User blog:Laconia/The Lady's Romance Rant

If I step on some toes here, good. At least I'm not stepping on necks.

People have probably blogged about this before, but I'm too lazy to go looking for said blogs, and wanted to rant on the subject myself anyway. I may be a fanfic writer, but I'm also an avid fanfic reader, especially when it comes to 'Halo'. Lately I've been perusing works here on Halo Fanon, though I tend to spend literal hours on Fanfiction.net trying to find stuff that's worth reading. Believe me when I say that there are some pretty awesome fanfics out there, stories that are well-constructed and believable, stories with compelling original characters and amazingly-written action sequences. But then there's stuff that makes my eyes bleed when I read it, and then afterward I go scrub my brain with bleach to get rid of the mere memory. Some of the eye-hemorrhaging results from reading heaps of poor grammar, poor grasp of canon, and all-out rejection of plot and character development. The usual maladies. But then the majority of ocular blood-spewing comes from reading a particular genre of fanfiction... ROMANCE.

Okay, I'll admit it, I support certain pairings, most of which are canon and only a few of which are of my own creation. But I absolutely cannot 'stand' it when I read a “pairing” that's executed nauseatingly and turns out to be horribly cliché. Maybe it's just my conservative views talking here, but WHY CAN'T ANYONE SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THAT A PAIRING CAN BE BUILT ON MORE THAN SEX?!?! Usually at some point in the badly-written romance (usually in the first few chapters, rarely further on) the two members of the pairing have a sudden sexual encounter, and it's written as 'liek teh most erotic-est thing EVAR'. What 'really' grinds my gears is when said encounter is between Spartans. I mean, hello? We are talking about super-soldiers who have been brainwashed from age six to put the mission before everything, including personal desires. It's mentioned that the platinum thyroid pellet only has a 'potential' side effect of suppressing a Spartan-II's sexual drive, but in all actuality, a person who's been conditioned to show virtually no emotion and spend their life killing large numbers of people isn't going to spend their spare time getting laid. It's not stated whether or not the Spartans got sex ed with their schooling, but really, Spartans aren't just chomping at the bits to start “bumping uglies,” to utilize a term used by SpecOps306.

Now, I am aware that in 'Halo: Bloodline', Spartan-IIs Black-One and Black-Three were romantically involved during their training. This is, as far as I know, Halo canon. And Maria-062 states in 'Halo: The Graphic Novel' that she wishes to start a family. I'm not trying to say that Spartans 'can't' have relationships or fall in love. I'm just saying that all this porn-style erotica fanfiction has fed me up to the point where I'm ready to chunk my laptop out the window and beat it to death with a baseball bat. Can Spartans have sex? Yes! Does this give every teenage girl with access to a computer the right to write lavishly ravaging accounts of how Carter had a one-night stand with Kat? No, no, NO! Absolutely not! The least courtesy such authors could give the rest of the world is to actually THINK about the dynamics of such a pairing and break down how on earth such a romance could evolve. Yes, you read it right, EVOLVE. Romance, at least the successful kind, isn't something that happens just as a result of copulation. In my opinion, authors that utterly destroy the integrity of the art of fanfiction in such a manner are simply transferring their own sex fantasies into words, trying to pass it off as valid storytelling. It's not, and never will be.

So, by now some of you are probably wondering what kind of psychotic Bible-thumping asexual I am, ranting like this. Indeed, I am a Christian, and I've sworn off getting involved in any sort of romantic relationship at this point (for academic reasons). But I am a human being, and I do know what love is, even if I haven't really experienced it for myself. Because I love 'Halo' so much, it saddens me when all a writer can base a story on is a cheap encounter, glorifying the sex act above the actual personalities of the characters and the depth of the Haloverse. It's not that such writings make me uncomfortable; it takes more than some literary porn to ruffle me. It's just depressing that so many people have reduced love to simply 'that' instead of taking the time to write out a workable relationship.

And may I state that while I am not a homophobe nor ever will be, I do not need to read ANYONE'S steamy account of how Master Chief seduced the Arbiter, or anything like that. Even homosexual relationships can be written without IQ-reducing amounts of erotica. The term “homosexual” is in itself misleading; people of the same gender can be attracted to each other based on more than how much they want to sleep together. 'Nuff said.

I guess what I'm trying to say (in between all the foaming at the mouth and fist-shaking) is that there is a time and a place for sex in Halo literature, even in the turbulent waters of fanon and fanfiction. Maybe I'm just beating a dead horse, or making a mountain out of a molehill, or whatever adage you think fits it best. I just feel that the widespread misconception of what makes good romance has really dragged down fanfiction, and it's sad how many writers with a wealth of potential waste their time typing stuff that really does nothing to support what 'Halo' is really made of.


 * steals Jorge's minigun, finds defensible position, awaits chaos*