Why romances aren't romantic · 5:11am Jan 16th, 2017
Drawing by LessThanNormal
Earlier this week I was trying to list great and famous examples of different types of stories. When I came to romance, I realized that none of the stories that seemed most romantic to me were romances.
The "great" romances are not, to me, very romantic. I think Romeo and Juliet is a great play about society crushing individual aspirations and desires, but the title characters' ridiculous adolescent infatuation is driven by feelings closer to those inspired by porn than by love. I'm not sure that "romance" is the right word to use for Wuthering Heights; it's more about pain, suffering, and vengeance than about love. I haven't read Gone with the Wind.
At least there's still Twilight...
Dido and Aeneas? Jason and Medea? I'm not feeling it. I read a few popular contemporary romances, and forgot them entirely. The men in them were indistinguishable. The most-romantic romances I know, the ones where I get some sense of why the characters like each other, are by Jane Austen, and they're rational and bloodless.
But I could think of lots of "buddy movie" literature that feels romantic to me. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Holmes and Watson. Jeeves and Bertie. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man. (And, for some people, Kirk and Spock. But Kirk isn't good enough for him. 
)
Consider Don Quixote and Sancho Panza: Both are deeply flawed, foolish, self-centered men, yet both have great hearts, great integrity, great faithfulness. They're more lovable than an Aeneas, a Jason, or a Heathcliff. Seriously, I want to hug them. They complement each other; they each need to learn something from the other; they eventually realize they need each other, though their relationship seems crazy to everyone else--probably is crazy.
Bromances feel more romantic to me than romances do.
Why?
There's a literature on this: feminist writing about slash fan-fiction. It argues that women write about relationships between two men, rather than a man and a woman, because they can't imagine a man having respect for a woman (Lamb, Russ), or because they've internalized patriarchal attitudes so much that they don't want to be women (Penley).
Actual female fans are more likely to say they read these stories because they're hot. Also, there are male writers on a site called fimfiction who write fan-fiction about lesbians. How does that fit the narrative? Romantic buddy movies don't have to be about guy buddies, either. Thelma and Louise is a pretty romantic buddy movie.
And there are stories that aren't primarily romances, or aren't conventional romances, that have great romance in them. On Golden Pond. Harold and Maude. Buffy and Spike.
I might just be reading the wrong stories. Or I might be weird. But I think there may be structural reasons why stories framed as romances aren't usually romantic.
The feminist narrative might be onto something, in that buddy relationships are based on long-term mutual respect, but I don't think that's because of gender roles. It's because the characters in a romance are required to be strangers at the start [CORRECTION: No; see Undome Tinwe's first comment below], because the tingly excitement of meeting someone new is supposed to be part of the romance. Maybe this is a mistake.
I think there's a bigger problem, though. Have you ever tried to love someone? Someone who made you smile, made you enjoy life, whom you trusted completely and could rely on completely. Someone you told your most horrible secrets, who loved you anyway. Someone you could spend the rest of your life with, if you could just love him or her.
So you made a list of all the reasons why you should love this person, and gritted your teeth and. Tried. To. Love. Her.
I have. It didn't work. Not until I gave up and stopped trying. (By then, of course, it was too late.)
I don't think love blooms in direct sunlight. It's a pot that won't boil while you watch it. You have to look away and focus on something else, because love isn't a thing by itself. I can't fall in love by thinking about love. I can't love without a context. Unconditional love is... something else. My mom loves me unconditionally, but that's not romantic. Purely pragmatic conditional love for being objectively awesome, like Dido for Aeneas or Lois Lane for Superman, isn't romantic either; it's just mercenary. Romance isn't (as the ancients thought it was) what happens when two superior people meet and admire each other's superior qualities. The alpha male mating with the alpha female isn't romantic. Romance is when two people find some synergy/complementarity between them that is particular to them, that neither would have with other people, no matter how superior.
But unless that synergy shows itself in some activity other than love itself, it's not stable. I don't think a relationship based on two people loving how the other loves them can last.
We can love Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and imagine them loving each other, because we've seen them doing other things. Love is not the focus of their story. They have their own pursuits and concerns which, at any given moment, seem more important. Pursuing those goals reveals what each of them does best and values most, and how their skills and values complement each other.
It would not, if those goals were of only secondary importance in the story, or merely instrumental to getting them together--as they usually are in stories that the authors think of as romance stories. In a romance novel--even a modern action romance in which the hero and heroine are both bad-ass secret agents--the romance is the primary focus. The characters keep thinking about it. The writer keeps forcing the reader to stare at it. The characters' common goal isn't to achieve something either of them care about; it's to overcome some generic plot obstacle keeping them apart. And the writer falls into the old Greek ways, explaining the "love" as an attraction to superior qualities of beauty, strength, willpower, etc., because without showing either person pursuing their own goals, we can't understand them or how their goals and skills fit together.
Also, we have that awkward word "love". As I wrote in 2015, "love" is a deliberately misleading over-simplification. Uttering it throws you into a script which rules out most possible ways of loving. "Love" drives out love.
I'm not well-informed about pony romance. TheJediMasterEd wrote a very nice little romance last year, "Aubade", about two older ponies talking about love by talking about younger ponies. 164 views. It's a bit unusual, in that you very quickly get to the then-they-finally-kiss part where a lot of fanfics would end, and it keeps going. I think that's because the focus is less on the falling-in-love and more on the effect that realizing he's in love has on the overly-dignified stallion.
What are the most-romantic romances, and the most-romantic stories, that you know?
References
Hellekson, Karen, & Kristina Busse 2014. The Fan Fiction Studies Reader. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2014.
Lamb, Patricia, and Diana Veith. “Romantic Myth, Transcendence, and Star Trek Zines.” In Hellekson & Busse 2014.
Penley, Constance. “Future Men.” In Hellekson & Busse 2014.
Russ, Joanna. “Pornography by Women for Women, with Love.” In Hellekson & Busse 2014, pp. 89-105.
This might be why Monica/Chandler really worked very well, and Ross and Rachel felt so horribly forced.
Also, when you mentioned Kirk and Spock, you forgot McCoy. Shame on you.
I'm going to assume you don't know the old Irish tales. Look up Cuchulain and Emer. It's beautiful.
...I keep looking and I swear all I see in that picture is Filthy Rich's scalawag unicorn brother come to seduce unknowing, innocent hearts. Maybe I've been writing Rich drama too long
This is an unfortunate truth, that I would love to see counter examples too. As it is, even though I really want to read a Spike/ember or starlight/sunburst ship, I know any fic labeling it as such will be disappointing, and any good execution will be hiding in a larger adventure story.
I'm a huge fan of the modern Paranormal Romance genre, having read hundreds of books in the genre and also having tried my hand at writing some too, so I might be able to provide some perspective on this. First of all, I agree with you that love being the focus of the story can be a problem. I tried reading regular romance novel once, but as you might have encountered, it honestly felt like porn with some generic "romantic" dressing on top to make it a romance novel. The reason why I stick to PR is that the paranormal element usually introduces a secondary focus that allows the romance to bloom more naturally while the primary plots developed. The best paranormal romance stories I read were basically just fantasy stories with a heavy romantic subplot that tied back into the fantasy part of the story. The worst were the ones where the authors put the two characters in a metaphorical bottles and had them wax poetic about each others' qualities in between bouts of sex.
Which leads to your second issue about synergy instead of both characters just being awesome. The romance genre is plagued with Mary Sues/Gary Stus that would make the average self-insert on this site seem realistic. Stories where the characters are Good People who do Good Things except for that one Fatal Flaw that they must overcome with The Power of Love are incredibly boring. Stories where both characters legitimately flawed characters with lots of actually unique personality traits that complement each other are much better, and unfortunately the romance genre is quite bereft of these types of stories.
Finally, I just want to clarify that romance doesn't require the characters to be strangers at the start. That's just one popular story structure. There are other structures that allow for the characters to have a shared backstory. One popular setup is for the protagonists to be former lovers who broke up because of some conflict. Thus, the story revolves around them trying to build a new, stronger relationship by becoming more mature and addressing the problems in their previous relationship. Another setup is the unrequited love situation, where character A had feelings for character B that wasn't returned. But now something has changed and Char B sees Char A as someone she wants to date. These setups have their own possibilities, like Char A having moved on and Char B having to convince him to try loving her again, or dealing with how to turn their friendship into a relationship without killing their friendship (this is popular is fanfics where the characters already know each other in canon). These structures, IMO, tend to be more interesting because they provide more content to work with and because they deal with actual internal relationship issues instead of just infatuation.
My first attempt at writing paranormal romance was a story set in the universe of a DnD campaign I played in years ago. My protagonists were paragons of virtue: strong, brave, smart, kind-hearted, noble, beautiful, and humble despite having crappy childhoods. The story involved them falling in love while going on a quest to collect the magic McGruffin and defeat the evil Priestess. In the end, the fighting evil part of the story ended up being the only worthwhile part of the story, since the romance was literally them talking about much of a Good Person the other was and trying to convince each other that You Are Worth Loving (which apparently they hadn't figured out even though they're very heroic people). In short, I made all the mistakes one can make in writing romance and ended up with a boring love story, but at least I got a decent adventure out of it.
My second attempt, which is only a couple chapters long at the moment, involved a female protagonist who is a coward who is also pretty self-centered, and a male protagonist who is a complete asshole to everyone and slightly less of an asshole to the female protagonist. They also have a couple decades of shared backstory before the story even starts, with at least two bad breakups in their shared history, but ultimately, his assholeness pushes her to be more assertive and stand up for herself, and her delicate nature brings out the softer side of him and makes him feel empathy for others. Objectively, they're both "bad partners," but together, they are pretty decent people. Writing about these two has been much more fun, and despite not having a solid fantasy adventure for them to go on, I still think what little I have is better than my first story.
In short, what you've written is mostly correct, but refers only to the most standard romances that cover the vast majority of stories. Some authors do use other less common structures that can lead to interesting stories. And yes, the best romance stories are not "X and Y fall in love," but rather, "the relationship that develops between X and Y while doing Z."
Well said. Add to that how often 'romance' stories often rely on cliches, simplification, or having to turn one or both characters into idiots to make it work and create 'drama'. The worst being the whole misunderstanding that gets blown massively out of proportion and leads to one of the them calling the whole thing off. Rather then, you know, actually acting like people who have the ability to not be irrational morons. It's one of many reason I tend to avoid any 'romance' tagged stories.. and also really just, don't care about 'shipping' in general.
Though it can be done right, best romance fics I've read are J-Teeth's A Delicate Balance which has rather often been referred to as the 'least romantic romance story on fimfiction." For how it avoids the usual shortcuts, cliches, and melodrama associated with 'romance' and rather then being some treaty on how lovely it is to be in love, and getting all concerned with hammering home how great, and perfect, and timeless this love is. Treats it like a realistic relationship. Things are rough, uncertain, but both Twi and AJ act like rationale, intelligent ponies. They have fights, disagreements, but never blow things out of proportion, and it's always cases where, they both have good points, they both have reasons for their views, and then try to work out a way to fix things. Is more about the hard work and effort needed to make a relationship work then just pretending it's all some fairy tale perfection.
Next would be Oroboro's Fractured Sunlight more for some really amazing character work, how natural things felt between Sci-Twi and Shimmy, yet also complicated.
But yes, the focus on them is on the CHARACTERS, not the romance itself. It's more, about telling stories about these characters, that happens to include or be about the part of their lives where they end up in a romance.
As to how loaded 'Love" is, true, but mostly because so many seem unable to separate Amore from the other three loves and realize that not all love has to be romantic.
But yeah these are some great reasons why 'romane' stories simply... kind of suck as love stories. Also... finally someone else who can't see R&J as 'romantic" it's two horny teenagers that want to hump each others brains out to piss off their parents... and then get so emo they go and kill themselves because mommy and daddy's just don't understand their love.
4384528
Distaff Pope's The Diamond in the Stars in another good romance along the same lines. The characters are rational, mature, and the focus is on the development of their relationship and on Rarity trying to put her life back together after a bad breakup rather than just focusing on a "love story."
Oh, my eyes! (about the picture)
(checks) Hey, not only have I already read "Aubade" but it's in my favorites list too
Ahem. I'll confess to having difficulty writing inter-M6 romance, mostly because I feel it cheapens the deep mutual friendship the six of them have, and would cause serious personal issues among the others left out. (and writing all six of them into a mutual... um... I'm not that dirty.) I've considered doing a dedicated Twilestia fic, and I've done at least one Twiluna as an aside, so it's not so much "I won't" as "It hasn't been a priority."
(checks on TTatL) Four years? Oh, my. So, if you had asked me *five* years ago if I would ever write romances, I would have laughed in your face. If you would have asked me after I published my first Fimfiction story in Oct 2012, I probably would have giggled. The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian was a stab at the "Hi, who are you, let's bang" fics that seemed to be flooding the site back then. I had no intentions of it reaching 37 chapters. I had no idea it would spawn three sequels. I didn't think I would ever ship another M6 character after The Purple One, and now I've written or am in the process of writing everypony but Rarity. To put more emphisis on the depths to which I have sunk, I shipped Pinkie Pie. With a changeling. Out of the top five ranked romance stories on the site, I have two of them.
Now for the question: Are romances romantic? Answer: Not intentionally. Here's a quick breakdown of my more popular romances:
Daring Do and the Dance: Minion who is beaten up by Daring Do on a regular basis develops an attraction for her skill and expertise, mirrored by Daring in the way she treats him in their ongoing encounters. Luuve hurts.
The One Who Got Away: Overly-stuffy young unicorn inherits a barony, finds an adorable cute little filly who the previous baron was friends with, and eventually discovers her widowed mother, who he is attracted to on a totally superficial basis at first, but it grows into a mutual fascination. (the pony-in-the-middle romance, which Harliquin has a few dozen)
Changelings, Love and Lollipops: A captured changeling in Ponyville, expecting to die from lack of love, gets Pinkie Pie as his probation officer. Much party cannon to the face precedes and follows. By the time he figures out he's not going to die, he's stuck. Doooomed.
And the original, Traveling Tutor and the Librarian: Twilight has been tutoring young unicorns in Ponyville. The official traveling tutor shows up (because there's not enough work to assign one there permanently). Conflict follows, along with a sustained misunderstanding, until a peace treaty is worked out, and a little more as they discover things in common between the both of them.
None of these are "Bob shows up in town intending on wooing and marrying Rarity" because as Bad Horse pointed out, there's not much 'there' in a story like that. Conflict in romances is normally less physical and more mental (party cannons excluded). As an example, the mirror image of 'Lollipops' is Buggy and the Beast, where a crippled changeling is rescued by an extremely disagreeable and dislikable unicorn. Beet Salad is a very physically violent pony, but with regards to his crippled 'rescue,' he only talks violent while he acts physically restrained.
Also, before I go to bed, just wanted to drop a link to this guide about writing romance which I think deals with a lot of the points you've made about why romances aren't romantic: http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/596665/5-tips-for-avoiding-alien-shipping-syndrome
For a script, I would suggest Edmund Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac" over Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" any day. I'm not sure how it stacks up romance-wise, but I consider it a much better story. Mostly because I can't stand the main characters of Romeo and Juliet. :P Project Gutenburg has a free translation, but I think it just renders everything down into prose, which seems a bit of a shame. Apparently the original is in quirky French verse, which is tricky to translate. I read a metered version with some friends forever ago, but I have no idea who did that translation. Oh, and it's also a tragedy, fair warning.
As for novels, Megan Whalen Turner's "The Queen of Attolia" is, I think, something like a romance novel, and it was pretty good. It had excellent character work, which was nice. However, the sequel "The King of Attolia" is, I would say, a much better love story, even if it's less like 'a romance'. Although... maybe I didn't dislike the 'The Queen' because the romance aspects were stronger. Perhaps 'The King' was just generally better-written. It's kinda hard to say, it was a while ago that I read them.
I controlled F'd for Princess Bride and couldn't find the world's greatest story about true love, so I'll mention it in the comments and read through the blog post properly in a bit.
4384601 But there is the caveat that the Princess Bride really isn't a romance. At its heart, it's an adventure novel, with the motivation for approximately half the cast having to do with a love triangle.
4384658 Precisely.
That's interesting food for thoughts, both the blog post and the comments. I'll try to add some of mine.
First of all, I can't agree more on the fact that the best romance stories aren't the ones that focus entirely on the 'love' part. To find somebody to love has almost always been considered as an ultimate goal in one's life, a love so deep and powerful that it would transcend time and space. But let's be honest for a second, people who have achieved this kind of love can be counted on a mitten's fingers and I would hardly trust someone who would tell me "I found my soul-mate" and all those cliches.
There is a huge gap between love depicted in fiction and love felt by people, and the difference (IMO) is that the violence of the former is translated into actions. For example, it's common to see a character in love crashing and destroying a place because he can't bear his/her internal turmoil, or launching himself/herself into deadly actions.
I rather enjoy a story where love is 'accidental' and happens along the rest of the story. I hate when characters who have suddenly fell in love forget who they are and that the rest of the world exists. They become only defined by the guy/girl/mare/stallion they love and they become like an empty shell.
"Vinyl and Octavia: University Days" by DawnFade is a good exemple of that, at least for the beginning (the second half tend to forget that). It's still a good story but I found that it prevents it to be perfect.
4384557
"Cyrano de Bergerac" is indeed a better love story than "Romeo and Juliet". But is it really a romance story? I don't think so. I very well know this play (it's one of my favorite, if not my favorite) but the focus isn't the love story, it's (as the title says) Cyrano. He is depicted as someone who would never bargain anything in any way. He will stay true to himself, no matter the cost is, even before death itself. Unfortunately for him, he is ugly and he can't confess his love for his cousin Roxanne because of his ugliness, fearing that he would be rejected.
And as a French, I can understand why it can be translated in prose. The structure of the rhymes is so linked to the language that you can't really translate it into another language. For example, there is a scene where Cyrano is engaged in a sword battle while he is reciting a "ballade", a french form of poetry which obey to strict rules. There is joke about it because he has to make six rhymes but it only exists five words in French that he could use.
How do you translate that in English? The answer is, you can't of course (But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be translated).
4384528
Once more, I agree. I hate when characters are made stupid just to create drama rather than building a real struggle where the two choices are both valid and are just a point of view.
I remember an AppleDash story (but not the title) where they are both settled and have kids. Dash spends most of her time with the Wonderbolts (being her dream since she is a filly) but AppleJack wants her to be more present. I found the conflict to be more believable because each was right.
I'll add a last exemple of a love story that I've found great. "Un long dimanche de fiançailles" (A Very Long Engagement) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (the one who have made Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain/Amélie from Montmartre). The story takes place after the First World War. Mathilde loves Marek but Marek is presumed dead. She believes he isn't and so, she will search for any clue on what has happened to him.
This story is a perfect exemple of all the things that have been said because Mathilde and Marek are already in love at the beginning of the story. It's a genuine love without any of the artificial drama that you can see in other stories. Moreover, even if her feelings are described as very strong, pure, and eternal, Mathilde won't do anything stupid or deadly to find Marek. She will just investigate and ask questions. And last, Mathilde isn't defined by her feelings by the author but she chose herself that her love is one of her main reason to live. I know that it doesn't make a big difference but this slight difference is what make this love story so great.
First off, I have always believed that Romeo and Juliet is misrepresented in modern culture. It is not a story of romance, it is a parody of romance. A satire to be specific. Its about whiny, self entitled hormonal teenagers who think they are in love and end up killing each other because of a one night stand. Shakespeare was a sassy guy, and I totally believe he never intended this to be a romance story.
I thin when you boil romance down, it comes down to two things. Relationships and dreams. Even the original concept of the "Romantic hero" is one of the rebel fighting against a much larger system in some dire "good vs evil" struggle. That is a fucking dream adventure right there. You don't have characters that are trying to live some kind of life, then you are working with boring characters. Good romance use character's goals and background as narrative terrain to make the dance of romance more interesting. Romance is about desire and drive, and its about the relationships shared with characters. Buddy cop might seem more romantic because its got more built on the ebb and flow of tension in a relationship than the romance that is too far up its own ass in pleasant fantasy to understand a link between two characters. Also, people have this idea that love and romance is all about things going right, but thats just going to make a dull story. You want dynamic chemistry between characters and the potential for things to go from really good to really bad, and then be able to overcome that bad again. Thats a good dynamic relationship. When romance gets stuck by itself it starts to turn towards TV soap opera tropes, and nobody likes that.
I'm a big fan of the Rom/Com, with two parts comedy, one part romance. The heart of comedy is, in essence, flaw. It thrives when the world is not as it should be in some exploitable hilarious way. One such way to write likably terrible people. The romcom benefits from this because you get characters that bounce off each other chemically, without being the tuttifrutti romantic dream of every b-list chick flick. That kind of rom/com thrives because of the romantic expectation and then breaking it into thousands of little pieces, and then probably pissing on it for good measure. Good romance isn't about how you love the good, its how you learn to love the bad.
On the subject of thoroughbred romances failing, I think some of it can be attributed to becoming stuck in their own tropes. There are certain milestones people go through in relationships, and so if you boil romance down to its core elements and try to write 1000 stories, they will all start showing certain types of trends.There might be a few separate models, but I think romance on its own has a bad habit of becoming predictable. The dreams and aspirations that seem tangential to a story are the X factor that help shake up a formula. However, while purebred romance can squander itself, I feel like the opposite can also be true of the "Romantic subplot." Romance subplots seem to show up in absolutely everything now a days. Some people live for the romantic subplots. Still, sometimes by not focusing on the romance, the romantics of it become trite and unnuanced. You get characters who become more flat to enforce a tenuous relationship at best. Hell and suffering to every story with a "Love conquers all" deus ex machina. I wouldn't say that if there weren't a ton of them. Also, I'd like to say that it is possible to write a story that is predominantly about a relationship and a romance, while appearing to be built around a general plot. You just have to be clever and make the events plot reflect aspects of the relationship and use it to drive a conflict between people.
As for the general idea of "Ix nay on the ove lay." and uttering the word making narratives weaker just comes down to one things. Subtext is really fucking cool. No seriously, that's all it is. People get such a hard on for when they understand something that never has to be said. Its communicative zen right there. You can write a good scene that builds up to characters talking about love in a way that is powerful and evocative, but not saying it is just so powerful that most people would rather just not mention it and play it for its delicious subtext. Romance drama is all about communication a lot of the time and mostly how people aren't communicating. Then again, too much subtext can be pretty bad. I remember groaning through final fantasy 8 as I went from romantic themed section to romantic themed section.
Now I'm very interested in your opinion on a movie called "Stranger than Fiction"
I LIKE WHEN THE PONIES MAKE KISS
4384506
I just can't think of a name for him, though. The human brain quails.
Fortunately I have access to the Robotic Pony Name Generator (He-Sluts Edition):
I'm partial to "Bold Bigflank" but "Flint Ironstag" works too.
I would propose that it's a case of trying to give your reader what you want, or at least convince them of it. I would propose that, in the way how "your first paragraph is everything, never say that it gets better because the readers won't stick around for it" is a golden rule around these parts, authors of romance stories who are trying to sell into the market must give their readers some promise of payoff, and it wouldn't be evident (overly as it may be) if the focus wasn't "romance".
My experience with Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat - which an earlier blog of yours sold me on - is kind of like that. I went in expecting interesting psychological cases, but not every one was structured the same way. Quite a few opened with academic musings on general theories which then led into specific types of manifestations... I found myself, to my shame, impatient and ready to skip to the next, more gratifying entry.
I'm not saying it's the best way to do it, but in the end, don't we tell stories to be heard?
4384601
Seconded.
I've never understood why people think R&J is a romance...
It's a fucking tragedy, people!
4384777
pssh, next you'll tell me that Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear aren't supposed to be ideal role models
It's romance when you spend a lot of time talking about love.
It's love when you spend a lot of time talking about a relationship.
It's a relationship when you spend a lot of time talking about your weight.
--MAD Magazine
As others have pointed out, "romance" has gone from meaning "a long, often fantastic fictional adventure" to "the mushy parts of that adventure where you go out to the lobby and get popcorn."
Which perhaps explains why romance, as a genre, is hard to write workably: it wasn't meant to stand on its own.
Most romance is wish-fulfillment. "Aubade" certainly is. But that in itself is no impediment to good writing and I worked very hard to write that piece well.
Then again, it was conceived as an interlude in a much, much longer piece: a fantastic fictional adventure, you might say (there's a reason for Bertie's dream, there at the end). For those who may be interested, I've written a little more about it here.
And hey, thanks for the product placement!
very true. I noticed how strange it is that it's so easy and natural to apply this to other concepts. yet when it comes to love it's like our culture has blinders on. we NEED to see love as a goal in itself, because that's what our stories say.
the funny thing about MLP being about friendship is that Twilight Sparkle is told to make some friends, but doesn't make the effort. she doesn't want to be friends with the weird ponies she meets. but they end up becoming friends anyway, because they had to help each other out in the spooky forest, on their quest to save the world.
then all those slice-of-life episodes that follow are about solving some minor problem, which leads to the characters' friendships growing stronger in the process. Lesson Zero is the first episode where "friendship" becomes the goal itself, and that turns into a tragedy. Twilight messes up so badly, the deus ex machina actually has to step in and clean up the disaster.
the CMC want their destiny (cutie marks) but the obvious lesson there is you don't find your destiny by constantly searching for it. it'll come naturally when you understand yourself. the more they focus on it, the further away it gets.
to put it another way, it's pretty rare to find a popular story about friendship to go like "let's be friends, because we NEED to be friends." and then they became friends, THE END. yet that's how we collectively seem to view romantic love in stories!
I think that Die Hard is a romance movie. Seriously. John McClane and Al have a lot of heartfelt discussions. And when they finally lock eyes for the first time? There's even a moving orchestral score at that moment. Yeah, it's a bromance, and I'm betting that neither one of them wants to rub weiners, but that's love right there.
Lord of the Rings. Sam and Frodo. Merry and Pippin. Yes, that's love. No, it's not sexual.
I really think the distinction between sexual and non-sexual love is overblown. The only real difference is the feeling of "let's mash our genitals together." Other than that, you can have the exact same relationship with anyone.
pitofultimatedarkshadows.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/gomez-and-morticia-on-the-lips.jpg
4384601 4384604 4384658 I should know better than to say this, but...
I love the Princess Bride. It's one of my favorite books and one of my favorite movies. But I don't find it romantic at all.
Wesley loves Buttercup... because she's pretty? Because she insults him?
Buttercup loves Wesley because... he's killed hundreds of innocent men for money? He's outrageously competent at everything he does? He saved her life?
How much do we know about Wesley and Buttercup? What will they do in their spare time? What do they have in common? What do they disagree about? What do they want, besides each other? We have no idea.
This is just the classical "hyper-competent action hero rescues beautiful woman" story. It's a great adventure story, but not about anything I'd call love. It uses the words "true love" a lot, but saying it don't make it so. Any story that uses the phrase "true love" is not about any real love.
4384880 Well I knew somebody would go there. I should've guessed it would be you.
Thanks for the enlightening blogpost. I think I'll take the "romance" tag off of Desert Spice. Even though a romantic relationship's development between two of its protags is one of its main foci, the fic isn't really about the drama of "falling in love" or somesuch, and the romance tag would give people the wrong idea. (Or worse, might give me the wrong idea.) After all, the real reason I'm writing the story is to explore the world I created, and how its denizens react to it being thrown into disarray.
Making sure that I don't force romance for romance's sake but instead properly integrate the romantic elements into what the protags are otherwise doing with their lives seems like a pretty good idea, too.
4384549 Huh. I think I've heard of this "bookplayer" person before.
Sorry, bp--I'd forgotten how much of this you'd already said.
4384676
Shakespeare's plays are very largely written as poetry, but no one ever acts them that way. They can't be "translated" into contemporary aesthetics. If you read the lines in a metrically-even way, as intended, they sound stilted and terrible. Discarding the poetic meter actually improves the plays IMHO. Modern ears don't like drama done to meter; we prefer actors to speak the lines dramatically. So I wouldn't worry about losing the rhymes.
4384870 That's a really good example! That is a couple that fits each other.
There isn't much romance-first work I've read outside of MLP (or frankly much within). But out of stories in other genres, hmm...
The Name of the Wind has the protagonist's love interest as a secondary or tertiary plot line which occasionally takes center stage. Yet even then, when it does so for longer stretches it's enmeshed in more immediate concerns for one or both parties: pulling off a musical performance that's the key to avoiding poverty; investigating strange phenomena; maintaining a relationship with a patron. The only time it really dominated focus was relatively early on, short, and was the introduction to the love interest character.
The Just City's* romance between Simmea and Pythias (plus third wheel Kebes) is more central, and at least on one side begins at least in the described mode ("(as the ancients thought it was) what happens when two superior people meet and admire each other's superior qualities"), but then, that's to be expected given a setting composed in large part of the ancients. From there, though, it develops in a more bromantic mode mixed with jealousy for quite a while, and brings in different aspects over time. For all that it's a major line within the story, though, each of the two is still primarily focused on their own self-improvement and the betterment of the city, at least on the surface. And again, most of the time, there are other more immediate things which concern them, though more often the motivations overlap because of their close friendship. (Though these are at a more personal/social level than some from Name of the Wind, since the story's much closer to slice of life than adventure novel: e.g., Pytheas trying to work over accidentally insulting another girl, qua girl, and thus Simmea as well; talks with Socrates and determining whether their robots were people; dealing with Simmea's postpartum depression.)
*Granted, I expect you'd probably dislike this for its setting and theme, what with it being set within a Platonist project and populated mainly by Platonists (and some anti-s, true--conflict's gotta come from somewhere).
4384532
Shorter from the same author is "Thorny Words," which I think does the job of establishing a preexisting non-romantic relationship with underlying romantic tension, and then resolving it.
4384859
I think you're kind of off base here, at least in a practical sense. The high degree of correlation between the two has practical effects, especially when placed within the context of a setting. For example, with the Frodo and Sam case, how does this get affected by Sam's marriage, and how does it affect the marriage? Is there jealousy on one part or another? Do Sam and Frodo stay as close when Sam's situation is such that not only are they no longer together constantly, but he's directing more time and emotional energy towards Rose than before the journey? (And in what ways are the Sam-Frodo and Sam-Rose relationships similar and distinct?) Maybe, maybe not, but they would be things to address in a story in which those relationships play a major role.
More abstractly, relationships that seem fine on the love angle can and do founder due to sex, whether due to incompatibility or infidelity or something else. Or the reverse. Physical attraction can be a starting point for building a relationship that becomes love over time. Just because these are distinct concepts doesn't mean that they are neatly severable, and especially it seems that within the context of stories told in our world, the combination of the two is meaningfully distinct from either on its own.
That said, it's not like this can't be done, or isn't; the Pytheas-Simmea romance is something of an example. But it was also one where the distinction from the norm is within a context specifically trying (with mixed success) to separate sex and relationships.
4384919
Gandalf begs to differ (mostly--he does make a reference to "Marlowian verse" when discussing struts and frets his brief hour--but that's Marlow, not Shakespeare):
A very much younger Gandalf. Was 1979 so long ago?
4384896 Correct. The two main characters have an attraction founded entirely on looks. Buttercup is such a useless whiner that, in actual interviews, the author has stated that the moment Buttercup's looks start to go, Wesley will realize she's more trouble than she's worth and dump her instantly.
* coming up with an obvious example: Han Solo and Leia trying to escape the empire together sets up a much more convincing romantic love than Anakin and Padme, who NEED to get together and make a few babies for continuity reasons.
* Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann manages to be about both bromance and romance. Simon and Kamina complement each other perfectly in a practical way, working together in adventures and robot battles. but it's contrasted with Simon and Nia who complement each other in an emotional sense, guiding each other during their lowest points. it feels natural and convincing when they grow into a couple, without the show ever focusing on typical romantic drama or dating. it's so subtle, most fans don't notice how this romance story is weaved into the over-the-top manly action.
* Season 1 of Skins is the best example I can recall, of a "romance story" that works romantically. I think it succeeds for the same reasons you identify -- it's secretly not about love itself. the romantic subplots happen in between the various characters dealing with their own life problems. they develop and change, which leads to them better understanding how they relate to the people around them, positively or negatively.
this blog helped me finally understand why Season 2 of the same show doesn't work -- it's only about love. the characters already know they love each other, and talk about loving each other, but there's all these plot obstacles getting in the way so nothing happens. They're angsty and unhappy, but don't know how to prove their love for each other to get back together, because there's no context going on.
4384919
I will disagree here. Some plays are still written in verse, a few in the old way. Futhermore, old plays are still played today and still drag many people to see them.
But I agree that it requires some 'training' to be able to fully enjoy the beauty of the verses. It also requires to accept that the characters are speaking in an artificial way. It's a bit like accepting that magic exists in a fictional world (willing suspension of disbelief and all of that).
And I'm very far from being able to enjoy Shakespeare in its original language.
There is a tiny little difference between William Shakespeare and Edmond Rostand (the author of Cyrano de Bergerac). Shakespeare lived around the 16th century while Rostand created the play in 1897. It's closer from us and the language used is really closed to ours. The contemporary aesthetics you were talking about follow the same rule.
Uh, I'm probably the least qualified to talk about romance. The only examples I can think of are, like, Casablanca (that counts right?), The Office, and uh, classic Star Wars.
I do wonder if Alien Shipping Syndrome (if I'm using it right) does serve a useful purpose. Keeping the source of attraction between two people vague (like you mentioned about Princess Bride) allows, maybe, the audience to fill in reasons for their own personal attraction to either character, allowing them to better inhabit the other protagonist. Basically the silent video game hero approach. There's no chance of disagreeing with, say, Wesley's reasons for loving Buttercup, preventing me from empathizing with him.
I don't know maybe that's dumb. Like I said, least qualified. :P
Whaaaaaaaaaaaat.
(From Chuck's article) "Today’s topic is Alien Shipping Syndrome (or ASS), a malady in romances where chemistry does not occur through shared interests, personal magnetism, or personality traits, but is instead instilled by parasitic brain worms."
Darnit, now I need to write one of those. Hm, Alicorn brain worms, perhaps, irritated by trans-dimensional jaunts...
To be fair, most stories labeled as romances are probably less about two characters falling in love and more about making the reader infatuated with one of the characters.
Also, if romance is what comes after the romance problems have been addressed, then you should probably focus on the couple in the end, not throughout the story. I disagree with the notion that those endings are disadvantaged in being romantic relative to ones where the romance is incidental. I'm sure people generally feel that stories "feel right" in their conclusions for differing reasons. For me, a conclusion feels most right when the main character is able to solve the main problem by developing a deeper understanding of what it is he/she wants. If that something is romance, then it's hard for me to not see the story as being about romance, and it's hard for me to not see the resulting romance (if there is one) as satisfying.*
4384528 mentioned Fractured Sunlight as an example of romance done right. I'll second that. It's three for three in doing infatuation well, doing synergy romance well, and playing the romance tag well.
4385273 write a story of alien brain worms falling in love with each other. Like they are making two pairs fall in love with each other for stupid reasons, and they cross paths and realize "We have so much in common!" and turn it into a legit romance... between brain slugs.
It sounds like the core issue has historically been A)Only romances between men and women were written, and B) People believed that men and women didn't really have anything in common other than sex and romance.
It seems like based on what you're saying, writing a good romance isn't that hard: Write a really good buddy comedy, then re-write the last 3rd of it so the two buddies fall in love.
Bad Horse, I so did not have time for this blog post right now. I'm in the middle of a pony romance novel I want to start publishing on Valentine's day. Judging by this post, you'd like it, but I also know you don't like long fics.
And with regards to, 4384912 , don't worry, I forget how much I've already said all the time.
For classics, my go-to romances are Gone With the Wind and Jane Eyre.
For contemporary (at least, written within my lifetime,) Ruth and Idgie in Fried Green Tomatoes. And I'll give another nod to 4384870 's vote of Gomez and Morticia.
I'll also pull an Ed, letting youtube do my talking, and add that "romance stories" are often Moments in the Woods for the reader. The most romantic stories are more than that.
4385362 ...and so easy to make M rated.
Xlorg!ph ran the soft violet pseudopod of her host body along the fur of the captive pegasus, who rattled in his chains and looked frantically for an exit out of the bedchambers.
"Twilight, I think this has gone far enough. I didn't object when you came back from that... human place with some strange ideas, but hoofcuffing me to the bed and covering me in jelly is farther than I really want to go in our relationship now."
"Further," corrected Xlorg!ph, taking a break from smearing the nutrient gel across the restrained Flash Sentry in order to get a glass vial out of her bags. "Don't worry, Flesh. Once the new embryonic worm is implanted in your cerebral cortex, you'll be perfectly fine with this." After a brief moment to move the larvae from the test tube to the inside of her mouth for warmth, Xlorg!ph leaned closer. "Now pucker up."
4385399
It's funny that the musical's called Into the Woods.
Because the father of all Western romances was Ariosto, a Renaissance Italian who rebooted the Chansons de Geste (which had fallen into self-parody, from whence the term "jest"). He introduced what we would now call fantasy elements to the stories, as well as a plot-device called the Vale of Arden, an enchanted forest into which he had his characters go whenever they needed an adventure. The Everfree Forest functions the same way in MLP.
The Vale of Arden is a real place. Later it came to be called the Ardennes and it is "a region of extensive forests, rough terrain, rolling hills and ridges formed by the geological features of the Ardennes mountain range." A likely place for adventures.
And, indeed, two cataclysmic battles were fought there in the 20th century alone: the Battle of the Ardennes, in World War I, and the Battle of the Bulge, in World War II. "Adventures are not all pony-rides in the sunshine."
I wonder how many classic old romances are meant to be experienced as part of a live performance and might be more compelling if experienced thus.
So, I was thinking about this point and I wanted to create a counter argument for this. There are a lot of times where I've seen or experienced bromantic shenanigans that haven't felt remotely romantic, and I think there is something to be found in trying to explore what the difference is. I think the first stipulation I decided to explore was the idea that bromance and romance often follow different value sets, some of which appear antithetical to each other. A lot of the time, rivalry shows up in bromance type relationships, where in competition, the two parties develop a relationship of respect through acting in ways that can sometimes be spiteful and abusive. In a way, romance often manifest as characters bonding through vulnerability, while bromance thrives on eschewing that or denying vulnerability. At bronycon 2016, a bunch of us writers got together to hold a brony fight club, and the bromance was rampant. We would beat each other up, then compliment each other on how we were doing it. We'd knock each other down only to encourage each other. As Solo and Nyronus have said, and I will echo, I don't quite feel like I've known somebody until I've fought with them. That's a really bromantic sentiment.
Still, I was thinking on the subject, and so in trying to come up with a working definition for rivalry, I came up with a desire to compete for dominance, which can honestly be part of a romance story pretty easily. There are lots of romances that use that to further their development. Its a rather hotblooded method too, which is really cool. So, it can't simply be that bromances are rivalry induced. I think there is definitely a culture of tough love within bromance that is less apparent in traditional romance stories. Rivalry is a strong dynamic for any relationship, so it certainly would make bromances seem really powerful. There is certainly a lot more emphasis on "worry" rather than "respect" in traditional relationships. A bromance is generally not one of wanting to protect one's partner. Certainly it is something of guarding ones back, but it isn't a knight in shining armor deal. I think somebody said something before about early writers not believeing that a man could respect a woman enough to be on even footing, and I think that this is that point.
In a way, Bromances are often linked by some goal. Its hard to just be bromantic about nothing. It has things that it manifests around. Whether it is literal "brotherhood", or something like mutual mischief or a common journey, it has something of an encouragement culture. Its dedication towards some ideal. Bromances aren't impervious to destruction. Often, one will find that a brother's values change and they start taking a different approach, and they have a falling out. Looking into this further, I think bromance looks to respect a lot for its drive, but I think its a very narrow type of respect. Like if you are a martial artist, you can bond over street fighting with somebody, then watching the person become more enraptured with becoming a visual artist, still respect their art, but not respect them as a brother in a joined pursuit. The joined pursuit or joint experience quality of bromance is kind of important, because one of the facets that makes bromance so attractive is that people or characters will understand each other in a way that sometimes goes beyond words, and this is how. Sharing those experiences lets the groups have empathy for each other, and I think for guy culture this is something that is generally unprecedented, because guys are encouraged to not display empathy.
I think bromance is often not... monogamous. Weird term to use for it, but its often shared with however many people have shared an experience. In a way, bromance manifests as intense friendship. Its also been said that romance should be built on friendship, so there are definitely similarities, but there is a culture of exclusiveness that makes the distinction feel very separate. Bromances that turn romantic often still suffer the effects of romance's exclusiveness. Do we need to make up a term like "Bro-tonic relationship" for this shit? I feel like bromantic romantics is a totally different animal than simple bromance. I only have experience in the non-romantic bromance. There is certainly jealousy that is felt from people who aren't in the brotherhood of some bonding experience, but there isn't exclusivity between those who are part of the group. Its like having an inside joke, its obnoxious, but its not like you can't share it with more than one.
Speaking of obnoxiousness, I think that one of the factors of bromance that stands out to me is just how intense it manifests. Romance is often shy and cute. Bromance storms in, shouts "BROOOOO!" at the top of its lungs and then latches onto you like a hulked out koala bear, whether or not you are ready to hold it up. I was trying to imagine what it would be like if a romance was treated the same way, and my immediate thought was "ewww." The fact that it is such a trained response I think is purely cultural conditioning. Bromance is often celebrated and allowed to be put on display, while romance is hidden away and secretive. Is it a manifestation of patriarchy? Possibly, but let me provide another explanation. Is it that love for a man is more acceptable than love for a women? I don't think so. People are pretty bigoted about shit, and go and be bromantic out in the open and you will still be given the same judgement any non-bromantic gay person would receive. The reason why it is celebrated so much is that guys don't care. They are raised in a culture of repression of emotions, and so relating with people is made difficult for a lot of guys. Get them to experience something together where they can really understand each other without having all the mushy stuff, and you have a giant wave of repressed emotions barreling through to the fore. Its empathy, the manly way. Understand what is inside by not talking about it! That repression of the desire to be understood makes dudes really fucking into the bonds they have. Are their elements of patriarchial permittance of these sorts of things? Probably, but it would really be interesting if this repression lead was the reason why guys have really intense friendships while women complain about not having many girl friends. Friendship is built on empathy, so it seems strange that guys have such intense friendships when they are told "don't do the empathy thing."
I threw around some other ideas, trying to look at non-martial bromantic relationships, and I was thinking of things like partner in crime or the dynamic duo, but these definitely show up in romantic relationships. They show up in nonromantic relationships too. Then it hit me. Its because its not about romance at all. Its about friendship. Bromance isn't romance, its intense friendship. Think about it. Romance is best when its built on friendship, right? Bromance is almost always a strong friendship, and traditional romance novels deal with characters who are close friends, so wouldn't it always appear that bromances are better romances than traditional romance?
I think that if I'm going to draw anything from this long winded rambling I had to myself, I'm going to say that it is that... get ready guys...
Friendship is magic.
*Shenanigans throws a smoke bomb and runs off like a maniac screaming zoidberg noises.*
Personally, i think it was a mistake for you to pursue a potential answer in feminist literature. In my experience, feminist scholars- that is to say, people who identify as feminist scholars, and not people who identify as feminsts and are also scholars- have, at most, 3-4 answers to any given question, and they all fit the same theme of "men bad and oppresive, women good and oppressed".
That said- i think this is why more recent Disney movies(notably frozen and princess and the frog) play so much better as romances(as does mulan, but... Well, people dont generally seem to like acknowledging mulan)- the romance is a side thing, unimportant to the main story, so even when we don't see the romance blossom for ourselves until the end of he movie(note- this is true for all three movies, to differing degrees), we can believe that it can work out.
Same here. I just figured it was just 'cause I'm gay, but now you have me wondering if there's something else to it. That's probably still part of it, though, 'cause I prefer m/m over f/f, but either's better than straight pairings
I wouldn't say hot, but they can be enticing
Regarding romance as being a secondary matter vs. the focus of the story: I couldn't help thinking of how so many movies use romance as a B-plot
I don't read much romance, but I'll try to come up with a list (mostly movies and ponyfics):
Brokeback Mountain
Get Real
Latter Days
Were the World Mine
Last Hearth's Warming
The Price