Baby and Johnny live happily ever after. Sure, it’s easy to write off the events of 1987’s beloved Dirty Dancing as a beautiful summer fling set to a kickass 1960s soundtrack — most people do — but I’m here to tell you that they make it. They survive past the credits and the last strains of “The Time of My Life.”

The basic plot of the movie involves a privileged, sheltered, college-bound girl, played by Jennifer Grey, falling for Patrick Swayze’s blue-collar dance instructor. But like so many romance novels we’ve devoured and loved, the emotional core is that they connect despite their differences — and they admire each other because of them. I’ve read summaries that describe Johnny as the worldly one in the relationship — and maybe he is sexually, but in all other ways…? Baby holds the power. Yes, she’s wealthy and educated, but she’s also fearless and brave and strong in her convictions. She goes after what she wants — and who she wants. That floors Johnny. Ultimately, he’s the one seduced, not her.

Johnny: “I’ve never known anyone like you. You think you can make the world better. Somebody’s lost, you find them. Somebody’s bleeding—”

Baby: “I go get my daddy. That’s really brave, like you said.”

Johnny: “That took a lot of guts to go to him! You are not scared of anything.”

Baby learns to dance so that Penny can keep her job. She goes to her father for medical help when Penny’s back-alley abortion goes wrong. She faces down her family and the Kellermans to exonerate Johnny when he’s accused of stealing from guests. Why wouldn’t she fight for an HEA with that exact same passion?

Baby: “I hurt my family, you lost your job anyway — I did it for nothing!”

Johnny: “No, not for nothing. Nobody has ever done anything like that for me before.”

Baby: “You were right. You can’t win no matter what you do.”

Johnny: “Listen to me. I don’t want to hear that from you. You can.”

And I believe she does. Past the summer. Into fall at Mount Holyoke. Baby keeps winning — with Johnny by her side. There is nothing to suggest otherwise. In Baby’s opening voiceover, she notes that she met Johnny “before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came.” Who’s to say they didn’t experience those milestones together? That they weren’t huddled in front of the TV together, stunned and clutching hands, as Walter Cronkite interrupted As the World Turns? Who’s to say they didn’t dance to “Something” at their wedding?

Let’s face it, we’ve taken bigger leaps in fiction — and in life. Opposites attracting and then making a marriage work isn’t a huge hop. And, of course, there’s fanfic that covers all those pesky little skips and jumps that end with Johnny and Baby as a long-term couple. Here are a few that stand out:

A Real Grown-Up Name, by fairy_tale_echo. (Trigger Warning: contains an antisemitic slur.)

Through Every Open Door, by mjules

Waiting Room, by Missy

by any other name, by FreshBrains

Waiting For a Voice to Come, by Arsenic

As far I’m concerned, this is what happens after that fateful, forbidden, fantastic summer at Kellerman’s: They make it. They survive. They continue to help people in need. And they keep dancing.

(And, most importantly, they aren’t remade into a soulless, money-grab TV movie by ABC.)

Originally published on HeroesandHeartbreakers.com

Something author Tiffany Reisz once said has always stuck with me — that, to her, the closest genre to BDSM romance is horror. Presumably because they both involve facing and conquering fear. As a horror movie junkie, I totally acknowledge that if there’s a shippable pair thrown together against the threat — or maybe it’s the protagonist and the threat — I am all for it. Because there’s nothing like the combination of passion and terror. Everything is heightened. The stakes are astronomical. It’s not just hearts on the line — it’s lives, too.

Horror also tackles so many fascinating tropes — taboo relationships, us-against-the-world, lovers-on-the-run. But, unlike most mainstream romances, horror happily exposes the creepy underbelly of those plots. Just look at 2013’s Stoker, written by Prison Break’s Wentworth Miller and gorgeously directed by Park Chan-wook. Mia Wasikowska stars as India Stoker, a young woman who develops an intense attachment to her charismatic uncle, Charlie (Matthew Goode). The incestuous elements are the least troubling bits of the film — and I could not look away! I don’t know what this says about Mia’s career choices, but she’s also in two other films I’d recommend to romance readers: 2015’s Crimson Peak and 2013’s Only Lovers Left Alive. (Both co-star Tom Hiddleston, which is a huge selling point for me). Guillermo del Toro and Jim Jarmusch’s respective aesthetics are gorgeous. Just like a good romance zeroes in on the protagonists, so does horror — to an almost claustrophobic extent. These are both films about being stuck — and, honestly, I’m never going to complain about being trapped with Tom Hiddleston, whether he’s an incestuous gold-digger or an emo vampire.

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This post contains spoilers for Rogue One. Proceed with caution!

Are they, or aren’t they? A lot has already been written about whether Rogue One’s Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus qualify as the Star Wars universe’s first official gay couple. Given that heterosexual romance didn’t get much traction in the film either, who’s to say, right? But what I know for damn sure is that Chirrut and Baze are love ― great, sweeping, epic, love that is the both the stuff of romance novels and that of your parents bickering at each other across the dinner table.

It’s a dynamic we’ve seen already in the Star Wars franchise ― from Han Solo and Princess Leia to C-3PO and R2-D2 (that’s a ‘shipper manifesto for another time). It’s a partnership that transcends everything else, the constant that gets you through in the trenches. And Donnie Yen’s Force-devout, Chirrut and Jiang Wen’s gruff mercenary Baze are already a rock-solid team when viewers meet them on the desert planet of Jedha. They’re the last remnants of the Guardians of the Whills ― followers of the Force but not actual Jedis. Chirrut is still a believer, and Baze has become a cynic, more trusting of his gun than what Han Solo would call “simple tricks and nonsense.” But our very first glimpse of him is as Chirrut’s backup, behind him, protective and suspicious when heroine Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) approaches them. Chirrut later notes that Baze used to be the most devoted Guardian of them all…and it’s clear that, now, he’s a devoted Guardian to just one person.

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