I'm sure it's true that there are people who are genuinely uninterested in women or women's sexuality who dismiss romance as a genre. But my aversion to romance as such is my perception that it's about women who either (a) are not interested in anything but finding the right man and living happily ever after or (b) who are actually interested in other things but learn by the end of the book that what they really should have been looking for the right man and subsequently sacrifice all of their other goals to be with him. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with telling stories about women's lives, it's that *my perception* of a romance narrative is not of something that's actually about women in a positive way, but about how women need men to complete them.
Now I am *sure* that all romance narratives are not like that, and it's probably true this perception comes more from movies than from books that I haven't read since I was a teenager. But I don't have any concept of where I would look to find stories that aren't like that.
Now about Marvel Divas itself, I'm not sure it really even qualifies as a romance -- I'm not sure WHAT it is -- but I think it bears repeating that I'm not upset by what's in this comic but I'm upset that of all the stories Marvel could have chosen to tell about its women, it picked this one.
Primarily, though, I was uninterested in the book because I thought the 4 characters had utterly indistinguishable personalities and didn't talk about anything I found interesting. It was just, to me, not a well-told story. It's just that, because the external fact of the book's publication and marketing bugged me, I'm still thinking about it instead of tossing it and forgetting it as I generally would with a story I didnt' find well-told.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-08-21 12:37 pm (UTC)Now I am *sure* that all romance narratives are not like that, and it's probably true this perception comes more from movies than from books that I haven't read since I was a teenager. But I don't have any concept of where I would look to find stories that aren't like that.
Now about Marvel Divas itself, I'm not sure it really even qualifies as a romance -- I'm not sure WHAT it is -- but I think it bears repeating that I'm not upset by what's in this comic but I'm upset that of all the stories Marvel could have chosen to tell about its women, it picked this one.
Primarily, though, I was uninterested in the book because I thought the 4 characters had utterly indistinguishable personalities and didn't talk about anything I found interesting. It was just, to me, not a well-told story. It's just that, because the external fact of the book's publication and marketing bugged me, I'm still thinking about it instead of tossing it and forgetting it as I generally would with a story I didnt' find well-told.