If it wasn’t clear, these days I tend to mostly read and write reviews around books that are often placed in the ‘unconventional’ categories for romance. Regardless of whether romance is the focus or not I’ve often gotten tired of the same old things coming up with straight romances. Many of which are not only harmful ideals but downright insane. This is why I’ve never truly been one of those people who loves ‘chick-flicks’ or the romance book equivalent, despite really loving all the sappy romance-like non-sense.
This doesn’t mean I won’t read a series or a book because it has a straight romance in it. I recently read the entire current Imp series by Debra Dunbar and still enjoyed it despite it having many of these straight romance clichés or tropes in it. But that does mean I tend to roll my eyes or completely gloss over those areas of the book because I know what’s going to happen and I just don’t end up caring. And I call these clichés and tropes because I’ve seen them enough in the straight romance books I used to read plentiful that I’ve grown tired of them, even if others might not consider them tropes (I never bothered to check TV Tropes).
The ones I’m going to discuss are not necessarily in Debra Dunbar’s series, nor are they necessarily in every straight romance, but usually at least one of the ones I will talk about is in every straight romance I’ve come across. In fact there’s only one series I can actually think doesn’t have one of them and that’s the Harry Dresden books (out of the books I’ve read).
You are Abusive to Me and Now I Want You More
This is probably one of the biggest issues I have with an insane amount of straight romance books. Like, this seriously shouldn’t be happening, but it does… in massive loads because for some reason there are women that absolutely LOVE these stories. It completely just blows my mind. Some of the biggest and most famous that pretty much everyone knows are Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray, but there are plenty of others (including in the Imp series by Debra Dunbar, and Game of Thrones).
There are a few books that manage to show an abusive relationship exactly for what it is, rather than romanticizing it, like But I Love Him. But those are not the kind of books I’m talking about. That one recognized the relationship was bad from the beginning. The ones that concern me are where the relationship continues to be abusive, but the character doesn’t recognize it and just loves the person more and says that’s just the way they are. There’s no bad break-up, all these stories end with a happy ending between those two characters in a relationship that clearly bad for them.
It’s those kinds of books that tell a girl who the person they are with should be at the very least emotionally abusing them, otherwise they aren’t the right person. I’m honestly a bit afraid of how the dating scene will be for the Twilight fangirl generation. And this scares me because I have a friend that has gone through this shit as one of the girl’s who loves Twilight and is in the dating scene. She’s been in MULTIPLE abusive relationships, and continues to think it’s her fault when they end, and continues to think the boy is the most perfect thing ever and was only abusive because he had a ‘troubling past’ as if that’s an excuse to be a total dick half the time to someone. Or that the other half the time when they seem to act sweet, makes up for their total dickishness.
I Hate You, which Means I really Love You
I will give a small credit, that I have seen this trope in one or two F/F Romance books, but both of those books had been F/F remakes of originally straight classic novels, so I don’t count them, but I’m still acknowledging they exist. For the most part though, this is a common obstacle in pretty much every famous straight romance novel that doesn’t have an abusive relationship like the ones I mention above. Heck, sometimes both this trope and the one above mix together to form the biggest nasty ever.
This one always starts off as the two people who will eventually fall in love with each other, absolutely hate each other. Maybe the guy did something douche-y to the girl, and now the girl just totally resents the guy, yet for some reason the two keep ending up in situations that force them together and eventually the girl sees that the guy is really just a nice guy that was caught at a bad time. Some times the books or stories make a point to make sure the audience is aware that there were circumstances that caused the guy to be an asshole on their first meeting so you can sympathize with him and actually try to cheer on the girl getting him.
My biggest problem with this one is that the first time I ever saw it was in a TV Show called Ranma 1/2. Which I believe that show, shows perfectly how this tends to only be an issue with straight romances. The main character is first introduced to the main love interest in this show as a girl, so they are both girls and they are good friends right away. Things go well. Then the main character changes back to being male and their first interaction is getting caught at the bathroom door with both of them naked. From then on, they BOTH hate each other, while everyone around them just keeps saying: Oh, it’s because they hate each other that they really love each other.
Even better though is a classic novel example, a book that many people always say: Oh it’s the best!
Pride and Prejudice.
Yes, this is probably one of the first books that really did this, but that doesn’t make it any better. It’s likely because of this book that so many other romance novels follow along with it and use the two main love interests hating each other as the main obstacle through the whole novel.
And this is actually the reason for most of these tropes I’m talking about. All of them do this as a means of creating obstacles to prevent the characters from being involved with each other. The TV show Castle, and like twenty others do this same thing to make sure the two characters never get together, because as soon as they do all that tension is gone. Tension that was built on the idea that the two characters hate each other. I don’t know about you, but there are like a billion damn normal obstacles in the way with relationships and getting together with someone, and chances are you don’t give someone who’s an asshole to you the time of day, regardless of some act of god that forces you to interact with them.
You Are Mine
This is the main one that just downright pisses me off. It’s strange that it is only something I frequently see in straight romance too. But I think I should explain this one first. More often than not this line occurs in a lot of erotic areas of a story. Particularly when the couple might be having sex and then suddenly one of them says ‘You are mine’, or ‘mine’ or ‘you’ll always be mine’.
Now I have no problem with two people saying they are each others, or one of them confessing to the other that they are that persons. This is actually seen in a really cute moment between Willow and Tara in the Buffy series, with Tara admitting that she was Willow’s and that it was actually a discussion between the two.
In that case there is a connection between the two people, and it’s not one person taking, it is one person giving to another. This trope that pisses me off is when it is clearly just one person literally taking the other person, as if they own that person now. One of the biggest TV series I saw this for so frequently that I had to finally stop watching it was True Blood. Constantly the vampires in that series are claiming people left and right as ‘theirs’, as if no one else has any say in the damn matter. And ironically, the one F/F relationship in it with a Queen vampire never actually says that she owns the other woman.
The worst offender for this is straight erotica though (which I’d place the True Blood series in). It’s like two straight people during sex have to have one of them claim the other before they can orgasm. It just… it’s one of the most mind-boggling things I’ve seen that really just makes me want to put a book down immediately or turn off a show. It may not seem like much, but it holds the point that often times a woman never is ‘complete’ without either owning a man, or a man owning her, and that pisses me off beyond belief.
And worst of all, is that all of these things I’ve mentioned are really lazy things. You have the people hate each other because you can’t think of other millions of obstacles between two people getting together. You have one be abusive or threatening for the same reason. And you have one of the people claim another during sex because you feel you need some kind of dialogue in the sex scene, without interrupting the flow. I get it, but it’s total bullshit and incredibly damaging things that people are writing about.
To be fair though, there is one trope I have seen rather consistently with F/F fic as well that I find incredibly interesting to be such a frequent thing.
I’m Straight…but I Love You
The amount of F/F books (Possibly M/M books too, but I don’t read those) I can think of that have a straight character that is ‘turned to the gay side (We have cookies)’ is intense. It’s like the go-to option when an F/F series needs some kind of obstacle for the love interests to overcome. I understand it, sometimes yes, there are girls that weren’t really straight and were just following things because it’s what they thought they had to be. And yeah, sometimes everyone gets a crush on someone who doesn’t have the right sexual orientation. It happens, but you’d think with F/F books it just happens all the damn time! Heck, even my book has a ‘straight’ character that’s had their sexuality kind of waver because of another girl. (Which goes to show I’m not just criticizing other people’s shit).
And I’m not talking about the people who like never knew two girls could be together or anything like that. It’s usually ones where the straight girl has been friends with some gay girls for a while and knows it’s totally something that can happen, but just continually says they aren’t interested, and then that one girl comes along to change it all.
It’s such an interesting consistent trope to see in F/F fic though, since apparently it’s totally okay for a girl to convince another girl that they can have sex and a relationship, because they are going from straight to gay. It shows that sexuality is fluid, and that sometimes people do jump from gay to straight or straight to somewhere else entirely. Yet at the same time Lesbians often have to be the ones to reaffirm that their sexuality will not change, even if they really want a straight girl to change her sexuality (Shane from the L word, I’m looking at you).
Though I can understand this one at least. It’s definitely more likely for a straight girl to switch than a gay girl to switch, especially when it comes to the whole bicurious, experimenting thing. It’s just still an amusing trope to consider with sexuality at large.Unlike the other tropes though, I don’t largely consider this trope to be damaging, since it’s often unlikely for a straight guy to think they can turn a girl straight because they saw a girl turn another girl gay. Hell I’d be amazed to see a straight guy that actually reads or watches F/F fic that isn’t all about playing to male fantasies (like porn).
