Fixed stars. I... No, better to talk through it a bit.
Let me frame it this way. Imagine a hypothetical trashy romance novel, if you will. Certain known character types. Dashing - and skillful - her gentleman, somewhat battered from previous wars. A woman past the first bloom of springtime youth, apparently cut from the 'clever and bookish' heroine mold. Various secondary characters: siblings and friends and that cast of faces designed to allow the author to share some necessary piece of plot.
He and she fall - through chances of fate and choice - into each other's spheres. There are the usual challenges, the ups and downs. Some do not think her worthy of him. Some think he has not settled from the rakish behaviour of his past. It changes friendships, some, for both of them.
And then, one day, there is a duel. (I suppose this must be one of those Napoleonic era romances. Surely not medieval.) She watches. And she is taken, all of a sudden, with a sense of this gentleman that is both a surprise and not a surprise. Seeing him in a new light, as it were, that fierceness and sureness and what is hiding beneath the surface.
Something far older, far more primal - well, that is the nature of good romance novels, even the trashy ones. To play with the layers of human interaction and reveal and obscure them in turn. To illuminate desire and choice and action, all at once.
It is not a bad thing, this discovery. And it is not even unexpected by our heroine - well, she reads romance novels, and she knows enough of the reality that seeds them. (For she truly is no young and inexperienced maiden.) But it is a thing to think about, when one finds oneself the morning after the climax of the novel, more sure than ever that the happily ever after is, in fact, a well-rounded goal.
There. Is that explanatory enough without being too indelicate and personal? As I said. Thinking. Though now I think I might have a way to talk about it with Poppy on Wednesday, so thank you. (And on the whole, I would rather find I am living in a romance novel than in most other genres. So I suppose there's that.)
Re: Private message to Antosha
Fixed stars. I... No, better to talk through it a bit.
Let me frame it this way. Imagine a hypothetical trashy romance novel, if you will. Certain known character types. Dashing - and skillful -
hergentleman, somewhat battered from previous wars. A woman past the first bloom of springtime youth, apparently cut from the 'clever and bookish' heroine mold. Various secondary characters: siblings and friends and that cast of faces designed to allow the author to share some necessary piece of plot.He and she fall - through chances of fate and choice - into each other's spheres. There are the usual challenges, the ups and downs. Some do not think her worthy of him. Some think he has not settled from the rakish behaviour of his past. It changes friendships, some, for both of them.
And then, one day, there is a duel. (I suppose this must be one of those Napoleonic era romances. Surely not medieval.) She watches. And she is taken, all of a sudden, with a sense of this gentleman that is both a surprise and not a surprise. Seeing him in a new light, as it were, that fierceness and sureness and what is hiding beneath the surface.
Something far older, far more primal - well, that is the nature of good romance novels, even the trashy ones. To play with the layers of human interaction and reveal and obscure them in turn. To illuminate desire and choice and action, all at once.
It is not a bad thing, this discovery. And it is not even unexpected by our heroine - well, she reads romance novels, and she knows enough of the reality that seeds them. (For she truly is no young and inexperienced maiden.) But it is a thing to think about, when one finds oneself the morning after the climax of the novel, more sure than ever that the happily ever after is, in fact, a well-rounded goal.
There. Is that explanatory enough without being too indelicate and personal? As I said. Thinking. Though now I think I might have a way to talk about it with Poppy on Wednesday, so thank you. (And on the whole, I would rather find I am living in a romance novel than in most other genres. So I suppose there's that.)
A, thoughtful.