this rant is a little ridiculous
Jul. 28th, 2010 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraine... considering the source. Still, I must share the sheer frustration of People Being Wrong Off the Internet.
I read Regency romances for fun. They're mostly horrible, and this amuses me, and some are not, and this makes me happy. They've been my guilty pleasure for about ten years.
Historical accuracy is not exactly their selling point. Because I'm me, the mistakes annoy me a little, but ... come on. Regency romance isn't about the Regency. Generally it's a rather flanderized ... uh ... well, to be honest, it's more like a bizarro world Theme Park version. Most of the authors do not go for research à la Heyer.
(To clarify: Heyer =/= research. Heyer's research = research like whoa.)
So most of the time I set it aside, and if I'm going to be annoyed by something, I go with the fantastically insane concoction most manage to make of racism, classism, misogyny, misandry and annoying clichés. However, there are mistakes and then there's being absolutely and completely wrong. As in the one that sent me off on this in the first place:
Our heroine is the gently-born daughter of a clergyman-cum-mad-inventor. Our hero is, of course, an uber-aristocrat. But also American! See, Daddy's a duke but before his father died he was suspected of murder, so he ran off to America, and Made A Name For Himself ... under his own name ... and married a merchant heiress and had children, and the hero happens to be his firstborn son. But the charges were dropped and now that the old duke's dead they have to prove that Daddy is dead -- which he isn't, but his stepmother wants him really dead so her son inherits the title and our hero is mistaken for Daddy and there's amnesia too.
Anyway, the heroine's lover naturally wants to marry her. Being the only sane character in the novel, he doesn't see any major obstacles to overcome. "So, we're in love. And your cousin's a lord or something, so that's cool. Money isn't an issue, I have plenty of money from Mama ... what was the problem again?"
But she can't marry him because she has A SEKRIT LIFE. As a ...
Novelist.
It's impossible! Someday he will be a duke, and because this is a book, it will inevitably come out that his duchess has committed this horrible, unspeakable, utterly unprecedented sin against society. OH NOES!
HERO: Huh?
HEROINE: IT WOULD SHAME YOU!
HERO: But ... plenty of women have written novels ...
HEROINE: I'm not that kind of woman!
HERO: Respectable women! You know, Jane Austen? And the other ones nobody remembers...
HEROINE: NONE OF THEM WERE SECOND COUSINS TO A BARON!!
JAMES BRYDGES: *cough*
... yeah. If your plot rests on an entirely arbitrary obstacle you pulled out of your ... left shoe, you might want to check Wikipedia first. Gah.
I read Regency romances for fun. They're mostly horrible, and this amuses me, and some are not, and this makes me happy. They've been my guilty pleasure for about ten years.
Historical accuracy is not exactly their selling point. Because I'm me, the mistakes annoy me a little, but ... come on. Regency romance isn't about the Regency. Generally it's a rather flanderized ... uh ... well, to be honest, it's more like a bizarro world Theme Park version. Most of the authors do not go for research à la Heyer.
(To clarify: Heyer =/= research. Heyer's research = research like whoa.)
So most of the time I set it aside, and if I'm going to be annoyed by something, I go with the fantastically insane concoction most manage to make of racism, classism, misogyny, misandry and annoying clichés. However, there are mistakes and then there's being absolutely and completely wrong. As in the one that sent me off on this in the first place:
Our heroine is the gently-born daughter of a clergyman-cum-mad-inventor. Our hero is, of course, an uber-aristocrat. But also American! See, Daddy's a duke but before his father died he was suspected of murder, so he ran off to America, and Made A Name For Himself ... under his own name ... and married a merchant heiress and had children, and the hero happens to be his firstborn son. But the charges were dropped and now that the old duke's dead they have to prove that Daddy is dead -- which he isn't, but his stepmother wants him really dead so her son inherits the title and our hero is mistaken for Daddy and there's amnesia too.
Anyway, the heroine's lover naturally wants to marry her. Being the only sane character in the novel, he doesn't see any major obstacles to overcome. "So, we're in love. And your cousin's a lord or something, so that's cool. Money isn't an issue, I have plenty of money from Mama ... what was the problem again?"
But she can't marry him because she has A SEKRIT LIFE. As a ...
Novelist.
It's impossible! Someday he will be a duke, and because this is a book, it will inevitably come out that his duchess has committed this horrible, unspeakable, utterly unprecedented sin against society. OH NOES!
HERO: Huh?
HEROINE: IT WOULD SHAME YOU!
HERO: But ... plenty of women have written novels ...
HEROINE: I'm not that kind of woman!
HERO: Respectable women! You know, Jane Austen? And the other ones nobody remembers...
HEROINE: NONE OF THEM WERE SECOND COUSINS TO A BARON!!
JAMES BRYDGES: *cough*
... yeah. If your plot rests on an entirely arbitrary obstacle you pulled out of your ... left shoe, you might want to check Wikipedia first. Gah.
no subject
on 2010-07-28 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-07-28 11:14 pm (UTC)