It always makes me cringe when people say romance novels are porn. I mean, some romance novels are, in fact, porn. There is a wide range from “paper-thin plot wrapped around scenes of genitals being combined with other body parts in a variety of inventive fashions” to “the characters kiss a shocking three times.” But the latter category exists, and it is not because women as a whole get off on chaste confessions of love.
In my opinion, the purpose of a romance novel qua romance novel is to elicit in the reader the emotion of new relationship energy (or NRE, because I hate typing), in much the same way that porn elicits in the reader the emotion of sexual arousal. Naturally, these go together quite well (as do sexual arousal and NRE in real life). But they are separable and often separated.
A romance novel plotline goes through the entire process of new relationship energy: meeting someone; discovering their good qualities; wondering if they’re into you; finally having them commit to you. However, romance novels heighten the NRE by including lots of ludicrous things that do not generally happen in real life, e.g. billionaire cowboys, secret babies, conversions of troubled atheists by the power of your steadfast love and wholesome beauty. (This is, of course, similar to porn: real life contains extremely few reverse gangbangs consisting solely of conventionally attractive nineteen-year-olds.)
Romance novels also offer a sense of safety. You know that– no matter how dark the climax seems– the heroine and the hero are going to get together. Real-life NRE is full of uncertainty: sadly, many people fail to recognize your many charms, and those that do sometimes turn out, upon reflection, to be mean or boring or prone to cutting off people’s heads and storing them in the basement. However, a happily ever after is a genre convention of romance novels; if there’s no happily ever after, it’s not– by the Romance Writers of America definition– a romance. (Yes, this does mean that Romeo and Juliet is not, technically speaking, a romance.) You know that the hero’s commitmentphobia will turn out to be a misunderstanding, his gruffness will turn out to be caused by his dark and troubled past, and the fact that he doesn’t seem to be into the heroine will turn out to be because she smells so good that he’s constantly on edge trying not to suck all her blood. The sense of safety means that a lot of things that are wildly unpleasant in real life– such as being rejected– instead enjoyably heighten the suspense.
One thing which puzzles me very much about romance novels is that there doesn’t seem to be a version with men as the target audience. After all, there is a version of porn with women as the target audience (page 98-101 of the romance novel, or chapter three of the fanfic). I understand that there is significant stigma around men consuming romantic media, but capitalism is really good at the thing it does. Why hasn’t capitalism produced a genre of romances festooned with enough dead bodies and half-naked women that men can feel comfortable consuming it without it impugning their masculinity?
(Okay, the movie Deadpool. But why aren’t there, like, five hundred thousand versions of the movie Deadpool?)
Perhaps men as a group do not desire to read romance novels? I’ve seen people express this belief but I think it’s incorrect. First of all, men do experience NRE and find it quite enjoyable, so presumably men would also enjoy simulated NRE. Second of all, I know lots of men who claimed not to be interested in romances, but became passionately invested in them once they found the right sort of romance. For instance, they might have believed that they didn’t like romance because they think romantic comedies are kind of boring and stupid, but show them Hermione/Luna fanfiction and suddenly they’re awake at four AM going “but I HAVE to see how this fake marriage fic is going to turn out!”
Of course, this makes perfect sense. People find that different things trigger their simulated NRE. Continuing the porn analogy: if you’re vanilla and the only kind of porn you were ever exposed to was Kink.com, you’d probably think porn was repulsive and mean and maybe you’d say you don’t like porn at all. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t enjoy the hell out of loving, affectionate lesbian porn. I myself find that the average romance novel leaves me cold: the heroes are often a hypermasculine alpha male archetype that I find approximately as sexy as a potted plant, and I sometimes feel too much of an urge to slip the heroine a domestic-violence hotline number to be really invested in the relationship. Fortunately, I have also read Pride and Prejudice, which stars Darcy The Socially Awkward Penguin, and (on a less highbrow note) a truly mind-boggling number of fanfics starring shy coffeeshop employees who can’t confess their feelings to each other.
In conclusion: men, if you think you don’t like romance, consider the possibility that you have been reading the wrong romance, and maybe you’d enjoy the hell out of the movie Deadpool or Jane Austen or A Civil Campaign or something.
(If you do like A Civil Campaign, it’s a pastiche of Georgette Heyer IN SPAAAAACE, so you would probably like her books too.)
Thing of Things 
Tragically, my preferred romance/porn features 1) a sad melancholy hot person who’s also sadistic/dominant, 2) no msub content because it’s triggering to me.
The joke is that the intersection of those is VERY narrow, and, had I been willing to drop the 2), I’d be able to browse ao3 all day long. But I’m not!
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Sounds like a lot of mainstream bdsm M/f stuff? (And a large portion of twilight bdsm fanfic). Or does that bring up a different set of issues?
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Yep, I read tons and tons of mainstream bdsm m/f (and f/f) stuff! The problem is that straight-to-Kindle commercial writing is universally so horrible here, and so you have to dig for the good stuff on tumblr, literotica etc.
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Ooh I really like this genre insight! Like, the part about what the main idea is, and the part about the safety making various suspense heightening things enjoyable. Hm!
Also, isn’t romance type stuff aimed at men, like, the compulsory romance plotline of action (and I think other ‘male aimed’) movies? Like, the whole old damsel in distress trope, Bond girls, Pepper Potts, etc.
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Some of the action movies, I think the Girlfriend/Damsel in Distress is only thrown in as a kind of “No Homo”, since the relationships between the male characters can be of more emotional depth. With the disparity in ages between what counts as “still can play action hero” for male actors, and “she’s thirty? wife and mother material!” for women actors, the Hot Girl As Prize serves to show (a) no, really he’s straight, even if he seems to care more for his buddy/side-kick than the ostensible love interest (b) he is still manly and virile and masculine enough to get the hot young girl.
But action movies are really about blowing shit up, and that’s good enough for most people; you don’t really go in expecting the romance to be anything deeper than “oh yeah, and he has to rescue the damsel in distress” as plot device.
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I disagree. Not all action movies have sidekicks etc, there are shorter and easier way to check off a no homo box (also the trope dates back enough to when I doubt anyone gave said box any thought) and while the plot may not be deep or complicated, it’s still repeatedly *there*, with time and creative resources devoted to it.
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Skyfall comes to mind as an example.
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Yeah, it occurred to me while reading this article that, as a man, my equivalent of a romance novel wouldn’t be porn, it would be an action movie where the action hero and the damsel in distress receive equal characterization and they define each other. The sidekick character, if he exists at all, is more there to set the stage/complete the picture, like the best friend character in a romantic comedy. And definitely don’t be afraid to have big emotional character scenes – yes, acknowledging emotion is contrary to the male gender role, but that’s a really shitty part of the male gender role anyway. I’m talking a movie that contains a lot of Power Fantasy Man Blowing Bad Guys To Bits, but devotes a lot more time and energy to Power Fantasy Man’s date with Attractive And Interesting Girl in the first act, Attractive And Interesting Girl refusing to shut up about how her boyfriend will save her as she’s being tied up and then maintaining faith in him for the entire movie, and PFM and AAIG’s kiss over the villain’s corpse leading into the wedding epilogue. And even the action scenes are framed in the context of “PFM is really fucking pissed that he’s being kept away from his girlfriend and really scared for her”.
Essentially, an “I’m competent enough to take care of someone” fantasy as a counterpart to the “I’m attractive enough to get someone to take care of me” fantasy of the romance novel. Gender role porn (in the same non-sexual sense as food porn or design porn).
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There are a lot of fanfics (eg. harry Potter, Naruto) that meet your description.
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Also non-fanfics! (eg Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn*)
* CN for rape in the second volume, stalking in the third, much death and sadness, being asked to mourn for a pair of random redshirts.
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I think Shakespeare would agree that “Romeo and Juliet” isn’t a romance; it’s a tragedy – they both die stupidly, the Capulet-Montague feud has caused other stupid deaths, and if they hadn’t been horny teenagers in lust and infatuation, they might have survived to make a go of their marriage. Which probably would have cooled down and left them in their twenties tied to each other but – at the best – “just good friends” because they had nothing in common except being horny teenagers in lust.
As for romance for men – I think “courtly love” fills that role, until it (inevitably) fossilised into an affectation of style, and then got really silly in the 17th century with the Cavalier poets – basically guys whining about being friendzoned and trying to convince a woman to let them fuck her, but if she ends the relationship first she’s a bitch, if she slept with other guys before this particular dude she’s a bitch,if she’s never slept with other guys and doesn’t want to start with this dude she’s a frigid bitch, if she sleeps with other guys after they split up she’s a bitch – you get the idea. At best it became a conventional style where you gave your (possibly imaginary) love interest a Classical Greek name of a nymph or shepherdess, wrote in a formal box-ticking manner about her attractions and how you are dying with love, and ending with a conceit to round off the whole thing and show off your poetic chops.
Dead in the water by the 18th century, and only with novel-reading becoming a feminine vice did romances (as in “love affairs”) get kick-started again, this time for women!
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Yes, in Shakespeare terms Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. A Shakespearean romance is one of his plays that doesn’t properly fit into any of the three main categories (tragedy, comedy, history). The most famous one is The Tempest.
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That may be an oversimplification (discourse cw i guess?).
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So that means John Green’s Looking For Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars aren’t romances?
Maybe part of the problem is that since romance is written for women, the dangerous-but-safe-because-genre stuff like being a vampire or a secret father falls on the male, while (straight) men might prefer that stuff on the female.
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I’d say that John Green’s work is still stereotyped as something primarily consumed by young women,. Furthermore, both of these books separate the protagonists by the end and don’t first with Ozy’s strict definition of romances ending with couples together.
And I don’t think “wacky guy seduces normal girl” won’t appeal to men, is the right question. It’s, why isn’t somebody writing the normal guy charmed by quirky girl that would more likely appeal. And yeah there’s Looking for Alaska but that’s not actually reaching too many men. The true equivalent would be the Magical Girlfriend genre mentioned by Doug S. Why do American men clamor for such content much less.
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There is at least one male version of the romance novel, in terms of a genre aimed at producing NRE – it’s video games that are mostly made in Japan and primarily for Japanese audiences. (Yes, yes, many of these are pornographic, but there are also HUGE numbers of chaste, romantic dating sims aimed at a male audience that come out every year.)
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I would’ve gone with “harem anime”, but that works too.
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Yuri as well – it appears to be mostly targeted at men. But I think that the important difference is that all those are typically consumed by people who decidedly don’t conform to conventional masculinity, whereas romance novels are often consumed by women who are very much gender-conforming. So the question remains whether there’s a space for NRE “porn” within the conventional masculinity.
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This seems to be just a subset of the question “why doesn’t everyone read romance novels?” For me the answer is “I haven’t happened to get into it and I don’t think it’s the best use of my time”, though of course I could be wrong about the second part. (Since I read more rarely and slowly than you, Ozy, there are more tradeoffs to be made on deciding what books to read, and “I would enjoy this book” doesn’t necessarily mean I should read it.) Probably being a guy makes it less likely that someone will happen to pick up a romance novel one time and thus discover that they like it.
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I second that japanese dating sims are probably the male version of romance novels.
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“paper-thin plot wrapped around scenes of genitals being combined with other body parts in a variety of inventive fashions”
Unambiguously best version of this: http://the-toast.net/2014/04/02/alien-erotica/
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What about visual novels or harem anime series? They seem to be consumed by a significantly larger proportion of males then romance novels despite following most of the same formulas. The major difference is the fact that they are visual and largely ignore the inner experience of the protagonist.
Men generally rely more on visuals to simulate sexy experences, so it’s not a stretch to suppose that they also need a visual component to simulate romantic feelings. Instead of page-long depictions of Fabio’s perfect glistening abs, we get pictures of huge-breasted catgirls. It’s still just a small number of males that consume this media, and unlike reading romance novels (which is treated like a guilty pleasure at worst), reading or watching these forms of media typically instantly regulate someone to creepy loser status.
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Also, there seems to be a much wider range of fantasy-fulfilment out there that is explicitly marketed towards male identifying people. For one reason or another, they have more stuperstimuli out there competing for attention. Even if men find romantic fantasy-fulfilment as satisfying as women do, they may find the other fantasies offered to them more appealing.
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I’ll interject that the /light/ novel involves a greater degree of inferiority with the same events.
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Re romance for men:
seinen romance manga?
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Hmm, Scott Pilgrim strikes me as something like the idea romance novel for at least a subset of my taste. It isn’t explicitly targeted at men, but the video game/comic book community is fairly heavily gender skewed.
A variety of anime stories also come to mind, that do male romance pretty well. I really enjoyed the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (or however that was spelled again) for some of that reason.
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Scott Pilgrim was the only example that can me to mind when I was reading this of a primarily romantic story that truly got equal attribution of fan ardor from men. It was so good.
Props on spelling the title of that anime correctly.
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Theory: maybe men tend to be kind of non-verbal or non-mindful about NRE? Like, they want to see the girl, so they just GO and try to see her, instead of reflecting on how “oh wow, I seem to really wanna go see her!” And once NRE tapers off a bit, they don’t go “I used to want to see girl all the time, but now I’d rather watch this youtube” and instead just watch the youtube.
Someone please weigh in! ^_^
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“Features a female character the male audience is supposed to fall in love with” isn’t that strange a trope – the “Magical Girlfriend” anime genre is all over this, as were most movies that starred Marilyn Monroe… they generally don’t get called romances, though…
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Also anything labelled as embodying the ‘Manic pixie dream girl’. If that trope’s supposed to be catering to men then surely every movie labelled as having it as a central theme (Garden state, 500 days of summer) it a male romance movie. Though that said, the post is on novels, and I can’t think of any Manic pixie dream girlfriend novels.
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I suspect there are a lot of “MPDG” novels, considering that I see feminists talking about “male writers” complain about them all the time.
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For the ‘issue’ of the relative dearth of female authors published in Sci Fi (and to a lesser extent fantasy) I’ve previously made the (rather silly) argument of ‘Why are we not also complaining about the even steeper lack of males in romance?’ This post has made me consider that the many many female authors who push schlock about bodices and bosoms have in doing so made themselves unavailable as (equally schlocky) purveyors of spaceships and sorcery.
Unless we think that there is a marked gender difference in desire (and capacity) to be an author (there might be, but not in my experience) then we’re not necessarily seeing people being kept out of genres by their genders, but instead the inevitable absences created by differences in self assortment a zero sum context.
Thinking about it, there has been an explosion of paranatural and fantasy themes in romance (which always had a tendency for historic periods frequently aped by fantasy worlds), and fantasy novels, well, romances are practically inevitable, and frequently plot central. If either genre got banned I really think that there’d be a lot of authors who’d be quite comfortable making the jump to work in the other.
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There is a romance novel (for women, I think) where the male lead is a time-travelling viking who is also a navy seal. The parallels are strong.
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I read a couple of my wife’s romance novels, out of interest. They featured explicit sex scene. My impressions were:
The sex scenes were stimulating enough, but the plots were basically filler (except for the insights into the female side of sexuality and what my wife is into). I would have been equally well serviced by Penthouse Forum or whatever as I was by those books, but without the time investment in ploughing through the romantic stuff to get the sexual stuff. The romantic stuff just didn’t hold my interest.
Men, I think, generally tend to compartmentalize sex and romance much more then women tend to in this particular realm. The thesis of the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts is that women require much more information to get aroused then men do.
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Perhaps the “Hero Receives Princess” subset of pulp, high fantasy, and related genre? It’s not a consistent element*, but usually “Receives Princess” means something of the form “there is a romantic subplot in addition to the usual crowning”. The world is wide, but complaints about these romantic subplot are usually of the form, “Good God this is badly written!”, as opposed to, “Someone put romance in my action!”
Plus all the novels about male novelists struggling to get over their crushing hipster boredom while they await the appearance of their spunky-yet-affectionate soulmate.
The library won’t call it “Men’s Romantic Fiction”, but they also don’t have a section for narrative porn.
* Sometimes the Hero Receives a No Princess; sometimes the Princess is just kind of part of the furniture (Tolkien**).
** Eowyn is an excellent if minor character. Arwen might as well be a bench.
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Notable stock characters in the Romance Subplot of Male Novels:
– The Protagonist. Generally pretty competent, but (1) does not appear physically strong (get ready for an endless parade of “wiry” guys with unkempt brown hair), (2) cannot talk to Girls. If the Protag is a young/middle teen he will be short. If there is time in the story, expect him to grow at least 4″, perhaps more. Depending on the genre of the main story, may not be competent from the get-go, but usually has some degree of talent or perhaps a special skill. May have a dual identity; if so he likely will compete with himself for The One to some degree.
– The One. Almost always among the top three women weighted by competence and more general importance to the story. Gets a capital “The”. The smartest girl the Protag knows, unless the Protag has a female party member whose trait is Smart. If the Protag does not have a dual identity, it is very likely that The One does. Even if he does, she may as well. Expect some degree of meditation on The One’s inner/outer or private/public self in some form or another regardless. Almost always both likes and dislikes the Protag from shortly after her introduction. If she is not a lead herself, the qualities she likes in Protag are his good qualities and those she dislikes are his bad qualities (which he will outgrow). If she is a lead (really if she grows at all, but especially if she’s a lead), part of her growth will be a change in her view of the Protag.
– The One with Large Boobs but a Shallow Personality. This is the girl the Protag has a boner for at the start of the story. If she is not combined with someone else for economy, she is entirely irrelevant to the plot. Her purpose is to show that The One is an interesting person, rather than simply a Sweet Ass.
– The One who is a Bro but Other People (possibly including the Protagonist) think she is The One. This girl will help the Protag hook up with The One, but only after causing someone to believe she and the Protag are romantically attached to one another. Ultimately friends with both the Protag and The One, but one or both of them might be mad at her first. Depending on story structure, there may be or have been at least one direction of romantic attraction between her and the Protag. In some stories, the same might also apply to The One in some fashion.
– The Impossible One. The hottest, smartest, strongest, most capable girl in existence. Her purpose is to show that The One is a Normal Achievable Romantic Target. Of course, sometimes the story is about Going Beyond the Impossible; in such a story this girl is more likely (but not guaranteed) to just be The One.
– The Evil One. Sexy, evil, dead. May be combined with The One with Large Boobs, depending on story structure. Not much more to say.
– The (Male) Bro. This is the Protag’s best (male) friend, and he has two forms: the Protag’s romantic equal (eg Ron Weasley) or a model of successful romantic attachment. As an equal, he can be expected to have a similar (but less explored) romantic plot of his own, generally taking place after the Protag’s (otherwise he shifts into the model role). As a model, has a romantic partner who is (a) not an initial party member and (b) not a plausible partner for the Protag but (b) generally is to the Bro as The One is to the Protag. The Bro’s Partner in the model case is generally off solving problems in parallel to the main cast; they might join The One’s party, if the parties are split. In the equal case, the Bro’s Partner is usually already a party member, often The Lady Bro.
– The Rival. A hot sexy jock who distracts The One with his awesome pecs, abs, buttocks, and/or calves, possibly in addition to his awesome wealth. Counterpart to The One with Large Boobs &c. Sometimes secretly evil, sometimes secretly The (future) Bro, sometimes just some schmuck.
– The First [stop on the romantic escalator]. If the Protag and The One are not each other’s First Whatever, it will be a Huge Deal and you will have to sit through all of it. Generally the First Whatever also does something else in the story, unless they only exist in flashback-land. The Protag’s First Whatever is usually either The Lady Bro or The Evil One. The One’s First Whatever is pretty much always The Rival, unless you are reading a Japanese work in which case see Japanese weirdness re: First Kiss.
Depending on how inclusive of LGBTEA* folk the story is, some of these may not have the gender or sexuality you would expect; one of the easiest ones to change is the Bro’s Partner, who is usually female but might be genderflipped to cement the non-rivalrous nature of the Protag’s relationship with the Bro. The Evil One, the Lady Bro, the Rival, and the First Whatever(s) can also genderflip pretty easily. A story with a male One is often A Story About Being Gay** and therefore not quite in the genre I’m talking about, but Worm is notable for having a completely gender-mirrored version of this subplot prior to Arc 16 or so.
* Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, et, al.
** Billed-as-romance-novel readers: am I correct in assuming that there is a strong distinction between A Story About Being a Lesbian and a romance novel for homoromantic women, and that the former is much more common than the latter?
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This was excellent.
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Isn’t there a pretty strong divide between men and women, where the former read mostly non-fiction and the latter fiction? That could explain a lot of the gap already.
Perhaps we need more books that mix non-fiction with romance, like War & Peace.
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War and Peace is more ‘fiction with a load of essays and history herown in’ than non-fiction with romance’.
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I didn’t intend to imply that non-fiction was dominant in the book, so either I expressed myself poorly, you misread me or both.
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> Of course, this makes perfect sense. People find that different things trigger their simulated NRE. Continuing the porn analogy: if you’re vanilla and the only kind of porn you were ever exposed to was Kink.com, you’d probably think porn was repulsive and mean and maybe you’d say you don’t like porn at all
I really think it’s not just about the type of romance but the fact that (many) are written as wish fulfillment for women. Of course that’s not going to be interesting to men.
The female protagonists are likable enough. They are often relatively plain (almost pathetic) so that any reader can identify with them. But that’s okay. I can like such characters. (Sometimes the protagonist seems likable enough except for, why the hell does she like that ass-hole!?).
The male love interests are the problem for me. Neither can I identify with them nor can I fancy them (me being male and heterosexual and all). Sometimes they don’t make any sense at all (like they have a bad-boy side and a sweet side to them in a way that is just inconsistent). To the extend that they are attractive in ways that I’m not they make me uncomfortable. Their weaknesses don’t make them more accessible at all. They are obviously just their because women like dark and troubled pasts or for the man to have a soft side or whatever. (Sometimes the man seems relate able enough except for, why the hell does he fancy that completely unremarkable, plain, nondescript protagonist? Though it can work the other way, too. Sawako (the girl) from kimi ni todoke is plain. But she is so sweet and unique (I think she has aspergers) that the very fact that Kazehaya (the guy) likes her makes him relatable to me).
The reverse (plain male protagonist and wish-fulfillment female love interest) wouldn’t be ideal, either. But I’d probably still like it better.
I don’t think romance stories for men need more action or need to be more sexy (I find the notion mildly insulting). They just need more relateable men.
I wonder to what extend I like yuri (lesbian romance manga) because there are no men (who have the above mentioned problems) or because much of it is written for men.
I think fanfics are excellent for romance because, if you like the source material, you already know you’ll like the characters.
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“The reverse (plain male protagonist and wish-fulfillment female love interest) wouldn’t be ideal, either. But I’d probably still like it better.”
This was /the formula/ in manga and anime aimed at older teen boys, and young men for, I think, about a decade from like 10 years ago to 20*.
The magical girlfriend genre, (which is not connected to the magical girl genres) was a romance comedy blend aimed at boys and men. though the only modern one I can think of is about a lesbian and …decidedly more gender neutral I would say. Though still for people that find girls romantically attractive.
And well stuff aimed at teens is stuff aimed at teens.
* I am terrible at dates so this is most likely wrong.
But I don’t really read non-pornographic manga anymore. So my info is all fading memories.
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I am a man (sort of) and I love romance! That is, I enjoy romance / romantic comedy films and romance books also (although I almost exclusively read speculative fiction, so not “mainstream” romance) or at least books that have strong romantic elements (e.g. Outlander is one of my favorite book series ever), on any point in the sexual explicitness spectrum. Btw, if anyone here has recommendations for good fantasy / scifi romance, I’d love to hear them!
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For one male data point, while I don’t read romance novels, I enjoy the heck out of the webcomics “Questionable Content” and “Leftover Soup”, which I would have a hard time describing as anything else than (very nerdy) romance. So there seems to be some market that is, in fact, being satisfied very adequately.
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xkcd puts romance right its tagline.
Classic webcomic Faans is fundamentally centered around relationships. Its writer also did “Rip and Teri,” where Rip is a retired spy, Teri is the schoolteacher he loves, and she gets drawn back into action with him.
Girl Genius seems to have a good number of male fans, and classic webcomic Narbonic turned out to be an epic love story.
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Romance novels for men just aren’t labeled as such. Fantasy novels are often primarily romance novels.
They just don’t parse as romance novels because much of the romance occurs through action.
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You are at least the second person here to say that.
Any example? I don’t know of such fantasy novels. I don’t know if that’s because I’m not that well read or because they didn’t parse as romance novels or because I disagree that they are primarily romance novels.
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I’m guessing I’m the first you’re thinking of? If so, I don’t quite agree with Peter Gerdes, though my point is similar. All I was trying to say is that genre fiction for men often has a strong romance component, which is usually “for men” in the way that traditional romance novels are “for women”. This is (somewhat) separable from male characters having or acquiring romantic attachments, and is also very distinct from the porn scenes, much like the 95% of the typical romance novel that is not porn.
Fantasy novels tend to be huge and sprawling, so they often have their feet in more than one of {action, drama, comedy, romance, political thriller, …}, moreso than a lot of other books. Most have prominent romance elements if there is a pair of compatible leads, though it’s relatively rare for that to be the most important plotline. I picked the following examples because the parts where they drift into romance are very obvious, but you can find bits of it to varying degrees all over the place. Some of them are more SF than fantasy (and one’s a crime thriller), but they’re all written by men writing primarily for men.
Kingkiller Chronicle, for example, is very prominently a romance, in addition to being a (multiple) self-insert fic, a novelized D&D game, a meditation on storytelling, a tragedy, a slice-of-life centered on college students, a story of courtly intrigue, and a fantastical war story.
Prince of Nothing has a very prominent romance between Esmenet and Achamain (which, like many things in that book, is ultimately sacrificed to the Glorious Plot).
Shadowmarch*, like Kingkiller Chronicle has a notable romance subplot (Briony and Ferras Vansen, plus arguably Barrick and Qinnitan, although that’s more “and they happen to be each other’s Fantasy Relationship Prize”).
Anathem** has a prominent romance early on, which goes away for a while and comes back near the end.
Dirty Streets of Heaven has a romance B-plot, the resolution of which drives the two sequels.
These can be distinguished from, say, Reamde, where some people hook up at the end after having chemistry, but there aren’t scenes dedicated to one or both characters trying to make a relationship happen, or to a character thinking about their romantic target.
1632 and the franchise it spawned are also notable for occasionally having romance plots and occasionally having miscellaneous hookups.
* I’m less sure for this one that Tad Williams was writing for a mostly-male audience. He got one, but it doesn’t read “for men” the way some of the others do.
** Likewise, Anathem doesn’t exude “for men” the way some of the other books here do, but the primary cast is almost exclusively male, and more importantly the romance subplot is clearly for men.
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The Dresden Files?
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A writer realizes that Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels are a romance series.
Most of Anne McCaffrey’s epic fantasy and scifi novels are very centered on relationships.
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IMHO, the key feature of a romance novel is that the romance is the primary conflict – the heroine isn’t sure whether her affections will be returned, or which suitor to choose, or whether her suitor is will prove sufficiently suitable.
Maybe it’s structural sexism, or maybe it’s innocently cultural/biological/whatever, but I just don’t see a lot of books targeted to cishet guys where the primary driver is “will the protagonist end up in the right relationship.”
There are movies that are popular with men where romance is the primary conflict – when Harry Met Sally, Nine and a Half Weeks, and Tequila Sunrise, to take three fairly different examples.
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Teen sex comedies tend to be unexpectedly romantic– our horny pack of lads do everything in their power to conceal their usual hobbies to trick the girl into thinking them attractive, but then discover that they didn’t just want the sex after all, the girl who casually shows interest in their hidden hobbies is the real catch. Grease, American Grafitti, Superbad, American Pie, Stand Up!, etc.
And it’s not a coincidence that Deadpool does a condensed version of this for its first act. Wade is just bowled over by Vanessa proving her Star Wars cred.
The likes of Zoolander and Dodgeball also seem to apply to the broader topic, but it’s interesting to note how these types of guy-rom-coms tend to focus on a central bromance than het romance.
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It probably says a lot that the default is that the guy can’t expect a woman to love him for who he is, while in female-centric romance, that is far less common and it’s more often the woman who is confused about what she is looking for in a relationship.
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I haven’t read many romance novels in the last decade or so, but I used to devour them by the crateload when I was still living at home with too much time on my hands and they were around.
Most of the female protagonists also didn’t expect a man to be able to love them for who they were, either. Of course, mostly for seemingly laughable reasons such as ‘My chin is too small and my eyes too big’ or ‘My boobs are hideous! They are so big my bathing suit can barely contain them!’ But those things aren’t any more laughable than the main male romance insecurities – a rational, self-possessed person wouldn’t let that hold them back, but they do speak to deep cultural and personal abysses of fear, usually with a backstory of bullying.
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I think that a lot of comedy films marketed towards men would be considered as romance films with th genders reversed and marketing changed a bit. But since there’s a stigma against men enjoying romance films they’re not marketed in that way. You can see this for the same film, where for example siver linings playbook and friends with benefits were marketed differently to different audiences
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Most men of my acquaintance don’t like Pride and Prejudice, which is pretty much the ur-romance novel; I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman who disliked it. (It’s in my top 5 novels, but I’m an atypical man.) There’s something going on here that’s more fundamental than the typical demographic targeting, tweak-a-few-things-and-market-it-to-the-other-gender a la pink razors. Men do get off on NRE, but perhaps we tend to experience it differently enough that a story about it won’t do the trick, or we don’t like it to be the focus of the story (your Deadpool example fits here). Another possibility is that even the appearance of rejection is so wounding to masculine vanity that we won’t enjoy it even with the knowledge things will turn out all right in the end.
I’m confident this has nothing to do with “performative masculinity”, because men aren’t sneaking around reading P&P on the sly — it’s genuinely boring to most of us. And I have to think that if a potential genre of male-marketed romance existed, someone would’ve cracked it by now.
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Hmm, interesting. On the other hand, Darcy’s perspective is barely present in P&P (I’d even say he’s mostly written as the prize, although he’s written well).
How about a scene like this — is it as boring as P&P, more, less?
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Reblogged this on Eiri Brown.
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