Okay, so, Christina highly recommended Incarnate to me, and I read it and liked it... except. Except. The main pairing is between an eighteen-year-old and a five-thousand-year-old, and that Just Happens to Be One of My Squicks.
Oh, it happens a lot. Twilight? Couple-hundred-year-old vampire and high school girl. Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock-- I adore Jones, I do, she's one of my favorite authors, but this book I like less than the rest of her work just because of the age-disparate pairing. Bujold is another favorite author who hit this squick solidly with her Sharing Knife fantasy series, featuring a long-lived middle-aged male protagonist and a short-lived teenager female protagonist. (The rationale being that they'd live about the same number of years.)So here's the thing. I'm thirty-five. I've done all the formal degree-based schooling I'm ever going to do. I have a husband and a child and a career. I know kids in high school, college, kids maybe fifteen years younger than I am. Kids I even have something in common with -- kids who love books, who love to talk to me about them. But we're in such different places in our lives -- I'm focused inward, they're focused outwards. I've become the person I was going to become, for the most part; they are still figuring out who they are. To think about dating one of them is just weird to me. Now multiply that by two, or by ten, or by three hundred. Just freaks me out.
I understand why these romances are so common and why people like them so much, mind. Who wouldn't like a love interest who could help you with anything? Don't we all want someone who's always patient and kind and supportive, like a perfect parent is supposed to be, but as no parent actually is? (I am a parent myself, as I said earlier, and I can tell you right now that I'm not always patient, kind, and supportive. I try to be!) And hot sex, too! But this kind of relationship is not equal.
I can think of one large-age-disparity relationship that didn't make me cringe too badly: A Monstrous Regiment of Women (Laurie King), a sequel to The Beekeeper's Apprentice (read that one first -- that's another one that I can't give spoilers for). That one worked (relatively so) for me because both the older man and the younger girl are depicted as... really weird. Really weird. And so it was believable to me that they got along better with each other than they would with anyone else. And also the female partner does fight for equality with the male partner (although it's still not full).But anyway. Am I the only one with this squick? Do you have another squick that no one else seems to share?
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I totally see what you mean - when the younger party is teenage and still growing up. Totally. But on the other hand, by the time you hit mid-twenties it seems perfectly normal (to me, in my real life) to have friends from late teens through to those in their 60s and 70s. So I think it'd be less bad if the younger one was at least an adult!
ReplyDeleteYou raise a really good point! And I think you're absolutely right -- I too have friends in their 60's and 70's, with grown children my age, and friends who have just gotten out of school, and it's totally fine. And my husband and I are separated by eight years :) Most of the books I have trouble with have the much younger party as a teenager and still growing up, like you say, so there's kind of a maturity-power disparity as well -- that's the thing that really squicks me :)
DeleteThis has given me pause in a lot of books. In Twilight, though, I think he was only around a hundred, but the point is still valid. I had that same issue, even more strongly than usual with the 5000 year old. I don't know. I mean, I do sometimes ship the vampires or immortals or w/e with the young heroine, but I would prefer that the heroine were of legal age or that the dude weren't so old or something.
ReplyDeleteWhat the big issue here is, I think, is that these relationships also tend to involve the dreaded instalove or at least insta-attraction. Why on earth would someone with a 5000 year old be so interested in someone who, compared to him is but a baby? This can work, but only with enough time to really set the couple up and show WHY they work together.
Heh, yeah. I think this could have been fixed fairly easily, too, by making the people only vaguely aware of their past lives... oh well! I also kind of feel like 5000-year-olds would react very VERY differently to things, but I guess it's hard for me to tell since I'm not 5000 years old :)
DeleteThis weirds me out too. I'll pick on Tamora Pierce, with her pairing of 14-year-old Daine and 30-year-old Numair. They were SO cute together, but I had to pretend in my head that they were closer in age so it didn't freak me out.
ReplyDeleteI guess it bothers me less with vampires and immortals because they LOOK young. However, when I think about it more, I do get a little concerned. This guy could have been her grandfather! He could have known her grandfather! Add some 'greats' onto there. Stephenie seems to love this, though, considering she's basically betrothed newborn Renesmee to 17-year-old Jacob. Gag me.
It's just weird.
C.J.
Sarcasm&Lemons
Oh, YEAH. The baby thing is SO not right.
DeleteIs that Tamora Pierce's Immortals series? I haven't read that one (though I've read all her Tortall books) - do you like it?
I think a big part of the attraction of an older guy for female readers (who are typically the age of the female protagonist) is that level of experience, maturity, and worldliness. I think many of the guys they are dealing with in their own lives are acting much less mature than their actually, youthful, ages. The ability to smooth over the rough spots (or age spots) of an older male character in a literary format allows the author to highlight the benefits of such a pairing and ignore the impractical aspects of a May-November relationship. A bigger challenge, I think, is to write a convincing male lead who is both age appropriate and possessing the qualities of maturity often lacking in his peers.
ReplyDeleteShawn, that's very insightful. I think you're right!
DeleteErm. I think Shawn is making a thinly veiled reference to his hero, Kip, from The Intern's Tale. ;-) That's ok... Kip is a cutie.
DeleteWell, you know... the thing about Kip is that in fact he's not mature at the start; he goes from being less mature to more mature. That's the kind of romance I enjoy, where there's some personality growth involved. Being with someone should make you a better person!
DeleteI'm not sure why this comment didn't post, but it's a good one, so I'll post it for her.
ReplyDeleteThis is Rachel Cotterill's post.
I totally see what you mean - when the younger party is teenage and still growing up. Totally. But on the other hand, by the time you hit mid-twenties it seems perfectly normal (to me, in my real life) to have friends from late teens through to those in their 60s and 70s. So I think it'd be less bad if the younger one was at least an adult!
Ok if one of them is middle aged and the other is a teenage then yes I definitely have a problem with it especially since I have a teenage daughter.But if one is a vampire and they are both teenagers then I don't see a problem with it.I guess it is because I love vampires and when I look at the I see the age they became a vampire not their real age.Like Edward,his siblings,and Stephan Salvatore they don't really act older than their peers,they relatively act the age they were frozen as.Like Rosalie said"We will always be like this,never aging never moving forward".They may be more patient,kind and generous and maybe wiser than their peers but their over all demeanor is still as a teenager.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with you. However, I read Die For Me (Amy Plum) and the girl was 16 or 17 and the guy is around 80-90 - supernatural of course, and it didn't bother me too much this time. I guess it only works if the guy is older, what kind of book would it be if the older character was a woman in love with a boy of 18? Sounds a little creepy, doesn't it? It works if the girl is mature and the guy is a typical guy because they never seem to grow up, really. :)
ReplyDeleteHm. Things like this don't really bother me too much. Probably because I'm attracted to older people. When it comes to things like vampires, I think it's just soothing to think about. No one wants to die. So when people read about a character that's a thousand or five thousand, there's that glimpse of immortality that everyone (at least for a while) wants.
ReplyDeleteThe solid foundations of a lasting relationship i feel are not only based on friendship, but also having things in common. This i feel is so important as by having that similarity you are closer, compared to a relationship in which you share not many interests. When it comes to age i think that there is a limit, before the gap is too wide to be able to connect with the other person and relate to them. If one is more than 15, 20 years older (or in some novels ages apart), then i think the reader will find it hard to believe in their closeness and understanding- for how can such an old person who has seen so much of life relate to a young teenager?
ReplyDeleteThis is a peeve of mine as well. Especially in Twilight. You would think a man that has outlived the average human lifespan would have more refined tastes than to go after high school tail. I would think he would at least want a mature, cultured woman even if she is, inevitably, younger than him.
ReplyDeleteIn real life it is totally creepy, but if the book is really good I forget about the age difference. For me, it's about maturity and if the two personalities fit.
ReplyDeleteNo you're not! I was married (in real life) to a guy just nine (9) years older than I and there were many times that I felt like I was married to a MUCH older man than he actually was. I was still relatively young and he just wanted to sit home or hang with his brothers and drink beer. (not my scene) Not enough in common to make a relationship work with a five thousand year age difference!!!
ReplyDeleteThe age difference in paranormals don't really bother me, but I'm not really interested in reading about older women-younger men in any genre.
ReplyDelete