I'm plotting a romance novel and I'm trying to think of something disastrous happening between my two leads. I've already had a bratty ex accosted them. What do?
How about ... ah, I've got a few ideas:
Let's make them both hardcore authoritarian Stalinists. Like, super-DUPER-Stalinists. The kind of jackbooted assholes that Stalin himself might say "oh gimme a friggin' BREAK, can't you anal squares just chillax for once?"
But! Let's also say they'd first met each other at the grooviest, most laid-back libertarian rural commune you can possibly imagine. Like, apocalyptically libertarian: ALL drugs are free and legal as the Free Market intended, and I do mean ALL.
Both Stalinist leads loathe and despise all this unconscionable bourgeois bullshit. Both personalities thirst to stamp some goddamn Discipline on this heathen friggin' rabble. So both leads have independently sneaked their way in, athirst for righteous sabotage.
Both sport fiendishly cunning disguises as right-wing libertarians. Both fully intend to undermine and obliterate all this loathsome and decadent filth from within. And make Stalin's ghost proud.
But it's the world's most right-wing drug den, isn't it. One must Blend In. One must Partake.
So both thus met whilst high as fucking kites. They fell in love. They fucked. They fell in love more deeply. They fucked again. Then they inevitably got themselves plastered yet further on both Adderall and mescaline to maintain their funky-wunky groovy/liberty facades.
But they're still terrifyingly aware, and solitary-ly aware, that they're stealth-jackbooted interlopers! Neither dare drop their Ayn-Rand-ian facade, even to their beloved! Each deems themselves a lone stalwart Stalinist in an ocean of decadent hippie bullshit! Neither knows their counterpart is as Super-Communist as them!
They're both terrified of being FOUND OUT by the other, FOUND OUT by the wider commune, and feel they simply must take ALL the drugs in the universe, constantly, unrelentingly, or their blitzed neighbours will start asking: who are these uptight squares? Are they the Filth or something? Get 'em!
Both are also terrified of the unrelenting drug tsunamis dissolving their espionage-esque Focus, their Discipline, their Social Masks, and - worst of all! Their dreamy beloved hippie-counterpart might discover their stalwart Stalinist hardcore ideals, and they'll lose the man and/or woman of their friggin' dreams.
They can't stay hammered! They can't not stay hammered! Both are internally freaking the fuck out. Both are desperate to annihilate their despised libertarian commune, yet Be With Their Beloved.
How?
Easy peasy, bro.
Each should simultaneously take the other hostage. Makes total sense when you're sozzled. Give it a try yourself. It's rad, man. And all true Stalinists are armed to the teeth with Kalashnikovs. Right? Right?
The story's third act begins with both leads interrupting a particularly screechy pan-commune musical rendition of the classic smash hit "Ron Paul Makes Me Foggy In My Soggy." Both leads independently and simultaneously brandish AK-74s. Both scream to the commune their genuine Stalinist loyalties, and that they'll blow the brains out of this other corrupt bourgeois scumbag, unless the entire libertarian commune surrenders to them its remaining three tons of cocaine.
Both act the part so superbly that they don't realise their beloved is screeching the same threats, word-for-word, until several sentences in. And then the real fun begins.
...
Bah 😛 Needs a ton of polishing. But there's a pair of decent-ish character arcs in there somewhere. Give it a whirl, girl!