Beauty (also slashiness and some Brontes)

[citrus_java]

This enchanted beauty actually moved me to read Wuthering Heights at the time. Also, this was the main way I liked guys before the Winchesters came into my life.

When I finished the book, I was kinda lost - no idea what the appeal was, why I'd just read that, and what was going on with the mood changes and genre changes and why I was expected to be rooting for their love and just a big WHAT . I guess with time and with trying to be supportive of Twilight fans, and with loving fucked up relationship stories myself, and being kinda intrigued with masculinity in the story, perhaps I have a better understanding of that now? Slightly better? If you like it and feel like showing me the awesome, I want to see.

Anyway, at the time, this made me feel vindicated:


Back to the beautiful Noel and the guys getting flustered over him!
The long version - awesome and delightfully slashy feedback. If you don't have the patience for the who thing, skip to that.

And the second version. if you don't feel like watching the whole thing you might want to jump to 02:00 - that's Noel's BFF and very... very slashy partner. Slashy like comparing their relationship to falling in love. Slashy like Noel saying he's read slash about giving him a blowjob and had to touch himself. Slashy like that.

Comments

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you both think so! The impression I got in general was that people watched the '80's miniseries (?) and found all that passion romantic, and that other people liked to mock it, like in the Thursday Next books. I just read it as an earlier version of some of the romance tropes I'm less comfortable with (personal taste), only perhaps more extreme and with less of the disturbing-sweet reassurances that it is indeed romantic. It's interesting to think of it as intentional, as a horror story. I don't think I've heard that before.

Huh, what intrigues you in Nelly?

The Brontes really do write some messed up relationships. Even Anne!

Oh no! I haven't read anything by her yet, but that comic put her on my list of "perhaps"...

In one of her books, the hero horse-whips another dude into a coma because he is jealous of him. And he still gets the girl.

Wow, that's... yeah.

[balder12.livejournal.com]

We've talked before about how I love Stockholm syndrome fic, but hate fic that essentially gives a character Stockholm syndrome and calls it true love. I feel like the same kind of distinction is at work here. Wuthering Heights is dark fic that knows it's dark fic. Twilight is fic that thinks it's being romantic when it's actually being creepy.

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

*on board*
I definitely agree about the distinction, and I like and dislike both of those too :)

[applegeuse.livejournal.com]

Anne Bronte is my favorite. :3 That book I referenced, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is my favorite of the Brontes' books! Anne's only got two books--a really boring little one about a governess and then Tenant, which is amazeballs.

FWIW, Agnes Grey (the boring governess book) probably has the least problematic romantic relationship out of any of the books, and I think Anne's being really snarky in Tenant.

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

Hmm, OK, perhaps I should read it anyway :)
Thanks!

Agnes Grey (the boring governess book) probably has the least problematic romantic relationship

I don't mind problematic relationships just for being problematic, they can be fascinating and they can even be romantic, it's more about how they're presented, what path I'm taken through while reading them, and in a big way - what the story seems to assume I'd think and feel.