Romance Tropes and Me

[ase]

Tonight I'm thinking about the current "Open-Source Boob Project" drama on LJ, and am torn between "gee, this is a big reaction to a small group of consenting adults at a con" and kneejerk rage because the context changed when people brought this out of the con and online. There's a post to be written about context and behavior. Meanwhile, have some thoughts on romance novels.

I lent hourglasscreate the first two Sharing Knife books, and thanks to discussion of same I've gotten a solid handle on why I lose at romance novels:

1.) I want the relationship to put the protagonists more in harmony with themselves and/or the people around them. This is why I can see rereading Pride and Prejudice in the future: Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet's pairing-off upholds social expectations, but their relationship is a compliment to their personalities and landed British gentry values. "Unsuitable on the surface, compatible in core values" is tough to pull off. As a corollary, I cannot abide Us Against The World unless The World (tm) is a complete dystopia and the protagonists' forbidden love is their one chance at a desperate scrap of happiness.

2.) The world is larger than two people. I want to know where all your friends are while you're diving into this mismatched relationship. Again, where is your community? Where's the context? And I want to know what both of you are getting out of it.

2a.) Acknowledging character... not flaws, but incompletions... is okay. In a "no, really, I know exactly why you're single, and some of these reasons make us a good fit and some of those reasons are why we will quarrel over breakfast some days" way.

3.) I am really, really bad at Happily Ever After. I see the problem of living alone and without love solved, but ask "so what about this other list of things? What about 20 years from now? 'Will you still need me, will you still feed me...' seriously, will you?"

This may explain why I love Mark and Kareen's romance in A Civil Campaign beyond all reason - it's a problem, it's character development, it's who you are and how that's defined by the social space you inhabit - while I have a harder time getting behind some of LMB's other romances. But Mark and Kareen are presented as both being aware that what they have is a relationship that can't be taken for granted, but must be worked at. (Miles... doesn't always get this.) Mark's humanity is a wonderfully grounding trait.

Anyway. So that's why I'm off romance novels, take three or four or ten. I want them to be buddy stories with character studies and engagement rings.

Comments

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

How about the romance that emerges from a guy at a con asking a girl if he can touch her breasts, and her saying NO YOU ASSHOLE GO AWAY, and him learning something from it? I'd read that one. Well, if it wasn't boring.

My difficulty, I've realized, is that I dislike romances that separate their protagonists from the world, but I also have knee-jerk reactions against attempts to combine romance and other genres (i.e. worlds). Except when they work. Which may be when the genre subsumes the romance, but not always.

Agree about Mark and Kareen, though what I want is to see everybody ten years on; I'd like Miles and Ekaterin to work too.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Oo. I was hoping you'd do this post. (And the one on the open-source blah blah, but I'll get to that.)

1) So I can be made to like Us Against the World, or unsuitable-surface/compatible-core (I dare not recommmend Possession to you, as the things I love about it don't, I think, overlap with the things you love in books very much at all, but it is an example of doing it right), but I am dead set against it in Sharing Knife because a) community and family are so important in the sort of society she's building up (and, because she is LMB, she richly details it so that you can't help but realize it's that way) b) the Vorkosigan and Chalion books, all of which I love madly to pieces, are about accepting your place in the world (which is a theme I resonant much more strongly with anyway), and this sudden reversal is a wrench for me.

Also, Pride and Prejudice totally rocks, also for your reason 2a.

2) So, that's the thing. Many books are about introverts, because authors tend to be introverts, and I'm okay with there being few-to-no good friends in the picture, because I didn't have close friends until I switched high schools, and I'm even okay with the emotionally-abusive family that doesn't get you (although I'm going to have marginally less respect for you if you write that, because it's cheating a bit). But Fawn and Dag are not exactly introverts (Scrappy little Fawn doesn't have any friends??), and their families, while dysfunctional in huge ways, are not emotionally abusive to the extent they would need to be to make me believe this. Again, this is because LMB is a good enough writer that she cannot do 2D villains, especially in the context of the strong emotional ties of family, but it makes me not really buy the romance.

3) Hee. I'm okay with Happily Ever After, though not okay with the "sexual attraction is enough for happily ever after," which I think Sharing Knife plays into (without meaning to... I'm sure we're supposed to think Fawn is also loved for her scrappy character, but... come ON) and absolutely not with the "one day, or hot moment, or emotionally-driven dangerous moment, of sexual attraction is enough" which pushes all of my rant-hot-buttons.

I actually liked Ekaterin and Miles' relationship much more in Komarr than in ACC... it was about problem-solving, and character development, and I felt it went kind of out the window in ACC. (Also, I was extremely disappointed by the problem-solving in ACC. "Will you marry me?" should not be a solution to all your problems.)

Um. I think this might be longer than your post. Sorry :) Anyway, the one-sentence summary is: We clearly disagree somewhat on romance, while agreeing totally on Sharing Knife. All of which you knew already :)

[filkferengi]

Excellent post! I may disagree with you on how thoroughly Lois carries out your list in this particular series of books [they work very well for me, but then, I'm probably more naturally comfortable with some romance tropes], but admire the clarity and con-/pre- cision with which you analyze some of your issues with this genre.

If you ever find the ideal romance novel mentioned in your last paragraph, let me know; I'd love to read it.