Blog flog

[dwg.livejournal.com]

URL: http://blog.laurellkhamilton.org/2006/07/richmond-va.html
Title: Richmond, VA
Date: Monday 10 July 2006

LKH in italicised blockquote, me...not so much.

We actually got two questions in the Q and A that we'd not had before. One was why doesn't Anita like women, as in like-like. Honestly, it's because I forget that women are potential sex objects. I am just terribly heterosexual, so I notice men, but women just don't hit my radar. As a writer I see it as a deficit

Everyone please take a moment to let this sink in.

. . .

Geez, as if we haven't noticed that LKH is "just terribly heterosexual" in her reflections in Anita. What with every man on earth - and all who are yet to be born! - fawning all over her, and every single woman on earth either jealous bitches or brainless twits that "don't understaaaand" how to please a man. WTF, I ask you - just what the zombie jesus fuck?

I should probably give her brownie points for recognising this, but...well, I take them off when I read about her solution.

I even went out to the mall with Jon and said, show me how to look at women, but we discovered that our taste in women is too different. Women he thought were cute just didn't do it for me, and women I was willing to say were cute didn't do it for him, so it wasn't very useful.

Just...wait a second. LKH, you want Jon to approve in your taste in women? No...really? Because you two can't agree on something it's classed as "not very useful"?

I am aghast.

Egad, lady. You're allowed to think of chicks as hot. It's okay if your GRR-tough-and-manly-husband (with his glorious locks of long, long haiiir!) [/sarcasm] doesn't agree with what you might hit if you swung that way. You are the writer! You create people that are not real! That totally doesn't count toward being a lesbian or having an affair.

I'm going to faceplam on behalf of us all.

I am trying to add more women to the Anita series in the current book I'm working on, but sadly, the women are probably never going to get the loving description that the men do. My apologies.

No need to apologise, Laurell. Women, generally, do not have penises. Therefore, any description of a woman in the current series would probably be cut down to half a paragraph.

The other question we got was how do I come up with all those sex scenes. Truthfully, I'm going to have to think about that one for a while.

And here was me thinking she had a "to-do" list and she just checked things off as she went.

I mean to me it's not an effort to come up with the scenes. Once you know your characters you just have to think how they would make love, what they would do during sex. Your sex scenes should be different when you're with different people.

I call bullshit on this. What with most sex scenes being pastede on, yay!

Course, it also helps if other characters had personalities and the like, but...well, that also gets addressed:

Personality isn't something that just happens before you get into bed and then afterwards. The person you are is very much there in bed with you, or should be on paper and in real life

In the case of Micah, personality never happens at all. But kinda in the case of Richard, this little statement is true. He stops having any kind of opinion during sex, and then afterward goes back onto the angst parade.

Though, at this point, I'm willing to wager that every time Anita has sex, a character loses their personality. *claps hands* I believe in characters, I do, I do!

I think that's one of the reasons I've never done causal sex, it's never just the physical that interests me.

*coughRequiemByronAugustinecough* Like those were never casual. And after Anita nearly tripped over while watching a well-endowed stripper at the Incubus Dreams strip joint in ID - again, I call bullshit. She's interested in the physical, so don't try to tell me that she wants to know about how other people feeeeel, and thiiiink. Someone please point out to me the number of conversations that Anita has had with male characters that A) do not have to do with Anita's hangups, B) do not have to do with the male characters wangst, C) sex. Hmm? Anyone? Beuller?

I have to know someone before the idea of sleeping with them appeals to me. I think this is the same with the characters. I have to know them, know their history, and something about who they really are before they get that chance on stage with Anita.

I can see it now, the checklist to get into LKH's and Anita's pants are as follows:

1. Must have large penis.
2. Must have omgsotragicpast *woe* even if it's about 1.

And I hope to the gods of writing, she doesn't mean a *literal* stage. But if she does, JC ought to sell tickets at the Circus.

"Come one, come all!" *coughpuncough* "See the Amazing Anita Blake and her inexhaustible snatch! Watch men reduced to mindless shells! Behold the Rainmaker! PH34R the loudest orgasms ever recorded!"

I think reading this blog entry hurt my brain.

Comments

[dwg.livejournal.com]

It's kinda sad, I was thinking last night that the ardeur could be fantastically cool if it were in the hands of a more adept writer. Even with the aspects of metaphysical rape.

But no, no, no...it's lame, and I'm tired of "THE ARDEUR MADE ME DO IT! But that's totally okay, because I love him now and I will fight for the people I love!"

Gah. *vomit*

[mariakatarina.livejournal.com]

Yes! make the ardeur create more conflict instead of this idiotic 'sex solves everything' idea.

Rape, Fucking the wrong -person-. I want a showdown where Meng Die kicks Anita's ass for whoring off of Requiem. I think the readership is owed that at the very least?

When was the last time Anita got into a physical altercation and even had to use a gun on someone or something?

[mariakatarina.livejournal.com]

er. nix that stray question mark. Not particularly used to this keyboard yet.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I'll meet your query and raise you the issue of, since when have we seen Anita use any of her spiffy magical powers that conveniently show up to save the day EVER AGAIN? One of the things that's been pissing me off so much is hey, Anita's got a new power - and then that's it. She doesn't bother to learn about it, learn how to control it - because phhh, like it'll ever turn up and like, HURT someone that she loves and wants to protect OHNOEZ - and then practice like hell to bitchslap the NEXT bad thing that comes along into hell.

But since nobody's ever in peril, it totally doesn't matter. And the people that do get hurt totally don't count. In fact, they had it coming. [/sarcasm]

[mariakatarina.livejournal.com]

Seriously. It's taken her four books (and counting, judging by the way this one is going) to even attempt to control the ardeur. She's looking more and more like an amateur and the repeated plots of 'sex to control the ardeur' are getting really tedious.

And no one's ever in peril because LKH is too terrified to kill any of her darlings.. regardless that the last one that was vaguely a darling was Philip (I think, it's been a while since I read GP) and she wasn't in love with him (like she claims to be with everyone in her harem). And that was the first book of the series. Knowing she won't hurt her characters drains all the suspense out of things. It makes the plots tedious.

I really want one of her powers to backfire, or powers to counter-act each other, or mess around with each other to cause problems. Not just Anita's ineptitude with controlling them.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

And the thing I don't get is, in ID, Anita levelled up enough to go, "Shit, *I* control the ardeur, it does not control me!" but it's still there and she still has to feed it, but now she's got some choice into who and how she feeds.

So everything else from that point on is pure bullshit. Obviously, LKH lost her sticky note that had this on it. *facepalm*

[rantingmule.livejournal.com]

It went to the same scary realm where her sticky note that Narcissus is psychic went.

I will never forgive her for that mistake. EVER.

[mariakatarina.livejournal.com]

stickynotes.. goddamn those things. Wouldn't a professional author keep a better notation system? Like binders/folders/word documents? Stuff that's organized?

[jeannette.livejournal.com]

*uses stickynotes*

*in all fairness, only uses them when she has a storyboard, and does her best to write down all developments/story ideas in a pretty journal*

[mariakatarina.livejournal.com]

Because 'leveling up' leads to less conflict, which leads to less excuses for sex. LKH is actually limiting herself the further Anita advances..

which actually explains a lot.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

CONFLICT IS GOOD! Conflict is interesting! Everyone getting along so harmoniously is boring as hell, and sadly, I am a total Joss Whedon fangirland put myself through the emotional wringer when I watch Buffy, Angel or Firefly because of how he not only breaks up relationships, but fucks them over, inside out, to death, and then resurrects them for some more emotional sodomy. *cries*

But I love it. I cannot get enough.

Dammit, the ardeur could have been the coolest plot device ever if only it wasn't weilded by LKH like a four year old trying to stick a knife in a power socket.