The Careful Hands That Mold Us

I think an experience I had at a book club recently exemplifies the problems faced by today's romance novelists. One month we read a historical romance novel from 2021 that was fairly typical of 2010s historical romance in terms of gender/sexual politics. The heroine has sexual experience, her own money, and a group of female friends who are supportive but have their own stuff going on. The hero is a decent hunky guy whose worst fault in the relationship is emotional avoidance due to a Big Secret. There are background lesbians and the protagonists are chill about it. The sex is enthusiastically consented to. Most of the book club had a very "meh" response to it, mainly due to reasons that didn't have much to due with said politics (like not finding the relationship very interesting or thinking there weren't enough sex scenes), but, crucially, some people zeroed right in on two moments that could be considered in bad taste. The first one: the hero admires the heroine's silhouette while she's changing behind a screen and talking with him. The second one: the hero tries to curb his sexy thoughts about the heroine by getting her a glass of warm milk, reasoning that this is a very unsexy thing to do because it's the sort of thing you would do for a sick child. I personally thought the first thing was a total non-issue in context (he's looking towards her because they're talking, she knows he's there and how shadows work) and the second was kind of a silly, overdone joke but not creepy or offensive. But the people who took issue with it were genuine in their disapproval, even citing our current climate of misogyny as why it rubbed them the wrong way.

Random Feanorian elf inherited by Elrond: That's not... No.

Book that was good: I liked it 👍

it’s funny how we’re getting to the point in the AI lifespan where you can feel the desperation from tech companies to have you use their AI features. instagram has moved their AI effects to the top of the menu when you’re creating a post for your story, exactly where the draw/edit button used to be. gmail is creating one-click AI-generated replies right before you open up the text box. spotify put a beta AI playlist generator on the front page that looks just like a search bar so all of their users accidentally click on it when they go to search for a song.

“Pink isn’t innocence. It’s a warning”