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Title: Doubts
Link: http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2006/03/doubts.html
Date: Thursday, March 16 2006

LKH is in italics.

The first part of the blog is going on about spoilers, but eventually it gets back on track to what Merry is starting to demand the same kinda treatment as Anita got.

But I promised Anita that if she truly cared about someone they'd survive. I know why I made the promise to her; my mother's death when I was six. To say it scarred me is an understatement.

All I can say about this is no shit, Sherlock. If you haven't read about it in the AB:VH books, you can get a revised version in the Merry Gentry series. Though, for transparency, look to Anita and how she's never gotten over her childhood trauma. I know it must be a horrible experience - so don't think that I'm insensitive - but surely I'm not the only one thinking OMG PLEASE STOP HARPING ON ABOUT IT! You're...how old now? You've had how many years to try and deal with it? You're now rich enough to afford how many therapists?

People die. People that you care about die. It's a sad, frightening and terrible truth. Wanting to save everyone you care about might be a noble thing to aspire toward, but it's ultimately futile and just because you can do it on paper instead of in real life, doesn't necessarily mean you should.

Read Frankenstein if you don't believe me.

So I promised Anita something I cannot promise myself. How was I to know that she would fall in love with so bloody many men? I was planning on monogamy for her when I made the promise. Who knows, maybe her interest in so many of the other characters is my subconscious's way of keeping everyone safe? Maybe.

You think? Only a 'maybe'? Not to mention there's the whole, is it morally better to have sex with characters rather than kill them argument that she brought up in an earlier blog - I think it's probably safe to say that for everyone out there that's cheering for a cast character to die? It's not going to happen.

I just want to scream at how attached to her characters she is. I can understand loving a few of them to the point where you don't want to let them go, but honestly? This is getting ridiculous. Specially from a Bestselling Author. This is the kind of stuff I expect from a 15 year old badfic writer. Which...I'm kinda convinced LKH really IS, because of a bizarre time-travel accident where present-LKH and teen-LKH switched bodies.

But Merry is pressing for the same promise. I don't think I can give it. I fear for some of the men in this, the last few scenes. She's fighting me, and I can't argue with her. I feel that it is wrong, if I can stop it, if I can save them all, why not? Why not?

Because Merry isn't the boss of you? Or, how about this: the book might have one redeeming feature if LKH had the guts to kill off someone that she, and the readers, care about. And then, you can use the death to flesh out characters and plot and propel them out of 2D cardboard cut-outs into 3D creations that are interesting.

Then again, I know I'm a crazy person for thinking that this is going to happen. It'd be nice to see it happen, but it's not. I have to keep telling myself that it's not.

A woman at the St. Louis signing for MICAH asked when I was going to kill someone off in one of the series. She didn't care who, just someone. She felt that the characters weren't in true jeopardy anymore.

I want to hunt down this woman and hug her. Was it one of you guys?

I'd been wondering the same thing myself for a little while. But who would I sacrifice to make my fictional world more believable? No one. I hold them all precious.

GAH! *headdesk* See? LET THEM GO! It's okay, you can afford therapy. Just...let them go!

Admittedly, eventually, Cel is going to have to die in the Merry series.

Hands up the number of people who didn't see that coming after A Kiss of Shadows? Anyone? Beuller?

I just don't see her as every being safe while he lives. But that's books away, and I don't care about Cel, not in that way.

As someone that's generally a supporter of Team Evil and the Congress of Villainy, I want to punch LKH. Just because she doesn't care about the villain doesn't mean that other people might not. I hate it when authors dumb down the bad guy, or just don't care enough to make him/her/it a character that the hero actually has to work to defeat. I love sympathetic villains - not the ones that whine and yell WOE! for they are evil and if only they had a moment of Twoo Wuv, they'd give up their evil ways - but rather, ones that I can understand their reasons for being villains, ones that under other circumstances could be heroes.

I don't really care about Merry's safety, or that of her men. And from what I've read so far, Cel doesn't seem to be that big a threat to anyone. Just reading those two sentences, my suggestion would be to sit and work on Cel and find something worth caring about, just so he could be a better character.

Again, I'm a crazy person for thinking this will ever happen.

If Merry's series is not 'real' enough for some of the readers is that a good enough reason to pick someone to kill off? No.

GAH! WHY NOT? Inquiring minds want to know.

Though, I'm pretty sure people want characters to die not because the series isn't 'real' enough, it's more so we don't have to make spreadsheets (pardon the pun) to keep track of who and what Merry is sleeping with. What's the current tally? Six? Seven? More?

But what I fear is that the plot itself, of its own weight, is leading us to the loss. It's that fear that keeps Merry reluctant, and my feelings of guilt that help her win the argument. Can we get through this last scene with everyone intact, and should we? I don't know anymore; I just don't know.

Don't give into her! DON'T! YOU CAN DO IT LAURELL! Oh, who am I kidding? She'll cave to peer pressure. Merry and Anita will gang up and guilt trip her so that the other 8934737 men will all live, happy and well hung, FOR EVAH!

*headdesk*

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she just freaks me out more with every blog entry.

Me too. Honestly, she types like she's got MPD.

Nah, I think it's just good old-fashioned Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (http://www.toad.net/~arcturus/dd/narc) No, seriously. I think Laurell's got NPD.

If it's true, I feel SO bad for her kid. Children of NPDers have hellish lives.

(Of course, maybe she isn't. Maybe she's a great mom who loves her kid and devotes her life to raising a decent, productive member of society. Who the hell knows? I'm not casting aspirations on LKH specifically; just NPDers.)

This post really disturbed me, but not as much as the 'sex is more life-affirming than violence' one. It's boggling that she's a bestselling author.

This is the kinda stuff that you would have been taught Not To Do in high school, and even if you did it, then people would mercilessly torment you for how bad it was.

I have to wonder how it is a grown woman can get away with doing all this. Bestseller or not.

Though, it's my opinion that Bestsellers ought to be held to a higher standard than everyone else - simply because they're so successful and therefore set the bar for people to aim toward. Then again, if Micah can make it as a big hit, then there's hope for the little people yet.

At some point will some one hug her and say," ummm sweety, there not real they are in your head and they can not tell you to anything. They are aspects of your creative writing. Now take the nice pills and get back to reality, and a plot. "

I used to love the books till they no longer became thrilling. Once I figured out that no one could die what was the point.

mags

Y'know, the one character I'm writing wants to nail the other one, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna let my work turn to unrepentant and terribly-written smut. Because you know what? ~~I know how to write smut better than her~~ They're characters. I control them. And I understand that if I want porn for the sake of porn, I write a PWP, keep it seperate from the main body of the work, and set it loose on the wilds of the internets by itself.

I write a PWP, keep it seperate from the main body of the work, and set it loose on the wilds of the internets by itself.

*dies laughing* I can see it now, people tagging PWP and releasing it into the realms of cyberspace. "Run free, PWP. FREE!!!"

It makes it about three steps, and a sex-starved fangirl swoops down like a hawk and mauls it. XD

Guilty as charged. ;)

I think this blog entry has just decided me. I'm done with both series'. What's the point if LKH is saying that it's all going to stay status quo because she likes the characters? These books are not driven by plot, they are driven by the author's whims and her almost schizophrenic conversations with her main characters.

She also basically said that there is no direction to her writing. Sure that has been pretty clear for some time now but the reluctance with which she admits that Cel will have to die is astounding. I never doubted that Cel would die. He's supposed to die. She has been leading up to his death since the beginning of the series. It never crossed my mind that she didn't have that planned. Yet now she says that he can die because she "doesn't care" about him? WTF? I had always hoped I was wrong or that maybe she had writers block or something but that she'd eventually get back to the promise she showed in the beginning, that the series would start moving forward, not just collecting more consorts. That we'd get back to, oh, plots.

As for the whole "I like them so they can not die" and "I don't like him so he can die." bit, if I wanted that kind of logic in my reading, I'd spend more time dredging through FF.net.

Woman, Anita isn't falling in love with so many men. You are. As far as I've noticed, Anita is actively trying not to fall in love with anyone. Anita is hardcore, Anita will not break down if someone dies. You're the one that lingers and creates physical reasons for them to live. Because you just know that she'll be able to cope and you fucking won't.

The fact is that we intimately know a whole damn lot about your way of (not) coping with death and heartbreak. I don't know as much about my closest friends. And, lady, I honestly never wanted to know these things about you!

ARgh. It's sad that I'm addressing LKH, isn't it? Damn insanity.

...notice how Anita got the hell over Philip's death.

Right. Philip who? That one guy from Guilty Pleasures. That long ago. I don't know why LKH has let things slip so much since then. That book...with that character's death...was moving. It was powerful.

The recent books? Are crap. :(

oh occasionally she makes a vague reference lost amidst her endless wangst and Epic Soliloquies of Doom!!!1!

But I don't think she's mentioned Philip by name since uh... Circus of the Damned...

(deleted comment)

I'm well aware of that, I'm just pointing out that it doesn't necessarily have to be Anita=LKH. Okay, it makes more sense in my head, but if you take the character, strip it off her LKHness, there's that Anita we got to know in the first few books. That's the hope I held onto when the community got started, that one day LKH will stop using the books as her therapy. That the character and the author will stop feeding off each other. I've lost that hope a long while ago, of course, but I used to be amazingly idealistic on this issue. :)

See, every time LKH blogs about Anita not letting her do one thing or another, I read it as LKH not letting Anita progress naturally and steering her in a direction only LKH is comfortable with. Because the woman has lost all ability to distinguish between herself and her heroine. What I'm basically saying is that Anita has the potential to be a character, instead of a proto-LKH.

If it's Laurell falling in love with the girly-boi characters... Does that mean she has some issues with Jon? Is he not servicing her as well as Anita's boi's?

*Que sexual wangst*

I now want shirts printed with the slogan "supporter of Team Evil and the Congress of Villainy." XD

I want Team Evil support badges. And shirts.

Maybe a website, with buttons for people to have to show they care for the bad guys.

I'd join that. So would they. (http://community.livejournal.com/sexandvillainy/)

I'm killing off one of the main characters in my book. I will probably cry.. but I'm doing it.

(deleted comment)

Yeah, she's getting SCARY. Like...to some extent, one's characters are an extension of oneself...but she's taking it waaaaaaaaaaaay too literally and seriously for my comfort.

*sniggers* I absolutely adore your flogs. Saves me the energy to do it myself. ;)

What gets me is how she can be so devotedly attached to such one-dimensional characters. Most of them have NO PERSONALITY to speak of, and yet she holds them all "precious". There's nothing to be emotionally invested in.

And not only are the characters uninteresting, she has now removed any remaining shred of drama, since she openly admits that nothing will be at risk. Oh, characters might be tortured for added wangst, but true jeopardy won't be an issue, because she has "promised" Merita (I love you for that term, dwg!) that by story's end all of her boytoys will be snug in bed with her, and she will never ever have to face true pain or grief, because surely TELLING the audience of all her past woes is enough to gain their sympathy, right? ("My mother/father was tragically killed when I was a child/teenager!" Okay, that was nearly twenty years ago. Sucks to be you, now GET OVER IT and stop wringing that particular plot dry.)

EXACTLY!!! How does one get so irrevocably attached to a bunch of ball-less yes-men? I think I'd find LKH's 'emotional trauma' over all this way more realistic if there was actually some *depth* to speak of in these characters.

Yeah, they're pretty, but so what? So are 98.9999999% of the cardboard cut-out characters in your standard badfic. That doesn't mean we'll be permanently scarred if they die, heh.

Word. Totally.

All the freaky attachment stuff aside, I don't see how she can be attached to ALL the characters. Main cast, yes. But what about Merle, Caleb, Zane, Wicked, Byron and the other 10000 new characters that she introduced in the past few books. Surely she can kill one of THEM off?? They're like cut-outs with the names scrawled in permanent marker. And getting slightly OT: why does she introduce more characters anyway? Especially since a lot of them disappear after one book and we never, ever see them again.

Much agreed! In my opinion, she could just take the entire assload of new "characters" (that word just seems like too *much* to describe them, doesn't it?) that have been brought in lately and dump them in one nice, massive slaughter. Preferably with Edward involved. :P

And it seems that, as with so many other things in the books nowadays, she only brings more characters in so that Anita can get some Shag Variety. Hell, some of them have set *records*, don'tcha think? Byron was introduced for what, six pages before she was boinking him? ::rolls eyes::

Anyway, you're completely right about them just being cut-outs with names attached (cheesey ones, at that ;) ). There's nothing to get attached to.

Byron was introduced for what, six pages before she was boinking him?

Wasn't Byron the one that was introduced AFTER she shagged him senseless? If I recall, someone was. In Incubus Dreams, she had sex with some character we'd never met and LKH proceeded to introduce the character after the sex. There's something wrong with that women's priorities.

Yeah - both Byron and Requiem were introduced properly after teh sexx0rz in ID.

Y'know what irritates me the most about this particular little issue of hers? She keeps ignoring the fact that she really *does* control this fictional universe, and as such controls EVERYTHING about it. Time included.

You *can* kill off a character in your writing and not necessarily HAVE to "let him/her go". There are flashbacks. There are dreams and/or memories. Hell, you can even just go off and write some random scenes/stories about that character at some other point in their life! It's not like scratching them out of the *present* timeline is OMGTHEEND. Just wind the damned clock back for a bit, LKH. :P

At this point in the series, it's ridiculously absurd that some major characters *haven't* died! One of the things that was harped on the most in the earlier books was how death and tragedy were a part of Anita's world (Merry's too, natch)...well, WHERE THE HELL IS IT?!

Anyway, there's my gripe for the subject. I wish LKH *would* just start dumping some characters into the abyss, and only deal with them in flashbacks or side stories (if she absolutely must, heh). And actually, it might be kind of *fun* to see stories about those characters, PRE-ANITA. They can't very well be shagging her if they haven't even met her yet. :P

And actually, it might be kind of *fun* to see stories about those characters, PRE-ANITA. They can't very well be shagging her if they haven't even met her yet. :P

...But they don't exist unless they're shagging her...at least, that seems to be the idea. Any scene with actual detail (mind boggling anatomically impossible uber sexalicious detail) only occurs during sex.

Oohhh, RIGHT! How could I *ever* have forgotten that? ;)

Thanks for the reality check! XD I had a moment of insane, hopeless optimism. ::sighs:: Alas.

I just read that blog entry and was oh-so-disappointed by it. Because it really just confirmed everything I hate about LKH. Plus the added nail-to-the-coffin about LKH living through her characters. We know she does it but "Oh my mother died" just is Anita and all her wangst.

*shudders*
I remember reading an article once in which Anne Rice talked about killing off Claudia in Interview with the Vampire. Originally Claudia lived. Then Rice realised Claudia was a big psychological thingy of her daughter who had died of leukaemia. End result? Rice got herself some closure and killed off Claudia.

On the other hand, LKH may be on to something here: despite knowing how bloody NUTS she is, I will still read ABVH books, hoping and praying with every page I turn that Richard will FINALLY get killed as he so richly deserves.

There aren't enough *headdesks* in the WORLD for this kind of shit.

I really, really, REALLY wish I knew what happened between books nine and ten. Was it just the divorce/remarriage? Or did she manage to piss off her editor and the entire copywriter's department simultaneously? If so, how? Or is mind control involved? Alien mind control?

... in the end, it's probably the boring and predictable outcome of isolating yourself from the world at large, and surrounding yourself with people who never contradict or challenge you, and so are nothing but emotional pacifiers.

Or maybe Darla and Jon are aliens. Hmmm.

For anyone coming by later, the blog link has been changed to http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/index.php/site/doubts/

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