BlogFlog: Mother's Day

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

LKH: Emphasis
Me: Regular

We did our celebrating last weekend because Trinity is with her father this weekend.

I am probably getting the rarest gift of all for Mother's day. Time to myself.

I can't think of any custody arrangement wherein the child doesn't get to be with the mother on Mother's Day. I've heard of half-day arrangements. I've heard of combined Mother/Step-Mother celebrations. But not being there at all?

All I can think is that this is what she asked for - because ''the rarest gift of all for Mother's day. Time to myself'.

Considering she has dual custody of her child and thus doesn't have her child fulltime in the first place - what the heck is she talking about?

Also her child isn't a toddler who'll follow her into the bathroom and go 'Mommy can you get me a glass of milk?' Or a kindergartener who gets into mischief if left alone.

So what?



I bring this up not for the sole opportunity to bash LKH, but because this kind of selfishness and self-involvement seems to me to be part of what translates into her books and is why they suck and she can't take direction/advice/suggestion.

It also makes me think of Anita Blake (specifically) and the character's utter selfishness and how the world is seen through Anita's eyes.

I really wish it were possible if someone was messing up a franchise that someone else could write it better and get all the credit and kudos and money. Somehow it's just not enough to run circles around LKH in fanfiction. I'd love to see her truly threatened by someone else not locked into a selfish self-wanking point of view in exploring the universe.

It makes me wonder just how close could you get to mocking her in an original work? How close could you get to exploring a similar world? Would it have to be a strict parody? Or could you mention the brain-damanged Vampire Executioner who wonders the streets dirty and out of touch with reality and occasionally turning tricks on people with no scruples?

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2007/05/happy-mothers-day.html

Comments

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

One would think, with all her talk about how losing her mother still affects her that she would make a special effort to be there for her own daughter.

One would think.

Actually, you may have just nailed something that has puzzled me for years. My mother lost her mother (my grandmother) when she was 9 years old. She was raised by aunts.

My mother and I had such a strained and distant relationship I was practically raised by the same aunts. Like quizzicalsphinx, I can't stand my mother, and I won't document why. Suffice it to say that she has plumbed depths of creepy to which even LKH will struggle to stoop.

Perhaps losing her mother at a young age somehow stunted my mother's ability to be an effective parent, and LKH shares that problem?

[kyalesyin.livejournal.com]

Oh heck, there was a theory about this, we talked about it in psych, and a study and everything...

Wasn't it Bowlby or someone similar who did a study which pretty much showed that if you had bad or no parents, you're likely to neglect your own child? I think it was monkeys that he used, but it pretty much proved all those 'mothering is instincive' people wrong.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_shiisa_/]

we talked about it in psych

We talked avout it too. In animal behaviour, about cows. And maternal behaviour, even in animals (who are supposed to be more instinct-driven), is learned. If the farming is careless and the calves are separated from the mother too soon, they won't learn it and they'll probably ignore their own youngs afterwards.

[kyalesyin.livejournal.com]

Proof I should be paying more attention, I can't remember all the details, but it does seem to make sense.

sorry for the complete OOT-ness, can't resist ^_^;

[http://users.livejournal.com/_shiisa_/]

I was in exam-mode, it's funny how many details you can remember in these moments...

From what I remember of the lesson, recently etology has been proving that most of the "animals are only guided by instinct" thing is wrong: complex behaviours like mothering or hunting are learned. That's why when some well-meaning idiots release lab animals in the wild they tend to die after a few days: no one's taught them how to behave outside of a cage and they don't even know how to get their food. Here some activists released a few hundred minks and most of them didn't survive, I'm still slightly pissed.

side note

[http://users.livejournal.com/_shiisa_/]

I'm not against releasing animals from labs or fur farms. I just think that, if you really care about them you should be giving them a chance for a better life, not condemnig them to another kind of death.

Acting without thinking causes more problems than it solves, IMHO.

Sort of like "adopting" a bunch of weres after killing their alpha and then ignoring their needs.
Or, more seriously, having even partial custody of a kid when you don't really care.