Something that has been bugging me...

[aerofish.livejournal.com]

Hello, all. I'm new to this group and this is my first post. I figured I'd introduce myself with this peeve of mine.

I was reading the sample chapters for the next Anita book, and it was mentioned Anita is 27. This made me back up and go WTF(well, more than I already was). I know Anita is supposed to be in her twenties, yet that fact just never seems to stick, and I constantly find myself envisioning her as mid-30s with the mind-set, perhaps, of someone much older, if not the maturity. And giving her the age of 27 in this upcoming book really drove home the point to me, as that is my age.

Anita does not act like any twenty-something I know. For any of you around Anita's age, do you feel the same way? And I know I'm making a sweeping generalization about how a 25-30 year old should act, but shouldn't there be some consistencies with the popular culture for this age group? I have so many examples, but here's two obvious ones:

-Does she dress like someone my age dresses? Maybe if it were the 80's or early 90's, with her silk shell blouses and pantyhose and power jackets. Maybe she's going for a retro-ironic hipster thing, and I'm too dull to see it?

-She speaks with none of the slang commonly used. And while yes, "nifty" is a, well, nifty word...it's not exactly the cornerstone of a young person's vocabulary, right? Doesn't she, in one book referencing her brother's opinion of her line of work, even say something like "he says it's cool, or whatever the kids are saying these days?" Uh. Right.

In general, this is such a minor pet peeve, what with the many many MANY issues with her books I am having these days. But still, shouldn't there be a least a few references here and there anchoring Anita to the age she is supposed to be?

Comments

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

Omg, or remember when Richard cut off his hair? It was like they were under nuclear attack or something!

Someone needs to get LKH a Vogue subscription, or something. Show her what's actually considered sexy nowadays.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I use "nifty," but I'm also a weirdo geek who's nothing like Anita and my speech patterns and dress are not typical of people my age.

Her clothes...yeah. The only people my age I know who dress like that all the time are political science and economics majors. Anita is pretty clearly neither.

I'd say overall, she definitely vibes 30s to me and always have. I never really realized she wasn't supposed to be.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

...and I might note that I don't know many people in their thirties who dress 80s formal all the time, either. Like, zero.

Anita is just a weird conglomerate of teenager and 30-something prude, stuck in 80s fashion. I guess it's a good thing I always tuned out the clothing descriptions.

[russian.livejournal.com]

I mentioned this to my ex-boyfriend just yesterday.

Something along the lines of, "Why does she always wear silk shirts and fucking black jeans and a fanny pack? Way to be lame."

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

Not to mention Nathanial was a STREET kid.

A friend of mine was a street kid for about 5 months. She chose it, sort of like a cultural expeiriance.

Nathaniel, even though "reformed", would still have mannerisms and a touch of the language. That's what he grew up in.

On a different note with the demands of food for lycanthrope's I don't see how he would survive on the streets like that. He would be shifting all over the place. I know people that scrounge all day through ashtrays, scraping tobacco out of butts, with a single dirty rolling paper so they can share the cig with four other people just to feel less hungry.

Nathaniel should definatly be using some slang.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

As I said in an earlier comment.

Nathanial was a STREET kid. Raised on the streets by the streets. Even "reformed" he would retain some of the mannerisms and language.

He really should be tougher too... I mean, street kids are tough 'cause they have to be to survive. No matter how beaten down he was, he would have basic survival instincts... He would HAVE too... Or he would have been dead.

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

Some people are mature enough to know what they are going to be doing at 21-22. I just don't entirely buy it with Anita..though what her character seems to do is FALL into what she's going to do. Talents determine it, not necessarily anything personality- or maturity- wise.

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I've known a few throw aways who really didn't use that much slang, either. My problems with Nathaniel, however, are LEGION..and just get started with her screwing him.

That is just so wrong, considering her position in his life. SOO wrong.

-Dira-

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in that way she was pretty typical..and honestly, that's just part of why, perversely, I also found her so immature.

By mid twenties, if not married, all but the really hard cases are generally OVER that. The ones with the wedding dress in the closet, on the other hand? Again, a big maturity gap there.

-Dira-

[saadiira.livejournal.com]

See, here's a yes and no. He really could be what he is now that he's NOT on the streets. He may have catered to an older clientelle that didn't like all the slang, and learned fast not to use it. He may have hooked up with various and sundry sugardaddies, just because he sucks at keeping himself alive. Again, that's not my problem with him.

My biggest problem is that he's screwed up, and vulnerable, and that she's in a powerful mother/therapist sort of position, and lets him into her bed.

It's bloody squicky.

-Dira-

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

Ah. This could be a difference in location.

Most of the street kids I know are younger and aren't prostitutes.

I still stick with the fact that he would have a street "persona". I've never known someone who lived on the streets that didn't.

[kuzunoha.livejournal.com]

There is some basic street slang that is needed for survival.

If you live on the streets as in homeless, it's like a code.

He would at least have this, even if he didn't use it with his "clients".

And I've still convinced it would rear it's head once in a while. But I'm going off the people I know.

[mneiai.livejournal.com]

Wasn't he a street kid before he was changed? He was one of the ones that Gabriel took in, wasn't he? Gabriel went around and "saved" people from their horrible lives by turning them into wereleopards...(And, gods, why did LKH have to get the no-killing-main-char policy after killing the coolest were ever?).

[vanity-lost.livejournal.com]

Can I say: PLEASE GOD? My roommates and I go through an insane number of magazines due to class projects and me being a media major, so maybe we should start donating our fashion mags to the Show LKH Modern Fashions cause?

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah - in this world long hair that is cut = major psychological problems.
It's very odd that nobody in LKH's series cuts their hair without a terrible reason. It's never just being tired of taking care of all that hair.

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

A good question, let me see, from personal experiance, it seems to be diabetics or older women and men.

[aerofish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I totally agree! COFFEE!!!!!!!

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

I got stuck on how his hair's ridiculously long, how long it would TAKE for his hair to get that long, and how much hell he'd have to go through to keep it in any kind of reasonable shape while on the street. Or does he have super-special hair that grows like my lawn?

[randomsome1.livejournal.com]

I remember people using "nifty" back in the mid-90's. :P

[vanity-lost.livejournal.com]

First: I'm sooo glad I wasn't the only one who was thinking that the preview of Ronnie and Anita was like reading some acid-laced, badly-spelled version of Thirteen. The girls in my middle school were the bitchy unholy terrors of which parental and societal nightmares are made. And Ronnie and Anita were acting exactly like them.

As a midwest kid myself, nothing but nothing explains Anita's out-of-touch attitudes and fashions. St Louis is not anywhere near as passe as LKH-land would make it seem.

On the other hand, the whole issue of fashion-not-keeping-up-with-the-times is an issue with other longer running series. The Stephanie Plum books? The clothes, lack of technology, etc, are somewhere perpetually around 1995. 1999 in the more recent ones. The author only seemed to notice the issue when some fans started commenting on it.

Maybe Laurell just hasn't noticed. There's a lot in the books she hasn't noticed recently though, so I guess the fashion throwbacks are something we shouldn't be surprised by.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I was, um, pre-teen/early teen then (aka my British Slang Phase). My slang has never conformed to any particular time period or place. For someone as relatively conventional as Anita (I mean, take away the zombie-raising and magic powers, and she's your average uberdramatic teenager with a Madonna/Whore complex) to be acting stuck in the 80s is a little peculiar.

[track-04.livejournal.com]

I have always found that really annoying, too. I'm 25 and I don't know anyone close to my age who would act, dress or talk like that. I'm sure there are those few anomalies out there that I just haven't met yet... but, well, this just makes it that much more obvious what a Mary Sue that Anita is, doesn't it?

I find myself always imagining her a) older and b) in better clothes when I read the books. The second is hard, of course, since LKH has to go through painful 3 page long descriptions of the same black nikes with the swoosh that she's been talking about since Guilty Pleasures.

Then again... she just doesn't write young characters well, does she? None of the men that are supposed to be young like Nathaniel or Jason really seem that believable either.

This would all be so much more tolerable if she didn't envision herself as such a great writer, too. XD;

[track-04.livejournal.com]

Anita's fashion sense has always struck me as something that wasn't even particularly cool at the time it was in, though. The descriptions sound more like something my grandmother would have worn at the time, not someone who would even be attempting to be hip. o.<; Or that could just be my own personal bias. Because I loathe fanny packs. >.>;

And I'm not entirely sure your take on the midwest is absolutely correct. We do tend to be behind but 3-5 years seems like a little extreme. 6 months or even possibly a year, yeah, but we're not quite that out of touch. I'd give you a little longer in the 80s when LKH would have been growing up, true... but it seems to me that she was always just a little on the lame side to begin with from what I'm picking up. *laughs*

And I don't think the slang she uses is regionally based. Not from what I've heard from people from the St. Louis area, at least. I think it just shows LKH's severe inability to get with the times. XD;

[arabel.livejournal.com]

Oh, so true.

One of the most giggle-inducing memories of uni for me was the shambling line of groaning, bleary-eyed fine arts students (myself included) at the one good coffee store on the campus in the morning.

[dracoliciousss.livejournal.com]

Remember when she snootily told Zerbrowski "these are *date* clothes?"...I really shuddered at that, because no twenty-something i know would wear a skirt with "hose" and a tshirt on a date. I'm willing to concede that i could be wrong, but i really think no one in any zip code would wear that. There seems to have been a shift from the horrid polo shirts, black jeans and nikes to the black boots, skirts, and "scoop-neck" tshirts. And the outfits she comes up with for Jean-Claude are just laughable. He dresses like something out of Wannabe Goth Weekly, the period clothes mixed with the vinyl is just so absurd!! ok, i'm done ranting now, lol.