You Like What You Like

[shipperx]

It's so funny to read book reviews on Good Reads.  It's great having tons of reviews, but it brings home that people can like wildly different things.  One person's four star review is another's "What the hell is THIS?!"  And some of it really boils down to nothing but preference.   Some of my biggest reactions are when someone flat-out admits to liking and/or disliking a certain trope and their like/dislike is the polar opposite of my own, or one I find the 'dislike' to be something I find to be inexplicable.

Examples of comments that made me go huh:


-- "I don't like it when the hero has been in love before..."
My Reaction: Wha-huh?  Doesn't this cut out a LOT of potential stories and storylines?  That seems terribly arbitrary.



--"I really liked the author's proper use of grammar..."
My Reaction: Um... this is a review of an AUDIO BOOK. What the heck are you talking about? Subject/verb agreement?



-- "I don't like a commoner involved with a titled person stories. I like them both to be aristocrats..."
My Reaction: What kind of classist B.S. is this?  (Admittedly, the commoner/"beneath you"  trope where classes intersect is one of my go-to kinks.)



-- The pervasive love of rich domineering assholes. There are SO many people who seem to love that archetype.  My reaction to it this time basically came from a poll on an author's web site where she was asking which of her stories was her fans' fave, and the winner was the one where I spent waaaaaayyyyyyyyyy too much time mentally fuming re: the hero "What an ASSHOLE!!"  The book was good overall (but not because of HIM), but the "hero"  was a terrible asshat who needed to be taken down many a peg, but wasn't.  Meanwhile waaaaayyyy down the poll list was my favorite of the writer's stories, the one where a bonafied nice person was the hero. I probably have a long musing post one day on the Uberwealthy Domineering Asshole archetype that seems so popular. Not today, but someday...

Comments

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I don't think the 'kitten' heroine is a new thing though. (I remember LOATHING the female narrator of Daphne Du Maurier's "Rebecca" who spends an inordinate amount of time whining about how damn dowdy she is. All I could think was "You don't HAVE to be dowdy. You married an aristocrat. Go to the damn store and BUY LESS DOWDY STUFF!!)

But, yeah, there is a weird thing going on sometimes with Good Reads reviews. There were several reviews of Hoyt's "The Leopard Prince" bitching about the heroine's decision near the end to consider marrying someone other than the (servant) hero that she loves. I haven't read the book yet but have bought it and have skipped to the end to understand that bit of it and... I can't help thinking that some people just don't get things. There's a point in why things happen that way. The attached fairy tale relating to the title 'The Leopard Prince' refers to an enslaved genie which makes the point perfectly clear (to me), especially in light of the hero's thoughts when he finds out that she's pregnant and that this means that he doesn't get to make a choice re: his future. Circumstances have made the choice for him. (Crux of the problem being that he's a commoner and her servant. If he marries her and lives with her, everyone will always believe that he's her bought lackey and always believe him to be a fortune hunter. Can he live a lifetime of being thought of in this way? Even if both he and she know that that's not the case?) She decides 'to free the Leopard Prince' rather than keeping him 'enslaved' by circumstances by finding a (gay) friend who is willing to marry her and accept the baby as his own thus, storywise, freeing the hero to actually have an opportunity to MAKE a choice. He's no longer optionless due to circumstances. Once the obligation is lifted the hero can make a choice of his own free will to live with people's assumptions about him so as to have the life and family that he could have with her.

It's like this 'point' is being missed by a LOT of reviewers of this book. Some people are just... not particularly insightful.

I also think there's a certain appeal for some that's akin to emo teens (read an emo teen's fanfic and sometimes the persecution complex oozes from the page). Some people LIKE the endlessly saintly martyred heroine, it scratches an emotional itch (and some dislike ones that act...well... a lot like the heroes. And, yeah, I think there's sexism in heroines being cut less slack than heroes)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

It's like this 'point' is being missed by a LOT of reviewers of this book. Some people are just... not particularly insightful.

Even when you underline the point to them, put it in Capital letters, and scream it. (I've had a frustrating couple of weeks at work. I'm starting to wonder about people's reading comprehension skills.)

Anyhow..no, after years on the internet, I've discovered there are quite a few people who are metaphor blind. They really wouldn't recognize a metaphor if it came up and bit them. You have to spell it out for them, and even then...Also subtext? Completely lost on them. Discovered that with Buffy viewers and ahem, some television critics.

One of the Good Reads reviewers blew my mind when she complained about the fairy tales that Hoyt puts in front of each chapter - stating: "why are they there? Does anyone even read them?" [Ah, yes, metaphor.]

also think there's a certain appeal for some that's akin to emo teens (read an emo teen's fanfic and sometimes the persecution complex oozes from the page). Some people LIKE the endlessly saintly martyred heroine, it scratches an emotional itch (and some dislike ones that act...well... a lot like the heroes. And, yeah, I think there's sexism in heroines being cut less slack than heroes)

Hee, Hoyt appears to be trying to deconstruct the saintly martyr trope in the first three books of her Maiden Lane series. Have mixed feelings about it so far.

Anyhow..I agree.

They do like the EMO teens - which is rather popular in the New Adult/YA Romance genre (not the paranormal one) - go read the reviews to Jamie Acquirre's Beautiful Disaster (don't read the book - it's ghastly, I did, and hated it). But it's a perfect example of "emo" teen romance. They are extremely popular on Good Reads for some reason.

It's not my trope. So probably shouldn't critiqued the books as negatively as I have - because hello, it's just not my trope. I'm not a fan of the persecuted heroine.

[Confession? I never made it through Dauphne Du Maurier's Rebecca - I could not stand either character. Both drove me bonkers. Oddly, the Hitchcock movie didn't bug me as much...not sure why. Maybe because Hitchcock toned some of that down? Had similar issues with Gone with the Wind - I could not stand Scarlett O'Hara - which may explain my dislike of Lady Mary in Dowton Abbey - they are in some respects similar characters.]

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

The only thing good about Du Maurier's "Rebecca" was that the husband really was a murderer (That got totally excused because 'dead wife was evil' *spit*). Other than that, it was a complete waste of time.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as I looked to see what the explanation was I couldn't help but think that the only way she could have been any more clear about it was to have a character directly state 'you are doing this because...' Because short of that I couldn't see how she could have made it any more obvious.

And I didn't read the early Maiden Lane stuff. Tell me if they're worth reading. I think I may have skipped them because nothing in the bluebell fell into my story kinks. Our favorite tropes tend to be our go-to tropes. Even if we may like an author they still may not have a novel that falls into our story kinks.