but i sang you from the dark skies, fill the sails with my own breath
So I reread Devil's Cub Friday during my train ride out to the island. It's my favorite Heyer - the first one I read, and the one I imprinted on at an impressionable age, and I think that shows because it has so many things in it that I've continued to love and look for in the stories I consume (and write):
It's Heyer, so there are certainly issues (class issues up the wazoo in this one), but this one is so firmly ensconced in my heart that I continue to love it despite seeing the problems. (I didn't read These Old Shades until I was an adult, so it didn't have the same impact.)
I mean, I'm sure on some level I was aware of how many of my narrative bulletproof kinks are wrapped up in Devil's Cub, but it really popped out at me on this reread.
I think between this, Star Wars and The Thin Man, you can easily trace the beginnings of my penchant for bickering, bantering het couples.
My m/m BFF-turned-boyfriends thing comes from my early shipping of Legolas/Gimli and Alexander/Hephaistion, which were pretty formative between the ages of 9 and 12. (Well, I was mostly interested in Alexander + Bucephalus as a pre-teen, but Hephaistion was obviously there and his boyfriend in my mind. And it never occurred to me that Legolas and Gimli didn't get married until I was much, much older and discovered that there were people who didn't believe that. Imagine my shock and horror, because really now. They spent their lives together and then Legolas takes Gimli over the sea with him. I don't think it could be any plainer that they were married or whatever the elf/dwarf equivalent would have been. I am just saying.)
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/577172.html.
people have commented there.
- competent ladies who take control of dangerous situations,
- heroines who shoot (at) the heroes,
- heroes who are cranky to everyone but (eventually) the heroine,
- road trips/reluctant partnerships on road trips (see also It Happened One Night and The Sure Thing),
- and a relationship that starts out completely unequal that equalizes over the course of the story (of course, there are still serious imbalances due to the society they live in, but for the story, set when it is and written when it was, the seeds of it are there - she's certainly equal to the task of dealing with him, anyway),
- plus the madcap comedy of the supporting cast (e.g., Leonie and Rupert and the bottles of wine)
It's Heyer, so there are certainly issues (class issues up the wazoo in this one), but this one is so firmly ensconced in my heart that I continue to love it despite seeing the problems. (I didn't read These Old Shades until I was an adult, so it didn't have the same impact.)
I mean, I'm sure on some level I was aware of how many of my narrative bulletproof kinks are wrapped up in Devil's Cub, but it really popped out at me on this reread.
I think between this, Star Wars and The Thin Man, you can easily trace the beginnings of my penchant for bickering, bantering het couples.
My m/m BFF-turned-boyfriends thing comes from my early shipping of Legolas/Gimli and Alexander/Hephaistion, which were pretty formative between the ages of 9 and 12. (Well, I was mostly interested in Alexander + Bucephalus as a pre-teen, but Hephaistion was obviously there and his boyfriend in my mind. And it never occurred to me that Legolas and Gimli didn't get married until I was much, much older and discovered that there were people who didn't believe that. Imagine my shock and horror, because really now. They spent their lives together and then Legolas takes Gimli over the sea with him. I don't think it could be any plainer that they were married or whatever the elf/dwarf equivalent would have been. I am just saying.)
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/577172.html.
people have commented there.