What is it about taboo relationship structures that trip our Sex-O-Meter so hard?
I was thinking about romantic relationships with set-ups that make us uncomfortable, but that speak strongly to many of us regardless. Boss-secretary. Aristocrat-servant. Guard-prisoner. Abductor-abductee. Guardian-ward. Hell, even stepfather-stepdaughter—I’d be lying if the mind-boggling and outright wrongness of the relationship in Karen Robard’s Morning Song wasn’t one of the primary titillations that kept me turning the pages.
For me, part of the appeal lies in the inversion of power and relationships, not to mention the frisson of disquieting sexiness inspired by the violation of social taboos. What I can’t figure out is: why do certain power relationships pique my interest, while others just gross me the fuck out? I’m not particularly interested in romances in which the brutal, forceful Greek tycoon forces his secretary to marry him, and we find out later it’s all an elaborate revenge ploy because the secretary’s father was secretly behind the downfall of the tycoon’s father’s second cousin’s hot-dog-on-a-stick franchise, but oh dear lord I have a weak spot for guardian-ward romances, which, as far as it goes, are even more disturbing.
And then, as I’ve explained before, I really enjoy the masochistic pain-pleasure of a high-stakes love story. Love and romance are high stakes, to be sure, but when you’re putting your professional and personal reputation on the line, when the love you hold for the other is forbidden and you have to resist as hard as you can because this love won’t just change your lives, it has the potential to tear apart the fabric of your existence (that’s right, motherfuckers, how do you like that melodramatic bit of phrasing?)—well, I’d just like to say “Hell YES,” and “More, please.”
And then that made me think about the proliferation of sub-genres and specialized niche romances, and I came up with the idea of a new romance novel line that categorizes its stories in a different way: Slightly Squicky Romances. Looking for a story about stony-hearted guardian and the feisty ward who finally melts his defences away? What about a stepbrother falling in love with his stepsister? Hey, how ‘bout that footman falling in love with his mistress—or his master, for that matter? Or do you desire to read about the whirlwind romance between the math professor and the brilliant college student for whom he was the senior thesis advisor? Then look no further than Slightly Squicky Romances, where the relationships are always kinda wrong, but also oh so right.
Shape shifter romances fit this category for me.
P.C.Casts centaur books OMG!
kinda weird having a human in love with a horse. wonderful stories and I have all her books on my keeper shelf but I kinda squirmed at some of the dialouge. in one the goddess offers to “take care” of her centaur husband while he’s in horse form. kinda kissin the beastiality stone there but it was turned into a humorous passage and my sensibilities were not too bruised.
Some other shape shifter novels kind of blur the line worse than that but hey..its fiction and taken with a grain of salt (followed by tequila and lime)
(on an unrelated note.. the confirmation word thingy below is anti69, I hope that doesnt mean I have to BE anti 69)
Dude. You can’t do a footman falling in love with his master. Romance is strictly hetero, didn’t you know that? And bestiality with shape-shifters is right out.
(JOKE!!! SARCASAM!! I SWEAR! Read whatever ya want!)
There was something slighly squicky about Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Ain’t She Sweet? about a woman who falls for her former high school teacher after she accused him of coming on to her when she was his student and got him fired.
OK, it was more than slightly squicky, but dang if SEP didn’t pull it off!
I don’t know what it says that I am already imagining that card stuck in the middle of my next paperback – Order from Slightly Squicky today – Stories of forbidden love.
Oh, oh, oh, I love this topic.
There’s a small thread on AAR right now dealing with the revelation in the new Charlaine Harris grave-whatever book that there’s some feelings between the step-siblings. Personally, I adore it when Harris pushes on various taboos because she’s built a lot of trust in me. Ditto Gaffney in a book like To Have and To Hold. In Romance, outside the particular character of the relationship, it’s all about the trust I can or cannot have in an author. More than anything, I have to feel that the author is aware of the power relations, that she’s sensitive to the most provocative issues, and that, at some very fundamental, she wishes the characters (and the readers, I guess) well.
In general, as someone who has spent literally years researching captivity narratives, I can tell you that for me, most of the fun is in spotting moments of subversion of the expected power differential. Those moments that command shifts, or that understanding and comprehension occurs, or that the power differential actually flips. And in narrative form, I find it virtually impossible NOT to find some moment of subversion (much more so, for example, than in what might actually take place in a real-life captivity experience, as a POW, for example). Those moments of subversion can comfort me, give me a sense of power as more fluid than it might otherwise seem, and reaffirm my faith in the primacy of individual experience over so-called statistical realities. And maybe that’s one of the reasons I like Romance—by it’s very nature, the idea of a relationship that beats the odds happily is subversive, and I just can’t resist that.
This is why I love fan fic so much…You watch certain movies and you can’t help but wonder…
*cough*
*X-Men*
*cough*
*runs and hides*
I have a thing for the jailor/jailee (is that even a word). He’s the stoical, unmovable rock of Gibraltar, you know the type. He’s above weak physical needs, he just stands there and does his job. But then, the heroine does something he’ll think is either unbelievingly heroic/brave/dumb/enticing and BAM! He falls! MWA HA HAA!!
I know it’s been done to death, but I like me a good Stockholm Syndrome any day of the week!
Nora Robert’s Honest Illusions was always my favorite slightly squicky stepsibling romance. Geez, that one is so damn old I feel like I dug it out of the rubble of Pompeii.
I don’t want to read any of these books. *insert disturbed face here* I guess my squick factor is easily triggered (which I find strange, since I’m such a pro-sex slut). I just shy away from anything that smacks (reeks?) of coercion, or where the power is strongly in one player’s hands. I just don’t find it sexy (I think this is why so much “romantica†just doesn’t not work for me; I find it neither romantic nor erotic, let alone both).
On the other hand I loved the first story in Somebody’s Lover by Jasmine Haynes, about the guy in love with his brother’ widow. Forbidden, big time, but it didn’t have that power-imbalance issue that turns me off.
I thought of a couple more with a certain “squick” factor. Pamela Morsi’s Simple Jess is a historical about a man who’s mentally disabled and the woman who falls for him. Colleen McCullough’s Tim handles a similar theme in a contemporary setting.
Anne Rice’s Belinda is a teen having an affair with a much older man. I thought I’d hate it, and I enjoyed it very much.
OK, I guess I’m the only one who’s going to comment on the TV reference… at least I’m assuming the math prof is Charlie from Numbers. I can’t say this one bothers me; they’re about the same age, and there’s never really seemed to be any imbalance in intelligence or power.
I agree with Darlene about Ain’t She Sweet, although I had a hard time getting why the guy was willing to give the girl a chance… I just remember the basset hound!
Ack; missed closing the italics on that comment. Sorry!
I can see that my lack of a cousins-squick thing is really causing me to miss out here!
Brenda Joyce’s latest, _The Stolen Bride_, really laid the squick factor on with a trowel. Perhaps she was deliberately trying to entice this demographic!
Now, would that be Logan and Scott, or Logan and Rogue? 🙂
But I refuse to see any romantic subtext between Simon and River (Firefly) – they’re brother and sister, and that is it.
Laurie R King’s Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series has a bit of an ick factor – he’s was 50ish when they met, and she was 15 or 16 at the time, but the romance in the books is more on the peripheral side. I think that happened in The Time Traveler’s Wife too, kind of, except that one is about their romantic relationship.
I also agree about SEP’s Ain’t She Sweet?. I thought the relationship worked out quite well, even with their history.
Robin, that moment of subversion is exactly what I love best about stories with these sorts of relationships. I’ll even go so far as to say that books that don’t telegraph to me clearly enough that the imbalance is restored in some way tend to piss me off. In The Windflower, for example, it’s pretty clear that Devon is every bit as much bound to Merry as she is his prisoner, and that relationship develops gradually. This is in contrast to, say, To Have and To Hold, when the power shift happens during a very definite scene. And Shadowheart is interesting to me in that the power imbalance starts out heavily in favor of Allegreto, then swings all the way in the other direction in favor of Elena, only to adjust itself yet again before the end of the book.
Books with squicky relationships that fail to restore the power imbalance clearly enough for my liking include several Johanna Lindsey books and The Flame and the Flower.
KTG: Fanfic, and especially slashfic, is often ALL about the exploration of these forbidden, squicky relationships that the writers would never explore in the canon. Which is probably why the draw is so immense and so powerful.
EmmyS: Have not heard of Numbers. I’m essentially TV-illiterate. To give you an idea of how behind the times I am: I watched my first episode of The West Wing this year.
Yes! Charlaine was good for me…totally anticipating the next installment…soon please!
Squick…humm…definately, but it can be good squick if the plot expresses a growing relationship and emotional growth vs. impulsive and slutty bed hopping. As usual, quality writing does it for me. Examples…Kinsale’s The Dream Hunter & Shadowheart squicked some readers, but I enjoy her writing. Or, Champagne Rules begins with interacial sex with a stranger, which could be squicky, but author Susan Lyons develops it into a wonderful story. The new Charlaine Harris started to get squicky when the step sibling attraction appears in the plot, but Charlaine handles it well and now I’m eagerly anticipating more!
Not good squick…rape, incest, D/S, S/M, and really bad writing (ie Jaid Black’s sex licking night creatures).
Did I see Tonda’s book for pre-sale on Borders? Looks like a challenging plot…
BTW, recent failures for me: The Witchling didn’t pass the 10 page test, does it get better? Dressed to Kill by Harper Allen (Bombshell) is so awful that after thousands of books over decades of reading…a virgin moment. I’m going to find my receipt and return this one. It’s a first, I’ve never returned a book but this one is complete middle school soap opera tripe. By page 70 I can’t stand it any more, and so insulted by the poor writing it’s going back…beyond bad.
PS Why is EC ad art so much better than their cover art?
Cassie,
I ship Rogan (Wolverine/Rogue) but I’m a sucker for any good X-men movieverse fic…Surprisingly I’m not alone in my obsession with a love that is illegal in 35 states..
KTG
Jane Feather crosses that squick a lot for me with the thirty yo men and the seventeen yo girls. But I loves them so bad! The cousin thing doesn’t bother me. D/s is wonderful when done right, SM even better. I love the sex in LKH—yes, I’m as slutty as Anita.
I think the only thing that squicks me is bad writing.
Rebyj…Ditto on PC Cast and the horse thing. I enjoyed the prequil, others love her, I have contemplated purchasing several times, but…I squick on the horse thing.
Maybe because a recent local scandal involved a sex ring, VIP’s, a heart attack during sex, and yes a horse. Yes…really, the VIP and a horse. The visualization is…well, squicky.
The Charlaine Harris relationship doesn’t bother me but my best friend is totally squicked out about the idea. However, that does not stop her from borrowing my copies. Course I also cheered when she killed off that character that upset so many other people in one of her other series (sort of a spoiler cover although I should think it’s been enough years since she did it that it shouldn’t be a spoiler. )
Over the top shapeshifter squick for me was Mallory Rush’s Kiss of the Beast. And while wildly popular at one time but left me cringing, Lisanne Norman’s series. When I finally left off the heroine and the alien cat hero were somehow meeting in the middle dnawise so they could have a baby. Insert eyeroll there.
On the other hand I loved loved loved the relationship between Jani Kilian and Lucian Pascal in Kristine Smith’s SF series. Pascal is such a psychopath but Jani is a strong enough character and going into whatever it is they have with open eyes.
word to submit: long69
:exclaim:
I usually have a fairly high tolerance for most aspects of the ‘squick factor’. The only thing that makes me really go “eewwwww!” is anything to do with lusting after/sleeping with your brother/sister/father/mother and that includes steps as well. Just can’t handle it.
I got creeped out reading Anne Stuart’s To Love A Dark Lord and he was only pretending that she was his sister! Aaack! The scene when he is kissing her face and fondling her while a crowded room looks on just made me feel kinda icky.
I don’t think I’ll read Charlaine’s new one then!
DS…Lisanne Norman squicked herself so bad she hasn’t written in years.
One book in particular with the squick factor that I love is Anne Bishop’s Black Jewel Trilogy wherein the hero falls in love the heroine when she’s just a kid, and he much older, becomes her teacher/ friend and waits around for her to grow up. I’m a big fan of guardian/ward romances wherein the hero fights himself for control. Another great guardian/ward with the romance toned down (it’s YA), but still there are Mairelon the Magician and The Magician’s Ward.
God, even though the Stockholm Syndrome set-up is responsible for 99.9% of the asshattery in the Phantom of the Opera fandom and fanfiction, damned if I don’t jump on it every time like a debutante on laxitives.
Hey, I thought Pamela Morsi’s “Simple Jess” was remarkable for the fact that she managed to write a full length historical romance between a typical woman and a man with mental challenges *with no squick factor at all*.
She got into the hero’s head so well, demonstrating his inherent dignity and humanity (as well as his manliness) and allowed us to see how a smart woman could discern those same qualities to fall truly in love with him, disability and all.
But hey for the squick factor in Anita Mills’ ancient tome “Lady of Fire”…a pulsing medieval knight’s tale where the heroine thinks the hero is her half-brother (though he isn’t) and is halfway through a love scene with him before she realizes “I’m awake and I’m sucking face with my brother”. Mills worked it and she worked it well! If you can find it, read it!
Anne Stuart’s books for Onyx—especially the one where the hero is head of a cult. The hero in that particular book is pretty squicky as he essentially takes advantage of the heroine’s mental illness. And the heroine is such a psychological mess! But it’s still in my keeper box.
Speaking of old squick, I’ve got to mention Violet Winspear’s “The Devil’s Darling.” Heroine is married off to repay dad’s debt to a rich and fiery Latin who is 30 plus, she’s a virginal 17 and he rapes her on their wedding night. All ends well (sort of) with them going off to the bedroom to make a baby, with his grandma’s blessing. The macho thing irritated me but the idea of grandma’s knowing look as she closed the door—SQUICK!
I’m light21. I’m OK with that
So, Candy, if the math professor reference wasn’t about Charlie on Numbers, is there a book out there that I should be reading? 🙂
Holy bugger, Darlene, I’d completely forgotten about Simple Jess. I think I read it 3 times before I finally passed it on, I enjoyed it that much and I didn’t get any icky feelings from it. It was different, that’s for sure (not to mention it was set in hillbilly territory, which is pretty rare.)
I recently reread Jane Feather’s Vixen and I was fairly taken aback by the fact that the heroine was 17 and very childish, which translated into her dynamic with the hero, her guardian. The first love scene reminded me of something out of V.C. Andrews. I like the book, but I couldn’t shake the little fits of discomfort that would come over me every once in a while.
I seem to have a low squick tolerance: don’t like cousins mating (must have been the numerous revisions of that genetics textbook I typed while working as a secretary for two bio professors) or big age differences, especially if either H/H is quite young—because in the end I can’t believe the power is ever equal in ways I find romantic. Note, this didn’t bother me in Bishop’s Black Jewels Trilogy because Daemon was hundreds of years old and Janelle human, so a huge age difference was inevitable. Besides, there’s always one exception that provides the rule, or so I tell myself when trying to explain why I can’t read books with 15 year differences but loved these books where the age differences was measured in centuries, not decades—perhaps because it was so patently a fantasy instead of the kind of trophy wife thing one reads about in the style section of the newspaper all the time. On the other hand, I don’t mind footmen with their masters/mistresses or shapeshifters or centaurs or were-whatevers. And some other automatic squicks for others, such as adultery, very much depend on the situation (at least in romance novels).
My sister-in-law’s brother married his stepniece. He was 37 & she was 19 at the time. Seeing it in real life killed my taste for slightly squicky romance. I’ve always wondered if the kids should be calling him Uncle Daddy?
I can’t read or watching anything about mathematicians or Julianas, as I come from a family of mathematicians and my name is Juliana. I don’t know how women named Sarah or Jessica do it. Plus, the writers always get the math wrong. How hard is it to check the math with a local starving math grad student?
Or boss/underling romances, or anything where the heroine admires the hero’s greying hair and/or “life lines on his face” sort of thing, especially if she’s young. It’s not a turn-off if she’s in the same age range as the Hero.
D’oh. I’m so used to using the name Lily online, I wrote “My name is Juliana” and signed the post Lily. Obviously my poor grasp of modern-day social skills makes me perfectly suited to be a mathematician 🙂
One of my big squick factors is when the Hero or Heroine have the name of a parent or friend. Especially my father, that is sketchy beyond belief and tends to ruin the novel for me.
Haha, my word is right 32. Damn straight.
I have to second that. Anytime I’m reading a romance novel, and the heroine starts crying out, “Oh (Dad’s name), oh God (Dad’s name),” it just kills the story for me.
Don’t think I’ve ever read a book featuring my fathers name (Dennis). Read one last week with my daughters name, that was a little sqicky.
One that I found to be, possibly not outright squicky, but it kicked me out of the story. The male lead was a minister, and after feeling severe lust toward the female lead, he would occasionally pray something to the effect of ‘If you approve of me seducing her, then give me no sign. Thy will be done.” He slept with her less than two weeks after they first met, and by the end of the book there was no sign he was even planning to propose.
Shapeshifter romances don’t really squick me. If they’re in the same form, whatever form that might be, it’s a lot easier to handle.
. . . oh, another that creeped me out: The heroine had a narrow escape from a rapist right before meeting the. . . I’m just going with ‘male lead’, as he didn’t strike me as any sort of hero. She was shaken by this, and he decides that the way to help her is by heavily pressuring her to have sex. But since it’s GOOD sex, that makes it all right. Even when she repeatedly told him she really didn’t want to rush things.
I’ve read several harlequins that fall into this category. I don’t remember the name, but there was one in which the parents of the leads were cousins. I couldn’t deal with that and had to put the book down.
Funny…we were just discussing a similar topic at ye olde watering hole yesterday.
My squirm button is definintely pushed by hardcore BDSM in which women are thoroughly dominated and humiliated. Why? Simple. Any female who’s been in an abusive relationship finds nothing—and I mean absolutely NOTHING—erotic or romantic about such treatment. In fact, we find it repugnant. This doesn’t require any analysis. The end.
And why is it that so many publishers refuse to put out fem-dom (female dominant) books? I suppose it’s because their readers don’t want to see women dominating men…yet slaver over men reducing women. Assuming most readers are female, that is a sad, sad commentary on where their heads are at.
I truly don’t get it. Assholes of any stripe just don’t turn me on. I’ve known too many to find them titillating.
Judith McNaught’s Whitney, My Love was one of the first romances I read as a young and impressionable teen and still occupies a special place in my heart. I’ve got to say, though, that when I read (in a dedication to a later book, I think) that Ms McNaught’s children are called Clayton and Whitney, like the hero and heroine, I was a bit squicked out. Reading a romance whose hero and heroine had the same names as my brother and me would be enough to do what no amount of tycoon-marrying-his-secretary-who-is-also-his-ward-and-his-cousin-and-the-mother-of-his-secret-baby books could do: put me off romance for EVER.
We have funny names though, so I think I’m safe.