Date, Mate, Rate, Repeat

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Date, Mate, Rate, Repeat is a 2007 short story written by Alana Wilkinson and Mellea Barrie. The story focuses on Blaise and Damien, two best friends in a French boarding school (though Blaise and Damien are originally English), whose idea of a fun game would be to see who can date, have [...] with, and rate the girls of their school the fastest, then repeat the process again with other students (inspiring The Title).

Plot

Blaise Whelk and Damien Wrath are two best friends, both the age of 17, originally from England, who now go to a boarding school in France. The two have a game they play. The object is to pick a girl, and date her, have [...] with her, and rate her faster than the other person did, then repeat the process again with another girl. The two boys have no conflict in their game whatsoever.

One target sets to change all that - Melanie Barrie - who Damien falls madly in love with, even though Melanie has a boyfriend at the time, Jason. Damien chooses to deny his love for Melanie, as he wants to keep going on with the game, and that he doesn't want to destroy the friendship he has with Blaise. Blaise doesn't want their friendship to end either and becomes incredibly worried of losing Damien.

Damien pays his sister, Jacquline, to seduce Melanie's boyfriend into cheating on her, which she successfully does. Melanie and Jason break up, but in a bizarre turn of events, Jason dies in a car accident a month later. Jacquline was attracted to Jason, and needs her brother by her side to get over him. Damien goes and stays with her in Paris for a little while, and when he returns, he discovers that Melanie had found the leather-bound book that Blaise and Damien used to record 'the game'. Melanie and Damien have a massive fight, and at the end, Melanie confesses she is pregnant with Damien's child. Damien burns the book and expresses his love for her.

Many years later, Damien and Melanie are married, and Blaise has accepted that his friendship with Damien isn't as strong anymore, as burning the book symbolized that it was the end of their fun.

Trivia

  • Obviously, the character of Melanie Barrie was named after co-writer of the book, Mellea Barrie.
  • The original concept of the story was that Blaise was going to do all he could to break Damien and Melanie up to preserve his friendship with Damien, and ends up [...] Melanie.
  • Another alternate ending was that Melanie fell down the stairs while pregnant, and killed herself and her unborn baby. Damien kept blaming himself, even though it was an accident.
  • The two writers, Alana Wilkinson and Mellea Barrie, wrote the story before they had ever met face-to-face.
  • The name of the French school means The Knowledge in English.
  • An alternate title for the story was 'The Virgin and the Beast'.
  • The entire book wasn't an intertwined project, Alana and Mellea, the authors, each wrote a page or a paragraph each, separately.