S06.49: Mafia Romance Reasons
This week, we're back to Mafia books, because it's been a few years since we've tackled this one and the landscape has changed drastically. We're talking about the appeal of the organized criminal, the way the genre is the direct descendant of the Medieval romance, and the fact that it underscores some of the deepest seeded patriarchy in the genre--for good and bad. Sarah shows off the Italian and the Italian American in her past, and tells a few stories about people and places she doesn't name because did she see anything? No she didn't.
If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where 1000 other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as we do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
Show Notes
Back in 2020, we recorded our first mafia romance interstitial with author Nisha Sharma, that season we also had a dark romance interstitial, and those two genres have only become more popular over time.
If you’re interested in the real life story of how Providence RI was a hotbed of organized crim activity, check out season one of the Crimetown Podcast. But every town has their famous mobsters: Al Capone in Chicago, John Gotti in New York, etc, etc. As Jen was preparing show notes for this episode, she discovered there is a Mob Museum, The National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement in Las Vegas, so add that to your bucket list.
Lorenzo Lamas was a favorite 80s Hottie, and the movie The Shawshank Redemption had a very important scene with a tunnel behind a movie poster.
Watch this scene with the horse head and tell Jen she didn’t NAIL it with her impersonation of the guy’s scream. Part of the reason he sounds so horrified…that head was real and he didn’t know it?!?!?
Apparently Joseph Campbell said, “Women don't need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she's the place that people are trying to get to.” And well, we hate it. You might be interested in reading The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger if you would like to learn more about other ways stories can be organized, and also The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar.
Books Mentioned This Episode
The Sponsors
Sophie H. Morgan, author of De-Witched, available in print, ebook or audiobook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or wherever you get your books,
1001 Dark Nights, publishers of Jennifer L. Armentrout's Born of Blood and Ash, available in print, ebook, and audiobook from Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or wherever you get your books,
TL Swan, author of The Bonus, available in print, ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
S03.31: Morality Chain Romance
We’re so thrilled to be talking morality chain romance! We’ve owed this episode to Katee Robert for nearly a year, and we have no excuses for how long this has taken, except that time in 2020 was a flat circle. Here, we get down to business—we tackle the definition of Morality Chain, and how it differs from Dark Romance, how it connects with mafia, criminals, pirates, highwaymen, and the original Alpha.
Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, we’re reading Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola, one of our Best Books of 2020! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
One very important note: we highly recommend doing a thorough search for content warnings for all the books and movies we mention this week.
We love Katee Robert, who we had on as a guest for the menage interstitial. Katee bid on this item at Kennedy Ryan’s Lift 4 Autism auction. It happens every spring, so keep an eye on this page for the 2021 auction if you’d like to pick the topic for a future interstitial.
This week, Katee released Seducing My Guardian, the 4th book in her SUPER HOT Touch of Taboo series. If you'd like to read a morality chain romance written by Katee, we recommend The Bastard's Bargain.
“In springtime, the only pretty ring time” is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It's also possible Sarah knows it from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She would like you to believe that it's from the former, but we'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Either way, “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it,” is from Beyonce.
As it turns out, Chicago is a great town for beach volleyball.
It’s hard not to talk about morality chain & dark romance together, but we think they are inverse tropes. The internet definition of Morality Chain is “is a character who is the reason another character is Good.” Jen and Sarah’s current definition is that in morality chain romance, the Love Interest pulls a hero towards humanity and goodness, while in dark romance, the love interest is pulled down into the hero’s lawless world.
Some examples in pop culture are Spike from Buffy and maybe Barney in How I Met Your Motherr. Also, check out a movie called The Professional, where a child (played by Natalie Portman!) befriends the assassin next door. The Jason Statham one with a kid is called Safe.
The Hero’s Journey is very common character archetype in literature and pop culture, but Sarah and Jen are both very taken with Gail Carriger’s description of the alternative archetype, The Heroine’s Journey.
If you want more about morality chain, so many of Kresley’s books from The Immortals After Dark series will work, so please listen to season one! Our favorites are Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, Lothaire, and Sweet Ruin.
We were divided on whether the character has to be a danger to others in order to qualitfy as morality chain. In the Gamemaker series: The Professional is about an assassin who is a danger to others, while in The Player he’s only a danger to himself.
Jen Porter wrote a long thread about what she thinks of as PEA, or problematic ever after, romance.
Mickey is "kind of a Fagin-y" as a character, but without the antisemitism. In interesting historical facts, Dickens rewrote Oliver Twist later in life to remove all anti-Semitic characteristics from Fagin, after he'd been criticized for the portrayal of the character. Of course, it's not that simple. Read more about it from Deborah Epstein Nord.
Scottie is the main character of Managed, and is classified more as grumpy one/sunshine one, which we argue is just morality chain dialed down.
More about how most writers have a “core story."
Next week, we'll be reading You Had me at Hola by Alexis Daria
MUSIC: Cardi B - Money
S03.10: Mafia Romance Novels with Nisha Sharma
This week, as part of joy month, we’re joined by Nisha Sharma, author of The Takeover Effect and The Legal Affair, to talk about her favorite trope — Mafia Romances! We talk about why organized crime works in romance, fill your TBR to the brim…and share some real life mafia stories. Or, at least, Sarah does. It’s a lot.
We’re putting read alongs on hold for a bit to spend the next few weeks hanging out with some of our favorite people and talking about books and tropes that give us joy, so we hope you’ll join us and keep a pen handy so you can add to your TBR list as needed!
Also! please join us for a Fated States phonebanking session with Indivisible.org on Saturday — it’s so fun! We love seeing so many of your amazing faces there, hanging out, and lifting each other up through absolute anxiety! Please join us, fellow Fated Maters, and special guests for Fated States Phonebanking Part 4 this Saturday, October 17th at 3pm Eastern to call Iowa! It’s easy, not scary, and there will be prizes!
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Show Notes
Welcome Nisha Sharma! She is the author of some of favorites: the YA romance My So Called Bollywood Life, and the Singh family trilogy.
The Fifty Shades movies are lying about lipstick.
Maybe you’d like to learn more about organized crime in Rhode Island, Cleveland, and Scranton. Sarah grew up in Rhode Island and recommends you listen to Crimetown if you're interested in learning more about how far-reaching the mob is there.
When it comes to Capone, we recommend the Chicago tour (if life ever returns to normal) but not the movie with Tom Hardy.
Nisha mentioned a 1970s Bollywood movie. It’s called Sholay, and Nisha said, “Technically it was like this small village bad guy...think old westerns but he had like a gang of hoodlums.”
The big Western movies seem to pop up every ten years, and Brokeback Mountain was 2005!
The list of mafia romance from Goodreads is here, and the queer mafia romance list is here.
Does your gender determine how you relate to mafia movies, books, and TV shows? Or if you participate in real life?
Maybe you want to watch Weeds or Traffic and see some kickass women who are antiheroes?
Erin from Learning the Tropes is on the hunt for books that have heroines that are named Erin, so let her know if you’ve read any. Jen’s list is Ivan and an old Loveswept by Barbara Boswell called Sharing Secrets -- the hero’s name is Rad Ramsey!
Speaking of Ivan and Erin, while working on show notes for this episode, Jen discovered that a second story with these two is coming out in a few weeks!
It is MMA fighting, which stands for Mixed Martial Arts.
We did a deep dive episode on Kresley Cole's The Master in Season 1. Listen to it here.
Jen’s love of Russian mobsters started with Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises.
Sons of Anarchy actually does predate the MC romance. The TV show aired from 2008 - 2014, and one of the first MC romances was Motorcycle Man (2012) by Kristen Ashley. After Sons of Anarchy ended, the MC romance genre did grow exponentially, including books like Reaper’s Property by Joanna Wylde (2016).
Jen said the Molly O’Keefe book with the mafia guy and the secret baby was Bad Neighbor, but it’s actually Baby Come Back. You should just go ahead and read them both.
All about the myth of the minotaur.
The big, bad Russians influenced American media for decades.
Online Advertising is the new cement shoes.
Sarah learned about money laundering because of pinball machines. Today's kids get to learn about it because of the President. Sure.
Books Mentioned on the Podcast
15: How Is She Even Able To Walk? - The Master
We’re back with The Game Makers Series this week — talking with the wonderful Sophie Jordan about her favorite book in the series, The Master! Starring Maxim Sevastyan and the first-time escort who lays him flat (in all ways), This one has all the insane sex stuff of the last Game Makers book, now with birth control insanity, and a sweet nod to holiday traditions…and a trip into the Internet to look at chastity belts.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.
In two weeks, IT IS HAPPENNNINNNGGGGG! We have reached Sweet Ruin, Sarah’s favorite book in the IAD series, and she is BEYOND EXCITED to talk about her favorite Kresley hero and the magnificent, perfect heroine who refuses to back down from their fated matehood. Block off some time, as we can’t guarantee this will be anything near a normal length episode! Read Sweet Ruin at Amazon, B&N, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local Indie. Also, we promise you won’t be disappointed by the audio of this one!
Show Notes
Welcome Sophie Jordan!
You should listen to the Wicked Wallflowers podcast where Sophie talks about her Game Makers Series theory.
The politics of lane-sharing at the pool are more complicated then you'd think!
In case you don't know what pendejo means.
ICYMI: one of our first interstitials was about the escort trope.
I guess we did learn more about what Christian was thinking when she fell over the threshold in that 50 shades sequel, Grey.
Is there really a morning after shot?
The Smart Bitches gave The Master a D! /clutches pearls
If you haven't read Lord of Scoundrels, you should.
I decide who is a Pretty Woman quote. Of course.
The Robin Hood Men in Tights chastity belt, or iron underwear as it's more commonly known.
Sophie's upcoming book is The Duke's Stolen Bride.
You can preorder signed copies of Brazen and the Beast from Word in Brooklyn. You can download Wicked and the Wallflower for $2 all of June.
"That great Kerrigan Byrne Newgate one" is called The Highwayman.
Bitch Planet is an amazing comic.
Sweet Ruin is coming!