Hmm no-- because I firmly wrote Quarks as a love story (with cool time traveling bonus) and I don't feel anything was OOC. (Which I really need an example outside of my own fic. *SIGH*) I think that most romance fic is just-- not handled well. Most of the reasons fic would make it into that guilt pile is not just characterization, that's just the icing on the cake of everything else that I take issue with. And I don't think it's the romantic structure itself so much as you know, from earlier, A and then B therefore POTATO.
I think there's plenty of room to write romance without making the characters close to unrecognizable or add in pages of unnecessary and clunky dialog or INCREDIBLY unrealistic sex (not to be mistaken for mildly unrealistic) or the author forcing the plot for the sake of putting them into the situation they need. Etc.
The problem is that a lot of the tropes romance has come to claim as its own are really HARD to simply fit into most fandom canons or even AU canons. It's not that it can't be done, it's just that it's rarely done well all around. Like with most fiction.
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I think there's plenty of room to write romance without making the characters close to unrecognizable or add in pages of unnecessary and clunky dialog or INCREDIBLY unrealistic sex (not to be mistaken for mildly unrealistic) or the author forcing the plot for the sake of putting them into the situation they need. Etc.
The problem is that a lot of the tropes romance has come to claim as its own are really HARD to simply fit into most fandom canons or even AU canons. It's not that it can't be done, it's just that it's rarely done well all around. Like with most fiction.