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[sweetpirate.livejournal.com]

Hi! Random entry time! I've been reading through a couple of the latest posts and wanted to share my top five thoughts (of the moment anyway).

5) Sex should never be so good that it saves the world. I mean, come on! You're in a dangerous situation, losing a fight (or loosing through it, as the case may be), you're injured...tired...so you give some stranger a blow job? Or you have sex with a complete stranger, and suddenly--BAM! SUPER ANITA TO THE RESCUE!
4) If you can't remember your own character names, chances are good your fans won't either. Did anyone else notice that in the MG series, one of the queen's men started out as 'Whisper' at the end of one book, and was named 'Minstral' at the begining of the next? (Alright, I'm not positive his name was Whisper, but I'm too lazy to go back and look--however I am positive that it wasn't Minstral).
3) STOP ADDING CHARACTERS! No, really! I can't keep track anymore! I don't remember the last time we got to see Rafael, or Manny or whatever her name that works at the front desk of Animators Inc. There are so many characters now that characters who were new last book don't get any playing time in the next! And then you expect us to remember them??
2) The ever popular: Kill a main character. My choices? Micah, Nate, Richard, Asher, JC......really anyone not Jason or Edward will do. *grins* I'd shit estatic kittens if she killed Anita herself. I was going to write that for my character death, but I couldn't get more detailed than i could feel the power rising, rising higher and higher, until i felt i would explode before it released...there was a loud pop, more felt than heard, and everything went black See? I can even use lots of commas like the author herself!
1) This is a Thesaurus. Find it. Buy it. Use it.

Comments

[bleedtoblue.livejournal.com]

So, who, besides the obvious ANITA, should die?...I, as always, vote for Richard as my first choice....with Richard, and Richard as my second and third choices as well.

[sweetpirate.livejournal.com]

I still say that anyone who isn't Edward or Jason can go. Although I had major *NOOOOOO* issues with Jason and Anita having sex, at least it wasn't out of character for Jason. After all, he is the quintessential frat boy--as long as it's not rotting, he's good to go!

[bleedtoblue.livejournal.com]

I like Edward and Jason because their characters seem to stay true. Edward won't sleep with Anita and Jason, as you point out, will sleep with almost anything....I'd love it if he'd sleep with Jean-Claude but then, I love slash. Which is why Anita's death would not be a loss, at least to me and my fantasies.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

Besides the obvious reasons that Anita is a total Mary Sue, LKH has the problem that lots of people try to avoid, in that she named the series (both series!) after the main character. It's just like with Buffy, how they had wanted to kill her off, but were completely unable to, since she was the title char.

It's tragic, really. I could just imagine the new heights the series could manage without Anita dragging it down....

[vanity-lost.livejournal.com]

Well... in case anyone else ever watched Judging Amy... it was kind of a similar situation with that show. The supporting cast and characters rocked. The main one, Amy, was a whiny bratty angsty sue. Picture Anita without the occult stuff, but with a gavel and a kid.

Toward the end of the series, every episode was about anyone but Amy. It became very much ensemble-ish and got way better and more entertaining and then it died because of network silliness. Still, they just downgraded their title character instead of killing her off and it worked well enough.

Of course, since Anita is the narrator we're sort of irrevocably stuck with her. Unless LKH wants to try her hand at slipping into third person. Maybe if she tried writing the universe from J-C's or Nathaniel's or whoever else's pov she'd realize what a sue Anita is. But that'll never happen.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

...I always wanted to see an Edward spinoff, personally. It would be all, like, Tom Clancy-meets-Buffy or something...Or, in a perfect world with a better writer, it would be.

And I actually liked Amy. I mean, she had a lot to be whiny about (with a lot more reason than Anita, since Anita is getting regular extreme bouts of sex and will probably live forever) and some of those court cases were really interesting.

[vanity-lost.livejournal.com]

hee. An Edward spin-off would be fun. And very gorey.

Sometimes I liked Amy too. But it was always short-lived. I loved the show, loved Bruce (sometimes I wasn't sure why, but I did), loved Maxine and generally everything. The cases were interesting. Maybe I loathed Amy so much because I didn't get to see it all the time, so most of the episodes I caught, there was usually her whining about not getting a date or getting the wrong date or the date not being perfect or her ex or Lauren or... just, generally too much whining. Favorite episodes were when Maxine would get fed up and yell at her. Or Bruce. He was good at it too.

Anita needs a Maxine and a Bruce. She needs the people who care about her enough to knock some perspective back into her. I thought Ronnie was attempting something like that in the preview of Danse Macabre, but since I read the first few chapters on her website, I guess it was false hope.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_cynical_beauty/]

i think they should have ended buffy at season five: kill her off and be done with it. of course, i was so obsessed (and still am) with buffy, i wanted as many episodes that they could pump out-no matter how much i despised the last season.
maybe lkh should end the series (i wouldnt be crushed) with anita's death, though it would be pretty disturbing/interesting since it is written from her point of view. oh, i very much enjoyed the challenge this community did with the anita death scenes. :D

[kidkai.livejournal.com]

Also! We don't need to hear your clothing description down to the colour of your "Nike swoosh". Why the hell are we even hearing the words "Nike swoosh" in a supernatural thriller anyway? IN EVERY CHAPTER. The same goes for the gun holsters. We don't need the neverending, loving descriptions of colour, plainess, fanciness, how they ride up, stay put, chafe etc. etc. etc.

[albinowolf.livejournal.com]

I like guns, I really do. I own a pistol myself and am looking at another and even a bad experience can't keep me away, but her pages of gun descriptions just... fuckin' bore me to death. Every book we get at least two pages of her *just* describing the guns. "This is my Firestar *lists descriptions and ammo types taken from the manual along with made up info* and it goes HERE. This is my Browning *repeat the same* and I keep it sheathed HERE." God help us if she gets a new gun later on in the book because then we get the joy of another page of intros.

[http://users.livejournal.com/belladonna_/]

God, I *long* for the days of the Nike swoosh. I mean, it was heinous, but it was heinous in an original way, not in an overdone cheesy slutty way, which is what we've got now.

[tricky-cracker.livejournal.com]

HOWEVER...

Nike swoosh descriptions > Anita's pre-sex vaginal descriptions.

[demoncougar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I gotta say, I'll take the swoosh instead of the slut.

[vanity-lost.livejournal.com]

Anyone else feel the urge to hurl when she was describing the -taste of herself- on Micah's mouth? Something about meaty? Eurgh. I'm never looking at steaks the same way again.

[demoncougar.livejournal.com]

"Anyone else feel the urge to hurl when she was describing the -taste of herself- on Micah's mouth?"

Okay that is most certainly barf-worthy. :P I think my brain refused to acknowledge it...which book was that from?!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Micah.

The whole paragraph goes on to say that OMG you shouldn't say all women taste fishy because every woman tastes different.

I'm like...fish? I like fish. I...don't like fish in that way.

[demoncougar.livejournal.com]

Okay...that's just...ick. Damnit, though...train wreck syndrome. Now I wanna read the book just to know how vile it is.

Goddamn I can be such a masochist.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I...don't recommend paying money for it. Just spend a couple of hours flicking through it with a coffee at Borders or something. If you're a fast reader, you should get it down quick because it's honestly shorter than it looks (which is kinda ironic, given Anita's tastes) - I probably could have read it in one sitting, but decided to spread it over three days just so that I could have a day to recover from teh sexx0rz.

...alternatively, I have an electronic copy that I could email you.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

Yes, totally. Or the fact that it's an ongoing series and therefore any other author would probably assume that the majority of readers had read one of the other books, and yet some people (gods, like Damien) get two page descriptions. And I'm pretty sure she's just started repeating the same shit over and over again with some of them.

[sweetpirate.livejournal.com]

See, I would agree with you on this--if she could keep her facts straight. But nooooooooooooo....we get different information every time! It's like Cracker Jacks! You never know what's going to be inside!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

For number 3 - honest to god, I need to start a database with character stats in it because I can't keep track of who is who in either series. They all tend to look the same, even with the detailed penis descriptions.

It's also a nagging motivator behind doing something like the Anita Blake Compendium, but much more detailed and for both series - because there's obscure shit that I've been looking up lately and I don't want to have to go through the books to find it every single time. It's much easier to dial up a website and go CTRL + F.

[demoncougar.livejournal.com]

I wish we could impose a (insert number here) character max on her. Like...for each series, she can have no more than fifteen named "good" guys at any given time, and if she ever wants to create a new one, one of the old ones MUST die.

Like...the circle of life, or some such thing.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

*cues The Lion King* Even Disney could kill beloved characters. Sheesh.

That would be an awesome idea, though.

[vanity-lost.livejournal.com]

That idea is awesome. I vote the number be 9. Then we can life the mantras from the Tolkien fandom/Monty Python and voila: Nine shall be the number of the counting.

Because when you get up to twelve or more, it's just not going to work. Ten and eleven are pushing it a little far, but nine? You can handle nine.

[sweetpirate.livejournal.com]

They all tend to look the same, even with the detailed penis descriptions.

There are...different...penis descriptions? I thought they were all long, wide and just generally huge? Except for...Gregory, was it? He was curved or something like that? Which Anita only knew because of Raina. Whom we haven't heard from in like three books as well.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I'm going to type this, because I can't believe I actually remember it through the trauma.

But with Merry, there's different colours to go with, different glows and the like, and I know that with Sholto in particular, there was whining at great length at how he was all *tear* "I may never get laid by a real girl! BECAUSE I HAVE TENTACLES!" shit going down and that kinda was reflected in Damian in ID when he, Nathaniel and Anita looked like they were gonna get their sexx0rz on (I suspect the wangst was pastede on, yay!)

And then with Anita, we're intimatly acquainted with how impressive Richard is, and we always get far, far too much about Micah, we know Jason has had a full body wax, Anita likes to fellate JC while flaccid, Asher's got a thing for the backs of his knees to be licked (*shrug*) and can now get it up because he's been circumsized, Nathaniel is way more hung than anyone ever thought, Damian is pastede on from Sholto, yay! and yeah, Gregory's kinda bent but in that really cool way that seems to hit "all the right places" (thanks Raina), and we still get the two penises of men she hasn't slept with in OB with Bernardo and Deuce...

...I don't know if I've left anyone out.

I need to go drink a bottle of bleach and claw out my own eyes.