#the grovel would actually be earned in a hero/villain enemies-to-lovers but interestingly i don't see that much either

[the-fallen-blue]

So of course a very common M/F romance trope is the Grovel™, in which A Guy has done something very wrong and been rejected because of it, and must make a grandiose, ideally self-sacrificial gesture and a heartfelt verbal apology to regain the good graces of the heroine. Very popular, entirely understandable kink. Now, I do not, as a rule, seek out M/F in my fanfic, so it may be that this is a professional phenomenon only, but it has been my experience that when The Groveler is a dude and his partner is a woman, he very consistently earned it. He was a complete asshole who demeaned his girl's expertise and agency, ruined her sister's happiness, and attempted to tear down the magic barrier and ruin the world, and he had better get groveling. Offer her your throat my guy! She has every right to tear it out!

But what's fascinating to me is that I also see people do what is clearly an attempt at the Grovel™ in femslash. And like 90% of the time, it's complete bullshit, actually! Utterly unearned! The Groveler gave the injured party's parents a gift that is perfectly polite and respectful in their mutual culture but which ruined the introduction for reasons the Groveler could not possibly anticipate. The Groveler made a decision in a time-sensitive situation that she has 20 years of experience with without taking the time to listen to and coddle the injured party's obviously incorrect and in fact genuinely detrimental alternate suggestion. The Groveler asserted a completely fair social boundary against a third party, ruining her partner's plans to make them both seem victims for later profit, a plan which the Groveler did not consent to or even know about. The femslash Groveler is mostly making grandiose gestures of denial and self-abasement to atone for doing nothing actually wrong.

I am so compelled by this phenomenon, I feel like it says so much about gender in our society. Is this a direct manifestation of our high demands on women socially, that any emotional injury to another party is treated with the same severity as the most severe, deliberate, and avoidable emotional injury caused by men? Is it a second-order consequence of that phenomenon, because female characters, by and large, must be far more considerate and respectful of other people's opinions and agency than male characters with the same literary role to be liked, and so the worst in-character thing you can get them to do is still undeserving of the trope you're trying to play out? Is it that the bar for forgiveness is different, that writers still want the Grovel™ catharsis but wouldn't be able to enjoy the relationship if there'd been an actual Grovel-worthy crime? Or something else entirely? What is happening here.