Books and breakfast
Jun. 19th, 2011 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethYesterday I read two Anita Blake books. Book 13 was 100% sex and worrying about pregnancy. If I wanted to read that kind of book I'd read ones with less vampires thanks. But book 14 and 15 seem to have rediscovered plot, albeit plot that happens as a vague background to sex and worrying about pregnancy.
I have previously read that one appeal of slash fic is that it tries to integrate relationships with work lives, when the work lives involve saving the world a lot. I like it in slash fic. But with slash we have a lot of canon to go back to if we miss the gen adventures. I like it much less well in a series where that isn't an option. Sitting around Talking About Your Feelings while so arse deep in alligators the room is full of bodyguards is implausible and frustrating on multiple levels. If we care about the plot we'd like to get on with it, if we care about the relationship we'd like them to get on with that, and while a few conversations to get things clear and clear the air would help, they're supposed to help with the getting on with things. If all they do is sit around, talk, and shag, the work/life/therapy balance is all wonk.
Also when reading for Jane Eyre I read Eagleton's theory that JE negotiates a compromise between middle class and upper class values in that JE works very hard, meritocratic middle class values, and is eventually rewarded by discovering what she was born to, wealth and good family, upper class good breeding type values. (At least I hope he said that, I just did an essay on that basis, but it were a whole book so I distil rather). I compared the Anita Blake books and there's some of that. Anita works hard when there's a plot to work at, and she turns out to be Super Special by realising what power she was born with. Her tendency to level up every book and discover a new power is, well, one of the reasons I quit buying them - leveling is not character development! And it means instead of just working with what we already know she spends every damn book exlploring a new power. Usually by shagging. But with the book series keeping on going and going there's starting to be a lot about the transformative power of love and sex. She shags dodgy guys and they start turning into the guys she'd want them to be. It turns out this is another way she's Super Special cause it's her secret vampire power. To mind whammy people into being more suitable boyfriends. But everyone is okay with this. Because she really loves them too! Except now when her boyfriend tries the same power on her it's Not Okay. The difference? *big shrug* It's okay when Anita does it?
The other crit bit was Politi about eroticising power inequalities, making the master/servant relationship hot, and making it all about how women (or other subordinate groups) aren't unhappy that there are power equalities per se, they just want to choose good masters. Then everyone would be happy! ... which is creepy. But the Anita Blake books are doing that in so many words. All the supernatural groups keep trying to join Anita and Jean-Claude cause they're looking for good masters. And it's all about sex. Apparently the vampires who get power from sex and eroticise their master/servant relationships are better masters than, say, the vampires who get power from fear. Because sex under mystical influence is better than fear for keeping people behaving. And again, there's times the book seems to think it's Not Okay, cause it states there's laws that make mind powers equivalent to date rape drugs, and times Anita is all OMG I used powers on you that's like rape, except every single time the people who have been whammied are all happy and cool with it. Like, it could be rape, but afterwards they decide that equivalent-to-drugging them was fine. I don't know if it's creepier for noticing it should be creepy.
Also the whole sex-is-power thing is weird enough, but lately it has evolved into sex-or-death, sex or other people die, sex or every vampire in the city dies, and sex now or we'll let people kill every last one of your kind later. That last is presented as ethical because by not having sex with her they leave every vampire to die. And then the book cake-and-eats-it by presenting it as a choice that will kill all the werelions but then, because the new werelion wants to be a better person for Anita, it doesn't work that way and the lions get to live. There's such a tangle of don't in there I don't know where to start. Like, sex doesn't work that way. Granted, there's a shortage of vampires and zombies in the real world, so why quibble? Well, because I like stories that chew over ethical conflicts and present the cost benefit on a set of solutions. If you change a biological basic like sex so instead of pleasure it's about survival, that changes the ethics big. But in creepy ways. Really, if someone doesn't want to have sex with you, there are no circumstances where sex-or-death applies, so they can just not have sex with you and it does not hurt you at all and there's no way no how you can pressure people to have sex on ethical grounds. That's sort of important. You can't say need sex on the same level as need food. It would change the whole ethical structure around sex. But these books have sex=food, and starving potentially kill large groups of people because one person won't get fed on. Reducing other people to food is creepy and making it their bad when they refuse is double creepy. And then the book looks at the thing where treating people as things would be bad and goes lalala she looooooves all of them they're not just food, sex makes her looooove them so it's not just using them, lalala happy now. It's just ... not right.
The parts of the story that are about protecting each other, keeping people alive, they are getting tangled with and taken over by this sex-or-death thing. So there's a lot of people swapping sex for protection now. And that's presented as a good thing.
And by the magic setup of the world, they can't just decide to live like regular humans in a regular democratic society. So it has set up something which necessarily involves a hierarchy where the one at the top keeps everyone else alive, and power trickles down from the top, and when the one at the top feeds on everyone else everyone gets stronger for it. It's like a really big lie in support of aristocracy.
I want to write urban fantasy where it is in fact possible to live as equals, where difference is because people learn stuff, where it's always possible to change. Where a human government can run things without these parallel above-the-law structures going on. Where people enforcing their will by killing people, or casually talking about killing people for giving an interview, would in fact be criminal and bad and wrong, and not sexy and lifesaving at all.
So, basically: Anita Blake books: big lies tied up with entirely too much sex.
... yes I'm going to read the next one. From the library. I'm not giving them money again.
Today I went and got breakfast at the supermarket. They'd had a very busy day, all the tables all full of plates and stuff. Lots of people there with their olders.
It's pretty easy to make me happy. Egg and beans and potato and I'm quite contented til I get hungry again.
... er, in a came home and complained about books kind of way.
I have previously read that one appeal of slash fic is that it tries to integrate relationships with work lives, when the work lives involve saving the world a lot. I like it in slash fic. But with slash we have a lot of canon to go back to if we miss the gen adventures. I like it much less well in a series where that isn't an option. Sitting around Talking About Your Feelings while so arse deep in alligators the room is full of bodyguards is implausible and frustrating on multiple levels. If we care about the plot we'd like to get on with it, if we care about the relationship we'd like them to get on with that, and while a few conversations to get things clear and clear the air would help, they're supposed to help with the getting on with things. If all they do is sit around, talk, and shag, the work/life/therapy balance is all wonk.
Also when reading for Jane Eyre I read Eagleton's theory that JE negotiates a compromise between middle class and upper class values in that JE works very hard, meritocratic middle class values, and is eventually rewarded by discovering what she was born to, wealth and good family, upper class good breeding type values. (At least I hope he said that, I just did an essay on that basis, but it were a whole book so I distil rather). I compared the Anita Blake books and there's some of that. Anita works hard when there's a plot to work at, and she turns out to be Super Special by realising what power she was born with. Her tendency to level up every book and discover a new power is, well, one of the reasons I quit buying them - leveling is not character development! And it means instead of just working with what we already know she spends every damn book exlploring a new power. Usually by shagging. But with the book series keeping on going and going there's starting to be a lot about the transformative power of love and sex. She shags dodgy guys and they start turning into the guys she'd want them to be. It turns out this is another way she's Super Special cause it's her secret vampire power. To mind whammy people into being more suitable boyfriends. But everyone is okay with this. Because she really loves them too! Except now when her boyfriend tries the same power on her it's Not Okay. The difference? *big shrug* It's okay when Anita does it?
The other crit bit was Politi about eroticising power inequalities, making the master/servant relationship hot, and making it all about how women (or other subordinate groups) aren't unhappy that there are power equalities per se, they just want to choose good masters. Then everyone would be happy! ... which is creepy. But the Anita Blake books are doing that in so many words. All the supernatural groups keep trying to join Anita and Jean-Claude cause they're looking for good masters. And it's all about sex. Apparently the vampires who get power from sex and eroticise their master/servant relationships are better masters than, say, the vampires who get power from fear. Because sex under mystical influence is better than fear for keeping people behaving. And again, there's times the book seems to think it's Not Okay, cause it states there's laws that make mind powers equivalent to date rape drugs, and times Anita is all OMG I used powers on you that's like rape, except every single time the people who have been whammied are all happy and cool with it. Like, it could be rape, but afterwards they decide that equivalent-to-drugging them was fine. I don't know if it's creepier for noticing it should be creepy.
Also the whole sex-is-power thing is weird enough, but lately it has evolved into sex-or-death, sex or other people die, sex or every vampire in the city dies, and sex now or we'll let people kill every last one of your kind later. That last is presented as ethical because by not having sex with her they leave every vampire to die. And then the book cake-and-eats-it by presenting it as a choice that will kill all the werelions but then, because the new werelion wants to be a better person for Anita, it doesn't work that way and the lions get to live. There's such a tangle of don't in there I don't know where to start. Like, sex doesn't work that way. Granted, there's a shortage of vampires and zombies in the real world, so why quibble? Well, because I like stories that chew over ethical conflicts and present the cost benefit on a set of solutions. If you change a biological basic like sex so instead of pleasure it's about survival, that changes the ethics big. But in creepy ways. Really, if someone doesn't want to have sex with you, there are no circumstances where sex-or-death applies, so they can just not have sex with you and it does not hurt you at all and there's no way no how you can pressure people to have sex on ethical grounds. That's sort of important. You can't say need sex on the same level as need food. It would change the whole ethical structure around sex. But these books have sex=food, and starving potentially kill large groups of people because one person won't get fed on. Reducing other people to food is creepy and making it their bad when they refuse is double creepy. And then the book looks at the thing where treating people as things would be bad and goes lalala she looooooves all of them they're not just food, sex makes her looooove them so it's not just using them, lalala happy now. It's just ... not right.
The parts of the story that are about protecting each other, keeping people alive, they are getting tangled with and taken over by this sex-or-death thing. So there's a lot of people swapping sex for protection now. And that's presented as a good thing.
And by the magic setup of the world, they can't just decide to live like regular humans in a regular democratic society. So it has set up something which necessarily involves a hierarchy where the one at the top keeps everyone else alive, and power trickles down from the top, and when the one at the top feeds on everyone else everyone gets stronger for it. It's like a really big lie in support of aristocracy.
I want to write urban fantasy where it is in fact possible to live as equals, where difference is because people learn stuff, where it's always possible to change. Where a human government can run things without these parallel above-the-law structures going on. Where people enforcing their will by killing people, or casually talking about killing people for giving an interview, would in fact be criminal and bad and wrong, and not sexy and lifesaving at all.
So, basically: Anita Blake books: big lies tied up with entirely too much sex.
... yes I'm going to read the next one. From the library. I'm not giving them money again.
Today I went and got breakfast at the supermarket. They'd had a very busy day, all the tables all full of plates and stuff. Lots of people there with their olders.
It's pretty easy to make me happy. Egg and beans and potato and I'm quite contented til I get hungry again.
... er, in a came home and complained about books kind of way.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-22 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-19 05:23 pm (UTC)Yes, exactly. Those books make me a bit ill, because the early ones had some possibility, and now they're just self-indulgent slop, in my humble opinion.
But I'll keep getting them from the library, for now at least. They're worth the 25 cent hold fee, but not much more.