At Readercon

I did manage to stop myself today on the panel on "beast men" from blurting out my characterisation of the differences between urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Our moderator focused on the open-endedness of the urban fantasy narrative and the centrality of the romantic relationship(s) to the paranormal. My definition was a little different. For me, urban fantasy is what SF people feel they can make fun of, while paranormal romance is what urban fantasy people can make fun of.

Okay, a little harsh, I suppose, but there are such hierarchies of genre. People who really ought to stick together to support all their marginalised genres, instead devolve into in-fighting. The powerless turn on each other and that's how the powerful stay in control.

But enough of politics.

Okay, just one more bit of gender politics. A lot of people on Twitter were forwarding along a quote from Stephen King this week. Apparently he said,

Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.

Now, I'm no fan of Meyer's stories or the films which my brother has forced me to watch, but the very gendered slam wrapped up in King's quote really grates on me. Setting aside the fact that that's not what it's all about (or that there are troubling things in what it is about), there's a lot to object to in this comment. The denigration of romance as "girly stuff" ignores the fact that most people obsess a great deal of the time over relationships, but somehow only women talk about it or, more germane for us, write and read about it.

Before publishing became controlled by the question of "where will this be shelved?" romance elements were not quite so denigrated in this way. The fact that everyone feels safe sneering at romance shows how that has changed. In the same way that mainstream lit people don't like to think of SF classics as really SF (or people like Margaret Atwood insist they don't write SF), other genre folk feel safe in scoffing at what they think romance is. I did make a point of saying that folks should check out the submission guidelines to see where romance is now – it's not all Barbara Cartland. There's a much wider range of genres within romance (as we all know) that explore a wide variety of adventures and relationships.

It's nothing to be scared of—or shouldn't be.

Filed under: C. Margery Kempe, contemporary romance, fantasy romance, Fantasy with Romantic Elements, Kit Marlowe, paranormal, paranormal romance, Readers Conference, Readers Conferences, Twilight, vampire books, vampires, Writers Conferences, Writing Topics