lkh_lashouts | LKH's Seattle Q&A for A Shiver of Light

LKH's Seattle Q&A for A Shiver of Light

Many apologies for not posting this sooner, Lashers:

If the embed doesn't work, the link is HERE. For those who don't want to sit through 90mins of LKH talking or have issues with the audio, mod has done a thorough transcription: DOC and RTF format. It's too long to post to the comm in its entirety but we wanted it to be available.

Highlights of the video include:

● seven minute sexist monologue intro
● 4/24 questions relate to Merry Gentry and one doesn't count because it's a spoiler.
● LKH's opinions on body positivity, polyamory, pregnancy, therapy, Guy Zen, the French, Crocs footwear, and softcore porn. This is in addition to answering questions about the books/characters, writing, research, inspiration, and rejection.

Book/character discussions:
● LKH has notes on Anita going home to her family for Thanksgiving.
● She has no favourite book that she's written, she prefers character arcs and development.
● She has notes for a book about Nathaniel, his traumatic childhood, and giving that some resolution.
● Olaf will probably die. Also LKH does not think Olaf/Anita shipping is cool.
● Apparently Asher has always been a bag of dicks and LKH has no plan on Anita "fixing" his scars. Also he's not ambitious enough to try for a Council position.
● Bernardo Spotted-Horse and Peter will return if/when LKH writes about Edward's wedding.
● Belle Morte may come to America but struggle to adapt there.
● Anita will not willingly get pregnant. If Nathaniel could do it, LKH would go with that.
● There are plans for more books set in Merry's universe; two ideas include stories about Barinthus and Rhys. Merry is "content" so LKH isn't sure where to go with her story.
● The preternatural branch of the US Marshal Service may become its own entity. It has too much power and may go horribly wrong.
● LKH struggles to find myths in order to include more reptillian shapeshifters.

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Hate.

Haaaaaateeeeee.

HAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Belle Morte may come to America but struggle to adapt there
Is it wrong that I kinda want to read the fanfic of this? The comedy version that's still bound to be a better idea than whatever LKH comes up with is particularly alluring.

I want to spite 'ship Olaf/Anita but I can't manage to hate myself enough to pull that trick off sadly.

I feel I may have missed something on the Asher front since I refused to read the last Anita book.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to run away before I die of laughter trying to figure out what she considers "development" or even a proper character arc.

In Affliction, Asher wasn't present but there was a lot of discussion about him. Evidently he pissed off the leader of the were-hyenas in whatever city they banished him to, out of spite mostly, and was under threat of imminent death. Anita and JC talk about they ought to just let the were-hyenas kill him, but they miss him even though he's acting like a giant asshole p much all the time, so they'll probably bring him back home. There's also a lot of talk about what a great dom he is, even though Anita thinks that without a safe word he might actually kill her. So it looks like he'll probably be back to pout and make everyone miserable but also to tie them up and what not, and probably this move will gain them some enemies in the form of the were-hyena pack.

You can totally ship Olaf/Anita real easily without even investing emotion.

They "fall in love", they fuck, Olaf kills her right after.

Bam, done.

Because OLAF CAN'T FALL IN LOVE IT'S AN EMOTION HE DOESN'T HAVE. HE WOULD JUST MANIPULATE, DAMMIT. ~~This is aimed at LKH because she butchers psychology and it pisses me off.~~

I feel the need to break this out again.

ETA: ...I think I just threw up in my mouth a little at the jacket-strip and the whole "they're men" bullshit. Yes, we're men. We're also not rabid beasts. We have enough MRA assholes making horrible excuses for our collectively generalized bad behavior. We don't need Laurell adding to it. Good god, that was about five degrees from drifting into the land of rape apologism.

Edited 2014-07-09 16:50 (UTC)

It's funny how she thinks she's defending men when really it's just very insulting to them (to say nothing of how sexist it is to women as well of course---she's the queen of hitting both with one blow, she really is)

Agreed. Basically everyone is inferior to Le Laurell, this hybrid of manly strength and womanly goddesshood, who embodies all of the superior things about being male while still having a woman's beauty. Poor plebes still stuck with all the downsides of their gender, of which she has none.

(This is actually a huge beef of mine with LKH's books: how she glorifies masculinity as somehow superior to femininity, but only as far as she--or her avatar--can be masculine but still be pretty princesses that everyone wants to fuck. I would love to see a character in the Anitaverse whose personality traits weren't defined by their gender first before anything else. Where they're not strong because they're masculine; they're strong because it's who they are and they've earned that strength regardless of gender. Where they're not weak or emotional because they're feminine, but because perhaps events in their lives have left them powerless; or perhaps they have a naturally empathetic personality that causes them to feel things more deeply than others might. This whole association of masculine = good, strong and feminine = weak, bad needs to stop; but more, the idea that certain traits are only exclusive to certain genders needs to stop. It creates this falsehood that LKH uses as her religion: that for a woman to have any value, she needs to be more like a man. But still hot enough to satisfy men.)

^This. So much.

I can't really see how these books are supposed to be "empowering" for women, because (biology aside), Anita's a guy. LKH has gone out of her way to make Anita as unfeminine as possible, but then tries to pass her off as the most desirable woman in the whole world. It certainly doesn't help that just about every other female character is demonized for the sin of being a woman but not being Anita.

I'm a little hesitant to say Anita's a guy--because just as women are so much more than the narrow boxes society pushes them into, so are men. Rigid, binary gender roles drive me crazy. (Currently dealing with some BS from my fan club right now with some of them speculating if I'm really a woman because I'm not an insensitive dick. Sometimes.) I think maybe Anita is LKH's rigidly binary, entirely chauvinistic idea of what she thinks makes being a man awesome. LKH's idea of a man is like those advertisements you see in the back of comic books. Send in $2.99 and we'll send back an AWESOME MEGA SUPER SPACE GUN. Only when the package shows up, it's just Anita: a cheap little laser pointer painted up bright and trying to look badass.

...that was a totally mixed metaphor and kind of wandered off track there. Wait, what point was I trying to make?

I think I see what you're going for. Anita doesn't act like a real-world guy, she acts like a stereotype of a guy. Which I'd be fine with on its own, but combined with the fact that anything remotely feminine is treated as bad, and the treatment of most of the non-Anita female characters, it feels very misogynist. Like, the only reason Anita is a "good" woman is because she rejects everything vaguely feminine (I mean, I'm not sure she even cleaned her own apartment back when she live alone, for fuck's sake).

(Full disclosure: I have not read any of LKH's books first-hand, nor do I intend to, because I think my brain would melt. Also, I am hetero-, cis- member of the Has A Y-Chromosome Club.)

Yes. This. She uses the stereotype to basically preach her religion of men = good, women = bad. Only in a lot of ways men are awful, too, because they constantly try to keep her heroine down. So the only good man is a man with tits.

Really, the only person in her mind who is in any way worthy is Anita. Sex appeal of a woman--but only one type of women, because all other types of women are bad--but all man under the skin. But don't you dare call her butch, because then someone might think she's a scary lesbian, and lesbians are frightening and might want to touch her.

(Hey, we're not that far apart. Cis, y-chromosome, very-recently-realized-he's-bisexual-and-not-gay. And I've only read one full book, and forced my way through various chunks of others for research purposes.)

Wow, love the great big slut-shaming rant she starts with. Yeah, men being inappropriate is just totally women’s fault. We should never ever wear anything we like if it might possibly be the least bit sexy because men just can’t help themselves. See, guys, she understands! She’s one of the COOL girls! Love her, dammit!

I enjoy how she openly said there’s not boundaries between her writing and life. I mean the way she followed it up shows she doesn’t mean it like THAT, but…yeah.

I get putting her self-image issues into Anita, I really do. I feel so much sympathy for her there. But with Anita, it truly is obnoxious, firstly because Anita herself so clearly doesn’t believe it with how she’s always comparing other women negatively to herself (even the ones supposed to be “prettier” than her ala the tall thin blondes are still actually always bashed as fake, boyish, etc.), secondly because she doesn’t change. In real life, yes, this sort of thing can last a lifetime, as evident by LKH herself, but when it comes to characters in a book, evolution is necessary, and it comes off as patently ridiculous for Anita to still be at the same place when she is hailed as the hottest woman on earth by almost every character she encounters. Which brings me to my third point---it feels very hollow, even insulting in a way, to read this coming from someone who isn’t simply “not ugly” but seems to in fact by objectively the most attractive women in her universe. Anita is never NOT someone’s cup of tea, and she has no actual physical flaws besides her super-kewl scars that she makes a show off to someone once a book. I get that the message is probably meant to be “even really beautiful women can be made to believe they’re ugly” but it’s kind of grating for me as a perfectly normal woman to read this knockout goddess repeatedly lamenting her awful deformity of being PETITE and CURVY and BRUNETTE book after book, especially since this is such a common thing among heroines in general (though that last bit isn’t LKH’s fault) I think a better message would be for Anita realizing some people don’t find her attractive, sure, and that’s FINE, it doesn’t mean she’s objectively hideous, and beauty isn’t that big a deal anyway, and some people DO find her attractive too…as it is, it seems the tragedy is supposed to be “oh no this beautiful woman thinks she’s UGLY!” as if her self-hate would be just fine if she actually were conventionally unattractive or anything less than the impossible ideal figure she actually is. It really, really comes off as “beauty is the most important thing, so she should realize she’s beautiful” rather than a more positive message like “There is no universal beauty, and it’s not like it’s that important anyway so I’ll try to grow beyond hinging my self-esteem on it” I don’t demand that all heroines come to this conclusion and work through all their issues to a perfect state of emotional wellness---that’s just not human---but I think Anita is highly symptomatic of an author that never even got close to this, and that’s why she’s got to be the most universally beautiful woman in her world and every man must believe so. Which brings me back to what I said before about me feeling sorry for LKH.

It really, really comes off as “beauty is the most important thing, so she should realize she’s beautiful”

And this is just reinforced with how LKH waxes on about all the descriptions of the men being SO BEAUTIFUL and that's clearly the most important thing in Anita's or Merry's mind. It's not like any of these characters have anything else going for them; no personality, no internal life, no outside interests. They're beautiful. That's it.

They really don't.

No, LKH, trauma doesn't count as personality either.

At this point, I'd be pleasantly surprised if LKH's characters had enough personality that their trauma was the only thing about them, so long as it actually mattered. But it doesn't. Nothing matters but how pretty people are.

And how pretty people are when they cry so Anita can have sex with them to make their sads go away. Orgasms fix everything!

You know, the very first Anita novel I ever read, I remember really liking that Anita was short, busty, had hefty thighs, lots of hair and scars from her Kewl Danger Life. She seemed like an interesting creature, attractive, fit and real (and also a raiser of the dead) and a bit complex even. That was before she became the embodiment of all beauty.

I like how she talks about Trinity just to work in that her teenage daughter is jealous of her ass.

Edward can’t be from New Mexico because she’s never been there? Look, LKH, I think you’re taking “write what you know” a little TOO literally

Oh please just stop calling Nathaniel a “kitty” of any type, please, ugh

How does lots of women with one man not make “biological sense”?

What the fuck does she MEAN it was “not my choice” for Olaf to be a werelion? YOU ARE WRITING THESE BOOKS. Like maybe she meant “I didn’t really want for that to happen but then I found that the way I’d written things it made the most sense” but even that doesn’t hold water because it was made clear early on in the series, wasn’t it, that feline therianthropy is WAY harder to catch and you could be practically MAULED and still not get infected? Versus the mere scratch it takes from, say, a wererat? There is no reason Olaf had to become a werelion, LKH, stop lying

She may not want Anita and Olaf to hook up and I’m with her on that, but I guarantee you she DOES like the idea of him being hopelessly and disgustingly infatuated with her, especially in victim-blaming ways that emphasize how Not Like Other Girls Anita is

“I don’t think a male’s been set up with any kind of power related to it” I do not understand this as an answer at all

You may think Asher’s beautiful, but you’ve just said he doesn’t, so doesn’t it make MORE sense for him as a character to choose to try something like that, even if it could fail? She seriously just can’t handle the idea of her toys changing in any way.

Really fed up with her calling Belle Morte and other villains (usually female, ho w about that) “crazy” when what she means is “evil”.

Maybe the reason people would “get upset” at describing a woman as “well-hung” is because the only way that can be interpreted is as someone drawing really rude attention to the genitals of a transgender woman, which is a common way to emphasize the idea they’re not really women. I guess maybe what she means is that you can describe a guy more sexually and get away with that, but I think that’s because people routinely boil women, real and fictional, down to their looks, and it’s not done with dudes as much so when it happens it’s not part of a shitty objectifying pattern like it is with women and thus it’s not going to be as offensive. Sorry to spoil your white-knighting for THE PRECIOUS MENZ again, LKH. Also, in this case in particular, YOU are the one who made “big dick” one of his main character traits and draw attention to it in every book he’s in, so yeah.

“The men are stubbornly not bisexual enough” I love how she goes from sobbing about the poor men being talked about sexually to complaining about them not altering their sexualities to suit her and Anita.

I thought it was merely annoying how she kept saying “we” to mean “I” but when it got to asking her if she liked Frost or Doyle better and she said that “we can’t pick” because “I’m polyamorous” I realized it was so much more than that, holy shit

So she literally just admitted she wanted JC to be Spanish but made him French because Anne Rice had French vampires, lol

Oh, so that’s her idea of therapy.

It’s kind of funny how she says not to get your ideas of sex from porn but a lot of commenters have noted in my sporks that she seems to have done just that.

I don’t really see why she thinks there need to be legends of were-reptiles IRL to justify having more were-reptiles in the Anitaverse

What I got most about the Asher question is that she doesn't want to fix him because it means that he'd have to develop as a character. If the scars remain, then his sticking point of angst remains and we can recycle the same drama forever. If he's content with his appearance, content as a character, WHAT DOES SHE DO THEN.

Also I find it weird that *she finds him beautiful so it's okay. If this was a real person, it's be so very, very skeevy.

Couple this with how the entire Q&A just makes it seem that LKH has no idea that as a writer of fiction, this means she's allowed to make things up.

What I got most about the Asher question is that she doesn't want to fix him because it means that he'd have to develop as a character. If the scars remain, then his sticking point of angst remains and we can recycle the same drama forever.
That is EXACTLY how I read it

If this was a real person, it's be so very, very skeevy.
And since she constantly says they ARE real to her....

LKH has no idea that as a writer of fiction, this means she's allowed to make things up.
Right? It's not like the wererats or the ardeur have any place in folklore that I know of (I mean, I realize she gets the idea of ardeur from the idea that incubi/succubi feed on sex, but the seed of an idea isn't the same thing as "has to be there in full as a pre-existing legend or it just isn't allowed to exist in fiction") so why is she suddenly taking that approach? I think she just doesn't want to write about were-reptiles cuz she doesn't find them sexy.

Well, since she's said that there are more werewolves in the universe because she's found more myths about people turning into wolves...it's not all that surprising. Yet at the same time she's got this whole secret society of tiger clans?

I'm still struggling to wrap my mind around A Shiver of Light -- fairies! You can literally do anything you want with them! It's not like you're entirely beholden to folklore. But fairies in a world where they've been out in the open for at least a couple of hundred years, yet modern medical science knows exactly jackshit. And immortal warriors of legend totally hit the gym. Not even to practice sparring (though you'd think they'd have their own fighting styles given they're from a whole other society), just lift weights and running. Also they use human firearms. Where are the fae weaponsmiths. Where are the enchanted McGuffins, like a bow that always aims true or darts that carry enchantments. I don't know if LKH has never considered these things before or what. Mostly it just creates so much wasted potential that frustrates me to no end.

i just imagined "well-hung" in terms of women as referring to abnormally large labia (both) and a giant clitoris. Because... feminine equivalent of dick and balls.

And now I'm going to quietly wash my brain out of that mental image.

(deleted comment)

Once she started talking about polyamory my brain checked out for good.
Probably for the best

she looks like a fifty-something housewife who doesn't do much physical work. That's not a bad thing to be (it describes my mom, for one thing, and my mom is a total domestic badass) but it's at odds with how she describes herself.

And I think she knows that's how she looks too, and unlike you, she DOES think it's a bad thing (look how much beauty, specifically one single ideal of female beauty, is emphasized as important in her books, and look how unkind her descriptions are to any women outside it). Which is why she tries so, so hard to claim that the reverse is true. Which...just ends up drawing attention to the fact it isn't, ironically.

I didn't even try watching the video, but I only got through about seven pages of the DOC file. Right around the first use of "bad kitty". I just... no.

While I get treating your characters like "real" people (i.e. not just puppets), LKH takes this waaaaay too far. Like, potential mental issues far.

And my mom's the same, and she's knocking on sixty. And I have aunts who are even older who are also great. Maybe this relates back to her own issues with her appearance - she feels a constant need to be told how attractive she is.

Also, I find it annoying that she did this whole thing about not giving her daughter body image issues, only to then mention how said daughter is jealous of her ass.

And then how this kind of thing is the woman's fault. Because I guess guys can't also have body image issues. Or give their daughter/niece/whatever body image issues.

(deleted comment)

I think the same thing goes for the little anecdote she starts with. But instead of saying, "Ladies, don't get offended if a guy tells you that he finds you attractive when that was your intent", she instead went with, "Guys just can't help themselves, so you shouldn't get offended if they're staring at your boobs."

Edit: And now that I've thought about it, that whole "my teenage daughter is totally jealous of my ass" bit is a bit hypocritical. Because apparently it's okay for her daughter to have body image issues, so long as it's LKH she's jealous of. Seriously, that fist pump kinda undermines her whole point.

Edited 2014-07-10 14:13 (UTC)

She is so shallow that if she were a character in a book/movie/video game, I'd disbelieve her character and say the writer was strawmanning.

Why do there have to be legends of reptilian transformation for her to make up more reptile shapechangers? I think she just admitted that everything she writes is fanfic and she's incapable of original ideas.

Anita will not willingly get pregnant.
Am I the only one very, very concerned about this?

Yeah, that kind of made my brain go "WHAT?!" but I was immediately distracted by the "if Nathaniel could do it, then that would be it". Like if she could just mpreg Nathaniel and somehow make it Anita's, then her world would be complete. Because Anita's pseudo-penis would be real and legit.

And now I'm enjoying mpreg!Nathaniel because he's bitching about his hair making him hot and he's having moodswings while dancing.

My favorite thing is that she's slut-shaming and victim-blaming, but then she's not exactly dressed conservatively herself.

~~Granted, I'll take this "gothic"!Renaissance dress to that mini-skirt from that one con...~~

Just thought of this---does anyone feel it was kind of inappropriate for her to discuss whether or not her teen daughter has body image issues? I know that if my mom talked about that regarding me with even her close friends I'd be really embarrassed and I'd be upset at her because THAT IS MY BUSINESS, let alone telling a room full of strangers. I mean, for all I know she discussed this with Trinity beforehand and she's 100% okay with it, but I got the impression these questions weren't scripted?

How did she even GET on most of this stuff? I read the transcript but I sort of skimmed past stuff like Crocs because I don't care, but now I'm wondering, is she just the queen of tangents, or...?

It's a tricky sort of area but seeing as LKH is the queen of making what's personal public, it's what I expect from her.

Certainly, if it was my mother, I'd be incredibly upset. But my mother wouldn't talk about my body issues at a public event.

She's also the queen of making everything about herself. If she had stayed on topic, it could have been a really *great Q&A.

She is a really good public speaker - absolutely fantastic, really compelling, great rapport with the crowd. But the things she says makes me want to stab myself with plastic spoons.

Plus, the 'tracts of land' bit. It's not Scottish! It's a Yorkshire accent! I am accently annoyed!

I really, really wish she'd bring that sort of charisma to her writing. The books would be slightly less painful to slog through. But oh god the veil between reality and fiction is virtually non-existent and that's just embarrassing to me.

I did not know that! (I'm accently annoyed on her Italian, but at least she admits her French is bad.)

No, I meant the MP bit is performed in a Yorkshire accent, and she decided to do it Scottish for some reason. It's bad enough she is a fellow Python fan, but she gets the references wrong.

If she could capture her charisma for her writing, her books would be a lot better. Still not great, but better.

Her talking about not really understanding what genre of book she's writing and wondering why things are being difficult because of that actually makes a whole lot of sense to me. I've done that, and I know a few other writers who've had the same problem: they start off wanting to write an epic fantasy and try to incorporate all those elements, only to realize that what they're actually writing is a romance with fantastic elements and that the writing would go better if they stopped trying to force it into the mold of another genre. That's actually pretty sophisticated advice. Four for you, LKH. You go, LKH.

But the way she talks about how she didn't know she was writing an epic fantasy, plus the references to GoT, gives me the unsettling suspicion that she's about to pull the same trick she did when the Southern Vampire Mysteries was getting more attention than the Anita Blake series. I was doing hot sexy epic fantasy series before GRR Martin was ever a thing! LKH seems to feel that doing something first equals doing it best.

Face it, Laurell--even if you were the first to write in this genre, which you're not, you're basically the Internet Explorer of vampire novels.

you're basically the Internet Explorer of vampire novels.

Win. A thousand gold stars for you, and a gold-plated Internet.

The GoT reference really pissed me off. Because that series (the books and the show) are a compelling drama about mostly good-ish people clashing with each other due to their opposing goals, all with a much greater threat looming in the background.

From what I've read, the Merry Gentry books were basically all about sex. Even the politics boil down to sex. (The same pretty much goes for the more recent AB books as well.)

It's interesting that you phrased it like that, because only today Lindsey Ellis (a.k.a. the Nostalgia Chick) said something about GoT that struck me as probably the best description I've heard of the series. While the characters in GoT aren't always likable, they are all driven. Everyone wants something, you know what they want, and you understand why they want it.

Anita Blake and Merry Gentry just don't seem to have a goal. They have things they say they want and things they need to accomplish, but then they get distracted by the sexy and the whole thing skids off the rails. Problems, when they appear, tend to get hand-waved or else solved very quickly with little effort and no real sacrifice. Throw on top of that the fact that the author herself has said "I don't like to kill anyone" and you've got a real mess. You don't have to kill characters, but if you're not putting them at the risk of some real, permanent loss, they're just going to shuck their oars and drift aimlessly. Hence the long, meandering series LHK has been producing.

Not to take this too off-topic, but when I really think about it, there aren't any really "Evil" characters in GoT. Yeah, there are bad or nasty characters, but never straight-up, capital-E Evil characters. Even Joffrey, Viserys, and Lysa, as horrible as they all were, weren't exactly Evil - they were at worst crazy, in one form/extent or another.

(deleted comment)

It is, and now I want fan-art of Santa patting LKH on her poor wee noodle.

Damn it. Laurita, you are a charismatic speaker. I want to like you. Why must you say such terrible things?

She really is quite a good speaker. Her accent is so bizarre though! I've never heard an American speak like that. Where is it from?? I feel like she's a cast member from clueless. But not nearly as well dressed.

From the way she talks about her daughter, it seems like she has real envy of the girl. Why would her daughter be envious of her?

Don't get me started on that INTRO.

Another though: If she could get a were-seahorse, maybe she could get him pregnant. YES, PLOT FOR NEXT BOOK

Edited 2014-07-13 07:31 (UTC)

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LKH's Seattle Q&A for A Shiver of Light

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