mokie | Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Note type thingie: I have a format for book reviews and such, sure, but I'm all hopped up on cold medicine, so I'll edit that in later, m'kay?

Fans of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series will happily tell you that she invented the paranormal romance genre. That's always struck me as very silly, as any book containing vampires was likely to contain some eroticism already, and the series in question started out as paranormal mystery.

I will buy that it helped immensely that Hamilton's series was already popular and well-established when it jumped from paranormal mystery to paranormal romance, and her timing--she made the switch just in time to pants that zeitgeist--was perfect to become its poster author. I'll even agree that she's the source of the now ubiquitous vamp/were/kinda-human love triangle, and thus most books in the genre owe Anita Blake a huge debt of gratitude.

(I'll also grumble about losing the plot, characterization thrown out the window, and authors who get too close to fandom and end up writing what is essentially fanfic of their own series...)

One series in which the influence of Anita Blake is obvious is the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. I have the warm and fuzzies for this series, because even if Briggs didn't set out to do so, it feels like a former fan's attempt to write an Anita-like series without the more annoying Anita-isms.

The way Hamilton brought whole books to a halt to describe Anita's latest outfit, down to the Nikes with color coordinated swooshes? Mercy throws on yesterday's T-shirt, mustard stain and all.

The way Hamilton always had to have her necromancer Blake level-up, one-up and out-badass the monsters, even when it didn't make sense and left her painted into a corner? Mercy is a relatively weak shapeshifter surrounded by things that would normally kill her; she gets by because she's very good at being strategically submissive, generally unobtrusive, and in the right place at the right time.

The way early Anita was judgmentally prudish, until ~~Hamilton remarried~~ that pesky ardeur suddenly required her to screw everybody that crossed her path? It's nonchalantly suggested that Mercy has a social life, with no sexual hang-ups that require supernatural justification or a sex scene every 2.3 pages.

The way Hamilton is squicky about homosexuality, and so not only did all males have to swoon over Anita, but they were forbidden to bed each other? Briggs' gay werewolf is just a friend, there are social implications to this within the story beyond, "So, that means he doesn't have sex with the heroine then?" and like most of the other characters, he's happily tied up in his own relationship.

The way Hamilton forgets to include any goddamn plot once she gets into that 'sex scene every 2.3 pages' run of books? I've not hit the latest Mercy books, but as far as I've read, the series is still mystery with some romance and sex, and even when Mercy gets laid, other shit still happens.

This may be a sticky point particular to fans of the early Anita books. Hamilton once swore she'd never include gratuitous sex, and then declared later that the constant sexin' wasn't gratuitous because they were plot, while simultaneously declaring that she didn't write smut. I have no problem with smut (downright fond of it, I am), but let us be honest with each other: you need plot in a story, and if sex is the plot, then it's smut. And, alas, the same way some people can read Stephen King's horror books but not his I'm a serious author books, or Anne Rice's vampire soap opera books but not her whip me! spank me!romance novels, I'm quite fond of Hamilton's mysteries, but I cannot stand the way the woman writes a sex scene. Her smut is not my kind of smut.

Where Hamilton ever admits it to herself, Anita Blake: Vampire Slayer and Anita Blake: Vampire Layer are completely different genres, and the difference is palpable in the writing itself. Mercy Thompson stays Mercy Thompson, whether she's getting smacked around, getting laid, or having flashbacks to a bad thing that tried to kill her.

(The way Anita's constant leveling up meant she never had to break down and wig out when she should have full-blown PTSD by now? Yeah, fixed that one, too.)

Current Mood: geeky

According to the Huffington Post*, Glenn Beck is wigging out over Occupy Wall Street and all but declaring that the protestors are going to climb in your window and eat your babies. In response to Nancy Pelosi's support, HuffPo says:

"Nancy Pelosi, you really think these people are your friends?" Beck asked. "Are you that stupid? People around Nancy Pelosi, are you this stupid? Do you really think that you're going to be able to somehow or another control these people?"

I think that's a nice Freudian slip Beck is wearing.

Pelosi said, "I support the message," and based on this, Beck assumes that the liberals intend to try to commandeer and steer the movement to their own ends? Where would he get that idea?

And do those three-cornered Tea Party hats come already lined with tin foil, or is that a DIY job?

* I stopped reading regularly as they drifted into the AOL tabloid machine, but I think their Beck coverage is the last of their attempts at political blogging.

Current Mood: apathetic

Profile

mokie

January 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

Currently (re-)reading: Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs
When you're just too crazy for Fox News...

Credit

Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: Black Lace by nornoriel

Page generated Friday, 20 June 2025 08:09 am

About dream/reading tags

y-* tags categorize dreams.

For types: beyond the obvious, there are dreamlets (very short dreams), stubs (fragment/outline of a partially-lost dream), gnatter (residual impression of a lost dream).

For characters: there are roles (characters fitting an archetype), symbols (characters as symbols), and sigils (recurring figures with a significance bigger than a single dream's role/symbolism).

x-* tags categorize books.

Material is categorized primarily by structure, style and setting. If searching for a particular genre, look for the defining features of that genre, e.g. x-form:nonfic:bio, x-style:horror, x-setting:dystopian.

Tags

absinthe-minded [7]
absolutely scrumtrulescent! [13]
adorable plague vectors [1]
aha! [18]
all is full of love [6]
altared slates [7]
and to your right are wing-gremlins [3]
and yet it moves [8]
anonymice and orthophants [8]
anxiety soup [7]
apocalypse wow! [13]
apropos or no [10]
archies in their bunkers [9]
argument for hermitage [13]
arse drink feck girls [10]
as you wish [5]
astronaut sniper [1]
aw hell no [13]
baa [1]
back to the sad mines [5]
behold mah belly [5]
being of sound mind and body [12]
bridge for sale [14]
bunnucular facilities [3]
but wait! [8]
can't brain today [6]
can't sleep tim curry will eat me [6]
cat jelly [1]
celluloid-based lifeforms [15]
charisma wars [5]
church of candy [4]
cleanliness is next to ocd [4]
confused? you won't be... [4]
corked fork [1]
crackerlicious! [7]
crackheads off the port bow! [1]
crappily ever after [7]
crazy like a fox news viewer [15]
creepy and kooky [21]
creme fraiche [2]
crossposted goodness [19]
cutting out the boring parts [1]
cybernetic soapbox [10]
d'oh! [11]
damn the man! [8]
das sproggins [8]
dead of the affluenza [8]
dear whomever [3]
debatable hamster wang [1]
deedubyosity [2]
delayed reaction [19]
deserves its own tag [5]
dirigible wars of 1982 [6]
do not adjust your screen [6]
does not fempute! [13]
domesticity achieved! [10]
doom! [14]
drinking instant karma [7]
eat the rich [7]
eat the rude [11]
echoes of [2]
eeevil [24]
elephants [8]
eljaeity [4]
emoriffic [11]
endangered bovine syndrome [21]
erase that mental image [8]
eta [17]
explaining heaven to bears [26]
feel trip to feeladelphia [1]
feline persuasion [4]
fellowship of the thing [12]
fine chilean sea bass [12]
fire is the cleanser [12]
firecrotch factor [1]
fist in the air and head in the sand [11]
fistful of stupid [4]
get off my lawn! [1]
glorious streisandfreude [9]
goldfish says what? [26]
gone to my unhappy place [13]
hail mall-gok! god of commerce! [15]
hail sterculius! [36]
happy happy joy joy! [13]
hark! tis the song of my people [1]
hedgehog quarterly [10]
hello snowflake! [21]
herding thoughts [1]
hey now [9]
hideous space reptiles [8]
hidey-ho [3]
holiday grab bag [10]
holler fish [22]
holy ground highlander! [16]
home of the squirrelly [11]
i must not fear [9]
i see a tall dark stranger [2]
i think i'll go for a walk [10]
i will do science to it [24]
i'll use small words [27]
i'm a social butterfly! [9]
in the unloved corner [3]
internet tour guide [20]
it becomes self-aware at 2.14am [21]
it came from the intarweb [15]
it's my therapy knife [3]
it's weatherish out there [10]
japanese moon rover [7]
john has a long moustache [21]
jumping at shadows [1]
laser tag [4]
less invasions! more equations! [6]
lesson! if you see a stranger follow him [6]
link rot ahoy [2]
listolicious [12]
little snackrifices [9]
live from my pants! [15]
live from the salt mines [14]
lolitics [8]
look what i made! [1]
love and hate and reality tv [15]
major leaflet campaign [1]
mediapocalypse [32]
mental shoebox [11]
metareader's digest [16]
moving pictures [1]
my common sense is tingling [46]
my fellow earthicans [38]
my god it's full of lol [19]
name that tune [1]
neutron star [5]
no soap radio [13]
not a morning person [4]
note to self [2]
nsfcw [1]
ohana mofo [2]
omgwtfzombiebbq [7]
one pill makes you larger [7]
orbiting the monkeysphere [3]
organic gmo-free hemlock [3]
osh kosh b'goth [10]
passive-aggressive possum [13]
perfectly cromulent [32]
person-shaped blobs of sentient misery [5]
phoebelicious [5]
plague on both your houses! [5]
practicando the parlez-vous [40]
president of the nillionaire's club [5]
projectile uterus [5]
purple monkey dishwasher [4]
rageonomics [6]
rain of shoes [2]
raised by wolves [19]
rawr! [30]
reading ridealong [7]
retrostalgic reminiscences [12]
sacrelicious! [3]
salute some shorts [27]
sappy's choice [6]
say cheese [1]
say your safeword [17]
shaking my tiny fists [20]
sharing is caring [29]
shenanigans! [25]
shiny happy people [3]
shut up and write [2]
side of fremdschamen [12]
skull full of wasps [3]
snotalicious [13]
so i was watching this thing [24]
spacemonkey mafia [10]
spoileriffic [1]
squeeful things [24]
squirrel bait! [16]
standing ovulation [8]
state of the mokie [15]
stupid questions lj asks [7]
stupid questions mokie asks [6]
summon bigger fish! [19]
sweep the leg! [18]
sweet baboon of florissant! [7]
sweet zavist zeitgeist [23]
tag me later [2]
tag me later! [7]
tag your pets! [2]
tagraggery [2]
talking to ghosts again [2]
taste the rainbow [7]
tea and blasphemy [9]
tea and crackers [6]
technically people [1]
that place where bees come from [3]
the great unhip [20]
the internet will know what to do [14]
the man is a christmas miracle [6]
the root of the problem is bigfoot [19]
themeday memeday [8]
they've gone to plaid! [6]
things i hate [28]
this hateful hiatus [2]
this is my design [21]
this is my shiny thing! [8]
this is why we can't have nice things [25]
this toads the wet sprocket! [5]
three cheers for reincarnation! [4]
till someone loses an eye [3]
to the oubliette [9]
touched by an anvil [22]
tree bad fire pretty [10]
tweetalicious [4]
twirling towards freedom [10]
two lincolns for every napoleon [25]
tyranny of the coffee machine [12]
unfairest of them all [5]
unicorn shit everywhere [19]
united states of bitch [5]
until your forehead bleeds [1]
urban jungle [1]
viva el moochismo! [6]
wandering in edom [10]
watching out for japanese well-girls [1]
we're going to need a bigger boat [2]
wet copper armour [2]
whatshisface [1]
wheel of morality turn turn turn [38]
when i grow up [7]
when i rule the world [32]
when i was a young warthog [13]
why did it have to be snakes? [25]
wild thingdom [4]
wisdom of the mokie [48]
wood=duck=witch [3]
x-audience
- adults [1]
  - women [1]
- ego [1]
x-conflict
- man v supernatural [1]
x-form
- fic
  - novella [1]
- nonfic
  - bio [1]
  - instructive [1]
- series [1]
x-place
- uk
  - england [1]
- usa
  - nj [1]
x-setting
- fantastic
  - supernatural [1]
x-style
- horror
  - cosmic [1]
- mystery
  - softboiled [1]
x-theme
- arrogance of man [1]
- behind the veil [1]
- character v author [1]
- gnostic nightmare [1]
- nature is not innocent [1]
- social examination [1]
x-time
- contemporary [1]
- victeddian [1]
xmarksthespot [3]
y-issue
- betrayal [1]
- clutter [1]
- contamination [2]
- failure [1]
- power [1]
- trust [2]
y-meta
- actors or stand-ins [2]
- bathroom [3]
- blast from the past [3]
- cycles [1]
- dorky details [5]
- lucidity [3]
  - control [1]
- macguffin [3]
- media tie-in [2]
- replay [1]
- resolutely no [1]
- resolution [1]
- scripted [2]
- word salad [1]
- work-related [1]
y-mood
- annoyance [2]
- anxiety [3]
- closure [1]
- concern [1]
- embarrassment [1]
- fear of erring [1]
- freedom [1]
- judgment [1]
- powerlessness [1]
- shame [1]
y-plot
- act
  - attack [1]
  - avoid [1]
  - converse [2]
  - exercise [1]
  - harvest [1]
  - hide [1]
  - pursue [1]
  - search [2]
  - sell [1]
  - steal [2]
  - wait [1]
  - walk [1]
- event
  - detour [2]
  - discovery [1]
  - infestation [1]
  - oversleeping [1]
  - party [1]
y-role
- dreamer [3]
- female protector [1]
- male aggressor [1]
- mediator [2]
- rival [2]
- trickster [1]
- unseen aggressor [1]
y-set
- building
  - bank [1]
  - basement [1]
  - bathroom [1]
  - hotel [1]
  - house [1]
  - restaurant [1]
  - school [2]
  - store [1]
  - theater [2]
- geo
  - europe [1]
    - ireland [1]
  - old house [1]
- space
  - exhibit [1]
  - garden [1]
  - maze [1]
  - parking lot [1]
  - passage [3]
  - tunnel [1]
- status
  - urban greening [1]
y-sigil
- two advocates [1]
y-sym
- act
  - attack [2]
  - avoid [1]
  - converse [1]
  - deceive [1]
  - pursue [1]
  - search [1]
  - steal [1]
  - test [1]
  - violence [2]
- animal
  - bird [1]
  - bug [1]
  - dinosaur [1]
  - reptile [1]
- body
  - eye [1]
  - head [1]
  - illness [1]
  - metamorphosis [1]
  - wing [1]
- object
  - blade [1]
  - camera [1]
  - clothing [1]
  - cup [1]
  - food [1]
  - game [1]
  - glasses [1]
  - image [1]
  - paperwork [1]
  - safe [1]
  - tree [1]
  - vehicle [2]
- other
  - anachronism [2]
  - business [4]
  - language [2]
  - money [1]
  - monster [1]
  - technology [1]
  - time [1]
- people
  - acquaintance [2]
  - child [2]
  - crowd [4]
  - family [2]
  - friend [1]
  - grandmother [1]
  - mother [1]
  - police [1]
  - rich bastard [1]
  - teacher [2]
  - thief [2]
  - typhoid mary [1]
  - ugh you [2]
  - unseen force [1]
  - worker bee [1]
  - zombie [1]
- sense
  - sight [1]
y-theme
- injustice [1]
- responsibility [1]
- secrets [1]
- socialization [1]
y-type
- affected [3]
- dream [3]
- dreamlet [2]
- lucid
  - semi [1]
- nightmare [3]
- stub [3]
you are my freight train [13]
ಠ_ಠ [21]

life in mokievision

always a cameron, never a ferris

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Currently (re-)reading: Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs

When you're just too crazy for Fox News...

Profile

January 2025

Page Summary

Credit

About dream/reading tags

Tags