Boyfriend Ex Machina

I’m sure you know the story: A person is lost in their life – maybe they’re fun, maybe they’re sad, maybe their career isn’t working out no matter how hard they try.   Their family could be struggling financially, or a close friend could be sick.  Maybe this main character is just angry and grumpy all the time – jaded at a world that done them wrong.  Their circumstances honestly don’t matter that much.  The point is their life is going poorly.  But then then meet a MAN!  And he’s great!  Or at least he’s different.  Maybe he’s super smart or maybe he’s rich!  Maybe he’s a slob or maybe he’s organized.  Sometimes he needs pursuing, sometimes he is the pursued.  Again, these details are all trivial in the end.  The result is the same in this story - he fixes everything.  He enters the story and through his disruption, or perhaps we should say through his divine intervention, everything in the story is resolved.  Boyfriend Ex Machina is a term I coined to describe this storytelling phenomenon, which has roots all the way back to the knights in shining armor of old.  It’s often employed in modern day stories in the romantic comedy genre, but many writers purposefully or accidently slip into this method.  This writing pattern is also often seen in reversed gender roles, such as the “Manic Pixie Girl” archetype.  It’s almost as though it is hard wired into our brains; People change through getting a partner.  Many of us who have been in a relationship might see the error in this storytelling philosophy.  And yet it persists.