Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 52
February 22, 2013
Just a little thing
I feel like shit today, so no review. It's bad enough that I have to work.
I would, however, like to do a shout out to two people because between the two of you, you've made this month the best month I've had on the blog, like, ever.
RF, thanks for the link earlier, you are awesome.
Second, all the twitter links, and I do mean ALL OF THEM, are from one person. I checked. They are probably responsible for a third of the traffic I've gotten this month. Without them, half of you probably would not have read anything I've written. I'm not sure why this person has decided to promote me the way that they have, but I'm actually kind of grateful. Other than RF, nobody else is even talking about me.
So thank you. I don't get your reasoning, but thank you just the same. It is really amazing that somebody as important and well respected as you are takes an hour out of your day to talk about a blog that, prior to you taking an interest in me, nobody else was reading. It really means a lot.
(Also? This is what "passive aggressive as fuck" looks like.)
I would, however, like to do a shout out to two people because between the two of you, you've made this month the best month I've had on the blog, like, ever.
RF, thanks for the link earlier, you are awesome. Second, all the twitter links, and I do mean ALL OF THEM, are from one person. I checked. They are probably responsible for a third of the traffic I've gotten this month. Without them, half of you probably would not have read anything I've written. I'm not sure why this person has decided to promote me the way that they have, but I'm actually kind of grateful. Other than RF, nobody else is even talking about me.
So thank you. I don't get your reasoning, but thank you just the same. It is really amazing that somebody as important and well respected as you are takes an hour out of your day to talk about a blog that, prior to you taking an interest in me, nobody else was reading. It really means a lot.
(Also? This is what "passive aggressive as fuck" looks like.)
February 21, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 18 NSFW
*sighs*
When I was eight years old, I walked into my grandmother's library. There was a burl wood table that had been there since before I was born. It was a very nice table. I'd looked at it every three to six months since I was old enough to crawl. But on this particular day I looked at the table and realized that the wood patterns were hiding the face of Satan.
I didn't go into that room for two years. I knew I was being silly, I knew it was just a wood pattern, but it was the face of Satan.
That's what this book is. I said it was the "OK" series. I said it was the fun series. I said it was the series to go to if you wanted the fun of LKH's narrative voice and you wanted to stay away from the awfulness of Anita Blake's non-con. But I was wrong. The awfulness is there. In fact, the awfulness is worse. Much, much, MUCH worse. It's just casual, and as long as you don't look at it too close, you don't realize that it's the face of Satan. But it is. This book is officially a Hellmouth, and it's all because of this chapter.
And...Look. I know. I know. I know. I've tried, okay? I've tried. I've tried to keep from commenting on the racial aspects here because I know goddamn well I don't have the street cred to do it right, but it's gotten to the point where it'd be even more wrong for me not to comment on it. IT'S THAT BAD. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry for anything I get wrong, I'm sorry for anything I get right, I'm sorry this book even exists. This entire chapter should owe reparations to everyone, everywhere, forever. That's how wrong it is.
I started this chapter being funny, there are funny moments in it, but this is not a good thing. This is not even something I should be joking about. I don't want to recommend that anybody not read my blog post, but you really might not want to read it today. I'm serious. Here are a bunch of pictures of cats being cute. Look at the pictures of the cats being cute, fill yourself with the adorability (...it's a word. IT IS A NEW WORD THAT I HAVE JUST MADE GODDAMN IT) of the kittens, and be VERY glad that your head isn't going to be filled with the shitstorm that is about to follow. This is worse than Kitto and the dog bed. This is worse than Kitto period. This chapter is so wrong that to ignore its existence and what it says about the attitudes of its author is almost as bad as trying to ignore the Holocaust.
I am very sorry this is here. I am willing to continue reviewing this book chapter by chapter, if only because I started it, damn it, and I finish what I stared, but if, after this, mentioning this book makes anybody feel uncomfortable, I will drop it and do something less wrong. Like Save the Pearls or The Caterpillar's Question.
This chapter is worse than Save the Pearls.
This chapter is worse than that entire book.
I am dead serious.
It's time for Merry to have sex with Doyle, LKH's not-an-African black man.
You can stop reading now.
And since you're not, let's start with the very obvious: How fucked up do you have to be for your fetish to be sex with a dark skinned man, but you have to make it absolutely positively clear that this dark-skinned man isn't actually a real kind of brown person? Oh, He's not human brown-black. He's tar black! Right. Yeah. Keep digging, Laurel. That hole's not deep enough yet.
He smiled. “We all are (auditioning to be king), Meredith. Some of the others may forget that in the rush of hot skin and sex, but you must never forget. You are choosing a father for your children, a king for the court, and someone you will be tied to forever.”Yes. Guys can fuck whomever they want to, but a woman must always be mindful of her future mate and make sure that she picks somebody who will be a good provider of her children. Letting herself have a few minutes of fun would be irresponsible.
But you know, I never intended this to be a fancy blog about social justice and righting wrongs and making the world a better place. I'm not here to make sure all the cultural groups get represented in a responsible and respectful way, and that all the characters manage to address everyone without any kind of sexism, and that all the right whatever things are done at all the right moments. I'm not good at that, and that's not my intended job. I'm not accepting that responsibility. If I'm talking about something, it's not because I think it's an offence against X or Y, it's because I think what I'm reading about is morally wrong. That doesn't make me a good person or a good blogger. Calling this shit what it is, is the most basic thing that anybody who even hopes to call themselves a good person should do.
But in the end, I don't know the game, I don't get the buzzwords. I don't even have a college education. I'm reviewing books because the writing in them is bad, and not because the message in them is bad. I don't intend to call somebody out on cultural appropreation--I don't know enough about the issue to make that call, and obviously I can't even spell the damn word--but I sure as fuck will nail their ass for research fail. I might get pissed off at somebody for turning a religion into their shiny object, but that falls under research fail too. I mean, fuck, guys, I can read John Ringo and enjoy it even though half of his books have an admitted rapist as a main character and the other half have main characters who are either kinked towards consensual rape play (Herzer Herrick, I'm looking at you.) or survivors of a harem where rape is more than a little fetishized. I like problematic things too much to be a good little warrior for truth and justice in the social way. I'm not here to gain anybody's approval--I mean, I'd like it, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here to have fun and enjoy myself talking about either so-bad-it's-good books, books that are actually good, my own books, and whatever-fucking-else I happen to decide I WANT to talk about today.
So I'm gonna make a little deal with this awful book. If this sex scene is sexy in any single way, then this porn-book will have fulfilled its purpose and I will have to admit that it is a success in what it set out to do, which is being an equal opportunity porno for everyone. And I will have to be a little more lenient towards it, because this isn't intended to be a classic, or a commentary on life, or an educational portal into how to be a good human being. It's just porn.
The feel of his lips made me shiver, writhing in his lap. Doyle drew a sharp breath, his hands wrapping around my waist, across my thighs. He whispered, “Merry,” against my skin, his breath warm and fierce, his fingers digging into my thigh, my waist. There was such strength in his hands, such pressure, as if with little effort he could plunge his fingers into my body and bring my blood and flesh to the surface, peel me apart like something ripe and sweet. Something that had been waiting for his hand to open me, to bring me, to spill me in a rush of pleasure over his hands, across his body.
I am going to go pollinate with a fucking bush for the rest of my life. You just compared his foreplay to you pealing an orange using language that invokes the image of your body being skinned alive so someone else can literally eat you. WHO IS SUPPOSED TO FIND THIS SEXY? HANNIBAL FUCKING LECTER?
Something ripe and sweet. Dear fucking God is her vagina an overripe cantelope? Is he going to turn her into the jelly thing from "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream?" (I don't like Harlan Ellison. That is the only one of his stories I will ever read volluntarily. I read "Repent Harliquin said the Tick Tock Man" and you will have to put a gun to my head to make me read anything else he's written. Also, he's an asshole. I wanted that on the record) And what the fuck is he bringing her? Is he taking her someplace? WHAT IN THE BLUE GODDAMN FUCK DID THAT LAST SENTENCE MEAN?
The ONLY thing that I ask from a book is that it FUNCTION AS A BOOK. I am not an intelectual, I don't pretend to read classics, if I'm reading something it is because I want to and I really don't care how many smart-person-brownie-points it buys me, or how many social-justice points I lose. One of my favorite books is basically a three-hundred page lovecraftian penis joke. But there are some very basic fundamental things that a book needs to have to work as intended. If it's a western, there should be horses and cowboys. If it's a fantasy there should be long dresses, taverns that spell like piss and wizard hats. If it's sci fi there should be something in the book that does not currently exist (I consider CSI to be science fiction, FYI). Religious books should contain some kind of spirituality. Self-help books should actually help you. Romances should have more kissing than actual content. THIS IS PORN. THE PORNY BITS SHOULD ACTUALLY QUALIFY AS PORN. I SHOULD NOT FEEL LIKE I'M READING THE COLLECTIVE FANTASIES OF JEFFERY DHAMER.
But that has to be the low point in this sex scene. I mean, it cannot possibly get any--
He got up on all fours, straddling above me like a mare with a colt, but there was nothing motherly about the way he stared down at me.
Laurel K. Hamilton just managed to imply beastiality and incest in a single sentence.
This is the worst thing ever written by a human.
Also, I have yet to read a single paragraph where Doyle is not either compared to an animal or implied to be cannibalizing Merry. At one point he howls because he is supposed to be a Hound of the Great Hunt. At no point does he act like a real, sane person about to have sex.
In fact...Oh.
God.
Guys I just realized one of Merry's two dark skinned lovers was made from a transformed magical dog, and that the series explicitly says that's the reason why he's black. Because he's an animal turned into a man. This is not even just something kind of sort of implied by the book, it says so in the text.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I am ashamed to even exist at this point.
Doyle somehow hulks out from being aroused and starts chasing Merry around the room, and the text implies that it's not play. So somehow we've gone from this being a consensual, if icky as fuck, encounter to it being non-con YET AGAIN.
He tore me away from the door, threw me on the bed. I tried to slide off to one side, but he was there, his lower body pressing against mine, keeping me pinned to the side of the bed.Tell me that is not a rape scene. JUST TELL ME. I FUCKING DARE YOU.
Also, I don't remember Frost leaving the room last chapter. Somehow he's just dissipated. Rhys appears after Merry screams due to Doyle being scary. Rhys has his gun out.
I believe that under certain circumstances "Ground Control" is a good thing, but if Ground Control for your sexual encounter feels moved to keep a loaded gun for your own protection YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG.
Oh, but Merry HAS to fuck this oh-so-dangerous aspect of Doyle's personality because if she doesn't he'll lock it away from everyone else and slowly die inch by inch. BULLSHIT. If you can't keep your dangerous, not-nice aspects locked away where they can't hurt people, YOU FAIL AT BEING HUMAN. HAVING an impluse does not condone ACTING on that impulse. And if, for example, I were kinked towards bondage play and my mate were not? And I loved that mate enough to keep them? I DO NOT DO BONDAGE PLAY. And if I don't do bondage play and my lover is willing to shelve that part of his life for me? I DO NOT DO BONDAGE PLAY EITHER. THE. FUCKING. END.
And then this happens:
Even as his body ground into mine, forced small noises from my throat, he growled, “Do you want this?”
“I want this.”This is the first time a view point character in ANY LKH book I have blogged about has verbally consented to an act of sex. THE. FIRST. TIME. Now. Let's see. Who else in this series was carefully shown to be giving consent to every little thing he or she did?
Oh, right. It was Kitto. Because some instinct in LKH realized that somebody was going to call FUCKING WRONG on her writing and she wanted to make it absolutely clear that everything here is consensual. Her instincts are telling her that she has to make consent absolutely clear ONLY with the fake twelve year old and the black man.
With the pedophilia-in-all-but-name, and the utter garbage that we are reading right now.
I can't even comment on this. Other than to say I'm sorry until "sorry" stops looking like a word. This should not exist, and I am sorry. I can't make this funny. I can't make this okay. I can't even get angry at the stupid anymore. It just makes me feel very, very, very sad, and I'm sorry.
And then we have this:
Then he began to drag himself out of me, and push himself into me, and the small waves of pleasure began.Sex should not sound like you're trying to move a piano.
...unless you're talking about the headboard and not the amount of effort involved. Because if it's the headboard action it should definitely sound like you're moving a piano.
And when the sex is over, they "come to", so to speak, fucking covered in each other's blood. Yes. Being covered in blood is completely sexy and an indicator that a good time was had by all.
WHEN YOU ARE A MURDERING PSYCHOPATH.
And because ending a chapter with a character actually enjoying themselves is too much to ask out of LKH, Doyle has one of those patented laugh/cry hysterical fits that just give our lives so much fucking meaning.
I'd say something reassuring after this point, but I really, honestly, did not remember this scene being like this, and I can't promise that it gets any better. Or worse, if you're here for worse. This is an awful thing, it should not exist. I want to apologize to everyone in the world for this thing existing.
I am sorry.
Um...fair warning re: next Caress of Twilight update
Guys, I just reviewed the next chapter of Caress of Twilight ahead of time, and...uh...it kind of made me not want to exist anymore. There is so much wrong in it, on every level you can possibly imagine, that I would have skipped it out of consideration for you guys if I did not feel that not reviewing it, given that I am who and what I am, would be as bad as a German ignoring the Holocaust.
In plain English, I feel like I just read something that every white person, everywhere, should apologize for allowing to exist.
If anybody in western civilization had any kind of conscience, we would have piled all these books into a giant mound and set a nuclear bomb off on top of the pile.
I'm not kidding. I'm not trying to employ hyperbole. I'm not playing this whole social justice circle jerk "find the subtext" game that the internet is in love with right now. I am dead fucking serious.
Laurel K. Hamilton should never publish anything else, ever again. She is a rancid, awful waste of oxygen. She has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The fact that she is still getting paid to put words onto paper should be prosecuted as a fucking hate crime.
If I feel better about this in the morning, if I feel any regret for calling a published author who is better than I am at the mechanics of writing a waste of valuable organs, skin and space, it is an indication that I fail as a basic human being.
You guys have no idea. None whatsoever.
I'm going to go find something nice to look at for a while so that I don't dream about this shit.
In plain English, I feel like I just read something that every white person, everywhere, should apologize for allowing to exist.
If anybody in western civilization had any kind of conscience, we would have piled all these books into a giant mound and set a nuclear bomb off on top of the pile.
I'm not kidding. I'm not trying to employ hyperbole. I'm not playing this whole social justice circle jerk "find the subtext" game that the internet is in love with right now. I am dead fucking serious.
Laurel K. Hamilton should never publish anything else, ever again. She is a rancid, awful waste of oxygen. She has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The fact that she is still getting paid to put words onto paper should be prosecuted as a fucking hate crime.
If I feel better about this in the morning, if I feel any regret for calling a published author who is better than I am at the mechanics of writing a waste of valuable organs, skin and space, it is an indication that I fail as a basic human being.
You guys have no idea. None whatsoever.
I'm going to go find something nice to look at for a while so that I don't dream about this shit.
February 20, 2013
The Host--Chapter 10
This chapter is concentrated dumb. It is stupidity distilled down into its most basic componants. It is the Everclear of senselessness. It makes Bella Swan look like Katness Everdeen. I thought the height of stupid was having a make-out session during a political charged mirror-magic conference call but boy was I proven wrong. This is, quite possibly, the single biggest instance of character stupidity I have ever read. INCLUDING Solan Gris's machinations in Mission Earth, INCLUDING Clary Sage running through a Magical Door of Mystery when she has no clue what the fuck is behind it, and INCLUDING every thought and feeling both Anita Blake and Merry Gentry ever have, combined.
It's not even offensively stupid. It's just plan...GAH let's just get on with this.
Wanderer is going into the desert to go find Jared and Jamie.
Because she can't live without them.
Because Melanie's memories of them are driving her to this.
But you know what Melanie obviously has no memories of? Hiking through a desert and coming back alive.
Yesterday I mentioned what I like to call the Desert Island test. You make a list of all the things you'd need to survive when you are removed from the human group--you can't go for help--and your accustomed tech base. Every item you have to add to that list indicates a skillset that you do not have. A knife would be the most basic--you can't forge a knife on a deserted island fast enough for it to make a difference for you, even if it's just rocks and sticks. If you have to add firestarters (matches, lighters, and god forbid, lighter fluid) that means you don't know how to make fire. Food means you don't know how to find food. String, ditto. Water? And it's more than three day's worth? You're fucked.
Having read this chapter, I feel very confidant in saying that Melanie, and by extension Wanderer, would not pass the Desert Island Test. Or the "Not dying in the motherfucking desert because you're an idiot" test.
They go into a Soul run store to get supplies.
This is a list of things that I think I would have to bring with me on a desert hike, if I wanted to survive and I had no idea how long I'd be there, in order of importance:
-three days worth of water
-A piece of durable clear plastic and/or a box of ziplock plastic bags--part of making a water solar still
-Several weights of some kind, like nuts or a roll of quarters--ditto
-Rope and/or some kind of twine
-Salt
-A tarp made of heavy, opaque plastic
-a knife
-a coat
-a sleeping bag
-a roll of duct tape to repair all of the above
-a durable, strong hiking stick
-A backpack.
-firestarters.
-Food. At least four days worth.
Water, a way to get more water if none is immediately avaliable and/or the water I find is bad, a way to treat and prevent dehydration, a way to make shade if none is easily found, a thing to cut other things with, things to keep warm with, things to fix other things with, things to carry and/or tie other things to, and food. And with all of the above, ways to get more food when I run out.
Let's see what Wanderer gets!
Melanie says they should get three galleons of water, which would give them three days to find Jared and Jamie. Before I explore how fucking stupid that statement is, let's see if S. Meyer even got that right.
Google fu leads me to several sites. This one says the following:
That does not include the whole "passing out from heat exhaustion" part of dying from heat and no water. Let's guestimate, then, that if it is really hot, and it will be, and if you are exerting yourself in the heat--and they will be, god help them--you have two to three hours to find more water. Pass out, the game is over and you make your final contribution to the planet's welfare. Wanderer will be taking the car for the first day of this journey, but even the text admits that eventually they're going to have to ditch the vehicle. So the "extreme heat and physical overexertion" part of that statement applies. It then goes on to say that a galleon is the fucking minimum. So yes. There's a chance that S. Meyer has gotten the minimum amount of water Wanderer would need to get three days out into the desert.
This is assuming, of course, that she doesn't actually eat anything too carby or to salty.
According to this site, every gram of carbohydrate and salt you consume has to be compensated for by, you guessed it, more water. So anything that Wanderer brings with her that isn't water is going to mean she'll need more water.
Here's the stupid part: THEY WOULD BE THREE DAYS INTO THE FUCKING DESERT WHEN THEY RAN OUT OF WATER.
When you plan for a trip, you plan for all of the trip. Three days of water means you walk in for a day and a half, you take a break, and then you walk back for a day and a half. This is, of course, assuming that Melanie's body is in any kind of condition to make this treck.
Wanderer has been teaching history classes. WANDERER HAS BEEN TEACHING HISTORY. There is no mention of how much excercise she's getting, if she's used to extreme conditions, and lest we forget, she can barely handle the mental stress of dealing with Melanie. Wanderer can barely handle dealing with the little voice in her head. And she wants to go into the desert. I'm sorry, walk into the desert. With only three days worth of water and...let's see, what exactly does Melanie insist Wanderer get?
-A flat of water bottles. (...Not galleon jugs, but a fucking flat of bottled water. Something that you can't tie to your backpack with a leingth of rope. And the Darwin Award of the year goes to--)
-A box of granola bars
-a roll of doughnuts
-a bag of potato chips
-a topographical map.
And that's it.
First of all, you remember that part about every gram of carbs and sodium having to be compensated for by more water? This is gas station food. Those granola bars? Unless the Souls changed them, they're about as healthy as those chocolate bars sitting underneath them. The doughnuts? Not healthy. A fucking bag of salt laden potato chips? Fuck me.
And then there's all the shit Wanderer isn't buying. No matches. No sleeping bag--remember, all Wanderer packed for was a casual trip to Tuson--no hiking boots. No coat. No tarp. No tent poles. No rope. She's going to wander out into the desert with barely enough food and water for three days. There's nonsense about how "water is more important than food" in the desert, and this is true, but I get the feeling S. Meyer was researching what you need for basic survival. What Wanderer and Melanie are about to do is NOT basic survival. They want to hike through the desert and find a place that neither of them has ever seen before, using only one landmark and some indistinct directions from an uncle who, prior to the invasion, was blatantly crazy. With a body that even Melanie admits is in no condition for this hike.
You know what else Wanderer is not bringing with her? Salt. It sounds like a contradiction, but you NEED salt to stay hydrated. Water is not optional. Salt is not optional. If you read the treatment for severe dehydration it recommends you mix salt and sugar with water before you give it to the person. So after a certain point--after the granola bars, doughnuts and potato chips are gone--it won't mater how much water Wanderer drinks, it's not going to be doing her any good.
And then Melanie goes off on how it's going to be dark soon and they need to get going.
This is where shit totally breaks down.
S. Meyer lives in the New Mexico/Arizona region. The same site that says "Food can be a bad thing" says travel at night if possible, something I knew WITHOUT googling survival tips. And the other thing it insists on is clothing. Specifically on warm clothing, a windbreaker and a down-filled sleeping bag. Because it gets fucking cold in the desert. As in freezing tempretures. As in you can avoid heat stroke by the skin of your teeth in the afternoon only to die of hypothermia at night because you were dumb enough to strip down to your coolest layer and leave the warmer things behind.
Wanderer, a cultured and civilized person in a society that doesn't even have to pay for things because "Everyone is honest, what's the point of money?" (...to exchange value of labor for items of equal value.) is about to walk out into the desert and she hasn't once in the six months she's been a human even gone without air conditioning.
And Melanie is cheering her on the whole fucking way, even to the point of suggesting Wanderer go to sleep when it gets too dark.
Both these women are stupid. And it makes me question S. Meyer's capacity too, because she lives in this shit. That's why it's set here. That's why Bella Swan starts her cheerful little story in Phoenix and not Forks. And when you live in an area, even if it's not an area you're familiar with at first, you learn basic survival stuff. First thing I learned when I moved to South Texas? Where the hurricane evacuation routes were and not to go out into the afternoon sun in the middle of fucking summer. I am about as civilization-addicted as you can get--I get pissy when my room gets too hot--and even I know you do not travel in the fucking desert during the day. I live by the coast, things are (sometimes) lush and green, and in the summer noon to four is uninhabitable. You do not go outside and do anything. You say inside. You drink water. If you're a good human being you consider donating window units to the elderly people in your neighborhood because if they don't have A/C they are going to die. YOU DO NOT FUCKING WALK THROUGH THE FUCKING DESERT DURING THE DAY.
If you're smart, at about eight to ten in the morning, you find a shady spot that hasn't hit "FUCK ME" level hot--don't start with a hot place because all you'll be doing is insulating heat, and that's bad--you spread the tarp you brought with you into a tent shape with most of the tarp pointed in the general west area, you tie it to trees/rocks/a cactus/the hiking stick you made the second you realized you had to hike through the desert, you spread your sleeping bag/wind breaker/coat over the rocky bits of the ground, and then you go to sleep. And even if you can't sleep because it's daytime and fuck it's hot, you STAY THERE. In the shade, with your water and your food and your other supplies. You don't leave your shelter until the sun is AT MINIMUM touching the horizon. And then you try to get as far as you possibly can before the sun comes back up and you have to find another shady spot to put your tarp.
Yes. You have to deal with rattlesnakes and coyotes and scorpions and spiders and about fifty other nasty things at night. You know what you don't have to deal with? The motherfucking sun. You *might* find a rattler and it *might* bite you (they're shy). You *might* find the wrong kind of scorpion or spider and that *might* kill you. You *might* have to fight off a hungry coyote if you're not good in the "make a lot of scary noise" department. But you know what you can't get away from that absolutely fucking will kill you? THE MOTHERFUCKING SUN. DO NOT GO OUT INTO THE MOTHERFUCKING SUN WHEN YOU ARE IN THE DESERT AND YOU ARE ONLY BRINGING THREE FUCKING DAYS WORTH OF WATER. THIS IS BASIC LIVING-IN-A-HOT-ZONE COMMON SENSE.
The chapter ends with Wanderer going to sleep. And the title of the next chapter is "Dehydrated"
NO FUCKING SHIT.
...at least Wanderer isn't trying to fuck a tree. Because at this point, Merry Gentry would. But please tell me she keeps the empty water bottles. Please tell me that even this woman has the sense to keep the empty fucking water bottles. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Let my faith in humanity and S. Meyer's common sense have that little tiny bit of light. Please oh please oh please.
It's not even offensively stupid. It's just plan...GAH let's just get on with this.
Wanderer is going into the desert to go find Jared and Jamie.
Because she can't live without them.
Because Melanie's memories of them are driving her to this.
But you know what Melanie obviously has no memories of? Hiking through a desert and coming back alive.
Yesterday I mentioned what I like to call the Desert Island test. You make a list of all the things you'd need to survive when you are removed from the human group--you can't go for help--and your accustomed tech base. Every item you have to add to that list indicates a skillset that you do not have. A knife would be the most basic--you can't forge a knife on a deserted island fast enough for it to make a difference for you, even if it's just rocks and sticks. If you have to add firestarters (matches, lighters, and god forbid, lighter fluid) that means you don't know how to make fire. Food means you don't know how to find food. String, ditto. Water? And it's more than three day's worth? You're fucked.
Having read this chapter, I feel very confidant in saying that Melanie, and by extension Wanderer, would not pass the Desert Island Test. Or the "Not dying in the motherfucking desert because you're an idiot" test.
They go into a Soul run store to get supplies.
This is a list of things that I think I would have to bring with me on a desert hike, if I wanted to survive and I had no idea how long I'd be there, in order of importance:
-three days worth of water
-A piece of durable clear plastic and/or a box of ziplock plastic bags--part of making a water solar still
-Several weights of some kind, like nuts or a roll of quarters--ditto
-Rope and/or some kind of twine
-Salt
-A tarp made of heavy, opaque plastic
-a knife
-a coat
-a sleeping bag
-a roll of duct tape to repair all of the above
-a durable, strong hiking stick
-A backpack.
-firestarters.
-Food. At least four days worth.
Water, a way to get more water if none is immediately avaliable and/or the water I find is bad, a way to treat and prevent dehydration, a way to make shade if none is easily found, a thing to cut other things with, things to keep warm with, things to fix other things with, things to carry and/or tie other things to, and food. And with all of the above, ways to get more food when I run out.
Let's see what Wanderer gets!
Melanie says they should get three galleons of water, which would give them three days to find Jared and Jamie. Before I explore how fucking stupid that statement is, let's see if S. Meyer even got that right.
Google fu leads me to several sites. This one says the following:
Without water, dehydration can set in within an hour in severe heat. The combination of physical overexertion and extreme heat — without water — can lead to death in as little as several hours.
That does not include the whole "passing out from heat exhaustion" part of dying from heat and no water. Let's guestimate, then, that if it is really hot, and it will be, and if you are exerting yourself in the heat--and they will be, god help them--you have two to three hours to find more water. Pass out, the game is over and you make your final contribution to the planet's welfare. Wanderer will be taking the car for the first day of this journey, but even the text admits that eventually they're going to have to ditch the vehicle. So the "extreme heat and physical overexertion" part of that statement applies. It then goes on to say that a galleon is the fucking minimum. So yes. There's a chance that S. Meyer has gotten the minimum amount of water Wanderer would need to get three days out into the desert.
This is assuming, of course, that she doesn't actually eat anything too carby or to salty.
According to this site, every gram of carbohydrate and salt you consume has to be compensated for by, you guessed it, more water. So anything that Wanderer brings with her that isn't water is going to mean she'll need more water.
Here's the stupid part: THEY WOULD BE THREE DAYS INTO THE FUCKING DESERT WHEN THEY RAN OUT OF WATER.
When you plan for a trip, you plan for all of the trip. Three days of water means you walk in for a day and a half, you take a break, and then you walk back for a day and a half. This is, of course, assuming that Melanie's body is in any kind of condition to make this treck.
Wanderer has been teaching history classes. WANDERER HAS BEEN TEACHING HISTORY. There is no mention of how much excercise she's getting, if she's used to extreme conditions, and lest we forget, she can barely handle the mental stress of dealing with Melanie. Wanderer can barely handle dealing with the little voice in her head. And she wants to go into the desert. I'm sorry, walk into the desert. With only three days worth of water and...let's see, what exactly does Melanie insist Wanderer get?
-A flat of water bottles. (...Not galleon jugs, but a fucking flat of bottled water. Something that you can't tie to your backpack with a leingth of rope. And the Darwin Award of the year goes to--)
-A box of granola bars
-a roll of doughnuts
-a bag of potato chips
-a topographical map.
And that's it.
First of all, you remember that part about every gram of carbs and sodium having to be compensated for by more water? This is gas station food. Those granola bars? Unless the Souls changed them, they're about as healthy as those chocolate bars sitting underneath them. The doughnuts? Not healthy. A fucking bag of salt laden potato chips? Fuck me.
And then there's all the shit Wanderer isn't buying. No matches. No sleeping bag--remember, all Wanderer packed for was a casual trip to Tuson--no hiking boots. No coat. No tarp. No tent poles. No rope. She's going to wander out into the desert with barely enough food and water for three days. There's nonsense about how "water is more important than food" in the desert, and this is true, but I get the feeling S. Meyer was researching what you need for basic survival. What Wanderer and Melanie are about to do is NOT basic survival. They want to hike through the desert and find a place that neither of them has ever seen before, using only one landmark and some indistinct directions from an uncle who, prior to the invasion, was blatantly crazy. With a body that even Melanie admits is in no condition for this hike.
You know what else Wanderer is not bringing with her? Salt. It sounds like a contradiction, but you NEED salt to stay hydrated. Water is not optional. Salt is not optional. If you read the treatment for severe dehydration it recommends you mix salt and sugar with water before you give it to the person. So after a certain point--after the granola bars, doughnuts and potato chips are gone--it won't mater how much water Wanderer drinks, it's not going to be doing her any good.
And then Melanie goes off on how it's going to be dark soon and they need to get going.
This is where shit totally breaks down.
S. Meyer lives in the New Mexico/Arizona region. The same site that says "Food can be a bad thing" says travel at night if possible, something I knew WITHOUT googling survival tips. And the other thing it insists on is clothing. Specifically on warm clothing, a windbreaker and a down-filled sleeping bag. Because it gets fucking cold in the desert. As in freezing tempretures. As in you can avoid heat stroke by the skin of your teeth in the afternoon only to die of hypothermia at night because you were dumb enough to strip down to your coolest layer and leave the warmer things behind.
Wanderer, a cultured and civilized person in a society that doesn't even have to pay for things because "Everyone is honest, what's the point of money?" (...to exchange value of labor for items of equal value.) is about to walk out into the desert and she hasn't once in the six months she's been a human even gone without air conditioning.
And Melanie is cheering her on the whole fucking way, even to the point of suggesting Wanderer go to sleep when it gets too dark.
Both these women are stupid. And it makes me question S. Meyer's capacity too, because she lives in this shit. That's why it's set here. That's why Bella Swan starts her cheerful little story in Phoenix and not Forks. And when you live in an area, even if it's not an area you're familiar with at first, you learn basic survival stuff. First thing I learned when I moved to South Texas? Where the hurricane evacuation routes were and not to go out into the afternoon sun in the middle of fucking summer. I am about as civilization-addicted as you can get--I get pissy when my room gets too hot--and even I know you do not travel in the fucking desert during the day. I live by the coast, things are (sometimes) lush and green, and in the summer noon to four is uninhabitable. You do not go outside and do anything. You say inside. You drink water. If you're a good human being you consider donating window units to the elderly people in your neighborhood because if they don't have A/C they are going to die. YOU DO NOT FUCKING WALK THROUGH THE FUCKING DESERT DURING THE DAY.
If you're smart, at about eight to ten in the morning, you find a shady spot that hasn't hit "FUCK ME" level hot--don't start with a hot place because all you'll be doing is insulating heat, and that's bad--you spread the tarp you brought with you into a tent shape with most of the tarp pointed in the general west area, you tie it to trees/rocks/a cactus/the hiking stick you made the second you realized you had to hike through the desert, you spread your sleeping bag/wind breaker/coat over the rocky bits of the ground, and then you go to sleep. And even if you can't sleep because it's daytime and fuck it's hot, you STAY THERE. In the shade, with your water and your food and your other supplies. You don't leave your shelter until the sun is AT MINIMUM touching the horizon. And then you try to get as far as you possibly can before the sun comes back up and you have to find another shady spot to put your tarp.
Yes. You have to deal with rattlesnakes and coyotes and scorpions and spiders and about fifty other nasty things at night. You know what you don't have to deal with? The motherfucking sun. You *might* find a rattler and it *might* bite you (they're shy). You *might* find the wrong kind of scorpion or spider and that *might* kill you. You *might* have to fight off a hungry coyote if you're not good in the "make a lot of scary noise" department. But you know what you can't get away from that absolutely fucking will kill you? THE MOTHERFUCKING SUN. DO NOT GO OUT INTO THE MOTHERFUCKING SUN WHEN YOU ARE IN THE DESERT AND YOU ARE ONLY BRINGING THREE FUCKING DAYS WORTH OF WATER. THIS IS BASIC LIVING-IN-A-HOT-ZONE COMMON SENSE.
The chapter ends with Wanderer going to sleep. And the title of the next chapter is "Dehydrated"
NO FUCKING SHIT.
...at least Wanderer isn't trying to fuck a tree. Because at this point, Merry Gentry would. But please tell me she keeps the empty water bottles. Please tell me that even this woman has the sense to keep the empty fucking water bottles. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Let my faith in humanity and S. Meyer's common sense have that little tiny bit of light. Please oh please oh please.
Caress of Twilight--chapter 17
Something positive before we start, because GOD this stuff is garbage. I've been reading Gandhi's autobiography. I usually avoid the stories of uber-special people because I don't like feeling like I'm picking my reading to be special. You should read what you like, no matter how uplifting or problematic it might be, and you should be honest about how you enjoy it no matter how good it looks. I like John Ringo's work, and will continue to like his work no matter how awful he gets because damn it I like his work. And I'm reading the autobiography of one of the best people that ever lived because it sounds like he was as obsessed with spinning as I am.
Anyhoo, there's only one little tiny part of it that bugs me so far, and maybe it's a cultural thing, and maybe it isn't. The ideal that a child's first loyalty ought to be towards their parents. Yeah. No. Well, in an ideal world where people don't suck, your first priority should be other people. Parents, partners and children, then friends and strangers. But that just doesn't work. Unchecked unselfishness is just as bad as selfishness, and vice-versa. And if you apply the virtue of selfless love to a dysfunctional family...you're fucked.
An individual's first priority in the world has to be themselves. It's not "love everybody with no thought for yourself" it's "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." And if you don't know how to do that last part, how can you do the first? Same thing with "do unto others". Self sacrifice only has meaning if you want the same things you are sacrificing for. If I choose to be in poverty because it does something for me--brings me closer to god, gives me time to write, whatever--it has no meaning beyond what it does for me (See: JK Rowling choosing to be on welfare so she could write Harry Potter. Now she has all the money) But if I choose to go without so that somebody else can have, that does have meaning. It's saying "I want to be well fed, so I'm going to give up part of my meal so that you can be well fed too." "I want to be cared for, so I'm going to care for you." "I want to be accepted for who I am, so I'm going to accept you."
In other words:
There. There's your happy thought for the day. Now, you might want to put it in a safe, velvet lined box so it doesn't get any sucky stuff on it.
Merry is crawling across a bed.
...can I go back to talking about how to act like a real human? Because I don't think I want to do this.
No, no, it's okay, she's just doing a "business call" with Queen Niceven. From her bedroom. From her bed, while being draped with naked men.
Because using other people as props is totally alright.
Also? Merry has apparently taken time to coordinate her bedroom in all the shades of dead roses. Because the text decided we needed to know every single detail about her pillows. And I have to say it, the thing that has probably contributed the most to the decline of Western civilization is the advent of Better Homes and Gardens. Yes, folks. The world will fucking end if you don't have a twenty piece pillow sham and comforter set with matching dust ruffles. (Or to quote The Narrator from Fight Club: The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalog. Where is Tyler Durden when we need him?)
So Niceven says she's been waiting for Merry to call because she "knows (her) fondness for the green knight" and--NO. OH NO. OH HELL NO. OH FUCK NO. FUCK FUCK NO, MERRY.
GET YOUR PORNOGRAPHIC MEANDERINGS THE FUCK OUT OF MY OLD ENGLISH POETRY.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Okay, so there will be business in this post, a very fucking premature announcement. You guys can consider the entire Exiles stories released so far to be one book. And there's going to be two more, and the next one I am basing on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight because it is a fucking beautiful narrative about honor and honoring promises and the imagry. OH MY GOD THE IMAGERY. It's a poem that does this:
Being invoked in a book that compares a brown skin tone to rotting leaves and is basically a self insert sex story with every slightly shiny object in Celtic-British-Germanic mythology ever.
(And for the record, if you ever want to study the power of alliteration, Read Gawain. Rhymes are few and far between, so the poem depends on the simularities of the words within the stanza. The whole gazed-moment-amazed thing kind of makes me giddy with how awesome it is)
I am now devoutly hoping that LKH didn't get sick of borrowing dieties from her "Witch's Encyclopedia of Celtic Gods" or whatever reference book she's using, and that she hasn't just jumped straight into Arthurian legand fan-fic, but that hope is on life support. If you're playing in the universe of Celtic and English mythology as fuel for your fairy tale porno, "The green knight" is very specific imagry.
(At least it isn't Taliessin through Logres. I'd really have a shit fit then)
Anyway, Merry asks for healing for Galen. Niceven continues desecrating the classics and insisting that Cel wants (sigh) the "Green Knight" to remain injured.
LKH, you are comparing a dude who just cooked dinner in jeans, a lacy apron and nothing else to a fairy knight who had his own head chopped off to prove a point to king Arthur, and then walked out of Camelot carrying his head under his own arm. Galen =/= the Green Knight. STOP INVOKING SOMETHING AWESOME FOR YOUR SHITTY PORN STORY.
And as the conversation continues, the guys start making out with Merry.
Has anybody else seen "Save the Last Dance?" I hated it, mostly because "OOOH INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIP" and admittedly cool dancing (that only happens at the fucking END of this supposed "dance movie" does not make up for a shitty, shitty story. (ooooh, the white girl saves the black boy from a life of crime and jail with the power of love and dancy-dancy-ness. Because the fact that he got into fucking medical school and is way smarter than his idiot gangster friends isn't enough to keep him from being a dumbass. Thank you movie. Thank you.) But there was a scene where a little old lady gets offended at the black boy and white girl sitting together on the bus (actually, the black boy and white girl assume the little old lady is offended re: race and not, you know, a little old grumpy lady frowning because her knee hurts or she just found out her daughter has cancer or something, and she happened to be looking in their direction while thinking about death and chemo and arthritus and stuff) and so the boy and girl start making out in front of her because that's the really mature way to prove that you are better than a racist. Yeah. This scene here? It's exactly like that. It's not sexy. It's the genital equivilant of waving your tongue around while muttering "Neener neener neener."
Niceven is apparently really horny, though, and watching the boys sex up Merry is all it takes to get her hot and bothered. WOW. We totally couldn't have had a scene involving faerie politics without having sex thrown in as a seasoning.
This is a porn book. Can we please just have porn for porn's sake, and stop getting it all over everything? YOU DO NOT NEED TO JUSTIFY YOUR PRIMARY CHARACTER HAVING SEX.
So the make out session continues until Niceven finally asks what she can get in trade for "Making the Green Knight whole."
(...at the end of Sir Gawain he surrenders himself to the knight to have his own head chopped off--it's complicated--and the Knight, having proved that when it comes to his own self-interest Gawain isn't above lying his ass off, just gives him a little tiny touch with the axe and explains everything that just happened, then sends him home to Think About Things. It's a story about honesty and honor, and yes, they throw the whole thing on Morgan's doorstep at the end and it's problematic and it doesn't degrade my enjoyment of Gawain one iota because at least Morgan had the guts to actually screw with her brother and try to scare the utter living shit out of Gwenivere. I'm stuck in a book with a female character who doesn't do shit. SIR GAWAIN DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE INVOKED HERE.)
(...and in case you interpret the "screw" part literally, that was Morgause, not Morgan. We're leaving Mordred and incest out of this conversation)
(Can I please start discussing the female figures in arthurian mythology, please? It might be misogynistic but it sure as fuck is better than this shit. Please? Please?)
(...how about the Christ figures in the Grail cycle? I know at least one of them was a woman. Please?)
(No?)
(Fuck.)
I don't think I've addressed how fucking bad the dialogue in this book is. Oh, I discussed the "give me your guns" "no" nonsense, but the narrative in this book is just awful. Here's an example:
All the problems are in the tail that dialogue is wagging. Let's see: Telling instead of showing, check; stating the very fucking obvious, check; adding more information than the reader needs to enjoy the story, check check check fucking check.
Then Merry tries to tempt the Queen to cure Galen by offering her sex:
Your Mary Sue makes Lisa Frank's artwork look restrained, Laurell. And it's important to note: Merry is not offering to let Niceven have sex with her. She's offering Niceven the chance to drink her blood and taste the wonderful straight sex that Merry is having with her men. No. I do not know how the fuck that can even work.
Also, apparently Niceven has an eating disorder, because she's "cadaverous" but she thinks her body is beautiful, and if that doesn't fit the defintion of somebody with anorexia/buliema then fuck if I know what does. Thank you for villifying mental disorders like anorexia while praising the actually dangerous things like sociopathy and homocidal psychosis, LKH. I am sure the whole fucking world will benefit from you making Anadais's torture of underage men look like a good thing.
(That was in the last book)
Then, when Niceven agrees to cure Galen, Merry decides to push for an alliance by offering a once-a-week feeding. LKH continues to invoke fairy-tale/horror mashups that are better than hers by continuing to call Galen "green knight" even though he's about as knightly as a windsock. The boys continue to do sexy things behind Merry, and when she invokes her alliance with the goblins I think the whole world can figure out this alliance business is just Merry getting yet another sex partner. And yep, that's exactly what happens.
Does LKH have like, a fetish checklist? I mean, we've done feet, we've done tenticle hentai, there's a lot of oral stuff, now we're doing gigantism again, and do not get me started on Kitto. Is the reason why she can't do another Merry Gentry book because she's run out of fetish-related material to try?
...and can I skip the book where she does in-depth bestiality?
Also...this means Merry is bribing an anorexic with food. Merry is doing the subtle version of "eat a hamburger" here.
Guys, we're curing anorexia with the power of sex. This is not a good book.
The alliance is struck, the conversation ends...and Rhys is now brushing out Doyle's hair.
I don't get it. The "interesting" thing is over, so why is the chapter still here?
...at least we're acknowledging that ankle-length hair is kind of stupid.
And now Doyle and Frost are fighting over whose turn it is with Merry. Uh, the correct way to fix this is "Who would you like to sleep with tonight, Merry". You don't need to stretch the chapter out to include--you are, aren't you? Goddamn it.
But...but...but...the van. back in the van. Back at Maeve's house. Six minutes ago in the living room. Last book in Queen Anadais's room. MONOGAMY IS NOT A RULE AMONG THE FAE NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU INSIST IT IS. This is basically two men arguing over who will get to be Merry's one and only while Merry is trying to manuver her way into all the things penises and THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. I want romantic machinations to make SENSE, damn it.
Finally, Merry says "Hello? Vagina-owner here? This is not a time share." (actually she says "You're talking like I'm not here" but the dialogue is so awful I want to start inventing my own) and Doyle is all like "Oh, right. Would you object to whatever we decide?" and I think feminism just had a collective anurysm because that is not how this whole "Acknowledging owners of vaginas" thing works.
Good fucking God, did I miss the chapter break? Apparently somebody decided something and Merry is in love with Frost and Doyle is still here and Rhys leaves, and for the life of me I can't decide what decision got made at all. Is she sleeping with both Doyle and Frost tonight?
Oh thank you, thank you, thank you GOD this chapter is over before we answer that question.
Anyhoo, there's only one little tiny part of it that bugs me so far, and maybe it's a cultural thing, and maybe it isn't. The ideal that a child's first loyalty ought to be towards their parents. Yeah. No. Well, in an ideal world where people don't suck, your first priority should be other people. Parents, partners and children, then friends and strangers. But that just doesn't work. Unchecked unselfishness is just as bad as selfishness, and vice-versa. And if you apply the virtue of selfless love to a dysfunctional family...you're fucked.
An individual's first priority in the world has to be themselves. It's not "love everybody with no thought for yourself" it's "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." And if you don't know how to do that last part, how can you do the first? Same thing with "do unto others". Self sacrifice only has meaning if you want the same things you are sacrificing for. If I choose to be in poverty because it does something for me--brings me closer to god, gives me time to write, whatever--it has no meaning beyond what it does for me (See: JK Rowling choosing to be on welfare so she could write Harry Potter. Now she has all the money) But if I choose to go without so that somebody else can have, that does have meaning. It's saying "I want to be well fed, so I'm going to give up part of my meal so that you can be well fed too." "I want to be cared for, so I'm going to care for you." "I want to be accepted for who I am, so I'm going to accept you."
In other words:
There. There's your happy thought for the day. Now, you might want to put it in a safe, velvet lined box so it doesn't get any sucky stuff on it.
Merry is crawling across a bed.
...can I go back to talking about how to act like a real human? Because I don't think I want to do this.
No, no, it's okay, she's just doing a "business call" with Queen Niceven. From her bedroom. From her bed, while being draped with naked men.
Because using other people as props is totally alright.
Also? Merry has apparently taken time to coordinate her bedroom in all the shades of dead roses. Because the text decided we needed to know every single detail about her pillows. And I have to say it, the thing that has probably contributed the most to the decline of Western civilization is the advent of Better Homes and Gardens. Yes, folks. The world will fucking end if you don't have a twenty piece pillow sham and comforter set with matching dust ruffles. (Or to quote The Narrator from Fight Club: The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalog. Where is Tyler Durden when we need him?)
So Niceven says she's been waiting for Merry to call because she "knows (her) fondness for the green knight" and--NO. OH NO. OH HELL NO. OH FUCK NO. FUCK FUCK NO, MERRY.
GET YOUR PORNOGRAPHIC MEANDERINGS THE FUCK OUT OF MY OLD ENGLISH POETRY.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Okay, so there will be business in this post, a very fucking premature announcement. You guys can consider the entire Exiles stories released so far to be one book. And there's going to be two more, and the next one I am basing on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight because it is a fucking beautiful narrative about honor and honoring promises and the imagry. OH MY GOD THE IMAGERY. It's a poem that does this:
And they gazed at him a long moment, amazed.
Everyone wondered what it might mean
That a man and his mount could both be coloured
The green of sprouting grass, and even greener—
Like emerald enamel that glowed on a
ground of gold.
Being invoked in a book that compares a brown skin tone to rotting leaves and is basically a self insert sex story with every slightly shiny object in Celtic-British-Germanic mythology ever.
(And for the record, if you ever want to study the power of alliteration, Read Gawain. Rhymes are few and far between, so the poem depends on the simularities of the words within the stanza. The whole gazed-moment-amazed thing kind of makes me giddy with how awesome it is)
I am now devoutly hoping that LKH didn't get sick of borrowing dieties from her "Witch's Encyclopedia of Celtic Gods" or whatever reference book she's using, and that she hasn't just jumped straight into Arthurian legand fan-fic, but that hope is on life support. If you're playing in the universe of Celtic and English mythology as fuel for your fairy tale porno, "The green knight" is very specific imagry.
(At least it isn't Taliessin through Logres. I'd really have a shit fit then)
Anyway, Merry asks for healing for Galen. Niceven continues desecrating the classics and insisting that Cel wants (sigh) the "Green Knight" to remain injured.
LKH, you are comparing a dude who just cooked dinner in jeans, a lacy apron and nothing else to a fairy knight who had his own head chopped off to prove a point to king Arthur, and then walked out of Camelot carrying his head under his own arm. Galen =/= the Green Knight. STOP INVOKING SOMETHING AWESOME FOR YOUR SHITTY PORN STORY.
And as the conversation continues, the guys start making out with Merry.
Has anybody else seen "Save the Last Dance?" I hated it, mostly because "OOOH INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIP" and admittedly cool dancing (that only happens at the fucking END of this supposed "dance movie" does not make up for a shitty, shitty story. (ooooh, the white girl saves the black boy from a life of crime and jail with the power of love and dancy-dancy-ness. Because the fact that he got into fucking medical school and is way smarter than his idiot gangster friends isn't enough to keep him from being a dumbass. Thank you movie. Thank you.) But there was a scene where a little old lady gets offended at the black boy and white girl sitting together on the bus (actually, the black boy and white girl assume the little old lady is offended re: race and not, you know, a little old grumpy lady frowning because her knee hurts or she just found out her daughter has cancer or something, and she happened to be looking in their direction while thinking about death and chemo and arthritus and stuff) and so the boy and girl start making out in front of her because that's the really mature way to prove that you are better than a racist. Yeah. This scene here? It's exactly like that. It's not sexy. It's the genital equivilant of waving your tongue around while muttering "Neener neener neener."
Niceven is apparently really horny, though, and watching the boys sex up Merry is all it takes to get her hot and bothered. WOW. We totally couldn't have had a scene involving faerie politics without having sex thrown in as a seasoning.
This is a porn book. Can we please just have porn for porn's sake, and stop getting it all over everything? YOU DO NOT NEED TO JUSTIFY YOUR PRIMARY CHARACTER HAVING SEX.
So the make out session continues until Niceven finally asks what she can get in trade for "Making the Green Knight whole."
(...at the end of Sir Gawain he surrenders himself to the knight to have his own head chopped off--it's complicated--and the Knight, having proved that when it comes to his own self-interest Gawain isn't above lying his ass off, just gives him a little tiny touch with the axe and explains everything that just happened, then sends him home to Think About Things. It's a story about honesty and honor, and yes, they throw the whole thing on Morgan's doorstep at the end and it's problematic and it doesn't degrade my enjoyment of Gawain one iota because at least Morgan had the guts to actually screw with her brother and try to scare the utter living shit out of Gwenivere. I'm stuck in a book with a female character who doesn't do shit. SIR GAWAIN DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE INVOKED HERE.)
(...and in case you interpret the "screw" part literally, that was Morgause, not Morgan. We're leaving Mordred and incest out of this conversation)
(Can I please start discussing the female figures in arthurian mythology, please? It might be misogynistic but it sure as fuck is better than this shit. Please? Please?)
(...how about the Christ figures in the Grail cycle? I know at least one of them was a woman. Please?)
(No?)
(Fuck.)
I don't think I've addressed how fucking bad the dialogue in this book is. Oh, I discussed the "give me your guns" "no" nonsense, but the narrative in this book is just awful. Here's an example:
“What would Queen Niceven of the Diminutive Fey want from Princess Meredith of the Unseelie Court in return for curing her knight?” I’d purposefully put both our titles in the same sentence, emphasizing that I knew she was queen and I was not. I was hoping to make up for Frost’s outburst.
All the problems are in the tail that dialogue is wagging. Let's see: Telling instead of showing, check; stating the very fucking obvious, check; adding more information than the reader needs to enjoy the story, check check check fucking check.
Then Merry tries to tempt the Queen to cure Galen by offering her sex:
I turned my eyes toward her, knew the effect that those tricolored green and gold eyes could have through a frame of blood auburn hair, coupled with glimpses of skin like polished alabaster.
Your Mary Sue makes Lisa Frank's artwork look restrained, Laurell. And it's important to note: Merry is not offering to let Niceven have sex with her. She's offering Niceven the chance to drink her blood and taste the wonderful straight sex that Merry is having with her men. No. I do not know how the fuck that can even work.
Also, apparently Niceven has an eating disorder, because she's "cadaverous" but she thinks her body is beautiful, and if that doesn't fit the defintion of somebody with anorexia/buliema then fuck if I know what does. Thank you for villifying mental disorders like anorexia while praising the actually dangerous things like sociopathy and homocidal psychosis, LKH. I am sure the whole fucking world will benefit from you making Anadais's torture of underage men look like a good thing.
(That was in the last book)
Then, when Niceven agrees to cure Galen, Merry decides to push for an alliance by offering a once-a-week feeding. LKH continues to invoke fairy-tale/horror mashups that are better than hers by continuing to call Galen "green knight" even though he's about as knightly as a windsock. The boys continue to do sexy things behind Merry, and when she invokes her alliance with the goblins I think the whole world can figure out this alliance business is just Merry getting yet another sex partner. And yep, that's exactly what happens.
Does LKH have like, a fetish checklist? I mean, we've done feet, we've done tenticle hentai, there's a lot of oral stuff, now we're doing gigantism again, and do not get me started on Kitto. Is the reason why she can't do another Merry Gentry book because she's run out of fetish-related material to try?
...and can I skip the book where she does in-depth bestiality?
Also...this means Merry is bribing an anorexic with food. Merry is doing the subtle version of "eat a hamburger" here.
Guys, we're curing anorexia with the power of sex. This is not a good book.
The alliance is struck, the conversation ends...and Rhys is now brushing out Doyle's hair.
I don't get it. The "interesting" thing is over, so why is the chapter still here?
...at least we're acknowledging that ankle-length hair is kind of stupid.
And now Doyle and Frost are fighting over whose turn it is with Merry. Uh, the correct way to fix this is "Who would you like to sleep with tonight, Merry". You don't need to stretch the chapter out to include--you are, aren't you? Goddamn it.
He shook his head. “No, but you have had three months and there is no child. She is a princess and will be a queen. She cannot afford to give her heart away where there is no marriage.”
But...but...but...the van. back in the van. Back at Maeve's house. Six minutes ago in the living room. Last book in Queen Anadais's room. MONOGAMY IS NOT A RULE AMONG THE FAE NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU INSIST IT IS. This is basically two men arguing over who will get to be Merry's one and only while Merry is trying to manuver her way into all the things penises and THIS DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. I want romantic machinations to make SENSE, damn it.
Finally, Merry says "Hello? Vagina-owner here? This is not a time share." (actually she says "You're talking like I'm not here" but the dialogue is so awful I want to start inventing my own) and Doyle is all like "Oh, right. Would you object to whatever we decide?" and I think feminism just had a collective anurysm because that is not how this whole "Acknowledging owners of vaginas" thing works.
Good fucking God, did I miss the chapter break? Apparently somebody decided something and Merry is in love with Frost and Doyle is still here and Rhys leaves, and for the life of me I can't decide what decision got made at all. Is she sleeping with both Doyle and Frost tonight?
Oh thank you, thank you, thank you GOD this chapter is over before we answer that question.
February 19, 2013
The Host--Chapter 9
I need a break from LKH awfulness. How I managed to lazily read past a child simulcrum confined to a dog bed I will never know.
So we're back to Stephenie Meyer. A different kind of awful that is saving itself for the very end. What we are left with is boring.
Comfortable boring.
When we last left our "heroine" Wanderer was driving across New Mexico to avoid a perfect shiny silver soul who is also a stalking sociopathic lunatic. Melanie is upset because she realizes that she's going to die. Wanderer is upset because she's skipping bodies, and that would make her a quitter, and because she maybe kind of sort of feels sorry for the republican Human whose body she stole.
And then Melanie goes on the fucking war path.
Wanderer realizes that a landmark is triggering a major memory for Melanie. Melanie realizes that it would be bad juju if she gives away this memory with Wanderer about to sacrifice her body for the cause, so Melanie starts slamming Wanderer with every good and fuzzy memory she has. Jared and her brother Jamie, over and over and over, until finally Wanderer screams uncle and says she can't live without the two boys now either.
Yeah, if you look up "co-dependant" in the dictionary you'll find a picture of every S. Meyer female ever right beside it.
That's when Melanie drops a bombshell. Her uncle, aunt, and several relatives were all conspiracy nuts. Bigtime. And as all of them dropped off the face of the earth right around the time the Souls began taking people over, there's a real good chance they're still alive. In the process, we get a few memories of Melanie's uncle trying to talk her dad into believing that her mom is no longer her mom.
Yeah, we've totally skipped over the best part of this story. I know Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been done so much it's a trope in its own right, but the alternative is an endless drive through New Mexico. Fuck that shit, I'd rather read about how Melanie got away from Soul-Zombied Mom and Dad.
Wanderer now has to decide if she'll continue on to Tuson or follow the landmarks to humanity. We also get this internal concept:
I don't like this. I don't like the idea that a concept requires an opposite for definition. It's like how people insist that yin-yang represents a good/evil dicatomy. Evil is not the opposite of good the way hot is the opposite of cold. Evil is the absence of Good. It's like quality. You don't know what it is, but you know when it's there and you know when it's not there. Loyalty would exist as a concept without the idea of betrayal. Life would exist as a concept without the idea of death. These things are made more obvious by the existance of their opposite, but they are not defined by that opposite. Saying that loyalty is defined by the existance of betrayal is like saying that romantic love is defined by the existance of rape.
If you can agree with that, do us all a favor and go away.
Finally Wanderer decides to do the only thing she can do: She goes shopping.
End of chapter.
...well, at least we haven't had to deal with non-con yet.
So we're back to Stephenie Meyer. A different kind of awful that is saving itself for the very end. What we are left with is boring.
Comfortable boring.
When we last left our "heroine" Wanderer was driving across New Mexico to avoid a perfect shiny silver soul who is also a stalking sociopathic lunatic. Melanie is upset because she realizes that she's going to die. Wanderer is upset because she's skipping bodies, and that would make her a quitter, and because she maybe kind of sort of feels sorry for the republican Human whose body she stole.
And then Melanie goes on the fucking war path.
Wanderer realizes that a landmark is triggering a major memory for Melanie. Melanie realizes that it would be bad juju if she gives away this memory with Wanderer about to sacrifice her body for the cause, so Melanie starts slamming Wanderer with every good and fuzzy memory she has. Jared and her brother Jamie, over and over and over, until finally Wanderer screams uncle and says she can't live without the two boys now either.
Yeah, if you look up "co-dependant" in the dictionary you'll find a picture of every S. Meyer female ever right beside it.
That's when Melanie drops a bombshell. Her uncle, aunt, and several relatives were all conspiracy nuts. Bigtime. And as all of them dropped off the face of the earth right around the time the Souls began taking people over, there's a real good chance they're still alive. In the process, we get a few memories of Melanie's uncle trying to talk her dad into believing that her mom is no longer her mom.
Yeah, we've totally skipped over the best part of this story. I know Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been done so much it's a trope in its own right, but the alternative is an endless drive through New Mexico. Fuck that shit, I'd rather read about how Melanie got away from Soul-Zombied Mom and Dad.
Wanderer now has to decide if she'll continue on to Tuson or follow the landmarks to humanity. We also get this internal concept:
This shouldn’t have felt like a betrayal, the idea of continuing on my right and proper course. My first language, the true language of the soul that was spoken only on our planet of origin, had no word for betrayal or traitor. Or even loyalty— because without the existence of an opposite, the concept had no meaning.
I don't like this. I don't like the idea that a concept requires an opposite for definition. It's like how people insist that yin-yang represents a good/evil dicatomy. Evil is not the opposite of good the way hot is the opposite of cold. Evil is the absence of Good. It's like quality. You don't know what it is, but you know when it's there and you know when it's not there. Loyalty would exist as a concept without the idea of betrayal. Life would exist as a concept without the idea of death. These things are made more obvious by the existance of their opposite, but they are not defined by that opposite. Saying that loyalty is defined by the existance of betrayal is like saying that romantic love is defined by the existance of rape.
If you can agree with that, do us all a favor and go away.
Finally Wanderer decides to do the only thing she can do: She goes shopping.
End of chapter.
...well, at least we haven't had to deal with non-con yet.
The ultimate in divided priorities
Things I need to do today:
-fix things on Smashwords because they just told me they are broken
-work on the picture I've been ignoring for a year and a half
-write new things
-edit old things
-be in good condition for work in case co-workers decide hangover is more important than going to work today.
How I actually feel today:
I was fine when I wrote the review today. Now I am not. Send chocolate. Or a hysterectomy. Either works.
-fix things on Smashwords because they just told me they are broken
-work on the picture I've been ignoring for a year and a half
-write new things
-edit old things
-be in good condition for work in case co-workers decide hangover is more important than going to work today.
How I actually feel today:
I was fine when I wrote the review today. Now I am not. Send chocolate. Or a hysterectomy. Either works.
Caress of Twilight--chapter 16
The chapter opens with Merry and CO. discussing what they'll do when Niceven calls back. They're using a magic mirror, but it reads like a telephone. So my mental image right now is of a blood splattered, fanged tinkerbell using a smart phone. For some reason, this strikes me as both utterly insane and totally cool, and I have no idea why.
There's also a lot of dismissing of the demi-fae as being bloodthirsty little animals. I kind of feel like I'm stuck in yet another vampire novel and we've just added this thin glaze of fairy dust to everything.
Kitto ate dinner on the floor and then then went back to his dog bed. At this point I can't even make jokes about it. I can understand how a writer can do dumb shit like forget how streets work in New Orlenes (favorite complaint of my mother: you cannot run out of THAT GRAVEYARD and run into THAT STREET. Every movie does it.) or specific details about languages and cultures they weren't raised in (My writer's group discussed certain mangled spanish phrases on warning signs once.) but FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK, HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THIS? This is basic human stuff. It's moral building blocks. You don't lie, you don't take shit that doesn't belong to you, you do not fantasize about having sex with children, and you do not treat your child like an animal.
...In fact, LKH is implicitly condoning child abuse. I don't think I've gone a month without hearing a story about parents locking their kids into some form of cage, or making them sleep in an inappropriate place. "Kitto needs the dog bed because his agrophobia won't let him use a normal bed" isn't that far removed from "Sarah needs the dog cage because she keeps wetting the bed" or "Bobby needs the dog cage because he keeps stealing food at night". There is a certain amount of consent explicitly stated--that Kitto actually likes this--but this is a woman that writes most of her sexual encounters with a heavy helping of non-con. It is suspicious and really icky that the one character she goes out of her way to show consensual encounters with is the simulation of a twelve year old.
"Ah, but we love and respect the demi-fae because they're the Queen's spies"
Yeah, because you didn't just call them "bloodthirsty animals" a few pages back, Doyle.
Merry also made Galen take the frilly white apron off because it was too distracting for her. Let me remind you that chapter 14 had information that, if used right, could help Merry leverage her way into safety, and instead of brainstorming that she's sitting around a table info-dumping shit that everybody at this table ought to already know and forgetting how to eat because Galen looks so sexy in that insane apron.
No. Literally. She forgets how to eat:
...Tiny person, big person. This really is the "Let's include everybody straight in porn!" porn, isn't it?
Anyhoo, Anadais was outraged that a lower creature like a pixie would dare seduce her ladies in waiting, so she had him killed. And then she regretted it, because the pairing was fertile and having children justifies everything.
The info-dumping continues. This is what the demi-fey are, this is what the unseelie court is, this is what the slaugh is, now let's all go do the dishes while we talk about something else instead of actually advancing the plot.
Merry finally decides the best thing she could do is get control of the demi-fae away from Queen Anadais. Because actually using the world shattering information you got from Maeve Reed, or using the goblins you are trading your body for, would be asking too much.
But Merry has to appear like a Queen before Niceven, a fellow royal and an equal who has every right to demand healing for another person. What is the best way for Merry to do this?
And then Doyle and Frost start arguing over who has the right to have sex with Merry, because Frost hasn't gotten her pregnant yet and Doyle hasn't taken a turn yet.
Merry is a Faerie Princess in the state that paid for the Octomom's famous multiple pregancy, and most of the pregnancies before that on the basis that the Octomom was infertile and that conditon was covered by medicaid. I GO GET INVITRO FERTILIZATION AND MOVE ON WITH THE STORY.
Merry decides she has to intervene, not because two men are fighting over who gets to fuck her as if she were not sitting right there, but because Frost hasn't earned the right to be jealous of her yet. But before she can open her mouth the magical mirror of telephone rings--like a pretty silver bell--and everybody troops into the bedroom. The chapter ends.
...I just realized this is the first time LKH has ended with "we went to bed" and it wasn't a prelude to sex. Uh...yay?
There's also a lot of dismissing of the demi-fae as being bloodthirsty little animals. I kind of feel like I'm stuck in yet another vampire novel and we've just added this thin glaze of fairy dust to everything.
Kitto ate dinner on the floor and then then went back to his dog bed. At this point I can't even make jokes about it. I can understand how a writer can do dumb shit like forget how streets work in New Orlenes (favorite complaint of my mother: you cannot run out of THAT GRAVEYARD and run into THAT STREET. Every movie does it.) or specific details about languages and cultures they weren't raised in (My writer's group discussed certain mangled spanish phrases on warning signs once.) but FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK, HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THIS? This is basic human stuff. It's moral building blocks. You don't lie, you don't take shit that doesn't belong to you, you do not fantasize about having sex with children, and you do not treat your child like an animal.
...In fact, LKH is implicitly condoning child abuse. I don't think I've gone a month without hearing a story about parents locking their kids into some form of cage, or making them sleep in an inappropriate place. "Kitto needs the dog bed because his agrophobia won't let him use a normal bed" isn't that far removed from "Sarah needs the dog cage because she keeps wetting the bed" or "Bobby needs the dog cage because he keeps stealing food at night". There is a certain amount of consent explicitly stated--that Kitto actually likes this--but this is a woman that writes most of her sexual encounters with a heavy helping of non-con. It is suspicious and really icky that the one character she goes out of her way to show consensual encounters with is the simulation of a twelve year old.
"Ah, but we love and respect the demi-fae because they're the Queen's spies"
Yeah, because you didn't just call them "bloodthirsty animals" a few pages back, Doyle.
Merry also made Galen take the frilly white apron off because it was too distracting for her. Let me remind you that chapter 14 had information that, if used right, could help Merry leverage her way into safety, and instead of brainstorming that she's sitting around a table info-dumping shit that everybody at this table ought to already know and forgetting how to eat because Galen looks so sexy in that insane apron.
No. Literally. She forgets how to eat:
Galen leaned against the counter at the end of the kitchen, arms crossed over his now bare chest. He’d put the apron away, I think to save me embarrassment. I don’t know why his bare chest wasn’t as eye-catching as his chest peeking through all that sheer cloth, but I couldn’t eat and sit across from him while he wore the apron. The second time I missed my mouth with the stew, Doyle asked him to take the apron off.Then Galen tells us the story of where he came from. His Dad was a pixie who had sex with one of Queen Anadais AKA Crazylady's ladies in waiting.
...Tiny person, big person. This really is the "Let's include everybody straight in porn!" porn, isn't it?
Anyhoo, Anadais was outraged that a lower creature like a pixie would dare seduce her ladies in waiting, so she had him killed. And then she regretted it, because the pairing was fertile and having children justifies everything.
The info-dumping continues. This is what the demi-fey are, this is what the unseelie court is, this is what the slaugh is, now let's all go do the dishes while we talk about something else instead of actually advancing the plot.
Merry finally decides the best thing she could do is get control of the demi-fae away from Queen Anadais. Because actually using the world shattering information you got from Maeve Reed, or using the goblins you are trading your body for, would be asking too much.
But Merry has to appear like a Queen before Niceven, a fellow royal and an equal who has every right to demand healing for another person. What is the best way for Merry to do this?
“Lounge upon the bed with your men. Drape us around you for effect just as the queen would do. It is a way of looking powerful, for Niceven envies the queen her bevy of men.”BECAUSE SEX IS THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.
And then Doyle and Frost start arguing over who has the right to have sex with Merry, because Frost hasn't gotten her pregnant yet and Doyle hasn't taken a turn yet.
Merry is a Faerie Princess in the state that paid for the Octomom's famous multiple pregancy, and most of the pregnancies before that on the basis that the Octomom was infertile and that conditon was covered by medicaid. I GO GET INVITRO FERTILIZATION AND MOVE ON WITH THE STORY.
Merry decides she has to intervene, not because two men are fighting over who gets to fuck her as if she were not sitting right there, but because Frost hasn't earned the right to be jealous of her yet. But before she can open her mouth the magical mirror of telephone rings--like a pretty silver bell--and everybody troops into the bedroom. The chapter ends.
...I just realized this is the first time LKH has ended with "we went to bed" and it wasn't a prelude to sex. Uh...yay?
Caress of Twilight--chapter 14+15
So we spend the first part of this chapter repeating what we already know: Maeve Reed got thrown out of Faerie for accusing Taranis of being infertile. NEXT.
Gordon Reed shows up. He's Maeve's husband. And he's dying of Plot Disease. Merry finds this out via Authoritius Lazitius, also known as the author didn't give a fuck, or a "true seeing", because letting Maeve drop the bombshell that the love of her life is slowly dying before her eyes would be giving a character who is not one of LKH's self inserts too much dignity.
And again, this is a novel written so that LKH's self insert could screw every major god in the Celtic pantheon. And it's a series begun not too long after she began studying this shit as a real religious option.
Christianity has fucked up a great many things for a great many people (My personal theory for the Garden of Gethsemane prayer is that Jesus wasn't saying "I don't want to die". He was saying "I don't want to be the root cause of mass genocide") but I will say this: We do not have new converts make cash by writing self insert porn involving Jesus. (Ann Rice doesn't count. She reconverted and she's batshit fucking insane.)
And I swear to fucking God if anybody links me to self insert porn involving Jesus I will scream. Seriously. I know it probably exists. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE IT.
Maeve Reed explains that she wants a child because Gordon's got six weeks left to live. Less than two months. And she wants to pay Merry to do a fertility rite to make sure she gets Gordon's kid.
HAS NO ONE IN THIS UNIVERSE HEARD OF IVF?
Guys, the potential of this plot just went way up. See, Maeve knows that her getting preggers will send Taranis over the edge (probably) but she doesn't care because getting "in the family way" is the only way to preserve a little bit of her love. She's willing to bring down the wrath of a very powerful monster, just so that she can hear the pitter-patter of her hubby's child after he's dead and buried. The emotional baggage here is beautiful.
LKH is ignoring this.
Meanwhile, we find out that Conchenn is the goddess of "beauty and spring."
...WHAT REFRENCE IS LKH USING FOR THIS? Seriously. If Neil Gaiman can write American Gods and have it be what it was (I can't really take Thor the movie seriously because every time I see Anthony Hopkins as Odin I think about two-man con jobs and vanishing gold coins and how the casting gods are mocking me and how Anthony Hopkins is a perfect Mr. Wednesday and Joseph Gordon-Hewett is fucking Shadow) then LKH could take nine fucking minutes to give enough 'fo about her research for me to track down who the fuck this goddess really is.
(...Nicole Kidman would be Easter. Christopher Heyderdal would be either Anubis or cameo Jesus. Dakota Fanning would be that fucking awesome lesbian chick that follows Shadow around and then is all kissy kissy with her girlfriend and makes Shadow realize something, though IDK what that something was. Laura would probably be Kristen Stewart in a dye job. All she'd have to do is act dead. Casting call is kind of my favorite game with books)
(Seriously. If they can turn the Host into a thing why oh why oh why can't we have American Gods as a movie?)
(Better yet, fuck American Gods, it was depressing and it didn't make that much sense, let's have Ananzi Boys as a movie.)
(Actually, we couldn't do that because Louie Armstrong is dead, and that's the ONLY man who could play Mr. Nancy. But if we could resurrect Louie? Noel Clarke is totally Fat Charlie/Spider. Hallie Berry is Rosie. John Goodman is Grhame Coats. Zoe Saldana is Daisy.)
(I have to start talking about Caress of Twilight again, don't I? Fuck.)
So the chapter ends with LKH confounding my google-fu re: Conchenn. We move on to Merry's apartment in 15. It's tiny, because Merry hasn't graduated to the Having Oodles of Money stage in Mary Sue progression. Galen, one of her other men (the one that got chewed on by tiny butterfly-fairies and thus was rendered impotent) is the Nathanial for this book. He's in the kitchen cooking.
Now, I know I am very white and very straight and very much not the person who should be making certain kinds of judgement calls, and I know there are lots of men who love to cook, both gay and straight, and in no way shape or form does a love of cooking have anything to do with masculinity (or, for that matter, does sexual orentation.) But all that Galen is missing are the pearls. Originally that line was "pearls and fluffy white apron" but then I re-read the text and he is fucking wearing the fucking white apron:
I don't even know why this is wrong. But on a gut level, I know it is. It might be because if this were a description of a chick in an apron so sheer you could see her nipples greeting her husband with an armload of baked bread, we'd be wincing. But I think it's because, as somebody who's worked in food service for five years now, I can imagine someone wearing a sheer lace apron to cook in if, and only if, they absolutely hate their nipples.
(Hot grease splatters everywhere, kids. Think about it.)
Merry has known that Galen is cursed with impotence for three months and has done nothing about it. But because we're on chapter 15 now and we still have only general hints at plot, Merry decides that this has to be fixed now.
Hey, what's Kitto doing?
Guys, I read this a week ago. I have tried very hard to come up with something to say. And I have decided it can only be summed up by an epic .gif chain.
FOR THE LOVE OF BABY JE--no. NO. I AM NOT MENTIONING CHILDREN ANYWHERE NEAR THIS CHARACTER EVER AGAIN. BUT HOW? HOW DO YOU WRITE THIS SHIT? HOW DO YOU WRITE ABOUT YOUR CHILD-SIZED LIVING REALDOLL LIVING IN A DOG BED WHEN YOU ARE NOT ACTIVELY FUCKING THEM AND NOT REALIZE THAT YOU ARE DOING THIS HUMAN THING TOTALLY WRONG, I MEAN
The worst part is, this is so very, very very fucking casual in the book. It's like "Oh, I'm making my child slave sleep in a fucking dog bed, now let's go fix my lover's broken weener.
LKH, at this point I and most of humanity have one thing to say to you:
...and the chapter isn't even over yet.
Merry demands that Doyle contact the demi-fae AKA the butterfly faerie's queen, Niceven, to lift the curse on Galen. Please note: Merry has information that could fucking destroy the Seelie court, that she could use to leverage bigtime concessions out of Taranis, and instead of actually doing it, she's focusing on fixing her boyfriend's penis.
Galen says he doesn't want Merry in Niceven's debit. Merry accuses him of disrespecting her, and we get a replay of the conversation that happened before Merry damn near forced Rhys to have sex with her and Kitto.
There is a place where Merry realizes that Galen would be a really shitty King, and she bascially decides that since he'd be killed if he tried to rule, she'll fuck him until she's just sick of him, and then drop him cold:
LKH has written a female character that makes the guys who spill drinks on girls in bars while trying to get into their pants look like fucking humanitarians. She should be so proud.
The chapter closes with Merry thinking about the protocols for keeping a "royal lover".
HEY, MERRY? IF YOU CAN KEEP A ROYAL LOVER THAN WHAT THE BLUE ROYAL FUCK WAS ALL THAT SHIT ABOUT MONOGAMY IN THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK?
...also, should we update monogamy? I think we ought to. -gamy=girls, right? If a girl is in an exclusive relationship with a guy, wouldn't that be monoandry? So shouldn't it be monoamory now? Maybe monamory, so we don't have two conflicting vowels?
...I am rambling about gendering words refering to romance. This book has broken my brain.
Gordon Reed shows up. He's Maeve's husband. And he's dying of Plot Disease. Merry finds this out via Authoritius Lazitius, also known as the author didn't give a fuck, or a "true seeing", because letting Maeve drop the bombshell that the love of her life is slowly dying before her eyes would be giving a character who is not one of LKH's self inserts too much dignity.
And again, this is a novel written so that LKH's self insert could screw every major god in the Celtic pantheon. And it's a series begun not too long after she began studying this shit as a real religious option.
Christianity has fucked up a great many things for a great many people (My personal theory for the Garden of Gethsemane prayer is that Jesus wasn't saying "I don't want to die". He was saying "I don't want to be the root cause of mass genocide") but I will say this: We do not have new converts make cash by writing self insert porn involving Jesus. (Ann Rice doesn't count. She reconverted and she's batshit fucking insane.)
And I swear to fucking God if anybody links me to self insert porn involving Jesus I will scream. Seriously. I know it probably exists. I DO NOT WANT TO SEE IT.
Maeve Reed explains that she wants a child because Gordon's got six weeks left to live. Less than two months. And she wants to pay Merry to do a fertility rite to make sure she gets Gordon's kid.
HAS NO ONE IN THIS UNIVERSE HEARD OF IVF?
Guys, the potential of this plot just went way up. See, Maeve knows that her getting preggers will send Taranis over the edge (probably) but she doesn't care because getting "in the family way" is the only way to preserve a little bit of her love. She's willing to bring down the wrath of a very powerful monster, just so that she can hear the pitter-patter of her hubby's child after he's dead and buried. The emotional baggage here is beautiful.
LKH is ignoring this.
Meanwhile, we find out that Conchenn is the goddess of "beauty and spring."
...WHAT REFRENCE IS LKH USING FOR THIS? Seriously. If Neil Gaiman can write American Gods and have it be what it was (I can't really take Thor the movie seriously because every time I see Anthony Hopkins as Odin I think about two-man con jobs and vanishing gold coins and how the casting gods are mocking me and how Anthony Hopkins is a perfect Mr. Wednesday and Joseph Gordon-Hewett is fucking Shadow) then LKH could take nine fucking minutes to give enough 'fo about her research for me to track down who the fuck this goddess really is.
(...Nicole Kidman would be Easter. Christopher Heyderdal would be either Anubis or cameo Jesus. Dakota Fanning would be that fucking awesome lesbian chick that follows Shadow around and then is all kissy kissy with her girlfriend and makes Shadow realize something, though IDK what that something was. Laura would probably be Kristen Stewart in a dye job. All she'd have to do is act dead. Casting call is kind of my favorite game with books)
(Seriously. If they can turn the Host into a thing why oh why oh why can't we have American Gods as a movie?)
(Better yet, fuck American Gods, it was depressing and it didn't make that much sense, let's have Ananzi Boys as a movie.)
(Actually, we couldn't do that because Louie Armstrong is dead, and that's the ONLY man who could play Mr. Nancy. But if we could resurrect Louie? Noel Clarke is totally Fat Charlie/Spider. Hallie Berry is Rosie. John Goodman is Grhame Coats. Zoe Saldana is Daisy.)
(I have to start talking about Caress of Twilight again, don't I? Fuck.)
So the chapter ends with LKH confounding my google-fu re: Conchenn. We move on to Merry's apartment in 15. It's tiny, because Merry hasn't graduated to the Having Oodles of Money stage in Mary Sue progression. Galen, one of her other men (the one that got chewed on by tiny butterfly-fairies and thus was rendered impotent) is the Nathanial for this book. He's in the kitchen cooking.
Now, I know I am very white and very straight and very much not the person who should be making certain kinds of judgement calls, and I know there are lots of men who love to cook, both gay and straight, and in no way shape or form does a love of cooking have anything to do with masculinity (or, for that matter, does sexual orentation.) But all that Galen is missing are the pearls. Originally that line was "pearls and fluffy white apron" but then I re-read the text and he is fucking wearing the fucking white apron:
He was wearing a white lacy apron that was sheer enough that I could see the darker skin of his nipples, the curl of darker green hair that decorated his upper chest, the thin line of hair that traced the edge of his belly button and vanished inside his jeans.
I don't even know why this is wrong. But on a gut level, I know it is. It might be because if this were a description of a chick in an apron so sheer you could see her nipples greeting her husband with an armload of baked bread, we'd be wincing. But I think it's because, as somebody who's worked in food service for five years now, I can imagine someone wearing a sheer lace apron to cook in if, and only if, they absolutely hate their nipples.(Hot grease splatters everywhere, kids. Think about it.)
Merry has known that Galen is cursed with impotence for three months and has done nothing about it. But because we're on chapter 15 now and we still have only general hints at plot, Merry decides that this has to be fixed now.
Hey, what's Kitto doing?
Only Kitto was missing, and I knew where he was, in his oversize, fully covered cloth dog bed.
It was like a small, snug tent. It sat in the far corner of the living room positioned so he could watch the television,
Guys, I read this a week ago. I have tried very hard to come up with something to say. And I have decided it can only be summed up by an epic .gif chain.
FOR THE LOVE OF BABY JE--no. NO. I AM NOT MENTIONING CHILDREN ANYWHERE NEAR THIS CHARACTER EVER AGAIN. BUT HOW? HOW DO YOU WRITE THIS SHIT? HOW DO YOU WRITE ABOUT YOUR CHILD-SIZED LIVING REALDOLL LIVING IN A DOG BED WHEN YOU ARE NOT ACTIVELY FUCKING THEM AND NOT REALIZE THAT YOU ARE DOING THIS HUMAN THING TOTALLY WRONG, I MEAN
The worst part is, this is so very, very very fucking casual in the book. It's like "Oh, I'm making my child slave sleep in a fucking dog bed, now let's go fix my lover's broken weener.LKH, at this point I and most of humanity have one thing to say to you:
...and the chapter isn't even over yet.Merry demands that Doyle contact the demi-fae AKA the butterfly faerie's queen, Niceven, to lift the curse on Galen. Please note: Merry has information that could fucking destroy the Seelie court, that she could use to leverage bigtime concessions out of Taranis, and instead of actually doing it, she's focusing on fixing her boyfriend's penis.
Galen says he doesn't want Merry in Niceven's debit. Merry accuses him of disrespecting her, and we get a replay of the conversation that happened before Merry damn near forced Rhys to have sex with her and Kitto.
There is a place where Merry realizes that Galen would be a really shitty King, and she bascially decides that since he'd be killed if he tried to rule, she'll fuck him until she's just sick of him, and then drop him cold:
No, I could not have Galen as my king, but I could have Galen. For a brief time before I found my true king, I could have Galen in my bed. I could quench the fire that had been burning between us, quench it with the flesh of our bodies.
LKH has written a female character that makes the guys who spill drinks on girls in bars while trying to get into their pants look like fucking humanitarians. She should be so proud.
The chapter closes with Merry thinking about the protocols for keeping a "royal lover".
HEY, MERRY? IF YOU CAN KEEP A ROYAL LOVER THAN WHAT THE BLUE ROYAL FUCK WAS ALL THAT SHIT ABOUT MONOGAMY IN THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK?
...also, should we update monogamy? I think we ought to. -gamy=girls, right? If a girl is in an exclusive relationship with a guy, wouldn't that be monoandry? So shouldn't it be monoamory now? Maybe monamory, so we don't have two conflicting vowels?
...I am rambling about gendering words refering to romance. This book has broken my brain.
February 18, 2013
State of the CW
My birthday is in nine days. Go me.
This has been a really, really shitty month. A couple of positives, yep, but no big wins. But I don't think that's the problem. It's possible it's just the post-project blues. Everything is very gray and very blah right now. I've gone through this before, but this is the first time that it's actively hurt. You don't think about emotional low points being physical pain, but I've felt like I've had a pincushion for a gut for a week solid. Usually this only happens if something is actively wrong.
I have no idea what's going on with my head right now, but I wish it'd just knock it off.
Some of you have probably noticed I revised the publishing schedule and took the next Gray Prince book off the list. That's soft, depending on how much revision the story will require, but I don't think that I could get it ready for publication without severely hurting the other releases. It'll get released. Just...not now.
I just wish sometimes that there was a reality checklist. Something I could go to that would say "hey, this is real and you need to pay attention, this isn't real and you can dismiss it." I believe the negative things better than the positives because people are more likely to lie and say something's good when it isn't. It's just getting real low around here right now, and I'm running out of things to look at that remind me life doesn't completely suck.
This has been a really, really shitty month. A couple of positives, yep, but no big wins. But I don't think that's the problem. It's possible it's just the post-project blues. Everything is very gray and very blah right now. I've gone through this before, but this is the first time that it's actively hurt. You don't think about emotional low points being physical pain, but I've felt like I've had a pincushion for a gut for a week solid. Usually this only happens if something is actively wrong.
I have no idea what's going on with my head right now, but I wish it'd just knock it off.
Some of you have probably noticed I revised the publishing schedule and took the next Gray Prince book off the list. That's soft, depending on how much revision the story will require, but I don't think that I could get it ready for publication without severely hurting the other releases. It'll get released. Just...not now.
I just wish sometimes that there was a reality checklist. Something I could go to that would say "hey, this is real and you need to pay attention, this isn't real and you can dismiss it." I believe the negative things better than the positives because people are more likely to lie and say something's good when it isn't. It's just getting real low around here right now, and I'm running out of things to look at that remind me life doesn't completely suck.
