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Yes what terrible writing to see a romantic relationship develop over the course of a story. Every relationship in media should just be like Cinderella going to the ball, dancing with the Prince and then BAM they're in true love after meeting and barely saying a word to each other.
In fairness to the
extremely broad point here, most romance stories are poorly paced and dragged out to an unnatural and oftentimes aggravating degree. The thing about romance as a genre (and as a subplot) is that writers and executives think the most interesting part is the chase. You guys are definitely right in that following an actual romance, where the characters grow to know each other and date and fall in love, is how a healthy relationship should be portrayed in fiction.
The problem with fiction is that it takes a long,
long time to even get to 'getting to know each other' and 'dating'. Two characters will oftentimes be destined as romantic partners, but contrivance upon contrivance will keep from ever even agreeing to get together-- love triangles, jealous rivals, convoluted misinformation, two people who somehow can't communicate to one another that they like each other. There will be moments of romantic and sexual tension that will be undercut and subverted to hell and back before you even get to the part where the prospective couple sits down and begins to enjoy one another's company.
Part of this is because being happy and in love is, frankly, boring (or even aggravating) to everybody watching. Stories are built on conflict, and when the core of your story is romance, you have to introduce conflict, and that conflict (according to established law)
must be about the romance itself. For some reason this also bleeds into romance as a sub-plot; how many shows or books have a romantic plot tumor that just gets in the way of everything else? Characters moping around because somebody listened at the door to half a conversation, or introducing a succubus to disrupt the main couple and make one of them murderously jealous, or they wind up having some kind of stupid fight and then find different partners and you have to follow those frayed threads for ages before they realize how wrong they were and then something else comes up...
I don't actually
disagree with the crux of Lily's issue here; she's complained about how so many romances are about the unresolved sexual tension instead of the relationship, and it's true. Romances would be infinitely more tolerable if they were actually about two really good friends who evolve into a romantic partnership and have so much trust for each other that, while things might sometimes be rocky, they stick through it and conquer things together. Even an actual romance novel would be really interesting if the conflict driving the story was an outside force and you watched the characters' trust and love evolve
through that conflict. I'd read that.
However.
With Lily's history, yeah, we all know it's that she wants instant gratification. You know these two characters are going to be in lesbians with each other so let's just cut to the chase. They don't need to actually learn about each other as friends and partners, they don't need to actually decide if they're compatible, they don't need to have a talk except maybe one of them is mopey and the other says "I love you!" and then suddenly everything is perfect for them. She isn't interested in actually developing characters and showing them falling in love, she just wants to get done with the 'hard part' and go into people laying in each other's laps or making out in the starship or cuddling and constantly calling each other "girlfriend" or "wife".
Watching an actual blooming romance between two people who mutually trust and respect each other is a beautiful thing that isn't represented in fiction often enough, dismissed in favor of stringing along the audience in will-they-won't-they bullshit and piling on contrivance, but it's just as bad to present two characters, have you as the author decide 'yeah, they're gonna bang', and just flip two chapters ahead and yeah sure they're married whatever. You didn't prove to me they're good for each other or why they care about each other. If I'd actually watched that happen I would be absolutely invested in their relationship, but I didn't, so now your story is just the equivalent of watching a couple still bathed in hormones showing off excessive public displays of affection and snuggling and Christ
get a room, I don't want to see this, it's voyeurism!
Hell, I'd rather you start with the couple already together if you're just going to gloss over it and we can already see the trust and respect they have. I guess since SU has been getting brought up, it would be like Ruby and Sapphire when we're first introduced to them. It's not much before they reform Garnet, but the emotions they express in Prison Break (their desperation to see one another, the relief and joy in their voices when they do) are enough, and then seeing them as they appear later on... yeah. You can see that they're in love. I buy it.
Meanwhile, you have Lily writing her World of Warcraft fanfic (or no longer writing them, I guess) where the two characters talk at each other about how in love they are instead of showing the audience, or you get The Sith Resurgence where Aliana and Rey decide they would die for each other within a few chapters and we're supposed to be happy for them when they make their pairing official and get married. Why? They have no chemistry.
Then again, Lily has stated that 'romantic chemistry' is stupid and unnecessary. She seems to be under the impression that chemistry means 'unresolved sexual tension', but the fact that she outright dismisses the concept when people correct her also seems to suggest that she doesn't even realize
she's completely missing a vital component to romance.
What's that? Your hyper specific, self-insert, auto-fellating story about how you fuck a genocidal corpse and totally put all the men in their place is... not interesting to anyone but you? IMAGINE THAT. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
Hope she actually follows through and stops talking about it all together. Seeing those blurbs always left a sour taste in my mouth.
Honestly there's nothing wrong with writing a hyper specific fixation and sharing it with people. Somebody out there is bound to enjoy it. The Internet's a weird and wide place. And honestly, I think some of the best advice I've ever seen was this: "I don't write for approval of an audience. I write for approval of myself." Artists are usually their own harshest critics, and while it's fairly easy to find a broad audience and pander to them for a cheap rush, it's something very different to write something, and find it a decade later, and still be proud of your work.
But Lily writes for an audience. She writes for accolades and attention and when she sees that something isn't working, she doesn't stop and think "Well, I enjoyed it, and the couple of people that commented obviously enjoyed it, too, so I'll leave it up." Only getting a handful of reviews and views is evidence of her ABJECT FAILURE and must be EXPUNGED FROM THE INTERNET. She can't fathom leaving it up if she didn't get a flood of validation, and leaving a story there where you only see 12 comments is simply unacceptable. Review numbers on Ao3 and notes on Tumblr are what objectively prove that your work is good. Creating is pointless if you don't have people flocking to you. You need that validation, that rush, and moreover the proof to
other people that you got triple-digit comments on your shitty Star Wars fanfic.
If Lily weren't an objectively terrible person it would almost be sad.
