![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I don't read romance novels. I have no desire to be in a romantic relationship with anyone. Why, then, do most of my ideas for fanfiction and original fiction involve romance?
On that note, I really, really don't understand the appeal of romances where one half of the couple is a criminal and the other half is an ordinary person unaccustomed to the seedier side of life. (Probably one of the reasons I don't get the appeal of Erik/Christine, now that I think about it.) You'd think that I, pirate and gangster enthusiast that I am, would understand it, but I don't. I just think the ordinary person looks like an idiot. History doesn't help me on either front. Anne Bonny and Calico Jack Rackham were lovers, sure, but they were both pirates to begin with. Al and Mae Capone appear to have enjoyed a relatively stable and normal marriage, but stable relationships don't make for compelling romance stories. And both my actual favorite real-life examples of each kind of relationship ended in tragedy, albeit not for reasons that had anything to do with the relationships themselves.
And no, Captain Blood does not count, because (a) Peter was more or less forced to become a pirate and (b) Arabella is appalled by his piratical activities. Goodfellas and the Godfather trilogy deconstruct this in a way: in the former, we see Henry and Karen courting and then watch their marriage unravel over the course of the movie; in the latter, Kay ends up leaving Michael in the second movie.
What am I not seeing? Is there something wrong with me?
On that note, I really, really don't understand the appeal of romances where one half of the couple is a criminal and the other half is an ordinary person unaccustomed to the seedier side of life. (Probably one of the reasons I don't get the appeal of Erik/Christine, now that I think about it.) You'd think that I, pirate and gangster enthusiast that I am, would understand it, but I don't. I just think the ordinary person looks like an idiot. History doesn't help me on either front. Anne Bonny and Calico Jack Rackham were lovers, sure, but they were both pirates to begin with. Al and Mae Capone appear to have enjoyed a relatively stable and normal marriage, but stable relationships don't make for compelling romance stories. And both my actual favorite real-life examples of each kind of relationship ended in tragedy, albeit not for reasons that had anything to do with the relationships themselves.
And no, Captain Blood does not count, because (a) Peter was more or less forced to become a pirate and (b) Arabella is appalled by his piratical activities. Goodfellas and the Godfather trilogy deconstruct this in a way: in the former, we see Henry and Karen courting and then watch their marriage unravel over the course of the movie; in the latter, Kay ends up leaving Michael in the second movie.
What am I not seeing? Is there something wrong with me?
From:
no subject
You've figured out what I couldn't. It is loyalty, and characters having to decide who or what deserves their loyalty the most, that interests me.
I honestly do suspect that the appeal of romances where an 'ordinary girl' gets wooed by a criminal is the same as the "Bride of the Sheikh" (from Valentino onwards!) or "Seduced by the Duke" style: the strong, ruthless, dangerous man whose one vulnerable point is his inexplicable attraction towards the reader-insert heroine :-p
I've suspected as much myself, and that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me at all—I just find it frightening rather than sexy. :P
From:
no subject
Yes, I thought it probably was ;-)