[LMB] Re: Slash (was OT) now Bujold Romance/Slash Meta

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kirsten Edwards" <carbonelle at juno.com>


> (Don't forget that if you lose the Bujold tack (about 1/2 way down) to
> switch back to the "OT" marker--!)
>
> Only in our modern Western age have we been able to divorce the
> sexual goodies from the big messy human family package (Cue the
> cordwainer smith djinn for ironic effect here)

Er, that is massively NOT true, there are ancient stories of the past, 
regarding girls captured into prostitution... there are a lot of reasons why 
prostitution's called the oldest profession (but somehow pimping never gets 
mentioned along with that...).

> Think about it. How many romances do you read in which the heroine
> and the hero have their kids in the picture?

There are some--there's at least one novel by Patricia Wrede where the 
heroine's a widow with children, and the children are actively involved in 
pushing the romance along.    There's the story The Stagman by Robin 
McKinley where the true romantic lead is -not- the husband and father of the 
children.  There are several Regency romance stories, including at least one 
non-novel length story by Georgette Heyer where the heroine's widowed with a 
marriageable daughter, and there are a number of Regency romance novels by 
other writers where either the heroine or the hero has children, and the 
children play roles in pushing the romance forward.  (For that matter, there 
are cases where there are wards who are pushing for it, or one of the hero 
or heroine has their younger siblings they're responsible for--that's that 
case with a Heyer novel that I can't of the name of at the moment).   .

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> Imagine how Miss Fawn's sexual healing would've gone if she'd been
> farther along, say, with twins, and had (1) spontaneous abortion + (2)
> live birth and been (3) nursing the survivor?
>
> Hella romantic, no? No.

Ah, but there is that scene in Devil's Cub where the male lead is holding 
the basin while the female lead is being miserably sick, also, the scenes 
where he dares her to shoot him... and the novel that I can't remember the 
name of above, where at least one of the younger siblings gets 
bedridden--and for that matter, so does the heroine, who comes down with a 
bad case of flu, or some such-and she's hardly the only Heyer heroine who 
gets sick.  For that matter, Heyer heroines also sometimes nurse miserably 
sick male leads, and male leads do nursing of miserably sick relatives of 
the heroines.

Barrayar is -after- the marriage, but is still a story about the 
romance/relationship between Cordelia and Aral--and Cordelia is pregnant, 
and Bad Things happened to her in that pregnancy (the soltoxin attack..).

For that matter, Ekaterin has a son who's a child, in her meeting and 
courtship with Miles.

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> The question simply doesn't arise with slash. The characters can
> sidestep that whole "diaper-years" crushing of the Big Romance entirely
> and stick to the fun.
>
> Anyhoo. Am I on to something here--?

Fantasy and SF traditionally don't have children running around in them that 
aren't e.g. Harry Potter and Hermione and Ron Weasley etc, who are the leads 
and cohorts of the lead.  There are exceptions, though,  some of Pat Wrede's 
protagonists have younger siblings or are parents as noted above,  Heinlein 
in e.g. The Rolling Stones had the whole family off on a trip,  Lazarus Long 
has offspring, and the male lead of a Roland Green novel that I can't think 
of the name of, that was supposed to be the start of a series, was a 
parent--except that his offspring were far away from where he was, he was on 
an assignment a long way from home and his extended family structure.