Facebook flog - Feb 24 2014

[knitterleigh.livejournal.com]

link: Feb 24, 2014
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's Facebook. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

I've heard people give the same advice for sex and writing, namely, that you should drink to lower your inhibitions, so you can have wild sex, or wild, new creative ideas. I've never understood that advice. If I was anymore uninhibited sober, I'd be a serial killer. - LKH

Comments

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

Shut up, you stupid woman. Stop glamourising sociopaths and murderers as the height of desirability. You are making yourself look like a complete tool.

The drinking thing is just ridiculous. Is it a UK/US thing? I mean, I never drink with the intention of getting wasted. I drink because I like an occasional glass of fancy wine with a nice dinner, but the aim is never "let's get plastered so we can do all those sexy things we daren't do when we're sober!" You don't have to get drunk just because you're having alcohol and I think it's utterly ridiculous that a woman her age can't tell the difference between the two.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

IDK? Australia's got a really big drinking culture and getting completely wasted is generally the aim/a mark of pride. There's a lot of peer pressure to be drinking, even if you know your cut off ("just one more, c'mooon,") and we've got a massive drunken violence problem.

But that's a completely different thing from what LKH is saying here, because she seems to be conflating a shot of liquid courage with possibly lubricating your brain for creative purposes. Which isn't to say that wine/drugs are necessary for creativity (though she does conflate that a lot too), more that it can take the edge off stress/nagging doubts enough to get things started. LKH seems to be clinging to the Bohemian idea of the starving, tortured artiste surviving on naught but hard liquor, debauchery, and dreams.

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, there are parts of the UK - big cities especially - where that's true too. But I feel like LKH can't even understand that you might drink alcohol and not get drunk. Like that's a complete physical impossibility. And that people might drink for reasons other than to get wasted.

But yes on everything else you say.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

At least she's consistent in being unable to fathom that other people may not think the same way she does and may have had experiences that are different to her own.

On a side note, during yesterday's #13HourDevour Hannibal marathon, I really wanted to be passive-aggressive about one scene where characters were talking about the top vocations people with psychopathic tendencies tend to go. Because shit, if everyone that was a psychopath was edgy and cool like Nicky in the books, we probably wouldn't have doctors, lawyers, politicians, police, or journalists.

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

We watched a brilliant documentary last year called "I Am Fish Head - Are Corporate Leaders Psychopaths?" Basically it was about how psychopaths and sociopaths mimic the behaviour of other successful people to make it to the top of their field, and once they're there, they can't do the job so it all falls apart.

Now, I'm not diagnosing anyone with anything but...

[dwg.livejournal.com]

looool

But it is worth saying that not all sociopaths and psychopaths are serial killers and not all serial killers are socoiopaths/psychopaths. That's a massive point that has been missed somewhere along the line and it irritates me every. single. time she brings something like this up.

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

Yes. And also her insistence that being a sociopath is somehow aspirational? She always seems to have her characters say it the same way someone might say, "I'm a qualified neurologist," like wow, you achieved sociopathy? Tell me more!

I guess it's an extension of her conviction that the bestest and manliest occupation in life is military/police work. And since she thinks all soldiers and policemen do is indiscriminately gun down people who annoy them, by extension, being a murderous sociopath must somehow be even better than that.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Being a murdering sociopath means you don't have paperwork or chain of command, so it's totally cooler than a cop or soldier. YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT. Besides, if you're killing people for all the right reasons, like to protect the ones you love or because other people are bad, it can't possibly be wrong in any way. The justice system is obviously made by people who don't understand.

[dagonista.livejournal.com]

You live outside society's square rules! You rock the edgy, wild lifestyle most people can only dream about dreaming about! YOU'RE THE FUCKING MAN, ANITA.

[jeza-red.livejournal.com]

It IRKS me to all hell that all of her sociopaths are basically the same freaking model of badass no-care-in-the-world fine with being messed up! She's writing psychopaths, let's be honest.

Being even a borderline sociopath is not glamorous and certainly not fun. There's nothing badass or gratifying in discovering one day that you can't relate to people around you and have to remind yourself constantly to 'love' your family and put effort into being good to your friends, because otherwise the point that you're a faulty machine is driven home BIG TIME. She doesn't seem to know about the mood-swings, depression or waves of anger that make a person want to rip people/things apart - not to mention random cases of sadism and constant lying and the horror of not caring.

Her version of socipathy is so clean and settled and downright freaking social - all the 'loved ones' that are genuinely loved just 'cause and not as a means of someone desperately trying to be normal...

She needs to get out more.

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

Isn't that more Asperger's-ish or somesuch than sociopathy, though? I thought the point with sociopaths was that they didn't get depressed or anything of the like over being "faulty", because they had no sense of remorse over their inadequacies.

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned elsewhere (Amazon), I've known a couple of sociopaths in my life and a couple of murderers. The murderers were less frightening to me. The guys that I knew who were sociopaths were typical middle class/upper middle class pillars of the community. One was, in fact, a bishop in his church. As far as I know neither of them were anything other than law abiding. They still scared the crap out of me because they had neither conscience nor empathy.