Trope Talk: Fake Dating

Hello and welcome to this post of Trope Talk. The trope I’ll be talking about today is fake dating. And yes, it’s okay to cheer now!

I won’t lie, fake dating is probably my favourite trope of all time. The thing with tropes is that they tend to work the same every time, and fake dating is no exception. Let’s be real, the majority some media with fake dating is that two people start dating each other for some reason other than actually wanting to be in a relationship with each other, then as time goes by, the feelings turn real. That’s often where the conflict stems from, as the two will usually end up stop fake dating as what they wanted to achieve with the fake dating will have been achieved in some form or another, but in shocking twist that no one ever sees coming, one of the two will have real feelings. I feel like that is the most basic of basic concepts for fake dating.

Is it the same every time? Yes. Do I eat it up every time? Yes. I don’t know what it is about fake dating, I just love it. I think with tropes in general, there are just some that I’m more drawn to than others, and this is one of the ones I’m drawn to. I was originally planning on maybe talking a little about the history of fake dating, some older examples, but considering the whole idea of Trope Talk came to me after seeing a YouTube video called “a deep dive into the fake dating trope” by The Book Leo, and they did a bit of a, shock, deep dive into the trope, ranked some of the content from it. So, I don’t want to rehash their video, so I’m just going to talk about some examples I’ve consumed and then give a bit of a closer at the end.

So, my examples, two from books and one from a TV series, that I personally enjoyed. And the way I’m going to talk about them is book, series, book, just since this is a place where I talk about writing and books. My examples are Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar, 2gether the series, and Out of the Blue by Jason June. There are hundreds, if not thousands of other examples out there, but these are the ones I’ve got and feel I can talk about to some extent.

I do want to mention that I will be including spoilers for my examples, just because for what I want to talk about, I’m kind of going to have to spoil certain plot points. Then again, when it comes to romance content, a lot of it does end up with the two leads getting together at the end. It’s all very formulaic, which is partially why I enjoy it. I don’t care how it happens, I just enjoy seeing people get together.

Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating follows Hani and Ishu (shocker) who both want something. Hani came out as bisexual, but her friends don’t believe her as she’s only dated guys in the past, so she wants a queer relationship to prove it. Ishu wants to be head girl but feels like she needs to be more popular to achieve that, so the two start fake dating. Hani gets to prove that her bisexuality isn’t just some trendy phrase, which is kind of crusty that she unfortunately has to prove that, and Ishu gets to seem nicer and more approachable by dating Hani.

I think out of the three examples I’ve got, this one is probably the most typical when it comes to the fake dating trope. Like it’s the two of them being forced to spend time together, helping each other, learning about each other’s lives and so obviously they’re going to realise that, even though they never really interacted or spoke to each other before needing to fake date, they actually like each other. I think this book is a very good example of the phrase “you don’t need to reinvent the wheel”. Like, this book just made its own really good version of the wheel. Or at least, it did to me.

2gether is a Thai BL series. It was a very popular one, it’s most viewed bit on YouTube has more than 33 million views, and it’s probably the one I can talk about the most, since I’ve consumed the media the most times. But it follows Tine, self-proclaimed “Mr Chic”, who gets hit on by this guy, Green. Tine doesn’t like Green, so to get rid of him, he decides he needs to fake date someone to get Green to leave him alone. After failing to get a girl to fake date him, he ends up going after Sarawat, who is this super popular guy who plays the guitar. Tine gets to fake date Sarawat to get Green off his back, and Sarawat gets to fake date Tine.

This is one of those bits where I mentioned spoilers would be included. So, Tine gets to have Sarawat as a shield against Green, that’s what he’s getting out of their fake dating arrangement. But what does Sarawat get? Like I said before, Sarawat gets to fake date Tine. It gets revealed later in the series that Sarawat has liked, or had a crush on, Tine the whole time, like before the two of them even met officially, and Sarawat was basically doing that whole pining from afar thing. But when it comes to the two of them fake dating, since Sarawat actually likes Tine, some of the times when the two are flirting, it’s very “oop, this feels a bit real”, because, plot twist, to Sarawat it was real. I won’t lie, the first time I watched this (because I’ve watched the whole series at least four times through at this point) it was very much Luxx Noir London gagged them a bit for sure vibes from me.

Then it’s very much the case of eventually Tine finds out that Green, the guy who’s been going after him, has a boyfriend. But that then therefore means, uh oh, Tine doesn’t need Sarawat to fake date him anymore, so they break their fake relationship off, which Sarawat isn’t happy about, which Tine just doesn’t understand, because it was all fake right? So why is Sarawat so unhappy about it? Then as Tine goes about his life, now without Sarawat, he finds himself thinking about Sarawat wherever he goes. And there you have it, turns out that maybe Tine actually likes Sarawat back for real. Is it my favourite drama series I’ve watched? No. But I would call this series a comfort series for me, just because it’s so light-hearted, very much no brain cells required to enjoy it.

Out of the Blue was wild. It was fake dating, but with merfolk. Crest, the merfolk, has a month-long quest on land to help a human so they can get their merfolk power. Sean, a lifeguard, just got dumped by his boyfriend, so Crest decides to help Sean by fake dating him to make his ex jealous so they can get back together. The idea is Sean gets his boyfriend back, and Crest helps a human and gets their merfolk power. But also, for Crest as well, since this is the first time they’ve come up on land, so they’re also learning essentially how to function as a human, so they don’t understand all the rules of being a human.

This is an odd one to talk about since, while it is a fake dating book and does follow that “you don’t need to reinvent the wheel” phrase, it sort of did reinvent the wheel. Or when I say reinvent, I think maybe it added an additional part to the wheel that wasn’t there before. That’s obviously because Crest, who uses a fake name on land, by the way, they don’t just call themselves Crest. But that’s because Crest is merfolk. It’s almost like there are two plot lines going on at once. There’s the fake dating more on Sean’s side, and then there was more of the forbidden love trope on Crest’s side. Crest by the end of the book, because this is a fake dating book obviously likes Sean, but they have to go back to the ocean and have to decide whether they want to go home back to the ocean, leaving Sean, or stay on land to be with Sean.

Now, do you love that this is a place where I talk about books and writing, but the TV series was the example I talked about the most? Isn’t that fun? Still, welcome to the tail end of this. I’d like to begin my closer with me saying, I know that I like fake dating, and like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, it’s maybe my favourite romantic trope. But after all that, I wasn’t sure why I like fake dating so much, but it was that video by The Book Leo that gave me an amazing quote as an explanation. They said, “It’s a good trope that let’s you see the cute couple-y stuff while having the will they won’t they tension to it as well.”

And I think that’s exactly what it is. They managed to put into words exactly what it is that I like about it. Usually with fake dating, and I say usually because this point doesn’t apply to 2gether, you don’t get to see what happens after the end, or when the leads get together. You don’t usually get to see the two characters in a real relationship. So I think by fake dating, you get the excuse to get a through the window look into what their relationship would be like before they’re in it, but since they’re not actually together there’s that heightened feeling since they’re doing something that a couple would do and like the quote said, there’s still the will they won’t they. You don’t know whether they’ll get together or whether, for the person who already has feelings, the one who doesn’t have feelings can even like the other person back.

And I think that is where I’m going to leave this post of Trope Talk. I love fake dating, if you hadn’t guessed by now. I don’t really think I have anything else I need to add, and that I can just leave this post here.

Okay, bye!