romance novels: a wishlist
May. 25th, 2021 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intimatopiai was forced to make this post,
an overview
[yes]
A ROMANCE NOVEL IS A NOVEL.
[no]
a wikipedia page is a romance novel.
[yes]
a song is a romance novel when you send it to someone youhate love.
[no]
a novel is when you have words, and the more words you have, the more novel it is.
[yes]
there is a happy ending
[no]
it was worth it.
are we clear?
why romance novels?
good question!
[the bad answer]
i like happy endings and watching people fall in love. i like characters, and events, and the way people love. i like seeing writing happen and unhappen and happen badly. sometimes writing is a process of failure. romance novels more than others. science fiction most of all.
(it is easy to make something up. it is easier to work with what you already have. science fiction is both, which makes it really hard.)
(yes)
[the good answer]
romance novels are like fanfiction, but less so. lately i have a hard time reading fanfiction. this is primarily an issue of caring - i care a lot about the characters/the people writing it and therefore i can't read what's in front of me. i am very afraid of my own opinions.
romance novels are like...(at least, the gay ones, or the good ones, which are gay - i have never read a good straight romance novel, or i have, but they weren't romance novels [1])...i'm trying to find a unifying theme here beyond the obvious. it's not just romance - it's a vibe. how do i talk about vibes? the stakes are never actually high. the happy ending is guaranteed. i want to say that's what makes it like fanfiction, but that's actually not it. genre-wise, fanfiction pushes stakes a lot more. if romance is a style of writing, it's one where the chapters start with descriptions and then the adjectives are limited to sex, clothing, and the way people smile. if it's a way of measuring time, you can take it on good authority that people take a month to fall in love, and six months to lose their heads.
i can live with that, just barely. it's harder to put up with it than it seems - even the slow burns aren't slow burns! c'mon.
deep breath. okay. i will admit that i've been reading kj charles more than anything else. this is self-defense - most romance dynamics don't really appeal to me, and the gay ones even less so. kj charles is not perfect, but i'm glad she exists. i wouldn't have anyone without her.
i don't actually want to read about romance. it has its moments, i'll admit, and i'm as much a slut for the free easy serotonin as anyone else. i want to read about people being in pain and the aloneness of that and the alleviation of that aloneness. i want to read about something tender blooming. i want to read about bruises. i want to read about addiction [2]. so far, romance novels are not delivering.
"but carys, why is that a reason you're reading them?" because i'm an inveterate optimist! who knew.
finally, a wishlist
1. slower burns!!!!. the burns are NOT SLOW ENOUGH. enough 1 month love affairs! enough declaring yourself to someone with only 3 weeks of knowing them! fucking enough. no more. stop. love affairs must last SIX MONTHS MINIMUM before someone says i love you. violation of this rule means i will ball up newspapers and throw them at you. i am not asking for some EPICALLY SLOW BURN SPANNING A CENTURY i am just asking you to leave space for...a third date. perhaps even some places where a character is like "oh shit, i have to deal with a family thing, brb in 3 weeks." come the fuck on. it's not about realism. it's about dragging it out. it's about letting feelings age, like wine.
2. more fucked up characters. fucked up in the sense of "this is kind of an awful person" and in the sense of "holy shit you have too much trauma/mental illness to be walking around" (yes i want more felix harrowgate). an unnatural vice was one of the most satisfying things i've ever read - the hate-to-love, "you're a terrible fucked up person and i want to hold you so badly it's making me feel stupid" thing is amazing. more of that. 400 more of that. i want characters with depression and social anxiety and cluster b disorders. i want them to suffer a little (or a lot) and then have a happy ending. it just means more with them. and yes, i would like to see more morally bankrupt characters - assassins and thieves and tyrants - but i also want a certain moral staining, a guilt of the heart. a character who abandoned a dear lover out of fear / a character who did something terrible to get away from someone terrible but hurt more people than they intended to / a character who was forced into committing atrocities and isn't quite sure how hard he should have resisted.
3. less happy endings. WRONG GENRE CARYS i know. i fucking know. i don't mean less happy endings, exactly, i just want more complex forms of happiness, and more bittersweetness. i want characters who end the novel by breaking something precious because it is precious, and because that is what commitment means to them, even if it seems bewilderingly codependent to the reader. i want characters who decide to continue to live in a terrible situation because their way out hasn't materialized yet, and for them to still have good things in their life. for love to mean something even if the course of its happening doesn't really fix everything.
(the NUMBER of kj charles novels where one of the characters ends up working for the other in the course of their happy ending. insane. someone stop her)
4. more angst. yes i am an angst liker. i am. i just think we should linger longer on the painful things. the more of that we get the better the sweetness hits. angst & hurt/comfort is THE trope for a fucking reason. i don't care how this happens i just want more people being sad and hurt and in pain and needing something they can't have.
footnotes
[footnote 1] i have a hard time finding women interesting in the same way i find men interesting. i want to argue that this is misogyny (internalized, otherwise), or some kind of deeply repressed lesbianism, or some kind of even more deeply repressed heterosexuality, but the boring answer is dysphoria, and the fact that people have a certain way of writing female characters.
[footnote 2] there is a certain way of doing addiction, like it's something that either doesn't exist and meaningfully affect people, or an abject state on par with being homeless or a whore or (you get the picture). instead of a thing that happens to people sometimes, a thing that some overcome and some don't want to overcome and that some succumb to (not necessarily overlapping with not wanting to overcome addiction). i like the struggles of recovering from addiction (stuck on the puzzle, my beloved) but it's not the only thing worth writing, and just once i'd like to see characters who are addicted be respected and not treated like failures and tragedies while they're still right fucking there. i want that for the real life addicts i know too (and the homeless and sex workers).
end note
thank you for reading this?
an overview
[yes]
A ROMANCE NOVEL IS A NOVEL.
[no]
a wikipedia page is a romance novel.
[yes]
a song is a romance novel when you send it to someone you
[no]
a novel is when you have words, and the more words you have, the more novel it is.
[yes]
there is a happy ending
[no]
it was worth it.
are we clear?
why romance novels?
good question!
[the bad answer]
i like happy endings and watching people fall in love. i like characters, and events, and the way people love. i like seeing writing happen and unhappen and happen badly. sometimes writing is a process of failure. romance novels more than others. science fiction most of all.
(it is easy to make something up. it is easier to work with what you already have. science fiction is both, which makes it really hard.)
(yes)
[the good answer]
romance novels are like fanfiction, but less so. lately i have a hard time reading fanfiction. this is primarily an issue of caring - i care a lot about the characters/the people writing it and therefore i can't read what's in front of me. i am very afraid of my own opinions.
romance novels are like...(at least, the gay ones, or the good ones, which are gay - i have never read a good straight romance novel, or i have, but they weren't romance novels [1])...i'm trying to find a unifying theme here beyond the obvious. it's not just romance - it's a vibe. how do i talk about vibes? the stakes are never actually high. the happy ending is guaranteed. i want to say that's what makes it like fanfiction, but that's actually not it. genre-wise, fanfiction pushes stakes a lot more. if romance is a style of writing, it's one where the chapters start with descriptions and then the adjectives are limited to sex, clothing, and the way people smile. if it's a way of measuring time, you can take it on good authority that people take a month to fall in love, and six months to lose their heads.
i can live with that, just barely. it's harder to put up with it than it seems - even the slow burns aren't slow burns! c'mon.
deep breath. okay. i will admit that i've been reading kj charles more than anything else. this is self-defense - most romance dynamics don't really appeal to me, and the gay ones even less so. kj charles is not perfect, but i'm glad she exists. i wouldn't have anyone without her.
i don't actually want to read about romance. it has its moments, i'll admit, and i'm as much a slut for the free easy serotonin as anyone else. i want to read about people being in pain and the aloneness of that and the alleviation of that aloneness. i want to read about something tender blooming. i want to read about bruises. i want to read about addiction [2]. so far, romance novels are not delivering.
"but carys, why is that a reason you're reading them?" because i'm an inveterate optimist! who knew.
finally, a wishlist
1. slower burns!!!!. the burns are NOT SLOW ENOUGH. enough 1 month love affairs! enough declaring yourself to someone with only 3 weeks of knowing them! fucking enough. no more. stop. love affairs must last SIX MONTHS MINIMUM before someone says i love you. violation of this rule means i will ball up newspapers and throw them at you. i am not asking for some EPICALLY SLOW BURN SPANNING A CENTURY i am just asking you to leave space for...a third date. perhaps even some places where a character is like "oh shit, i have to deal with a family thing, brb in 3 weeks." come the fuck on. it's not about realism. it's about dragging it out. it's about letting feelings age, like wine.
2. more fucked up characters. fucked up in the sense of "this is kind of an awful person" and in the sense of "holy shit you have too much trauma/mental illness to be walking around" (yes i want more felix harrowgate). an unnatural vice was one of the most satisfying things i've ever read - the hate-to-love, "you're a terrible fucked up person and i want to hold you so badly it's making me feel stupid" thing is amazing. more of that. 400 more of that. i want characters with depression and social anxiety and cluster b disorders. i want them to suffer a little (or a lot) and then have a happy ending. it just means more with them. and yes, i would like to see more morally bankrupt characters - assassins and thieves and tyrants - but i also want a certain moral staining, a guilt of the heart. a character who abandoned a dear lover out of fear / a character who did something terrible to get away from someone terrible but hurt more people than they intended to / a character who was forced into committing atrocities and isn't quite sure how hard he should have resisted.
3. less happy endings. WRONG GENRE CARYS i know. i fucking know. i don't mean less happy endings, exactly, i just want more complex forms of happiness, and more bittersweetness. i want characters who end the novel by breaking something precious because it is precious, and because that is what commitment means to them, even if it seems bewilderingly codependent to the reader. i want characters who decide to continue to live in a terrible situation because their way out hasn't materialized yet, and for them to still have good things in their life. for love to mean something even if the course of its happening doesn't really fix everything.
(the NUMBER of kj charles novels where one of the characters ends up working for the other in the course of their happy ending. insane. someone stop her)
4. more angst. yes i am an angst liker. i am. i just think we should linger longer on the painful things. the more of that we get the better the sweetness hits. angst & hurt/comfort is THE trope for a fucking reason. i don't care how this happens i just want more people being sad and hurt and in pain and needing something they can't have.
footnotes
[footnote 1] i have a hard time finding women interesting in the same way i find men interesting. i want to argue that this is misogyny (internalized, otherwise), or some kind of deeply repressed lesbianism, or some kind of even more deeply repressed heterosexuality, but the boring answer is dysphoria, and the fact that people have a certain way of writing female characters.
[footnote 2] there is a certain way of doing addiction, like it's something that either doesn't exist and meaningfully affect people, or an abject state on par with being homeless or a whore or (you get the picture). instead of a thing that happens to people sometimes, a thing that some overcome and some don't want to overcome and that some succumb to (not necessarily overlapping with not wanting to overcome addiction). i like the struggles of recovering from addiction (stuck on the puzzle, my beloved) but it's not the only thing worth writing, and just once i'd like to see characters who are addicted be respected and not treated like failures and tragedies while they're still right fucking there. i want that for the real life addicts i know too (and the homeless and sex workers).
end note
thank you for reading this?
no subject
Date: 2021-05-25 07:08 pm (UTC)ANYWAY I LOVE how u are so coherent w what u wanna say. how r u so sure abt words we should talk [also ily]