{"id":2573,"date":"2009-05-28T23:30:33","date_gmt":"2009-05-29T03:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=2573"},"modified":"2009-05-29T01:39:14","modified_gmt":"2009-05-29T05:39:14","slug":"qotd-on-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/28\/qotd-on-romance\/","title":{"rendered":"QOTD: On Romance"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>A good romance is defined by a <strong>passionate desire<\/strong>. A want of something so near, but <em>unattainable<\/em>. It\u2019s longing of the future or of the past and the possibilities that could never be. It\u2019s the futility and foolishness of making oneself <em>vulnerable<\/em>, no matter what disasters may occur.<\/p>\n<p>A good romance <em>rarely<\/em> ends happily, and if it grips you it has the power to melt and break your heart in the same breath.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It\u2019s committing suicide in order to remember what it was like to live.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s a pretty good evocation of something we&#8217;ve all felt, isn&#8217;t it? Those three paragraphs stand quite strong on their own, without any context.<\/p>\n<p>You might be surprised to find out that they&#8217;re actually part of a discussion of the romance between a book nerd and (literally) diabolical temptress in a web comic. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.webcomicrumble.com\/2009\/05\/romance-found-deep-inside-a-sinfest\/\">But they are<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps ironically, that particular storyline isn&#8217;t terribly interesting to me, even though I&#8217;ve been reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sinfest.net\/\">Sinfest<\/a> regularly for almost a decade<footnote>Jesus, I started reading this when I was still in Ontario, that means 2000 or very early 2001&#8211;that&#8217;s really almost a decade. Where does the damn time go?<\/footnote>. However I love that description&#8211;I love the way it captures that utter disinterest in self-preservation&#8230; or maybe even an element of purposeful self-sacrifice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">A good romance is defined by a passionate desire. A want of something so near, but unattainable. It\u2019s longing of the future or of the past and the possibilities that could never be. It\u2019s the futility and foolishness of making oneself vulnerable, no matter what disasters may occur. A good romance rarely ends happily, and if it grips you it&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/28\/qotd-on-romance\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[285,125,155],"class_list":["post-2573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-and-done","tag-nostalgia","tag-quote","tag-webcomics","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-Fv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2574,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions\/2574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}