LKH Lashouts

Since we do the occasional Anne Rice post here when relatable to LKH/AB, I thought I'd share this. While looking at FB during my lunch break, I saw that Anne Rice was calling to her fans to combat the "toxic" reviews on her latest Lestat book and linking good reviews and asking them to upvote said good reviews. Hardly the "you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective" epic, but amusing nonetheless, so I went to go check out just what the reviews had to say. The ones that spoke negatively of the book really weren't at all rude (at least, not the ones that I saw) but, well, I guess "toxic" is her version of "haters"...aka anyone who doesn't completely love anything you do.

While the book sounded hilariously bad in ways unique to Rice (purple prose galore, gushing constantly over Lestat who is unironically even referred to as "the James Bond of vampires" by another character, etc.) there were a few flaws cited that reminded me of LKH. For instance, apparently there's a billion characters and none of them do anything, there's no real plot, and the Big Bad just shows up for two seconds at the end and gets whipped instantly. Sounds a lot like the last few AB books, huh?

I was interested to find out that there are now a few POC vampires (but the review I saw that mentioned them didn't say who they were or how they were handled) but enraged at what I found regarding Zenobia. Zenobia is a very minor character who shows up in Blood & Gold, and was one half of a lesbian relationship with her maker, Eudoxia. Marius kills Eudoxia (well, technically Akasha does, but Marius pretty much might as well have, as he throws her to her) but Zenobia isn't mad, she's just perfect and docile and sweet and in love with Marius because he's perfect and she's helpless and she just follows him for a bit before disappearing entirely. This, by the way, is the ONLY lesbian relationship in the series, which is FRAUGHT with homoerotica between beautiful bisexual men. Again, sounding familiar?

Anyway, Zenobia reappears and now she's with a man and apparently the only mention poor Eudoxia gets is as being "the wicked female vampire" who made her. Fuuuuck your lesbophobia, Anne Rice. Guys get to have alllllll the gayness, but girl/girl is icky and bad and must be destroyed. Given the recent treatment of Jade, this is almost TOO perfectly coincidental, wow.

I have a habit of taking super duper minor villains from X-Men (like, 'minion that showed up in ONE issue during the 90s' minor) and privately concocting entire personalities/bios for them. I don't use it for fanfic or anything (well, stories in my head, but I never write them down into an actual project because I'm lazy) but I just like to imagine how *I* would have done them if I'd been in charge and they got more screen-time. I've always meant to do the same with a lot of AB characters---Melanie and the golden tigers, for instance---and now I think I'm gonna have to do that with Zenobia and Eudoxia (and Petronia but she's not in this that I can tell) So apparently Anne Rice brings out my WASTED POTENTIAL, MUST FIX impulses just like LKH too!

A little bit ago, comments in a post (sorry, don't remember which!) resulted in someone suggesting that two lists be compiled: One of shitty tropes commonly found in urban fantasy, and one of UF books to avoid because of an overabundance of these tropes and/or too much similarity in the wrong ways to the Anita Blake series. So, this is that! Tell me the tropes you haaate in UF and why! Tell me the UF books you thought were terrible, either because of AB-isms in them or some other reasons! As each new addition is brought up and discussed, I'll add it to the two master lists in this posts :D

Naturally, there will be disagreements, especially over the books list. Don't be afraid to disagree with someone and say why, since part of the point of this list is to help people know what they might or might not want to read in the future, and you might bring up something will spark someone else's interest in that book for the better, but also please try to keep everything civil and respectful too!

I'll start with a book I think should be on the list: The Gillian Key series.

As for a trope I'm tired of, I'm sick of the Alpha/Beta/Omega system being presented as the way werewolves run because "that's how real wolves do it." No, that is not how wolves in the wild do it at all. That is how a bunch of wolves who didn't know each other and were thrown together by human scientists did it, it was not a normal pack at all. Now, if your werewolves are a bunch of non-family people thrown together by circumstance, as with most UF, then I have no problem with them running on that system, as long as it's not presented as YUP THIS HOW WILD WOLVES NATURALLY DO IT AND THAT'S WHY WE DO because noooo that's not how they do it!

BAD TROPES LIST
-Alpha/Beta/Omega system presented as natural wild wolf behavior
- The Chosen One
- Female Exceptionalism
- Oppression used for Speshulness
- The One True Mate (known by scent or psychic rightness).
- "Mate" bullshittery in general
- Vampires vs Werewolves (especially if it's Just Because)
- Werebeasts always tied to moon (also Just Because)
- Hero gets new powers every book (especially if new powers aren't needed)
- All supernaturals are really sexy; no one who is less than that by modern standards is made into a vampire, werebeast, etc.
- Wereanimals must all act just like animals! (Bonus points if that's not even how animals actually act)
- Vampires as pretty, wise, cultured, civilized monsters and werewolves as savage, grubby, wild, feral monsters....All of them. JUST BECAUSE!
- Mindless bloodlust being portrayed in therians as just natural animal hunting behavior
- Tough Chicks in Leather. Always. Because.
- Love interest who won't take no for an answer, how romantic!
- Rapey behavior is okay so long as it's DESTINY that says you're meant to be together!
- Mystic baby machine: as part of a happy ending, it's really only the woman's destiny to produce chosen one babies.
- Bi-racial characters treated as basically white people whose non-white heritage is just an exotic accesory
- Super-cool companion beast for no real reason which acts more like accessory than an animal (can also manifest as 'My soul takes form of a hawk/black cat/silver wolf')
- No matter how tough and dominant a woman is, she can only hook up with a man as tough/dominant or more so than she is
- Angels and demons are just attractive humans with extra appendages that totally want to fall in love and have sex with humans!
- Elves are just beautiful wise people with pointy ears, never really STRANGE or OTHER in any way
- Werewolf societies that demand females must mate, werewolf heroine tries to go it alone but eventually falls for jackass male werewolf who's been dogging her
- Heroine is in love triangle in which one or both men (it's always men) who are terrible to and for her
- The supernatural world is successfully hidden despite the fact that there's no good reason the average person shouldn't have noticed it. Bonus points if there's something along the lines of "People only see what they want/expect to see" for hand-waving justification
- When normal humans have no advantages/ways of dealing with the supernatural (bonus points if the supernatural is still hiding from them anyway)
- Only white vampires allowed to exist
- Fey are always pretty, regardless of breed (bonus points if it's modern Western standards of conventional human beauty to boot)
- No one suffers encumbrance from carrying too much for too long (much like horses in fantasy quest stories)
- Impossible character descriptions (Ex: Anita is delicate and petite and dainty-looking but packs lots of noticeable hard muscle and has amazing curves and big breasts yet only weighs 110 lbs if that)
- Too much gratuitous sex that is unrelated to the plot or character/relationship development
- Vampires and wereanimals are always super sexy, at least the important ones, and always by modern Western beauty standards and/or the author's personal tastes
- Black and white morality for everything and everyone. Especially for species that have no palpable reason to split into a system like that.
- Human with magical creature heritage being used as equivalent to real world mixed heritages

BAD BOOKS LIST
The Gillian Key series by Talia Gryphon -Where to even start...
Katie MacAlister - Heroine has intelligence of a slime mold, numerous bad tropes
Anna Strong Chronicles by Jeanne C Stein - Tons of Chosen One bullshit
Lori Handeland - First book alright, but characters in all subsequent books overshadowed by heroine from the first
Stephanie Meyer - Do I even need to say it?
Once Bitten, Twice Shy by Jennifer Rardin - "Tough" overpowered supernatural-killing heroine with quirky and often annoying debits that don't quite make up for the variety of her powers who narrarate "humorously" from first-person POV with a supposedly-charistmatic vampire love interest and a dark secret revealed at the end of book one that makes her even more of a Mary Sue