I thought of this after rewatching the first two episodes of this season’s Primeval… A disaster of some sort, be it an upside down boat or a zombie apocalypse, is often the catalyst for a couple (who either doesn’t know each other, or simply isn’t previously involved) to quickly fall in love during their struggle for survival. I bet you can think of ten movies or books with that theme right now.
But then what? What happens when the disaster is over, and the couple no longer has to depend on each other to live? I’m sure Abby and Connor are going to stay together since it’s that kind of show, but are there any books/movies series/tv shows you can think of that when the dust settles and danger passes the couple realizes that they’re wrong for each other when it comes to going back to perfectly ordinary lives?
Well, the most extreme case would be any Conan the Barbarian book…
There are quite a few instances in the Marvel universe of couples meeting, as it were, in the heat of battle and going on dates: some work for a while, some work for ever and ever, some don’t go past the first date.
Sarah, the female lead in Walter Jon Williams’s Hardwired, broods on the idea at the end of the novel. What she and Cowboy (Yes, he calls himself Cowboy. That’s a red flag right there, no?) have is a wartime thing, and they don’t really have much in common beyond the pressures that brought them together.
Being a Williams’ heroine, in addition to being tall, athletic, dark, and emotionally damaged by a troubled past, she’s also brave enough to give it a shot anyway.
Though, heroine might be the wrong word for most of his female leads . . . Awesome should probably be in there somewhere, though.
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To be fair, the protagonist of Metropolitan was skinny, not athletic, and the woman from Dread Empire’s Fall was blond. I don’t recall if unshaven armpits are a consistent factor, or if that was unique to Voice of the Whirlwind.
Lucius Sheperd did this in his story “How the Wind Spoke at Madake,” (eight years before Speed).
The protagonist, after surviving a disaster, realizes that the woman he shared the experience with is breaking up with him, and protests it’s not supposed to be that way.