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Posted by THE AUTHOR, April 12, 2012 at 02:14 am, in THEORY

I love you, dear reader.

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Purely platonically of course!!

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Baka.

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As you might have guessed dear reader today is the day I cover love. Yesterday was a bit depressing after all, and I don’t want to be overly macabre all the time.

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Nay today is purely about love and romance, and more specifically the character archetypes, tropes and the clichés involved in their lovely creation.

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Let’s start off by posing a simple and tame question, what is love?

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Other than a song lyric found in Nestor Haddaway’s famous hit single “baby don’t hurt me” released as part of an album called The Album?

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Well, that’s hard to say.

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While being an exceedingly simple question to ask, answers can come in differing forms.

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The philosopher in me would for example go on and on about, eros, attachment theory, Sternberg’s triangle and the many other interpretations of love and its meaning, but if I may be so bold dear reader, that may be ever so slightly absolutely boring.

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That’s why I won’t be so obtuse, get it, and instead I’ll try to not create a bedlam with my following, likely controversial, words.

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Love is parasitic dear reader, it’s like a beast that one has to tango and wrestle with to gain the upper hand.

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Let me explain.

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When I say that love is parasitic I mean that in the context of stories dear reader, the butterflies and rainbows in one’s stomach may make them reach out for the pink bismuth, but it won’t kill them.

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For stories however it’s a different matter, love and romance can suck away the excitement from all other aspects of a story and may leave the reader of that story wanting only for one scene.

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Whether it be a kiss or something as lewd as premarital hand holding the promise of that final ending scene takes away from what a story could be.

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Sadly as you probably know dear reader everything is fair in love and war, and to my and I’m sure many other people’s dismay: love rarely fights fair and square.

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Luckily for us though there is one weapon that we have at our disposal to fight the onslaught of strikes that romance throws our way dear reader, and that is the process of habituation.

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Different from making romance into a subplot, a task rarely executed with much success, habituating a reader to a certain scenario can ease one’s need to focus on love and the romantic elements of a story.

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The most historically relevant example of this, and probably the most famous of its kind, is prince charming coming to save the princess.

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Whether it is readers or moviegoers the idea of the hero saving the damsel in distress at the end of a story is so cemented in the mind that focus can be drawn away from the romance and instead be directed at the more action or drama filled scenes.

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All of this of course is only relevant if romance is not the main topic being played upon, in that case, one does not need the subtleties of good cinematography, exciting set pieces or even entertaining dialogue to keep the reader or moviegoer engaged.

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All that is needed then is to make sure that any elements relating to an overarching story are sufficiently obscured by the romantic dynamic at play, you know, so that the reader or watcher essentially forgets that it exists in the first place.

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Think of the plot in such a scenario as being a piece of filler used by writers and scriptwriters to give the reader or moviegoer a breather before the next romantic scene begins.

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And that’s really it.

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Bit anti-climactic, I know, but I don’t know what else to say dear reader.

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Despite my tangents often going in many directions it doesn’t always fit the narrative that I’ve got going on when writing.

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I could talk about the more esoteric or strange ways in which love can be used and expressed in stories, but I think you’re probably familiar with those.

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Honestly speaking I had a whole bit about dere-ology, what comes after the pinnacle scene and even a closing statement about the importance of feeling loved. I can’t however include it, it all felt a bit off-topic for some reason.

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It feels like everything I said became meaningless.

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Even now reader it feels like every character I write, every word I type is utterly devoid of anything tangiable.

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Everything just feel so blurry.