lkh_lashouts | Entries tagged with book: ab 01: guilty pleasures

Link: 25 Years Since Guilty Pleasures Was First Published
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

( 25 Years Since Guilty Pleasures Was First Published )

rodentfanatic.livejournal.com

One consistent criticism of Nikolaos that I've encountered both here and elsewhere is that she's a rip-off of Claudia. Now, I'm always willing to tear into LKH's work when it's deserved (and it is deserved a LOT), but in this case, I just don't see it.

Claudia resents her condition, and only plays up the 'cute child' image when she needs to, such as for luring in prey. Nikolaos never shown to be bothered by being an eternal kid, and she plays it up at whim versus for survival, suggesting she might just like playing it up it in general, which would suggest she doesn't resent it at all. Claudia's goal is simply to be able to grow up, but Nikolaos is a ruler over vampires and wererats whose goal is to maintain her rule and gain power, and that suggests very different mindsets to me. I don't feel that Anne Rice owns the 'child vampire' concept even if she was first to do it, not anymore than Polidori owns 'vampire as a suave, foreign, and possibly bisexual aristocrat' just because he was the first to do that. Yes, even if the vampire is a blonde blue-eyed girl both times in the former case.

I didn't see or read Interview before I read GP, and I wonder if some of the folks who did just got Claudia fixed in their minds as The One True Child Vampire (and I can see why, I love her!) and so end up just comparing all others, especially little girl ones, to her. If they come off as similar, they're a ripoff. If they come off as dissimilar, they're a bad ripoff. Not that this is the case for everyone who thinks she's just a bad Claudia clone (since that would be really dismissive and insulting towards other opinions) but I wonder if that might not be the case for some at least, as I've seen a few who just immediately decided she was a Claudia-clone the second she appeared on the page and then complained about how she was a 'bad' one because she had none of Claudia's traits...so it just seems odd to me to call her a copy but then complain because she's not a copy?

What do you think? Was LKH copying? Or did she just take the basic idea (little girl vampire) but then steer it entirely different direction so they're 'the same' only as as physical appearance goes? Or was it just a big coincidence? My bet is second option, personally, especially since she's said she herself read Interview, but I'm open to any other opinions of course!

As a note, I feel the same on Valentina--she may be closer to Claudia's age, but the circumstances of her turning were completely different, she chooses and prefers to be treated as a child, and she is needlessly cruel to her victims when they have done nothing to her, whereas Claudia only harmed Lestat because she blamed him for her condition and wanted for her and Louis to be able to escape living with him, if I recall right. Valentina also wants peers, and I don't remember Claudia having the same desire. Like Nikolaos and Claudia, Valentina and Claudia both seem to have very different psyches, with only the packaging looking similar, at least as far as my interpretation goes (though, as always, definitely interested in hearing other thoughts!)

rodentfanatic.livejournal.com

Sizeism is (sadly) not limited to LKH. In most media, fat people either just inexplicably don't exist, or, when they do show up, exist as an object of disgust and mockery. Guys get off lighter (Jack Black, Seth Rogan) and can even be painted as charming and lovable protagonists/stars so long as they're funny, (and it seems that a guy can be a lot heavier than a girl can before he's considered "fat" anyway) but a woman...well, if she gets lucky, maybe she gets to be the Fat Comic Relief Best Friend and amuse everyone with her food-obsessions and hopeless man-hungriness. At least she'll get to be a recurring character though, right?

It's been awhile since I read any of the AB books, but among all the problems I remember, fatphobia wasn't really one of them. There was a definite "thin=beautiful" sentiment I suppose (admittedly as much for the men as the women), and Anita got to have her cake and eat it too by weighing some bitty number but also getting to rail against those terrible awful pretty thin blonde ladies because, unlike "boys with breasts", Anita actually has ~*ENORMOUS TITTEHS~* so she totally knows the woes of being plus-sized (not that I do either as a thin woman, but, call it a hunch, I am still pretty sure that just having an epic rack doesn't gain you the shitty treatment that actually being overweight besides just in your chest does--in fact, it probably gets you some Conventional Beauty Standards Bonus Points) Other than that, though, nothing much stuck out that I can recall...

Except Crystal. I believe that was her name, anyway. In Guilty Pleasures she's one of the humans at the party/gathering that Philip takes her to (it was a mixer for humans that were in to vampires, if I recall right) and she's described as looking like a soccer mom and as being quite plump. She also was all over (gasp! how dare she!) pretty-boy Philip, and while I cannot recollect the exact words, it seemed like, in addition to the sin of being a FEMALE coming on to one of Anita's men (was her attitude about this that bad back then? I don't think so, but she also didn't really have any men at that point to feel threatened over...), there was just an overall tone of disdain for her body type in the text that even in high school, with no understanding about anything related to fatphobia or fat-acceptance, I picked up on. If this were another author, I'd take that tone of a sign of prejudice on Anita's part, probably from internalized size-issues of her own, but given that what Anita thinks seems to be what LKH thinks, I'm kind of surprised, given that LKH seems to have (or thinks she has) a somewhat size-positive attitude (note that bashing skinny women does NOT equate to being size-positive).

Can anyone else remember or cite anything relating to this sort of thing that appeared in other books or her blogs? I'm just sort of curious, since it's something that always bugged me whenever she talked about Anita as a fuller-figured woman and that's great etc., etc., but wrote about, to my memory, a fat woman with just such a tone of judgement and disgust. So, what, is it okay to be "fuller figured" as long as it's in ways that society wants and is still considered attractive (tits, hips) or just as long as you keep your mitts off the pretty stripper boys?

Or am I just remembering everything wrong? Because that is totes possible too.

devilmet67.livejournal.com

Some things in life are simply meant to be shared. Like the video from DragonCon of Laurell Hamilton in the Kilt-Blowing Event. No one should have to deal with that one alone. :)
But this is too good. Amazon Kindle has a indie book spoof of our favorite pint-sized fangbanger: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003UNKYZA/ref=cm_cd_asin_lnk

It's a complete satire of Guilty Pleasures and I gotta tell ya- it's pretty freakin' funny! Thanks to Andy Chapman for digging up this little gem.

If you don't have a Kindle, Amazon has an app for PC, Mac and other platforms you can download for free and works fine. Trust me, this one's well worth the effort. :)

FYI- Chibineko found an interesting link to this as well. Take a good look at the tags. I kinda agree with her that though the author of the book remains anonymous, this could be a wee hint as to who did write it.

http://www.zimbio.com/Kindle+Ebook+Reader/articles/4mUEfOi7N6b/Faulty+Gratification+Ineeda+Halfbaked+Vampire

Current Location: Brooklyn NYC
Current Music: Sports Talk Radio

dwg.livejournal.com

I posted this on my journal first, so I'm sorry to the people who get this twice, but! News fresh in from Twitterland! So fresh, rigor hasn't even set in!

LKHamilton: I've finished crying over my imaginary friends, but I'm left empty and sort of numb. Stunned with the turn of events. Jan 18 8:44

LKHamilton: I've spent days trying to save this character. I pulled a major metaphysical event to save the day & in the end not enough. Jan 18 8:46

LKHamilton: Death will come, final and complete, and the light in their eyes dulls until the windows to the soul show nothing but emptiness. Jan 18 8:47

LKHamilton: The body is still warm, the flesh still soft, you can still hold them, cradle them in your arms and smell the sweet scent of their skin. Jan 18 8:49

LKHamilton: Death comes soft at first, lay a last kiss on their mouth while the warmth lasts and before the cold comes. Jan 18 8:52

LKHamilon: I'm out of here. I have not the heart to stay. Time to find someone real and get a hug. Should have known what was coming. Sometimes . . . Jan 18 8:55

LKHamilon: . . . even in fiction you can't save everyone. I fucking hate that. Jan 18 8:56

SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE IN BULLET! This is doubly amusing because not three days ago, in a Q & A for Barnes and Noble, she said this:

Ok, this is a spoiler if you haven't at least finished Guilty Pleasures then please do not read this message. Ok, I've done the warning bit. Anita and I were both traumatized by Phillip's death in Guilty Pleasures. I promised her after that if she cared for a man I wouldn't kill him off. Her way of getting around that was apparently to care for every man we met in the books from that point on. Talk about unforeseen consequences.

I honestly think my subconscious is responsible for the low death count among major and major/minor characters. People dieing, or leaving, when I was very young have left their mark. In real life you can't save everyone, but in fiction, sometimes, you can. We may actually have some deaths at some point, but I think my muse and I would rather not.

Bold emphasis is mine.

I was talking to a couple of people over the weekend and saying that if LKH wanted to keep things as real-to-life as possible, as she claims she does, then she'd have to let some characters die. In my opinion, you can't really have it both ways; either you keep things gritty and real and deal with the tough breaks the story gives you, or you can make it a fancy fictional la-la land where nobody dies and everyone's sparkly and happy. Trying to fudge one just hurts the other, and...well, the books are a really good example to that with the random metaphysics and miraculous saves. So it's nice to see that someone's biting the Bullet.

Umm, on a related note, I went through the B & N forum and copied out the Q & A in more readable format, so that LKH's answers are right after the question and you don't have to scroll around to try and find what she's talking about: Part one and part two. I'm sorting through the Facebook chat in a similar fashion, but I'm going to add more blog links and commentary to it.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Jack Off Jill - Witch Hunt

nightangel486.livejournal.com

Because I just re-read Guilty Pleasures for the first time.

( Oh, RealAnita! Wherefore art thou?? )

Current Mood: nostalgic

rantingmule.livejournal.com

I snarked about this to Ladyravana last night...and now I wanna re-snark and share.

From the fan club site, Laurell in her own words, roughly just before OB was published: http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/FanClub/fanclub.htm#Laurell

( I must visit the Paper Street Soap Company, I HAVE NEEDS OF THE BRAIN SOAP. )

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: Brantford, Ontario
Current Music: n/a

dwg.livejournal.com

After going through Incubus Dreams meticulously, I promised myself that I'd go back to the beginning of the Anita Blake : Vampire Hunter series, summarise and take notes on it. In other words, I dissected it to pieces and ranted like a crazy woman.

But after getting distracted by the Kim Harrison books, I finally kicked my butt into gear and got to finishing Guilty Pleasures.

So here it is:

Or for less licking around, just jump straight to the memorable post section.

Now for the disclaimer:

There are spoilers for the book. It's the entire book from page 1 to page 266.
There are spoilers for the rest of the series, but mostly for Incubus Dreams.
My edition (look right) is the very first edition, released in October 1993. So if the page references don't match up with your copy, this is why. I usually include a quote with a page number, so you should still be able to find the bit that I'm referring to.
By no means do I think I'm right about anything. I'll gladly accept any valid argument you make on something where you think I'm clearly wrong. This is just my opinion from my own general knowledge.
The summaries and notes are basically for my own reference and benefit -- if you find it useful, great.

Now I get to look forward to The Laughing Corpse.

This has been cross posted everywhere, including: anita_blake_fan, abstd, lkh_lashouts, olihin_xe, and all posts of ranting can be found in muse_abuse.