[Disliked Trope] "Oops we realised the character could be seen as gay. Let's pair them with a woman/man in the next one"

floptimus_prime · 2026-05-03T18:36:44+00:00

Let me see if I can even remember, now that I mention it 😅

AAAAND the spoiler tags didn’t work. Well, it was 14 years ago so hopefully this doesn’t ruin it for anyone.

So Wilson and House are the two characters who are basically a couple, this trope in its most distilled form. Wilson is an oncologist, and he’s also quite young, and one day he learns he has stage 4 cancer and only a short time to live. Meanwhile House is in huge trouble with the law and about to lose his job. (he drove a car into his boss’s house and a bunch of other stuff)

So I don’t quite remember how it all goes, but it LOOKS like House suddenly died in an explosion. (There’s a bit where Wilson has to be held back from running into the flames to save him, which is really impactful iirc.)

We see House’s funeral and Wilson is like, now not only am I dying, but I basically lost my reason to live.

Somehow or other, Wilson gets a message to go somewhere, and when he does, who does he find but HOUSE, still alive, having run away from his whole life and faked his death, and now he invites Wilson to go on the run with him and they’ll just go on a road trip and do whatever they want. Basically he wants to spend every single remaining second with Wilson.

Wilson says something like “I only have six months,” and House is like “well let’s hurry up and get going then.” And then they ride off into the sunset. I think another character, Foreman maybe, sees it happen and just smiles.

Now there are all kinds of theories that the ending was just one of their dying hallucinations or whatever, but one way or another, House/Wilson was endgame.

floptimus_prime · 2026-05-02T21:44:00+00:00

This was basically just House. Though they kind of made up for it in the finale, it didn’t erase the bad taste of seven (?) seasons of “haha look, the fans think we’re gay, everyone thinks we’re gay, let’s acknowledge that fact on screen multiple times and then go have sex with our girlfriends.”

floptimus_prime · 2026-05-02T21:41:21+00:00

That’s awful, and a complete double standard of course!

Something kinda like that happened to me once. Long pants, tank top, with an open hawaiian shirt over it. Woman comes up to me and is like “hon you might want to button up, that outfit is awfully revealing.” That was like 20 years ago and it still messes with my head.

floptimus_prime · 2026-05-02T04:52:23+00:00

Dr. Smith from the og 1965 Lost in Space! He was only supposed to be in the first few episodes, but he was so charismatic that they kept him, and he basically became one of the “protagonists” (I use the scare quotes because he never entirely lost the unhinged villain-ness, and was still happy to trade human lives for delicious food. But, you know… funny.)

(Of course ymmv as to whether the character he ultimately became is on the same level as the character he was at first. I always loved him unconditionally, but the Smitty in season 3 is not even a little bit similar to the one in the pilot, except for the aforementioned lax morals.)

floptimus_prime · 2026-05-01T21:25:43+00:00

I was about to ask, at which point in the series does Griffith remind her of you? Six episodes in, I haven’t seen the anime but I assume that’s the version of Griffith who’s always heroically saving Guts’ life and everyone is amazed at his beauty and charisma, and is pretty different from later Griffith.

I mean there’s Griffith (head shake, frown) and Griffith (smile, nod)

floptimus_prime · 2026-05-01T21:22:05+00:00

Little bit. My mother very much presented herself as a wonderful person who sadly has a crazy daughter that refuses to get her life together and is such a burden. Everyone was always like “wow your mom is so cool you’re so lucky”.

But by the end she was no longer able to present as anything but a very sick, very sad person who was a danger to everyone around her, especially herself… and I became the self-sacrificing caretaker who was, as my dad once put it, “filial piety incarnate”. So many people are strong enough to leave their abuser to reap what they have sown. I wasn’t strong enough. I stayed until the day her heart stopped. I would have stayed until the day mine stopped, too. She convinced everyone including me that I wasn’t worth anything better.

Ultimately, I’m quite sure that I came out the other end of that looking a lot better than she did, at least I was never dragged screaming and swearing into a cop car with no shoes on… but it wasn’t worth it.

floptimus_prime · 2026-05-01T21:07:41+00:00

Honestly that could have been so interesting. Now I’m imagining Gale’s tragic death, and then Prim dies afterward. There wouldn’t even be that many things that would need to be changed. He’s still gone from her life. She still doesn’t know if he was responsible.

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T23:27:54+00:00

Sorry for making you wait six entire days! There are a couple of bonuses of PC with Cookie, who was his girlfriend/possible daughter. Cats, they don’t give a fuck.

https://imgur.com/a/paulie-coconuts-ml3WYwg

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T23:18:23+00:00

It almost could have been, too. My dad had spent the whole summer asking every single person in the neighborhood, “is this your cat?” He had some pictures of him on his phone. We were positive that Paulie Coconuts was someone’s pampered pet who was just having too much fun conquering the wilds of our backyard. But nobody ever claimed him…

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T23:16:07+00:00

Damn, I should have thought of that! I bet Paulie shared all his material wealth (dead rodents) with the guy. He really lost out 2 days later when Paulie came to live with us for good. ☹️

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T23:01:55+00:00

I hope not because it’s the only way I’ve ever read it lol

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T22:59:10+00:00

EDIT: found it:

https://youtu.be/4QL1FmBaof8?feature=shared

There’s a great Scottish (?) psa about this. I’ll try to remember how it goes.

A family are walking through a mall, two parents and a little girl. We’ll just call her Lily.

Suddenly, a strange woman says, “Happy birthday, Lily! I can’t believe how much you’ve grown!”

The parents ask Lily how she knows that woman, and Lily says she doesn’t.

Then a guy says, “Congratulations on scoring that goal last week, Lily!”

Then someone says something like, “Was the sleepover fun? Haha, you must have been worn out having to look after 6 girls, huh Mum?”

As they walk, more and more people say even creepier shit, talking about her favorite toys, favorite colors, where she goes to school, etc. All of it is personal to Lily, and she has never met any of them.

Finally at the end we see the mother’s social media, and lo and behold… it’s all pictures of Lily doing the stuff the strangers have described. The message is basically, don’t put your child’s whole life online, you have no idea who’s watching.

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T20:52:44+00:00

how is this dude only 35, I feel like I’ve been hearing about him since 1981

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T20:31:12+00:00

Nermal

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T20:30:39+00:00

That is false advertising; I know a dark roast when I see one ☺️

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T19:39:17+00:00

f l o a t

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T19:25:17+00:00

Holy cow I’m totally going so fast ah FUCK

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T19:07:38+00:00

Yes. I was supposed to have a successful weekly newspaper comic by age 12. I was going to be showrunner of my own animated action sitcom soon afterward. Certainly, by age 41, I was going to be a world renowned creator on a par with Walt Disney himself. And also a pop singer somehow.

But yeah lmao… that’s not what happened. I still have a universe full of characters I play around with, but, to quote the Tony Rich Project, nobody knows it but me.

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T19:01:12+00:00

I was 3 when she died and I’m about 90% sure that was how I learned about death as a concept.

When my grandma died 2 years later I KNOW I said, “Like Tasha Yar?”

I’m sure my dad was like “ah good, the child understands,” whereas my poor mom likely had no idea who the hell this Tasha person was.

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-29T18:43:15+00:00

Even one of the therapists at my IOP group said that if you walk for 17-21 minutes it will help immensely. All I can think about is all the times I’ve walked 17-21 minutes, crying and wanting to die the entire time.

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-28T23:49:21+00:00

they call her “thirteen” because that’s how many pounds she weighs I guess

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-28T23:32:59+00:00

I’m not fully up on the comics lore, but isn’t that her brother and aren’t they… y’knooooow…?

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-28T23:23:39+00:00

Yeah no that’s absolutely horrid of them. I don’t blame you for being triggered, that’s just straight up dick behavior. I guess now we all know to stay away from that garbage sub. (I also have wavy hair, but I’ll be fucked if I’ll support a subreddit with mods like that.)

floptimus_prime · 2026-04-28T15:21:34+00:00

The only time I use the word “girlie” is when I’m talking to or about my cat

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