P.S. I hate you. A rant on Romance.

I'll say it again. The fact that they are first physically attractive is not unrealistic. The fact that the person you find the most attractive is also the person that is perfect for you personality-wise is unrealistic. Not in every case, but it seems to happen alot and it gets monotonous.

 

Ah, now I get what you're saying. I think the main thing is that writers don't want to include multiple love interests if romance isn't the main point of the book, so they stick with one, and face it, we'd all rather date an attractive person.

 

I agree. That's one of the reasons I love the Hungry City Chronicles Quadrilogy.

(No, that was not plugging. )

 

Ah, apologies for misunderstanding. Although in personal experience I've found that the person I am with is the person that I find the most attractive physically and emotionally (otherwise why would I be with them?) I can see how some people might be with someone who isn't the most attractive to them for one reason or another.

 

Maybe that person is not actually the most attractive person. Maybe...

...the main character just presents them as the most attractive person because to them, they are. People have different tastes, so really the main character could think they were the hottest person in the room, but everyone else could think they were ugly for all we know.

 

Good point.

 

Sadly we do not live in an idealistic world where we value emotional connectivity over pure forms of attraction. By that I am not positing that this is the case always but merely that it's mostly the case. Shallow yes, but fact of life too and it sells more copies. But personally I avoid the romance genre altogether because I am sick of the Mary Sue-esque recycled plots.

 

But wouldn't that come after a emotional/spiritual connection and going through things together, not soon after meeting each other?

 

Not necessarily. People have different opinions about what makes a person physically attractive...a dark-haired scruffy guy might walk into a room full of people where one person prefers guys that look like him and everyone else in the room likes blonde, clean-cut guys. The one person preferring him while the others think he is just average looking doesn't have anything do with an emotional or spiritual connection between the two...it's just a matter of different tastes as to what makes a person physically attractive.

 

Ah, I see. I thought you were talking about when they fall in love that that person is the most beautiful thing in the world to them, and they wouldn't want to be with anyone else. 'my bad'.

 

Sadly, in a world where people like other people upon first sight, your statement tends to be true. Take a room full of the opposite gender. You automatically knock off the ones you don't want to talk to simply because of their looks. Afterward, you might kick yourself for doing so, but it's just the way we as a society work nowadays. We're all inwardly attracted to something, and zero in on that type, focusing on their looks to increase our desire to meet them, know them, have them.

But like other people have said, this isn't always the case. My ex-boyfriend was proof. When I first met him and back two years ago, I had no intention of dating him. I wasn't attracted to his looks, but I wanted to know him regardless. Overtime I grew to have feelings for him because of who he was, not what he looked like.

 

This thread is about Romance novels. Romance novels are basically porn. My mom had bookcases of them...I looked through many many novels. They are porn. If I am going to read a book and imagine...what they are doing...in my fantasy, I want them to be attractive people. Maybe I am shallow. I would rather see two attractive people doing it that two people with great personalities. Romance novels are about fantasy, not reality.

In books where Romance is a central theme, but not necessarily the whole point...it can be more realistic. The heroine can realize that the geek who follows her around like a lost puppy is her soul mate. I am cool with that.

In real life, physical attraction is an element of romance. I am not saying your partner has to look like a movie star, but there has to be something attractive. Otherwise, they go into the "friend" category or even the "Don't wanna talk to this person" category. Sure you can learn to find someone attractive just like you can learn that some hot person with a lousy personality loses attractive points for being a jerk.

In a romance novel, just give me the porn. That's really what I am reading it for.

 

Romance =/= erotica. Just saying.

 

Good point. It's just like in romance movies...how often do you see a romance, romantic comedy, anything of the sort, really, that doesn't star two beautiful people? Not often...

 

I don't agree with you. Romance novels aren't about porn, erotica books are about porn. Porn is about porn, you know, movie-wise. Romance novels are about people who find each other, fall in love, and in the end skip off into the distance happily ever after, or however it works for them. It's not about two good-looking people having hot, sweaty sex. It's about love and that concept in a more virgin-like form.

 

Romance and erotica are very different reads. And to say romance novels are porn, hmm.

I don't think The Notebook or A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks are porn or erotica. The Shopaholic series is not porn or erotica.

Go to Amazon and click on books, then romance. You will notice several types of romance you can click on, one of them being erotica.

My cups of tea are, contemporary, fantasy, futurist and ghost, romantic suspense, and vampires. All of them are subcategories of romance.

Erotica and porn are about the sex. However, romance is about the chase. It's about the developing relationship and the tension created between them. In some romances there is not even a sex scene. Some have one maybe two sex scenes and they are quick and downplayed. Some romances borderline erotica.

Nonetheless, I want good looking people in my romance novels.