reenka

I've always been a little too obsessed with the comrades-to-lovers scenario (especially in queer romance but it's really any), I feel, but it's for good reason: if you're a fantasy/adventure-plot reader and you like your romance liberally sprinkled at best, you're often naturally blessed with an abundance of comrade-type friendships. It's really a bit ridiculous and slightly degrading to go the only other route, which is to have the main character meet their SO in a bar or a party of some sort and be like 'omg, they're so hot' and then not really hang out with them 'cause they have 'things to do' except at the end where they get maaaarried (and/or kiss dramatically).

    I mean, this is how fairy-tales and action-thriller films nearly always work, but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck donkey balls. I don't need a couple to be friends first or whatever, but some sort of reasonably progressing relationship (even antagonistic! hey, -especially- antagonistic-- I dig it!) is better than riding off into the sunset with a barely-known acquaintance (like even with Harry/Ginny, I guess). I mean, even if it's a really hot acquaintance who kisses really well (and, uh, has a castle). I, personally, don't wanna even seriously date an acquaintance. Sorry, fairy-tale prince and/or people I don't know well. :/
    (And yeah, this is partly why I like fairy-tales like The Snow Queen and Beauty and the Beast: omg, they -know- each other! SCORE!)

    Man, speaking of emotional climaxes (which we weren't, but): having finished the second Nightrunner book, I finally get all the people who were sort of personally offended, almost, or at least frustrated as hell that the H/G romance in book 6 was so skimpily (flimsily? incompletely? sort of desultorily, even?) handled. I remember people saying that this is because we came to HBP with expectations borne of romance and character-centric fanfic, whereas JKR is writing a plot-centric work that uses characters & their relationships rather than being about them, precisely. I myself didn't care so much because I didn't care about Harry/Ginny (even if I care about Harry & vaguely like my -own- idea of H/G and Harry-romance in general).

Well... having read the 'romance' bits with 'Stalking Darkness', I have to say I have a very similar reaction: there just wasn't enough. I mean, in this case the book is definitely about these two characters, but also definitely focused on the stuff they -do- rather than the stuff they feel (which is secondary); however, this... emotional incompleteness is all the more striking with it being the two main characters, I feel. As if Harry and Hermione -did- get a romance, and yet it was treated little more in-depth than the H/G in HBP. I feel cheated, somehow.

Trying to puzzle it out... I'd have to say that it's just that I feel it's not... I'm tempted to say 'satisfying', but I'll go with to 'a complete arc', and therefore an emotional disappointment. Things don't feel 'right' to me if they don't progress right, at their own pace: so if things were going fast as blazes for a long time, and then the writer throws wrench after wrench in the relationship just to 'avoid the inevitable' and have the couple get together, I get pissed off. Similarly, if things were slowly growing from 'comrades with oomph' to 'deeper friendship with subtext' to 'budding romance in the midst of camaraderie & adventure'-- it's a total cheat to have things wrap up and come to a head in say, 2 days and then drop the issue and jump ahead to 'EEEE, SOULMATES 4 LIFE!!1'. Sorry, thriller-writers. :/

Of course you don't have to concentrate on the romance, but the scattered 'keystone' scenes should reach their-- well, climax. And the climax in a romance isn't necessarily sexual, but it does exist, just as it does in a plot-arc (where all the threads come together and the promise of the story 'explodes'). All that happened in 'Stalking Darkness', after 2 books building up to it, is a sort of... trailing-off point where it was clear this is the cusp and the first step (the 'opening' to the resolution) has been achieved. They'd resolved to resolve, which makes clear where things are going events-wise, but that's not an emotional resolution by any means, especially not when the next book picks up 2 years later.

And 'what's an emotional love-story climax?', you may well ask.
    At least, -I- may ask, heh. I feel like it's a lot easier to say what it's -not-, though. It's not the 'first kiss' or the 'first love-confession' or first anything, really, because it depends wholly on being the culmination of the couple's memorable scenes & the moments that came before it. A climax between major characters, whether or not we're talking about a love-story (I feel) should not only -nudge- them in a new direction (as was the case at the end of the second Nightrunners book) but actually have them arrive, the same way you'd need to 'arrive' with a plot-related arc.
    And, you know, I'm actually pretty curious as to any arguments you have to the contrary, whether or not you've read these particular books-- mostly 'cause I -want- to feel satisfied with this. It's just-- it doesn't help that between the last two books, we jump from 'promising beginning' to 'magically bonded soulmates 4evah!!1', with nothing but cliched references later to 'union of body and spirit', semi-telepathy and constant fucking. I mean... forget me-the-reader, but don't these characters deserve more?

With HBP and Harry in general, I still sort of feel it's not the same 'cause Ginny is a sidenote at best, and even if they -are- 'soulmates 4evah', that's mostly going to be left to flourish beyond book 7 (I imagine). I can accept that, so regardless of the less-than-deft writing, I feel I didn't miss much since the 'promising beginning' or whatever was the -point- here. With Flewelling... there's a whole book of romance's worth it feels like she purposefully didn't write, and that's hard to swallow. Sure, we can make the connection as the readers easily enough, but why?
    What used to be tempting, growing & accumulating half-steps in a hopeful direction before the 'pseudo-climax' for nearly 2 books straight became glancing asides with a heavy 'after the fact' feel. I can see why she skipped over the heavy romance, on the other hand-- because for those first few months, if she did try to have plot-type stuff happen to them, the romance would have to take more center-stage. Mostly 'cause when your characters are mutually crazy in love and fucking all the time-- even if other things are going on and you write no smut-- a writer's not going to get away without making frequent excursions into heavy territory and keep up a coherent narrative without constantly and obviously being seen as refusing to write certain things. There'd be visible holes.
    However! However, what this amounts to, basically, is a refusal or inability on the part of the writer to change or adjust the style of the narrative to fit the growing & expanding demands of one's characters.

I say this, and yet I'm also aware plenty of (usually great) writers do well enough combining romance and other relationship subplots with a major event-driven arc. I'm sure there are tons of books out there where the romance is built-up to and not dropped even though other things keep going on. Perhaps being able to do that is the mark of a more deft, emotionally piercing writer than Flewelling is or was at that point; it would require using not narrative space (or time) to explore but rather depth. The skill at showing-not-telling would probably have to be extremely well-developed in a way it rarely is in otherwise good novel-length writers (since it's usually sharpest in vignettes, but it's that same skill); I should probably know Flewelling is nowhere near that skill-level if she tries to cover up by basically coming back with 'well, they have a mindbond now' next book, which is practically code for 'SOULMATES 4EVAH OMG!!1... the end'.

It just sucks reading books thinking 'ooh, this is really good', and then realizing 'oh wait, not so good-- this writer is nowhere near really good, at least as yet'. I mean, the strength of the first book, I feel, was both in cohesive, interesting adventure-plot storytelling and slow, natural building of the central relationship. You know how in many adventure shows, the 'main couple' often just builds up to an 'opening' at the end, or just get closer together, but you see all this subtext and chemistry that is -bound- to explode at some point soon? That's pretty satisfying in itself, I feel, especially in adventure-thriller -movies-, but I think the thing is-- when you keep going, build more of a story and a background, you need to deepen the relationship beyond subtext/asides/etc or it begins to feel 2D-- and believe it or not, even adventure plots revolve in their interest around the human element.
    So. What happened was, the set-up never changed-- mostly-plot with lightly sprinkled relationshippy scenes-- but the demands of the deepening relationship outpaced the capacities of the still-shallow structure, just as the plot actually slowed down and got 'deeper' and more dependent on gradual build-up & multiple threads rather than the initial diverting adventure-type antics where the characters' growing camaraderie (with promises of more) had once worked so well. 'Growing' being the key word there, btw.

I think Flewelling tried to have her cake and eat it too, and it basically didn't work: she wanted adventure and camaraderie, except with romance (which I applaud and adore as an idea!), but without actually -having- the great bulk (literally, without writing!) of the romance. And dressing up romance as effectively the same as the early camaraderie doesn't really work for me; I just can't buy, on a deeper level, that you can 'just add sex' (which excuses you from having to write it & lets you merely say 'well, it happens'). So having jumped 2 years to where the characters act nearly the same with each other except with references to mind-bonds and sex-- that's a major, major misstep.
    In a way, I think that's what went wrong with JKR's (even less well-handled) build-up to romance as well. The books' structure worked well enough when the Trio (and Ginny, in OoTP) were comrades and friends, their relationship growing slowly and the adventures coming fast: that's the tried-and-true adventure book set-up, I think. But after awhile (basically, by OoTP), JKR's plot deepened and began to depend on slow development and older threads unravelling rather than quick action, and just like with Flewelling, this coincided with hurried filling in of the romance subplots, which made the whole thing feel muddled, suddenly cliched as hell and just incomplete.

I'm not sure, in the end, what this says about 'ideal' comrades-to-lovers scenarios; trying to think of 'official' instances of this, I can only remember stuff like Mulder/Scully (a similarly awful failure), unless you count some few fanfics or stuff like Star Trek's Riker & Troi or Babylon 5's Sheridan and Delenn. I'm not sure if they count as 'comrades' outside technicalities because they always had clear chemistry headed in that direction, and were merely delayed by the writers. Even so, I'm sure there are some good het comrades-to-lovers examples, which is why I'm bitterly suspicious that the reason you don't get the good stuff with the queer romance isn't the demands of the plot but the demands of the audience being squeamish. Which-- needless to say-- pisses me the bloody hell off at both society at large -and- the actual writer, thanks. GRRRRRRR. >:(

    I really really -wanted- to say, 'Flewelling's books finally gave me the queer fantasy-romance I keep looking for, and which exists aplenty with het,' but they haven't. I haven't even read many of the others because I know they're either depressing/angsty (like Lackey's stuff), purely subtexty (like the Fitz/Fool series) or established-relationship stuff (like Kushner's Swordspoint) which largely ignores the romance from the first. What I -wanted- would be the usual in a 'normal' romance: that is, usually, meeting --> build-up --> chemistry/angst/etc --> resolution/climax/happy-endo. I don't want to dwell on either the angst (having the romance only to have the characters separate or die a gory death), the chemistry (seeing as I don't need to look to published fic for smut) or the build-up (if it ignores the rest and flounders like these books). Neither, I feel I should add, do I want to skimp or miss out on any of these (angst is good! build-up is good! etc). *sigh* WRITERS. >:(

...And it really doesn't help that I'm now reminded that things -can- work like in the Basara manga, even though there's no comrades-to-lovers relationship (ripe for lovin' as Nachi & Hijiri obviously are). Of course, allowances have to be made for the fact that Basara is one of my favorite love-stories of all time and I consider 95% of its characters absolutely adorable and brilliant and think it's a shining example of the ideal of what fantasy-type plot merged with romance looks like. Um. Well, at least with every not-as-good book I read, I realize how utterly fucking amazing the great stuff is. :> If for no other reason than Basara is one of the very few stories where I love spending time with the all the minor characters just as much as with the main ones. Now -that's- talent.
~~

As an aside, I wonder if I'm the only shy/introverted-type person who feels... um, uncomfortable having to read the main characters constantly stuck in big groups (like, long stretches where they don't get time alone together or just... alone). It's funny, 'cause obviously I get people-tired in that way myself in real life, but reading Flewelling's third Nightrunner book, I actually find it happening sympathetically, even though the characters aren't really suffering that much. Especially since they're in a relationship and I want to see more of that, having them not only investigating/exploring like before but having less time alone than when they were first getting to know each other-- that's really backwards and uncomfortable to me.

...Though I'm actually a freak 'cause I get a sort of 'aaah, too many people!!1' discomfort just from changing povs with too many characters while I read, too. Before now, I just took it for granted that I'm naturally more interested with deeper-quality relationships with fewer-quantity characters/people (in real life as well), but I wasn't quite aware it was my introversion kicking in before, even while I read.