https://twitter.com/DrVivien2U/status/1501093695994531841?s=20&t=MWQCEhlLear_qKRtUPZMZQ

:D 

idk about today, but as an American teenager in the 90s there was this experience where you KNEW the rule: a female character was allowed to flirt with the "bad boy" character or a "(fren)enemy" character, but at the end of the story she HAD to end up with the good boy. Anything directed at teens and young adult women had this rule. Sanitized for the american public!

And I remember hating and resenting it SO MUCH. Because that good guy tm wasn't a real life person we were picking as real life relationship material, he was a FICTIONAL SYMBOL. He was a representation of how girls could have a "phase" and try unconventional things, but then needed to grow up and settle down into docile, domesticated married life. As a baby dyke in the 90s, it frustrated me even more because mostly all there was available was hetro products, so you had to queer things up yourself (BYO Metaphors). And then you would get taunted with the trope that the girl would flirt with the idea of liking the socially isolated character who is marginalized and seen as bad/dirty... but in the end she always buckles to proprietary and settles down into the status quo to have 2 kids and a house with a lawn with nice, dependable lad. In a time when gay people couldn't get married or adopt.