Romance: literature & film

Pin said:
Yes, the Death of Ivan Illych. This man spends his entire life trying to accrue material things only to have the worst sort of awakening.
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lucyinthedarkness said:
I can advise you more similar books :)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera is very similar. But it it also adds philosophy and historicisms.
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Thank you for your recommendations! I still haven't read War & Peace and really should.

Gaze said:
I think it depends on how it's done and why. Too often romance is often dismissed because it is romance or it is oversimplified as a romance when the real question is what's the point of this particular romance? What is it trying to make us feel or think? Why?
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I agree. Sometimes it feels like romance for the sake of romance. I like exploring why they love who they love, and why they love how they love. Relationships that look 'aesthetically pleasing' like you say, and fueled by shallow drama... I've no doubt they exist but they're not interesting. I'd rather know two (or more) very flawed people struggling to find their happiness with each other & themselves.

My own novels don't always feature romance arcs, though sometimes they form organically. They tend towards dysfunctional.
 
Wyote said:
The Expanse does a good job of conveying some of the aspects of love.
You think it's going in a sort of traditional story route, but then things get complicated.
That's pretty accurate to life imo.

Stories are just stories, they give you a specific slice of particular facet of love.
Usually stories try to indulge in our strongest feelings and attempt to give the audience those feelings one way or another.
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This is so true. I think the Expanse is one of the best series i've ever seen and its because of the characters and the strong friendship element. The love relationships are oddly complex and realistic

I also really enjoyed the The last kingdom for the exact same reasons. Real characters, genuine relationship building

@Pin
I get what you mean about the anti-hero thing in space but i personally see James Holden as a pure hero rather than anti-hero. Am i missing something?

I dont really generally get into the genre of romance but i really like it when works have strong character building, relationship building and romance thrown in.
I liked Robin Hobbs books a lot in this sense.
I liked Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Its weird and obscure but The people vs larry flint made me cry.

And Casablanca- that's a romance i liked
 
The funny thing is unless I'm specifically watching a rom com or movie about the topic when romances are randomly introduced as a plot point I think it's cheap writing.

I've been frustrated, too, in writing collaborative stories that the central thing people want to write is young romantic love when I want to write aging senior sisters and other aspects of life.

Sex sells and sex just isn't the only important aspect of life. It drives me up the fucking wall.
 
slant said:
Do you/ have you collaborative written online before?
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I have, yes. It wasn't the worst experience though I dislike that my co-author self-published without discussing it with me first, and dislike that they didn't run their edits by me before that. It's somewhat resolved now.
It wasn't my best writing, but there were no randomly introduced romances.
 
Pin said:
I've seen a lot of games, films, and books involving romance.

Now that I think of it, rarely is my favorite protagonist a bachelor. At least not forever. Except Batman or something. I think that a lifestyle of that sort can be interesting because it centers the reader on specific aspects of a character's life without raising the question of hero's family is doing, for example.

I've noticed that for classical heroes, relationships just happen because they're so cool and accomplish something impressive. For example, who would turn down Hercules or Gilgamesh?

I'm not really familiar with how romance goes for tragic heroes like Orpheus. I don't know if he got the girl or not, but if he did, she probably died or something. I'll look into it.

Where things get really interesting to me though are the Byronic heroes, the absolute bastards of heroes. I don't even enjoy reading stories with these sorts of "heroes" because they usually have the wrong kinds of lessons. Basically, every angsty male protagonist these days.

I like classical heroes the most. For example, Clark Kent in Smallville and T'Challa in Black Panther.
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I guess I don't really know where you want to focus in this thread. You're mentioning comic heroes, where romance plays a minor part. Then, you're mentioning Classical and ancient mythology were romance isn't "fleshed out"for various reasons. What's your take on Shakespeare? On the romances in Hemingway's work? On D.H. Lawrence? Anais Ninn? Tolstoy? Okparanta? What about poets like Maya Angelou, Rumi, Yeats, Keats, Nizar Qabbani? ... I'm not asking you to respond to any of these specific writers. I'm just curious what your general opinion is of romance in novels and poetry that you didn't mention?

There are definitely great romances in novels, and some on screen, but the writers who do it best (IMO) include romance as part of the human experience, or discuss the human experience within the romance. For example, Austen writes about gender and class within her romances. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy write about romance as part of their stories about the struggles of life. Tolkien's "Beren and Lúthien" represent him and his wife and are woven into his Middle-earth fiction that otherwise focuses on adventure, imagined cultures, and war. All the novelists mentioned above use romance as part of a greater story about the human struggle, or use romance as a symbol for it. Poetry can capture romance well. The objective is to make the reader feel.... to feel alive, to feel a kind of heartache, to feel like their heart is bursting.


I used to loathe romance movies, except for old ones (like from the1950s) because they are inane, but escapism, whether romance, comedy, or fantasy, is good de-stressing entertainment. We can't always watch Werner Herzog.


Pin said:
Outside of the Western world, arranged marriage usually.
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My father's family practiced arrange marriage.

In the Wings said:
I don't mind romance, but I usually want it to be one part of a larger picture. And it's not really a requirement.
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Same.
 
I usually relate to the quippy dialogue (most recently in The Lovebirds or The Boys), but yeah it's hardly realistic. It's the sincere schmaltz I avoid. Different strokes and all.
 
slant said:
Do you/ have you collaborative written online before?
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Where can I find a collaborative writing group? I'm flaky as fuck, so I may not, but it's something I'd like to try.

One of my favorite places to see romance is funnily enough in Tabletop Roleplaying stuff. I think it's because when two characters have chemistry it's just so organic and unforced, since there's no puppet master on high nudging them that way for the plot.
 
In the Wings said:
Where can I find a collaborative writing group? I'm flaky as fuck, so I may not, but it's something I'd like to try.

One of my favorite places to see romance is funnily enough in Tabletop Roleplaying stuff. I think it's because when two characters have chemistry it's just so organic and unforced, since there's no puppet master on high nudging them that way for the plot.
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http://rpg-directory.com
 
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