oyceter | Mori Kaoru - Emma, vol. 05 (Eng. trans.)

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Mori Kaoru - Emma, vol. 05 (Eng. trans.)

Awwww! William's parents are so cute! Though I am sad by how things ended up. And I want to know: do they still love each other? Does he resent her for not being able to handle the stress, even if he knows it's not logical? Do they write to each other?

I very much like that Mori isn't providing a fairy-tale ending to the Jones' story. I like how quietly and slowly things fall apart, how love doesn't conquer all odds, how things like social expectations and whatnot have an effect, no matter how much people try to make them not matter. It's a nice contrast to the usual "Love conquers all!" schtick that annoys me.

But it also makes me afraid of what will happen with William and Emma. I do not know how it can possibly end well! And oh, they are so cute, and part of my love-triangle-hating heart is mollified by the fact that Eleanor isn't in this much.
(but i still want to whap william because dude! not nice!)

Also, I am a total sucker for letters in fiction.

I'm also glad that Mori isn't keeping Emma and William's relationship a secret; part of this is because I detest love stories that involve sneaking around. Another part is just because the schtick of "Oh no! Will they get caught!" gets really, really old.

In conclusion, Emma running toward William and flinging her arms around him is the cutest thing ever.

Unless the cutest thing ever is Mori Kaoru's author notes at the end ("Lace, lace, corsets, stairs, lace, aprons, aprons, glasses, glasses!").

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Oh, Emma. My big summer reading project. It's so adorable, and so ...fraught, really, for all the reasons you mention. I love the art, but my big love is probably for the pacing; nothing seems too forced, but the story moves, y'know? It's ...rather shatteringly period-appropriate that none of the answers are coming easily for any of the lovers, young or old.

Yes! I love also how the art contributes to the pacing; I think my favorite parts are these mostly wordless pages in which we see Emma putting on her maid outfit or something.

Me too! Even though it has me in agonies of waiting for the next volume and the next and the next and etc.

I too adore how complicated and fraught everything is. How there is no clear path.

Though, wow, Oyce, you have a long list of things that drive you crazy in love stories!

Though, wow, Oyce, you have a long list of things that drive you crazy in love stories!

I reread my entry, and wow, I really do! I blame it on consuming entirely too many romance novels, shoujo manga, and romantic comedies? I looooove all those genres, and I love love love good romances, but some of the tropes drive me nuts because I see them so often. Well, ok, that and I'm incredibly cynical and never bought into the Romeo and Juliet thing ;).

Are you adamant about it? Or are you cool with sneaky love and/or triangles if they're done well?

I can do triangles if they're done well and if they involve a lot of unrequited love (I am a complete sucker for unrequited love). Honey and Clover actually has several love triangles/quadrangles/geometric shapes, and it totally works for me because none of them have cheating and because all the people involved are more concerned with not hurting other people than with having their love returned.

I think the thing that throws me out of something is when two people are dating/married/committed and one of them is in love with another person, and that that is portrayed as True Love a la Guinevere and Lancelot (one of the main reasons why I am almost never into Arthur retellings). I always end up feeling sorry for the third person.

Also, part of it is personal -- I absolutely hate hate hate watching people drag out relationships IRL because they don't want to hurt the other person instead of just making a clean break. Just make the break! It is actually less painful in the end! (um, this is totally my own personal projection)

I can do the cheating thing a little better if it's from the POV of the person being cheated on, a la Nana, but no matter what, I end up wanting to strangle the cheater.

I can also do forbidden love if it's ... hrm. I'm not sure. Like, if you have angels and demons involved, I will read pretty much anything! I think I do forbidden love better when it's portrayed as doomed and angsty and dysfunctional with two broken people clinging to each other, as opposed to the "we defy society!" To me, R&J is doomed, but not angsty and dysfunctional, and I always get the sense that they don't really think they're doomed; they actually think they will get away with it in the end (ergo the scheme with the priest). Also, I am a total sucker for sneaky love that has one person hiding their love for the other person because they think it won't be accepted, as opposed to two non-dysfunctional lovers sneaking off together.

Um. That was probably way more than you ever wanted to know!

I was rereading, and I guess the thing that annoys me the most is the idea that True Love Conquers All. Because I don't think it does (I think it helps and it is a good thing, but it doesn't necessarily trump friendship or family), and I hate it when characters do and go off and act selfishly because of that and hurt other people and it's portrayed as wonderful and romantic.

No, no, no, not at all. That's all fascinating. I, too, do not believe that True Love Conquers All. But I am quite the sucker for Doomed Love. But only if it really is Doomed and not lamely for no-believeable-reason doomed. That's one of my big hates in romances when the thing keeping the lovers apart makes no sense at all. Grrr.

Doomed Love can totally get me as well. But yeah, it has to be really doomed.... most of the "Woe! He is of another religion/we come from dueling clans/my family will disown me" type stuff doesn't really strike me as doomed. I mean, I think it can be, but I always want the lovers to actually discuss or something. Like, maybe you are from dueling clans! But have you tried actually mentioning it first to your brother/mother/ruling clan person? (If they do and the answer is "you will be outlawed! We will hate you forever!" then yeah, it does feel more doomed) Also, "this is not going to work out because we are too different" doesn't tend to strike me as Doomed.

Well, unless it's dysfunctional. Ha! And this is where I totally contradict myself, because if you throw in angels and demons, I am so in!

ZOMG. Speaking of Doomed Love, have you seen the trailer for Ang Lee's Lust, Caution? Pushes every single one of my Doomed Love buttons.

Oh, yes, Lust, Caution despite the really lame title is on my must-see -or-I'll-die list.

So, angels and demons are your bullet-proof kink?

Um, not totally bulletproof -- most of my kinks are such that bad writing or skanky issues (gender, glbt, race, etc.) can kill it for that particular work. But angels and demons pretty much guarantees that I'll give something a try. Triple points if it's the guy who's an angel and the girl who's the demon!

What about you? What counts as Doomed Love?

The closest I get to bulletproof is girls cross dressing. When I was kid I really loved These Old Shades and the sequel not to mention the Angelique books which I remember as being full of Angelique having to pass as a boy but it is many many years since I read them so I may be misremembering.

Like you it's not really bulletproof because bad writing and scarifying politics will kill it stone cold dead for me.

I kind of like the Doomed Love of Rhett and Scarlett because it's so willful but you believe her blindness and stupidity and that he would finally lose patience with her. I wish the book wasn't so unspeakably racist . . .

I am also a huge fan of Rebecca in Ivanhoe. Though I am disturbed by my kind of wanting her and Bois-Gilbert to get it on. Because he is DREADFUL.

I do have a weakness for books where the love does not work out. But sometimes I feel very alone in that . . .

A giant YES to the girls cross dressing!! I need to read These Old Shades.

I remember liking Pam Rosenthal's Almost a Gentleman for the cross-dressing, and Julia Ross' The Wicked Lover has it too, but I never finished that one because it annoyed me. And oh!!! Everyone has been watching the kdrama Coffee Prince which also has it and I am so excited because I will start watching it this weekend when I visit

rilina! And someday I need to finish reading Hana Kimi. And the cross dressing is totally why I started watching the RxJ anime, despite my general dislike for the story (well, that and the FLYING CITY!).

I think the one thing that bugs me about cross-dressing is when the guy thinks he is attracted to another man OH NOES and is sooo relieved to find that he is not homosexual.

I am a total sucker for Rhett and Scarlett. Especially the bits about Rhett not letting himself show how much he loves her, despite the ensuing hinky gender politics. Not to mention the race stuff, of course...

I love books where the love does not work out! Unfortunately, it's so hard to find them... but that's one reason why I love Nana and Yazawa Ai in general so much.

These Old Shades is a gas. It's by a long margin not the best Heyer but it's a lot of fun. I like the sequel too. I just bought the first two Hana Kimi and am very excited to read them. Don't spoil me or say anything about them. All I know is that they're cross dressy.

The great love that does not work out gives me a very strange feeling that I find hard to describe. It's like one part of me is brain washed into desperately wanting the two to walk off into the sunset together and part of the enjoyment of love gone wrong is the weird pulling feeling you get from the love-must-work brainwashing being thwarted. Or something.

Aargh! See? It's so hard to describe what the strange pulling ouch pleasure of tragedy is.

Oh, and yes also on the whole thank God I'm not gay bit. Erk.

I have always wanted to have the guy be strangely attracted to the girl disguised as a guy, and then be freaked out when it turns out that she is actually a girl in disguise, because what he was attracted to was the guy. ZOMG! Is he actually gay?! Or not?! Can he actually be attracted to a woman?! Will this totally shake up his sexual identity?! The angst!

I would totally read that.

Now I want to write it! Because it would be DEEPLY awesome. You should do a manga!

I have a feeling it's been written though. (Not that that would stop me from writing it.) It feels SO familiar to me. Though that could be because it happened to me one time. I was fourteen or fifteen and waiting in a fairly sleazy (though not scary) part of Sydney to meet my boyfriend. I was wearing a guy's coat and jeans---pretty much boy clothes---and the coat was big and made me look flat. This guy came up to me and asked me how much. I was shocked and spluttered. And then he looked shocked and spluttered, "Oh my God! I thought you were a boy!" He hurried away very quickly.

Most surreal.

You should write it! It would be awesome!

Yes, me too! Or for the guy to just be like, "Hrm, maybe I'm bi. Ok, cool."

There's actually a subplot like that in the lesbian historical romance "Patience and Sarah," where the cross-dressing half of the eventual couple, who frequently passes as a boy (I forget whether it's Patience or Sarah), gets hired as a helper by one of those guys who travels around in a caravan selling allegedly miraculous elixirs to gullible eighteenth- or nineteenth-century townsfolk. Anyway, after a few days of traveling together the guy makes a pass at the cross-dressing girl, whom he thinks is a boy, and she turns him down. He starts sulking and going, "How do you know you don't like it if you've never tried it?," or something to that effect. Finally Patience or Sarah just comes right out and tells him she's female, then asks if he thinks maybe he was picking up on that. The guy is quite definite about that not being it, and is now as thoroughly over his infatuation with the faux-boy assistant as if he'd been doused with a bucket of water.

A year or so later the cross-dressing girl runs into the guy again with his wife and children (yes, he's married--he'd mentioned that to her when they were originally travelling together). It turns out he's told his family all about her--well, not quite all, since according to the sanitized version one of the kids repeats, the apparently bisexual (at least) medicine-peddler discovered that his "boy assistant" was actually a girl when he went to ask if he could borrow the "boy's" razor and caught "him" not quite dressed enough that it was apparent that the "boy" had breasts, or something to that effect. The cross-dressing girl is a bit disconcerted that he told them anything at all, but plays along with his version of the story.

The guy does seem to love his wife and children, so it's not clear whether he's basically gay but managing to get some kind of emotional fulfillment out of the heterosexual relationship despite its not suiting his sexual tastes (and therefore making passes at attractive young men when he's a safe distance from home), or just likes both genders, but only wants to play around with the one he isn't already married to (or something along those lines).

Awesome!! I have to read that now!

"I think the one thing that bugs me about cross-dressing is when the guy thinks he is attracted to another man OH NOES and is sooo relieved to find that he is not homosexual."

You might find the novel Through A Brazen Mirror by Delia Sherman interesting. One of the things it does is turn that convention on its head.

TNT

I vaguely remember starting that and being thrown out of it for some reason, but this makes me want to pick it up again!

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Mori Kaoru - Emma, vol. 05 (Eng. trans.)

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cross-dressing in fiction

Re: cross-dressing in fiction