Just A Thought...Are We Enablers?
Oct. 3rd, 2009 03:00 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
watersheerie.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
lkh_lashoutsI apologize if this particular thought has already been posted...I have a really really bad memory.
We are all very aware of how much LKH loves attention. Good, bad or indifferent, she thrives on it. It has gotten to the point that I wonder if she is Histrionic or something of that nature. She does anything she can for attention. Books aside, she continues to write what has already generated a lot of heat. Her choice of clothing in public, and her actions within public. Her blogs...God the blogs. She'll complain that she doesn't want to be in the spotlight and is tired of people paying attention to her, which is her passive submissive way of gaining more attention.
We all get it, LKH, you love it when people talk about you, even if its bad.
With this in mind, are we feeding the beast? I understand why LKH Lashouts came into being. I was, for a brief time, a member of the LKH forum, and found the place to be more frustrating then trying to get all the plastic and stickers off a new cd (a personal pet peeve). Eventually...quickly I grew tired of the min-fascist regime they had going on over there and came her. I do like this place, and the reason for LKH Lashouts is an understandable and rational one. Still...we are giving her attention over here, and I can't believe that she is totally unaware of what goes on here. In fact, I think it is a lie that she claims to not visit her forums very often and other places on the net related to her. She probably checks them 24/7, as they are places devoted to her favorite subject: LKH.
We are giving her attention, and I'm wondering if this is just giving into what she wants. LKH is surrounded by enablers currently. I almost feel bad for her, because I can't believe that all these people who say they care about her, actually do. Their actions are not that of people who do love her. I would hope that the people who love me would stop me from pulling the stunts that LKH does. Her writing has deteriorated because of these enablers, possibly her own mental state has as well, and none of them really give a damn about her. If she truly is Histrionic, or something of that nature, she needs help...not more 'yes men.'
Does the attention we give her over here, only exasperate the problem? It seems like lately her blogs have been showing no improvement, in fact they seem to indicate that she is getting worse. Now, I'm not saying that LKH Lashouts should be stopped, or that we are all very bad people for encouraging LKH and her whoring for attention. I'm just wondering if we are a part of the problem.
Side-note: My mother works within the the mental health care system as a case worker for those with mental illness. I was telling her about LKH's books, specifically her thoughts and views on sex and sexual abuse. I mention how LKH believes that Nathanial is old for his age because of his childhood abuse, and how Anita is now sleeping with him, and how every man has been abused and raped in some fashion. My mom looked disgusted, then asked me if LKH had every been sexually abused as a child. I said I didn't know. My mom explained that it sounds as if LKH had been sexually abused, her obsession with sex and all that. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but sadly it does make some sense. It doesn't excuse LKH's behavior, if anything it makes it more imperative that these supposed 'caring' people in her life get her some help.
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Date: 2009-10-03 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-04 02:13 am (UTC)we ARE being watched
TRUST me, there are lkh troos/trolls over here that report everything back to lkh central. Just read through the tweets or the plog - many times, there has been a swipe at either this forum or the forums on Amazon. She herself doesn't need to watch us, because there are troos/trolls out there that do it for her.
-,'-,'-,'--@
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Date: 2009-10-03 07:30 pm (UTC)I don't think we are a part of the problem, and if we are its a small part of it. I think if LKH was aware of us and reading this LJ we'd be hearing all about it.
If you look at her blogs, you can see that whenever something 'annoys' her or 'hurts' her no matter if it's physical or mental she'll wax on and on and on about it. Pretty sure if she knew about Lashouts we'd never hear the end of it in her blogs and if Darla was still part of the team she'd be the one on the computer to LJ trying to get us shut down.
LKH DOES have way too many 'Yes Men' Darla (formerly) and Jon top of the list determined to keep her 'happy' no idea if this is so she keeps writing (thusly the money flowing) or if it just makes it easier to live with her. Now that LKH is brancing out so to speak, twitter for example, it might be harder to filter out the bad and keep her 'happy' so we shall see on the latter part.
I think we all here at Lashouts agree that LKH doesn't have issues, she has subscriptions...LIFETIME subscriptions she needs a break from her writing and a good long stint at a quality therapists couch in that order.
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Date: 2009-10-03 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-03 09:50 pm (UTC)In order to be "enablers," she would have to know and visit this place regularly. Since we have no way of confirming whether she does or not, I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't worry about things we have no control over.
*LOLs at the idea of one of LKH's crew trying to shut down Lashouts*
I also agree that a certain writer needs a break and some time on a couch to pare down the subscriptions at least a little bit.
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Date: 2009-10-03 10:31 pm (UTC)The sales for Anita Blake and Merry books are already on a downward slide, and I do think it is fuelled by the fact that the books suck, but also because there's been such a swing against them. IMO, LKH holds her sale figures as the primary reason to write so much flagrant porn. Hopefully, soon, the figures will depleted enough so that she'll clue up.
I'm not holding my breath.
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Date: 2009-10-03 11:50 pm (UTC)Honestly, I don't see Hamilton even wanting to deal with this level of dissatisfaction- hence, 'Dear Negative Reader'... she'd rather hide behind her spiky iron fence.
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Date: 2009-10-04 03:45 pm (UTC)Is there some schadenfreude to watching the Laurel K. trainwreck in progress? Yeah. There is. But that's not why I love this group so much and if that was the only thing keeping the community active, I would imagine it'd get boring in very short order. I mean, how many times can one of us shout "OMG, Laurel K just posted something really clueless and self deluded on her journal!" before that gets old?
For me anyway it's the rich interaction with other like minded people and the dissections of how to handle creativity, how to handle a body of work that's become popular, how to deal with characters and their development, how one lives as a writer and how much room fans will give an author before they finally go "Are you frickin' kidding me?" and so on that keeps this community so compelling and fascinating to me.
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Date: 2009-10-08 04:02 am (UTC)The side-note is the only part that baffles me. As a survivor sexual abuse, and having gone through therapy for that and years of recovery, I've never looked at a romance novel and thought the author was abused because they're "obsessed with sex." I mean. It's a fucking romance novel. Maybe this is just a trigger issue with me, but I think abuse survivors like Nathaniel have just as much of a right as anyone to decide when they want to have sex and with who. It's not about damage at that point, it's about caring for somebody else. The abuse factors less into your sex life once you've gone through therapy and learned to heal. Nathaniel is getting help and developing healthy sexual confidence. That gets my damned thumbs up for showing that people who've suffered abuse aren't one sided, shallow losers who are broken forever. We can heal.
I actually thought the discussions of male abuse and rape were the only intelligent part of the books, as it's a socially unacceptable topic that rarely gets media or literary attention. It may be a campy representation, but it's a representation all the same, and one that actually includes female aggressors. Also, "every guy" is a little extreme. Edward, for one, is a main character without any hint of sexual trauma in his past. Richard is more of an aggressor. The lifestyles are kind of important to consider before throwing "omg she's obsessed with male rape" out there: feudalistic systems of absolute power (ie, the vampires and were packs) pretty much 100% of the time result in sexual abuse and misconduct. Look at situations in our modern climate like Abu Ghraib. NOT including that abuse of power would be shoddy world-building. She's not that great at it to begin with, but that would be even worse.
I dunno, I would have preferred the books never turned into pornographic fantasies, but as far as that goes, they're fairly positive in comparison to things like "The Sheik's Unwilling Virgin Bride." The representations of safe, sane and consensual BDSM are pretty accurate. The threesomes are pretty accurate. The question of how to be a strong woman and still enjoy being sexually dominated is an important one to me, at least. Hell, the sex is one of the only things she actually spends TIME on anymore.
(All right, I'm done now. That's as much positive as I can stand.)
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Date: 2009-10-09 04:15 am (UTC)What I don't agree with is that LKH portrays all of this in a healthy light. It's not the inclusion of rape and abuse that bugs me. It's the way that it's included. It's shown as okay if Anita does it. Nathaniel is saved by being abused by Anita. On what planet does abuse heal anything? And why do so many authors seem to live there? Does it make it okay to rape someone because you're a woman? Or because you're a vampire or a were-whatever? Does it make it okay to rape someone because you're in charge? My answer is no.
I don't see much of her BDSM to be accurate at all. Her views on the subject are narrow and one-sided. Anita is always in charge. She's never dominated or even creates the illusion of being so. She has safe words, but none of the men do. Most of the men that have come into contact with Anita did so unwillingly. That's rape. I don't care if it's "metaphysical" (gah, LKH made me hate that word!)or if it's done with a knife to the throat. Rape is rape. And being told that if you don't sleep with someone, you will be killed, is abuse. Nothing about that is safe, sane or consensual.
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Date: 2009-10-09 05:09 am (UTC)I also wouldn't say that when Anita uses her powers to make someone have sex with her she doesn't feel guilty. It's pretty clear textually that she thinks it's wrong. Of course, it's still in there, so we kind of have to wonder how LKH feels about it; then again, Raina is very obviously a female rapist who is NOT portrayed in a positive light. I don't think power-abuse rape is portrayed positively in ABVH. (As for the safe words, Anita is so uncomfortable with topping at this stage that she won't even get close to play where the word "Stop" is part of the game. "Stop" or "no" is a safe-word when you know it is one.)
I think there's a lot of text to sift through for interpretations and everybody's going to come up with something different, though. I think her relationship with Nathaniel at this point in the series is probably the healthiest one there is, mostly thanks to Nathaniel and therapy on his part. I don't think she's abusing him. I think her problem earlier in the books is that she believed she was abusing him solely because she thinks submissives are insane and he was too young, which is just insulting.
Nathaniel, from the very beginning, was open about his desire for Anita. He wanted her from day one. It never crossed my mind that she abused him because I never once saw that in the text. I saw her turn him down for all the wrong reasons, and in doing so emotionally degrade him, but I never once saw the implication of rape. He was a very, very consenting partner.
(The threesomes are a little too perfect, speaking as someone who was once in a triad relationship with two men. Now, the Jean-Claude and Richard conflict? That's more realistic. *g*)
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Date: 2009-10-09 08:44 am (UTC)As for the dom/sub thing, I still don't think that LKH understands what it really means. The men are there for Anita to play a submissive, but she's still the domme. Again, she's the only one with a safe word. The guys don't have one. Hers is "stop", but they don't seem to have one of their own. I guess no matter what Anita does, it's perfect and wonderful and no one would ever want it to end....
The sex is really blah for me. All the guys are there for is to please Anita, or for Anita to experience something "new" (but that she's really done already and LKH just forgot.) I get that it's a fantasy, but mine would include my partners more. All the guys do is wank on and on about Anita's beauty, or her many sexcapades (eww), or her "rain-making" (eww and oh no)but she is extremely vanilla when it comes down to it and pretty much lays there for the extent of the scene. For instance, she knows that Jean-Claude and Asher want each other, yet they can't do anything while they're in bed together (or apart, because only Anita can have a poly-amorous relationship). Her guys can't even really touch each other without her wigging out. She may say that she's "thinking" about it (and who is she that she's the one to decide this stuff, anyway?), but if she ever allows them to mess around, it will take forever in the books and will such a pathetic attempt to be edgy yet truly vanilla that if I read it, I'll laugh myself to death. What Anita does do has been done before so many times that I don't even need to read the scenes anymore to know what's going to go down. She's just a Real Girl doll that gets praised like she's the Queen of Sex-land.
The three-somes do go a bit too well in terms of everyone being happy with what they get.(been there, done that) While the Jean-Claude and Richard conflict was more realistic, it wasn't realistic enough. Richard was just "the ghost of the conservative past". The Micah/Nathaniel thing is just ridiculous. Some men may like sharing their women on certain, um, occasions, but the domestic thing does NOT usually work. At least, not for long stretches.(tried that, too)
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Date: 2009-10-09 02:29 pm (UTC)I don't think she writes particularly realistic sex--just that it's better than a lot of the remarkably misogynistic creepy uncomfortable romance novel sex that's floating around out there. (ie-"The Billionare's Blackmailed Lover" etc. The titled of the new Harlequins at my bookstore give us the giggles for weeks.)
(On the threesome front: the sex was the ONLY thing that worked in my experience. *g* I suspect with more easy-going, non alpha-male types it might work better in the domestic setting, so I can stretch my imagination for Nathaniel and Micah.)
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Date: 2009-10-10 04:00 am (UTC)Yeah, the newer paranormal fiction/romance stuff out there now is terrible. It's what the editors want because LKH sells so very well. I used think that LKH was at least a little better than most, until I realized that they were only copying her. And a poor copy of poor work is terrible. The titles are the only good part, I think.
Yup, for me, the only thing that worked was the sex in a 3p relationship. Once that was done, people stopped getting along with each other. I've never the domestic side work for very long for any of my friends, either. Maybe if everyone was less territorial it might have worked. But I think that most of us want to be special to the person we love. People can share, but most want their loved one to be theirs alone when they get home. It's funny, but the ones who freaked out over the situation were always the guys. I can see it as a fantasy, though. I'll never say that it wouldn't be nice to have my own harem at home. I just wouldn't have the energy for it. ^_^
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Date: 2009-10-09 06:21 pm (UTC)Though I have to say that I don't believe that Nathaniel is getting help or becoming healthy. He saw Anita, in the beginning, as one of the first parental figures who didn't want to fuck him. And in the beginning she was against having sex with him for the very same reason I listed above. And suddenly that reason vanishes and Anita is having sex with him. The plot did not go through a gradual buildup of Nathaniel getting better and growing into a stable relationship, LKH purposely twisted it into having Anita jump into bed with Nathaniel as soon as possible. Nathaniel is still fully dependent upon Anita, he really has no life of his own, in the real world I would consider their 'relationship' to be very one-sided in that once again, Nathaniel is being used for sex and he can't get out because then he would have no home or financial care.
You are right, sexual abuse survivers have every right to decide when they are ready or not, as long as it is a healthy decision and are healed themselves. But Nathaniel really did not decide for himself. He was still in the mindset that he had to offer sex as way of payment for home and care to Anita when he kept insisting on sex, which is not healthy. It was this mindset that accompanied them when the two finally 'got it on.' And LKH has the nerve to say that this is a healthy relationship.
I have to disagree with you, but I don't believe that the rape and sexual abuse of the books are portrayed in a healthy light. I also disagree in the idea that LKH is writing about strong women who are sexually dominate. Anita, throughout the books, is constantly referred to as a strong woman because she can do things like a man. She can act like a man and do 'man things' better then all men. I would really like to read a book where a woman is strong, because she is woman, not because she can act like a man. Anita is also constantly under the control of her sexuality, it is a complete switch from the old mentality that women should be afraid of their sexuality. Instead we've gone to the opposite end of the spectrum where women should be controlled by their sexuality. I can rarely recall any sexual situation where Anita initiated the sex willingly, of her own free will, instead of being forced too by the Arduer/Ardeur or some other magical rape device. How is this a characteristic of strong women?
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Date: 2009-10-10 02:06 am (UTC)As for the consensual sex issue: All of the sex pre-arduer, is, well, pre-arduer. The first sex scene is in book 6 and the arduer doesn't pop up until book 10. She still has a great deal of consensual non-magical sex. The threesome with Nathaniel and Jason recently was one initiated by Anita without any arduer at all. I think it's a point of strength that she ended up with the arduer and adapted, despite the strain on her psyche and relationships. (Now, I don't think it's a plot device that should have ever shown up at all, but since it's there, I'm dealing with it.)
As for the strong women thing, it really depends on what kind of feminist you are. I think it is possible to subscribe entirely to the female stereotype and still be emotionally strong, but I also think it's important for women to be able to branch out into stereotypically male parts of life and work. If we never question the assigned jobs and stereotypes for "male" and "female" we wouldn't have made it through WWII. I don't view Anita as "acting like a man" whatsoever. She dresses like a woman, talks like a woman and emotionally identifies as a woman. It is the MEN in her world who tell her she's doing a man's job, and subscribing as readers to that idea of "men's work" sort of undermines the feminist movement entirely. She's not acting like a man. She's acting like herself.
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Date: 2009-10-10 04:21 am (UTC)I actually believe that LKH is a misogynist, she has the deepest contempt for other women.
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Date: 2009-10-10 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 04:31 am (UTC)I'm 50 now and I did experience some prejudice early in my career, but like I said most of it went away as I proved that I could do the job. Was it fair I needed to prove my competence before I was accepted, maybe not, but people get weird about change? And some of the weirdness is based on their fear that a woman might not be able to pull her weight.
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Date: 2009-10-12 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 05:47 pm (UTC)LKH's depiction of women and gender if very rigid. She seems to feel that there are very specific things that make a woman a woman, and very specific things that make a man a man. For someone who is supposedly about gender equality she spends way too much time trying to show how the genders are so incredibly different...except for the resident Sue Anita. Anita is depicted as constantly beating men at their own game. You always read about her showing horrible sexist men how she can shoot better, lift more weights, has more guns...why is it every book has Anita facing off a guy and showing off her bigger gun? It's because LKH believes that in order for Anita to be a strong woman, she must do 'manly' things, and she must do them better then men. And it is LKH who divides the world into men-things and women-things in the first place, LKH who has a very rigid and old-fashioned view on how women and men should act. While we still have some work to do in terms of gender equality, there has been some progress, progress that LKH refuses to see.
I'll admit that I have no experience with the police field, beyond my cousin now studying to be a cop. However, I can't believe that LKH is very accurate about the police either. All the men are racist/sexist/bigoted assholes who let their own prejudices get in the way of their jobs. The few women are always jealous of Anita and let their jealousy of her and their lust for her men interfere with their jobs. There are very few people who don't fall into these two categories.
I agree with magdalen77, I think that LKH/Anita hate women, and I really feel sorry for her, and I wonder how this deep hatred toward her gender and herself really started. She tries very hard in both her books and blogs to show how she isn't really a 'woman', she's more like one of the guys by her own exacting standards on how men and women should act and appear. She's just a guy who happens to have breasts.
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Date: 2009-10-11 10:22 am (UTC)Hi, from a long time reader, first time poster.
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Date: 2009-10-11 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-10 04:14 am (UTC)Nathaniel paid Anita to take care of him with submission, sex and housework. He's only happy now because he's doing what he believes he has to, what he was taught was "right", and because Anita's sextastic magic makes him believe that everything's okay. They don't have a relationship. Anita is master. Nathaniel is dog. All of Anita's "relationships" are like that. Do exactly what Anita says or she'll put you down.
Why do so few people understand that rape is rape? It doesn't matter how it's done, who does it, or how the rapist fells about it afterwords. It's still rape. You cannot rape someone to make them happy or whole. Anita rapes. And uses a deadly weapon in order to force everyone to comply. Her magic makes everyone around her need her, want her, and become addicted to her abuse. She could easily kill them with it, deny it to them once they are addicted, or just shoot them if her power fails to ensnare them. She could learn to control her power. Jean-Claude can control his. But Anita doesn't want to control it. She enjoys it. And that makes her a rapist.
LKH wouldn't know a strong woman if one beat her to a pulp with a ravioli. She also wouldn't know how to portray anything (rape, BDSM, bisexual/gay sex or characters, sex in general) that wasn't completely vanilla and conservative. Her treatment of bisexuality and abuse upset me in particular. All of these things are included in her books only because they sell. The topics are edgy and the way LKH portrays them is the way that many ignorant or naive readers believe that they are (or want them to be).
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Date: 2009-10-09 03:56 am (UTC)Another point that has already been made here is that to some, any attention is good attention. And, as it's said in show biz, "It doesn't matter what they say about you, as long as they spell your name right."
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Date: 2009-10-10 01:07 am (UTC)Besides, I think LKH books are kind of like drugs to some. Maybe it's brain candy and tastes good sometimes, or just something to eat, but eventually, someone is going to get screwed up, and if the party's not over from that, they'll just kill themselves down the road.
Personally, I'd rather be otaku/pseudo-comic-nerd than pararom/para-porn nerd. Better to spend my money on anime and manga I love and will probably enjoy for months and years to come, than crappy authors I'm going to regret in the morning like a hangover after getting smashed. Not to mention some anime/manga actually manages to make me think on interesting subjects, where para-___ is just...making me think sex is boring. And that some people really hate the world/humanity, and should just kill themselves rather than inflicting their hatred/bigoty on the rest of us, if they're so unhappy. Or they need to grow up.
And it is true about attention. I think at this point, given how many people seem to loathe her books, Laurell's gonna take whatever attention she can scrape together, good or bad. But I still feel better not sending a dime of my hard-earned money into her pockets.
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Date: 2009-10-12 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-12 05:33 pm (UTC)