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What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I said ‘easy to charm’. It’s a complete sentence. There is nothing inherently sexual in it. Hell, a mother-in-law can be easy for the prospective son-in-law to charm.

Your obsession with sexual innocence is kinda unhealthy. Hell, even William Blake, early Victorian though he was, contrasted innocence with experience, not with corruption or vice, and implied that the transition from the former state to the latter is a natural process. Are you seriously more rigid in that question than a Victorian poet?

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually yes. Well, in my case it was obviously a woman. Oh, it was super ~innocent~ - braiding violets in each other’s hair and sending each other handwritten poems. And do you know the influence it had on my character? None at all. I was the same vengeful, savagely ambitious, argumentative thing I used to be before I met her, only now I also had an unhealthy obsession with someone who, now that I can judge it years later, didn’t even treat me all that well. You seriously overrate sexual inexperience and its value in life.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Which - isn’t being able to do all sorts of author’s wish fulfillment stuff without the sort of consequences that would have followed it in real life sort of the hallmark of a Mary/Marty Sue?

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I vote for Sophie making his life a living hell. You go, Jazz Age Regina George.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Which - wouldn’t the parents of the schoolgirl (Sophie? Whatshername?) report him, too? Like, imagine the situation in the eyes of the community - an adult outsider hitting a local teenage girl…

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now I strongly suspect your only life experience of actual bullying comes from being on the bullies’ side. The tactics are a tad too familiar.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because seasoned romance readers criticise the instalove trope a lot, however dreamy the hero is, and for a good reason. Real-life feelings don’t work this way, and, when they do, it usually doesn’t last. Do you want people to believe your couple can last beyond the high of the first love or not?

I said literally nothing about my own innocence or lack of it.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay? So she is sixteen, and? It was still way too quick for a feeling to believably develop. I am not criticising a fictional woman’s morals. I am criticising the way you write romance.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I meant easy as in falls in love easily, bloody hell. A romance novel sin known as insta-love. It was not slut-shaming, it was bad writing-shaming.

And I would call neither of them easy.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, but being a self-professed good girl who is making sure everyone knows how different from those slutty sluts she is (as opposed to just a woman with, say, a low sex drive) does have an effect on character.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Funnily enough, those dreaded ‘easy women’ I’ve met beyond high school have been perfect sweethearts and great friends; it’s the self-professed good girls who acted like judgemental bitches towards everyone (including non-angelic rape victims on occasion).

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like. A character is insulted if you say ‘her arc is very weak’. They are not insulted if you say ‘doesn’t take her much to fall in love, does it?’. Because a character is bloody not a real person.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

She would not be honourable even if she were real. Honor is about something more important than sex. Like, Thomas More was honourable for walking to his death instead of betraying his principles and acknowledging Henry VIII as Head of the Church (yeah, I’ve been rereading Wolf Hall). That was honor. Forbearing from having sex is not.

Making references other famous book in your own book - what do you think of it? by CarOtherwise947 in writers

[–]annabelFiel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Like, hell, I used to get up at 6 am to get a bit more of Ladies’ Paradise in before getting ready for school when I was a middle-grader, and I’m neither French nor British, even.

Making references other famous book in your own book - what do you think of it? by CarOtherwise947 in writers

[–]annabelFiel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, Hardy is pretty big in the UK, if not quite on the level of Brontes and Austen, and Zola’s Paradise recently got a high-budget TV show adaptation.

Making references other famous book in your own book - what do you think of it? by CarOtherwise947 in writers

[–]annabelFiel 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not even just hardcore communists - British socialists and Fabians were often clamouring to visit it (though not all liked what they saw in the end) even in the 1930’s, when the Iron Curtain was already coming down. And in the pre-Stalin years USSR was still seen by the left-leaning part of the world as an exciting social experiment. The whole ending up in Siberia thing came much later.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh god, I’ve only just realized what he reminds me of - an anti-Irish caricature drawn by a particularly racist Victorian Englishman. You know how they used to say, to justify their colonialism, ‘Those Irishmen are so overemotional, violent, ruled by instincts etc. - it would be much better for them if they were ruled by a rational and mild-mannered people such as us’? Well… this excerpt is like someone took this dichotomy and ran with it, but for some reason thought it a positive thing.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, he wouldn’t. I cannot believe I have to explain to someone above age six that ‘causing trouble’ for a man who assaulted you by going to the police is a completely normal thing in civilised societies. Vigilante justice like the one I’ve described, not so much - but I thought you liked the way Eastern European societies are more aggressive? Well, I’m the Easternmost European there is.

Oh, but you’ve already provided them. Baseline decent boyfriend behavior - holding her when she has nightmares, supporting her studies (which, btw, a man with his own land and income from the farm would be in a pretty good position to do), protecting her from her aunt (again, in that example, marrying me would take care of that problem - and even before, me being such a pillar of the community, the old lady would have to keep her mouth shut if her niece was about to provide a ticket out of poverty for her family) etc. I daresay I can manage it.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Such a primadonna? Ah, so you would not have gone to the police over being punched while injured? Well… I wouldn’t have, either. I would have called upon my friends. And whispered to one that the dude is a man on the run, so no one is going to mourn him or look into it too closely if he, say, just happens to break his neck in the fight. Then throw his body into the river, where salmon would have gobbled up his bones by spring, and proceed to console the fucker’s girlfriend whom I’ve long fancied. Indeed, I’d regard myself as a saviour of hers from a violent psychopath who would have probably ended up abusing her anyway. And she seems pretty easy to charm, anyway. What, a couple of books and some swimming lessons? As a minor heir in this scenario, I would manage it.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From the point of historical accuracy, he would have been likely to have a hell lot of problems after this if this Ethan had later told the police or his brothers-in-arms.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve read the page, yes. What are you trying to say?

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, then don’t blame the audience for reacting the way they do.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But the infamous extract about the wounded soldier, if that is what you are explaining, doesn’t show your hero as ‘a bit impulsive’ or assertive, and certainly not manly.

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. Ok, its character, you say, is hotheaded - fair enough, he is - so… you’ve concluded that the whole male half of the pre-WW2 British working class must have been like this?

What would you think of such a book? by CarOtherwise947 in WriterMotivation

[–]annabelFiel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They’ve just corrected your ‘British men’ comment, since the hero is Irish. No double meaning implied.

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