6 ms·

I'm 15. I read romance novels constantly. I begin to notice that the male love interests are all muscular billionaire vampire pirate bad boys with a dark side

I'm 15. I read romance novels constantly. I begin to notice that the male love interests are all muscular billionaire vampire pirate bad boys with a dark side yearning to be tamed. No romance novelist ever writes a love interest who is an awkward teen boy who likes to read all day and play Magic the Gathering and video games all night. Why can't romance novelists represent me?

di4na 5y ago
There are romance novelists that do that ! i am not a romance specialist, but i know they exist. I advise to search a bit, maybe ask your local library. Romance is a really wide genre, the biggest, with a lot of different niche. It exist. I promise you.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I'm not actually a romance novel enthusiast, I'm just parodying the article. From my point of view the article is a complaint about how Frank Miller, an author who specializes in writing edgy grimdark superhero comics for teenage boys, doesn't write the kind of character that might appeal to a 20-30 something feminist.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    The article's complaint about Miller's stories goes quite a bit further than that.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      Please elaborate.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        There's a whole thread of elaboration on this point.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
If you continue your campaign with vision, intelligence, humor and wit, there's a chance that the books you're looking for might emerge. Good luck!
jason-phillips 5y ago
"It's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." --Ulysses Everett McGill
oweiler 5y ago
Not exactly romance but I guess IT comes close enough https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8697402-scott-pilgrim-the-complete-series https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8697402-scott-pilgrim-th...
throwawaygh 5y ago
(Because it apparently wasn't obvious, OP is not actually a 15 year old purveyor of young adult romance fiction. His post is mimicking the writing style of the article ("I'm 20 and a creative writing major...").) BTW, there's a GoodReads list entitled "Nerdy Guys Are Hot" containing 114 books. And that list is obviously incomplete. For example, Harry Potter -- the most popular youth fiction series ever -- has a nerdy main character and plenty of romance subplots.
- slickdork 5y ago
  Are you saying Harry Potter himself was nerdy? Because he definitely never did homework or studied and lucked into every solution he ran into by dumb luck. Hermione was nerdy, but was usually made fun of for being nerdy, and was a love interest despite her nerdy ways.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > Are you saying Harry Potter himself was nerdy? Yes, in a certain sense, although a slightly more accurate characterization might be that Harry Potter is a nerd's idea of a hero. Although I have to admit my knowledge of the series is rather superficial, so perhaps I'm wrong. > he definitely never did homework or studied and lucked into every solution he ran into by dumb luck. Nerdy doesn't necessarily imply industrious or studious. I wouldn't say the average MtG or DnD player was a particularly good student at my high school.
    - cgriswald 5y ago
      Harry didn't play DnD or MtG though. He lived in a magical world, and while some of those magical things occasionally caught his attention, he wasn't really deeply interested in any of it. His main concerns were social: casting unsubstantiated aspersions on Snape and Malfoy and occasionally being correct. He didn't care about any of his classes. His only real love was Quidditch, which he was naturally talented at, making him, if anything, a jock. Rethinking through the series, which I have re-read within the past year, the only truly nerdy moments he has all involve girls; and then only really at the beginning of his involvement with girls. Very quickly, he begins to have quite mature thoughts regarding his relationships, even if he doesn't always make the right choices.
mbg721 5y ago
Wayne Brady: "How come there's no one who looks like me on Friends??" (audience: "awww") Colin Mochrie: "How come there's no one who looks like me on Friends??" (audience goes wild with laughter)
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I don't get this joke. I get Wayne Brady's - there are no black characters on Friends, but I don't get Colin's part. I tried watching the clip but I still don't understand it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djX7aDuqi48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djX7aDuqi48
  - mbg721 5y ago
    Because he's bald and older (and very much eccentric), and Friends was fundamentally about young people in New York with no realistic means of support. The sequence is poking fun at the idea that race is the sole obstacle to paradise.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    The joke is Colin is a bald guy who wouldn't be considered attractive. (I suppose Gunther is an example of that, but leeway for main cast vs. occasional supporting role)
JKCalhoun 5y ago
So super hero comics are for (pre) adolescent, straight white boys? That's too bad because I have been told that that was a stereotype and was no longer true.
- savingsPossible 5y ago
  Super hero comics are not. These super hero comics might be?
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Fair.
dkarl 5y ago
For me, as a fan of other kinds of escapist entertainment, the feeling of "ugh why am I not just doing this" is really easy to trigger, and it ruins the immersion and the fun. I need the fantasy to be not just attractive, but also unattainable, so that I don't start wondering, "If I'm so excited about this, why don't I take the relatively straightforward steps to experience it for myself?" For example, imagine watching a Top Gear episode about the latest Ford Fiesta. Most of the fun of the show is the presenters, how they talk about the cars, and how much fun they seem to be having. I'm sure watching them I could get pretty excited about the Ford Fiesta. It could be a great episode! Except the fact that I could rent one for a day for $35 would force me to think about why I don't actually want to do that, why I would rather watch a TV show about driving it rather than driving it for myself, and the difference between fantasy and reality, and then the excitement evaporates pretty fast.
tptacek 5y ago
What's your point? That's a valid criticism of dime-store romance novels.
- taeric 5y ago
  I think the point is that you can hate Frank Miller's work without hating all comics.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    The author probably didn't even write the headline, which is the only place that sentiment appears in the piece. I'm pretty confident she's aware of Love and Rockets, Bone, and Maus. Maybe it's helpful just to mentally substitute "superhero comics" for "comics".
    - taeric 5y ago
      Fair. Though, I suspect some super hero comics are fine. I am also ok with the thought that that earlier exposure clouds all later exposure. I am further ok with someone not liking comics. Or super hero stories.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        That seems like the interesting discussion to have, right? Whether there are superhero comics that confound Miller-ism. I can't really think of any, though maybe early-1990s X-Men, which had a palpable subtext about bigotry long before that was a super trendy idea (making the series antagonist himself an opponent of bigotry was a pretty slick move).
        taeric 5y ago
        Sandman stands in my mind. Though, most folks don't think of those as super hero. I think most of that is definitionally, though. If you accept that super hero comics are bad, you probably consider any good ones to not be super hero. Edit: that said, Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader is undeniably a super hero comic. Complete with an amazing call out to Goodnight Moon. Edit2: Perez's Wonder Woman set is highly regarded, I think. In many ways more feminist than current works, from my memory.
watwut 5y ago
This sort of point would be much stronger if it was not too apparent you don't know what is in romance books nor surrounding culture nor types of conflicts going on in there.
deleted 5y ago
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aaron695 5y ago

di4na 5y ago

There are romance novelists that do that ! i am not a romance specialist, but i know they exist. I advise to search a bit, maybe ask your local library. Romance is a really wide genre, the biggest, with a lot of different niche. It exist. I promise you.

ALittleLight 5y ago
I'm not actually a romance novel enthusiast, I'm just parodying the article. From my point of view the article is a complaint about how Frank Miller, an author who specializes in writing edgy grimdark superhero comics for teenage boys, doesn't write the kind of character that might appeal to a 20-30 something feminist.
- majormajor 5y ago
  The article's complaint about Miller's stories goes quite a bit further than that.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Please elaborate.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      There's a whole thread of elaboration on this point.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

If you continue your campaign with vision, intelligence, humor and wit, there's a chance that the books you're looking for might emerge. Good luck!

jason-phillips 5y ago

"It's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." --Ulysses Everett McGill

oweiler 5y ago

Not exactly romance but I guess IT comes close enough https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8697402-scott-pilgrim-the-complete-series https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8697402-scott-pilgrim-th...

throwawaygh 5y ago

(Because it apparently wasn't obvious, OP is not actually a 15 year old purveyor of young adult romance fiction. His post is mimicking the writing style of the article ("I'm 20 and a creative writing major...").) BTW, there's a GoodReads list entitled "Nerdy Guys Are Hot" containing 114 books. And that list is obviously incomplete. For example, Harry Potter -- the most popular youth fiction series ever -- has a nerdy main character and plenty of romance subplots.

slickdork 5y ago
Are you saying Harry Potter himself was nerdy? Because he definitely never did homework or studied and lucked into every solution he ran into by dumb luck. Hermione was nerdy, but was usually made fun of for being nerdy, and was a love interest despite her nerdy ways.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > Are you saying Harry Potter himself was nerdy? Yes, in a certain sense, although a slightly more accurate characterization might be that Harry Potter is a nerd's idea of a hero. Although I have to admit my knowledge of the series is rather superficial, so perhaps I'm wrong. > he definitely never did homework or studied and lucked into every solution he ran into by dumb luck. Nerdy doesn't necessarily imply industrious or studious. I wouldn't say the average MtG or DnD player was a particularly good student at my high school.
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    Harry didn't play DnD or MtG though. He lived in a magical world, and while some of those magical things occasionally caught his attention, he wasn't really deeply interested in any of it. His main concerns were social: casting unsubstantiated aspersions on Snape and Malfoy and occasionally being correct. He didn't care about any of his classes. His only real love was Quidditch, which he was naturally talented at, making him, if anything, a jock. Rethinking through the series, which I have re-read within the past year, the only truly nerdy moments he has all involve girls; and then only really at the beginning of his involvement with girls. Very quickly, he begins to have quite mature thoughts regarding his relationships, even if he doesn't always make the right choices.

mbg721 5y ago

Wayne Brady: "How come there's no one who looks like me on Friends??" (audience: "awww") Colin Mochrie: "How come there's no one who looks like me on Friends??" (audience goes wild with laughter)

ALittleLight 5y ago
I don't get this joke. I get Wayne Brady's - there are no black characters on Friends, but I don't get Colin's part. I tried watching the clip but I still don't understand it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djX7aDuqi48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djX7aDuqi48
- mbg721 5y ago
  Because he's bald and older (and very much eccentric), and Friends was fundamentally about young people in New York with no realistic means of support. The sequence is poking fun at the idea that race is the sole obstacle to paradise.
- function_seven 5y ago
  The joke is Colin is a bald guy who wouldn't be considered attractive. (I suppose Gunther is an example of that, but leeway for main cast vs. occasional supporting role)

JKCalhoun 5y ago

So super hero comics are for (pre) adolescent, straight white boys? That's too bad because I have been told that that was a stereotype and was no longer true.

savingsPossible 5y ago
Super hero comics are not. These super hero comics might be?
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Fair.

dkarl 5y ago

For me, as a fan of other kinds of escapist entertainment, the feeling of "ugh why am I not just doing this" is really easy to trigger, and it ruins the immersion and the fun. I need the fantasy to be not just attractive, but also unattainable, so that I don't start wondering, "If I'm so excited about this, why don't I take the relatively straightforward steps to experience it for myself?" For example, imagine watching a Top Gear episode about the latest Ford Fiesta. Most of the fun of the show is the presenters, how they talk about the cars, and how much fun they seem to be having. I'm sure watching them I could get pretty excited about the Ford Fiesta. It could be a great episode! Except the fact that I could rent one for a day for $35 would force me to think about why I don't actually want to do that, why I would rather watch a TV show about driving it rather than driving it for myself, and the difference between fantasy and reality, and then the excitement evaporates pretty fast.

tptacek 5y ago

What's your point? That's a valid criticism of dime-store romance novels.

taeric 5y ago
I think the point is that you can hate Frank Miller's work without hating all comics.
- tptacek 5y ago
  The author probably didn't even write the headline, which is the only place that sentiment appears in the piece. I'm pretty confident she's aware of Love and Rockets, Bone, and Maus. Maybe it's helpful just to mentally substitute "superhero comics" for "comics".
  - taeric 5y ago
    Fair. Though, I suspect some super hero comics are fine. I am also ok with the thought that that earlier exposure clouds all later exposure. I am further ok with someone not liking comics. Or super hero stories.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      That seems like the interesting discussion to have, right? Whether there are superhero comics that confound Miller-ism. I can't really think of any, though maybe early-1990s X-Men, which had a palpable subtext about bigotry long before that was a super trendy idea (making the series antagonist himself an opponent of bigotry was a pretty slick move).
      - taeric 5y ago
        Sandman stands in my mind. Though, most folks don't think of those as super hero. I think most of that is definitionally, though. If you accept that super hero comics are bad, you probably consider any good ones to not be super hero. Edit: that said, Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader is undeniably a super hero comic. Complete with an amazing call out to Goodnight Moon. Edit2: Perez's Wonder Woman set is highly regarded, I think. In many ways more feminist than current works, from my memory.

watwut 5y ago

This sort of point would be much stronger if it was not too apparent you don't know what is in romance books nor surrounding culture nor types of conflicts going on in there.

deleted 5y ago

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deleted 5y ago

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aaron695 5y ago