Salisbury.Fake Life, writing

Romance Novels are Dangerous

Bear with me. I’m not about to go trashing a genre that makes billions of dollars. Very clearly it’s a market people want and are all about. But I do want to discuss it a bit.

Let’s take a moment and think about what romance novels are at their core. They’re meant to be distractions. Fantasies about what we want, or think we want. There’s lust. Not a lot of actual romance before we get to the end, and somehow the main characters are in love and ready for their future together. It’s one of those things where we expect to be entertained without going too far into why we’re entertained. It’s time to break into that a bit.

My biggest issue is that the genre presents lust as love, without considering the impact of leaving out the love that gets left behind. Potentially. We don’t really get to see much of that past a happy ending. It’s all wrapped up. Nice little package. But love isn’t always happy. And I’m not talking about the overly drawn out dramatic confrontation that comes right before one of the protagonists realizes that the other is all they’ve ever needed in love. I’m talking about the fact that eventually the quirks that draw you into a partner sometimes might become annoying and not so cute anymore. The nights when trying to be a household feels like an impossibility because you’ve got your own habits, and they have theirs.

Romance novels all have the same basic plot, too, in what I’ve seen from the ten I read in preparation for this post. Boy and girl meet, have a spark, they can’t stop thinking about each other, there’s something holding one of them back from fully accepting feelings, they have wild sex multiple times, one thinks they’re not good enough somehow for the other, big dramatic event happens, the one who tried to leave realizes just how much they love the other, rush to find them/save them/tell them, they get married, and the woman is usually pregnant by the end of the story.

This isn’t a bad plot. But after reading so many in a row, it got tedious. The man is usually incredibly wealthy, completely ripped and fit, handsome as hell, and a loner of some sort. Bad boys are even better. The women are curvy in the right places, but still manage to have a trim waist. Long hair with perfect waves. Career or family driven, never both (there was one rare exception I read), weeps beautifully. The standard impossible people. Some of the main character traits for the men were a bit disturbing. The women consumed their every thought and lives until it was all they could do not to see them. I know the feeling of being in love for the first time with someone and it’s rather difficult to tear one’s mind away from a new love, but the level of . . . intensity and dedication was borderline obsessive. They were overly protective, actively committing violence against a perceived threat to the woman they claimed to love. Jealous. Almost abusive.

The women are typically submissive, even when they’re described as being take charge and full of vivacity. They’re still dominated by the men in the stories, which tells me there’s not much originality in the thought that goes into these things. They’re also consumed by the thought of the man, usually after they’ve had wild sex that stays on their mind for a few days until they can do it again. They snap at the characters around them until one of their friends says something like, “you haven’t been yourself lately, what’s up with that??” and there’s a realization that the woman is in love. But she can’t be in love! They only just met! How could she possibly have feelings for someone she just met? /sarcasm

The level of superficiality in most of these relationships is incredibly off putting to me. There’s not much substance to back up the supposed feelings of the characters. The chemistry they’re meant to have just doesn’t exist. Typical story: they’ve known each other for years, haven’t ever done anything about it, friends pit them together and suddenly they realize they’ve been lacking for seventy years.

What I want from romance novels is reality. I know that doesn’t sell, and maybe I’m an outlier here, but what good are these novels if they perpetuate problems? Women are the main target audience for these (I unfortunately don’t have enough experience reading any LGBTQ+ romance to have an opinion on this, especially when there are others who are much more capable of discussing that topic), and while I appreciate the attempt to have books designed specifically with women in mind, it makes me question what the actual gain is here, and what authors believe women really want.

Sure, the sex scenes are hot. But is that really all the novels are for? I feel like I might be missing the point of these novels. You might be wondering why I’m so interested in this, and the reason is because I’m in the process of writing my own. I read quite a few last weekend all in the name of research, and it discouraged me from wanting to proceed because of how vapid the whole thing is. And maybe that’s the point! That they’re strictly for entertainment purposes, which is fantastic. They are pretty entertaining. But as a reader, I want something more than just a kinky moment in someone’s bedroom. It feels disingenuous and like I’m looking in on something I shouldn’t be. I’m well aware there are plenty of softer romances out there–I read those when I was younger, hoping for inspiration that way–but it still leaves much to be desired in my opinion (no pun intended?).

I think I’ll leave this here for tonight. I do have more to talk about when it comes to characterization problems I have, but that’s a different post entirely, I think, because it’s less related to romance novels. If you made it this far in my ramble/rant, thank you. I would love to have an actual discussion about this kind of thing with writers to see if I’m not quite catching the purpose of this genre. It would be an interesting conversation.

Salisbury.Fake dinner, food

Quorn vs Tofurky/Veganuary

Wow, well, I disappeared for a bit there, didn’t I?  I work in a production plant and since it centers around stuff people want for the holidays, we were slammed with a lot more orders than we were expecting.  That said, I decided this year to try out two different holiday roasts by Quorn and Tofurky, respectively.

I purchased two roasts at the same time since they were on sale, and I have to say I wouldn’t purchase them again if they weren’t on sale.  Not to say they weren’t worth the price, but I definitely don’t have spare cash lying around.  That is one of my nitpicks with the vegan/vegetarian meat substitutes.  Even tofu can be expensive if you want a certain kind.  If it’s made with plants, why is it so expensive?  Well, the more processed it is, the more it costs, right?  Except not always.  I’ve noticed animal product… products don’t have the same issue.  Boxes of macaroni and cheese can be purchased for less than a dollar, while Daiya (which I’m not all too fond of, if I’m honest), is usually above 2 or 3 dollars.  I know there are homemade versions of a lot of the processed vegetarian foods, but I’m all about convenience.  I know this has nothing to do with what I said I’d talk about, so let me get back to the topic at hand.

I bought the Quorn turkey style roast for Thanksgiving.  It looks like this (image borrowed from amazon.com):

51DpwvD91QL._SY400_

Rating: 6/10

The texture was pretty spot on for how I remember turkey.  I know there are vegetarians who don’t like the texture of meat, so if you’re one of those people, I’d avoid this.  It’s got the flavor of cafeteria turkey sandwiches from high school.  It didn’t really remind me of turkey flavor too much, as from what I remember, turkey’s pretty bland unless you brine it or put a ton of gravy/cranberry sauce on it.

This roast isn’t vegan (they used dehydrated egg whites), or at least here where I live it isn’t.  I know the Quorn brand does make some vegan foods, but where I am, unless I travel to a bigger city, I don’t get that option.

The Tofurky brand roast was . . . interesting.  It looks a little bit like this (image taken from Vegan Essentials):

TofurkyRoastLG1

Rating: 7/10

This one was interesting because as you can see on the package, it shows a little bit of stuffing in the center, with a lot of, well, meat.  Mine was mostly stuffing, which wouldn’t have been too bad except I didn’t find the stuffing to be particularly good.  I wanted more of the turkey.  I’d say if the roast had the texture of Quorn’s, but the flavor of Tofurky, it would have been perfect.

There are a lot of vegetarians who say Tofurky has a distinct flavor to it, and it does.  It’s got that vital wheat gluten flavor in the background, because while they do produce mostly soy stuff, the gluten gives it the texture of meat.  Much like a seitan.

I did have leftovers from both, and while the Quorn roast was all right on day two, I made the most epic leftover sandwich with the Tofurky after I sliced it.  I used the So Delicious Cheddar Jack and some Veganaise on two slices of Dave’s Killer Bread (with some Sweet Baby Ray’s to round it out).  Best sandwich I’ve had as a vegetarian.  No lie.

If I had to choose between the two, I’d go with the Tofurky one.  Both had issues for me that would make it difficult to repurchase either one, but if I was told I had to, it’d be Tofurky.

Changing gears a little bit, I’m going to discuss my food plan for the month of January.  Please pardon me if this post gets a bit lengthy.  Food is something I have a weird relationship with, as I’m sure a lot of people do.

For January, I’ve challenged myself to participate in Veganuary.  For those who don’t know, Veganuary is where you spend the month of January living the vegan way, which is more easily explained on the Veganuary website.  You can sign up to pledge, get a starter kit, and there’s just a whole lot of information you can get there.

My goal is to maintain a strict vegetarian diet, and eat far less processed sugar.  I know that’s literally not vegan, but I don’t consider myself a vegan.  I consider myself a vegetarian.  So for me, the challenge will be eating little to no animal products such as eggs and/dairy.  I say little to no because I purchased some meat free sausage recently that has egg whites in it.  I’m not going to throw away food I already have because that seems a bit un-vegan to me (in the low waste sense).

I’m not a vegan because I use plastic bags and paper towels at home.  I have sometimes eaten cheese and eggs.  My reasons for this are my own, and I feel like a lot of people judge others for the way they eat which is really disturbing to me.  Like I said, I work in a production plant and not very many people know I’m vegetarian.  I don’t go around spouting it because it’s my personal business and if we happen to have a free food day where there’s nothing I want to eat, then I don’t eat it.  I don’t stand in line saying it’s rude they don’t have food for me.

It really is something appalling when I watch my favorite YouTubers and the comments are filled with people saying “I can’t believe you call yourself vegan when you _______.”

Who are we to judge other people for how they live their lives?  It all goes back to the whole treat others the way you want to be treated, and it reflects poorly on ourselves if we say we’re all about saving the world when we’re horrid to each other over something as simple as food.

So, my personal goal, like I said, is to stick to a purely vegetarian diet.  I’m excited to try it out and see how far I can go.  Who knows, I might be able to keep it going after January.

TL;DR — Tofurky’s better, I’m doing Veganuary on my own terms.