gochenourabout

oh boy oh boy that’s slightly terrifying

(if you go back one more generation for me, you get 1 grandpa who worked as a mechanic and in a soda factory)

farmers all the way down! with varying numbers of pigs.

maybe! part of what has set this to spinning in my head is that there seems to be some deep disillusionment with the men around them also pushing some readers toward dark romance?

but the feeling itself seems . . . generalized.

(i think there’s a different thing happening with queer readers tbh but i have to stew some more.)

but I wonder very much if readers reaching for no-conflict books have some overlapping feelings with mine but are not pegging that it’s the type rather than the existence of conflict which is giving them the yips.

there are of course contemporary authors generating conflict from other axes (for me, these are easiest to find in queer romance),

and because I’m not sure it’s a worthwhile goal even if it is possible (think of all those orphan puppies the heroine could have saved in the time it took her to convince one republican that women are people!)

that is a contemporary conflict I struggle to read now, both because I have been extremely disillusioned with the power of love to cause a cishet white man to change (ie I don’t really believe in it)

after more collecting my thoughts: i think in many classics of romance, the conflict is heroine vs. distilled patriarchy in the form of the hero (cf. Fated Mates), and that archetypal conflict remains uppermost in the minds of readers (but also just, y’know, people who have to deal with men.)

just kind of a storm of stuff all at once.

YES

but there’s also something of a confusion about exactly we want from explicitly progressive books???

which leads to a Lot Of Issues in romancelandia.

i have so many scrambled thoughts on this and no coherent thesis!

like, there’s something about the fact that one of the most common conflict cishet white women are dealing with in this country is “my male partner has pledged his allegiance to a deeply misogynist white supremacist politician,”

on!line! events!!!

yep! I think there are also plot devices which bother me less in isolation than they do as a conglomerate, and that’s probably one.

i think i can actually go to this!!!!

understood! I have also run into those dynamics, but I rarely finish those books because I’m tired and bored.

I can enjoy one of those books once in a great while, but a proliferation of them gives me pause.

i mean to be fair i think this is one of the toughest balancing acts in fiction? like, the challenge of romance is this kind of fine-tuning within genre constraints.

just, now we have a situation where fewer and fewer people are getting editorial (or any) support.

your criticism is consistently incisive and delightful!

100% ARGH

now have read the whole article and it’s great

is this something I should get therapy about? i have! so now i’m writing different possibilities in fiction to try to rewrite my brain.

like, my gut response to that is always, no one cares if they hurt your feelings, and if you’ve hurt someone enough that they’re willing to bring it up with you, it’s more a notification that the relationship is over.

i should read that!!

i think what i mean is that the specific kind of “you fucked up in a way which hurt my feelings and made me trust you less” conflict which romance deals in is something i struggle with a lot.

The downstream side effect of this is that without a midlist, not only do you lose your audience but you also lose the pipeline of talent. Actors, crew, writers, and publishing staff are losing work and aren't able to build careers without an entry point or midrange media.

Same problem in movies and TV. They want big, fast cash over properties with a lower opener but a steady, long tail

yes! this pattern became clear to me in the endless parade of superhero movies first, only for me to turn to romance and go . . . oh nooooooo

these are mostly pretty gentle characters but letting them be upset and not fully in control of their feelings also feels like a way to respect the seriousness of the histories i’ve given them?