If The HEA is Implausible, How Come It Happens?

If The HEA is Implausible, How Come It Happens?
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

As I've mentioned many times, one of the hardest things about Romance gaining the respect it deserves is the firm conviction on the part of a huge segment of the potential audience that the Happily Ever After "ending" is impossible.

Life, they say, just does not go like that.  The Happily For Now ending is all you can ever expect.

Well, true, if life is long enough, there will be challenges, failures, ignominious defeats, many tears, and many-many funerals to attend.

This is all especially true if you marry and have children.  Children are the joy of life, but they are also the source of buckets of tears.

We all know that, yet STILL persist in understanding the world and our lives in it as heading toward an HEA.

Overcoming the initial obstacles to finding and hooking up with that one special Soul Mate should be the End Of The Story -- and from there on, you live the Happily Ever After.

Just get through the Wedding Day (a real challenge for most!) and it's clear sailing after that.

Those who scorn Romance feel that in reality there is no way that can ever happen. 

And yet, in actual reality -- the real reality we live in every day -- such long-long-stable-marriages actually do exist.

Here is an example that hit the Internet some months ago. 

 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-28946521

---------quote------------
The pair say the secret of married life is kindness, love and tolerance

A couple who met as teenagers 10 years before the start of World War Two have celebrated 80 years of marriage.

Maurice and Helen Kaye, from Bournemouth, met in 1929 when they were 17 and 16 respectively.

They courted for four years because Mrs Kaye's mother wanted her older sister to be married first.

The couple, who are now 102 and 101, said the secret to a happy marriage was being tolerant of each other and being willing to "forgive and forget".

The pair, one of Britain's longest-married couples, plan to celebrate their oak wedding anniversary with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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There's a lovely video on that page you should watch and think about.

This video and some of its images spread through the internet like wildfire.  But nevertheless, there are those who are still convinced such a thing never EVER happens in "reality."

Because we believe in such happenings, such lives, we are the unrealistic people. 

Personally, I don't think there's any great advantage to living within the confines of "reality" -- I think the ability to imagine what is impossible is the Human Trait responsible for all human progress.

But still, a reality-check every once in a while is absolutely necessary to keep progress on course. 

This couple is real, not fantasy.  They are the reality check that those who scorn Romance because of the HEA need to consider.

The HEA is not a fantasy.  It is the reality of real life, and the standard by which success should be measured.

Note this couple has great-grandchildren.  Don't for a moment suppose those 80 years were without challenges, tears, failures, ignominy, and defeat.  But such low-moments in life do not mar HAPPINESS.  Such moments are integral components to happiness.

The HEA is the major, envelope theme for all Romance genre stories, novels, videos, etc.  One sub-theme that should be a part of each HEA is that sadness, loss, grieving, failure, and even embarrassment are components of Happiness.

Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Explaining Marriage To An ALIEN

Someone must have written an explanation of how to explain marriage to an alien from another planet (my apologies for the tautology) but my cursory Google search gave me explanations for children and for idiots (their word, not mine).

http://www.dailydawdle.com/2011/12/how-to-explain-gay-rights-to-idiots.html

No one seems to address the obvious question of why the Government gives benefits to persons who get married.... in an age of no-fault divorce, remarriage, dual incomes, single mothers, etc. They focus on the unfairness of the Government giving benefits to persons who are assumed to have penis-vagina sex from time to time.

Why does the Government do that? My alien thought process doesn't mean to ask for an historical account of how and why marriage came to be.

My romance-minded alien would understand that --presumably-- society benefits if persons who wish to cooperate to raise well-adjusted, healthy, sociable, useful members of the next generation, are encouraged to do so, or at least not penalized financially and socially for the unpaid amount of time and effort that goes into parenting and also making a lifelong commitment to take care of each other, and also of their aged parents.

But what about persons who have no interest in doing all of the above? Why does a government allocate status, respect, and rewards funded by taxpayers to people who shack up?

http://ccgaction.org/swc/realityofmarriage suggests that "marriage" today means two different things, "marriage is merely the public recognition of a committed relationship between loving adults" and "marriage unites a man and a woman with each other and any children born from their union."

If procreation, childbearing, child-raising/parenting, permanence are no longer an essential part of the marriage contract, what benefit is it to a government or to a society?

My alien might suggest that sexual exclusivity ought to be encouraged, even if it is temporary, to slow the transmission of various epidemics. What, then would my alien suggest as a remedy for the concept of "open marriage", which he would see as surely a form of tax fraud.... if not a pyramid scheme.

Perhaps, an alien with Spock-like dispassionate logic might suggest that the tax code should be revised, so that every person --married or unmarried-- should be obliged to file their tax returns separately, excepting only cohabiting parents who can demonstrate that they are actively supporting and rearing children of school age (or younger) and that those children are meeting or exceeding academic goals.

That would benefit the Government and Society.

My alien's solution would not take care of issues of wills and inheritance, death taxes, visitation rights, next of kinship rights. He'd probably abolish the taxes, and suggest that marriage contracts should include Living Wills and limited Powers of Attorney. He would suggest that, if the Government values marriage, the Government should provide one-time, free legal services to draw up comprehensive marriage contracts for all citizens (optional, not compulsory.... but required reading, and mandatory for couples wishing to file joint tax returns.)

Rowena
alien djinn romances

Science Fiction Romance and The Comedy Of Manners

Almost any plot or subgenre of literature can be reinvigorated as science fiction.

Westerns are a natural. You simply give black hats to some of your fellow Space-Ark-mates, or colonists and substitute aliens for the gentlemen in war bonnets.

Better still, make the alien equivalents of Native Americans the heroes. Or, make all of humankind walk in the shoes of all the aboriginal peoples our own colonists have wronged in the past, and present the incoming aliens as pilgrim fathers or conquistadors. Ah, but that isn't the stuff of Romance. Moreover, the natives win in "Independence Day".

You can have Quest plots (The Holy Grail in outer space... and very often, as with the Da Vinci Code, the holy grail in sfr is a fertile, pure young woman), Discovery plots, Adventure plots, Pursuit plots, Rescue plots, Mysteries (including murder mysteries), Rivalry plots, Revenge plots, Underdog plots, Transformation and/or Metamorphosis Plots, Beauty and the Beast, Coming Of Age, Who's Coming For Dinner (prejudice/forbidden love)....

The one plot that may not translate so well into an alien romance is The Comedy Of Manners... which in turn might be described as a highly entertaining, watered down Morality Play. (Erring protagonists don't die, they just end up married till death do them part.)

Yes, I watched "Sense And Sensibility" last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The cast included Emma Thompson, Tim Rickman, and a rather hunched Hugh Grant. I wonder how long it will be before Emma Thompson does us (us Romantics) a huge favor and makes movies of some of the Georgette Heyer novels.

The trouble with Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer --when it comes to space travel-- is that their plots and heroines don't kick butt. They are rewarded for not kicking butts, nuts, or giving tongue lashings to anyone. Heyer heroines, actually, are more dynamic. Some of them do have violent tempers, like Leonie, and they shoot men (or want very much to do so) and fight with swords, and cross dress (like Viola and a few other Shakespearean heroines), and drive racy vehicles too fast.

A Comedy Of Manners depends on the heroine wanting to marry a gentleman, but not being able to tell him so. She is too well-mannered, and he requires more encouragement than she offers.

Usually, she has a sister (possibly multiple sisters) who is/are man magnets, often for the wrong sort of man, and who behave like the sort of woman/women a chap would take as his mistress, but would never marry. Villainy in a man could mean that he has sex with a virtuous young woman (or tries to do so, or promises to do so within marriage) and then leaves her.

Imagine! James T Kirk would be the worst of villains in a Comedy Of Manners. The continent Spock would be the hero.... which he was for most of us, anyway.

In science fiction romance, our heroines have to be in greater physical danger than losing their reputations (ie being suspected of not being quite virginal). Unless they are Queens or Empresses married to a Henry VIII type, and likely to be subjected to a show trial and executed. But that is a different sort of plot. The archetypical Sir Jasper does not cut the mustard as a sfr villain. He'd have to want her world as well as her body.

Our heroines in futuristic settings are expected to be sexually liberated, to have smashed the glass ceiling, to hold their own and often their hero's (blaster or equivalent weapon). They have to rock. And multi-task. They cannot sit around, being nice and proper.

By rights, Eleanor ought to have ended up with Colonel Brandon. We saw much more of the Colonel. He was by far the most heroic. However, he did not want Eleanor. He was doggedly determined to love Marianne... and Marianne was the stock "silly girl" whom (in my opinion) we see far too often, setting themselves up as role models for our impressionable daughters in endless sit coms, Disney movies for teens, and high school dramas.

Eleanor got the man she wanted, but only because of the perfidy of Miss Steele. Colonel Brandon's patience was rewarded... but in sfr, does any hero or heroine worth his or her salt settle for being second best?

Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/