I think my biggest pet peeve with a lot of romance novels at the moment (I could be totally wrong, but especially in enemies to lovers) is the generic-ness.
I know this is rich coming from someone who spends a lot of time writing characters who don't even have names. But...
It feels like a lot of people smush in popular tropes likes 'Who hurt you" and "only one bed" and "don't touch them" regardless of it actually fits the characters or not. All the bad boys are bad in exactly the same way. All the girls are designed to have just enough personality that you can project on them.
Would they actually react in that way? Would they actually say it like that? Do they actually care about sharing a bed based on their backstory? This isn't a criticism of these tropes, I love them too, but when every romance at the moment has these exact same beats they kind of lose power. (For me, anyway). Because it stops being their love story.
Maybe it's because I'm ace/probably aro, but I just find it so frustrating compared to the more complex specific romances we could have. The ones where it feels like the author has actually thought about their specific characters, and why they might fall in love with each other, and what that means for their desires. They're not in love because it's a romance and that means they must be in love by the end of the book.
My absolute favourite love stories could never have the serial numbers filed off, you know? It could only be them. That's what makes it compelling. That's what makes me obsessed with them.
I don't know.
Anyone else get this?
Enemies to lovers just has so many different flavours, and each should be producing different stories.
E.g. enemies for more institutional/structural reasons like 'we are each on opposing forces in someone else's war', we are in two rival families, our species have historically be enemies' whatever. It's not personal, so it's an amazing way to focus a story on overcoming one's own biases or examining the structures that paint other people as monsters or why. This nation is made of savages blah blah, I've seen you cut people open on a battlefield. But you're so gentle when you kiss me? The contrast! The juxtaposition!
E.g. personal emnity. We are mutually obsessed with taking each other down and you are the centre of my world is very different to I hurt you once but I am a different person now, trying to be better, can you love who I have become and what does that mean for the hurt before? Is very different to 'we are the same, and I hate that we are the same, does embracing the love also mean loving or accepting parts of myself?'
E.g. I view you as an enemy, but you don't view me as one. You are the devastatingly seductive vampire lord who needs a bride or whatever, and I am the tool. What does it say about personhood when you fall in love with something you were just supposed to use? Can you still do what you need to do to survive?
How does literally consuming you change our relationship? Were we in love when you were still human? What does that look like now that you are something else?
E.g. everyone has always raised me to think of you as a monster, but I quickly realise you are not, so it's not fully an enemies to lovers story but people will often market you as that, and still great. What does it mean to find the place you belong in something that people have labelled as monstrous? Pretty sure a lot of people who have been othered by dominant society can relate.
It's just such a rich relationship set up for a story! It matters if you fall in love with your enemy. There are inherent stakes that change what that love means. Do you hate yourself for it? Does it make you feel free? Would you rather cut out your own damn heart then ride off into the sunset? Would you love them and kill them anyway?
