Corny Cliche Hatefest: Part Deux

Yes, it's happening again, as I predicted: my second Corny Cliche Hatefest, my rant about what I hate hate hate in badly-written romance. While most of these cliches were from To Sin with a Stranger by Kathryn Caskie, I have found them in other novels as well. It's just that having to read them all at once in one novel irritated me enough to make another point about them.

As with my previous Cliche Hatefest post, SPOILERS BEWARE. Major Major Spoilers Ahead. You have been warned.

The Gorgeous Protagonists
What is it? Romance heroes, heroines, and their sequel-bound relatives who are devastatingly tall, beautiful, muscular, and awesome - and at least ten times taller, more beautiful, muscular and awesome than everyone else.
Recent Offenders: To Sin with a Stranger, too many Lisa Kleypas novels to count, Sins of Midnight by Kimberley Logan.
Why I Hate It: This sounds like an odd duck of a cliche, I know. I'm not "hating people because they're beautiful." I have nothing against good-looking heroes and pretty heroines, and if a hero is handsome, it's genetically realistic that his siblings would also be hot. It's not like I'm rooting for heroes with bad teeth or anything.

What I hate is the cliche of the hyperbolically beautiful protagonist. The ones the author isn't satisfied to make simply handsome, or relatively good looking, but the protagonist who has to be the most beautiful, the most built, the tallest in the room, the protagonist who has to be the perfect physical specimen and ultimately superior to everyone else in the world, except maybe their siblings. The hero whose manliness makes every other man look girly - or the heroine whose feminine curves make every other woman look masculine. Or, at the very least, a protagonist whose physical perfection isn't a relevant plot point - for example, I'd pardon this cliche if the hero was a famous underwear model, because it would make sense to the story.

I hate this cliche for two reasons: it's unrealistic, and it's condescending. First of all, most romances (or at least the best romances) are built around interaction between the hero and the heroine - conversation, bantering dialogue, witty jokes, sensual encounters. Are good looks necessary to any of these? No. Being pretty doesn't make you smart, witty, or good in bed. So what, then, is the point to making them paragons of conventional physical beauty if it's not directly relevant to the plot?

Nothing's wrong with having a handsome hero (I love me some handsome heroes), but why does he have to make everyone else look bad in comparison?

The worst recent example of this was in To Sin with a Stranger, when the seven Sinclair siblings walk into a room for the first time. Laughably, all seven swoop in like aliens from Mars, or angels from Heaven - here's a direct quote (page 39): "Behind [Sterling, the hero] was a collection of the tallest, most beautiful beings she had ever seen. The women were the height of most men, their features delicate and perfect. The men were giants, a least a foot taller than any other gentleman in the assembly room. Like those of [Sterling] himself, their muscles were pronounced beneath their dark blue coats, protruding like great river stones embedded in a shallow creek."

This is an excellent paragraph for proving my point - not only does it dehumanize the characters and take away their realism, it also makes them bland. The paragraph calls them "beings." Not "people," not "humans," but "beings," as if they are a different species altogether. How does that make them relatable? What is the reader supposed to get out of that?

And notice how none of the seven siblings are described individually - the women are all "delicate and perfect", the men "giants." They're not even individual people - they're just cookie-cutter hotties, every one of them adhering to the same idea of beauty. What makes people individual, special, and different are their flaws - could none of them be short? A little too thin? Have an endearingly crooked nose or cleft chin? They all sound the same - and completely dull.

The condescending part comes from the fact that these types of characters are often so perfect for no discernable reason to the plot, and they all hammer home the same ideal of beauty that not everyone agrees with. I like skinny, lanky guys myself - so why do all my romance heroes have to be huge hulking Schwartzeneggars who have to walk through doors sideways if they're titled gentlemen who don't do any manual labour??? I mean, if romance authors are reading this, let me ask you: you spend so much time creating a hero or heroine with a unique backstory and character and personality - why don't you want them to be that way physically? Can't they be unique and special and loveable inside and out?

No Means Yes!
What is it? It's the tendency of romance-novel parents, best friends, eccentric aunts, and meddling servants to interpret the heroine's utter loathing for the hero (and vice versa) as boundless love.
Recent Offenders: To Sin with a Stranger, many others
Why I Hate It: This is another cliche that I tend to dislike only when it's exaggerated, but this cliche does tend to be exaggerated a lot.

When it's not exaggerated, this cliche can make sense. The opposites-attract theory's worked before, and it makes sense that people with opposing personalities might clash and dislike each other at first, only to discover how they complement each other later. And, after weeks and months of the hero and heroine sniping at each other, it's natural for their friends/relatives/servants to wonder why their friend seems to be so obsessed with this other person, even if it's only to make spiteful comments about them, and believe that their friend's pride prevents them from knowing their own mind.

However, many romance novels lately have taken to speeding up this process, to the point where Heroine A and Hero B only have to declare that they hate each other on sight for their confidantes to sigh, "It must be love!" No, it must be bullshit. Although there may be a thin line between love and hate, it's not realistic or natural to immediately assume that when someone declares a hatred for someone, they're hiding romantic feelings.

In To Sin with a Stranger, it takes Isobel and Sterling a total of TWO encounters within as many days for everyone to assume they've the hots for each other. During the first encounter, Sterling implies Isobel's a slut. During the second, Isobel slaps him silly. And yet, days later, Isobel's declaration of hatred for Sterling is refuted point-blank by a total stranger who says she "saw the fire between them" - you know, when Isobel was making Sterling's eyeballs rattle around in his head.

But this isn't the worst part about the cliche, the part that makes me grind my teeth whenever I encounter it - the worst aspect of the "No Means Yes" cliche, in which nosy relatives or servants think they know the hero/ine's mind better than the hero/ine themself does, is when they inevitably meddle and manipulate events to throw the hero and heroine together. It shows a dangerous and unrealistic disregard for the hero/ine's feelings. In a realistic world, imagine you are a spinster aunt in the Regency period, and your beloved niece and ward comes to you crying about what a brute Earl Toddy is, how terrible he makes her feel, how she hates everything he stands for. If the first thing that comes to your mind about what to do is engineer a scenario in which your niece and Earl Toddy are forced to spend the night alone in a snow-bound inn without supervision .... well, I guess you should be relieved that Social Services as we know it didn't exist in the Regency. But there's no way I'd consider you a responsible guardian.

It's those exaggerated cases that I despise, the ones in romance novels where well-wishers assume the hero's romantic intentions are contrary to his declarations based on very little time or evidence, and proceed to thwart the protagonists' orders/wishes/feelings/consent. I suppose this is a little ironic coming from a reader of historical romance, in which the heroines are nearly always in a position where their consent matters little in regards to what their fathers and guardians do for their own good. But I just plain don't like it when, in regards to romance, the heroine's wishes are sabotaged and thwarted by people who claim to know her mind better and claim to be doing it all for her own good. It's - well, it's pretty much as repugnant to me as the "no means yes" defence, that when a woman (or even a man) says "no," it's your judgement call, and not theirs as to whether they mean it or not.

Virgin In the Street and a Freak In the Bed
What is it? It's when a virgin heroine in an historical period, upon entering into her first sexual encounter, knows exactly what will happen, what to do, and some neat tricks to make it better.
Recent Offenders: To Sin with a Stranger
Why I Hate It: Um, because it exists completely in the realm of fantasy? Because it's a blatant refusal to write characters realistically influenced by their time periods? I could go on. As Julia Quinn's novels have demonstrated, well-bred misses in the Regency were not educated on sex to the extent that we are today. It was mainly "close your eyes and think of England." They likely wouldn't know what would happen unless they were told the night before their wedding by their mothers. And the ones that did learn about sex probably knew squat about oral sex.

It's not at all unlikely to assume that once they did have sex, they could grow better at it, more exploratory, etc., but it's insulting when the virgin heroine suddenly knows (without being asked or told) how to perform an exemplary blow job, or where to touch the hero, or the fact that there's even more than one position.

Why this is insulting to me is because it's a move that obviously panders to the reader rather than the story. Rather than remaining true to the characters and the time period of the novel, the author would prefer to scrap realism and consistent character development in favour of a more titilating sex scene, that in itself would probably be out of place in the novel's time period.

I really don't understand this tendency for authors to write historical romances and not make them historically accurate! Why write in the Regency if the characters don't act like the figures in the Regency? Writers can write about any place or time - you could even make up your own fantasy world that's like the Regency where that type of action could be tolerated! Here's a hint: maybe the people who read novels set in the Regency do so .... because they prefer to read about people who act like they're in the Regency.

AnimeJune's First Ever Corny Cliche Hatefest

SPOILER WARNING: In my Cliche Round-Ups, I often tend to go into explicit detail about plot points that occur at or near the end of romance novels, even more so than in my reviews. If you read Sophia Nash, Elizabeth Hoyt, Maya Rodale, Celeste Bradley or Eloisa James - I spoil a few of their books. You have been warned.

I don't think I can say any longer than I am new to romance novels. I still have a TBR pile full of new authors I haven't read yet, but I've established a few favourite authors (Julia Quinn, Mary Balogh, Jo Goodman, Sophia Nash), and have developed certain expectations of the genre. I have also, to my dismay, begun to notice how certain romance cliches get bounced around. After reading several romance novels consecutively, sometimes the more heinous chestnuts and repeat offenders stand out, so at infrequent moments on my blog, I plan to bitch about them. That's about it. Enjoy!

The first one on the docket? The Barren Baby Epilogue.
What is it? It pretty much speaks for itself, but I'll elaborate - in a romance novel where the heroine is proven to be barren, the epilogue shows her many years later, happily surrounded by kids with her hubby.
Recent Offenders: The Raven Prince, by Elizabeth Hoyt; A Dangerous Beauty, by Sophia Nash; The Duke Next Door, by Celeste Bradley (okay, not quite, it's more of a Barren Pregnancy Epilogue, but still the same sort of thing).
Why I Hate It: First of all, it's unrealistic. As Celine Dion has often sung, love can move mountains, but it cannot make you fertile. But some romance novels seem to uphold the theory that romance heroines possess a Magical Observant Womb that shrivels up like a Nazi staring at the Arc of the Covenant when in the presence of a Abusive Asshole Husband only to inflate to uber-fecund proportions once the heroine is married to the Man of Her Dreams.

A Dangerous Beauty, while a very enjoyable novel in all other respects, is the most egregious recent offender. The heroine, who never got pregnant once in her entire eight year marriage to a man whose previous wife died in childbirth (proving, at least in theory, that he was capable of impregnating women), conceives TWINS barely a few months after her marriage to Luc. There's miraculous, and then there's just overcompensating.

Secondly, this cliche is condescending. In both The Raven Prince and A Dangerous Beauty (but especially the former), the heroine's barrenness poses an obstacle to the romantic relationship. In the particular case of The Raven Prince, Edward, who lost his entire family to smallpox, needs to marry a woman capable of having children in order to repopulate the family tree, fill his palatial estate with the pitter-patter of happy feet, and fulfill his duties to his aristocratic ancestors. There's a particularly painful and beautiful scene somewhere past the middle point where Edward and Anna share an intimate moment, only for Edward to wrench away in anguish because he needs a wife who can have children.

One of the most significant points in the novel, character-development-wise, is when Edward finally chooses Anna over children. Ultimately, he realized that his determination to produce heirs was just a way of trying to recover his own lost family, and that the only way to move forward from his own tragedy was to make a new family with Anna. Great! Wonderful! Romantic! True love means sacrifices! Flash forward to the epilogue - Anna and Edward have a son, with apparently another bun baking in Anna's miraculously repaired oven.

I mean, WHAT? The epilogue basically just magics away the biggest obstacle in the book with NO explanation and for NO reason. Imagine, for a moment, that the most significant barrier between Anna and Edward's relationship was his hideous smallpox scars - and that in the epilogue his scars just evaporated off his face, leaving him perfectly handsome, smooth-skinned, and ready for a roll in the hay.

It's this element of the Barren Baby Epilogue that really gets me - because it's a betrayal of the story. With The Raven Prince (and A Dangerous Beauty, and others) we have this relatively unconventional couple who agree to live together in love despite unconventional circumstances (in this case, an inability to have children, which in the romance world is as bizarre as having three hands) - only to have this tacky, conformist, white-picket-fence, have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too, fairy-tale ending tacked on at the end. It's a cheap cop-out, is what it is.

Examples of This Cliche Done Well: As much as I hate cliches, there are always ways to write them well. Eloisa James' Duchess By Night is an example. In this case, the heroine assumes she's barren because her four-year marriage resulted in no pregnancies. In the epilogue, she and Jem have a baby son - after ten years of trying. Now that I can believe - this isn't a story about two sterile people who are rewarded by the Romance Plot Device Fairy with a honeymoon baby. This is a story about two people who accepted realistic circumstances and happened to get lucky.

Second on the Corny Cliche Docket: Those Three Little Words
What is it? When a romance heroine refuses to believe her hero loves her because he won't actually say "I love you," in those exact words, to her face. Yes, it occasionally happens to heroes as well, but the worst offenders in my experience have been women.
Recent Offenders: The Heir and the Spare, by Maya Rodale; The Duke Next Door, Celeste Bradley.
Why I Hate It: Well, the biggest reason I hate this cliche is that the heroes in romance novels who refuse to say Those Three Little Words have no problem performing just about every other kind of action or gesture that expresses "I Love You" short of actually saying Those Three Little Words, and this often makes the heroines look a) stupid, b) blind, or c) ungrateful as fuck.

I mean, Emilia from Heir and Deirdre from Duke have husbands who shower them with presents, defend them from naysayers and attackers, make passionate love to them every night (and morning, and afternoon...) while muttering "I need you" and "I can't live without you," and these bitches keep whining up until the final chapter about how their men can't get the word order right in their proclamations of adoration so it must not mean anything. Has no one told these women that actions speak louder than words?

Deirdre, in particular, needs to get her preternaturally gorgeous head out of her unbelievably tight ass. Her husband Calder abducts her favourite dressmaker to personally sew her a wearable orgasm in silk and lace and muslin, plays with her boobies in the middle of a working factory, beats her attempted rapist into attempted-rapist-flavoured-jello, and carriagejacks a vehicle to ride to her rescue, and through it all Deirdre mopes about how terrible it is to get presents from, have life-changing sex with, and be rescued by a heart-stoppingly handsome man who doesn't love her. How tragic!

Example of This Cliche Done Well: I haven't actually come across one - feel free to point one out to me.

I'm not completely obtuse, I can recognize the kernel of truth trapped in the centre of this gooey cliche - men have a hard time expressing their feelings, and women aren't mindreaders and can't assume what a man feels if he doesn't express it. The thing is, in most of the books I've come across where the man can't say Those Three Little Words, he's already expressing his feelings in physical, emotional, and (heh) financial ways that are perfectly obvious to everyone except the heroine. If they kept the cliche general (hero is too afraid to express affection) instead of specific (he won't say "I love you"), there are many ways in which this could work, in which the hero, afraid of being made vulnerable, acts brusque or wry or cold with the heroine, only to reveal his softer side later on.

If the guy's already genetically engineering you unicorns and painting every wall in his mansion your favourite shade of magenta and showing you the myriad ways in which tender savagery isn't an oxymoron, then saying Those Three Little Words is kind of redundant, isn't it? Which makes getting mad that he won't say them about as understandable as bitching at Wolfgang Puck for not folding your napkin for your complimentary seven-course banquet into a peacock like you asked.