I'm sort of all yes yes yes but but but (now my favorite romance writers are from reading years ago, and I still own a bunch of them for fave rereads--Georgette Heyer, Elizabeth Peters, Mary Stewart, Barbara Michaels (AKA Elizabeth Peters)...but I fondly remember some of the early bodice rippers, and will admit to having major rapefantasies, where I'd put the sort of 'bodice ripper' plot you mention above (and in fact have written a few fics with that whole vibe, or at least attempted)).....and yes, there's a lot of those conventions in fandom (in fact Henry Jenkins claimed in earlier book that slash grew from adding romance elements to action adventure plots, i.e. Kirk and Spock).
I think over the *coffcoff* decades since I was desperate to find anything to read by women writers (all those great historical ones too including Dorothy Dunnett and pant pant Mary Renault!), romance has changed (I stopped when Harlequin formulas seemed to take over the market, and I know the one type of romance I don't much like is any story set in the "real" world--yawn, boring, realism, blah), and well fan fiction / slash fiction has changed too. I hadn't realize partso f fandom were being snarky about romance--I mean, how can this be, given the prevalence of OTPs and ship wars, and true love, and all that that exists? (Not to say those are all of the romance conventions but quite a few..)
Have you read Catherine Asaro by any chance? She's this physicist who blended romance and hard science fiction--I cannot get into her stuff but she has major fans, and has been one of the major originators of romance in original sf.
What I think differs for me (anecdotal only) is that I am a LOTR fan -- so the major relationship between say Boromir and Aragorn (or Sean Bean and Viggo Mortensen) is incredible--and no matter how brilliantly the stories mentioned in your post or comments make use of those same conventions, I am not the least interested in them--I need the context). Even though some of them are for shows I know, I'm not in the fandom, not that interested in the characters.
And what always and still floors me is that fans one one genre or media turn around and be all snooty about another genre or media--sheesh.
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I think over the *coffcoff* decades since I was desperate to find anything to read by women writers (all those great historical ones too including Dorothy Dunnett and pant pant Mary Renault!), romance has changed (I stopped when Harlequin formulas seemed to take over the market, and I know the one type of romance I don't much like is any story set in the "real" world--yawn, boring, realism, blah), and well fan fiction / slash fiction has changed too. I hadn't realize partso f fandom were being snarky about romance--I mean, how can this be, given the prevalence of OTPs and ship wars, and true love, and all that that exists? (Not to say those are all of the romance conventions but quite a few..)
Have you read Catherine Asaro by any chance? She's this physicist who blended romance and hard science fiction--I cannot get into her stuff but she has major fans, and has been one of the major originators of romance in original sf.
What I think differs for me (anecdotal only) is that I am a LOTR fan -- so the major relationship between say Boromir and Aragorn (or Sean Bean and Viggo Mortensen) is incredible--and no matter how brilliantly the stories mentioned in your post or comments make use of those same conventions, I am not the least interested in them--I need the context). Even though some of them are for shows I know, I'm not in the fandom, not that interested in the characters.
And what always and still floors me is that fans one one genre or media turn around and be all snooty about another genre or media--sheesh.