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compacflt · 1 year

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I just wanted to say as someone who has stumbled across your blog and has read your Wednesday wips and posts about anything topgun related that your thought process and consideration of mav and ice, specifically their political beliefs and relationships with their own identities, is honestly so impressive and cool. You have brought such realism and life to these characters which is just so refreshing to see. idk i just wanted to express how cool and awesome i think that is

Because of the thought into these characters does it make it difficult to like them or understand them if you have differing opinions from them? for me personally i feel like if i were to ever actually have a convo with ice or mav regarding identity politics i would actually start to lose my mind (like how one feels when your dad or fun uncle talks for too long at thanksgiving dinner). If it does make them difficult to like, does that make it difficult for you to write them sometimes?

oh yeah! i think, my ice i really empathize with & really love & really could get along with, once he grows out of the sexism of his teens & twenties, but my maverick drives me crazy. someone sent in an ask a while ago that was like “WHY is cyclone simpson your one true love??” And it’s because i too would absolutely hate maverick & hate working with him lol. people who are overly cocky & un-self-aware & a bit self-centered make me CRAZY. (narrator voice: compacflt is a hypocrite as all these things also apply to compacflt.)

Politically… It’s difficult to say. no one really wants to hear the intricacies of one person’s political journey, which is why i won’t give you mine, but suffice to say—since the start of the russian invasion of Ukraine, and my semi-concerted effort to learn more about the political landscape of modern warfare, my own personal beliefs have shifted a whole bunch. definitely aided in that shift by my top gun fic project that specifically aims to understand the conservative straight-passing male mindset as it relates to military matters… there are many end goals to a project like mine, but one end product is a filter you can take away and hold up in front of your eyes and see the world through it. When writing from the eyes of a conservative straight (passing) white man, your priorities totally shift. I had to write from the perspective of someone who doesn’t care about identity politics. Because they don’t! A core tenet of conservatism is very proudly not caring about that stuff, and being very annoyed when people (usually left-of-centers) make that stuff very visible and want you to care about it! “Don’t shove it in my face,” etc., etc. Don’t force me to care about this taboo, private thing I really don’t care about. It violates my freedoms, or whatever, to be forced to care—or even bear witness to—stuff that i don’t care about. Etc. And then, to be nominally a part of that community that you really, really don’t care about, and then to be told that you have to care about it because of your publicity… people asking you to be proud of something that has had a negative connotation for much of your entire life… that’s not a transformation that happens easily.

Jesus, I could write an essay about this. I have, several times by now in responses to asks over my blog. But there is so much that I could talk about. I think… I really worry that some of my writing falls into the first of the below categories:

I really try not to romanticize conservatism in my writing—I tried to show that ice and mav’s happiness is the price they pay for their conservatism. They’re actively choosing to be unhappy—but because they prioritize their honor over everything, due to EXTERNAL PRESSURES they cannot control, and which I think are often ignored in the fandom space for one reason or another. The fact of the matter is, in 99% of IPs, characters prioritize something other than their sexualities. It’s never Maverick’s personal identity that is at stake in either Top Gun or Top Gun: Maverick, because he has built himself so impermeably masculine that there are no grounds upon which to question his personal identity. He just isn’t thinking about it. He’s thinking about how to get into Charlie’s pants, how to win the Top Gun trophy, how to uphold his promise to Goose, et cetera. If he’s fucking guys on the side, it’s because he wants to and because hes maverick and he does what he wants without thinking about it—that’s the whole point of his character, from a story-construction standpoint. That’s his archetype. He’s a renegade maverick superstar who is both thoughtlessly brilliant and thoughtlessly dangerous. He’s thoughtless. His priorities are to survive and to look cool doing it, and that’s it. He is a savant in the Naval Air Force, where honor is your lifeblood, who feels he has been dishonored by his own family name, and who willingly joined the conservative post-Vietnam Navy right when/after Ronald Reagan was elected President, and who wears cowboy boots and who disrespects women to their faces, and who is eager to get into altercations with Soviet-Chinese-DPRK-X-second-world-country-coded-but-EXPLICITLY-Soviet-manufactured-Mikoyan-Gurevich-MiG-28s(-F-5s-painted-black)… I’m sorry. In my opinion, the conservatism is baked into him as a character. I find it extremely difficult to separate him from his conservatism, because in some ways his patriotic conservatism is his raison d’etre. IMO if you take that away from him, he ceases to exist.

Same thing with Ice and his unwillingness to openly rebel or go against the grain. That is his whole reason to exist in the story at all. I know that I’m saying this in a fandom space where the whole point is to change characters & put them in different situations (fanfic) but… in kind of a perverse self aware way, as in I know I sound ridiculous and pretentious, i guess i don’t really understand an impulse to change the core tenets of a character irreparably in fanworks. We are shown that ice always goes by the books in TG. Then we are shown that he achieves the fruits of that labor (four stars) in TGM. So he is rewarded for never rebelling, whereas Maverick, who always rebels (but NEVER in a way that challenges his personal identity), has stagnated in the ranks at full-bird O-6. And that’s Ice’s character. That’s what he’s there for in the story—he’s a tool to show us the value system of rank and prestige you earn by following the rules of the Navy. Why take that away from him? That’s his priority! Canonically, that’s his priority and reason for existence! And historically the way to achieve that priority is through conservatism.

And you ask me if it’s hard to like my ice and mav. Yes, but that’s not my choice. The movie already did that for me. They are not, I’m sorry, likable people. I am not a straight white conservative male writing about straight white conservative men to validate my own beliefs—I’m a queer AFAB person of color writing about straight white conservative men because I want to understand the limits of their conservatism. What they do and do not care about, and what it takes to make them care. And from what we are shown in TG… ice and mav would not care about ME. At all. And they would not want to be forced to care about me. Ice’s casual careless dismissiveness… “the plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies’ room…” mav following Charlie into the bathroom… turning the key in the ignition and driving away while pretending not to hear her… “what?? i can’t hear you! 🙉” … they do not care. They have no desire to care.

Again. Maybe I subscribe to a very very old-school and labored and pretentious ideology when it comes to writing… I know a lot of people write just to have fun. I do not. I wish i could, but I don’t. And when you’re not writing to have fun, you don’t have to like the characters you’re writing about. They’re nothing more than tools at your disposal to get your point across more effectively. No, I don’t like them! Of course not! My ice is cruel and cowardly and careless and hypocritical and subservient and weak, and my mav is demanding and dangerous and dismissive and oblivious and so, so, so unbelievably bitter.

And that’s what my story needed, to get my point across. So, shrug. My point was my priority. I don’t care too much about the characters themselves.

Re: icemav & identity politics. Part of hopefully selling this story is the attempt at empathy for the conservative male, to bring this discussion back to the top. Why write fiction at all if you’re not going to write about people different from you, and why write about people different from you if you don’t want to understand them? So… part of trying to understand them was to understand and have empathy for this shift in priorities. Conservative guys do not want to care about labels, or sexual orientations, or, God forbid, discussion of their gender identities. I can kind of see Ice tolerating it by the end… but, there are limits. Again, it’s supposed to be private. I think he’d chafe against getting labeled gay—he wouldn’t want to be called the first gay compacflt, or SECNAV, etc. He can’t say, “i slept with like a hundred fifty women before I even MET the ONLY man ive ever slept with,” because that’s like intensely private personal information!! No one deserves that information, but people still want to call him gay, even though in his head he really is not!!!! Again—from the conservative perspective, it’s a public imposition of left-wing, overly sexualized, too-neat labels and politics onto an area of life that has typically been kept private and respectable—I don’t agree with the conservatism, but I can at least empathize with it. Pre-Maverick’s death (pre-coming to terms with it), it would’ve been shameful & embarrassing to him; but even after coming to terms with it, it’s still not something he “takes pride” in. I think he thinks of it like this—most people aren’t proud of being straight. Like, it’s weird if you are. Same thing with being proud of being white, etc. Why be excessively proud of things you have no control over? Why not take pride in your ACTIONS—for instance, his career that he has actively sacrificed so much of his pride for? I can really empathize with that thought. I don’t necessarily agree, but I get it, especially in his professional circumstances, where he has so much to be professionally proud of, and yet people keep wanting him to publicly care about this private part of him he has no control over and can’t change.

Maverick though. I think he’d be actively hostile about talking about it in public. He Does Not Care. he does not want to care. It’s all an insult. They call him the first openly gay Ace cause he’s married to another man— “okay, but, like, I’m not. Stop calling me that. Neither of us are. Oh my god we have slept with so many women. Stop calling us that.” Ok then what do you want us, the press corps, to call you? First openly bisexual Ace? “No that’s worse!! That’s a word some teenager made up and doesn’t mean anything!! I’m sixty years old stop asking me to talk about this stuff im too old.” What do you have to say to LGBT kids who want to go into the navy? “😎👍 there’s a place for you etc etc. Let’s go back to talking about all the planes I shot down.” Maverick does what he wants without thinking about it. That’s the core tenet of his character. Very conservative. Don’t ask him to care too much.

Idk. No I don’t like them. But I understand them, if that makes sense. Like their conservative anti-label logic does make emotional sense to me. So that’s part of what I took away from this project, for better or worse… probably worse: I understand why conservatives don’t like the modern over-publicity of sexuality. They don’t care and they don’t want to care. And because they are small-C conservative, my ice and mav still don’t care lol. So, yeah. It doesn’t make them hard to write, because thats why I wanted to write them in the first place.

#what does it say about me that i put myself in their shoes & understand their position #i don’t agree with it but I understand it #the annoyance and the bad optics and the over labeling of hard-to-label sexuality #being a gay republican has got to be the seventh circle of hell #note my ice and mav are not republicans #but also note my story would not change even one bit if they were #i don’t LIKE gay republicans because they’re republicans. but i can empathize with them cause that’s gotta fucking blow.#normie median biden voter ice #now I think if a kid came up to maverick at an airshow and was like…#sir im trans and I think I want to go into the navy to fly & you’re my hero…#he’d freak out like ‘omg that means so much to me actually thanks!! it might be difficult for u i won’t lie but we need more people who #can overcome adversity…omg let me set you up with this admiral i know… yes yes yes…’#he doesn’t like the conceptual discussions but he likes the people if that makes sense #& he really likes people massaging his ego #i find them incredibly annoying. but that’s what character development is for. if u start out liking ur characters ur doing smth wrong #& if they weren’t incredibly annoying then i wouldn’t have a story to write.#pete maverick mitchell #tom iceman kazansky #icemav #top gun #top gun maverick #asks #edts notes #**obvious disclaimer this is just my interpretation!!!**

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daandova · 4 months

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“ Where have you been? ” (from hypatia) - @satellitewar

firelit eyes blink up to the inquisitor almost incredulously from her spot amongst the stone floor. where has she been ?? last she checked right here. in the armory. maybe it wasn't her usual haunts as of late , sure , but the last venture they'd taken resulted in some adjustments that had to be made to her crossbows. there've been plenty of times the hero had been down and out , hit a snag and was left fighting with nothing but a dagger or shortsword and suffice to say it was not a position she liked to be in. where normally she may hover around the battlements or library , she honestly couldn't tell you the amount of days that may have passed down here where little light seeps through.

" has something happened ?? " is her immediate response. fingers coated in oil , surrounded by pieces of metal and wood , there's signs that she may not have slept the last couple of nights ─── too hyperfocused on tweaking this gods forsaken semi-automatic trigger. " i'd thought i had some time to make some fixes. . . erm [ ... ] unless the table was called and i hadn't heard. "

#i 1000% read this in molly weasley's voice and just took it from there BUT #it doesn't have to have been said that way rofl #i'm still digging out her da verse but we can just plop a once hero in there amongst the others for now #* . ⌜ ic. ⌟#* . ⌜ memes. ⌟#* . ⌜ dragon age. ⌟#satellitewar

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ludcake · 1 year

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Few things loom over A Song of Ice and Fire quite like the Others - the pale, cold gods beyond the Wall, which first introduce us to the magic of Martin's world. Better theorycrafters (and writers) than me have gone at length about the thematic strengths of the Others, and how they contrast the coming struggle against the winter foretold by the Starks since Book 1 with the petty politics, intrigue and bitterness of the Southron courts, which see it better fit to war against each other than unite against the looming threat to, as they "hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins", as said by Old Nan in AGOT Bran IV.

When we first meet the Others, in the very first chapter of the entire series, the very first thing we are told of is the cold and the dark - and, of course, the dead. Waymar, Gared and Will are already put to discomfort before the Others are even hinted at, though it is clear that the three rangers know of the tales of White Walkers. Gared and Will are veterans of the Night's Watch, but as soon as there are hints of the darkness and the cold, Will seems to judge Gared ready to kill Ser Waymar for denying them a fire - and while it is true that Gared had already lost both ears and a finger to frostbite, we are also told that it is warmer than usual in the Wall, enough that it is weeping, or melting.

Of course, as we all know, the wildlings the trio was sent to track have disappeared, seemingly turned to wights - and it is here that we first meet the Others, and find one of their rare and few descriptions, at a moment where they seem all too human, perhaps more than anywhere else in the series. The Others are often framed as, well, Other - we see little of them but as distant shadows, the cold gods spoken of by Craster, and Old Nan's tales (more on that later).

Afterwards, of course, Ser Waymar and the Other engage in a duel, and notably, its companions do not engage; instead, they watch the fight, and approach only to deliver a coup de grace - and in what I believe to be one of the most interesting moments of the prologue, they speak, and seem to mock Ser Waymar.

To me, this already provides a stark contrast to how the White Walkers were depicted in the show, which hints at an origin of them as men turned by the Children of the Forest as a weapon; though these warriors of frost seem cruel and dissimulated, they have a tongue, and communicate with each other, with distinct voices and both flair and personality. Interestingly enough, perhaps, the same conlanger who developed the Dothraki and High Valyrian tongues for the TV show supposedly began developing a tongue for the Others during the production of the show's pilot - though that idea was (unfortunately) dropped. The Others are a people, creatures of ice just as dragons are of fire, dwelling beyond where it is always winter - and they bear armor and swords of frost, speak a language of harsh ice and bring forward the cold wherever they come. Let us take a look at their other prominent appearance, in Sam the Slayer's great bout against the white shadow.

These are the two times we face the Others directly - and they are both heralded by the looming cold, the rustling of the trees, the darkness and despair filling the men who see them; they bear pale crystal swords, seem to melt at contact with obsidian, are able fighters, fast and elegant, and glow and shimmer in the reflective ice of their armor, turning the color of their surroundings as it reflects upon them - and interestingly enough, both appearances are near sentinel trees, though they are common enough in the North for it not be particularly aberrant.

Every single other thing we know of the Others, however, comes from other sources; some more reliable, such as Mance Rayder and Tormund Giantsbane, who have personal experience with them, while others come from distant reports, passed down in the library at Castle Black or by Old Nan's tales. We are told of the Long Night and myths of the North by Maester Yandel, and Craster speaks of his cold gods sparsely, but if anyone, he's the one who'd know them best; and Melisandre, the Red Witch that follows King Stannis, speaks of them as shadows, servants of the Great Other - a god whose name must not be spoken.

What is interesting, then, is what is not shown in both these encounters; we see no great ice spiders, no weaving of spellcraft, no eternal hatred for all that lives. They commit no particularly great atrocity for evil's own sake - they create their army of the dead through the wights, but it may well be motivated by the pragmatism of an unending army, rather than an ultimate desire or appreciation for undeath over life, as they show little appreciation or care for the walking dead but as tools of warfare - and the Others don't feed their servants the flesh of human children, nor do they deal with the Children of the Forest. Much of what we are told of the Others, and who they are, comes from secondary information, legends passed down generation after generation by wet nurses and servants to babes low and highborn alike.

I must take a moment here to emphasize that I don't believe that this disproves what we are told of the Others; while indeed the information that is shown to us is sparse, a lot of what is told is not a stretch at all, and it'd be unlikely for it to be entirely disproved - all the more when the source of information are Wildlings such as Mance, Tormund or Ygritte, who have been dealing with the encroaching advance of the Others for years now and lived with that threat more than any Southron Maester. However, I do think that there is more to the Others than an omnicidal horde of ice demons - fitting though the idea of a climate change allegory may be, I am skeptical that the ultimate conclusion to A Song of Ice and Fire lies in a reenactment of the Battle of the Black Gate. As Martin famously said to Rolling Stone,

Of course, this line has been endlessly repeated, parodied and quibbled over, but I do think it's a recurring theme throughout the series - the full interview goes at length on a lot of fascinating points that I believe shed a very bright light on a lot of what Martin believes and how he writes, and you can find it here. Even the matter of the "little baby orcs" is brought up in the idea of the righteousness of Joffrey's assassination, and I definitely think it's a motif that bears keeping in mind; the innocence of children, and the conflict between their significance as the continuation of a line and the innocence they represent, is something that's touched on with the Lannisters, the conflict at Castle Black regarding baby Aemon Steelsong, and it is something that I believe will be reflected down the line whenever Craster's sons reappear.

The orcs in Lord of the Rings function, in many ways, a not dissimilar purpose to what the Others and their wights are; a looming threat casting a long shadow over the realms of men, over which the petty disputes of politics and family are secondary to what may yet be the end of life as we know it. An army so incredible and mighty that it seems hopeless for the sentinels of civilization to defeat, which will require that humanity either "face them and fight them or defeat them, or work with them, but […] do so as earthmen", to quote the fat man himself from that same interview. From the same interview, he comments this regarding the Wall and the Night's Watch:

This is, of course, a personal piece of meta, reflecting on my own approach to the themes; but to me, one of the most consistent pieces of relevance in George R R Martin's writing is his capacity for humanity, and to empathize and humanize people and characters which would not, in the traditional fantasy genre with which he plays, be humanized at all - that's at the crux of PoVs like Jaime or Cersei, or Jon's journey with the Wildlings, or even a character like Sansa. The human heart in conflict with itself is the fundamental reason to write, to tell a story - and if there is no conflict with itself, if there is no humanity to be had, there is no story, or character.

Of course, there are missteps in the process; his heavily misogynistic treatment of characters such as the Dead Ladies Club, or the orientalist nature of the characterization of Dorne and Essos are some of the most litigious pieces of his writing in terms of abstracting humanity away from parts of the setting. But ultimately, when we do explore these areas and these characters, we meet people like Arianne, and we're made to care for even the commonfolk of Essos moreso than the commonfolk of Westeros, I'd argue, through the point of view of Daenerys and her own struggle for liberation, which is later expanded to a wider cause.

The Others are Otherised by their very name, by their very nature; they're not human, they're one of the most explicitly supernatural things in the setting, they open the very first book with a sense of dread. And yet, dragons such as Viserion can be granted sympathy and characterisation; GRRM is not unfamiliar with dealing with non-human characters in his other works. And yet, as he compares the Wall to Hadrian's Wall, don't we know that what lies beyond - in the Lands of Always Winter, in Scotland - are people? People who wage warfare and who laugh and sing, and who love and are torn apart between duty and passion?

To me, there's an intense disconnect between a profoundly humanist story, by an author who is notably critical of the usage of orcs and similar threats in fantasy literature, and the idea of an all-encompassing, apocalyptic and manichean conflict in the Battle for the Dawn; it's a deeply myopic worldview, and it is, indeed... Well, Melisandre who calls for it!

For what it's worth, I do not think that Stannis and Melisandre are characters to be taken entirely at face value - particularly when for a majority of ASoS, the word demon is used particularly to invoke *fire* - to invoke both wildfire, in the memories of the Blackwater, and to invoke R'hllor in Davos' perspective.

I'd continue on and talk a bit about my theories for the Others - the ideas of them as spirits, as creations of the Children of the Forest, as oathkeepers and Starks (I find the idea of them being oathkeepers is very interesting, and ties into some of Mance's story). Unfortunately, that'll have to be kept to another post, if I do write it, because I think the point of this one is very clear - to think of a Battle for the Dawn as the central point, to think of A Song of Ice and Fire as a story that serves to fundamentally legitimise the violence and warring against an enemy that is Otherised, seems to me to be missing the point. I sincerely hope that if The Winds of Winter comes out, we'll have a fresh insight into who, exactly, they are, but I've no doubt it'll be a more interesting explanation than "people you can murder without feeling guilt over it".

#asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #the others #meta #.txt #I'd also talk a bit about how like.#lots of people further use the idea of the others to make a big marvel hero team up #or even to justify specific situations #(looking at you nissa nissa/azor ahai prophecy theories that are about fridging main characters)#but i think the point is made #if the others are just ice demons you can struggle against and kill without worrying for their humanity (or yours)#then there's not really a human heart in conflict with itself innit #they need to be more than that if there's gonna be a story to be told #otherwise we could've just said “and then the bad guys invaded because we were too concerned with petty things like politics and violence”#not to mention that coldhands....... exists

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xx0yeet-everything0xx · 1 year

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no bcos like. remember in boo when jason met beryl???? when he was sooo close to snapping and when there was the line that "and now here jason was, drawn taut as a bowstring"??? wouldn't it have been cool if he'd gone completely batshit. if the bowstring DID snap, and if all those years of internalised grief and abandonment because of his mother's broken promise— finally faced with the completion of that promise, in the worst way possible— was too much and simply fucking tipped him over and like. to all those monsters and whatnot it was an instant. fucking. KILL.

#IM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS CONCEPT CAN YOU TELL #WRITING A FIC WRITING A FIC WRITING A F IC #I NEED T'GO SOMEWHERE RN BUT I WILL!! ELABORATE!! LATER!!#i love him #jason grace #heroes of olympus #hoo #blood of olympus #beryl grace

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whitegownsandflowercrowns · 9 months

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The Red Wedding 🤝 Blood & Cheese

Being horrendously brutal and seeming smart in the moment, but actually being poor decisions in the long run due to turning the smallfolk against you and eliminating the rules of war

(Credit to @kirby.alice on TikTok for her analysis of The Red Wedding)

#this has become my new Roman Empire #because knocking out your enemies/traumatizing them seems smart #but instead you’ve made yourself look like a monster #you’ve made your enemies seem much better in comparison #(granted helaena and the kids were innocents regardless)#but now aegon aemond alicent and otto are all just grieving a horrible tragedy #and as kirby said robb was losing support #but then he became the glorious hero struck down by cowards #and that’s without mentioning the war playbook getting thrown out #small children are fair game now? how about we have your son watch you die rhaenyra?#acts of war can happen at private family events? i don’t know when and i don’t know how but that will come back to bite at least #one of the red wedding families HARD in the next two books #game of thrones #house of the dragon #a song of ice and fire #fire and blood #blood and cheese #the red wedding

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fiiirsthero · 20 days

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@gloryseized liked for link!

It was a strange and surreal experience to feel like his memories were being actively rewritten. Time had already passed and this moment had already been etched in memorium, but it was changing now. It was happening... differently.

There had been no Hero here. There hadn't been one for a very long time. But now there--

Lucas wasn't a stranger in the court of Rauru and Sonia, but it would be hard to say they were friends. They each had a job and it was best if none of them interfered with each other. And was it interfering to want to learn more about the Hero that appeared who should and could not have been there?

"Hello." He wasn't dressed the same way as Rauru's court, instead in simple brown pants and dark shirt and a cloak, one that hid the faded red scarf that was wrapped around his neck. If anything, the style was far more reminiscent of clothing era's past, a style that would swing back around close to ten thousand years in the future.

The horse he was riding, a disinterested mare, snorted before beginning her work of ridding the field of any flowers she could see. Horses themselves were hardly common now, phased out in favor of the use of Zonai technology. Lucas found he had never been able to adapt, though.

"I haven't seen you here before. New people aren't really common with Rauru's court."

#ic ; in character #gloryseized #a moment paused in time ; queue #endless epilogue ; wandering hero #[[ spreads hands i can make a new starter i just saw this au and it called to me ]]#[[ since first link has existed since the beginning of time he'd be there for the past of totk ]]

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mermaidsirennikita · 8 months

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Since we're on the topic what is your favourite kind of romance heroine? It doesn't have to be one specific type just what kind do you gravitate towards.

Hmmm I mean, I love a lot of romance heroines, but I've noticed that I tend to enjoy heroines who've experienced life most of all or are very determined to experience it. This doesn't have to mean a widow in historicals, or even necessarily one who isn't a virgin (though I do prefer a non-virgin heroine over a virgin--and it truly doesn't matter lol, I'll read either very happily, it's just that like... if I HAD to choose I'd pick a heroine who wasn't a virgin, and the hopeful? series I'm trying to write does not feature any virgin heroines, which wasn't planned and sort of just happened). I just like a heroine who's at least somewhat jaded, who knows how the world works. Someone who is closed off.

I do love an ice queen. The lady of the manor, as it were. I also really love an unrepentantly sexual and hedonistic heroine--like, I ADORE this type, virgin or not. Someone who's all "well what happens if I do tHIS?" and very happily teases her partner. I think both the ice queen who's seen too much of the world and is tired of this shit and the very sexual heroine (whether she's done it before or adjusts to it like a duck to water lol) are preferable to me than like... The true babe in the woods innocent who's like "whaaaaat" at every single sexual thing that happens. Like, as an example of how you can handle this with virgin heroines--Evie in Devil in Winter is a virgin, but she's very naturally sexual and doesn't have an issue with adjusting to St. Vincent's appetites and is soooo into sex that she's the one who "makes" him lose the bet. And she's so practical about it. She finds out they need to fuck to make it legit and goes "yeah that sounds about right". She's not all shocked or whatever.

I love very feminine heroines, and will usually gravitate towards heroine that give "divine feminine" vibes over tomboy vibes. BUT THAT BEING SAID. I can get behind most heroines. Very rarely will I turn down a book just because the heroine doesn't seem like my type. I tend to love heroines that people hate. The only things I really can't do with heroines is:

--constant insecurity

--constantly mentioning how plain or ugly she is like shut the fuck up Mr. 6'5" stunnah with a 9 inch cock is railing you at every minute, I don't buy it, this feels like such pandering and I frankly don't want or need it

--subset: heroines who are fat and are always like "I know that because of my ample body he probably doesn't like me" oh my god this romance hero is clearly one of those guys who likes to see it jiggle get ooooover it (I say this as someone with insecurities about my weight--I just can't get behind heroines who agonize over it every other page, she can have body image issues without it being 20% of the novel)

--heroines who fuck the hero over but it's fine because she's the heroine and he's the hero and we never confront these actions ever (ex: I just a read a book I was really loving with an NFL player hero who was a virgin, and the heroine deflowered him, they fell in love, and this Ashley Madison type site put out a $1 million reward for a woman who could prove she took his virginity; someone steals hero's phone and leaks nudes of the heroine she sent him, and it's hORRIBLE and she's understandably traumatized and depressed, but she claims her power by TELLING THE PRESS SHE TOOK HIS V CARD without TELLING HIM IN ADVANCE so she can donate the money to charity???? And when he's understandably mad it's treated as this overreaction on his part??? And dude I am sorry but how the fuck is very intimate info about his sex life being shared without his permission okay???? Anyway sorry that shit blew my mind.). I find that condescending.

Heroines I love that I think sum up a lot of this:

--Greer Galloway/Colchester/Galloway Colchester Moore or whatever the fuck from New Camelot by Sierra Simone. Greer is so self-possessed and cool and smart, but she's also like, this hedonistic wild woman who is fully willing to "why not both?" her marriage. Lol some of the best parts of the sex scenes in those books are Greer in the background like "GIVE HIM THE DICK!!!!!"

--Neomi Laress, Dark Needs at Night's Edge by Kresley Cole. A total temptress(ssss) who flirts first and asks questions later, but is also out for her own (understandable) game and accidentally falls in love with a deeply damaged Conrad Wroth and is like "he is baby". Both tough and jaded and deeply nurturing once her heart opens up.

--Ellie Peirce, Lothaire by Kresley Cole. I love Ellie so fucking much. (And she's a virgin heroine, so again, I love all!) She's tough as nails (her epigraph is literally "steel magnolia? TRY TITANIUM") but has the vulnerability to like, cry and break down when shit gets really hard. She refuses to be disrespected. She's very in touch with her own sexuality and uses it to get what she wants. I love a heroine who approaches a hero that is basically the equivalent to a massive toothy snarling monster and like, solemnly buckles a diamond collar that says "BRAT" or something around his neck, and then he's just her bitch from there on out.

--Eleanor Ramsay, The Duke's Perfect Wife by Jennifer Ashley. A new favorite! I love her your honor! Very fun and nice and perky and confident, but has been around the block and isn't super quick to trust Hart this time around. (Even if they did have sex THRICE like a decade ago, as he constantly reminds her.) She had the dignity to expect better from him and dumped his ass without crying (in front of him). She also, unfortunately, can't resist that dick. And wants to take Victorian photographs of it. The dichotomy of woman. But again, this heroine who just blinks at the hero unimpressed and goes "down boy" is really My Shit.

--Sara Fielding, Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas. Sara really encapsulates a specific subset of heroine that I love, and I think this is probably my favorite type of virgin heroine, which is "local woman cartwheels headlong into mortal peril at any given moment while very growly man shrieks in terror and runs after her like she's a priceless vase that just fell off his mantle". Sara is nosy, she's not afraid to learn, she is naive at points but in a very "my b" kind of way, she super doesn't care about cheating on her wet blanket fiance when Derek Craven is on the menu, and she does dumb shit like go "Should I get bangs?" (Derek: I WILL KILL MYSELF IF YOU GET BANGS.)

#romance novel blogging #i think almost any type of heroine can be pulled off #if the author puts in the work #the uncomfortable thing i've noticed from many recent m/f books especially #is that the heroines are cardboard #the hero gets the lines the growth the heroine is there for the reader to project upon #and she is often there in particular to suffer so the reader can get the satisfaction of the hero going 'I WAS WRONG'#and i love a grovel i love an i was wrong #but if the heroine lacks dignity or any sense of self throughout the novel that is so fucking hollow #i think that's a big reason why i tend to love brats and ice queens and batty bitches more #they're never milquetoasts

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