The Joys of Fiction

Bad boys

My English teacher from year 9 summed up most romance stories in nine words:
'Boy meets girl. Boy looses girl. Boy gets girl.'
I don't think I've been able to think the same way about romance again.

Whenever I use wattpad, it's nearly always after long long periods of absence. So hi again. Welcome to another part of my educational rants! *waves*.
Then I remember why I don't usually go on here that often.

Wattpad either has no clue what my taste in books is and thinks "fantasy" means "teen girl pining over her one direction uncle" or they must see my registered age and go, "Awkward-alien-teen-model-romances-are-in!"

Sometimes I like romance, but chances are if they're on this site I'm 80% inclined to want to dislike them and go to the published ones, then do a hunger games and eliminate them until I have a winner (because chances are, they've been through more editing rounds than words in a wattpad novel). It might be bias, (it is) it might be just taste but I tend to avoid wattpad romances like the flare. Especially if they have titles that sound more like the tag lines of a tween movie.
"Band member falls in love with me. Turns out I'm part unicorn so we can't be together."
Put "Bad boy" or "band member" in the title and instantly, thousands upon thousands of girls will flock to the book like Dean Winchester to pie.
The thing we all know about "bad boys" is they're never actually bad. They squash an ant from someone's ant farm and suddenly they're cold blooded heart-stompers who secretly stop off to groom my little ponies after school. 
I'm not against the soft side boy. But I am when Bad Boy is the human incarnation of a Lolcat.
I see Jason ahead, and he tackles me to the ground. "Give me a belly rub, you know you want to!" I give him a cheeseburger and it distracts him until I get free.

Bad Boy is almost always a jerk-but-not-a-jerk-actually who is high school aged,
Bad Boy always has a tragic backstory. Next thing you know, you're sitting under the moonlight in Narnia listening to how his father stole his pet hamster when he left and that's why he's in a band.
Bad Boy always has a paragraph to himself in the book blurb. It runs like a profile after the 400 word excerpt that spoils the story and the description of Main Girl: 16, cute, shy, who is, of course, complete opposite of Bad Boy. The premise is whether or not they will get together. And we all know what the ending is.
In Twilight (I can hear the groans), the central part of the story is the relationship. However, the premise isn't the will they or won't they get together, it's the development. The discovery of a new part of life she never thought existed, the awkwardness, the imperfection, recklessness and pureness of first love and its consequences.
It feels like, in most of these wattpad attention-grabbing-cliche-titles, that it's touched on but never really explored, it's just there. Like, insta love!! Love-at-first-sight is usually used as a cover to avoid the tedious effort of getting the reader to love Mr Bad Boy or Guy-at-the-corner-shop-who-plays-death-metal-in-spare-time.
I'm not bashing love-at-first-sight, but it's like the whole concept is a get-out-of-work-free concept in fiction.

That's why I usually stay away from wattpad.

edit July 2021: reading back, i realise what's been missing from these - my summaries. They seemed more like pure ranting than constructive points. so, without further ado:

Rambling point #1: if you call your boys bad, make them bad.

Rambling point #2: love at first site is not an excuse to avoid doing the work of building the relationship.

as always, if you're still reading this, thank you.

- Steph.