Happy DAY!
I don’t like pranks at all. I have severe embarrassment issues. Second hand embarrassment too. Oh my god, I can’t watch or read stuff that seems to be setting up humiliation for the characters. I hate it. I still to this day, skip the scene in Princess Diaries 2 on the horse with the fake leg. I saw the set up coming and could not deal with it so I fast forward every time. Maybe it wasn’t that embarrassing. By her tears I’d say it was. I can’t do it.
And I don’t write it. It’s the one thing I can never bring myself to write. Intentional humiliation. I can’t. I don’t try to, but sometimes when I feel like I’m moving to accidentally humiliate someone, I walk away for a bit to figure out how to rework the scenes leading up to that point. I won’t intentionally humiliate because well, one, I like to think I’m a decent person, but for two, I’ve had it happen many times. I was bullied in school. I will not do it in my fictional worlds either. Not even by the bad guy.
Therefore, one of the main genres of both romance and cozy mystery is something I can’t stand. The rom-com. God, I hate rom-coms. I hate the cozies with the rom-com flavor.
Why? Because most of the com in the rom is nothing more than the heroine being a klutz, or a series of unfortunate events that ends with a dogs face in someone’s crotch. No likey.
Most comedy in the books I’ve read isn’t comedy. It’s a humiliation kink. And I hate them. Oh the girl is a ditz. She’s so cute and funny, look she tripped, look her puppy escaped or wrapped her in the leash or dragged her in the mud. Haha laugh and point.
It’s not funny. It’s not entertaining. It’s lame.
Funny is witty banter, or some other such device that doesn’t rely on one person being the butt of a joke, constantly.
Jesus, people, stop doing that.
And while I’m talking about what I don’t like in fiction… I loathe submission humiliation stories. Granted most of the ones I’ve read were poorly written BDSM where the sub never actually agrees to anything. It’s forced submission at best, at worst it’s torture. I don’t get the appeal of that. That’s not to say that I haven’t read good BDSM, I have. And I do love a little non-con. I just can not stand the humiliation kink stories. Especially the non-con kind.
Also, if you’re going to write BDSM, first, do it correctly. Second, don’t sneak it into what looks like a regular contemporary story. Put a damn trigger warning on that if you’re not making it explicitly obvious either in the blurb or by the cover. It’s one of the things I will actually leave a negative review on.
Yes, I do review on Amazon. If I read the book to the end. I never review books I don’t finish. If I like it and if it has something I feel needs to be acknowledged like surprise non-con humiliation kink BDSM. No, I don’t review under my pen name or my real name.
I’ve read one book to the end this entire year. So, it’s not like I review anything that often.
God, I need something good to read. Nothing is good. And I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not me, it’s not that my tastes have changed. It’s not even that I’ve become more exacting in what I read. It really is that the glut in both of my favorite genres is chock full of poorly written stories that finding the good stuff is impossible now.
I don’t know… how does anyone find anything to read that isn’t by the same five pen names all the damn time? I don’t like Mpreg. I don’t like hockey. I don’t like rom-coms. I don’t like daddy kink. I don’t like alpha/omega. I don’t mind age-gap but I do mind the sugar daddy infantilization of the younger partner. I don’t like kink play of any kind. That feeds into the humiliation thing.
I do like the hater to lover trope, I do love the forced proximity trope. I do love small town contemporary. I love good fantasy. I love historical, but I’m meh on Regency. I love cozy to suspense mystery. In short, I’m picky as hell.
So…
You know it’s always a surprise as to what I’ve actually blogged about… by the time I’ve gotten this far it really is a case of “huh, this isn’t what I meant to blog about” but this time, I did kinda stick to the original thought. So… SURPRISE!
Hope you’re having a lovely first day of April. Hoping you’re doing well.
Will talk again later.
Peace,
Mercy
