gochenourabout's Avatar

gochenourabout

@sjgochenour.bsky.social

Writer/illustrator/cheese enthusiast. stories: https://highflyingpoultry.wordpress.com/ website: https://www.sharonjgochenour.com/ newsletter: https://buttondown.com/SharonJGochenour

2,123 Followers  |  971 Following  |  25,547 Posts  |  Joined: 28.06.2023
Posts Following

Posts by gochenourabout (@sjgochenour.bsky.social)

this came up when i bought a travel guide to London from 1888 and wanted to contextualize the prices!

05.03.2026 04:24 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

(the farming, I mean, not the millwright stuff.)

being a millwright is basically a ton of precision welding, which is why my brother knew how to arc weld by age thirteen.

05.03.2026 04:21 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

oh I forgot: my paternal grandpa was a millwright before he was able to farm full time, which is what everyone in his family had done since the first Gochenour fled Germany yelling about god and such-like.

05.03.2026 04:19 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

or better yet find a list of prices and wages for the relevant year, because sometimes the inflation calculator doesn’t catch the nuances (eg tourism in 1880 was very cheap, but the majority of people’s wages were very, very low.)

05.03.2026 04:11 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

or raise, sorry!

05.03.2026 03:09 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

ooo, what did your people grow?

05.03.2026 03:09 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

if by doofus you mean β€œresplendent Knower of Things and Favored by Noble Squoofs Everywhere,” sure!

05.03.2026 00:40 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

oh boy oh boy that’s slightly terrifying

(if you go back one more generation for me, you get 1 grandpa who worked as a mechanic and in a soda factory)

04.03.2026 22:51 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

farmers all the way down! with varying numbers of pigs.

04.03.2026 22:44 β€” πŸ‘ 16    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 0

maybe! part of what has set this to spinning in my head is that there seems to be some deep disillusionment with the men around them also pushing some readers toward dark romance?

but the feeling itself seems . . . generalized.

04.03.2026 22:39 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

(i think there’s a different thing happening with queer readers tbh but i have to stew some more.)

04.03.2026 21:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

but I wonder very much if readers reaching for no-conflict books have some overlapping feelings with mine but are not pegging that it’s the type rather than the existence of conflict which is giving them the yips.

04.03.2026 21:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

there are of course contemporary authors generating conflict from other axes (for me, these are easiest to find in queer romance),

04.03.2026 21:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

and because I’m not sure it’s a worthwhile goal even if it is possible (think of all those orphan puppies the heroine could have saved in the time it took her to convince one republican that women are people!)

04.03.2026 21:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

that is a contemporary conflict I struggle to read now, both because I have been extremely disillusioned with the power of love to cause a cishet white man to change (ie I don’t really believe in it)

04.03.2026 21:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

after more collecting my thoughts: i think in many classics of romance, the conflict is heroine vs. distilled patriarchy in the form of the hero (cf. Fated Mates), and that archetypal conflict remains uppermost in the minds of readers (but also just, y’know, people who have to deal with men.)

04.03.2026 21:56 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

just kind of a storm of stuff all at once.

04.03.2026 17:58 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

YES

04.03.2026 17:58 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

but there’s also something of a confusion about exactly we want from explicitly progressive books???

04.03.2026 17:52 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

which leads to a Lot Of Issues in romancelandia.

04.03.2026 17:50 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

i have so many scrambled thoughts on this and no coherent thesis!

like, there’s something about the fact that one of the most common conflict cishet white women are dealing with in this country is β€œmy male partner has pledged his allegiance to a deeply misogynist white supremacist politician,”

04.03.2026 17:50 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

on!line! events!!!

04.03.2026 17:44 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

yep! I think there are also plot devices which bother me less in isolation than they do as a conglomerate, and that’s probably one.

04.03.2026 17:43 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

i think i can actually go to this!!!!

04.03.2026 17:42 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

understood! I have also run into those dynamics, but I rarely finish those books because I’m tired and bored.

04.03.2026 17:41 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

I can enjoy one of those books once in a great while, but a proliferation of them gives me pause.

04.03.2026 17:37 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

i mean to be fair i think this is one of the toughest balancing acts in fiction? like, the challenge of romance is this kind of fine-tuning within genre constraints.

just, now we have a situation where fewer and fewer people are getting editorial (or any) support.

04.03.2026 17:21 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

your criticism is consistently incisive and delightful!

04.03.2026 17:07 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

100% ARGH

04.03.2026 17:03 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

now have read the whole article and it’s great

04.03.2026 16:56 β€” πŸ‘ 6    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0