![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I realized something while reading TSK, which is that I don't like the way Bujold does romance when she's consciously thinking about romance.
What really draws me in, with romance, is-- part of falling in love, really getting love right, is seeing oneself differently. Realizing one might have to be a different person for the beloved. Learning to live with the faults of the beloved, and changing yourself to be the person that can live with your beloved.
The romances I love are all like that. Pride and Prejudice. Perilous Gard. Gaudy Night/Busman's Honeymoon. A Civil Campaign, except for the part where Miles' romance gets short-circuited at the end (which kind of irks me, but whatever). Possession (well, many styles of love are explored... one major one of which is an exploration of what happens when change/compromise does not occur).
The romance in TSK, in contrast, is relatively a bunch of infatuated sighs of "oh, isn't X wonderful?" Which is fine, and certainly a necessary part of romance, but if I want to see that I can just, you know, walk down the hallway and find someone who is engaged. Or read my journal entries about D :) Or, in fact, my journal entries about all my ex-boyfriends, all of whom have many fine and worthy qualities, though not enough-- and not well enough matched to mine, or at least we were unwilling to match them-- to keep us for a lifetime, or even for more than a couple of years. And that's the kicker: just reading about infatuation is rather unconvincing to me. If the author has not sufficiently shown us how the characters are doing the work-- and it can be work, albeit fun work-- of matching themselves together, well, I don't see any reason that I should expect the romance to last any longer than, you know, those of the growing number of people I know who are starting to get divorces.
Now, I'm not saying I don't enjoy the part of romance where the lovers are finding out all sorts of new and lovely things about each other. I really do like that, and I had great fun reading TSK-- and, because Bujold really is a consummate craftsman, it's not quite as cut-and-dried as I've implied here. But... I don't keep going back to it, the way I do to the deeper treatment of the books mentioned above.
What really draws me in, with romance, is-- part of falling in love, really getting love right, is seeing oneself differently. Realizing one might have to be a different person for the beloved. Learning to live with the faults of the beloved, and changing yourself to be the person that can live with your beloved.
The romances I love are all like that. Pride and Prejudice. Perilous Gard. Gaudy Night/Busman's Honeymoon. A Civil Campaign, except for the part where Miles' romance gets short-circuited at the end (which kind of irks me, but whatever). Possession (well, many styles of love are explored... one major one of which is an exploration of what happens when change/compromise does not occur).
The romance in TSK, in contrast, is relatively a bunch of infatuated sighs of "oh, isn't X wonderful?" Which is fine, and certainly a necessary part of romance, but if I want to see that I can just, you know, walk down the hallway and find someone who is engaged. Or read my journal entries about D :) Or, in fact, my journal entries about all my ex-boyfriends, all of whom have many fine and worthy qualities, though not enough-- and not well enough matched to mine, or at least we were unwilling to match them-- to keep us for a lifetime, or even for more than a couple of years. And that's the kicker: just reading about infatuation is rather unconvincing to me. If the author has not sufficiently shown us how the characters are doing the work-- and it can be work, albeit fun work-- of matching themselves together, well, I don't see any reason that I should expect the romance to last any longer than, you know, those of the growing number of people I know who are starting to get divorces.
Now, I'm not saying I don't enjoy the part of romance where the lovers are finding out all sorts of new and lovely things about each other. I really do like that, and I had great fun reading TSK-- and, because Bujold really is a consummate craftsman, it's not quite as cut-and-dried as I've implied here. But... I don't keep going back to it, the way I do to the deeper treatment of the books mentioned above.
