All of this. Interestingly, Georgette Heyer, who is, you know, sort of a star of the pantheon of romance novel writing, fairly consistently wrote romance novels that I don't bounce off of—and I always want to sort of... hold up her stuff as an example of, "Look, you don't have to do it quite by the script to create that same feeling." Though of course my favorite Heyer (A Civil Contract) is the subject of an oft-acrimonious argument about whether it even is a romance novel, so—
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In my case, when it comes to my ability to, like, take romance as a genre on board, it's complicated by me also being almost totally aromantic—like, actually aromantic, not just not into romantic gestures—which definitely makes things harder. I find it interesting which carefully constructed combinations of, you know, "affectionate love" and "passionate friendship" and "crippling codependency" readers respond to as though they're romantic love—and which ones I as an author actually viscerally respond to, because I've 100% written romantic relationships I found gross and alienating but have gotten a great reader response... but it's usually a little more complicated than that. Because usually what I'm writing, I do recognize. I just wouldn't call it romantic love.
Like—for me all the sort of strictures we put on what we call "romantic love" just kind of don't work, like "oh, well it's sexual"—but I've had a lot of sex with people I couldn't stand; "oh, well, you feel it for one person"—but polyamory's definitely a thing?; "oh, well you have a person you just love more than everyone else"—more than... my beloved dog? my best friend? my mom?; "oh, well it's the person you choose to be with"—well, yes, but then you're talking about action, not feeling, and for me the person I, personally, choose to be with is my complicated queerplatonic best friend slash writing partner, who I don't love more than I love my mom but who I sure as hell like spending time with a hell of a lot better. And for me, the sort of qualitative boundaries between the emotions I feel for her and my dog and my mom and my best friend and my sex friends and my sister are not... very... clear, even though in some cases the quantitative ones may be, and obviously not all of those relationships are sexually inflected (some of them, though, may be more sexually inflected than my relationship with my partner). I still pick my partner. That's why she's my partner. So that choice sort of has to be where I focus, if I'm writing about quote-unquote Romance™, because that's the only bit I really have access to.
When I'm talking to people outside of fandom, I usually describe what I tend to write as un-romance-novels, like—I'm interested specifically in where the fissures appear in the genre when you try to be true to characters who may feel tremendously deeply, but don't—engage with Romance™, or want to engage with Romance™, usually because it feels unnatural or alienating; or who—e.g. Sherlock in BYW, who's kind of my narrative exception on a lot of fronts—both want and don't want it in this really intense, ashamed way. It's sort of like my entire engagement with "romance" in fiction kind of boils down to how to, like, mediate this experience that either a lot of other people experience, and I don't; or that a lot of other people experience in a vocabulary that is so alien and revolting to me that I am literally incapable of learning it—but that I still find incredibly interesting, in part because it is really sort of fundamentally inaccessible to me.
Which is a pretty good segue into the specific thing that I absolutely cannot deal with in romance as a genre, also not coincidentally exactly the thing that's waxing my cat in The Magicians: this idea that partnership or love or marriage is a choice you make once, instead of a choice you make over and over and over and over until you die or stop being married, and a choice that you have to make not only when it's hard to make in the moment, but because it's hard to make in the moment. I feel like romance is like, oh, well, getting married! It means you're committing to love each other forever so once you do that, great! Done and dusted! And I'm just sitting there clawing at my face going: even if you want to pretend that divorce isn't a thing, I have bad news for you, buddy. That's just not how it works. Because the times when you most need to be with your spouse are a lot of times the moments when you least want to do it: when your family is financially melting down, or your parent is dying of Alzheimer's, or your spouse has a psychotic break. The point of marriage is—or, well, should be, at least—to say, "hey, if our family is financially melting down, or your parent is dying of Alzheimer's, or you have a psychotic break, I plan to stick around." I'm no great fan of traditional Western/Christian marriage, but that's exactly what the "for better or for worse" in the vows means, and that's there for a reason. But promising that is easy. The hard part is actually doing it.
To give The Magicians source creators their due: they're clearly pretty fucking aware of what a gross and coercive idea magically-enforced marital fidelity is, but man, the fandom reaction, in a lot of quarters has just been so, so alienating to me. I mean—speaking from some pretty awful personal experience, actually, for a lot of people, sex is a fundamental need. And if sex is a fundamental need for my partner... if they can't choose to be with someone else, how can they possibly be actually choosing to be with me? I am literally the only place they can get it. That's not romantic. That's rape. And it really, really bothers me that here in 2019, that seems to be so fucking hard for a lot of people to see.
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consent issues cw
Date: 2019-01-31 03:22 pm (UTC)¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In my case, when it comes to my ability to, like, take romance as a genre on board, it's complicated by me also being almost totally aromantic—like, actually aromantic, not just not into romantic gestures—which definitely makes things harder. I find it interesting which carefully constructed combinations of, you know, "affectionate love" and "passionate friendship" and "crippling codependency" readers respond to as though they're romantic love—and which ones I as an author actually viscerally respond to, because I've 100% written romantic relationships I found gross and alienating but have gotten a great reader response... but it's usually a little more complicated than that. Because usually what I'm writing, I do recognize. I just wouldn't call it romantic love.
Like—for me all the sort of strictures we put on what we call "romantic love" just kind of don't work, like "oh, well it's sexual"—but I've had a lot of sex with people I couldn't stand; "oh, well, you feel it for one person"—but polyamory's definitely a thing?; "oh, well you have a person you just love more than everyone else"—more than... my beloved dog? my best friend? my mom?; "oh, well it's the person you choose to be with"—well, yes, but then you're talking about action, not feeling, and for me the person I, personally, choose to be with is my complicated queerplatonic best friend slash writing partner, who I don't love more than I love my mom but who I sure as hell like spending time with a hell of a lot better. And for me, the sort of qualitative boundaries between the emotions I feel for her and my dog and my mom and my best friend and my sex friends and my sister are not... very... clear, even though in some cases the quantitative ones may be, and obviously not all of those relationships are sexually inflected (some of them, though, may be more sexually inflected than my relationship with my partner). I still pick my partner. That's why she's my partner. So that choice sort of has to be where I focus, if I'm writing about quote-unquote Romance™, because that's the only bit I really have access to.
When I'm talking to people outside of fandom, I usually describe what I tend to write as un-romance-novels, like—I'm interested specifically in where the fissures appear in the genre when you try to be true to characters who may feel tremendously deeply, but don't—engage with Romance™, or want to engage with Romance™, usually because it feels unnatural or alienating; or who—e.g. Sherlock in BYW, who's kind of my narrative exception on a lot of fronts—both want and don't want it in this really intense, ashamed way. It's sort of like my entire engagement with "romance" in fiction kind of boils down to how to, like, mediate this experience that either a lot of other people experience, and I don't; or that a lot of other people experience in a vocabulary that is so alien and revolting to me that I am literally incapable of learning it—but that I still find incredibly interesting, in part because it is really sort of fundamentally inaccessible to me.
Which is a pretty good segue into the specific thing that I absolutely cannot deal with in romance as a genre, also not coincidentally exactly the thing that's waxing my cat in The Magicians: this idea that partnership or love or marriage is a choice you make once, instead of a choice you make over and over and over and over until you die or stop being married, and a choice that you have to make not only when it's hard to make in the moment, but because it's hard to make in the moment. I feel like romance is like, oh, well, getting married! It means you're committing to love each other forever so once you do that, great! Done and dusted! And I'm just sitting there clawing at my face going: even if you want to pretend that divorce isn't a thing, I have bad news for you, buddy. That's just not how it works. Because the times when you most need to be with your spouse are a lot of times the moments when you least want to do it: when your family is financially melting down, or your parent is dying of Alzheimer's, or your spouse has a psychotic break. The point of marriage is—or, well, should be, at least—to say, "hey, if our family is financially melting down, or your parent is dying of Alzheimer's, or you have a psychotic break, I plan to stick around." I'm no great fan of traditional Western/Christian marriage, but that's exactly what the "for better or for worse" in the vows means, and that's there for a reason. But promising that is easy. The hard part is actually doing it.
To give The Magicians source creators their due: they're clearly pretty fucking aware of what a gross and coercive idea magically-enforced marital fidelity is, but man, the fandom reaction, in a lot of quarters has just been so, so alienating to me. I mean—speaking from some pretty awful personal experience, actually, for a lot of people, sex is a fundamental need. And if sex is a fundamental need for my partner... if they can't choose to be with someone else, how can they possibly be actually choosing to be with me? I am literally the only place they can get it. That's not romantic. That's rape. And it really, really bothers me that here in 2019, that seems to be so fucking hard for a lot of people to see.
</your thursday dead horse floggery>