I avoid female romance novels the same reason why I avoid isekai/harem anime. But I want to specifically talk about my frustration with female YA romance books. Aside from them being cheesy and lacking in imagination/insight, it seems the audience for 90% of female "erotica" or romance novels is aimed at 14 year old girls or teenage girls with adult bodies. These stories are centered around good-for-nothing female protagonists who are swept by capable, domineering and (most importantly) good looking men. Much like an isekai protagonist with his busty, Tomboy gf.
I believe most YA romances are written by housewives who have nothing to do, and they tend to know nothing outside highschool social life. I have personally met women like this, they were popular in highschool and remain the same person for the rest of thier lives. They whine over trivial things and inter personal drama that should know how to deal with as an adult. They don't realize how much of thier success was based on thier looks. These "erotic" romance novels are aimed at this sort of infantile woman.
To some degree I understand why many young females gravitate towards BL. Many seek to escape this dynamic of the bland, passive female and the active, aggressive hot man. I also sincerely believe most yaoi fans are just really into pegging, or atleast they want to take an active role in the story (hence why BL leads both tend to be feminine). Females also gravitate towards gay shipping because "male characters are more appealing", and I completely agree.
Even when it comes to my writing, it seems female characters are still locked into specific roles of passivity if I'm writing for women. I didn't encounter such an issue writing femdom stories for men. I have, like many others (pic related) took BL as an inspiration to write appealing couples with a more domineering woman, for a matured female audience. It seems to be working in the case of fem Dom stories like S Flower, Sadistic beauty and Hands on exposition.
I think the older you get, the more realistic your expectations of the "other" become. I think Moxxie and Millie from Helluva Boss have the best couple dynamic.
We had this thread already, not even a week ago. >Moxxie and Millie At least you have better tastes than the last OP.
Christopher Baker
I wish they're were more romances aimed at dudes. I wrote my own since I couldn't find any that appealed to me.
Brody Stewart
Are you fat? if not, will you be my gf?
Your perspective is the feminine looking towards yaoi. How about the masculine looking towards yuri? In both cases the audience is primarily composed of the gender excluded from the actual content itself, and I think that is, as you said, part of searching for a more realistic dynamic that is absent in standard cross-gender romances. Part of the issue with cross-gender romances, the caricature nature of them, comes from, as you say, the ignorance of the author, but there is a part of that that is unavoidably ignorant. An author is either man or woman. (A side thought occurs to me here: are there any romances with each character written by a different person? Surely there are, but I am unaware of them). At the core, men and women are different. The differences are, in the grand scheme of things minor, but they exist. There is one person that goes out to hunt the deer. There is another that cooks it. This all springs from the basic facts of physical strength, if nothing else. And there is nothing wrong with this. It is beautiful in its own interlocking way, but when translated to fiction there is always some error introduced. The man becomes a rich animal. The woman becomes a simpering mess. In other words, the man becomes a caricature of a man, and the woman becomes a caricature of a woman. Now, take a fictional homosexual relationship. This extreme is tempered, made impossible by the fact that a relationship requires two people. They cannot be identical. This doesn't mean it has to be one taking the place of the man and the woman, but rather that they must gain some nuance, and in terms of personality this nuance masculine and feminine, since that is the most basic form we can describe people. In this way you can have, to duplicate the example of your image, the powerbottom, who is simultaneously masculine and feminine (for this is the realization: that while male or female exists, within them both are what we would term masculine or feminine, for lack of a better descriptor). Likewise the other is in the same way enhanced. cont
Carson Richardson
I never posted here a week ago. That's true. On observing male oriented romances like Dress up darling or Nagatoro, it seems women are getting too comfortable with writing romance. I haven't read a good romance title written by a woman in years and it's a shame. I cannot stand the "bland female/hot bad boy" dynamic. There's no feminist reason why these stories are bad. They're just terrible.
Luke Ortiz
Turning to yuri, this is the same dynamic. You have two women, who could be written with passivity, but because they are together it is inevitable that some aspect of action must be introduced. In an inversion of yaoi for girls (where distinctly male characters take on feminine qualities), yuri for boys introduces females, that while distinctly female characters take on masculine qualities. The appeal of this is its truth: the male must become feminine to truly connect with the female, while the female must become masculine to connect with the male. In the middle they meet and form a greater whole. This is something virtually impossible to do in life and in fiction, so, since fiction relies on the outside observer, an easy way to simulate this connection and superiority of two different individuals is by making them (in the view of culture, or biology, or whatever you wish to term it) identical and therefore being forced differentiate them, in the process creating a truer and more beautiful perspective.
Caleb Russell
Why are you even reading YA romance books?
Austin Morris
>I believe most YA romances are written by housewives who have nothing to do, and they tend to know nothing outside highschool social life. I have personally met women like this, they were popular in highschool and remain the same person for the rest of thier lives.
user, high school never truly ends. Just because the window dressing changes it doesn't mean that the social dynamics of high school ever truly disappear, stacies just become secretaries who are fucked by the guys who called you a faggot in school and average janes and joes become unremarkable paper pushers who are shat on now and then by the people above them in the hierarchy.
I think romance novels written for women are handicapped much more by how boring and one-note women's tastes are. There's very little real variance, it's all tall, handsome, rich, powerful and aggressive/dominant men deciding for some reason to be wrapped around the finger of some unremarkable self-insert. Men's tastes are infinitely, INFINITELY more varied both in terms of personality and appearance.
>romances aimed at dudes
Is there such a thing? Surely you're thinking of something a step above dating sims.
Ayden Johnson
I seem to remember reading The Time Travellers Wife which was very much a romance aimed at women but had a little more going for it. Obviously the male love interest is made to be appealing, but there's substance as well.
Jonathan Gonzalez
I remember the last thread. And the conclusion was that men want to conquer the world while women want to conquer men. If you're not worth conquering she won't even try and will actually hate you. That's what the fantasies are about, they're all women who are nothing special and yet conquer smart rich and handsome Chad dudes.
Xavier Green
Wrong. Women want to conquer both men and the world. But for most of history, conquering the world was an impossible feat for women. Modern YA stories rarely revolve around the badboy/blad female trope, it's just something specifically prominent in purely romance stories. And I don't think the Jordan Peterson-y take of women wishing to conquer men is correct. He's lying about the feminine heroes journey but that's another thread.
Women just want to feminize men. Hence the reason why Kpop, pretty boys & maid boys are very attractive to young women, and men who can cook are attractive precisely because they're good at a feminine task. Theres a reason why women don't chase after UFC players or Elon Musk. As pointed out, the male must become female to connect with the opposite sex. Most men are stuck being little boys not because of the lack of father figures, but thier rejection of the feminine.
I'd say it's the opposite is true, it is men who truly want to conquer women and they project that similar desire onto us. Paliga pointed out that men are naturally outcasts from socitey hence are unable to understand the emotions of other people. They realize the only way they can get the attention of a single woman is by giving her shiny rocks or suppressing her autonomy.
You also make it sound like women make effective military generals.
They're never shown to be masculine either. They're generally given a softer image.
Michael Gomez
> Women seductively undresses in front of you > You start having a panic attack, fall on your ass, can't answer a simple yes or no question. I swear whoever write these moonrunes comics have never had a single romantic encounter in their entire life.
Aaron Rivera
Julia Child? And you're conflating professional/celebrity chefs with the act of cooking. For Pierre White or Gordan Ramsay, the cooking is secondary to their role in business or television. But when they do cook, it's a softer image as said. This isn't a bad thing. Actually, I would argue that it is part of the appeal, for both men and women.
Blake Kelly
>I swear whoever write these moonrunes comics have never had a single romantic encounter in their entire life. Like most Japanese.
Adrian Jenkins
It's pretty accurate to how I would react, at least. I'd probably run thinking she was trying to trick me or deceive me.
Nathan Anderson
>thinking she was trying to trick me or deceive me And you'd be right, women are nothing but tricks and deceptions
Charles Clark
Jesus Christ. You do not get to be in a private context with a woman who is attracted to you without realizing it somehow. The question of if you want to have sex with her would have been resolved before she started to undress. And if she saw you bumbling like an actual PTSD sufferer she'd get immediatly dried up and leave.
Easton Russell
Captain Obvious to the rescue!
Bentley Cox
A year ago, there was some SJW stuff coming from Burger King, I think, about how there are not enough female head chefs. I think they even said, "Women belong in the kitchen." They were mocked for being woke, getting out of their lane, and the quote. The reason I bring this up is that, in fine dining, there are few female chefs. Gordon Ramsey is a better representative of a career chef than Julia Child. The reason for this, OPPRESSION!
Noah Sanchez
Damn you for making me think about where chefs sit in the dominance hierarchy. While celebrity chefs are portrayed as classic authority figures, I do think that chefs are feminised by virtue of having a job that's based in a need to serve others. I can imagine that many people find the reaction they receive when they tell someone they're a chef to be slightly patronising. For evidence I would point you to the way customers treat Gordon on television. They definitely don't respect his authority, which in any other masculine profession would be absolute, as much as the chefs under him in the kitchen. youtube.com/watch?v=hG6U9WAdppo
Elijah Sanchez
>career chef That's my point. Fred Astaire existing does not make tap dancing a masculine activity.
Cameron Hernandez
Years ago girls would dare each other to hug me and pretend to ask me out for a laugh. Now I'm paranoid any girl who is outwardly nice to me is playing a trick, and she's just trying to get me to put my guard down so she can humiliate me.
Carson Davis
>They don't realize how much of thier success was based on thier looks. That's literally all women in all functional romantic relationships. If you're a gay faggot who dates women for all the masculine qualities like diligence, intellect, or male-centered hobbies (e.g. video games) then all you're gonna get are mentally broken attention whores with BPD. Don't repeat my mistakes. A woman WANTS a man to get hard just by looking at her. This applies to every single woman, hot and ugly.
Ayden Butler
>I wrote my own based
Jeremiah Jenkins
>having a job that's based in a need to serve others
I know you mean need to serve as in working a service job, but hardly anyone but the handful of people at the peak are in a position where they are an absolute authority. The only exceptions that come to mind are teachers and doctors.
Caleb Taylor
Of course, but hierarchy is about perception rather than reality. Authority, absolute or otherwise, is essential for female attraction and male respect.
Ryder Sanchez
Women don't want to conquer the world otherwise they would start more businesses. Starting a business is the best way to conquer the world.
Females are passive because... big surprise... they are. And they understand this on an instinctual level. You just sound like a sexual deviant.
Asher Sanders
Just because they are passive doesn't mean they have no agency. Because they do
Isaac Cruz
Womens' YA is hyperbolic reality. They are passive by nature, and men more active intellectually and in their careers. IRL the giga-chad triple digit income zero-ick husbandos hardly exist, but for the most part, successful relationships involve a man that makes more money, is assertive, and is generally speaking more interesting than their wife.
Women that are ambitious, interesting/intellectual, and financially stronger tend to fail with relationships. I'm sure they live passionate flings and brief romances, but usually little sticks when they outperform most of their partners. They turn into the cool wine aunts (not the gross washed up types), and in pre-industrial times probably ran off into the woods and studied witch craft in femme-communes.
Women make great cooks, men excellent chefs. There are people with brain-lock that can't conceive the distinction and it aches my soul to imagine being trapped intellectually like that.
David Russell
>Because they do And the world will burn because we allow them to exercise it. It's also why women fantasise about the times in which they were raped by reavers and married off to cold, dark and handsome men, they know things were better then.
Juan Kelly
You write like a woman or a transsexual. Are you either one of those two?
Levi Gutierrez
Anons are missing the point, OP's dissatisfaction with female romance novels is more of an issue due to the times than an issue with the men vs women dynamic.
Women are writing romance novels with their idea of strong women and "good" men. Which when written by women is pure fiction. Men are writing romance novels with their idea of honorable men and modest women, which is also pure fiction.
And when a novel of any sort that claims to be romance that is pure fiction is just too fake to be enjoyed as an actual romance novel. Hence why most romance novels end up having to resort to lewd writing.
A good romance novel would be realistic, with two relatively naive characters in love. The problem is no one is naive anymore due to the internet. We all know women are generally trash and confuse lust for love. While men are so cynical of women that they become these unloving men who give up on love despite knowing what it is, for the sake of their lust.
That crazy thing is some of these hentais are starting to have better romance stories than romance stories themselves. Where the female is overbearing outside of sex but submissive during, and the male is submissive outside of sex but takes the lead during.
This is the main problem with novels from women, they rush into sex in a loveless way without any build up. Original/old romantic novels use to be how there was some sort of problem or journey of love before it led to lust/sex.
Hudson Long
Even back then it was fake love. Women were forced. They didn't want to
Samuel Gomez
No. The only thing I'm dilating is my tone to write the way Milo did in 2015.
Jason Taylor
>and in pre-industrial times probably ran off into the woods and studied witch craft in femme-communes Did I accidentally type in tumblr, what's going on?
Gabriel Cruz
Nobody cares bitch, suck my nuts
Oliver Bell
>I think Moxxie and Millie from Helluva Boss have the best couple dynamic. Happy, loving couples are much more appealing than shows and movies seem to perpetuate. Wanting to watch shows where the main driving force in a relationship is drama is almost exclusively a juvenile experience because during puberty EVERYTHING is about drama. All the most beloved pop-culture relationships are happy ones- the most prominent, and oldest example being the Addams Family. Morticia and Gomez are the quintessential loving, happy couple.
Ian Ross
I'm neither ambitious nor intellectual but fuck I'd love to join a femme-commune in the woods.
Hunter Barnes
It's not necessarily fake love, as women simply don't know what love is. Women that get close to knowing what it is often tend to crave older times when they were sold or given in marriage. Women who were forced in the past were happier than woman now. There's a reason why many women still read romance novels with the cliche trope of getting forced into marriage or sex or relationship where the female main character realizes throughout the story her master/husband/captor loves her because he takes care of her and thus she acknowledges that she's in love usually at the very end of the story.
All the "bestsellers" women buy are about the woman getting dominated by a dark triad guy.
>I also sincerely believe most yaoi fans are just really into pegging, or atleast they want to take an active role in the story (hence why BL leads both tend to be feminine). Disagree. BL leads are generally the "uke" or the bottom in the relationship, and that is who the woman is self-inserting into.
William Fisher
I'm specifically disagreeing about the pegging part, by the way. The part about needing a male protagonist to give the female reader a more (vicarious) active role in the story is probably correct.
William Brooks
Its called men wanting to make money because men have to provide for themselves. Men also cannot marry rich women to channel thier funds to whatever ideology they want. On top of not being held back by child care, the end result for some of them is immortality. Women on the other hand take to arts, literature or even having a child to create a mark on the world.
Justin Mitchell
Hunger games, Divergent, Frozen and Sailor moon all have "dark triad" types. Yeah I'm totally not projecting my own incel desires and cherry picking very specific media popular with women.
Elijah Adams
YANASHITA, NOOOOO, RUN, SHE'S A MARRIED WOMAN AND A WHORE, DO NOT LET HER TOUCH YOUUUUUUUUUU
Anyone, especially women, who calls someone and incel because their narrative is exposed are just projecting their own insecurities of being an incel themselves.
Did hunger games have romance in it? Never watched it but women never mention it for romance, but only mention the "strong woman".
Wasn't divergent about eungenics and then a typical emotional roastie saves the day with her "strong women" words?
Never saw Frozen, but I thought that was a child's movie. I should have guessed it had dark triad introduction for this degenerate generation.
Brody Long
Hunger games and Divergent have prominent love triangle plots. Two men pinning for the same woman. It was a hit with young women.
Samuel Wood
male oriented romances are usually pure fanservice and ''loser/nerd mc with hot girl that teases them''. can you name one that doesn't have the things i named ? i'd genuinely like to watch/read it
Thomas Phillips
>Hunger games >doesn't have a 'dark triad' character Iirc, the last book features the main character fretting back and forth between the dark triad hunter guy and the sweet beta caretaker until it's outright confirmed that the dark triad guy is partially responsible for air-striking her sister. "I was undecided on the violent radical guy until he killed my closest family member" isn't quite the rebuttal of the 'incel' argument that you think it is.
Nolan Roberts
Komi Can't Communicate, but it falls into the other male romance trope of "hot girl who has something wrong with her that only our mc can fix" that a lot of VNs feature.
Elijah Perez
What does this mean? Because I definitely remember watching rom coms, video games and stories with male leads who have to choose between the sweet, childhood best friend, and the "bad for you but hot" types of girls.
I never watched/read Hunger Games, but going back to my original point, most stories women find "romantic" have a dark triad character as an interest. I feel that based off modern news articles, some women would still pick the "violent radical guy" even if he murdered her whole family.
This whole thing is silly. It's like constantly trying to get women to admit what they truly want, while women are constantly lying about what they want, and then when noticing and pointing out the patterns of what they truly want in their romance novels based of sales, it's still being denied by women.
OP says he avoids female romance novels in summary because they are "cheesy". He's not wrong in one sense.
I think the dark triad character trope is a big part of this, because that's where these female romance novels eventually lead.
>I think the older you get, the more realistic your expectations of the "other" become. OP seems to have a good head on his shoulders. It would be interesting to read a romance story about a post-wall roastie trying to find a partner that isn't an absolute simp.
Camden Russell
The Nisekoi series really drove this point home, as the male leads got forced to choose the "bad for you" girl, it's infuriating. There was no reason for it either, it was like the author let the readers vote, and a whole bunch of trolly women literally picked the worst girl. The whole ending falls apart because of it. Everyone I've talked to who is a well cultured man is in agreeance, the "sweet, childhood best friend" is always the BEST GIRL.
Men are not like women, we do not want to pick the dark triad girl. We want the light triad.
Aaron Russell
> men are not like women, they want the light triad When you read a female lead romance with a sweet, childhood best friend vs. The "dark triad", most of these stories end with the childhood best friend, as seen in Star Vs. The forces of Evil and Hunger games. When the option for a more kinder person awaits, it's always the best option.
Women aren't lying about what they want because women aren't a monolith. > some women Yes. Some. Just like how men simp over female serial killers, pedophiles and whores. "Some" women also prefer men without a spine. > I think the dark triad trope... It doesn't look like you're thinking
