"Hell is Empty": Another Mistake To Avoid When Writing Romance · 11:16pm Apr 10th, 2016
I’m not good at romance.
My dad refuses to use any other word than “the bagpipe” to refer to the human penis. When I was in Elementary School, three songs that came out of nowhere became popular among the students – and they were all about anal sex. A girl once confessed her love to me by changing her wifi password to a portmanteau of our names, then suggesting it’d be a good name for our daughter.
And among these folks, I was always labelled “the unromantic one”. I believe the uvula counts as genitalia. I giggled at a fart during a funeral. I’ve had two pets in my entire life, and they ate all their children.
Hi, I’m Aragón. I’m a colossal idiot, I’ve never written anything romantic, and I’m currently fisting somebody precious to you. Here’s another blog on the subject of shitty romance.
1. GOD IS DEAD AND YOU CUNTS KILLED HIM.
I honestly can’t tell if they’re fucking with me on purpose at this point.
I mean, until now I just sorta assumed all romance writers were idiots. The idea was that only a total cockmonger would write the shit I’ve read – because I’m sorry, I just refuse to believe that whoever came up with “they fall in love because both have hemorrhoids” has a functional brain. This is not something that appears naturally in the human race. This is stupid by design. This is going back in time to feed bleach to your pregnant mother and then high-fiving yourself.
But then I see shit like the stuff I’m going to point out in this blog, and I can't help but change my mind. You can only go so far with idiocy. This is not the romance writers being stupid. This is the romance writers going out of their way to piss me off.
What are they doing, you ask? It’s a little tricky to explain. In this blog, I’ll be talking about forced lack of communication between characters. About a discrepancy between character motivation and character action. About a lack of an internal consistency within the story to make room for the author.
I’ll be talking about the use of artificial plot points and misunderstandings to lengthen the story as much as possible, sacrificing the entire story itself.
I’ll be talking padding. Fucking padding. Larding, faffing, aggrandizing, filling out. Wearing high heels to the stilt convention. Stuffing your briefs with cotton when hiring a prostitute. Wearing the fleshlight as you penetrate a cavernous vagina.
I’m talking about motherfucking filler.
In a romantic story.
Look: I’m an idiot. I’m the reason why doctors ask you to please not blow bubbles in the glucose dropper. I’m the intended audience for every fart joke in your favorite cartoon. But even I realize that trying to use filler in a romance is like asking a homeopath for contraceptives.
And yet, here we are! Talking filler! Aren’t you glad you were born. I sure am.
This is filler done wrong, by the way. Those idiots really aren’t conquering the world any time soon. I don’t even know how to feel about how they still mess up – relieved? Offended? I think I’ll go by offended, because really, this makes me rage. This is where the lines between stupidity, laziness and evil blur into a goddamn mess. This is calling your Vietnamese friend the n-word.
But first things first: yes, filler is to modern storytelling what casual racism is to Australia. When you’re telling a story that’s episodic in nature – because, say, you’re the writer of a TV show – sometimes you need to throw some pauses in there. It’s good for the pacing of the entire show, and to make sure the audience can breathe between plot points. It can also be well-written, and help us take a peek into the characters’ everyday life. It makes them look whole, fleshed out, like actual fucking human beings. Filler, when done right, can be really immersive.
When done right.
But this? This is not filler done well. This is to literature what diaper fetishists are to disentery outbreaks.
I have seen filler in bad romantic stories done a thousand times, and so have you. Everybody has, because that turd is omnipresent in the genre. But, precisely because of that ubiquity, it’s really fucking hard to point out the specifics. If we take the romantic genre and picture it as a room, then my blog posts are me walking in and pointing at the huge piece of shit on the carpet. But this time I can’t focus my attention on any particular log, because the writer just farted and left. And at first we think there’s no shit in the room, but then we breathe, and our lungs burn like embers. We can smell the mess, we notice the author ate tacos last night, but we never actually see it.
But untangle your bollocks, because not all is lost. You can’t fart like that without leaving a mark in your underwear. And holy fucking shit guys, am I going to point that mark out.
It’s too complicated to explain this in abstract, so let’s talk examples first. I'll explain three cases where this happens, and then I'll make a point to talk about what those scenes imply, and what they have in common. See if they ring any bells.
Bad romantic filler is when the writer tries to retcon the ending of the story so it’s not actually the ending. When the two main characters finally confess, kiss, fuck, or whatever the shit the endgame is for your particular story – but then in comes the next episode, and they’re back at square one. Because they forgot that they confessed. Or they are too embarrassed to do anything else about it. Or they couldn’t hear what the other was saying.
Reading this is like pissing with an erection. Swingers would say this is cheating. Onan would deem it a dick move.
Why? Because this bullshit isn’t a fair move. What the writer is doing here is not telling the story – in fact, the writer is doing the exact opposite. But just one example is not enough, so let’s talk two more before getting to the point.
Bad romantic filler is when the characters flirt with the finesse of a redneck fucking his shotgun, but they’re still not together. Because that’s exactly the level of social awareness romance writers possess, I assume. The two characters have telegraphed the other what they feel a thousand times, and it’s absurd how they’re still not an item, and everybody knows this. And then, one day, they finally man the fuck up, and decide to confess, and as the words come out of their mouths—
The phone rings. A building explodes. A dog barks, somebody opens the door, the guy’s anus prolapses – doesn’t fucking matter. Something interrupts them. They get flustered. And then they stop the confession.
And they act as if nothing had happened.
So they’re still not together.
Because Hell is empty.
And of course, this doesn’t happen once – it happens many, many times. But we’re not done yet.
Bad romantic filler is when the characters are together and they still doubt if the other loves them. Sure, they have kissed and cuddled and they can still feel each other’s smegma around their lips, but that means squat. Some people kiss their dogs, and you don't assume they love them until they get the peanut butter.
So in short, the characters assume that physical intimacy does not equal emotional closeness. They don't know if their love interest would jam up their emotional crotch for them, we could say. Okay. Cool. Whatever. I’m Spanish, I think I'm rude if I'm not making out with your wife two seconds after learning her name – I understand that a kiss doesn’t really mean anything.
But Papa says just ‘cause ye shot yer dick off ain’t mean shotgun’s gonna fuck itself, so of course, right after we establish that in this story we’re aiming for that tone, the protagonist sees her love interest kiss somebody else on the cheek, and then I don’t even bother with the rest of the story. I just hiss the word “cunt”, close the tab, and my soul abandons my mortal body.
Because if the main characters are the ones kissing each other nobody gives a shit... But the very moment somebody else enters the picture, that philosophy becomes more useless than a woman in Utah. Mr-Love-Interest looked at another girl, so he’s obviously heads over heels. The rules change if it means that we're introducing a love triangle: the gestures that didn't matter before are important now. You kiss it, you love it. Go buy an engagement ring for my asshole.
Then, of course, cue the thousand episodes of pointless drama and misunderstandings, and "I thought you loved me"s and "I only love you"s. And in the end nobody learns anything. If they get together again? Expect more questions about what does a kiss really mean.
I gave you three examples of bad filler, but the list goes on, and on, and fucking on. It never ends. Said three examples – “forgot the confession”, “constant interruptions”, and “suck my dick” – are prominent, but they surely aren't the only ones. Padding. Faffing. Bullshit.
And there’s a thematic connection, of course. There’s a reason why this idiocy feels so tacked on, even though at first sight it shouldn’t – it’s drama, yes, but it’s unnecessary drama. It’s drama that fucks with the plot, with the characters, with absolutely everything that the story stands for.
Remember how I mentioned episodic storytelling earlier? Yes, that was for a goddamn reason. Episodic stories are told in chunks, with pauses between the chapters, with time skips between the episodes. So they can have filler, because it’s possible to end an episode and then tell a completely different story in the next one. A story that has nothing to do with the main plot. You’re fighting aliens? Good. Here, enjoy twenty minutes of farting around at the beach.
But see, linear storytelling can’t have that. Because that’s what "linear" fucking means. So if you want to pad out the story, you can’t make it unrelated – there are no side stories, no “off” chapters. Everything has to do with the main plot, the central conflict, the drama.
However, the shitty romance writers want filler, because they can’t let the story end. So they write it anyway, and they integrate it into the story.
It’s a stupid solution to a stupid problem. It’s resorting to incest because you don’t know want to memorize an extra birthday. By changing the story to add elements that have nothing to do the previous shit you've established, you’re breaking the characters’ minds.
In “forgot the confession” and “constant interruption,” the first two examples, there’s no reason why the characters shouldn’t be together already. Their motivation is to be with each other, or at least that’s what the stupid author keeps telling us – but it’s really not. With those scenes, a discrepancy is created, and now the audience realizes that the characters' real motivation is to be in love but never move on from there. The story wants the unresolved sexual tension, the cheap thrills of teenager drama. The moment they get to the point where the next step is unavoidable, something happens and we go back to square one.
What happens here is that it’s easier to write people in love than to write people that are together. Thinking about a plot is harder when you can’t just trust your colon and go for the clichés. So the result is that the characters become huge hypocrites. They say they love each other, but they don't. They don’t want a relationship, and they’ll use any excuse to dodge that particular bullet.
The third example – “suck my cock” – is slightly different, but it follows the same idea: the characters, while together, have a particular brand of drama going on. But when that is about to get resolved, the author introduces a completely different plot thread so the story can drag on a little more. Like the junkie that mixes aspirin with the cocaine so he can snort more often because he just doesn’t give a shit anymore.
There are some rules, some motivations that the story establishes and follows all the way up to the climax. But if they get to the climax, the story ends. So, the moment the story catches its final breath, everything goes through he fucking window, and we’re forced to canter on. Everything looks the same, and we keep hearing that this is going to end in romance, but we can see through that lie now.
It’s all really meta, and that makes it even worse. It's the author thinking "no, fuck this, I do what I want," and consciously making a bad choice. Consicously lessening the story's quality and breaking suspension of disbelief because it's simpler this way. At least the “tsundere”, horrible as she is, has some consistency. But this is literally a disrespect to the already-shitty-story we’re reading. This is everything and everybody going out of character at the same time. This is CPR-ing a rotten corpse. This is masturbating in Planned Parenthood.
Because, again, the author believes that writing people together is harder than writing people who aren’t. So it all stops. Cheap drama appears, asinine plots are repeated time and time again, and whatever excuse to make the story last longer is used. This is a choice taken for reasons unrelated to the story. The characters refuse to advance on their own will, the story’s universe seems to conspire against evolution, and the narration kicks our dicks and says it’s a blowjob.
This is telling a story for the sake of telling a story. It’s degrading the entire thing time and time again to make it last forever, to always have that last plot threat hanging, to make sure your readers don't (or can't) escape. And everything that could have been good about the story slowly fades away.
With the TMC and the “tsundere” the authors were going for the lazy, stupid route; they’re fucking puppets and I can see the cunt that moves them. But this? This filler? This is the writer cutting the strings, and then assuring us the puppets are still dancing.
This is cancer for all things literary. All things story-related. This is a son of a bitch making fun of absolutely everything, included the story itself, and believing that storytelling doesn’t deserve at least a little bit of respect. This is treating a story like something artificial and worthless, that you can play with, that you can destroy or reassemble at your own pace. This is insulting everybody who ever gave a shit about your characters.
This is probably the worst sin that a romantic story can commit. This is one of those things that make me hate a story, no matter how good everything else is. This is bullshit.
Let me be absolutely fucking clear, Author. You’re not being clever. You’re not staying true to yourself. You’re not “playfully teasing” the readers. If you write yourself into a corner, then continue writing and see where that gets you. If the plot has ran its course, let it end. If the characters demand you to finish the tale, finish it. Because right now, you’re not telling me a story.
You’re wasting my fucking time.
To be continued
This one felt too short, or too weak for you? Worry not. Consider this a breather episode, because the next installment of the series is going to tackle something that makes the “tsundere” and the TMC look like Hamlet.
Next time: The Harem Protagonist, or “Wish Fulfillment”.
I'm aware that this blog counts as filler within the series.
Sorry it took so long, guys. This one was really hard to write, and I went through kind of a dry spell -- but I'm out of it now, so hey, all's good.
This blog has a particular joke that might be seen as offensive -- I hope that's not the case, however. The narration points it out specifically as an "evil" thing to say, after all, and the tone of the blog demands that kind of language. Still, if it annoyed you, I'm really sorry. If it becomes an issue, I don't mine changing it.
PS. Recently, Bookplayer wrote about bad romantic stories, and tackled a particular issue -- comunication between characters, and what they talk about when they're in love -- that can be seen as the exact opposite of the problem I talk about here. I heartily recommend both this blog, and the one it's referencing, Chuckfinley''s treatise on Alien Shipping Syndrome.
Died. 10/10 blog
I want to swap smegma with you for writing this, but I'm circumcised.
What do?
I chuckled at this.
Romance done well is a rare sight here, isn't it?
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Ha! True story, I wrote that joke at him while workshopping the
line, because while it's a fantastic line, what makes it powerful is how offensive it is, but it's kind of offensive for the right reasons? So we put a lot of thought into that. I still argue that's the better joke of the two because of the risk it takes.
The original joke in place of the "homeopath for contraceptives" one was:
But yeah, it turns out Aragon puts a lot of genuine thought and care into writing these things and actually edits them. Who knew?
When I saw the title I knew it was gonna be good.
I think every Harlequin romance written in the early 80's had the same theme: young inexperienced girl meets older dashing handsome loving kind single non-gay non-weird sane guy (what I like to call a miss/myth relationship) and promptly spends an entire book angsting about actually getting up enough nerve to tell him how much in love she is with him (with optional POV change to show the guy doing the exact same thing only with genders changed in the filler). The wife literally had a few hundred pounds of them and I'd watch her read back when we were in college. It went a little like: flip, flip, flip... pause, flip, flip, flip... pause. Only every ten pages or so was there anything germane to what could laughingly be called a plot.
God. Damn it. Thank God for you. But damn it. Thank God damn it.
I want to voice this. Can I make a dramatic (super-dramatic) reading of this, and possibly the other entries in the series?
Unnecessary drama is one of my biggest pet peeves in any genre (especially when due to forced lack of communication).
I read this paragraph and my immediate thoughts for alternate filler options were:
"forgot the dick"
"constant sucking"
"interrupted my confession"
and
And I can see all of these working.
1) Fillyfriend comes over for our first, truly romantic evening together as a couple.
Oh no, she forgot the dick!
2) Friend attempts to talk about how they actually feel but is unable to due to her friend's constant sucking.
Be it of the last dregs of a milkshake where it seems there's more milkshake at the bottom of the glass than there was in the entire fucking milkshake- OH MY FUCKING CELESTIA HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR YOU TO FINISH A DAMN DRINK! Or where the constant oral sex makes it impossible to maintain a single, continuous sentence.
3) Friend attempts to confess their romantic and/or sexual attraction but just keeps getting repeatedly interrupted.
Be it by the friend of the first example coming back to get the forgotten phallus, or by a thrown glass shattering the window.
3861515 "I'm aware that this blog counts as filler within the series." fuck you, this was hilarious and insightful. This was some Oscar Wilde, "if you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." level shit.
Like, don't be such a kitten-huffing moron, quality isn't measured in wordcount.
This was too majestic to just read in my head. Someone get Morgan Freeman to narrate, seriously.
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Learning new things every day.
I dated a girl for far too long who wholeheartedly believed all that. The stuff about me having female friends or saying/implying other women were attractive in any way. She was a real winner.
Also, you can get away with the interruption thing once in a romantic arc, but only once, and only if it's funny. It also helps if the characters are teenagers, because teenagers are stupid and can't read context clues.
Reading your prose is like navigating a forest of metaphors. Except the trees are dicks and the vegetation is orphan abuse.
Honestly, this entire blog post feels like filler...for the...next...
*Squints at screen*
...You son of a bitch.
*Eagerly waiting for the next installment of whining*
Greetings, first and foremost thank you for the pleasant experience with the it feels rapey mini-series. Even though your original intention came from the AO3 you did an excellent job to summarize why im unable to watch any romantic anime nowadays, or why im only reading romance fanfiction in exceptional cases. And if reading your posts caused some reconsideration in some of the authors, then I offer you my sincere thanks.
About the harem topic: in my own anime friend-group we had some serious discussion about the logic behind the harem animes and about the main character. I spare you the part about how the clumsy but kind, in his hobbies passionate main character became Heikin Sato-kun aka average John, with average face, average grades, no hobbies, no interest.
Seriously what did they do before the first female character? Sitting in their rooms, reading chalorie intake charts to be in the middle of the Gaussian chart?
And its sad because "the make connection with the main character" became <3 if he can get 5 girlfriends so can you, you unlucky lonely bastard <3
It can work too, if they admit that the next 12 episodes are going to be ecchi-penis joke combos and they don't want to make it a romantic comedy or romantic drama. Watching admittedly stupid animes is like taking 3 cookies from a "free cookies , pls only take one" stand. It gives you a guilty pleasure, if you tell it someone else, they will think that you are a horrible person, but otherwise pretty harmless.
But when they try to tell you, that the best student in the school, the track-field star, and the student model are competing for the attention of Sato-kun who is so average, that his parent are in a business trip in America (to avoid the shame of being unable to recognize their own son)...
And yet you can still find good female characters in good harem animes... when Sato-kun is not present. Then they can interact with each other, have a clash of interest, build connection or friendship with each other.
Heck if I ll ever get the necessary language skills to write and English or Japanese script, its going to be a Harem parody where the girls use harem-logic about EVERYTHING -> about inanimate object like a perfect summer dress, the topic what should they eat etc.
TL:DNR Harem is good if its merchandised as porn-light, because a normal romantic drama can do nothing with the fact that Sato is unable to say: im committed to someone. Or make Sato marginal, so the girls have enough space to shine
Yea, I think I wrote a sort of inversion of the "suck my dick" even though it's really just a romance subplot to a magic filled coming of age story. The main girl character angsts about whether their dating because while she had this crush on him and admired him from a distance, she has sex with him within a few minutes of meeting him, but they don't really discuss a relationship. He does want to date, and as is discussed in the story the rules are very loose in terms of sleeping with other people, as long as neither lies to the other. At one point it almost seems like she's upset by walking in on him having sex with her sister, but really she's only upset that due to, lets call it magic puberty, she has no sex drive at the moment and feels she's failed her boyfriend by not having enough sex with him. After plot happens she ends up double teaming the guy with her sister, but is in no way jealous of her or any other girl just because they have sex. She does have some doubts about the relationship that linger, but they're all of the, is my relationship really more than great sex? This is very in character since she's been having doubts about control of her own sex life from the start of the story, and because her magic induced puberty is terrible at least some of these are valid. To the point is despite being a possibly very shallow relationship, it's still more romantic than the "suck my dick" example.
I love your metaphors, even as they make me glad for the miles between us.
There's miles between us, right?
I'm kind of torn on this. On one hand, pointless relationship drama filler is terrible. On the other hand, there are authors out there who are going to put dozens of unnecessary chapters in their story no matter what, and I'd rather see dozens of unnecessary chapters of stupid drama than a dozen or so chapters of reasonable romance and then dozens of unnecessary chapters of extended epilogue.
Really I just wish that authors would pace themselves better.
Ah, the reason I became disillusioned with Inu Yasha.
The whole demon thing was OK, but I wanted to see Inu Yasha and Kagomi go somewhere. I forgave them the first time "somewhere" was "back to square 1," and probably the second or third time too. But about that same time I got frustrated with having to go back to Go without collecting 200cc's of romance subplot. And then upset. And then whatever you're going through in this blog post.
Now I'm sorry that I brought up Inu Yasha because I don't like even talking about it...
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Well, at least those two did end up together... albeit after literally entire seasons of filler material.
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Yeah, in the anime. The fucking manga didn't really give the audience what they wanted -- Takahashi is a good author, but Inu Yasha's ending was as cathartic as a kick to the balls. Thank god for the anime showrunners who added a couple kisses here and there, or else...
(Also, someone's going on a blog binge, huh).
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Hey, I see a list that looks interesting, I open one, and y'know. Can't just not read those others
I recently stumbled on (online scans of) a collection omnibus of "Ah! My Goddess", and there was this small gag comic in the introduction in which the author-avatar rather bluntly said it was pretty much exactly like the previous story they wrote, just with some new faces slapped on the same characters, and just like the previous one it went on for-goddamn-ever without anything happening, and they honestly weren't sure why you'd bother reading it. (To which the characters vehemently insisted they were their own people and not just carbon copies).
So yeah, they're aware of it, but it just sells I guess
...Inuyasha is guilty about this with everything, Love Hina was MADE of this. Ah My Goddess pulled this BIG time. (Up until the finale, and even in that case it kinda cheeateed...but at least there it kinda had a bit of awesome...)
What I found hilarious? Ah My Goddess, eventually, had the reveal that the PLOT itself was actually messing with Keiichi's mind...so that he wouldn't click that he is truly in love with Belldandy.
Hell, even HARUHI fell into this. Though, at least in that instance...it's actually justified and kinda funny. (He confessed. He explained everything. She fell over laughing)
At least SAO has the two main characters get married in the first season.
Hmm...this has some good points, though like your other blogs on romance, I see this more in anime than books and writing, but that could just be my own experiences. Wheel of Time syndrome comes to mind, but that's about it.
I suppose it can depend on what you find to be filler and what isn't? A chapter where we get to learn more about a character's history, personality, and see what makes them tick in a romance is, to me, a good chapter and not filler, even though the story doesn't necessarily need that chapter in it. When does a chapter meant to do character development become filler, I suppose, is a question to be asked?
Is the main protaganist spending a chapter hanging out and playing video games with his two closest friends and them talking back and forth throughout a filler chapter because it doesn't advance the plot? Would it not be a filler if it involved the love interest, but it did not really further their relationship in anyway?
I'm looking at doing more character development chapters in my next story, chapters of the main characters hanging out, doing different activities, and showing their friendship with one another to give the readers a look at their personalities and motivations, but is that just filler when the core of the story is meant to be going towards a romance in the long run? A romance that only involves one of those friends with the interest not being present in that chapter even? Just curious on your thoughts on this.
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Holy shit, you guys. You just made me realize that Inu Yasha was a rare Male Tsundere.
Come to think of it, Kagome was also a bit of a tsundere, what with the "Sit!" stuff. And also Kikyo, in the cold, tragic, "I love you, but we can never be together because I'm dead," kind of way. And so was Sango with Miroku. And maybe that little Thundergirl that fell for Shippo...
Actually, Kagome's little brother Shota and that girl he confessed to and reciprocated his feelings, might be the only characters on that show that WEREN'T tsundere's.
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Is it really "tsundere" when it seems more like a show design element, rather than any individual's defined trait? Because it seemed less like the characters were all avoiding admitting any feelings, and more that the show was never allowed for anyone to realise them, because reasons. Probably bad ones, like "we like the constant romantic tension," but still reasons.
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Going back to the chapter Aragon wrote about tsunderes, I do believe most of the main characters on the show qualify as tsunderes by personality traits, and not as the toxic modern character archetype.
i feel so attacked right now :< :< :<
But really, this blog does speak to the weakest part of my only decent romance. If I had to do it all over again, I dunno if Rainbow would have listened to Rarity and Fluttershy. Things to
overthink and have anxietythink about.