Fellow Old People! Or am I the only one?

I found bodice rippers pretty early too. Ironic cause mom made me watch dirty dancing with her at like 15, I was soooo scandalized. Lol good times

Found that on GoodReads, and followed through with a review on Smart Bitches, bless their little hearts. They aren't down with romances written in the 70s and 80s, because of all the rape-tasticness. I got side-tracked by a review for a historical romance that I haven't seen in decades, called "Purity's Passion", which had no excuses. I remember being stuck with my cousins in a camper on a rainy weekend after everyone was all played out, and that was the only book around to read. I had a bad feeling about it, induced in no small part by the heaving, swelling, overwrought cover, but picked it up since I was fit to peel off my own skin with boredom.

There was this one scene where girls in a boarding school start to experiment with sex and smuggle a mentally handicapped servant's boy (so there's the first triggering violation) into their dorm and tease him until he explodes and rapes one of the students, who later kills herself from the shame. I was just a kid and I couldn't get past that point. Sure it disgusted me, even if my physical body reacted—involuntarily, as these things do. So there was shame involved as well and nausea and a complete sense of being all at sea with these conflicting feelings. I put the book down and steadfastly refused to read another romance story for years.

The first romances I started to read after that hiatus were fanfictions in the Harry Potter genre, which are an interesting and special case. I think the magical setting and darkness of that universe allowed people to take an unflinching look at their own psyches and explore things they had denied about themselves, because there were some truly dark stories that emerged. But as my psychology training showed, just because those impulses are inside us doesn't mean they originate with us. Much of it is cultural, it can be filtered through families and neighbourhoods, media, politics ... some of it may be animal memories. What awareness of them does is to allow us to see how we block them, and in what ways those same blockages also prevent us from releasing creative energy of a more positive, inspired, joyful and healing nature. But blocks are there for good reasons, and the use of fantasy is a powerful and safe means of working through them without letting them corrupt the real world.

Yup. Apparently, them menfolks kept sticking their manroots into Skye without her permission, which wasn't a problem until they tried to stick those manroots into her butt. When they went anal, it led to a disease in which they became irredeemable villains, whereas all the other rapists were fine because they just stuck with her hoohah which made her magically fall in love with them.

Good policy, unless he makes an ass of himself in public which obliges you to speak up as a means of distinguishing yourself from his opinions?

Was that Moi? There are actually a couple of grandmas around. I may not be the oldest gatekeeper after all.

Yeah, that sound like the plot - the whole thing made me roll my eyes the second time around, the first time - I had just graduated from 'young adult angst" ... part of why I left romance novels behind long ago, and started reading Heinlein, Asimov, Sawyer, Hambly, De Lint and a host of others ...

Most effective abstinence method, ever! Anatomical descriptions of orgasms have to be the worst. "After the periformis muscle contracts, the volume of blood accumulating in the soft tissues caused the clitoris to engorge ..." ugh. I hope your cousin was more accurate than a yaoi manga.

I moved quickly away from romance to SciFi/Fantasy/Horror (read Vampire) genres.
That book you read sounds horrific ... I might have eschewed all reading for a while, had that been in my collection.

I want to 'chat' some more about Heinlein and your sci-fi picks, but I'm falling asleep in my chair. Talk soon.

Okay - side note - I have read every one of his books!

Perfect! Then you're the very person I want to talk to. Ages ago, I read Asimov's "Foundation and Empire" trilogy, and fired up, I went looking for more great sci-fi. The big news in sci-fi back then was Frank Herbert's "Dune" and, expecting something of the same quality, I picked that up. Wellllllll .... what a let down. I mean, I've tempered my dejection somewhat over the years, but going from such an amazing and sweeping arch of civilization to a space opera mafioso-style drug war let a lot of air out of the balloon. And with all the criticisms that Old School sci-fi has gotten for misogyny and other serious turn-offs, I've been very scatter-shot about going in for another deep dive. Robert Silverberg's Mahjipoor Chronicles was amazing! Not so fussed about some of Vonnegut's solar systemic stuff.

And then, there are all those rows and rows of Heinlein on the public library shelves. He's got to have inspired a fair fan-base with that amount of published fic, but where to start? Where would you suggest I start?

I was disappointed with Dune myself, loved a number of Silverberg's works and have not tried Vonnegut, but I have hundreds of SF books from amazing authors like Alan Dean Foster, Robert J Sawyer (A Canadian) and the iconic Douglas Adams.

Heinlein Recs: Stranger in a Strange Land, Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.

Heinlein is so far from misogynistic, he writes very strong women and men, is not afraid of LGBT and is an advocate for 'free love' and is 'Libertarian'. He has a couple of styles that he writes in, one of which was directed more at youth - so the story is more of an adventure. Have Space Suit, Will Travel is a great example. These stories are lighter and generally feature teens, another example is Red Planet.

His more serious works delve into politics, understanding human nature, culture, religion (I won't spoil) Stranger in a Strange Land is his best work of those, and I believe it won a Hugo. But try all of his books, you will not be sorry, they are amazing and pretty liberal, provoke deep thought and cover a huge variety.

A book that was written by Spider Robinson, using Heinleins notes/plot etc. and written in Heinleins 'voice' is Variable Star - a terrific read.

And if you liked Asimov and Silverberg, read Nightfall - they wrote it together.

This sounds like a good selection. I will make a trip to my library tomorrow with something to look forward to. Thank you.

Happy reading!

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The tales of the Grimm brothers are dark and mysterious but told in a way that are not too violent for the Young Minds. Unlike the ones that we encounter here.

Some scenes are too graphic for children to understand and comprehend the fantasy the
Stories portray. They might think that its the norm and act like it.

Do you really think so? I think that the limitations of the manga formula, itself, make the stories too inauthentic and ... I would say, absurd, but more in the sense of incongruous, dissonant and senseless, rather than silly, although plenty of them are silly, too, and often without intent. I just don't see too many youngsters taking manga as their formula for life. I don't see any youngsters doing this in fact.

Do you mean Grimms fairy tales? I highly doubt that children would think these fantastical stories with anthropomorphic animals, cannibals, sleeping princesses (or those with really long hair), ghosts or other supernatural creatures are the norm. Children can tell the difference between fantasy and reality, for the most part. In fact, young children tend to be very clear thinkers, at least those that I taught art to, and they are far more creative and imaginative than older kids.

Reading the comments makes me feel so fucking young ;-;

Not at all. This is a site for grown-ups. I just try to avoid these mystery kids on here as much as possible. I really love it when I run across people who are older. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I still love to read amazing stories every single day. I will never stop until I’m dead! NEVER! I actually think I might be the oldest person on here I don’t know that for sure but I’m 47. I would really like it if there was somebody older than me on here. I have had people, I’m assuming minors, comment on my age. Kids cannot understand this fact, on the inside you really do remain the same. You’re just at the mercy of nature and only your physical body really changes. I’m older and I’ve had more experiences, but I’m still the same fun, amazing, open minded, crazy person I was when I was 20 and 30 and 40.