Books - unnamed epic fail
Mar. 6th, 2009 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwI admit it - the main reason that I don't usually post about the books I can't make myself finish is because I would like to be a published writer some day. What's more, I would like to be a successful published writer. And I gather from various politely (and snarkily) worded posts around the internet that bashing on the works of others who have actually published? Totally acceptable from people who plan to stay strictly on the Reader side of the fence, but not so much if you want to spend time on the Writer side of the fence.
Which is why you don't hear a whole lot about specific romance novels I read unless I like them. I tend to write about things like how there need to be more novels with scarred forty year old women with tortured pasts picking up the 18 year old virginal naive male hotties (because I am beyond sick of that plot in its more normal gender formulation). But I try not to bash on individual novels. Unfortunately, a new group flaw has hit my tolerance level and surpassed it (by group flaw I mean something I have seen in more than 10 separate romance novels, by major authors, with publication dates spanning a full decade or more - equivalent to the hot young heroines and their scarred older love interests thing).
The current thing I am sick of is the mysterious displaced oriental advisor in historical romances. I'm using the extremely loaded word of oriental here deliberately - because it reflects how these texts are constructed. The character's actual country of origin is usually irrelevant to the story - but the other-ness and perceived exoticism of this character's origin are crucial to the story. Lots of authors whose other works I generally like have used this character. He (it is usually a he) is a sexless, servant-level member of the household of some trader or traveller to the orient. The master in this relationship may be male or female, but is rendered by the text as uncomplicatedly good, despite their involvement in trade, empire building, and the East India Companies. That is, the servant character (and the character here may be Chinese, Japanese, Indian; Muslim, Buddhist, or some made up sorta-Zen sounding random religion, etc. ad nauseam) is unquestioningly loyal to the master character because the master character really really deserves the loyalty.
Ok, this makes me scratch my head. There are usually bonus points here because the servant character has no textual reason for this loyalty. At some point the household hired this person on, or this person appeared with the household. Often when the master character was under the age of majority (and thus not contractually or ethically responsible for the possibly coercive nature of the relationship, right?). And then the loyalty to a child card is played to explain the servant's continued presence in the household.
And this asian character's sole place in the narrative is to dispense Eastern Wisdom. Usually this involves either fighting or meditation techniques. Sometimes it may be magical techniques (in a paranormal), or it could be some piece of medical information. Does your romance novel lead have syphilis? The asian servant has a medical cure! Does your romance novel lead need to overcome a debilitating drug addiction? The asian servant can teach you special meditation techniques! Does your romance novel lead need to fight off larger attackers? The asian servant can teach you special fighting techniques!
Blech.
The frustrating part is, to me, that a lot of this comes from sort of a compromise approach to historical accuracy. The author of the story is doing several admirable things - wanting to acknowledge the drug addictions, STDs, and violence of the time period where their story is set. And also to acknowledge that in an era of massive international trade, there certainly were folks from China, India, Japan, and probably every minor island of the Idonesian archipelago hanging out in England at some point, if only during a ship stop over.
But somehow it all goes wrong in the writing process. I didn't used to notice these characters much, but that was before I started reading a lot of history of the East Indian companies and all. Now my brain looks at characters in romance novels in a bit of a different way. I actually prefer the historical novels that just completely ignore the larger world and where all that money is coming from, because so far I haven't read many compromise solutions that I like. It's pretty hard to white wash the sources of imperial wealth in a historical novel, and most of the attempts don't hold up.
There are, actually, a few writers who have managed to use the trope without totally making me throw books against the walls.
Things they did - even 1 item from this list is enough to help a lot.
1) Give your asian servant character a love interest. Especially if your character is a guy. The idea of asian men as sexless is one of those stereotypes we don't want or need to perpetuate in fiction. If your character is a girl, consider having the love interest not be a rich white guy who likes her because she's so feminine. Nuff said on that one. The world already has one Madame Butterfly, and we don't need another.
2) Give your character a quest beyond supporting the hero in their moment of adversity. I.e., the reason this person came along on the difficult dangerous sea voyage to England where they didn't speak the language fluently and risked death and jail? It should really really involve at least some aspect beyond "make life easier for the hero/heroine". Maybe they're looking for a lost family member. Maybe they want revenge on a local noble who displaced their whole family. If you've done the research, there are PLENTY of things you could come up with here. Maybe they're mixed race and want to get to know their other parent who ditched them when returning to the all-white upper crust of England at the time.
3) Make the character not a servant. This is probably the easiest one. Stories I've read where the white upper crust brit seeks out this asian character who is an autonomous person (a professional, a local medic, something) start out from a much better place. I tend to assume that public business folk have their own lives. Not so much with servants.
I can't think of more right off, but I'm sure they exist. Others that come to mind (make the relationship between hero and servant fraught and dangerous) make it hard to have the kind of extremely sympathetic hero/heroine that romance conventions demand. But enough with the sexless asian house servants and their unique wisdom, k? It is not a good way to add depth to your romance historical world. Thanks.
Which is why you don't hear a whole lot about specific romance novels I read unless I like them. I tend to write about things like how there need to be more novels with scarred forty year old women with tortured pasts picking up the 18 year old virginal naive male hotties (because I am beyond sick of that plot in its more normal gender formulation). But I try not to bash on individual novels. Unfortunately, a new group flaw has hit my tolerance level and surpassed it (by group flaw I mean something I have seen in more than 10 separate romance novels, by major authors, with publication dates spanning a full decade or more - equivalent to the hot young heroines and their scarred older love interests thing).
The current thing I am sick of is the mysterious displaced oriental advisor in historical romances. I'm using the extremely loaded word of oriental here deliberately - because it reflects how these texts are constructed. The character's actual country of origin is usually irrelevant to the story - but the other-ness and perceived exoticism of this character's origin are crucial to the story. Lots of authors whose other works I generally like have used this character. He (it is usually a he) is a sexless, servant-level member of the household of some trader or traveller to the orient. The master in this relationship may be male or female, but is rendered by the text as uncomplicatedly good, despite their involvement in trade, empire building, and the East India Companies. That is, the servant character (and the character here may be Chinese, Japanese, Indian; Muslim, Buddhist, or some made up sorta-Zen sounding random religion, etc. ad nauseam) is unquestioningly loyal to the master character because the master character really really deserves the loyalty.
Ok, this makes me scratch my head. There are usually bonus points here because the servant character has no textual reason for this loyalty. At some point the household hired this person on, or this person appeared with the household. Often when the master character was under the age of majority (and thus not contractually or ethically responsible for the possibly coercive nature of the relationship, right?). And then the loyalty to a child card is played to explain the servant's continued presence in the household.
And this asian character's sole place in the narrative is to dispense Eastern Wisdom. Usually this involves either fighting or meditation techniques. Sometimes it may be magical techniques (in a paranormal), or it could be some piece of medical information. Does your romance novel lead have syphilis? The asian servant has a medical cure! Does your romance novel lead need to overcome a debilitating drug addiction? The asian servant can teach you special meditation techniques! Does your romance novel lead need to fight off larger attackers? The asian servant can teach you special fighting techniques!
Blech.
The frustrating part is, to me, that a lot of this comes from sort of a compromise approach to historical accuracy. The author of the story is doing several admirable things - wanting to acknowledge the drug addictions, STDs, and violence of the time period where their story is set. And also to acknowledge that in an era of massive international trade, there certainly were folks from China, India, Japan, and probably every minor island of the Idonesian archipelago hanging out in England at some point, if only during a ship stop over.
But somehow it all goes wrong in the writing process. I didn't used to notice these characters much, but that was before I started reading a lot of history of the East Indian companies and all. Now my brain looks at characters in romance novels in a bit of a different way. I actually prefer the historical novels that just completely ignore the larger world and where all that money is coming from, because so far I haven't read many compromise solutions that I like. It's pretty hard to white wash the sources of imperial wealth in a historical novel, and most of the attempts don't hold up.
There are, actually, a few writers who have managed to use the trope without totally making me throw books against the walls.
Things they did - even 1 item from this list is enough to help a lot.
1) Give your asian servant character a love interest. Especially if your character is a guy. The idea of asian men as sexless is one of those stereotypes we don't want or need to perpetuate in fiction. If your character is a girl, consider having the love interest not be a rich white guy who likes her because she's so feminine. Nuff said on that one. The world already has one Madame Butterfly, and we don't need another.
2) Give your character a quest beyond supporting the hero in their moment of adversity. I.e., the reason this person came along on the difficult dangerous sea voyage to England where they didn't speak the language fluently and risked death and jail? It should really really involve at least some aspect beyond "make life easier for the hero/heroine". Maybe they're looking for a lost family member. Maybe they want revenge on a local noble who displaced their whole family. If you've done the research, there are PLENTY of things you could come up with here. Maybe they're mixed race and want to get to know their other parent who ditched them when returning to the all-white upper crust of England at the time.
3) Make the character not a servant. This is probably the easiest one. Stories I've read where the white upper crust brit seeks out this asian character who is an autonomous person (a professional, a local medic, something) start out from a much better place. I tend to assume that public business folk have their own lives. Not so much with servants.
I can't think of more right off, but I'm sure they exist. Others that come to mind (make the relationship between hero and servant fraught and dangerous) make it hard to have the kind of extremely sympathetic hero/heroine that romance conventions demand. But enough with the sexless asian house servants and their unique wisdom, k? It is not a good way to add depth to your romance historical world. Thanks.
