C.M. Stone's Blog, page 3

Gallusville

Imagine you’re driving on a road trip and your car breaks down in a weird little Midwestern town. The mechanic says it’s going to be a couple of days, so you get a motel room.

At dawn, you get woken up by screaming. You rush outside. On a park bench near the sidewalk is a loudly dressed man, standing on the table. He has his hands on his hips as he walks back and forth. He is yelling. “GOOD MORNING, LADIES. THE SUN IS UP AND SO AM I. GOOD MORNING, LADIES.”

While he’s strutting, another man comes down the sidewalk on his way to work.

“HEY BOB. HEY HEY. HEY BOB. YOU GONNA GET A LADY TODAY?”

“hell damn yeah im gonna get a lady today”

“YEAH. GOOD MORNING, LADIES. THAT’S RIGHT.”

This is a little weird, to be certain, but you shrug it off as the local drunk or something of the like.

To pass the time while you wait for your repairs, you wander around main street and find a craft shop. You head inside, admiring the supplies, when you notice that the shop has a room set up for group craft work. There are tables by the walls and a big circle of chairs. It’s full of women holding knitting, all standing around, waiting their turn in one specific chair.

In that single chair is a large woman, knitting needles working in a blur, as the other women shift their weight from foot to foot and occasionally sigh.

“Where’s Clarice?” one of the waiting women asks.

“She was in my chair when I got here,” the seated woman says. The clicking of her needles stops briefly. Her head cocks to glare around the room through one wide eye. “Don’t ever take my chair.”

And that’s when you finally realize it. You’re trapped in a town of werechickens.

How to Write a Surgeon

Finally we’re to the fun part. Not that writing and editing and all of that isn’t fun. Geez, how could I survive as a writer if it wasn’t? But this is the definitely the part I’ve been waiting for: getting to share what I wrote with all of you.

And here it is at last: How to Save a Surgeon. I’m usually super nervous about reading reviews, but there are some good ones already out there. (And I especially loved Liberty Ann’s review over at CUDDLES PLEASE.)

From here I’ll be popping up on a couple more blogs this week and will be sharing those links later. There’s also a contest if you’d like to win Gambling Hearts swag.

And now let me tell you a story…

I hadn’t introduced Eliza’s brother Jackson in One Night in Vegas with the intention of writing a book about him. If I had, I probably would have chosen a different name for him so people didn’t think of Jackson Avery from Grey’s Anatomy. Then again, Jesse Williams is ridiculously hot, so maybe there’s never a wrong time to think about him.

Nope. Definitely not wrong.

…anyway. I should have remembered the romance novel commandments: Thou shalt not introduce a hunky brother without also writing his story. My editor asked for a book about Jackson and then I had to come up with an idea for what to do with him. Since he was a workaholic, it made sense to me that the only way he could ever spend time with somebody was within a medical context. Which meant this almost definitely had to be a medical romance. I’d never read that many of them (I lean towards pirates and cowboys), but I figured I’d do some research and let the characters drive where it went from there.

Ha ha ha. The world had other plans. Instead of my research involving leisurely days on my ereader, highlighting and bookmarking all the really good bits (isn’t this what everybody does?), my research ended up a little more hands on than that. My step-father slipped on some ice out in the woods and broke his ankle, so I had to call an ambulance and literally run out to find him. It was bad enough that he needed surgery and months of recovery, which lead to me spending entire days hanging out at a hospital and many long discussions with his surgeon about his care at home.

Okay, that sucked, but broken bones happen, right? Well…about a week and a half after he broke his ankle, my best friend–who’d been mysteriously ill for a while but couldn’t get a diagnosis–collapsed at home. In a pool of blood. Luckily, her roommate happened to be there and got her to the hospital. Finally, she got a diagnosis, but it was a bad one: cervical cancer, which had spread well beyond surgical options and had even taken up residence in her lungs.

So the rest of the writing and editing for this book? Written in abject terror. We’d been friends for sixteen years and the thought of losing her was as incomprehensible as imagining my life without me in it. My best friend didn’t want to hear statistics about her odds of survival or how long the oncologist thought she’d live, but we all knew it was pretty dire. Not wanting to upset her, I’d look up survival rates based on how far the cancer had spread on my own, then go and freak out to my mother (my other best friend) about how empty the world would be without her.

But fear and dramatics weren’t what my best friend needed and as scary as it was for me, ultimately all of this was about her. Her health, her feelings, her experience was what mattered, and if we lost her we could all grieve on our own time but until and unless that happened she needed all the support, love, and happiness I could muster for her because it wasn’t about me. If you’ve already read my book, some of this might start sounding a bit familiar.

Without surgery being an option, she went through chemo. If you’ve been unlucky enough to have a condition requiring it or one of your close loved ones has, you know how miserable chemo can be. The treatment is poison, with the hope that it will poison the quickly reproducing cells of cancer faster than the rest of you, but you’re still being brutally poisoned in the hope for a cure. Because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment, I chose to reread The Girlfriend during all of this and became a sobbing, snotting mess for two days solid.

Edits wrapped up and my book was on its way to getting published–and I’d gotten far more medical research than I ever wanted along the way–while my best friend’s treatment continued. I feared how much time I had left with her and how much of that precious time would be taken up with the book instead. She had a CT scan a few weeks prior, but we had to wait for results. And wait. And wait.

Just before my book came out, just before promotion kicked into high gear, my friend finally got results: they couldn’t find cancer. It was gone. They’d have to do followups and all of that, but it looked as though the misery making chemo had done its job well. Even now, it’s hard to fully accept it and let go of the constant companion of fear. Like a rainbow after a hurricane, it’s baffling and hard to trust.

And yet…rainbows do come after hurricanes. Even the worst storms come to an end. Horrible things that should by all rights kill us can be halted in their tracks by modern medicine and the amazing people who’ve dedicated their lives to it.

Congratulations to my best friend Maggie and thank you to all the people out there ensuring people like her get their happy endings.

How to Save a Surgeon

Title: How to Save a Surgeon (a Gambling Hearts story)

Genre: Contemporary Romance, novella

Length: 214 pages

Release Date: August 17, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-63375-336-5

Imprint: Lovestruck

He’s sworn off all women…

When he lost the girl he loved, Dr. Jackson DeMatteo shut down his heart and became the kind of perfectionist surgeon that alienated him from the residents. Now Jackson has a very coveted promotion dangling before him…but it comes with a price. Working with adorably geeky first-year resident Darla Morales is definitely going to cost him. Big time.

She’s just what the doctor ordered…

Completing her trauma residency demands confidence and Darla, who’s already pretty high on the nerd scale, is definitely not confident. Worse still, she’s forced to work with Doctor Dreamy, who makes her even more nervous and defensive. Darla needs to focus on the work and not his bedroom eyes if she ever hopes to become a trauma surgeon.

Excerpt:

“It’s not like that,” Darla said. “It’s more like the lady version of wanting to rescue the damsel in distress.”

“The villain isn’t a damsel in distress.”

“But movies don’t make heroes emotionally vulnerable in the same way, and that’s what appeals about the bad guy. It’s not him being evil, it’s his pain. He’s hurt and looking for something. If he just let himself be loved, he could be saved.”

Jackson glanced at the screen. Had they watched the same movie? “Saved from what?”

“Himself.”

There was something in the way she said the word. This time he couldn’t resist touching her. His hand cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking her skin. “Are we still talking about the movie?”

“Well, everybody could use a little saving now and then.”

Her eyes closed as she leaned into his touch, and he had the urge to kiss her eyelids and feel the brush of her lashes.

“What do I need saving from?”

His fingers slid from her cheek to the side of her neck, lightly tracing the lines of her body to memorize them through touch. She melted back against the couch and rolled her head, exposing more of her neck to his touch.

She was quiet for so long that he began to wonder if she’d respond at all before her eyes opened a slit. “Being a stick in the mud who only ever wants to do things the same way?”

His fingertips just barely teased behind her ear and at the fine hairs of her nape. It was the lightest touch he could manage without breaking contact, but it still flooded his body with heat. “Is that what you think of me?”

“I’m not sure, but it seems like you try really hard to make people think that.”

He drew his hand away, torn between what he needed to do and what he wanted. “Maybe. I might be compensating a little.”

She licked her lips, her heavy-lidded eyes never wavering from his. “Compensating for what?”

“For occasionally being very, very unprofessional.”

 

 

Speculation about Mr. Robot

Yes, yes, I’ll get back to old romance novel recaps eventually. Promise. ANYWAY.

I’m a huge fan of Rami Malek and have been for about ten years now, when Night at the Museum came out and I got my first glimpse of those impossibly huge blue eyes. For years, I’ve tried to convince everyone around me of what a brilliant actor he is and how they absolutely need to watch him in The Pacific and omg you guys he is so good.

Finally, the world has listened to me. (Rami’s talent and his agent probably helped, too.) Mr. Robot is out there and people are rightfully excited about it and yay. The show is up to three episodes now, but it feels like it’s been going on for a lot longer as the story just sucks you in deeper. If you haven’t seen it yet, the entire series is available online to watch. Elliot is a cyber-security engineer, who also hacks for vigilante justice in his free time. He ends up getting sucked into an anarchist cell intent on basically destroying capitalism as we know it. It’s so much better than I can make it sound, so go watch it now and see what I mean.

Spoilers below!

Assuming you have watched it, there’s a lot of discussion popping up about the show now. I thought I’d speculate on a couple of the possible plot holes/mysteries others have been pointing out.

Why is Elliot getting therapy for hacking, instead of having the book thrown at him?

We don’t know all of the details of the crime he was caught for yet, but what we do know is that Elliot has hallucinations. He sees men in black following him, isn’t always entirely sure what’s real and what isn’t, and is clearly a very paranoid, socially detached person. The viewer seems to be an imaginary person he’s explaining everything to. His psychologist Krista (played by Gloria Reuben) talks about him no longer “yelling like before” and refers to his delusions and the medication he’s supposed to be on. Very, very occasionally, someone who is ill gets help instead of prison time. It’s possible that’s what happened with Elliot, as difficult as it can be to swallow. Or there may be more to the story for us to learn yet. Remember: the people on the show aren’t actually saying “Evil Corp”. That’s just what Elliot hears. For all we know, he was never actually charged for anything and has constructed a delusional justification for his therapy.

How can Elliot hate being touched and yet have a sexual relationship with Shayla?

Dude. Duuuuuude. I’m really surprised how many times I’ve seen variations of this one pop up. People who are on the autism spectrum or suffer social anxiety or any number of other reasons for being uncomfortable with hugs and handshakes often have a history of sexual and/or romantic relationships. Just as a neurotypical person is going to be okay having certain kinds of physical contact with some people under some circumstances and not okay in others, so are the neurodiverse. Elliot is an attractive man who’s really sweet to Shayla, opening up around her more than he does in most other situations. That they care about one another and find ways to express that isn’t that surprising.

Isn’t fsociety worried about the Men In Black following Elliot? Couldn’t they follow him to their secret hideout?

Some men in black (the ones that came from Evil Corp to recruit Elliot) are real, but it’s been made very clear that the vast majority of the time they aren’t. This is part of what makes everything so terrifying and confusing for Elliot. He keeps doubting whether or not things are real. In a way, it might have been a relief for him to have Darlene interact with Shayla, as that confirmed for him that Darlene is a real person. As for Mr. Robot…

Is Elliot Mr. Robot?

Don’t know. It’s possible that he is, because we really haven’t seen Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) interact with anyone else in the same reality testing way Darlene has. Even when he was shouting in Elliot’s workplace, nobody else paid much attention. I’m hoping we don’t get that Tyler Durden twist, personally, but there’s no way to be sure at this point.

Is Tyrell Wellick gay? Isn’t the evil closet-case a pretty terrible stereotype?

Based on the way he was interacting with his wife–despite being exhausted, he still indulges her bondage kink when he gets home in the third episode and expresses loving concern over getting too extreme while she’s pregnant–I’m doubtful about him being gay. Bisexual, maybe. Most likely, he’s just an asshole who will do anything (and anyone) he needs to in order to get what he wants. He was taking his pulse while having sex with that guy, tricked him into hopping in the shower, and then hacked his phone as soon as the guy stepped out of the room. Tyrell’s goal there was never about getting laid.

The third episode wasn’t my favorite one yet, but it was still better than any other crime drama I’ve watched this year. Possibly ever. Next episode, will we get more answers or just more questions?

Ruining My Childhood: A Pirate’s Love, chapter fourteen

Sorry for the huge gap between updates. I helped my brother move across several states, spent two weeks with a friend going through chemo, and had a bunch of editing to finish up as well. I’ve also decided to revise how I’m doing these recaps from now on. The chapters are short, so it’s not a lot of work to do one a day…but it does get tedious. So instead I’m going to do two recaps a week. If I can fit more than one chapter into a recap, bonus!

In case you’re just finding these recaps, A Pirate’s Love is a historical romance novel by Johanna Lindsey written in the late ’70s. I’m a huge fan of Lindsey’s, but this book suffers from the awfulness of its era. Recaps start here.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE AND MIND GAMES AND GENERAL ABUSE

When last we left our intrepid heroine and the loathsome butthead hero, Bettina had been dragged back from her escape attempt and locked in Tristan’s cabin on the ship.

Chapter fourteen begins like so:

A soft, gentle pressure on her lips awoke Bettina from a sound sleep. She opened her eyes to find Tristan kissing her. It was a tender sort of kiss—the kind a husband would give his wife upon waking. She tried to rise, but Tristan held her firmly against the mattress.

It turns out the only time Tristan is willing to show Bettina any “tenderness” is when he’s a) kissing her while she’s unconscious and incapable of consenting and b) literally holding her immobile. Très romantique!

She protests what he’s doing and he laughs (because her telling her rapist and captor “no” is hilarious), then explains he’s basically going to…um…well. It appears he’s going to punish her by forcing her to orgasm from his assault this time. And this is one of those things that, in the context of a consensual BDSM scene, could be intensely hot. I bet my face was bright red at the sexy naughtiness of this when I was a kid. Unfortunately, now I’m more focused on how Bettina actually feels:

“With whom do you compare my lovemaking, Bettina, when you have had no man before me?”

“The fact that you sicken me is enough,” she retorted, but she could see the futility of her efforts. How could she make him angry enough to rape her quickly?

She wants to piss him off so he’ll rape her fast, rather than subjecting her to the added humiliation of body betrayal. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Unfortunately, her attempts don’t work and he continues his plan. When he does force her to orgasm, his reaction is…

…

…can you guess?

That’s right! He laughs at his rape victim.

Bettina heard Tristan laugh deeply, triumphantly, and she felt more humiliated by this than by anything she had gone through so far. So this was his revenge—to give her that wonderful, that unbelievable pleasure.

And at the height of the moment, she had clung to him as if she couldn’t bear to let him go.

“Do you still criticize my loving, little one?”

She looked up into his smug, smiling face and suddenly felt angry beyond endurance. At him, for he would never let her forget his power—and with herself, for losing control of her body in passion.

“Damn you, Tristan!” she screamed and pushed him off her body.

She yells at him about how much she hates him and actually uses the phrase “my body may have betrayed me”. In the midst of this, she realizes his threats to whip her (the threats that have been keeping her from fighting back) are empty. He was going on and on about how terrible the Spanish are for how they treat their slaves (lol the english were no better), and so was probably bluffing about subjecting her to the lash.

This paragraph is kind of awesome and reinforces my love of Bettina as a character:

She decided to wait before calling his bluff until it would be to her advantage. She suddenly smiled, and then she began to laugh at the bewildered look on Tristan’s face. How happy she was! Happy that she would no longer have to submit to this giant, this beast of a man, happy that she would no longer have to cower before him or endure his caresses. She could fight him now. And if his strength should prevail over hers, well, there was no humiliation in that. She would at least go down fighting. She continued to laugh.

YES. Laugh in his smug face, Bettina.

Unfortunately, her Mary Sue eyes make an appearance as Tristan freaks out over how weird she’s acting and noticed her eyes are now super dark blue.

“What color are your eyes, Bettina?” he asked wonderingly.

She stopped smiling and pulled away from his grip. “You have seen my eyes enough to know what color they are,” she snapped, turning her back on him.

“Your eyes were blue just now, blue as sapphires. Yet ever since you have been on the Spirited Lady, they have been green—until now.”

“Don’t be absurd. Eyes do not change color. It was merely the light.”

“Look at me now!” he commanded. And when she refused, he swung her around, only to find that her eyes were green again.

The whole time she’s been on the ship, Tristan has only seen her Magic Mood Ring eyes green. Now they’re dark blue. As established earlier in the book, green eyes = Sad!Bettina and the darker the blue, the happier she is. Aside from being a ridiculous way of establishing how the character is feeling, this does tell us something important:

The only time Bettina has been happy since she was kidnapped is when she thinks about beating the snot out of Tristan. And that makes her really, really happy.

Since Tristan is the dumbest pirate ever, he assumes her new good mood is a sign that things are improving between them and he agrees to give her sewing supplies–including scissors–to make herself some new dresses to wear.

There’s a far too long exchange at the end with Bettina’s nursemaid showing up again after Tristan leaves that just feels like filler. It’s more of the same with Madeleine worrying about how Bettina needs to be nicer to Tristan, though Bettina’s not having it now. It throws off the pacing of the whole scene and ends the chapter on a dull note instead of the more interesting exchanges between Bettina and Tristan. This is probably a combination of an editor who wasn’t taking the genre seriously (I’m lucky to have awesome editors who really make me work) and an inexperienced author (this was only Lindsey’s second novel, remember). When looking over your own work try to find what isn’t the story and remove it. Showing us every single moment of every day and letting us know about conversations that have zero plot or character development impact? Not the story.

I’ll get to chapter fifteen on Monday. Really really this time!

Ruining My Childhood: A Pirate’s Love, chapter thirteen

I have thirty-one more chapters to go. Why am I doing this? I really don’t know what masochism compels me at this point.

We’re back to A Pirate’s Love by Johanna Lindsey, a historical romance novel first published in 1978. In the last chapter Bettina had sneaked off Tristan’s ship and gotten arrested for her trouble.

Chapter thirteen begins with what is clearly a flashback or a dream of Tristan’s, to make us feel bad for his poor tragic past:

The night was clear, and a full moon shone above the peaceful little village by the sea. A young boy of

twelve was asleep in his parents’ one-room house.

His father had not gone out in the fishing boats with the other men of the village that night because of a fevered cold, so both the boy’s parents slept in their big bed in the corner of the cottage.

Three hours after the fishing boats had left the little village, the Spaniards came. They came not for riches, for the village was a poor one. They came for sport, to destroy, and rape, and kill.

So these Spaniards have the exact same motives as Tristan did when he attacked the Windsong, except without the “those people we seriously injured and left at sea will probably be just fine” excuse. Got it.

The father goes to fight off the Spaniards and is killed by one. The mother hides the little boy under the bed and tries to fight the man who killed her husband. She puts up a really good fight, but eventually more Spaniards come to join the first one and they subdue her. They also refer to the first one by name: Don Miguel de Bastida.

There’s no dialogue in this sequence, so the absurdity of this is easy to miss. Here is my interpretation of how it goes down:

“Hey, could you help me hold down this struggling woman? I have no motive whatsoever except to rape these peasants because I’m Spanish and evil and entirely unlike an honorable English pirate with no motive whatsoever except to rape a French noblewoman.”

“Of course, Don Miguel de Bastida.”

The little boy stays hiding while his mother is raped by six men and murdered when she attempts to attack Bastida again. Then he comes out for his own feeble attempt at vengeance:

He attacked the Spaniard with his bare fists, but Bastida only laughed and laid open the boy’s cheek with the point of his sword. Then he kicked him to the ground only a few feet from where his father lay, and told him he was no match for—no match for. . . .

Wait, what?



The book The Princess Bride came out five years before this book did. Tristan is a mash-up of Inigo and Westley. And the heroine is engaged to another man instead of her destined true love in both books. How did I never notice that before? I was born in the ’80s. I obviously saw the movie before I ever picked up a romance novel. Why wasn’t it obvious to me?



Of course, Westley and Inigo are both decent people and not raging assholes like Tristan. When Westley scares Buttercup, it’s because he truly believes she wronged him and yet he was still trying to do the right thing by her and save her life. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaan. I should just go watch that movie instead of reading this.

Anyway. It’s revealed that all of this was a nightmare of Tristan’s man pain that’s supposed to explain/excuse the horrific crap he does. He realizes that Bettina is gone and immediately goes to shore to find her. How he finds her is glossed over, but he gets to where she’s locked up and has her released with a story about transporting her to a convent for her father.

Naturally the first thing he does when he gets her alone is threaten her.

“You put on quite a show last night, displaying your body to half the men on the dock,” Tristan growled as they stepped out into the square. “Just what the hell did you think you were doing?”

“I—I—”

“Never mind!” Tristan cut her off brusquely, tightening his grip on her arm. “Anything is preferable to sharing my bed, isn’t it? Even getting yourself arrested!”

“Yes, anything!” Bettina snapped in defiance.

He turned her around to face him, and his eyes were like blue ice crystals. Bettina feared for a moment that he was going to kill her right there on the street.

“There is only one thing that prevents me from throwing you back into that jail, and that is the pleasure I’m

going to have in breaking you,” he said in a harsh whisper. “I have yet to teach you something, my willful wench. And knowing how you feel about me, you won’t enjoy the lesson.”

“What do you mean?”

“In good time,” he snarled cruelly, and started across the square. “And kindly keep that cape tightly closed, Bettina, or I will wring your pretty neck.”

So. He watched his mother get brutally raped and murdered and now all he wants to do is rape this innocent woman and talk about murdering her. Tristan actually makes Dexter look like a really well-adjusted guy finding a constructive way to deal with his childhood trauma.

Bettina does have a valuable insight as she’s forced back to her imprisonment on the ship:

As they passed through the town, Bettina’s face grew red when she realized how stupid she had been. If only she had asked what country claimed this island, she could have saved herself much trouble. This settlement was English, and Tristan had said he had England’s sanction. No wonder those men had laughed at her when she told them a pirate ship was in the harbor. To the English, Tristan wasn’t a pirate

All very true. And the difference between a pirate and a privateer doesn’t matter one iota if you’re not one of his countrymen. But Bettina is being held captive, threatened constantly, and raped by this man. Any desperate attempt at escape seems damn reasonable at this point.

The chapter ends with Bettina locked alone in Tristan’s cabin once again. Chapter fourteen shall be up tomorrow.

Ruining My Childhood: A Pirate’s Love, chapter twelve

This is a short chapter, so I’m going to take a second to talk about what it is that’s appealing about this story. I had some theories before I started my re-read, but now I think I’m well enough into it that I can figure it out. Remember, as bad as some of this looks to modern eyes, I unironically loved this as a kid. This book was a bestseller when it first came out. People liked this book.

When it comes to discussions of a problematic fictional relationship, things usually tend to break down badly. You’ve got the fans who are feeling defensive and attacked and then you’ve got people who are flabbergasted and horrified and then there’s just the regular mainstream “lol mommy porn” misogyny.

This might be depressing, so take this.

The truth is, there’s not actually that much difference between this book and many other alpha-hole stories. Lots of paranormal books are still relying on the same relationship dynamic here. Though rape is explicit in this story, it’s not a rape fantasy. It is a love fantasy. Reading books like this when I was younger, I didn’t thrill at the idea of being captured and tortured. I sobbed along with Bettina, because I felt like she did. I already felt hurt and trapped, fundamentally unlovable. The abuse of the story was essential, because that was catharsis. I wanted it to be terrible, because I wanted the heroine to hurt so I could hurt with her and yet know that it was going to be all right in the end.

I’ll just keep ’em coming.

The fantasy element was that even if I was hurt and made to feel terrible about myself I wouldn’t be abandoned. The one doing the hurting wasn’t going to push me away. They were going to stick around and, magically, change. They’d figure out how to love me and everything would be all right. Was Tristan an ideal partner? Definitely not. But he fit well into a particular category that had already been made in my head. Most of us create these categories when we’re still kids–I must have been ten when I began reading this and already it was there–based on our relationships with our parents, guardians, older siblings, etc. Later in life, we often seek out relationships that match what we already know.

There, there, tiny human.

I can only speak for me and the people who’ve told me what they find appealing about stories like this. Other people likely have different motivations and feelings. But what I found amongst my friends and myself was that we knew that the Tristans of Romanceland were terrible. We didn’t want a book with a non-terrible hero, because we needed that catharsis and that hope that things would get better. We needed to know that he was awful because he was orphaned as a child, or abused, or a woman had done him wrong, and not because he was a cruel, abusive person himself. (When in reality, abusers may well have suffered and that doesn’t make their abuse of their victims any less real.)

Shh. Shh. It’s okay.

And after getting older and having my heart broken spectacularly, I realized something. If somebody makes you feel unlovable, that has no bearing on your worth. That’s not a relationship to try to fix. This is the time to laugh and take care of yourself. If there’s something in your life that needs fixing, do it, but don’t waste your time on a relationship that’s clearly better off over.

Sprouting a million middle fingers might also help.

I also found the book Getting Past Your Breakup by Susan J. Elliott really useful. If you need help getting over the Tristans in your life, give it a try.

Now on to another recap of A Pirate’s Love by Johanna Lindsey, a historical romance novel first published in 1978. I hope you’re not as traumatized by it all as I am.

When last we left Bettina, I don’t even know. Horrible stuff, probably. Don’t make me read it again.

Chapter twelve starts us off with Bettina laying in Tristan’s bed in the dark, counting off the minutes. After he assaulted her and she was so awful by crying at him, he had to go outside to tend to his precious injured feelings.



She wants him to come back and go to sleep so she knows exactly where he is when she makes her escape. I imagine this refusal to just give in and embrace the Stockholm syndrome is one reason why some reviewers hate this character. She makes it uncomfortable. She makes it impossible for you to forget how horrible all of this is. And this is why I love Bettina and she and I are going to run off together and found l’île de Lesbos Nouvelles.

Well after midnight Tristan comes back and stumbles into bed, dropping an arm over her like a dead weight. He stinks of alcohol. Sexy.

Bettina carefully lifted his arm off her, then quickly scooted to the end of the bed, rather than risk crawling over him. She went straight to Tristan’s chest of clothes and took out the two articles she had laid on top of the others.

She had decided earlier that she would have to wear-his clothes, for her velvet dress would be too heavy and cumbersome to swim in. She had picked out the darkest colors he had, so it would be less easy to see her.

I really like this. She knows she’ll have to wear his things and already chose dark clothes, so she won’t be visible in the night. She braids her hair and tucks the braid down the back of the shirt, then covers the top of her head with a hat, so not even her blonde hair will give her away.

And this is all a great way of showing the reader how clever the heroine is instead of just telling us, which is why I’m so depressed about how I think this goes. If my memory from reading this as a kid is accurate, she’s going to immediately get threatened with rape instead of rescue when she gets to the island and Tristan will have to save her and then she’ll be shamed for being such a dumb woman because obviously you should pick the rapist you know over any other possible situation.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not that bad.



Bettina sneaks off the ship and swims to the island like the badass she is. The music from a tavern catches her attention and she doesn’t see anyone on the streets, so she heads there looking for help. She worries that some of Tristan’s men might be inside–an insightful concern–but there’s nowhere else that looks to have activity at the moment. Waiting for day would be smarter and give her more options, but she’s worried about Madeleine and so takes the calculated risk.

She goes up to the first men she sees and asks them for help. This happens:

“Monsieur,” she ventured, but not one of the men looked up at her. “Monsieur, I seek a gendarme.”

“Speak English, will ye?” one of them said. He glanced at her, and then his eyes opened wide. “Blimy! Will ye look at that!”

The other two men looked at her with greedy eyes, and Bettina looked down at herself. She gasped when she saw that the thin, wet shirt clung tightly to her breasts and was nearly transparent. She quickly pulled the material away from her skin, but it was too late, for at least half a dozen men had already seen the clear outline of her perfectly formed breasts.

“What’s yer price, wench? I’ll pay it, no matter what,” one man said.

Okay, this? This is genuinely bad writing here. We’ve been shown how clever Bettina is. We’ve been shown her purposefully picking out dark clothes. This is a woman who’s normally covered by about five layers of clothing. Now she’s in a shirt light enough to be translucent when wet? Modesty didn’t occur to her when she made the shocking decision to wear men’s clothing in public? Bullshit. Bull. Fucking. Shit. This is Lindsey being lazy and it’s disappointing. She’s a better writer than this.

The barkeep gets angry at Bettina for causing a fight between the men and yells at her. She runs away and finds a uniformed guard, but the barkeep runs up and demand she be arrested and charged for the damages to the tavern from dudes fighting because they saw some boobs. No, seriously. Not even joking. This is what happens. She says she’s trying to escape from pirates and the barkeep and the guard laugh heartily over this obvious lie.

She’s arrested and told she’ll be sold into indentured servitude to pay for the damages to the tavern. Unlike the idiotic shirt thing, this is actually plausible and historically accurate. There’s nothing about her to indicate she’s a woman of status. She’s on British territory, speaking with a French accent, dressed strangely, and…well, a woman. No one has any reason to believe her. The cruelty that could be shown to poor, foreign women would have sufficed here without the stupid “her boobs started a bar fight” scene. That was poor characterization for Bettina based on everything we’ve seen of her and a fairly ridiculous reaction on the part of the men, too. If they got into tavern destroying fights every time a pretty sex worker walked up to them, they wouldn’t be allowed in those taverns any more.

The chapter ends with Bettina crying herself to sleep in her cell, blaming Tristan for the situation she’s in. He’s certainly the main reason her life is a giant pile of shit, but this specific situation is due to xenophobia, classism and patriarchy as well. Ignoring that shirt thing, I’d say Bettina’s biggest fault is being naive and thinking that the respect and deference she’s received in the past as a wealthy white woman in her native country is how all women are treated. It’s not. Perhaps she might realize that now.

I’ll have chapter thirteen up tomorrow. It looks like it opens with a flashback or dream.

Ruining My Childhood: A Pirate’s Love, chapter eleven

Just assume every chapter once Tristan shows up in this book is a nightmare. Trigger Warnings forever.

Prepare yourself: I am super sick. I had to go and look at other posts in this series to be sure was writing the title correctly (because I have such a complicated naming scheme) so this recap may make less sense than usual.

In the last chapter some stuff happened and then there was other stuff. I think sewing was involved. Tristan is a shithead.

Chapter eleven has us stuck in Tristan’s cabin with Bettina. She can’t leave and has nothing to do but clean the asshole’s bedroom, which she does. She reorganizes his possessions until the place is barely recognizable and tries her best not to die of boredom. This isolated captivity situation is probably part of what gets the “oh wow, I totes love my evil captor” dynamic really flowing. When you’ve got nothing to do but stare at walls all day, maybe even a hateful crapface like Tristan is a relief.

“Did you miss me, little one?” he asked, a hint of laughter in his voice.

She backed away from him when he closed the door and started unwinding the whip that was wrapped about his chest, the handle hanging over one shoulder.

NEVER MIND.

They have dinner. There’s some back and forth about how she thinks he’s a coward since he won’t even be in the same room with a captive woman without a whip to terrorize her (I agree, Bettina). She wants to know why she wasn’t allowed out of his cabin, since she couldn’t escape. He says he doesn’t want other men to see her because everybody will want to steal her. Gross. She points out that she’s no different from any other woman and that’s a load of crap. He admits that’s true, but still thinks his crew will be tempted and it’s best if she’s only ever out of the cabin with him, in the evening because reasons.

Probably because this way he ensures she associates the pleasure of a minor reprieve from her captivity with his company. Like the Beast being so nice to Belle (who is his captive) by “giving” her a library. Or a bank robber trying to keep hostages calm.

After dinner he takes her on the promised walk on the deck. And of course he makes even this rapey.

It was a beautiful, warm night—a night made for love. She knew that she could look forward to many such nights when she reached Saint Martin, and she hoped that she would find love there—love that could make her forget this nightmare she was living.

She felt Tristan’s presence behind her. Looking down, she saw his hands clutching the railing on both sides of her, leaving her no way to escape. He was standing so close that his body was touching hers, and then she felt his lips brush against her neck. Gooseflesh spread down her back, making her whole body tingle, and she realized that she must break this mood before he went any further.

Ugh. I need a break from this horror. Look, here’s a picture of a woman riding Aristotle like a pretty pony.

Did you think I was joking?

Bettina asks Tristan why he let her believe he’d murdered all those people on the Windsong. He says she wanted to believe the worst about him and he saw no reason to deny her the satisfaction. He claims not to be as terrible as she, his kidnapping and rape victim, thinks he is. She points out he’s a pirate and he lays this whopping load of bullshit on her:

“Not exactly. Again I must disappoint you. I am a privateer under the sanction of England. I prey only on Spanish vessels, as I told you—plate ships carrying gold back to Spain. Do you know how the Spanish get their gold, Bettina?” Tristan asked, his voice suddenly cold. “By the death of men, women, and children. The Spanish enslaved the natives of the conquered Caribbean islands, and they starved and beat them to death because they didn’t work fast enough. And when the native Indians were exterminated, the Spanish brought in black slaves and treated them no better. I have no love for Spain, and I enjoy taking her gold and giving it to England. You may be surprised to learn that there are French buccaneers who do the same thing, and give the gold to France.”

This book takes place in 1667. In 1655, Britain took control of Jamaica, which had a population of about 4,500 white people and 1,500 Black people. By the 1670s, Black people formed the majority of the population. Why’d those numbers swell so fast? Because of the slave trade. For privateers like Tristan, taking slave ships for the crown was just as lucrative as taking gold, if not moreso. Sugarcane was brought over to the British West Indies at around this time, which would turbopower the Atlantic slave trade. Let us also not forget that wherever indigenous populations still lived when the British got there, they tended not to fair so well afterwards.

And Bettina’s country doesn’t get let off the hook either. They lagged behind other European powers, but were already involved in the slave trade at this point.

But of course Tristan would hold himself and his country up as virtuous. Their slavery and genocide isn’t as bad as the Spanish, right? Just like his rape of Bettina isn’t as bad as it would be if somebody else raped her. Can we really believe a man willing to kidnap, mentally torture, and repeatedly sexually assault a woman of his own race while profiting (whether directly or indirectly) from the slave trade and genocide of native populations really cares what happens to any people of color? It’s a convenient way to make himself feel superior to the Spanish, nothing more.

Oh, and Tristan has a great excuse for why he attacked the Windsong, too. They started it. No, seriously.

“I intended to board her and speak with you, or bargain with the captain to learn where you were being taken. The Windsong fired first, and I have never run from a fight, Bettina. However, since the battle was on, I gave the order to avoid killing. I boarded the ship, took you, and left.”

The walk done, he drags her off to his cabin again and tells her it’s happy fun rape time once again. Tristan orders her to strip.

What can I do? Bettina thought wretchedly. I am such a coward! I fear the whip more than death itself. I should have jumped ship today, but it is too late now.

“Now!” Tristan bellowed.

So. Fucking. Romantic.

Once again he promises that this time it’s going to be super hot and she’s going to love it. Once again she insults him. Once again he hurts her and finishes in about thirty seconds. And once again he claims that her being mean to him is why he fucks like a rabid gerbil.

After he’s done assaulting her, Tristan chides Bettina for not taking better care of the dress he keeps tearing off of her. She says she has other dresses, but he says she doesn’t: he claims not to have taken any of her things from the Windsong. She sobs, saying that she had worked on her wedding gown for a month. He yells at her for her stupid, mysterious lady tears and stomps off.

And we’re now a quarter of the way done with this novel. Chapter twelve will be up on Monday.

Ruining My Childhood: A Pirate’s Love, chapter ten

Content Warning for rape apologia and…stuff. Honestly, I’m unsure any chapter in this book will be entirely safe now that Tristan’s arrived.

It’s getting harder to do these recaps, as this book horrifies me more and more. I expected it to be bad. I didn’t expect it to be heartbreaking.

So. Johanna Lindsey’s A Pirate’s Love. Previous chapter. Tristan terrorized and abused Bettina, then made her sleep in bed with him after he sexually assaulted her.

Chapter ten opens with Bettina waking up, hoping it’s all been a nightmare, but of course it isn’t. There’s this interesting bit where she thinks about Tristan:

It was all true. She was actually on a pirate ship. She was actually at the mercy of a man she knew nothing about, a man who enjoyed having her in his power. And he did enjoy it. She had seen it in his eyes, heard it in his tone of voice. He was a man who cared only about his own desires, and nothing about her feelings.

That is the perfect description of the mindset of a rapist right there and it’s backed up by everything we’ve seen from Tristan’s point of view. He’s not some inhuman monster, nor is he overwhelmed with lust. Tristan is simply a person who enjoys having her in his power and doesn’t care about her feelings. (Check out the list of characteristics on page seven. The “instrumental” violence and psychological weapons are spot-on for Tristan’s behavior.)

You’d think Lindsey had studied this with sociologists and psychologists to perfectly capture the way a rapist functions, but the field hadn’t advanced this far in the late ’70s. I know I’ve made jokes about Bettina’s Mary Sue qualities, but Johanna Lindsey truly is an incredibly talented author and even in the midst of this rape-a-riffic garbage and this early in her career, that comes through. She knows how people operate. She knows how they think and act.

And yet her hero is the very realistically portrayed rapist.

Bettina goes digging around through Tristan’s things to find some clothing she can wear (she settles on a shirt of his) and then searches for a needle and thread to fix her ruined dress. She’s interrupted by Madeleine’s arrival and a really stupid question.

“Are you all right, Bettina?” Madeleine asked. “I was so worried that the capitaine might do you harm.”

“He didn’t beat me, as you can see,” Bettina answered, feeling her temper rise once again. “This Tristan exacts his revenge in a much more subtle way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you do!”

You tell her, Bettina. She’s been harmed plenty. It just hasn’t left any wounds that Madeleine can see. Vying for the position of Most Hated Character Ever, Madeleine expresses relief that Bettina has been threatened with a whip into submission, because this means she won’t be physically injured so long as she obeys.

Madeleine tries to soothe Bettina’s (justified) rage in the most offensive way possible.

Madeleine sighed. “I wish your first time with a man could have been happier. But the damage is done, Bettina. The scars of the mind will eventually heal and be forgotten. But scars on your body would be there forever to remind you of this unpleasant experience.”

“Unpleasant! You are too kind,” Bettina declared.”Terror-filled or nightmarish, yes, but unpleasant—this could hardly be called just an unpleasant experience.”

“But that is all it is, an experience that you are going through. It will all be over soon, and then you will marry the comte, and—”

I had to walk away for a while again. A giant bucket of kettle corn and an episode of Castle have slightly soothed my urge to run screaming

They eat and Madeleine reveals that she’s been given the temporary position of cook on the ship. Jules gave up his cabin for her and all these murderous, rape-y pirates are just so very nice, provided you’re an older woman who gives them absolutely everything they want with a smile. Madeleine tries to talk Bettina into developing Stockholm Syndrome to make the whole trip more pleasant, but Bettina isn’t having any of it. We also get a bit of background on Jules and Tristan:

“Don’t you see, Bettina? Given the same circumstances, you or I would have reacted the same way. Jules thought you had killed his friend. He told me last night that Tristan is like a son to him, or more like a brother, for they are only ten years apart in age. Tristan lost his parents when he was but a boy, and Jules took him in and raised him. They have been together ever since. They are close, very close. Would you not have acted the same way as Jules if you thought someone you cared for had been killed?”

Bettina acknowledges that she might, but isn’t ready to forgive any of these pirates. She still wants revenge when she’s freed as well, and Madeleine is just so confused by all this anger about being kidnapped, raped, and mentally abused.

“Bettina, what is the matter with you? You usually accept a situation when it is inevitable. Why don’t you try to make the best of it? It will not be for very long.”

Yeah, just make the best of being raped.

During this conversation it’s revealed that as far as Madeleine could tell, the crew of the Windsong were all left alive. Bettina closed her eyes and didn’t want to see the carnage, but Madeleine is fairly certain even the wounded were merely unconscious and not dead. And, obviously, this totally absolves the pirates for their crime, right? Injuring someone until they’re unconscious–in a time when a papercut could be lethal thanks to the lack of antibiotics–is a really minor thing.



Madeleine tries once again to get Bettina around to her way of thinking.

“Accept the truth that men rule this world and we women have no say. It would be much easier for you if you did. Just as you had to obey your papa’s orders at home, now you must obey this Tristan. And when you marry, you must obey the comte. Men have a way of punishing us women when we do not comply with their wishes.”

I think it’s important to pause here and remind ourselves that Madeleine is also a victim. She’s been kidnapped and terrorized as well. What the pirates want from her (to cook and deal with Bettina) are things she doesn’t mind doing, but she doesn’t have any agency of her own. The entire sexist system that she’s describing as holding Bettina captive is doing the same thing to her, except she doesn’t even have the protection of wealth and social standing that Bettina has.

Whenever there’s oppression, some members of marginalized groups will make the bargain Madeleine has. With no hope of escape, they submit and tell themselves it’s for the best. They help support the system that’s abusing them and hold themselves up as an example to those who would resist. Madeleine is irritating as hell and also complicit in the abuse of Bettina, but she’s still a victim. She’s doing the best she can for her own survival and she believes that the same tactics that have worked for her will help protect Bettina as well.

Will they? Will Bettina find safety by bargaining away her own agency? Is that how she gets her “happy ending” with Tristan?

Madeleine gives Bettina a needle and thread to repair her torn dress, then tells her that the ship is in the port of Tortola. Bettina’s thoughts are immediately of escape, but Madeleine tells her it won’t work because they’re too far out, the longboats have been taken to shore, and Tristan is still on the ship, so trying to swim to safety won’t end well.

One more chapter for this week coming tomorrow. Woo.

Ruining My Childhood: A Pirate’s Love, chapter nine

Trigger Warning for sexual assault, sexual violence, and threats of further violence.

In the last recap, I’d mentioned that I had an interpretation of this book that was going to make it easier to get through. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with contemporary literary criticism, here’s the cool thing: authorial intent doesn’t have to matter. I don’t have to be constrained by what Johanna Lindsey was going for (since she isn’t sitting here reading it with me, it’s not like I know what she was going for anyway). (Also I’d die if Johanna Lindsey was sitting here with me. There’d probably be tears and begging forgiveness for cracking jokes at her work.)

So long as my interpretation is consistent with the text and can be well-argued, it’s as valid as any other interpretation. It’s this beautiful sort of anarchy. You want an interpretation where every character who isn’t explicitly described as having milk-white skin is a person of color? Do it. There is no central authority when it comes to how to read a book. If there isn’t anything in the text to contradict how you read it, nobody on earth is more “right” than you are. Not even the author.

My interpretation is that this is really a deconstruction of the abusive nature of romance relationships written during the ’70s. While my mom told me that romance novels of this era weren’t as rape-y as this book, that isn’t completely accurate. They were often full of rape–and some would argue popular romances today have it, too–but the rape wasn’t called rape.

This is a big part of rape culture. People will say that sexual assault is wrong and then not grasp that having sexual contact with an unconsenting person is, y’know, sexual assault. What’s interesting about this book is that Madeleine gave us a primer on what rape is before Tristan ever appeared on the page: rape is an unwanted sexual act. It couldn’t have been more explicit without copying the Crystal Clear Consent definition in the book.

And when Tristan sexually assaults Bettina, it’s called rape. This is what makes this book radical and shocking. It isn’t “seduction against her will.” It is what it is. Bettina is calling it rape, but Tristan says he’s “dishonored” her and shrugs off her accusations by saying she can call it what she likes. Jules references unwilling women, but doesn’t call Tristan a rapist. Bettina knows what’s been done to her, regardless of how the rape culture around her would try to dress things up. When Madeleine tries to downplay it and talk Bettina out of vengeance, she’s acquiescing to rape culture as well. She’s reminding readers of how this is supposed to go. Bettina’s virginity is gone so she can’t be defiled any further, might as well relax and enjoy it, hey? That’s the thinking. And Bettina defies that. Bettina is not going to quietly play her role as happy victim.

That in mind, let’s see how my interpretation holds up to the rest of the book. In the last recap, Bettina had fainted and Tristan was sad about how he only had about a week left to keep raping her.



Chapter nine opens with Bettina waking up and realizing she’s not dead. She’s sure that Jules has only spared her for the moment because he wants her awake and suffering through her torturous death, though–that is exactly what he told her–and starts to regret her rash actions before:

Why did I have to kill him? she thought miserably, covering her face with her hands. I would only have had to endure a short time with the capitaine; then I would have been free—free to enjoy a long life. It would not have taken too long to forget about this experience, to be happy once again. Why did I jeopardize my whole life just for revenge? After all, the man was a pirate. I should have expected no more than deceit and lies from him. Bettina moaned softly in her misery. What was going to happen now? Was the first officer preparing an even more terrifying death for her? She must escape this cabin, she decided. She would jump ship and end her life in the sea. She could swim, but being so far from land, exhaustion or sharks would soon claim her. Not exactly the way she would choose to die, but a kinder death by far than the lash.

Several of the negative reviews I read of this book talked about how obnoxious Bettina was and how the readers couldn’t stand her. Right now, after reading this paragraph? I want to marry her and have her weird little mood-ring-eyed babies. She recognizes that she could recover from being raped, that it hasn’t “ruined” her. There’s some guilt and self-blame, but not because she was assaulted. It’s because she didn’t think things through better. And then what does she decide? She decides that if she’s going to die anyway, she’s not giving these fuckers the satisfaction of doing it themselves.

Sure, that plan might end as well for her as it did for Ahab, but she remains defiant in the face of a horrific situation. Fuck yes.

Unfortunately, Tristan is still there in the cabin creeping on her. He also finds her fear when she notices him absolutely hilarious, “his eyes were gleaming with merriment, with devilry.” He’s embodying the sexy rogue archetype here, but instead of that little thrill the heroine is supposed to get, Bettina gets angry. Because even if she’s afraid, even if this man literally has power over her life and death, she recognizes he’s wronged her.

Bettina stiffened as rage filled her. “You!” she managed to scream at him. “You should be dead! But I will yet succeed, Tristan!”

“Do you really long to feel the lash across your tender flesh, Bettina?” he asked quietly. He set the tankard back on the table.

She paled visibly. Hadn’t she just asked herself why she had killed him? He was not worth that kind of death.

Look at what she’s thinking there. Not that killing him would be bad. Not that he doesn’t deserve death. Just that this fucker isn’t worth her risking herself. If you’re trying to read their interactions as romantic–which is reasonable in a romance novel–this could be very frustrating for a reader. Bettina isn’t reacting the way she should. Her hate is too real, her suffering too on the nose. It’s like an actual human being got shoved into a pirate rape fantasy and she refuses to play her role.

He demands to know if she’s going to attack him and risk the lash again. There is this beautiful moment as she’s thinking over her response:

Her eyes were dark and fiery emeralds, caressing him with her hatred. There were other ways to take revenge, and she would find one. But she would wait until she was safe.

Incidentally, this is one of the most sensual passages in the book so far. His rape of her was described in stark, almost clinical detail. But now? Her eyes caress him with her hatred. Delicious, delicious rageporn.

He yells when she doesn’t answer him right away. Finally, she tells him that she isn’t going to try to kill him, not even when he says he’s going to keep her in his cabin for his further pleasure. Ugh. She does say she’ll fight him and hurt him if he tries to rape her again, though. He takes out the whip and cracks it at her, assuring her that she will not fight. So. Fucking. Romantic.

Tristan makes her eat, implying that he’s going to rape her when she’s done eating. Bettina purposefully eats slowly, trying to take back whatever small amount of control she can have over the situation. After a bit of this, he finally becomes impatient and tells her he can’t wait any longer. At his order, she goes to him to avoid being whipped. He rips her dress off and twists her arms behind her back when she starts to resist.

“You are hurting me!” she cried, trying to pull free.

“Don’t you want to hurt me?” he asked, but he released her arms. “I know that you wish to fight me, Bettina, but know now that I will not allow it. For every time you strike me, you will receive ten lashes. For the slightest resistance, you will receive five lashes. Do you understand me?”

As terrible as this is, isn’t that really just making the subtext into text? This is what’s really going on in every bodice ripper, in every “forced seduction.” She’s not fighting because the consequences of fighting are too awful. Beauty goes to the Beast’s castle because the alternative is worse. As Mallory Ortberg put it in that linked story, “Her ‘no’ wore the shape of a ‘yes,’ and this lie was good enough for everyone involved.”

Aaand I’ve depressed myself.

His tearing off of her clothes and threats and her protests continue. She begs him to at least snuff out the candles so she doesn’t have to be on display to him, but even this he denies her.

“You are cruel beyond reason, monsieur.”

“You may think so now, but were I to keep you for my own, then you would change your opinion of me,” he said. “You would look forward to my taking you in my arms. Although you didn’t reach fulfillment when we made love the first time, you can’t deny you enjoyed the feeling I gave you.”

Body betrayal is a real thing rape victims of all genders experience and doesn’t mean they wanted it. Bettina refuses to give him the satisfaction of using this against her and starts insulting him when he tries to foreplay up his rape. His response is to stop trying to arouse her and just get off. I’m reluctant to post any of his assaults in this space, but I think it also provides some important context when I talk about how starkly detailed they are. So an extra big TW before this bit. This is right after she snapped at him about his groping:

With that, he climbed on top of her and entered her quickly, and a bit painfully. He rode her hard, with deep, penetrating thrusts, and despite Bettina’s desire to resist, a growing, unbelievable pleasure began to spread through her body, until it was cut short by Tristan’s final deep thrust.

Just two sentences, highlighting pain and her resistance. Where most bodice rippers would focus on sensuality and how she-really-wants-it-even-if-she-says-no, this can’t be read as anything but an assault. He hurt her. She didn’t want it. Yes, her body reacted, but it was against her will.

He collapses on top of his victim when he’s done like the pig he is and she’s trapped there under him for several minutes. Finally she starts trying to get away and says she wants to at least be able to sleep in peace. He makes it clear that she’ll have to sleep in his bed with him and, hey, she could just sleep while being crushed beneath his massive romance hero bulk. She’s not having it and starts putting up a fight. And…

“If you don’t stop wiggling, you will be raped a third time this day. Would you prefer that to sharing my bed?” he asked, his eyes gleaming with devilry.

Bettina’s response is to freeze in terror. Her eyes widen, “pleading silently with him for mercy.” He finally relents and moves off of her so she can sleep without being raped again or having her ribcage crushed by his weight. What a gentleman, eh?

Sorry this recap wasn’t particularly funny, but it was pretty difficult to find the humor in any of this. I’m, strangely, still able to take some enjoyment in all this awfulness in part because I think Bettina might be the only person in the world who hates Tristan more than I do. Of course, sadly, I know that she’ll end up in love with this worthless piece of shit.

Here. Maybe this will help.

Next chapter will be up tomorrow morning.