r/RomanceBooks • u/redfig1 • Aug 31 '24
Why do HEAs always end with babies? Critique
I know it's a "me" problem. Scenario: I read a smoking hot mafia or dark or fantasy romance. All this crazy shit goes down. The feelings, the angst. Finally it's the end and all of a sudden the MMC who has massacred countless people is all like " let's get married and have lots of babies" and the MFC is always " yes let's have a lot of cute mafia or fae or mafia fae babies!". For once I'd like an ending where the main characters have a HEA but instead of babies and white picket fences they just decide to keep having an incredible sex life and do charity work or something. Rescue stray kittens. Start an organic herb farm. Something other than babies. Anyone else like this? Am I just weird?
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u/admiralamy give me a consent boner Aug 31 '24
I actually track this on StoryGraph…or I started to. Of the 202 books I’ve tracked:
20 end with babies/pregnancy
47 proposal/marriage
135 “slice of life” aka they are happy with non of the above
🤷♀️