And ^^^THAT ^^^ is why I’m spicy. All that heartburn.
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The question is will it keep me up at night or am I getting proper sleep so my smut writing doesn’t lose its pronouns halfway through a snore?
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Woke smut scenes.
Well, the spice can also keep you awake long enough to write them.
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Real deep!
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Real deep in the mechanics of how we are made.
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Don’t forget the “I can fix him! He’s nice to me!”
and the mc being like, “nooo I can’t end up with my nicer ex-boyfriend because even though he’s kind and nice and overall awesome, with a good job and hopes for a family, he’s not … him”
The problem with “I can fix him” tropes is that no, that isn’t the protagonist’s business. The MC should just get a ride straight for the border and become a sea captain. She’d do great in those ups and downs at sea than the ups and downs with her vindictive partner.
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It’s more that people don’t know how to navigate change from bad to better, so a lot of it is highly unrealistic.
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People do change to accommodate a relationship, though. Not that anyone fixed me, but that there are other signs of change, where I show I wanted to change and given where I was starting from, it would be an uphill battle. (I came out of a mentally abusive relationship very… aggressively, and had to relearn that my husband was not that idiot. The reason my husband stuck it out is he was watching me try and struggle. And his ex was worse.)
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One of the things my father had to say about waiting on change was that if they weren’t motivated to self-change before marriage, you weren’t going to get that thing to change after marriage–and it was likely to get worse because secure in having you isn’t motivated to the chase. So you cut it off before commitment, if they aren’t motivated.
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There has to be a breakdown where the person who is waiting has had enough. The person who is being that stubborn has to hit rock bottom. This isn’t done in stories, almost at all. Preferably, both these things happen before the couple gets together, so there is a sense of: you saved me from myself, caught me coming off the worst I am.
It’s where both the spouse and I were at. I was becoming a raging bitch who wasn’t sure I could do monogamy after what I went through, and he was falling into alcoholism (without being an alcoholic). The amount of nightmares I had where I cheated on the guy early on scared me. My refusal to heavily drink and just having a standard he lived against was enough for him to back out of it.
- Change cannot risk lives. “He can change” is not for clear abuse. Lay a hand on me and you’ll be beaten while tied up in your bedsheets, before I let the men in my family know what you did.
In this one I notice that change is with clearly defined areas of where you will wait for improvement, and where there is no wait (having standards).
- The Good Guy vs. the Good for Me guy.
My roommate needs constant interaction. She dated my cousin who doesn’t interact. He’s a good guy, but he didn’t give her what she needed in relationships, but because she couldn’t tell the difference between good for me and good enough, she’d set her bar so low that she never understood how these low energy men would go from “good guy” to fuck no so quickly.
In a lot of these stories where the guy they don’t want appears good, they don’t do a good job of showing how “being a good guy” isn’t enough. Mostly because people can’t articulate what the problems are.
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Change is good. Encouragement can help, but the fact that characters are given the responsibility of ‘fixing’ someone. It paints a portrait that change is only induced and is the responsibility of a partner and erases accountability. The partner can do horrible things, the protag would take it and say, “Oh yeah, he’s like that.” or something like, “It’s my fault.” and it romanticises it to the point where people brand all relationships to be this endless loop of this.
That would actually be a lot more healthier to handle and a bit realistic too. I don’t want to pawn off all ‘fixing people’ as cliches, but sometimes it’s great. If they’re struggling with honesty and opening up, the partner can help them in being more open and give them space to be comfortable. That’s much better than this assertion that, “I will change him. I will be the only person to change him. He listens to me.” and giving up their whole life that way and all their past decisions.
I agree, yes. Ultimately all characters that are in the endgame couple’s story are treated with haste. We don’t know any real reasons until the very end of the road and it’s just an excuse. Young impressionable kids can get carried away with such very base-level ideas. It’s how they handle flaws and how well they ensure that the flaws are within the resolution and within the partner’s ability. If they’re horrible people, then clearly one man alone can’t fix it. It sucks because even though the intent is good, the execution is terrible and there’s some rushed-up ending that somehow miraculously fixes it all, giving the message that :" Yes, this is how it is. Just skip ahead."
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✧･ﾟ: * ✧･ﾟ:* Gentle reminder: you don’t need to be perfect in order to be loved.✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ: *
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That is why I started all that off with people don’t know how to navigate it. Too many people are still finding themselves and writing about love. It’s rarely real, but a repeat of what they’ve seen work for other’s writing.
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That’s true. This notion that all romances are either wholesomely unreal or advertised as realistic, when it is just simply toxic matter, is polarised. There needs to be a middle ground where both parties can settle their differences.
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My most basic advice is to leave more to the imagination than not. I don’t think it’s even necessary to describe a single character physically. Let the reader fill in the blanks.
Also remember that just like in real life, sometimes the biggest conflicts are completely internal. And once you make it clear to the reader that love is a certainty by the end of the story, you’ve lost the main point of tension. Hold onto that for as long as you can.
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One thing I found Regencies did well (in a rare author) is show when a man is tired of a wild lifestyle, and how he settles down when he finds a woman he wants. I don’t find that this is nearly as defined in modern romances.
Part of the problem is we’re so busy affirming every lifestyle choice that we forget to affirm people stepping back from previous choices. There is such a thing as a season in life but we don’t allow for seasons.
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It’s also too idealistic, and when it gets into that territory for impressionable minds, then that’s where it gets dangerous. If it’s an adult book, and adults know better, then it’s not as bad. Still, it is a stupid trope, I agree. It’s boring now.
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