Weekend Stuff

[shipperx]

- I wish Tom Branson had a better storyline on Downton Abbey. I really didn't care for this one. Also, I feel for poor Edith. Matthew is barely in the ground and already Mary's parents are trying to match her up. Edith got left at the altar last year and it was "poor Edith. No one will ever want her." Poor Edith, indeed. Poor Edith for a family that doesn't value her worth squat.



- Watched Oblivion with Tom Cruise. The guy is certainly batty, but he is quite photogenic. That said, the movie struck me as the epitome of how female characters are there to not be people in their own right but generic love interests. His 'wife' in the movie never even had a personality. Barely said anything. And yet was supposed to be this stupefyingly important true love. Erm... guys, how about actually giving her something to DO rather than be a goal and object?

Further causing me to tilt my head and wonder was the final act/twist/revelation. It made me miss Farscape. Farscape did it FAR BETTER. No one anytime ever would accuse Aeryn Sun of only being a movable object. She was a person in her own right and her being so is what carried what is in fact a very similar story point.

So, in total, Oblivion is a relatively enjoyable (if totally formulaic) movie but, no bones about it, Season 3 Farscape is infinitely better.


- Read Sherry Thomas' "Luckiest Lady in London." Eh. No real complaints about the book, really. (Well, yeah, I could make a few but why bother?) Sometimes it's not a matter of how 'well' someone writes or doesn't. It's a matter of whether they emotionally connect with the reader (or at least THIS reader). I can tolerate typos and poor punctuation in service of an involving story. That may not make me the most discerning reader, but it's the way that I roll. I remained rather detached from this one. The only particularly strong emotion it ever stirred in me was one small 'hell yeah' to the heroine when the hero confessed that he loved her and she stepped back and told him that his 'love' was stunningly selfish, always about what he wanted or needed. If she'd turned around and thrown herself into his arms after that love confession, I probably would've had a strong reaction to the novel (throwing it across the room). But, luckily, she didn't. Another act followed. So in the end, I was "eh. Okay, by the end." Other than that I remained emotionally detached.

I guess it again goes back to story kinks. There was definitely some heat in this one, and nothing was 'wrong' with it per se. But... eh. I didn't really connect. (I liked Thomas's brief novella "Dance in Moonlight" better. Far more brief and rushed, and yet it reached me far more than this full length book.)

May be burning out on romances now. I've had a few questionable quality that I loved, one or two I thought were quite good, and a couple of "eh, not really what I would've prefered." I tend to be an eclectic reader, so I may be back on history or science or comedy or science fiction again next week.

Comments

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about DA and Tom. I'm glad that stupid Braithwaite story got dealt with ASAP, because watching her be so transparent and him be such a wimp was really pissing me off. Meanwhile, Edith is becoming my favorite, even though I'm pissed at the whole German citizenship storyline, because it's so transparently setting up WWII drama, since I'm sure the show is going to drag on forever from cliche to cliche.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Too many dreadful cliches going on in the story. You can get away with cliche if there's wit to it. There isn't in the DA story. I think I literally cheered out loud when Braithwaite left because WHAT AN INSUFFERABLE STORYLINE! Seriously, they can't think of anything better to do with an angsting young widower who is feeling woefully out of place? Dude, that's a great character to use! Instead we get this...

And I already know that Edith is going to be pregnant. It's not even about spoilers, it's about being concussed with story anvils.

*sigh* But the show is so darn pretty and does have some witty lines. It would be so good if the writing were better.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh, you managed to read the Sherry Thomas novel that I avoided, after reading the reviews. (This is how I choose books: I read the worst and the best reviews on Amazon and good reads. If it sparks my kinks or curiousity - I'll read. Otherwise won't bother.)

Best Sherry Thomas? Private Arrangements - her first book and it's about two people who have been happily separated for a long time. The wife decides to get a divorce and marry someone else. Her husband pops up to interfere, much chaos ensues.

Not Quite A Husband - was also interesting and has a strong heroine. Actually the male character is more sympathetic in that one. This has the most sympathetic of the male characters.

I always try to get the cheap ones...so typos and copy-editing errors go with the territory.

Agreed on Downton Abbey - Branson's storyline is annoying. And Edith's is beginning to annoy as well - since it's obvious they are using it to transition into WWII and Nazi Germany. Anna's is predictable.
And...it's hard to care about Lady Mary, or understand why anyone falls for her, I guess she's pretty, but she's such a cold fish.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Private Arrangement, though the heroine from it appears in "Luckiest Lady" as the ex-lover of the hero.

There are good parts to "Luckiest..." especially in the first half of the book. There's something enjoyable in their snarking at each other, and in their recognizing each other as being completely different inside than the images they like to project to everyone. And then there's some hot banter.

And as much as I didn't like how the hero self-destructed the relationship after they married, you could see it coming a mile off, because that's exactly where his psychology would lead. It made perfect sense. While it's implied that he gets it, I sort of wish it was brought out more forcefully that he was EXACTLY like his mother in as much as he created the exact same dynamic in his marriage as in his parents marriage, his fear of being his father turned him into the mother.

And, to the heroine's credit, she hit it 100% on the nose when she figured out what he had done and called him on it. He then confessed he loved her and she was RIGHT when she said that he believed it, and maybe he did, but his 'love' had been entirely about what HE needed and wanted.

So intellectually, I could understand the whole thing. It made sense. And it worked its way through as he had to then try to become something other than selfish.

All that said... it ended up far too much of a 'thinking it through' book than a feeling it one. I was too emotionally detached. I had really liked the first half of the book, and had a creeping sense of dread that things would go kerblooey as soon as she got close... and of course that was exactly what happened. And at that point it was hard not to want to punch the hero and say, "You're creating your own damn problem, you idiot!"

It made sense, but it was less than emotionally compelling.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

All that said... it ended up far too much of a 'thinking it through' book than a feeling it one. I was too emotionally detached. I had really liked the first half of the book, and had a creeping sense of dread that things would go kerblooey as soon as she got close... and of course that was exactly what happened. And at that point it was hard not to want to punch the hero and say, "You're creating your own damn problem, you idiot!"

Yep, that's a definite flaw in all of Thomas' novels. What she does right - is deconstruct the whole misunderstanding/miscommunication trope - depicting how it was inevitable due to the characters own fatal flaws or parental issues as opposed to it just being a plot contrivance to break them apart (I'm looking at you Judith McNaught!) However, she over-thinks it or over-explains it, can't decide which, so that you sort of feel either really annoyed with the characters and want to smack them upside the head, or you feel emotionally detached.

Also, marital issues are her favorite trope - which is new. Normally - it's all about getting to the altar.

Private Arrangements dealt with the hero discovering the heroine manipulated him into breaking off a prior engagement and marrying her, prior to their marriage. (HE would have broken off the other engagement and married her anyway, because he was head over-heels, but she didn't know that.) Instead of confronting her on what she'd done, he decides to marry her anyway and get revenge - to the point that his revenge sort of makes what she did seem rather minor in comparison. You just want to smack him.

And in Not Quite A Husband - the heroine discovers prior to her marriage that her husband slept with another woman. She sort of sees it, without him knowing. It's a minor thing to him. But it throws their whole relationship into question - because she's terribly insecure about her appeal to the opposite sex and their age difference (she's older than he is) and she's a surgeon and doesn't often hit it off with people. Instead of confronting him on it - she decides to marry him anyway, and be a martyr, which of course doesn't work. Years pass...they become separated, and finally she tells him. By this time, you want to smack her upside the head.

They are frustrating romances, for the angst, but interesting in that it happens due to fatal character flaws which are realistically explored.
But, I think Liane Moriarity does a better job with marital miscommunications in her novels What Alice Forgot and The Husband's Secret, which admittedly aren't romance novels...more contemporary women's lit (or chick-lit).

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The "deconstructing the tropes" aspect worked well. She did a reasonable deconstruction of the "hero doesn't want to love a heroine and fights it even though he does" trope, revealing that while the hero is telling himself that he's just so darn tenderhearted that he can't take being loved, that it's really a very selfish outlook because it makes everything about how he feels.

And I liked the way that it actually didn't hinge on miscommunication or misunderstanding. She fakes you out with that. She sets up one with the heroine witnessing Lady Tremaine propositioning the hero and his not overtly turning her down and... the heroine and hero just have a stare off immediately after it. And then the hero thinks the heroine is retaliating with some jerk and... that only led to their acting out one of their sex fantasies. So the "misunderstandings" aren't what drove them apart. What drove them apart was that the heroine cottoned on to the absolute unvarnished truth.

He'd spent the first half of the novel shamelessly propositioning her to become his mistress with the heroine both turned on by his pursuit and pretty honest with herself that doing that would give him all the power in the relationship and would be really bad on her self-esteem, and ultimately... probably just a bad idea.

Meanwhile he's blowing up all her chances to get a respectable engagement. But they both know that he's doing that. Both characters are game-players. He plays the Mr. Darcy role in public and yet the heroine knows he's really a rather ruthless manipulator. And she plays the perfect admirable young lady role in public, and yet is basically a (pragmatic) fortune hunter (by necessity, but she's fully aware that divorced of any euphemisms, it's what she really boils down to). So they're basically functioning on an even playing field for most of the novel. And even when he ends up blowing up the relationship when he figures out that he lost control of his feelings somewhere along the line, she's a strong enough heroine that I wasn't all that bothered. They could both dish it and take it. So even that part wasn't the big blow-up.

The big blow up came when she realized that one of the "legit" suitors whose pursuit of her was nixed was because the hero had told her a scandalous, bold-faced lie. A lie that if it had ever been breathed aloud by her (and why would the hero think it wouldn't have been?), the lie would have destroyed the lives of two totally innocent bystanders, two people who were outside of the hero and heroine's relationship, two people who had done nothing wrong and who would've been ruined had the lie gotten out. The hero tries to explain that, yeah, he had gone a step too far but it was because he loved her and the lie actually hadn't gotten out... and the heroine just rips his rationalization to shreds. He'd been not only ruthless, but utterly without scruple. Did he realize that? Did he realize that he could have destroyed two people who were immaterial to the situation and had never done anything to either of them? And he did it, why? Because he was afraid his feelings might possibly, maybe get hurt? And don't say he did it because he was 'in love' with her, because his 'love' had amounted to doing whatever it was that served his emotional needs. Not hers and certainly not anyone else's. She was pretty spot on (and I actually did like the heroine of this one.)

So, actually, on the deconstruction aspect, Thomas did a good job. Where it was less good was that while the hero was deconstructed pretty well and it did go through the stage where he had to think about what the heroine said and then work on actually winning her in a non-selfish way... I just never actually fell in love with the hero. I can think through the plot, but I didn't love the romance.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I want to read it. ;-)

I realized something while I was reading your response, that I'm less interested in the "romance" and more interested in how the writer gets the two characters together and past their issues, as well as the deconstruction.
It's as if I have a craving for stories about how people overcome character flaws and nasty actions, forgive, and are reunited and stronger for it.
Or how they overcome it through forgiveness - a weird combo of redemption story plus forgiveness story.

I don't care if I fall for the hero or necessarily like the heroine (although that certainly helps) - I just need their actions to make some sort of sense, to not feel contrived, and to come from their own characters/personalities and be something they can overcome. I need the characters to evolve or change. I find that comforting. I also find romances that I would never want to be in - ever - insanely comforting, possibly because it makes me happy that I'm single? (ie. Thank god, I don't have THAT.)

My difficulty with Sherry Thomas' Not Quite a Husband and Private Arrangements was that it felt a wee bit too one sided, and the reunion or wrap up was almost too neat or too abrupt - as if the writer threw it all together at the end. I can't remember either well enough to provide a plot synopsis - I read them both over a year ago, and romance novels don't tend to stay with me - in one ear out the other. Sort of have a vague recollection.

Her writing however is leaps and bounds above most of this genre. And she's a POC, so a minority romance writer. Apparently she taught herself English by reading romance novels. And goes out of her way to subvert the tropes or deconstruct them.

Courtney Milan, Sherry Thomas, and Meredith Duran seem to like to deconstruct the trope - but all tend to love angst. Meredith Duran is a bit on the melodramatic side...I rolled my eyes a lot.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

On reflection, I liked it better than I thought. There were good things about it.

And the Private Arrangements thing must be really important to her because I've now seen not one but two subsequent novels of hers that involved two of that heroine's lovers.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It's weird, I don't remember the heroine having any lovers in Private Arrangements. If she did, good for her, I really wanted to kick the hero by the end of that book.

Granted...my memory when it comes to romance novels is not great. Although will state that I remember Thomas' novels better than most.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The hero of Luckiest Lady in London is an ex-lover of Lady Tremaine's. They were still friends during that book. The novel seems to take place before Private Arrangements, because she is still estranged from her husband and the hero of LLL suspects that she isn't entirely happy even though she likes to pretend that she is.

The hero's brother in "His at Night" was also an ex-lover of Lady Tremaine's. He apparently was wildly in love with her and had wanted to marry her, but his hopes were dashed when she reconciled with her husband three years earlier than this book. He gets a subplot romance with his childhood best friend (who had been in love with HIM all along) and so he was generally presented as an all-around uncomplicated nice guy, unlike his brother.