Longest post in a while, I think
Mar. 15th, 2013 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotWouldn't The Way We Live Now be just perfect for a modernized adaptation? All about stocks and greed and cheating and the excesses of the super-rich ... Someone needs to make it.
I did a post on fashion and feminism (namely the idea that after periods where women are more liberated society responds by forcing women into more feminine fashions), and I should share it here since I think it's one of the few things I post there that's of general interest.
My Godey'ses and Peterson's are making me obsessed with Civil War-era dress. It's so annoying how easily my interests (obsessions) turn.
Jillian really thinks consulting is the way to go, re: employment, because museums are more likely to be able to get grants for projects than to be able to guarantee funding for a hire. I mean, one place I applied to seems to be simply not filling their educator position.
At the last library book sale, I picked up Wild Conquest, by Hannah Howell, because despite so many examples to the contrary, I have a bad tendency to believe the impassioned defenses of the romance novel as brilliant because it shows the human spirit and true emotion etc. etc. etc. Okay, I don't think the idea of the genre is bad - in theory, I love it. I love love stories. And I super love a lot of tropes that go with romance novels. But because so many of them are churned out by writers who have to put them out one after another, often in the same narrow subgenre, they can be really shitty.
So the back cover and the beginning were really, really promising - set in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1760s, the heroine (Pleasance) is so put-upon by her family and forced to shit up her own life; her sister makes her steal something for her and the family refuses to support her after she's caught, so the man (Tearlach, because this is an author who usually writes Highland romances) her family made her give up because her sister wanted him (then the sister gives him up to go back to her old bf and it's like WOE) and whom she was stealing from is like, "I'll pay the fine, and that means she's my indentured servant for a year." And I was like, this sounds like we're going to master/servant awesome conflicted angsty feels.
BUT NO. Howell completely disappointed me. It started going downhill when they were riding off to his wilderness home and they run into some British soldiers at the overnight cabin they stay at. The soldiers try to rape Pleasance but Tearlach fights them off - and then there's this fucking weird lecture from him about how actually being raped would have traumatized her forever. Bad sign. Then once they get to his house and she meets his sister (who was nicely bratty, I'll give Howell that - her stated willingness to beat Pleasance may be uncomfortable but it's pretty period), what I was hoping for was for him to realize that she'd been forced to give him up and didn't think he was a backwoods loser, that what she needed most was respect, and that as he was in a position of power over her he didn't dare act on his feelings as it would make him a TOTAL ASSHOLE. Meanwhile she would be realizing that she deserves happiness and that she's conflicted over her feelings for him as he's essentially her owner for a year.
NO. Instead he decides to "seduce" her by constantly touching, nuzzling, kissing, etc. her while she has the so-common "omg I love him and yet I hate him!!" reaction. NOT ON, both in terms of morality and tropiness. And now I'm also all pissed off because I built up this story in my head and now I can't see how it finishes. >:(
So no more romance novels for me ever unless they are by Eloisa James, I don't care how attractive the summary is, it will never be the way I want.
I did a post on fashion and feminism (namely the idea that after periods where women are more liberated society responds by forcing women into more feminine fashions), and I should share it here since I think it's one of the few things I post there that's of general interest.
My Godey'ses and Peterson's are making me obsessed with Civil War-era dress. It's so annoying how easily my interests (obsessions) turn.
Jillian really thinks consulting is the way to go, re: employment, because museums are more likely to be able to get grants for projects than to be able to guarantee funding for a hire. I mean, one place I applied to seems to be simply not filling their educator position.
At the last library book sale, I picked up Wild Conquest, by Hannah Howell, because despite so many examples to the contrary, I have a bad tendency to believe the impassioned defenses of the romance novel as brilliant because it shows the human spirit and true emotion etc. etc. etc. Okay, I don't think the idea of the genre is bad - in theory, I love it. I love love stories. And I super love a lot of tropes that go with romance novels. But because so many of them are churned out by writers who have to put them out one after another, often in the same narrow subgenre, they can be really shitty.
So the back cover and the beginning were really, really promising - set in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1760s, the heroine (Pleasance) is so put-upon by her family and forced to shit up her own life; her sister makes her steal something for her and the family refuses to support her after she's caught, so the man (Tearlach, because this is an author who usually writes Highland romances) her family made her give up because her sister wanted him (then the sister gives him up to go back to her old bf and it's like WOE) and whom she was stealing from is like, "I'll pay the fine, and that means she's my indentured servant for a year." And I was like, this sounds like we're going to master/servant awesome conflicted angsty feels.
BUT NO. Howell completely disappointed me. It started going downhill when they were riding off to his wilderness home and they run into some British soldiers at the overnight cabin they stay at. The soldiers try to rape Pleasance but Tearlach fights them off - and then there's this fucking weird lecture from him about how actually being raped would have traumatized her forever. Bad sign. Then once they get to his house and she meets his sister (who was nicely bratty, I'll give Howell that - her stated willingness to beat Pleasance may be uncomfortable but it's pretty period), what I was hoping for was for him to realize that she'd been forced to give him up and didn't think he was a backwoods loser, that what she needed most was respect, and that as he was in a position of power over her he didn't dare act on his feelings as it would make him a TOTAL ASSHOLE. Meanwhile she would be realizing that she deserves happiness and that she's conflicted over her feelings for him as he's essentially her owner for a year.
NO. Instead he decides to "seduce" her by constantly touching, nuzzling, kissing, etc. her while she has the so-common "omg I love him and yet I hate him!!" reaction. NOT ON, both in terms of morality and tropiness. And now I'm also all pissed off because I built up this story in my head and now I can't see how it finishes. >:(
So no more romance novels for me ever unless they are by Eloisa James, I don't care how attractive the summary is, it will never be the way I want.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-16 09:16 pm (UTC)So true. I think this is why I gravitate toward fantasy and sci-fi novels with heavy romance elements, rather than romance novels per se. Speaking of which, I love Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, though I am disappointed at the lack of sex scenes :(.
That's a great post on fashion. I think this is really important: "It's really hard to define "periods of feminist freedom"." In a couple hundred years, historians might be able to do it, but for now I don't think we have enough to go on. For instance, comparing the 20s to the 50s, socially women seem to have been more "free" in the 20s, if we go by stereotypes. But I'd far rather wear the clothing of the 50s, since I would look better in it and it looks more comfortable to me, plus women could wear trousers in the 50s without scandal. There was a period of the 2000s when I did not buy any t-shirts, because I could not find any that were not belly shirts -- one could certainly tie that to Dubya and a backlash against feminism if one chose. But then we get into what kind of clothing is "feminist": must it be less sexualizing and more androgynous? That's purity culture, which is anything but feminist.
So complicated.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-17 12:34 am (UTC)But I'd far rather wear the clothing of the 50s, since I would look better in it and it looks more comfortable to me, plus women could wear trousers in the 50s without scandal. ... But then we get into what kind of clothing is "feminist": must it be less sexualizing and more androgynous? That's purity culture, which is anything but feminist.
Really good points. It's such a difficult issue - I'm halfheartedly trying to turn it into a srs academic paper.