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

[shriekitty.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's all I have to say about this.

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as a parent that creeps me the hell out.

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

Let it be said, for the record, that I hate my own mother. We have never gotten along, and the gap is at this point irreconcilable.

That being said: Laurell, there are adult children who would give a year of their lives to be with their mothers for one more Mother's Day. There are mothers who would give up ten years of their lives to have their children with them for one more hour, on any day.

All I gotta say to this is thank you, Laurell, for solidifying my hatred of you as a person as well as your craptastic writing.

[quizzicalsphinx.livejournal.com]

::realises, belatedly, the vehemence of her above comment:: Oh Lord, let me not bring the wank.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I don't think you're entirely in the wrong. My own mother and I don't get along. But it doesn't mean I don't have friends who are wonderful mothers, or I don't know mothers who would in fact give half their bodies and souls for their child to be happy, healthy and pain free for one hour on any day - just like you said.

Yes it's a made up holiday so people can buy stuff. But that doesn't mean that it's still not filled with sentiment. My flist has people who've eaten cold, crappy breakfasts because their five year old tried to make it all by themselves and who smile at stinky perfumes and put up with stains on the bedclothes due to over-enthusiastic hugging.

There's a certain love and self-sacrifice mixed with friendship, wisdom and companionship that's celebrated as a whole on Mother's Day. And she's not fitting the bill.

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.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

PS:

Which is why I related it to her writing and how Anita as her viewpoint character is so amazingly selfish that she really is the ultimate unreliable narrator.

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

Y'know, one day, Trinity is going to come across her mother's blog and learn about what a burden she apparently was. Not to mention some of the outright creepiness.

I'm sure we can think of something to do here at home.

Maybe my mind's just perpetually in the gutter anyway, but this sounds like a possible attempt at sexual innuendo.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I think that Trinity already knows how her mother feels about her. People can kid themselves that children don't pick up on these things. But they do.

[avierra.livejournal.com]

I am not conversant with LKH's living arrangements, but she did say she had celebrated with her daughter the week before. I am a mom, and I can understand her desire to have some time to herself, regardless of it's being Mother's Day or not. My own hubby took my daughter to the park for several hours yesterday, and it was great. I read a book, and watched TV and did other stuff I never get to do by myself otherwise.

It does bug me that she seems to have chosen her husband's company over that of her daughter.

But, I guess I am reluctant to ascribe selfishness to her for this incident in particular, much less read it into her characters' motivations.

Having said that, I intensely dislike the way her characters have been behaving in the last few books, and think their characterization has been raped.

[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?

[nimnix.livejournal.com]

She probably has come across it. What it means to her is anybody's guess. I would hate to be a mom like LKH. If I ever grow out of my utter selfishness, then I'll be ready.

Until then, I'll leave the baby-raising to people who actually understand what it takes.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Well...copyright law allows for parody. Only a one-off, as I understand it, but it is legal. So you could write a truly vicious, insightful and hysterical parody of Anita Blake, Vampire Humper and it would be perfectly legal to publish it.

But no sequels for you!

[xtricks.livejournal.com]

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?

Well, I read the first one or two of the Charlene Harris books and I think they were partially a commentary/paradoy of LKH's Anita series. The were-dog, the rather inept vampire, the 'special' heroine who's a waitress, etc. etc. She did go on, as her work became independently popular, in her own direction but I'm pretty sure the first, if not the first couple, were parodies.

[were-lemur.livejournal.com]

Huzzah.

I've got my grandmother telling me all the time that it doesn't matter if I think I'm too selfish to have kids -- that once I have them, my love for them will make me into a good mom.

It's so nice to see someone who understands that being unselfish should come before the baby-having, not (wishfully) as a result of it.

[were-lemur.livejournal.com]

Anida Mann, Vampire Layer?

[nimnix.livejournal.com]

I guess the concept of someone being that selfish (and being able to recognize their selfishness) is hard to grasp for some. For people who aren't like this, either we're not selfish because we don't want to subject children to less than perfect environments, or we're speaking out of fear.

But considering what I put my parents through, and their patience...

I can't do that yet.

[gray-ghost.livejournal.com]

Okay - that's just nasty. Trinity - go with daddy so I can boink your step-dad on Mother's Day. Ewwwwww....

[tonights.livejournal.com]

I feel so sad for her daughter. When I asked my mom if she wanted me to mail her gift, she said "No, just hold on to it, it's not Mother's Day until you come home anyway." To say that Mother's Day is best spent with time to yourself... I'm starting to think that Fuckhead LKH might need more serious therapy than she's currently receiving.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2007/05/relaxation.html

This shows what she was doing last Sunday. It doesn't sound much like a mother's day celebration to me 'Each of us doing our own thing'. But maybe I too am disturbed that she seems to have chosen her husband's company over her daughter.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I try my best to focus on LKH's writing. Because I can hold that in my hands. I don't really know anything about her homelife.

And yet lack of respect for her bleeds into so many areas and I end up thinking things like 'Is a lack of understanding about the true ties of family contribute to her writing?'

Or 'Is the lack of any true mothering impulse or skill part of why Anita couldn't mother or big sister Nathaniel?'

[sevariusjr.livejournal.com]

She named her kid "Trinity"?

How old is this child. Because so help me god, if she named her after the goddamn Matrix character, I will break shit.

Oh, and uh, yeah. I agree with the sentiment that Anita....I mean Laurell....doesn't seem to emotionally involved in spending time with her kid. That's something I find a bit perplexing, because I'm assuming that it's a shared custody situation, so it's not as if the kid is always there with her, so that "a day away from the kids" is a somewhat legitimate reward from the usual stress of being a full-custody mom.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, I'm the world's worst daughter when it comes to Fathers/Mothers Day, because I generally do not get my parents anything. Ma's made it abundantly clear that neither my father, or I, should get her anything because she'll traditionally buy her own present...a pair of slippers.

Fathers Day, I just tend to forget, so...uh, my bad?

Philosophically speaking, I don't really agree with a Speshul Day set aside for parents, because well, shouldn't every day be a Fathers/Mothers Day where you appreciate your parental units? Okay, maybe in a Utopian society, this will happen.

But for the rest of us mere mortals that do not get along with their families like the Brady Bunch, this blog is grating in the worst possible way. Yay, LKH, you celebrate being a mom and raising a cool kid! You tout your love for how awesome she is and you are and...

No wait, I'm getting confused with Neil Gaiman again. And let's face it, he probably would make the world's awesomest mother.

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

I've only recently jumped on the Neil Gaiman bandwagon, so I feel the need to say: hellz yeah, he'd make the world's awesomest mother!

[freyalorelei.livejournal.com]

I think Trinity's ten, or just about. Pre-Matrix, I believe. Doesn't make it any less stupid, though.

[freyalorelei.livejournal.com]

Whenever LKH complains about the Trials and Tribulations of Motherhood, I think, Bitch, please.

1. She has one child. ONE.

2. This one child is in school for at least six hours a day, five days a week, eight months a year.

3. Going by traditional custody arrangements, that one child probably spends every other weekend with her father.

4. Since remarrying, LKH also has a partner to assist in parenting full-time. She is not a single mother anymore, and has not been for several years.

Granted, that is not to say that parenting even under the best circumstances is not difficult and demanding, but LKH has quite possibly one of the more ideal arrangements parenting-wise, so her constant harping on having to actually spend time with her daughter (diety forbid!) wears rapidly thin.

I badly want to believe that she is a good mother, she is, despite the vibes I get from her blog, for Trinity's sake. No one deserves to have an inattentive, resentful parent. I hope she's a great mom who loves her kid to death, and I hope that Jon's a terrific stepdad. I hope Trinity is happy and feels loved, despite being saddled with the name "Trinity" ('cause, seriously). But when LKH says stuff like this, I cringe a little inside.