(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elspethdixon Dec. 16th, 2009 04:39 pm)
elspethdixon Dec. 16th, 2009 04:39 pm)I mean, aside from the title.
So, I picked up a romance novel up at the library yesterday, eagerly anticipating angsty h/c goodness (the back page summary promised me that the hero had spent years as a captive during the crusades and was therefore all tortured and angst-ridden), only to be met with dreadful writing and two literally jaw-dropping instances of WTF.
First, the dreadful writing. The female lead's romantic rival is, of course, an evil slutty bitch who manipulates men by appearing to be all innocent and pure and helpless, but whose doll-like blonde eauty conceals her true nature as a murderous scheming whore. Also, she apparently became a murderous, scheming whore because her father molested her, which could have been interesting if she were portrayed even semi-sympathetically as an abuse survivor determined to use whatever means available to prevent herself from ever being victimized like that again, but no. The abuse is all pastede on yay as some kind of token explanation for why she's apparently pure evil.
The hero, who left his bride the morning after their wedding to go to the crusades, comes back six years later to discover that he's been declared dead for years and his wife is about to marry someone else. She forgets all about love interest #2 the moment her husband comes back (of course), but is determined that she doesn't want to be married to said husband anymore because he's a rat bastard who abandoned her the day after their wedding leaving only a note to explain where he'd gone, and she doesn't care if he's spent years in prison or what -- if he'd actually cared about her to begin with, he wouldn't have left her without a word after less than 24 hours of marriage. This, I feel, is a valid grievance.
The hero (thankfully) realizes that ditching her a few hours into the honeymoon and running away to another country was a dick move, but now he wants to get back together with her because the memory of their wedding night and the thought of coming home to her kept him sane while he was being tortured and thrown in oubliettes and so on. He's supposed to have PTSD, but he has the pastede on yay kind where it gives him one or two convenient nightmares and some staring-into-space flashbacks, but otherwise doesn't affect his thought processes or behaviors in any way. You know, the Lord Peter Whimsy kind of prettied-up PTSD of convenience, which is there when the author want to make her hero seem tortured and wounded for a second, and then vanishes utterly the rest of the time (Dorothy Sayers, I will resent you forever for promising me a kink-fulfilling shell-shocked hero and then never actually delivering on that). He tells the heroine that if she agrees to let him try to seduce her into staying married (well, technically make her love him, but actually he just tries to seduce her) without objecting to anything he does in the process, then he will promise to get them an annullment if his seduction attempts fail. There's lots of the hero being sexually aggressive and the author confusing True Love with ravenous lust, and no apparent realization that the heroine being trapped in a position where she has no choice but to let the hero try to coerce her into jumping is bones is kind of creepy. The sad thing is, if the author had acknowledged the inherent power issues, it could have been vaguely D/s themed and hot. Instead, it just made me uneasy because of the palpable levels of sexual threat that went totally unacknowledged by either the author or any of the characters. Sexual coercion masquerading as romance is no fun when the author is writing it with utter sincerity as an idealized relationship rather than as "this is badwrong but OMGsohot."
Plus, at one point the heroine tries to shove the hero into a dark closet at knifepoint and lock him in there. This is supposed to be cute. Except, you know, for the part where he spent years being chained up and tortured (thankfully, the heroine actually realizes this after her adorable, "you're so hot/cute when you're angry" attempt to escape continuing sexual harassment fails, but if she can realize that she shouldn't lock her husband who spent years in an oubliette in a linen closet to teach him a lesson, why can't he or the author realize that "No," doesn't mean "Convince me?").
And then.... *drumroll*
WTF moment #1, which actually occurred later in the book but is a lesser offence in terms of overall boggle-worthiness:
At one point, the narration, supposedly from the pov of a 13th century man, contains this line (after the heroine asks if he's going to come into her bedchamber or not and walks away into said bedchamber all sexily): "He was so coming."
So coming. As in, "you are so going to pay for that." Or "I am so right there with you." Or "I'm, like, so an American from some point after 1980, you know?"
Medieval warriors do not speak like valley girls. Possibly the guys from JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood still spoke like gangsta rap wannabees even in the pre-enlightenment era, but this hero's name was Simon, not Sihmohn, and the valley girl speak was a handful of utterly jarring lines scattered through a book that otherwise was filled with "verily"s and "foresooths" and other general incidences of Thor-speak, not an ongoing stylistic thing (consistantly anacronistic speech would have been annoying, but wouldn't have possessed that sudden & random, jar-you-out-of-the-narrative quality).
But that and indeed everything else paled beside WTF moment #2, wherein the aura of unacknowledged sexual threat on the hero's part goes from background creepy to OMG, WTF:
Wherein the heroine reveals, in an argument with the hero, that on their wedding night, the hero consumated their marriage by tying her to the bed and having sex with her over her protests. This revelation that he raped her on their wedding night is then never mentioned again, by either of them. Apparently, it wasn't rape because she came multiple times and enjoyed the sex after that first, tied to the bed-posts and refusing him initiation.
This book was just published this year, and yet the "it wasn't rape because she came" excuse is offered with no appearance of irony on the author's part.
The sad thing is, if it were acknowledged by both the characters and the narrative to have been rape, and treated (by both the characters and the narrative) as an offence every bit as bad or worse than him ditching her without saying goodbye in order to go on crusade, it could actually have been interesting. If the hero, having been abused and suffered at someone else's mercy himself, was then retroactively horrified by what he'd done to the heroine and the main thrust of the plot was "as husband and wife in the middle ages, we're basically stuck with one another for good, so we must learn to get along, mostly via copious grovelling on my part and proof that I've changed into someone you can actually trust not to assault you," instead of "I will fuck you into wanting to be my wife again -- but this time without ropes," then it could have been a really interesting and complex story that didn't result in my swearing never to read anything by this author again. (Well, aside from the valleygirl thing and the evil slut villainess thing, but it was the "rape isn't rape if she comes so he didn't do anything wrong" that was the dealbreaker for me)
I OTP Spike/Buffy and Hank/Jan and I've read that marquesate and vashtan epic about the Russian and British special ops guys in Afghanistan about three times. I'm perfectly willing to be sold on the imaginary, non-stupid redemption-via-suffering and earning back her trust plot I wish this book had had. But alas, I got "orgasm = retroactive consent" instead. I'm going to go read Special Forces again for some nice, cathartic vengance and a fucked up relationship that's actually acknowledged as fucked up.
So, I picked up a romance novel up at the library yesterday, eagerly anticipating angsty h/c goodness (the back page summary promised me that the hero had spent years as a captive during the crusades and was therefore all tortured and angst-ridden), only to be met with dreadful writing and two literally jaw-dropping instances of WTF.
First, the dreadful writing. The female lead's romantic rival is, of course, an evil slutty bitch who manipulates men by appearing to be all innocent and pure and helpless, but whose doll-like blonde eauty conceals her true nature as a murderous scheming whore. Also, she apparently became a murderous, scheming whore because her father molested her, which could have been interesting if she were portrayed even semi-sympathetically as an abuse survivor determined to use whatever means available to prevent herself from ever being victimized like that again, but no. The abuse is all pastede on yay as some kind of token explanation for why she's apparently pure evil.
The hero, who left his bride the morning after their wedding to go to the crusades, comes back six years later to discover that he's been declared dead for years and his wife is about to marry someone else. She forgets all about love interest #2 the moment her husband comes back (of course), but is determined that she doesn't want to be married to said husband anymore because he's a rat bastard who abandoned her the day after their wedding leaving only a note to explain where he'd gone, and she doesn't care if he's spent years in prison or what -- if he'd actually cared about her to begin with, he wouldn't have left her without a word after less than 24 hours of marriage. This, I feel, is a valid grievance.
The hero (thankfully) realizes that ditching her a few hours into the honeymoon and running away to another country was a dick move, but now he wants to get back together with her because the memory of their wedding night and the thought of coming home to her kept him sane while he was being tortured and thrown in oubliettes and so on. He's supposed to have PTSD, but he has the pastede on yay kind where it gives him one or two convenient nightmares and some staring-into-space flashbacks, but otherwise doesn't affect his thought processes or behaviors in any way. You know, the Lord Peter Whimsy kind of prettied-up PTSD of convenience, which is there when the author want to make her hero seem tortured and wounded for a second, and then vanishes utterly the rest of the time (Dorothy Sayers, I will resent you forever for promising me a kink-fulfilling shell-shocked hero and then never actually delivering on that). He tells the heroine that if she agrees to let him try to seduce her into staying married (well, technically make her love him, but actually he just tries to seduce her) without objecting to anything he does in the process, then he will promise to get them an annullment if his seduction attempts fail. There's lots of the hero being sexually aggressive and the author confusing True Love with ravenous lust, and no apparent realization that the heroine being trapped in a position where she has no choice but to let the hero try to coerce her into jumping is bones is kind of creepy. The sad thing is, if the author had acknowledged the inherent power issues, it could have been vaguely D/s themed and hot. Instead, it just made me uneasy because of the palpable levels of sexual threat that went totally unacknowledged by either the author or any of the characters. Sexual coercion masquerading as romance is no fun when the author is writing it with utter sincerity as an idealized relationship rather than as "this is badwrong but OMGsohot."
Plus, at one point the heroine tries to shove the hero into a dark closet at knifepoint and lock him in there. This is supposed to be cute. Except, you know, for the part where he spent years being chained up and tortured (thankfully, the heroine actually realizes this after her adorable, "you're so hot/cute when you're angry" attempt to escape continuing sexual harassment fails, but if she can realize that she shouldn't lock her husband who spent years in an oubliette in a linen closet to teach him a lesson, why can't he or the author realize that "No," doesn't mean "Convince me?").
And then.... *drumroll*
WTF moment #1, which actually occurred later in the book but is a lesser offence in terms of overall boggle-worthiness:
At one point, the narration, supposedly from the pov of a 13th century man, contains this line (after the heroine asks if he's going to come into her bedchamber or not and walks away into said bedchamber all sexily): "He was so coming."
So coming. As in, "you are so going to pay for that." Or "I am so right there with you." Or "I'm, like, so an American from some point after 1980, you know?"
Medieval warriors do not speak like valley girls. Possibly the guys from JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood still spoke like gangsta rap wannabees even in the pre-enlightenment era, but this hero's name was Simon, not Sihmohn, and the valley girl speak was a handful of utterly jarring lines scattered through a book that otherwise was filled with "verily"s and "foresooths" and other general incidences of Thor-speak, not an ongoing stylistic thing (consistantly anacronistic speech would have been annoying, but wouldn't have possessed that sudden & random, jar-you-out-of-the-narrative quality).
But that and indeed everything else paled beside WTF moment #2, wherein the aura of unacknowledged sexual threat on the hero's part goes from background creepy to OMG, WTF:
Wherein the heroine reveals, in an argument with the hero, that on their wedding night, the hero consumated their marriage by tying her to the bed and having sex with her over her protests. This revelation that he raped her on their wedding night is then never mentioned again, by either of them. Apparently, it wasn't rape because she came multiple times and enjoyed the sex after that first, tied to the bed-posts and refusing him initiation.
This book was just published this year, and yet the "it wasn't rape because she came" excuse is offered with no appearance of irony on the author's part.
The sad thing is, if it were acknowledged by both the characters and the narrative to have been rape, and treated (by both the characters and the narrative) as an offence every bit as bad or worse than him ditching her without saying goodbye in order to go on crusade, it could actually have been interesting. If the hero, having been abused and suffered at someone else's mercy himself, was then retroactively horrified by what he'd done to the heroine and the main thrust of the plot was "as husband and wife in the middle ages, we're basically stuck with one another for good, so we must learn to get along, mostly via copious grovelling on my part and proof that I've changed into someone you can actually trust not to assault you," instead of "I will fuck you into wanting to be my wife again -- but this time without ropes," then it could have been a really interesting and complex story that didn't result in my swearing never to read anything by this author again. (Well, aside from the valleygirl thing and the evil slut villainess thing, but it was the "rape isn't rape if she comes so he didn't do anything wrong" that was the dealbreaker for me)
I OTP Spike/Buffy and Hank/Jan and I've read that marquesate and vashtan epic about the Russian and British special ops guys in Afghanistan about three times. I'm perfectly willing to be sold on the imaginary, non-stupid redemption-via-suffering and earning back her trust plot I wish this book had had. But alas, I got "orgasm = retroactive consent" instead. I'm going to go read Special Forces again for some nice, cathartic vengance and a fucked up relationship that's actually acknowledged as fucked up.
Tags: