Alright, here's a topic that I've wanted to broach for some time now, but never really wanted to on more casual forums mostly because I just haven't found a place for it. Romance, especially in the YA subgenre, Paranormal Romance.
I've read (and read about) a fair number of extremely popular YA novels these days and the gushing praise that follows such novels to the point of nausea. It's never the weird half-assed world-building that bothers me, it's always the half-assed relationships that bother me much, much more. I'm not a huge fan of Romance in general (I do love Romance when it's well done, though) but I hate to see it in YA moreso because it seems increasingly common that many authors are just putting out the same basic story with the same basic characters. This isn't exactly a terrible thing - I know that people have been doing the Hero's Journey for nigh on a couple millenia now - but in the case of YA Paranormal Romance, it's an issue because these novels are printed extremely close together in terms of time for the sake of marketing and also because these archetypes and tropes are extremely problematic and well... just outright fucking awful.
For one, there's usually two male character types that stick out when it comes to the overall story and in relation to the protagonist. These two types are what I like to call "The Masochistic Boy-Next-Door" and "The Mysterious Brooding Asshole Hottie."
The Masochistic Boy-Next-Door (who I'm just going to refer to as the BND for everyone's sake from now on) is not too far off from the standard Girl Next Door archetype floating around in everything from teen flicks to general pornography. He may not be the brightest penny in the fountain, be he'll usually always have a skill he's good at that he'll share common interest in with the protagonist. He's a bit of a hottie in his own right, but the protagonist just never really thinks of him in a sexual manner, and usually cannot, especially when the Brooding Asshole enters the picture. Naturally, he's carrying a torch for the protagonist, but he'll end up losing the game of "Getting the Girl." When his existence becomes problematic (i.e. the fanbase prefers him and the protagonist as a pairing over who the main love interest) his personality is likely to do a complete 180, where he becomes this huge, pushy, Nice Guy asshole who the protagonist will eventually reject. This is pretty much what happened with Twilight, just so you know.
Then the Brooding Mysterious Asshole Hottie rolls into the picture in his wicked car, wearing his slick leather jacket, who plays by his own rules, and the protagonist falls head over-goddamn-heels for him for no other reason than "omg he's sooooo hoooooooot and mysterious." When it comes to Paranormal Romance, this guy is likely to be some sort of monster - a glitter vampire, werewolf, musty mummy, rapist pixie, you name it, he's probably one of those things. And oh my Goooood, doesn't it just make him so much more amazing despite his 2D personality and jack-off attitude towards everything?!?! I want to believe that authors don't think readers are that fucking stupid, but maybe they're just as oblivious as their fanbase. WHO KNOWS. Moving on, this guy... this is the motherfucker that the protagonist will risk life, limb, and hymen for, despite being a tremendous abusive shitheel. Edward (Twilight) is abusive, Patch (Hush, Hush) is abusive... the list goes fucking on. What's worse is that this relationship that the Brooding Asshole has with the protagonist will always be shown in narration as ideal, despite all logic to the contrary. And this is a huge fucking problem, which I'll get to in a moment.
Both of these characters in combination with the protagonist lead to the inevitable transparent Love Triangle. This is a very shallow plot contrivance that's meant to drive the whole story forward but usually ends up stagnating everything. This is what happened to Twilight. There is easily 200+ pages dedicated to Bella and Edward's "love" and maybe 100 pages of actual, antagonist-based conflict. It's almost shoe-horned in as an afterthought. Furthermore, despite all debate on who the protagonist "should" choose, the answer is always made obvious - rarely does the protagonist choose the BND over the Brooding Asshole, that's... just not how things work in this genre. I don't know why this is, and the fact that authors keep making Love Triangles like this is actually upsetting to me. Not because I'm basically being cheated out of actual conflict within the narration, but because this ends up glorifying abuse. While a lot of people end up pooh-poohing this whole idea when it's brought up, it's a serious issue considering the high rate of domestic abuse and sexual abuse that occurs daily within the US.
As an aside, my mother works as a middle school Family and Consumer Science teacher and part of her curriculum is teaching students about healthy relationships. Inevitably, she discusses abuse with students, bringing up such publicized relationships like Chris Brown and Rhianna, and recently I've got her to discuss even fictional relationships in media and what constitutes as unhealthy. It was unsurprising, yet still heartbreaking to hear that many students feel Rhianna deserved to be beat and that the relationship that Bella and Edward have is ideal. Even though I know teens are far more mature than I am willing to admit, at the same time, I can't deny the fact that many teens are still very impressionable and subconsciously do absorb a lot of social cues through the media really easily, and this is why I feel the need to rail against this shit.
As a wannabe author, I feel a little more duty to readers than just selling them something entertaining. I don't think it's my place to shove my own personal set of morals down people's throats, but I can't show a relationship to my readers that is anything remotely similar to that in YA Paranormal Romance in anything resembling a positive light. Further, I will not allow romance to trump the entire story itself as it does in so many YA books already. I think I'll be taking a different approach to love in my books.
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