The J/C romance isn`t only a part of fanfiction, it`s also real. Watch Resolutions or look at the interaction between them both and their screen chemistry.
With all due respect, there's a difference between romance and flirting. And I didn't see much of that either. It was mostly just hints and some sexual tension.
Look, I'm not trying to offend J/C-ers, I'm aware that there are legions of them (including you, I presume... "J/C 4ever" and all that). I just really dislike the idea of a Captain and his/hers XO playing house. I mean, it would turn the ship into a huge station wagon full of kids with mommy and daddy sitting in front seats.
I agree with this roughly 1000 percent. The tiny bit of flirting and so on was fine, but the threat of a full-scale romance was the thing I most dreaded when I first started watching Voyager. The thought of a captain (or even, to a slightly lesser degree, a first officer) in a romantic relationship with someone under his or her command just made me go, and I quote, "Euw."
(Yes, I know it happened on TOS - though it was mostly hinted at, not actually overt, as far as I can remember - and TNG...but it was wrong then, too. At least on TNG when it happened to Picard, they showed the consequences. That was great...and incredibly rare.)
On a more general note, it also made me go, "Oh, dear God, not
again. Not another Trek 'romance' that they're going to tease us with for years and then mess up! Not another situation in which there are two hearts yearning for each other but kept apart by circumstances or fate or whatever! Not
again."
I thought the friendship between Chakotay and Janeway was great, and a little bit of sexual tension was fine - and realistic. That kind of thing happens in real life all the time. But I didn't want
any more than that...not so long as they were trapped in the DQ with a crew that was depending on those two to get them home.
Which brings me to Riker/Troi and Picard/Crusher. Talk about a "'romance' that they're going to tease us with for years and then mess up," talk about "two hearts yearning for each other but kept apart by circumstances or fate or whatever" - these are the perfect examples.
Yes, I know they finally resolved one in a movie and the other in the books, but the way they were handled on TNG was...just awful. Awful. For one episode, they were each others' own true love, two hearts yearning for each other but kept apart by circumstances or fate or whatever. And then an episode or two or three later, one or the other of them would fall deeply, deeply in love with someone else. That "deep love," of course, generally lasted just until the closing credits rolled (although to be fair, they did show some hints of consquences with some of Picard's romances. This
never happened with Crusher, Riker or Troi as far as I can remember.) Then an episode or two or three later, they were again each others' own true love, two hearts yearning for each other but kept apart by circumstances or fate or whatever.
And so on and so on and so on.
AND so on.
I hate it. TV does this with regular characters all the time and I hate it each and every time.
And may I also say that to me it's also quite, quite boring? What makes it boring is that it's so damn predictable. On how many shows and with how many characters have we seen this exact same pattern? I have no idea, but the short answer would be "a LOT."
It's one of the reasons that I rather liked Worf/Troi, Worf/Dax and Paris/Torres. All three of these romances had a beginning and a middle, and therefore went beyond the usual "two hearts yearning for each other but kept apart by circumstances or fate or whatever." The first one was ended entirely too abruptly (I mean, jeez, they couldn't have given Worf a couple of lines of explanation? had him writing a letter to Troi? or something?), but up until that, there was a refreshing sort of...realism to it, and to Worf/Dax and Paris/Torres, too - well, as realistic as romances involving fictional species on episodic TV can be. We actually got to see a courtship going on. It was an important break with tradition for Trek, a tradition that is, to me anyway, booooooorrrrring.
Why not throw in Leeta and Ezri too? 
