Sex is Bad, Kids

The sheer awesomeness shown by Rearden in his conflict with Potter (especially his line at the very end) inspired my support for Rearden, even though Potter was quite obviously another one of Rand's symbolic punching bags for the heroes of objectivism to knock down. It is with this setup that I was a little too excited for the success of Rearden Metal. It is at this point that I must acknowledge that Rand not only has the capability to craft a great story, but actually uses this for more than just the John Galt story line. I am forced to acknowledge this because anyone who at any point doubted Readen and Dagny's success must not have been reading the right thousand-page book. The objectivists do not lose, they don't even face conflict unless Rand wants to bring up another thing that objectivism finds evil.
I promised myself I would at least make an attempt to talk about the content of the book this time, as opposed to talking about Ayn Rand and my own cognitive dissidence, and that I would try to make this of reasonable length so before I go on a rant about how Rand does not allow for the possibility of other opinions let's just get started.
The sex scene at the end of chapter eight.... I don't care about it. At all. I get what she was doing, but I think Rand needs to choose between making this book the objectivist manifesto or an actual story where normal characters have feelings. The Rearden/Dagny relationship was building up for a while, but I really did not want it to happen because there is simply nothing fun, interesting, or relevant about it. I think Rand has done a good job of showing us that even objectivists can feel sometimes, but she has made me care about these characters in a way that is far from traditional, and in this method she has at no point brought me to care about their romantic/sexual desires. Maybe she tried with Dagny's flashback, but I think it was well-established that she is now a cold objectivist. I acknowledge that this scene was expected, but please forgive me if I could not wait for it to end because I just could not care. I actually would not be surprised if Rand gave them both horrible STD's for having sex because THAT IS NOT THE WAY OF THE OBJECTIVIST. How dare they.
Actually, if you think about it for a moment, the two biggest objectivists in the book just mixed business with pleasure by having sex with a business partner. If Rand doesn't punish them then she's not a real objectivist and everything in this book is a lie.