Girl Talk Thursday - Who's Your Romance?

I went through a brief phase towards the end of high school when I could just not get enough of the romance novels. I don’t know how many I must have read but it’s not like they take that long to get through. In a good week I would easily get through several. I started covertly, sneaking them off of my mom’s shelf, but soon enough I was just reading them out there in the open. Not really sure what got me started and I’m even less sure of why I stopped.

I’ll still occasionally grab a romance off of my shelf or pick up a new one in the store but I have to be honest here, I can’t remember the last time I actually finished one. Maybe it’s an age thing or something but now I find the plots and frequently the characters to be boring, cliché, and sometimes even annoying. The last one I tried to read spent so much time telling me the heroine and hero were so “smart” and “intelligent” and “brilliant” all while they were running around acting like big idiots. I wasn’t convinced.

ANYWAY.

As a reader, I’ve definitely imagined myself as a character in the novels I’ve read. I think if I were to star in my own romance I would definitely want to be in one of the historical ones set in London. Beautiful dresses, elaborate parties, shenanigans unacceptable by society’s standards. There would be none of that damsel in distress nonsense, no contrived plots for me. I might be the debutante on the sidelines, a little too smart and bored to really take part. My leading man would possibly be tall, dark, and handsome (I’m allowed at least one cliché, right?) and would notice how awesome I was. There’d be some friction because we would be both be a little too disillusioned for our own goods but eventually it would work out. I guess it would end with babies?

OR.

If I go back to the sort of scenarios I used to imagine myself in before I even picked up a romance novel, I would definitely be the awesome heroine in the action/adventure plot. The female equivalent of Robin Hood, the good witch in the woods who made that amazing potion, maybe even captain of the pirate ship! I’ve noticed I’m not the first lady participating this week whose romance novel character fantasies involve some combination of swords, kicking ass, and pants.

Makes sense to me! Why should we have to be relegated to the role of dress wearing, bosom heaving, corset enclosed, helpless woman who needs a man to come to her rescue? F’ that! I will cut you just as soon as kiss you!

Not that I want my hero to be weak or even in need of saving himself. Ideally we’d be going up against the villain together, we’d need each other to succeed. We would both be strong, capable people who work better together than individually.

And we would have some great sex.

So I think my plot would go something like this. I’m a girl/princess/lady/whatever who lives in some sort of castle or village. I somehow stumble across this truly heinous plot by the evil villain and this sets off a string of events leading me out into the wide world on a quest to retrieve some object or save some other person. Along the way I’d meet and team up with my hero and maybe a couple of other supporting characters. We’d all distrust each other at first but over the course of adventures and various life saving we’d form a deep bond and eventually realize we were in love. The quest would continue, something crazy and epic would happen possibly involving various gods of different cultures, and in the end we would vanquish the villain together.

The love part wouldn’t be easy though. He would definitely be the dangerous type and the story would be fraught with sexual tension before any sort of consummation ever occurred. Maybe there wouldn’t even be any consummation! Unfulfilled desire is hot. There would definitely be lots of close whispering in corners, smoldering stares, that sort of thing.

So maybe we would have some great sex. Maybe not.

I think that more or less covers it. I love the quest idea. If I lived in another magical time period I would definitely go on a quest. I think that would cover more of my romance novel than the lovin does. Maybe that’s why I’m not such a fan of romance novels anymore. Love always has to be the center of the story and the character’s lives. In my real life I don’t really want that, my fantasy life isn’t much different.