{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://frankhecker.com/2024/03/18/goodbye-my-rose-garden/",
  "description": "I add some thoughts to Goyavoyage’s review.",
  "path": "/2024/03/18/goodbye-my-rose-garden/",
  "publishedAt": "2024-03-19T03:12:52.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:77mn3ult3b72tpvtqqva6tat/site.standard.publication/3mpfmfpu4u72n",
  "tags": [
    "Goodbye, My Rose Garden",
    "yuri",
    "manga",
    "Cohost"
  ],
  "textContent": "\\This post was originally published on [Cohost. Where linked-to Cohost articles were not archived, I’ve updated the links to go to non-Cohost copies.\\]\n\nWe’re well into March now, but it’s never too late to highlight @Goyavoyage’s Februaryuri reviews. I have some comments to add to her review of _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_:\n\nFirst, like @Goyavoyage I will point you to Dee’s _Anime Feminist_ article about _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_, which I think is a shining example of _Anime Feminist_ at its best: review articles that combine stylish writing with rigorous sourcing and insightful analysis — like a good academic paper but without the academic stuffiness and obscurantism.\n\nSecond, a major virtue of _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_ is that its characters actually think and act as one would expect of people living in that time and place. In a lot of manga and other works featuring historical and semi-historical settings, the protagonists come off as people of modern sensibilities isekai-ed into the past and cosplaying as natives. Like typical isekai protagonists, as characters they’re unrealistic at best, smug and annoying at worst.\n\nOn that note, if you want to get a good feel for the sorts of queer-coded fictions created by contemporary writers of that era, I strongly recommend checking out Sarah Orne Jewett’s story “Martha’s Lady,” referenced in the manga. It’s a lovely story in its own right, and also a good example of how a premise like that of _Goodbye, My Rose Garden_ might have played out in real life.\n\nFinally, if you’re inclined to write your own historical fiction on queer themes, you could do a lot worse than to consult the various articles Heather Rose Jones has created as part of her _Lesbian Historic Motif Project_, which collects and presents information “that would be useful in grounding a fictional lesbian character in the context of historic human experience.”",
  "title": "Goodbye, My Rose Garden"
}