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Consent cooties
Apr. 29th, 2015 10:35 amSo I picked up at one point a box set of fluffy food-themed mystery cozies for mindless reading. It was either free or a 99-cent thing, I forget which. Anyway, the first one was fun, basically the sort of thing I expected.
The second one I can't get past the first page.
It starts with our heroine musing on how she hasn't dated since her divorce, and then this guy asked her out, and he was attractive but she wasn't ready so she gave him every excuse she could think of, and when he kept persisting she finally said the "dreaded" yes.
Now, I think the intended subtext is that she secretly wanted to go out with him and he knew that so its okay that he pushed past her reluctance to what she really wanted. But ... no no no no. Repeated excuses are not "please ask me again", they are "no". And saying yes to a date should not be phrased as dreaded, even in jest.
...sometimes I wish I were still oblivious enough to see this sort of situation as adorably romantic instead of skeevy as hell.
The second one I can't get past the first page.
It starts with our heroine musing on how she hasn't dated since her divorce, and then this guy asked her out, and he was attractive but she wasn't ready so she gave him every excuse she could think of, and when he kept persisting she finally said the "dreaded" yes.
Now, I think the intended subtext is that she secretly wanted to go out with him and he knew that so its okay that he pushed past her reluctance to what she really wanted. But ... no no no no. Repeated excuses are not "please ask me again", they are "no". And saying yes to a date should not be phrased as dreaded, even in jest.
...sometimes I wish I were still oblivious enough to see this sort of situation as adorably romantic instead of skeevy as hell.
