Anita - Setting

[dan-lian.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking a bit about LKH lately (mostly because I'm looking fora MUX or two to play in, and ran across some Anita Blake ones). I think she had a fantastic setting--it was modern without shooting into the future, it was realistic and intelligently formed, with realistic bias and prejudice. Where did that go? When did it go away?

I think LKH got to the point that she felt people knew enough about her universe, Anita's world, to not need the constant setting material, and then flung us into Anita's sex life. By doing that, I think she forgot a lot of the things she developed and where she went with it, and it's been disappointing.

What are your thoughts on it? Do you like the world, minus Anita's sex life?

Comments

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

I'm with everyone else, for the most part. Though I've always had some questions about how lycanthropy and vampirism work. She tries to apply both biology and metaphysics to them, but sometimes it didn't come together so seamlessly. And these days, those lines between biology and magic are even further blurred by the fact that she ignores blatant rules she has set for it all.

But the major issue I had, even before the 180, was with the lycanthropes and pop culture references. It was like only Richard and Jason understood references to things like The Wizard of Oz. Fine, they're lycanthropes, but they don't spend all their time in animal form, with the pack, or out of the house, do they? They've got jobs, families, homes. Is it really so hard to believe that most of them have seen a movie or watch TV on a regular basis? At least before they became infected, did they ever see a movie?

That was always the most implausible part to me about lycanthropy, socially speaking. That, and the wereleopard social structure deviated so much from "natural" leopards (who are some of the most solitary animals on the planet).

[wonderbink.livejournal.com]

I posed a question earlier in this comm about why deliberate lycanthropy infection seemed to be so rare in the AB universe, when, given what one gets with it (superpowers and your own 'pack') lots of outcast/social deviant types would practically be lining up to get furry.

She does have some interesting world-building ideas, but then she ignores all the potential aspects that could be explored and just goes for sex and angst. Which is one reason why she's simultaneously so fascinating and so disappointing to me.

[frabjously.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess the Church of Eternal Life has a bit of that going on, so I don't see why there aren't werewolf groupies.