Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 60
January 2, 2013
Narcissus in Chains chapter 28
Anita and Gregory have a shower, seperately. We are assured that Gregory's shower never becomes sexual. This is after we are told that Gregory still does not have full use of his arms and legs.
I watched a true crime show last night where a pair of truly terrible men kidnapped another man and ducttaped him to the rafters of a barn for six days. The man lost his hands. The police were amazed this man was still alive.
And then we get a description of Anita's kitchen table. She had to get a new table because the old one wasn't big enough for everybody to eat breakfast around. Dr. Lillian, the underground shapeshifter doctor (WHY DOES THIS WOMAN NOT HAVE HER OWN BOOK?) explains that Gregory can't shift because he's still drugged, and if he doesn't shift soon the physical damage to his body, including his ears, will be permanent.
And that brings me to the thing that drives me batshit about this series.
I'm about to divorce a bunch of words from their moral baggage, so bear with me for a second.
In my special version of writing theory there are four character types. Protagonist, Antagonist, Hero and Villian. It is possible to be two of them at once. You can be a villain protagonist, a hero antagonist, or the more traditional hero protagonist, villian antagonist. But the words are identifying different character traits.
The protagonist is the character the audience roots for. The antagonist is the one the audience hopes will lose. Easy enough. But it's the hero/villain definitions that get trickier.
The western hero is defined as a reactive character. Not a "Good" character or a just character, but somebody who reacts to the actions of someone else. Superman waits for a bank robbery, the car thief sits around until somebody kidnaps a family member (thus making his theivery a reactive action). Villians are active characters. They initiate the actions the hero reacts to. When a hero figure becomes the active character--the initatior--rather than the reactive, they become ambiguously heroic. That's why the police in Minority Report felt morally ambiguious to us: The pre-cog police were technically active characters. They were reacting to the pre-cog's vision, which allowed them a heroic label, but their heroism was active because what they were saving people from hadn't happened yet.
This is a subconsious definition, and it took me a LONG time to figure it out. But I have yet to see it defied in either western books or cinema. The traditional hero is consciously defined by his morality, but he is subconsiouly defined by his reactive behavior in response to an active character's bad deeds.
Anita Blake has the moral content of Styrofoam, but she's structured as a traditional hero. Her actions are ALWAYS in reaction to the actions of someone else. At NO POINT in ANY Anita Blake novel I have read to date does Anita initiate an action in response to someone else. She doesn't initiate relationships. She doesn't initiate battles. She never initiates sex. Everything Anita does is reactive. Someone else has to do something to get her off her ass.
The problem I have is not that Anita is reactive; that's traditional story structure. It's that every time LKH wants Anita to start moving, its at the expense of another character's ability.
This is an example: Gregory could have healed on his own. But LKH needs the scene we're about to read to happen. So Gregory doesn't heal on his own. He's too weak, because LKH needs Anita to be strong. The background implication of every action Anita makes is that strength and heroism can only happen at the expense of another individual. That someone else has to fail before Anita can succeed. It turns heroism into a predatory device, and potential heroes into vultures looking down at a crowd of starving antelope, waiting for a chance to swoop in and save them.
Anita is told that if she were "really Nimir-Ra" she could call Gregory's beast and force him to heal himself. It's physical healing as a rape analogue. And then we go off on a "How are you handling maybe sort of being a shapeshifter?" (she isn't) tangent while the wereleopard suffers over in the other room. So this whole thing won't be about Gregory healing. It'll be about Anita being the big bad wereleopard that she might be now (She isn't).
Let me repeat this: The heroine of the story is possibly a wereleopard, and this trumps the brutalization of another human being and his potential deafness.
Richard is the only Alpha in the city who knows how to call a shapeshifter's beast to the surface. Fucking convenient.
Also, there is another option involving drugs, but it is potentially fatal. Dr. Lillian already asked Gregory if he wanted to do it and he already gave his permission, but because he's brutalized, traumatized, and deaf, he's too much like a child to make decisions regarding his own body.
Yeah. Fuck you, Anita Blake.
And then she goes off on a tangent about how "Richard's ideals are going to get everyone killed" and we go off on ANOTHER fun tangent about religion:
This is Christianity you're talking about, Anita. You know, the religion where Christ said "Turn the other cheek" and "If somebody steals your shirt, give them your coat, too" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The religion where, when Jesus Christ was arrested by Romans and Peter tried to save him via slicing off a guard's ear, Jesus put the ear back and told Peter to knock it off. The religion where Jesus Christ died for your sins because you weren't good enough. That religion?
Yeah.
You know, at this point I think it'd be impossible for LKH to piss me off even more reguarding my own reli--
Oh, FUCK YOU. Seriously. You just spent several paragraphs praising witches and condemning the church for not accepting them into its everloving arms, and then you just fucking dismiss witches who've managed to reconcile competing belief systems as being "zealots." You follow Silver Ravenwolf, for fuck's sake. You do NOT get to pass judgement on whether or not someone else's belief system is valid. And your zealotry in that department way surpasses mine over in my little corner of the world. I read your blog about finding your joy rune, Laurel, and it reminded me of the ten zillion "God found my car keys!" stories I hear during testimony day at church. (For the record, God finds my car keys all the time. I just don't talk about it because we're both kind of embarrassed about it)
Fuck, I'm amazed a Christian witch would even talk to you about it. We they usually keep their mouths shut because we they know people on BOTH sides of the religion fence tend to go all "KILL IT WITH FIRE" and we they had enough trouble with their own consciences, thank you, we'd they'd rather not deal with your bullshit, too.
And then Lillian and Anita give each other a little toast and say "Down with zealots".
...I want to lock LKH into a cage match with a lineaged Gardnerian Wiccan. Jesus, you want to talk about zealots...
Lillian leaves, Anita prays. Micah shows up. And now we're going to have a fun little conversation about prayer. So we're not leaving the religious boat any time soon, are we?
In case you couldn't pick up my subtle hints up above there, my version of christianity has some FUN wrinkles in it. Some of them are just great toys, like my tarot card collection (STEAMPUNK DECK FTW) and some of them are real spiritual things that are not toys at all. And the most prickly thing in the toybox is this form of meditation/visualization that is really closely related to guided imagry. It's fun, most of the time, and it is 100% all in my head. I do not claim to have contacted Archangels, for example, but imaginary versions of the archangels are there. Most of the time I've done this, I've stumbled over some spiritual stuff that I, personally, find very powerful, most of the time it's a lot of fun, but every once in a while God, spiritual forces or my own imagination (whatever makes you comfy) decides that He/it has had enough of my bullshit. And let's just say that one fine day I decided the very best thing I could do, after a week of praying and sobbing and asking God why oh why he wasn't letting my book get published, was have a couple sessions of meditation and visualization for the sake of fluffy warmth and comfort so that God could explain why He wasn't immediately doing what I wanted him to do.
And instead of being comforted, I got my self-absorbed ass chewed out by an archangel's glorified secretary. In detail.
In short, boys and girls: THIS IS NOT HOW PRAYER WORKS. God is not the magical slot machine in the sky, and if you treat him like that too often he's going to show you just how good He is with the clue-by-four. And he's perfectly capable of using your own imaginary friends as a wake up call.
But instead of having something of actual value in this book, we get Anita telling her rapist all about the effectiveness of prayer in the right hands.
And then Micah says he has to go rescue his pard's version of Nathanial. You know, the "natural victim".
And then Dr. Lillian tells Anita to be careful about giving her heart to this strange, new man. You know. Micah. The one who raped her.
And then they go to make Gregory shapeshift while Anita tries desperately to believe in miracles.
END OF CHAPTER.
GOD, THIS BOOK SUCKS.
I watched a true crime show last night where a pair of truly terrible men kidnapped another man and ducttaped him to the rafters of a barn for six days. The man lost his hands. The police were amazed this man was still alive.
And then we get a description of Anita's kitchen table. She had to get a new table because the old one wasn't big enough for everybody to eat breakfast around. Dr. Lillian, the underground shapeshifter doctor (WHY DOES THIS WOMAN NOT HAVE HER OWN BOOK?) explains that Gregory can't shift because he's still drugged, and if he doesn't shift soon the physical damage to his body, including his ears, will be permanent.
And that brings me to the thing that drives me batshit about this series.
I'm about to divorce a bunch of words from their moral baggage, so bear with me for a second.
In my special version of writing theory there are four character types. Protagonist, Antagonist, Hero and Villian. It is possible to be two of them at once. You can be a villain protagonist, a hero antagonist, or the more traditional hero protagonist, villian antagonist. But the words are identifying different character traits.
The protagonist is the character the audience roots for. The antagonist is the one the audience hopes will lose. Easy enough. But it's the hero/villain definitions that get trickier.
The western hero is defined as a reactive character. Not a "Good" character or a just character, but somebody who reacts to the actions of someone else. Superman waits for a bank robbery, the car thief sits around until somebody kidnaps a family member (thus making his theivery a reactive action). Villians are active characters. They initiate the actions the hero reacts to. When a hero figure becomes the active character--the initatior--rather than the reactive, they become ambiguously heroic. That's why the police in Minority Report felt morally ambiguious to us: The pre-cog police were technically active characters. They were reacting to the pre-cog's vision, which allowed them a heroic label, but their heroism was active because what they were saving people from hadn't happened yet.
This is a subconsious definition, and it took me a LONG time to figure it out. But I have yet to see it defied in either western books or cinema. The traditional hero is consciously defined by his morality, but he is subconsiouly defined by his reactive behavior in response to an active character's bad deeds.
Anita Blake has the moral content of Styrofoam, but she's structured as a traditional hero. Her actions are ALWAYS in reaction to the actions of someone else. At NO POINT in ANY Anita Blake novel I have read to date does Anita initiate an action in response to someone else. She doesn't initiate relationships. She doesn't initiate battles. She never initiates sex. Everything Anita does is reactive. Someone else has to do something to get her off her ass.
The problem I have is not that Anita is reactive; that's traditional story structure. It's that every time LKH wants Anita to start moving, its at the expense of another character's ability.
This is an example: Gregory could have healed on his own. But LKH needs the scene we're about to read to happen. So Gregory doesn't heal on his own. He's too weak, because LKH needs Anita to be strong. The background implication of every action Anita makes is that strength and heroism can only happen at the expense of another individual. That someone else has to fail before Anita can succeed. It turns heroism into a predatory device, and potential heroes into vultures looking down at a crowd of starving antelope, waiting for a chance to swoop in and save them.
Anita is told that if she were "really Nimir-Ra" she could call Gregory's beast and force him to heal himself. It's physical healing as a rape analogue. And then we go off on a "How are you handling maybe sort of being a shapeshifter?" (she isn't) tangent while the wereleopard suffers over in the other room. So this whole thing won't be about Gregory healing. It'll be about Anita being the big bad wereleopard that she might be now (She isn't).
Let me repeat this: The heroine of the story is possibly a wereleopard, and this trumps the brutalization of another human being and his potential deafness.
Richard is the only Alpha in the city who knows how to call a shapeshifter's beast to the surface. Fucking convenient.
Also, there is another option involving drugs, but it is potentially fatal. Dr. Lillian already asked Gregory if he wanted to do it and he already gave his permission, but because he's brutalized, traumatized, and deaf, he's too much like a child to make decisions regarding his own body.
Yeah. Fuck you, Anita Blake.
And then she goes off on a tangent about how "Richard's ideals are going to get everyone killed" and we go off on ANOTHER fun tangent about religion:
“So you would trade all your ideals for the people you care about?” she asked.
“I’m not sure I have any ideals anymore.”
“You’re still Christian, aren’t you?”
“My religion isn’t an ideal. Ideals are abstract things that you can’t touch or see. My religion isn’t abstract, it’s very ‘stract,’ very real.”
This is Christianity you're talking about, Anita. You know, the religion where Christ said "Turn the other cheek" and "If somebody steals your shirt, give them your coat, too" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The religion where, when Jesus Christ was arrested by Romans and Peter tried to save him via slicing off a guard's ear, Jesus put the ear back and told Peter to knock it off. The religion where Jesus Christ died for your sins because you weren't good enough. That religion?
Yeah.
“I’ve held a cross while it flared so bright it blinded me until all the world was just white fire. I’ve seen a copy of the Talmud go up in flames in a vampire’s hands, and even after the book had burned to ash, the vampire kept burning until it died. I’ve stood in the presence of a demon and recited holy script, and the demon could not touch me.” I shook my head. “Religion isn’t an abstract thing, Dr. Lillian, it is a living, breathing, growing, organic thing.”In other words: My religious penis is still bigger than yours. Also, yep, God is big enough to work through Anita Blake. But he also worked through an ass once. I'm pretty sure He could do it again.
You know, at this point I think it'd be impossible for LKH to piss me off even more reguarding my own reli--
“There are Christian witches,” she said.
“I’ve met some of them. They all seem to be zealots, as if they have to be more Christian than anyone else to prove that they’re good enough to be Christian at all. I don’t like zealots.”
Oh, FUCK YOU. Seriously. You just spent several paragraphs praising witches and condemning the church for not accepting them into its everloving arms, and then you just fucking dismiss witches who've managed to reconcile competing belief systems as being "zealots." You follow Silver Ravenwolf, for fuck's sake. You do NOT get to pass judgement on whether or not someone else's belief system is valid. And your zealotry in that department way surpasses mine over in my little corner of the world. I read your blog about finding your joy rune, Laurel, and it reminded me of the ten zillion "God found my car keys!" stories I hear during testimony day at church. (For the record, God finds my car keys all the time. I just don't talk about it because we're both kind of embarrassed about it)
Fuck, I'm amazed a Christian witch would even talk to you about it. We they usually keep their mouths shut because we they know people on BOTH sides of the religion fence tend to go all "KILL IT WITH FIRE" and we they had enough trouble with their own consciences, thank you, we'd they'd rather not deal with your bullshit, too.
And then Lillian and Anita give each other a little toast and say "Down with zealots".
...I want to lock LKH into a cage match with a lineaged Gardnerian Wiccan. Jesus, you want to talk about zealots...
Lillian leaves, Anita prays. Micah shows up. And now we're going to have a fun little conversation about prayer. So we're not leaving the religious boat any time soon, are we?
In case you couldn't pick up my subtle hints up above there, my version of christianity has some FUN wrinkles in it. Some of them are just great toys, like my tarot card collection (STEAMPUNK DECK FTW) and some of them are real spiritual things that are not toys at all. And the most prickly thing in the toybox is this form of meditation/visualization that is really closely related to guided imagry. It's fun, most of the time, and it is 100% all in my head. I do not claim to have contacted Archangels, for example, but imaginary versions of the archangels are there. Most of the time I've done this, I've stumbled over some spiritual stuff that I, personally, find very powerful, most of the time it's a lot of fun, but every once in a while God, spiritual forces or my own imagination (whatever makes you comfy) decides that He/it has had enough of my bullshit. And let's just say that one fine day I decided the very best thing I could do, after a week of praying and sobbing and asking God why oh why he wasn't letting my book get published, was have a couple sessions of meditation and visualization for the sake of fluffy warmth and comfort so that God could explain why He wasn't immediately doing what I wanted him to do.
And instead of being comforted, I got my self-absorbed ass chewed out by an archangel's glorified secretary. In detail.
In short, boys and girls: THIS IS NOT HOW PRAYER WORKS. God is not the magical slot machine in the sky, and if you treat him like that too often he's going to show you just how good He is with the clue-by-four. And he's perfectly capable of using your own imaginary friends as a wake up call.
But instead of having something of actual value in this book, we get Anita telling her rapist all about the effectiveness of prayer in the right hands.
And then Micah says he has to go rescue his pard's version of Nathanial. You know, the "natural victim".
And then Dr. Lillian tells Anita to be careful about giving her heart to this strange, new man. You know. Micah. The one who raped her.
And then they go to make Gregory shapeshift while Anita tries desperately to believe in miracles.
END OF CHAPTER.
GOD, THIS BOOK SUCKS.
January 1, 2013
Narcissus in Chains chapter 27
We're still obsessing over Anita climbing down the ladder. Yay. You're being big and strong and facing your fears. SO DO IT ALREADY. YOU ALREADY HAD YOUR ANGSTY CHAPTER.
It's Micah's turn to comfort her. Oh, goodie. Let's get comfort from our rapist. See, I don't read this as "Micah is good and misunderstood". I read this as "Anita is so sexy she even pulls romantic feelings out of natural rapists" and that is why Micah going lovey dovey makes me want to puke in LKH's lap.
Climbing down the ladder. Anita talking about how scary-scary it is. More climbing down the ladder. It's scary. Even more climbing. And then Richard grabs Anita around the waist, and the touch of his hands give her the streingth to make it the rest of the way down.
Female empowerment, boys and girls. A heroine who has to be rescued by a male, emotionally.
Then they find Gregory. And I want you to fully appreciate this bullshit, because I am about to go full on nuclear over it.
Lycanthropes have a natural allergy to silver in this universe. It burns them like acid. They heal fast, so it kind of balances out. A lot of lycanthropes have silver piercings because having piercings that burn the shit out of your body is badass. I always ask people how much their piercings hurt. Anyway, silver. Allergy. The werewolves wrapped Gregory up in silver chains.
A species that KNOWS it can be severely damaged by a certain kind of metal has deliberately wrapped one of its enemy in that material because they are just that fucking sadistic.
This is the conversation Anita and Richard have over Gregory's prone, bound and blindfolded body:
Also, note the REALLY subtle implication: That Gregory didn't struggle against being bound. Another condemnation of weakness. And it's not "How could you DO this to another member of your kind?" No. It's "He's not powerful enough to take it."
Fuck you. Fuck you, Anita, fuck you Richard, and FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK YOU Laurell K. Hamilton. People like you three are the reason why women carry mace and male rape victims just pretend it never happened.
He is not lying there because he's not powerful enough to resist it. He's lying there because a bunch of sociopathic assholes decided wrapping him up in shit he's allergic to is a fun way to spend an evening. He's also there because Richard didn't have the balls to back a cement truck up to this hell-pit and erect a monument to the countless other human beings who have died down there. Anita and Richard are walking around on top of a pile of human bones right now. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen: keeping instruments of murder and torture around because maybe someday they could use them.
Gregory is so traumatized he can't properly interact with Anita and Richard. Thus allowing him to be an object of pity for the rest of the chapter, rather than an actual character.
Also, the psychopaths Richard refuses to deal with shoved silver earplugs into Gregory's ears until his eardrums burst.
Richard cuts Gregory's blindfold off. Gregory sees him and starts screaming bloody murder. Anita feels sorry for Richard, because seeing someone be that scared of him must be hard for Richard to deal with. Right. And Richard had so much nothing to do with this, the sight of his face sends the traumatized man into screaming fits. Right.
Hey, I just read a paragraph that distills every possible disturbing thing about this book down into two sentences:
And then Anita forfits any remaining goodwill I might have had for her:
But nope, they're gonna put Jacob and his buddies down here, and Anita is calling bullshit because Richard won't go all the way and torture them too. This is all a challenge to Richard's authority, and not a terrible thing done by terrible people. And that, the challenge, is why he and Anita are going to push this. Not because the people who did it are shit-eating psychopathic human trash, but because it's a threat to their personal safety.
Our fucking heroes.
Meanwhile, while they're talking pack politics, the burtalized wereleopard is still sitting in his own excrement in the hole he's been imprisoned in for the last four days. He even recovers enough to ask to be removed from the pit, and Anita says "sure, sure" and then she and Richard go back to politicking while the raw sewage soaks into Gregory's wounds some more.
Also: GET THE BRUTALIZED HUMAN BEING OUT OF THE MURDER HOLE.
Nope. Now it's time to talk about relationship issues, and how Richard didn't stand up for Anita when the pack demoted her. YOU HAD NOT SPOKEN TO THIS MAN FOR SIX MONTHS, YOU ONLY CALLED HIM BECAUSE ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS WAS IN TROUBLE AND YOU NEEDED HELP. HE HAD EVERY RIGHT TO TELL YOU TO FUCK OFF.
ALSO: GET THE BRUTALIZED HUMAN BEING OUT OF THE MURDER HOLE.
THIS IS HOW NORTH KOREA IS STILL A THING. IF YOU WANT TO ARGUE THAT KIM JONG IL WAS A GOOD MAN, IT IS NO LONGER A MINOR CASE OF SERIOUS BRAIN DAMAGE.
This sucks, ladies and gentlemen. Plain and simple. Fear and love are both effective leadership tools. But you know what the best tool is? Doing a good job the first time. If you're doing a good job you shouldn't be so worried about a rebellion. Richard is not doing a good job. He is not doing right by his people. He should not be Ulfric. But his leadership problem is not that he's being to nice and goody-goody. He's not leading at all.
And what Anita is doing now is insisting that Richard institute a full on Robspierre level Rein of Terror on his pack to make up for his inability to be an effective leader.
This is the heroine of this series. She is advising her lover and ally to turn his political enemies into Marie Antoinette.
And then finally, finally, FINALLY, they get Gregory out of the hole.
The heroine of this novel series put politicking with her lover over the sanity of a charge that she views as a weak child in need of protection.
And then we get this paragraph. It made me literally laugh out loud.
Richard and Micah then convince Anita to take her brutalized wereleopards home so they can heal up. And thank you GOD, this awful chapter ends.
It's Micah's turn to comfort her. Oh, goodie. Let's get comfort from our rapist. See, I don't read this as "Micah is good and misunderstood". I read this as "Anita is so sexy she even pulls romantic feelings out of natural rapists" and that is why Micah going lovey dovey makes me want to puke in LKH's lap.
Climbing down the ladder. Anita talking about how scary-scary it is. More climbing down the ladder. It's scary. Even more climbing. And then Richard grabs Anita around the waist, and the touch of his hands give her the streingth to make it the rest of the way down.
Female empowerment, boys and girls. A heroine who has to be rescued by a male, emotionally.
Then they find Gregory. And I want you to fully appreciate this bullshit, because I am about to go full on nuclear over it.
Lycanthropes have a natural allergy to silver in this universe. It burns them like acid. They heal fast, so it kind of balances out. A lot of lycanthropes have silver piercings because having piercings that burn the shit out of your body is badass. I always ask people how much their piercings hurt. Anyway, silver. Allergy. The werewolves wrapped Gregory up in silver chains.
A species that KNOWS it can be severely damaged by a certain kind of metal has deliberately wrapped one of its enemy in that material because they are just that fucking sadistic.
This is the conversation Anita and Richard have over Gregory's prone, bound and blindfolded body:
“The chains have rubbed him raw,” Richard said, voice soft.
“He struggled,” I said.
“No, he’s not powerful enough to take this much silver against his skin. The chains ate their way into his skin.”LKH JUST TURNED TORTURE VIA NATURAL VULNERABILITIES INTO A MAGICAL PISSING CONTEST.
Also, note the REALLY subtle implication: That Gregory didn't struggle against being bound. Another condemnation of weakness. And it's not "How could you DO this to another member of your kind?" No. It's "He's not powerful enough to take it."
Fuck you. Fuck you, Anita, fuck you Richard, and FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK YOU Laurell K. Hamilton. People like you three are the reason why women carry mace and male rape victims just pretend it never happened.
He is not lying there because he's not powerful enough to resist it. He's lying there because a bunch of sociopathic assholes decided wrapping him up in shit he's allergic to is a fun way to spend an evening. He's also there because Richard didn't have the balls to back a cement truck up to this hell-pit and erect a monument to the countless other human beings who have died down there. Anita and Richard are walking around on top of a pile of human bones right now. Our heroes, ladies and gentlemen: keeping instruments of murder and torture around because maybe someday they could use them.
Gregory is so traumatized he can't properly interact with Anita and Richard. Thus allowing him to be an object of pity for the rest of the chapter, rather than an actual character.
Also, the psychopaths Richard refuses to deal with shoved silver earplugs into Gregory's ears until his eardrums burst.
Richard cuts Gregory's blindfold off. Gregory sees him and starts screaming bloody murder. Anita feels sorry for Richard, because seeing someone be that scared of him must be hard for Richard to deal with. Right. And Richard had so much nothing to do with this, the sight of his face sends the traumatized man into screaming fits. Right.
Hey, I just read a paragraph that distills every possible disturbing thing about this book down into two sentences:
I leaned over, placing my hand carefully on the pile of bones and watched Gregory’s eyes finally see me. He stopped screaming, but he didn’t look relieved enough. I pulled the gag out of his mouth, and it peeled away, taking bits of lip skin with it. He worked his mouth slowly, and for some odd reason I was reminded of the scene from The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy puts oil on the Tin Man’s jaw after he’d been rusted. The image should have made me smile, but it didn’t.I want you to name one sane, adjusted person who would look at a severely brutalized human being who has just been deafened by eardrum bursting earplugs, who has been gagged so long bits of skin come off with the gag, watch him struggle to get his body parts working again, and think "Gee, I should be amused by this. Isn't it bad that I'm not?" NAME. ONE.
And then Anita forfits any remaining goodwill I might have had for her:
Whoever brought out those damn earplugs. I want them down here.”No. The good guys do not use the weapons of the bad guys. The good guys do not look at a pile of human bones left from the other countless victims and think "I want to put my enemies down here". The good guys look at the pile of bones and think "Not even my enemies. Not ever again." and then they bring down heaven and earth to make sure that promise comes true.
But nope, they're gonna put Jacob and his buddies down here, and Anita is calling bullshit because Richard won't go all the way and torture them too. This is all a challenge to Richard's authority, and not a terrible thing done by terrible people. And that, the challenge, is why he and Anita are going to push this. Not because the people who did it are shit-eating psychopathic human trash, but because it's a threat to their personal safety.
Our fucking heroes.
Meanwhile, while they're talking pack politics, the burtalized wereleopard is still sitting in his own excrement in the hole he's been imprisoned in for the last four days. He even recovers enough to ask to be removed from the pit, and Anita says "sure, sure" and then she and Richard go back to politicking while the raw sewage soaks into Gregory's wounds some more.
“If your system worked better than the old one, then I’d support it, but it’s not working. I’m sorry that it’s not working, Richard, but it’s not. If you continue this. . . experiment in democracy and gentler, kinder laws, people are going to die. Not just you, but Sylvie, and Jamil, and Shang-Da, and every wolf that supports you.This is the second statement of purpose I've seen in this book so far. And I'm beginning to think that I've underestimated LKH. Because this reminds me WAY too much of Terry Goodkind and his descent into Objectivism, and how that ruined the entire series. Sacrificing character and story on the altar of idealism is a PERFECT way to utterly destroy a book. But maybe that's why this book sucks so hard. LKH has decided that kindness and goodness and human sanity are horrible things that must be campaigned against, and she's using her book as a vehicle for this. She's not a good enough writer to pull off a good alegory, but maybe she's good enough to--
Look at the throne you’re sitting on as Ulfric. It’s ancient, you can feel it.Nevermind. The throne CANNOT be older than St. Louis, and St. Louis isn't any older than the declaration of independence. Laurell, you TOTALLY FAIL at this.
Also: GET THE BRUTALIZED HUMAN BEING OUT OF THE MURDER HOLE.
Nope. Now it's time to talk about relationship issues, and how Richard didn't stand up for Anita when the pack demoted her. YOU HAD NOT SPOKEN TO THIS MAN FOR SIX MONTHS, YOU ONLY CALLED HIM BECAUSE ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS WAS IN TROUBLE AND YOU NEEDED HELP. HE HAD EVERY RIGHT TO TELL YOU TO FUCK OFF.
ALSO: GET THE BRUTALIZED HUMAN BEING OUT OF THE MURDER HOLE.
“Make them fear you, Richard. Make them fear you. Machiavelli said it nearly six hundred years ago, but it’s still true. Every ruler should strive for his people to love him. But if they cannot love you, then make them fear you. Love is better, but fear will do the job.”I am pretty sure that you are using that quote wrong. I am pretty sure, in fact, that you've missed the point entirely. So I am not going to do the research to prove it, and assume that you're absolutely right in that statement, that you're not using that quote out of a greater context, and that this is a viable arguement and not just LKH half-assing her way through "The Prince" because she's got more in common with Wheatley than she does any IRL human being.
THIS IS HOW NORTH KOREA IS STILL A THING. IF YOU WANT TO ARGUE THAT KIM JONG IL WAS A GOOD MAN, IT IS NO LONGER A MINOR CASE OF SERIOUS BRAIN DAMAGE.
This sucks, ladies and gentlemen. Plain and simple. Fear and love are both effective leadership tools. But you know what the best tool is? Doing a good job the first time. If you're doing a good job you shouldn't be so worried about a rebellion. Richard is not doing a good job. He is not doing right by his people. He should not be Ulfric. But his leadership problem is not that he's being to nice and goody-goody. He's not leading at all.
And what Anita is doing now is insisting that Richard institute a full on Robspierre level Rein of Terror on his pack to make up for his inability to be an effective leader.
This is the heroine of this series. She is advising her lover and ally to turn his political enemies into Marie Antoinette.
And then finally, finally, FINALLY, they get Gregory out of the hole.
The heroine of this novel series put politicking with her lover over the sanity of a charge that she views as a weak child in need of protection.
And then we get this paragraph. It made me literally laugh out loud.
Jacob was there, already bound in silver chains, carried like a piece of struggling luggage between three werewolves. They let him keep his cutoff shorts. No nudity for the good guys. I guess there has to be some differences, or how do you tell which side you’re on?Laurell, did you even bother to re-read this book before you mailed it to your new publisher? How can you BE so unaware of what you're writing? Seriously. YOU ARE TREATING THE BAD GUY THE WAY THE BAD GUY TREATED YOUR CHARGE. You are not any different. YOU ARE THE SAME AS THE BAD GUYS.
Richard and Micah then convince Anita to take her brutalized wereleopards home so they can heal up. And thank you GOD, this awful chapter ends.
NIC chapter 26 + Planet Bob Update
The good news: I survived New Years.
The bad news: I've decided to push Planet Bob's release back to this weekend. Why? Well, it's not as polished as I'd like. Also, Amazon changed something in how they process the files I upload (HTML) that totally fucking breaks HTML formatting. What I usually do (format in word, save as HTML file, upload to KDP) won't work anymore. I've got to add a couple fun steps with another program I know fucking nothing about (Calibre. It's a good program. It's just new. I hate learning curves with passion and fire, sports fans. Passion and fucking fire) to have a .mobi file that isn't FUCKING BROKEN.
Seriously: Fuck you, Amazon, for not notifying sellers about the large number of issues with Paperwhite's formatting, AND for not making sure that your new products don't fuck up your old ones. I know that you're really just geared towards the big companies that can actually afford InDesign (Which doesn't actually mesh with .mobi files and requires a plug in, apparently) and fancy programing, but letting people know you've changed things in small and monumental ways would have been nice.
The other good news: Using this method, I can make all the other formats on my own. .mobi, .epub, everything else. I've meant to learn how to do this for a while.
The best news ever: NIC starts updating again RIGHT NOW.
...fuck, this book sucks. I forgot how much this book sucks. This book fucking sucks.
To remind you of the utter suck, Anita is following Richard, her ex best beloved, to rescue a wereleopard Richard stuffed down a hole. Okay, one of his underlings did, but Richard is responsible. The SS didn't get away with saying "Well, somebody else decided to use the showers that way" you know. Richard being suddenly all on Anita's side had her flip from "Richard is SOOOOOO fucking useless" to "Richard might be a good Alpha/Ulfric after all!"
Because agreeing with Anita = being worthy of leadership. Bullshit. Richard passed the buck and let somebody under his command take the blame for a fucking terrible choice. He should not be a leader.
Anita says she wouldn't have found the oubliette if she hadn't known it was there. Last chapter she said she didn't know where it was. So she has failed the test the wolves presented her. By their laws, the wereleopard should be dead meat.
Hey, Laurell, you started listening to your editor yet?
Also, it was established that you had to go back to the oubliette here frequently to inject shift-preventing drugs into your victim, and the oubliette has a screw-in lid. Uh...if you have to go back 1. it's not an oubliette and 2. PUT HINGES AND A LATCH ON THE LID.
Also, LKH fails at basic biology. She says that people talk about you "starving to death" in what I assume is the oubliette. You would not starve to death. You would die of dehydration long before your body gave out due to lack of calories. Maybe a little water would get in, but you'd be licking it off the walls. At least she mentions what the floor would be covered in.
Richard, why was your first move as Ulfric not to fill this hole up with concrete?
Gregory is down in the bottom, of course, and Anita then pisses me off, hard:
Why? Because he didn't kill fifteen people with his teeth? Being a victim does not mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you're strong. It means someone else broke your defenses and harmed you.
And hey, anybody here watch Mythbusters? Anybody here watch the episode where they tested Chinese water torture? They put Kari in the restraints, under the drip, and even though she was perfectly safe, with friends, and knew she'd be released the second she asked, she was reduced to tears in a very short period of time.
This is damaging to any person, and using the fact of their captivity to enforce a perception of weakness IS WRONG.
Oh, and Anita is claustraphobic and almost has a fucking panic attack on the climb down. This, and not Gregory's torture, takes up ALL of the chapter. So Gregory is weak for being chained up by a gang of enemy werewolves and shoved in a hole for several days, but Anita is strong for having a panic attack while climbing vollentarily down the same hole. God forbid she have to be strong for somebody else.
Richard offers to let her get out of it:
Not everything is a fucking pissing contest, Anita.
And of course, Richard's offer to let her off the hook is seen as him trying to be a big manly man, and not because Anita is about to pass the fuck out from a panic reaction, and that having her collapse on the ladder would not be a good thing for anybody. Look, you're not weak if you have issues with dark spaces or holes. You have a phobia. I have a phobia about stinging instincts, especially bees and wasps. I see a bee, I am on the other side of the fucking room long before my brain has a chance to think, "Oh, look, a bee". I understand that there is no rational connection between the object of your phobia and your reactions. That's why you, Anita, should be the last person on earth to go down that hole right now. You should try to manage your phobias, but you do that in a safe location with controls in place. You do not try to do it when someone else's life is dependant on your actions.
They are not trying to challange Anita's dominance here. They're trying to be human beings and keep this situation from getting any worse. Anita getting a compound fracture by falling down the ladder into a puddle of raw sewage would be the definition of "getting any worse". And just because the person offering to go down instead of Anita has a penis doesn't make this a gender thing. It makes it a sane human thing.
But no. Anita has to prove she's better than everyone and go down the slippery shaky ladder and risk falling on top of Gregory and breaking a limb, just to prove that she's the biggest, baddest thing in the world.
God help us, that's the end of the chapter.
By the way, we're WAY past the halfway point of the actual text, and not nearly halfway done with the chapter count. There's gonna be a couple two-pagers up ahead, isn't there?
Next chapter: I hope you like the Saw movies, because the next part is torture porn.
The bad news: I've decided to push Planet Bob's release back to this weekend. Why? Well, it's not as polished as I'd like. Also, Amazon changed something in how they process the files I upload (HTML) that totally fucking breaks HTML formatting. What I usually do (format in word, save as HTML file, upload to KDP) won't work anymore. I've got to add a couple fun steps with another program I know fucking nothing about (Calibre. It's a good program. It's just new. I hate learning curves with passion and fire, sports fans. Passion and fucking fire) to have a .mobi file that isn't FUCKING BROKEN.
Seriously: Fuck you, Amazon, for not notifying sellers about the large number of issues with Paperwhite's formatting, AND for not making sure that your new products don't fuck up your old ones. I know that you're really just geared towards the big companies that can actually afford InDesign (Which doesn't actually mesh with .mobi files and requires a plug in, apparently) and fancy programing, but letting people know you've changed things in small and monumental ways would have been nice.
The other good news: Using this method, I can make all the other formats on my own. .mobi, .epub, everything else. I've meant to learn how to do this for a while.
The best news ever: NIC starts updating again RIGHT NOW.
...fuck, this book sucks. I forgot how much this book sucks. This book fucking sucks.
To remind you of the utter suck, Anita is following Richard, her ex best beloved, to rescue a wereleopard Richard stuffed down a hole. Okay, one of his underlings did, but Richard is responsible. The SS didn't get away with saying "Well, somebody else decided to use the showers that way" you know. Richard being suddenly all on Anita's side had her flip from "Richard is SOOOOOO fucking useless" to "Richard might be a good Alpha/Ulfric after all!"
Because agreeing with Anita = being worthy of leadership. Bullshit. Richard passed the buck and let somebody under his command take the blame for a fucking terrible choice. He should not be a leader.
Anita says she wouldn't have found the oubliette if she hadn't known it was there. Last chapter she said she didn't know where it was. So she has failed the test the wolves presented her. By their laws, the wereleopard should be dead meat.
Hey, Laurell, you started listening to your editor yet?
Guess not. By the way, gang, I would be willing to bet that the intended audience for this book will have watched Labyrinth multiple times. Hoggle's explanation of what an Oubliette is beats this one hollow.Oubliette is French for a little place of forgetting, but that’s not a direct translation. Oubliette simply means little forgetting, but what it is, is a place where you put people when you don’t plan on ever letting them out. Traditionally it’s a hole where once you push someone in they can’t get out. You don’t feed them, or water them, or talk to them, or anything to them. You just walk away.
Also, it was established that you had to go back to the oubliette here frequently to inject shift-preventing drugs into your victim, and the oubliette has a screw-in lid. Uh...if you have to go back 1. it's not an oubliette and 2. PUT HINGES AND A LATCH ON THE LID.
Also, LKH fails at basic biology. She says that people talk about you "starving to death" in what I assume is the oubliette. You would not starve to death. You would die of dehydration long before your body gave out due to lack of calories. Maybe a little water would get in, but you'd be licking it off the walls. At least she mentions what the floor would be covered in.
Richard, why was your first move as Ulfric not to fill this hole up with concrete?
Gregory is down in the bottom, of course, and Anita then pisses me off, hard:
Gregory wasn’t the strongest person I knew, not even one of the top hundred. What had it done to him to lie there in the dark with the stench of old bones, old death, pressed against his body? Had they explained to him how they’d leave him there to die? Had they told him every time they screwed the lid back in place that they weren’t coming back, except to drug him?
Why? Because he didn't kill fifteen people with his teeth? Being a victim does not mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you're strong. It means someone else broke your defenses and harmed you.
And hey, anybody here watch Mythbusters? Anybody here watch the episode where they tested Chinese water torture? They put Kari in the restraints, under the drip, and even though she was perfectly safe, with friends, and knew she'd be released the second she asked, she was reduced to tears in a very short period of time.
This is damaging to any person, and using the fact of their captivity to enforce a perception of weakness IS WRONG.
Oh, and Anita is claustraphobic and almost has a fucking panic attack on the climb down. This, and not Gregory's torture, takes up ALL of the chapter. So Gregory is weak for being chained up by a gang of enemy werewolves and shoved in a hole for several days, but Anita is strong for having a panic attack while climbing vollentarily down the same hole. God forbid she have to be strong for somebody else.
Richard offers to let her get out of it:
I shook my head. “I have to do it, Richard.”
“Why?” and his voice held the first hint of anger, like a slap of warmth.
“Because it scares me, and I have to know if I can.”
“Can what?”
“If I can crawl down into that hole.”
Not everything is a fucking pissing contest, Anita.
And of course, Richard's offer to let her off the hook is seen as him trying to be a big manly man, and not because Anita is about to pass the fuck out from a panic reaction, and that having her collapse on the ladder would not be a good thing for anybody. Look, you're not weak if you have issues with dark spaces or holes. You have a phobia. I have a phobia about stinging instincts, especially bees and wasps. I see a bee, I am on the other side of the fucking room long before my brain has a chance to think, "Oh, look, a bee". I understand that there is no rational connection between the object of your phobia and your reactions. That's why you, Anita, should be the last person on earth to go down that hole right now. You should try to manage your phobias, but you do that in a safe location with controls in place. You do not try to do it when someone else's life is dependant on your actions.
They are not trying to challange Anita's dominance here. They're trying to be human beings and keep this situation from getting any worse. Anita getting a compound fracture by falling down the ladder into a puddle of raw sewage would be the definition of "getting any worse". And just because the person offering to go down instead of Anita has a penis doesn't make this a gender thing. It makes it a sane human thing.
But no. Anita has to prove she's better than everyone and go down the slippery shaky ladder and risk falling on top of Gregory and breaking a limb, just to prove that she's the biggest, baddest thing in the world.
God help us, that's the end of the chapter.
By the way, we're WAY past the halfway point of the actual text, and not nearly halfway done with the chapter count. There's gonna be a couple two-pagers up ahead, isn't there?
Next chapter: I hope you like the Saw movies, because the next part is torture porn.
December 28, 2012
NiC paused until after the New Year
As you can see by the count down I have a couple days until Planet Bob hits the e-shelves. I also have a terrifyingly packed schedule at my work. So we will pause for CW to get her shit together and come back after the new year.
It is not something I wanna do, but priorities, man. Book flogging is fun, but it's not what I came to the dance for.
Meanwhile...New book on Tuesday! Yay!
It is not something I wanna do, but priorities, man. Book flogging is fun, but it's not what I came to the dance for.
Meanwhile...New book on Tuesday! Yay!
December 27, 2012
Narcissus in Chains--chapter 25
So I had a setback with Planet Bob. Not a massive one, but a moderately frustrating one. My mother has been my copyeditor so far (It's part of her IRL job at the print shop). Somehow we failed to communicate on the release date properly. So I'm on my own. I refuse to miss a deadline just because I didn't say "deadline January 1st" when my mom and I were discussing things. I also refuse to waylay her life because of my hobby.
So when you see mistakes in the release, you can blame me for it.
Fortunately today's chapter is going to be short and brief and problem free, and we'll blow through it quick, and...
...fuck. It's this chapter.
Anita ended the last chapter with the dead ghost of the former lupa crowing that she'd pushed Anita into triggering a fight. This chapter starts with Anita being restrained and Richard saying "Fuck, I deserved that hit". There is no fight.
Hey, guys? Do you remember the Nancy Drew Books? I remember the Nancy Drew books. Especially how every chapter ended with both a cliffhanger and an exclimation point! Even if it was just a knock! on a door! And this chapter really REALLY reminds me of Nancy Drew in the scenes where she's in trouble but yeah, not really.
Anita calls bullshit on Richard for using the oubliette. Richard says it was Jacob's idea. NO, Rich. You do not pass the buck like that. You're the boss, you decide. Maybe your problem is not that you're trying to impose democratsy, but that you're trying to impose it without first instating a bill of rights, or removing the barbaric things that make rule-by-force a necessity. (Look, if most people could vote their enemies into a guilotine, an Iron Maiden, or a rack, we wouldn't have Justin Bieber anymore. Just sayin') YOU are in charge of the pack, YOU should have decided where Gregory was stored until it was time to kill him. You have six hundred people in this pack, I'm sure you could have found a bank vault or something to house him in. And it is absofuckinglutely your responsibility to make sure that your ideals are followed in your pack, and to punish the shit out of people who fall back into the old ways because the old ways are fucking wrong.
It's not Richard's morality holding him back, in other words. It's Richard's inability to enforce it, or to stay on top of what's happening in the pack. Richard is not leading, and his morals have nothing to do with it.
But rather than calling bullshit on Richard, because fuck yes this is still on him, Anita goes psychopath on Jacob for suggesting it. So "Kill the Messenger" is in full force in this pack. Nice to know.
Laurell K. Hamilton, meanwhile, tries to be funny:
Humor is hard. Humor without being offensive is even harder. So to make up for that bullshit, let me show you a man ten thousand times more talented at humor than anybody else. John Pinette:
That? Right there? It's six minutes of genious. Dramatic stories? I can do those. (maybe). I cannot, and will never be able to do humor, and I am perfectly content with that, because we have John Pinette.
Right. Shitty book now.
Anita pulls lupa rank, which she still has for now, and kicks Jacob in the face. Yeah, Jake and Elizabeth are probably going to get together at some point. Richard says that he's "voting her back in", and IDK if that means as lupa for life or if we're still going to watch them have public sex later in the book, but if it's the former, well...much as I DO NOT want to see Anita and Richard make out on a chunk of rocks with pretensions, way to chicken-shit your book out of a crisis, LKH.
Jacob calls Richard out on turning things back into a dictatorship, Richard hulks out and gives a speech that ends with this little gem:
And I just had a VERY unpleasant flashback.
I had a very ill-fated foray into the world of Robert Jordan several years back. It ended when somebody complained about how the series slowed down after book four, and I stood there going "...it gets slower? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?". They recommended Terry Goodkind to me as a replacement. And while Wizard's First Rule was less "replacement" and more "direct fucking rip-off of Jordan's second book", I liked it. And I liked the second one, and the third one, all the way up to Temple of the Winds. Along the way, Richard, the lead, and Kahlan, his wife, got stranger and stranger and more militant, and Richard began getting preachy, but I'd never heard of Ayn Rand or Objectivism, and even if I had, Goodkind was too good of an author to destroy a good series by shoe-horning his own politics into the plot.
And then Faith of the Fallen happened. It was a good book. It was very clearly the book that Goodkind had been working towards from the beginning, because the writing sizzled (at least, compared to the book before, which I cannot remember one goddamned thing about) but HOLY FUCK. It was a freaking love letter to Ayn Rand.
In this book, boys and girls, I think I can safely say that LKH has a similar adjenda. And we just got our thesis statement. "If kindness won't work, we go for the kill."
Except not one fucking person in this book has been kind.
Ah, but now that Richard has agreed with Anita, shown his fangs and gone back on his word by throwing Jacob into the oubliette as soon as they get Gregory out, he's now perfect Ulfric material.
End of chapter.
Next chapter: Time to gross us all out, folks. They go get Gregory.
So when you see mistakes in the release, you can blame me for it.
Fortunately today's chapter is going to be short and brief and problem free, and we'll blow through it quick, and...
...fuck. It's this chapter.
Anita ended the last chapter with the dead ghost of the former lupa crowing that she'd pushed Anita into triggering a fight. This chapter starts with Anita being restrained and Richard saying "Fuck, I deserved that hit". There is no fight.
Hey, guys? Do you remember the Nancy Drew Books? I remember the Nancy Drew books. Especially how every chapter ended with both a cliffhanger and an exclimation point! Even if it was just a knock! on a door! And this chapter really REALLY reminds me of Nancy Drew in the scenes where she's in trouble but yeah, not really.
Anita calls bullshit on Richard for using the oubliette. Richard says it was Jacob's idea. NO, Rich. You do not pass the buck like that. You're the boss, you decide. Maybe your problem is not that you're trying to impose democratsy, but that you're trying to impose it without first instating a bill of rights, or removing the barbaric things that make rule-by-force a necessity. (Look, if most people could vote their enemies into a guilotine, an Iron Maiden, or a rack, we wouldn't have Justin Bieber anymore. Just sayin') YOU are in charge of the pack, YOU should have decided where Gregory was stored until it was time to kill him. You have six hundred people in this pack, I'm sure you could have found a bank vault or something to house him in. And it is absofuckinglutely your responsibility to make sure that your ideals are followed in your pack, and to punish the shit out of people who fall back into the old ways because the old ways are fucking wrong.
It's not Richard's morality holding him back, in other words. It's Richard's inability to enforce it, or to stay on top of what's happening in the pack. Richard is not leading, and his morals have nothing to do with it.
But rather than calling bullshit on Richard, because fuck yes this is still on him, Anita goes psychopath on Jacob for suggesting it. So "Kill the Messenger" is in full force in this pack. Nice to know.
Laurell K. Hamilton, meanwhile, tries to be funny:
He stepped back from me, averting his eyes, his face. “You heard the Ulfric. Go fetch your cat before we change our minds.”
“You couldn’t change your mind with a hundred watt bulb and a team of helpers.”
He frowned at me then. Sometimes my humor is a little esoteric, or maybe it’s just not funny. Jacob didn’t find it funny.
Humor is hard. Humor without being offensive is even harder. So to make up for that bullshit, let me show you a man ten thousand times more talented at humor than anybody else. John Pinette:
That? Right there? It's six minutes of genious. Dramatic stories? I can do those. (maybe). I cannot, and will never be able to do humor, and I am perfectly content with that, because we have John Pinette.
Right. Shitty book now.
Anita pulls lupa rank, which she still has for now, and kicks Jacob in the face. Yeah, Jake and Elizabeth are probably going to get together at some point. Richard says that he's "voting her back in", and IDK if that means as lupa for life or if we're still going to watch them have public sex later in the book, but if it's the former, well...much as I DO NOT want to see Anita and Richard make out on a chunk of rocks with pretensions, way to chicken-shit your book out of a crisis, LKH.
Jacob calls Richard out on turning things back into a dictatorship, Richard hulks out and gives a speech that ends with this little gem:
“I thought we were people, not animals. I thought we could change the old ways and make something better. But we all felt it tonight when Anita and her leopards melded. Something safe and good. I’ve tried to be temperate and kind, and look where it’s gotten us. Jacob said Anita is my backbone. No, but she’s doing something right, something that I’ve missed. If you won’t take kindness, then we’ll have to try something else.”
And I just had a VERY unpleasant flashback.
I had a very ill-fated foray into the world of Robert Jordan several years back. It ended when somebody complained about how the series slowed down after book four, and I stood there going "...it gets slower? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?". They recommended Terry Goodkind to me as a replacement. And while Wizard's First Rule was less "replacement" and more "direct fucking rip-off of Jordan's second book", I liked it. And I liked the second one, and the third one, all the way up to Temple of the Winds. Along the way, Richard, the lead, and Kahlan, his wife, got stranger and stranger and more militant, and Richard began getting preachy, but I'd never heard of Ayn Rand or Objectivism, and even if I had, Goodkind was too good of an author to destroy a good series by shoe-horning his own politics into the plot.
And then Faith of the Fallen happened. It was a good book. It was very clearly the book that Goodkind had been working towards from the beginning, because the writing sizzled (at least, compared to the book before, which I cannot remember one goddamned thing about) but HOLY FUCK. It was a freaking love letter to Ayn Rand.
In this book, boys and girls, I think I can safely say that LKH has a similar adjenda. And we just got our thesis statement. "If kindness won't work, we go for the kill."
Except not one fucking person in this book has been kind.
Ah, but now that Richard has agreed with Anita, shown his fangs and gone back on his word by throwing Jacob into the oubliette as soon as they get Gregory out, he's now perfect Ulfric material.
End of chapter.
Next chapter: Time to gross us all out, folks. They go get Gregory.
December 26, 2012
Narcissus in Chains--chapter 24
So after whining about how perfect Richard is and how having Micah (her rapist) at her back she can't forget about Richard. Finally, she asks about taking Gregory home. Jacob tells her that if she can track Gregory by scent, then she can take him home.
That's the test. That's it.
I think they dumbed it down a little bit.
Anita and her boys, however, are all offended. Anita hasn't shifted yet! (she won't). And this is a test that only a powerful shapeshifter could do. Track a man's scent like a bloodhound. Right. Anita asks what the rules are, and Richard tells her no one can help. She asks if she can use her necromancy, because she had a vision of Gregory sitting on a pile of bones. Jacob says "I don't see how that will help at all" but nobody actually tells Anita no.
This is the stupidest part of the book. There are places that are MUCH more offensive, but this part is just plain dumb. The test is way too simple for a shapeshifter to do, and Anita cheats her way through it by summoning the spirit of the last dead lupa, Raina
Apparently this is something only a great alpha could do. Because it's not just summoning a dead thing, it's summoning the munin, the ghost of a dead wolf. The ghost of a fucking psychotic dead wolf. Raina takes over Anita, somewhat, gets snippy when she sees what a mess the pack is--it's too big for one man to control, of COURSE it's a mess--and after demanding some kind of sex or chaos in payment, says that Gregory is in the oubliette.
Note: Anita never finds out where this oubliette is. The test was to track Gregory down by scent, and she never does that. But she gets pissed as hell at Richard for putting Gregory down the same hole that Raina and Marcus put all their condemned bad boys, and Richard backs right down like a good puppy.
Anita gets so pissed off she takes a swing at Richard, and the chapter ends with her going "Oh fuck, I've started the fight."
Huh. Other than being MORONICALLY STUPID this chapter wasn't so bad. Are we getting a reprieve?
No. And we're not going to get that fight, either.
That's the test. That's it.
I think they dumbed it down a little bit.
Anita and her boys, however, are all offended. Anita hasn't shifted yet! (she won't). And this is a test that only a powerful shapeshifter could do. Track a man's scent like a bloodhound. Right. Anita asks what the rules are, and Richard tells her no one can help. She asks if she can use her necromancy, because she had a vision of Gregory sitting on a pile of bones. Jacob says "I don't see how that will help at all" but nobody actually tells Anita no.
This is the stupidest part of the book. There are places that are MUCH more offensive, but this part is just plain dumb. The test is way too simple for a shapeshifter to do, and Anita cheats her way through it by summoning the spirit of the last dead lupa, Raina
Apparently this is something only a great alpha could do. Because it's not just summoning a dead thing, it's summoning the munin, the ghost of a dead wolf. The ghost of a fucking psychotic dead wolf. Raina takes over Anita, somewhat, gets snippy when she sees what a mess the pack is--it's too big for one man to control, of COURSE it's a mess--and after demanding some kind of sex or chaos in payment, says that Gregory is in the oubliette.
Note: Anita never finds out where this oubliette is. The test was to track Gregory down by scent, and she never does that. But she gets pissed as hell at Richard for putting Gregory down the same hole that Raina and Marcus put all their condemned bad boys, and Richard backs right down like a good puppy.
Anita gets so pissed off she takes a swing at Richard, and the chapter ends with her going "Oh fuck, I've started the fight."
Huh. Other than being MORONICALLY STUPID this chapter wasn't so bad. Are we getting a reprieve?
No. And we're not going to get that fight, either.
December 25, 2012
Narcissus in Chains chapter 23
We are still heading INTO the lupanar.
I got to see the Hobbit today with my dad. In IMAX, it was FUCKING AMAZING and I will never critize 3D again HOLY SHIT. But it was also one third of the original story. One third. From "In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit" to the dwarves and Bilbo climbing out of the orc caves (or thereabouts. There was a Final Conflict, it was utterly bad-ass). There was not enough book to fill that much movie, so Peter Jackson started making things up (and it totally worked).
So it was one third of a book's worth of plot spread so thin they had to add more things in, and that plot still moved faster and contained more character development than this one does.
It also had a plot.
Lupanar. There is an ancient, multi-hundred year old throne with arms worn by "years of Ulfrics" touching it. It is an ancient, multi-hundred year old throne decked out like Boromir is ready to take a seat in it, plopped down in the middle of a St. Louis clearing. St. Louis was founded in 1764. It is barely older than our actual country, Laurell. Where the fuck did the magic chair come from?
Please say Narnia. Please oh please oh please. (Actually, please say that Merry Gentry's family brought it with them, because connecting this series with the series that is still actually kind of sort of good might help rescue Anita. Maybe.)
"Countless generations" my ass. I'd buy a magic wolf throne if it came from Eire, or Unst, but not this shit. Basically, gang, the wolves decided they wanted to appropreate more than just norsy-sounding names for their leaders, so they took their idea of viking culture and used it to build a fake barbarian throne. Maybe not last week, but probably within the last two hundred to two hundred and fifty years, because I doubt there was a thriving wolf pack back in 1764. And that's a generation gap you can fucking count.
Also, no mention of how many wolves are in this clearing, which is about 100 to 150 yards. I have to assume it's all of them. All six hundred wolves, all two hundred rats, twenty to fifty leopards and a swan. In a 100 yard clearing. It MIGHT work. But sanitation is an issue.
Okay. Seriously. Are you guys TWELVE? Are you all going to go home and listen to Linkin Park and Evanescense? YOU ARE HANGING BLACK CURTAINS IN THE TREES TO BE MELODRAMATIC. JESUS.
And once more I think about the Mercyverse, and how Bran the uber-werewolf would show up looking like a pizza delivery dude barely old enough to drink. Bran did not pretend to be bad-ass because he knew damn well he could take the room apart if he wanted to. If you have to put on a show, boys and girls, you're not what you're pretending to be.
Richard shows up.
I read a story the other day about Bayard Rustin. Bayard Rustin was a pacifist who refused to bend on the issue of violence ever. To the point that when someone was beating him, he gave the guy a new stick and suggested he be beaten with the new stick too. Bayard Rustin was also a quaker, black and openly gay in the ninteen sixties. He's the dude that convinced Martin Luther King that nonviolence was the way to go. If there is a poster boy for taking a damaging, inflexible moral stand, it would be this dude.
And that guy I mentioned? The one doing the beating? When Bayard Rustin offered him that other stick, the presumably white, racist, angry dude threw both sticks down and walked away. That's right. An act of turning the other cheek, what most people call "being a martyr", usually with a snide little smirk on their face, shut the violence down. In fact, non violence usually shuts violence down. Maybe not immediately, but it's not fun when the person you're beating on stops fighting back.
That right there? That's bad ass. Hell, being openly gay in the ninteen sixties was fucking bad-ass. Anita Blake? Is not bad-ass when she whines about how morals hold you back. She sounds like a ten year old kid told "Sorry, you can't have a pony."
Tank man. He shut down China's tanks.
Ghandi. He shut down England.
Susan B. Anthony. She shut down men.
None of them shot the people they were trying to change through the heart to prove a point. What they did do, though, was produce they change they were trying to cause. (assuming all Tank Man wanted to do was stop China's tanks)
And a generation later, the descendants of the people he saved are still leaving rocks on his grave out of respect for what he did.
You want power that lasts, Anita? You want to be remembered as somebody great? You want your name to be something people conjure with? You take a moral stand and you do. not. back. down. EVER.
Richard's problem is not that his morals get in the way. It's that he's too inconsistant, he's way too fucking self-centered to pull off the stand he's trying to make, and his wolf pack is too fucking big for him to rule effectively. The pack needs to be split up.
Yeah. Sigh. Whatever.
So Richard announces that they're there to bid goodbye to their lupa and to choose another. And so I don't have to mention it later, there are a whole bunch of girls dressed sexily sitting over in a corner. One of them is named "Paris" and she's implied to be some kind of wonton gold-digger. So they're not wasting any time at all.
I think this problem is less "Anita is a wereleopard now (She's not)" and more "Anita hasn't been functioning as our lupa for six fucking months, now we've got a chance to get rid of her." If she'd BEEN THERE, they could have worked around it. She has not. They want her gone.
The book does not seem to be aware that you cannot treat people like they don't exist for half a year and then try to pretend you're all buddy buddy with them.
Richard says they also need to punish Gregory. Anita says a prayer for guidance. God says "You'd have been better off before you shot an unarmed woman in the heart."
Richard asks what the wererats are there for. They explain that they're here to honor Anita's debit, and also if Richard is dead they won't help the wolves anymore, so fuck you contender-for-the-throne Jacob.
Donovan also states he's there to support Anita because she almost died saving his swans. Jacob calls bullshit on Anita saving people. Richard uses this to point out that Anita has saved half the pack personally, made their lives a fuckload of a lot better by getting rid of the former Ulfric and lupa, saved all the rats and did a couple other things too, and turns it into a chance to see who in the pack still supports him. Looks to me like Richard does this politics thing fine. Anita makes a pretty good plea for a second chance, too, but Jacob shoots it down.
Anita asks to go get Gregory. Paris says Anita needs to stop being Lupa first so that Paris can go jump Richard. Anita asks what that means, and there is a ceramony that must be done, though Anita could also refuse to step down. Anita says she thought she was already voted off the island and Silvie, another wolf, says that Anita can either refuse by going into mortal combat against all challengers or by "annointing the throne"
I sure hope they wash that thing. Also...this is probably going to happen at the ...sigh...climax of this book. I hope it isn't, but my hopes, dear friends, are not high.
And then some metaphysical nonsense happens between Anita and Richard, and Anita mourns that now she is Richard's perfect mate, now! When she may never touch him again!
I used the pooh-bear graphic too early, didn't I?
Next chapter: It gets dumber. But you already knew that.
I got to see the Hobbit today with my dad. In IMAX, it was FUCKING AMAZING and I will never critize 3D again HOLY SHIT. But it was also one third of the original story. One third. From "In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit" to the dwarves and Bilbo climbing out of the orc caves (or thereabouts. There was a Final Conflict, it was utterly bad-ass). There was not enough book to fill that much movie, so Peter Jackson started making things up (and it totally worked).
So it was one third of a book's worth of plot spread so thin they had to add more things in, and that plot still moved faster and contained more character development than this one does.
It also had a plot.
Lupanar. There is an ancient, multi-hundred year old throne with arms worn by "years of Ulfrics" touching it. It is an ancient, multi-hundred year old throne decked out like Boromir is ready to take a seat in it, plopped down in the middle of a St. Louis clearing. St. Louis was founded in 1764. It is barely older than our actual country, Laurell. Where the fuck did the magic chair come from?
Please say Narnia. Please oh please oh please. (Actually, please say that Merry Gentry's family brought it with them, because connecting this series with the series that is still actually kind of sort of good might help rescue Anita. Maybe.)
"Countless generations" my ass. I'd buy a magic wolf throne if it came from Eire, or Unst, but not this shit. Basically, gang, the wolves decided they wanted to appropreate more than just norsy-sounding names for their leaders, so they took their idea of viking culture and used it to build a fake barbarian throne. Maybe not last week, but probably within the last two hundred to two hundred and fifty years, because I doubt there was a thriving wolf pack back in 1764. And that's a generation gap you can fucking count.
Also, no mention of how many wolves are in this clearing, which is about 100 to 150 yards. I have to assume it's all of them. All six hundred wolves, all two hundred rats, twenty to fifty leopards and a swan. In a 100 yard clearing. It MIGHT work. But sanitation is an issue.
Someone had hung cloth in the trees to one side of the throne. Black cloth, like a curtain, and it took a movement of the wind to draw my attention to it.
Okay. Seriously. Are you guys TWELVE? Are you all going to go home and listen to Linkin Park and Evanescense? YOU ARE HANGING BLACK CURTAINS IN THE TREES TO BE MELODRAMATIC. JESUS.
And once more I think about the Mercyverse, and how Bran the uber-werewolf would show up looking like a pizza delivery dude barely old enough to drink. Bran did not pretend to be bad-ass because he knew damn well he could take the room apart if he wanted to. If you have to put on a show, boys and girls, you're not what you're pretending to be.
Richard shows up.
He looked the part of the barbarian king, but there was still something in him, something . . . soft. And if I could taste it, then so could Jacob.Because having compassion and trying to give people choices and let everyone's voice be heard at the expense of your own is bad. Seriously, Richard is about to take a pounding because he stands up for his morals. And this makes him weak, because he can't accept that he's a big scary monster like Anita is now, and if he'd just once accept that wonton violence and wholesale violations of human rights are good things, his whole life would have new purpose!
\
I read a story the other day about Bayard Rustin. Bayard Rustin was a pacifist who refused to bend on the issue of violence ever. To the point that when someone was beating him, he gave the guy a new stick and suggested he be beaten with the new stick too. Bayard Rustin was also a quaker, black and openly gay in the ninteen sixties. He's the dude that convinced Martin Luther King that nonviolence was the way to go. If there is a poster boy for taking a damaging, inflexible moral stand, it would be this dude.
And that guy I mentioned? The one doing the beating? When Bayard Rustin offered him that other stick, the presumably white, racist, angry dude threw both sticks down and walked away. That's right. An act of turning the other cheek, what most people call "being a martyr", usually with a snide little smirk on their face, shut the violence down. In fact, non violence usually shuts violence down. Maybe not immediately, but it's not fun when the person you're beating on stops fighting back.
That right there? That's bad ass. Hell, being openly gay in the ninteen sixties was fucking bad-ass. Anita Blake? Is not bad-ass when she whines about how morals hold you back. She sounds like a ten year old kid told "Sorry, you can't have a pony."
And if I’d still been lupa, hell, we had enough ruthless people to get the job done, if Richard would just get out of our way. We were so close, and at the same time we weren’t even in the ballpark. It was more than frustrating. It was like watching a train race towards Richard, and we were all yelling, “Get off the tracks, get off the tracks!” Hell, we were trying to drag him off the tracks, and he was fighting us.Other people who used non-violence effectively:
Tank man. He shut down China's tanks.
Ghandi. He shut down England.
Susan B. Anthony. She shut down men.
None of them shot the people they were trying to change through the heart to prove a point. What they did do, though, was produce they change they were trying to cause. (assuming all Tank Man wanted to do was stop China's tanks)
If Jacob was the train, then I could kill him and Richard would be safe. But Rafael was right. If it wasn’t Jacob, it’d be someone else. Jacob wasn’t the train hurtling to destroy Richard. Richard was.Hmmm...okay, how about somebody whose moral stand cost them everything. Oskar. Fucking. Schindler. The only time in his life the man ever held a position of success was when the Nazis put him in charge of a factory. He decided what the Nazis were doing to the Jews was wrong, and he gave up everything to save just over a thousand people. Used up all his power, all his connections. He died penniless.
And a generation later, the descendants of the people he saved are still leaving rocks on his grave out of respect for what he did.
You want power that lasts, Anita? You want to be remembered as somebody great? You want your name to be something people conjure with? You take a moral stand and you do. not. back. down. EVER.
Richard's problem is not that his morals get in the way. It's that he's too inconsistant, he's way too fucking self-centered to pull off the stand he's trying to make, and his wolf pack is too fucking big for him to rule effectively. The pack needs to be split up.
Yeah. Sigh. Whatever.
So Richard announces that they're there to bid goodbye to their lupa and to choose another. And so I don't have to mention it later, there are a whole bunch of girls dressed sexily sitting over in a corner. One of them is named "Paris" and she's implied to be some kind of wonton gold-digger. So they're not wasting any time at all.
I think this problem is less "Anita is a wereleopard now (She's not)" and more "Anita hasn't been functioning as our lupa for six fucking months, now we've got a chance to get rid of her." If she'd BEEN THERE, they could have worked around it. She has not. They want her gone.
The book does not seem to be aware that you cannot treat people like they don't exist for half a year and then try to pretend you're all buddy buddy with them.
Richard says they also need to punish Gregory. Anita says a prayer for guidance. God says "You'd have been better off before you shot an unarmed woman in the heart."
Richard asks what the wererats are there for. They explain that they're here to honor Anita's debit, and also if Richard is dead they won't help the wolves anymore, so fuck you contender-for-the-throne Jacob.
Donovan also states he's there to support Anita because she almost died saving his swans. Jacob calls bullshit on Anita saving people. Richard uses this to point out that Anita has saved half the pack personally, made their lives a fuckload of a lot better by getting rid of the former Ulfric and lupa, saved all the rats and did a couple other things too, and turns it into a chance to see who in the pack still supports him. Looks to me like Richard does this politics thing fine. Anita makes a pretty good plea for a second chance, too, but Jacob shoots it down.
Anita asks to go get Gregory. Paris says Anita needs to stop being Lupa first so that Paris can go jump Richard. Anita asks what that means, and there is a ceramony that must be done, though Anita could also refuse to step down. Anita says she thought she was already voted off the island and Silvie, another wolf, says that Anita can either refuse by going into mortal combat against all challengers or by "annointing the throne"
“You fuck the Ulfric on the throne in front of all of us.”
I was already shaking my head. “Somehow I don’t think either Richard or I are up to public sex.”
I sure hope they wash that thing. Also...this is probably going to happen at the ...sigh...climax of this book. I hope it isn't, but my hopes, dear friends, are not high.
And then some metaphysical nonsense happens between Anita and Richard, and Anita mourns that now she is Richard's perfect mate, now! When she may never touch him again!
I used the pooh-bear graphic too early, didn't I?
Next chapter: It gets dumber. But you already knew that.
And we have book cover!
This is the first time I've finished a cover with a week left to go. No disasters. No mistakes. No errors.I am not excited about this release--I tend to disappoint myself ahead of time so it doesn't hit later--but the anticipation is starting to get to me. And I am NERVY about this one. Starbleached has done so well (almost 50% of my sales) that I feel like there's a lot riding on this being a good one.
That said, I do think the covers match:
Also, you know what this means, gang. BLOG MAKEOVER TIME!
CHRISTMAS!
I love Christmas. I love the holiday, I love the lights, I love the tree, I love watching South Texas try to be cold for Christmas (It didn't make it this year. It's about seventy degrees F outside. Most years its 40 with a steady drizzle so seventy and sunshine are much better) I love how QUIET it is. Oh my GOD does it get quiet for Christmas.
And then there is the accounting of things. Because the best part of Christmas is definately family, the second best is glitter (I include twinkly lights as glitter), but the third best is that on Christmas people give you stuff.
I'd say there were three stand-out highlights. The one thing I asked for this year were a pair of real headphones. I am a music addict, and earbuds just don't do it for me anymore. I got them. YAY!
My brother gave me the motion-capture/wii remote knockoff deal for my PS3. I am a somewhat casual gamer (MINECRAFT! JOURNEY! OMG if you game, and you can find it for your system, GET JOURNEY) so it's a lot of fun. It will also kill your arm and give you tennis elbow in record time. Also, it let me get my mother the dancing game she's wanted for Christmas. It made her happy, too. :D
But my fav this year came from my stepfather.
I am kind of a nail polish addict. Okay, it's not EVERY kind of polish. But I love glitter. No. I LOVE glitter. And there is nothing quite as much fun as a big, spangly holographic glitterbomb. Sadly, companies do not frequently make big, spangly holographic glitterbombs, and I am both too lazy and too cheap to buy the indies, so I make my own. (...It makes sense in my head.). This means there is a table in my garage with a bottle of glitter medium and enough glitter to become a health hazard. My stepfather, who doesn't know me very well yet, decided that it was nail polish in general that I liked, and gave me a set of nail art stamp plates.
Which I had just begun lusting over. As in I had just spent most of Christmas eve looking at stamp plates and drooling, and then looking at my bank account and making a sad whimpering noise. So I. Freaked. Out. And then tried them out immediately. Ready to visit Planet Girl?
And just because I feel like showing off, and I FINALLY had my camera close at hand, here's the glittery things I mixed my own self:
This is the one I'm wearing in the picture, on top of a glittery gold-purple base thing you can kind of see down near the nail bed.
This one is pure self indulganceYes. They're both in brand name bottles. I usually use half of the glitter medium (WHICH IS EXPENSIVE AS FUCK) and half of a brand-name clear polish, which has the added benefit of giving me another polish bottle to work with. I'm not ENTIRELY happy with that gold mix, and I plan on hitting Wal-mart for a bunch of dollar top-coats as soon as Christmas stops being here so I can get the recipe down. That silver-blue spangle mix is perfect. I even have it written down *somewhere*.
Other members of my family had lots of fun. My brother got a buck-knife, and immediately said "That's not a knife" in a Crocodile Dundee accent. My mother got a MASSIVE set of hand-tuned wind chimes. They resonate for about a minute after you hit them. It's like a tape of meditation music all the time, now. I don't know my stepfather that well yet, either, so I gave him what he asked for (Magic 8-ball) and something I figured he'd like (WWE DVD. Because he is *that* into wrestling)
And then he told me he hadn't gotten anything for Christmas for 5+ years, and we both kind of cried.
I have yet to do Christmas with my Dad and stepmother, so unless he can come down to this part of town (it's an hour long drive) we may wind up holding off until after New Year's.
Speaking of New Year's, if you don't hear from me after the first, it will be because the customers at my workplace ate me. It's going to be that hectic.
So now the question is...what holiday did YOU celebrate this month, and how much fun did you have in the process?
And then there is the accounting of things. Because the best part of Christmas is definately family, the second best is glitter (I include twinkly lights as glitter), but the third best is that on Christmas people give you stuff.
I'd say there were three stand-out highlights. The one thing I asked for this year were a pair of real headphones. I am a music addict, and earbuds just don't do it for me anymore. I got them. YAY!
My brother gave me the motion-capture/wii remote knockoff deal for my PS3. I am a somewhat casual gamer (MINECRAFT! JOURNEY! OMG if you game, and you can find it for your system, GET JOURNEY) so it's a lot of fun. It will also kill your arm and give you tennis elbow in record time. Also, it let me get my mother the dancing game she's wanted for Christmas. It made her happy, too. :D
But my fav this year came from my stepfather.
I am kind of a nail polish addict. Okay, it's not EVERY kind of polish. But I love glitter. No. I LOVE glitter. And there is nothing quite as much fun as a big, spangly holographic glitterbomb. Sadly, companies do not frequently make big, spangly holographic glitterbombs, and I am both too lazy and too cheap to buy the indies, so I make my own. (...It makes sense in my head.). This means there is a table in my garage with a bottle of glitter medium and enough glitter to become a health hazard. My stepfather, who doesn't know me very well yet, decided that it was nail polish in general that I liked, and gave me a set of nail art stamp plates.
Which I had just begun lusting over. As in I had just spent most of Christmas eve looking at stamp plates and drooling, and then looking at my bank account and making a sad whimpering noise. So I. Freaked. Out. And then tried them out immediately. Ready to visit Planet Girl?
And just because I feel like showing off, and I FINALLY had my camera close at hand, here's the glittery things I mixed my own self:
This is the one I'm wearing in the picture, on top of a glittery gold-purple base thing you can kind of see down near the nail bed.
This one is pure self indulganceYes. They're both in brand name bottles. I usually use half of the glitter medium (WHICH IS EXPENSIVE AS FUCK) and half of a brand-name clear polish, which has the added benefit of giving me another polish bottle to work with. I'm not ENTIRELY happy with that gold mix, and I plan on hitting Wal-mart for a bunch of dollar top-coats as soon as Christmas stops being here so I can get the recipe down. That silver-blue spangle mix is perfect. I even have it written down *somewhere*.Other members of my family had lots of fun. My brother got a buck-knife, and immediately said "That's not a knife" in a Crocodile Dundee accent. My mother got a MASSIVE set of hand-tuned wind chimes. They resonate for about a minute after you hit them. It's like a tape of meditation music all the time, now. I don't know my stepfather that well yet, either, so I gave him what he asked for (Magic 8-ball) and something I figured he'd like (WWE DVD. Because he is *that* into wrestling)
And then he told me he hadn't gotten anything for Christmas for 5+ years, and we both kind of cried.
I have yet to do Christmas with my Dad and stepmother, so unless he can come down to this part of town (it's an hour long drive) we may wind up holding off until after New Year's.
Speaking of New Year's, if you don't hear from me after the first, it will be because the customers at my workplace ate me. It's going to be that hectic.
So now the question is...what holiday did YOU celebrate this month, and how much fun did you have in the process?
December 24, 2012
Narcissus in Chains--chapter 22
Okay. I have to confess something: I have spent way too much time reading the Mercy Thompson novels. That severely, SEVERELY reshaped my view of were-whatever congregations. See, I was under the impression that were-whatevers were a little hard to find. In that the population was still in double digits. I am sure the other novels stated exactly how many were-whatevers there were in each colony. I must have blocked it out.
There are two hundred were-rats at this gathering. Two. fucking. hundred.
And there are six hundred werewolves. All of whom are here.
This is not a meeting, boys and girls. It's a fucking convention. There are eight hundred people in this clearing tonight.
HOW DO THE COPS NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS? WHY IS THERE NO COP PRESENT?!? DON'T YOU NEED A PERMIT FOR THIS? HOW ABOUT SANITATION? WHAT? WHERE? HOW! HOW IS THIS A THING!
I'm sorry. My brain got overloaded by stupid there for a second. These are gangs, boys and girls. And we are about to have a full on fucking gang war. You can float a feud between forty people past the cops, but not eight hundred.
Rafael gives Anita a body guard. Wisely, this is female. Also, apparently the pard cannot function because it has too many submissives and not enough dominants.
These are fucking leopards. They don't work that way, and even if they did, they could still eat a wolf.
Rafael points out to Anita that when she's Nimir-Ra in truth, meaning when she shifts (she won't) she'll have to advertise for "enforcers". And when your "pack" is so big you have hundreds of people in it, "advertise" is the right fucking word. Is there a were-whatever craigslist or something?
Given that they've already been here an hour...
Can we PLEASE move on with this? PLEASE?
And then a man guard walks up beside the woman guard. Anita agrees to have bodyguards. And then this happens:
Way to enforce gender norms there, LKH. I'm not being sarcastic. The guy wants to protect fragile pretty Anita, and the woman wants to compete with her.
And then we have Magical Touch Therapy between Anita, Micah and the other wereleopards. All except for Gregory. You remember Gregory? The kidnapped wereleopard? If you do remember him, you might want to remind Anita.
And then it moves on to borderline sexy fun-times with Micah and Anita. And it might be fun for them, but it sure as hell isn't fun for me:
Fifty Shades of Gray had sexier scenes. At least we didn't have to dip into bad metaphores (like a door we stepped through? really? REALLY?) to describe Ana and Christian's fun with ben-wa balls.
And then Richard shows up! He watched the whole thing.
You want to know when I decided the Twilight series had no redeeming qualities? It wasn't the stalkering in the first book, it wasn't the blank-but-for-one-word pages or the halucination-triggering in the second. It was that fucking tent scene in Eclipse, where Bella almost freezes to death due to Edward having no body heat, and Jacob comes in and snuggles with her until she fakes falling asleep, and then Ed and Jake have a verbal dick measuring contest. It was contrived, illogical and shitty for every single character involved, and I hated every fucking second of it.
I bring it up because I saw the word "Richard" and immediately felt the same rush of throat-ripping rage. And Anita goes on about how much she loves and wants Richard, and it is finally time to bring this out:
The next several dozen paragraphs are "Should we rescue your cat? Let's go rescue your cat. Should we go? Yes. But should we?" I'm skimming.
A wolf goes up to Anita and says he's envious of how nice all the leopards are with each other. Anita blames Richard's morals for sabotaging their closeness. Because it's morals that prevent people from being close to each other.
And then LKH manages to throw me right off the deep end.
Also...tenderhearted. Seriously? THIS IS THE WOMAN THAT JUST SHOT HER POLITICAL ENEMY IN THE HEART JUST TO WATCH HER SQUIRM.
Morality is wrong, blog readers. I did not know this. I have lived my whole life not stealing or hurting others or raping or murdering, but apparenlty all these things are wrong. I shall go out post haste and do something terrible. Like book burning. Book burning is morally wrong. Let's start with this one.
Oh, God it's still going on. Anita is so tenderhearted. It's one of her best qualities.
THIS IS WHAT THE TEXT SAYS. AND IT WILL NOT SHUT UP ABOUT IT:
YES WE DO.
God. Look, sometimes I write bullshit like that too. But I go back and take it out and spend five days trying to figure out a way to convey the same nonsense with showing, so that I don't look like an idiot by having the words and the actual actions of the characters be this badly paired.
And this is where I call bullshit on the "Morality is wrong" nonsense:
Really. Out of all the things in this book, I think I am most disturbed by this growing theme of "having a moral code is bad." Richard is trying to make the pack a safe place. Richard's problem is that he's not offering concequences for bad behavior. Hell, his relationship with Anita has probably fucked him up so bad it's gotten in the way of him doing his job. The best thing he could do for the pack is separate from Anita.
There's probably shocking moments yet to come, but this is the first time I've felt honestly creeped out by this.
Oh, and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and I hope you all have a very good day tomorrow. I will probably be posting pictures of swag.
There are two hundred were-rats at this gathering. Two. fucking. hundred.
And there are six hundred werewolves. All of whom are here.
This is not a meeting, boys and girls. It's a fucking convention. There are eight hundred people in this clearing tonight.
HOW DO THE COPS NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS? WHY IS THERE NO COP PRESENT?!? DON'T YOU NEED A PERMIT FOR THIS? HOW ABOUT SANITATION? WHAT? WHERE? HOW! HOW IS THIS A THING!
I'm sorry. My brain got overloaded by stupid there for a second. These are gangs, boys and girls. And we are about to have a full on fucking gang war. You can float a feud between forty people past the cops, but not eight hundred.
Rafael gives Anita a body guard. Wisely, this is female. Also, apparently the pard cannot function because it has too many submissives and not enough dominants.
These are fucking leopards. They don't work that way, and even if they did, they could still eat a wolf.
Rafael points out to Anita that when she's Nimir-Ra in truth, meaning when she shifts (she won't) she'll have to advertise for "enforcers". And when your "pack" is so big you have hundreds of people in it, "advertise" is the right fucking word. Is there a were-whatever craigslist or something?
Nathaniel leaned into me, and said, “If you don’t give in on this we’ll still be standing here an hour from now.”
Given that they've already been here an hour...
Can we PLEASE move on with this? PLEASE?
And then a man guard walks up beside the woman guard. Anita agrees to have bodyguards. And then this happens:
I put my hand out. They exchanged glances between them, then shook my hand. Igor touched me like he was afraid I’d break, and Claudia tried to squeeze hard enough to make me cry uncle. I didn’t. I smiled pleasantly at her, because I knew she wouldn’t really hurt me. She just wanted to see if I’d squirm.
Way to enforce gender norms there, LKH. I'm not being sarcastic. The guy wants to protect fragile pretty Anita, and the woman wants to compete with her.
And then we have Magical Touch Therapy between Anita, Micah and the other wereleopards. All except for Gregory. You remember Gregory? The kidnapped wereleopard? If you do remember him, you might want to remind Anita.
And then it moves on to borderline sexy fun-times with Micah and Anita. And it might be fun for them, but it sure as hell isn't fun for me:
It was as if Micah’s body and mine were a door and we stepped into each other, closer than flesh could touch, closer than hearts could beat, and I felt his beast and mine roll through us, around us, as if the two great animals bound us together like a rope that ran through our flesh, our skin, our minds.
Fifty Shades of Gray had sexier scenes. At least we didn't have to dip into bad metaphores (like a door we stepped through? really? REALLY?) to describe Ana and Christian's fun with ben-wa balls.
And then Richard shows up! He watched the whole thing.
You want to know when I decided the Twilight series had no redeeming qualities? It wasn't the stalkering in the first book, it wasn't the blank-but-for-one-word pages or the halucination-triggering in the second. It was that fucking tent scene in Eclipse, where Bella almost freezes to death due to Edward having no body heat, and Jacob comes in and snuggles with her until she fakes falling asleep, and then Ed and Jake have a verbal dick measuring contest. It was contrived, illogical and shitty for every single character involved, and I hated every fucking second of it.
I bring it up because I saw the word "Richard" and immediately felt the same rush of throat-ripping rage. And Anita goes on about how much she loves and wants Richard, and it is finally time to bring this out:
The next several dozen paragraphs are "Should we rescue your cat? Let's go rescue your cat. Should we go? Yes. But should we?" I'm skimming.
A wolf goes up to Anita and says he's envious of how nice all the leopards are with each other. Anita blames Richard's morals for sabotaging their closeness. Because it's morals that prevent people from being close to each other.
And then LKH manages to throw me right off the deep end.
“I’ve benefited from your loyalty, your sheer stubbornness. What I didn’t realize until tonight is that you didn’t save me just because I was your friend, or just because it was the right thing to do. You didn’t risk yourself and your people to save me from torture because of the kind of moral rightness that Richard is fond of. You saved me because you could not bear the thought of leaving me behind.” He touched my face, very gently. “Not from a sense of right and wrong, but because you are just that tenderhearted.”Did the ten commandments bite you on the ass, Laurell? Did you lose a bet with a law firm? Did the Magna Carta run over your puppy? SINCE WHEN WAS DOING SOMETHING BECAUSE IT IS RIGHT A BAD MOVE?
Also...tenderhearted. Seriously? THIS IS THE WOMAN THAT JUST SHOT HER POLITICAL ENEMY IN THE HEART JUST TO WATCH HER SQUIRM.
Morality is wrong, blog readers. I did not know this. I have lived my whole life not stealing or hurting others or raping or murdering, but apparenlty all these things are wrong. I shall go out post haste and do something terrible. Like book burning. Book burning is morally wrong. Let's start with this one.
Oh, God it's still going on. Anita is so tenderhearted. It's one of her best qualities.
THIS IS WHAT THE TEXT SAYS. AND IT WILL NOT SHUT UP ABOUT IT:
ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE SAME CHARACTER HERE?
“First I have to accept the fact that you’re kindhearted, now I have to accept the fact that you’re insightful as well. I knew you were powerful, ruthless, and pretty, but that you have a mind and a heart besides is going to take some getting used to.”
“Does everyone pretty much think I’m just a sociopath who happens to have magical abilities?”
YES WE DO.
God. Look, sometimes I write bullshit like that too. But I go back and take it out and spend five days trying to figure out a way to convey the same nonsense with showing, so that I don't look like an idiot by having the words and the actual actions of the characters be this badly paired.
And this is where I call bullshit on the "Morality is wrong" nonsense:
You can bandage a wound, set a broken bone, but not caring . . . you can’t cure that, and you can’t recover from it.First of all, 104 members of humanity need to grow up. Yes, that was highlighted too. Second, that's a moral judgement on your part. See, Anita, your issue with Richard isn't that he has morals. It's that his moral code does not agree with yours. Richard's code is just based on an outside idealism that he refuses to use. Yours, on the other hand, is based on your emotional judgements and your uterus. If you're screwing someone, or you want to screw someone, they are a good guy. If you're not, or they have no interest in you, or they want to screw one of "your" men, they're a bad guy.
Really. Out of all the things in this book, I think I am most disturbed by this growing theme of "having a moral code is bad." Richard is trying to make the pack a safe place. Richard's problem is that he's not offering concequences for bad behavior. Hell, his relationship with Anita has probably fucked him up so bad it's gotten in the way of him doing his job. The best thing he could do for the pack is separate from Anita.
There's probably shocking moments yet to come, but this is the first time I've felt honestly creeped out by this.
Oh, and Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and I hope you all have a very good day tomorrow. I will probably be posting pictures of swag.
