A lot of '20s musicals were a hodgepodge of melodrama, mixed with operetta and romance, and then some sense of modernism and some sense of irreverence.
I tend to lean toward romance, characters, and relationships when I write, so I have to add to the setting elements and world-building when I revise.
My songs are my girlfriends. I have a secret romance with all of them. I romance with them year after year.
When I was little, my grandma used to get romance novels, and she would get hundreds of these, and she'd read a dozen a month.
Within the sphere of steampunk, there seems to be a rapidly growing subsphere of gadgetless 'neo-Victorian' novels, most of which attempt to recapture the romance of the era without all the sociopolitical ugliness.
The thing about relationships is, the stronger they get, the more rapidly the realm of romance starts to overlap with the domestic.
I like those stories that capture the brutality of life, but there's still some kind of melancholy romance.
Not to disparage anything, but most vampire stories tend to be romance novels that are 'Twilight'-ish with metrosexual guys.