2025 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - Wicked

Chris's review: 

    Wow, is this movie ever a feast for the eyes?! The set and costuming are just so beautiful! I think people focusing on this aspect will inevitably compare it to last year's Barbie, which did an excellent job with the visuals, but in Wicked, it feels like there's a lot more to see. On top of just being beautiful and visually rich, the creators knew their way around the use of motifs -- visual elements and mannerisms of the players, at least, and these were often delightful. But I also had some issues. I guess I'm considering watching it again soon, so how bad could it be, right? Well...my first experience of the film was pretty seriously harmed by what felt like two big flaws. 

    The first is that it took me seventy minutes to care, at all, about what was going on. I was sitting there with Cathy, watching this Best Picture nominee, and sort of wishing we could 'nope out' of it. I'm glad we didn't, and this experience is part of what makes me want to watch again...now that I've been hooked, will I be invested from the start upon a second viewing? But I still have to call it a flaw. An hour of being bored is a problem!

    The other big flaw is that the audio is muddy. This is a musical! The songs were hard for me to follow and parse. And there was frequently too much going on in the aural sphere -- I could take in one little strain of it while knowing that all the other stuff was passing me by unappreciated. When they broke into song, I generally wished they'd shut up and talk, which is not how I normally respond to musical theater. This might be just me -- Cathy rated the aural artistry much more highly than I did and I have some sensory processing issues. But that's how it was for me and I can only relate my own experiences.

    The acting was great, particularly by the two young witches, and only one casting decision seemed weird. I've read the novel, but it was several years ago and I don't remember it well enough to call out inaccuracies. My sense is that it was much more nuanced -- but how could it not be? So I'm not willing to call that a fault of the film.

Cathy's Review: 

    Before watching this movie, my only experience with the Land of Oz was seeing the 1939 movie when I was a kid, and playing in the pit orchestra for the stage version when I was a young adult (I got thoroughly sick of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow").  The only thing I knew about Wicked was that like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, two minor characters in an older story become the main characters in another, filling in the backstory of the witches in L. Frank Baum's 125-year-old story.

    The movie is visually gorgeous and imaginative (very much in the vein of last year's Poor Things and Barbie) and the special effects, makeup, sets, and costumes do a lovely job supporting the world of the movie.  The songs were nice enough, and there were plenty of wonderful moments (I loved how Galinda taught Elphaba to toss her hair, and later you see her practicing).  But, lovely visuals and wonderful moments don't guarantee a good movie, and this one felt bloated and disconnected. Worst of all, it failed to make me care what happened to the characters. And because I didn't care, I was bored.  And 2:40 is a long time to be disinterested.

    While the acting was excellent -- I have no complaints there -- they hired 3 actors in their 30s to play teenage characters (the movie mostly takes place at a university (though it feels more like a high school). Except for Ariana Grande (who at 31 looks to be in her mid-20s) I would have guessed the other two were 10 years older (and in fact, Cynthia Erivo is 38 and Jonathan Bailey is 37).    

    It's also hard to like a movie where nearly every character is an asshole (and that includes most of the main characters).   The adults abuse and neglect Elphaba because of her green skin, the children bully her, the teachers mistreat her, and the wizard wants to exploit her.  There are a few decent folks, but they are just tokens.

    Glinda (or Galinda) the not-so-good witch is just incredibly unlikable through most of the movie. When a story uses a mean girl as a protagonist, it really needs to reveal her vulnerability and make us like her despite her petty behavior. It has to show us that she isn't as shallow as she appears.   Glinda's shallowness eventually evolves from snarky to quirky, but it happens so late in the movie that I never connected with her.

    As for Prince Fiyero, he serves as a homecoming king of sorts, but in the end, there's little difference between someone who is shallow and one who only pretends to be, and who cares if a character is insightful if they just immediately fall in with the mean girl?

    I liked Elphaba better than anyone else; it's easier to identify with the interesting and talented-though-misunderstood character than anyone else.  But she is (understandably) prickly and often just seems along for the unpleasant ride.  She eventually takes charge of things, but again ... too late for me to feel part of her story.

But ... In a world of magic, with flying monkeys and talking goats, why does everyone look askance at Elphaba's green skin? Particularly when she lives in a world with an Emerald City, where everything is green and represents all that's good?

(Pithy Reviews; and Ranking of 10 out of 10 nominees):

• The Substance  (Beautiful horror movie ruined by ending; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
• Wicked (Beautiful, yet boring; Cathy: 2, Chris: 2)

Unranked/yet-to-be-seen:

• Unwatched - Anora (NYC sex worker marries a Russian oligarch) Next Up.
• Unwatched - The Brutalist (Jewish architect rebuilds his life in America after the Holocaust)
• Unwatched - A Complete Unknown (A biopic about the early days of Bob Dylan's career)
• Unwatched - Conclave (Conspiracy thriller while picking a new pope)
• Rewatching - Dune: Part Two (House Atreides kicks House Harkonnen off Arrakis)
• Unwatched - Emilia Pérez (Conspiracy to help a transgender mob boss disappear)
• Unwatched - I'm Still Here/Ainda Estou Aqui (A Brazilian politician's wife makes a new life after her husband is disappeared in 1971)
• Unwatched - Nickel Boys (1960s-era reform school survival story)

Coffee with a Crazy Person

Prompt - Unrecognizable (200 words): Write a story from the perspective of someone who has woken up in a room or place they do not recognize.

***

I struggle to consciousness against a slothful, sluggish brain. I really want to be awake.  

First I notice the sounds, which aren’t at all familiar. No Catty-kitty meowing for breakfast.  No sounds of subways or traffic honking. No neighbors slamming doors or stomping down the hallways.   

Instead, I hear the whirr of something … a computer fan, maybe?   I also hear chains clinking, moans, and muffled movements as someone bumps around a confined space.  I hear bubbling and someone scratching a pencil on paper. I smell…. coffee?

I open my eyes and find I’m in a darkened room.  I see a white-coated, wild-haired man sitting before a computer, taking notes. Next to him, a beaker is bubbling over a blue flame. I locate the moans - they are coming from a closet that is padlocked shut.  

I have NO IDEA where I am.  I remembered my friends convincing me to voluntarily swallow a roofie so they could give me a birthday surprise. Suddenly, that decision struck me as profoundly stupid.

I must have made a noise because the wild-haired man turned and leered at me. 

“Welcome to the Escape Room. Solve the clues to get out,” he says, handing me a cup of coffee.

-- March 11, 2020

2025 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee - The Substance

 Cathy's Review:  

    I started writing this review during a lunch/bathroom/popcorn-popping break about halfway through the movie. At the time, I thought it might just be the finest horror movie ever made.  With my bowl of popcorn in hand, we started watching again, and the third quarter was just as excellent ... and then, WHAM, the final 25% hit us like someone dumped a vat of pig's blood on us.

    The movie has so much going for it. The acting is flawless and spectacular. The makeup perfectly supported the story.  The camera work couldn't have been better, and it switched between a neutral gaze, character POV gaze, and even male gaze, which was deliberately overdone at times in a nice bit of visual sarcasm. 

    The storytelling was tense, creepy, beautifully and artistically filmed, and up until the final 30 minutes, occasionally gross.  There are visual homages to the hotel in The Shining and The Backrooms, and Alien.  It also uses color in a wonderful and symbolic way - yellow symbolizes (both figuratively and literally) egg yolks and mitosis and division of the soul, and white seems to represent purgatory, while black symbolizes imprisonment and vulnerability.  Happiness is shown with bright and cheerful pastels ... except when it's not.

    The characters were fascinating - the movie uses stereotypes as metaphors, much the way morality plays did 500 years ago.  Instead of Everyman, Good Deeds, and Death, we have Old Actress and Ambitious Starlet.   And the men - they are nearly all pigs.  They aren't just any stereotype-as-metaphor; they are the stereotypes that women have for men, like the Uncaring Executive and the Thinks-He's-God's-Gift-to-Women. To be fair, Former Classmate wasn't a pig (just a little sad), and neither was Doctor, but Creepy Nurse was a complete swine; his morality play name would be Leads-Us-Into-Temptation.

    Demi Moore's Elizabeth Sparkle (Aging Actress) and Margaret Qualley's Sue (Ambitious Starlet) were perfectly matched. Both women performed fully naked at times, and it never ever felt gratuitous because it furthered the story and made sense. There was also no male gaze during the nude scenes except when Sue first discovered her body was now firm and young; she was also evaluating how she would look to others).  

    Dennis Quaid (Uncaring Executive) played Harvey with awe-inspiring gusto, and he leaned into his vile character perfectly, with disgusting eating habits and crass behavior like urinating while talking on the phone, talking smack about the aging actress while she overhears.  I think he represented the elderly version: "Boys will be boys."

    But, I've never had a movie quite so completely ruined by its ending before.  To be honest, I feel robbed. The Substance was shaping up to be a powerful commentary on our society's sexism, unreasonable beauty standards, and obsession with remaining youthful, but the final 30 minutes jumped the rails (mixed metaphor absolutely intended), and that message and the story were completely overshadowed by the crescendo of gore that went on and on and on.   

    It's a pretty bad sign that I stopped caring about any of the main characters, got bored and numb, and just wondered when it was going to end. I think the director should have followed Stephen King's advice to "even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings" and ended the movie very differently (and much sooner).  I'm not looking for a happy ending; that wasn't possible, but something pointed (yet still tragic) would have been great.

Chris's review: 

    The first hour and forty-five minutes of The Substance is a masterful tension-building creep-fest with an important message. The final thirty are a weird combination of ham-fisted melodrama, overwrought spectacle of technical theater, and, in the final scene -- a Gwar concert. 

    I honestly don't know that I've ever seen a movie where I liked it as much as I did and then, at one identifiable moment, started to hate it as thoroughly as I did. I'm still processing, and I'm not sure what I'll think in the end, but it feels like they really had something and just pissed it away because someone didn't know how to kill their darlings.

(Pithy Reviews; and Ranking of 10 out of 10 nominees):

• The Substance  (Beautiful horror movie ruined by ending; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)

Unranked/yet-to-be-seen:

• Unwatched - Anora (NYC sex worker marries a Russian oligarch)
• Unwatched - Conclave (Conspiracy thriller while picking a new pope)
• Rewatching - Dune: Part Two (House Atreides kicks House Harkonnen off Arrakis)
• Unwatched - Emilia Pérez (Conspiracy to help a transgender mob boss disappear)
• Unwatched - Wicked (Retelling of The Wizard of Oz)
• Not available yet - The Brutalist (Jewish architect rebuilds his life in America after the Holocaust)
• Not available yet - A Complete Unknown (A biopic about the early days of Bob Dylan's career)
• Not available yet - I'm Still Here/Ainda Estou Aqui (A Brazilian politician's wife makes a new life after her husband is disappeared in 1971)
• Not available yet - Nickel Boys (1960s-era reform school survival story)

Romance Challenge: Graphic Novel

   "Read a graphic novel or comic book romance."

Tropes and Trifles ordering link

 

    

    Over the years, I've read a small handful of paranormal romances (basically only when my favorite historical romance author happened to branch out), and when Twilight was big, I read that series because my kids were, and well ... it's really not my preferred subgenre, mostly because love stories between humans and vampires or werewolves have such unbelievably skewed power dynamics, and I find that hard to enjoy.

    A relationship between a human and a vampire is just too close to that of one between a human and a god, and you have to ask yourself what kind of god falls in love with a human, a being so far beneath them as to be inconsequential, a bug that can be squished beneath a godly stomp.  

    Seriously, a romance between a blow-up doll and her owner is about as far from romantic as you can get.

    And I know that people are sometimes turned on by powerful partners, but seriously, how romantic can sex be when a moment of inattention can actually kill your partner?  I can just imagine the conversation between the vampire and his partner's (victim's?) parents. "I'm so sorry - I sneezed when we were doing the dirty, and then she ... died."  Or maybe he'd just eat them and avoid the confrontation entirely.

    I loved the novel Dracula (well, until I realized what buffoons the good guys were), so I've nothing against the idea of vampires as villains, but I just prefer they stay in their monster lane and not try to be romantic heroes.

    But.

   

    A romance between a vampire and a werewolf has some decent romantic possibilities. Because I was trying to explore new kinds of romances when I picked a graphic novel, I deliberately went for something with monsters, and Fangs by Sarah Andersen was highly recommended.

    And it is absolutely darling. There's not much more story than "Vampire falls in love with a werewolf, and they resolve a series of funny conflicts."   It's not so much a story but a series of non-sequential vignettes about how they make it work (he insists that when they go for a walk, he will NOT wear a leash, even during the full moon). He has to be careful not to throw open the shades when he wakes up in the morning, stuff like that. Best of all, the relationship between Elsie the vampire and Jimmy the werewolf doesn't feel even slightly unbalanced. 

    The production quality of the book is wonderful - it's a hardback with a red cloth cover, and the page edges are actually black, something I've never seen before. The drawings are exclusively black and white.

    So highly recommended, but keep in mind that its value isn't the story itself.

2025 AMPAS Best Picture Nominees - Initial thoughts, trailers, and other miscellany

    Every year, my husband Chris and I try to watch all of the AMPAS Best Picture Nominees and review, rate, and rank them prior to the awards ceremony, which is on March 2nd this year. Here are this year's nominees.

    Note: The movie title/headings will take you to the IMDb page for that movie.

Anora

    This looks to be a Cinderella story of sorts - a young sex worker in NYC marries the son of a Russian oligarch. IMDb lists the genre as a comedy/drama/romance, and it echoes Pretty Woman at least a little (though perhaps less Pygmalion and more Cinderella). Looks to be mostly in English, though there's some Russian and Armenian thrown in.  Available on streaming.

***

The Brutalist 

    I think this is the obligatory WW2-era period drama and it is about a Holocaust survivor who comes to the US to make a new life for himself. Hits close to home for me, for it takes place in 1947, the same year my own family immigrated here, but instead of designing oil drills as my grandfather did, the main character designs buildings. It's currently in a limited theatrical release and not yet available for streaming.  (I'll update this entry when I find out when/where it can be streamed.)

 

    Note: Brutalism is an architectural style that arose after WW2 that, according to Wiki, is characterized by "minimalist constructions that showcase the bare building materials and structural elements over decorative design."

***

A Complete Unknown

    A Complete Unknown is a biopic and drama about Bob Dylan's early days when he left Minnesota and moved to NYC and became a famous musician and songwriter. Feels like it's in the vein of last year's Elvis, though I assume with a happier ending. This one is tailor-made for me since Joan Baez is one of my favorite singers, and she's a character in the movie, and Dylan's lyrics are pretty GOAT-y. ACU joins several documentaries and the experimental 2007 biopic I'm Not There about the life of the singer-songwriter. Currently in theaters.  (I'll update this entry when I find out when/where it can be streamed.)

***

Conclave

    Conclave (short for papal conclave, the ritual used to select the Catholic's highest leader) is a conspiracy thriller, starring (among others!) the fantastic Ralph Fiennes, Stan Tucci, and John Lithgow. What more can someone want from a movie: papal conspiracies, arcane and ancient rituals, and scandals?  Available for streaming.

***

Dune: Part Two

    This is the sequel to Dune, which was nominated for ten Academy Awards (winning six) in 2022. It's a rare honor when a sequel is also nominated for the highest honors (The Godfather, anyone?), and part two was nominated for five Oscars, including best cinematography and visual effects.  This is the only nominee that I've already seen (what can I say?  We are a household of SciFi nerds). Available for streaming.

***

Emilia Pérez

    It's hard to know what to write about this woman-centered movie, though I'll say this: It's not every day that one has the opportunity to use "gender reassignment surgery" and "Mexican drug cartels" in the same sentence. Even IMDb has some difficulty with it, listing its genre as: Comedy, Crime, Drama, Thriller, and ... Musical (because, of course). The cast list includes the always wonderful Zoe Saldana and Karla Sofia Gascon, the first openly trans woman to be honored by a whole bunch of nominations and awards (including at Cannes). This appears to be mainly in English, with some Spanish and a little bit of French thrown in. Available for streaming on Netflix.

***

I'm Still Here/Ainda Estou Aqui

    It's a little odd to call a movie that takes place during my lifetime a "period piece," but there you have it. The film is based on a true story from Brazil in the early 1970s of how the military dictatorship made a politician disappear and how his wife and their children were forced to forge a new life, never knowing what had happened to him. This will be my first Portuguese-language film. Currently, in a very limited number of theaters.  (I'll update this entry when I find out when/where it can be streamed.)

***

Nickel Boys 

    Nickel Boys is an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name, which was itself inspired by the corrupt and notoriously abusive (and sometimes murderous) real-life Dozier School for Boys.  One of the things I learned back in grad school is that American History curriculum rarely goes into detail about the sheer numbers of civil rights abuses of BIPOC folks (and the paradigm is usually, "things were bad then, but we fixed them.")  While this movie is about a fictional school, it is based on a real-life juvie where black boys were abused and sometimes murdered for the better part of a century.  Movies like this one have the unique ability to reach people in a way that curriculum boards cannot.  It is currently in a limited number of theaters.  (I'll update this entry when I find out when/where it can be streamed.)

***

The Substance

    This Drama/Horror/SciFi movie is about an aging TV star who goes to dramatic lengths to preserve her youth.  It's based on an - ahem - substance that creates a younger and better version of oneself through genetic manipulation.   It appears to be a commentary on society's absurd beauty and aging standards. I like the idea of this movie, but I suspect it will squick me, and I may end up noping right out of this one. Available for streaming.

***

Wicked

    Technically, this entry should be named Wicked: Part One.  It's a movie based on the musical Wicked which is based on the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which is based on L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was adapted into a 1902 stage musical and the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. A convoluted and wonderfully imaginative (and sometimes creepy) set of books, musicals, and movies.   I've only ever seen the 1939 movie (and incidentally, I played in the pit orchestra for the stage version performed at the Boonville Community Theater in the 1980s). For whatever reason, there was some controversy surrounding this movie, but it mostly seemed ridiculous and overblown because this looks wonderful, every bit as wonderful and imaginative as its predecessors. Available on streaming.

***

    I'm looking forward to watching (or in the case of Dune, re-watching) all of the movies, except perhaps The Substance, since I'm not generally a fan of horror, and it looks creepy as hell.  But I loved Silence of the Lambs and Alien, so hopefully, I'll love this horror movie as well.

    Enjoy!

My brother, the plant influencer

    "You're just a goddamn plant influencer!" some rando on the internet accused my brother. 

    For the record, my little brother has a kelly green thumb, and he's pretty active in the online plant forums, sharing his indoor-grown potted olive trees, his giant poinsettia, and his 7-foot tall (2.1 m) fiddlehead fern that he grew from a mere 18" (46 cm) tall. 

    Paul wasn't bothered and just thought it was funny. A plant influencer?  Hell of an insult, right? I laughed when he told me about it and wondered what set the guy off.   

    I searched Amazon and found the following T-shirt, and had it sent to my brother.

    I didn't say who it was from, figuring he'd get the joke and know who sent it.

    But weeks went by, and no texts asking me if I'd sent him the shirt, no FB posts, nothing.

    So, finally, I texted him:

Hey, did you ever get a T-shirt in the mail that you weren't expecting?

Lol yes

    Then the phone rang, and Paul was laughing. "They sent me a shirt, and I thought it was a scam. Someone sends you something you didn't order, and they include a barcode, and you scan it, and it blows up your phone or something."

    "A scam?  Why would you think that?"

    Paul started laughing harder, "because it's the ugliest shirt I've ever seen."

    It was hard not to laugh along, but I was utterly flummoxed. The shirt I’d ordered was kind of attractive - I didn’t think anyone would describe it as ugly. "What shirt did they send you?!?" I asked.

    At this point, Paul was wheezing with laughter, and it was almost hard to understand him. "It's a picture of a ripped werewolf," and then he said something about a kitten.

    "Whut? Can you send me a picture?" I asked. A moment later, he texted me the following image:

    "Mom and Sean are looking at me like I've got two heads," he said, still laughing, then called to them, "It's my sister." Then to me, "It's dinnertime, and I need to go."  

By this point, I was crying with laughter, so I texted him a picture of the shirt he was supposed to get, and he texted back, "That is MUCH BETTER than the one I got."

    We hung up, and then, because my husband and daughter were looking at me as if I'd lost my mind, I explained. Chris discovered there was a whole line of ugly werewolf T-shirts, one of which said, "Lock up your wives, the ALPHA is here!"  We started joking about sending him werewolf shirts on purpose.

    After dinner, I talked to Paul again, and he confirmed that if he'd received the plantfluencer shirt, he'd have at least known it was someone he knew and would have asked who sent it to him.

    The story has a happy ending. Amazon refunded me for the shirt and didn't demand we return it, and I just ordered another plant influencer shirt for Paul. I wonder what shirt they'll send this time?  Probably the right one, but ... I can't help but hope he gets another ridiculous T-shirt.   

Juliet, Romance, and the Award-Winning Genocidal Hero

Romeo and Juliet by Ford Madox Brown (1870)
 Is it just me, or is Juliet gritting her teeth?
And Romeo's pose is kinda awkward.

    Is Romeo and Juliet a romance?  

    No, it's not.

    Many people consider R&J the epitome of romantic stories, and ... well, I think they are wrong.  If someone wants to try to convince me that R&J is a romance, I promise I'll listen and hear them out (but I'm unlikely to change my mind).  It is certainly a poignant story, but it is a heart-breaking tragedy and not a romance.  Hell, its full title is The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. 

    Seriously, on date night, do you think accidentally killing your partner's kinsman is romantic? Might you consider going no-contact with both families?  No? How about getting stranded because of a plague epidemic or committing suicide?   Do those sound like a fun and oh-so-romantic followup to a dinner by candlelight? 

    The death of children has never struck me as especially romantic, perhaps because I've seen the emotional wreckage it leaves behind.  Even in the 17th century, Shakespeare's audiences would have been horrified as soon as Juliet's age was revealed and that her mother had been had only been 14 when Juliet was born.  The groundlings at the Globe would have been considered Juliet much too young for marriage because a thirteen-year-old was still a pre-pubescent child (in 1600, the average age at menarche was 16). 

    Pregnancy in young girls was also dangerous as hell because they frequently died in childbirth (perhaps because their pelvises hadn't yet broadened), and infants born to very young mothers were nearly always underweight. In a time when the child mortality rate approached 50%, risking an underweight newborn was asking for trouble, and the Elizabethans knew it.  While it's true that on rare occasions, dynastic marriages occurred when the girl was only thirteen, the young couple was typically kept apart until the bride could safely bear a child, usually around the age of 18.  

    Romeo and Juliet may not be a romance, but it is about love ... and hate.   It's a conflict between the individual and the group; two individual kids fall in love, yet their families' hate tragically keeps them apart.  

    I'm comfortable with calling R&J a love story, though, because there is an important distinction between that and romance, but the terms are not interchangeable.  There is dissent, of course, on what counts, but the most commonly agreed-upon modern definition of romance is that it's a story that focuses on the romantic love between the main characters, has at least hope for a happy ending, and the main characters must be in a relationship at the end of the book (you can see how this definition excludes R&J).

    A love story is a much broader category, requiring only that love be at least a subplot. It is far more defined by what it doesn't require than what it does; no happy ending is necessary, the main characters don't have to end up together (they might even marry other people), and romantic elements don't have to be the primary focus.

    In other words, all romances are love stories, but not all love stories are romances. 

    The disagreement as to what counts as a romance even extends to the Romance Writers of America (RWA), and whoo-boy, do they have an oddball history, particularly with regard to changing social norms, and their inability to respond to the wishes and needs of their diverse readership. For the last decade or so, they've had egg (or entire omelets) on their face more often than not.  I'm not going to address most of the organization's problems here - that's the subject for a term paper or even an MA thesis, but I included a few links at the end if you are interested.

    But the RWA, with a stunning lack of awareness, confused love story with romance twice in a six-year period, honoring books featuring genuinely genocidal heroes. Because committing genocide is so, so romantic?

    The hell? 

    In one case, RWA gave one of its prestigious awards to a book that features a hero with a "tortured soul" (it's a common romance trope). He's an American soldier who took part in more than one massacre of Native Americans, including at Wounded Knee. I get that sometimes soldiers get caught up in horrific situations after the shooting starts, but those are tragedies.  And no matter how remorseful he is, how can one enjoy his romance and happily ever after against a backdrop of the innocent victims he murdered and the author's condescension toward the victims' religious beliefs? 

    In the hands of a skilled author, a genocidal soldier might make an interesting protagonist or anti-hero (Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy, I'm looking at you), but a hero of a romantic story? Yeah, no. 

    In another case, the RWA advanced a book to finalist (in two different categories!) that features an SS officer at a WW2 concentration camp as a hero. The heroine is a Jewish prisoner, and they fall in love; he saves her, she rejects her Judaism, and converts to Christianity. While I don't think the hero needs to be a good man, it's pretty hard to accept one who is committing actual war crimes. The SS officers who ran the camps were evil shits, monstrous in ways the Beast never was in Beauty and the Beast.  

    There could also never be genuine consent by the heroine, and it's hard to imagine finding the love story between a Stockholm syndrome-suffering victim and an evil genocidal monster in the least bit romantic. And what happy ending is even possible when she knows her lover holds her ethnicity in so much contempt that he is willing to torture and murder people because of it? 

    It's reasonable to call the novels described above love stories, and I don't doubt they are well-written -- they wouldn't have been finalists or won awards if so -- nor do they lack realism; they strike me as possible, perhaps even probable in real life. I suspect the WW2 love story was inspired by the real-life relationship between Franz Wunsch, an SS guard at Auschwitz, and the Jewish prisoner Helena Citrónová. While she did have feelings for him, they had no happy ending (she married someone else, and he stalked her for years before finally giving up), and at his trial in 1972, she testified that, yes, he had indeed saved her, but that she had also witnessed him committing atrocities.

    So, I know I'm gatekeeping a bit, but I'd really prefer that genocidal main characters stay off the romance shelves and stay in the historical fiction lane where they belong. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this. 

    Oh, and did I mention that the RWA regularly passed over highly acclaimed entries by black authors in order to recognize books that featured the deeds of the aforementioned genocidal heroes?  Unsurprisingly, the RWA entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May of 2024.

Selected Links:

• RITA Controversies
• RWA Wiki page - Diversity Controversies
• Inside the Spectacular Implosion at the Romance Writers of America
• Fifty shades of white: the long fight against racism in romance novels
• White romance novelist in racism row says she was used
• A romance novelist spoke out about racism. An uproar ensued

Romance Challenge: Recommend a book to your friends

 "Recommend a romance book you’ve read to a friend or family member."

    I'm not just going to recommend a book, rather, I'm going to recommend Evie Dunmore's four-book series A League of Extraordinary Women.

    I've always said that I've learned a lot of history from reading historical romances, and this series is an excellent example of why this is so. They are thoroughly researched, yes, but they were also beautifully written and engaging, and I felt as if I were a silent friend and member of their suffragette chapter, along for their very bumpy ride.

The books are set in Victorian England in the 1880s and chronicle just how convoluted the fight for rights has always been.  Some of the more interesting things they cover:

• Queen Victoria's own passionate disapproval of women's rights.
• Women's suffrage in England (which didn't occur until 36 years after the series begins).
• The right of women to own their own property after marriage.
• Laws that allowed a husband to have his wife jailed if she decided to live apart from him.
• Colonial art theft.

This series covers the lives of four friends who are among the very first women to attend Oxford University and the men they fall in love with. Most of the eight main characters are based on real-life suffragists and their allies who recognized injustice and fought alongside their wives and lovers (you can read about the real people who inspired many of the main characters at the bottom of this page) to help create a world where men and women can be true partners.

I especially loved how the books, which focus on the significant misogyny of the time, never cross the line into misandry.  The men (and women) range from good to bad, but nearly everyone falls somewhere in between the extremes.   Something that's interesting (and kind of cool) is that all four book titles honor the allies:

• Bringing Down the Duke - Suffragette/Country girl Annabelle meets the Duke of Montgomery, Queen Victoria's Tory political strategist. My second favorite of the series.
• A Rogue of One's Own - The heroine is more prickly than I like, the hero is a bit too handsome, though that in itself causes some humor. Focuses on a sympathetic eye on sex workers, who the heroine helps on occasion.
• Portrait of a Scotsman - My favorite of the series, as the characters come from lower or middle-class beginnings (though they or their families have attained some wealth).  This book contains one of the very best grovels I've ever encountered.   
• The Gentleman's Gambit - Heroine is a linguist and brilliant in her own right.  Hero is from the Levant and is interested in returning local artifacts stolen by British colonial powers.  The book turns the traditional grovel on its head by having the heroine do the groveling (as was contextually reasonable - she genuinely screwed up).

Anyway, I loved the books. Enjoy. :-)

The Ultimate Romance Reading Challenge

Tropes and Trifles link

After she inspired my romance genre paradigm shift, my daughter gave me this fun book for Christmas, and I am enthusiastically planning out the challenges.  

First some house rules:

• No "already fulfilled the challenge" loopholes. In other words, I can't get a prize for the meet-cute (#1 below) challenge just because I've read many such books already. I must meet the challenge again, with a new book.
• No re-reading books to meet the challenge. I must pick something new.
• If I really cannot find a book to meet the challenge, I may write a 5000-word (preferably 7000) short story that does meet the criteria.
• A book cannot be used to fulfill more than one challenge (unless the challenge encourages you to do so).

Now, the challenges. Numbers 1-15 should be prefaced with "read a romance novel that..." and any of the italicized items can be combined with other challenges, if desired.

Topic challenges:

1. Is about a much older protagonist.
2. Is a graphic novel/comic book.
3. Is about a gay or lesbian couple.
4. Was published in the year you were conceived.
5. Was published before 1900.
6. Was written by/about a different ethnicity than your own.
7. Is a genre-bending romance.
8. Includes a meet-cute trope.
9. Includes an enemies-to-lovers trope.
10. Includes a friends-to-lovers trope.
11. Is a memoir about love and relationships.
12. Takes place in a country other than your own.
13. Is by a self-published author.
14. Is a current bestseller.
15. Is part of a series.

Action challenges:

16. Recommend a romance you’ve read.
17. Visit your local bookstore and ask for a recommended romance read.
18. Pretend to be the main character of the book you are reading.
19. Make a list of ways to enjoy your own company. Complete three.
20. Write a love letter.
21. Write a list of ten things you know/feel/believe about love.
22. Learn 3 things about your ideal romantic destination.
23. Read a summer romance outside near a body of water.
24. Watch a movie/show based on a romance book.
25. Check out three romance novels from your local library.

As I finish each one, I'll add links to their own short posts. 

Note: one thing I will not do, is share what the prizes are - I don't want to ruin the mystery, should you buy your own copy (linked above).  I also didn't use my Amazon Associates link, so I won't make any money from the link (not that I've ever made any money through that channel).

Romance Challenge: Much Older Protagonist

"Read a romance novel with a protagonist much older than you are."

    Well... I'm in my mid-50s, so "much older" means the heroine has to be at least 70 years old, and I wasn't sure how many romance novels exist where that is the case.

    Fortunately, some friends recommended a novella by an author I've read before, and liked: Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan.

    I liked the book very much. It’s a historical romance that takes place in Victorian England, and the main characters are 73 and 69. The older of the two is quite wealthy, and her nephew and legal heir is a really awful person. He is a leach, living off the promise of inheriting his aunt’s fortune (and given that she is 73, it shouldn’t be far off), refusing to pay his debts (he hasn’t paid his rent in two years, having forged his aunt’s signature on the lease). He even hires prostitutes on the promise of paying them when his aunt dies. Bertrice and Violetta make it their mission to torment him. Madcap adventures ensue.

    The story touches on the loss of friends (when one reaches her 70s, she will absolutely have outlived a few loved ones), the lack of power women had at the time, and the fact that being falsely declared incompetent was a real risk. It even touches on NotAllMen (see footnote below), Victorian-style, which was fun. The dialog was wonderful, and there were many beautifully described, funny moments.

    The book displays more misandry than I typically prefer -- I like the main male character to be a good man, not a villain.  Aside from the Terrible Nephew (that's what they called him), all the other men in the book were extremely minor supporting characters, so that made it feel a little unbalanced. On the other hand, the story was really just about Bertrice, Violetta, and the Terrible Nephew.

    I really liked this septuagenarian romance, though it makes me wonder how common lesbian relationships were in Victorian times. I assume they happened, but they must have been pretty dangerous at least until 1967 when Britain partially decriminalized homosexuality. Anyway, a love story is a love story and this one was quite wonderful.  I really wanted the main characters to continue on their adventures together.

I also really adored how the author reframed the reader's image of elderly women's bodies from the typical wrinkled and withered to:

"Skin that was dusted with age spots and veined like the finest marble."

"Breasts that time had given a graceful sway."

"Every act of gravity and time made beauty in nature—except when it happened to human women. Not any longer. Ravines carved in her forehead by time made a striking landscape."

    Given that my own body has existed for 55 years, these descriptions made me feel appreciated, even admired in a way that most romance novels don't (or haven't in a long time).

    The book got me thinking, though, about romance between elderly folks. It's usually handled on TV as something of a joke - the shows Parks and Recreation (episode 5.4 "Sex Education") and New Amsterdam (episode 4.21 "Castles Made of Sand") have both dealt with outbreaks of STDs among elderly populations in nursing homes, and the humor is in no small part based on ridicule and disgust.   For some reason, people think old people doing the dirty is HI-LAR-IOUS and that their bodies are - to put it far more kindly than they did - unsexy.

    I prefer to think of elderly bodies as scarred by time.  Sexual desire doesn't go away just because someone accrues a few extra decades.  Neither does our need for friendship, intimacy, cuddling, companionship, and love.  

    Now that I think about it, movies and TV typically have two modes for love among the elderly - either long-time partners who are about to be parted by death (tragedy) or elderly folks bed-hopping (comedy).  

    With the former, it's usually (I think?) about the husband losing the wife, which is evidently more compelling, more heartbreaking, than the other way around, possibly because women outlive their husbands far more regularly than the opposite and is somehow less interesting because of that? For the record, I disagree with this sentiment.  I was lucky enough to marry my best friend, and chances are that I will outlive him, and well, that feels pretty damn tragic to me.

    And with the latter, well, the stories range from condescending ("Aren't these old folks so cute for acting like young people?") to outright jerky (characters pretend to vomit at the idea of sex between the elderly).  A particularly egregious example is from the 1971 movie Harold and Maude:

    To be fair, the scene, which bothers me in isolation, is much funnier in context, and I appreciate the subtext quite a bit.

    I'd really love it if there were more stories that fall in between the two, episodes more like 4.15 "The Benefactor Factor" in The Big Bang Theory, where Leonard sleeps with an elderly wealthy university donor.  Yes, there's some humor at her expense, but it manages to subvert the ridicule in a way that I like, and touches on her loneliness (she is also delightfully snarky toward most of the main characters), and the fact that both participants had a pretty good time in the process.

* While it is absolutely true that not all men are assholes like Bertrice's nephew, either in the book or in real life, the NotAllMen argument is nearly always an obtuse diversion that hands men an out, a reason not to try to change the system.  Even good men (of which there are fortunately plenty in this world) still benefit from a system that favors them, and unless they are actively attempting to put an equitable system in place, they are part of the problem.  I don't exactly fault them - it's awfully easy for anyone, including me, to look away, to go along to get along.  Also - while things are MUCH better than they were in 1867 when the novella takes place, women today still only make 84% of what men do.

The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles, Anno 24 Elizabeth Regina, 1582

Prompt - Four Seasons (400 words): Structure a story based on the four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. Write 100 words for each season, with the four episodes tying together and leading to a dramatic or thought-provoking conclusion. 

***

Winter

    Sleet tapped the glass windows, and John Dee shivered with cold on Plough Monday as he re-read his notes on the new principles of cartography he wished to introduce to Queen Bess in his upcoming audience. 

    Walsingham strolled into his office. “Her Majesty wishes you to be the Official Uncorker of Ocean Bottles.”

    Dee started to laugh, but Sir Francis’s eyes lacked mirth. “But … I am a mathematician and map-maker, sir.”

    “Her majesty says, ‘Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.’  You have been tested. Those bottles may contain messages from spies.”

Spring

    Dee was in the garden, enjoying the first warm spring day, when a royal messenger interrupted him, handing him a very old bottle, like no design he’d ever seen.

    Dee sighed, carried the bottle inside to a windowless room, and locked the door behind him.  He set to worrying the clay and wax stopper free, extracting the aged-stiffened parchment, and carefully unrolled it.

    Greek letters. Interesting.  

    “Theophrastus… ocean currents …” he translated rustily. Dee pushed a pin into a wall map, marking Greece, writing “2000 yrs” underneath. He placed the bottle on a shelf with the rest of his salt-encrusted collection.

Summer

    In the sweltering heat, John Dee sat looking through William Cecil’s atlas of manuscript maps, not allowing a single drop of sweat to land on the lovely collection.  

    My Lord Burghley, he wrote, the maps appear accurate, excepting the Roanoke and Virginia colonies, which lack proper proportions.  I should be glad to draw —

    A royal messenger placed a bottle on his desk. “Another one, sir.”

    Dee opened the bottle, not allowing the messenger to see the message, and scanned it, picking out a few words of Spanish.  “Columbus’s report of Hispaniola.”  

    “Oh! The New World? Your bottle-message collection is wonderful, sir!” 

Autumn

    Snow drifted on a frigid breeze across the messenger’s path as he carried a bottle to Dee’s house. Dee met him at the door and eagerly took the bottle.  

    “Good Yuletide, sir!” the messenger said, following him in.  

    Dee opened the bottle and read aloud, “The Spanish prepare for war against beloved Gloriana, 1st September 1580. —Drake.”  Dee dropped the bottle, and it shattered upon the hearth.

    The door slammed open. “’Tis a shame, John,” Walsingham said, leading soldiers inside. “I see I didn’t test you enough.”  To his men, he said, “The Tower. And destroy the too-renowned bottle messages.”

--April 19, 2020

***

Notes:

• John Dee was a real person, an English mathematician and cartographer.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee
• Sir Francis Walsingham and William Cecil/Lord Burghley were also real; important advisors to Elizabeth I and sometimes patrons of Dee.
• Cecil really did create an atlas of maps, and it is in the Royal Library today.
• Elizabeth I supposedly created a position “The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles” in the 1580s believing messages found in bottles washed up on the beach to contain coded spy messages, and it was on pain of death for anyone else to open them. However, this is no evidence of this, nor is there any evidence that John Dee held the position. He also lived to 1608, so even if he was sent to the tower in 1582, he survived the ordeal
• Elizabeth considered Sir Francis Drake’s accounts of circumnavigating the earth to be Royal secrets.
• Columbus set reports of his findings adrift in bottles
• Theophrastus also did in about 300 BC, but as a science experiment, to understand the tides and currents of the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
• https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-08/the-bizarre-history-of-messages-in-a-bottle/9522322
• https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/saxton-and-speed-two-early-elizabethan-cartographers-and-the-flemish-influence/