The Notable Lack of Romance in my Stories

This is something I've been thinking about for some time, but I was inspired to write a post about it after reading one of the blogs I regularly check in on (regarding society and its expectations of people).  Even media is big on reinforcing many kinds of things.  If I ever get my work attended-to in any professional or famous way, I have a feeling that *my* media will be different.

Here's why:

I suck at writing romance and thus avoid it.

The Static-Lands experimental stories on this blog are a good example.  I write all kinds of relationships, opressor / opressed, parent / child, friend / friend, mentor / student, peacenick / warrior, artist / zombies...  yet I haven't gotten into the lovey-dovey romantic pairs stuff.  I have an idea for a story where I might do that in a non-tradtional way, but I'm holding off on writing it because it's one of those stories I'm not sure I'll do right and I'm not sure I'm "allowed" to do given my position in life. I feel like I need to ask people permission to write it but am afraid to even ask.

Another example of my lack of romance writing: my novel-length works that I do not publish in entirety (as yet) online. 

Okay, so I have one novel where the protagonist and the friend he made get together at the end (though she is a werewolf...) - but, yeah that happened kind of organically in a story that's an adventure-tale and not a "romance." Still, that one doesn't count. 

My other novels?  Let's see... I have a novel where one of the major themes is "If you find just *one* person whom you can trust and give your heart to, you're lucky." - The catch?  The protagonists who trust and love each other are a woman and a gryphon and it's not romantic. They have an adoptive mother-son relationship that's cultiavated throughout the novel.  (In other words, if any fan ever makes porn of them, I'll go "Sigh, fandom," but also privately twitch. A lot).

My most recent completed novel stars a teenage girl and a teenage boy who go on an amazing journey together.  They are best friends (and if fandom pairs them together, I won't twitch) - but I will gleeflly point out that it's not canon.  In the epilogue of the story (which shows them growing up and growing old), the male protagonist falls in love with another girl and they get married while my female protagonist never quite settles down and enjoys the (non-sexual) companionship of her spiritual guardian.  The two protagonists do remain best friends to the end of their days, though.  One of the things I conciously wanted to do with this story is to elevate the idea of close friendship. I honestly thought of doing the predictable thing with this novel and pairing the two, but decided against it when the writing told me that they were better off as friends.  The characters just presented themselves that way to me.

One thing I've learned about fiction writing is that the writer never has full control over the work.  The characters and their world will tell me what to do after a point.

This lack of romance thing even crosses over into my fan fiction (and anyone who's ever been into reading or writing it knows that it's romance / pairings central).  Even when one's tastes gravitate away from the porn-fics, pairings and scmoophy-romance are served up hot and in abudnance.  Also, Sturgeon's Law.  I'm a gen-ficcer and I *like to think* that my fan fictions are in the "other 10%" at least most of the time.   I feel like I'm one of the few fan fiction writers (for any fandom) who doesn't do a lot of romance.  I like to do adventure-tales and philosophical-introspective stuff, oh, and horror. 

When one of my fan fictions ends with a major-character pairing, it usually took a long road to get there in a story that's mostly about an adventure or some worldbuilding fill-in-stuff-the-canon-world-makes-you-wonder-about stuff.  One of my recent long fan fictions ending with a pairing I don't even like a great deal just because that's the way the fic went - the organic writing.   A few of my fanfictions are attempts at romance from the get-go, but they usually wind up being about something else or have some other kind of mood to them.  One of my pairings/romance stories wound up being about the constructed politics of another world  Another of them was a tragedy about one lover trying to get the ghost of her beloved to stop lingering around and go to the afterlife. 

In other words, if you want me to write anything for you, please, for the love of puppies don't ask me to write a romantic-comedy. 






 

Heresy!

It's a silly day, so I might as well post a silly topic - even though this is an actual rant, not a joke, it's just on a goofy topic.  Oh, and it snowed a little in my area today. Snow in April. What happened to my Spring, dagnabbit?!

In hanging out on the Zelda Dungeon forum, I was confronted once again with a particular fandom-controversey among fans of the Legend of Zelda videogame series. And I realized once again that, quite some time ago, I commited a huge "sin" in this fandom!  

Unless you want a huge argument, never, ever bring up the topic "Link and guns" on a Zelda forum. It's almost as bad as saying that "Ocarina of Time" is *not* your favorite game of the series.  No, actually it's worse. People seem to accept that I like "Twilight Princess" for my own reasons, but the idea of a future Zelda game in which Link (protagonist, player-character) handles any form of firearm?  Hoo, boy....

But my best-reviewed, most acclaimed fan fiction, a fan fiction I co-wrote with a friend, a fan fiction that's garnered so much attention that it's been featured as a Fanfic Reccommendation on the illustrious TV Tropes wiki...

Involves Link being a gunslinger. 

Oh, noes!  It's here, if you want to read it:  The Great Desert  

It's The Legend of Zelda combined with sci-fi/Western.  Yes. My co-writer (Sailor Lilithchan) and I originally met and befriened each other in Trigun fandom (Trigun is an anime/manga that is a future-set Western) and we both loved Zelda... we started hashing ideas back and forth in AIM and thus the monster was born. It's not *entirely* a hash-apart thing... Link does still make use of swords, and of course, ultimate evil can only be banished via the Master Sword, as per game series tradition, and there's magic, and fairies, and undead things, and neighboring dimensions, and Hyrule's goddesses, though they show themselves be a bit... different... in this story than how most people think of them.  Still, it's an unusual setting, and despite the swordsmanship, in it... Link uses a gun.

I'm surprised I haven't been flamed out of the fandom for this fic, honestly.  It's such a contentious issue. I think my co-writer and I made it work, but still...

I would not object to a future Zelda game in which Link handles firearms - as long as they're the right kind. I'd hate to see some kind of gritty modern warfare reboot of Zelda, but a game that, like some of the games already in the series that feature pirates and steampunk adventure, I wouldn't mind seeing him with a flintlock pistol in addition to the sword, or, if a game was made that was like the fanfic Lilith and I created - a Hyrule that's "advanced" out of the Medieval Stasis but hasn't gotten futuristic or completely modern yet, perhaps taking a stint in a "Wild West for Hyrule" era - but keeping the magic elements, of course.   Or... a magic-powered psuedo-gun. 

He handles the energy guns in Super Smash Bros. just fine.  In fact, he does so hiliaroiusly in Melee' if you play the Young Link version on Tiny Melee mode. The trigger is bigger than he is!

Anyway, I just continue to find it amusing that I've commited one of the gravest sins in my fandom, yet it seems I've gotten away with it.  

Ride, Link, ride!