Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 53
February 18, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 13
So we had Market Days here in town. I thought it was all just fresh tomatoes, citrus and watermelon, so I've never gone. Actually there was one lone fruit stand (...selling tomatoes, citrus, watermelon and the world's hardest avacadoes. I could kill someone with them long before I could make guacamole.) and a whole bunch of fad blingy clothing stands. The fad last year was glittery belts and purses with silver and turquoise on them. The fad this year is shawls with big silver pendants hanging off them, and blinged out flip-flops. And I don't mean sequines. I mean rinestones. On a pair of big foam sandels that will break the first time you wear them out. There were the Hot Sauce Venders and the Silver Jewelry venders, and I was about to find an internet-friendly part of the feild to sit in when I found the alpaca farm people.
They had felt shawls and mats and hats and gloves and one lone little baggie of brown roving that, I swear to god, called to me from across the entire field. I've spent the last two days in a wonderful fluffy brown haze and my poor little charkha is about to explode. I will definately have to replace the drive cord in a couple days.
I stopped playing to blog this. Feel sympathy for me.
I said yesterday that if you can't see the potential awesome of a fertility crisis of the gods Faerie plotline, I'd disown you. I won't go that far if you can't see how this book should have been edited, but I will be sorely disappointed. This is the primary plotline for this story. Maeve Reed wanting a kid.
This could have been huge. Specifically because if Maeve gets preggers AND goes public with her accusation of Taranis's infertility, shit would go down. She'd have the wherewithall to either trigger civil war or to get back in with the Seelie court, AND she could provide Merry with the leverage to get protection of her person out of Taranis--keep her safe or I'll tell the whole world you're shooting blanks. Merry could use the goblins to keep them both safe from Taranis's guard, and Taranis's guard could keep her safe from Cel. Meanwhile Cel and Taranis could be plotting something else together. It could be like the Faerie Inception, only instead of dreams within dreams its death plot within death plot.
This will never happen. However, if you want to read something kind of like this, go find any of Julian May's books. I recommend the Piloscene epoch if you want to see what LKH could have done with Celtic mythology (the old gods are Aliens. I hate that plotline--I think it's really racist to say that the gods of another culture are actually aliens that built all that culture's wonders, just because we can't imagine a person from 4,000BC understanding math well enough to build the pyramids--but OH MY GOD I love that series) or the Ironcrown books for just pure plot-in-plot-in-plot-in-"who's supposed to be killing who now?" level awesome.
Or just say "fuck it" and read the Jack the Bodiless books. :D
So what really happens? Merry assumes that Maeve means she wants to have sex with her men. Because of course her men are the only men in the entire world worth fucking.
Merry agrees to have the conversation in private, though that means just that the boys go stand under a nearby tree. Maeve wants them to go further away. Merry says "They're my bodyguards. No." and then there's a confusing conversation about magic, and how Maeve's power awakened Merry's power and she's not sure she can "do that again", when I don't remember anybody doing anything to begin with. The only magic Merry has, other than the power of glowworm, is the ability to turn people into screaming basketballs of inside out flesh. Scary as fuck, yes. But this didn't happen in this book, yet.
Maeve promises that nothing will hurt Merry on purpose. Merry forces her to promise that nothing will happen to her or her men while she's on Maeve's property, and Maeve is pissed, but agrees. I actually like this part, because that's how Faeries are supposed to be. Every conversation and promise should end up like you wished on the monkey's paw.
Then they waste time talking about Maeve joining the Faerie court before Rhys and Marie come out of Maeve's house. Rhys looks good, Marie looks like she just took a tumble in a hay bin. Merry asks what the fuck is going on and...is it just me or are there a lot of M names in this book? Anyhoo, then Maeve tries to get Merry into a bikini.
Let me remind you, there's a Christmas tree in Maeve's perfectly decorated living room. So either she has a mystical connection to Christmas trees, which she probably shouldn't as Christmas trees started as a pre-Christian German custom and would have more to do with Odin/Wotan than anything Celtic, or it is December.
I do not think you're going out in a bikini in fucking December, even in Los Angeles. I say this because we've just had an incredibly mild winter--January was in the 70Fs all month--and we still had most of our clothes on during Christmas.
Merry finally puts everything together and expositions that Maeve is trying to make sure Merry and at least one of her men are birth-defect free, becasue Maeve wants Merry to preform a fertility rite.
Merry also notices that Marie looks very uncomfortable, and decides its because she's disappointed that she and Rhys didn't actually screw. Now, me, I'd figure it's because Marie's boss just told her to have sex with a total stranger and just about anybody I know would have issues with that, but that's just me.
At one point Merry comments on how Maeve smells like cigarettes and alcohol and how it's kind of sickening. Yeah, the woman's pretty obviously medicating, and while I think it's hugely incautious of her to be drinking when she actively wants a kid--and to be drinking reguarly enough for a fifth of scotch to not affect her, because the detox on that is going to suck--it's also hugely insensative of Merry to be nausiated by the symptoms of obvious psychological misery simply because they gross her out.
And then, because Merry is grossed out and offended about the birth-defect inspection without their consent--which they have every right to be pissed about--she goes on a long rant about how the Seelie sidhe give birth to deformed children and throw the deformed off on the Unseelie court, and that's why the court is known for being full of deformed people, and then Merry forces Maeve to promise to tell her the true reason she was thrown out of court, which we already know because they already told us, and then Merry hopes that Maeve had a deformed kid, and that the deformed kid got thrown into the Unseelie Court, and that Maeve is being haunted by this hypothetical deformed kid that Merry has assumed she has.
End of chapter.
You're a piece of shit, Merry. Really.
They had felt shawls and mats and hats and gloves and one lone little baggie of brown roving that, I swear to god, called to me from across the entire field. I've spent the last two days in a wonderful fluffy brown haze and my poor little charkha is about to explode. I will definately have to replace the drive cord in a couple days.
I stopped playing to blog this. Feel sympathy for me.
I said yesterday that if you can't see the potential awesome of a fertility crisis of the gods Faerie plotline, I'd disown you. I won't go that far if you can't see how this book should have been edited, but I will be sorely disappointed. This is the primary plotline for this story. Maeve Reed wanting a kid.
This could have been huge. Specifically because if Maeve gets preggers AND goes public with her accusation of Taranis's infertility, shit would go down. She'd have the wherewithall to either trigger civil war or to get back in with the Seelie court, AND she could provide Merry with the leverage to get protection of her person out of Taranis--keep her safe or I'll tell the whole world you're shooting blanks. Merry could use the goblins to keep them both safe from Taranis's guard, and Taranis's guard could keep her safe from Cel. Meanwhile Cel and Taranis could be plotting something else together. It could be like the Faerie Inception, only instead of dreams within dreams its death plot within death plot.
This will never happen. However, if you want to read something kind of like this, go find any of Julian May's books. I recommend the Piloscene epoch if you want to see what LKH could have done with Celtic mythology (the old gods are Aliens. I hate that plotline--I think it's really racist to say that the gods of another culture are actually aliens that built all that culture's wonders, just because we can't imagine a person from 4,000BC understanding math well enough to build the pyramids--but OH MY GOD I love that series) or the Ironcrown books for just pure plot-in-plot-in-plot-in-"who's supposed to be killing who now?" level awesome.
Or just say "fuck it" and read the Jack the Bodiless books. :D
So what really happens? Merry assumes that Maeve means she wants to have sex with her men. Because of course her men are the only men in the entire world worth fucking.
Merry agrees to have the conversation in private, though that means just that the boys go stand under a nearby tree. Maeve wants them to go further away. Merry says "They're my bodyguards. No." and then there's a confusing conversation about magic, and how Maeve's power awakened Merry's power and she's not sure she can "do that again", when I don't remember anybody doing anything to begin with. The only magic Merry has, other than the power of glowworm, is the ability to turn people into screaming basketballs of inside out flesh. Scary as fuck, yes. But this didn't happen in this book, yet.
Maeve promises that nothing will hurt Merry on purpose. Merry forces her to promise that nothing will happen to her or her men while she's on Maeve's property, and Maeve is pissed, but agrees. I actually like this part, because that's how Faeries are supposed to be. Every conversation and promise should end up like you wished on the monkey's paw.
Then they waste time talking about Maeve joining the Faerie court before Rhys and Marie come out of Maeve's house. Rhys looks good, Marie looks like she just took a tumble in a hay bin. Merry asks what the fuck is going on and...is it just me or are there a lot of M names in this book? Anyhoo, then Maeve tries to get Merry into a bikini.
Let me remind you, there's a Christmas tree in Maeve's perfectly decorated living room. So either she has a mystical connection to Christmas trees, which she probably shouldn't as Christmas trees started as a pre-Christian German custom and would have more to do with Odin/Wotan than anything Celtic, or it is December.
I do not think you're going out in a bikini in fucking December, even in Los Angeles. I say this because we've just had an incredibly mild winter--January was in the 70Fs all month--and we still had most of our clothes on during Christmas.
Merry finally puts everything together and expositions that Maeve is trying to make sure Merry and at least one of her men are birth-defect free, becasue Maeve wants Merry to preform a fertility rite.
Merry also notices that Marie looks very uncomfortable, and decides its because she's disappointed that she and Rhys didn't actually screw. Now, me, I'd figure it's because Marie's boss just told her to have sex with a total stranger and just about anybody I know would have issues with that, but that's just me.
At one point Merry comments on how Maeve smells like cigarettes and alcohol and how it's kind of sickening. Yeah, the woman's pretty obviously medicating, and while I think it's hugely incautious of her to be drinking when she actively wants a kid--and to be drinking reguarly enough for a fifth of scotch to not affect her, because the detox on that is going to suck--it's also hugely insensative of Merry to be nausiated by the symptoms of obvious psychological misery simply because they gross her out.
And then, because Merry is grossed out and offended about the birth-defect inspection without their consent--which they have every right to be pissed about--she goes on a long rant about how the Seelie sidhe give birth to deformed children and throw the deformed off on the Unseelie court, and that's why the court is known for being full of deformed people, and then Merry forces Maeve to promise to tell her the true reason she was thrown out of court, which we already know because they already told us, and then Merry hopes that Maeve had a deformed kid, and that the deformed kid got thrown into the Unseelie Court, and that Maeve is being haunted by this hypothetical deformed kid that Merry has assumed she has.
End of chapter.
You're a piece of shit, Merry. Really.
February 17, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 12
So they're going out to the pool.
It takes a while. And when they get there, Maeve insists Merry take a lounge chair when Merry is in a short skirt.So instead of working on plot we're setting our protagonist up to inadvertently replicate that leg-crossing scene from Basic Instinct.
This is several pages into the chapter. It's the only thing worth blogging about for the first three pages. I want there to be porn just for something to have happened.
Rhys goes off with Marie, Maeve's assistant while Kitto clings to Merry and everybody else picks a chair. Maeve is upset. Maeve is upset. Maeve is really upset. We're halfway through the chapter and all I know is that Maeve is upset and Merry doesn't know how to manage a skirt properly (you can sit in a lounge chair and not flash the whole world. You just have to think about it and keep your hands on your thighs)
We get a play by play while Maeve drinks an entire fifth of scotch.
I knew a dude who would drink a fifth and a half of whiskey a night. When you consume that much booze, you're not even fun to watch. I am willing to believe that Maeve, being non-human, could manage to consume that much and not be at the painful-for-onlookers stage, but the text even implies that a fifth would hit even the fairy folk very hard.
Maeve moves on to rum and coke.
Merry refuses to drink.
Maeve insists.
Merry says no.
This repeats ad nauseum. And I mean Maeve literally says "I really do hate to drink alone," over and over and over again while Merry comes up with various excuses.
Trees died for this. Trees.
We also find out that Maeve is married to a guy named Gordon. This is going to be important. Or as important as things ever get in a LKH book.
Maeve asks for privacy. Merry says that won't happen. Maeve calls Merry on being rude. I swear to God, this book is stuck on repeat. I've read NaNoWriMo projects that weren't padded with this. Even Narcissus in Chains had wrapped up its first rescue by chapter twelve.
And then finally, finally, we get to the fucking point.
It's probably dumb how hung up I'm getting on the many use of Celtic deities in this book, but Celtic mythos is incredible. You have the "invasions", the Tuatha de Danan and the Formorains in Ireland, the Welsh cycles (which I don't know well enough to reference yet) the Scots cycles, not to mention the blurring between god and not-a-god that happened during the conversion to Christianity. There are so many things that LKH could be drawing upon, and instead she's made a major character out of a goddess that I cannot research via google.
Either LKH has research sources that normal people do not have access to, or she googled "celtic goddess of love" which was the only fucking way I could find Conchenn's name without actually typing "conchenn" into the search field. I even checked Maeve, to see if that wasn't a variation on Conchenn--kind of like Artemis/Diana in Greek/Roman mythos, but that's not it. There is a Maeve, but the only (questionable) source I could find that discussed her as a goddess and not a warrior-queen who was very fucking badass in her own right says that Maeve was the goddess of...well, booze.
...I really doubt that LKH is this subtle, but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maeve Reed, she of the whiskies and the rum-and-cokes, is now the goddess of intoxication for the rest of this review.
The potential. The story potential. Totally. Fucking. Wasted.
So Conchenn aka Maeve Reed was exiled from Faerie for "not pleasing the king." And yes. They mean sex. Meaning that for centuries the King of the Fairies has been telling women that if they don't give him a happy ending, he's going to throw them out of Crazyland. And most of them are crazy enough to see this as a bad thing. Well, so far in this series we've covered vore, blood play, vampirism, bestiality, pedophilia and tenticle porn, so I guess we really need the rapey overtones to make the non-con crowd happy.
And please note: the only homosexuals in this series so far are the ones whose entire relationship is offscreen. Because god forbid we get any of that in our vore-blood-vamp-pedo-zoo-rape-hentai. That'd just be nasty.
Maeve asks what her supporters did after her exile. Merry tells her that she, Merry, was beaten for asking about her. Well, that's bad. I'm not going to say that wasn't bad. But that wasn't what Maeve was asking. She wants to know what her friends did in her absence, and apparently that was "die". Taranis killed one of her supporters in a hand-to-hand duel for asking what Maeve did that was so very, very bad.
She refused to have sex with the King. That's what it was.
Now, I actually have no problem with this plot twist in and of itself. It's been established that the entire Faerie people draw power from their rulers, AND that they are suffering a severe fertility crisis. Queen Anadais, AKA Crazylady, is stepping down because a magical ring of matchmaking no longer fits on her finger, indicating that her eggs have gone off, as it were. AND the Queen is taking steps to make sure that whoever does take the throne after her is as close to "fertile as a wheatfeild" as someone can get. Meanwhile, Maeve told the king she didn't want to "be his queen," NOT because he's a crazy abusive psycho perv, but because Maeve wanted to have children and she was fairly confident that Taranis couldn't have any.
Which would mean that the fertility crisis afflicting the Fae is entirely the rulers' fault. And while the Queen is trying to fix things in her own crazy way, Taranis doesn't want to step down at all. And if the Fae find out that he's the reason they're dying out as a species? They will kill him during a religious ritual to see if that won't fix things.
If you cannot see the plot potential of that setup, I disown you forever.
So what are we going to focus on that ISN'T the hugely promising politics of the Fairy Court?
Maeve Reed wants a child.
That's how the chapter ends. And I have to say it, I might get clobbered for it but I HAVE TO SAY THIS. For the good of humanity.
IF YOU ARE ACTIVELY TRYING TO GET PREGNANT FOR FUCK'S SAKE DO NOT DRINK A FIFTH OF ALCOHOLIC ANYTHING. If you've decided to bring a human life into this world, you make sure you do everything you can to make that life a good one. Not drinking or doing drugs while you're trying to get pregnant is the minimum. I've known people with fetal alcohol syndrome. I don't want to give more details than that because privacy is important, but you don't want to do that to a kid. Especially not if it's yours.
Tomorrow: Second verse, same as the fucking first.
It takes a while. And when they get there, Maeve insists Merry take a lounge chair when Merry is in a short skirt.So instead of working on plot we're setting our protagonist up to inadvertently replicate that leg-crossing scene from Basic Instinct.
This is several pages into the chapter. It's the only thing worth blogging about for the first three pages. I want there to be porn just for something to have happened.
Rhys goes off with Marie, Maeve's assistant while Kitto clings to Merry and everybody else picks a chair. Maeve is upset. Maeve is upset. Maeve is really upset. We're halfway through the chapter and all I know is that Maeve is upset and Merry doesn't know how to manage a skirt properly (you can sit in a lounge chair and not flash the whole world. You just have to think about it and keep your hands on your thighs)
Kitto made sure that he touched some part of my body continuously.Also, LKH either doesn't understand human interactions and what "subtext" means, or else her brain is very very very very very very wrong.
We get a play by play while Maeve drinks an entire fifth of scotch.
I knew a dude who would drink a fifth and a half of whiskey a night. When you consume that much booze, you're not even fun to watch. I am willing to believe that Maeve, being non-human, could manage to consume that much and not be at the painful-for-onlookers stage, but the text even implies that a fifth would hit even the fairy folk very hard.
Maeve moves on to rum and coke.
Merry refuses to drink.
Maeve insists.
Merry says no.
This repeats ad nauseum. And I mean Maeve literally says "I really do hate to drink alone," over and over and over again while Merry comes up with various excuses.
Trees died for this. Trees.
We also find out that Maeve is married to a guy named Gordon. This is going to be important. Or as important as things ever get in a LKH book.
Maeve asks for privacy. Merry says that won't happen. Maeve calls Merry on being rude. I swear to God, this book is stuck on repeat. I've read NaNoWriMo projects that weren't padded with this. Even Narcissus in Chains had wrapped up its first rescue by chapter twelve.
And then finally, finally, we get to the fucking point.
“Your exile was the bogeyman for all the younger sidhe in the Seelie Court. ‘If you don’t please the king, you’ll end as Conchenn did.’ ”Given how the entire cast are deities of some kind, and most of them are ones I recognize from my (albeit casual) readings of irish/scots/welsh mythology, I got curious. And I just spent twenty minutes trying to figure out which one Conchenn is. And while I found a few mentions (as in baby names and lists of gods and goddesses) I cannot find a single website with more information than "goddess of love". There was a tribal celtic queen named Conchenn, but I kind of expected more, given the emphasis on HOW MUCH SHE WAS WORSHIPED IN YE OLDE TIMEZ we hit a little earlier. (I also found something called the Salmon of Wisdom, and I have to say that is the most awesome thing I have read today. It's a Salmon. Of Wisdom.)
It's probably dumb how hung up I'm getting on the many use of Celtic deities in this book, but Celtic mythos is incredible. You have the "invasions", the Tuatha de Danan and the Formorains in Ireland, the Welsh cycles (which I don't know well enough to reference yet) the Scots cycles, not to mention the blurring between god and not-a-god that happened during the conversion to Christianity. There are so many things that LKH could be drawing upon, and instead she's made a major character out of a goddess that I cannot research via google.
Either LKH has research sources that normal people do not have access to, or she googled "celtic goddess of love" which was the only fucking way I could find Conchenn's name without actually typing "conchenn" into the search field. I even checked Maeve, to see if that wasn't a variation on Conchenn--kind of like Artemis/Diana in Greek/Roman mythos, but that's not it. There is a Maeve, but the only (questionable) source I could find that discussed her as a goddess and not a warrior-queen who was very fucking badass in her own right says that Maeve was the goddess of...well, booze.
...I really doubt that LKH is this subtle, but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maeve Reed, she of the whiskies and the rum-and-cokes, is now the goddess of intoxication for the rest of this review.
The potential. The story potential. Totally. Fucking. Wasted.
So Conchenn aka Maeve Reed was exiled from Faerie for "not pleasing the king." And yes. They mean sex. Meaning that for centuries the King of the Fairies has been telling women that if they don't give him a happy ending, he's going to throw them out of Crazyland. And most of them are crazy enough to see this as a bad thing. Well, so far in this series we've covered vore, blood play, vampirism, bestiality, pedophilia and tenticle porn, so I guess we really need the rapey overtones to make the non-con crowd happy.
And please note: the only homosexuals in this series so far are the ones whose entire relationship is offscreen. Because god forbid we get any of that in our vore-blood-vamp-pedo-zoo-rape-hentai. That'd just be nasty.
Maeve asks what her supporters did after her exile. Merry tells her that she, Merry, was beaten for asking about her. Well, that's bad. I'm not going to say that wasn't bad. But that wasn't what Maeve was asking. She wants to know what her friends did in her absence, and apparently that was "die". Taranis killed one of her supporters in a hand-to-hand duel for asking what Maeve did that was so very, very bad.
She refused to have sex with the King. That's what it was.
Now, I actually have no problem with this plot twist in and of itself. It's been established that the entire Faerie people draw power from their rulers, AND that they are suffering a severe fertility crisis. Queen Anadais, AKA Crazylady, is stepping down because a magical ring of matchmaking no longer fits on her finger, indicating that her eggs have gone off, as it were. AND the Queen is taking steps to make sure that whoever does take the throne after her is as close to "fertile as a wheatfeild" as someone can get. Meanwhile, Maeve told the king she didn't want to "be his queen," NOT because he's a crazy abusive psycho perv, but because Maeve wanted to have children and she was fairly confident that Taranis couldn't have any.
Which would mean that the fertility crisis afflicting the Fae is entirely the rulers' fault. And while the Queen is trying to fix things in her own crazy way, Taranis doesn't want to step down at all. And if the Fae find out that he's the reason they're dying out as a species? They will kill him during a religious ritual to see if that won't fix things.
If you cannot see the plot potential of that setup, I disown you forever.
So what are we going to focus on that ISN'T the hugely promising politics of the Fairy Court?
Maeve Reed wants a child.
That's how the chapter ends. And I have to say it, I might get clobbered for it but I HAVE TO SAY THIS. For the good of humanity.
IF YOU ARE ACTIVELY TRYING TO GET PREGNANT FOR FUCK'S SAKE DO NOT DRINK A FIFTH OF ALCOHOLIC ANYTHING. If you've decided to bring a human life into this world, you make sure you do everything you can to make that life a good one. Not drinking or doing drugs while you're trying to get pregnant is the minimum. I've known people with fetal alcohol syndrome. I don't want to give more details than that because privacy is important, but you don't want to do that to a kid. Especially not if it's yours.
Tomorrow: Second verse, same as the fucking first.
Really awesome lace knitting. Howzawhat now?
Rambly thought time! Reviews to come later, but this is something I've wanted to write for a LONG time now.
So a couple people pointed out that I said something really obscure the other day. Not the part about where fairy legends come from, but the other things I said come from Scotland--golf, great whiskey (...look. My spelling sucks, okay? Half the time I can't even keep numbers straight, and you expect me to remember that I-before-E shit?) and really awesome lace knitting.
My primary hobby, after art and writing, is lace knitting. Specifically, my undying quest to knit a wedding ring shawl. I do not talk about this much, because a fundamental part of knitting is how freaking boring it is to non-knitters. I also spin, which is even more boring to most people. And that's a crying shame, because the history of yarn is EVERYBODY'S history. If you want to truly understand a culture, don't start by studying its public face. Study how spinning tech developed. Study its yarn.
But if everybody spins, not everybody does lace. As far as I know, there are five places where lace is a part of the culture: the Faroes isles (...do not make me spell that right. Please.) the Ukraine, Estonia, Orenburg Russia and the Unst region of the Shetland isles. The latter two are the only ones with a history of making four-foot-by-four foot shawls (or bigger!) that you can pull through a wedding ring.
The history of Russian lace is incredible. You cannot read about it without also reading about the Soviet revolution. Lenin made the shawls a national treasure, but because the same men and women doing the knitting were frequently the kulaks, Stalin immediately began killing them. There is a story of a man who won awards for his work, who was killed because he "couldn't conform". The text of that story strongly implied the man was gay.
Shetland lace doesn't have the same dramatic history, but it does have many of the same patterns. This is incredibly weird to me, because Shetland is a little clump of rock sitting off the end of Scotland, and Orenburg is a city in the middle of the mountains between Russia and Afganistan. The only connection between the two locations during the era when this art-form was developing were the Vikings. And yet many of the patterns are nearly identical--the Orenburg "Strawberry" pattern and the Scottish "Cat's paw" is a good example. Another interesting thing is how the culture of the area "flavors" the knitting. Orenburg knitting has a very Arabic feel to it, whereas Shetland lace is Shetland lace.
FYI, this is shetland lace:
And this is Orenburg lace:
...it's a really shitty old picture and I gave this shawl away alreadyOne final tidbit before I end this thread of ultra bordom: I also spin, because you can't find laceweight yarn fine enough for wedding ring shawls without epic-level google-fu and a credit card worth its weight in gold. And in order to produce yarn fast enough to get to knit this lifetime (...you learn on drop spindles. You can't produce on them) I had to buy a wheel. Wheels, however, are expensive and few of them are actually good for spinning lace weight yarn. Eventually, I settled on a charkha. Which I had to buy from India.
It is my favorite thing in the whole world. And in researching the history of this, I've come to be rather in awe of the tool that I get to own. I came across this site the other day, and if you read abosolutely nothing else today, READ THAT LINK. But just in case you decide not to, here are three quotes from somebody pretty surprising. And I'll save that surprise for the end:
Mahatma Gandhi said that. And I know I probably have the wrong context here, and it's probably wrong as fuck for a white woman to quote Gandhi, but you know what? Fuck it. IMHO the west's biggest problem is that we have too much and we don't have to work. Knitting is that thing old ladies do, spindles are what knocked out Sleeping Beauty, and a spinning wheel is a metaphor for doing nothing. The key to a healthy life without the sickness of hubris is Worship and Work--both are a reminder that we are small, frail, faliable humans and none of us, not one of us, is better or worse than any other. Yes. We do need to change. If there's one thing we privelaged white folk need to re-learn, it's humility. And the old, devalued work--spinning, weaving, sewing--might just be the teacher we need.
I'm not saying the world would necessarily be better if everybody got around a big table and played with yarn for a few hours, but it would certainly be a lot softer. And I don't know about you, but there's a lot of broken warp and woof in my life that I definitely need to fix.
So a couple people pointed out that I said something really obscure the other day. Not the part about where fairy legends come from, but the other things I said come from Scotland--golf, great whiskey (...look. My spelling sucks, okay? Half the time I can't even keep numbers straight, and you expect me to remember that I-before-E shit?) and really awesome lace knitting.
My primary hobby, after art and writing, is lace knitting. Specifically, my undying quest to knit a wedding ring shawl. I do not talk about this much, because a fundamental part of knitting is how freaking boring it is to non-knitters. I also spin, which is even more boring to most people. And that's a crying shame, because the history of yarn is EVERYBODY'S history. If you want to truly understand a culture, don't start by studying its public face. Study how spinning tech developed. Study its yarn.
But if everybody spins, not everybody does lace. As far as I know, there are five places where lace is a part of the culture: the Faroes isles (...do not make me spell that right. Please.) the Ukraine, Estonia, Orenburg Russia and the Unst region of the Shetland isles. The latter two are the only ones with a history of making four-foot-by-four foot shawls (or bigger!) that you can pull through a wedding ring.
The history of Russian lace is incredible. You cannot read about it without also reading about the Soviet revolution. Lenin made the shawls a national treasure, but because the same men and women doing the knitting were frequently the kulaks, Stalin immediately began killing them. There is a story of a man who won awards for his work, who was killed because he "couldn't conform". The text of that story strongly implied the man was gay.
Shetland lace doesn't have the same dramatic history, but it does have many of the same patterns. This is incredibly weird to me, because Shetland is a little clump of rock sitting off the end of Scotland, and Orenburg is a city in the middle of the mountains between Russia and Afganistan. The only connection between the two locations during the era when this art-form was developing were the Vikings. And yet many of the patterns are nearly identical--the Orenburg "Strawberry" pattern and the Scottish "Cat's paw" is a good example. Another interesting thing is how the culture of the area "flavors" the knitting. Orenburg knitting has a very Arabic feel to it, whereas Shetland lace is Shetland lace.
FYI, this is shetland lace:
And this is Orenburg lace:
...it's a really shitty old picture and I gave this shawl away alreadyOne final tidbit before I end this thread of ultra bordom: I also spin, because you can't find laceweight yarn fine enough for wedding ring shawls without epic-level google-fu and a credit card worth its weight in gold. And in order to produce yarn fast enough to get to knit this lifetime (...you learn on drop spindles. You can't produce on them) I had to buy a wheel. Wheels, however, are expensive and few of them are actually good for spinning lace weight yarn. Eventually, I settled on a charkha. Which I had to buy from India.It is my favorite thing in the whole world. And in researching the history of this, I've come to be rather in awe of the tool that I get to own. I came across this site the other day, and if you read abosolutely nothing else today, READ THAT LINK. But just in case you decide not to, here are three quotes from somebody pretty surprising. And I'll save that surprise for the end:
“The message of the spinning wheel is much wider than its circumference. Its message is one of simplicity, service of mankind, living so as not to hurt others, creating an indissoluble bond between the rich and the poor, capital and labour, the prince and the peasant. That larger message is naturally for all.”
"Art to be art must soothe.” He said further that the yarn we spin is “capable of mending the broken warp and woof of our life.”
“A plea for the spinning wheel is a plea for recognising the dignity of labour. I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption."
Mahatma Gandhi said that. And I know I probably have the wrong context here, and it's probably wrong as fuck for a white woman to quote Gandhi, but you know what? Fuck it. IMHO the west's biggest problem is that we have too much and we don't have to work. Knitting is that thing old ladies do, spindles are what knocked out Sleeping Beauty, and a spinning wheel is a metaphor for doing nothing. The key to a healthy life without the sickness of hubris is Worship and Work--both are a reminder that we are small, frail, faliable humans and none of us, not one of us, is better or worse than any other. Yes. We do need to change. If there's one thing we privelaged white folk need to re-learn, it's humility. And the old, devalued work--spinning, weaving, sewing--might just be the teacher we need.
I'm not saying the world would necessarily be better if everybody got around a big table and played with yarn for a few hours, but it would certainly be a lot softer. And I don't know about you, but there's a lot of broken warp and woof in my life that I definitely need to fix.
February 16, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 11
I will be so glad when this weekend is over. Nothing says "Humility" like having people who have more money than you will ever see in your lifetime berate you because you couldn't magically figure out they meant "blue cheese crumbles" and not "blue cheese dressing" when all they said was "with the blue cheese". There are times when I really hate my job.
So. Can we have a plot now?
Well, Maeve runs out of the room in tears, while her bodyguards all stand around with a "huh?" look on their faces. Meanwhile Merry is standing frozen because "She tasted like sunshine."
Gee, why would Maeve be so upset? Maybe it's because she's dropped her glamour for the first time in forty plus years? Maybe it's because having another Fairy around reminds Maeve about her life in the Seelie court? Maybe it's because--
Then they all discuss how Maeve dropping her glamour basically rang every bell in the neighborhood. Then they all discuss how Maeve was worshiped long after the rest of them were forgotten--and I've already discussed the stupidity of reducing a fucking deity to erotica's supporting cast, so we're not going to talk about it again--and how that's given her more power. And then somebody points out the obvious: That Maeve being a movie star basically equals more worship than she would have gotten even back in the day.
And this is a big deal in the story's universe, because the Fae are only in the states as long as nobody worships them. In the last book, Queen Crazy had to beg Merry not to reveal that Prince Cel had worshipers of his own. This could, in fact, get the Fae thrown out if it were revealed that movie-star worship equals god/goddess worship.
Will this ever get addressed? No. I mean...LKH can either use this little bit of worldbuilding as a launchpad for a truly epic plot of epic proportions...or she can have her self-insert screw a major god of the dead Celtic religion she studied up on when she jumped faiths.
This is almost as bad as when Anne Rice wrote those first person books from Jesus's perspective.
Anyway, Maeve asks everybody to go out to the pool. Everybody's fine with it except Kitto, who freaks out because he has severe agoraphobia. He lived his whole life in caves and dark tunnels. Merry doesn't care. The guy can't handle a big white room and she's going to make him go outside. She'll allow him to go to the van if he gets overwhelmed, but she's decided he needs to work on his fears.
You know, usually exposure therapy occurs under highly controlled conditions, under a counselor's supervision. But I'm absolutely sure a member of a race where rudeness is punishable by death is perfect to supervise a traumatized individual's exposure to something that scares the shit out of them. And this--a highly charged negotiation with a literal goddess--is the perfect time to make Kitto face his fears.
And then Rhys decides to make everybody skip down the hallway singing "We're off to see the wizard".
That's how the chapter ends. I did not make that up.
Plot is still nonexistent.
So. Can we have a plot now?
Well, Maeve runs out of the room in tears, while her bodyguards all stand around with a "huh?" look on their faces. Meanwhile Merry is standing frozen because "She tasted like sunshine."
Gee, why would Maeve be so upset? Maybe it's because she's dropped her glamour for the first time in forty plus years? Maybe it's because having another Fairy around reminds Maeve about her life in the Seelie court? Maybe it's because--
I felt my eyes widen. “You mean she’s attracted to me.” I shook my head before he could say anything. “She’s attracted to the first sidhe she’s touched in a hundred years.”Yeah. Because it all has to be about sex with Merry. Even though the text then goes out of its way to say "Maeve is not a Lesbian." Thanks. I needed to know this.
Then they all discuss how Maeve dropping her glamour basically rang every bell in the neighborhood. Then they all discuss how Maeve was worshiped long after the rest of them were forgotten--and I've already discussed the stupidity of reducing a fucking deity to erotica's supporting cast, so we're not going to talk about it again--and how that's given her more power. And then somebody points out the obvious: That Maeve being a movie star basically equals more worship than she would have gotten even back in the day.
And this is a big deal in the story's universe, because the Fae are only in the states as long as nobody worships them. In the last book, Queen Crazy had to beg Merry not to reveal that Prince Cel had worshipers of his own. This could, in fact, get the Fae thrown out if it were revealed that movie-star worship equals god/goddess worship.
Will this ever get addressed? No. I mean...LKH can either use this little bit of worldbuilding as a launchpad for a truly epic plot of epic proportions...or she can have her self-insert screw a major god of the dead Celtic religion she studied up on when she jumped faiths.
This is almost as bad as when Anne Rice wrote those first person books from Jesus's perspective.
Anyway, Maeve asks everybody to go out to the pool. Everybody's fine with it except Kitto, who freaks out because he has severe agoraphobia. He lived his whole life in caves and dark tunnels. Merry doesn't care. The guy can't handle a big white room and she's going to make him go outside. She'll allow him to go to the van if he gets overwhelmed, but she's decided he needs to work on his fears.
You know, usually exposure therapy occurs under highly controlled conditions, under a counselor's supervision. But I'm absolutely sure a member of a race where rudeness is punishable by death is perfect to supervise a traumatized individual's exposure to something that scares the shit out of them. And this--a highly charged negotiation with a literal goddess--is the perfect time to make Kitto face his fears.
And then Rhys decides to make everybody skip down the hallway singing "We're off to see the wizard".
That's how the chapter ends. I did not make that up.
Plot is still nonexistent.
Caress of Twilight--chapter 10
Business first: Free story on Smashwords. It's over here, It's an old-old OLD short, and I don't think you have to put any credit card 'fo or anything in to get it. You just would have to sign up for an account.
SO. NOW do we get a plot?
Do bears shit in toilets?
So this adoration Kitto has? Not okay. Dear fucking God is it not okay.
Merry shakes Maeve's hand. Maeve doesn't shake hands well. We absolutely needed a whole paragraph devoted to this.
Merry asks if Maeve hired the other PIs as body guards, something we found out last chapter. Maeve shrugs.
Merry asks again. Maeve gets nervious. Merry asks a third time.
The thing about porn plot? there is porn to fill in the holes. There is no plot, and there is no porn, and I'm having a lot of trouble taking Merry's "I'm going to be insultingly rude" threat seriously when all she's doing is repeating a question she already has the answer to.This "do you think I'm that scary" conversation takes up most of the chapter. So basically this is Merry's version of "Anita is a badass". Given that all she's done in this book so far is pet a child-simulation? Yeah, I don't buy it.
And then Merry, Sexual Savior of us all, says "You don't have to hide yourself from us" and just like that, Maeve Reed drops her glamour. She's all pretty and golden, and...oh for fuck's sake.
The Sparkledog eyes strike again. Also? This is a prime example of why describing things too much is bad. That last sentence dangling all on its lonesome? That's perfect for a non-human character's eyes when they've got the power level Maeve is implied to have. It gets the feeling across, it gives you a very clear image, and it is short and sweet. The bad part is it gets lost in the detail-by-detail byplay of things nobody is EVER going to notice.
We don't like a lot of detail in our eyes. I used to work hard to try to get the faultless photographic realism of eyes in my artwork, but the best eyes I ever painted were random blobs of color I did in a hurry. Eyes are important, but the fact that there's liquid and they're shiny are far more important than color. This is a TON of information that we don't need at all.
Merry kisses Maeve on the hand and tells her she has the most beautiful eyes. Maeve begins to cry. She kisses Merry on the lips, mutters something about how she thought the men were the dangerous ones--I guess she didn't get the memo on being in a story with a Mary Sue--and then runs out of the room.
End of chapter.
...At least she's not running off to rescue a poor helpless victim-man from a boyfriend/gay people. Which is like saying at least we're not having boiling oil poured over our heads but hey, whatever.
SO. NOW do we get a plot?
Do bears shit in toilets?
I WALKED AROUND THE COUCH TO GREET THE GODDESS. KITTO followed me, and I had to make him stay by the couch. Left to his own devices, he’d have stayed glued to my side like an overly devoted puppy.Yep. Because abuse creates very strong attachments with the abuser. Not kidding. It's the survival mechanism abuse victims develop because keeping the bad guys happy means you don't get hurt today (maybe). It's also why abusers are so hard to leave. When your entire life is making them happy, and leaving makes them very unhappy, it's very hard to go through with it. Yeah, that attachment? It's not devotion, IMHO, it's the same instinct that makes rape victims choose not to fight sometimes, the instinct that says "If I go with this part, maybe I'll live long enough to get away."
So this adoration Kitto has? Not okay. Dear fucking God is it not okay.
Merry shakes Maeve's hand. Maeve doesn't shake hands well. We absolutely needed a whole paragraph devoted to this.
Merry asks if Maeve hired the other PIs as body guards, something we found out last chapter. Maeve shrugs.
Merry asks again. Maeve gets nervious. Merry asks a third time.
The thing about porn plot? there is porn to fill in the holes. There is no plot, and there is no porn, and I'm having a lot of trouble taking Merry's "I'm going to be insultingly rude" threat seriously when all she's doing is repeating a question she already has the answer to.This "do you think I'm that scary" conversation takes up most of the chapter. So basically this is Merry's version of "Anita is a badass". Given that all she's done in this book so far is pet a child-simulation? Yeah, I don't buy it.
And then Merry, Sexual Savior of us all, says "You don't have to hide yourself from us" and just like that, Maeve Reed drops her glamour. She's all pretty and golden, and...oh for fuck's sake.
There was a wide outer edge of rich deep blue like a bright sapphire, then a much thinner ring of melted copper, and an equally thin circle of liquid gold around the dark point of her pupil. But what set her eyes apart even among the sidhe was that the gold and copper trailed out across her iris like streaks of color in a good piece of lapis lazuli, so that metallic glints shone out from that ring of faultless deep blue.
Her eyes were like a stormy blue sky shattered by colored lightning.
The Sparkledog eyes strike again. Also? This is a prime example of why describing things too much is bad. That last sentence dangling all on its lonesome? That's perfect for a non-human character's eyes when they've got the power level Maeve is implied to have. It gets the feeling across, it gives you a very clear image, and it is short and sweet. The bad part is it gets lost in the detail-by-detail byplay of things nobody is EVER going to notice.
We don't like a lot of detail in our eyes. I used to work hard to try to get the faultless photographic realism of eyes in my artwork, but the best eyes I ever painted were random blobs of color I did in a hurry. Eyes are important, but the fact that there's liquid and they're shiny are far more important than color. This is a TON of information that we don't need at all.
Merry kisses Maeve on the hand and tells her she has the most beautiful eyes. Maeve begins to cry. She kisses Merry on the lips, mutters something about how she thought the men were the dangerous ones--I guess she didn't get the memo on being in a story with a Mary Sue--and then runs out of the room.
End of chapter.
...At least she's not running off to rescue a poor helpless victim-man from a boyfriend/gay people. Which is like saying at least we're not having boiling oil poured over our heads but hey, whatever.
February 15, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 9
Business first:
GRAY FOX HAS ARRIVED!
Pick your poison, kids. Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. READ IT AND ...uh...well, not weep. You're not supposed to cry during this book. But buy it! And read it! Please!
...back to the suck, I guess.
Here is the plot so far: Movie Star Fae Goddess asks Merry (...who is some kind of fertility goddess herself, I forgot that part) to come visit. Merry does. She confronts Movie Star Goddess's guards. Movie Star Goddess arrives in time to get insulted to her face.
This is chapter nine.
My three favorite book obsessions right now are John Dies At the End (John Dies
buy John Dies because HOLY SHIT it is an awesomely fucked up book.) Warm Bodies (Hunger Games.
By chapter nine in John Dies Dave and John have saved Las Vegas via shitty garage band rock, beaten a meat monster that wanted to confront a TV psychic and Dave is in the process of trying to buy a bratwerst from a haunted McDonalds. (...look. Just read the book)
By chapter nine in Warm Bodies R has had Julie for quite a while, they have bonded over Frank Sinatra and shitty canned pad thai and R's whole not-eating-Julie thing, they've been discovered by a gigantic spoiler, and he's starting to take her home.
By chapter nine in Hunger games, Peeta and Katniss are in the capitol, have gone through almost all of their training, have done the chariot ride, and are about to go into the inverviews. Peeta has asked to be coached seperately and Katniss is not taking it well.
In ALL of these (KICK ASS AWESOME) books, the plot has been established and advanced. In John Dies and Warm Bodies, the first act is over and we're clearly moving into the second. In Hunger Games, well, we're about two chapters away from Act two AKA the arena, if I remember right.
We do not even have a conflict in this book yet.
But now Maeve Reed is here, and she's going to tell Merry everything and we will move on with the plot now, right? Right?
*sigh*
So we get a long ass description of what Maeve Reed looks like, and what she's wearing, and how she's using magic to look human, and then how she looks like a supermodel, but it's not diet and excercise that does it, it's just how she looks.
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. SHE'S USING MAGIC TO LOOK THAT WAY. OF COURSE SHE'S GONNA BE HOT.
I have said this before, I'm gonna say it again: NOBODY CARES WHAT YOUR CHARACTER LOOKS LIKE. At least not for four fucking paragraphs worth of material that are about to get blown out of the water anyway.
She says Ethan probably ought to leave if he feels that way.
Ethan says he didn't mean the Seelie court, because they are the "bringers of beauty and wishes."
AKA: The guys that humans believe do good things, as opposed to the ones with all the ugly monsters.
Yeah. Because it's not like the Fairy Queen in Tam Lin was paying a tithe to hell with human people now, is it? Oh wait, she was. And her allignment was never specified.
Another problem here is, LKH is mixing mythology without caring fuck-all for what she's doing. Seelie/Unseelie divisions are a scots thing. Like really awesome lace knitting, great whiskey and golf (...two out of three aren't bad) this belongs to Scotland. And given that you have to go into Norse mythology to find a paralelle (light/dark elves) I'm going to bet this division came from the east. The Sidhe, on the other hand, are Irish. And they're not divided, far as I can tell.
So she's trying to write this big paralelle for oppressed peoples, while ignoring how she's fucking up mythology (do not get me started on how EVERY FUCKING ONE of Merry's boys are a god from old Irish/Scots/Welsh mythology). You know, I got pissed off for Cassandra Clare borrowing everything but God from Christianity, including that bullshit with that church, so I'm going to get pissed off now too. Borrowing fairies and Sidhe and even the Seelie/Unseelie courts? I'd let that slide. But LKH is grabbing very specific gods and goddesses from three different pantheons and shoving them all together so that her main character can have sex with them. It'd be like Jerry B. Jenkins creating a self insert to screw Jesus, Mohammad and Krishna. And LKH, remember, is a card carrying pagan dabbling in both "Wicca" and Astaru. She should have more respect than this.
Faith is not a shiny object.
So Ethan leaves and Maeve is all like "I feel neglected without him" and Julian goes into full on pandering mode, rambling about how he'll never leave her side, yadda yadda yadda, and any chance that Maeve could have been a cool character goes down the fucking drain. It's not badass to watch someone who could probably obliterate you whine and complain that they just don't feel special enough.
And then Merry figures out that Maeve hired all these idiots to protect herself from Merry and Co. Because they are dangerous unseelie court Fae, and the book is basically chasing its own tail again, isn't it.
So now do we find out what the plot is?
Merry listens to Maeve's magic. Maeve watches them. Somehow Doyle indicates that Merry gets to be rude to Maeve. He does this through bizzare eye telepathy. Merry decides that she'll be so very rude, if she were in Faerie territory--because the home of a Goddess for fourty plus years obviously doesn't count--she'd get killed for insulting the other person and...
the chapter ends.
Next chapter will be the tenth chapter without a plot.
HOW do you write ten books, and then have your writing go this bad? It's like LKH died after Obsidian Butterfly and got replaced by a pod person. HOW DO YOU NOT REALIZE YOU'VE WRITTEN TEN CHAPTERS WITH NO PLOT? It's almost as bad as when Jerry B. Jenkins lost World War Three during Trib Force and Nicolae.
Ah, well. There's your chapter for today. And sadly we've got three more chapters of this to go. And trust me, when we find out what Maeve Reed wants? It's not worth it. Not at all.
GRAY FOX HAS ARRIVED!
Pick your poison, kids. Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. READ IT AND ...uh...well, not weep. You're not supposed to cry during this book. But buy it! And read it! Please!
...back to the suck, I guess.
Here is the plot so far: Movie Star Fae Goddess asks Merry (...who is some kind of fertility goddess herself, I forgot that part) to come visit. Merry does. She confronts Movie Star Goddess's guards. Movie Star Goddess arrives in time to get insulted to her face.
This is chapter nine.
My three favorite book obsessions right now are John Dies At the End (John Dies
buy John Dies because HOLY SHIT it is an awesomely fucked up book.) Warm Bodies (Hunger Games.
By chapter nine in John Dies Dave and John have saved Las Vegas via shitty garage band rock, beaten a meat monster that wanted to confront a TV psychic and Dave is in the process of trying to buy a bratwerst from a haunted McDonalds. (...look. Just read the book)
By chapter nine in Warm Bodies R has had Julie for quite a while, they have bonded over Frank Sinatra and shitty canned pad thai and R's whole not-eating-Julie thing, they've been discovered by a gigantic spoiler, and he's starting to take her home.
By chapter nine in Hunger games, Peeta and Katniss are in the capitol, have gone through almost all of their training, have done the chariot ride, and are about to go into the inverviews. Peeta has asked to be coached seperately and Katniss is not taking it well.
In ALL of these (KICK ASS AWESOME) books, the plot has been established and advanced. In John Dies and Warm Bodies, the first act is over and we're clearly moving into the second. In Hunger Games, well, we're about two chapters away from Act two AKA the arena, if I remember right.
We do not even have a conflict in this book yet.
But now Maeve Reed is here, and she's going to tell Merry everything and we will move on with the plot now, right? Right?
*sigh*
So we get a long ass description of what Maeve Reed looks like, and what she's wearing, and how she's using magic to look human, and then how she looks like a supermodel, but it's not diet and excercise that does it, it's just how she looks.
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. SHE'S USING MAGIC TO LOOK THAT WAY. OF COURSE SHE'S GONNA BE HOT.
I have said this before, I'm gonna say it again: NOBODY CARES WHAT YOUR CHARACTER LOOKS LIKE. At least not for four fucking paragraphs worth of material that are about to get blown out of the water anyway.
She says Ethan probably ought to leave if he feels that way.
Ethan says he didn't mean the Seelie court, because they are the "bringers of beauty and wishes."
AKA: The guys that humans believe do good things, as opposed to the ones with all the ugly monsters.
Yeah. Because it's not like the Fairy Queen in Tam Lin was paying a tithe to hell with human people now, is it? Oh wait, she was. And her allignment was never specified.
Another problem here is, LKH is mixing mythology without caring fuck-all for what she's doing. Seelie/Unseelie divisions are a scots thing. Like really awesome lace knitting, great whiskey and golf (...two out of three aren't bad) this belongs to Scotland. And given that you have to go into Norse mythology to find a paralelle (light/dark elves) I'm going to bet this division came from the east. The Sidhe, on the other hand, are Irish. And they're not divided, far as I can tell.
So she's trying to write this big paralelle for oppressed peoples, while ignoring how she's fucking up mythology (do not get me started on how EVERY FUCKING ONE of Merry's boys are a god from old Irish/Scots/Welsh mythology). You know, I got pissed off for Cassandra Clare borrowing everything but God from Christianity, including that bullshit with that church, so I'm going to get pissed off now too. Borrowing fairies and Sidhe and even the Seelie/Unseelie courts? I'd let that slide. But LKH is grabbing very specific gods and goddesses from three different pantheons and shoving them all together so that her main character can have sex with them. It'd be like Jerry B. Jenkins creating a self insert to screw Jesus, Mohammad and Krishna. And LKH, remember, is a card carrying pagan dabbling in both "Wicca" and Astaru. She should have more respect than this.
Faith is not a shiny object.
So Ethan leaves and Maeve is all like "I feel neglected without him" and Julian goes into full on pandering mode, rambling about how he'll never leave her side, yadda yadda yadda, and any chance that Maeve could have been a cool character goes down the fucking drain. It's not badass to watch someone who could probably obliterate you whine and complain that they just don't feel special enough.
And then Merry figures out that Maeve hired all these idiots to protect herself from Merry and Co. Because they are dangerous unseelie court Fae, and the book is basically chasing its own tail again, isn't it.
So now do we find out what the plot is?
Merry listens to Maeve's magic. Maeve watches them. Somehow Doyle indicates that Merry gets to be rude to Maeve. He does this through bizzare eye telepathy. Merry decides that she'll be so very rude, if she were in Faerie territory--because the home of a Goddess for fourty plus years obviously doesn't count--she'd get killed for insulting the other person and...
the chapter ends.
Next chapter will be the tenth chapter without a plot.
HOW do you write ten books, and then have your writing go this bad? It's like LKH died after Obsidian Butterfly and got replaced by a pod person. HOW DO YOU NOT REALIZE YOU'VE WRITTEN TEN CHAPTERS WITH NO PLOT? It's almost as bad as when Jerry B. Jenkins lost World War Three during Trib Force and Nicolae.
Ah, well. There's your chapter for today. And sadly we've got three more chapters of this to go. And trust me, when we find out what Maeve Reed wants? It's not worth it. Not at all.
February 14, 2013
GRAY FOX IS LIVE!
And GRAY FOX is now LIVE on Smashwords!
I will give you an update on when it's live on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It should be just about everywhere by noon tomorrow.
Edit:
And we're live on Amazon!
And live on Barnes and Noble.com!
I will give you an update on when it's live on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It should be just about everywhere by noon tomorrow.
Edit:
And we're live on Amazon!
And live on Barnes and Noble.com!
Gray Fox ETA
I am doing the formatting as fast YET as carefully as I can (WHY. WHY DID I PICK THE DAY AFTER VALENTINES. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE APOCALYPSE LOOKS LIKE? IT IS A RESTAURANT RESERVATION BOOK ON VALENTINE'S DAY. FUCK. ME.) and I feel confident in declaring that it will go into the various processing things TONIGHT and be live sometime tomorrow morning.
Yes, folks. IT IS HAPPENING NOW.
And just in case you have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about, here are the other Exiles books:
Or you can go over here and use this coupon: TU68W and get a copy for free
ALSO: I have included a sneak peak at my super-uber-secret July project working titled Project:Dragon at the end of Gray Fox. IT WILL BE AWESOME.
I am PUMPED, my loyal blog-readers. PUMPED.
THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME.
Yes, folks. IT IS HAPPENING NOW.
And just in case you have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about, here are the other Exiles books:
Or you can go over here and use this coupon: TU68W and get a copy for free
ALSO: I have included a sneak peak at my super-uber-secret July project working titled Project:Dragon at the end of Gray Fox. IT WILL BE AWESOME.I am PUMPED, my loyal blog-readers. PUMPED.
THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME.
February 13, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter eight
It's way early, but I'm calling it now:
CARESS OF TWILIGHT IS WORSE THAN NARCISSUS IN CHAINS.
Holy. Fuck. how did I read this the first time and not be completely disgusted by it? And it's Kitto. It's all on Kitto. I had a lot of reactions to NIC but never once did I actively want to flush my brain out to make the image go away. Possibly because Anita Blake is a horrible world of torture and madness, and Merry Gentry is one sparkle away from being an episode of My Little Pony. Only with blood in it.
Ugh. Let's just get this over with.
Now. In a normal book we'd be meeting Maeve Reed. We'd be meeting Maeve Reed because meeting a new character is supposed to set a plot in motion, and we need to save room for that plot to happen. Instead, we're going to do the same thing we did last chapter.
Second verse same as the first, Ethan follows Merry into Maeve's living room. It's big and white and shiny and designed by a decorator and, oh yeah, IT IS CHRISTMAS. There were no christmas lights before now, or presents, or carols, and I don't remember there being too many after this (in fact, in a couple chapters Merry and Maeve will be debating bikini tops) so my theory is this book was started in November, this chapter was written in December, and by the time we make it out to the pool, it's May.
I've dropped by LKH's website a couple times and read the many, many, MANY "WHERE IS THE NEXT MERRY GENTRY BOOK" questions from fans, and LKH's "Uh........" reactions to those questions (The deadline, if I remember right, was back in 2011) and I have this to say: The woman writes slower than continental drift. She says that she writes in 12 point Times New Roman, double spaced, one inch margins, but that's what I work with (that's basically industry standard. Most agents/publishers will accept that), and my novel's first draft, when it was 190K, was about six hundred pages. If I remember right, LKH's books number in the eight hundred pages, because pages are all she talks about, and I do not think her books are anywhere near the 200K range. And I don't see how she'd have an editor toss 50-100k worth of book and not pitch Kitto out with it.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe her output is roughly 2K a day. Moving on.
Marie, Maeve's servant/secretary, is potentially a brown person. She'd be the first human brown person we've encountered in the book so far. Just...making a note of it. She offers Merry a drink.
Merry thinks it could be poison and refuses, but manages to do so politely.
Frankly, I think her primary motive in refusing booze shouldn't be "it could be poisoned" but rather "I'm trying to make a baby in my off hours, and I could be preggers now, so no thanks." But that's just me. Maybe Faerie babies don't get Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
The men are all glaring at each other, because testosterone. Merry tries to make them sit down. Hey, what's Kitto doing?
Good GOD. HOW CAN YOU BE DOING THIS EVERY TIME YOU DESCRIBE THIS GUY AND NOT REALIZE WHAT YOU ARE DOING? The men in this book are not characters. They are sex objects. And LKH is doing everything she possibly can to also turn this one into a child. It's like when I read a webcomic about a highschool student who was also a crime fighting prostitute (It happens?) and the author went OUT OF HER WAY to make sure everyone knew the kid was 18. As in that was 90% of the dialogue for the first several pages.
No. I'm sorry. If you go out of your way to make a character thousands of years old, and then spend every single fucking second after that infantasizing the guy, you are not writing a meaningful character. You are providing fap fuel for pedophiles and you're trying to do it in a way that won't get you signed up as a Registered Sex Offender.
I absolutely despise Piers Anthony for his pedophile male leads (the guy does a lot for new writers, but it can't make up for how many of his novels contain twenty+ year old male leads and fourteen year old females.) but you know what? At least he was fucking honest about it. At least he's not like "No. This character is a legal adult older than China, Who also happens to be wearing a power-ranger's T-shirt and light up flashy Nikes. Want me to talk about his 'teddy bear' again?"
Guys, if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. And Kitto looks, acts and quacks like an abused and traumatized child. He should not be in this book at all.
Meanwhile, the bodyguards are overcompensating because Merry is Unseelie Fae and thus is dangerous to be around.
I agree with this 100%. They're people who consider having your eye ripped out during rape so your rapist can keep it in a jar for later a simple failure to properly negotiate a safeword. (Green=go, Red=stop, so would Holy fuck you tore my eye out be purple? How about "Lovely shade of char--HOLY FUCK YOU JUST RIPPED MY EYE OUT!")
But Merry starts up a debate with Ethan about how this is prejudice and wrong.
This would be true IF the Unseelie had not introduced themselves to us through rape potions and rampaging monsters. Merry has proven herself to be a good person, but the men around her are killers. Two of them--Doyle and Frost--were Queen Psycopath's go-to guys for pain. Rhys just proved he can't contain himself around Kitto.
At the risk of inflaming social justice folk everywhere, a certain amount of prejudiced thinking is necessary for safety. Prejudice against a man because he is a man is just plain wrong. Prejudice against a man who is an obvious member of a violent gang is problematic, but something you have to account for in your thinking processes. Prejudice against a man who is an obvious member of a violent gang who also has a rap sheet of his own is something that you have to do because you cannot predict what he'll do. He might leave you alone, he might not, but he's proven that he'll hurt people if he has motive to do it. The issue is not the race or gender of the person, it is the fact that their friends are violent, and sometimes they themselves are violent. If I know a man has a best friend who is a registered sex offender, I'm not leaving my kid alone with them. If they are a registered sex offender I am not being alone with them. If the people this person associates are known to be violent, and if the person themselves is known to be violent, you have to take precautions. Especially if being a bodyguard is your job. Everybody Merry is sitting with, with the possible exception of Kitto, is a killer. If I were Ethan, I would not be comfortable being alone in that room, let alone with allowing my boss to come within six miles of it.
It's not a "We are the poor oppressed" issue. It's a "We are fucking scary, and you don't want to take chances with us" issue.
And then Julian, Ethan's partner, comes into the room. There's two twins here, Julian and Jordan, and Julian is dating Ethan's brother, Adam.
And he dresses normal. And as of Divine Misdemenors he has yet to be rescued from gayness by a vagina.
...it's an improvement. But I am not giving LKH Kudos for finally writing a gay character like a human being. It's like giving a dog cookies because it's not piddling on the floor right this minute.
Julian explains to Ethan (and thus to us) that the sidhe are stealing business from Ethan and Julian's agency because the sidhe are just prettier than anything their agency has on staff, and having a pretty fairy on their staff gaurentees the movie stars publicity.
And then Julian hits on all of Merry's men. All of them. Because he has a "special arrangement" with his boyfriend Adam.
Okay, look. I don't know why this annoys me, given that I have no problem with polyamory, but it does. Especially because the one nearly sane gay character I've met in LKH's writing so far is implied to be a tomcat of monumental proportions. I think because it's not polyamory implied here, but rather promiscuity. If you're in a major relationship, especially if it is with more than one person, you don't fool around. You just don't.
I think what bugs me is that, given the massive emphasis on monogamy in this book--technically ALL the guys are monogamous. It's Merry who is into polyandry here--is that it's implying the relationship between Julian and Adam isn't as "valid" as the relationship between Merry and her men. It's "Only" a gay relationship, so Julian can screw around whenever he wants. It doesn't "count".
I hate this book.
And then Doyle sits down so that his back is touching Julian's hand. And just in case you thought maybe the book was inadvertantly playing up the homoeroticism, there's a long screed about how Doyle's rules for touching are the same for boys and girls, because he's been celebate so long he'd rather not be teased. In fact all the guards are implied to have rules about touching, very un-Faerie like rules, which completely obliterates everything we've learned about Merry and her boys over the previous book.
It's like LKH read a book about fetishes and decided to do all of them. The only thing she hasn't done yet is feet, but I think that got handled in the last book, when Galen took Merry's silk stocking off with his teeth.
It's also a play up for how Merry is a monster just like Anita is a monster and she needs to give up her guns now. FUCK. THIS IS A BOOK. THAT HAS ALREADY DONE THIS ONCE BEFORE. CAN WE MOVE ON WITH THE BOOK? PLEASE?
And then Ethan implies something nasty about Julian and his brother Adam, and Julian says, basically, you're being an infant, grow up, fuck off and go home.
Ethan blows his top and shouts "BUT THEY'RE NOT PEOPLE" at Julian...right about the time that Maeve Reed comes down the stairs.
Nice going dude. You just called your boss, who was worshipped as a goddess for a couple centuries, an animal to her face.
The chapter ends before Maeve can turn the moron into strawberry jam.
CARESS OF TWILIGHT IS WORSE THAN NARCISSUS IN CHAINS.
Holy. Fuck. how did I read this the first time and not be completely disgusted by it? And it's Kitto. It's all on Kitto. I had a lot of reactions to NIC but never once did I actively want to flush my brain out to make the image go away. Possibly because Anita Blake is a horrible world of torture and madness, and Merry Gentry is one sparkle away from being an episode of My Little Pony. Only with blood in it.
Ugh. Let's just get this over with.
Now. In a normal book we'd be meeting Maeve Reed. We'd be meeting Maeve Reed because meeting a new character is supposed to set a plot in motion, and we need to save room for that plot to happen. Instead, we're going to do the same thing we did last chapter.
Second verse same as the first, Ethan follows Merry into Maeve's living room. It's big and white and shiny and designed by a decorator and, oh yeah, IT IS CHRISTMAS. There were no christmas lights before now, or presents, or carols, and I don't remember there being too many after this (in fact, in a couple chapters Merry and Maeve will be debating bikini tops) so my theory is this book was started in November, this chapter was written in December, and by the time we make it out to the pool, it's May.
I've dropped by LKH's website a couple times and read the many, many, MANY "WHERE IS THE NEXT MERRY GENTRY BOOK" questions from fans, and LKH's "Uh........" reactions to those questions (The deadline, if I remember right, was back in 2011) and I have this to say: The woman writes slower than continental drift. She says that she writes in 12 point Times New Roman, double spaced, one inch margins, but that's what I work with (that's basically industry standard. Most agents/publishers will accept that), and my novel's first draft, when it was 190K, was about six hundred pages. If I remember right, LKH's books number in the eight hundred pages, because pages are all she talks about, and I do not think her books are anywhere near the 200K range. And I don't see how she'd have an editor toss 50-100k worth of book and not pitch Kitto out with it.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe her output is roughly 2K a day. Moving on.
Marie, Maeve's servant/secretary, is potentially a brown person. She'd be the first human brown person we've encountered in the book so far. Just...making a note of it. She offers Merry a drink.
Merry thinks it could be poison and refuses, but manages to do so politely.
Frankly, I think her primary motive in refusing booze shouldn't be "it could be poisoned" but rather "I'm trying to make a baby in my off hours, and I could be preggers now, so no thanks." But that's just me. Maybe Faerie babies don't get Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
The men are all glaring at each other, because testosterone. Merry tries to make them sit down. Hey, what's Kitto doing?
The big white living room seemed to have triggered his agoraphobia. He sat pressed up against my legs, one small arm encircling them like I was his teddy bear.
Good GOD. HOW CAN YOU BE DOING THIS EVERY TIME YOU DESCRIBE THIS GUY AND NOT REALIZE WHAT YOU ARE DOING? The men in this book are not characters. They are sex objects. And LKH is doing everything she possibly can to also turn this one into a child. It's like when I read a webcomic about a highschool student who was also a crime fighting prostitute (It happens?) and the author went OUT OF HER WAY to make sure everyone knew the kid was 18. As in that was 90% of the dialogue for the first several pages.No. I'm sorry. If you go out of your way to make a character thousands of years old, and then spend every single fucking second after that infantasizing the guy, you are not writing a meaningful character. You are providing fap fuel for pedophiles and you're trying to do it in a way that won't get you signed up as a Registered Sex Offender.
I absolutely despise Piers Anthony for his pedophile male leads (the guy does a lot for new writers, but it can't make up for how many of his novels contain twenty+ year old male leads and fourteen year old females.) but you know what? At least he was fucking honest about it. At least he's not like "No. This character is a legal adult older than China, Who also happens to be wearing a power-ranger's T-shirt and light up flashy Nikes. Want me to talk about his 'teddy bear' again?"
Guys, if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. And Kitto looks, acts and quacks like an abused and traumatized child. He should not be in this book at all.
Meanwhile, the bodyguards are overcompensating because Merry is Unseelie Fae and thus is dangerous to be around.
I agree with this 100%. They're people who consider having your eye ripped out during rape so your rapist can keep it in a jar for later a simple failure to properly negotiate a safeword. (Green=go, Red=stop, so would Holy fuck you tore my eye out be purple? How about "Lovely shade of char--HOLY FUCK YOU JUST RIPPED MY EYE OUT!")
But Merry starts up a debate with Ethan about how this is prejudice and wrong.
This would be true IF the Unseelie had not introduced themselves to us through rape potions and rampaging monsters. Merry has proven herself to be a good person, but the men around her are killers. Two of them--Doyle and Frost--were Queen Psycopath's go-to guys for pain. Rhys just proved he can't contain himself around Kitto.
At the risk of inflaming social justice folk everywhere, a certain amount of prejudiced thinking is necessary for safety. Prejudice against a man because he is a man is just plain wrong. Prejudice against a man who is an obvious member of a violent gang is problematic, but something you have to account for in your thinking processes. Prejudice against a man who is an obvious member of a violent gang who also has a rap sheet of his own is something that you have to do because you cannot predict what he'll do. He might leave you alone, he might not, but he's proven that he'll hurt people if he has motive to do it. The issue is not the race or gender of the person, it is the fact that their friends are violent, and sometimes they themselves are violent. If I know a man has a best friend who is a registered sex offender, I'm not leaving my kid alone with them. If they are a registered sex offender I am not being alone with them. If the people this person associates are known to be violent, and if the person themselves is known to be violent, you have to take precautions. Especially if being a bodyguard is your job. Everybody Merry is sitting with, with the possible exception of Kitto, is a killer. If I were Ethan, I would not be comfortable being alone in that room, let alone with allowing my boss to come within six miles of it.
It's not a "We are the poor oppressed" issue. It's a "We are fucking scary, and you don't want to take chances with us" issue.
And then Julian, Ethan's partner, comes into the room. There's two twins here, Julian and Jordan, and Julian is dating Ethan's brother, Adam.
And he dresses normal. And as of Divine Misdemenors he has yet to be rescued from gayness by a vagina.
...it's an improvement. But I am not giving LKH Kudos for finally writing a gay character like a human being. It's like giving a dog cookies because it's not piddling on the floor right this minute.
Julian explains to Ethan (and thus to us) that the sidhe are stealing business from Ethan and Julian's agency because the sidhe are just prettier than anything their agency has on staff, and having a pretty fairy on their staff gaurentees the movie stars publicity.
And then Julian hits on all of Merry's men. All of them. Because he has a "special arrangement" with his boyfriend Adam.
Okay, look. I don't know why this annoys me, given that I have no problem with polyamory, but it does. Especially because the one nearly sane gay character I've met in LKH's writing so far is implied to be a tomcat of monumental proportions. I think because it's not polyamory implied here, but rather promiscuity. If you're in a major relationship, especially if it is with more than one person, you don't fool around. You just don't.
I think what bugs me is that, given the massive emphasis on monogamy in this book--technically ALL the guys are monogamous. It's Merry who is into polyandry here--is that it's implying the relationship between Julian and Adam isn't as "valid" as the relationship between Merry and her men. It's "Only" a gay relationship, so Julian can screw around whenever he wants. It doesn't "count".
I hate this book.
And then Doyle sits down so that his back is touching Julian's hand. And just in case you thought maybe the book was inadvertantly playing up the homoeroticism, there's a long screed about how Doyle's rules for touching are the same for boys and girls, because he's been celebate so long he'd rather not be teased. In fact all the guards are implied to have rules about touching, very un-Faerie like rules, which completely obliterates everything we've learned about Merry and her boys over the previous book.
It's like LKH read a book about fetishes and decided to do all of them. The only thing she hasn't done yet is feet, but I think that got handled in the last book, when Galen took Merry's silk stocking off with his teeth.
It's also a play up for how Merry is a monster just like Anita is a monster and she needs to give up her guns now. FUCK. THIS IS A BOOK. THAT HAS ALREADY DONE THIS ONCE BEFORE. CAN WE MOVE ON WITH THE BOOK? PLEASE?
And then Ethan implies something nasty about Julian and his brother Adam, and Julian says, basically, you're being an infant, grow up, fuck off and go home.
Ethan blows his top and shouts "BUT THEY'RE NOT PEOPLE" at Julian...right about the time that Maeve Reed comes down the stairs.Nice going dude. You just called your boss, who was worshipped as a goddess for a couple centuries, an animal to her face.
The chapter ends before Maeve can turn the moron into strawberry jam.
February 12, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 7
It is time for LKH to have her main character meet new people. Anybody remember how hard it was for Anita Blake to get into Narcissus in Chains armed? Well, I hope you found that scene to be fucking riveting because we're about to get a replay.
Remember: Merry is here to meet with Maeve Reed . The chapter opens with a description of Ethan Kane, a character who is manifestedly not Maeve Reed, who is one of her psychic bodyguards/PIs. Why would she hire more PIs when she already has Merry's major competition on retainer?
We will find out. And we will not be happy.
Ethan attempts to be imposing to the Fae men, who pretty much define imposing for the sake of this story. Although I do have to ask...how imposing is Christmas tinsel hair? Several members of my household watch WWE wrestling regularly (...my primary writing place is on the couch in front of the TV, and Mondays are my only real day off. So yes. I usually wind up watching the first and last thirty minutes. The other two hours though, I usually wind up playing Minecraft until a Creeper blows up my house), and the big thing for the past month has been watching the Rock call Paul Haymen "Twinkie Tits" and C.M. Punk "Cookie Puss". So kids? If your descriptions of your Bishe men makes me think of the Rock's kindergarten (if admittedly clever-ish) TV safe insults? YOU FAIL.
(For the record, I'd rather be watching Sherlock, but the roomies get the TV on Mondays. My retaliation has been episodes of Sherlock)
And my attempts at imagining this scene:
This is hilarious.
And then they start talking.
I'm going to be real honest with you guys. Dialogue is not LKH's strong suit. Dialogue exists to develop characters and convey information you would not normally get. Screaming is perfectly acceptable dialogue. Repeating very fucking obvious shit that you already covered in previous paragraphs? THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Ethan asks Merry what she's doing there. She says that Maeve Reed invited her. She asks what he's doing here. He says he's Maeve's bodyguards.
Right.
I really hope Merry didn't pay a lot for that PI badge of hers. (...and suddenly I'm hearing Joe Pecci saying "They fuck you they fuck you they fuck you with the cell phones" and I realize they both got their badges from the same place)
Merry says in her internal monologue that she is about to be blunt. Then she spends the next several paragraphs describing everything except what she should actually be doing, which is getting into Maeve's House so the plot can actually exist.
"Blunt", Merry, is when you actually say the thing you're intending to say in as few words as possible.
...Oh, hey, what's Kitto doing?
NO.
GOOD FUCKING GOD. WHY? WHY WOULD YOU WRITE THIS? WHY WOULD ANY HUMAN BEING COMPARE A CHARACTER THEIR MAIN CHARACTER IS FUCKING TO A VICTIM OF MOLESTATION AND TRAFFICKING?
Jesus. Jesus Christ. I need to go take medication for this.
Okay. I'm better now.
Merry's form of bluntness is to tell Ethan why he's being a dick--he is worried that Merry and the boys are about to replace him. Merry, I would not want to be within six feet of me with a gun becasue I would not be confident that she wouldn't have a sob attack or decide to get passive aggressive about getting a raise ("...yes I know your stalker killed your cat, but I am allergic to cats. Now give me a two thousand dollar raise so I can afford medication for my allergy to people")(Also: Not saying girls can't guard. I am saying that Merry shouldn't guard) but if I were Fae and the Queen of Crazy's royal guards were suddenly on the market? Fuck yes I'd hire them.
But Merry is quick to assure Ethan that Maeve wants to see her, and only her, and I guess it is that obvious that Merry should never preform guard duty for anything, ever, because Ethan backs right the fuck down.
Hey, how respectful of Merry's person are her boyfriends?
That's the most sexist thing I've read this year. There are layers of suck in that tiny paragraph. First of all, there's the fact that Merry's fucking bodyguards just told somebody they don't know from fuck all about how good Merry is in the sack. For all they know this dude could have a Merry Gentry shrine in his bedroom (Because remember, kids, Merry is more famous than Elvis) Second, there is how this passage doesn't demonize this at all. It's a comment on Merry's sexual prowness, not an example of what kind of men Merry surrounds herself with. It's trying to tell you how awesome she is. And thirdly, it implies that all men are like that. It takes the whole thing out of the relm of character development and shoves it into the land of gender typecasting. It's not people doing this, folks, it's men. it's not Merry being left out of the conversation re: her ladyparts. Nope. It's women. Here's the age-old divide that LKH swears she's trying to mend, and here's the shovel she's using to make the canyon just a little bit wider.
And I know that some guys do have this conversation, just as some women have it. They're assholes reguardless of gender. But even if we did have that conversation, most of us are smart enough to have it when the object of our genetalia's affection ISN'T FUCKING STANDING RIGHT IN EARSHOT.
And he's doing it in front of her competition. You know how Merry was going on about respect? This is a sign they don't respect her at all. Not that they don't obey her orders, or Rhys's freaking out over man-child goblin sex. It's the fact that Rhys is airing out her dirty laundry not just in public but in a business setting. And Merry doesn't turn around and reprimand him for it.
Gang, the basis for respect is healthy bounderies. If you establish and mantain them, people respect you. If you prove that you're willing to violate both yours and other people's? People lose respect for you. If you are willing to let your employees gab about your personal information? Eventually they're going to start taking cash out of the till. Merry has no bounderies, and neither does anyone else in this god-awful book.
And then we start playing the "We're not letting you in with your guns" part of the "LKH's Main Character meets new people" game. Jesus Christ, you'd think she'd come up with a new way to do this after twenty fucking books.
Anita solved this by talking in circles for hours. Merry solves it by shouting "Maeve Reed, Maeve Reed, come out to play!" at the top of her lungs until Maeve shows up.
I liked it better when Patrick Swayze did it:
Finally Maeve's secretary comes out and asks them to come in. Ethan insists on releaving Merry of her guns, it takes ten minutes for Maeve to threaten to fire Ethan and for Merry to step through the house's front door.
End of chapter.
Remember: Merry is here to meet with Maeve Reed . The chapter opens with a description of Ethan Kane, a character who is manifestedly not Maeve Reed, who is one of her psychic bodyguards/PIs. Why would she hire more PIs when she already has Merry's major competition on retainer?
We will find out. And we will not be happy.
Ethan attempts to be imposing to the Fae men, who pretty much define imposing for the sake of this story. Although I do have to ask...how imposing is Christmas tinsel hair? Several members of my household watch WWE wrestling regularly (...my primary writing place is on the couch in front of the TV, and Mondays are my only real day off. So yes. I usually wind up watching the first and last thirty minutes. The other two hours though, I usually wind up playing Minecraft until a Creeper blows up my house), and the big thing for the past month has been watching the Rock call Paul Haymen "Twinkie Tits" and C.M. Punk "Cookie Puss". So kids? If your descriptions of your Bishe men makes me think of the Rock's kindergarten (if admittedly clever-ish) TV safe insults? YOU FAIL.
(For the record, I'd rather be watching Sherlock, but the roomies get the TV on Mondays. My retaliation has been episodes of Sherlock)
And my attempts at imagining this scene:
He frowned down at us from just outside Maeve Reed’s large double doors. We were all standing at the foot of the marble steps that led up to those doors.Has me giggling madly. I see this huge, sweeping front staircase, with Merry and Co at the bottom and this dude in little dark glasses and a pressed suit staring down at them with his arms folded. Nobody's saying anything. They're just kind of standing there. And there are four other people standing between them and the door.
This is hilarious.
And then they start talking.
I'm going to be real honest with you guys. Dialogue is not LKH's strong suit. Dialogue exists to develop characters and convey information you would not normally get. Screaming is perfectly acceptable dialogue. Repeating very fucking obvious shit that you already covered in previous paragraphs? THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Ethan asks Merry what she's doing there. She says that Maeve Reed invited her. She asks what he's doing here. He says he's Maeve's bodyguards.
Right.
I really hope Merry didn't pay a lot for that PI badge of hers. (...and suddenly I'm hearing Joe Pecci saying "They fuck you they fuck you they fuck you with the cell phones" and I realize they both got their badges from the same place)
Merry says in her internal monologue that she is about to be blunt. Then she spends the next several paragraphs describing everything except what she should actually be doing, which is getting into Maeve's House so the plot can actually exist.
"Blunt", Merry, is when you actually say the thing you're intending to say in as few words as possible.
...Oh, hey, what's Kitto doing?
He looked oddly out of place in his short-shorts, tank top, and child-size Nikes.
NO.
He’d put on black wraparound sunglasses, but aside from that he could have passed for someone’s nephew,
the kind that usually isn’t a nephew at all but a boy toy.
GOOD FUCKING GOD. WHY? WHY WOULD YOU WRITE THIS? WHY WOULD ANY HUMAN BEING COMPARE A CHARACTER THEIR MAIN CHARACTER IS FUCKING TO A VICTIM OF MOLESTATION AND TRAFFICKING? Jesus. Jesus Christ. I need to go take medication for this.
Okay. I'm better now.Merry's form of bluntness is to tell Ethan why he's being a dick--he is worried that Merry and the boys are about to replace him. Merry, I would not want to be within six feet of me with a gun becasue I would not be confident that she wouldn't have a sob attack or decide to get passive aggressive about getting a raise ("...yes I know your stalker killed your cat, but I am allergic to cats. Now give me a two thousand dollar raise so I can afford medication for my allergy to people")(Also: Not saying girls can't guard. I am saying that Merry shouldn't guard) but if I were Fae and the Queen of Crazy's royal guards were suddenly on the market? Fuck yes I'd hire them.
But Merry is quick to assure Ethan that Maeve wants to see her, and only her, and I guess it is that obvious that Merry should never preform guard duty for anything, ever, because Ethan backs right the fuck down.
Hey, how respectful of Merry's person are her boyfriends?
“I can be very nice if people give me the chance, Ethan.”
Max spoke low so that Ethan couldn’t hear him. “And how nice can you be?”
Rhys answered, voice low, “Very, very nice.”
The two of them shared one of those masculine laughs that women never seem to be able to participate in, but are always the subject of.
That's the most sexist thing I've read this year. There are layers of suck in that tiny paragraph. First of all, there's the fact that Merry's fucking bodyguards just told somebody they don't know from fuck all about how good Merry is in the sack. For all they know this dude could have a Merry Gentry shrine in his bedroom (Because remember, kids, Merry is more famous than Elvis) Second, there is how this passage doesn't demonize this at all. It's a comment on Merry's sexual prowness, not an example of what kind of men Merry surrounds herself with. It's trying to tell you how awesome she is. And thirdly, it implies that all men are like that. It takes the whole thing out of the relm of character development and shoves it into the land of gender typecasting. It's not people doing this, folks, it's men. it's not Merry being left out of the conversation re: her ladyparts. Nope. It's women. Here's the age-old divide that LKH swears she's trying to mend, and here's the shovel she's using to make the canyon just a little bit wider.
And I know that some guys do have this conversation, just as some women have it. They're assholes reguardless of gender. But even if we did have that conversation, most of us are smart enough to have it when the object of our genetalia's affection ISN'T FUCKING STANDING RIGHT IN EARSHOT.
And he's doing it in front of her competition. You know how Merry was going on about respect? This is a sign they don't respect her at all. Not that they don't obey her orders, or Rhys's freaking out over man-child goblin sex. It's the fact that Rhys is airing out her dirty laundry not just in public but in a business setting. And Merry doesn't turn around and reprimand him for it.
Gang, the basis for respect is healthy bounderies. If you establish and mantain them, people respect you. If you prove that you're willing to violate both yours and other people's? People lose respect for you. If you are willing to let your employees gab about your personal information? Eventually they're going to start taking cash out of the till. Merry has no bounderies, and neither does anyone else in this god-awful book.
And then we start playing the "We're not letting you in with your guns" part of the "LKH's Main Character meets new people" game. Jesus Christ, you'd think she'd come up with a new way to do this after twenty fucking books.
Anita solved this by talking in circles for hours. Merry solves it by shouting "Maeve Reed, Maeve Reed, come out to play!" at the top of her lungs until Maeve shows up.
I liked it better when Patrick Swayze did it:
Finally Maeve's secretary comes out and asks them to come in. Ethan insists on releaving Merry of her guns, it takes ten minutes for Maeve to threaten to fire Ethan and for Merry to step through the house's front door.
End of chapter.
