S04.34: Celebrity Romance Novels
We’re tackling one of Sarah’s favorite tropes this week — the celebrity romance! We talk about all the ways that her buttons were installed (thanks Judith McNaught) and about how rare movie stars are in romance even now, all these years later. We discuss The Chrises, the appeal of celebrity/normal person pairings, the difference between film/tv romance and rockstar/sports star romance, and about why Americans especially love a celebrity.
Oh, and we get into our own existential despair. Visit fatedmates.net/fatedstates for past episodes of us being Big Mad if you want some inspiration.
Thanks to Avon Books, publishers of Eloisa James’s How to Be a Wallflower for sponsoring the episode. Thanks, also, to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies. Visit microdose.com and use code FATEDMATES to get free shipping & 30% off your first order.
Our next read along is Jeannie Lin’s Butterfly Swords. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Show Notes
A leaked memo from The Supreme Court makes clear the fate of Roe V. Wade, and the other civil rights they’re looking to eliminate next. We’ll be reactivating Fated States soon, and you can listen to some of our previous episodes (RBG, bodily autonomy, elda minger) related to these topics. It’s terrifying and feels like its all unraveling, so just fight where you can, remember we’ve been here before, and you should organize in your local community to help others. Check out the Auction for Reproductive Rights being organized by The Meet Cute Book Shop, and donate to an abortion fund near you.
Good Chrises only, please: Hemsworth, Pine, Pang, and Evans. As we say, name is destiny.
We feel bad about it, but both of us thought about the book Perfect after hearing about the shooting on the movie set Rust. Here is a timeline of how Alec Baldwin ended up with a live weapon.
Perfect takes place is some part of Texas where it snows, and Judith McNaught partnered with Coors to raise awareness of and adult literacy.
We love it when Normal people and movie stars get together.
Harry Styles will be on tour later this year, everyone.
I’m not sure why photographers love “the wet suit photoshoot”, but it’s definitely a thing.
If you think you've bought a book before on Amazon, but it's showing you the buy button. Go to Your Content and Devices and search for the book. You can also search your digital orders.
Charlevoix MI is a cute tourist town on the shores of Lake Michigan, which is very big by the way. Unsure about whether or not merpeople live there, but there are lots of shipwrecks.
The final girl is a horror trope.
Our next read along is Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin.
Celebrity Romance Novels
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publisher of Eloisa James’s How to be a Wallflower, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit avonbooks.com
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S03.32: You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria: A Textbook for Human Relationships
We named Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola one of the best romances of 2020, and for good reason. This week, we’re talking about how great romances can be handbooks for great relationships, about why taking risks in romance writing can pay off big time, about what it’s like to be bilingual in America, about why intimacy coordinators are amazing, and about normalizing lube. Enjoy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading…honestly, we don’t know. Stay tuned! Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
If you need to manifest, Sarah's surprise crystal kit came from Crystal Rising.
We had a Best of 2020 box available from Old Town Books in Alexandria, and it looks like you can still order it. You can listen to the whole Best of 2020 episode here.
The Applying to College Reddit is probably not a real healthy place for high school seniors to hang out, so I guess if you must, you can be the person who just says reassuring nice things. But if nothing else, portal astrology shows just how desperate people are to make meaning out of the tiniest of clues.
Telenovelas vs. soap operas.
The bilingual spectrum--from receptive to equilingual--and the ways that this is a particularly American issue. Jasmine in YHMAH is a dominant bilingual (so is Sarah). The ways in which writers put languages on the page has changed a lot in the past decade. Watch this video of author Daniel Jose Older explaining why he doesn’t put Spanish in italics.
In the movie Selena, there’s a scene where her father worries about her Spanish skills as she is about to meet Mexican reporters. Although this scene may not be accurate, Selena learned the phonetic Spanish for all her songs since she wasn’t fluent. A more recent series about Selena’s life is on Netflix, check for reviews because neither of us have watched it.
Being an Intimacy coordinator is a real job!
Breaking the 4th Wall is a phrase from TV when the actors directly address the audience. In You Had me at Hola, we see Jasmine or Ashton fall out of character and become themselves during the filming of a scene.
The Penn & Teller cup and ball trick, which we also talked about in the Bet Me Episode.
Little Red Corvette and Sugar Walls are songs about sex, so don't worry about the pop music your kids are listening to these days. It's all gonna be fine.
