Anita Blake
Jan. 3rd, 2011 03:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethPainkillers are very nice things, but I like it when they work better.
I've been re-reading Anita Blake books after long enough I'm getting a new angle on them. Some of the things that made me give up on the series were there from way earlier on than I thought. And I think I thought they were a different genre than the author thought right from the start. Anita emphasises that she isn't a PI. That's why she has a best friend who is a PI, for contrast. So they aren't detective stories, even though they share a bunch of traits. Vampire politics are there from the get go. Porn is there from book 4. And it's Book 7, Burnt Offerings, where the crime offered for investigation at the start, the pyrokinetic, just kind of peters out without Anita doing anything. But if they're not detective stories what are they? Paranormal romance, with a backdrop of politics, kind of a rags to riches story with superpowers instead of money, and a lot of mucking about with supernatural power structures so she can both marry the boss to be on top (princess story) and be most personally powerful (US style success). We're there to watch Anita survive, stake things, and shag things. Emphasis things. It's creepy the way she consistently distinguishes between 'people' on the one hand and 'werewolves' and 'vampires' and 'monsters' on the other, even while dating them, and killing to protect them. Everyone should be people. It shouldn't be a status you can disqualify yourself from.
One theory says in PI stories the detective draws a line between the criminals and the cops, defining a course of right action that rejects parts of both groups. If Anita is doing that it don't really show. And romance novels with two guys to choose between usually have the good guy and the bad guy and making a choice. Anita really isn't doing that, she's shagging ever more people. So what is it she's choosing? To be a better monster. To be any kind of monster if it protects those people she designates as her own. But to remain willing to kill her own. The vampire politics and the werewolf politics does the same things as her, but the good guys are the only ones that show they want to protect as well as establish dominance. So it's like saying that murder, torture, all the rest, is all okay, as long as it's to save people. Even if you'd happily turn around and kill those same people.
How this connects to the strand of US mindset that leads to 24 justifying policies of torture I don't really want to think about.
Also, annoyingly, she spends waaaaay more time stressing about if shagging the wrong people, or too many people, will make her a whore and mess up her soul and mess up her faith and all, than she does thinking about how maybe actually torturing people is A Bad Thing. She'll happily use violence, but every book has her stressing about the sex. Yeesh.
But everyone she shags gives her more power. Actual supernatural powers, plus the power to command them to throw themselves into danger for her. And that's while she's still a human animator with raising zombies as her main power. Sex is power even more later on.
And it's not like it don't show from the start. Book one, vampire marks from the strip club pretty guy. Gain powerups.
But I'm not much interested.
Levelling up is not character development. Every book she gains a new superpower and has to learn how to deal with it. And it's always a surprise. Oh look, I can do which with the what now? Wow! Surprise! Magic made me do it!
She's always reacting to events, she doesn't have her own plan, and her goals seem to be limited to 'stay alive'.
When her own power is yet another of the things she's just reacting to all the time it gets really freaking annoying.
When sex is something that just sort of sneaks up on her and happens by accident it's creepy and annoying.
So basically Anita has issues, the books work through them by having her level up and accidentally kill stuff on accident and also accidentally do sex, and it gets really annoying.
If vampires are living with a kind of feudal structure they don't like, and America makes them citizens, could there not be a story in getting rid of the aristo structure and becoming democratic vampires? Isn't the point of democracies and the institutions thereof to make sure that everyone has the same rights and the strong can't just roll up and eat you and put you in coffins? How come being legal don't mean abiding by the laws? Anita is a vampire executioner for when they break human laws, but they aren't being protected by human laws, or living by them amongst themselves. Same with werewolves. It's gang violence with fur. Protecting their own by killing people who find out about them? These are the allies?? What makes the enemies so much the worse? What, they're not protecting themselves too?
... I think I'm annoyed with these books. I think I'm annoyed with the relations of power they set out and how they present sex and what they present as sexy. I think I'm very annoyed with the options they completely ignore.
Anita gets powers and protects people, mostly by killing a lot. She does work with the police, but her theory is that she can protect herself because of supernatural powers and the police can't so she should go around behind their backs killing stuff for their own good. And since she gets away with it a lot and gets boyfriends and powers and lots of neat stuff the books seem to agree with her. But wouldn't it be more helpful to get the police more training, so they have the same knowledge-power she does? And silver bullets like she uses that are what makes the difference in fights? Except in this 'verse, the way this writer sets it up, that wouldn't be enough. Because some are just born more powerful. Can't carry a spell of protection, have to be born with the power, or changed like vampires or werewolves. Power is an essence thing and can't be given to the masses.
Sod that.
And, okay, I'm still reading, and I probably wouldn't be this grumpy if the painkillers worked better, but it's a vision of the world and of power and also of sex that's just... nothing like what I would write and very little of a sort I want to read.
I was re-reading to see if I really wanted to sell the books after 9. At the moment I'm considering selling the first 9 too. I just don't like the bones of this 'verse.
I've been re-reading Anita Blake books after long enough I'm getting a new angle on them. Some of the things that made me give up on the series were there from way earlier on than I thought. And I think I thought they were a different genre than the author thought right from the start. Anita emphasises that she isn't a PI. That's why she has a best friend who is a PI, for contrast. So they aren't detective stories, even though they share a bunch of traits. Vampire politics are there from the get go. Porn is there from book 4. And it's Book 7, Burnt Offerings, where the crime offered for investigation at the start, the pyrokinetic, just kind of peters out without Anita doing anything. But if they're not detective stories what are they? Paranormal romance, with a backdrop of politics, kind of a rags to riches story with superpowers instead of money, and a lot of mucking about with supernatural power structures so she can both marry the boss to be on top (princess story) and be most personally powerful (US style success). We're there to watch Anita survive, stake things, and shag things. Emphasis things. It's creepy the way she consistently distinguishes between 'people' on the one hand and 'werewolves' and 'vampires' and 'monsters' on the other, even while dating them, and killing to protect them. Everyone should be people. It shouldn't be a status you can disqualify yourself from.
One theory says in PI stories the detective draws a line between the criminals and the cops, defining a course of right action that rejects parts of both groups. If Anita is doing that it don't really show. And romance novels with two guys to choose between usually have the good guy and the bad guy and making a choice. Anita really isn't doing that, she's shagging ever more people. So what is it she's choosing? To be a better monster. To be any kind of monster if it protects those people she designates as her own. But to remain willing to kill her own. The vampire politics and the werewolf politics does the same things as her, but the good guys are the only ones that show they want to protect as well as establish dominance. So it's like saying that murder, torture, all the rest, is all okay, as long as it's to save people. Even if you'd happily turn around and kill those same people.
How this connects to the strand of US mindset that leads to 24 justifying policies of torture I don't really want to think about.
Also, annoyingly, she spends waaaaay more time stressing about if shagging the wrong people, or too many people, will make her a whore and mess up her soul and mess up her faith and all, than she does thinking about how maybe actually torturing people is A Bad Thing. She'll happily use violence, but every book has her stressing about the sex. Yeesh.
But everyone she shags gives her more power. Actual supernatural powers, plus the power to command them to throw themselves into danger for her. And that's while she's still a human animator with raising zombies as her main power. Sex is power even more later on.
And it's not like it don't show from the start. Book one, vampire marks from the strip club pretty guy. Gain powerups.
But I'm not much interested.
Levelling up is not character development. Every book she gains a new superpower and has to learn how to deal with it. And it's always a surprise. Oh look, I can do which with the what now? Wow! Surprise! Magic made me do it!
She's always reacting to events, she doesn't have her own plan, and her goals seem to be limited to 'stay alive'.
When her own power is yet another of the things she's just reacting to all the time it gets really freaking annoying.
When sex is something that just sort of sneaks up on her and happens by accident it's creepy and annoying.
So basically Anita has issues, the books work through them by having her level up and accidentally kill stuff on accident and also accidentally do sex, and it gets really annoying.
If vampires are living with a kind of feudal structure they don't like, and America makes them citizens, could there not be a story in getting rid of the aristo structure and becoming democratic vampires? Isn't the point of democracies and the institutions thereof to make sure that everyone has the same rights and the strong can't just roll up and eat you and put you in coffins? How come being legal don't mean abiding by the laws? Anita is a vampire executioner for when they break human laws, but they aren't being protected by human laws, or living by them amongst themselves. Same with werewolves. It's gang violence with fur. Protecting their own by killing people who find out about them? These are the allies?? What makes the enemies so much the worse? What, they're not protecting themselves too?
... I think I'm annoyed with these books. I think I'm annoyed with the relations of power they set out and how they present sex and what they present as sexy. I think I'm very annoyed with the options they completely ignore.
Anita gets powers and protects people, mostly by killing a lot. She does work with the police, but her theory is that she can protect herself because of supernatural powers and the police can't so she should go around behind their backs killing stuff for their own good. And since she gets away with it a lot and gets boyfriends and powers and lots of neat stuff the books seem to agree with her. But wouldn't it be more helpful to get the police more training, so they have the same knowledge-power she does? And silver bullets like she uses that are what makes the difference in fights? Except in this 'verse, the way this writer sets it up, that wouldn't be enough. Because some are just born more powerful. Can't carry a spell of protection, have to be born with the power, or changed like vampires or werewolves. Power is an essence thing and can't be given to the masses.
Sod that.
And, okay, I'm still reading, and I probably wouldn't be this grumpy if the painkillers worked better, but it's a vision of the world and of power and also of sex that's just... nothing like what I would write and very little of a sort I want to read.
I was re-reading to see if I really wanted to sell the books after 9. At the moment I'm considering selling the first 9 too. I just don't like the bones of this 'verse.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-03 01:07 pm (UTC)Too bad, she had what could have been an interesting world if she'd been a better writer, or at least less self-indulgent. Assume the IMHO and all that, of course.