Uh-oh, romance

Ragandar said:

So what do you lot think of the romantic plot in Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles then?

The girl there is independent in her own way, though she appears to rely on romantic relations with men to facilitate that. It's a sort of limbo.

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I think the thing with Kingkiller and Denna is threefold:

1. she is incredibly annoying. Rothfuss can clearly write women - Auri and Devi prove that - but Denna is wooden, transparently not what she seems and yet Kvothe is blind to it, and a mystery to me.
2. she is the trope of the good whore, as presented at the moment. I'm hoping and praying Rothfuss is going to be cleverer than that and deliver a twist that we all go oooooh to (and wearing the knots in her hair etc indicate she's not stupid).
3. She's not in Kote's story. So whatever has happened, it's not a happy ever after romance. I doubt it's going to be a Happy for now, even.

Jo Zebedee said:

by the time she does romance again (in the Miles in Love collection) she does it incredibly well and, indeed, with so much humour I cry when reading A Civil Campaign.

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And that is probably the one that both I and the Bisketta have re-read the most. Well written, well plotted, and kicks the conventions firmly in the check-box.

interesting thread here - I have to be honest and say that I'm with @Toby Frost with this one. There seems to be a whole culture of sub-Mills & Boon romances (possibly even soft porn if you're in the mood for someone like L K Hamilton) which in the early days came under the horror or paranormal headings, thankfully they've now (to a degree) stopped doing that and at least lumped it all together in the 'paranormal romance' section


@The Big Peat. I have to say that I'd not have even thought of classifying The Elenium series or Legend (and I guess then by way of association Waylander) as being romantic novels. They may be novels which contain romance but (IMO) they are most assuredly not romanaces

Jo Zebedee said:

I think the thing with Kingkiller and Denna is threefold:

1. she is incredibly annoying. Rothfuss can clearly write women - Auri and Devi prove that - but Denna is wooden, transparently not what she seems and yet Kvothe is blind to it, and a mystery to me. [...]

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Thank god, I'm not the only one who thinks she's annoying. I was beginning to worry that I'd missed something about her.

As to why Kvothe would not see it, you could ascribe that to youthful romance, I suppose. I reckon a fair share of us have been blind to some degree in the face of teenage love.

I would say that Kvothe is not entirely blind to it. I feel like he does realise there's more to her than meets the eye. That's why he treats her the way he does.

WaylanderToo said:

interesting thread here - I have to be honest and say that I'm with @Toby Frost with this one. There seems to be a whole culture of sub-Mills & Boon romances (possibly even soft porn if you're in the mood for someone like L K Hamilton) which in the early days came under the horror or paranormal headings, thankfully they've now (to a degree) stopped doing that and at least lumped it all together in the 'paranormal romance' section

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But there are others amongst us who wonder how on Earth a novel about adults (and teens, and whoever) can not include romance. My trilogy spans generations and people with a couple of romances in it, one in particular very, very central. Books are supposed to be about people. People fall in love. Surely not to depict that makes genre a pastiche of stories with limited relevance to the way we live....

Well no, they're not romances. Are we talking about fantasy novels including romances, or romance novels using the fantasy heading here? I am mildly confused.

Jo Zebedee said:

But there are others amongst us who wonder how on Earth a novel about adults (and teens, and whoever) can not include romance. My trilogy spans generations and people with a couple of romances in it, one in particular very, very central. Books are supposed to be about people. People fall in love. Surely not to depict that makes genre a pastiche of stories with limited relevance to the way we live....

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I'm in the same boat. I'm in the process of writing a book where my MC is carrying a couple of wedding rings round in his pocket. This thread had me wondering about the premise of the story.

MWagner said:

But men dislike romance. Many will happily read a book where there are no female characters at all. So it's hard to see how these tropes are meant to gratify men.

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I think the trope IS meant to gratify men. How men are or aren't keen to romance is not the point. Men will read and enjoy books without an ounce of romance, but the point is that if there was a female in the book, she would be romantically linked at some point to a partner, usually male. Underlying it all are the concepts of: women as objects to be possessed by the male, or that a female needs a male to be "complete" and happy and cannot stand on her own as a character in the story.

And I hate Kingkiller's romantic bits.

The Big Peat said:

Well no, they're not romances. Are we talking about fantasy novels including romances, or romance novels using the fantasy heading here? I am mildly confused.

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Good point. I suppose what I dislike is the insertion of (for want of a better word) Mills & Boon-type cliched romance into a story that seems more realistic, the way that I wouldn't want the characters in a John le Carre spy story to do John Woo-style kung-fu on each other. That level of over the top cheesiness should surely be reserved for stories where it's the point of the story to give the reader that stuff.

It occurs to me that porn is just the most extreme example of a story that is designed to give the reader an emotional kick, probably at the expense of realism. A film like Taken isn't there to explore the reaction of a single parent to the kidnap of his daughter: the daughter gets kidnapped so that Liam Neeson can kill a load of bad guys. Similarly, the tropes of cliched romance must be there to provide a kind of emotional thrill to the reader. In a book designed for that, it's fine, but where the book isn't designed for that, or pitched at people who want that sort of thrill and are prepared to sacrifice credibility to get it, it feels wrong.

This appeared on my Facebook feed today. Not sure if has any relevance or not but Romance has always had definite tick boxes for its stories.

Toby Frost said:

Good point. I suppose what I dislike is the insertion of (for want of a better word) Mills & Boon-type cliched romance into a story that seems more realistic, the way that I wouldn't want the characters in a John le Carre spy story to do John Woo-style kung-fu on each other. That level of over the top cheesiness should surely be reserved for stories where it's the point of the story to give the reader that stuff.

It occurs to me that porn is just the most extreme example of a story that is designed to give the reader an emotional kick, probably at the expense of realism. A film like Taken isn't there to explore the reaction of a single parent to the kidnap of his daughter: the daughter gets kidnapped so that Liam Neeson can kill a load of bad guys. Similarly, the tropes of cliched romance must be there to provide a kind of emotional thrill to the reader. In a book designed for that, it's fine, but where the book isn't designed for that, or pitched at people who want that sort of thrill and are prepared to sacrifice credibility to get it, it feels wrong.

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The thing is - and I'm playing devil's advocate only in part here - is how many works of fantasy literature are about realism and exploring reactions to strange circumstances, and how many are about providing cheese and emotional kicks? And how many are about being both? Is SFF a genre that can say with a straight face that there is no place for cliche-ridden romance in it? I mean, take Anne McCaffrey's works. I am not familiar with the two mentioned, but if they're anything like Pern, then I'd say they're very much the latter. Why shouldn't she add romance to the emotional kick list there? Is there inconsistency there or are we just onto arguments of taste?

I think its more the latter. The problem with these M&B romances aren't that they have no objective place in a lot of fantasy, its that a lot of us think they suck. Its not - and I apologise if I'm putting words in anyone's mouths here - that we're anti-love story, we're anti-that type of love story. They're weird and unsatisfying and so stale we can smell the things from 50 pages off downwind. I mean, is there any book you want to read a M&B romance in Toby? Is it just that its out of place, or is it you just don't want to do read the thing at all?

P.S. You don't want to see a John le Carre/John Woo mash-up? Sir, I find your words incredible, and demand the satisfaction of a duel. Of morally dubious investigation followed by kung fu. Kindly nominate a second and mine will sort out the details.

I like books with relationships in them - as in two people becoming a couple - but it isn't essential to me. I can read sff with steamy and stormy in it, I can read it without, but I do get annoyed by great chunks of misunderstanding - oh for gods sakes sit down and talk about it, don't brood and slam doors and have long passages of angst followed by rushing to supposed deathbed which makes you realise how much the other person means to you but oh no is it too late.
Several examples of what I would call relationships - Bujolds Sharing Knife and the three Chalion books - which have a good variety of couples. I am also fond of Barbara Hambly for relationships and she has a good variety.
In all of this, to me Shakespeare got there first. Much Ado About Nothing - contrasts two developing relationships, one of two people who've known each other for years and finally get together against "oh my goodness me look at that fantastic girl, introduce me now, married five minutes later" and how well that goes.

Toby Frost said:

It occurs to me that porn is just the most extreme example of a story that is designed to give the reader an emotional kick, probably at the expense of realism. A film like Taken isn't there to explore the reaction of a single parent to the kidnap of his daughter: the daughter gets kidnapped so that Liam Neeson can kill a load of bad guys. Similarly, the tropes of cliched romance must be there to provide a kind of emotional thrill to the reader. In a book designed for that, it's fine, but where the book isn't designed for that, or pitched at people who want that sort of thrill and are prepared to sacrifice credibility to get it, it feels wrong.

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Taken is a good parallel. Ultra-violent revenge porn probably isn't a healthy thing. But it scratches some fundamental itches, just as cliched romantic tropes do, so I don't expect it to go away any time soon. Most people seek out stories that satisfy irrational appetites, at least now and then.

Jo Zebedee said:

But there are others amongst us who wonder how on Earth a novel about adults (and teens, and whoever) can not include romance. My trilogy spans generations and people with a couple of romances in it, one in particular very, very central. Books are supposed to be about people. People fall in love. Surely not to depict that makes genre a pastiche of stories with limited relevance to the way we live....

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Depends on the subject. I read a lot of books that centre on war. There are relationships between adults, but none of them are romantic. Books set in a pre-modern era, which had different attitudes towards sex and relationships, can also omit romance. The Cicero series by Robert Harris, for example, has almost no romance, because the ancient Romans had what we would consider a very utilitarian approach to sex and marriage. And I've read books by Mary Renault set in ancient Greece that had hardly any speaking parts for women, because she's writing about a fiercely patriarchal society. Right now I'm reading about Cortez' conquest of Mexico. There's not a lot of scope for romance in a story about 500 men conquering an empire where women are treated as chattel. Doesn't mean there isn't human drama - there's loads of it - but none involves sexual or romantic relationships.

My current WIP has a romance sub-plot between the MC and a side character, but as opposed to being a "Destiny brought us together" trope, I'm aiming to make it a normal progression of their friendship evolving into something more, allowing some growth and exploration into who they are as people, but neither of them is entirely sure where it is actually going. Plus, my (female) MC's rather relaxed stance on sex makes them getting together (in the physical sense) believable, while the side character is a very "eat of the fruit of Life" type, constantly pursuing what feels, tastes, sounds good. I like to think that IRL people like that would naturally find each other, if not gravitate toward one another.

But I'm biased.

Fascinating thread. My own take is that the matter is rather simpler. Romance is the most essential human experience, so you get writers who aren't really interested in writing romance who nonetheless feel obligated to stick one into their book. When a story is measured by its emotional impact, why would you skip over the strongest of the emotional experiences? The problem is, these shoe-horned romances are thin, probably not tied into the main plot very well, encourage role-driven characters, and more often than not damage the story rather than enhance it.

I'm not sure it's as complicated as the subtle sexisms of male gratification as mentioned above. I'm constantly seeing stats that suggest most readers are women and most women prefer female authors... no idea if that is true, but it does make the male gratification lens a little opaque. No doubt there are insidious elements of this kind of thing spread all over, but I would guess the main issue is just what I said above.

I am not a romance reader by a long shot, but when done well, I've fallen for it. I would guess that is true of most people. Are there any Stormlight Archive readers that aren't secretly rooting for Shallan and Kaladin? I'm not reading those books for romance, but if it's built into the story and done well, it DOES enhance the experience.

Ragandar said:

As to why Kvothe would not see it, you could ascribe that to youthful romance, I suppose. I reckon a fair share of us have been blind to some degree in the face of teenage love.

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Don't forget, we are dealing with a potentially very unreliable narrator in Kvothe. We know from an interjection by Bast that Kvothe is romanticizing and exaggerating things as he retells. Personally I found that relationship interesting to read, if not a little predictable.

zmunkz said:

I'm not sure it's as complicated as the subtle sexisms of male gratification as mentioned above.

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I agree. To put it bluntly, I think crude romance works on a certain percentage of female readers the way crude ass-kicking works on a certain percentage of male readers. I'm not sure I'd read much more into it than that on political terms. If you stop to think about it, Taken is pretty reprehensible in almost every way that a 21st century liberal could imagine, but it does work on a gut level. In terms of reading a good story, though, because I'm not looking for that romantic "hit", I would usually prefer to read a book where the two leads just became friends, because the execution will probably be better.

Two thoughts come out of this: firstly, you've got to do it well. I remember a chapter towards the end of A Game of Thrones where Joffrey basically maims peasants, hits his wife and probably eats a puppy, which struck me as really obvious when I read it. Secondly, is this ability to appeal on a gut level what the most successful thriller writers do? I'm thinking of Lee Child, James Patterson and so on. I find it slightly worrying that the key to success might be to appeal to the reader's instincts rather than to write a genuinely good book - although realistically, it's probably a mixture of both.

regarding key to success by appealing to instincts.

Pondering that and thinking "which instincts" . There have been various threads on which are your "comfort read" books, and closely related, which books do you re-read many times. Haven't gone back to find a thread, but I have a general memory of there being quite a wide range of what people wanted to re-experience in order to lift them out of the dumps. My picks tend to be books where I want to re-meet the characters and there is often an underlying theme of competent people achieving something - Terry Pratchett, Bujold, Hambly, but I do remember being startled by some other people's choices being more grim dark for example than I'd read once, let alone many times.

Toby Frost said:

Secondly, is this ability to appeal on a gut level what the most successful thriller writers do? I'm thinking of Lee Child, James Patterson and so on. I find it slightly worrying that the key to success might be to appeal to the reader's instincts rather than to write a genuinely good book - although realistically, it's probably a mixture of both.

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Surely all genuinely good books appeal to their reader's instincts/emotions on a gut level in some way?

The other thing is not all books or movies are political statements, so they might look funny when examined under that light. Taken and the Rock's movie Walking Tall are both fun because it's nice to see the underdog kick some butt sometimes. It's rewarding to see people doing bad things, assuming they can get away with it, and being wrong. Simple as that. Nice little adrenaline kick to that inner vigilante we all have that gets outraged at senseless injustice.

Could the MC of Taken have been female? Could the victim needing rescue been male? Could the criminals have been involved with something other than a sex ring? Of course yes to all of them. On the one hand we don't want unintentional biases slipping into books and movies that further stereotypes, but we also don't want writers to be boxed into narrow paths, carefully picking and choosing elements in perfect balance so under no light is their story non-PC. It is a complicated issue.

Personally, I don't worry about it if one book (or movie) swings too far on one side or the other. I say tell your story as it is. Sometimes that story is the men saving the women. Fine. Sometimes it's the other way around. Also fine. Not every story needs (or should) to be every thing. I only begin to register an issue when something like this becomes a recurring theme for an author (or director) across multiple works.