#where is my novel where she does unhinged insane things to punish him? tries to kill him and he chuckles?

[notbecauseofvictories]

also I've spent the last couple weeks reading some older historical romance novels, and my made up, wholly unverified hypothesis that in the 2000s romance authors finally grasped that the old-fashioned "no, don't! stop, you brute" etc. scenes were not really landing with audiences anymore. So they faced a conundrum about the future of the genre. Ultimately, I think they chose to quietly stop writing those heroes, and switch them out for a more sensitive model. Still dark and brooding! But with limits, often a Heart of Gold, and more general emotional intelligence.

Still, somewhere out there is a parallel universe where these authors decided to take the opposite approach---to write heroines as unhinged, cruel, impulsive, and emotionally ignorant as their heroes. I don't know if I want to live there, but I wouldn't mind a trip to their library sometime.

[unnameablethings]

#I read a whole novel about how a man married a woman and then proceeded to abuse her#(in pretty horrific ways I'm not going to lie. there was no romance in that romance novel.)#and because she's so pure and stoic and virtuous she just....cries privately. thinks about killing him. does nothing.#and then at the end they're in love.#where is my novel where she does unhinged insane things to punish him? tries to kill him and he chuckles?#thinks dreamily about how she must be planning her next attack; is in raptures purely because she hates him so much.#that might not be love but it's the closest thing he recognizes.#meanwhile his otherwise virtuous retiring wife who's spent her whole life taking care of her family#is hunched in the corner planning how to add arsenic to his food at a dinner party because socially he will be compelled to eat it.#seducing the blacksmith so he maybe doesn't shoe his lordship's horse correctly.#befriending his mistress and quietly suggesting that if he were out of the way...maybe....it could work for both of them?#freak4freak regency would be so much more interesting than Two Featureless Dolls With Correct Politics#and I wouldn't be forced to conclude that this duke abused and stockholm syndromed his way into marriage.#from the bookshelf (via @notbecauseofvictories)

don't leave this in the tags im insane about it

also I've spent the last couple weeks reading some older historical romance novels, and my made up, wholly unverified hypothesis that in the 2000s romance authors finally grasped that the old-fashioned "no, don't! stop, you brute" etc. scenes were not really landing with audiences anymore. So they faced a conundrum about the future of the genre. Ultimately, I think they chose to quietly stop writing those heroes, and switch them out for a more sensitive model. Still dark and brooding! But with limits, often a Heart of Gold, and more general emotional intelligence.

Still, somewhere out there is a parallel universe where these authors decided to take the opposite approach---to write heroines as unhinged, cruel, impulsive, and emotionally ignorant as their heroes. I don't know if I want to live there, but I wouldn't mind a trip to their library sometime.