Dear Listeners, prepare to enter a tale as much yr grrl Jane as it is yr boi Aldous because this week Morgan and Isabeau are taking a trip to the other worldly. It’s Persuasion, generations after an event called "the Reduction," where love continues to blossom through the cracks of a biologically-enhanced hierarchical class structure. How does the framework of a mother text allow its children to run amok? Are epistles a creative crutch? Is alluding to it as “butterflies” an appropriate way for young-ish adults to discuss teenage sexuality? If we only had two syllables to describe this episode they'd be: it good.
It’s Jane-uary in this beautiful New Year of yr grrl, and we’re going all in out the gate y’all. This week, Morgan and Isabeau are breaking off a little preview of Ibi Zoboi’s P&P remix, Pride, named the Great Big Romance Read of 2018 by the Ripped Bodice. It’s about being a castaway in the throes of youth culture. It’s about that-trendy-new-place-in-an-up-and-coming-neighborhood. It’s about Mr. Darcy’s relationship to the trope of the manic pixie dream girl. It's a modern telling of P&P with... teens. It’s all killer and no filler party people.
In this episode Morgan and Isabeau discuss a time traveling romance. And it's not Outlander. Our modern day heroine (who lives in Chicago!) is thrown back in time and into an entirely different body! She does her level best to figure out the mystery of how she not only swapped bods but also timelines and she has sex on a horse.
Morgan and Isabeau dive deep into questions around corporeal identity, consent, and what rage looks and feels like. Trigger Warning: this book is a lot and deals explicitly with molestation and rape.
Dismissive actions. Furtive eyes. Arguing and making out in the rain. Hate fucking that becomes love fucking. This week, for a special Boxing Day Boner, Morgan and Isabeau unpack the classic Romance trope of enemies to lovers through the lens of the indelible 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Darcy. Gazebos. And displeasure turned titillating. Snuggle up with this cozy Boner and get ready because Jane-uary, came early.
Whether they’re kicking you and your loved ones off their property, enjoying a solitary brood on the snow swept moors, parroting Ebenezer Scrooge, or simply trying to run a successful newspaper, it seems Dukes are everywhere these days. This week, Morgan and Isabeau explore the men beneath the titles in How the Dukes Stole Christmas, an anthology of novellas by Tessa Dare, Sarah MacLean, Sophie Jordan, and Joanna Shupe. Can love coexist with wealth? Is Heiress Alone just Home Alone with more vitamin D? Does magic shortbread show up on a drug test? It’s a festive Duke down with all the trimmings. Eat and be merry!
We said we wouldn’t do it. We said we’d never talk about Jane Austen on this show. She’s played out. Old hat. But this January, get ready for the face-off you never thought possible, because it’s Jane-uary motherbitches. Morgan and Isabeau are coming fully loaded with genre spanning Jane Austen inspired content, commentary, reviews, Clueless; the whole gamut.