Confessions

[marguerite_krux]

I’m going to make a shocking declaration.

*DUCKS*

Okay, before I’m subjected to ‘Jerry-Springer’ type boos and hisses, I will add that I hate myself for it. The vast majority of these books are terrible. Those that I deem terrible consist of a plot that revolves entirely around the main couple ending up in a passionate embrace somewhere, anywhere, private or public or even in the most implausible, impractical location imaginable. It’s hard to support these characters when their judgment rests solely in their genitals. [If I want smut, I read fanfic, thx. And they generally have way more characterization than the novels in a fraction of the length anyway]

For goodness sake, one pathetic excuse for a novel has the couple making time for some pleasuring while trapped in a store full of enemy agents intent on killing them. Mid-shootout, the chick decides it’s as good a time as any to act on her horniness. The guy, occupied with picking off the villains one-by-one with his infinite supply of ammunition, decides she’s a genius and happily allows himself to be distracted while they’re sitting ducks. WTF? Do they think the baddies will roll in, wave their guns around and then get flustered, like, ‘Oh, dude, sorry, my bad…I guess…you know, I’ll come back later.’

[Which is where a ‘200’ flashback sets in:

‘Younger, edgier’ Teal’c is making out with a hot chick.

‘Younger, edgier’ Cameron shoots her.

T: Yo, dawg, whatchu do dat for?

C: Dude, that hot chick was so totally a Goa’uld

T: Duh, but I was still gonna tap dat.

Yeah. My mind works in mysterious ways.]

But back to my point- despite being this dumb, they still managed to survive to the requisite happy ending. I love happy endings, I get depressed without them, but in some cases, I’ll be rooting for the bad guys to win. In this case, I wish the couple had ended up in a morgue, body riddled with bullets. They so totally deserve it, man.

Romances- filled with bad dialogue, crappy character development, lots of sex scenes that border on rape and excessively saccharine declarations of love. *gags*

---------Extract of Excruciating Horrid Writing----------

Nikolai: Marry me. Be my wife. Be my love. Be mine always.

Tiffany [valiantly resisting]: Don’t say that!

Nikolai [undeterred]: I love you. I love you, my darling.

Tiffany: I won’t let you stop me from marrying Rolf!

Nikolai ignores her words and listens to her body. Which wants him badly. And being the accommodating guy he is, he decides to try and override her verbal protests by seducing her masterfully.

Tiffany ‘endure[s] the ravaging flames that prey upon her body as she struggled against him…feels an electric shock of pure pleasure…her body was betraying her with its flashes of passion that ignite[s] each place his hand touche[s]’

But she struggles free.

Tiffany: I have to…to leave now. I can’t stay here with you.

[pretends to walk out]

Nikolai: I love you. I love you more than life itself. But if you walk out that door, I never want to see you again. I love ballet, but I love you more. My life without you is nothing. With you it is everything.

Tiffany is wavering. [Damn that man and his romantic words! Think, woman, think with your mind and not your passion! Don’t let him use your body against you!]

Nikolai [defeated]: Maybe…you really…don’t love me at all.

Tiffany [sobs]: Oh, I do!

Rushes into his arms and…you imagine the rest. [Hee, I’m prudish] But I will tell you that ‘music crashed and soared around them…they danced the most beautiful dance in the world…the dance of love…’

----------end extract------------

Blech. If that didn’t strike you with the need to find a toilet bowl to retch over, then… wow, you must have a stomach of steel because mine is roiling like you wouldn’t believe. You can have this book. I got it for free when the hospital decided to get rid of its book collection [which angered me greatly as I had spent $5 there the previous day…] so it’s not like I have any stake in it. And it should tell you something that I want to dispose of a *free* book because I don’t want it sullying my shelves any longer. Hmm. Maybe I’ll donate it to the bookstore in town, at least I’ll be rid of it.

Now, I’m sure you think I’m over-reacting, but I don’t have a lot of space in my room and I don’t need this trash occupying a square *millimeter* of area, thank you. And of course, I’ve had the distinct displeasure of being more familiar with the book, there’s plenty more awfulness to be had. You’re talking to an expert on how much it sucks; all the clichés are employed- they sleep together, he tells her it was just sex, she’s devastated, he repents, she finds out he has a fiancée, he tells her he loves her, fiancée says otherwise, woman runs away and pines for him, he tracks her down, she’s engaged to someone else, they sleep together anyway…jeez. Have some morals! I loathe books where the characters are involved with other people. What I need novels and shows to convince me is that there is one person that you are destined to be with. So for one of them to be engaged to another person just kills me. Because it involves someone getting hurt. And it makes their love more sordid…almost defiled, because it is wrong and immoral and I can’t cheer for them because they are selfish, callous people.

[Which is why I was turned off Mac/Harm in JAG because she was getting married to some random and still struggling with feelings for him. And why I got sick of Sam/Jack in SG-1 because of frickin’ PETE and that blonde chick O’Neill hooked up with in Threads, not to mention the long list of alien babes and dudes each of them scored. After one of my pairing gets seriously involved with someone else, I can’t ship them anymore. The fantasy’s ruined, you know?]

This is unsympathetic little me, having never been in love. I don’t know, maybe I’ll be struck with the need to hurt someone badly if I do experience that blissful state. Maybe I’ll be determined to fight dirty as long as it means I end up with my man. But I’d like to think I’m more principled than that. I hope that in a situation where someone I care for is in a relationship with someone else, I would rank respect and fidelity higher than being a greedy, grasping individual who takes what she wants without any concern for others.

[Like IZZIE OMFGMCSKANK. She ruined Grey’s Anatomy for me. Yes, I know that George was equally culpable for sleeping with her, I’m not engaging in the double-standard of judging the woman harsher than the guy. I hate Izzie because George was trying, he was determined to make his marriage work, he even applied for a transfer to another hospital to get away from her and focus on his *wife* and Izzie kept coming after him, saying she loved him, saying she didn’t want him to go, kissing him, being all hurt and wounded and *needy*. If she was a good person, she would’ve kept it all to herself and I would’ve respected her. But no, she even disrespected Callie. When the poor woman was talking about how important her relationship with George was, given that they’d just *married* and all, Izzie turns on her, ‘Why do you keep saying that like it means something?’ Biatch. It’s not enough to sleep with her husband, you have to tear her down as well. Why are you acting like you’re the one that’s being betrayed, you’re the one that deserves sympathy? You’re in the wrong! And to think I cried for you when your fiancée died! You think that because you were devastated in the past, it gives you the right to ruin someone else’s life, to compensate for how crappy yours has been? My god, the self-delusion is incredible.]

But why is it so many romances have the guy finding out a secret, feeling betrayed, sleeping with the woman and then kicking her out of bed the following morning and sneering at her for being a whore? Sure, she may have lied, but that’s no reason to resort to such brutal action. That makes you a thousand times worse, loser! They seem to think being hurt, even unintentionally, is a reason to deliberately go out and ruin the woman’s life. Destroy her self-esteem. Enjoy the benefits of her body and then dump her. Get her pregnant and then ruthlessly insist on being married, for some crazy reason. Why the hell would she want you after all you did to break her? Stop being so macho about giving a name to the kid, her own is good enough, so back off!

Ye gods. And it’s women that write this crap. What does that even mean?! I think romance writers who produce this drivel need counseling, desperately.

*iz nervous 'bout defamation suits*

But no, I just did defamation and the main requirement is that the person LIED. And I’m not lying about any of the above, so there. XP

*sighs* It occurs to me that my style of writing is very…unfocused. Pretty much flow-of-consciousness. I could tidy it up, make it more structured, so there aren’t so many enormous brackets but meh. If it’s going to be a mess, it’s going to be a glorious mess! ;)

So where was I? Oh, why I still read romances, despite the fact that 90% of them are crap. I guess it’s because I know that there will be a happy ending for one lucky couple. It’s escapism with the safety on, you know? I started reading this sci-fi book because it mentioned this guy and woman investigating a murder [which set off X-files vibes], but oh, halfway through the book, she winds up DEAD. Her body torn to pieces. Mutilated practically beyond recognition. Gee, that was unsettling. So much for their budding relationship.

Fantasy is quite dicey- they don’t often deal with one-true-love. Or if there is a couple-destined-to-be, each of them must be tried and tested and beaten and abused and hook up with other people and lose them and have random appendages lopped off to satisfy prophecies…yikes. Also, there’s quite a few that I’ve read where for no apparent reason, nothing that advances the plot in any way, the girl is raped. Just out of nowhere. And it ruins the whole thing for me.

So while romances are often poor quality, they stress me less. And I have lower expectations, so I am sometimes pleasantly surprised.

Of course, I have strict criteria, too strict for most of them to satisfy. Because I’m trying to vicariously live the woman’s life, I need her to fit a certain profile.

No history of marriage. No children. Preferably an only child, no focus on relationship with parents. Lone, solitary type. Not a victim of rape or some diluted form of sexual abuse. Oh, and not a flake. Like those ‘oh, I hero-worshiped this kid in the neighborhood and now he’s all grown up and spunky and I’ve developed boobs and I want to seduce him and why doesn’t he notice me?! oh I’ll get him to teach me how to be sexy and pretend to be interested in someone else, then he’ll fall for me and we’ll live happily ever after’ things.

No, the women need to intelligent, driven; I like them to be in the medical profession, law enforcement, teaching, that sort of thing. Those books about heavily pregnant women on the run from abusive ex-husbands really don’t appeal to me because I can’t put myself in her place. And frankly, who would want to? This is supposed to be about wish-fulfillment, not a study on the recent trends of women trapped in violent households. I’m not naïve, I know bad things happen in the world. I just don’t need it interfering with the medium providing my entertainment, kay? [This crap about killing off characters to make shows more realistic and enhance the tension and sense of jeopardy, for instance]

It’s not that violence itself puts me off, though. Dude, my favorite SGA fic is ‘Metamorphosis’ by Alternate Ego on fanfiction.net. All about teh Lizzeh whump. Heh.

I know they have a Shep Whump thread on GW. Wonder if any female characters have similar threads, or if it’s too politically incorrect. God forbid women be treated as anything other than the sensitive, fragile, delicate creatures they are. [Can you guess that Conversion and TLG are among my SGA favorites?]

Hmm…GW…it’s calling to me. damn it, I’ve spent way too many nights, secretly logged on at midnight, posting frantically to people on the other side of the world. It’s not good for me! I must resist…

Sadly, just the way the female inevitably succumbs to the male’s seductive charms in trashy romances, despising herself all the while for being guided by her needs rather than her common sense, I am compelled to seek out GW.

I am so *weak*, lol.