http://easol.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] easol.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] lkh_lashouts2008-01-23 04:25 am

Reality lines are blurring

First, I must complain that LKH is taking ALL the stuff I love and rambling about it. Now it's Fido! WAH!

Anyway, I had to flog this blog because it's just so damn creepy. I don't know if this woman realizes how unspeakably creepy it is that she talks about her Mary Sue as if she were living in her own little world. Which she is, but not in quite thew same way.

http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2008/01/some-wounds-never-heal.html




No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
Robert Frost


Does it shock anyone that the next line is "No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader"?

Frost is one of my favorite American poets. There are poems of his that I reread periodically.

Ye gods! She reads something besides the captions on TV! Now if only we could make her read her OWN stuff.

It's always nice when one of your literary heroes agrees with your own philosophy of writing.

I must have missed the "pomes" where Frost went on about giant penii, subservient girly-men, and the utter joy of serving the Crotch.

Of course, perhaps reading his work when I was in my mid-teens helped shape my own attitude towards writing.

See, people? She's REALLY REALLY, like, deep and stuff! She reads POEMS and things! I bet she like, wears black nail polish and listens to, like, GOTH music!

If you haven't finished the book, this is your last chance to stop reading and save the surprise, no, the shock.

I'm not sure what is shocking about ANY addict ending up badly...

Okay, I have to assume if you're still reading, you know what I'm about to type. Here goes: Seeing Ron Lim's art, with Phillip chained against the wall, so helpless, so hopeless, really hurt me.

Ironic. Sounds more like something Anita would find a major turn-on, be so very shocked and yet titillated by it, and give Phillip healing sex.

It's been over ten years since I wrote GUILTY PLEASURES. Over a decade since I created Phillip,

Yes, folks, a decade is ten years. And by the way, it's more like fifteen years now, but I don't think LKH wants to think about that.

and had to watch him die.

How do you watch someone die if they, you know, exist only in book pages?

And this, folks, is where it starts getting a little odd.

I didn't know he was going to die until about a paragraph before Anita found him dead. I thought, until the last possible moment, we'd save him. But we didn't, we couldn't. It was the first time I cried for one of my characters.

Well, given that this was her first (original) novel, and nobody "good" had died before, that's somehow not very surprising, IMHO.

And it doesn't surprise me that she was running into this at random. Again, I cannot help but wonder if there was some input from her ex, because in a better author's works, this would be a turning point emotionally. And not for Teh Sex Buddies.

I cried for his death. I cried because we couldn't save him. I cried because he'd been trying to get his life together, and making some progress, and now all of his chances were gone.

Okay, two things:
1. Who is "we"?
2. Is LKH aware that Phillip COULD NOT have any more chances, or get his life together, because ultimately he was a collection of words on a page? At best, an idea?
3. Furthermore, is she aware that she COULD have "saved" him had she wanted, especially since she magically "saves" all Anita's penii via ridiculous methods in recent books? And therefore, she is just being all melodramatic again?

Ron's art reminded me that Phillip didn't expect to be saved. He gave up before Anita did, before I did. It was all there in Phillip's eyes

Of course, her opinions may be clouded by the fact that she now KNOWS that he's gonna croak. Moreover, REALITY LINES BLURRED ALERT.

Of all the people we've lost in the books, Phillip's death hurt me and Anita the most. That pain, those shed tears, are probably one of the main reasons we have a cast of dozens but few deaths of main characters. It hurt too much.

That, and since she can't separate reality and fantasy, she made a pwomise to her heroine to never kill off the penii. All others are expendable.

I told them how his art had effected me,

AFFECTED, dammit.

and assured him that I was sane about all the other characters.

Did she mention the part where she talks to them and they talk back, she buys presents for them, makes promises to them, refers to her pain with Anita's, etc?

I guess it was a complement.

ComPLIMent, dammit.

I miss Phillip. I miss him almost like a friend that died young. You think about them every once in awhile.

Oh, here we go again. Aren't there any characters, except those evil jellus bigots, whom she doesn't obsess on?

What would have changed in Anita's life if Phillip had survived that first book? Would we be looking at him as her one and only boyfriend, and would he have taken up too much room for Jean-Claude to invade? Or would it just have been Richard who wouldn't have found enough room to be in her life?

Or would he have become another doe-eyed long-haired walking penis, drifting through the house in the forlorn hope that Anita will boink him today, because he loves her soooooo much, and her LUUUUUUUV saved him from his addictions and traumas and blah blah blah?

Anita still dreams of him, and his death, and her failure.

Okay, creepy.. It's very, very weird that she refers to her character "dreaming" in the present tense as if this person lives in her house. Ye damns.

Because that's how she sees it, as her failure.

And as a lost chance to shag yet another broken, sexually traumatized, long-haired, ginormously-hung stripper.

We killed those that murdered him. We've had all the revenge we can have for Phillip. It didn't bring him back. It never does. More's the pity.

Somehow I can imagine LKH rocking to and fro in her darkened office, grinning maniacally at the screen and muttering, "We did it, precious. We killed them all, killed them, bathed in their blood, precious... we gots our revenge, precious..."

[identity profile] mystickiwi.livejournal.com 2008-01-24 02:42 am (UTC)(link)
It would make sense for Anita the character to be upset, it would make TONS of sense that if Anita were so torn up about Philip's death it became a plot point. But it's not, in fact I don't even know if Philip has been mentioned since his death. Instead of something that could be used as a good plot-forwarding device, we get an author with a questionable mental state.

[identity profile] clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com 2008-01-24 03:55 am (UTC)(link)
He was. Approximately twice. >_> IIRC, he was vaguely alluded to once, mentioned by name another time, and then that was IT. Nothing, nada, ever again--after something like book 3.

[identity profile] novadivine.livejournal.com 2008-01-24 01:51 pm (UTC)(link)
I may be completely mistaken, but in one of those early books, doesn't Anita say that some character reminds her of Philip? But yeah, I remember him only being mentioned in passing.

[identity profile] daphne-gateau.livejournal.com 2008-01-24 06:21 pm (UTC)(link)
I recall this out of the haze of past books also. I *think* it was Jason (but maybe Nate?) and she was noting similarities between their confidence with women and annoying flirtations. Maybe that they were both strippers. It wasn't a nostalgic trip down I Miss Phillip Lane.

[identity profile] clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com 2008-01-24 09:08 pm (UTC)(link)
I went looking for the mentioned-by-name instances and oddly enough, found something that almost sounds like LKH has a point.

Circus of the Damned, p 96-97 (in my e-book, at least--can't find the paper copy)

[Richard] grinned at me. "Now we're getting somewhere. The Executioner collects stuffed toys. I like it."

"Glad to hear it." My voice sounded grumpy even to me.

"What's wrong?" he said.

"I'm not very good at small talk," I said.

"You were doing fine."

No, I wasn't, but I wasn't sure how to explain it to him. I didn't like talking about myself to strangers. Especially strangers with ties to Jean-Claude.

"What do you want from me?" I said.

"I'm just passing the time."

"No, you weren't." His shoulder-length hair had fallen around his face. He was taller, thicker, but the outline was familiar. He looked like Phillip in the shadowed dark. Phillip was the only other human being I'd ever seen with the monsters.

Phillip sagged in the chains. Blood poured in a bright red flood down his chest. It splattered onto the floor, like rain. Torchlight glittered on the wet bone of his spine. Someone had ripped his throat out.

I staggered against the wall as if someone had hit me. I couldn't get enough air. Someone kept whispering, "Oh, God, oh, God," over and over, and it was me. I walked down the steps with my back pressed against the wall. I couldn't take my eyes from him. Couldn't look away. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't cry.

The torchlight reflected in his eyes, giving the illusion of movement. A scream built in my gut and spilled out my throat. "Phillip!"


Something cold slithered up my spine. I was sitting in my car with the ghost of guilty conscience. It hadn't been my fault that Phillip died. I certainly didn't kill him, but . . . but I still felt guilty. Someone should have saved him, and since I was the last one with a chance to do it, it should have been me. Guilt is a many splendored thing.


And yet, in The Lunatic Cafe, ONE book later...

(page 73) The sweater was too long for my leather jacket, so I was back in my black trench coat. Me and Phillip Marlowe.

...that's it. No angst, no wailing over another man named Phillip, not another word on the topic.

[identity profile] terrie01.livejournal.com 2008-01-24 10:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Except that Philip Marlowe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Marlowe) is an old Raymond Chandler character.

[identity profile] clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com 2008-01-24 10:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, but same first name, so I was kind of puzzled at her thinking of someone named Phillip and then going on to something else, rather than remembering. I'm not sure what she thought of Phillip personally, but it's pretty clear the way he died shook her up... at least at first...

[identity profile] darkese.livejournal.com 2008-01-25 02:45 am (UTC)(link)
Phillip Marlowe always wore a trench coat and a fedora pulled low.

So in that first quote from COTD is she having a flashback or something?

[identity profile] clover-elf-kin.livejournal.com 2008-01-25 03:20 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah. She obviously liked him at least a little (going off how how upset she was after he died), and seeing him with his throat ripped out doesn't seem like something easily forgotten. And I'm pretty sure that normally it would take a while to get to where she could say/think his name, be it actually in reference to him or not, without remembering his death (and him as a zombie, and her having to put him back).

And considering the Film Noir angle, going from Phillip Marlowe to the traumatic death of Phillip the stripper doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

Dammit, I haven't read book 1 in a while, but I thought Anita having to put Phillip to rest was one of the most powerful moments in the book. Now I'm realizing it was probably one of the most powerful in the SERIES.