Blogflog - Dead Ice: Anita Blake
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lkh_lashoutsLink: Dead Ice: Anita Blake
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.
This is the last blog before Dead Ice hits the shelves here in America, you lucky fans in the U.K. already have your copy, but on this side of the pond we’re still waiting and in anticipation of that wait here is Anita. Because if there’s just one more blog left before the pub date, it’s got to be Anita.
Question: How did you come up with the character of Anita?
Answer: The summer after college I read my first hard-boiled detective fiction, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, Sue Grafton, Sara Paratesky, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. I’m sure there were other male writers in the genre I read that year, but that’s the list that sticks out in my mind. What stood out in my mind then was that the male detectives got to cuss, have sex, and shoot people pretty much without remorse. The female detectives rarely cursed, sex was either nonexistent or sanitized and off stage, and if they had to shoot someone they had to feel really, really bad about it. The difference between the two hard-boiled genders was so unbalanced that it pissed me off, and out of that anger I decided to create a female detective that could even the playing field. At the same time I read a short story with zombies in it, several articles on real life voodoo as a religion, one on Sanataria, and . . . the idea that Anita would be more than an ordinary detective began to take shape.
Secrets to Share: In retrospect I may have done a bit more than just evened the playing field, but then if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing? *grins* The seed that would eventually become Anita Blake, and spawn a #1 New York Times Bestselling series, began with that sense of outrage at the gender inequality in hard-boiled detective fiction. If I’d stayed with that original idea then I would have tried to sell a seriously violent detective series with a hard talking and sexy female detective, and respected editors in the mystery genre have told me that they love Anita Blake, but the series would never have sold if it had been straight mystery. We may have come a long way, baby, but apparently mainstream mystery hasn’t come far enough to have a female detective that can play as hard as the men. In fact, Anita gets to play harder than most of the men in the plain mystery section. If I hadn’t read the pieces about voodoo and zombies at nearly the same time as the mysteries, then I don’t know if I would have thought to have Anita raise the dead for a living. Adding the horror genre to the mystery was what allowed me to be as violent as the crimes Anita was investigating needed to be; and horror also lets women fight back right alongside the men, more even than mystery.
The zombies came from reading the right things at the perfect time, but I’d already decided to put the supernatural in the series because I thought I’d get bored with just straight mystery. I read a lot of mystery series after those initial ones, not just hard-boiled, but cozy, and everything in between the two. What I found was that most writers seemed to get bored with their series between book five and eight. You could watch them fall out of love with their characters and their worlds. Some authors rallied and were able to find renewed energy and fall back in love with their series, and some were selling too well to stop so they struggled on for more books, but the lack of joy in their work showed through on the page. I decided I’d give myself enough toys so I would never grow bored. I’d read fantasy and horror most of my reading life and I loved old horror movies, especially the old Hammer vampires films. I’d watched them as a child on the late night creature feature show and been enthralled. I’d read all the real life ghost stories and folklore that I could get my hands on from the time I could read, so I decided I wanted a world where everything that went bump in the night was real. More than that though, I wanted it to be modern day as if we went to bed one night and got up the next day with all the monsters being real and everyone knew about them. I wanted to see modern day America have to deal with vampires, zombies, and shapeshifters as a reality, not as a rumor or a ghost story, but real. I wanted to mix the fantastic with the mundane in a serious way and see what happened. That was one of the main things that interested me at the beginning and is still one of my favorite things to write about today.
The fact that I then added relationship tropes to the series just helped me push the writing in any direction the story took me.
Question: Will we ever meet Anita’s family on stage in a book?
Answer: I think so.
Secrets to Share:
I actually wrote the first chapter and planned the mystery plot for a book where Anita goes home for Thanksgiving. The original idea was she would take Richard to meet her family, but by the time I sat down to write the first chapter it was Micah and Nathaniel. Why not Jean-Claude? First, vampires don’t travel as well by car, and that was the original plan. Second, Grandma Blake is crazy religious and prays for Anita’s soul because she’s sleeping with a vampire. We don’t trust her not to do something like open a window so sunlight hits Jean-Claude. The original idea was that Anita would stay in the house she grew up in, like most of us do when we go home for the holidays. Nothing like being surrounded by family and staying in your old room to throw you back into old childhood mindsets. Not sure how much of the plot would change, but every time I try to make it the next book it just doesn’t work. My muse and I aren’t ready, or maybe Anita isn’t ready.
Question: Is Anita you?
Answer: No.
Secrets to Share:
I made Anita my size, because it was easier to choreograph a fight scene if my main character was my size. If I’d made her taller, or in any way that different from me physically, then I’d have had to find a friend the size of my character anytime I went gun shopping or looked at a shoulder holster. She’s my size because the hand I have is the hand I need to fit. It just made sense to me at the time. I gave her my hair because I like my hair, and I figured if I was going to screw her life up with terrifying mystery/horror plots that I should give her something that she might like, too. I’m told that Anita’s attitude is tough, strong, masculine, not very feminine, and in many ways, it is my attitude; but I didn’t think of it in those terms until readers and interviewers started telling me. Anita’s personality and mine were closer to the same at the beginning of the series, but it’s a first person narration so making her sound and think like me was easier as a new novelist. When I sat down to write Merry Gentry years later I would make sure she didn’t sound like Anita, which meant she didn’t sound much like me, and made writing her a whole lot harder. I think it’s one of the reasons that Merry writes slower than Anita, because I don’t think like Merry does, and yet she’s a first person narrator, too. Anita and I have diverged as people because our experiences have been very different. She’s gone on to have one of the highest kill counts in fiction outside of war novels, and I married, moved to suburbia, had a child, dogs, and did a much more traditional approach for the first decade I wrote Anita. She was anything but traditional by any standards. Anita is now decades younger than I am, because I read an essay by Agatha Christie years before where she complained that she’d made both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot too old, and if she could do it over again she’d have started them off much younger. I took that bit of advice to heart and Anita was twenty-four when she stepped onto the page, as was I when I wrote the first short story with her in it. Seven to eight years is all that’s passed in Anita’s world, while much more has passed in the real world.
Anita and I both lost our mothers in car accidents as children. She was eight when her mother died, I was six. Why did I do that? Because when I was twenty-four my mother’s death was still so traumatic that I couldn’t imagine understanding a character that hadn’t had a similar experience. That early tragic loss made me understand just how fragile life was, and took forever the ideal that the adults around me are omnipotent and could keep me safe, because they couldn’t keep themselves safe. That knowledge at such a young age has made me a different person than I might have been, and it’s so intimate to who I am that I gave the viewpoint to my main character, because again, first person narration. They say, write about what you know, so what did I know? I knew death and loss, monsters and lovers, small town American lost in the big city, I knew how to be a strong woman in a man’s world, I knew not to ask for mercy for there isn’t much to go around, save the mercy for someone who needs it more.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
Lita looked at me, head slightly to one side. “You didn’t worry that it’d make men not want you?”
“No,” I said.
“You didn’t worry that it made you look like a victim?” Kelly asked.
I frowned at her. “No, every time I look at my scars I think that I lived, and I killed what hurt me. These are victory marks, not victim,” I said.
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.
This is the last blog before Dead Ice hits the shelves here in America, you lucky fans in the U.K. already have your copy, but on this side of the pond we’re still waiting and in anticipation of that wait here is Anita. Because if there’s just one more blog left before the pub date, it’s got to be Anita.
Question: How did you come up with the character of Anita?
Answer: The summer after college I read my first hard-boiled detective fiction, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, Sue Grafton, Sara Paratesky, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. I’m sure there were other male writers in the genre I read that year, but that’s the list that sticks out in my mind. What stood out in my mind then was that the male detectives got to cuss, have sex, and shoot people pretty much without remorse. The female detectives rarely cursed, sex was either nonexistent or sanitized and off stage, and if they had to shoot someone they had to feel really, really bad about it. The difference between the two hard-boiled genders was so unbalanced that it pissed me off, and out of that anger I decided to create a female detective that could even the playing field. At the same time I read a short story with zombies in it, several articles on real life voodoo as a religion, one on Sanataria, and . . . the idea that Anita would be more than an ordinary detective began to take shape.
Secrets to Share: In retrospect I may have done a bit more than just evened the playing field, but then if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing? *grins* The seed that would eventually become Anita Blake, and spawn a #1 New York Times Bestselling series, began with that sense of outrage at the gender inequality in hard-boiled detective fiction. If I’d stayed with that original idea then I would have tried to sell a seriously violent detective series with a hard talking and sexy female detective, and respected editors in the mystery genre have told me that they love Anita Blake, but the series would never have sold if it had been straight mystery. We may have come a long way, baby, but apparently mainstream mystery hasn’t come far enough to have a female detective that can play as hard as the men. In fact, Anita gets to play harder than most of the men in the plain mystery section. If I hadn’t read the pieces about voodoo and zombies at nearly the same time as the mysteries, then I don’t know if I would have thought to have Anita raise the dead for a living. Adding the horror genre to the mystery was what allowed me to be as violent as the crimes Anita was investigating needed to be; and horror also lets women fight back right alongside the men, more even than mystery.
The zombies came from reading the right things at the perfect time, but I’d already decided to put the supernatural in the series because I thought I’d get bored with just straight mystery. I read a lot of mystery series after those initial ones, not just hard-boiled, but cozy, and everything in between the two. What I found was that most writers seemed to get bored with their series between book five and eight. You could watch them fall out of love with their characters and their worlds. Some authors rallied and were able to find renewed energy and fall back in love with their series, and some were selling too well to stop so they struggled on for more books, but the lack of joy in their work showed through on the page. I decided I’d give myself enough toys so I would never grow bored. I’d read fantasy and horror most of my reading life and I loved old horror movies, especially the old Hammer vampires films. I’d watched them as a child on the late night creature feature show and been enthralled. I’d read all the real life ghost stories and folklore that I could get my hands on from the time I could read, so I decided I wanted a world where everything that went bump in the night was real. More than that though, I wanted it to be modern day as if we went to bed one night and got up the next day with all the monsters being real and everyone knew about them. I wanted to see modern day America have to deal with vampires, zombies, and shapeshifters as a reality, not as a rumor or a ghost story, but real. I wanted to mix the fantastic with the mundane in a serious way and see what happened. That was one of the main things that interested me at the beginning and is still one of my favorite things to write about today.
The fact that I then added relationship tropes to the series just helped me push the writing in any direction the story took me.
Question: Will we ever meet Anita’s family on stage in a book?
Answer: I think so.
Secrets to Share:
I actually wrote the first chapter and planned the mystery plot for a book where Anita goes home for Thanksgiving. The original idea was she would take Richard to meet her family, but by the time I sat down to write the first chapter it was Micah and Nathaniel. Why not Jean-Claude? First, vampires don’t travel as well by car, and that was the original plan. Second, Grandma Blake is crazy religious and prays for Anita’s soul because she’s sleeping with a vampire. We don’t trust her not to do something like open a window so sunlight hits Jean-Claude. The original idea was that Anita would stay in the house she grew up in, like most of us do when we go home for the holidays. Nothing like being surrounded by family and staying in your old room to throw you back into old childhood mindsets. Not sure how much of the plot would change, but every time I try to make it the next book it just doesn’t work. My muse and I aren’t ready, or maybe Anita isn’t ready.
Question: Is Anita you?
Answer: No.
Secrets to Share:
I made Anita my size, because it was easier to choreograph a fight scene if my main character was my size. If I’d made her taller, or in any way that different from me physically, then I’d have had to find a friend the size of my character anytime I went gun shopping or looked at a shoulder holster. She’s my size because the hand I have is the hand I need to fit. It just made sense to me at the time. I gave her my hair because I like my hair, and I figured if I was going to screw her life up with terrifying mystery/horror plots that I should give her something that she might like, too. I’m told that Anita’s attitude is tough, strong, masculine, not very feminine, and in many ways, it is my attitude; but I didn’t think of it in those terms until readers and interviewers started telling me. Anita’s personality and mine were closer to the same at the beginning of the series, but it’s a first person narration so making her sound and think like me was easier as a new novelist. When I sat down to write Merry Gentry years later I would make sure she didn’t sound like Anita, which meant she didn’t sound much like me, and made writing her a whole lot harder. I think it’s one of the reasons that Merry writes slower than Anita, because I don’t think like Merry does, and yet she’s a first person narrator, too. Anita and I have diverged as people because our experiences have been very different. She’s gone on to have one of the highest kill counts in fiction outside of war novels, and I married, moved to suburbia, had a child, dogs, and did a much more traditional approach for the first decade I wrote Anita. She was anything but traditional by any standards. Anita is now decades younger than I am, because I read an essay by Agatha Christie years before where she complained that she’d made both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot too old, and if she could do it over again she’d have started them off much younger. I took that bit of advice to heart and Anita was twenty-four when she stepped onto the page, as was I when I wrote the first short story with her in it. Seven to eight years is all that’s passed in Anita’s world, while much more has passed in the real world.
Anita and I both lost our mothers in car accidents as children. She was eight when her mother died, I was six. Why did I do that? Because when I was twenty-four my mother’s death was still so traumatic that I couldn’t imagine understanding a character that hadn’t had a similar experience. That early tragic loss made me understand just how fragile life was, and took forever the ideal that the adults around me are omnipotent and could keep me safe, because they couldn’t keep themselves safe. That knowledge at such a young age has made me a different person than I might have been, and it’s so intimate to who I am that I gave the viewpoint to my main character, because again, first person narration. They say, write about what you know, so what did I know? I knew death and loss, monsters and lovers, small town American lost in the big city, I knew how to be a strong woman in a man’s world, I knew not to ask for mercy for there isn’t much to go around, save the mercy for someone who needs it more.
Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
Lita looked at me, head slightly to one side. “You didn’t worry that it’d make men not want you?”
“No,” I said.
“You didn’t worry that it made you look like a victim?” Kelly asked.
I frowned at her. “No, every time I look at my scars I think that I lived, and I killed what hurt me. These are victory marks, not victim,” I said.
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no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 04:57 am (UTC)I am stopping right there.
Laurell, if publishers told you this, it's not because of the sex -- which is all rape and which Anita doesn't have without massive amounts of guilt and pretending to be in "love" anyway. It was because you can't write mystery for crap. You needed the paranormal skin because that was the only interesting thing you had going.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 06:06 am (UTC)Answer: No.
And then she goes on for many paragraphs for how Anita is just like her. Though I guess it's nice that she admits that Merry's harder to write because she's got more points of difference. Except for the whole hating being pregnant thing and the poly and the bdsm and being a short, busty heroine with a dead sainted parent...
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 09:15 am (UTC)Sort of related to this, this tumblr post (http://mythicgeek.tumblr.com/post/120182468294/queerpropaganda-a-writers-characters) speaks volumes to me about what we, the readers, can infer about LKH too.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 12:36 am (UTC)God, that's just so infuriating. I get writing a character with some traits similar to your own (particularly opinions, temperament, and preferences) but when it's things like height/body type, "formative" events, and their friggin' hair color, claiming otherwise just looks weird. Denial isn't a river in Egypt, Laurell
Her justification for making Anita the same height/build as she is to help with the fight scenes is such a load of crap. Harry Dresden is somewhere around seven feet tall - Jim Butcher is not. That fact has had zero impact on the fight scenes.
And the whole "I can't identify with a character who doesn't have a past like mine" is both stupid and kind of disturbing. We mere mortals can do that sort of thing all the time - it's called having empathy. And given that Anita is basically a sociopath with a badge, it's really disturbing that LKH can identify with her.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 12:46 am (UTC)A little more actual of LKH's actual self in Anita would have done the books a world of good. If Anita were a normally attractive, normally built woman, I think the books would have ended up in a very different place.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 09:59 am (UTC)Also this: "Lita looked at me, head slightly to one side. “You didn’t worry that it’d make men not want you?”
“No,” I said."
First - wasn't Anita self-conscious about her scars at times earlier in the books? Or am I misremembering?
Second - of course other women constantly worry about and value themselves by how attractive they are to men and can't fathom another woman not doing so, with the shining exception of OMGSOBADASSHASMANYSCARS!Anita. Ugh.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 03:56 pm (UTC)See, this is one of the few ways in which Anita/LKH actually *does* think like a man (well, a sexist man)---they think girls are only ever thinking about what dudes think too!
Honestly, I think LKH/Anita thinks a LOT about what men like/want/etc. Anita is pretty much tailored to be the "Cool Girl Fantasy" of a hot chick who is one of the guys but omg she's still a hot chick isn't that so cool? I see a lot of girls, IRL and RP characters, who try really hard to push this image of themselves (as opposed to girls who actually are stereotypically masculine and/or don't care what dudes think, who don't push it at all cuz this is just them) because they want to seem attractive and exceptional to guys, and that's all LKH ever does with Anita---talking about what a guy she is, but also her big bewbs and how tiny and hot she is! And god forbid she ever do anything like cut her hair so it can't be grabbed in a fight (idgaf about her and Micah's promise to each other, it's DUMB AND DANGEROUS) or consider a binder or breast reduction because those massive E-cups have got to be a pain when you run around that much, not to mention totter around in high heels and short skirts...oh so manly, teehee!
Speaking of that, despite the claims of her and her author, Anita isn't actually in any way particularly butch or even tomboyish in her interests and behaviors....except in the most backwards, gender-binary view of things possible (liking guns = masculine! feelings = girly!) And even then, she kind of fails, because all Anita ever does is cry and need to be held and lie there passively for sex, all of which are pretty feminine by LKH standards. Everything Anita and LKh decry about girls, Anita actually embodies. Being a murderous rapist doesn't change that, and, no, it's not "manly" either.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 10:51 am (UTC)While I can understand being drawn to writing (especially first-person-narrators) who share your general view of the world (and I think just about every writer brings their morals to their stories, for how would you otherwise decide who is right and who is wrong), this seems like a tremendous drawback for a writer and I don't think she ever much evolved past that. Really, I think this is how you end up with hero-centric-morality like it is in Anita's world. Because the author only really understands the view that this one character has on the world and doesn't really make enough attempts to delve deeper into other characters' mindsets that might be different, but that the author has to understand as valid positions that also come from a host of no less important experiences in their lives. They might not be I-narrators in the narrative, but that doesn't mean that important secondary characters shouldn't be written with all the care and understanding that is put in the narrator figure.
Also, as someone who has some Frankenstein's monster's level-scarring from operations done when I was a child, no woman (or person in general) has ever asked me anything like that about the scars. Sure, the way I got them is different, but a) most people, even if they would think that, are not socially inept enough to say it, and b) extrordinarily, most women do not constantly think about everything in terms of 'but would guys still find that hot', but understand that maybe I value my continued survival a little more than to agonise about the scars it left. Anita's view is really not as special snowflake as she thinks.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 03:57 pm (UTC)But, ironically, it's actually what LKH and Anita seem to be most concerned with. Heck, I think that's half of why she bends over backwards making claims that Anita is sooo totally one of the guys but STILL SEXY---that's seen as a male fantasy, the super hot chick who likes watching sports and playing video games with you and totally doesn't mind your sexism cuz she agrees!
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 02:37 pm (UTC)Really? Is that really what you want to say about Anita? Because, um, that's pretty easily demonstrably untrue.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 06:13 pm (UTC)Harry Dresden and his One Shot Kill of an entire SPECIES of Vampires respectfully disagree with that.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 06:35 pm (UTC)Edited to add: Found the comic! (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0439.html)
no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 01:12 am (UTC)Hell, Mike Nelson in Mystery Science Theater 3000 blew up 3 planets.
Mike Nelson has a higher kill count than Anita Blake.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 03:31 pm (UTC)Other than that... just me, over here heaving some heavy sighs. Anita is nothing like you, that's why she's exactly like you!
no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 07:25 pm (UTC)LEAVE ME BE
SANATARIA
JUST LEAVE ME ALONE
(can't they see it's why my brain says "rape") (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Sanitarium-lyrics-Metallica/0347BB5E3EC1C23948256D2700076F8B)
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 03:31 pm (UTC)Further proof of my theory that she doesn't read books for pleasure, and hasn't for a long time, so it makes her think she's Super Speshul because she doesn't have a point of comparison.
What I found was that most writers seemed to get bored with their series between book five and eight. You could watch them fall out of love with their characters and their worlds. Some authors rallied and were able to find renewed energy and fall back in love with their series, and some were selling too well to stop so they struggled on for more books, but the lack of joy in their work showed through on the page. I decided I’d give myself enough toys so I would never grow bored.
[extended facepalm] She got bored. She added porn for "renewed energy" and acted like she'd invented the wheel. Still can't tell if she actually likes the world anymore, or have just convinced herself that since it was selling so well she'd keep on going. With bonus points for proving those "haters" (anyone who critiques the books in general) and "prudes" (anyone who points out the sex scenes are badly written and the BDSM is inaccurate)are wrong.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 04:26 pm (UTC)So, is that why you presented Voodoo as being Mexican? You got them mixed up? And if you read "several articles" why is it portrayed SO HORRIBLY WRONG in your books?! Several articles is still not enough research, imo, but it should have at least prevented the dumb shit YOU wrote about it!
" sex was either nonexistent or sanitized and off stage"
And now instead it's a woman getting passed around between a bunch of dudes like an object and having to be coerced into everything by said men or a magical curse that makes her do it. I don't think you improved anything.
"if they had to shoot someone they had to feel really, really bad about it"
Whereas Anita has literally shot innocent people just to make a point. Again, you didn't improve anything. You in fact are VALIDATING the idea that 'good woman feel bad about this' with how HORRIBLE Anita is.
"mainstream mystery hasn’t come far enough to have a female detective that can play as hard as the men"
Bones and Oliva Benson would like a word with you. Also, Anita is always fainting. None of your guys are doing that. And I'm pretty sure neither are the men (or women) in other mainstream mystery series.
"horror also lets women fight back right alongside the men, more even than mystery. "
Lets? Like women can't in other genres? What?
"I’d already decided to put the supernatural in the series because I thought I’d get bored with just straight mystery.....What I found was that most writers seemed to get bored with their series between book five and eight. You could watch them fall out of love with their characters and their worlds"
Firstly, that doesn't have anything to do with the genre. Secondly, that's exactly what happened to you. There's been no worldbuilding for a long time, nor anything that could be described as characterization, the only part that you pay attention to writing about is your self-insert getting her ego stroked by a bunch of interchangeable pretty yes-men.
" More than that though, I wanted it to be modern day as if we went to bed one night and got up the next day with all the monsters being real and everyone knew about them. "
Which is one of the problems with the series---it really is as if everyone just found out about them, when supposedly they were known to be real all along. It's very confusing, and also very lazy.
' relationship tropes "
Yeah, and you picked the WORST tropes
"I made Anita my size, because it was easier to choreograph a fight scene if my main character was my size. If I’d made her taller, or in any way that different from me physically, then I’d have had to find a friend the size of my character anytime I went gun shopping or looked at a shoulder holster. "
Having read her so-called fight scenes, I can say that this is dumb and if she's telling the truth about why Anita is her height (which I doubt) then none of that made it on to the page. And I don't even with the shoulder holster thing, it's not as if, ridiculously detailed as she likes to be with her gun porn, she tells us exactly what measurement it is around her.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 04:26 pm (UTC)"I’m told that Anita’s attitude is tough, strong, masculine, not very feminine, and in many ways, it is my attitude"
I may be biased because there are very, very few traits I see as gendered, but even thinking in stereotypical terms, I don't really see this with Anita or LKH. Anita's very conscious about fashion and hair despite claiming not to be, constantly compares herself to other women, whines and cries a lot, faints all the time, is snitty and snobby and rude, literally needs her hand held by her boyfriends to deal with really simple shit, wears short skirts and high heels and low-cut tops, makes a big deal about her big boobs, needs every man in the room to think she's hot, refuses to eat, is really passive during sex aside from clawing and screaming...some of these are negative female stereotypes, some are just obnoxious, but nothing here says "masculine" to me. The only stereotypical dude thing she ever does is get into pissing contests with everyone. The fact she's self-centered, violent, and a rapist does not a man make, if THAT'S what LKH means. As for LKH herself...again, she doesn't come off to me as masculine or feminine in particular so much as just a narcissistic pretentious asshole, but if I had to pick, given her focus on what everyone is wearing and domestic relationships and how much everyone loves everyone and pretty eye colors and playing house with Matthew and Anita being prettier than every other women, I'd say honestly she definitely comes off very much as the worst stereotype of a female writer. Again, guns and violence and crowing over how tough Anita is (while she's actually very much not) doesn't make her masculine, she's just the Faux Action Heroine trope.
"She’s gone on to have one of the highest kill counts in fiction outside of war novels, and I married, moved to suburbia, had a child, dogs,"
Remember kids, these are mutually exclusive things. Even Edward needed a split personality to pull this off!
Also, firstly, no she doesn't. Ever hear of Phoenix? From the X-Men? Killed a whole damn planet. Secondly, that's not even impressive. All you have to do is write "killed this many people" and voila.
"She was anything but traditional by any standards"
Not really. There was the super-standard love triangle with the good boy and bad boy (though to her credit, I don't think one being a vampire and one being a werewolf was a cliché yet), it was presented as sexy and romantic when the bad boy was a super creepy obnoxious asshole, there was a romantic interest with a frilly shirt, there was a girl who made a big fuss about how tough she was and how she could save herself but still consistently needed men, said girl is also only female in her field because it's not that girls can do this to it's just that only SHE can do it cuz she's NOT LIKE THEM, said girl was honestly incompetent as all fuck.....not really seeing what standards she bucked here.
And for the excerpt, as I noted in my replies to other comments, of course LKH thinks all women care about is what men think (except Anita!) and should be lambasted for it, when in fact she and Anita pretty much only care about exactly that as far as I can tell.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 09:13 pm (UTC)Considering the traits she claims are "manly" in her books, I think that's exactly what she means. Men get all dangerous-looking when they're thinking about/having sex. Men are constantly comparing themselves to other men in the weapons and penii departments. It's manly to hunt down and kill your friends for sport (that was in Affliction). Men physically confront each other all the time, that's how men do things.
Not only does LKH think these are true, she thinks they are good. Because to her, manly is synonymous with good, so violence and rape and pissing contests and killing without remorse must also be synonymous with good.
I much prefer characters who feel bad about needing to kill to ones who run around shooting people without compunction. But speaking of characters who can kill without compunction, in one of Miss Marple's books she says something to the effect of "I'm glad they haven't stopped hanging murderers because this guy (who wouldn't have been caught and hanged without her) really deserves to die." Fluffy, pink Miss Marple was hard as nails. And I can't recall her ever fainting.
ETA: This was meant to be a reply to
no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 01:15 am (UTC)It's not a crime to say "yes, I created this character because I understand how her mind would work, since it's so much like mine. But I strove to give her good character development based on these new experiences in her life, so she isn't like me anymore except in looks." But Anita is still pretty much LKH which... isn't a good thing.
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Date: 2015-06-09 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-11 05:14 am (UTC)Yes you are.
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Date: 2015-06-09 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-09 11:48 pm (UTC)