The rise of nomance
Mar. 27th, 2007 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnyI referred to the ficlet I wrote this morning as 'unromantic' and I've had a bunch of people protesting that designation so I thought I'd clarify since, as is so very often the case with me, I didn't say quite exactly what I meant.
The word 'romance' is a problem for me. I associate it in my head with hearts, flowers, boxes of chocolates, all things which are to me the very antithesis of - well, what I would think of as romantic. Only not. Since I don't use that word. They're traditional, they're clichéd, they require absolutely no thought whatsoever and are therefore about as loving as being nice to someone only on Valentines Day.
I've mentioned before that my idea of the perfect valentines gift is a banana covered in biro'd poetry, but the truth of it is that it would be anything that was aimed specifically at me. Something that someone had taken time to think about rather than just throwing money at it as some sort of trade-off.
There are bands that write about my idea of love (romance); people like the Magnetic Fields, Badly Drawn Boy, the Weakerthans. What my mate would refer to as 'indie bedwetters'. Simplistic songs, references to talking all night, wearing each others' footwear, taping happy notes to heavy machinery.
The same thing applies to fic, see. When I read fics in which John and Rodney declare their undying love in front of the gate techs... well, I say 'read' but I should more accurately say 'come across' because at the first hint of it I'm clicking frantically at the back button. It doesn't work for them, it's not true to the characters (in my opinion), and it doesn't indicate any real thought that's been put into it. Fics about John spending hours at a time teaching Rodney to fire a gun, thwapping him around the back of the head and mocking him and never saying a single thing even remotely involved with feelings? That's way more like it. It's all about the context.
(Needless to say if you can write them declaring their undying love in front of the gate techs and make me believe it, you will have my everlasting respect and awe.)
So it's not so much the idea of romance I protest as the connotations I attach to the word.
Bitching, snarking, receding hairlines, practical jokes, getting old together with ceaseless mocking all the way, that's what I want from romance. (Only not.)
Thankfully, SG:A is absolutely full of it. :D
(ETA: this entry is not showing up on my f-list, so if I get no comments I choose to believe no one read it, rather than the fact that people are all facepalming at me and saying 'well duh'. :D?)
The word 'romance' is a problem for me. I associate it in my head with hearts, flowers, boxes of chocolates, all things which are to me the very antithesis of - well, what I would think of as romantic. Only not. Since I don't use that word. They're traditional, they're clichéd, they require absolutely no thought whatsoever and are therefore about as loving as being nice to someone only on Valentines Day.
I've mentioned before that my idea of the perfect valentines gift is a banana covered in biro'd poetry, but the truth of it is that it would be anything that was aimed specifically at me. Something that someone had taken time to think about rather than just throwing money at it as some sort of trade-off.
There are bands that write about my idea of love (romance); people like the Magnetic Fields, Badly Drawn Boy, the Weakerthans. What my mate would refer to as 'indie bedwetters'. Simplistic songs, references to talking all night, wearing each others' footwear, taping happy notes to heavy machinery.
The same thing applies to fic, see. When I read fics in which John and Rodney declare their undying love in front of the gate techs... well, I say 'read' but I should more accurately say 'come across' because at the first hint of it I'm clicking frantically at the back button. It doesn't work for them, it's not true to the characters (in my opinion), and it doesn't indicate any real thought that's been put into it. Fics about John spending hours at a time teaching Rodney to fire a gun, thwapping him around the back of the head and mocking him and never saying a single thing even remotely involved with feelings? That's way more like it. It's all about the context.
(Needless to say if you can write them declaring their undying love in front of the gate techs and make me believe it, you will have my everlasting respect and awe.)
So it's not so much the idea of romance I protest as the connotations I attach to the word.
Bitching, snarking, receding hairlines, practical jokes, getting old together with ceaseless mocking all the way, that's what I want from romance. (Only not.)
Thankfully, SG:A is absolutely full of it. :D
(ETA: this entry is not showing up on my f-list, so if I get no comments I choose to believe no one read it, rather than the fact that people are all facepalming at me and saying 'well duh'. :D?)
