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Jun. 19th, 2015 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI just finished reading Jim Butcher's Skin Game.
I've stopped liking Harry. It's all well and good someone pointing out how arrogant he is, but they pointed out the wrong things. They're like, you can't save everyone! They're not like, you kill a lot of people and you're a dick to women and think consent is sexy rather than absolutely necessary baseline. Most of how he thinks about women is lust and him feeling bad about lust. It's creepy.
The book also seems squarely on the side of Harry's choices, since the people who think his only flaw is thinking he could do more are the good guys and the ones that point out he killed a hell of a lot of people including some who were not in fact evil, those turn out to be bad guys. Ugh.
I've also had it with women who only get to be a bit competent in order to show how utterly badass men are when they outshine them. Competent women are going to end up either too injured to finish the fight or secretly evil. They screw up and men pick up and I've just had it with that.
Then there's the redemption thing. I really like the theory of the redemption thing. There's always a way out, god loves everyone, the knights are there to save people. Good. Great.
So maybe give them some chances to actually do that?
Because the book comes down on the side of badass violence every time and I'm beyond tired of it.
I never know if the strength of my reaction is justified.
It's not just one book at a time though. There are so many stories where the guy thinks he's treating women well by meeting minimum requirements, just about, mostly, ish. There are so many stories that are about men doing violence and then feeling really bad about it and having people tell him to stop feel bad because he had to do the thing. There are so many stories that set up the man doing violence with some kind of 'had no choice' scenario and then describe the violence in graphic detail. And there's entire genres that somehow take the characters away from the structures of civilisation like law courts and prisons, to justify just killing instead. It gives me the creeps.
It's got so I find it unfortunate that the books are well and engagingly written. I read it, I enjoyed it, I like a lot of the characters and the theory of what they're trying to do, but then I'm all 'hang on' about too many aspects.
On the plus side I remembered that before spending money on it this time, so I only read it from the library.
I've stopped liking Harry. It's all well and good someone pointing out how arrogant he is, but they pointed out the wrong things. They're like, you can't save everyone! They're not like, you kill a lot of people and you're a dick to women and think consent is sexy rather than absolutely necessary baseline. Most of how he thinks about women is lust and him feeling bad about lust. It's creepy.
The book also seems squarely on the side of Harry's choices, since the people who think his only flaw is thinking he could do more are the good guys and the ones that point out he killed a hell of a lot of people including some who were not in fact evil, those turn out to be bad guys. Ugh.
I've also had it with women who only get to be a bit competent in order to show how utterly badass men are when they outshine them. Competent women are going to end up either too injured to finish the fight or secretly evil. They screw up and men pick up and I've just had it with that.
Then there's the redemption thing. I really like the theory of the redemption thing. There's always a way out, god loves everyone, the knights are there to save people. Good. Great.
So maybe give them some chances to actually do that?
Because the book comes down on the side of badass violence every time and I'm beyond tired of it.
I never know if the strength of my reaction is justified.
It's not just one book at a time though. There are so many stories where the guy thinks he's treating women well by meeting minimum requirements, just about, mostly, ish. There are so many stories that are about men doing violence and then feeling really bad about it and having people tell him to stop feel bad because he had to do the thing. There are so many stories that set up the man doing violence with some kind of 'had no choice' scenario and then describe the violence in graphic detail. And there's entire genres that somehow take the characters away from the structures of civilisation like law courts and prisons, to justify just killing instead. It gives me the creeps.
It's got so I find it unfortunate that the books are well and engagingly written. I read it, I enjoyed it, I like a lot of the characters and the theory of what they're trying to do, but then I'm all 'hang on' about too many aspects.
On the plus side I remembered that before spending money on it this time, so I only read it from the library.