My eyes. Oh dear God, my eyes.

[auralily.livejournal.com]

I'm a long time lurker in this community. Usually, I figure that whatever I have to say has already been said and in a much better way than I could put it myself, but this time I just couldn't stay silent. You see, I mad a horrible mistake.

I actually read Micah. A friend gave it to me for Christmas and, even after I promised myself that I would never touch another one of her books much less read one, I let my curiosity get the better of me. I knew it was going to be a literary trainwreck. When you consider the source, there's nothing else that it could have been, but even I didn't think that it could be as bad as it was. I don't think I've ever been more wrong in my life.

For a 245 page book, it took me an insane amount of time to read. You see, at every poorly written sex scene I came to I could only read a few sentences at a time before I felt like my skin was literally trying to crawl off my body in disgust. If I never see another mention of how wettightohmygodsoamazinglywonderfullytighttighttightanddidImentionwet Anita's hellish blackhole of a vagina is I could die a happier and considerably more sane person. Also, just as a side note, finding yourself lying in a pool of your own blood after sex is not in anyway sexy. It is, however, a sign that you should probably find your way to the nearest hospital and get your shit sewn back together. Just a thought.

Also, I have to ask. Was I the only one who saw the great irony in that scene coming directly after Anita reassuring Micah that, while only her cast iron cootch is capable of recognizing the glory of his enormous cock (and is also roomy enough to seat four comfortably)all other women are just inadequately small. Or, you know, just slightly terrified of being permanently injured.

By the end of it all, I was in desperate need of a shower. Not just an ordinary soap and water shower, mind you, but the kind that you get after being exposed to hazardous chemicals. At this point I'm fairly certain that there is no soap on earth strong enough to the Laurell K. Hamilton off of me.

I've learned my lesson well. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find a HAZMAT team.

Comments

[pith]

I just got a cheap second-hand copy of Micah for destruction purposes. =)

all other women are just inadequately small.

LKH is getting epidemic with that. It's like Anita is The Way Women Must Be and if they aren't like her, they aren't women. They can't be slim. They can't be small-chested. They can't be tall or blonde or dark-skinned or anything that she ISN'T.

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Sleeping with more people, sleeping with less people, disapproving of her "morals" . . .

[xanath.livejournal.com]

Totally off-topic, but I love your icon. Is it gankable?

::note to self: buy some Megatokyo::

--Kris

[auralily.livejournal.com]

I just got a cheap second-hand copy of Micah for destruction purposes

We should organize a bonfire. I'm willing to part with my copy for the cause : )

And as for the LKH epidemic, we all know that she live out her fantasies through her characters, so of course any woman that isn't Anita ia automatically either a lesbian or a raving bitch. We wouldn't want any competition, now would we?

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

Sure, credit and whatnot. :)

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

They can't be small-chested.

I remember someone (probably Jean-Claude) telling her at one point that they were "small but perfectly formed" or something. Although, I also remember her commentary about how she couldn't cross her arms properly, but instead she ended up sort of cradling her boobs, and saying that "women's bodies weren't meant to look tough," so maybe that means they're bigger than the other quote would imply.

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

Really? Wow. Another stickynote must've died that day...

[catskin.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure Anita's boobs have been slowly getting bigger and bigger as the series continues. If the stats LKH offers us are to be believed (which I doubt) the girl's totally out of proportion. Either that or she's pulling a trick a friend of mine used to have: deliberately wearing the wrong-size bra to make her boobs look bigger.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

that always bothered me, especially in her blog where she referred to small-breasted, small-waisted women as little boys, or something like it. Her claim of "a womynz bodie is curvay" is so messed up. I realize she was talking about people who diet obsessively to stay slender, but I was majorly offended.

[ravenclaw-devi.livejournal.com]

Every time LKH loses a sticky note, God kills a tit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Parus_major_4_%28Marek_Szczepanek%29.jpg)? ;)

[catskin.livejournal.com]

I know. I'm a reasonably curvy gal, and I was still offended. I believe the same comment was made by Laurell Anita in OB - women under a certain dress size are just boys with breasts, or something equally ridiculous.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

that's what it was! she used the same phrase in one of her blogs, i believe referring to something jon said about skinny women. I don't care if you're rail thin, chubby, curvy or heavy, but frankly judging one above the other, or denying the femininity of a slender girl is just ridiculous. I've been both skinny as a stick and on the chubbier side, but my breasts never got any bigger. She's obviously quite insecure about her size if she feels the need to judge, through both her main character and her personal thoughts.

[karmyn75.livejournal.com]

Damn, she must hate Emma Peel, then. Tall, slim, small breasts, could kick your ass without breaking a sweat, and she looked great in leather. Plus there's that whole having a very sexual relationship with another man while still technically married thing.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

That which doesn't kill us and all that, so just think - YOU SURVIVED MICAH!

Which, come to think of it, a whole legion of women with inadequately endowed vaginas should be wearing a shirt that says just that.

[pith]

In regards to Anita? Hmmm. I thought she was always portrayed as large chested. I remember when Richard was getting a Halloween costume, she needed one size larger than her hips needed because she was "busty".

[crevette.livejournal.com]

By the end of it all, I was in desperate need of a shower. Not just an ordinary soap and water shower, mind you, but the kind that you get after being exposed to hazardous chemicals. At this point I'm fairly certain that there is no soap on earth strong enough to the Laurell K. Hamilton off of me.

We call that a Silkwood-esque decontamination at my place, usually pulled out for discussions revolving around people who would actually sleep with Simon LeBon. I think that it applies perfectly here though.

[quill-shadow.livejournal.com]

And my first thought on reading this description: "Anita's hellish blackhole of a vagina" was "My God! She has a Hellmouth for a vagina!"

Sadly, that could explain quite a lot - like the bad sex, disappearance of personality in every man she has sex with, her own personality becoming warped beyond all recognition....

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

There's a once upon a time member of the comics professional community who recently did a summary of what was going on in her life. Blog: Occasional Superheroine (http://occasionalsuperheroine.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_occasionalsuperheroine_archive.html). Start with the bottom/first post and work your way up.

In it she describes having sex with someone and having to stop because she was bleeding and she kept bleeding and she had to have emergency surgery costing thousands of dollars (which the man who did it to her claimed lack of funds to help pay for - and then went out and spent money on comic swag)

Now I personally think something like that would be painful for me. But to have Anita talk this up as a good thing, when there are women who force themselves to have sex because they think they have a mental problem in finding it uncomfortable....

I didn't read Micah. I only heard about the bleeding.

But 'pool of blood' seriously pissed me off!

And it leads me right back to my own thoughts that LKH is exploring her sexuality in her books and unfortunately convincing a lot of women that this is how it goes.

This is not the way to start the Self Empowerment Personal Sexual Revolution of an individual!

[catskin.livejournal.com]

As with most things LKH says, she's seeking approval and validation from someone. And the sad thing is, she'll get it no matter how ridiculous her comments are, because someone will misinterpret her insecurities as a blow for feminism.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yes, but at least in Buffy there were tentacles involved.

[lilian413.livejournal.com]

I had managed to bleach the memory of 'Micah' from my brain, and I couldn't really say why... until I read this post. I was so disgusted after I finished reading it, I think I may have brainwashed myself into believing I had never read it in the first place.

And of course, as a woman who also has curves (my body type is similar to Anita's, which is why I liked reading the book at first and listening to her bitch about boobs getting in the way! :-)... before she went all anatomically impossible on us), I find it completely horrendous what she's doing to her readers, pushing this stupid ideas of a *borrows term from someone else's post because OMGTHEFUNNY* 'a womynz bodie is curvay' and everyone else is a little boy??? Bitch, please.

[swiftgold.livejournal.com]

Yeahh... there's a difference between saying 'curves are cool too, you know' and 'you can't be skinny and feminine'. It's pretty much just the inverse of 'no fat chicks' and it's frankly just as rage-inducing :P Go too far one way in "fighting the system!1!" and you'll just come right back around to the other side.

[gothic-fae.livejournal.com]

And it leads me right back to my own thoughts that LKH is exploring her sexuality in her books and unfortunately convincing a lot of women that this is how it goes.

This is not the way to start the Self Empowerment Personal Sexual Revolution of an individual!

I know people who revolve around their wholes lives around Anita Blake… It’s sad to think that their sex lives echo Anita’s… worse to say that I feel just as dirty listening to them talk about it as I do just picking up one of these books…

*Echo’s the HAZMAT comment*

[sevariusjr.livejournal.com]

Quick question for those who HAVE read this (as I definitely haven't): are any of the chapters relatively short? I've been thinking of doing a MISTie of one of the chapters of the later Blake books, and I'm looking for a chapter that's reasonably short (cause I'm not wading through dozens of pages of bad pr0n in a single chapter) that I could use.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I'm going by memory here, because I can't be bothered going into my room and trying tofind where I put the book - so bear with me.

IIRC, the first and last chapters are fairly short (the epilogue is always short!) - the first three are fairly quick, but then, nothing actually happens in them. The whole book is 9 chapters long, and the longest chapters are A) Micah confesses his Psyche Scarring Trauma to Anita which leads to, B) the sex and suddenly C) going to the cemetery to raise the zombie aka. "what was thrown in there to pretend that there was actual plot to this book".

All else fails, you could always troll the LKH site and use the sample chapter she's got posted of books.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

No, I lie - the book is 12 chapters long. Which is about 8 chapters too long for this story.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. But my arms aren't... supporting my boobs or anything. I guess that's what I was picturing. :O

And, and she ran regularly, too! That was canon right from Guilty Pleasures. I think she was running up the stairs and mentioned that that was why she ran: so she'd be able to when the bad guys were after her. Something like that.

I think it is true that you're not supposed to clink the weights; it means you're doing it too quickly.

Sticky notes. :/ You'd think it would be just as easy to keep a set of her own books nearby so she could see what she actually said about something. I mean, it doesn't take that long to flip through a book to find something particular, and I'm sure it's even quicker to find if you wrote it and have a feel for where everything is.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Ooo. Yeah, that does sound sort of familiar.

Maybe they grew.

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

We've made a discovery! As Anita's ego and delusions grow, so do her boobs- You can measure her sanity by her bra size!

Considering how ungirly she was early on, maybe she never figured out how bra sizes work to begin with? I had to explain them to a friend of mine the other day and dragged her to Victoria's Secret to get fitted. The instant change in appearance once she got a real bra was astounding...

[catskin.livejournal.com]

OMG yes! And the same is true for penis size!

Penis gets bigger, sanity gets smaller.

yikes

[nimnix.livejournal.com]

I think someone needs to point LKH to that woman's blog. Maybe then she won't be so *shudder*... whatever the word for her is now.

I did read Micah, and she decided to call the blood "color". As in, "I don't mind a little 'color'." At least, I recall her saying something like that, but reading the book again to be accurate will give me nightmares after reading that blog.

Re: yikes

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

Sorry to have steered you near nightmare inducing stuff. But I have my own personal horror story about someone not being careful down there - in my case it was a health professional.

I have to wonder if LKH is just numb in her pants due to some sort of deadened nerve endings, or botched surgery when she was giving birth to her daughter. Because how she can forget that -bleeding- is a huge ass no no is beyond me.

Even if you're desperately in love and horny and going at it like stereotypical honeymooners. The minute someone feels 'raw' or there's 'pink' I'd think most people would have the good sense to stop. Why her character doesn't...

I have no words.

Re: yikes

[nimnix.livejournal.com]

I have to hope that she actually never had that happen, because otherwise it means she has even less common sense than we give her credit for. I assume for sanity's sake that she just is interested in the whole rape/pain fantasy on an academic or purely fantastic level. Maybe she likes a little blood when she's bitten or scratched, then just transfers that feeling to bleeding in that more sensitive area. The fact that even a small scratch in that area feels a hell of a lot worse than anywhere else apparently just escapes her mind.

I have fantasies that are messed up, but I know enough to realize they don't feel the same in real life and don't have the same consequences when they're only in my head. They're just images, which can't do real physical damage.

[nightangel486.livejournal.com]

For realz. While a lot of scrutiny and criticism is placed on curvy gals, there are also people like me, I mean I'm 20 but have the body of 12 year old, and I'm constantly fighting feelings of insecurity over my lack of curves, because of people like LKH who go around saying I'm nothing but a "boy with breasts" or that I don't fit some ideal version of femininity.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

There's precedent too: in The Craft, the girls' skirts got shorter as their powers increased.

[cicipsychobunny.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, the chapters aren't that long (though they really seem it), because the big wangst/sex/blood scene carries across three chapters.

[mm_madb]

Her main character IS her personal thoughts.

[mm_madb]

Well, she stopped working out and lifting weights...so maybe they did in fact grow.

[alex-lebeau.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, the infamous "I need a Juniors' size 7 because my tatas are too big for Earth Normal Woman size 6." Also, she's just over a hundred pounds, 5'4'', and, well, God.

[quill-shadow.livejournal.com]

Anyone have any brain-bleach to spare? That comment just gave me a picture of tentacles coming out of Anita's Hellmouth.

Not something I needed. Ever. [shudders]

[summersdream.livejournal.com]

Whaa? Juniors size? Aren't they you know, teen size? In other words... smaller?

[longtail.livejournal.com]

Well, speaking as an unusually well-endowed woman (42H), they really don't get that much in the way. I don't know if I'm doing any extra compensating for gravity that is different from others, but I can still run, throw a punch, do push-ups, kick, and work out in a gym and things with little trouble.

Jumping rope or fitting in tight spaces like under a bed, not so much. :)