JMC @ My Two Cents posted:
Before you start to even comment… I like jmc… ignore that lil Sebastian Whomever comment… no need to traumatize me more
JMC sez:
Now, I get that one of the romance genre staples is the redemption of the Bad Guy by the Love of A Good Woman. But that’s really not my favorite story. Call me a cynic, but not even in fiction do I believe that the Magic Vagina of a heroine can change a man, and if he’s bad all the way through in one book, he’s likely to be that way in the next book. Unless, of course, he wasn’t really bad at all in the first book, it was just a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation of the circumstances.
I can totally see the point and often it doesn’t work for me. Other times I think it is fucking amazing but the fucking in the amazing ones it isn’t the sex that is the cure all. In many a reformed rake story, the rake is fucking anything that will stay still long enough. The set up can and should vary as to why the ‘rake’ is at the point where lurve finds him, he discovers lurve or finds that one special vagina he wants forevah. Or maybe I just WANT to believe love, in whatever form, can make us want to be better people.
You see something so special in the other person, you want to be worthy of them. The idea that love inspires us to be the best we can be doesn’t have to be about getting laid. Does it? Of course I admit I love many a reformed rake story. Yes girls and teddy, jmc is wicked smart and prolly likes the same books I do…. 1 out of 500 times. And that might be pushing it ;).
No one can make you do anything. Each person has to want to change, regardless of what the change is. Your wife wants you to quit smoking? NOT gonna happen until you want to quit. Want to drop 20 pounds? NOT gonna happen until you want to drop it. A woman can want a man to stop sticking his prick in every hole he can find but unless he truly has reason to change his whorish ways…. NOT gonna happen.
The thing I first thought of when I read jmc’s post was but people change! Don’t we? Each of us can be said to be a product of our environment, for only so long. Often you will see a person thinks as their parents do that is what they learn. Then they grow up.
You read books. You keep up with the news. You are exposed to things your parents might not even know exist. Every experience we have… has the potential to change us? And if it doesn’t, isn’t that a whole other problem? So if we allow that people can grow and change, then reformed rake stories can work. Can’t they?
LOL then my second thought was I always say, ‘once a cheater, always a cheater’. So doesn’t that negate everything I just thought?
It is up to the author to make it work, to make it mesh and make sense. I mean people we read about vampires and weres… is a reformed rake that hard to buy? I do agree with jmc about Sugar Daddy. I enjoyed it but didn’t like the end At the same time I think BED works. I would have been MUCH happier if it wasn’t in first person. There are different things that didn’t work for me and many more that did. But the ‘bad guy’ becoming the hero wasn’t even a thought.
What is a bad guy to you? Is it different from a man who is behaving like an asshat, or does asshattery make a bad guy? It can be said men treat causal fucks differently than they would someone they are involved with but does that make them a ‘bad guy’? If you fall into many beds at 20, can you really say you will at 30? 40? 50?
I am sure you haven’t noticed but I think St. Vincent completely works in Devil in Winter. A large part of that has to do with him being at the right place in his life to understand, see and want love. He also comes to understand he needed to behave in a way that made him worthy of being loved, without negating his youth, expectations of his positions which he gladly followed or his previous behavior. Yes he had regrets but if you get to be 30 and have no regrets, you haven’t lived nor have you learned a damn thing. Sex can be great but sex without emotion will at some point became meaningless. And the only way to find longterm fulfillment is to discover the difference between having sex and making love. But do you find that in the act itself? I don’t think so. If a rake can divorce the act of sex from the person, doesn’t that mean said rake is not yet reformed? Makes for an interesting question if nothing else. Oh fine I am just easy to amuse, you knew that…
Do you hate reformed rake romances? If so why? Are they only about the magic vagina? What novels worked for you and which ones didn’t? And most importantly…. what did you think of Devil In Winter *g*… LOL I kid…. what reformed rake novels would you recommend everyone read?
I love them, personally. I agree with you that it’s not the magic vagina that makes the good ones work, either. One that I read years ago was by Mary Balogh, one of her Signet regencies. I can’t think of the title just now, but it was about a younger son who was aging badly. He and the heroine have sex just about immediately in the book, but it’s clear that that’s not what makes him change. Eventually the bookish widow helps him rediscover his inner scholar. I’m being flippant, but I remember it as being quite moving. If I could remember the title, I would recommend that one.
I loved reformed bad boys. There is something about the love of a good woman that changes them for the better. Even when I first read about Sebastian and he was trying to seduce Lillian in It Happened One Autumn, there was just something about him that was very sexy and seductive. At one point I was thinking that Lillian and Sebastian would be a good couple, but over course Marcus was the one for her. But I wasn’t sure if Sebastian could be redeemed because of her kidnapping and almost forced seduction he tried to pull. That was almost going past the point of no return.
I did enjoy Devil in Winter, even though it is not my favortie of the Wallflower series but I loved how Sebastian tried to become a better man for Evie, especially giving up sex for her. A true hoot that was!
But alas, my heart will always belong to Derek from Dreaming of You. He was truly redeemed in every way. Sigh…
OMG. The Go to my room guy….YUM! *wiping drool off keyboard*
Um…What was your question? Oh, yeah, reformed rake…
The reformed rake works for me. I have read alot of them but the one that pops in my head right now is Loretta Chase “The Last Hellion” Loved that book. When my brain comes back online(after effects of Go to my room guy), I will think of some more.
Yes, yes, yes! You hit it on the head. I love reformed bad guys. Not just rakes but all kinds. I do have to be convinced they have changed and redeemed themselves, though. I think it’s the personal growth of the character that makes this type of story more moving than most (for me).
Y’know, thinking about it more, it isn’t that I think bad people (men or women) cannot reform. It isn’t even about being a rake who’ll screw anything but is suddenly celibate for The One. For me, it’s whether the reformation is well-enough done that I’ll believe it; and a lot of the time, it’s not. (I didn’t read Sebastian’s book, so I’m not sure if it was believable.)
I don’t think being a rake or being promiscuous makes someone a Bad Guy. Instead, its all about intent and harm. If a guy is using people and hurting them (with sex or without), that makes him Bad. If there’s no harm and no foul and everyone pulls up their pants and goes happily about their business, that’s not Bad. The cheating that Kleypas had the character in Sugar Daddy *is* Bad Guy behavior for me, though.
I’m sick of Duke of Sluts (aka The Reformed Rake) stories. There’s so many of them out there that I can’t stomach them anymore.
My personal viewpoint is that I find nothing respectable, or even interesting, about a man who sleeps with everything that moves, especially since, more often than not, those women end up being cruel villains or spiteful bitches out to make mischief in the course of the book. What does it say about a man who chooses that type of women to take to bed? It’s not often that we see a guy only bedding intelligent and intersting women.
But, no matter how well an author handles it, I’m always picturing the heroine meeting a good numbers of her husband’s past lovers over the years–a bit à la Robb with all those exes of Roarke we meet, only time that by at least 10. It’s got to take its toll on the rosy HEA we’re given when we close the book.
I once read a book, an historical romance IIRC, where people are sitting down for dinner. The hero had slept with all the women who sat at the table except for the heroine–and it was a given he’d do her before the end of the book. Something about this scene really repulsed me.
A man doesn’t have to a rake to be a ‘bad boy’ if a more dangerous aura is what you’re after in your heroes.
So now I stay away from stories featuring Dukes of Sluts. I could enjoy one now and then when it was well written but not anymore. Reforming a rake was never a fantasy of mine anyway.
It’s all in how it’s done.
a shallowly done redemption is like those plastic geegaws you get, shiny for one moment, then it breaks and you have to toss it. A beautifully done redemption is ore forged into steel and then hammered into a blade–unique and breathtaking.
To Have and To Hold, is all I’m saying.
Loved TH&TH! I definitely believed he changed.