![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 23rd, 2010 10:39 amI read a Georgette Heyer book this weekend that I didn't love or even really like at all, which makes me kind of sad as even the less-appealing Heyers usually have enough highly entertaining bits to count as comfort reading for me. But in Bath Tangle, I just couldn't get past the fact that the hero and the heroine are two of the most enormous jerks I have yet encountered in a Heyer novel, and that possibly includes the villains. They are meant to be appealingly passionate and have argumentative chemistry, but I sort of suspect they actually both have serious anger management issues and will end up murdering each other within a year, taking out a wide swathe of bystanders along the way.
The storyline also centers around a trope that I have discovered generally tends to frustrate me, which I have dubbed Engagement Chicken. The game of Engagement Chicken, a popular pastime in the Regency period as far as I can tell from romance novels, is played something like this:
Character A: Character B, whom I secretly love, has become engaged to someone else! So now I will become engaged to someone else. TAKE THAT, CHARACTER B.
Character B: Wait, now that you're engaged to someone else I have figured out I love you! But I can't break my engagement unless Character C also wants to break it.
Character C: I have realized my terrible mistake in getting engaged to Character B, but I can't break my engagement unless Character B also wants to break it.
Character A: Hah, I knew you didn't love Character C!
Character B: SHUT UP I AM TOTALLY MARRYING CHARACTER C AND I HATE YOU.
Character A: Anyway, I can only break my engagement to Character D if they also want to break our engagement!
Character B: . . . so, hypothetically speaking, Character C, what are the circumstances under which you would break our engagement?
Character C: I would never break our engagement! Unless, I mean, unless you wanted to break our engagement.
Character B: What, I mean, why would you even think that? Damn our inevitable misery, full speed ahead!
Character D: I have realized my terrible mistake in getting engaged to Character A, but I can't break my engagement unless Character A also wants to break it . . .
EVERYONE: *sits around and stares hard at each other as the wedding dates approach until SOMEONE finally gets fed up enough to break their engagement, generally in the last five pages of the book*
Sometimes there is only one engagement involved, sometimes there are two or three, but it always involves a lot of sitting around and agonizing over the terrible mistake they have made and how they can possibly extricate themselves.
Is there already a name for this trope, or have I discovered a new one? And are there enough examples that it could, say, justify a TVtropes page? Flist, your input and examples would be appreciated!
The storyline also centers around a trope that I have discovered generally tends to frustrate me, which I have dubbed Engagement Chicken. The game of Engagement Chicken, a popular pastime in the Regency period as far as I can tell from romance novels, is played something like this:
Character A: Character B, whom I secretly love, has become engaged to someone else! So now I will become engaged to someone else. TAKE THAT, CHARACTER B.
Character B: Wait, now that you're engaged to someone else I have figured out I love you! But I can't break my engagement unless Character C also wants to break it.
Character C: I have realized my terrible mistake in getting engaged to Character B, but I can't break my engagement unless Character B also wants to break it.
Character A: Hah, I knew you didn't love Character C!
Character B: SHUT UP I AM TOTALLY MARRYING CHARACTER C AND I HATE YOU.
Character A: Anyway, I can only break my engagement to Character D if they also want to break our engagement!
Character B: . . . so, hypothetically speaking, Character C, what are the circumstances under which you would break our engagement?
Character C: I would never break our engagement! Unless, I mean, unless you wanted to break our engagement.
Character B: What, I mean, why would you even think that? Damn our inevitable misery, full speed ahead!
Character D: I have realized my terrible mistake in getting engaged to Character A, but I can't break my engagement unless Character A also wants to break it . . .
EVERYONE: *sits around and stares hard at each other as the wedding dates approach until SOMEONE finally gets fed up enough to break their engagement, generally in the last five pages of the book*
Sometimes there is only one engagement involved, sometimes there are two or three, but it always involves a lot of sitting around and agonizing over the terrible mistake they have made and how they can possibly extricate themselves.
Is there already a name for this trope, or have I discovered a new one? And are there enough examples that it could, say, justify a TVtropes page? Flist, your input and examples would be appreciated!
