No romance in a story?

[ghostmaya]

It really depends on topic~ What's more important to the story is the characters that people can be empathize or relate with~
also there's a lot of definition of romance~

[bulgariansumo]

I feel kind of odd having stories with mainly LGBT+ casts, but having little to no romance. Someone on another thread mentioned feeling like they'd be wasting their audience's time by tagging their own story as LGBT+ when there's no romance, and that's something I struggle with too sometimes. Especially when it's not the main focus of my stories.

On the other hand, I can't exactly say that characters being LGBT+ isn't important in the stories. It comes up. There's ways it affects the characters beyond who they may or may not be interested in dating. It can change a lot about how someone is viewed by others. It can cause someone to have a different point of view on dynamics that are often taken for granted. I think that's something worth exploring.

I don't hate romance all the time. There's a lot more that can be explored in the realm of romantic relationships than what's been allowed in the past, and I'm here for there being more LGBT+ romances in media and in fan circles. However, it's a little tiring that conversations around character dynamics are either done through a romantic lens or largely ignored. I can't blame anyone for having fun with their ships. It's just hard not to feel alone in wanting to talk about something else. Though it could just be the kinds of media I consume.

My biggest fear in gaining an audience is them focusing more on the potential romances over all the other character dynamics I've worked so hard to write.

This comment got away from me LOLOLOL.

[TheLemmaLlama]

My stories generally aren't too romance-focused, but they do mostly end up with some romance in them. I call it 'Godwin's Law of romance in stories': as the length and scope of a story increases, the probability of it containing romance approaches 1

Romance is more common than murder (or so I hope O_O), and so I guess it's just a matter of if you have so many characters and spend so much time with them, it just feels weird if absolutely none of them falls for each other etc (at least for me from the writer's point-of-view; I can see myself not finding it weird as a reader if the writer masterfully directs our attention and keeps it focused on non-romance stuff :P)

Conversely, I think all my one-shots actually contain 0 romance

There are only a few series I've seen where romance is not a factor at all...and sadly, that usually means that the important relationships that ARE in the story end up bland, lifeless, and unexplored. =/I said once that certain writers "think platonic relationships write themselves", and as much as I hate it it's very true.

I think it's less 'writers think platonic relationships write themselves' and more 'writers are oddly touchy about people shipping their characters in ways the don't like' :'D Whenever there are two characters of similar age that show any consideration or depth of consideration for each other, someone's gonna ship them; that's just a rule of nature XD

[conventurecomics]

I don't have any romance in my comics. Mine takes place at a fictional anime convention comedy and fantasy. The only thing my characters sometimes have their eyes turn into hearts. But that is an anime thing showing expressions of when a character is behaving towards another character.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

'writers are oddly touchy about people shipping their characters in ways the don't like' :'D Whenever there are two characters of similar age that show any consideration or depth of consideration for each other, someone's gonna ship them; that's just a rule of nature XD

I get that, but I also feel like...part of maturing as a writer (or any kind of creator) is learning that you can't control your audience. You can't ensure that only 'certain' people interact with your work, or that they'll only interact with it in certain ways...no amount of preventative writing is going to keep people from seeing whatever they want in your characters.

So you should just do what you want. ^^; Personally, I would be damned if I let shipping fears prevent me from writing characters having relationships beyond whoever they're attracted to. My characters are going to bond with their friends and neighbors and students and teachers and siblings and cousins, those bonds are going to be engaging and meaningful, and if people want to read into them 'the wrong way' that's simply not my problem. =T

[Awesomeness_Studios]

I also don’t have romance in my comic, also because I don’t feel like it needs to be there.

However, this also has some rooting with irl things:

Growing up, I was upset at how many shoehorned romance plots there were in literally kids media. I was watching A Bug’s Life with some people in discord the other day and damn we all agreed that Flik and Atta really made no hecking sense lol.

In my own life, I also had (and still have) trouble with dealing with romantic feelings, sometimes to the point of completely ignoring or trying to control them. So that may have caused me to create this comic where no one in the main cast is romantically attracted to anyone.

Nowadays I’m more aware of this problem and am working on it, but at this point I’m not interested in changing this detail about my comic. I’m still determined to make a story about different people who learn what it means to be a friend.

[UrMom]

I feel kind of odd having stories with mainly LGBT+ casts, but having little to no romance. Someone on another thread mentioned feeling like they'd be wasting their audience's time by tagging their own story as LGBT+ when there's no romance, and that's something I struggle with too sometimes. Especially when it's not the main focus of my stories.

To be fair a lot of people use the tag for stories that generally bring up queer issues, or has a majority queer cast. (I think that's what it was meant for too, but don't quote me on that.) I use that tag myself for the former, even though they're not a major part of my comic they're still there.

I think it's less 'writers think platonic relationships write themselves' and more 'writers are oddly touchy about people shipping their characters in ways the don't like' :'D Whenever there are two characters of similar age that show any consideration or depth of consideration for each other, someone's gonna ship them; that's just a rule of nature XD

This doesn't apply to everyone, but I've seen this being the consensus with some. Not so much as them treating it like a ship, but hounding the creator to make it a canon thing in the story, I myself have had people in the past spam my comments with chants for my characters to kiss or get together. It can be really frustrating when you're trying to tell a serious story, and while I'm not scared to develop my MC's friendship overtime, I know reader's push for romance is a real fear for some. I remember a while back I followed a webcomic creator who was developing a slice-of-life/drama about two guys in a really close friendship (Like a familial type of thing.), the characters were meant to have no romantic or sexual interest in eachother, but readers hounded the creator so bad they quit the comic. I guess it got to a point where people were calling them homophobic for not complying with the demands to make the ship canon, which I did see some comments like that pop up occasionally, who knows how bad it was in their DMs and on social media. It was really sad, and I haven't seen them post anything online since.

It's nice that it never got that bad with my comic, but I think their audience skewed younger than mine, so they got a lot of horny, bratty kids. Plus this was before I started my comic, when BL was way more popular than it is now.

[JaveCraze]

If it ever gets that bad with my comic, I'll just make a response, and if that doesn't work ignore em.

A lot of my characters are adults who are near the same age, so I'd probably just tell em to write fanfics at that point lol.

[TheLemmaLlama]

hounding the creator to make it a canon thing in the story

Oh wow, I didn't know that happened, at least to that extent. It's like ... just write fanfics, amirite? :'D But yeesh, I guess I'll be more understanding towards creators who get snappy at shippers from now on. I'll still write whatever fanfics I want, but at least I know why they feel the way they do :'D

[UrMom]

If it ever gets that bad with my comic, I'll just make a response, and if that doesn't work ignore em.

A lot of my characters are adults who are near the same age, so I'd probably just tell em to write fanfics at that point lol.

There really isn't much you can do while keeping the integrity of your story in tact. Ignoring them would probably be the only thing you can do, but that depends on your level of popularity. Like, the more popular you are the worse the harassment will be purely based on numbers, and the larger the crowd the more rabid it can get. Luckily most creators don't ever get that popular.

Oh wow, I didn't know that happened, at least to that extent. It's like ... just write fanfics, amirite? :'D But yeesh, I guess I'll be more understanding towards creators who get snappy at shippers from now on. I'll still write whatever fanfics I want, but at least I know why they feel the way they do :'D

Right? If you want it so bad just do fanfiction, people in Japan do it all the time with doujinshi, and kids do it with big IPs they know won't satisfy their niche. I don't know why readers won't do it with indie works if they want the thing so badly. (The cynical side of me thinks it's because harassing a smalltime creator is easier for them an making their own stuff.) Honestly, the person who got hounded wasn't a super common case. I know a lot of minority writers/artists get at least some shit, but this person was fairly popular at the time so it was pretty bad. Also it seems when someone is accused of being racist/sexist/bigoted for -insert non-issue here- word can spread fast.

[Zhengo]

My comic doesn't really have any major romance plots, at least not planned right now. I simply don't have interest in writing one into my story at the moment and I don't think it needs it.

Very occasionally I like to read a story with romance as the main focus, because I want to read something with lots of cute interactions. I actually don't like when romance becomes a major subplot in stories where romance isn't it's main genre since I find that it starts becoming a distraction to the main plot.

This is especially true for ones where theres major drama stemming from the romance subplot. For some reason, the relationship drama in some of these subplots can get more annoying than romance genre stories where relationship drama is the main appeal. Someone brought up Star Vs. here and I also wanted to add the romance drama in the later seasons there got more ridiculous than some cheap harem anime.

When I had hit a certain age I started being a lot less interested in romance in stories. Maybe it's because I saw it a lot and at times felt like the main couple had no chemistry.

[system]

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