Your peeves about romance writing!

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Every time there's the "oh no! the misunderstanding! one part of the pairing heard something wrong and came to wrong conclusions and now the whole conflict shall be centered around their inability to talk it through! but don't worry it's funny 'cause it's a comedy!" trope - I want to chew a hole in the wall

Oh, another thing I really hate in a lot of romance works-- and this is especially common in comics-- is when the OTP falls in love, and then the next day whoever is the designated sub (and I could go on about the annoyance toward this trope too) gets kidnapped and nearly or outright molested, and then hero dom saves the day due to their super epic money/power/sleuthing skills and saves the prince(ss), who is incapable of doing anything other than crying.

I don't like how romance has become so hyperfocused in stories. So many stories nowadays tend to shoe-horn in a romance when their really doesn't need to be. Two men can be close friends without seeing each other as romantic partners. The strong, kicka** baddie doesn't HAVE to have a wife. She can have a soft husband or a battlehusband who is fighting right by her side, or a novel concept, she can be bad all by herself. No romance required.

A person's exlover doesn't have to be the built-in enemy in the story. A lot of the time, people just break up because they grew apart. Your ex isn't always crazy or secretly plotting on getting you back.

Like Nick, I'm tired of high school kids being paired together and considered OTP. To add to that, I'm tired of the one "true love" per hero. While characters like Lois Lane and Peggy Carter have their good points, their sole purpose in the story becomes to be the love interest of the male lead. The male leads also don't get the opportunity to grow and develop because their focus is protecting their one love interest. It's not even in superhero shows, even How I Met Your Mother did it to us.

One of my biggest pet peeves is also directly tied to how female characters are written. In romances, the girl is usually written as either an abused baby needing rescuing, an ultra-naive sweetpea, or she's a brat. That's it. A little common sense and backbone would make all the difference. The trope of Man: don't do this. Woman: Why not? Because I'm a girl? - really wouldn't be a thing if she was written to be a fully realized person with some common sense rather than a 2D Mary Sue who thinks that a strong feminist character involves punching people and yelling at men for presumably wronging them. *I don't know if this exists in queer romances but it sure bugs me in het romances.

Lastly, shaming the character for making the "sensible" choice. A lot of romance movies low key glorify cheating. They might not be physically cheating on their partners but they are sure as shooting cheating on them emotionally. People might get mixed feelings and rethink their choices, and I think that's fine and valid. But sometimes the romantic plotline is hyped so much that when the lead choses the "safe" partner, rejecting their "fun" partner, they are shamed for it. It's tiring.

Couples hitting each other or generally treating one or the other like shit. Being struck is literally a red flag to get the hell away from them, end of story. Humiliating is also a sure way to make a relationship not work. If you don't respect and generally don't care if you publicly make fun of them, you will soon find your relationship over. This is why in real life Dom/Sub relations don't last. In the quiet of your bedroom, it's game on. But in public, where others can see you, there is basically no chance it will work.

Most romance comics are not real people at how they act and the like. Misunderstandings are fine for immature relationships (highschool), but once you live life for a bit, you just tend to talk it out or leave.

The guy or girl that can't decide on two different people, usually gets neither. And specially for a guy, he who plays hard to get, gets none. Girls don't put up with that in real life. That is why harem anime/manga are annoying. Shy/introvert/awkward guys don't have 3+ girls throwing themselves at him.

Having the 2 gay/lesbian couple in a group/school liking or love each other automatically as the only 2 in the area. In most comics stories it seems all same sex couples have to be is close to one another and BOOM, they date and fall in love. I get it that's the story, but it happens way to often to be normal. There are plenty of hetero people in group settings that don't date or actively hate each other in comics.

Finally I'm tired of basically the pursuer being all but a stalker/predator. This is a big trope in BL comics for sure. They get away with stuff no traditional romance could. It is a strange fantasy.

My thinking is make your romance as normal and realistic as you can while changing the setting. The situation can be different, but the people have to act like humans, not space aliens or how you think humans should act.

Nothing annoys me more than when one of them (in a straight couple, pretty much always the man) is extremely fucked up and scary and mean & stuff and the other one is basically just there to “fix” their asshole partner.

So, I don't mind things like stalkers or master/slave or just generally messy toxic bad relationships in any kind of romance with any type of pairing, my issue is when the author doesn't seem to realise that's what they're doing. If you want to read a dark romance bordering on thriller about power imbalances, that's cool, sometimes I enjoy that too, but like I want to seek that out and read it. I don't want my wholesome relationship story to actually be a dark mess. And I think that's the big problem with a lot of romances, especially older BL but not exclusive to it. There's nothing wrong with the content in itself, more that you're selling it as a thing it's not and don't seem aware that it's not.

More generally, the love interest being a nothing character. We all know this is why BL ships happen in a lot of fandoms because the female love interest has no time on screen with the main character and no chemistry vs the rival/best friends who has seasons worth of content and chemistry on their relationship. I don't care if the relationship is gay, straight, open or polyamorous, I just want they to have chemistry and all the characters to be actual characters.

Any character who's not the love interest is automatically a threat. Especially common with women. If there's a woman who isn't the main girl/boy, she a bitch here to steal your man! Every much in line with the I'm not like other girls vibe lots of YA books had and still do have to an extent.

They got together in high school and they're together forever. Like, I get it, teenagers think like that, their romance is the greatest love story of all time and Romeo and Juliet is a love story and no one has ever loved like these two 14 year old morons who've not experienced life, but sure. And yeah, some high school couples do last. But when every couple who got together at like 18 or under is happily married and together like 10 or 15 years later? It just makes me roll my eyes.

But on the flip side, characters who randomly got together off screen during a time skip. Like, ok this is very specific, but if you two named characters who're part of the main cast and then pair them together off screen during a time skip for your epilogue it just looks to me like you didn't want to go through the effort of writing the relationship. At the very least, let them have some chemistry before the time skip. I'd rather you just tell me they have a girlfriend but I don't know her, then shove them together where I couldn't see it happen and expect me to buy it.

i developed a lot of trust issues with master/slave with poc especially black folks (and even more so when it's from nonblack writers) power dynamics can be interesting and if it's consenting partners just playing roles then maybe i can be more lenient but in other cases it's just a hard no (genshin and cookie run fans got me especially messed up with that one) and in the same vein "scary black man or scary poc" is another hard no

like yea we've come pretty far when it comes to rep especially as the writing scene (and publishers specifically) continues to diversify but there's folks who just completely miss the mark and trying to understand intentions or giving the benefit of the doubt just gets tiring after the umpteenth occurrence

that's like i'd already mentioned in the other thread some of my peeves with the handling of aromantic or asexual characters coz the worse mishandlings feed into the idea that it's something that "needs to be fixed" or "requires the right person" or means that the individual is some "emotionless robot" among other things which beyond just being tired as hell is just plain aphobic

that's like it's less a peeve but in general it'd be cool to see more poly romances or queerplatonic or just straight up platonic relationships depicted in media, especially the latter since that feels hard to come by

Forcing the plot.
Many novels have an MC who wants to break their engagement with the ML. And when they do the Emperor (or someone with equivalent power), who is the father of the ML, forces the engagement to continue for no good reason. Thus the ML keeps seeing the MC.

An even worse thing is when the author makes the MC stay with the person who abused them both physically and mentally in a past timeline.
The reasoning of the author is that the ML is a different person and they didn't abuse the MC yet.

That's BS.

NOTE: I am not talking about a typical time reversal story in which the MC is basically killed by the ML due to misunderstanding. I am talking about full mental and physical abuse in which the MC gets so traumatized (s)he starts hyperventilating on the mere mention of the ML.

I once read a novel in which the ML brought a concubine made her pregnant. When the MC complained the ML decided to violate her. Once she got pregnant her father tried to save her but ML sent her father to war. Father died. MC became extremely depressed. ML pushed MC to the floor causing her to lose her baby. And then she gets accused by ML (the audacity and hypocresy) of trying to harm concubine's baby. She gets executed sent back in time. Meets two other 2nd ML. Each were a bit toxic but they treated her well. And then author decided to force MC and ML together. Reason being ML was a different person from ML of 1st timeline. That was so BS. Many fans got mad and left once they found out ML was the douche who caused her so much pain.

I hate insta love or when the story starts with them already loving each other. I wanna fall in love with them and enjoy the journey 🥰