But I spend too much time worrying about what happens to people in books relative to history.
No, that's fair. My first dramatized version of The Secret Garden (1987, Derek Jacobi as Archibald Craven) is the only one I've still seen acknowledge that the characters would hit adulthood just in time for World War I, with semi-predictable results.
With Mic and Vivian I don't think they will be able to have that conversation, which means what they have is the ghost of love... and that isn't a happy ending.
I don't want a happy ending for Mic and Vivian because they're supposed to be in a romance novel; I want them not to have this unhappy ending because it feels inorganic—externally and awkwardly imposed—for all the reasons previously described. They have problems as a couple which I believe, also previously described, which if Renault was insistent on pushing to a distressing conclusion could have led to a falling-off of the relationship and the same cold morning (although I would have been sorry, because a successful genderqueer romance in 1938 would have been awesome). Vivian could have backed off so strongly from allowing Mic the same indivisibility from her life she always automatically gave Jan that he takes it as a lack of trust, so afraid of becoming once again the more loving one that she looks like the less; Mic's emotional insecurities are huge and complex, starting with his illegitimacy and surfacing most recently with his fear that his sexuality disqualifies him from loving Vivian, which is why the only one of his violent actions I believe is the way he flips out at her when she masquerades as her brother, because what if he does want that more? What if she does want the standard boy-girl manoeuvres—he thinks—and he can't give them to her? They could have destabilized as a couple without the need for an out-of-character affair or the vaguely disquieting way it takes Jan's death to commit Vivian and Mic to each other (another fixing: Vivian no longer has a doppelgänger, Mic no conflict of interest). I don't know that I would have liked that outcome better, but at least it would have felt like a storytelling decision, not a complete cave-in.
I have also had problems with this a lot from all kinds of angles.
no subject
No, that's fair. My first dramatized version of The Secret Garden (1987, Derek Jacobi as Archibald Craven) is the only one I've still seen acknowledge that the characters would hit adulthood just in time for World War I, with semi-predictable results.
With Mic and Vivian I don't think they will be able to have that conversation, which means what they have is the ghost of love... and that isn't a happy ending.
I don't want a happy ending for Mic and Vivian because they're supposed to be in a romance novel; I want them not to have this unhappy ending because it feels inorganic—externally and awkwardly imposed—for all the reasons previously described. They have problems as a couple which I believe, also previously described, which if Renault was insistent on pushing to a distressing conclusion could have led to a falling-off of the relationship and the same cold morning (although I would have been sorry, because a successful genderqueer romance in 1938 would have been awesome). Vivian could have backed off so strongly from allowing Mic the same indivisibility from her life she always automatically gave Jan that he takes it as a lack of trust, so afraid of becoming once again the more loving one that she looks like the less; Mic's emotional insecurities are huge and complex, starting with his illegitimacy and surfacing most recently with his fear that his sexuality disqualifies him from loving Vivian, which is why the only one of his violent actions I believe is the way he flips out at her when she masquerades as her brother, because what if he does want that more? What if she does want the standard boy-girl manoeuvres—he thinks—and he can't give them to her? They could have destabilized as a couple without the need for an out-of-character affair or the vaguely disquieting way it takes Jan's death to commit Vivian and Mic to each other (another fixing: Vivian no longer has a doppelgänger, Mic no conflict of interest). I don't know that I would have liked that outcome better, but at least it would have felt like a storytelling decision, not a complete cave-in.
I have also had problems with this a lot from all kinds of angles.
I hope there are better people for you too.