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It's been a long week, in spite of being only Thursday. More accurately it's been a long two weeks, and I'm registering that fact in an access of bad temper worthy of the days when I had hormones to rage with. (Always the individualist, sigh. Rather than exacerbating it, menopause seems to have cured me of the chronic snarls I had in the old days, as well as of most of my samugariya's chronic coldness. [insert Kohri reference to 'Blood's so cold!' while the other demons think Ishuca is having relationship problems.] I'm still having a bit of an identity crisis about the latter. IME it's only men who sleep in boxers and tshirts, and hate flannel sheets. And I love flannel sheets, but they make me too hot.)
Have had a mystery on my shelves since, oh, forever, probably picked up off someone's lawn. It's the one about the antiques-selling woman who lives in Toronto, nado nado, and I kept meaning to read it. So I started it today. Here we are with our little antique store in Yorkville and our group of local friends and our... nasty layabout tits-on-a-bull ex-husband with his new trophy wife who cuts us out of an auction lot we desperately wanted, and this is where I start using bad language. Because look. *Last* contemporary-set female-authored mystery I read had a tea set selling woman and her west-coast Washington State friends and her nasty layabout tits-on-a-bull ex-husband with his new trophy wife, not to mention her current boyfriend more interested in his Hollywood writer's career than her and her children.
Not sure why exactly this irks me, except that it seems another instance of of western reductionism. M/f in genre literature is always the same. (I suspect it's always the same in mainstream lit as well, but I don't read that stuff.) Good or bad, the relationships are always good or bad in the same way, and both leave me feeling mildly revolted. Look at us find wonderful mutually-open self-help-book style love! (Talking about your emotions with your partner in 20th century therapist's jargon is not my definition of intimacy, quite aside from the fact that it has no place in an historical novel or a fantasy set outside the 20th century.) Equally, Look at the utterly unredeemed bastard I was married to for a decade, what a toad he is! (Then why did you marry him???, one wants to ask. Unless most women are functionally insane between the ages of eighteen and thirty, which maybe they are.)
Could we have just a little depth, a hint of three dimensions, some RL ambivalence and ambiguity? No, we couldn't. The relationships must be as formulaic as the plots so frequently are. Bah.
Alas, I fancy the cure for a bad case of heteronormative reductionism is not Fruits Basket. Which is a pity, because I have six volumes of it to read. Nor Aubrey/ Maturin and ships, which is a pity because I have three volumes of that. A long weekend and nothing to beguile it, so I suppose I must go watch not!Chen Daoming in Hero, and fast forward through all the heroic and depressing m/f parts. Could someone please provide me with The Other Thing? which is probably the rest of Kohri, and no, they couldn't.
Have had a mystery on my shelves since, oh, forever, probably picked up off someone's lawn. It's the one about the antiques-selling woman who lives in Toronto, nado nado, and I kept meaning to read it. So I started it today. Here we are with our little antique store in Yorkville and our group of local friends and our... nasty layabout tits-on-a-bull ex-husband with his new trophy wife who cuts us out of an auction lot we desperately wanted, and this is where I start using bad language. Because look. *Last* contemporary-set female-authored mystery I read had a tea set selling woman and her west-coast Washington State friends and her nasty layabout tits-on-a-bull ex-husband with his new trophy wife, not to mention her current boyfriend more interested in his Hollywood writer's career than her and her children.
Not sure why exactly this irks me, except that it seems another instance of of western reductionism. M/f in genre literature is always the same. (I suspect it's always the same in mainstream lit as well, but I don't read that stuff.) Good or bad, the relationships are always good or bad in the same way, and both leave me feeling mildly revolted. Look at us find wonderful mutually-open self-help-book style love! (Talking about your emotions with your partner in 20th century therapist's jargon is not my definition of intimacy, quite aside from the fact that it has no place in an historical novel or a fantasy set outside the 20th century.) Equally, Look at the utterly unredeemed bastard I was married to for a decade, what a toad he is! (Then why did you marry him???, one wants to ask. Unless most women are functionally insane between the ages of eighteen and thirty, which maybe they are.)
Could we have just a little depth, a hint of three dimensions, some RL ambivalence and ambiguity? No, we couldn't. The relationships must be as formulaic as the plots so frequently are. Bah.
Alas, I fancy the cure for a bad case of heteronormative reductionism is not Fruits Basket. Which is a pity, because I have six volumes of it to read. Nor Aubrey/ Maturin and ships, which is a pity because I have three volumes of that. A long weekend and nothing to beguile it, so I suppose I must go watch not!Chen Daoming in Hero, and fast forward through all the heroic and depressing m/f parts. Could someone please provide me with The Other Thing? which is probably the rest of Kohri, and no, they couldn't.
no subject
Me too! After trying out C.'s jersey sheets I bought a set for myself and I've never gone back to flannel. Jersey sheets are like sleeping in a hug.
I am so tired of the useless ex-husband as a motivator/sympathy ploy in books. None of my exes motivated me to do anything but boot their butts out the door AND THEN I DON'T DWELL! Sheesh. And okay, so maybe he was a bastard... why are you letting that define who you are now? I just want to sit these protagonists down, buy them a beverage, and calmly explain why this is not a healthy way to live.
no subject
If someone's going through a break-up then fine, I'll listen to what a useless bastard he was. But I can't see even someone going through a breakup wanting to read books about *other* women's useless nasty underhanded narcissistic exes, and I for sure don't. Why can't we have a female detective who's on good terms with her ex for once? Lack of cheap dramatic tension, yes right.
no subject
Right, exactly, while going through it I can be sympathetic.
Years later? I'd hope a person had moved on.
I would love to read about a female detective on good terms with her ex, or better yet, that their relationship is 'complicated'. Like, maybe they get on pretty good as long as they're working independently but if they are working together BOTH their egos get in the way and they wind up fighting and sabotaging each other but then they forgive and they're back to being amicable when they no longer have to share credit or compete. Sometimes life IS that weird! And it would STILL be interesting to read about.