Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Incenjucar" data-source="post: 1832201" data-attributes="member: 6182">Appearantly, it means "Princess Barbera" "Martin Tenbones", from the second Sandman compilation.More seriously, its one of those words that has several, barely-related meanings.Properly, it means more or less, "Of Rome".  Later, Romance came to mean "idealized" (Which includes both the increasingly perfect women of Arthurian legend, each one more absolutely perfect than the last, and the dark idealizations of E. A. Poe, who romanticized about his ladies AFTER their deaths.).  Of late, its usually people and situations who are idealized, but one can also Romanticize, say, the Middle Ages, by thinking it was like Camelot rather than a festering cesspool of plague and violence.  Of late, "Romance" mostly means "love and dating in a way women have a hard time getting it at the moment", which changes based on the current social fads.  If women only have burly, pushy men, the latest romance will have sensative artists who woo them with tears.  If women have only sensative artists, they'll be curling up with a story about lumberjacks.  If women are having overly-demanding partners, the stories may involve getting to date around, if they have partners who date around, the stories may involve absolute, unquestioning loyalty.  If partners are getting too physical, it'll be emotional, if partners are getting to emotional, it'll get physical.  It's basically "relationship-oriented wish fulfillment" fiction.  Add fantasy, and its the same, plus Martin Tenbones.From what I've seen lately, the single mother thing is getting out of hand, because there's a bloody dozen pregnancy and baby related romance novels.  Stable boys are also quite prominent, which is probably a result of urbanization.There is, of course, romance of a less faddish nature, it's just not as common.Personally, I'm writing in some romantic notions in the background of my latest (er.. first... eh heh..) story.  It's not going to be a major part of things, but it's an effective way of noting the tension that exists in one of my fantasy cultures.I've also used a seriously long, convoluted romantic situation in my online RPing.  Aside from culminating in my character's death, and being amazingly, creepily accurate (When I had first started playing the character, who was nigh-unkillable, he said to some, on the issue of love, "Love is the only thing that can kill me.")  Finding a 'part' of his former love (from another lifetime, in another body) in a woman who wanted his bod, he ended up thinking he was in love with her, being torn apart every once in awhile by her infidelity.  When they finally get together, she quickly does something idiotic.  The character thus goes haywire (long story), and ends up in the arms of a dear friend -- they realize the real love was between the two of them, all that time, and he died in her arms.  (And the best part, he came from a culture that expressed emotion through song -- her character's thoughts as he died was that she never got to hear him sing).Romance is bloody fun.  Especially tragic romance.</blockquote>

Verification