Things I Liked (And Didn't) About Flirt
Feb. 23rd, 2013 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratSince you all now know my love for Tori Amos, doesn't her song She's Your Cocaine sound like it was written about Anita's men?
She says control it
Then she says don't control it
Then she says you're controlling
The way she makes you crawl
I feel like theses lines are especially good for to Jean-Claude: And is it true that devils end up like you? Something safe for the picture frame. And is it true that devils end up like you? So tied up and You sign Prince of Darkness, try Squire of Dimness
I realize I have been lax in ratty updates as of late! Allow me to remedy that now. Firstly, I got a pair of lovely hammocks--one for Justin and Jenner, one for Sam and Blatz. Both pairs use theirs, but the girls are the ones who have really taken to it. Every time I look in their cage now, they're cuddled together in there! It's so cute! However, while the boys use theirs less, they've still managed to mess it up more with pee marking. Oh boys.
I also decided to weigh everyone on Dad's digital scale. The boy rats are all over a pound, but not two pounds. Ratsputin is the heaviest of the three because, while Justin is bigger due to being fat, Ratsputin has dense, solid muscle. Miss Blatz is about a pound, and itty bitty baby Sam is only half a pound! As for the mice, Joram doesn't even weigh a full ounce, Tiras is an ounce and a half, and Jabez....my precious portly Jabez is TWO AND A HALF OUNCES XD Bless his gluttonous little heart.
Speaking of Sam, we got her in November and she's still not any bigger. I'm starting to think she may be this size forever. I knew someone once with a female rat that was an adult but never got larger than teenager-size. Maybe Sam is just a runt? She's my little runt! <3
I'll be posting the first spork of Bullet tomorrow but, as with Skin Trade, here's a little commentary of mine on some general thoughts and criticisms (as well as good things, believe it or not!) for Flirt.
THINGS I LIKED
- There was zombie raising. It's about damn time we saw Anita back on her job (though I can forgive/understand how it didn't fit in to Skin Trade, and that it would have just slowed it down more)
- There was at least some violence, and one weapon did at least get used
- Someone thought to exploit the connection of Anita to some of her guys
- THE SHADOWS IN THE ZOMBIES EYES
- The plot stayed on track (except for that second chapter, the one with the scene that, ironically, LKH claims the whole novella sprang from)
- All the characters who appeared in the novel got used in some way. There was not a superfluous amount floating around like with Skin Trade where we had all those SWAT guys that never did anything besides get a name and a physical description. Even Natalie Zell functioned as an okay red herring, and, even more surprising, Ahsan had a role besides thinking Anita was hot (he was the one who told the harem about seeing Anita get into an SUV with two men)
THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE besides the obvious about rape and murder and taking away the free will of another human being forever
-There was not enough focus on the zombie raising itself. See DWG's excellent comment here on how that could have been improved upon
http://a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com/11483.html
- The zombies with whatever was in their eyes would have been great if they stuck around and presented an oh-shit problem. Like let's say the novella went as it did up until that point, and then the real enemy turns out to be this. You could make it into a full novel from that, with the first half being what was Flirt, and the second half being this.
- I never felt Anita was in any actual danger. She had an edge over these guys before they even got her in the car. The 'threat' that they posed felt laughable, not serious or real or dangerous in any way.
- Which brings me to the incompetent, nonthreatening bad guys. Long story short, they sucked. You read the sporks, I don't need to tell you how and why (and then the only one who was competent at all, Ellen, was treated as if she was the weak link instead, ugggh)
- Anita was unlikeable as always. Not just in terms of the problematic issues around misogyny and rape and such, but just in that she's not a person I can see any reason to root for or be invested in in this novel. Nothing about her really interested me (having a lot of powers does NOT make you an interesting person) nor evoked my sympathy (the attempt with the mean grandma memories just irritated me instead, it was too transparent and readers do NOT like seeing the strings when the author is trying to manipulate them). She also didn't impress me either; nothing she did was remarkably clever or brave or even funny. She knew the way to win from the start because it was obvious as all fuck, she didn't need any courage to bang a guy she already had her metaphysical claws in, and the only time she could be called resourceful (using the zombies on Tony) it was in a way that was not needed at all. If a protagonist doesn't interest me, impress me, and/or have my sympathy/empathy so that I root for them, why the fuck should I keep reading about them? Besides to snark, I mean.
- Besides just being unlikeable, which would simply leave her bland and boring, she was dislikeable too. Really dislikeable. Even without all the bigotry and sociopathic shit, she's just generally nasty and self-absorbed, and not in an interesting or entertaining way. And she's constantly validated for it by other characters and the narrative/world itself. That's not just someone I have no interest in reading about, that's someone I'm actively against reading about. Except, again, for snark of course.
- Where are Domino and Crispin? It's iffy enough that none of the other sweeties are around really (or are even mentioned as existing at all) given their absurd number and the fact they're almost all local, but those two guys in particular were just added to the St. Louis residential cast and we know very little about them. It would have been good idea to give them focus for fans who are interested in them as new additions.
- Her win felt way too complete for me. She bests the bad guys by a long shot, her sweeties are all just fine, and she gets a new harem member. In a good story, the fact that she enslaved a man to save people who it turns out were fine all along could have been a great twist, one that would hurt her so bad, wrench her with guilt, etc. It would be an incredible cost on her soul. Instead though, she just decides literally overnight that she "can live with it". She was cost nothing. She lost nothing. She only gained. Generally speaking, any real win should cost a protagonist something, especially in a series that is supposed to be grim, gritty, blood-soaked, high-stakes, and "high body count" like this one.
- I just don't feel that she earned this victory. The way that she won was handed to her on a platter. The men were putty in her hands from the start because of her lioness (versus anything intelligent or at least deliberate that she actually did) and she knew it, so thinking up and executing the idea of seduction isn't something particularly clever or innovative on her part, especially since she was told BY THEM to fuck Nicky anyway, so even if she hadn't thought of seduction already she still would have ended up doing it and thus still probably winning by it. She never did anything to change her situation or try to help anyone else (like the woman meant to be the human sacrifice that SHE FORGOT ABOUT WTF); she just went along with everything and it worked out not because of her own guts, brains, and resourcefulness, but because her magic vagina eats the minds of men automatically (she did make the deliberate decision to MAKE THAT EVEN WORSE THOUGH by making him a Bride versus a one-time rolling...how is it the only time she does anything, it's something terrible?). The one time that she actually took what skills she had and thought of a way to deliberately turn it against her enemies in this situation was the zombies with Tony, and that...you know my rant on why that was totally needless, made no sense, and was Not Heroic in the slightest.
- The seduction solution made for a boring story, and she didn't even actually escape due to it (or escape at all, she just did the job) so it ended up not doing her any good. Seriously, she could have done the same damn thing (raise zombies, turn them on Tony) and not have touched Nicky, let alone enslaved him.
- Also, seduction is what she did with Vittorio too. Come to think of it, the bad guy meeting his end by being torn apart alive by a horde of supernatural creatures (Vittorio by the weretigers, Tony by the zombies) was in both books too. That's less blatantly repetitive than the Tony/Gaynor parallels, so I don't mind the two endings existing in the same series at all, I just think they should have been spaced out between books more instead of one after the other.
- That afterword. The comics. 'Nuff said.
She says control it
Then she says don't control it
Then she says you're controlling
The way she makes you crawl
I feel like theses lines are especially good for to Jean-Claude: And is it true that devils end up like you? Something safe for the picture frame. And is it true that devils end up like you? So tied up and You sign Prince of Darkness, try Squire of Dimness
I realize I have been lax in ratty updates as of late! Allow me to remedy that now. Firstly, I got a pair of lovely hammocks--one for Justin and Jenner, one for Sam and Blatz. Both pairs use theirs, but the girls are the ones who have really taken to it. Every time I look in their cage now, they're cuddled together in there! It's so cute! However, while the boys use theirs less, they've still managed to mess it up more with pee marking. Oh boys.
I also decided to weigh everyone on Dad's digital scale. The boy rats are all over a pound, but not two pounds. Ratsputin is the heaviest of the three because, while Justin is bigger due to being fat, Ratsputin has dense, solid muscle. Miss Blatz is about a pound, and itty bitty baby Sam is only half a pound! As for the mice, Joram doesn't even weigh a full ounce, Tiras is an ounce and a half, and Jabez....my precious portly Jabez is TWO AND A HALF OUNCES XD Bless his gluttonous little heart.
Speaking of Sam, we got her in November and she's still not any bigger. I'm starting to think she may be this size forever. I knew someone once with a female rat that was an adult but never got larger than teenager-size. Maybe Sam is just a runt? She's my little runt! <3
I'll be posting the first spork of Bullet tomorrow but, as with Skin Trade, here's a little commentary of mine on some general thoughts and criticisms (as well as good things, believe it or not!) for Flirt.
THINGS I LIKED
- There was zombie raising. It's about damn time we saw Anita back on her job (though I can forgive/understand how it didn't fit in to Skin Trade, and that it would have just slowed it down more)
- There was at least some violence, and one weapon did at least get used
- Someone thought to exploit the connection of Anita to some of her guys
- THE SHADOWS IN THE ZOMBIES EYES
- The plot stayed on track (except for that second chapter, the one with the scene that, ironically, LKH claims the whole novella sprang from)
- All the characters who appeared in the novel got used in some way. There was not a superfluous amount floating around like with Skin Trade where we had all those SWAT guys that never did anything besides get a name and a physical description. Even Natalie Zell functioned as an okay red herring, and, even more surprising, Ahsan had a role besides thinking Anita was hot (he was the one who told the harem about seeing Anita get into an SUV with two men)
THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE besides the obvious about rape and murder and taking away the free will of another human being forever
-There was not enough focus on the zombie raising itself. See DWG's excellent comment here on how that could have been improved upon
http://a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com/11483.html
- The zombies with whatever was in their eyes would have been great if they stuck around and presented an oh-shit problem. Like let's say the novella went as it did up until that point, and then the real enemy turns out to be this. You could make it into a full novel from that, with the first half being what was Flirt, and the second half being this.
- I never felt Anita was in any actual danger. She had an edge over these guys before they even got her in the car. The 'threat' that they posed felt laughable, not serious or real or dangerous in any way.
- Which brings me to the incompetent, nonthreatening bad guys. Long story short, they sucked. You read the sporks, I don't need to tell you how and why (and then the only one who was competent at all, Ellen, was treated as if she was the weak link instead, ugggh)
- Anita was unlikeable as always. Not just in terms of the problematic issues around misogyny and rape and such, but just in that she's not a person I can see any reason to root for or be invested in in this novel. Nothing about her really interested me (having a lot of powers does NOT make you an interesting person) nor evoked my sympathy (the attempt with the mean grandma memories just irritated me instead, it was too transparent and readers do NOT like seeing the strings when the author is trying to manipulate them). She also didn't impress me either; nothing she did was remarkably clever or brave or even funny. She knew the way to win from the start because it was obvious as all fuck, she didn't need any courage to bang a guy she already had her metaphysical claws in, and the only time she could be called resourceful (using the zombies on Tony) it was in a way that was not needed at all. If a protagonist doesn't interest me, impress me, and/or have my sympathy/empathy so that I root for them, why the fuck should I keep reading about them? Besides to snark, I mean.
- Besides just being unlikeable, which would simply leave her bland and boring, she was dislikeable too. Really dislikeable. Even without all the bigotry and sociopathic shit, she's just generally nasty and self-absorbed, and not in an interesting or entertaining way. And she's constantly validated for it by other characters and the narrative/world itself. That's not just someone I have no interest in reading about, that's someone I'm actively against reading about. Except, again, for snark of course.
- Where are Domino and Crispin? It's iffy enough that none of the other sweeties are around really (or are even mentioned as existing at all) given their absurd number and the fact they're almost all local, but those two guys in particular were just added to the St. Louis residential cast and we know very little about them. It would have been good idea to give them focus for fans who are interested in them as new additions.
- Her win felt way too complete for me. She bests the bad guys by a long shot, her sweeties are all just fine, and she gets a new harem member. In a good story, the fact that she enslaved a man to save people who it turns out were fine all along could have been a great twist, one that would hurt her so bad, wrench her with guilt, etc. It would be an incredible cost on her soul. Instead though, she just decides literally overnight that she "can live with it". She was cost nothing. She lost nothing. She only gained. Generally speaking, any real win should cost a protagonist something, especially in a series that is supposed to be grim, gritty, blood-soaked, high-stakes, and "high body count" like this one.
- I just don't feel that she earned this victory. The way that she won was handed to her on a platter. The men were putty in her hands from the start because of her lioness (versus anything intelligent or at least deliberate that she actually did) and she knew it, so thinking up and executing the idea of seduction isn't something particularly clever or innovative on her part, especially since she was told BY THEM to fuck Nicky anyway, so even if she hadn't thought of seduction already she still would have ended up doing it and thus still probably winning by it. She never did anything to change her situation or try to help anyone else (like the woman meant to be the human sacrifice that SHE FORGOT ABOUT WTF); she just went along with everything and it worked out not because of her own guts, brains, and resourcefulness, but because her magic vagina eats the minds of men automatically (she did make the deliberate decision to MAKE THAT EVEN WORSE THOUGH by making him a Bride versus a one-time rolling...how is it the only time she does anything, it's something terrible?). The one time that she actually took what skills she had and thought of a way to deliberately turn it against her enemies in this situation was the zombies with Tony, and that...you know my rant on why that was totally needless, made no sense, and was Not Heroic in the slightest.
- The seduction solution made for a boring story, and she didn't even actually escape due to it (or escape at all, she just did the job) so it ended up not doing her any good. Seriously, she could have done the same damn thing (raise zombies, turn them on Tony) and not have touched Nicky, let alone enslaved him.
- Also, seduction is what she did with Vittorio too. Come to think of it, the bad guy meeting his end by being torn apart alive by a horde of supernatural creatures (Vittorio by the weretigers, Tony by the zombies) was in both books too. That's less blatantly repetitive than the Tony/Gaynor parallels, so I don't mind the two endings existing in the same series at all, I just think they should have been spaced out between books more instead of one after the other.
- That afterword. The comics. 'Nuff said.
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no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 02:55 am (UTC)Really, what ruins any sense of conflict or struggle for Anita is that everything’s given to her on a platter and her world revolves around her. All of the people that she insults are eventually shown to be evil or despicable, so her petty spite is justified by the narrative and she never has to admit that she was wrong or apologize to anyone. She collects harem members like Pokémon cards, so any romantic tension is rendered nonexistent. And she becomes so powerful that she never has to be held accountable for anything.
All of that would be annoying in a character that was honestly nice. With Anita, it’s infuriating, because she is such a horrible person. What would be unsettling in a decent or neutral character becomes absolutely terrifying when it comes to Anita because she proves how monstrous a person can become when there are no checks on their behavior. Not only is Anita despicable, she’s self-righteous, and both of those traits combined form a very ugly mix of entitlement and narcissism that hardly anyone can sympathize with.