TSTL. Too Stupid To Live.
It’s an acronym that pops up in romance discussion-land way more than us authors would like.
Running into the dark, scary castle wearing only a nightgown? TSTL.
Forgetting to charge your cell phone before embarking on a trip with some dodgy nationalists and a rugged, dangerously handsome SEAL? TSTL.
In Regency-land, our heroines can, and do, do stupid things. Like believing a random piece of gossip told by a sketchy person rather than believing the gorgeous hunk who’s been getting her all steamed up for 100 pages. How about thinking she’s completely ugly because she’s got the wrong color hair, even though there’s a gorgeous hunk who keeps popping up from behind the potted palms at Almack’s to ogle her? And what about thinking no-one will ever love her because she’s (eek!) smart.
Well, people are stupid in real life. This is not to defend the TSTL heroine, but to admit I’ve been there.
For example, I am the most gullible person in the world. That time when someone told me “gullible” wasn’t in the dictionary? Fell for it. And later on, when I was purportedly an adult, someone convinced me that survivalists used frozen fish sticks as weapons. Yes, you read that right. Frozen fish sticks. That orange netting construction companies put on the sides of big buildings when they’re getting worked on? Another person convinced me it was to protect suicidal stockbrokers when they jumped out of buildings during stock market crashes.
So–who’s your favorite TSTL heroine, and why? What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?
Thanks for sharing–
Megan
I agree that TSTL heroines (and heroes) can be highly annoying…but then again, humans are TSTL!
I admit I’m not that gullible myself… Some of my earliest childhood memories are my father telling me that the athletes on the cereal boxes didn’t really eat the cereal, they were just PAID to say that. That, plus my essential cynicism (or paranoia??), led me to always assume the other kids were lying to me. 🙂
However, I was TSTL in other ways. 😉
BTW, I just want to say that the characters in many science fiction TV shows way out-TSTL any romance heroine who ever lived (or didn’t live.) (And I’m a fan of TV SF, too!)
Dr. McCoy (or Major Carter): We have to go back for him! He’ll die if we don’t!
Mr. Spock (or General Hammond): If you go back to rescue him, the likelihood is that the entire universe will be destroyed.
Scotty (or Daniel Jackson): It’s a risk we have to take!
Um, say what??? A ten percent chance of saving your friend’s life is more important than a 90 percent chance you’ll destroy all life???
TSTL!
Cara
While I think she started out TSTL, I really liked Jacinth (I think that’s her name) from Lady of Desire by Gaelen Foley. And if a character starts out TSTL, as long as I can see some growth throughout the story I can learn to appreciate her. But if there is no growth – I will forever hate the book. And as for stupid things I’ve done – well, I crashed the entire email system of the place where I used to work (not there anymore – hmmmmm) when I added a picture to a company email of a daffodil when I sent out a company wide email announcing they would be selling them for charity. Now what killed everyone’s system was the fact that I multiplied, then multiplied then multiplied 3 more times the flowers. I ended up sending out over 1,000,000 kigabytes or megabytes or something to each computer. That was not a good afternoon let me tell you.
LOL, Kristie!!! All for a little daffodil… 🙂
I agree with you about a character growing and learning during the story. Thinking about it, I think when we often complain about a TSTL character, it’s not even that the character is stupid — it’s that the character’s supposed to be smart, and the author has her doing something incredibly stupid, and we’re supposed to think it’s reasonable. Instead, I think it’s often a case of poor writing… Either the author faked the character’s motivation (and the character really wouldn’t have done whatever it was), or there was some plot point the author HAD to get in there and the author couldn’t think of a better way…
I’m trying to think of a TSTL thing I’ve done, and my brain is oddly quiet. I think I’ve blanked out most of the embarrassing things I’ve done, to spare my ego. 🙂
Okay, here’s one… I locked myself out of the house when my husband was IN TAIWAN and though we had owned our little townhouse for a year I hadn’t bothered to give a key to any of my neighbors or my relatives who live nearby!!!! So I had no key, no wallet, and I was hungry (lunchtime!) And at first it seemed none of my neighbors were going to be home till dinnertime, and I had no idea what to do! Luckily, I found one neighbor home who let me use his phone to call a locksmith (who charged me $75 for busting the doorknob.) Yep. I felt pretty stupid about that. 🙂
Cara
Well, if we’re recounting occasions when we were shockingly stupid… I once had a coat with buttons as large as a two-shilling piece. (I’m turning red even remembering the garment.)
There. I challenge you all to top that story!
Bertram the Blushing
Mr. Bertram? I once (and it was a loooong once) had purple hair.
No purple turbans, though. I’m not a dowager.
Human foibles are all okay. I truly believed until the day I met my husband that no one would ever be able to love me. I also believe that if I were ever to get on a plane it would crash. Maybe not the first plane but, somehow I think I could die in a plane crash so, I don’t fly. Ever. Now, imagine me in a life threaten situation that involved me getting into a small aircraft. I’d probably argue over who was going to fly because I figure if it’s going down, I may as well be sure I was the one in control 😉
As for things I have done. There are a rack of them that the family just loves to re-tell.
I was a waitress at 15 and I heard one of the other waitresses ask the cook what kind of fish we served. The she said, probably highliner and then laughed. Month later a customer at a table asked me what kind of fish we served and I told him ‘highliner’. He started laughing and said, good one, go find out. I had no clue what he was talking about so I went into the kitchen and said to the cook, I told this guy out there that we serve highliner fish but he told me to come check. Yep, everyone had a good laugh at that one.
The cooks learned quickly that I didn’t know much about food so then I would get ‘Cindy! You didn’t ask this table how they wanted their pork done!’ ‘Kay’ I said. I went out and asked how the wanted their pork done. Their faces should have said it all. I walked in and said ‘well’. Laughing ensued. They then explained to me that pork was always cooked well. Hey! I was just a kid.
Oh and Megan, I also fell for the gullible thing and I can’t tell you how many times my dad has told Billy and I something like it was the truth and had us believing it.
Now, get this, I was about 17 and Billy was 12 and we were watching a show on twins so I turned to Billy and said, ‘oh, by the way, we’re twins’. I never thought anything about it until 7 years later when my parents told me that while they were watching a show with my 19 year old brother, he said something about how he and I were twins. I couldn’t stop laughing. I think my parents wonder about our intelligence.
CindyS
LOL on all of this!
Re TSTL heroines I agree with Kristie and Cara; I want to see character growth AND I want the heroine’s actions to make sense re her age and background.
If you think about it, Elizabeth Bennett has her TSTL moments. So do many Georgette Heyer heroines. Arabella (from the book of the same name) and Kitty from COTILLION come to mind. I’ve written heroines who had TSTL moments (THE INCORRIGIBLE LADY CATHERINE had quite a few!)
The point is all these characters are young and inexperienced.
It did bug me in a Julia Quinn book (TO SIR PHILIP, WITH LOVE) where the heroine, who was 28, I think, and out in society for some time. She went off all alone to visit a widower at his country estate and was surprised and resistant when the result was a forced marriage. Duh! I didn’t hate the book but I had to work to get over that.
I think some readers of historicals relate to a heroine who is really like a transplanted 21st century woman, rather than someone who grew up in Regency society and knew its rules.
Not that someone who knows the rules can’t break them, but I prefer that they have their reasons!
Elena 🙂
Oh, and my own TSTL moment has to be when I locked my firstborn baby into the car. Luckily it was not hot and we were at a fitness club about a block from a police station. A nice officer was there in about 2 minutes (before the game of peekaboo had palled), broke into the car and very kindly did not rib me too much about it.
This sounds like the beginning of a contemporary romance!
Elena
My favorite TSTL heroines are the ones who sacrifice all for Dear Daddy. I just want to smack them. Or the ones who, usually in the process of trying to save the mess Dear Daddy has made, make some bizarre decision like going to an orgy, or going to visit a rake at home, or…and at that point, you realize there are genetic factors at play, and this family should be forbidden to breed further.
Cindy, what is it that makes waitresses so vulnerable to daft tricks! In my first waitressing job, a familiar trick was to be sent to ask the cook for a Long Stand. We all fell for it.
Elena, I was always afraid I’d leave my child in her carrier on top of the car. I never did it, but one year, on April 14, as I was driving off to get my taxes done, I saw something flap by in the rear mirror, and realized I’d left all my tax papers (very complex that year) there. Fortunately I was able to pull over and retrieve everything. Whew. And there was the time my boss and I spent a long time tying a large piece of artwork onto the top of his car and then realized we had tied the door shut…ever after, referred to the time Janet and George tied one on.
I think I was more than gullible as a child. I remember my older brother telling me, quite seriously, that if you touched the beams from headlights that played over your bedroom wall from passing traffic, you’d get swept up and carried away. He claimed he’d actually seen someone hanging on…blah blah blah.
On one point, though, I’m glad I wasn’t gullible. And that was a lot of writing advice I received like: “…no editor will go for that…you can’t put that in a romance…your heroine/hero can’t do (whatever).” And I’m very happy I ignored it all and went with my gut feelings.
Janet
I think some readers of historicals relate to a heroine who is really like a transplanted 21st century woman, rather than someone who grew up in Regency society and knew its rules.
Very true, Elena, and it explains the popularity of time-travel. But to me that’s the whole challenge of both reading and writing historicals–finding the mores of another time credible.
Janet
One reason I read Regencies is because the characters think differently than modern people. I find that very interesting. I read science fiction for much the same reason! Human beings are highly adaptable — we love to forget this, or deny it — and what we like to think everyone of course thinks or does or feels, isn’t necessarily so.
I love to twist my brain around to follow a character until I can understand their thinking, their logic, their world.
Cara
Janet, so true about the heroines and their worthless fathers! Or sometimes brothers. Or whatever. I make a distinction between that and the heroines from books like COTILLION and FRIDAY’S CHILD who are just a bit, er, naive.
As for stupid things I have done, they are, unfortunately, all permanently branded on my memory. Some recent ones? Umm…how about lighting a fire in the fireplace BEFORE checking if the flu was open? Yeah, that worked well.
I’m not too gullible nowadays…but I must admit, I take an evil delight in twisting the minds of my nieces and nephews. We all have our vices. I’ll have to remember that one about being twins–definite possibilities there!
Todd-who-is-otherwise-virtuous
The occasional foolish act of a heronine of a genuine Regency romance does not rile me, but I loathe the nitwits that inhabit old school Barbara Cartlands (virginal despite a few years of marriage, saved from the lecherous old goat by him having a heart attack after chasing him around the table) and the traditional Harlequins (no, sitting around and being pathetic will *not* get you a doctor).
Much prefer feisty, even violent heroines–the Georgette Heyer heroine who shot the hero to protect her honor in Devil’s Cub, and Freya of Balogh’s Slightly series, well known for her wicked right hook. Go get ’em girls.
Perhaps this category should be better call TPtL (Too Pathetic to Live) rather than TStL.
Re TPTL and sacrificing All for Dear Daddy…
I think authors use the Dear Daddy route when they want the heroine to do something wild (like offer herself as mistress to the hero), but need to justify it with some noble motivation. And what’s more noble than helping your family? (And actually, I don’t mind that when it’s done with some freshness).
And the authors that play the Family Loyalty card have a point. The times I’ve written heroines who did something wild (OK, even TSTL) for their own reasons, some readers have complained these heroines were selfish.
Sometimes it’s a fine line. When does noble cross over into TPTL? When does independent cross over into Too Selfish to Live?
Elena 🙂