I’ve always grown up disliking the romance genre, and it kinda became a habit. I didn’t mind reading romance in other genres, but despised anything where the girl’s focus was that boy—where the first one is usually a prick—and so avoided it all. Now that I’m older, I think it also had something to do with my resistance to anything feminine or “girly”. This was a combination of “I don’t like it, why are you trying to force me to like it” and the way people mocked me for being a lesbian. Which, I’m not. I had an idea that other females weren’t off the cards, but I wasn’t solely attracted to them, and so that’s a whole other confusing thing I’ll talk about another time. But the point is, I rebelled against that completely too, because it became something “expected” of me.

Romance & Me, 2013

And so, it was expected of me to like romance, and I didn’t like that. And so I assumed that I didn’t like it for years, particularly because of how I preferred it (wholesome and without all the drama). And then I started reading manga and manhua, and I just couldn’t get enough of it. Of course, as I read more, my tastes became refined and I matured and moved on from shoujo (aimed at teens) to josei (aimed at adult). I hated aspects of the romance genre in manga and manhua, but it was so easily consumable and quickly satisfying. At this point, anime also moved me more than real people did—I was quite emotionally stunted and anime kind of opened that up for me—and so I thought the attraction might be because these are 2D people and I don’t have to read/watch about other 3D people being stupidly romantic, as if they’re from separate realms. To be clear, I don’t like romantic movies or TV shows, I proper don’t enjoy watching it. It’s just not for me and that’s even after dissecting my whole relationship with the genre. Moving on.

Romance & Me, 2019

Now I was going to university and had to think a bit more about it when I studied genre. One of our assignments was to pick a genre we didn’t really write in, write in it and then draw up a proposal. I did it right and did it wrong. I picked romance, as it was my least favourite, but then my tutor came back and was like “what you wrote was actually post-modern” and I was like “aww shiet”. And so, I still don’t know how to write it, apparently. But it got me thinking. It was a time when I was properly digging up all my trauma and trying to go through them and fix what I could, and that included fixing negative habits. Anything that I claimed I hated, did I actually hate it? Trying foods that I thought I still didn’t like, reading books that I thought I would hate, picking clothes that I would have pretended I didn’t see etc. I was encouraging myself to explore the world, and also re-explore what was really boxed in with a lot of negative emotions and experiences. And so I read some Jane Austen.

And BOI.

It was amazing. Whilst reading Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, I realised that I harboured some pretty deep-rooted misconceptions about the genre as a whole (that stem from the above). It made me realise that a lot of my perceptions about things that were formed and reinforced as I grew up in such toxic environments had made me narrow-minded in a lot of random, small areas. I had to go through so many things that I thought I despised/disliked and check whether it was just a bias from my strangled memories. Broccoli, peas, omelette, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, rich white people, Pepsi, girls that fit a lot of the boxes of a “girl”, dresses, make-up etc. A lot of random things that I’d picked an aspect about and decided I didn’t like them, and then I just kept reinforcing that. I think that this also came at a time when I started the Indigenous Knowledges Minor, and the teachings and learning style just opened me up to a great journey of self-discovery. And it might sound cheesy, but it really was a journey. I try things now, I enjoy things that other people might mock, and there’s a lot of notions I had about feminism that were really rooted in traditional misogyny. And that was a mind-f*ck. Being annoyed with Nicki Minaj and other girls for dressing “skimpily” is part of the culture of controlling them. If you sexualise a young girl in a short skirt, that’s your fault. Their decision to dress how they want to doesn’t force you to be creepy and hostile—but that’s also another discussion for another day. If you’re curious, however, go and read up on how paedophilic culture has its own “surface layer” (as with racism, includes things that are considered socially normal, or not “hurtful” despite perpetuating harm).

Romance & Me, 2021

Okay, back to romance. It was something that I realised I hated for all the wrong reasons—except those few romances that were terribly written and relied on abusive mechanics for it “hot and spicy”—and I started thinking about it more. When I think of “romance”, I still cringe. I still don’t enjoy watching it and I don’t like that YA authors feel the need to put it everywhere, but I’m also not giving some of them enough credit. I personally feel that romance shouldn’t be paraded as something needed, and I have very particular feelings about the influence it has on young people, which I have written about. It’s about finding that balance of giving people what they want without accidentally making people think “bad things are desirable”. And so my relationship is still complicated with romance.

I think, I don’t hate romance. I write it in, but don’t like it as the focus. Romance isn’t to have, I do enjoy reading it—not really watching it—and I’m trying to be more considerate of YA romance. But the fixation with it in some of those novels is just something I can’t relate to. I don’t know if that’s just because I had bigger things to worry about during my school years—like all types of abuse, depression, self-harm, lack of parental guidance (I’m not trying to “flex” or make romantic troubles seem like they’re not trouble, but am trying to give a gauge for where I was at the time)—or if I just don’t get it. Immature love is really just that, immature. Or maybe I just got really lucky and that’s why. My lack of romantic experience—I’ve been with one person, and we’ve been together for 9 years—is both a blessing and a curse to my writing and reading?

Well, to make a long story short: my relationship with Romance is complicated.

I don’t mind it, but I don’t seek it out. And I think that’s okay. As long I remember to respect the writing and reading of others, it’s okay if I don’t like it. It’s when it’s a problem—when it’s dangerous—that it’s a hateable issue.