#bodice rippers

[fanaticsnail]

All this picturing Benn Beckman on the cover of a bodice-ripper has reminded me that my very sweet grandma wrote some bodice-rippers of her own....

Just imagie a young gingerbread girly visting her grandma's house and looking up on the wall and seeing these wonderful posters hung up:

It was great and may have awoken all this simping over men who very much belong on these wounderful covers in me 😂

I thought I would share a few of the covers for everyone's viewing pleasure!!

Have a great day/night!!

GRANDMOTHER GINGERNUT, YOU BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Just picturing a small Gingernut girly skipping up the steps of her grandmother's cottage to bring baked pastries and sweets - only to find her Grandmother hunched over a writing desk and crafting smutty literature.

I am screaming Gingernut. I am actually screaming.

How special that your talent has been founded by generations of powerful women. This is spectacular lore, and I am so grateful you shared it with me.

(Beckman as the third cover, though)

@feral-artistry @i-am-vita LOOK! LOOK AT WHAT WE'VE GOT HERE. LOOOOOOOOK.

[sweetsavageflame]

Warrior’s Woman, Johanna Lindsey, Avon, June 1990 

I read this 33 years ago!

[longveil]

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

On a quiet evening, when the sun has long set below the horizon and the bustle of Stormwind outside her window has quieted, Seraa likes to put on comfortable nightclothes, curl up in her overstuffed armchair of red and gold with a glass of port wine or voidblend...

...and read trashy romance novels.

The habit goes back to her youth in Quel'thalas, a guilty pleasure that she's shared with few. Sadly, it's been some time since she's been able to add to her collection - the bookseller in Boralus she once frequented closed up shop a few years back, and Stormwind's markets have had sparse selection of literature of any sort.

Perhaps, Seraanna sometimes wonders, I ought write my own

Under a pen name. Of... course.

[scottguy]

Clinch covers... I had to look that up. We just called them "bodice rippers." Model Fabio posed for many of those back in the day.

Personally, I love the idea that women can want super, almost ridiculously hunky, guys. Why not? We men make few apologies for wanting perfect babes. It's all just fantasy. Women like sex too.

None of this has ANYTHING to do with being objectified or women's rights. It's just fun. Women's are allowed the agency to want to be swept off their feet. If a lot of women didn't want that.. romance wouldn't exist as a genre.

It's fun being a hopeless romantic! Sex is fun too, especially if you're really in love.

So find Mr. Wonderful and let him tear your dress to shreds as he FINALLY gets the opportunity to satiate his long suppressed desire to take you as his own ... in no uncertain terms.

Ever since starting to publish romance novels I’ve been checking out the romance books at the thrift store specifically for the clinch covers, as a reference for what I might want to do with my own books.

As a culture we mocked these to extinction but I think we were just afraid of their power. The modern clinch revival still hasn't reached the heady heights of what they were doing in the 80s! The vintage covers can be really quite explicit. These ones in particular were steamy enough they had to be hidden on an inner flap.

[rhaenyra-the-gracious]

*SPOILERS AHEAD* if you want to read books by Nina Pennacchi and/or Ann Owen (her pen name), skip this post

I've read spoilers and still didn't notice at first, and I forget all the time, that Stephen Weymouth (Slave for Revenge) is homosexual and in love with Guy Spencer.

Realization before the end only came the second time, when I read the paperback. I was reading about the physical appearance of Guy, when I shook up: Waaait a minute, whose POV is that?! (Like I said I always forget about Steve's sexuality.) But then I was like Why is a guy giving a DETAILED description of another guy's half-naked body? Oh, yeah, because he's gay.

One of the first things Guy says to him is (ignore the harsh language, but I think that's also intentional - because, yeah, she didn't want to be too direct) - while they are, or were boxing:

Which is the case exactly. Steve wants him, because he's gay, and Guy won't reciprocate, this, at least, because he's heterosexual.

Also, I'll like to write about Nina's preference for Dull Boys(™). I mean Adam (Captain Swing) and Jacopo (The Prisoner in the Tower) are sharp as a knife. Still, Guy's and Christopher Davenport's (Lemonade) intelligence (especially their self-understanding) leaves much to be desired.

They both can't recognize love or think altogether to be other feelings. Christopher, in the end, realizes this, while Guy never does:

I lol'd so hard at this. Guy, sweety, that's not hate.

And Guy still doesn't realize this.

In Lemonade (as Nina Pennacchi), even Anna starts to suspect Christopher is in love with her, while he horribly mistreats her, and she basically still thinks he's an ogre.

Christopher is madly in love with her wife, from the get-go, but he doesn't know how to show his feelings, he just knows the language of revenge, manipulation and cruelness:

I'm not saying he didn't know how to be gentle, it is clear, that he is capable of it, but in the beginning, he doesn't recognize LOVE, just like Guy, only in the end (unlike Guy):

God... and I love Nina Pennacchi (or Ann Owen).

[yourbuckies]

[rochenn]

Forever cursed to remember this official (?) art of Dooku and Asajj

Why r they posed like they stumbled into a May-December couple photoshoot. It's the worst thing I've ever seen yet at the same time Dooku looks so fucking uncomfortable I simply have to laugh

[swordmaid]

looking like an 80s bodice ripper love interest

[awxcoffeexno]

just got done writing the last part of the patient. going to start working on an 1800s bridgerton-esque fic with a more charming, less bogged-down by the century and a half of pain logan.

it's angsty bodice ripper, victorian!logan (james) time 🎀🫶🏽

[thlayli-ra]

For Anon

(Heavily influenced by this cover art)

[nothwell]

#their valet usually helps them undress so they don't know the order of operations without help #how were they supposed to know they needed to untuck their shirts before unbuttoning them? #or that if you don't take your arms out of the sleeves it turns into a weird little shrug? - @sugarless5

My favourite historical romance trope is "men who don't know how shirts work".

[aeodonii]

Heh, yuri!!

[massivementalitynut]

My Broadway Comm of Nanami Kento from @iwanttobeaseme

[tieflingteatime]

this completely reshaped my brain

[ani-coolgirl]

So Henry wanted to get raw dogged by Sam and Dean like hard, right?

"Ugh, hunters… you're apes… dirty… nasty… ruthless… strong… so strong… I wouldn't be able to stop you at all… you could do whatever you wanted to me…"

[portraitoflestatonfire]

"...you've been my instructor in loving..."