I don't think it's fair to classify it all as mind games Smitty- though to be sure some women (and some men) do set out to be intentionally cryptic or manipulative. For the most part though, I think women are conditioned to trade more in emotional and verbal nuance- while men are allowed to remain ignorant as to the subtle implications of what they say. Don't assume that a woman is being passive aggressive or intentionally confusing when she doesn't follow your prefered communication style. Likely she believes she is being perfectly forthwright.

Many people knew the original fairytale. Read the earlier comments.

It would depend on the context. I work in an office and commonly joke that my coworkers owe me lunch when they have last minute requests. If one of them offered to take me up on it, I'd assume they were joking back. People are funny things with the ability to wildly misinterpret each other's intentions. But as I said above, it seems too likely that, in this particular case, the girl was being intentionally cruel.

My favorite moments of our history come from people not accepting the limitations they were born into.

I'm with hammerhead here. I've met a fair number of people in the real world- where I work and live and spend most of time- who are legitimately sexist or racist or homophobic. I meet these people and think -"oh, this is why It's important to push for tolerance". Then I get online and hear these stories about militant feminists and rampant SJWs and people making outrageous claims for safe space and trigger warnings and these stories seem so perfectly selected to cultivate gleeful outrage. They don't jive with the world I recognize at all and they paint whole groups and movements with such a broad brush, reducing them into ugly and cartoonish versions of themselves. There are always going to be people in every group who are hateful or stupid, crazy or misinformed or attention seeking. It's very easy to find the worst example of a group and make them the mascot to discredit all the others. It's much harder to actually try and empathize with an average or good ideological representation.

Agreeing with guests. Rights to kill certain animals are sold or raffled off by the parks and charities that protect these animals. People like this guy are not the same at all as poachers who illegally kill endangered species for profit.

Good. Guys like that are not worth keeping around.

Socially acceptable is for squares. Be a rebel and pour some vodka in your morning bowl of corn flakes. Warning- rebellion may lead to liver damage.

Which makes it legal but doesn't make it right.

I think people feel the need to include a romance plot because in American culture we really idolize romantic love and elevate it above all other sorts of love - like familial love or the love between friends. So the same thing that caused the writers to insert a love interest causes fans to take a platonic relationship that inspires them with its depth and sincerity and turn it into an OTP.

My theory is that the reason you see so much fanfic with gay (and specifically M/M) romances is that most of our shows, movies, books etc. center around male friendships and then feel the need to insert a romance plot and introduce a one dimensional female character to be the love interest. The result is that we feel like the love interest is intruding on what feels more like a real relationship.