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

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

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.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

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)

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

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.)

[apep727.livejournal.com]

^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.

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

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?

[apep727.livejournal.com]

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.)

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

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.)