Romantic Fiction, Reality Shaping and The Work

[Matai]

One issue I have had with the dark and modern romances in particular, and also some of the other romance novels, is the speed with which the protagonists make love. As we know from Laura's research, making love too early is one of the worst things a woman (or man) can do, given the personality disorders and emotional and spiritual hang ups so many carry.

In the good novels, the characters fortunately are not personality disordered and work through their emotional trauma together. In reality, the chances of this happening when you barely know someone are much slimmer and the risks of physical/emotional damage are far greater. Most female characters remain relatively pure as virgins in the romantic history books so they come less 'damaged' from sexual entanglements but the men are all depicted as rakes.

Little thought seems to be given to the emotional and spiritual damage this can be inflicting on these male characters. In some of the modern and dark romances the women also have exposure to previous partners and this is a lack of protection of women that is reflected in modern society.

Perhaps the rakes represent the rampant sex motivated fake 'love' present many in men and the overall male dominated competitive hierarchy of men which is driven by the sex drive as depicted by Gurdjieff and others like Barry Long.

Recently I have been reading the Barry long journal number two in which I think he accurately captures the reality for women dealing with the average man and how they can best compose themselves in a way which is not often represented in the modern and dark romance novels:

The greatest joke Have you heard the greatest joke of all time? A man comes up to a woman and says, ‘Lets make love. Are you available for love? You should be available. Barry Long says so. So be my lover! Let’s make love’. Well, Barry Long does not say that. That’s a misquote by man. Woman, never ever put up with that again. In future, this is what you do, if it is the truth for you. You say this: – ‘Are you joking? Make love? You must be talking about a different love to the love I know. ‘You’ve got to love me, man. You’ve got to walk along beside me and show me that you love being with me. You’ve got to do that day after day. You’ve got to take me to the pictures, and sit there and hold my hand – if I allow you to. You’ve got to stay with me overnight and not even think of making love to me. ‘Am I available? Be my lover? You can forget it. You’re not capable of making love to me if you talk like that. No man who says that can ever really make love.’ A man who does that will not make love. He will make trouble and you will weep. He will never get rid of your unhappiness for you. He will never be responsible enough in love to clear all your past lovers out of you, and your Dad and all your own wicked, wicked ways. How many times have you fallen for it, woman? I’m asking you: Is that the sort of love you want? It’s the greatest joke of all times, isn’t it? And he’s always got away with it. And he’s getting away with it in the name of Barry Long, unfortunately. But that is what comes of not hearing what I say. Man must face you. He must never get your body until he shows he has the capacity to love you. It seems to be the popular idea that you just go and make love and dip in anywhere to ‘remove the blockage’ or something. Great idea. But you know whose idea it is, don’t you? – man’s idea! Silly master’s idea. Silly therapist’s idea. Is that what you want, woman? Do you think that will ever take the blockage out of you? My God, it won’t. Only love takes the blockages out of you. The only thing that man wants from you woman (and I wish you would get rid of any other idea) is what’s between your legs. I have to be very crude, but that is what he wants. If you want to prove that he doesn’t, (because he mightn’t want that, might he?) you say ‘Well then, love me, be with me, walk beside me, just take me out’. Then you’ll know if he loves you for all those other reasons – your great intellect, your conversation etc. Or you will find out that your presence fits his; you just flow into him as you walk along and he enjoys walking with you, enjoys sitting beside you, wants to get on the phone to just talk to you, not about problems, but just to say how good it is to be with you. If you hop into bed with him, you’re finished. Love has got to be on your terms, woman. When you meet him, certainly you’ve got to be available for love. But what love? He’s going to bluster at you. He’s going to accuse you of being frightened, fearful, emotional, ridiculous, a denial of woman. You’ve got to be able to handle him. You’ve got to say, ‘Fair enough. See you later. Before you have me, you will love me – and not the way you think’. Takes a lot of guts. You’re going to lose a lot of men. You could be getting older and feel you haven’t many chances and then up he comes and you think ‘He looks alright. It seems alright. If I don’t sleep with him, am I going to lose him?’ Well, lose him. You are going to have to die for love sooner or later. Haven’t you been dying for love long enough?

 

[Voyageur]

There seems to have been a growing awareness in the public space on the issues with popular modern “romantic literature”.

The Absolute Degeneracy of Modern Writing
The Second Story

This two month old discussion on the subject by the YouTube channel ‘The Second Story’ by Hilary Layne doesn’t go anywhere near as deep as Laura’s breakdown with Grok on the phenomenon but nether less tries to explore the subject pointing out a lot of the most popular and pushed romance novels to be essentially porn. Some more attention has surfaced within the last week as more popular commentary channels have been touching on the subject.

Thought Layne to be rater interesting, and although not as deep as you say, she runs down some feminist parallels in describing modern era, so-called romance stories. She also looked into the studies dealing with the perils of film/picture porn industry on men - study after study, yet basically saying that there is nothing on woman. So, she sees a whole culture of woman around these books who are falling into the same trap. When it is pointed out, no one wants to touch it. As Hilary said, it is like they wrap feminist armor around themselves, such as shields that say they are just exploring their sexuality, etcetera.

Hilary also explained the affects reading these books had had on her, which were quite pronounced psychologically, with physiological effects.

 

[Bluegazer]

Who is behind this? What is behind this?

Well, most likely the same monsters in the story. It is possible that even misuse of language (malapropisms) may be the result of somewhat flawed communication.

the alien romances, monster romances, werewolf/shapeshifter romances

The love bite, right? You prepare and condition an entire generation to accept a future condition in order to extract emotional juice. You start with a millionaire psychopath... and end up with a "dragon".

Yes, here we are in this thread talking about romance and how it can change our reality for the better. But just as you noticed that this genre of dark romance exists, perhaps it is because it comes from darkness?

I can no longer think exclusively in terms of 3rd density...

 

[Jones]

There's book 7 to the Brides of Karadok series by Alice Coldbreath:

Amazon blurb:

Cheerful Gunnilde Payne is hiding a bruised heart behind her bright smile. When her friend invites her to spend some time away from her provincial home, she jumps at the chance.
All is going well, until Gunnilde overhears herself rudely dismissed by two knights, as “nice, and eminently forgettable.” Poor Gunnilde is mortified.
Then, she decides to take her future in her hands and seize the chances life puts before her. She will go to the royal court in Aphrany. She will attract the attention of the Queen and become one of her ladies-in-waiting!
Little does Gunnilde know that at court she will attract the attention of someone else entirely… Someone disapproving, someone who thinks she is a flaunting, flirtatious creature but certainly not forgettable. No, not remotely forgettable.
And then, the Queen insists that Gunnilde marry him.

Initially the married couple agree not to consummate their marriage, but each have surprises for the other as they discover an attraction to each other and change their minds. There is an unexpected development during the consummation and their reaction to it is hilarious!

 

[Anamarija]

Amazon blurb:

Certainly, the plot sounds intriguing.

 

[Nathan]

I tried to get Grok to write a couple of healthy dominance scenarios but it just wasn't able to do it - too much libtardedness interfering.

It seems Grok has the same problems as most modern romance writers!

Well-written contemporary romance novels are few and far between, from what I can tell, and Grok did an impressive job of laying all of that out. I’d say fewer than 5% of romance bestsellers in the charts are well-written. Most of these tend to be traditionally published, too, which guarantees at least an editorial process. But as we’ve discovered, many are plagued with libtardation. You can’t have it both ways, apparently! It’s also worth noting that the age of romance readers had expanded rapidly. It used to be 50+, but now it extends as far down as 18. Perhaps partly owing to the burgeoning hybrid genre of romantasy (romance fantasy).

Elle Kennedy is one example of a talented contemporary romance writer that comes to mind for me, although she is heavily constrained and entangled by her feminist perspective to the point where her work is almost at war with itself. That aside, she’s leagues ahead of her competition in terms of writing quality. One of her series is being adapted into a television series by Amazon MGM, which might even go harder into the libtard direction than she did.

On a bit of a side note, I was inspired earlier this year by Mary Balogh’s books to try my hand at writing my own contemporary (non-dark) romance novel under a pen name, not only to expand into other genres and learn more skills (I have no experience in this genre whatsoever) but also to understand character and romance better, both in fiction and in life. So I decided to attempt a cozy, wholesome story with the sparing use of sex scenes tied more to love than lust. I’m still halfway through, but it’s been a very enjoyable project to write and learn!

I approached a romance editor who had quite a history with publishers, since I needed help with structure and tropes. In my first attempt, I accidentally wrote a romantic comedy movie where they don’t get together until the very end. Which is not how the contemporary novels work at all, sadly. There needs to be at least some physical intimacy by one-third of the way through. What was interesting about the editor, though, is that she excelled at imposing a commercially viable romance structure and tying subplots in more directly with the main romance plot, but she struggled with satisfying payoffs and building healthy male characters. Her suggested male characters were one-dimensional and either “simp kings” (a common trope) or abusive exes or fathers.

This seems to be a common pitfall in non-dark subgenres. In fact, her desire for “simp” characters reminds me of the recent increasing “cucking” trend, where the woman has an existing husband or boyfriend who likes to watch her or at least hear about her activities with a dominant man. Given everything else we’re seeing, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by this.

Anyway, the editor’s sex scenes were rushed and occurred too early for my liking, so I opted for a more inexperienced female character who would be less willing to dive in, so to speak. This way, the romance has some room to breathe and hopefully avoid the issue that Matai encountered:

One issue I have had with the dark and modern romances in particular, and also some of the other romance novels, is the speed with which the protagonists make love. As we know from Laura's research, making love too early is one of the worst things a woman (or man) can do, given the personality disorders and emotional and spiritual hang ups so many carry.

Laura’s intriguing Grok conversation also reminded me of shoe0nhead’s video, which Andrian shared in an earlier post a few pages back. I’ve included a few interesting excerpts for anyone who is curious:

BookTok [book section of TikTok] is a very interesting place, and any book fans out there know how it has absolutely destroyed the hobby of literature and just flooded it with absolute slop. Spicy slop. You see, books on TikTok are not rated by how well they are written or how good the characters are. No, they are rated by the spice. And what does spice mean? Porn. It means porn.

And the latest book that everyone is talking about is none other than Morning Glory Milking Farm by C. M. Nascosta. [She attempts to read the book descriptions and throws the book off-screen before she can finish it]

The story is basically this millennial named Violet and she gets a job, basically working at Big Pharma in Narnian where they harvest Minotaur… milk to make Viagra for human males.

Cut to a Booktokker who says this with absolute sincerity: “Morning Glory Milking Farm is actually a profound critique of late-stage capitalism and toxic masculinity. In this text, we see that the tingling sensation in her coochie is the tingling sensation of a Marxist revolution.” [Cut to Shoe0nHead laughing hysterically]

This r/RomanceBooks Reddit Q&A was also featured in the video:

Q: Why do you guys like monster romances?

A: Human men are, quite often, terrible. Romance books with human men are already partly fantasy but monsters just takes the fantasy a bit further.

A: Maximal escapism, minimal association with real-life assholes, the patriarchy, misogyny and oppression of women etc etc. I’ve almost exclusively read fantasy as well, even before I started with romance. Still, non-human MMCs [male main characters] besides vampires are pretty new to me but Morning Glory Milking Farm and Homebound fixed that real quick.

A: Cause the monsters are less dangerous than dating actual men.

Shoe0nHead: A lot of women’s smut, particularly monster smut, is about submission, domination, forced breeding, “non-consensual consent.” The women are conquered and taken and overpowered by these monsters. And I think many of these women are reading these books containing monsters and not men because masculinity and dominance in men has been completely demonized in modern society.

If we’re looking for a peek inside the conflicted and contradictory worldview of the contemporary romance writer, I think this tightrope-walking quote from the book gives us a distilled glimpse:

“…realizing in mortification that she ought to have attempted to pay her half. What kind of feminist are you? […]

[On their dinner date, the Minotaur says:] “I don’t want you to feel like you don’t have any agency here. I might be the one giving all the orders, but you’re holding all the cards. Your comfort is the only thing that counts right now, and if I overstep, I want you to know you can tell me so. […]

She was a good feminist, she’d told herself, and she definitely couldn’t be bought. But if he had suggested at that moment that he would have appreciated [explicit act that she would theoretically accept] without a shred of hesitation.”

Which reminds me of this older quote from Jordan Peterson:

“And God, I’m going to say this too, even though I shouldn’t. But I don’t believe this, but I’m trying to figure it out. You know, I thought it was absolutely comical when 50 Shades of Grey came out, hey. I just thought that was just so insanely comical. That, at the same time, there’s this massive political demand for, like, radical equality. And, say, with regards to sexual behavior.

And the fastest selling novel the world has ever seen was S&M [sadism & masochism] domination, right. It’s like, oh, well, we know where the unconscious is going with that one, don’t we? And sometimes I think, like… because one of the things that I’ve really tried to puzzle out, and it’s not like I believe this, right, I’m just telling you where the edges of my thinking have been going: is that you have this crazy alliance between the feminists and the radical Islamists that I just do not get. It’s like, the feminists, why they aren’t protesting non-stop about Saudi Arabia is just completely beyond me! Like, I do not understand it in the least.

And I wonder too, I just wonder bloody well—this is the Freudian in me—is there an attraction, you know, is there an attraction that’s emerging among the female radicals for that totalitarian male dominance that they’ve chased out of the West? And I mean, that’s a hell of a thing to think. But after all, I am psychoanalytically minded. And I do think things like that. Because, like, I just can see no rational reason for it. […] Because as the demand for egalitarianism and the eradication of masculinity accelerates, there’s going to be a longing in the unconscious for the precise opposite of that, right?”