Lust Paint, And So On.
Jan. 16th, 2009 03:53 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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lkh_lashoutsThere are a number of books I consider to be "bad" that I nevertheless re-read regularly: many of them have the immediate effect of inspiring me to try to write something better. Most of the recent additions to Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series are not on that list, but nevertheless, I keep re-reading the damn things because I can't remember what the hell happens in them. Obviously something must have, if there were four or five hundred pages written about it, but the actual details of the latter-day Anitas just leak immediately out of my head if I put the book down and turn around too fast. (Perhaps it's a coping mechanism.)
So, in effect, every time I read the books, it's like reading them the first time. The upside is that I always have a vaguely entertaining (if in a rather twisted lulz-y way) fallback once I've read everything else in my house that sounds decent and need a book in a hurry. The downside, of course, is that I forget the best (worst?) lines.
In addition to the usual misuse of poor "spilled", the unfortunate fashion sense, and the overpowering fear of explicit anatomical reference, Laurell Hamilton has, shall we say, a "unique" touch with the figurative language. It'd be a shame to lose track of the bits of Danse Macabre that made me laugh out loud. [Page references in brackets are to the first U.S. paperback printing.]
Passion like something touchable, solid, spilled [aaaargh!] up through my body and over his. Lust like some thick, heavy paint flowed over us, covering us, trapping us. [p. 76]
. . . like helpless lust-mosquitoes stuck to wet Autumn Gold? Heh heh heh. Lust paint.
I could feel the two different ardeurs like two different flavors of fire, and Auggie was our only wood. We'd burn him up, and he wanted us to do it. [p. 94]
Not only is this a mixed metaphor that verges on painful (fire has flavors? Ow), there's a really unfortunate pun to be made there about Augustine's wood.
"I'm dating three men, sleeping with two more, and having occasional sex with two others. That's seven men. I'm like a pornographic Snow White." [p. 102]
Which would actually give Anita points for an accurate and succinct observation, if my mind's eye hadn't immediately supplied the outfits to go with it. (Go on, you try! It's surprisingly easy. Happy, Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy . . .)
I looked around at the other vampires. I looked at Elinore still gripping the back of her chair. I felt her. Felt her as if she were a flavor of ice cream that I could have put into a cone and licked. Mostly vanilla, with chocolate chips. I looked at London. Not vanilla, no, something darker, chunkier, full of hard crunchy bits. Wicked filled my mind like icing, chocolate icing to spread on skin and lick clean. I shook my head at the imagery, and looked for Truth, still huddling by the fireplace. Something fresh and clean, strawberries, maybe, strawberry ice cream to melt down the skin and be licked away, so you could suck the cold around the nipples . . . [p. 275-6]
*sporfle* Look, there's nothing I can add to that passage; it's just fine on its own, perhaps as a warning to writers to just go out for ice cream if you're obsessing about Baskin Robbins that badly and finish the chapter with cone in hand. The less said about London's hard crunchy bits, the better.
"Do you need to ask how I feel about your human servant?" he asked.
Jean-Claude nodded.
"It is all I can do to stay here on this seat. If my heart could beat, it would break." [p. 362]
Why does Auggie suddenly look like Spike? And more importantly, why is he singing? Hmm.
"I trapped you. I trapped you both; it's worse than what Auggie did to us. It's not fake, it's like real love. I made you both fall in love with me, that's like evil." [p. 409]
Now, this is an irritating speech habit that I fall into occasionally, so perhaps I'm hyper-aware, but the verbal tic of using "like" for nervous emphasis doesn't translate into print. In fact, it has the opposite effect: Anita here is undercutting the seriousness of what she has to say. It reads as "x is like y" instead of "x is very y", which is what she probably meant.
Well, that, or all the "I love St. Louis, I could never live anywhere else!" is a smokescreen to disguise the fact that Anita Blake, Vampire Executioner is a Valley girl.
I didn't expect Noel to answer, but he did. "Anita may hurt me by accident, but you'd hurt me just to see me bleed." Damn perceptive for walking food. [p. 423]
I realize this isn't a misuse of figurative language per se, but it is a pretty good example of the cringe-worthy undercurrent to every lycanthrope encounter. "Sexually submissive" is not the same as "socially submissive", and neither of those things adds equates to "born victim". It Just Bugs Me.
Lust at first sight. They say it doesn't last, but we were six months and counting. [p. 13]
Really? People have relationships that last that long? Six whole months? *eyeroll, eyeroll* Anita, you're almost thirty. Stop sounding fourteen.
So, in effect, every time I read the books, it's like reading them the first time. The upside is that I always have a vaguely entertaining (if in a rather twisted lulz-y way) fallback once I've read everything else in my house that sounds decent and need a book in a hurry. The downside, of course, is that I forget the best (worst?) lines.
In addition to the usual misuse of poor "spilled", the unfortunate fashion sense, and the overpowering fear of explicit anatomical reference, Laurell Hamilton has, shall we say, a "unique" touch with the figurative language. It'd be a shame to lose track of the bits of Danse Macabre that made me laugh out loud. [Page references in brackets are to the first U.S. paperback printing.]
Passion like something touchable, solid, spilled [aaaargh!] up through my body and over his. Lust like some thick, heavy paint flowed over us, covering us, trapping us. [p. 76]
. . . like helpless lust-mosquitoes stuck to wet Autumn Gold? Heh heh heh. Lust paint.
I could feel the two different ardeurs like two different flavors of fire, and Auggie was our only wood. We'd burn him up, and he wanted us to do it. [p. 94]
Not only is this a mixed metaphor that verges on painful (fire has flavors? Ow), there's a really unfortunate pun to be made there about Augustine's wood.
"I'm dating three men, sleeping with two more, and having occasional sex with two others. That's seven men. I'm like a pornographic Snow White." [p. 102]
Which would actually give Anita points for an accurate and succinct observation, if my mind's eye hadn't immediately supplied the outfits to go with it. (Go on, you try! It's surprisingly easy. Happy, Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy . . .)
I looked around at the other vampires. I looked at Elinore still gripping the back of her chair. I felt her. Felt her as if she were a flavor of ice cream that I could have put into a cone and licked. Mostly vanilla, with chocolate chips. I looked at London. Not vanilla, no, something darker, chunkier, full of hard crunchy bits. Wicked filled my mind like icing, chocolate icing to spread on skin and lick clean. I shook my head at the imagery, and looked for Truth, still huddling by the fireplace. Something fresh and clean, strawberries, maybe, strawberry ice cream to melt down the skin and be licked away, so you could suck the cold around the nipples . . . [p. 275-6]
*sporfle* Look, there's nothing I can add to that passage; it's just fine on its own, perhaps as a warning to writers to just go out for ice cream if you're obsessing about Baskin Robbins that badly and finish the chapter with cone in hand. The less said about London's hard crunchy bits, the better.
"Do you need to ask how I feel about your human servant?" he asked.
Jean-Claude nodded.
"It is all I can do to stay here on this seat. If my heart could beat, it would break." [p. 362]
Why does Auggie suddenly look like Spike? And more importantly, why is he singing? Hmm.
"I trapped you. I trapped you both; it's worse than what Auggie did to us. It's not fake, it's like real love. I made you both fall in love with me, that's like evil." [p. 409]
Now, this is an irritating speech habit that I fall into occasionally, so perhaps I'm hyper-aware, but the verbal tic of using "like" for nervous emphasis doesn't translate into print. In fact, it has the opposite effect: Anita here is undercutting the seriousness of what she has to say. It reads as "x is like y" instead of "x is very y", which is what she probably meant.
Well, that, or all the "I love St. Louis, I could never live anywhere else!" is a smokescreen to disguise the fact that Anita Blake, Vampire Executioner is a Valley girl.
I didn't expect Noel to answer, but he did. "Anita may hurt me by accident, but you'd hurt me just to see me bleed." Damn perceptive for walking food. [p. 423]
I realize this isn't a misuse of figurative language per se, but it is a pretty good example of the cringe-worthy undercurrent to every lycanthrope encounter. "Sexually submissive" is not the same as "socially submissive", and neither of those things adds equates to "born victim". It Just Bugs Me.
Lust at first sight. They say it doesn't last, but we were six months and counting. [p. 13]
Really? People have relationships that last that long? Six whole months? *eyeroll, eyeroll* Anita, you're almost thirty. Stop sounding fourteen.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 01:17 am (UTC)Oh gods, I had never made that connection before. And now it will never go away.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 01:22 am (UTC)^^ this is one of my biggest pet peeves with every single RPG I've ever come across in an Anita-Blake based RPG. Somehow, people have gotten it into their heads that a submissive (shifter), which is basically a "relative" thing between "more dominant" and "more submissive" with some (few) being by nature super-leaders and some being super-scared, isn't a function of power and force of personality (which it is), it all comes in one package where -- there are DOMINANTS and SUBMISSIVE and DOMINANTS have super cool powers, are the "tops" in the bdsm games that shifters all (lol) play, and are all really arrogant alpha males... whereas submissives are all weak physically and in power, have no force of personality or ability to stand up for themselves, and are masochists.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 04:41 am (UTC)I'm almost tempted to send LKH the Bible Black hentai series, just to see if she decides it's EDGY and SEXY or if it's OMG!EVIL.
...Actually, she might think the latter. I mean, from what I saw of it, there's a chick who grows a penis and does girls, and a few guys who do only one girl at a time, even if it's in a crazy demonic ritual orgy and...yeah...it made my all-time list of OMGWTFBBQ animated series.
Laurell might think they weren't being Adult Edgy Sexy Sexy Sex enough for her, or just hate that the Japanese girls in it generally aren't short, inhumanly busty, black-curly-haired penis-swallowing Sparkly Goddesses of Goodness with Magical Wish-Granting HotWetTight Vaginas and prude-y issues. I mean, several girls in it totally get into *gasp* anal, and do the chick-with-a-dick! Such sluts! *note sarcasm :P*
*hands out brain bleach for that total TMI before going to write Anita snark-fic for LJ*
no subject
Date: 2009-01-18 04:57 am (UTC):P
no subject
Date: 2009-01-18 07:56 am (UTC)HOSHIT, that just made me think: Maybe LKH already saw it and similar hentai (Hello, Viper GTS. Equal WTF to Bible Black, but also funny), and that's why Anita's cooch has been gulping down the supernatural penii of St. Louis for the last six books or so.
Maybe not, because then Anita would actually grow a penis as well as still having (or in place of) her HotWetTight Vag O' Doom, and she'd be going around raping all the Evil Blonde Skinny Skanks. And we know Anita hates anything hinting at gay sex or the existence of other women.
Not to mention, can you imagine the apocalyptic sex havoc she'd wreck *then*? One could imagine her walking dildos stay forever young, otherwise, she'll wake up surrounded by saggy grey old guys one day and be "EW, ugly old men, nooo!", and have no new penii to sex up.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 10:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 03:09 am (UTC)Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I LOL'd. XD!
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Date: 2009-01-17 03:22 am (UTC)Edited to add: While I too have my list of bad books that I reread, often for inspiration to do better in my writing (although like yours, LKH isn't on that list)...this community and the sporking involved are what prompted me to pursue a serious career as a writer, because I knew I could do better than LKH even if I rarely write vampire fiction. I've finished two novels since then, both of which I'm trying to sell to agents and publishers in the expected long, tedious, painstaking process, and picked up a well-paying job as a business / resume writer to pay the bills in between. So I kind of have this community (and unfortunately Laurell) to thank for launching my writing career.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-18 12:01 am (UTC)Just watch out out there - Vampire Fiction got to that strange point where you can't be too good of a writer>_<
no subject
Date: 2009-01-17 03:37 am (UTC)