I'm starting to figure this out.

[julian_griffith]

 If you take the world of romance as being like the entire world of fanfiction, then the sub-genres are the individual fandoms.

So there are paranormals with their subdivisions: vampire, werewolf, psychics, faeries, witches. And there are Westerns, both historical and contemporary. And police stuff, and military, and the ones about billionaires, and historicals of various periods... you get the idea. And of course they come in slash and het variations, as well as other stuff.

I have never had a whole lot of fandoms. I tend to stick to a few. And even in those, I don't often read widely, unless it's a tiny little fandom.

So it's not an actual failing that entire subgenres of romance hold no appeal for me.

They're just not my fandoms.

Comments

[laylah]

it does feel like it's about twenty years behind fandom

Wow, yes, this, in so many ways. Not just the dominance of het, but also the general...idk, willingness to take risks? I keep going back to writing fanfic because I can do more weird stuff there and have people get excited about it instead of having people go "we're just not sure there's a market for this."

I guess maybe if we keep at it, we'll get there eventually?

In the meantime, now I want a post-apocalyptic coffeeshop AU.

[ankaret]

Yes, the unwillingness to take risks! I know Julian's run into some problems with strict guidelines for novels with poly characters, for example.

It just seems so weird to me that the genre's open to books about vampires who fall in love with bunny shifters and aliens with nonstandard genitalia who land on the Planet of the Nose Fetishists and gritty books about motorcycle gangs, and yet when I was writing a steampunk romance I made sure that the heroine saw a portrait of the hero before she had a shouting match with the villain and told him where to put his offer of his protection, because otherwise I was afraid I'd cause genre whiplash in people who know that the first man onstage is the hero.

[laylah]

Hah! It's actually kind of encouraging to hear that you're running across aliens with nonstandard genitalia; I always worry that I'm going too far into weirdo not-human territory if I do that and sub it anywhere but Circlet.

But yeah, all the expectations about how romance happens and who's going to wind up together get stifling. My mom was trying to sell a book a few years ago about a woman who finds new love as her marriage is failing, and editors told her that she wouldn't be able to place it anywhere unless she rewrote it with the heroine already divorced. It didn't matter that the main character knew her husband was cheating on her; if she fell in love with someone else then she wouldn't be an acceptable romance heroine. SIGH.

[ankaret]

Cheryl Brooks' Cat Star: Slave. I really wanted to love it because I liked the Star Wars-goes-gonzo setting and the take-charge heroine, but I threw it at the wall when the hero threw a shitfit at the heroine for not being responsive enough to him when she was *nearly dying from a severe allergic reaction*. Also, the nose fetish orgy took place in a restaurant, which just made me think 'what about the people who wanted their meal without special sauce that evening?'

[laylah]

hah! yes. "If you REALLY loved me, you wouldn't let [anaphylactic shock/arterial bleeding/the deaths of your entire family] come between you and my penis affections!" What a terrible trope.

[recessional]

I think part of that is because the failure-mode of fandom is negligible ("oh noes, nobody commented"), where there's more investment from a publisher.

Not all of it, obviously, but I think it's a factor - art sans economic pressure is always more out there in little niche places all over the place (and in the weirdness) before the marketable world catches up.