A few weeks ago the hilarious and whip-smart Erin and I were having a (lengthy, very entertaining) email exchange on the subject of love triangles in fiction. Her insights were so spot-on, I wanted to fist bump my computer screen. But instead of threatening the integrity of my technology, I asked Erin to summarize her points in a guest post, which I’m so excited to share with you today!

Note: This post contains like, mega-spoilers. Be warned.

So you’re reading a book/watching a TV show/Netflixing a movie. There is a love triangle, and you’re eating up every second. Who will she choose? you think each time you flip a page, as though the answer tantalizes you just from the end of the next paragraph. The feeling is total intoxication – it brings you back to every unrequited crush you’ve ever had, revives the often-lost feeling of being pursued, makes every loaded exchange feel worthy of a good, old-fashioned Victorian swoon.

And then, the character chooses… unwisely.

Thus commences a series of actions: kicking all the sheets off the bed, yelling expletives at the book/TV, and silently fuming into the early morning hours. You feel betrayed. You feel as though YOU just let The One slip through your fingers. You have, at this point, only a tenuous grasp on the difference between your life and fiction.

This is you. You, the Gale-shipper. You, in your Team Jacob jersey. You, who also thought the name ‘Blaine’ sounded like a major appliance. You, who threw your cosmopolitan at the movie screen when Carrie married Big anyway.

So I’m here to make a bold statement:

Maybe more of our female protagonists should end up *gasp!* alone.

The main pitfall for women in storytelling is that she chooses the ONE grand gesture over the HUNDREDS of consistent little gestures of the better man. (*LOUD THROAT CLEAR* Carrie, I’m looking at YOU. And Aidan. And wishing you’d made it work.) She thinks with her heart and not her head. She is, simply, impetuous and foolish, making irrational decisions on the fly and letting herself be swept away in romantic gestures that don’t signal themselves for longevity. The female protagonist claims to want consistency but then makes decisions inconsistent with that. Of course, even I, the Grande Dame of Insensitivity, don’t read these moments like that – I swoon momentarily like everyone else. But I think some characters are written to be better than that. (See also: Season 3 of The Office, wherein Pam calls off her wedding and doesn’t end up with Jim or Roy. Commendable, Office scribes!) Plus, wouldn’t it have been nice to see if Bella could’ve taken just a few steps on her own instead of fumbling into the arms of either Jacob or Edward? (Sidenote: Speaking of solid guy characters, are any of us completely clear as to why Bella never gave poor Mike Newton a fighting chance?! Jussayin’…)

Some characters I wouldn’t have minded to see hit the singles’ scene:

Katniss Everdeen

She is an alpha female (read: the anti-Bella Swan) (read: She’s a total BAMF), and who – let’s be honest here – didn’t really need a man. She kills instead of being killed; she can provide sustenance by her own hand for herself and those she loves. And by the end of Mockingjay, both Gale and Peeta are so thoroughly unlikable that it would’ve been entirely understandable if Katniss would’ve chartered a hot-air balloon with the words ‘THANKS, BUT NO THANKS’ spray-painted in block letters on the side and peaced out to District 12. Dare I say, it would have even made sense. We as readers wanted a resolution, but she is a strong enough character to warrant a satisfying lone-wolf ending.

Hell, I might’ve even saluted such a conclusion.

Carrie Bradshaw

To me, Carrie should’ve been the poster child for ending up with none of them: not Big, not Aidan, not Petrovsky. Particularly after that Downtown-Macy’s-window-at-Christmas display of douchebaggery in the movie when Big left her at the altar. The framework for her being in that echelon of liberated woman was in place: She was self-sustaining, successful, and with a great support system of friends. She could’ve flipped Paris the bird, hijacked a 747, and completed a solo flight right into LaGuardia International, and we wouldn’t have pitied her a bit. The men in her life were not as powerful as the relationship she had with herself. (Cue after-school special music.)

I don’t find this a pitfall of the way some female protags are written and portrayed – in fact, I find their strength laudable, until those last, and sometimes unfortunate, seconds before they go down an inadvisable path to romance. So what say you? Can you think of other romantic scenarios where the protagonist should have just walked away? Do you find a character’s choice of a flawed individual some kind of weakness? Discuss!

Erin Ladd is a writer and editor living in the Bay Area. She managed to write this whole blog post without thinking of the name ‘Renesmee’ even once. She thinks that Theodore Roosevelt just might have been America’s finest president, and that Peeta can frost her cupcake anytime.

Tagged as: give Mike Newton a chance one time, Guest post, loooooooooove, Love Triangles, Reading, STILL trying not to think of Renesmee

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