Romance novels - ~Ravished by the Rogue Shitlord~

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I'm going to go ahead and quote this Tumblr post because I fucking love sharing this with people due to this beautiful "what if" of a trainwreck needing to be preserved.

All right buckle the fuck up kids, it’s the year 2012 and I’ve just been handed what should be an easy editing gig by my senior editor. It’s a vampire erotica story because one of the final Twilight movies is about to come out, and everything is vampires. Everything. I haven’t edited a single thing in months which isn’t about vampires. I am ready, I can do this. So I open the file and notice there’s a typo in the title, which really should have been my first inkling that something horrendous was about to go down, but you see I’m not quite dead inside yet so I carry on, bushy tailed and bright eyed with my faith in humanity intact. It’ll be dead by page 24, but I don’t know that yet. I’m just editing one more vampire boner fest.

The MC is a girl who we’ll call Sue. Sue is a Good Girl™, Sue is Not Like Other Girls™, she is pale and awkward and a virgin and has somehow managed to find herself a Bad Boy™ for a boyfriend. We’ll call him Dickhead.

Now Dickhead as previously stated is a bit of dick, he tries to pressure Sue into sex because he knows she is The One™ but he loves her really so it’s okay. Except it’s not okay because Sue is a Good Girl™ and holding out till marriage which he’s fine with except he’s got such a bad case of blue balls that one night walking home an attractive stranger lures him into an alley with the words “hey stud” and he follows, dick out before she’s even finished her sentence. Well turns out that was a mistake for Dickhead because she’s a vampire, but not just any vampire, a Dick Biting Vampire. So what started out as a skeevy blow job behind a club that he’ll feel bad about in the morning, turns into him being bitten on the dick and drained of his life essence and left for dead. Except DBV fucked up and now he’s a vampire. Are you still with me? Good, cause it’s about to get weirder.

Realizing he is now an abomination, Dickhead flees, becoming a creature of the night and feeding on animals rather than humans to repent for being such an asshole in life. Sue meanwhile is heartbroken, but carries on valiantly with her life and goes to bed each night crying for the loss of her One True Love™ who she would do anything to bring back. Well guess what Sue, Dickhead never really left you! He’s been “instinctively protecting her from rapists” by hiding out on her roof and fighting hobos who try to get to her open window via the fire escape for months now. Because that’s not fucking terrifying at all.

Upon learning of his predicament and how it happened, Sue can do nothing but blame herself. Oh if only she’d let him touch her secret places, then perhaps all of this could be avoided! Meanwhile Dickhead is having another dilemma of his own, realizing too late that his vampire powers have given him super senses and now he can smell her blood and he can’t decide whether he wants to get with her or eat her. And I don’t mean in the French sense. But he is strong! And over comes his base manly vampire instincts and neither rapes not kills her. Hurrah! And this is so romantic that Sue gives it up, but not before she launches into a theory about how in all fairy tales, True Love saves the day, so maybe her magical pure vagina that has never been touched by anyone, not even her, can bring him back to life. So Dickhead being a dickhead agrees and rips her clothes off, but not before he takes one last moment to marvel at the beauty of her purity, because he will never again look on her again and know she is Pure.

If you’ve only vomited once by now, I applaud your resolve.

So they hop on the good foot and do the nasty, except she is literally so pure in spirit, her flesh burns his. And I quote you from memory because these words are burned into my soul: “her breasts bit into his hands, like crucifix nail nipples tearing at his flesh, but he did not care because he loved her so and couldn’t stop”

This phrase haunts me. I dread that it will be the last thing I think about on my death bed and my last words will literally be “god fucking dammit” as I die, carrying that mental image with me into the afterlife. My own solace is in knowing that I inflicted it on other people too, like @ahzuri who is somehow still with me after all these years.

When the magical burning sex fails to heal him and leaves her bruised, battered and broken with “a dainty blue bells of bruises around her secret flower” (I am genuinely quoting this, I could never make something as horrendous as this up without being on acid) Dickhead leaves. Yeah. Off he fucks, leaving her to the mercy of the hobos at her window, and into the night to be the true monster he really is. But wait, there’s more. Remember the dick biting vampire? Well turns out she has figured out she made him into a vampire and has also been stalking HIM and is totally jealous of Sue, so tries to kill her. But again Sues Purity saves her, because sex before marriage which was done out of True Love is not a sin, so she is still a spiritual virgin and I’ll be honest, I started drinking heavily at this point and it’s all a bit of a blur.

A fight ensues some pages later after Dickhead returns, realizing the mistake he has made. And he rescues Sue from the Dick Biter, but not before he assaults Dick Biter, and calls her a slut for luring innocent men into alleys cuts her heart out by cutting her breasts off, at which point i screamed “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU REACH THE HEART” and my brain short circuited completely and I have no idea how it ends because I realized there was 30 pages left and my soul couldn’t take it. I emailed the chief editor like ?????!!!!!!????!!!!!! and the book was immediately pulled from the work line and the author dismissed from the publishing house. Turns out she was a friend of a friend and that was how she got the manuscript past our entry levels for requirement.

And that’s the story of how an author sent me death threats for over a month because I stopped her shitty vampire porn from ever seeing the light of day. You’re all fucking WELCOME.
 
I cannot stand Mills and Boon novels.

I'm pretty sure they were all written by the same person, because they all read the same - terribly.

Romance novels replaced pulp fiction because women would buy romance novels en masse, while pulp fiction... didn't sell as well.

And if you want to cry, millionaire's now an obsolete term for Mills and Boon. The ladies are all after billionaires and trillionaires now
 
I am currently reading Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn, which was published back in 1988.

56 pages in and very little action has happened so far except for the main dude's dad dying after a fight with a dragon, which is something I was more interested in reading about than characters going on about politics (which by the way, is so far a lot harder to follow than the politics in Game of Thrones).

I am also cringing at the author pushing this whole "lovers by fate/love at first sight" trope onto us in the most cliched manner possible. So because Sioned (pronounced She-Ned) saw Rohan in a fiery illusion it means that he is totally the one and only for her. And we're also expected to believe that unlike the other women, she totally has a brain!
 
If someone could explain the fascination with Scotland, I would very much appreciate it.
 
If someone could explain the fascination with Scotland, I would very much appreciate it.

Hairy he-men fighting for a lost cause and wearing clothes that provide easy access for those all-important "he pulled her to him" scenes.

56 pages in and very little action has happened so far except for the main dude's dad dying after a fight with a dragon, which is something I was more interested in reading about than characters going on about politics (which by the way, is so far a lot harder to follow than the politics in Game of Thrones).

I blame "Game of Thrones" for the sudden increase in oh-so-complex royal politics we've been seeing in fantasy novels.

If there's one thing editors have taught me, it's that you have to get into things right away. Either kill/rape/transform/seduce/attempt to assassinate someone in Chapter One or get off the pot.

And ah yes, the "not like other women" trope. Not as common these days, but still pretty easy to find. Is she also a sword-swinging badass and utterly, vocally uninterested in embroidery?
 
I blame "Game of Thrones" for the sudden increase in oh-so-complex royal politics we've been seeing in fantasy novels.

If there's one thing editors have taught me, it's that you have to get into things right away. Either kill/rape/transform/seduce/attempt to assassinate someone in Chapter One or get off the pot.

And ah yes, the "not like other women" trope. Not as common these days, but still pretty easy to find. Is she also a sword-swinging badass and utterly, vocally uninterested in embroidery?
*Technically Dragon Prince came before Game of Thrones, but I do see your point. GoT did popularize this trope.

I'm fine with politics sperging in fantasy (See: 12 Kingdoms by Fuyumi Ono)- but this book goes on for pages about bearing a son for the Rolestra throne; it doesn't help that it constantly repeats this point over and over. The author only briefly says why a son is required- but otherwise I found myself skimming through at least ten pages worth of politics sperging. I'm like, "goddammit tell me more about the dragons!"

She isn't a sword swinging badass, but she is a Sunrunner- which I guess is a Mage that can use fire, but can't use it to hurt other people or some dumb bullshit like that. So far, Sioned is a pretty irritating character due to her judgement (like assuming that because she saw herself with Prince Rohan in some illusionary flame that it means he's totally the one and only for her... even though she's never met him in person.)

Oh yeah, and I heard from a friend that suffered through this book that Rohan apparently raped the antagonist in an autistic rage at some point in the book.

The antagonist, Ianthe, also fits the whole "not like other girls" trope because the author goes on about her being a cunning bitch- even though Ianthe comes off as being just as dumb as Sioned.
 
Can't stand reading in the genre, but due to :autism: or something, stuff like this fascinates me:

http://authorearnings.com/2016-rwa-pan-presentation/

Per this presentation, the bulk of the industry, at least in the USA, has shifted from published to self-published, from paper to electronic, etc. Not 100% clear to me how "Data Guy" gets his data, but I suppose in the aggregate he's largely correct.

FWIW, the RWA is the one trade group that never seems to squawk about Amazon as Satan, the way virtually all the other groups do.

I am currently reading Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn, which was published back in 1988

Somewhere along the line Rawn suffered some kind of nervous breakdown and actually abandoned mid-series something that was selling fairly well. I don't think it was that series, though.
 
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Per this presentation, the bulk of the industry, at least in the USA, has shifted from published to self-published, from paper to electronic, etc. Not 100% clear to me how "Data Guy" gets his data, but I suppose in the aggregate he's largely correct.

FWIW, the RWA is the one trade group that never seems to squawk about Amazon as Satan, the way virtually all the other groups do.

Romance is a high-volume, high-consumption business, so I'm not surprised that it would gravitate towards the easiest method of publishing and distribution. Not to powerlevel, but I'm peripherally involved on that side of things as an author, and 90% of the authors and editors I meet are part-time, self-publishing writers who do it to supplement their income or scratch an itch. Amazon, as both a purchasing and publishing platform, is a big boon to them.
 
Somewhere along the line Rawn suffered some kind of nervous breakdown and actually abandoned mid-series something that was selling fairly well. I don't think it was that series, though.

I do believe she has clinical depression (which is an awful illness).

The series that was stopped was Exiles- which is a huge shame because I liked those books, which goes to show how much her writing improved since publishing the first in the Dragon Prince series. Part of me feels like I shouldn't be too harsh, but at the same time my expectations were at a reasonable level given her later books.

I have heard that the Dragon Star trilogy is much better though.
 
So is this a thread making fun of hilariously bad romance novels or can we get serious and talk about good ones or get recommendations?

Either way, I've been wanting to try out the romance genre for a while now. The only one that comes to mind that I may like is The Time Traveler's Wife. And Virtue Rewarded.

If someone could explain the fascination with Scotland, I would very much appreciate it.

Holy fuck I see this all the damn time in dollar stores.
 
So is this a thread making fun of hilariously bad romance novels or can we get serious and talk about good ones or get recommendations?

You're. On. Kiwi. Farms.

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I can't think of a subject more boring than romance. I don't care who loves who. Get to some cool action or adventure stuff.
 
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PSST-- BBW Werebear Shifter Romance. The women are fat. The guys are ripped. These things are all over Amazon. There are all kinds of bears to choose from, like rodeo bears, architect and construction bears, billionaire bears, Scottish bears, Christmas bears-- and there are a few BBW shifter tiger romances too. Discovering these was an eye-opener.
 
Went walking around a bookstore for the hell of it the other day, and I eventually stumbled on the romance section. I noticed a LOT of the novels had Duke in the title. I really don't get what's up with romanticizing dukes. Why not a typical prince? Or king?

My friend and I simultaneously picked up books to show to the other and we were like "Oh my god, look at this" and sure enough, they involved a duke. Mine was called "A Duke in Shining Armor". My friend had a funny quip: "I really want to write a romance novel now called 'Scent of a Duke'.
 
Blogger Ace of Spades still has the best explanation for why stories about sex are inherently boring though: because it's about two people working together to achieve a shared goal. Drama is about conflict, and the only actual conflicts are whatever the author can contrive put a few hundred pages between the beginning and the end. It's the same reason that old-school romances have been described as "the obstacle course to the altar."
 
Judging by Tumblr's rash of fujohimes, I think the vintage romance books would get a breath of fresh air if all the male suitors were women. Would also be rather hilarious to read, in my opinion.

Still, I prefer romance as a side dish to an adventure story over a pure romance novel, unless it happens to be a very short story.
 
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