It's exactly the same, except not Poly, or even Amorous

[jeriendhal]

jimhines has an interesting essay on his LJ about reviews for his novel Libromancer that discusses the negative reviews he's received due to the relationship the protagonists end up in at the end. And though the final relationships at the end of my own Shadow of the Red Vixen are considerable different, they might generate negative reviews as well, for entirely different reasons.



In Hines' book, the three protagonists, one female, two males, end up in a triad. In book, it's because the heroine doesn't like the idea of having to choose between the men she loves. The writerly reason is that he disliked the idea of Team Whomever plots, dragged out of a series of books, which leaves the girl with her One True Love and the Other Guy out in the cold and alone. It's bold choice if the reader is familiar with only with conventional romance choices. (Less so if you're familiar with Heinlein, Lackey, ect.) Apparently this really turned some readers off, and they weren't afraid to give negatives reviews expressing their dislike.

In his essay Hines explains that while he doesn't mind getting negative reviews for the book in general, getting them solely on the basis of how three people loves each brasses him off a bit. To which I say, good on him.

Now in SotRV I've got another problem going. It's a sequel to a romance book that I've managed to strip all of romance out of.

To Explain: The main characters are Sallivera, brother to Rolas from the last book, whose back story consists of a off screen abusive marriage that lasted two years, cost both her right eye and a good deal of her mental health, and made her swear off males for good.

The other character is Alinadar, her bodyguard who accompanies her on Salli's first offworld vacation after getting some badly needed therapy. Ali is A) secretly working for a pirate to kidnap Salli B) a lesbian and C) as happily loyal/crazy to her pirate mistress as Sgt. Bothari was to Cordelia Vorkosigan in Barrayar.[1] At least until she meets Salli and start to question the wisdom of her orders.

Much as the initial plot of the previous book was "Age of Sail Romances with the Gender Roles Reversed with FURRIES IN SPACE" SotRV's plot was supposed to be "The Bodyguard IN SPACE with LESBIAN FURRIES!" Salli was going to fall madly in love with Ali while the latter defended her from the kidnapping threat, and the book would end with them snogging merrily as Salli finds romance again.

Except when I started writing, Salli took one look at the idea and was having none of it. She'd taken too many hits in her life to let me get away with fixing everything with a quick romance and a magic kiss. Further, faced with someone who was almost equally broken, her instinct was to get Ali help like she had, not marry her.

So in the end, they don't even kiss. Salli is still celibate, Alinadar is deeply attracted to her, but not willing risk hurting Salli by pressing her attraction too deeply. But they end up together anyway, because Salli doesn't trust Ali's old mistress worth spit at the end, and she cares for Ali, even if she doesn't love her. Agape not Eros drives the plot and their relationship.

I can't decide if I'm cheating the erotica readers for denying them the Hawt Lesbian Snogging they might expect, cheating the LGBT community by stepping back from a potential F/F relationship, or making a bold decision by making the heroine continue in a chaste relationship, which admittedly is unusual in modern fiction. [2]

Sorry, I'm just worrying about this because I'm still waiting for feedback from my beta readers, who haven't said a peep to me yet.

[1] I will strongly note that B & C are not connected. Ali has a newsstand's worth of Issues, but sexuality isn't one of them.

[2] The only comparable relationship, weirdly enough, is Tony and Pepper in the first Iron Man movie, though by the second it's gone down a more conventional route.

Comments

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Judging from the IM3 trailers, that seems to have changed.

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

She was referring to the timeframe in which The Avengers was set, so yeah... Although in the trailer it looked like the Iron Man suit was cockblocking them.