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- Jan 22, 2008
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- 7,754
I have been reading Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s about a man and a woman on different sides in a war who have to work together to survive when they are stranded on a hostile planet. It’s pretty decent so far and quite exciting. However, romance seems to be about to happen, and I find the book’s appeal decreasing with every page.
I think part of it is the sense that most romance I’ve read (not much, admittedly, and as part of other stories) feels unrealistic. It squashes the characters into pre-set roles like a sort of pornography. Who cares about Helmut’s difficult childhood, or his struggle to put himself through engineering school – he’s here to mend this lady’s washing machine, and that’s what he’ll do (or not). It feels the same with bad romance.
None of the tropes of romance have much appeal to me. They all feel clichéd or just totally unlike real life. I can already see the tedious possibilities and am hoping very much that Bujold avoids them: the bit where he is not just rugged but inexplicably vulnerable; the bit where she is feisty and he likes that despite coming from a brutal dictatorship; maybe even the bit where a less rugged but more suave man turns up and she has to choose between them. Thank goodness, the characters haven’t hated each other on sight, which is surely the ultimate guarantee that they will get together.
One of the reasons I like Mad Max: Fury Road so much is the lack of romance, even the hint of it. Max and Furiosa are two people who fight together to survive. Neither is forced to become a “romantic” character. There’s no sense that they have to fill a role beyond the very broad need to be tough and heroic. This may not be the most popular opinion on the internet, but I think a lot of female characters are stronger without needing to find a partner in the course of the story.
I think there is a broader point here about what people want in novels. I have a friend who hates the Hunger Games films because, to his mind, they reduce an action story set in an interesting SF world into a dull question of who will end up dating who. He’s not the target audience, but neither is his wife, who likes them (they’re both in their 30s). It may be that the further the romance gets from the cheesy teen romance version and the clichés that go with it, the more tolerable and credible it gets.
I think part of it is the sense that most romance I’ve read (not much, admittedly, and as part of other stories) feels unrealistic. It squashes the characters into pre-set roles like a sort of pornography. Who cares about Helmut’s difficult childhood, or his struggle to put himself through engineering school – he’s here to mend this lady’s washing machine, and that’s what he’ll do (or not). It feels the same with bad romance.
None of the tropes of romance have much appeal to me. They all feel clichéd or just totally unlike real life. I can already see the tedious possibilities and am hoping very much that Bujold avoids them: the bit where he is not just rugged but inexplicably vulnerable; the bit where she is feisty and he likes that despite coming from a brutal dictatorship; maybe even the bit where a less rugged but more suave man turns up and she has to choose between them. Thank goodness, the characters haven’t hated each other on sight, which is surely the ultimate guarantee that they will get together.
One of the reasons I like Mad Max: Fury Road so much is the lack of romance, even the hint of it. Max and Furiosa are two people who fight together to survive. Neither is forced to become a “romantic” character. There’s no sense that they have to fill a role beyond the very broad need to be tough and heroic. This may not be the most popular opinion on the internet, but I think a lot of female characters are stronger without needing to find a partner in the course of the story.
I think there is a broader point here about what people want in novels. I have a friend who hates the Hunger Games films because, to his mind, they reduce an action story set in an interesting SF world into a dull question of who will end up dating who. He’s not the target audience, but neither is his wife, who likes them (they’re both in their 30s). It may be that the further the romance gets from the cheesy teen romance version and the clichés that go with it, the more tolerable and credible it gets.