Random Writing Post
(TW: brief discussion of heterosexism, sexism, and rape culture in mainstream media)
So sometimes random ideas get into my head, and sometimes I know what sparked them and sometimes I don’t.
If it is what I must do to return to your side, I will pass through storm and fire; under sky and over sea. Your will alone shall be my barrier; only your refusal will stay me. All other things that come between us I shall tear asunder.
Let no one who wishes to live keep me from you.
This is a vow. I don’t know exactly who says it or who they say it to (just some ideas), but I like it (though like every other first draft it needs revision). It’s exceedingly formal, so I’ll probably save it for a poetic, classic heroic type.
It jumped into my head, and this is one of the times I know why. I really love epic romances. The type where two seeming opposites have something so fundamental in common and find themselves creating a bond that will shatter all evil in its path to maintain itself- be it centuries of oppressive traditions, a cataclysmic war, or time and space themselves. Yet also the sort of bond that creates empathy for other bonds, and thus will be sacrificed for greater good; the tragedy that results when keeping their bond means destroying the lives of others, so it must be let go. (This is my lack of sympathy for Helen of Troy and Paris; I know they loved each other, but they doomed thousands of people they never met because they didn’t just carry the torch in their hearts and accept their fates).
However, there is not a lot of this kind of romance out there featuring characters other than a cismale and a cisfemale. And for obvious centuries-of-patriarchy reasons, those relationships are usually unequal, with the narrative focusing on the man (if it’s an adventure novel) or the woman (if it’s a romance novel) but not on both and even in the romance novels the woman might be the perspective character but she’s usually not society-power-wise equal to her male partner.
This saddens me. I want to read about non-cis-het couples, and I want to read about equals. Both would be great, but the fact that I usually can’t even find one is disheartening. And for reasons I suspect are related to traditions from old romance novels, I have a tendency to find relationships that seem equal until the author veers into skeevy consent issues, because apparently the best way to portray passion is an inability to respect the other person’s boundaries because you want them so badly.
Excuse me while I throw the book at the wall.
To bring us back to the vow. I had all of this swirling around in my head today, and it crystallized into these lines. I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to flesh out the characters and story they belong to, but for now I’ll keep it in my sock drawer.
This concludes the random writing post.
-DA
