Unambiguous Robin 🐦

Sapphic Book Bingo time again.

This post contains SPOILERS for Because I Said So by Karin Kallmaker, but you do not need to read the book to understand this post. (I have also written a spoiler-free review if you would prefer to read that.)

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Romance Stuff

Okay, so I've thought on it a little bit and I think it's appropriate to start off with this question:

Is this book a romance?

At face value, the answer is "yes". It's marketed as a romance book, and the plot centers around two women who are romantically interested in each other, and the book climaxes with them agreeing to date each other. In the end, happily ever afters are assumed.

The reason I bring up the question, though, is because after I finished the book, I decided to check to see why its score on Goodreads was a little low. It seems a lot of readers were disappointed from the lack of romantic elements in the book, citing Kallmaker's other novels as better examples of actual romances.

I really enjoyed Because I Said So, but this made me stop and think a little bit about why I did. Generally, I'm not one to judge a work based on how well it sticks to the conventions of a genre. Instead, I try to judge it partly based on what it is I think the creator(s) were trying to accomplish, and partly based on whether the work appeals to stuff I personally enjoy. And I think Because I Said So succeeded at both of those aspects.

But are either of those aspects romantic aspects? Well... that part's not cut-and-dry, either.

Something this book reaffirmed for me is that one of the things I find most compelling in a story is relationship drama. Not all relationship drama, necessarily; I do need to find the characters to be likable or at least respectable on some level. But I like seeing a creative work explore the complexities of relationships in search of solutions for how to make them work out.

Basically the entire book is relationship drama in this case, but a big portion of that drama comes from Kesa's relationship with her sister Josie, and Shannon's relationship with her found family Paz. However, most of the rest of the drama does come from the romantic relationship between Kesa and Shannon... but on the other hand, they are not really in a relationship for most of the book. Or even talking to each other much, really. More just obsessing over each other from a distance.

In spite of that, I still say that this book is fundamentally a romance. It's just looking at romance from a different angle than most other romance books; it's looking at it from a more cynical angle.

The core question of this book is "Can love at first sight exist in a world that forces us to be safe and practical?" This question is introduced with the conflict between the kids and their guardians: the fight between the loving couple who wants to get married, and the jaded "parents" who argue that it's too soon to make a decision like that.

However, that core question is also at the core of everything that the aforementioned guardians are dealing with, in regards to their feelings towards each other. And it is this couple that the book focuses on as its main couple, and it is this issue that the book focuses on as the fundamental premise being explored through the main romance.

Paz and Josie have already decided that they love each other enough to get married to each other. But the key here, though the book takes time to reveal it, is that Kesa and Shannon already reached that point with each other as well; after just three days, Kesa confessed her love to Shannon, and Shannon loved her strongly enough in return that she bought a ring for the purposes of proposing. However, unlike Paz and Josie, once Shannon found herself in this position, she opted not to follow through with the idea, and the point of the rest of the book is that both Kesa and Shannon have been hurting for it ever since.

This situation doesn't feel good, no. This is not romantic escapism. But it is an exploration of the kinds of feelings that can result from forming a romantic connection. It's an examination of the kinds of life positions we can find ourselves in that make us question whether getting into a relationship is worth it or even a good idea, and struggling with these kinds of questions is key to what romantic relationships are about.

So I still say that the book is fundamentally a romance at its heart. Admittedly, and unfortunately, it's not an exploration of everything associated with the development of a relationship, because... well, again, Kesa and Shannon barely spend any time together, since they're avoiding each other. Even when the book shows moments they shared in the past, the whole point of those moments is that they fell in love before they really spent any time together, so no real explorations could have been done there without undermining the book's core topic and theme.

All that taken into consideration, I do admit, it was an unusual choice of subject for a romance book! And I get why some people were disappointed with the results. All the same, I think it's as important an aspect of romance to explore as any other, and I'm glad Kallmaker made the attempt and did as well as she did.

With that out of the way, let's get into:

How the characters show love

• I mentioned this in my spoiler-free review, but it struck me how much the book leaned into Kesa and Shannon's immediate comfort with each other as its main indication of how well they were hitting it off with each other (as opposed to focusing on physical attraction and desire).
• I think I've talked before about having a relationship stand out by being different from the characters' other relationships, or act differently around each other than they do by default. In this case, I couldn't help but notice that usually Kesa avoids feeling comfortable (due to her focus on work and survival), but being around Shannon makes her want to be calm and comfortable.
• The story contains a few examples of characters clinging to other characters because they're afraid of losing those people from their lives, but the end result of that is sometimes a level of control that makes the other character uncomfortable and therefore ironically ends up pushing them away. (It also ironically leads to fights between the characters in question, when the underlying reasoning behind the fight is that they care about each other and don't want to lose each other.)
• I think there's something to be learned from how the characters react to an absence of a relationship. Near the end of the book, Shannon thinks of the years she could've spent together with Kesa, but gave up on the opportunity to have that. Like she's mourning something that never came to pass.
• She also regrets that she made the choice by herself, rather than letting Kesa be part of the decision too.
• Fuckin... COMMUNICATE

Actually, I want to go into the topic of communication in a bit more detail.

Communication and Trust, part 1: Within the story

I know I've already gone over the importance of communication several times in other essays/analysys, and... if you're getting tired of it, I'm sorry, I'm probably not going to stop anytime soon.

Without retreading those old topics, though, right now I just want to emphasize that my hope is that it will always be considered a given that communication is one of the first and most fundamental aspects of a good relationship. As such, when writing conflict in a relationship, poor communication is an easy and understandable source of that conflict.

On the other hand, whenever it is the primary source of conflict, what this also means is that the characters are failing at the most basic fundamentals of relationship-building. It's... well, it's cheap, and it can make it feel like the characters aren't even really trying. (Or like the author isn't.) And I bring this up because this is actually one of those books where lack of communication--not just poor communication, but lack of any communication--serves as the primary conflict for the romance.

I will say that one of the main differences with how this book handles it in contrast to other books is that it's almost always understandable why the characters aren't communicating. Both of them have bad histories with relationships, both of them are dealing with baggage from their parents, both of them are stressed about their jobs, both of them are stressed about their family members rushing marriage... In short, they're both drained and maybe feeling a little lost and confused on top of that.

The end result is the same, though. Going back to the idea that we are to view this book as a romance book, even though I think the perspective it provides is still valuable in its own way, it is nonetheless still a fact that this is ostensibly a romance story between two characters who won't even perform the most basic task of talking to each other with any real sincerity. And the only triumph in the relationship is... when they finally sit down and do that for once. And that's the note that the book ends on. At step #1.

I don't think a romance has to depend on this kind of conflict so heavily. Even when couples are open with each other about their feelings, they can still reach certain blocks in their relationship that require extra work to get past. In fact, I feel that's where some of the most interesting and complex conflicts ultimately come from--from navigating a situation no one's had to navigate before, because it's unique to this couple with its two unique individuals. It leads to the kinds of problems that even the readers have to think through how they would handle it; contrasted with what actually happened in this book, where it was painfully obvious what the solution would be long before it ever actually happened.

I won't lie, as much as I like the book, I do feel disappointed and maybe even a little cheated when I look at it from this perspective.

Communication and Trust, part 2: On a metatextual level

Something this book made me realize, though, is that my feelings on ideal relationships can also be connected to the relationship between reader and author.

I've said before that I view art as creative personal expression--a message being sent from artist to audience, intentional or no. As such, I see art itself as a form of communication, with its own associated relationship (again, between artist and audience), and with its own associated level of trust.

When I read a book by someone I don't know, I find myself in a state of initial skepticism. I don't know this author yet; they must have done something to catch my attention, or else I wouldn't be reading their work, but other than that I have not yet been given a reason to trust them. The book is now their opportunity to earn some level of trust with me.

During that introductory phase, I see the book taking hold of certain complex topics that I'm interested in, but I don't yet know how careful the author is going to be with these topics. Kesa's Filipino background is pretty central to this story, can I trust this white author to handle this topic without being weird about it? Shannon works for the US Marshals services, is this book going to serve as copaganda? It kinda feels like Kesa's trauma is putting her in a vulnerable position and Shannon is taking advantage of it, is this just a one-off moment intended to be stressful, or is it going to be portrayed as romantic and become a regular thing?

Personally, I find this thought process to be nerve-wracking. I know I may be out of the ordinary here; I'm naturally anxious, and I have some personal traumas that I have to be vigilant and be on the lookout for before a creative work crashes into them too deeply. Still, I can't help but wonder if most readers are also weighing this kind of thing when reading a new book or a new author, even if only on a subconscious level. But it's unavoidable; it's all part of getting to know someone without just giving yourself to them completely.

Strangely, one of the things that got me thinking about this topic in particular was the concept of plot twists. The first major plot twist in Because I Said So is that Kesa and Shannon actually met each other years before Josie and Paz brought them together to "meet" each other, and more specifically, they were in a romantic relationship that lasted only a few days.

In other words, this story is specifically a second chance romance, and the fact that it's a second chance romance is a plot twist. You cannot advertise the genre of this book without spoiling a major plot point of the book. I found that to be an interesting approach, it intrigued me, but it also got me wondering about whether I thought it was a good idea, and I'm not sure that I do.

This is why I brought up the idea of communication being important, because it applies to the author, too. If you want to be in a relationship with somebody, isn't it better to be honest about stuff that's core to your personality, your nature, who you are as a person? Especially if it's specifically the kind of stuff that the other person is looking for in a relationship? By that logic, wouldn't it also make sense to advertise what genre your book is rather than hide it as a surprise, so lovers of that genre will be able to find it more easily? Or people who dislike the genre for whatever reason will be able to avoid it? It's just more considerate all around, you know?

And I think plot twists in general are closely connected to that concept of trust and communication. In a relationship, it can be fun when someone you know surprises you with something, but only if you trust that person not to spring anything scary on you. Only if the other person knows what your boundaries are and knows not to cross them. And only if, you know, the surprise is actually good--and if you trust someone on that level, chances are you trust them to do good surprises, too (so you can lean into the excitement when they happen).

But anyway. Continuing with the topic of trust, it does occur to me that the author can build that level of trust before you actually read the book. Karin Kallmaker, for example, was already an established writer before writing this particular book, and so she already had an existing fanbase eager to see what she was going to provide for them next. I do think an author can afford to start taking more risks once they have that kind of audience who's already familiar with them; it just happened that I wasn't already part of that audience, and I acknowledge that the book may not have been written with skeptical people like me in mind.

But then there's the flipside of this equation--because fans were already familiar with her, they had some expectations of her, and as I alluded to in the "Is this book a romance?" section, a lot of her fans seemed disappointed with the book because it didn't meet those expectations. If it wasn't an accident, perhaps she chose to take a risk in an area they didn't like; maybe she wasn't writing specifically for her fans on this one. (Or maybe she was hoping they would approach it as fans of her writing more than as fans of the romance genre as a whole.)

All this aside, though, I'm sure Kallmaker had her reasons for making whatever decisions she did. My main reason for going over all this is that it's made me more conscious of the fact that I, too, am in a position of building trust with a potential new reader with every new work I make. And I want to be conscious of that; I want to work on building that trust in my own ways. I want my approach to my relationship with my readers to be reflective of my approach to ideal relationships as a whole, as depicted in writing or as lived out in real life.

I'm... probably going to have to do a lot of deep-dive thinking to figure out what that actually means in terms of how I choose to write. But hey, I'm doing these book analyses for a reason.

Writing Stuff

On chapter length: I noticed that chapters would last anywhere from 3 to like 17 pages depending on what was being covered. I'm still trying to figure out what I think is the best way to pace chapters, and I feel like I couldn't quite pinpoint the approach used in this book. There would be a chapter break anytime the book changed perspectives between Shannon and Kesa, but there would also occasionally be chapter breaks without a change in perspective. Sometimes it would mean a scene change, but again, not always. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it, but I do wish that the changes were either consistent or, if not consistent, then more clearly outlined in some other way (e.g. when Treasured noted whose perspective we were following in the header for each chapter).

On symbolism: In some stories, when the characters are playing some kind of game with each other, the state of the game is meant to represent the state of the story in some way. A tense game reflects a tense situation, and one character getting the upper hand on another character can be representative of the same character "winning" over the other character in another context. In Because I Said So, Kesa will occasionally play Mahjong with a group of friends, and as far as I can tell the games are not intended to be symbolic of anything, it is literally just some women talking while they play Mahjong.

This doesn't mean the games are underutilized; instead, it's just used in the more surface-level sense of showing that these friends get along so well that they like to play Mahjong together. But I bring it up because it made me reflect on how I have my own decisions to make in terms of how symbolic or non-symbolic I'd want my own writing to be, because depending on my approach, the end results can be very different from each other.

Things I personally liked (disorganized)

• I think I just have to admit at this point that I'm going to be inclined to be a fan of any story that goes into extreme detail about how terrible parents can be.
• In a romance, I like the dynamic of someone who's given up on love nonetheless finding love anyway.
• I like the trope of found family (inspired by Shannon's relationship with Paz).
• I like exploring how a relationship changes when other people are brought into the mix.
• The more queer characters there are, the better.
• I liked that the younger characters acknowledge that the world is falling apart and that that's why it's important to live life to your fullest.
• I like when a character wrestles with their repressed sexuality (inspired by Kesa judging herself for sleeping with a stranger, before realizing that it's enough that it makes her happy).
• I liked the B-plot of Cami coming out to her grandmother, and I think it's because it's a cute queer-positive side story to sort of reinforce the fundamentally sapphic nature of the larger story (even though the larger story isn't strictly about being gay).
• I like when a story understands that, when a plot twist happens, the important part isn't so much the plot twist itself, but rather, the emotional impact it has on the characters and how it changes their approach to things.
• I like when the storyline kind of "pauses" so the characters can discuss an idea or concept that's thematic to the story. (It's also an opportunity to show the difference between the abstract ideal of a concept vs. its execution in actual reality.)
• I've already mentioned before that I like it when plot contrivances put characters in plot-irrelevant horny situations (like Kesa's profession requiring her to see celebrities in their underwear).
• I appreciate efforts to keep the cast easily memorable. Some of this is accomplished by keeping the cast somewhat small, but I also liked how this book sort of "categorized" the characters into groups and associated them with specific situations/contexts (e.g. Kesa's Mahjong group, Shannon's coworkers, everyone's parents, etc.)
• I like it when the same (or two similar) situations are viewed from two or more different perspectives (inspired by the first two chapters having similar openings, Kesa learning Josie wants to get married, and Shannon learning Paz wants to get married). I think it's a good means of characterization via comparison.
• There's a moment in the book where Kesa realizes she's jealous of the marriage of one of her clients, but she spends just a paragraph thinking about it before compartmentalizing it so she can resume dealing with her other multitude of problems. I liked that, the premise of a character having experienced a particular negative thought (especially loneliness) so many times that they're practiced at just tossing it to the side and moving on.
• I like the prospect of the narration being representative of the POV character's mental or emotional state. There was one particular moment where the narration is describing something in the past, then is suddenly interrupted by something in the present; there's no immediate indication that this is what's happening, so for a little bit I was as confused as the character who had just been jostled out of her nostalgic reverie. I think that's neat! It helps enforce that emotional connection between the reader and the characters. (I also liked how this approach made the sex scenes more about the feel of it than about the play-by-play details.)
• I think one of the things I want to make sure to focus on in my own stories is how people's relationships with each other are influenced by expectations (this thought largely inspired by Kesa's frustrations with how Josie is using the freedoms that Kesa provided her). I want to explore each character's expectations of a relationship and how the emotions associated with the relationship are different depending on whether the expectations are met, whether the expectations are fair, whether the character knows whether or not the expectations are fair, whether the character knows they have the expectations, where the expectations come from, whether the character is actually happy with the relationship following their expectations or whether it's simply what they assume a relationship is supposed to be, etc. etc. etc.

Things I personally disliked (also disorganized)

• I'm really just not a background scenery person.
• I felt like the story was trying a bit too hard to get Josie's "kid speak" to sound hip and modern. Does anyone actually say "O-M-G"?
• I alluded to the idea that Because I Said So might be copaganda, and... it's not not copaganda? It's not a big part of the plot, but Shannon still works for USMS and never questions the justice of it, and her "job arc" involves choosing not to put a child trafficker behind bars, because he's more useful to another justice department. Mehhhhh
• I also already alluded to the fact that it felt like Shannon was taking advantage of Kesa's vulnerabilities for a while, and that made me really uncomfortable. Fortunately, Kesa did stand up for herself afterwards. But I kinda wish it just hadn't happened in the first place.
• I already talked about the story spending too long on the point of "the characters won't talk to each other," and although I said it's usually understandable, I do think Shannon was too slow on the uptake that maybe she should apologize for ghosting Kesa years ago, and it didn't really feel like there was a particular reason she didn't think about that initially.
• At some point Shannon utters the phrase "Holy beeswax" and I think I don't like that.

Tropes I noticed

• Bad parents.
• Someone assuming the protagonists are a couple before they actually are.
• It's a bit of a stretch, but I'm counting Kesa's "rose-and-vanilla perfume" as another example of girls smelling like scented candles.

How would I have written it differently?

For this, I want to return to all the points I made in regards to whether to think of this book as a romance.

I like that this book focused on a wide variety of character drama, not just the romantic aspects. But I do wonder, if I were going to write a book with a similar focus, would I have bothered also trying to make that book a romance as well? It does feel like that central plot point ended up being distracting to the book's wider focus. (I think I had a similar issue with No Rings Attached as well.)

Even if I took the "romance" route as well, again, I would've preferred to focus on character drama that arose from the characters openly communicating with each other--most of the drama in this book, not just between Kesa and Shannon but between Kesa and Josie as well, arose from the fact that characters were hiding things from each other.

And it is worth noting that part of the reason for that is because characters were hiding things from the readers, as well. It's not revealed until the end of the book that Shannon considered proposing to Kesa back when the two of them first met, and I can't help but think that the reason Shannon hides this information from Kesa for so long is because she is also hiding it from the readers until such a point in time that it can be revealed to make the plot feel like it's really ramping up.

And then this point ties back into my point on trust and open communication between authors and readers. Plot twists can be fun, just like someone surprising you in real life can be fun. But that kind of fun comes with a caveat; it has to be handled properly. It has to make sense. If you hold back on doing good things, or you do outright bad things just for the sake of making the surprise more surprising, I feel like you're kind of missing the point of what makes a surprise fun.

I think I would've enjoyed writing a book that covers the kinds of topics that this book does, but I think how I approached it would've been fairly different, because I would've wanted to approach it while keeping these other aspects in mind. Maybe the end result wouldn't have been that different from a surface-level perspective, but I'd hope the feel would've been a little different, a little more comfortable to read through.

A passage from the book

There was one passage from chapter nineteen that stood out to me as a really nice passage on exploration of sexuality/gender and that I wanted to preserve for posterity. Since I didn't know where else to put it, and since I'm never really sure how to close these essays out anyway, here's that passage for you.

Cami took a shaky breath. "Everybody says be yourself. Be true to who you are. Well, what if you don't know?"

"Maybe who you are is someone on a journey. Right now." When Cami didn't respond she went on. "Nobody starts out with all the answers. You go along and figure things out. Sometimes you find out the answers you thought you had were false." Her voice trailed away and she looked back toward the deli.

"Everybody at school is bi, or ace, or trans, or queer--they all know."

Kesa brought her gaze back to Cami's face. Her eyes were dark with worry and still shimmered with tears. "I'll let you in on a secret. The people who tell you they have all the answers haven't asked themselves the right questions yet."

"So you don't have all the answers?"

"God, no." I'm a mess, she wanted to admit, but it wasn't something a seventeen-year-old needed to hear. "It took me a while, but now I can tell you the name of any fabric." She touched Cami's shirt at the shoulder. "Cotton knit blend with four percent Lycra. That's experience. I can tell the difference now between damask, jacquard, and matelassé, but I still refer to samples to be sure. The trouble with feelings is that there's no swatch book for them, and we only learn their names as we go along. So a lot of the time, you know you're feeling something but you don't have the words for it. Or you pick the wrong words and it all gets really confusing."

Cami stared at her shoes until the moment the light changed, then bolted across the street, leaving Kesa to trail slightly behind.