Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 10
May 14, 2014
Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 6
I have a new theory for why LKH cannot write realistic people: She's a pod person. At this point, alien abduction and replacement is the only logical leap to take. What makes me say this? THERE IS NO UNDERSTANDING FOR NORMAL HUMAN REACTIONS AT ALL.
The timeline for this series is rather screwy. Probably the best thing that LKH did for this series was give it a deadline: Merry has six months to get pregnant before Cel gets out and tries to kill her again. This gives the series a sense of urgency, and a tight space in which to work.
Anyone who has read Anita Blake, or watched LKH's attitude towards her deadlines should know how much the lady hates time limits. So of course the first thing she did in the second book was throw out three months, and I *think* the space between the end of the previous book and the start of this one is about a month. So in the space of two books we've lost well over half of our deadline time. In which Merry has done nothing, save screw. She's making attempts at cementing alliances, but only at the urging of her men--Doyle, mostly. She's pretty officially at TSTL at this point, and she's proven that she would NOT make a very good Queen. A better Queen than Cel, but she wouldn't be what the Fae need right now.
Why do I say this? If I'm right, then it's only been a month since Maeve Reed's mortal husband died. The backstory for Ms. Maeve is that she got thrown out of the Seelie court for implying that King Taranis was infertile, landed in Hollywood, and met and married the guy she's been with ever since. A Hollywood marriage surviving decades is rather amazing. A Fae woman marrying a man who hasn't gotten her pregnant goes against everything they know in their culture. All of this implies that Maeve truly, deeply, unconditionally loved her husband. She got pregnant not because she wanted his baby, but because she wanted something of his that she would get to keep for a little while. Not the best motivation to have a kid, but it's an understandable stage in the grieving process--bargaining, to be specific.
And Merry does not understand this. AT ALL.
...It was the bed she had shared with the late Gordon Reed for more than twenty years. I'd suggested that maybe she could move to a new bedroom until she got over some of her greif. She gave me a look so scathing I'd never suggested it again. Because it's the bedroom that's causing the pain. It's not the fact that Maeve's partner, friend, confidant, and lover is gone, that he's not coming back. It's not the fact that, no matter where she sleeps, Maeve is going to roll over and discover, each morning, that he's not there. No. It's the bedroom.
One of my favorite movies is Memento. In the middle of the movie, there are a handful of scenes where Leonard uses his disability (if you haven't seen it, Leonard has no short-term memory and cannot make new memories, so he's got about five minutes worth of RAM to work with) to trick himself into believing that his dead wife just got out of bed. It works, but the pain of rediscovering her death is worse because for him, he's just discovered it. He burns her things, which the movie implies were the last of her things, that he's done this a thousand times before with different props and different rooms. And just prior to this sequence, he says something absolutely gut wrenching:
If Merry were this sheltered creature who had never suffered a severe, conscious loss, I'd give her this one. Not understanding that switching rooms would fix exactly shit would make sense. But Merry has lost a lot of things: her home, her father and only protector, friendships, lovers. She ought to understand that Maeve isn't in her bed because it's her room, she's in that room because it was Gordon's room, and it probably still smells like he was there. But instead, we get this convicting little twist at the end, about Maeve shooting Merry a nasty look for suggesting she trade rooms. I think we're supposed to read this as Maeve lashing out in the agonies of her grief, but it's so fucking clueless it's...yeah.
And let me remind you what brought this on: the studio execs Maeve work for suggested she get an abortion so she can still work.
And now Merry is going into Maeve's bedroom to make her stop crying.
Here's another theme I've noticed in LKH's writing: Tears must be stopped at all costs. Crying, negative emotion, always elicits this emergency response from everyone. If you are crying, you are not allowed to be alone and weep. People must come and distract you with something. Tears are always a call for attention. But Maeve has thrown her assistant, who is just as upset as she is, out of the room. It's kind of obvious, she wants to be alone.
Merry goes into the room, approaches the bed, mutters one word of "It's going to be okay" ....aaaaand we go straight to a random sex scene complete with random magic visions.
So the distraction-from-greif thing? It works perfectly. Same as every other time LKH wants to have ultimately negative behavior--ie slut shaming, the cultervention in Danse Macabre, dressing inappropretely, the constant pissing contests, the emotional, physical and sexual abuse that just won't stop happening--be portrayed as a positive thing. See, it's Maeve who is in the wrong here for crying. Merry must come and rescue her from her crying.
SHE IS IN MOURNING FOR HER DEAD HUSBAND YOU INSENSATIVE TWIT GO AWAY AND LET HER FUCKING CRY.
So. Random magic visions. When Merry comes to, Maeve and Frost are standing around her, looking worried. A couple minutes later, everybody's fine, and Merry has somehow given Maeve back her "godhead" (...that is the most phallic thing in this entire book, and that includes all the harem's penii) and has bestowed a brand spanking new one on Frost. Because Merry, for all intents and purposes, is just one great big Vagina of Holding.
So they talk about things. They try to explain how this could work. Maeve then says that when Merry and company killed the Nameless, the powers of the gods that folk like Rhys and Maeve had surrendered had gone into everyone present...except for Merry, who never had anything. So instead of it being her own personal godhead (gag) restored, Merry gets to be the very special Container for the Goddess Danu.
And then Maeve begins to cry again. Only THIS time, nobody crowds around to stop her. Because THIS time she's crying for Danu, and not for herself. Or, as Merry puts it:
Fuck you. Seriously, Merry. Go sit on a plunger, go jump off a bridge, go do something to remove your worthless, self-centered, egotistical, sociopathic self from the universe. Maeve Reed wasn't weeping because of "a bad day at work and baby hormones". She was weeping because her husband of twenty years has been dead for LESS THAN A MONTH. Maybe, MAYBE she's more prone to weep because she's hormonal, but that does not in any way, shape, or form invalidate anything about her emotions. People do not weep without cause. And how self-centered is it that you won't allow someone to weep for themselves, but you'll allow it when it's for a goddess? Why aren't you piling on top of her to offer her comforts and sex now? Her husband died. HER. HUSBAND. DIED.
And where in the name of fuck do you get off calling your boss insisting on your abortion "a bad day at work". That's not "a bad day at work". Burning yourself on cooking equiptment is a bad day at work. Being told "Get an abortion or else" is a motherfucking lawsuit, and if Merry hadn't interrupted the tears here Maeve's next phone call would probably have been to an incredibly good lawyer. Even if Gordon were alive, this is an invasion of privacy and some kind of work-related harassment.
This scene is not logical. Maeve's greif here was agitated just so Merry could go in and comfort her and bring back her (gag) godhead. Maeve's tears at the end are to show that Something Profound Has Happened. There is no indication that any of these emotions are treated or handled as real, and that either writer or lead character had any sympathy for a new-minted widow carrying her husband's last-ever child.
I hate this book and everything about it.
The timeline for this series is rather screwy. Probably the best thing that LKH did for this series was give it a deadline: Merry has six months to get pregnant before Cel gets out and tries to kill her again. This gives the series a sense of urgency, and a tight space in which to work.
Anyone who has read Anita Blake, or watched LKH's attitude towards her deadlines should know how much the lady hates time limits. So of course the first thing she did in the second book was throw out three months, and I *think* the space between the end of the previous book and the start of this one is about a month. So in the space of two books we've lost well over half of our deadline time. In which Merry has done nothing, save screw. She's making attempts at cementing alliances, but only at the urging of her men--Doyle, mostly. She's pretty officially at TSTL at this point, and she's proven that she would NOT make a very good Queen. A better Queen than Cel, but she wouldn't be what the Fae need right now.
Why do I say this? If I'm right, then it's only been a month since Maeve Reed's mortal husband died. The backstory for Ms. Maeve is that she got thrown out of the Seelie court for implying that King Taranis was infertile, landed in Hollywood, and met and married the guy she's been with ever since. A Hollywood marriage surviving decades is rather amazing. A Fae woman marrying a man who hasn't gotten her pregnant goes against everything they know in their culture. All of this implies that Maeve truly, deeply, unconditionally loved her husband. She got pregnant not because she wanted his baby, but because she wanted something of his that she would get to keep for a little while. Not the best motivation to have a kid, but it's an understandable stage in the grieving process--bargaining, to be specific.
And Merry does not understand this. AT ALL.
...It was the bed she had shared with the late Gordon Reed for more than twenty years. I'd suggested that maybe she could move to a new bedroom until she got over some of her greif. She gave me a look so scathing I'd never suggested it again. Because it's the bedroom that's causing the pain. It's not the fact that Maeve's partner, friend, confidant, and lover is gone, that he's not coming back. It's not the fact that, no matter where she sleeps, Maeve is going to roll over and discover, each morning, that he's not there. No. It's the bedroom.
One of my favorite movies is Memento. In the middle of the movie, there are a handful of scenes where Leonard uses his disability (if you haven't seen it, Leonard has no short-term memory and cannot make new memories, so he's got about five minutes worth of RAM to work with) to trick himself into believing that his dead wife just got out of bed. It works, but the pain of rediscovering her death is worse because for him, he's just discovered it. He burns her things, which the movie implies were the last of her things, that he's done this a thousand times before with different props and different rooms. And just prior to this sequence, he says something absolutely gut wrenching:
I don't even know how long she's been gone. It's like I've woken up in bed and she's not here... because she's gone to the bathroom or something. But somehow, I know she's never gonna come back to bed. If I could just... reach over and touch... her side of the bed, I would know that it was cold, but I can't. I know I can't have her back... but I don't want to wake up in the morning, thinking she's still here. I lie here not knowing... how long I've been alone. So how... how can I heal? How am I supposed to heal if I can't... feel time?That's grief. That's what it looks like. It's best illustrated in the ten thousand things grieving people do that they don't have to do anymore: the extra place at the table they set by mistake, and then refuse to remove because it would mean admitting that no one is going to sit there. Rolling over into their part of the bed so that you can get their smell, for however long it lasts.
If Merry were this sheltered creature who had never suffered a severe, conscious loss, I'd give her this one. Not understanding that switching rooms would fix exactly shit would make sense. But Merry has lost a lot of things: her home, her father and only protector, friendships, lovers. She ought to understand that Maeve isn't in her bed because it's her room, she's in that room because it was Gordon's room, and it probably still smells like he was there. But instead, we get this convicting little twist at the end, about Maeve shooting Merry a nasty look for suggesting she trade rooms. I think we're supposed to read this as Maeve lashing out in the agonies of her grief, but it's so fucking clueless it's...yeah.
And let me remind you what brought this on: the studio execs Maeve work for suggested she get an abortion so she can still work.
And now Merry is going into Maeve's bedroom to make her stop crying.
Here's another theme I've noticed in LKH's writing: Tears must be stopped at all costs. Crying, negative emotion, always elicits this emergency response from everyone. If you are crying, you are not allowed to be alone and weep. People must come and distract you with something. Tears are always a call for attention. But Maeve has thrown her assistant, who is just as upset as she is, out of the room. It's kind of obvious, she wants to be alone.
Merry goes into the room, approaches the bed, mutters one word of "It's going to be okay" ....aaaaand we go straight to a random sex scene complete with random magic visions.
So the distraction-from-greif thing? It works perfectly. Same as every other time LKH wants to have ultimately negative behavior--ie slut shaming, the cultervention in Danse Macabre, dressing inappropretely, the constant pissing contests, the emotional, physical and sexual abuse that just won't stop happening--be portrayed as a positive thing. See, it's Maeve who is in the wrong here for crying. Merry must come and rescue her from her crying.
SHE IS IN MOURNING FOR HER DEAD HUSBAND YOU INSENSATIVE TWIT GO AWAY AND LET HER FUCKING CRY.
So. Random magic visions. When Merry comes to, Maeve and Frost are standing around her, looking worried. A couple minutes later, everybody's fine, and Merry has somehow given Maeve back her "godhead" (...that is the most phallic thing in this entire book, and that includes all the harem's penii) and has bestowed a brand spanking new one on Frost. Because Merry, for all intents and purposes, is just one great big Vagina of Holding.
So they talk about things. They try to explain how this could work. Maeve then says that when Merry and company killed the Nameless, the powers of the gods that folk like Rhys and Maeve had surrendered had gone into everyone present...except for Merry, who never had anything. So instead of it being her own personal godhead (gag) restored, Merry gets to be the very special Container for the Goddess Danu.
And then Maeve begins to cry again. Only THIS time, nobody crowds around to stop her. Because THIS time she's crying for Danu, and not for herself. Or, as Merry puts it:
This time I didn't think it was a bad day at work and baby hormones.
Fuck you. Seriously, Merry. Go sit on a plunger, go jump off a bridge, go do something to remove your worthless, self-centered, egotistical, sociopathic self from the universe. Maeve Reed wasn't weeping because of "a bad day at work and baby hormones". She was weeping because her husband of twenty years has been dead for LESS THAN A MONTH. Maybe, MAYBE she's more prone to weep because she's hormonal, but that does not in any way, shape, or form invalidate anything about her emotions. People do not weep without cause. And how self-centered is it that you won't allow someone to weep for themselves, but you'll allow it when it's for a goddess? Why aren't you piling on top of her to offer her comforts and sex now? Her husband died. HER. HUSBAND. DIED.
And where in the name of fuck do you get off calling your boss insisting on your abortion "a bad day at work". That's not "a bad day at work". Burning yourself on cooking equiptment is a bad day at work. Being told "Get an abortion or else" is a motherfucking lawsuit, and if Merry hadn't interrupted the tears here Maeve's next phone call would probably have been to an incredibly good lawyer. Even if Gordon were alive, this is an invasion of privacy and some kind of work-related harassment.
This scene is not logical. Maeve's greif here was agitated just so Merry could go in and comfort her and bring back her (gag) godhead. Maeve's tears at the end are to show that Something Profound Has Happened. There is no indication that any of these emotions are treated or handled as real, and that either writer or lead character had any sympathy for a new-minted widow carrying her husband's last-ever child.
I hate this book and everything about it.
May 13, 2014
Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 5
Book stuff first: Don't forget that Starbleached: Liberty is out. It's on Amazon, and FINALLY is up on Barnes and Noble (grumblegrumbleTWO DAYS OF NON-STOP UPLOADING ATTEMPTSgrumblegrumble) and it's over on Smashwords. Where, if you are a new-blog-and-book-reader, you can get the first Starbleached book for free, and both the omnibus and Liberty for half off. You're basically getting seven bucks worth of stuff for three fifty.
Go buy things. Go. Go.
You know, probably the biggest question people ask...well, not me, but so called "negative" or anti-fans of LKH why they keep reading. Well, I think this chapter will probably show both why I, at least, can't look away from the train wreck and what happens when LKH finally starts doing the things she's done from the beginning.
Siun has appeared in the magic mirror...phone...thing. Siun is Rhys's primary rapist, and also Kitto's "owner". She is also a gigantic spider...thing, and does sound legit horrifying. Merry keeps her mouth shut while Rhys calls bullshit on Kurag. Kurag insists that, if he agrees to this alliance on the terms of one extra month per part-sidhe goblin brought over, Merry and her boys bed whomever he offers. Siun is part sidhe, so she'd be on the roster, so to speak.
Doyle calls bullshit and says that's not fair. Even an alliance shouldn't mean they have to sleep with whoever wants it.
Kurag says he's being generous. Doyle calls bullshit again.
Kurag tries a different tack--he implies that Siun is the product of a Sidhe raping a goblin. Rhys calls bullshit and says that Siun boasted that her mother had raped her Sidhe father. I honestly have to say, I haven't seen the word "rape" be used so much in an LKH book before. Kudos to her, but damn.
Finally Merry stops everything and agrees to the deal. Doyle agrees to bed Siun. Rhys says no, you can't, he's sworn a blood-oath to kill the thing the next time he saw her in person. Well, that settles that. Rhys gets to try his best to kill Siun before anybody has to fuck her.
Siun then fucks herself over by scaring the utter shit out of Kitto:
"And after I have killed Rhys," Siun said, "I will have his trull, my Kitto. I will ride him until he shines underneath me." She goes on to say that Rhys wouldn't have lost an eye if he'd "shone" beneath her. The problem here? The Sidhe only "shine" when they're really, really into sex. So what Siun is saying here is 1. If Rhys would have just laid back and enjoyed it, it would have hurt less (Fuck you) and 2. she's going to rape Kitto until he enjoys it.
Nobody calls bullshit on this.
It's kind of disturbing how LKH discounts the human body's ability to screw itself over. An orgasm is an involuntary reaction, kind of like a sneeze. Rub things together enough, it'll happen. If this weren't true, and you had voluntary control over how much pleasure you got, virgins would never have an orgasm. LKH, and a lot of other people, think that you can control how much pleasure you feel, and that if you feel pleasure at all...well, you must have wanted to. This becomes especially disturbing when Rhys shouts at Siun:
"I told you then, and I'll tell you now. You can force yourself on me, but you can't make me enjoy it. You're a lousy lay." Uh...yes. Yes she can. That's part of what makes rape such a violation, and why many victims have trouble dealing with their assaults, or even considering their rapes to have been assaults at all. Rape is not about penetration. It's about an absence of informed consent on the part of at least one of the participants.
However, that last shot enrages Siun, and she lunges for Rhys.
This is too much for Kitto. His undefined magic suddenly kicks on, and he drags Siun through the mirror...but only part way. She's now stuck between Goblin Town and Merry's house. And Kitto won't put her back because he's afraid opening the mirror again will let her through the rest of the way.
They spend a few minutes dithering about what to do with her...and then Rhys decides that he's going to make good on his oath. RIGHT NOW.
And something amazing happens. The book stops sucking.
Rhys wastes a minute taunting Siun. Then he orders Frost to give Kitto a sword. Kitto has displayed his magic for the first time, and Rhys knows if Kitto wants to keep his hand of power, he needs to shed blood. This must make the softer, gentler gifts a bitch to handle--I mean, what if you have something like a hand of healing? Do you have to go slaughter a chicken if you want to keep it?--but it means that Kitto is about to make a god awful mess.
He does.
Meanwhile, Merry is sitting over in a corner, watching and making no comments whatsoever. This scene might as well be a third person scene, for all the emotional investment Merry is giving it. And because it has nothing to do with LKH's self-insert, and everything to do with the two men here, the scene is good. At one point Kitto is struggling to advance on Siun and Merry starts to rescue him...and Doyle stops her, because this is Kitto's shit, it has to be Kitto's shit, and she needs to sit down and butt the fuck out.
And then there is one single paragraph of perfect awesome.
Siun is still alive, even though she's now in lots of itty bitty pieces. Kitto can't kill her. She is, literally, immortal. Rhys walks up to her, touches her, and tells her to die. She does. Rhys has his godhead back, and he's a death-god. Probably not the person you want to maim. And it's creepy, it's chilling, and it makes all the romantic pronouncements afterwards have decent weight to them.
THIS IS THE SHIT WE COME HERE TO READ. It's exciting, it's emotionally engaging, the overtones are cool, and it's chilling as fuck. The failing here is not in the scene itself, it's in all the utter, worthless garbage before it. The questionable consent issues, the victim blaming, the fact that Kitto looks twelve, the "They're brown but not human brown" racism around Doyle and the other brown boy-toy. When LKH takes three seconds to stop kissing her self-insert's ass, she can still write a good scene.
The problem I have with LKH is not that I think she's a terrible writer. I think that L. Ron Hubbard is a terrible writer. I google Stephenie Meyer sometimes to make sure the woman is NOT coming out with a new book anytime soon (so far, so good) and whoever decided Fifty Shades of Gray should have seen the world outside of FanFiction.net should probably sue their lobotomist because twenty page e-mail exchanges are not exciting reads. LKH is a decent-to-passable writer who can, when motivated, piece together enough good scenes to make a good book. Her problem is that she is unable to tell a good idea from a bad one on her own, and she has systematically removed every single person who could do the job for her from her life. This is why the same person who could write a scene like this--a newly restored god of death killing the everloving fuck out of his own rapist--is writing scenes where two major characters get glued together by their own bodily fluids. Is it a good scene? Not particularly. There's probably a lot of issues I can't focus on because the preceeding chapters burned me out. But it's a damn sight better than anything else in the book, and it's interesting. It makes me more interested in Rhys as a person, in Kitto as a person.
The reason anti-fans keep reading LKH when her book quality is so abysmal is we know she can do better, we resent that she won't, and we're kind of mourning the fact that a book that contains scenes like this can't manage to be any better.
She also has the timing of a broken clock. This chapter should end here. It's done. But instead, it goes on for several pages. A celtic god of death just got his powers back...and instead of actually letting us focus on that, and how utterly bad that could be--or good and awesome--LKH has to shift things over to how much Merry Loves Galen.
He's green. It's boring. Let's skip it.
Next up: This is not actually their house. This is not really mentioned in any of these chapters, but they're living with Maeve Reed. I guess LKH's copypasta doesn't extend to descriptions of actual places. Maeve has just come home. Her husband has died in the months between this and the last book, and she's pregnant via Merry's fertility spell, the last time she'll ever have a baby with her dead husband. The studio execs that she works for want her to have an abortion because she won't be able to make her next movie if she's pregnant.
In a rare case, I agree with Merry 100%; these guys are a bunch of assholes. Maeve is inconsolable, so Merry heads off to comfort her.
End of chapter.
May 12, 2014
The Rewards of Unmonitored Reading
My favorite scene in Lord of the Rings is probably Gandalf confronting the Balrog. More specificially, it is the scene on the bridge. One old, lone man standing on a narrow bridge against a monster two or three times his size. Something he knows he cannot fight, something that he knows will kill him. And to protect his friends--and the whole world--he doesn't run. Each time I watch that movie I become transfixed by the climactic line, You shall not pass. There is an idea there, something that runs much, much deeper than just an old wizard fighting an imaginary demon. It's an idea that gets repeated throughout the entire trilogy. It appears in the form of Helm's Deep, the final retreat of Rohan. It is spoken by Aragorn at the gates to Mordor: This far, no further. It's the idea that, at a certain point, the last stand stops being an option and becomes a necessity. And it's something that is needful to the soul of every human being. For our own protection and well being, we all need something that, when threatened, causes us to rise up in response and fight.
Mine are books.
I've been relatively open about this on the blog, but I'm also pretty sure I've snagged a few new readers since February, so I'm going to head this with a quick bit of backstory. I have a very long, very nasty history with depression and self-injury. This winter (2013/14) it got unmanageable, and I decided to seek help. I am on medication, and I have a WONDERFUL councilor who has managed to help me figure out a few things.
At the same time, my friend Tiger Gray (Hi Tiger!) pointed me to a blog called No Longer Quivering, where the stories of former homeschooled students were posted. I became interested. Not, of course, because there was anything wrong with how I was raised. Oh goodness no. I was one of the lucky homeschooled kiddos. No, I became interested because one of the posts was a story about a family I've been calling the "Matthews." I worked for them nearly ten years ago, and was rather stunned to see that 1. They were still around and famous and 2. had become, if this is possible, even more repressive and IMHO wrong-headed in the years since I'd been their employee.
But the thing about reading is, our brains are smarter than we are. MUCH smarter. And little bits and pieces of whatever we are reading tends to get into the cracks, no matter how carefully we try to keep it out. We are driven, in a way, by a web of subconscious, even unconscious, instincts, thoughts and feelings that our minds do not even allow us to know. Many of these things are things that, if we dared to be aware of them, would change our entire lives. For most of us, I have to assume that internal web is mostly benign. For me, it was toxic, restrictive, and confining. My life has been ruled, not by what I think, but by what I am not allowed to think.
Probably the biggest problem with Conservative Christian homeschool programs is that the programs are built around what they aren't teaching. It starts, not with a basis of inclusion but with one of exclusion. The fabric of the modern curriculum is taken, examined, and the disagreeable portions are amputated wholesale. Evolution. Sex education. Chunks of science, history, the arts. This is done in the belief that by restricting the information given to a child to the "wholesome", you are somehow limiting the damage life will do to said child. The problem, however, is that by basing teaching on the exclusion of ideas, rather than the inclusion, you are teaching the child that there are things they must not think about, things they must not have in their heads. They must not consider the idea of evolution before accepting or dismissing it, but rather must ignore it from the start and reject it wholesale (For the record, I am not a seven-day creation believer. Evolution is too elegant a mechanism, IMHO, for it to be either false or anti-God). Sexuality must be rejected, art that fits certain criteria must be removed. And the underlying message--the thing we weave into the children's mental web--is that our thoughts are something dangerous, something that has to be kept manicured and pruned, and anything distasteful must be hidden, ignored and unacknowledged. The first thing we do when we base teaching in the exclusion of ideas is educate children in the art of being afraid of their own minds.
This was something I did learn, but only halfway. Evolution was vilified, sex was shamed, everything educational must be kept as straight and narrow as possible...but my parents never bothered to monitor my recreational reading. They would sometimes question me to make sure that I knew such-and-such was false--reguardless of actual truth, I must always agree with EVERYTHING they thought--and then allow me to continue reading whatever and whenever I wanted to. It must have seemed like a gift to my mom, who didn't have to stress so much about my education. She was just glad I was reading. And if you wish to teach a child that ideas and learning are something to be afraid of, this is the worst possible thing you can do.
I still grew up ashamed of my reading choices--surely it was against God for me to prefer Lewis, Tolkien, Brooks, Donaldson, et al to the Bible--but this did not matter enough to me to give it up. I couldn't give it up if I wanted to. Every time I tried--praying on my knees for God to take this longing away from me--I was met with silence and a big fat failure. (This lasted until I was sixteen, at which point I think God got sick of it and came in with the clue-by-four to inform me that it was fine, he had made me that way, so would I PLEASE stop trying to amputate parts of my psyche?) And so I'd spend eight hours a day learning bible verses by rote, and studying facts that "disproved" the theory of evolution, and then spend the rest of my time reading McCaffrey, Weber, Verne and Wells. Madeline L'Engle was a very special favorite, though eight-year-old me did not understand that the ant diagrams explaining "wrinkling" were actually concepts and ideas most adults had trouble understanding. (I do think that if I hadn't read A Wrinkle in Time I would not have understood very much of The Time Machine when I finally got my hands on a copy, but fortunately those books were read in that precisely that order)
Naturally, I tried to separate these books from anything resembling actual thought. Not because I disagreed with these ideas, but because I knew if I dared to think, say, that evolution might possibly be a working concept, my parents would be highly displeased. Displeasure meant a withdrawl of love in my mind. My entire purpose was, after all, to support and please my parents. There was also a long-running theme of loss in my young life that I'm only just beginning to understand. Displeasing my parents meant that I would lose more things. I didn't want to lose my books. Books and ideas, and my vibrant internal life, were things no one could take away from me, if I were very careful about shepharding what I did and did not do. What I could permit to be conscious, so to speak, and what had to stay safely tucked away in the very bottom of my mind, had to be very, very carefully regulated. Otherwise I would lose the last defensive wall between myself and the world. I had to protect them. I really couldn't afford to lose anything else.
The thing of it is, books and stories soon became my castle, my very special form of Helm's Deep. The defenses for other parts of my life--my appearance, sexuality, behavior, speech patterns, creativity, spirituality--were minimal. These things could be breeched and broken at will by anyone. But my books had walls around them, had armies guarding them. Spikes and boiling pitch, and archers at every murder hole just waiting for someone to dare, dare try to take one of these books away. It was the one thing in my world that I had been allowed to grow unmolested, that I did not have to answer to. No one got to touch these.
I personally believe that this was a God thing. A big God thing. I started out protecting my books, but very quickly my books became the thing that protected me. If, for example, I had developed knitting or sexuality as my "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" bridge, I probably would have been vulnerable for a lot of nastiness. But the thing about abusive systems is, information is the very first thing they go for. It isn't by choice. One unregulated idea can shatter their whole system. It's like a beam of light in a darkroom: it destroys the picture they are trying to build. If they want to have any hope of controlling a person, they have to regulate the reading habits. And fiction is the biggest Trojan horse, the thing that must, under every circumstance, be fully inspected to ensure there aren't any Greeks hiding in the wings. The introduction of that unwelcome truth to the inner thought-web will set fire to the whole thing. And as I said, the one limit I had, the sole, unshakable boundary, was that NOBODY got to touch my books. If you even dared to try to limit my reading, or suggest that I remove one book from my bookcase, it meant that you were not to be trusted and that I needed to limit my contact with you.
When I worked for the "Matthews", I looked up to them. They were, I thought, everything I'd ever been told I had to be. Perfect, pure, spiritual, responsible, virtuous. I needed to listen to them, accept and internalize their instructions, conform to their model of good, because it looked very good. Much better than my life at the time. But the "Matthews" were not, and are not, good people. They and their teachings are unbelievably toxic. I've heard of very few systems as controlling, ugly, and destructive as the items they've pushed over the years. But at the time, this was not something I would have understood. All I saw was a beautiful family that was together and whole when my own family was not. By all rights, I should have swallowed every part of their world, internalized the whole toxic thing. I came very, very close to doing so.
And then I brought a Stephen King novel into their back room. Needful Things, I think. A story about the Devil dressing junk up to be beautiful, and using that junk to buy people's souls. Not a bad metaphore, I think, for the Matthews and their teachings. But Mrs. Matthews told me with an absolutely straight face that King was influienced by demons, and that I would likely commit suicide from reading him.
It took all my strength not to flat out laugh in her face. I knew this was bullshit. King had introduced an idea (that Divine love and perceived Divine cruelty can sometimes exist side by side, and that just because we're going through awful shit doesn't mean that God is angry with us, or that He has abandoned us) that I absolutely needed to have. My parents divorced shortly after I had processed that idea, and things went from tolerably bad to extremely fucking bad. I probably would have walked away from faith entirely, or else assumed that God hated me, given the events around my parents' divorce. Instead, I had something to hold onto: Yes, God is sometimes cruel, and sometimes he makes us walk through the Valley of Death without our understanding why, but that doesn't mean that you are alone, and that doesn't mean that you are unloved. Your circumstances have nothing to do with how much God loves you.
Looking back, I see how dangerous that idea would have been to the "Matthews" version of theology. One of the underlying ideas is that success means you are Godly, and failure means you have displeased God and are being punished. But even then, I might have still listened to her. I needed, desperately, to have something to explain why our lives had gone so badly wrong. And Mrs. Matthews was, well, Mrs. Matthews, and I was a very fucked up eighteen year old girl. But she had made an assault on my books, and that was unacceptable. Immediate rejection.
Fast forward a few months, and I'd brought another book to work. This time I was told if I brought another book like that to work with me, I'd be fired.
I left their employ not too long after. I would like to say it was because I'd realized their bullshit, but it was because my homelife had gotten unlivable. I was very sad to leave them behind, because I thought that place was a positive place. It was certainly a refuge I was, both then and now, glad to have had. But I was also much, much more careful around Mrs. Matthews than I would have been otherwise. She had made an assault on my books, after all, and might make another. Therefore every message from that quarter had to be regarded as suspect. And so where I'd begun internalizing a lot of VERY unhealthy attitudes and ideas, I now began to examine and reject them. The foundation was the threat to my books...but the benefactor was me as a human being.
Another assault came here recently, about a year ago. I'd developed a friendship with a pair of neighborhood Jehovah's Witnesses. I was very lonely at the time, in a nasty job, and I was just dying to have someone, anyone, give me positive feedback. It was very, very tempting to take the plunge, buy into their theology, and accept the resulting friendship and support my life was so sorely lacking. But they sharply criticized my choices in reading material, in movies, in books, in theology. And the walls went up. Divisions drawn, protections in place, and all input carefully scrutinized for further attacks...and in the process, I figured out a lot of things about the JWs that make me despise most of that organization.
So read, my darlings. Read. Everything. Anything. Good books, trashy books, uplifting books, depressing books, politically correct works and stuff that should be burned because damn. It doesn't matter. These are the bricks in your wall, the lifeline you may need one day. And teach yourself that, whatever else happens, you will stop anyone who tries to take your books away. Our brains are smarter than we are. They are good at sorting the value from the trash. If you have a healthy foundation, you can protect yourself...and if your foundation isn't healthy, books may be the only way you'll ever find that out. But the first thing a potential abuser will reach for will be the books on your nightstand. The best thing we can learn is how to clutch them to our chests and say "No. Not this. This one's mine."
Mine are books.
I've been relatively open about this on the blog, but I'm also pretty sure I've snagged a few new readers since February, so I'm going to head this with a quick bit of backstory. I have a very long, very nasty history with depression and self-injury. This winter (2013/14) it got unmanageable, and I decided to seek help. I am on medication, and I have a WONDERFUL councilor who has managed to help me figure out a few things.
At the same time, my friend Tiger Gray (Hi Tiger!) pointed me to a blog called No Longer Quivering, where the stories of former homeschooled students were posted. I became interested. Not, of course, because there was anything wrong with how I was raised. Oh goodness no. I was one of the lucky homeschooled kiddos. No, I became interested because one of the posts was a story about a family I've been calling the "Matthews." I worked for them nearly ten years ago, and was rather stunned to see that 1. They were still around and famous and 2. had become, if this is possible, even more repressive and IMHO wrong-headed in the years since I'd been their employee.
But the thing about reading is, our brains are smarter than we are. MUCH smarter. And little bits and pieces of whatever we are reading tends to get into the cracks, no matter how carefully we try to keep it out. We are driven, in a way, by a web of subconscious, even unconscious, instincts, thoughts and feelings that our minds do not even allow us to know. Many of these things are things that, if we dared to be aware of them, would change our entire lives. For most of us, I have to assume that internal web is mostly benign. For me, it was toxic, restrictive, and confining. My life has been ruled, not by what I think, but by what I am not allowed to think.
Probably the biggest problem with Conservative Christian homeschool programs is that the programs are built around what they aren't teaching. It starts, not with a basis of inclusion but with one of exclusion. The fabric of the modern curriculum is taken, examined, and the disagreeable portions are amputated wholesale. Evolution. Sex education. Chunks of science, history, the arts. This is done in the belief that by restricting the information given to a child to the "wholesome", you are somehow limiting the damage life will do to said child. The problem, however, is that by basing teaching on the exclusion of ideas, rather than the inclusion, you are teaching the child that there are things they must not think about, things they must not have in their heads. They must not consider the idea of evolution before accepting or dismissing it, but rather must ignore it from the start and reject it wholesale (For the record, I am not a seven-day creation believer. Evolution is too elegant a mechanism, IMHO, for it to be either false or anti-God). Sexuality must be rejected, art that fits certain criteria must be removed. And the underlying message--the thing we weave into the children's mental web--is that our thoughts are something dangerous, something that has to be kept manicured and pruned, and anything distasteful must be hidden, ignored and unacknowledged. The first thing we do when we base teaching in the exclusion of ideas is educate children in the art of being afraid of their own minds.
This was something I did learn, but only halfway. Evolution was vilified, sex was shamed, everything educational must be kept as straight and narrow as possible...but my parents never bothered to monitor my recreational reading. They would sometimes question me to make sure that I knew such-and-such was false--reguardless of actual truth, I must always agree with EVERYTHING they thought--and then allow me to continue reading whatever and whenever I wanted to. It must have seemed like a gift to my mom, who didn't have to stress so much about my education. She was just glad I was reading. And if you wish to teach a child that ideas and learning are something to be afraid of, this is the worst possible thing you can do.
I still grew up ashamed of my reading choices--surely it was against God for me to prefer Lewis, Tolkien, Brooks, Donaldson, et al to the Bible--but this did not matter enough to me to give it up. I couldn't give it up if I wanted to. Every time I tried--praying on my knees for God to take this longing away from me--I was met with silence and a big fat failure. (This lasted until I was sixteen, at which point I think God got sick of it and came in with the clue-by-four to inform me that it was fine, he had made me that way, so would I PLEASE stop trying to amputate parts of my psyche?) And so I'd spend eight hours a day learning bible verses by rote, and studying facts that "disproved" the theory of evolution, and then spend the rest of my time reading McCaffrey, Weber, Verne and Wells. Madeline L'Engle was a very special favorite, though eight-year-old me did not understand that the ant diagrams explaining "wrinkling" were actually concepts and ideas most adults had trouble understanding. (I do think that if I hadn't read A Wrinkle in Time I would not have understood very much of The Time Machine when I finally got my hands on a copy, but fortunately those books were read in that precisely that order)
Naturally, I tried to separate these books from anything resembling actual thought. Not because I disagreed with these ideas, but because I knew if I dared to think, say, that evolution might possibly be a working concept, my parents would be highly displeased. Displeasure meant a withdrawl of love in my mind. My entire purpose was, after all, to support and please my parents. There was also a long-running theme of loss in my young life that I'm only just beginning to understand. Displeasing my parents meant that I would lose more things. I didn't want to lose my books. Books and ideas, and my vibrant internal life, were things no one could take away from me, if I were very careful about shepharding what I did and did not do. What I could permit to be conscious, so to speak, and what had to stay safely tucked away in the very bottom of my mind, had to be very, very carefully regulated. Otherwise I would lose the last defensive wall between myself and the world. I had to protect them. I really couldn't afford to lose anything else.
The thing of it is, books and stories soon became my castle, my very special form of Helm's Deep. The defenses for other parts of my life--my appearance, sexuality, behavior, speech patterns, creativity, spirituality--were minimal. These things could be breeched and broken at will by anyone. But my books had walls around them, had armies guarding them. Spikes and boiling pitch, and archers at every murder hole just waiting for someone to dare, dare try to take one of these books away. It was the one thing in my world that I had been allowed to grow unmolested, that I did not have to answer to. No one got to touch these.
I personally believe that this was a God thing. A big God thing. I started out protecting my books, but very quickly my books became the thing that protected me. If, for example, I had developed knitting or sexuality as my "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" bridge, I probably would have been vulnerable for a lot of nastiness. But the thing about abusive systems is, information is the very first thing they go for. It isn't by choice. One unregulated idea can shatter their whole system. It's like a beam of light in a darkroom: it destroys the picture they are trying to build. If they want to have any hope of controlling a person, they have to regulate the reading habits. And fiction is the biggest Trojan horse, the thing that must, under every circumstance, be fully inspected to ensure there aren't any Greeks hiding in the wings. The introduction of that unwelcome truth to the inner thought-web will set fire to the whole thing. And as I said, the one limit I had, the sole, unshakable boundary, was that NOBODY got to touch my books. If you even dared to try to limit my reading, or suggest that I remove one book from my bookcase, it meant that you were not to be trusted and that I needed to limit my contact with you.
When I worked for the "Matthews", I looked up to them. They were, I thought, everything I'd ever been told I had to be. Perfect, pure, spiritual, responsible, virtuous. I needed to listen to them, accept and internalize their instructions, conform to their model of good, because it looked very good. Much better than my life at the time. But the "Matthews" were not, and are not, good people. They and their teachings are unbelievably toxic. I've heard of very few systems as controlling, ugly, and destructive as the items they've pushed over the years. But at the time, this was not something I would have understood. All I saw was a beautiful family that was together and whole when my own family was not. By all rights, I should have swallowed every part of their world, internalized the whole toxic thing. I came very, very close to doing so.
And then I brought a Stephen King novel into their back room. Needful Things, I think. A story about the Devil dressing junk up to be beautiful, and using that junk to buy people's souls. Not a bad metaphore, I think, for the Matthews and their teachings. But Mrs. Matthews told me with an absolutely straight face that King was influienced by demons, and that I would likely commit suicide from reading him.
It took all my strength not to flat out laugh in her face. I knew this was bullshit. King had introduced an idea (that Divine love and perceived Divine cruelty can sometimes exist side by side, and that just because we're going through awful shit doesn't mean that God is angry with us, or that He has abandoned us) that I absolutely needed to have. My parents divorced shortly after I had processed that idea, and things went from tolerably bad to extremely fucking bad. I probably would have walked away from faith entirely, or else assumed that God hated me, given the events around my parents' divorce. Instead, I had something to hold onto: Yes, God is sometimes cruel, and sometimes he makes us walk through the Valley of Death without our understanding why, but that doesn't mean that you are alone, and that doesn't mean that you are unloved. Your circumstances have nothing to do with how much God loves you.
Looking back, I see how dangerous that idea would have been to the "Matthews" version of theology. One of the underlying ideas is that success means you are Godly, and failure means you have displeased God and are being punished. But even then, I might have still listened to her. I needed, desperately, to have something to explain why our lives had gone so badly wrong. And Mrs. Matthews was, well, Mrs. Matthews, and I was a very fucked up eighteen year old girl. But she had made an assault on my books, and that was unacceptable. Immediate rejection.
Fast forward a few months, and I'd brought another book to work. This time I was told if I brought another book like that to work with me, I'd be fired.
I left their employ not too long after. I would like to say it was because I'd realized their bullshit, but it was because my homelife had gotten unlivable. I was very sad to leave them behind, because I thought that place was a positive place. It was certainly a refuge I was, both then and now, glad to have had. But I was also much, much more careful around Mrs. Matthews than I would have been otherwise. She had made an assault on my books, after all, and might make another. Therefore every message from that quarter had to be regarded as suspect. And so where I'd begun internalizing a lot of VERY unhealthy attitudes and ideas, I now began to examine and reject them. The foundation was the threat to my books...but the benefactor was me as a human being.
Another assault came here recently, about a year ago. I'd developed a friendship with a pair of neighborhood Jehovah's Witnesses. I was very lonely at the time, in a nasty job, and I was just dying to have someone, anyone, give me positive feedback. It was very, very tempting to take the plunge, buy into their theology, and accept the resulting friendship and support my life was so sorely lacking. But they sharply criticized my choices in reading material, in movies, in books, in theology. And the walls went up. Divisions drawn, protections in place, and all input carefully scrutinized for further attacks...and in the process, I figured out a lot of things about the JWs that make me despise most of that organization.
So read, my darlings. Read. Everything. Anything. Good books, trashy books, uplifting books, depressing books, politically correct works and stuff that should be burned because damn. It doesn't matter. These are the bricks in your wall, the lifeline you may need one day. And teach yourself that, whatever else happens, you will stop anyone who tries to take your books away. Our brains are smarter than we are. They are good at sorting the value from the trash. If you have a healthy foundation, you can protect yourself...and if your foundation isn't healthy, books may be the only way you'll ever find that out. But the first thing a potential abuser will reach for will be the books on your nightstand. The best thing we can learn is how to clutch them to our chests and say "No. Not this. This one's mine."
Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 4
Just a reminder, my lovely book-readers, that Starbleached: Legacy is live, and that if you go to Smashwords you can get the first Starbleached free and the rest of the series for half price (Coupons here) until June 11th.
Also: Apparently Nook Press has decided it doesn't want to work at all. I may look at my books but I may not load in new ones. So if you want an e-pub copy either go to Smashwords or wait a week, it'll be up at Barnes and Noble by then (via Smashwords. Where it's half off until June.)
Also a heads up to my blog-readers who are also writers and/or interested in Self Publishing: Publish America, a truly toxic outfit for writers, has just rebranded itself. It's still the same shitty outfit. It still does shit like call itself a traditional, advance offering publisher--which offers a dollar advance on a seven year, self renewing contract--frequently "loses" the letters from authors notifying them that they've got no desire to renew the contract, saying that they'll show your book to everybody from the BEA expo to Hollywood Producers to J.K. Rowling (Actually that entire episode was amusing as fuck. Note to would be shitheads: DO NOT FUCK WITH MS. ROWLING HER LAWYERS WILL HURT YOU) and publishes books with no editing and/or minimal editing (Literally clicking "change all" on MSWord spellcheck, clip art covers with frequently recycled art, and a rotating tredmill of hard-sell e-mails begging authors to buy their own books at horrifically inflated prices. The Absolute Write crew sum it up as Published Author: The Role Playing Game.
They are now America Star Books
Inform your friends.
And yes. YES. I am stalling. Merry is going to make out with Kitto, and I don't want to read this, my dear blog readers.
Merry and Kitto start pawing each other. Fortunately, LKH is going out of her way not to point out that this creature is the size and shape of a small child. Unfortunately, she went out of her way to do just that in the last two books, so the image is still there. Kitto gets into it until Creeda starts shouting "Make him glow!" eagerly. I'm now imagining this chick as the little giggling muppet from Return of the Jedi. You know, the one that sat on Jabba's lap? Kitto, meanwhile, forgets all about this "having sex" thing and huddles into Merry for comfort.
Merry accuses Creeda of raping Kitto. Two sentences later, she makes the most nonsensical statement I ever read in an LKH book, and that's saying a lot.
"Goblins will rape an enemy, or a prisoner, but they do not rape each other." (Merry) said.It must be so nice to be clueless in LKH's world. Seriously, you expect a culture that allows for unregulated gang rape to balk at doing it to each other? And instead of addressing that maybe, kind of, sort of, everything about this is fucked up, Kurag starts needling Rhys about his own rape.
Rhys then tops the previous quote of unregulated stupidity by apologizing to his rapist for not doing enough to defend himself.
"I know I was a fool, Kurag. The princess has told me I could have spared myself a great deal of pain, if I had known what to ask for."
It's very sad that I've hit "I can't even" stage on the fourth fucking chapter of this book, but I am like...what the actual fuck. WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK.
I know that LKH is trying desperately to write non-human standards of behavior, but...yeah. Well, maybe she won't manage to top that any time--
Kurag's leer faded into a frown. "A Sidhe admitting he is a fool, it's a miracle."I glanced back just enough to catch Rhys's nod. "We are an arrogant race, but some of us can learn from our mistakes."
He was raped. That was his "mistake".
...See, this is why asexual alien life forms should not be allowed to write books. They don't have the proper cultural context for the rules and boundaries of actual human interaction, and their working approximations just freaking suck.
Guys, it's the only explination that makes sense.
I shouldn't have to spell this out, you know? It's basic fucking logic. Rhys was captured by the goblins as a POW, I think, and was tortured and gang raped. HE BEARS NO RESPONSABILITY FOR BEING RAPED OR TORTURED AND ANYONE WHO THINKS HE DOES IS A WASTE OF PERFECTLY GOOD RESOURCES.
But there really is no possible way for LKH to make this any worse. I mean, what on earth could she possibly--
"Kurag, I know your laws...you do not rape your own people...""There is one exception to that rule, Merry...But if one of us sells his body for safety and shelter, then he gives up his right to refuse his body to anyone. Only his protector can dictate who can touch him and who cannot." This is one of the worst things ever written by a human.
Guys, this is supposed to be the "Good" series. And literally every other paragraph in this chapter is something utterly rage inducing. Also: HOW IS SELLING YOURSELF INTO SEXUAL SLAVERY "SAFETY AND SHELTER". IT FUCKING IS NOT YOU FUCKING MORON. FUCK.
LKH, via Merry, dismisses this as "prostitution".
Prostitution is when you trade money for a consensual sex act. Even when you are paid for sex, you have the right to set limits, like the use of condoms or how far a customer is allowed to go. And just like any other retailer, a prostitute has the right to refuse service to a customer for any reason. Her own safety, health, and the well-being of her colleagues and other clients has priority over the needs of the individual purchaser. (And for the record, raping a prostitute is rape, not theft. You're paying for a consensual sex act, not a non-consensual one.)
SEXUAL SLAVERY is when you lose the right to refuse service. Even if you receive beneficial items from the rape, like money or shelter, you are still being forced to have non-consensual acts, and you have no ability to run or leave.
Kurag then introduces Merry to the only two half-sidhe goblins not reduced to sexual slavery, Holly and Ash. Like everyone else, they're pretty. Holly makes it clear he has no desire whatsoever to sleep with Merry. Given that he's probably fought tooth and nail not to be somebody's special party favor, I do not blame him one iota. But Kurag takes offence to this and beats him bloody in front of Merry.
Ash, meanwhile, really wants to get some magic out of Merry's Great Vag of Holding, and he starts trying to talk his brother into sleeping with Merry. His brother starts almost weeping because, you know, he doesn't want to. Ash assumes it's because he thinks that Merry, or someone else in the Unseelie court, are the ones that abandoned them to the goblins, and he points out that nobody in the mirror could possibly be their mother. Thus missing the entire fact that his brother doesn't want to have sex.
Holly announces that he does not believe in the Great Vag of Holding, so Kurag demands that Merry make Kitto glow. Merry demands that Kitto be safe from the rest of the goblins, because as soon as he goes back to Goblintown--I really can't finish that sentence. Kurag says no, because if you let one sex slave go all the rest will make a try for it. NO REALLY, YOU THINK? Merry then tries to make herself Kitto's protector. Kurag and her bodyguards refuse to let her do this because she isn't strong enough to protect Kitto from the entire Goblin race.
So, in a movement that could have been really fucking cool if I weren't already pissed off past the point of feeling any emotion whatsoever, Rhys steps in and declares himself Kitto's protector, even though he hates Goblins, and has hated Kitto, since the first book. Doyle then declares that Kitto is Sidhe, and Merry senses that this has either kicked off or advanced a prophesy that changes the fates of all, or some shit. Gee, it'd be real nice if we were focusing on fate changing prophesy instead of INSTITUTED SEXUAL SLAVERY.
And then Kurag lets Merry know that not all the half-sidhe they've got are male, which means one of her bodyguards, like Rhys, will have to be a participant in whatever orgy they're planning.
And then he brings Rhys's primary rapist into the room.
End of chapter.
Also: Apparently Nook Press has decided it doesn't want to work at all. I may look at my books but I may not load in new ones. So if you want an e-pub copy either go to Smashwords or wait a week, it'll be up at Barnes and Noble by then (via Smashwords. Where it's half off until June.)
Also a heads up to my blog-readers who are also writers and/or interested in Self Publishing: Publish America, a truly toxic outfit for writers, has just rebranded itself. It's still the same shitty outfit. It still does shit like call itself a traditional, advance offering publisher--which offers a dollar advance on a seven year, self renewing contract--frequently "loses" the letters from authors notifying them that they've got no desire to renew the contract, saying that they'll show your book to everybody from the BEA expo to Hollywood Producers to J.K. Rowling (Actually that entire episode was amusing as fuck. Note to would be shitheads: DO NOT FUCK WITH MS. ROWLING HER LAWYERS WILL HURT YOU) and publishes books with no editing and/or minimal editing (Literally clicking "change all" on MSWord spellcheck, clip art covers with frequently recycled art, and a rotating tredmill of hard-sell e-mails begging authors to buy their own books at horrifically inflated prices. The Absolute Write crew sum it up as Published Author: The Role Playing Game.
They are now America Star Books
Inform your friends.
And yes. YES. I am stalling. Merry is going to make out with Kitto, and I don't want to read this, my dear blog readers.
Merry and Kitto start pawing each other. Fortunately, LKH is going out of her way not to point out that this creature is the size and shape of a small child. Unfortunately, she went out of her way to do just that in the last two books, so the image is still there. Kitto gets into it until Creeda starts shouting "Make him glow!" eagerly. I'm now imagining this chick as the little giggling muppet from Return of the Jedi. You know, the one that sat on Jabba's lap? Kitto, meanwhile, forgets all about this "having sex" thing and huddles into Merry for comfort.
Merry accuses Creeda of raping Kitto. Two sentences later, she makes the most nonsensical statement I ever read in an LKH book, and that's saying a lot.
"Goblins will rape an enemy, or a prisoner, but they do not rape each other." (Merry) said.It must be so nice to be clueless in LKH's world. Seriously, you expect a culture that allows for unregulated gang rape to balk at doing it to each other? And instead of addressing that maybe, kind of, sort of, everything about this is fucked up, Kurag starts needling Rhys about his own rape.
Rhys then tops the previous quote of unregulated stupidity by apologizing to his rapist for not doing enough to defend himself.
"I know I was a fool, Kurag. The princess has told me I could have spared myself a great deal of pain, if I had known what to ask for."
It's very sad that I've hit "I can't even" stage on the fourth fucking chapter of this book, but I am like...what the actual fuck. WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK.I know that LKH is trying desperately to write non-human standards of behavior, but...yeah. Well, maybe she won't manage to top that any time--
Kurag's leer faded into a frown. "A Sidhe admitting he is a fool, it's a miracle."I glanced back just enough to catch Rhys's nod. "We are an arrogant race, but some of us can learn from our mistakes."
He was raped. That was his "mistake".
...See, this is why asexual alien life forms should not be allowed to write books. They don't have the proper cultural context for the rules and boundaries of actual human interaction, and their working approximations just freaking suck.
Guys, it's the only explination that makes sense.
I shouldn't have to spell this out, you know? It's basic fucking logic. Rhys was captured by the goblins as a POW, I think, and was tortured and gang raped. HE BEARS NO RESPONSABILITY FOR BEING RAPED OR TORTURED AND ANYONE WHO THINKS HE DOES IS A WASTE OF PERFECTLY GOOD RESOURCES.
But there really is no possible way for LKH to make this any worse. I mean, what on earth could she possibly--
"Kurag, I know your laws...you do not rape your own people...""There is one exception to that rule, Merry...But if one of us sells his body for safety and shelter, then he gives up his right to refuse his body to anyone. Only his protector can dictate who can touch him and who cannot." This is one of the worst things ever written by a human.
Guys, this is supposed to be the "Good" series. And literally every other paragraph in this chapter is something utterly rage inducing. Also: HOW IS SELLING YOURSELF INTO SEXUAL SLAVERY "SAFETY AND SHELTER". IT FUCKING IS NOT YOU FUCKING MORON. FUCK.
LKH, via Merry, dismisses this as "prostitution".
Prostitution is when you trade money for a consensual sex act. Even when you are paid for sex, you have the right to set limits, like the use of condoms or how far a customer is allowed to go. And just like any other retailer, a prostitute has the right to refuse service to a customer for any reason. Her own safety, health, and the well-being of her colleagues and other clients has priority over the needs of the individual purchaser. (And for the record, raping a prostitute is rape, not theft. You're paying for a consensual sex act, not a non-consensual one.)SEXUAL SLAVERY is when you lose the right to refuse service. Even if you receive beneficial items from the rape, like money or shelter, you are still being forced to have non-consensual acts, and you have no ability to run or leave.
Kurag then introduces Merry to the only two half-sidhe goblins not reduced to sexual slavery, Holly and Ash. Like everyone else, they're pretty. Holly makes it clear he has no desire whatsoever to sleep with Merry. Given that he's probably fought tooth and nail not to be somebody's special party favor, I do not blame him one iota. But Kurag takes offence to this and beats him bloody in front of Merry.
Ash, meanwhile, really wants to get some magic out of Merry's Great Vag of Holding, and he starts trying to talk his brother into sleeping with Merry. His brother starts almost weeping because, you know, he doesn't want to. Ash assumes it's because he thinks that Merry, or someone else in the Unseelie court, are the ones that abandoned them to the goblins, and he points out that nobody in the mirror could possibly be their mother. Thus missing the entire fact that his brother doesn't want to have sex.
Holly announces that he does not believe in the Great Vag of Holding, so Kurag demands that Merry make Kitto glow. Merry demands that Kitto be safe from the rest of the goblins, because as soon as he goes back to Goblintown--I really can't finish that sentence. Kurag says no, because if you let one sex slave go all the rest will make a try for it. NO REALLY, YOU THINK? Merry then tries to make herself Kitto's protector. Kurag and her bodyguards refuse to let her do this because she isn't strong enough to protect Kitto from the entire Goblin race.
So, in a movement that could have been really fucking cool if I weren't already pissed off past the point of feeling any emotion whatsoever, Rhys steps in and declares himself Kitto's protector, even though he hates Goblins, and has hated Kitto, since the first book. Doyle then declares that Kitto is Sidhe, and Merry senses that this has either kicked off or advanced a prophesy that changes the fates of all, or some shit. Gee, it'd be real nice if we were focusing on fate changing prophesy instead of INSTITUTED SEXUAL SLAVERY.
And then Kurag lets Merry know that not all the half-sidhe they've got are male, which means one of her bodyguards, like Rhys, will have to be a participant in whatever orgy they're planning.
And then he brings Rhys's primary rapist into the room.
End of chapter.
May 11, 2014
Book Coupons!
So in honor of the new book, Starbleached: Liberty, I've decided to give you loyal blog-readers a present: COUPONS!
You can grab Starbleached for free with this one: FU46J
You can get Starbleached: Omnibus for half price with this one: RB36Y
AND you can get Liberty half off with this one: DF62W
Coupons are good for a month. Enjoy my lovelies. Enjoy
You can grab Starbleached for free with this one: FU46J
You can get Starbleached: Omnibus for half price with this one: RB36Y
AND you can get Liberty half off with this one: DF62W
Coupons are good for a month. Enjoy my lovelies. Enjoy
Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 3
So. NEW BOOK IS OUT new book is out New Book Is Out NEW BOOK IS OUT.
Here it is.
For you e-pub book readers--I am having a very, very, VERY difficult time getting Nook Press to work today. It won't load or process the manuscript, and now Firefox won't connect with the NP servers no matter what. If you are an e-pub reader and you really, really, really want a copy Smashwords is probably your best option right now.
Other news: well, look at that. We're already announcing the next book launch date? Why now? Why so late?
Pre-orders.
No. I'm serious. Smashwords has been offering pre-orders for a while, but since my turn-around time is so fucking tight I haven't been able to take advantage of it. I wanted to do it with Liberty, but that book turned out to be a very difficult one to write. And the next few chunks will probably be too.
Ivory Scars, however, is nearly done with several very comfortable months to go. So we're going with that, breaking it into three parts. Part one will be available for pre-order in June, with a release date in July, Part two will be up for pre-order in July with a release date in August, and so on and so forth.
Also, the fourth is my THREE YEAR SELF PUBLISHING ANNIVERSARY! Three years, my lovelies. Three beautiful, fun, fantastic years. And you know what? I wouldn't have traded one second of it. I love ya'll. I love all of ya'll so much.
Alright. Shitty book. Well, at least now we're on to politics. This cannot possibly suck worse than unconsious racism and WTF sex acts, right?
Just in the off chance that you are 1. not a regular reader here and 2. not someone who has survived Laurel K Hamilton's Merry Gentry series, Kitto is an immortal half-goblin, half Sidhe man who has the size, proportions and behavioral mannerisms of a twelve year old child. Something that LKH calls attention to over and over and over and over again. He constantly has to platonically snuggle with Merry for comfort, his entire personality is "whipped rescue puppy" and he sleeps, no bullshit, in a dog bed.
Kitto is a fucking indictment on this entire series.
It isn't made any better that part of his defining characteristics is that he is, what else, a product of rape. Because no one would consensually sleep with the goblins. They're ugly.
And when we get a good look at the Goblin Queen, the person Kitto is talking to, they're also Pizza the Hut, apparently.
Uh. Unless that's a truely terrible mirror, it probably would look like she were sitting with her reflection. Also: first female character introduced in the book. Ugly, nasty and contemptable.
I would like to give LKH kudos for trying, very, very hard, to write about a beauty standard other than that of humans. That's what she's trying to do here. It's not what she's succeeding at, but dear God is she ever trying. The problem here is that she's not using the right descriptive words. None of these are positives. They're all either neutral words, or negatives (dry and harsh, in respect to hair). Not once are we given a reason for the queen to be the epitome of goblin beauty. Are the arrangement of her eyes quite fetching? Has she dressed so that the curve of each arm is best displayed? Is the smile enticing? Nope. So instead of it emphasizing Creeda's beauty, it emphasizes the impression that the goblins are perverted little shits. And it also means that, once again, Merry is Kitto's rescuer.
Tiger, yesterday, commented that male rape victims only exist in LKH's fiction to be rescued by the main character. I would go as far as to say that every male character only exists to be rescued by the female lead. In the early Anitaverse it was a little different. Jean Claude started out as an antagonistic anti-hero, and has continued to be Anita's primary teacher/abuser. Edward did not give a fuck, other than if he got to kill things. But Richard had/still has to be rescued from himself, Asher was rescued by Antia through sex. Nathaniel was rescued from Chimera's people. Micah had to be rescued from Chimera--his assault and rescue by Anita thus negating his assault of Anita--Wicked and Truth were rescues, Requiem was a rescue. And all of the men in the Merry verse--ALL OF THEM--were rescued from celebacy and torture by this sex contest. This provides Merry with a deceptively dominant position over them. I say "Deceptively" because it is still possible for someone to take a victimized stance and still abuse and manipulate their rescuer. People have a tendency to give perceived victims a behavioral blank check--they were abused, so of course they did the whatever. The problem with this is probably best displayed in the context of an abused child. An abused child will absolutely act out when they feel they are in a safe environment. They feel safe in a way they do not feel at home. Simultaneously, they are unsure of what the limits are--will they get spanked if they do this? Or this other thing? Will they ever get spanked at all?--and their expectation of a punishment is usually further abuse. The job of a care-giver is to provide healthy limitations and healthy consequences for those limitations that do not include abuse (Preferably, that do not include physical chastisement at all.) And the very first thing the care-giver has to understand is that abuse explains the child's behavior, but it does not excuse it, and that's where a lot of our reactions to abuse victims becomes an issue. We excuse a lot of bad, learned behavior--manipulation, self mutilation, the abuse of others--on the history of the person behaving badly. In the process, we often violate our own boundaries, and teach the former victim how to make all those icky limits go away--something that, right now, they very much want to do, because they do not understand what healthy boundaries are. they don't understand how to interact with them, and they have no clue how to set boundaries of their own. Allowing an explanation for abuse to also become an excuse for it allows abuse victims to become abusers themselves, and perpetuates the real problem: That this person does not now and never has had good, safe boundaries, or a competent understanding of social interaction rules.
This is why every single abuse victim in this series--Anita, Merry, Micah, Nate, all of Merry's men, effectively everyone who has been hit or struck by someone else--turns around and begins abusing others. That said, it is worth noting that accepting and perpetuating abuse is the only way to live in these two social circles. If you become healthy enough to set good boundaries, place limits on how others may behave towards you, and refuse to behave badly towards others, the only option you can have is to leave that circle. You cannot be a healthy human being (or a healthy Were, vamp, or Fae) around either Anita or, to a smaller extent, Merry, without causing massive conflict.
And you know what? That's all Merry has to do to end this awful, awful situation she's stuck in. She'll advance to one that's uglier in the short term--abusers hate to lose control, and it's obvious that Anadais has Merry by the throat right now--but one that would, if successful, end with her being free to make her own choices. "I don't want to play this game" is always, always, always an acceptable response to being somewhere you do not want to be. It may not have a good short-term outcome, but saying "I quit" when you feel reasonably confident you can get out in one piece is always something you may do. Setting your own boundaries is never, ever, ever wrong.
Anyway, Creeda and Kurag both say that they want to see Kitto "naked and shining". In short, they want to make someone who looks and acts like a twelve year old child strip and preform sexually in front of someone they are terrified of.
RIGHT.
Dear Laurel K. Hamilton:
She does, however, manage to find something that is legit horrifying.
Because instead, we have to read about a rape victim preforming consensually for someone who watched his rape and has spent years needling him about it.
Everything about this exchange is completely vile. Completely. Utterly. Totally. I keep looking for any one thing to hang my hat on here, but it just keeps on coming up. The fact that they're bargaining for Kitto without talking to Kitto about it. The fact that Kitto looks and acts like a child. The fact that Rhys has to preform for one of his own rapists. The fact that the goblin queen is jerking off the goblin king WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.
Laurel. WHY. WHY IS THIS HERE.
Even better: it continues until he gets annoyed, and he squeezes her arms to the point of breaking them to make her let go. And then we get this paragraph:
And here's the thing: Merry and Kurag's negotiations in universe are a really, REALLY big deal. It'd be like a presidential candidate promising an ally country he'll give them a couple of nukes if they'll support his bid for president. It'll change how the goblins are reguarded AND it'll give LKH an excuse to write a lot of really nasty sex scenes. So why are we sapping this scene's energy by focusing on sex?
Things devolve into Merry doing a strip tease for the Goblin King. And then this happens:
I have nothing.
They wheel around Fae history for a minute, and it'd be rather entertaining to base a book on that, and then Merry demands that Kitto "shine" for Kurag. "Shining" only happens when a Sidhe is sexually aroused, so we've just plunged back into "ick" territory.
Especially as Kitto is so scared, he doesn't want to. The rest of the chapter is just repeated variations on a them of "Let's sexually molest the fake twelve year old."
I hate. This book.
Here it is.
For you e-pub book readers--I am having a very, very, VERY difficult time getting Nook Press to work today. It won't load or process the manuscript, and now Firefox won't connect with the NP servers no matter what. If you are an e-pub reader and you really, really, really want a copy Smashwords is probably your best option right now.
Other news: well, look at that. We're already announcing the next book launch date? Why now? Why so late?
Pre-orders.
No. I'm serious. Smashwords has been offering pre-orders for a while, but since my turn-around time is so fucking tight I haven't been able to take advantage of it. I wanted to do it with Liberty, but that book turned out to be a very difficult one to write. And the next few chunks will probably be too.
Ivory Scars, however, is nearly done with several very comfortable months to go. So we're going with that, breaking it into three parts. Part one will be available for pre-order in June, with a release date in July, Part two will be up for pre-order in July with a release date in August, and so on and so forth.
Also, the fourth is my THREE YEAR SELF PUBLISHING ANNIVERSARY! Three years, my lovelies. Three beautiful, fun, fantastic years. And you know what? I wouldn't have traded one second of it. I love ya'll. I love all of ya'll so much.
Alright. Shitty book. Well, at least now we're on to politics. This cannot possibly suck worse than unconsious racism and WTF sex acts, right?
I heard Kitto’s voice in the hallway long before we got to the bedroom.OH FUCK.
Just in the off chance that you are 1. not a regular reader here and 2. not someone who has survived Laurel K Hamilton's Merry Gentry series, Kitto is an immortal half-goblin, half Sidhe man who has the size, proportions and behavioral mannerisms of a twelve year old child. Something that LKH calls attention to over and over and over and over again. He constantly has to platonically snuggle with Merry for comfort, his entire personality is "whipped rescue puppy" and he sleeps, no bullshit, in a dog bed.
Kitto is a fucking indictment on this entire series.
It isn't made any better that part of his defining characteristics is that he is, what else, a product of rape. Because no one would consensually sleep with the goblins. They're ugly.
And when we get a good look at the Goblin Queen, the person Kitto is talking to, they're also Pizza the Hut, apparently.
She sat in the mirror, not a reflection, but as clear as if she sat just in front of us. She wasn’t much taller than Kitto, and her hair was long and black, but where his hair was silken, hers looked as dry and harsh as it truly was. She had more eyes scattered about her face than I could count. That along with a nest of arms around her middle gave her the look of some great spider. A smile split the wide lipless mouth and flashed fangs enough to make any spider proud. She had only two legs and two breasts. If those had been multiples, she’d have been the epitome of goblin beauty.
Uh. Unless that's a truely terrible mirror, it probably would look like she were sitting with her reflection. Also: first female character introduced in the book. Ugly, nasty and contemptable.
I would like to give LKH kudos for trying, very, very hard, to write about a beauty standard other than that of humans. That's what she's trying to do here. It's not what she's succeeding at, but dear God is she ever trying. The problem here is that she's not using the right descriptive words. None of these are positives. They're all either neutral words, or negatives (dry and harsh, in respect to hair). Not once are we given a reason for the queen to be the epitome of goblin beauty. Are the arrangement of her eyes quite fetching? Has she dressed so that the curve of each arm is best displayed? Is the smile enticing? Nope. So instead of it emphasizing Creeda's beauty, it emphasizes the impression that the goblins are perverted little shits. And it also means that, once again, Merry is Kitto's rescuer.
Tiger, yesterday, commented that male rape victims only exist in LKH's fiction to be rescued by the main character. I would go as far as to say that every male character only exists to be rescued by the female lead. In the early Anitaverse it was a little different. Jean Claude started out as an antagonistic anti-hero, and has continued to be Anita's primary teacher/abuser. Edward did not give a fuck, other than if he got to kill things. But Richard had/still has to be rescued from himself, Asher was rescued by Antia through sex. Nathaniel was rescued from Chimera's people. Micah had to be rescued from Chimera--his assault and rescue by Anita thus negating his assault of Anita--Wicked and Truth were rescues, Requiem was a rescue. And all of the men in the Merry verse--ALL OF THEM--were rescued from celebacy and torture by this sex contest. This provides Merry with a deceptively dominant position over them. I say "Deceptively" because it is still possible for someone to take a victimized stance and still abuse and manipulate their rescuer. People have a tendency to give perceived victims a behavioral blank check--they were abused, so of course they did the whatever. The problem with this is probably best displayed in the context of an abused child. An abused child will absolutely act out when they feel they are in a safe environment. They feel safe in a way they do not feel at home. Simultaneously, they are unsure of what the limits are--will they get spanked if they do this? Or this other thing? Will they ever get spanked at all?--and their expectation of a punishment is usually further abuse. The job of a care-giver is to provide healthy limitations and healthy consequences for those limitations that do not include abuse (Preferably, that do not include physical chastisement at all.) And the very first thing the care-giver has to understand is that abuse explains the child's behavior, but it does not excuse it, and that's where a lot of our reactions to abuse victims becomes an issue. We excuse a lot of bad, learned behavior--manipulation, self mutilation, the abuse of others--on the history of the person behaving badly. In the process, we often violate our own boundaries, and teach the former victim how to make all those icky limits go away--something that, right now, they very much want to do, because they do not understand what healthy boundaries are. they don't understand how to interact with them, and they have no clue how to set boundaries of their own. Allowing an explanation for abuse to also become an excuse for it allows abuse victims to become abusers themselves, and perpetuates the real problem: That this person does not now and never has had good, safe boundaries, or a competent understanding of social interaction rules.
This is why every single abuse victim in this series--Anita, Merry, Micah, Nate, all of Merry's men, effectively everyone who has been hit or struck by someone else--turns around and begins abusing others. That said, it is worth noting that accepting and perpetuating abuse is the only way to live in these two social circles. If you become healthy enough to set good boundaries, place limits on how others may behave towards you, and refuse to behave badly towards others, the only option you can have is to leave that circle. You cannot be a healthy human being (or a healthy Were, vamp, or Fae) around either Anita or, to a smaller extent, Merry, without causing massive conflict.
I smiled, and knew my face was pleasant, even bright and shiny. I’d been relearning a lifetime of polite lies that had kept me alive as a child in the faerie courts. You had to be able to lie with your face, your eyes, your entire body language, to maneuver through the politics of the courts. I wasn’t always perfect at it, but the goblins were less noticing of such things. The true test was always my aunt, the Queen of Air and Darkness: She noticed everything.I'm starting to get incredibly creeped out. "Keeping Sweet" is a term used extensively in FLDS circles. Abusive Christian sects also demand a smiling countenance, that things be done in an atmosphere of joy--even if the "thing" being done is sanding the paddle your daddy is going to turn around and use on you. Controlling the outward attitude is also another way to control the inner mind. If you're busy trying to keep from crying, you're too busy to go "Hey, this is bullshit. We're not playing this game."
And you know what? That's all Merry has to do to end this awful, awful situation she's stuck in. She'll advance to one that's uglier in the short term--abusers hate to lose control, and it's obvious that Anadais has Merry by the throat right now--but one that would, if successful, end with her being free to make her own choices. "I don't want to play this game" is always, always, always an acceptable response to being somewhere you do not want to be. It may not have a good short-term outcome, but saying "I quit" when you feel reasonably confident you can get out in one piece is always something you may do. Setting your own boundaries is never, ever, ever wrong.
Anyway, Creeda and Kurag both say that they want to see Kitto "naked and shining". In short, they want to make someone who looks and acts like a twelve year old child strip and preform sexually in front of someone they are terrified of.
RIGHT.
Dear Laurel K. Hamilton:
She does, however, manage to find something that is legit horrifying.
I waved back and said, “Greetings, Kurag, Goblin King. Greetings also to Kurag’s twin, Goblin King’s Flesh.” The stray bits were part of a parasitic twin trapped in the goblin’s body. The mouth could breathe, but not speak. The eyes and hands moved independently of Kurag. When I was a child, I’d played cards with the hands while my father and Kurag did business. I was sixteen before I realized that it was a whole separate person trapped inside the other male’s body.Alright. That is creepy. Why aren't we reading a book about that?
Because instead, we have to read about a rape victim preforming consensually for someone who watched his rape and has spent years needling him about it.
Everything about this exchange is completely vile. Completely. Utterly. Totally. I keep looking for any one thing to hang my hat on here, but it just keeps on coming up. The fact that they're bargaining for Kitto without talking to Kitto about it. The fact that Kitto looks and acts like a child. The fact that Rhys has to preform for one of his own rapists. The fact that the goblin queen is jerking off the goblin king WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.
Laurel. WHY. WHY IS THIS HERE.
Even better: it continues until he gets annoyed, and he squeezes her arms to the point of breaking them to make her let go. And then we get this paragraph:
She sat in his lap, rubbing her arms with some of her other hands. She looked sulky , like a child told, No. I’d have been angry. Creeda saved her anger for other things.Let's see: slut shaming, check. Shaming an abuse victim for not standing up to their abuser: Check. Excusing the abuse Creeda has done, and probably will do, because she's refocusing misplaced anger: Yep.
And here's the thing: Merry and Kurag's negotiations in universe are a really, REALLY big deal. It'd be like a presidential candidate promising an ally country he'll give them a couple of nukes if they'll support his bid for president. It'll change how the goblins are reguarded AND it'll give LKH an excuse to write a lot of really nasty sex scenes. So why are we sapping this scene's energy by focusing on sex?
Things devolve into Merry doing a strip tease for the Goblin King. And then this happens:
“Those same women tell me I am too short to be beautiful,” I traced my hands across my breasts, “they say my breasts are too large,” I traced down my waist to my hips, “that I curve in places they do not,” I traced down my thighs. Sidhe women don’t have thighs. I let my hair fall across my face as I moved, so that my eyes gazed at him half hidden behind the scarlet of my hair. “They tell me I am ugly.”
He spilled out of his chair, dumping his queen to the floor. He roared, “Who says these things? I will crush their jaws and see them choke on their own lies!”So the race of beings with a beauty standard other than human will go to war for a woman who fits every line of humanity's beauty standards simply because she's been told that she doesn't?
I have nothing.
They wheel around Fae history for a minute, and it'd be rather entertaining to base a book on that, and then Merry demands that Kitto "shine" for Kurag. "Shining" only happens when a Sidhe is sexually aroused, so we've just plunged back into "ick" territory.
Especially as Kitto is so scared, he doesn't want to. The rest of the chapter is just repeated variations on a them of "Let's sexually molest the fake twelve year old."
I hate. This book.
May 10, 2014
THE BOOK. IT IS LIVE.
Now, as I have said quite frequently before: FORMATTING HOEDIT TO ADD: STARBLEACHED LIBERTY IS NOW LIVE ON SMASHWORDS
AND AMAZON IS NOW A GO
Please note, my lovelies: I am having a LOT of trouble getting Nook Press to work. This one may take several days. So if you just cannot wait to get an e-pub copy, it might be best to go to Smashwords for it. Sorry.
COVER ART IS DONE
Now, as I have said quite frequently before: FORMATTING HO
May 9, 2014
Seduced by Moonlight--chapter 2
There are so many things I did not miss about Laurel's writing. The purple (GOOD GOD. THE PURPLE) the casual, unconsious racism. The consious sexism. The way her plots ONLY make sense in the context of her personal life. The fucking glacial pace.
The tabloid helicopter isn't interesting. Neither is a sex scene that gives the female actor about as much activity as a fucking barber pole. And instead of moving on to something that actually resembles "Plot", we get to read about Frost feeling left out.
He's here because the Goblin King has called in. Sadly, it is not Jareth, but rather the conjoined mutant...thing that LKH thinks is edgier. And they've left the Goblin King talking to Kitto.
Fuck. I'd forgotten about Kitto.
Doyle says that the men had better get dressed--the Goblin King might like oggling Merry, but, Doyle reasons, he won't like watching the men. Yeah, the Fairy Princess gets objectified, but god forbid anything happen to the pretty men. Rhys, however ,points out that this is not true.
Given how fucking tight her timeline is, I still think Merry should have at least tried the petri dish. When it's your motherfucking life on the line, you ought to try everything. Also: all Merry has done for four months is fuck. She hasn't been playing politics. She hasn't tried to use either the alliances she's made or the information she's gained. All she's done is lie on her back and spread her legs. Which isn't bad in and of itself, but for the love of God, she could at least try to get in a good position before Cel breaks out of his cell.
It also took me far, far too long to figure out that homosexual relationships are taboo to the fae, and this is the only reason Anadais didn't torture Rhys and his rapists to death for breaking her rule of celebacy for her guards. Mostly because Merry and company are talking in euphemisms about it.
Laurel K. Hamilton: the most prudish erotica writer I've ever heard of. She can't talk about gay sex, and she can't write the word "penis". I've finally popped my sex scene cherry, so to speak, and while I can't speak for anyone else, for me there's something pretty damn empowering about writing that your female lead reached down and took the male lead's cock. The euphamisms--refering to the penis as "him" or "Himself", for example--only allow you to distance yourself from something you don't actually want to be doing.
Merry continues to berate Rhys about how arrogant he's being about goblin culture.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. DID I JUST READ.
This is like wheels within wheels of fucked up. Jesus fucking Christ. One, you've got the fact that the female lead is berating a rape victim for taking an arrogant view of their rapist. Two, somehow the fact that there are rules to protect victims--rules that no one on earth could ever enforce--migitates the fact that these victims exist, and that there are more of them than in the other cultures.
KURAG PARTICIPATED IN RHYS'S RAPE, YOU INSENSITIVE PIECE OF SHIT.
I have no words at this point. Seriously. No words. THE HEROINE OF THIS NOVEL IS SUGGESTING TO A RAPE VICTIM THAT HE PRETEND HIS RAPE DOESN'T MATTER SO HIS RAPIST WILL LEAVE HIM ALONE.
Merry then says that Rhys can't just duck the meeting because Kurag asks about him. His "delicious guard". So instead, Merry wants to distract Kurag from their negotiations--she wants more time with the goblins--by making out with Rhys during their mirror-call.
This makes me want to vomit.
Merry then adds that what she's negotiating for is a trade: She gets a longer alliance, and she'll awaken the magic of more half-breed goblin/sidhe like Kitto. Which means she'll be fucking a very large number of goblins, which sets Frost off, and we get yet another round of false anti-racist commentary about imaginary things.
Rhys agrees that they need the goblins for longer. He asks Merry what she means by "distracting" Kurag. Merry then does a strip tease to remove her bikini. This happens:
And this is why you can't be a prude and write good erotica. That's so obtuse it's almost opaque. Rhys has an erection, and Merry likes how big he gets.
Merry then recaps how all the guards got their old powers back after fighting the Nameless. She has a breif makeout session with Frost for reasons--at least, I assume there are reasons. Usually things don't happen in books without them--and she compares Frost's eyes to snowglobes.
I think LKH needs to take a couple more semesters of biology because eyes do not work this way.
By now Rhys is moving into his role of distracting Kurag. Apparently all it takes to make you feel okay being in the same room as your rapist is to tease back. WOW! I wish somebody had told me that.
The chapter ends with the men all piling into the bedroom to talk to Kurag. Merry looks from one guy to the other...and then this happens:
I am going to hate every minute of this, aren't I?
The tabloid helicopter isn't interesting. Neither is a sex scene that gives the female actor about as much activity as a fucking barber pole. And instead of moving on to something that actually resembles "Plot", we get to read about Frost feeling left out.
He was handsome in his anger, but he was always handsome. Goddess had made it so that he couldn’t be anything else. He was all cheekbones and flawless lines that would make a plastic surgeon cry with envy. Skin like snow , hair like silver frost glittering in moonlight, broad of shoulders, slim of waist, narrow-hipped, long of leg and arm. Clothed he was handsome; nude he was breathtaking.Every. Single. Thing. About. This. Is. Broken. He's pretty. Did you get that part? Frost is pretty. And I like how it's the only thing that defines him. Some people get to be writers or artists or scientists or politicians. Frost gets to be pretty, and that's it. Laurel is also breaking one of the fancy description rules: When you do a goddamned list, make sure you write everything the same goddamned way. If you're going to make everything of something--which is annoying as fuck--make sure that you don't suddenly hyphenate halfway through the list. If nothing else, it points out how utterly fecking stupid all that "of" shit is.
He's here because the Goblin King has called in. Sadly, it is not Jareth, but rather the conjoined mutant...thing that LKH thinks is edgier. And they've left the Goblin King talking to Kitto.
Fuck. I'd forgotten about Kitto.
Doyle says that the men had better get dressed--the Goblin King might like oggling Merry, but, Doyle reasons, he won't like watching the men. Yeah, the Fairy Princess gets objectified, but god forbid anything happen to the pretty men. Rhys, however ,points out that this is not true.
Rhys raised his face from the curve of my neck. “He never touched me, but he watched. He sat on his throne and ate snacks as if it were a show.”To sum up the backstory here, Rhys was gang raped by the goblins, and permanently mutilated because he didn't make sure to tell them cutting his eyes out was off-limits. The good news is, this does get acknowledged as rape in the text. The bad news is, I still don't like how this is being played. It's like all of these characters are resigned to having shit like that happen to them. A kind of "Rape sucks, so let's not do anything about it" attitude. I also don't like the amount of victim blaming pointed at Rhys. It's played as his fault he lost the eye because he didn't bother to learn that in goblin town, the rape victim gets to set rules. Maybe this is because it makes no fucking sense at all, but that's just me.
The goblins were my allies for two more months. For two more months, if the Unseelie happened to go to war you would ask me, not Queen Andais, for goblin aid. Moreover , my enemies were the goblins’ enemies for two more months.
Given how fucking tight her timeline is, I still think Merry should have at least tried the petri dish. When it's your motherfucking life on the line, you ought to try everything. Also: all Merry has done for four months is fuck. She hasn't been playing politics. She hasn't tried to use either the alliances she's made or the information she's gained. All she's done is lie on her back and spread her legs. Which isn't bad in and of itself, but for the love of God, she could at least try to get in a good position before Cel breaks out of his cell.
It also took me far, far too long to figure out that homosexual relationships are taboo to the fae, and this is the only reason Anadais didn't torture Rhys and his rapists to death for breaking her rule of celebacy for her guards. Mostly because Merry and company are talking in euphemisms about it.
Laurel K. Hamilton: the most prudish erotica writer I've ever heard of. She can't talk about gay sex, and she can't write the word "penis". I've finally popped my sex scene cherry, so to speak, and while I can't speak for anyone else, for me there's something pretty damn empowering about writing that your female lead reached down and took the male lead's cock. The euphamisms--refering to the penis as "him" or "Himself", for example--only allow you to distance yourself from something you don't actually want to be doing.
Merry continues to berate Rhys about how arrogant he's being about goblin culture.
“You’re still being arrogant about their culture, Rhys. You act as if what they did to you is nothing that could ever have happened in the high courts of the sidhe. If the Queen of Air and Darkness bid it, or the King of Light and Illusion wanted it, it would be done. And the sidhe have no laws protecting the victims of torture. You’re just tortured. The goblins may do more torture, maiming, and rape than the sidhe, but they’ve got more laws in place to protect the people who end up on the wrong end of the punishment. You get fucked over by the sidhe, and they fuck you any way they want to. So you tell me, Rhys, which race is the more civilized?”
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. DID I JUST READ.
This is like wheels within wheels of fucked up. Jesus fucking Christ. One, you've got the fact that the female lead is berating a rape victim for taking an arrogant view of their rapist. Two, somehow the fact that there are rules to protect victims--rules that no one on earth could ever enforce--migitates the fact that these victims exist, and that there are more of them than in the other cultures.
“Kurag is like a schoolyard bully. He only continues to pick at you because he gets such nice reactions from you. If you could act as if it didn’t bother you, then he’d tire of the game.”
KURAG PARTICIPATED IN RHYS'S RAPE, YOU INSENSITIVE PIECE OF SHIT.
I have no words at this point. Seriously. No words. THE HEROINE OF THIS NOVEL IS SUGGESTING TO A RAPE VICTIM THAT HE PRETEND HIS RAPE DOESN'T MATTER SO HIS RAPIST WILL LEAVE HIM ALONE.
Merry then says that Rhys can't just duck the meeting because Kurag asks about him. His "delicious guard". So instead, Merry wants to distract Kurag from their negotiations--she wants more time with the goblins--by making out with Rhys during their mirror-call.
This makes me want to vomit.
Merry then adds that what she's negotiating for is a trade: She gets a longer alliance, and she'll awaken the magic of more half-breed goblin/sidhe like Kitto. Which means she'll be fucking a very large number of goblins, which sets Frost off, and we get yet another round of false anti-racist commentary about imaginary things.
Rhys agrees that they need the goblins for longer. He asks Merry what she means by "distracting" Kurag. Merry then does a strip tease to remove her bikini. This happens:
He was one of those men who looked small until he grew, and then you knew he wasn’t small in anything but stature.
And this is why you can't be a prude and write good erotica. That's so obtuse it's almost opaque. Rhys has an erection, and Merry likes how big he gets.
Merry then recaps how all the guards got their old powers back after fighting the Nameless. She has a breif makeout session with Frost for reasons--at least, I assume there are reasons. Usually things don't happen in books without them--and she compares Frost's eyes to snowglobes.
I think LKH needs to take a couple more semesters of biology because eyes do not work this way.
By now Rhys is moving into his role of distracting Kurag. Apparently all it takes to make you feel okay being in the same room as your rapist is to tease back. WOW! I wish somebody had told me that.
The chapter ends with the men all piling into the bedroom to talk to Kurag. Merry looks from one guy to the other...and then this happens:
I wondered if Doyle thought of himself as a potential sex partner, or as a meal? I guess that all depended on how Kurag felt about sidhe men, and if he preferred dark meat to light.
I am going to hate every minute of this, aren't I?
Book cover WIP
Yes. I'm working on it. Yes. I know it's probably not going to make it tonight. Work and counciling session ate most of my time today. I also no longer have weekends because Awesome!Job does not exist during summer (for reasons) and my summer job requires training. :(
But here's a WIP shot! It'll get here when it gets here, but it's ALMOST HERE
But here's a WIP shot! It'll get here when it gets here, but it's ALMOST HERE
