And another thing

[annathepiper]

I have a post on the Here Be Magic blog coming up soon, and I was going to save this for that, but fuck it, I want to post this now.

So yeah, as y’all can tell if you regularly read me, I’ve been keeping up with the recent SFWA explosions. However, on one of the posts I was monitoring, a generally reasonable discussion about the controversies at hand, somebody surfaced this morning to not only whinge about the dangers of OHNOEZ CENSORSHIP if people (read: women) complain about art involving absurd chainmail bikinis, but also to take a potshot at the romance genre. Which he described using the words ‘emotional porn’.

I promptly unsubscribed from the thread on the general principle of oh fuck you. But I’ve been seeing red about this all day as a result.

Because you guys, I am sick and goddamn tired of genre readers snarking on each other’s tastes. Especially when the snark flows in the SF/F->romance direction, because c’mon, people, we know how it feels to have our reading tastes belittled. To be bullied and mocked because we like reading stuff with spaceships and robots and magic swords and unicorns and elves. To have our reading material derided as “not REAL literature”, to be dismissed as socially inept losers. And if we happen to be women, to have the added slam of being “fake geek girls” thrown at us, and to have our worthiness to be reading and enjoying these books, comics, movies, TV shows, etc., constantly assaulted and challenged.

Yet a lot of us keep turning around and leveling the exact same bullshit over at the romance readers.

A lot of it is sexist, for the reasons romance readers have been getting hammered with for years: patriarchal dismissal of stories primarily written by and for women, and therefore unworthy of standing on the same level as anything written by and for men. Though a lot of that isn’t even exclusively coming from men–I’ve seen this shit coming from women, too.

But a lot of it is also just general bullshit, on the grounds that certainly in the vast majority of SF/F I’ve ever read, y’know what’s front and center with the spaceships, robots, magic swords, unicorns, and elves? Yeah, that’s right, epic love stories. To name three out of Tolkien alone: Arwen and Aragorn, Lúthien and Beren, and Éowyn and Faramir. Here are a few more: Tarzan and Jane, Superman and Lois Lane, Han Solo and Princess Leia, Leetah and Cutter, Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood, and Buffy and Angel.

The same applies if you go back and dig into mythologies and fairy tales from any corner of the world you care to name. Hell, you can’t swing a stick in Greek mythology without hitting a story involving a relationship of some kind–often highly screwed up, because the Greek gods were after all a pantheon of raging asshats for the most part. Ditto for the classic fairy tales, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast. At the core of almost all of them you’ll find a love story of some kind.

The point is, love stories are a fundamental part of just about every story ever told, because love is a fundamental part of human existence.

So why the hell, SF/F readers, do you keep snarking on romance?

Because if you’re doing it because we think that every romance novel is a bodice ripper full of prose so purple that it’s practically ultraviolet, I have three words for you: Eye of Argon.

If you’re doing it because we’re dismissing stories that focus on love, again I say: have you actually read your genre?

If you’re doing it because you’re dismissing novels with a lot of sex in them, because yes, a lot of romance novels do have sex in them, yet again I say: have you actually read your genre? Why is it okay to have fantasy novels wherein practically ever single female character gets raped at some point, but it’s not okay to have novels where the heroine and hero tear each other’s clothes off because they both want to?

If you’re doing it because your only conception of a romance novel is Twilight or 50 Shades, I challenge you to remember that those are the outliers in the genre, and no, actually, they’re not representational of the genre as a whole. No more than Harry Potter is representational of all children’s books in the world, or Tolkien is representative of all fantasy, or Star Wars is representational of all science fiction. I challenge you to find the authors that the regular readers of the genre are reading, so you can see what the current state of the genre is like. I will be happy to provide recommendations, or to point you right over to Smart Bitches Trashy Books. Like it says on the tin over there, “all of the romance, none of the bullshit”. And as you might guess, I do like my reading bullshit-free.

There. Now maybe I can let my blood pressure go back down for the weekend, hmm?

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[mmegaera]

Applauds at length.

[batyatoon]

I've been trying to emotionally reevaluate the romance genre for some time now, for a lot of the reasons you list above. I keep running into the problem of "but I just don't like them."

Maybe what I really need to do is get my friends who enjoy romance novels and have some idea what I like to make me some recommendations in the genre. Because maybe the real problem is that I've just never read a good one.

[annathepiper]

Now see, I can deal with just not liking the books, after making a good faith effort to actually read them. That's fine!

Because yeah, I acknowledge that there's a lot in the romance genre that I don't care for, either. I can't generally read most contemporary romance because the vast majority of it is too heteronormative for me, and I start gritting my teeth real fast at the trope that Happily Ever After = Babies.

Likewise, I tend to avoid stories that are generally mostly about the sex. And any novel that involves character conflict that could be solved by the involved parties actually talking to each other like reasonable adults, another thing that drives me nuts. ;)

What I do read, though, is historical romance involved with war or spying, or with paranormal or SFnal elements. I also like romantic suspense.

[batyatoon]

See, yeah -- the most I feel I can reasonably ask of myself is that good faith effort, as an adult. And a good faith effort I feel should involve getting a recommendation from people who know the genre and have some idea of my story preferences.

I did give one honest try to something in the "paranormal romance" subgenre and I found it rubbing me entirely the wrong way -- and yet I have enjoyed books billed as fantasy or SF that have heavy romantic elements. I have a hard time putting my finger on the difference.

[annathepiper]

I'm finicky about paranormal romance, yeah. A lot of it goes overboard with the sexual elements and that does bore me.

However, I do like Jessica Andersen's Nightkeepers series. The worldbuilding's good, and I like the overall ensemble cast. There's plenty of sex but there's also a OHNOEZ WE MUST ALL SAVE THE WORLD plot going on, with a lot of action and magic and good vs. evil and stuff.

I'm also liking Doranna Durgin's Sentinels series for many of the same reasons. Durgin has background in fantasy--she was writing fantasy when I originally started reading her, way back in the day.

And I definitely liked Zoe Archer's Blades of the Rose books. Especially book 4 with a hero of color who is also the genius scientist of the ensemble cast. +10 to her novels for having heros that were actually fully clothed on the covers. ;)

Historical-wise I like Kate Noble and Courtney Milan. Meredith Duran did a book I liked as well and I plan to read more of her.

Romantic suspense-wise, I do love me some Nora Roberts. But she's extremely prolific and I tend to prefer her standalone romantic suspense novels over her books with more paranormal elements, since I find her handling of them generally shakier than I'd like. But I really like that a lot of her lead characters nicely avoid the tropes that annoy me.

Also, Nora doubles as J.D. Robb and I DO like the In Death series, for long-running futuristic police procedural fun, with a badassed detective as the female lead and a ridiculously rich former thief as her husband, and who has the added fun of being Irish so I totally imagine him played by Pierce Brosnan-circa-Remington-Steele in my head.