Paranurban Fomance and "Harlequins"

A few days back, Candy of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, posted an excellent rant about this post on Pharyngula about the preponderance of mass market vampire romance.

Basically, PZ Meyers knows nothing about the topic, but is curious (though he pushes buttons instantly by writing it off as “formula fiction” from the word go). Things really go off the rails, however, in the comment thread, which I have only skimmed, but in skimming, agree with Candy’s sum up, which is brilliant, and goes like this:

I am also fascinated–FASCINATED–that Harlequin has become shorthand for romance, all romance, the way it has, since books published under the Harlequin/Silhouette imprint cover only a very specific niche of romance. It’d be as if, in attempting to define ice-cream, somebody didn’t address the ingredients, or the characteristics that make ice-cream, well, icy and creamy, but instead chose to refer to it solely by a rather slapdash association of flavor and brand name, sometimes resulting in rather jarring juxtapositions if you know ice-cream well. “My mom’s a huge fan of Breyer’s Phish Food, but I just don’t get it–the thought of eating bits of unbaked chocolate chip cookie dough in ice-cream makes me want to hurl,” sez somebody, and it’s all I can do to not leap up like an obnoxious bastard and say “DUDE, Phish Food is Ben and Jerry’s, and for the love of God, it doesn’t have chocolate chip cookie dough anywhere in it, and really, YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T EAT ICE-CREAM AND THEREFORE ARE UNQUALIFIED TO COMMENT ON WHAT WE’RE EATING, AND I’M GOING TO JUMP ON YOUR HEAD BECAUSE YOUR NEXT COMMENT IS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO BE HOW EVERYONE WHO EATS ICE-CREAM IS A FAT WHORE. SEE HOW I’M JUMPING ON YOUR HEAD? JUMP. JUMMMMMP.”

Hmmmm, who pointed something like this out before? Oh, yeah: me. Just apply the Harlequin Rule, Candy. If they conflate an entire genre with one publisher’s enormous, but necessarily limited series of books (which they have no doubt not read, as some of them are flatly fabulous), then they automatically lose their argument.

As for the argument at hand, namely, “where did all this paranormal romance/urban fantasy/vampire stuff come from,” I have my own ideas, too numerous to do justice in my allotted blogging time this morning, but I shall attempt:

1. No, it wasn’t Twilight. Sorry. It wasn’t even Twilight in YA, though that book’s success has certainly been a big push. But every adult pub (and most YAs) was clamoring for paranormal romance and urban fantasy (which Twilight is decidedly not, it’s a straight up romance) long before Twilight ever appeared. And Twilight effectively ended the vampire buy in at most YA houses, because it was pretty tough to compete. Now the big scramble seems to be for the “next creature.”

2. I strongly believe the current confluence of paranormal romance, vampire books, and urban fantasy is a “perfect storm” situation. It’s popularity in several distinct genres that have merged and created an enormous tidal wave of popularity. The people complaining in the threads of each post above have their taste, and hate it when the other genres intrude. If you got into urban fantasy through Charles De Lint, you probably dislike the people who got into it from Buffy. If you got into it through Buffy, you may hate the folks who came via Christine Feehan. If you got into it through romance, you probably hate the stuff that’s Lint inspired. And yes, publishers ARE publishing things that you (or someone else) might decide belongs on THIS side of the Fence as THAT instead.

Seriously, deal with it. A publisher is not going to define a genre to suit your own personal individual taste.

3. If I were to give an opinion of why the genre/s are so popular right now, I would say it was a combo of the following:

a. The non-human men populating most paranormal romance are the natural extension of a readership who longs for the “alpha male” fantasy, but don’t really buy it in normal contemporary settings. Nowadays, most men who act like the guys in romance novels would be considered psycho stalkers in real life. Thus, they are not the boys next store. But stalk it up to some paranormal soul mate/pack instinct/blood lust non human thing, and readers will accept it.

b. The stripe of urban fantasy stories that have the kick ass women with paranormal powers is due to the zeitgeist of kickass heroines. They are the descendants of Buffy et al.

c. The above are not mutually exclusive.

d. Also, people are very scared of real life stuff right now, so it’s fun to escape into magical scaredness of monsters instead of real scaredness of everything else in the world. Same reasons horror movies are in.

My YA novel, Rampant, can be (loosely) defined as urban fantasy, in that it is fantasy, contemporary, and takes place in a city. Thus, urban. If I had to pick a path from which it came, I’d point at Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It doesn’t have that “all powerful paranormal male” which I think is such a huge draw in the genre, but it does have strong women with supernatural powers dealing with same. It’s also not about folks (for the most part) on the edges of society, which is, I understand, the liminal, Lintian influence one see in many current works.

I do believe there’s room for us all. It’s unfortunate when one stripe of the trend is seen as ruining other stripes, or less worthy, or etc. I prefer to think of it as paths that lead to one another… or heck, to go with that ice cream metaphor again, as Neapolitan ice cream — many flavors, one box. Eat whichever one you want, or all of them together!