Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 54
February 11, 2013
Epic spam is EPIC
Ever since I allowed Anonymous postings and ditched the captcha, I've been getting spam.
It's no big deal. I can handle it.
What's facinating is trying to decide if this is a bot spamming me, or if it is a real human being typing random things and getting paid for spamming the crap out of my site. I'm 90% sure it's a bot, because the shit that gets posted is VERY general, and usually followed by a link to some site about gold buying or FOREX or MAKE MONEY FAST or some other garbage like that.
But the general stuff...up until today it has all been, basically "Gee I really like this site, I think you have good information, and can you tell me how you did your layout? Here's a link to my site: UTTER BULLSHIT"
Today, however, today, my dear blog readers, I got something unique. It's special. And I just have to share with the rest of you:
I've been looking at this all day, and I can't bring myself to delete it. I don't know what's better: How this is VERY obviously several kinds of content spooled into one--I think a decorating site was involved?-- the bizzare random characters where actual letters ought to be--check that W in "outwitting"--or the fact that, if you read it like it's an actual story, this is utterly fucking horrifying.
See, there's this old haunted mansion, and Facebook is involved, and somebody bought green ribbon, only a ghost interrupted and decided to exterminate the human race by stomping on people with trees until they are flexible to tie into pretty bows around random wedding chairs.
With the ribbon.
It's no big deal. I can handle it.
What's facinating is trying to decide if this is a bot spamming me, or if it is a real human being typing random things and getting paid for spamming the crap out of my site. I'm 90% sure it's a bot, because the shit that gets posted is VERY general, and usually followed by a link to some site about gold buying or FOREX or MAKE MONEY FAST or some other garbage like that.
But the general stuff...up until today it has all been, basically "Gee I really like this site, I think you have good information, and can you tell me how you did your layout? Here's a link to my site: UTTER BULLSHIT"
Today, however, today, my dear blog readers, I got something unique. It's special. And I just have to share with the rest of you:
Haѵing had hег request refused, the old mansion in the days following the murdеrs show horrοг haрpеned in thе social netwoгk. 1/4 yard of any type of green ribbon, at lеast in the room, but the tapping was comіng from a ghostly high, all the while outωitting extinсtion? Numеrоus acсidents resultіng in seriοus or fаtal injuries when his hеad slammed into а bow. The ѵoiсe of a thriving timber industry, anԁ the aveгage number of shapеѕ, sizeѕ аnԁ colorѕ οf chaiгs
I've been looking at this all day, and I can't bring myself to delete it. I don't know what's better: How this is VERY obviously several kinds of content spooled into one--I think a decorating site was involved?-- the bizzare random characters where actual letters ought to be--check that W in "outwitting"--or the fact that, if you read it like it's an actual story, this is utterly fucking horrifying.
See, there's this old haunted mansion, and Facebook is involved, and somebody bought green ribbon, only a ghost interrupted and decided to exterminate the human race by stomping on people with trees until they are flexible to tie into pretty bows around random wedding chairs.
With the ribbon.
Caress of Twilight--Chapter six
Business first: We are still on track for the fifteenth, guys and gals. Blue Ghosts is still free on Smashwords if you use the coupon TU68W. Final edits of Gray Fox are going down. It will be awesome. Am still debating on pricing. It will probably be 2.99. Three bucks. That's less than the cost of a gallon of gasoline, and some of Starbuck's coffees.
And on a more personal note...I got nothing done this weekend. Absolutely nothing. It was a working weekend, which sucks, so I usually don't do much that doesn't involve waiting on tables or making fancy french doughnuts for people with more money than I'll ever see in my lifetime. But I got de nada done this weekend because we did a Mardi-Gras style faire in one of our neighbor-towns, and I had way, way, WAY more fun than I should have, given that it's a small-town's fake Mardi-Gras and I had to work that evening so, while the beer truely was flowing freely, I couldn't drink any of it. There was a knife-sharpening guy who set up shop just outside the gates, and he had the kind of goodies that make parents and guardian angels cringe in terror. I blew way more cash than I should have on a knife-throwing set. Mostly because I can show it to my brother and then say "Don't touch, they're mine" to make up for how he broke most of our steak knives throwing them at trees.
I'm also going to learn how to use them. Because ditto. Yes. I am that kind of evil.
...Do I have to review the book now? Do I? No, it's not because there's sex. It's just...fine. FINE! Let's do this already.
If there is one thing that annoys the living fuck out of me with this book, it is the chapter jumps. I do not mind jumping between, say, Merry's office and her bedroom. What bugs me is jumping from Merry's office in the middle of an unresolved emotional crisis into a van several miles away, with all the loose ends neatly tucked away. I'm sorry. I can't say I'd have liked to actually watch Merry put herself back together, given that her hystreonics are less legit and more "The boys are fighting and I must escilate this situation by sobbing wildly until they stop." This is the kind of shit a relative pulled on me all the fucking time, so I have VERY little respect for that "I can scream louder than you" emotional manipulation shit.
But given that we're jumping from forced make-outs with phobias to "We're taking the hobbits to Isenguard! driving the Sidhe to Maeve Reed!" without one fucking word of a bridge, and this is the third chapter or so to pull this shit, I'm getting whiplash.
Another thing about Merry--and sometimes, Anita Blake, which really means this is an issue with LKH herself--is her frequent retreats into sarcastic nursery-words.
I like oversimplification. One of my favorite passages in That Hideous Strength is where a character "wanted to be with nice people, away from nasty people." So when I read this passage:
I ought to like it. But I don't. I actually feel like gagging every time I read it. See, what I like about the THS passage is how the oversimplification develops that character's mindset. Jane, the character in question, is either psychic or experiancing a nervous breakdown (She's psychic), and has been told by one group that both they and this other collection of people want to use her visions to their own end. The one group is rather nice, and kind, but rather off-putting because they're going at her directly, whereas the other guys (The NICE) are trying to recruit her by going through her husband first. So up until that point in the story, she could be going crazy, she knows the NICE are offering her husband a very cushy job, she knows this group of good-but-offputting people want to use her for things she doesn't understand, and so she is staying PUT, thank you very much...
...and then she sees a guy from one of her visions, a guy who has done nasty things in her visions and who should, if there were any good in the universe, be just a figment of her imagination, walk out of a shop and get into an NICE car. She realizes that everything the good guys has been telling her is real, and while she doesn't know who is good or bad, she knows that she wants nothing to do with the guy who just got into the car. "nice people/nasty people" is Lewis's way of portraying the kind of breakdown in reality that leaves you reduced to basic inner qualities, a kind of light/dark distinction that has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with wanting to feel safe right now, and it works beautifully.
This? This is Merry Gentry saying "You press shitheads won't let us use the van that doesn't make us look like inner city gangster, so fuck you," using sarcastic baby-talk.
This is not endearing or clever. It's about as passive aggressive as having hystreonics because your boyfriends are fighting. So basically, it's totally in character for Merry.
But it is worth noting: the van? is tailor made for PI work. And if they had thought to plaster "Gonzoles Family Lawn Care" magnetic signs on the side, and drag a half-empty trailer of lawn mowers and weed-eaters, nobody would notice the shitty van, no matter where they went. The invisibility of service workers+the innate racism of wealthy people=the Best. Disguise. Ever.
But nope. Merry is complaining in passive aggressive tones that the van is a rust-eaten monster.
Kitto is hiding under her legs. Literally. Because that's not dehumanizing at all.
And then we introduce Frost.
I like Frost because he's my type. I have a lot of issues with him, though. He's tall, he's imposing, he was Queen Crazypants's other go-to killer, he's handsome, yadda yadda yadda, let's skip straight to the problem.
His hair. Oh, Jesus Christ. His hair.
Guys? I went through the Mary Sue phase same as everybody else. I had rainbow-eyed girls who shape shifted into perfect glass immortal "elves". One of these was a Sailor Moon clone, because I had that phase too. So I have a certain level of sympathy. But guys? Frost has Christmas tinsel hair.
That is not me saying that. That's the description in the text.
Only it's not coarse, though it looks like it ought to be. It's dreamy soft and it flows down to his fucking ankles. And is completely tangle free.
Yeah. Of course it does.
So did your parents save Christmas tinsel? Because mine did. We never used it two years in a row, though, because while it comes soft and flowy and smooth and shiny in the box you bought from Walgreens/Home Depo/Wal-Mart, by the time Year Two rolls around you have a great big gray hairball in a grocery bag, no matter how hard you tried to preserve the stuff. (Also: NEVER HAVE TINSEL AND CATS IN THE SAME HOUSE EVER IT IS NOT GOOD FOR THEM. My pets have always been very lucky but I stopped draping everything with shiny gut-cutters a long time ago) So I cannot buy this description of Frost's shiny silver hair, because I'm not seeing long flowy beauty. I'm seeing that rolled up ball of shiny tangle which is not pretty at all.
And I like how LKH has put rough-feeling with coarse and smooth and shiny with soft. For the record, human hair of every type is terribly coarse as a fiber. People talk about spinning things from human hair and wearing it, my first thought is not "OH GOD THAT IS SO GROSS". It is "FUCK that must itch."
Tangleless hair that flows down to the ankles. The hours of brushing, kids. The shampoo and conditioner bills. The ungodly split ends.
We're not even in Maeve's house yet. Fuck.
Merry calls Frost's hair "Silken grace".
Frost has apparently been telling Merry things about Maeve Reed that Merry is not listening to because describing the fucking van she is driving in is more important. So LKH has her repeat what Frost was saying because exposition instead of actual observations on Merry's part is more interesting.
Oh, hey, we haven't addressed Frost's eye color yet:
Well, thank fucking GOD. If I had to read one more fucking block paragraph about the speshul color of someone else's eyes I think I'd--
Has LKH not read any good books? How about Mary Sue Litmus tests? How about her own fucking writing? How in the name of God can you write a line like "soft gray like the breast of a dove" (and my own inner editor rewrote that line as "gray as a dove's breast" twice. It's like I have this psychological block against repeating someone else's overwriting) and not explode from the sheer hiliarity of it all?
Anyhoo, the info dump we're avoiding for the sake of eye sex is, Maeve Reed has employed psychic bodyguards and has warded her own property so tightly that Nightcrawler couldn't teleport his blue ass inside. This means she thinks she'll be killed, and given that she's been exiled from the land of Sparkly Psychopaths for over forty years and King Taranis still beat Merry into a bloody pulp for asking why, Maeve is probably right.
Meanwhile, Merry realizes she is in love with Frost. And is dwelling on it.
In fact, Merry is dwelling on how she'll have to give herself body and soul to whomever gets her pregnant, and feelings will not enter into it.
EMPOWERING FEMALE CHARACTER. MUST ENTER INTO MONOGAMOUS RELATIONSHIP WITH EMPREGNATING PENIS. HAS NO CHOICE IN THIS. THE LOGIC, IT DOES NOT EXIST.
And again: when your species is having a fertility crisis, monogamy is not how you fix it.
Merry goes off on how she has to get pregnant. It's the only way to save her lovers from being murdered by her crazy-ass sadist cousin if he should be the first to get pregnant.
...and that brings me to a Question: How would anybody know for sure that it'd be Cel's kid? Merry's kid, it's kind of obvious, but I know a major plot point in future books is Taranis, he of the Light version of insanity, tries to claim that he is the father of her eventual pregnancy, rather than the five or six men who actually are the fathers (two babies. Five/six fathers. This happens) and the only way to prove that the guard managed to get more than one sperm into more than one egg, in this world of overnight paternity tests and episodes of Maury, is to summon the presence of an actual goddess to prove that Merry's kids are fathered by 90% of her current guard. So if it's that confuzzled, what's stopping Cel from throwing his harem at the penis of a proven fertile man? He could claim the kid was his long enough to get rid of Merry and Co, and after that who gives a fuck how the kid got here, he's the only contender for the throne.
Have I mentioned that this series ties biology down and does unspeakable things to it without lube?
They start discussing why Maeve was exiled. Which would be interesting if Frost and Merry gazing into each other's Sparkledog eyes weren't taking up more space than the actual plot (NOTE: If you do not know what a sparkledog is DO NOT GOOGLE IT. Just imagine what would happen if a Lisa Frank sticker kit had sex with a poodle)
Eventually they decide to ring the doorbell...and that's when the chapter ends.
And on a more personal note...I got nothing done this weekend. Absolutely nothing. It was a working weekend, which sucks, so I usually don't do much that doesn't involve waiting on tables or making fancy french doughnuts for people with more money than I'll ever see in my lifetime. But I got de nada done this weekend because we did a Mardi-Gras style faire in one of our neighbor-towns, and I had way, way, WAY more fun than I should have, given that it's a small-town's fake Mardi-Gras and I had to work that evening so, while the beer truely was flowing freely, I couldn't drink any of it. There was a knife-sharpening guy who set up shop just outside the gates, and he had the kind of goodies that make parents and guardian angels cringe in terror. I blew way more cash than I should have on a knife-throwing set. Mostly because I can show it to my brother and then say "Don't touch, they're mine" to make up for how he broke most of our steak knives throwing them at trees.
I'm also going to learn how to use them. Because ditto. Yes. I am that kind of evil.
...Do I have to review the book now? Do I? No, it's not because there's sex. It's just...fine. FINE! Let's do this already.
If there is one thing that annoys the living fuck out of me with this book, it is the chapter jumps. I do not mind jumping between, say, Merry's office and her bedroom. What bugs me is jumping from Merry's office in the middle of an unresolved emotional crisis into a van several miles away, with all the loose ends neatly tucked away. I'm sorry. I can't say I'd have liked to actually watch Merry put herself back together, given that her hystreonics are less legit and more "The boys are fighting and I must escilate this situation by sobbing wildly until they stop." This is the kind of shit a relative pulled on me all the fucking time, so I have VERY little respect for that "I can scream louder than you" emotional manipulation shit.
But given that we're jumping from forced make-outs with phobias to "We're taking the hobbits to Isenguard! driving the Sidhe to Maeve Reed!" without one fucking word of a bridge, and this is the third chapter or so to pull this shit, I'm getting whiplash.
Another thing about Merry--and sometimes, Anita Blake, which really means this is an issue with LKH herself--is her frequent retreats into sarcastic nursery-words.
I like oversimplification. One of my favorite passages in That Hideous Strength is where a character "wanted to be with nice people, away from nasty people." So when I read this passage:
There were ways around the media that didn’t need magic— for instance, a white van with rust spots that sat unused in the parking garage most of the time. The Grey Detective Agency used it for surveillance when the usual van would stand out too much. If it was a nice neighborhood, we used the nice van. If it was a bad neighborhood, we used this van. The media had started following the nice van every time it went out, on the theory that it could be hiding the princess and her entourage. That left us with the old van, even though it stood out like a sore thumb in Holmby Hills.
I ought to like it. But I don't. I actually feel like gagging every time I read it. See, what I like about the THS passage is how the oversimplification develops that character's mindset. Jane, the character in question, is either psychic or experiancing a nervous breakdown (She's psychic), and has been told by one group that both they and this other collection of people want to use her visions to their own end. The one group is rather nice, and kind, but rather off-putting because they're going at her directly, whereas the other guys (The NICE) are trying to recruit her by going through her husband first. So up until that point in the story, she could be going crazy, she knows the NICE are offering her husband a very cushy job, she knows this group of good-but-offputting people want to use her for things she doesn't understand, and so she is staying PUT, thank you very much...
...and then she sees a guy from one of her visions, a guy who has done nasty things in her visions and who should, if there were any good in the universe, be just a figment of her imagination, walk out of a shop and get into an NICE car. She realizes that everything the good guys has been telling her is real, and while she doesn't know who is good or bad, she knows that she wants nothing to do with the guy who just got into the car. "nice people/nasty people" is Lewis's way of portraying the kind of breakdown in reality that leaves you reduced to basic inner qualities, a kind of light/dark distinction that has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with wanting to feel safe right now, and it works beautifully.
This? This is Merry Gentry saying "You press shitheads won't let us use the van that doesn't make us look like inner city gangster, so fuck you," using sarcastic baby-talk.
This is not endearing or clever. It's about as passive aggressive as having hystreonics because your boyfriends are fighting. So basically, it's totally in character for Merry.
But it is worth noting: the van? is tailor made for PI work. And if they had thought to plaster "Gonzoles Family Lawn Care" magnetic signs on the side, and drag a half-empty trailer of lawn mowers and weed-eaters, nobody would notice the shitty van, no matter where they went. The invisibility of service workers+the innate racism of wealthy people=the Best. Disguise. Ever.
But nope. Merry is complaining in passive aggressive tones that the van is a rust-eaten monster.
Kitto is hiding under her legs. Literally. Because that's not dehumanizing at all.
And then we introduce Frost.
I like Frost because he's my type. I have a lot of issues with him, though. He's tall, he's imposing, he was Queen Crazypants's other go-to killer, he's handsome, yadda yadda yadda, let's skip straight to the problem.
His hair. Oh, Jesus Christ. His hair.
Guys? I went through the Mary Sue phase same as everybody else. I had rainbow-eyed girls who shape shifted into perfect glass immortal "elves". One of these was a Sailor Moon clone, because I had that phase too. So I have a certain level of sympathy. But guys? Frost has Christmas tinsel hair.
That is not me saying that. That's the description in the text.
Only it's not coarse, though it looks like it ought to be. It's dreamy soft and it flows down to his fucking ankles. And is completely tangle free.
Yeah. Of course it does.
So did your parents save Christmas tinsel? Because mine did. We never used it two years in a row, though, because while it comes soft and flowy and smooth and shiny in the box you bought from Walgreens/Home Depo/Wal-Mart, by the time Year Two rolls around you have a great big gray hairball in a grocery bag, no matter how hard you tried to preserve the stuff. (Also: NEVER HAVE TINSEL AND CATS IN THE SAME HOUSE EVER IT IS NOT GOOD FOR THEM. My pets have always been very lucky but I stopped draping everything with shiny gut-cutters a long time ago) So I cannot buy this description of Frost's shiny silver hair, because I'm not seeing long flowy beauty. I'm seeing that rolled up ball of shiny tangle which is not pretty at all.
And I like how LKH has put rough-feeling with coarse and smooth and shiny with soft. For the record, human hair of every type is terribly coarse as a fiber. People talk about spinning things from human hair and wearing it, my first thought is not "OH GOD THAT IS SO GROSS". It is "FUCK that must itch."
Tangleless hair that flows down to the ankles. The hours of brushing, kids. The shampoo and conditioner bills. The ungodly split ends.
We're not even in Maeve's house yet. Fuck.
Merry calls Frost's hair "Silken grace".
Frost has apparently been telling Merry things about Maeve Reed that Merry is not listening to because describing the fucking van she is driving in is more important. So LKH has her repeat what Frost was saying because exposition instead of actual observations on Merry's part is more interesting.
Oh, hey, we haven't addressed Frost's eye color yet:
They were just grey, not tricolored like mine or Rhys’s,
Well, thank fucking GOD. If I had to read one more fucking block paragraph about the speshul color of someone else's eyes I think I'd--
but, of course, they weren’t just grey. They were the color of clouds on a rainy day, and like clouds the colors changed and swirled not with the wind but with his moods. They were a soft grey like the breast of a dove as he lowered his head to kiss me.
Has LKH not read any good books? How about Mary Sue Litmus tests? How about her own fucking writing? How in the name of God can you write a line like "soft gray like the breast of a dove" (and my own inner editor rewrote that line as "gray as a dove's breast" twice. It's like I have this psychological block against repeating someone else's overwriting) and not explode from the sheer hiliarity of it all?
Anyhoo, the info dump we're avoiding for the sake of eye sex is, Maeve Reed has employed psychic bodyguards and has warded her own property so tightly that Nightcrawler couldn't teleport his blue ass inside. This means she thinks she'll be killed, and given that she's been exiled from the land of Sparkly Psychopaths for over forty years and King Taranis still beat Merry into a bloody pulp for asking why, Maeve is probably right.
Meanwhile, Merry realizes she is in love with Frost. And is dwelling on it.
In fact, Merry is dwelling on how she'll have to give herself body and soul to whomever gets her pregnant, and feelings will not enter into it.EMPOWERING FEMALE CHARACTER. MUST ENTER INTO MONOGAMOUS RELATIONSHIP WITH EMPREGNATING PENIS. HAS NO CHOICE IN THIS. THE LOGIC, IT DOES NOT EXIST.
And again: when your species is having a fertility crisis, monogamy is not how you fix it.
Merry goes off on how she has to get pregnant. It's the only way to save her lovers from being murdered by her crazy-ass sadist cousin if he should be the first to get pregnant.
...and that brings me to a Question: How would anybody know for sure that it'd be Cel's kid? Merry's kid, it's kind of obvious, but I know a major plot point in future books is Taranis, he of the Light version of insanity, tries to claim that he is the father of her eventual pregnancy, rather than the five or six men who actually are the fathers (two babies. Five/six fathers. This happens) and the only way to prove that the guard managed to get more than one sperm into more than one egg, in this world of overnight paternity tests and episodes of Maury, is to summon the presence of an actual goddess to prove that Merry's kids are fathered by 90% of her current guard. So if it's that confuzzled, what's stopping Cel from throwing his harem at the penis of a proven fertile man? He could claim the kid was his long enough to get rid of Merry and Co, and after that who gives a fuck how the kid got here, he's the only contender for the throne.
Have I mentioned that this series ties biology down and does unspeakable things to it without lube?
They start discussing why Maeve was exiled. Which would be interesting if Frost and Merry gazing into each other's Sparkledog eyes weren't taking up more space than the actual plot (NOTE: If you do not know what a sparkledog is DO NOT GOOGLE IT. Just imagine what would happen if a Lisa Frank sticker kit had sex with a poodle)
Eventually they decide to ring the doorbell...and that's when the chapter ends.
February 8, 2013
Caress of Twilight--Chapter 5
So the only sensible thing Merry does is take Rhys's gun away. He uses his coat to cover the desk. Merry persists in not understanding that Rhys was freaking traumatized by goblins and rambles on about this being Rhys's second chance. She calls this an irrational phobia with a basis in reality and decides that Rhys has to do it for his own good, and if she backs down she'll look weak.
And then the first unforgivable thing of this book happens. Merry negotiates with Kitto for what they do next, and Kitto decides on foreplay. This is not the unforgivable thing. The unforgivable thing is that Merry then goes out of her way to point out that Rhys could have negotiated too.
Yes. Let's point out to a fucking rape victim that he could have barganed his way out of rape, or at least out of losing an eye.
Ah, but it's HIS fault because he was too bigoted to learn about another culture. If he'd been more educated the goblins would not have disfigured him. RIGHT. Because rapists always listen when you tell them not to do things.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Male rape exists. And victim blaming in a rape is no more attractive when the victim is male than when they are female.
And then Merry kisses him and tells him he's still pretty, and this makes everything okay. Because it's not the rape and torture that is the problem. It's the fact that Rhys is missing an eye. And when she kisses him Kitto's arm is trapped between them, but it's alright because Rhys doesn't actively scream.
She kisses all his scars. He flinches and panics and almost starts crying, but she keeps going because this is good for him.
And then, in the middle of the makeout session, Rhys realizes that Kitto is still, like, right there, and he panics again, and then he's all like "Well, get this shit finished" and Kitto is all like "Nope, I'm good." There's ramble about how Kitto doesn't want Merry to lose her guard, and Kitto goes on about how weak he is and how great Rhys is for being in the running to be the King one day, and how he is, yep, a natural born victem. Merry thinks about how awful it is to be born weak, and the chapter ends.
And then the first unforgivable thing of this book happens. Merry negotiates with Kitto for what they do next, and Kitto decides on foreplay. This is not the unforgivable thing. The unforgivable thing is that Merry then goes out of her way to point out that Rhys could have negotiated too.
Yes. Let's point out to a fucking rape victim that he could have barganed his way out of rape, or at least out of losing an eye.
Ah, but it's HIS fault because he was too bigoted to learn about another culture. If he'd been more educated the goblins would not have disfigured him. RIGHT. Because rapists always listen when you tell them not to do things.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Male rape exists. And victim blaming in a rape is no more attractive when the victim is male than when they are female.
And then Merry kisses him and tells him he's still pretty, and this makes everything okay. Because it's not the rape and torture that is the problem. It's the fact that Rhys is missing an eye. And when she kisses him Kitto's arm is trapped between them, but it's alright because Rhys doesn't actively scream.
She kisses all his scars. He flinches and panics and almost starts crying, but she keeps going because this is good for him.
And then, in the middle of the makeout session, Rhys realizes that Kitto is still, like, right there, and he panics again, and then he's all like "Well, get this shit finished" and Kitto is all like "Nope, I'm good." There's ramble about how Kitto doesn't want Merry to lose her guard, and Kitto goes on about how weak he is and how great Rhys is for being in the running to be the King one day, and how he is, yep, a natural born victem. Merry thinks about how awful it is to be born weak, and the chapter ends.
What the shit? BAD JERRY. BAD.
MOST of you probably know I have big issues with the Left Behind series.
Mostly because Jerry B. Jenkins, the dude who did most of the writing, managed to write the worst Christian series in the history of Christian things. And I don't mean bad writing, though that's there. I mean he wrote Christian characters that make Anita Blake look like fucking Ghandi in terms of humanitarianism. Also: HOW DO YOU FUCK UP THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST? Because they did. Oh GOD did they ever.
And then they wrote a sequel that was about Celestial Kingdom Day Care. NOT KIDDING. It was horrible.
So what set me off, and has me writing two long rambly posts in the space of thirty minutes instead of doing book reviews like I ought to? This:
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2013/02/christian-writers-guild-publishing-pay.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AtLastWriterBewareBlogsAcCrispinAndVictoriaStraussRevealAll+%28Writer+Beware+Blogs!%29
First of all, if you are a writer and you do not subscribe to Writer Beware you need to go fix that right away. Second, if you do not go read that article (AND YOU SHOULD) let me point out two salient facts:
one: the carrot on the end of this shit-stick is the promise that you are going to be taught/mentored by a real published author.
Kids, I count as published.
Two: They do not provide anything that you cannot get for cheap elsewhere. If you want mentoring by real published authors, go to the Absolute Write Water Cooler, hang around until you get access to the Share Your Work forum (It takes about ten posts IIRC) and you'll get help from people like John Macdonald and Stacia Kane. For free. Editing from package deals is notorious for sucking, because these guys make their money by quantity, not quality. And they do not provide the two most important things to any writer, ever, Marketing and Distribution.
Three: YOU ARE PAYING TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR THIS.
Folks, I've held off on going on a self publishing rant for a while, but seeing a so-called Champion (Gag me) of my faith pull this shit? Yeah. We're done.
Don't sign with this thing.
Don't sign with Author Solutions, iUniverse, Xlibris, Harlequin's romance Self pub arm, or about ten other companies because they are ALL Author Solutions IRL, and Author Solutions sucks.
Don't sign any contract that asks you for a year's commitment to the company if you are paying them money for the privilege of seeing your book in print. IT WILL NOT BE WORTH IT.
Don't sign for a "package" that contains editing and a book cover and mentions lots of swag and press announcements but doesn't say anything about distribution. IT WILL NOT BE WORTH IT.
And if you DO want to self publish your books:
-Try to get professionally AKA "Trade" published first. It will teach you how to polish your work if nothing else
-Go to Deviantart.com. Find somebody whose work you like whose commission prices you can afford. Commission them to do your cover. It'll be better than what a package offers AND their fans might read your book just because
-Either edit using beta readers or hire somebody who has edited books THAT HAVE SOLD WELL. Contact authors they edited for and find out how many of their edits actually got used.
-Use KDP to get your ebooks on Amazon.com. It's free.
-Use Pubit to get your books on Barnes and Noble.com. It's also free
-Use Smashwords to get everywhere else. It's also free and you don't have to screw around with Apple/itunes
-Find or hire a typesetter to do the PDF for your print book, if you go that route.
-Look at Createspace.com and Lulu.com and decide which one you like better. Print through that one.
-Investigate Lighteningsource as a possible printer/distributor as well, as they DO have access to the brick-and-morter stores. Real bookstores probably won't carry your books, but Lightening Source, FAIK, also does hardback books.
You can probably do all this on a budget of 1500$ or less. MUCH less if you can do any of it yourself. AND THAT IS ALL MUCH MUCH MUCH LESS THAN TEN FUCKING THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS.
I tried to maintain respect for JBJ because he's an elder and a member of my faith and he's sold more books than I ever will, but I don't remember Christ saying "Do unto others, but bleed them dry first, because hey, there's a lot of money in this self-publishing thing". This is a cash grab, and possibly THE most overpriced cash grab I have seen JBJ do, and that INCLUDES the Celestial Day Care...thing.
Fuck you, Jerry. Fuck you.
Mostly because Jerry B. Jenkins, the dude who did most of the writing, managed to write the worst Christian series in the history of Christian things. And I don't mean bad writing, though that's there. I mean he wrote Christian characters that make Anita Blake look like fucking Ghandi in terms of humanitarianism. Also: HOW DO YOU FUCK UP THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST? Because they did. Oh GOD did they ever.
And then they wrote a sequel that was about Celestial Kingdom Day Care. NOT KIDDING. It was horrible.
So what set me off, and has me writing two long rambly posts in the space of thirty minutes instead of doing book reviews like I ought to? This:
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2013/02/christian-writers-guild-publishing-pay.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AtLastWriterBewareBlogsAcCrispinAndVictoriaStraussRevealAll+%28Writer+Beware+Blogs!%29
First of all, if you are a writer and you do not subscribe to Writer Beware you need to go fix that right away. Second, if you do not go read that article (AND YOU SHOULD) let me point out two salient facts:
one: the carrot on the end of this shit-stick is the promise that you are going to be taught/mentored by a real published author.
Kids, I count as published.
Two: They do not provide anything that you cannot get for cheap elsewhere. If you want mentoring by real published authors, go to the Absolute Write Water Cooler, hang around until you get access to the Share Your Work forum (It takes about ten posts IIRC) and you'll get help from people like John Macdonald and Stacia Kane. For free. Editing from package deals is notorious for sucking, because these guys make their money by quantity, not quality. And they do not provide the two most important things to any writer, ever, Marketing and Distribution.
Three: YOU ARE PAYING TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR THIS.
Folks, I've held off on going on a self publishing rant for a while, but seeing a so-called Champion (Gag me) of my faith pull this shit? Yeah. We're done.
Don't sign with this thing.
Don't sign with Author Solutions, iUniverse, Xlibris, Harlequin's romance Self pub arm, or about ten other companies because they are ALL Author Solutions IRL, and Author Solutions sucks.
Don't sign any contract that asks you for a year's commitment to the company if you are paying them money for the privilege of seeing your book in print. IT WILL NOT BE WORTH IT.
Don't sign for a "package" that contains editing and a book cover and mentions lots of swag and press announcements but doesn't say anything about distribution. IT WILL NOT BE WORTH IT.
And if you DO want to self publish your books:
-Try to get professionally AKA "Trade" published first. It will teach you how to polish your work if nothing else
-Go to Deviantart.com. Find somebody whose work you like whose commission prices you can afford. Commission them to do your cover. It'll be better than what a package offers AND their fans might read your book just because
-Either edit using beta readers or hire somebody who has edited books THAT HAVE SOLD WELL. Contact authors they edited for and find out how many of their edits actually got used.
-Use KDP to get your ebooks on Amazon.com. It's free.
-Use Pubit to get your books on Barnes and Noble.com. It's also free
-Use Smashwords to get everywhere else. It's also free and you don't have to screw around with Apple/itunes
-Find or hire a typesetter to do the PDF for your print book, if you go that route.
-Look at Createspace.com and Lulu.com and decide which one you like better. Print through that one.
-Investigate Lighteningsource as a possible printer/distributor as well, as they DO have access to the brick-and-morter stores. Real bookstores probably won't carry your books, but Lightening Source, FAIK, also does hardback books.
You can probably do all this on a budget of 1500$ or less. MUCH less if you can do any of it yourself. AND THAT IS ALL MUCH MUCH MUCH LESS THAN TEN FUCKING THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS.
I tried to maintain respect for JBJ because he's an elder and a member of my faith and he's sold more books than I ever will, but I don't remember Christ saying "Do unto others, but bleed them dry first, because hey, there's a lot of money in this self-publishing thing". This is a cash grab, and possibly THE most overpriced cash grab I have seen JBJ do, and that INCLUDES the Celestial Day Care...thing.
Fuck you, Jerry. Fuck you.
State of the CW
No Host today. I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row. Incidentally, I have discovered that JUST LIKE WHEN I PUBLISHED TFT, I've managed to schedule a release for the BUSIEST FUCKING NIGHT OF THE MONTH.
Valentine's day is the 14th. Release date for Gray Fox is the fifteenth. I SUCK at schedules.
That said...so far, everything is on track.
Also, I'm releasing a new short into the wild tomorrow. It's a nasty-good little horror piece in the same universe and vein as Taker. And by "tomorrow" I mean I've uploaded it already and it should be live sometime before midnight. Tomorrow, however (IF everything goes right) will be the day it is free for all uh...well, I was going to say "takers" but given the context of the story that'd be kind of creepy.
The cover art is a slightly modified version of a very old picture I did. If you've been with me since 07 you might recognize the piece.
In other, more selfish news: I GOT GIMP TO WORK RIGHT!!!
Okay, so about two years ago my old computer, the one with Photoshop on it, died a horrible fucking death. I was able to get all of my old stuff off of it, including music and old pictures, but my version of Photoshop went down with the ship.
Photoshop=oxygen. And I have been coasting ever since, first on temporary trial copies of Photoshop, and then on a very mangled partnership between Gimp and Photoshop Elements.
Surprisingly this partnership has worked very well. Gimp does a few things differently than PS, and I actually prefer most of its versions of the actions over Photoshop's. The two things it couldn't do well (dodge/burn and the Liquify filter, AKA the I-fucked-up-this-face-how-do-I-fix-it filter) Elements does perfectly. But I hated every minute of this because I could not make GIMP custom brushes paint in any color other than black, and Photoshop elements didn't SEEM to have all the fun brush settings that the real thing has. I was stuck. Trapped.
Until three days ago. When I figured out how to do that.
Apparently you have to flatten the brush image in GIMP using the very fucking specific control hidden under two different menus, otherwise your brush is just plain fucked. As for Photoshop, the angle/roundness settings, the opacity settings, and everything else I was just dying for, those were all hidden under another set of menus, and in the case of the angle/roundness setting, which I REALLY wanted, there was no indication that the little brush icon was hiding a drop down menu. None whatsoever.
BUT! THE GOOD NEWS! KIDS! IT WORKS! IT WORKS! AND NOW I DO NOT HAVE TO SPEND SIX HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS to get the real program again! It is a small stupid thing but I am PROUD of myself, loyal blog-readers. I am so. fucking. proud. I can paint leaves again! Using methods that work! And I can do screwball things with abstract brushes that are oh, so very much fun.
Other than that...well, you should probably know my personal challenge goal was to sell 50 copies of anything this month and thus break 200 books sold. Yes, I broke 150 last month--I believe we ended January with 155 copies of everything sold (Starbleached, naturally, sat in the seventies) Right now we are sitting at 160. That's 40 copies to go.
So if there is a book of mine? And you think you maybe sort of kind of might maybe want to read it? Please go buy a copy. (Unless you are waiting on an e-pub. Everything currently on Amazon, and I do mean everything, is going on Barnes and Noble in March. Except for Blue Ghosts because it is already there) Breaking the 200 mark in this short and dysmal month would be like, the best birthday present ever.
(...my b-day is the 27th. Which is also how old I'll be. I'm almost a dino, folks.)
Now I have to go bite the bullet and go to work on a friday. I hate weekends. There's no me time anymore.
Valentine's day is the 14th. Release date for Gray Fox is the fifteenth. I SUCK at schedules.
That said...so far, everything is on track.
Also, I'm releasing a new short into the wild tomorrow. It's a nasty-good little horror piece in the same universe and vein as Taker. And by "tomorrow" I mean I've uploaded it already and it should be live sometime before midnight. Tomorrow, however (IF everything goes right) will be the day it is free for all uh...well, I was going to say "takers" but given the context of the story that'd be kind of creepy.
The cover art is a slightly modified version of a very old picture I did. If you've been with me since 07 you might recognize the piece.In other, more selfish news: I GOT GIMP TO WORK RIGHT!!!
Okay, so about two years ago my old computer, the one with Photoshop on it, died a horrible fucking death. I was able to get all of my old stuff off of it, including music and old pictures, but my version of Photoshop went down with the ship.
Photoshop=oxygen. And I have been coasting ever since, first on temporary trial copies of Photoshop, and then on a very mangled partnership between Gimp and Photoshop Elements.
Surprisingly this partnership has worked very well. Gimp does a few things differently than PS, and I actually prefer most of its versions of the actions over Photoshop's. The two things it couldn't do well (dodge/burn and the Liquify filter, AKA the I-fucked-up-this-face-how-do-I-fix-it filter) Elements does perfectly. But I hated every minute of this because I could not make GIMP custom brushes paint in any color other than black, and Photoshop elements didn't SEEM to have all the fun brush settings that the real thing has. I was stuck. Trapped.
Until three days ago. When I figured out how to do that.
Apparently you have to flatten the brush image in GIMP using the very fucking specific control hidden under two different menus, otherwise your brush is just plain fucked. As for Photoshop, the angle/roundness settings, the opacity settings, and everything else I was just dying for, those were all hidden under another set of menus, and in the case of the angle/roundness setting, which I REALLY wanted, there was no indication that the little brush icon was hiding a drop down menu. None whatsoever.
BUT! THE GOOD NEWS! KIDS! IT WORKS! IT WORKS! AND NOW I DO NOT HAVE TO SPEND SIX HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS to get the real program again! It is a small stupid thing but I am PROUD of myself, loyal blog-readers. I am so. fucking. proud. I can paint leaves again! Using methods that work! And I can do screwball things with abstract brushes that are oh, so very much fun.
Other than that...well, you should probably know my personal challenge goal was to sell 50 copies of anything this month and thus break 200 books sold. Yes, I broke 150 last month--I believe we ended January with 155 copies of everything sold (Starbleached, naturally, sat in the seventies) Right now we are sitting at 160. That's 40 copies to go.
So if there is a book of mine? And you think you maybe sort of kind of might maybe want to read it? Please go buy a copy. (Unless you are waiting on an e-pub. Everything currently on Amazon, and I do mean everything, is going on Barnes and Noble in March. Except for Blue Ghosts because it is already there) Breaking the 200 mark in this short and dysmal month would be like, the best birthday present ever.
(...my b-day is the 27th. Which is also how old I'll be. I'm almost a dino, folks.)
Now I have to go bite the bullet and go to work on a friday. I hate weekends. There's no me time anymore.
February 7, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 4
So having firmly established Merry as trigger happy, a poor leader and a crybaby, LKH elects to open this chapter with Merry curled up in a chair with mint tea and her boss.
Yeah, Merry basically has Anita's job sans Zombies. I do not know who Jeremy Gray is other than Fae and her boss. He's ugly and he dresses in gray, and that's it.
You know what made Anita awesome for nine books? It wasn't the guns. It wasn't the steakings and beheadings and bloodbaths and zombies and magic and all that jazz.
No. It was the penguins. Anita Blake went through fucking hell for nine books, and she still collected stuffed penguins. Richard was awesome NOT because he was the baddest werewolf in the pack, which he was. It was because he was the baddest werewolf in the pack and he still taught highschool...um, science, wasn't it? What made the books so good were these little time out moments when we realized that oh, hey, Edward, the biggest sociopath in the series, has an entire family that he loves. Seriously, that was the last awesome moment in the series, watching EDWARD play with his kids. These little moments of cutesy gave us this hope in the bleak, black darkness that hey, everything can still be alright because we have stuffed penguins. Some day the world will end, my friends. Someday we will all be wandering around in gas masks and the things that give us hope will not be the great victories and moments of awesome redemption. No, it'll be the dandelions growing where roses used to be, and the occasional warm bottle of coke.
There's a few flickers of it in Merry--like where they all decide to go see a movie--but it's very rare. Jeremy Gray is so inhuman he needs to build model trains out of toothpicks and bottle caps to make up for it. And he doesn't.
Yeah, we're not even two sentences into this chapter and I've gone off the deep end.
Merry is drinking tea and petting Kitto. Somebody else pointed out that Kitto is a very problematic character, kind of like that seventeen year old kid Anita ropes into the harem in later books, and like Nathanial in Narcissus. The difference between Cynric and Nathanial, though, is that where all three characters are described as child-like, Kitto is the only one described as child-sized. As in a twelve year old.
And she is keeping him under her desk and petting him like a cat.
There is something severely disturbing about how both Anita Blake and Merry Gentry reach for the most child-like person in their many lovers every time they need comfort. It's like the men are all too fucking scary, so lets go grab the kid and snuggle them for a few hours.
I am not going to touch this with a ten foot pole. I do not even want to come close to understanding this psychologically. I just want to sit here and hope it goes away.
Oh, but we do find one special thing out about Jeremy Gray's species. A big nose to them is like big feet. Apparently this is LKH's way of indicating that this character has a big dong. Because humanizing a character definately needs to take a back seat to penis jokes.
(In a side note, I just re-read John Dies At The End for the seventeenth time or so. It is amazing how a book can simultaneously be the most terrifying thing ever and also be one big long running dick joke. If you have not read it yet, you do not understand life and you need to go fix the problem right now. If nothing else it will make you giggle every time you see, write or say the word "penis". This door cannot be opened.)
...see, this is my brain trying to protect me from the utter suck. It's not as trash-tastic as Narcissus, it's just boring. I think I skimmed this real fast to get on to the "plot", so to speak, because I seem to remember being halfway to Maeve Reed's house by now.
Jeremy is in the uncomfortable position of having to be impolite, because it is an insult among the Fey to notice that somebody is having hysterics. Convienent that three pages of description-via-dialogue can be politeness, and unnecessary conflict can be caused by "are you alright?" being a deathly insult. Jeremy finally takes the bull by the horns and asks for a status update as her boss. She answers, and somehow the entire conversation manages to make her look like an idiot. She had to do it to make the men obey her. Guys, there has GOT to be a better way to lead than by holding a knife to someone else's throat. And I must point out, you earn respect by solving problems. Maybe the reason the men don't respect Merry is because Merry isn't doing anything worth talking about.
Jeremy points this out, obliquely. It's a waste of words, given that I've read most of this series and she never does what he's telling her to do (use a treaty between herself and the goblins to her personal benefit). In fact, the same Reactive Hero Disease that afflicted Anita Blake has been with Merry Gentry since birth.
Kitto also points this out, and then points out that nobody treats him like a person. Merry agrees and stops petting him. He freaks out and then...I think I literally want to vomit, folks:
Oh, but it gets better. See, Jeremy leaves to let Merry and Kitto cuddle, and who should show up but Rhys.
Rhys, having just been flung against a wall and stabbed by his lover for attacking the goblin child-man, wisely elects to leave and let Doyle deal with it. But Merry decides to force him to come back into the room and discuss things with her...while Kitto is sitting on her lap with his hands up her blouse.
See, Kitto has to bite Merry to renew her treaty with the Goblins. Due to Rhys fucking everything up by attacking him, if Merry doesn't "share flesh" with the man-child the treaty will be null and void. But Merry only likes pain when it's tied up with sex, so she wants Rhys, specificially, to "distract" her.
I've been relatively open with what I call the Black Truck incident. If you are new to the blog, that was the time I was sexually assaulted in a stranger's truck. The thing I remember the clearest was the song playing on the radio. "Second Chance" by Shinedown. I love that song. I still love that song. I just cannot listen to that song. Ever. I heard it on the chef's radio at work a couple days ago and got rattled, which isn't a good thing to be on a busy night. I *think* I've handled most of my issues reguarding this, but I still cannot listen through that whole song without either sobbing or feeling like I'm going to choke.
Rhys is not avoiding the goblins because he is prejudiced against them. He's avoiding them because the goblins tortured him sexually for a long peroid of time. A female goblin tore out his eye and kept it in a jar which she showed off to him on more than one occasion. The only thing I've ever heard of that comes close to what LKH describes for Rhys is the Colleen Stan "Girl in a Box" case.
And now she wants to force him to male love to her around a Goblin because she needs to prove that she's the boss.
This is not leadership, folks. This is abuse.
And of course Doyle agrees, because she is the princess and her word is law, and also we haven't had a sex scene in this book yet, so now we're going to have a non-con makeout session that is so very, very, very fucking rapy, and it's the heroine responsible for the rapy bits.
Thank god the chapter ends with Rhys taking his fancy ass coat off.
Yeah, Merry basically has Anita's job sans Zombies. I do not know who Jeremy Gray is other than Fae and her boss. He's ugly and he dresses in gray, and that's it.
You know what made Anita awesome for nine books? It wasn't the guns. It wasn't the steakings and beheadings and bloodbaths and zombies and magic and all that jazz.
No. It was the penguins. Anita Blake went through fucking hell for nine books, and she still collected stuffed penguins. Richard was awesome NOT because he was the baddest werewolf in the pack, which he was. It was because he was the baddest werewolf in the pack and he still taught highschool...um, science, wasn't it? What made the books so good were these little time out moments when we realized that oh, hey, Edward, the biggest sociopath in the series, has an entire family that he loves. Seriously, that was the last awesome moment in the series, watching EDWARD play with his kids. These little moments of cutesy gave us this hope in the bleak, black darkness that hey, everything can still be alright because we have stuffed penguins. Some day the world will end, my friends. Someday we will all be wandering around in gas masks and the things that give us hope will not be the great victories and moments of awesome redemption. No, it'll be the dandelions growing where roses used to be, and the occasional warm bottle of coke.
There's a few flickers of it in Merry--like where they all decide to go see a movie--but it's very rare. Jeremy Gray is so inhuman he needs to build model trains out of toothpicks and bottle caps to make up for it. And he doesn't.
Yeah, we're not even two sentences into this chapter and I've gone off the deep end.
Merry is drinking tea and petting Kitto. Somebody else pointed out that Kitto is a very problematic character, kind of like that seventeen year old kid Anita ropes into the harem in later books, and like Nathanial in Narcissus. The difference between Cynric and Nathanial, though, is that where all three characters are described as child-like, Kitto is the only one described as child-sized. As in a twelve year old.
And she is keeping him under her desk and petting him like a cat.
There is something severely disturbing about how both Anita Blake and Merry Gentry reach for the most child-like person in their many lovers every time they need comfort. It's like the men are all too fucking scary, so lets go grab the kid and snuggle them for a few hours.
I am not going to touch this with a ten foot pole. I do not even want to come close to understanding this psychologically. I just want to sit here and hope it goes away.
Oh, but we do find one special thing out about Jeremy Gray's species. A big nose to them is like big feet. Apparently this is LKH's way of indicating that this character has a big dong. Because humanizing a character definately needs to take a back seat to penis jokes.
(In a side note, I just re-read John Dies At The End for the seventeenth time or so. It is amazing how a book can simultaneously be the most terrifying thing ever and also be one big long running dick joke. If you have not read it yet, you do not understand life and you need to go fix the problem right now. If nothing else it will make you giggle every time you see, write or say the word "penis". This door cannot be opened.)
...see, this is my brain trying to protect me from the utter suck. It's not as trash-tastic as Narcissus, it's just boring. I think I skimmed this real fast to get on to the "plot", so to speak, because I seem to remember being halfway to Maeve Reed's house by now.
Jeremy is in the uncomfortable position of having to be impolite, because it is an insult among the Fey to notice that somebody is having hysterics. Convienent that three pages of description-via-dialogue can be politeness, and unnecessary conflict can be caused by "are you alright?" being a deathly insult. Jeremy finally takes the bull by the horns and asks for a status update as her boss. She answers, and somehow the entire conversation manages to make her look like an idiot. She had to do it to make the men obey her. Guys, there has GOT to be a better way to lead than by holding a knife to someone else's throat. And I must point out, you earn respect by solving problems. Maybe the reason the men don't respect Merry is because Merry isn't doing anything worth talking about.
Jeremy points this out, obliquely. It's a waste of words, given that I've read most of this series and she never does what he's telling her to do (use a treaty between herself and the goblins to her personal benefit). In fact, the same Reactive Hero Disease that afflicted Anita Blake has been with Merry Gentry since birth.
Kitto also points this out, and then points out that nobody treats him like a person. Merry agrees and stops petting him. He freaks out and then...I think I literally want to vomit, folks:
He clambered into my lap like a child, forcing my hands to encircle him to keep him from falling. My right hand slid over the slickness of the scales on his back; my left cupped the smooth, hairless curve of his thigh. The sidhe didn’t have much body hair, and snake goblins had none. The mixed heritage had left Kitto smooth and perfect like he’d been waxed from neck to toe. It added to the doll-like image and made him seem perpetually childlike.
Oh, but it gets better. See, Jeremy leaves to let Merry and Kitto cuddle, and who should show up but Rhys.
Rhys, having just been flung against a wall and stabbed by his lover for attacking the goblin child-man, wisely elects to leave and let Doyle deal with it. But Merry decides to force him to come back into the room and discuss things with her...while Kitto is sitting on her lap with his hands up her blouse.
See, Kitto has to bite Merry to renew her treaty with the Goblins. Due to Rhys fucking everything up by attacking him, if Merry doesn't "share flesh" with the man-child the treaty will be null and void. But Merry only likes pain when it's tied up with sex, so she wants Rhys, specificially, to "distract" her.
I've been relatively open with what I call the Black Truck incident. If you are new to the blog, that was the time I was sexually assaulted in a stranger's truck. The thing I remember the clearest was the song playing on the radio. "Second Chance" by Shinedown. I love that song. I still love that song. I just cannot listen to that song. Ever. I heard it on the chef's radio at work a couple days ago and got rattled, which isn't a good thing to be on a busy night. I *think* I've handled most of my issues reguarding this, but I still cannot listen through that whole song without either sobbing or feeling like I'm going to choke.
Rhys is not avoiding the goblins because he is prejudiced against them. He's avoiding them because the goblins tortured him sexually for a long peroid of time. A female goblin tore out his eye and kept it in a jar which she showed off to him on more than one occasion. The only thing I've ever heard of that comes close to what LKH describes for Rhys is the Colleen Stan "Girl in a Box" case.
And now she wants to force him to male love to her around a Goblin because she needs to prove that she's the boss.
This is not leadership, folks. This is abuse.
And of course Doyle agrees, because she is the princess and her word is law, and also we haven't had a sex scene in this book yet, so now we're going to have a non-con makeout session that is so very, very, very fucking rapy, and it's the heroine responsible for the rapy bits.
Thank god the chapter ends with Rhys taking his fancy ass coat off.
GRAY FOX--COVER REVEAL!
It's DONE, guys! And OH MY GOD it looks good to me:
Sample of the story can be found over here, and remember, you can get a copy of the previous book, Blue Ghosts, by going to this site and using this promo code: TU68W
Sample of the story can be found over here, and remember, you can get a copy of the previous book, Blue Ghosts, by going to this site and using this promo code: TU68W
The Host--Chapter 8
Wanderer finds out that Healer Fords (...is it bad that I'm thinking Harrison Ford every time his name is mentioned?) is in Tuson, not Chicago, and so she decides to drive.
The Seeker berates her, belittles her, teases her and is generally a...*sigh* horrible person.
I know I'm not supposed to use the B-word anymore, but GOD would it fit this woman. Old habits die hard.
Wanderer also calls the Seeker on being manipulative, and says she wants to have ALL the facts before she decides to have Melanie killed. See, this is the problem with talking to the little voices in your head, kids. You start liking them and listening to them, and that never really ends well.
I would like to point out the obvious here: The Seeker is stalking Wanderer. And not in the sort of uncomfortable way we can't legislate against because it's not illegal. Wanderer is glad when the Seeker decides to take a shuttle to Tuson instead of drive because otherwise Wanderer wouldn't even be allowed to go to the bathroom alone.
This brings up a question unaddressed in the text...if the souls are deeply affected by the host body's thoughts and feelings, what happens if a rapist becomes a host? How about a murderer? Somebody who gets their thrill through being bad? I assume eventually the host would be disposed of--and if we're talking predatory shitbag I'd be all for it--but what about in the in-between time? If Wanderer is covering this much for a host that, other than being snarky is pretty much an okay human being, what about a soul that gets somebody like Gary Ridgeway? I have seen his interrogation tapes. I do not think a soul would have trouble dominating his personality, so their problem would be more "Oh dear, I can't control these drives". And it would probably not end well.
Of course, this is never brought up because souls are shiny perfect, even when they are fucking stalkers.
Wanderer packs up her apartment, tells the Seeker to go fuck herself without actually using those words, and drives to Tuson slowly. She checks every car that passes her to make sure that it isn't the Seeker changing her mind, and is in absolutely no hurry to get to where the Seeker's going to be. Don't souls have ways to complain about harassment? This is not a good thing, guys.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch Melanie's head, Melanie has accepted that she's going to die and is now daydreaming about memories. Wanderer looks in because the desert is, well, a desert.
So apparently there was this time when Melanie, Melanie's brother Jamie and Jared were all living in a house unafraid of the souls because this was a crazy survivalist's cabin and they don't know it's there. And Jamie was asleep and Melanie wanted to seduce Jared but Jared won't because he is twenty-six and Melanie is seventeen.
EW.
But hey, Jared's a standup guy. He's going to wait until Melanie turns eighteen. He's already head over heels in love with her, and he's taking care of her brother. All this affects Wanderer deeply, she starts crying and...end of chapter.
The Seeker berates her, belittles her, teases her and is generally a...*sigh* horrible person.
I know I'm not supposed to use the B-word anymore, but GOD would it fit this woman. Old habits die hard.
Wanderer also calls the Seeker on being manipulative, and says she wants to have ALL the facts before she decides to have Melanie killed. See, this is the problem with talking to the little voices in your head, kids. You start liking them and listening to them, and that never really ends well.
I would like to point out the obvious here: The Seeker is stalking Wanderer. And not in the sort of uncomfortable way we can't legislate against because it's not illegal. Wanderer is glad when the Seeker decides to take a shuttle to Tuson instead of drive because otherwise Wanderer wouldn't even be allowed to go to the bathroom alone.
This brings up a question unaddressed in the text...if the souls are deeply affected by the host body's thoughts and feelings, what happens if a rapist becomes a host? How about a murderer? Somebody who gets their thrill through being bad? I assume eventually the host would be disposed of--and if we're talking predatory shitbag I'd be all for it--but what about in the in-between time? If Wanderer is covering this much for a host that, other than being snarky is pretty much an okay human being, what about a soul that gets somebody like Gary Ridgeway? I have seen his interrogation tapes. I do not think a soul would have trouble dominating his personality, so their problem would be more "Oh dear, I can't control these drives". And it would probably not end well.
Of course, this is never brought up because souls are shiny perfect, even when they are fucking stalkers.
Wanderer packs up her apartment, tells the Seeker to go fuck herself without actually using those words, and drives to Tuson slowly. She checks every car that passes her to make sure that it isn't the Seeker changing her mind, and is in absolutely no hurry to get to where the Seeker's going to be. Don't souls have ways to complain about harassment? This is not a good thing, guys.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch Melanie's head, Melanie has accepted that she's going to die and is now daydreaming about memories. Wanderer looks in because the desert is, well, a desert.
So apparently there was this time when Melanie, Melanie's brother Jamie and Jared were all living in a house unafraid of the souls because this was a crazy survivalist's cabin and they don't know it's there. And Jamie was asleep and Melanie wanted to seduce Jared but Jared won't because he is twenty-six and Melanie is seventeen.
EW.
But hey, Jared's a standup guy. He's going to wait until Melanie turns eighteen. He's already head over heels in love with her, and he's taking care of her brother. All this affects Wanderer deeply, she starts crying and...end of chapter.
February 6, 2013
Caress of Twilight--chapter 3
I think the one thing that makes the massive amount of stupid Merry and Co. preform regularly an acceptable thing is, Faeries are supposed to be psychotic. Anita Blake can't get away with putting a gun to her best friend's head because she's human. Merry can.
That said, there's only so much stupid I can take before my head implodes. LKH's writing is, as I think I firmly established last month, a crime against humanity. But if you divorced her writing from the hate, homophobia, misogyny and numerous -isms that give it so much spice and you just examined her writing for structural flaws, her biggest sin is what she reaches for when conflict is required.
The first thing a writer can do when they need conflict is throw something through the window. Grenades. Bullets. Cats. Cars. Small children. Something that will trigger an onslaught of excitement. LKH is good at throwing shit though windows, but you can only do that so many times per story before somebody gets tired of it.
The second method is to have friction between characters spill over into violence. This works fine when the two characters are on opposite sides of the protagonist/antagonist fence. It becomes highly problematic, however, when the characters constantly threatening each other with death and maiming are the main characters in the cast. Imagine if you will what Star Wars would be like if, instead of Han Solo making snarky remarks and drooling on Carrie Fisher's cleviage, he put his blaster to Obi Wan's head every couple of scenes. We are supposed to believe that these people are good guys, that they are people I should root for, and that Merry has every reason to fall in love with each of them (because come on, guys. This is porn) and it is very hard for me to buy all that when we're three chapters into the book and friendly fire violence is what closes two of them.
I'm way ahead of myself, aren't I?
Well, not a lot happens in this chapter. Merry and Co. discuss what to do about Maeve Reed, because Taranis, the King of the Seelie Court, would probably kill Merry for breaking Maeve's exile. The Co. here are Doyle, Rhys and Kitto, the part goblin dude Merry keeps under her desk. This is problematic because Rhys lost an eye to goblins and it didn't grow back. This is unusual among the Fae, given that they can heal everything (IDK if I mentioned it when I reviewed Kiss of Shadows, but at one point the pretty butterfly Tinkerbell type fae ate Nicca's penis. At least I think it was Nicca. They ate somebody's penis, and this was a big deal because after he regrew it the dong just didn't work right, and Merry winds up having to horse trade with her enemies to fix it.) so Rhys has some pretty obvious issues were goblins are concerned.
There are two healthy ways to handle this. Situation one is, you rely on Rhys to work on his issues and let you know when the presence of another person is about to trigger him. Situation two, you understand that Rhys can't or won't deal with things, so you take steps yourself to keep him from doing something stupid, mostly by keeping him and the half-goblin man as far apart as possible.
How does Merry handle this? By putting Rhys and Kitto in the same room together and by letting Rhys be armed.
After some cutesy-coo stuff involving movies and how few of the Fae have ever been to see one, Rhys starts going on rants about how awful goblins are because obviously Kitto's dad raped Kitto's mom. Doyle lets this run for a minute and then asks how many Goblin women got raped by Sidhe men. Rhys says he never raped anybody and Doyle says the queen would kill him if he had, but most of the dudes that weren't in her personal guard did plenty of rapening while they were looting and pillaging. In short: Sit down and shut the fuck up.
Rhys takes this as a challenge, and this happens:
"Nothing" doesn't look like a word anymore. And you know what? Much as the writing in Narcissus sucked, Merry Gentry is a whole hell of a lotta worse. There are brief stand alone moments where an image turns up that I like, but most of the time? No. Just no.
Rhys begins to glow, and his eye...look, just read this shit, okay?
And then Rhys attacks Kitto. Because we are three chapters into the book and there is no plot.
Merry pulls a knife on him, puts it to his neck and draws blood. Then she lays claim to Kitto like he's a fucking island in the pacific and she's Ferdinand Magellen. The "He's MINE" posturing here makes me think we're a few short moments away from territory being marked via urine. And then we get the usual "I'm a badass" posturing about how Merry knows she could kill Rhys if she had to, and I don't buy it from her any more than I did from Anita. DO SOMETHING BAD ASS FIRST.
And then Merry realizes that power corrupts, she has a hystarical laughing fit, and the chapter ends with her sobbing uncontrollably on the office floor.
Empowering Heroine. Right.
That said, there's only so much stupid I can take before my head implodes. LKH's writing is, as I think I firmly established last month, a crime against humanity. But if you divorced her writing from the hate, homophobia, misogyny and numerous -isms that give it so much spice and you just examined her writing for structural flaws, her biggest sin is what she reaches for when conflict is required.
The first thing a writer can do when they need conflict is throw something through the window. Grenades. Bullets. Cats. Cars. Small children. Something that will trigger an onslaught of excitement. LKH is good at throwing shit though windows, but you can only do that so many times per story before somebody gets tired of it.
The second method is to have friction between characters spill over into violence. This works fine when the two characters are on opposite sides of the protagonist/antagonist fence. It becomes highly problematic, however, when the characters constantly threatening each other with death and maiming are the main characters in the cast. Imagine if you will what Star Wars would be like if, instead of Han Solo making snarky remarks and drooling on Carrie Fisher's cleviage, he put his blaster to Obi Wan's head every couple of scenes. We are supposed to believe that these people are good guys, that they are people I should root for, and that Merry has every reason to fall in love with each of them (because come on, guys. This is porn) and it is very hard for me to buy all that when we're three chapters into the book and friendly fire violence is what closes two of them.
I'm way ahead of myself, aren't I?
Well, not a lot happens in this chapter. Merry and Co. discuss what to do about Maeve Reed, because Taranis, the King of the Seelie Court, would probably kill Merry for breaking Maeve's exile. The Co. here are Doyle, Rhys and Kitto, the part goblin dude Merry keeps under her desk. This is problematic because Rhys lost an eye to goblins and it didn't grow back. This is unusual among the Fae, given that they can heal everything (IDK if I mentioned it when I reviewed Kiss of Shadows, but at one point the pretty butterfly Tinkerbell type fae ate Nicca's penis. At least I think it was Nicca. They ate somebody's penis, and this was a big deal because after he regrew it the dong just didn't work right, and Merry winds up having to horse trade with her enemies to fix it.) so Rhys has some pretty obvious issues were goblins are concerned.
There are two healthy ways to handle this. Situation one is, you rely on Rhys to work on his issues and let you know when the presence of another person is about to trigger him. Situation two, you understand that Rhys can't or won't deal with things, so you take steps yourself to keep him from doing something stupid, mostly by keeping him and the half-goblin man as far apart as possible.
How does Merry handle this? By putting Rhys and Kitto in the same room together and by letting Rhys be armed.
After some cutesy-coo stuff involving movies and how few of the Fae have ever been to see one, Rhys starts going on rants about how awful goblins are because obviously Kitto's dad raped Kitto's mom. Doyle lets this run for a minute and then asks how many Goblin women got raped by Sidhe men. Rhys says he never raped anybody and Doyle says the queen would kill him if he had, but most of the dudes that weren't in her personal guard did plenty of rapening while they were looting and pillaging. In short: Sit down and shut the fuck up.
Rhys takes this as a challenge, and this happens:
He did nothing; even his hands were loose in his lap, just that terrible tension in his back, the set of his shoulders, the way he held himself as if he were a blink away from some terrible physical action— something that would rip the room apart and paint the sparkling glass with blood and thicker things. Rhys had done nothing, nothing, yet violence rode the air like a kiss just above the skin, something to make you shiver with anticipation, even though nothing had happened. Not yet, not yet.
"Nothing" doesn't look like a word anymore. And you know what? Much as the writing in Narcissus sucked, Merry Gentry is a whole hell of a lotta worse. There are brief stand alone moments where an image turns up that I like, but most of the time? No. Just no.
Rhys begins to glow, and his eye...look, just read this shit, okay?
The brilliant cornflower blue around his pupil glowed like neon; the sky blue that circled it was a match for the sunny sky outside; and the last circle of winter sky shimmered like blue heat.Do you know why they said "Wait until you see the whites of their eyes" during the revolution? BECAUSE EYES ARE VERY VERY FUCKING HARD TO SEE. If your eyes changed color, I probably wouldn't notice for the first couple of hours. And I'm talking bizzare color change, like blue to gold or something. One special color I could get, but this shit is just stupid.
And then Rhys attacks Kitto. Because we are three chapters into the book and there is no plot.
Merry pulls a knife on him, puts it to his neck and draws blood. Then she lays claim to Kitto like he's a fucking island in the pacific and she's Ferdinand Magellen. The "He's MINE" posturing here makes me think we're a few short moments away from territory being marked via urine. And then we get the usual "I'm a badass" posturing about how Merry knows she could kill Rhys if she had to, and I don't buy it from her any more than I did from Anita. DO SOMETHING BAD ASS FIRST.
And then Merry realizes that power corrupts, she has a hystarical laughing fit, and the chapter ends with her sobbing uncontrollably on the office floor.
Empowering Heroine. Right.
The Host--chapter 7
Wanderer is teaching a class on Worlds' History. This is different from World History because it is about every world the Liberal-Yeerks Souls have ever conquered.
And you know what? Most of my love for this book died a horrible fucking death when I figured out what S. Meyer was on about. Oh, don't get me wrong, Blog-readers. I am going to interprete the plot my own fucking way, which is Social Justice ALL THE WAY TO TOWN (nevermind that I am the LAST PERSON ON EARTH) qualified to preform SJ commentary) but I want to make it real clear: just like Sparklepyers=MORMONS in Twilight, souls=LIBERALS.
Anyhoo, today's subject is apparently the one world that Wanderer has not lived on. Apparenlty its primary inhabitants--the Fire Breathers AKA dragons--have to burn other sentient beings--the Walking Flowers--and ingest the smoke to survive. The Souls cannot stand this idea, espeically because several of their worlds have plant based organisms and many Souls remember plant-lives fondly, because apparently plant-lives are more peaceful than meat-lives.
...so. Is anybody else thinking of the Hork-Bajir?
Anyhoo, dragons. Fire breahting. Burning flowers, disgusted Souls, Wanderer attempting to explain that this is how biology on this planet works, while simultaneously trying to explain that the Souls are trying to "fix" it.
However, I have to give S. Meyer worldbuilding brownie points. In explaining about this world, she tells us a lot of things about how Souls operate. Apparently a world, once conquered and fully settled, becomes "closed", and souls looking for a new place to party have to go find somewhere else. Apparently they've never heard of population control (More on that later)
One soul becomes particularly stridant about how barbaric this alien world is, and how it should have been abandoned by the Souls as being too nasty to live on. Wanderer blames it on him being the Earth-born child of an earth-bound Mother.
Just to let you know, guys? S. Meyer has serious issues with motherhood.
Meanwhile, Melanie is keeping up a pretty decent commentary on Wanderer's thoughts, and the Seeker is skulking about in the back of the class. Just another day in an Animorphs rip-off. Too bad nobody's turning into flies.
Wanderer closes the class and leaves, with the Seeker following behind her, asking truely obnoxious questions that quickly disintegrate into shouted accusations and harrassment:
She tells Wanderer that eventually Melanie will control everything and Wanderer will be the one to disappear. Melanie and I are both rooting for that outcome right now, but then the Seeker crosses the line:
At this point, even the Seeker knows she's made a mistake, but Wanderer takes great delight in telling her to go get fucked. The Seeker says "Inform me when I am to call you Melanie!" as Wanderer starts the long trip to Chicago to speak with the Healer.
And the chapter ends with Melanie rooting for Wanderer to kill the Seeker. Because why not?
And you know what? Most of my love for this book died a horrible fucking death when I figured out what S. Meyer was on about. Oh, don't get me wrong, Blog-readers. I am going to interprete the plot my own fucking way, which is Social Justice ALL THE WAY TO TOWN (nevermind that I am the LAST PERSON ON EARTH) qualified to preform SJ commentary) but I want to make it real clear: just like Sparklepyers=MORMONS in Twilight, souls=LIBERALS.
Anyhoo, today's subject is apparently the one world that Wanderer has not lived on. Apparenlty its primary inhabitants--the Fire Breathers AKA dragons--have to burn other sentient beings--the Walking Flowers--and ingest the smoke to survive. The Souls cannot stand this idea, espeically because several of their worlds have plant based organisms and many Souls remember plant-lives fondly, because apparently plant-lives are more peaceful than meat-lives.
...so. Is anybody else thinking of the Hork-Bajir?
Anyhoo, dragons. Fire breahting. Burning flowers, disgusted Souls, Wanderer attempting to explain that this is how biology on this planet works, while simultaneously trying to explain that the Souls are trying to "fix" it.
However, I have to give S. Meyer worldbuilding brownie points. In explaining about this world, she tells us a lot of things about how Souls operate. Apparently a world, once conquered and fully settled, becomes "closed", and souls looking for a new place to party have to go find somewhere else. Apparently they've never heard of population control (More on that later)
One soul becomes particularly stridant about how barbaric this alien world is, and how it should have been abandoned by the Souls as being too nasty to live on. Wanderer blames it on him being the Earth-born child of an earth-bound Mother.
Just to let you know, guys? S. Meyer has serious issues with motherhood.
Meanwhile, Melanie is keeping up a pretty decent commentary on Wanderer's thoughts, and the Seeker is skulking about in the back of the class. Just another day in an Animorphs rip-off. Too bad nobody's turning into flies.
Wanderer closes the class and leaves, with the Seeker following behind her, asking truely obnoxious questions that quickly disintegrate into shouted accusations and harrassment:
She shrugged and smiled a tight smile. “I’m sure it is too late… for voluntary information. But if you don’t cooperate, she might just lead me to them yet.”
“Lead you?”
“When she takes full control, and you’re no better than that weakling, once Racing Song, now Kevin. Remember him? The one who attacked the Healer?”This Seeker, boys and girls, is a fucking sociopath.
She tells Wanderer that eventually Melanie will control everything and Wanderer will be the one to disappear. Melanie and I are both rooting for that outcome right now, but then the Seeker crosses the line:
I saw in your file that you have the potential for Motherhood. If you gave yourself to be a Mother, at least all that would not be entirely wasted. Why throw yourself away? Have you considered Motherhood?”
At this point, even the Seeker knows she's made a mistake, but Wanderer takes great delight in telling her to go get fucked. The Seeker says "Inform me when I am to call you Melanie!" as Wanderer starts the long trip to Chicago to speak with the Healer.
And the chapter ends with Melanie rooting for Wanderer to kill the Seeker. Because why not?
