Romance Novel Turn-Offs

[dangermousie]

When I was younger, I was volubly dismissive of anyone who read romance novels for anything but sex scenes. Now I am older and mellower and will willingly admit that I enjoy the frothy heavy-breathing world of those books sometimes. Still, there are certain things that are ridiculous - if a romance novel has them, I will likely laugh at them and never ever pick up the book again.

Here they are.

Pets are great and so are lovers but I fail to see the need to combine them both

I am referring to the new popularity for were-anythings. I believe that if heroine wants someone who drools, rolls around in mud, and has a potential for biting, she should get a dog. I really do not get the recent obsession with romance novel heroes which bark at the moon a few times a month. Leaving anything else aside, the shedding has got to be horrendous. I fail to see anything sexy in a man who is a leopard, a tiger, or a swan (indeed!) part of the time. If I want to see a wild animal, I will go to the zoo. I suppose this would be heaven for a furry, however.

The word 'mate' should never be used outside of a nature documentary

Self-evident. Usually used in novels where the heroine or hero is a were-something. Who can imagine anything sexier than your significant other referring to what you do in bed together in terms usually used on Discovery Channel? Also, anyone who can refer to their significant other as a 'mate' without laughing is probably someone I do not want to be around.

Devil is not an acceptable boy's name

Ahhhh, who doesn't want to name their delightful bundle of joy Devil or Satan or Sin or Prizefighter? OK, I kid about that last one (I hope) but I have certainly seen all the other ones in various romance novels as names of the macho macho heroes. JR Ward's entire series is a horrifying lesson in what atrocities one can perpetrate with a naming scheme if one has a crazed imagination and utter disregard for spelling (Rhevenge? Really?) Let's face it, unless part of hero's secret sorrow is that he is a child of devil worshippers or hippies with a sense of irony, he is NOT going to be named Lucifer. Just take it on faith. Especially in a period novel unless the parents want him in the neighborhood ducking pond while they get burned for being satan-worshippers. Which leads me directly to my next point.

Jessica is NOT a medieval name

When you think of names Jessica or Jason a lot of things come to mind. Medieval individuals are not one of those. Yet all these and more are names I have seen in novels set in 12th century or 15th century or what not. I don't care how fierce and manly your Saxon warrior lord hero is, he is not going to be named Dirk. Hrothgar or Abeordan, possibly, Dirk - no. If you hate the period-appropriate names so much, perhaps you should write in an era where names you like can at least plausibly be used. No, Eleanor of Acquitaine isn't going to have a court lady named Marissa. Your Victorian heroine will not be named Jennifer. Muriel and Ida may not roll off your tongue the same way, but trust me, at least they will not leave any reader of yours with any familiarity with any time period before 1960 rolling her eyes and laughing.

The Case of the Improbable Virgin

You all know the scenario - the heroine may be a widow, kidnapped by pirates, even a courtesan or a harem girl, but she has never been with anyone but a hero regardless. Good Lord must have intervened himself, otherwise I am not sure how that could ever occur. And even if she is not *gasp* a virgin, she must have been a victim of rape (for hero to heal her with his penis) or, at the most, never enjoyed it before with her previous boyfriend/husband. Just once I want a courtesan heroine who knows what she is doing in the sack.

Who doesn't want to die of influenza or smallpox?

I have a special loathing for time-travel novels in which modern heroine goes back in time and decides to stay there, abandoning all her modern family and friends, not to mention healthcare and lack of endemic violence, in order to live with a studly hunk. I want to take the silly twit and shake her, asking: "you do realize there are no antibiotics, you have few rights, you can die in childbirth, you can never travel much due to logistics, you new husband will be off on regular murdering and raping expeditions, and you and your new loved ones are subject to a high chance of violent death" whenever some modern day PhD ditches it all to shack up with a Viking.

Pirates, God's gentlest creatures

There are some professions where the author has to bend over backwards to be able to convince me that the hero should shack up with the heroine instead of being hanged - pirates, highwaymen. But usually she believes that having the man in question be sexy and have an open shirt is enough. Heroine, I hate to tell you, but unless you found the world's sole Quaker Pirate, he probably has enough STDs to fill up a hospital ward and is a repeat violent criminal and rapist. Enjoy.

Everything is better with a little rape

I don't particularly care if people have rape fantasies but it's a little hard to sell a rapist as a viable romantic prospect. Many an author seems to believe that if the guy is hot, it's not rape. Hate to break it to you, lady, but if she stuggles away and says no, it's rape even if the guy is an Adonis and she has the best orgasm of her life (that's another point - if one is being raped, I fail to see why the mere fact of the guy being hot would matter enough to make one aroused. It's one thing if it's a weird form of kinky play or the woman has some odd rape fetish tastes, but in novels it is never presented this way).

Medieval Russian Vegetarians FTW

Ah yes. Please make sure whichever characteristics you give your protagonists, they are at least vaguely consistent with the time period. Vegentarianism is, no doubt, a praiseworthy lifestyle, and there are a number of time-periods and cultures where you can have a vegetarian heroine. The court of Ivan the Terrible is not one of them. I remember laughing myself sick reading some romance novel where court lady at Ivan's court was a tender, fluffy-bunny vegetarian. Indeed. There was also a novel where a medieval heroine happily cooked potatoes and tomatoes for her kin. She also had a dowry of 50,000 pounds which was probably the entire annual budget of the Crown at the time. Just a teeny bit of research won't kill you, I promise.

There are other people living in England beside Earls

If the romance novels are any indication, 18th-19th century England was filled shoulder-to-shoulder with hot young noblemen, so much so that if you added even one more, England would get so crowded some of them would start falling off into the sea for lack of space. There can't be that many of them! What's wrong about having an untitled hero? Or even *gasp* a merchant or a lawyer? Or, and I know this is shocking, a working-class one? The horrors, the horrors, I know. But it might be fun.

What are your pet peeves?

Comments

[algelic.livejournal.com]

LOL! Your whole post made me laugh so hard! You really nailed it!


Let the reader make his/her own judgement

In romance novels in particular, the authors seem to think we need to know EXACTLY how awesome the hero is. Exaggerated example: "His 6-pack, glistening with sweat, shines in the sun. He is the most handsome man in the land, with gorgeous women flocking him. He has a gentle soul, hidden underneath all that muscle". If that wasn't enough, they often make other characters (the mother, the sister, the servant) sing praises about him. JESUS, PEOPLE! Can't you just give a simple objective description and let us judge him on his actions (then again, many of them are rapists)?

There is no such thing as strong women

Either the heroine is weak and has self-confidence issues right from the start... or she's a strong woman at first and then loses all will-power when she meets the hero. Her successful career? Not anymore, since the hero demands your whole life. Her house, money, 21st-century life? It doesn't matter, all can be abandoned in a second! And the family? Strangely heroines either don't have families or all their family members are cruel to them.

The world is full of hot men... and Average Janes

Most of the romance novels I tried make the heroine an average Jane, without any special abilities or ambitions, while the hero (and his friends!) are all hot men, with beautiful white teeth (despite cleaning them with chalk, a century ago), tall (despite people being short back then from poor diets) and wonderful hair (even though some novels are set 3 centuries ago and no one remembers to wear wigs).

These were the first things I could think of. Will think of more.

[elvensapphire.livejournal.com]

"His 6-pack, glistening with sweat, shines in the sun. He is the most handsome man in the land, with gorgeous women flocking him. He has a gentle soul, hidden underneath all that muscle" LMAO that sounds like it could be a passage from Twilight. Ah, SMeyer, hitting every bad romance novel cliche possible using mediocre writing and making millions off of it. O_o

[algelic.livejournal.com]

So true! I like to dare people (who like it) to read it out loud. NOW TELL ME HOW POETIC THAT SOUNDS! XD

[elvensapphire.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine once told me to listen to part of the audio book for LOLZ, and it's pretty hysterical. And I also enjoy the statistics list of how many times SMeyer used the words "dazzle" "sparkling" "topaz", and so forth. (The first time I saw it all laid out, it was staggering. Like OMGWTFBBQ staggering. Write something that gets progressively awful and become a multi-millionaire!) Although, I think the movies do a good version of highlighting how truly ridiculous some of the dialogue is. I don't think I've ever seen two actors more uncomfortably (and/or) woodenly reading "I love you" lines than Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. *facepalm* xD

[jamieguo48.livejournal.com]

Umm, I just thought they were bad actors and wood was their native language. I liked Twilight, thought the heroine was somewhat atypical. But whatever she had was lost in the next books, as they got more and more idiotic.

For my part, I've thought about the current vampire/werewolf craze in books. Not to mention, fey, selkie, etc. I think the whole thing buys into a lot of females with the idea of the committed (er, mated) male who forms an unbreakable bond with one person. The werewolf is monogamous, strong, etc. I would imagine a lot of women wish they had some guy like that.

[elvensapphire.livejournal.com]

whatever she had was lost in the next books, as they got more and more idiotic. *nods* I wish she had just left it at Twilight, which, I have to admit, I actually loved when I first read it (what was that, three years ago?). And I really identified with Bella and her various character traits, insecurities, (even her birthday, lol), etc. Then Meyer wrote the rest of the series and they became so awful that I have a distaste for all of it. :\

And that's a really good point about all the supernaturally-themed books out there - the men are usually protective and very devoted, their love is pure and unwavering despite their 'condition,' and so on. There's also the concept of fixing someone, in a way - ie: loving him despite he's a monster and therefore making him 'better.' Those are generally pretty powerful ideas for most women, even if they can only ever be fantasy.

[astrothsknot.livejournal.com]

I like to find passages of books or rants, then get my PC to read them in Narrator.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

"His 6-pack, glistening with sweat, shines in the sun. He is the most handsome man in the land, with gorgeous women flocking him. He has a gentle soul, hidden underneath all that muscle". If that wasn't enough, they often make other characters (the mother, the sister, the servant) sing praises about him. JESUS, PEOPLE! Can't you just give a simple objective description and let us judge him on his actions (then again, many of them are rapists)?


I laughed so hard at this, I needed to pause for a drink of water.

[elvensapphire.livejournal.com]

With Jessica (speaking as someone having the ubiquitous name - my mom always says, "No one knew the name would be that popular when I gave it to you!" sigh. Although her second choice was Arielle. Three years pre-dating The Little Mermaid's Ariel, I'm still glad I didn't have to deal with people making "Part of Your World" references to me my whole life, but I digress) - a lot of people think Jessica is okay as a medieval name because of Shakespeare's use of it in The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare's Jessica is the oldest usage (at least ever written down) of the name, and it's generally agreed that he took it from the Hebrew Iskah (or its variants Yiskah, Yivka, etc), being that Shylock and Jessica are Jewish in the play. The Merchant of Venice was written in the late 1590s as far as I recall, and is set in an earlier period of Venetian history, so somehow people extrapolate from this that it was a name in common circulation at the time. It wasn't, which made her character unique in Shakespeare's day, but who needs accuracy? :P /nerd

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Awesome info, thanks!

[elvensapphire.livejournal.com]

Anytime my pointlessly geeky knowledge can be useful, I'm happy to share it! :D

btw, I basically agree with all the points you made (especially the rape one - because that's something that really bothers me in any context, I don't see how it could ever be attractive). And then there's the creepy borderline bestiality part of the were-stories. Um. There's a reason why werewolves always call it a curse. It's not cute. Although, the idea of a were-swan is absolutely HILARIOUS.

As for crazy names like Devil...people in real life are naming their sons Castiel. *brandishes Cas icon* I <3 him, but NO. Some celebrity recently named their kid Pilot Inspektor (yes, with a "k." I can't remember who it was, but I kid you not). Just...what. Don't get it. Authors saddling their fictional characters with that level of weird is bad enough. O_o

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

There is a were-swan in some really stupid story - I blotted the name out :)

There is a celebrity who named his kid Moon Unit.

[elvensapphire.livejournal.com]

sigh. Society worries me.

[algelic.livejournal.com]

Continuing...


Foreign accents are so sexy... whatever they're saying

This one REALLY annoys me. I've seen several examples of this: the hero is charming the heroine by speaking in French or Spanish or whatever, and even though that idiot woman doesn't understand a word, she think it's SO SEXY to hear him. Seriously... he could be saying you're fat, ugly, an easy conquest and smile as he speaks it! If you don't speak the language you're just looking like an idiot. There's also the case where the hero comes from 15th century Scotland (for example) an behaves like a Neanderthal, but it's OKAY because his accent is SEXY. -__-


Clothes, sports cars and a penthouse make the man...

Where are the average joes? It's either a castle in the 16th century or a penthouse in the 21st century. I particularly hate it when 99% of romance heroes drive sports cars (or something expensive). So cliche! The cherry on top is when the author actually bores us describing the brands of his clothes OR THE PRICE OF THEM! Dear author, I don't care about the price of anything the hero owns. It won't impress me!

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

How about Goodwill Hawaiian shirt and a wheelchair?

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I come from a family with 'foreign' accents so nope, nothing sexy about it. Accent is an accent is an accent :)

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Rhevenge? I can't tell if that's a trailer park or Section 8 housing kind of name.

"Jessica is NOT a medieval name"

It was used in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice," but that was a little later than the medieval period and said character was of the Judaic persuasion. Not too many Jewish girls in Merry Olde Romance Novels.

Names usually make me LOL at historical romances because they seldom are authentic for that era, whether they are Celtic warriors named Jayden or Civil War-era Southern Belles named Savannah or French medieval babes named Belinda.

I also completely agree with you on the many other anachronisms and inaccuracies in these novels. In one book that I read several years ago, a Civil War-era Southern Belle goes off to have loads of illicit sex with her studly Union soldier paramour. First off, no self-respecting Southern Belle would be caught dead with a no-good invading Yankee and if she did, it was so she could get some food from him or something. And the idea of wild bonking without the slightest concern about pregnancy in a time 100 years before the Pill? Only if you're a prostitute with some tricks of the trade knowledge. The Belle in this book did get pregnant eventually but it was right about the time the hunky Union soldier proposed marriage. Whew! Good thing too nobody in Mississippi circa 1865 would have had a problem with a local girl marrying an occupying Yankee.

"Pirates, God's gentlest creatures"

I just love too how real life dirty scumbags like Vikings or pirates are presented as romantic and hygenic heroes with flowing mullets, clean and perfect teeth, and dreamy pecs. The guys in the Capital One ads are closer to reality. The pirate king or Viking warrior is always a pillager with a heart of gold, who either goes straight for the heroine or you discover he's only into pillaging "bad" people. Uh huh.

"Who doesn't want to die of influenza or smallpox?"

This is what drove me crazy about that Meg Ryan movie from a few years ago, where she went off into the 19th century to stay with Hugh Jackman. I know the modern world of dating is dreary and horrible in many ways, but I'm not entirely sure I could live without t.v., movies, air conditioning, the internet, feminine hygiene products, the right to vote, refrigeration, cars, telephones, or electricity either. You only got the latter three at the end of the 19th century if you had money. I would also prefer not to live in a time when you had a pretty good chance of dying from tuberculosis.

The rape meme comes up a lot in fan fiction, as you know. *Sighs in annoyance.* Maybe some women out there have such low self-esteem they figure the only way they'll ever have sex with a hot guy is if he forces himself on her :/.

If there's one pet peeve you didn't cover, it's the Native American Stud trope. Apparently Chief Bulging Pecs can only find love and true happiness with a white maiden, who of course has a name like Briannah and is equipped a hymen tighter than buffalo hide. Bonus points if Chief abducts the fair maiden, getting into the rape/forced sex territory. In a business obsessed with political correctness, I'm really surprised nobody worries about offending American Indians with these stories.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I never red about the Native American ones (outside of that scandal with th plagistrist author whose name excapes me), LOLOLOL they sound awful. Also, I am surprised authors can get away with something so horribly non-p.c.

Re: Meg Ryan movie. Ihated that movie so much! She went back to the time you can die from the flu and can't vote! To hook up with her old bf's ancestor which means her old bf was in an incestuous relationship with her.

Ugh.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Assuming Meg and Hugh live happily ever after, she turns out to be her ex-bf's ancestor! Gr-ooooss!

[algelic.livejournal.com]

What movie are you talking about? O_O

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

From my 2007 50 book list:

Tycoon Warrior by Sheri Whitefeather. An object lesson in how NOT to write interracial romance. I don't think there is one Native American--or Texan--cliche she didn't hit with this. The characters were hot. The plotting was pretty decent. The execution sucked.

She claims to BE Native American, but it was so very bad, I kept reading to see how bad it was going to get.

OTOH, I can offer a Cherokee truck driver with a big heart and a soft spot for strays, four-legged or two-legged. His mom's a government functionary. His dad works for an ad firm. They're Episcopalian and a little embarassed by their blue collar son.

[hollyxu.livejournal.com]

I've only read Georgette Heyer's novels, so my pet peeve character traits are somewhat limited. Let us not speak of Twilight. (We're not going there. No!)

- Weaksauce females
- Patronizing men (usually goes hand in hand with the first one)
- Rape! ... as a meet-cute device.
- Horse analogies in general, hellions in particular.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of horse analogies, I am always amused at the ridiculousness.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

As a writer of romance, let me weigh in here.

I write werewolves. Gay Christmas werewolves to be precise. One is an architect, one is an English prof. And it's dealing with families, and coping with Change and everything else like new lovers do. Oh and not popping the waterbed with your claws.

I have two pirate novels coming out next month. One has a shiny warning from my publisher because my guys are pretty brutal. One doesn't kill unless he has to (no profit that way. Leave 'em alive and you can rob them again), but when he has to, he does and in horrible ways. In the other, again, brutal and harsh when he has to be, as in gutting someone and tossing them off the airship, with intestines trailing upward like revolting party streamers...
(okay, I write horror too)

The Orthodox calendar included over 200 fast days (days when no meat could be eaten). They liked to substitute mushrooms. Vegetarian Russian is pretty much the default.

My big peeves:
Idiot Plot/Big Misunderstanding Plot.
If your whole book depends on ending every conversation about 3 sentences before the words that would clear everything up can be said, you're making your characters carry the Idiot Ball.

Straight-Acting Gay Atheist Gym Bunny seeks same
All the guys are white and perfect. None of them are fay. None have messy religious entanglements. And they all blend into pasty cardboardness after a while.

This is why I write PTSD Iraq vets with scorched retinas and artifical knees who love legless pagan phone psychics. Or Drag Queens. Or Jewish lawyer with no social life who get ensnared by a VR simulator.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Some of my pet peeves are personal - i.e. werewolves, vampires etc. They are clearly very popular (tons of books with them out there) but very much not my thing.

I have no problem with pirates in erotica (especially if it's of more bdsm kind of stuff) but in a mainstream romance novel where one is portrayed as great husband material? Oh no.

I am Russian myself and no, no such thing as a historical vegetarian Russian. When you can't have meat, you have fish. If you can't have either, you put up with it, but you are certainly not going to be fluffy-bunny by choice.

I hate the Idiot Plot pet peeve. Too many books have them. Ugh.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Oh hell no to fluffy-bunnyism.
But, as I understand it, meat was the provenance of the upper classes, throughout the world. Peasants ate what they grew. They couldn't hunt (in medieval Europe, I'm fuzzier on Russia) because the lord owned all the game. Livestock was mainly too valuable to be eaten except on very special occasions.

Pease porridge hot
Pease porridge cold
pease porridge in the pot, nine days old
was the staple diet up into about the 18th/19th century. The pot was kept cooking and whetever there was got dumped in.

Now your upper classes are another story. (I own several medieval cookbook reproductions) Meat, meat, bread and more meat, some fruit and meat. Fruited meat.
Swans and Narwhals, Goose and beef and pork and lark pie and rabbit pie with prunes and the bones still in.

Actually, mine are romances, but they are same-sex romances. And they aren't moon and June gushy romances. They're the kind where you bond over cleaning sword cuts and surviving sea/air battles, and you always know that either could die at any time.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

The heroine was super upper class, married to BFF of Ivan the Terrible so yes, she'd eat meat diet with meat dessert :) But instead she was literally going "I can't eat this rabbit stew because it's too cruel they are so pretty." Ugh. I remember very little about the book (I think it was a reincarnation story?) except for this.

[main-hoon-emily.livejournal.com]

I tend to be more forgiving of romance novels because they're not setting out to be accurate. It's all about the fantasy. Real-life details like disease, lack of modern technology...that just gets in the way! :-P

I share your dislike of the whole were-genre, though. Ugh, and the names! I could never read a J R Ward book for the simple fact that her character names are so. Stupid.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I keep wondering how many drugs JR Ward has to be on to come up with those names.

[algelic.livejournal.com]

This has been fun! Let's keep badmouthing bad romance novels! :D Next step: quotes!

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I try to erase them from memory :)

[thelana.livejournal.com]

Who doesn't want to die of influenza or smallpox?

I have a special loathing for time-travel novels in which modern heroine goes back in time and decides to stay there, abandoning all her modern family and friends, not to mention healthcare and lack of endemic violence, in order to live with a studly hunk. I want to take the silly twit and shake her, asking: "you do realize there are no antibiotics, you have few rights, you can die in childbirth, you can never travel much due to logistics, you new husband will be off on regular murdering and raping expeditions, and you and your new loved ones are subject to a high chance of violent death" whenever some modern day PhD ditches it all to shack up with a Viking.

Funny that you should mention it. Because there actually is one book I rather liked that had the heroine going back in time and staying there... Except the twist was that the heroine herself wasn't a modern woman but a 1700s woman going back to the 1400s. Admittedly she got over the whole supernatural aspect relatively quickly, but I had much less issue with her deciding to stay and the very, very, very least the book was thus thankfully free of any quirky, dated pop culture references.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

As for pet peeves, I'm not sure if I have too many except the surprising virgin and the whole women = always inexperienced and man = always a ho thing.

I did read a lot of very sex-light romance novels when I was very young in high school (where "they kissed" was probably as far as it would go) and I got a kick out of it how in every single book the heroine broke her ankle so the hero would have to carry her somewhere. It just cracked me up that it always, always had to be an ankle.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I just finished a romance book in which buff virile medieval hero was a virgin - that was kinda a shock :)

[thelana.livejournal.com]

It's definitely one thing I loved about Bollywood movies that a lot of them are/were equal opportunity when it comes to virginity.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

This I could see more - though still...hmmm

[december-clouds.livejournal.com]

Just once I want a courtesan heroine who knows what she is doing in the sack.

I always see the OPPOSITE of this in every novel I read. A girl is not very sexually active and hasn't had much experience, but surprise! She is great in the sack and automatically knows what she's doing with no problems whatsoever. :s

I think I now need to read some Victorian novels.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes, but she's had no experience before the hero who teaches her everything :)

[gurlygirl10.livejournal.com]

I hate hate hate when the hero cheats, also indepth details of hero sleeping with another woman, geez I really don't want to hear about it.

I hate when authors base their books around pure sex and say that its love, there is no falling in love process- its just infatuation

Also hate when hero doesn't love heroine enough, doesn't do whats best for her, or even think of her first- who do these authors think they are catering to?

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes yes yes yes

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I swear, I must be the only person ever who doesn't pay attention to the sex scenes half the time.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I used to read romance books solely for them - that and Judith Krantz and a friend who was more worldly-wise and liked to talk are how I learned about how babies are made - I went to school in the Bible Belt so no sex ed for me :)