is that never do adam and olive decide to do this every case it is her friend that kind of forces them into these situations and is like you should do this you should rub his naked upper body in with sunscreen right in front of all of your co-workers so this is not olive and adam's own initiative they are forced into these situations we are only in olive's perspective and to me at least as a reader it was completely unclear if adam was okay with this and he definitely was not in the situation that he could refuse because like i mentioned before that would shatter the illusion to all of their co-workers and it would out them as weird liars when i was reading these scenes i wanted to eat my own shoe because of the second hand embarrassment that i felt part of me was like i know that they're both into it because this is a romance novel and that's how this works and they're always both into it just knowing that if they weren't into it that would be like the most horrible awkward uncomfortable situation imaginable and to me that ruins the book this is what i mean with the high risk high reward scale you forced romantic situations which could lead to some really tense scenes but very easily could go completely astray and to me that's an example of it going completely astray because of the lack of consent now it can be done well for me an example of this is take a hint danny brown the one wears a reef and danny do fake dating for internet clouds basically and the reason is because there are a lot of romantic scenes between them that don't happen in public so there's already this establishment of hey this is happening between us right now it's not fake and also you can reasonably say no without ruining it for both of us and i really wish i had the book with me unfortunately i don't have access to the physical book because otherwise i would look up the specific scene for you it was a scene between the two sitting together in public so other people would see them but the conversation that they had would not be heard by other people so they could technically talk about anything and say anything to each other they want zerif tells danny what he would like to do to her and then if i remember correctly he asks her what she would do if he did those things to which danny of course responds positively so that was a good example of how you can establish consent within the fake dating where it doesn't become too murky also tally abroad books are just really good and you should read them the other problem with the tricky consent situation around fake dating is that it often can lead to just horrible miscommunication this to me is another one of those breaking points for whether i think the fake dating is done well or not and that is does the fake dating situation lead to miscommunication here i want to give an example of another very popular fake dating book that i did not like and that is the spanish love deception and i specifically want to talk about a scene that happens late in the book that just made me want to pull my teeth out because of the miscommunication a refresher we have catalina and aaron who are going to spain for a wedding and catalina has convinced her parents that she's in a relationship just to get them to shut up and erin went with her to be her fake relationship even though they don't really like each other so we have these two characters that have established with each other that they're in a fake dating relationship and that they're both trying to convince everyone that they are in a relationship now at the wedding i'm pretty sure this is at the wedding i don't quite remember it's an event there is a kiss cam that's going around the crowd of course catalina and aaron are together because you know they're supposed to be a couple no one's really paying attention to them they can freely talk to each other but of course they're aware that if the kiss cam ends on them they need to kiss in front of everyone now cue an extremely long scene of catalina getting extremely anxious over the fact that this kiss cam might end up on their faces and it's just page after page of her worrying about what she should do can she kiss him would he be okay with that would he not be okay with that should she just do it or would it shatter the illusion if she doesn't do it should she go all in or would it be okay to just give a quick pack on the mouth all of these worryings and i'm like girl he's standing next to you you both are aware that this is an arrangement that you have you you could ask him you could you could very easily just lean over and be like hey if it ends on us do we just give a quick kiss on the cheek maybe ask him but no because good communication that's not interesting who does that and that's what i mean when i say that with fake dating authors can very easily just lean on miscommunication for more drama in the plot but i think it's just annoying and not well written so like the previous two things you know being able to skip the vulnerability and the consent part is just us humans um not being good at communicating but the last thing that i think makes a fake dating so popular is something a little more wholesome and that is that it almost always goes together with overcoming prejudice it's not exclusive to fake dating it is a very common and almost integral part to any fake dating romance it has to do with the forced proximity thing you know you have two characters that usually they start out not getting along because otherwise the fake dating isn't as interesting if two characters don't really get along they have to fake date therefore spend a lot of time with each other do a lot of cutesy things together baby kiss maybe they kiss and then through that they learn to love each other which means they have to overcome their prejudices for each other and i like this because overcoming prejudices almost always goes together with character growth and that's why i think it's it always it just always works really well conclusion fake dating i love it it's a fun narrative loophole that makes it possible for two characters to go through the cutesy romantic things that couples do while still retaining the will they want the attention throughout the story it can very easily lead to very horrible consent situations so again please for the love of all that is good and holy do not do this in real life but a good fake dating story in my opinion establishes good consent rules and also does not rely on the miscommunication for drama thank you to the people on the purple time discord that's the name of our discord that gave their opinion when i asked for insight for this video topic so if you also want to be there when i ask for input on another discussion topic and also if you just want to have a place to talk to other book lovers about all kinds of things and books that you've read you can join the purple time discord subscribe to the channel if you enjoyed this video and want to see more book content and also you can follow me on my social media at the book leo everywhere like i said i don't usually do these types of discussion videos because um i often don't really have the time to make them but i really wanted to make this one i had a lot of fun so let me know if you'd like to see more of this and i think that's it thank you for watching i'm really glad that you were here and i will see you in another video soon goodbye [Music] you

Channel: The Book Leo

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Id: aaVn3eKcKQ4

Length: 36min 17sec (2177 seconds)

Published: Mon May 30 2022