Other things worth commenting on or not...

[shadowkat]

1. Insane How Controversial Romance Novels Are -- a tumblr post ganked from conly.

My response? Eh, really? Have you not read romance novels?

I can see why they are controversial. Being an individual who reads a lot of controversial genres and has read quite a few controversial literary novels, it makes sense.

The Tumblr commentator clearly hasn't read as broad a range of romance novels as I have. ;-)

Quite a few have women and men raped, molested, and/or tortured in them. In the popular Outlander romance series -- every lead character is raped, major character arcs and plot-lines are determined via rape or sexual violence, regardless of gender or age. I will give the writer credit for being non-discriminatory in who she chooses to have raped in her novels. Also the hero spanks and beats the heroine's bottom in the first book -- which turned off a lot of readers.

In the classic Judith McNaught novel, "Whitney, My Love" - the hero rapes his virgin wife, believing she'd already had sex with someone else. He's furious and rapes her.
Then he maltreats her, believing she's pregnant with another man's child -- when she's only had sex with him. Rosemary Rodgers novels were similar -- most if not all of Rogers heroes had forcibly seduced their virginal heroines. It was the 1970s and 80s, it was in.

So yeah, there's a reason they are controversial folks.

That's not to say all romance novels are like this. Post 1990s, they tend to be tamer. And the Regency novels aren't really in that vogue.

It's like any genre really -- depends on the writer. I mean, the literary genre isn't immune -- there's controversial novels in it too. Also, the thriller/mystery genre is rather controversial as well.

But I will state, that she's right about one thing -- romance gets the least respect. No one feels ashamed to admit they've read James Patterson (I don't know why but people bewilder me), or half a dozen other best-selling thriller/mystery novels. But say you read romance novels? Oh dear. Actually comic books also get a bad rap. Men make fun of romance novels, women make fun of superhero comics. Forgetting that men do read romance novels and women do read superhero comics.
I know men and women who read both, hell I read both. I've also read many of the so-called great works of literary wonder. Honestly I no longer see much difference between them -- a good story is something that sticks in you and changes you, doesn't matter who else likes it or what they think, no matter how many degrees and accolades they've got.

I've two co-workers. One who is a kind man, on the board of trustees of his library, who told me a story of how he reprimanded a librarian for telling one of her co-workers, a single mom with two small children who was struggling to make payments on her house, not to bring her kids in to work with her. Since the children's librarians weren't responsible for supervising her kids. The kids were sitting with her and didn't require supervision. Also the woman and her kids are patrons of the library. Anyway he's good deed was protecting this woman's job and ensuring her kids as a matter of policy could sit with Mom while she worked in the library. He also purchases locomotives, and is friendly to everyone and easy to work with and very helpful. I love him dearly. He is constantly recommending books and trying to lend them to me. His wife liked my novel. The books he recommends tend to be genre, fantasy novels, romance novels, sci-fi, and mysteries. The other co-worker, is a nice guy and loved my novel, but is impossible to work with. He also is a frustrated English Major, who buys books doesn't get them from the Library, and has read to date all of James Joyce and is starting Finnegan's Wake. Next he's reading Faulkner's Sound and the Fury.

Coworker: I'm reading Sound and the Fury next.
Me: Eh...I'd read something else. It's not that good.
Coworker: No, no, I must read it.
Me: Okay..

Honestly? I read it and wrote a paper on it. My impression now? Faulkner had issues with women. The book is basically told in the perspectives of three brothers who are all obsessed with their half-sister Caddy. One is half in lust with her, the other two either love or need to protect her. The novel is a discourse on how men objectify and can't handle women. I compared it to James Joyce's Ulyssess and how Joyce wrote Molly Bloom -- with free abandon. Joyce also objectified women, but he was a little nicer about it. I felt sorry for both men's wives.

2. This brings me to... the news that Charles Dickens tried to lock his sane wife in an asylum. Apparently it was unlocked in a trove of letters?

Scholars have long known that Charles Dickens was cruel to his wife, Catherine. In their early letters, the novelist addressed her affectionally—“my dearest Life,” “dearest darling Pig,” he’d write—but that tone changed dramatically some two decades into their marriage once he met and began an affair with then-18-year-old actress Ellen Ternan. By the following year, Charles had divided the marital bedroom in two and taken the highly unusual (for Victorian England) step of legally separating from Catherine, who, in turn, had to move out of the family home.

At the time, Charles wrote a letter to his agent suggesting it had been Catherine’s idea to live apart and accused her of having “a mental disorder under which she sometimes labors.” The letter didn't stay private for long. As Victorian scholar Patrick Leary details in "How the Dickens Scandal Went Viral," it soon became public (likely with Charles' approval) and helped shape the narrative around the couple's uncoupling. Catherine's side of the breakup tale has remained mostly obscured from history until now.

Her rarely heard perspective comes back with vengeance thanks to a trove of 98 previously unseen letters that show Charles, to use a term floating around in the cultural milieu today, was actually gaslighting his wife as they separated.

The missives were unearthed by University of York professor John Bowen, who specializes in 19th-century fiction. He first became aware of their existance when he noticed them listed in an auction catalogue from 2014. He recently sorted through them himself at the Harvard Theatre Collection in Cambridge, where the letters ended up. "As far as I know, I was the first person to analyse them. I've not found any other reference," he tells Smithsonian.com in an ema
The letters were written by Dickens family friend and neighbor Edward Dutton Cook to a fellow journalist, and they include details about the couple’s separation, which Catherine shared with Cook in 1879, the year she died.

In them, Cook recounts: “He [Charles] discovered at last that she had outgrown his liking…He even tried to shut her up in a lunatic asylum, poor thing!”

Hmm...I now feel validated for despising Dickens. And no longer feel obligated to read Dickens, not that I ever really did -- considering I've managed to avoid reading Dickens (well except for A Christmas Carol, which everyone has read so it hardly counts) for the past 50 some years. I no longer feel the need to brag about what I'm reading. Half the stuff I've forgotten and so too, has everyone else (as I've discovered in more than one book club).




3. Regarding the OSCARS? So far I've actually seen about half of the films nominated. Black KKKlansman, Black Panther, VICE, Bohemian Rhapsody...I have not seen Green Book, Roma, Star is Born and The Favorite.

Of the one's I've seen? They are all deeply flawed, but the only one I can say that I really enjoyed and thought worthy of a second viewing is oddly enough Black Panther. It was the game changer. Everything else has been done before...and had major flaws.

Wales wants to see The Favorite -- I'm on the fence. I may watch Roma this weekend, but I tried last weekend and could not get into it. It's..well...the first fifteen minutes is just watching a woman clean.

4. Haunting of Hill House S2 is going the anthology route and will actually be the Haunting of Bly House -- -- good news. Mike Flanagan is wisely following in the footsteps of American Horror Story and going the anthology route, which works really well for Netflix. Netflix does television miniseries better than anyone -- because you can stream it all at once. No commercials. No waiting. Drops all at once. Binge and binge again.

I think they should do the same thing with Russian Doll. For the same reasons, neither works well if you extend it too far.

I thought Haunting was better written, tighter, better acted, and filmed than Russian Doll, but I liked Russian Doll better than Haunting -- if that makes sense. Probably not.

Anyhow..next season is an adaptation of another classic haunted house story -- Henry James' Turn of the Screw -- which has been adapted three times already. (As had Haunting of Hill House). So curious to see how Flanagan adapts it.

5. How People Read Fanfic

There's a nifty chart. Which you can find at the link above. Or on YourLibrarian's post about it.

How do I read and interact with fanfic?

When I was reading it -- which was a when I was obsessed with Buffy, I read to scratch an itch. I didn't really know it existed before then -- outside of what I wrote in my own head. I mean, I wrote it, but I didn't share it and I rarely put it on paper.

Did I read fanfic as a writer -- yes. I read everything as a writer. The writer in me will play with the story and critique it, to determine what I can learn from it -- to become a better writer myself. Eh, that really doesn't work for me, or that really did -- I may try that at some point. Or I love that idea. But...eh, that idea works in theory but not in reality, damn.

That's why I do constructive critiques of what I read -- to determine what worked and what didn't and how I can improve. I don't really do it for anyone but myself. I freely admit that.

Why do I read it? Usually because the story that is on screen or on the page is leaving something out and I crave more. In the case of Buffy, a heck of a lot was left out. The frigging writers weren't always interested in exploring the same things I wanted to explore. So I sought out fanfic that explored them. I wanted to know how Angel dealt with Spike getting a soul -- so I read fanfic on it. (This was before Angel S5 happened.) I wanted to know how Buffy dealt with Spike's death and his resurrection? So I read fanfic about it -- mainly because Whedon didn't care.
I did. He didn't. I hunted fanfic. I wanted to know how Spike handled getting a soul -- I read fanfic. I wanted to know how Spike would deal with being human -- I read fanfic. (Got annoyed, because the people who wrote the fanfic didn't get the character and for reasons that made no sense to me thought he would revert back to his pre-Spike or Victorian self, as if Spike was the demonic persona. Really? So I wrote my own in my head.) I wanted to know what would have happened if Spike got the chip out, not the soul and we explored a less black/white take on the verse - so I read fanfic.

I also read it for the sex -- but usually if it was an interesting set-up. And I wanted to see different variations on those characters. How would a full-on BDSM Spike and Buffy play out?

And I got curious about Spike and Xander's relationship -- what we didn't see. (Brendan and Marsters had great on-screen chemistry, it was clear that the two actors liked each other.) And I was curious about Spike and Angel's relationship - so I read fanfic.

Have I read fanfic outside of Buffy? Yes, sparingly. No one is writing fanfic on the stuff I'm currently curious about or if they are, I can't find it. I asked. It's not there. So not reading anything at the moment. Fanfic I've read that isn't Buffy related? Merlin (briefly -- the show covered pretty much everything I was interested in so there was no need), House (mostly just because a friend wrote it), Farscape (curious about what happened after the Peace Keeper Wars, but didn't find a lot, and I only was interested in John and Aeryn, also the series covered pretty much everything with no real gaps), Rachel Morgan (I wanted more of Trent/Rachel -- the author was moving fast and not giving enough of what I wanted), BSG (wanted more of Kara/Apollo -- because the show kept skirting around them, everyone else was heavily covered).

I won't read fanfic or seek it out -- unless I feel that something is missing from a story I'm reading or there's a gap -- and I'm obsessing over it.

For the past several years I've been obsessed with the character of Cyclops -- but no one else is. Or they aren't in the same way. So no, fanfic. Men don't tend to write fanfic about male characters -- for some reason. Women do. And the female fanfic writers aren't into him. So no fanfic. The only one's I've found are slash fics with Scott/Logan, which don't interest me. That's already there, Logan has been done to death. There are no gaps in his story.

Will I read it if I'm not into or obsessed or craving something more? No.

Do I interact with the writers or the fanfic community? No. Or rarely. Mainly because they don't want my kind of interaction. They want me to do one of three things: beta (ie copy-edit), squee, and tell them how great they are. And that's not how I roll. I want to analyze it, ask questions about it, and dissect the themes, characterization, world-building, story -- see what works and what doesn't. They don't want that. They want a copy-editor -- I suck at copy-editing. They want someone to love it, I want to discuss it. So I stay away. Meta writers are actually easier to interact with -- because they do want to do all of that. The Meta writer tends to be analytical, the fanfic writer isn't (well for the most part, there are one or two exceptions and they know who they are).



Ugh. Time got away from me again. It's past midnight. I got to go to bed.

Comments

[cjlasky7]

Saw The Favourite yesterday.

I could give you a rundown with mild spoilers, but I'll hold off if you're going to see it soon.

[shadowkat]

Worth a movie theater visit, or can it wait for cable?

[cjlasky7]

The set design for the royal castle and the cinematography deserve a big screen viewing. Lanthimos' liberal use of wide-angle lenses also works better on the big screen.

HOWEVER, the plot itself is kind of small. It's a three character story (more or less), and not that complicated (despite the period setting and the court intrigue). If you're into cinematic opulence, then it's worth the big screen. If you just want the character dynamics, wait for cable

[shadowkat]

Thanks, I can wait and see it on my 25-32 inch screen. I don't care about scenery that much -- if most of the story is inside and smaller.

Although if still playing, I may try to see it with Wales next weekend.

[yourlibrarian]

I've seen The Favourite and while there's things I quite liked about it, it's not to my mind a movie that needs to be seen in a theater.

[shadowkat]

I remember reading your review and thinking, eh, this can wait.