by Khione Archerone
A number of us went through a phase in life of reading y/n fanfics, imagines, headcanons and what not for our favorite characters and fictional crushes. We loved them so much and fanfics gave us the chance to imagine what it would be like to date them or be friends with them. More often than not, these fanfictions and imagines would cater to a very specific kind of scenario. One in which the character we were reading about was showing affection in some way, to the reader or y/n character.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s absolutely fine to read these, or even enjoy them. Everyone likes being loved, or shown affection to, it’s part of human nature to crave it in whatever way we can. However, the way we choose to do so now, and the way we interpret love and its ideal, has changed tremendously and is clearly evident in modern media.
Recently, I watched a video talking about how modern love is a capitalistic ideal. How everyone wants to be loved but no one wants to love. The current societal norms and expectations have turned love into passive force or something that happens to you.
As they say, art imitates life so it spread into popular books and tv shows too.
Let’s take the example of Aaron Warner from the Shatter Me series.
Don’t jump on me - I love him just as much as the next person - but we have to acknowledge the fact that he is literally written, to be this passive love interest character that just falls in love with the main character for no apparent reason. He’s simply obsessed. She means more to him than his life does, she is his world, his everything. He can do anything for her–but she doesn’t share the dedication or sentiment. She exists, he loves her.
If it was the other way around we may call that unhealthy pining. But we don’t because it’s a guy doing it and not a girl.
This is a trend you’ll mostly see with male love interests in female leading books. The love interest is obsessed with the girlboss main character, and he shows his love for her in extravagant ways. Society calls that love.
But is it?
From this example, love seems to be a passive choice, something that happens to the main character. The main character who doesn’t show any affection or dedication back. The main character who exists and is loved, not as a choice but as a consequence of being there.
Love here is one-sided, and possessive. Almost shallow in this sense.. Dominated by the affection of one person who does everything for their significant other, while the other couldn’t be bothered to do much of the same.
Real love is, fortunately, not like that.
Real love is a choice. A choice that we, as individuals, make. An active choice that you make everyday. You choose to love your family, you choose to love your friends, you choose to love your partner. Love is a mutual thing - two people (or more, whatever) need to actively support and love each other to build a healthy dynamic, romantic or otherwise.
But that’s not YA Romance.
And this argument isn’t just limited to the romance genre. Like I’ve already demonstrated with Aaron Warner, it is wildly popular throughout YA in general. Fantasy, science fiction, romance, thriller, none of the genres are exempt from this kind of thing. It’s fairly common and only seems to be growing.
Love interests exist in YA books as a representation - they exist to show the main character that they are loved, and can be loved for simply existing. They are perfect the way they are and will be loved for it - which isn’t a bad message per se, but the execution is depthless and thus the story lacks substance. The main character very rarely, if ever, shows affection back in the same way her cis male love interest does.
When writing, a common advice given to write characters is that we need to treat every character as their own person with their own story.
But, at some point while writing love interests, and very specifically male love interests, we turned them into being less a person, and more of an object to show how truly amazing the main character is.
Love becomes a part of a checklist. It happens to the main character at some point for no obvious reason. And the main character themselves often isn’t a person, but rather a self-insert of the author that represents the author’s dreams and ideals - going on a big adventure, having multiple people fall in love with them, and more ideals that we read about in books.
On the topic of love being a passive force, let’s discuss the idea of soulmates. The idea of soulmates dictates that someone is pre-dictated by the universe to be your friend or romantic partner, etc. This takes away from the fact that love is a choice and makes it seem like you just happened to fall in love with someone because a higher power deemed it so.
However, as someone who does believe in the idea of soulmates, I also believe that the only thing “pre-determined” if you will, is the idea of potential. You have the potential to be best friends with someone, you have the potential to be romantically involved with someone. These things don’t just happen, they’re not predetermined, but rather a series of active choices that you make with the people around you that lead you into finding, or rather, making a relationship that can be described as soulmates.
In most books today, especially young adult, characters exist only to further another character. What we promote as ships and the romantic relationships or otherwise we make edits for, are not love but devotion or obsession - which is fine as long as it’s mutual in some way. Take the example of Roma and Juliette from These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong. Both of these characters in the book make it very clear throughout the duology that they are devoted to each other equally.
One-sided romantic obsession is frankly uncomfortable and deeply unrealistic. It promotes an idea of love that is not focused on loving as much as it is on being loved.
But how can you be loved if everyone is unwilling to actually do the loving bit?
That idea, that no one is willing to love in today’s world, is why authors write their love interests the way they do. But the media can affect people’s perception of reality, and vice versa. It becomes a self-repeating cycle to see it in fiction than in real life, and the only way to stop it is to break the cycle.
So let love interests be their own characters. Let female leads be as tough as they want to be while being affectionate towards the people they love. It is not a weakness for two people to be mutually devoted to each other, but a strength. Let books show that. Show what it means to love, and be loved. Write stories that define love as a choice, and what it means to choose that. And remember: love is nothing to be ashamed of. Love is beautiful. Showcase that beauty.
Love love.
To learn more about the author, check out @wrajthful on instagram.
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