BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER EIGHT, PART TWO
Apr. 4th, 2015 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratI regret to inform you all that, since my previous post, my last rat, Nikolai, passed away. It was something of a surprise; he was old, but not on-his-deathbed old. However, he came down with a sudden respiratory thing, which can often kill rodents before anything can be down. Luckily, as with Blatz and Sam and Scurvy, I got to hold him in his final hours and be with him as he passed.
I still have the hamsters, Oatmeal and Boz, but I don't plan to get any more rats for awhile after this. Losing Blatz just hurt me too much.
Now, on to the spork, which we meet Lynelle, and if she ends up not relevant to the story (which, after having read The Witching Hour and a biography of everyone in the Mayfair family in the middle of it, I can see being the case) I'm gonna be mad
BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER EIGHT, PART TWO
When Quinn is ten ("in my tenth year" because he's a pretentious little fuck) he gets a new tutor who is a "nonpareil" named Lynelle Springer. She "played the piano exquisitely, spoke several foreign languages, and 'adored' Goblin and often talked to him quite independently of me." Considering that her musical and linguistic abilities are what he mentions first, is that part of why he prefers her over other tutors? Odd thing for a kid to care about; her having his approval because of her belief in Goblin makes more sense to me. Also, the implication the other teachers couldn't play piano or speak more than English is odd to me, because frankly those sound like the most basic of qualifications for the type of tutor a rich, old-fashioned family would even consider hiring for their spoiled special boy.
Quinn then tells us that Lynelle didn't actually believe in Goblin that and "I knew it was a game" but that Goblin didn't realize that and being spoken to by her made him very happy. I imagine that, as a sentient being aware of everyone else around you and apparently of a child-level intellect, being constantly ignored and invisible is probably super-frustrating...that alone actually gives me more sympathy for Goblin than I so far have for Quinn.
Quinn then tells us what Lynelle looks like (tall, slender, curly brown hair pinned back from her face), the name of the perfume she wore (Shalimar---why would a kid know/ask/remember that?), her romantic style of dressing, and that her favorite color was sky blue. He then says she wore very high heels and that she had "extremely full breasts and a tiny waist."
.....wasn't Quinn TEN? I mean....I guess if she stuck around for a few years, he'd hit puberty, and then he'd remember that for sure, assuming he's bi and not gay...but honestly, I still know nothing about Lynelle as a person, so it's a little weird to know about her tits, especially on the first page she's talked about. Nice priorities, Quinn.
He tells us how Lynelle loved Blackwood Manor and danced in the big rooms and was "most gracious" with the guests and how, of course, she proclaimed our precious Quinn to be a "rare intellect." I keep hearing about how adults think Quinn is so fucking smart but I haven't seen jackshit from him, either as a child or in the present, to indicate that. I hate informed traits in general, but one of the ones I hate most is when we're informed the protagonist is "smart" and never shown how and in what way. Intelligence is a huge spectrum that takes so many forms, just telling me a character is "intelligent" means nothing to me if I'm not seeing just what their type of intelligence is. He certainly has a vocabulary on him as an adult, I'll grant him that, but that actually comes off as more obnoxious than not to me because it just feels very deliberately used the way it's written, like Rice or Quinn is just really trying to push how smart and old-timey he is. It just doesn't read as natural to me, and anyway, even if it did, 80-buck words don't actually make you smart or interesting at all.
"My world was very much influenced and punctuated by embraces and kisses, and Lynelle fell into this style with no inhibition at all."
....ok, this is in 2002, Quinn is 22, so this would be 1990...wasn't that a little odd by then? Maybe not as worrisome as today, but I dunno, I feel like a ten year old and his adult teacher hugging and kissing a lot would have raised some eyebrows...then again maybe not, since he says that this was the norm at Blackwood Manor and everyone in his family seems weird except maybe Patsy.
Other tidbits include that Lynelle talked so fast that Sweetheart and Pops sometimes couldn't understand her, Aunt Queen was paying her three times what the other teachers had been paid (shit, no wonder she humors Quinn) because they'd met in an English castle, and Pops and Sweetheart are kind of suspicious of her because "she had six young children, that she had been a French teacher, that she had returned to college to make up a pre-medical degree, that she was scientific genius of sorts as well as a sometime concert pianist"
...why would any of this make them suspicious? Are they hardcore anti-intellectuals? Is it the French thing? The having kids of her own part, maybe? Because that part does throw me off, both because firstly who's watching those kids if she's living at Blackwood teaching Quinn, and secondly how the hell did she pump out six children and still have that itty bitty waist and all? I guess they could be adopted, and maybe her husband or partner looks after them (since she doesn't come off to me as sounding old enough to have adult children)....honestly, they're the least unbelievable thing on this list. What is this woman doing just being a tutor? I guess maybe she loves it that much, but WOW. And yet while I know how pretty she was and how big her tits were and how accomplished and brilliant she is, I still don't know jack about her personally or why I should give a shit. Even Quinn's teacher is a 2D Mary Sue!
Ah, ok, she wasn't living at the manor, she came for four hours an evening five days a week and "within a matter of a month she conquered everybody on Blackwood Farm with her energy, her charm, her optimism, and her effervescence, and she positively altered the course of my life."
Okay, that last bit there is FINALLY something interesting that sounds like it might actually be RELEVANT and WORTH taking a break from the very intriguing story of a bloodthirsty doppelganger that feeds on its vampire host. But we're not told how she altered it. No, first we have to be told how Lynelle taught Quinn to phonetically read big words, about grammar and arithmetic and geography and history and YOU KNOW I THINK I COULD HAVE GUESSED SHE TAUGHT HIM BASIC SCHOOL SUBJECTS BY VIRTUE OF THAT BEING HER FUCKING JOB, YOU KNOW and how they watched French movies and how "most great men" like Napoleon and Henry VIII were "insane" and how she had lots of videos and documentaries to show him (apparently this makes her "irrepressibly resourceful" even though that's done even in public schools as routine) and how she persuaded Pops to get Quinn a giant-sized TV for educational purposes.
We then get a list of every movie she showed him and why, such as The Red Shoes "which ignited me with fire to be around people of grace and culture" and for some reason he feels compelled to tell us about who played who in each one as well, like how "Immortal Beloved, in which Gary Oldman plays Beethoven to such perfection that every time we watch it I cried" BUT COCK-FIGHTS AND KILLING WOMEN IS A-OKAY "Then there was Amadeus with Tom Hulce as Mozart and F. Murrary Abraham as Salieri, a masterpiece of a film that left me breathless."
....oh, my god. This is the most boring, irrelevant shit. This doesn't advance the plot, and it doesn't give insight into Quinn's character. The books and movies that a character likes *can* be used to show things about them, but this is nothing but a prattling list of things that either Rice herself likes or that she thinks is "cultured" and Quinn shallowly gushing about it in the most stilted, unnatural way of talking I have ever seen. Not even fancy big-vocab people talk about movies like this, ok? He sounds like someone trying to write a film review and not being very good at it. He doesn't say what he liked about the movies, just that they were classy or moving or starred such and so who did an amazing performance, but there's nothing in there about WHY he thinks so. Well, except for two, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman, which move him so much he's put into actual physical pain by it, so much so that he cries out....unfortunately, the reason he gives for this pain is extremely shallow:
"so lofty, so exalted was their world"
So...because the people in those movies are rich and fancy. And just in case you're wondering if maybe he means something else, no, because he tells us Lynelle's response when he cried out in pain was to tell him that
"Don't you understand, Quinn? You live in a gorgeous house and you're eccentric and gifted like the people in these films. Aunt Queen keeps inviting you to meet her in Europe, and you won't do it. That's wrong, Quinn. Don't make your world small."
So that's what moves Quinn so emotionally as to cause him real pain: rich people being rich. You know, if he was growing up poor, I'd understand that. The fantasy world of the rich, especially in film, would represent so much more for a poor person, I'm sure, and I would NOT sneer at that at all; it would make sense to me, and it would move me in turn. But for someone already living that life, who is already stupidly wealthy and surrounded by people who cater to him, this comes off as both sickening and bizarre.
But the issue isn't "Quinn, wtf", it's apparently that Quinn had no idea that Aunt Queen wanted him to come to Europe with her, and all this time his grandparents had been refusing her on it and not telling him about it. Gosh, what trauma, what betrayal, what hardship poor little Quinn has undergone!
Look, I have no problem with protagonists who are rich, sheltered, spoiled, and/or who have had easy lives. They can still be interesting people, have interesting journeys, etc., and they've certainly got room to grow, and I very much dislike the trope that anyone from an upper-class background must be a vain callous snob or that a character can only be interesting if their past is full of tragedy......what I have a problem with is being asked to see shit like "not getting to go with my aunt to Europe" as something I should give a shit about. Quinn's only actual problems are that he's a spoiled, self-centered, obnoxious, classist little fuck! And I could be down with that if it were just ACKNOWLEDGED as a character flaw, but honestly, all of Anne Rice's previous books have given me the impression she's in love with rich people as a concept, so I'm not hopeful that this bullshit is gonna get called out by the text. Seriously though, fucking physical pain because, oh, these people are gorgeous and rich and amazing like me but they also get to travel and experience culture? THAT'S what I'm expected to want to read about instead of the whole current problem with Goblin being out for blood? FOR REAL?!
Quinn asks Lynelle to teach him to be a person worthy of going to Europe with Aunt Queen, Lynelle says it'll be easy, Quinn spends the rest of the page continuing to list all the things she taught him and how "I was in heaven with Lynelle." Luckily things get interesting when Lynelle gets him a computer and uses Quinn to type words, and Quinn says that later Goblin would learn to make the words appear without needing Quinn to type them, like he did a few chapters ago. Unfortunately, after this intriguing tidbit, we go back to hearing all the things he did with Lynelle, like exploring the swamp where she got scared by a snake and her taking him to New Orleans for museums and aquariums and mass. Interestingly, she educated him for his First Communion and his Confirmation. I guess presumably his grandparents asked for her to do this? I know that's certainly not something that would be done in public schools, but private tutors are surely another matter.
Anyway, we also have to hear all about what church this was at and what days he had these events, and the only relevance is that Quinn, learning that the saints had visions of angels, wondered if Goblin might be from Hell since he's not an angel. He never gets the guts to ask a priest about Goblin, but Lynelle says no and asks if Goblin ever puts him up to evil. When he says no, she says therefore he doesn't need to ask a priest about him, since he has no connection with sin.
"I think, all in all, the six years I had with Lynelle were the happiest in my life." Okay so she was with him from ten to sixteen, I can understand him noticing her tits then. Still shitty of him to mention those before almost anything else.
Even though Quinn previously says his grandparents were suspicious of her, he now says Pops liked Lynelle; I guess he's among the "everybody" she won over in a month. More interesting to me, though, is her relationship with Patsy. In fact, it's the only interesting thing in this section thus far.
"Even Patsy was drawn to Lynelle, and joined us for some of our adventures" and Quinns "most poignant memory" of this is "the shock of Lynelle when Patsy cursed at me to stop talking to that disgusting ghost."
Quinn says that "Lynelle softened and intimidated Patsy" and that, now as he looks back as an adult, he sees that Lynelle's respect for Quinn and Goblin inclined Patsy to respect him more as well, that Patsy never really saw him as "the person I was" until Lynelle drew her attention to him. This is odd, because I thought that they'd worked things out years ago, in that scene after Pops and her got into the big fight, but apparently it's now according to Quinn that "a vague interest substituted for the condescending and arrogant pity--"You poor sweet darlin'--that Patsy had felt before." Shit, she can't do anything right, can she? When she ignored or spoke ill to Quinn, he complains about it, but when she said he was cute in previous chapters he complained about that too, and now when she shows him sympathy---a kid being raised by his grandparents with no friends and apparently a little whack in the head to all appearances---she's arrogant. Gawd. I think I'm a little biased towards Patsy just because Quinn hates her so much, but the fact is that her flaws and failings (and the textual acknowledgements of them as such) have actually made her the most human (and thus the most interesting and likeable) character to me so far. Sorry, Anne Rice, but I can't connect with your perfect brilliant Lynelle who just automatically accepts all of Quinn's weirdness and thinks he's great and perfect and is so great and perfect herself. Now, this is all from Quinn's POV, and Rice has showed in the past she's capable of understanding character's can be wrong in that, so if this turns out to be a case of that, all my apologies, but until then...
Quinn lists all the movies they watch with Patsy and the genres and the actors and who liked what best, and that's pretty boring, but then he says something interesting again about Lynelle and Patsy:
"Patsy felt stupid around Lynelle, and for that reason the connection petered away and at one point threatened to break. Patsy wouldn't stay around anyone who made her feel stupid, and she didn't have an open mind with which to learn."
Again, he just can't help getting a slam in there on her, huh? But you know what, I get this. Lynelle would probably make just about anyone feel stupid, and I get the feeling that Patsy definitely doesn't have even a college education, might even be a high-school drop-out, and unfortunately, intelligence tends to be thought of as directly tied to education level in our culture. I can definitely see how Lynelle would "intimidate" her just by this alone, especially since Pops probably just sees her as a dumb slut and treats her as such, to say nothing of how Lynelle is beloved by everyone and connects with Quinn and seems to have a lot of classist attitudes that Patsy, with her experience from Pops, might be wary of lest Lynelle also think her "trashy" like he does. And she might be wrong in this suspicion (I'm sure she is, since Lynelle is so perfect) but the fact it's there, the idea that she might break off a friendship with someone because they make her feel dumb, of feeling bad about her flaws and having insecurities and wrongly pushing someone away because of it, is so human to me. Once again, I think I'm meant to be judging her, but instead I sympathize.
As for Lynnelle, she tells Patsy she likes her music, asks if she and Quinn can come listen, and praises her for what she's doing with her current "one-man-band" a 'friend' of Patsy's (get it, friend is in quotes cuz she's banging him, lol Patsy is a skank SEE SEE SEE SHE'S BAD) named Seymour who does harmonica and drums. "Seymour was an opportunistic jerk, or so I thought at the time. Fate had punishment in store for Seymour." Of course it did, as I'm sure happens to anyone you dislike, Quinn. We don't learn what happened to Seymour yet, but we're told about Lynelle and Quinn going to concerts in the garage, with Quinn sure to mention how Lynelle liked it more than him, and how surprised and happy Patsy was that Lynelle thought well of her music. Well, I'm glad for her, about time someone around Blackwood Farm started supporting her creativity.
Of course, she might not actually, because Quinn then tells us that this was all "deliberate design" on Lynelle's part because she'd noticed how Patsy "was afraid of her and backing off from us" Oh well, I guess her heart was in the right place, that she did this either to remain friends with Patsy herself or to try to make a better connection between Quinn and his bio-mother. Not really her business, but still well-intentioned.
Quinn tells us about going down to Missispi with Lynelle to see Patsy perform at a country jamboree, and though he first makes mention of her teased hair and heavy makeup and how "plastic pretty" she looks, he then admits that her singing is very good, that the crowd went wild for her, and that he remember thinking that "her life wasn't in vain." Wow, how generous of you, Quinn. Nice to know that even though you were barely in your own double digits, you'd been judging her life as being just that all this time. What a dislikeable little shit of a kid you were. Hey, Quinn, what have you grown up to do with your life? There's been no mention of a job. At least Patsy had talent and drive and the ability to pay her own bills without being pampered by Pops.
.....sorry, I just really cannot stand this, I cannot stand obnoxious spoiled everyone-loves-me Quinn constantly shitting on someone who is trying to make their own way in the world, who stood up to her asshole father to do what she really wants to do and is clearly good at it, and who is constantly disliked by everyone just because, oh, she's trashy and plays country music and had a baby when she was sixteen and worse yet, had the maturity to recognize she couldn't take care of that child and thus let someone who could do it instead of becoming an unfit mother at Quinn's expense, how dare she. It's really not cool that she yells at Quinn about Goblin, I grant, but that's really the only thing I think she's done wrong so far...as opposed to Quinn, who has thus far shown himself to be a huge asshole both as a child and as an adult.
Speaking of, immediately after this grudging compliment comes: "Sure, Patsy was a hit with the yokels, but I had Beethoven's Ninth."
...yeah, you're a fucking insufferable little snob, Quinn. And from this he concludes that "I didn't need Patsy. I'm not sure I've ever needed Patsy." Oh, okay, so all her potential value to you was entertainment. Up until now, I held out hope that his constant dumping on her was due to feeling rejected by the fact she gave him to his grandparents to raise, that he felt she'd chosen her band over him, something like that, and not just that he was peeved she didn't worship the ground he walked like everyone else, but I guess I was wrong and he's not actually got any issue but that. THANKS FOR CLEARING THAT UP, QUINN!
To tide you over till my next update, whenever than may be...first Anne Rice, then LKH, and now I find out about this? What *is* it with vampire authors?!
http://forthegothicheroine.tumblr.com/post/115447092891/can-you-tell-me-more-about-the-misogyny-in-the
And now...to help you get over all the awful...Nikolai pics!
I still have the hamsters, Oatmeal and Boz, but I don't plan to get any more rats for awhile after this. Losing Blatz just hurt me too much.
Now, on to the spork, which we meet Lynelle, and if she ends up not relevant to the story (which, after having read The Witching Hour and a biography of everyone in the Mayfair family in the middle of it, I can see being the case) I'm gonna be mad
BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER EIGHT, PART TWO
When Quinn is ten ("in my tenth year" because he's a pretentious little fuck) he gets a new tutor who is a "nonpareil" named Lynelle Springer. She "played the piano exquisitely, spoke several foreign languages, and 'adored' Goblin and often talked to him quite independently of me." Considering that her musical and linguistic abilities are what he mentions first, is that part of why he prefers her over other tutors? Odd thing for a kid to care about; her having his approval because of her belief in Goblin makes more sense to me. Also, the implication the other teachers couldn't play piano or speak more than English is odd to me, because frankly those sound like the most basic of qualifications for the type of tutor a rich, old-fashioned family would even consider hiring for their spoiled special boy.
Quinn then tells us that Lynelle didn't actually believe in Goblin that and "I knew it was a game" but that Goblin didn't realize that and being spoken to by her made him very happy. I imagine that, as a sentient being aware of everyone else around you and apparently of a child-level intellect, being constantly ignored and invisible is probably super-frustrating...that alone actually gives me more sympathy for Goblin than I so far have for Quinn.
Quinn then tells us what Lynelle looks like (tall, slender, curly brown hair pinned back from her face), the name of the perfume she wore (Shalimar---why would a kid know/ask/remember that?), her romantic style of dressing, and that her favorite color was sky blue. He then says she wore very high heels and that she had "extremely full breasts and a tiny waist."
.....wasn't Quinn TEN? I mean....I guess if she stuck around for a few years, he'd hit puberty, and then he'd remember that for sure, assuming he's bi and not gay...but honestly, I still know nothing about Lynelle as a person, so it's a little weird to know about her tits, especially on the first page she's talked about. Nice priorities, Quinn.
He tells us how Lynelle loved Blackwood Manor and danced in the big rooms and was "most gracious" with the guests and how, of course, she proclaimed our precious Quinn to be a "rare intellect." I keep hearing about how adults think Quinn is so fucking smart but I haven't seen jackshit from him, either as a child or in the present, to indicate that. I hate informed traits in general, but one of the ones I hate most is when we're informed the protagonist is "smart" and never shown how and in what way. Intelligence is a huge spectrum that takes so many forms, just telling me a character is "intelligent" means nothing to me if I'm not seeing just what their type of intelligence is. He certainly has a vocabulary on him as an adult, I'll grant him that, but that actually comes off as more obnoxious than not to me because it just feels very deliberately used the way it's written, like Rice or Quinn is just really trying to push how smart and old-timey he is. It just doesn't read as natural to me, and anyway, even if it did, 80-buck words don't actually make you smart or interesting at all.
"My world was very much influenced and punctuated by embraces and kisses, and Lynelle fell into this style with no inhibition at all."
....ok, this is in 2002, Quinn is 22, so this would be 1990...wasn't that a little odd by then? Maybe not as worrisome as today, but I dunno, I feel like a ten year old and his adult teacher hugging and kissing a lot would have raised some eyebrows...then again maybe not, since he says that this was the norm at Blackwood Manor and everyone in his family seems weird except maybe Patsy.
Other tidbits include that Lynelle talked so fast that Sweetheart and Pops sometimes couldn't understand her, Aunt Queen was paying her three times what the other teachers had been paid (shit, no wonder she humors Quinn) because they'd met in an English castle, and Pops and Sweetheart are kind of suspicious of her because "she had six young children, that she had been a French teacher, that she had returned to college to make up a pre-medical degree, that she was scientific genius of sorts as well as a sometime concert pianist"
...why would any of this make them suspicious? Are they hardcore anti-intellectuals? Is it the French thing? The having kids of her own part, maybe? Because that part does throw me off, both because firstly who's watching those kids if she's living at Blackwood teaching Quinn, and secondly how the hell did she pump out six children and still have that itty bitty waist and all? I guess they could be adopted, and maybe her husband or partner looks after them (since she doesn't come off to me as sounding old enough to have adult children)....honestly, they're the least unbelievable thing on this list. What is this woman doing just being a tutor? I guess maybe she loves it that much, but WOW. And yet while I know how pretty she was and how big her tits were and how accomplished and brilliant she is, I still don't know jack about her personally or why I should give a shit. Even Quinn's teacher is a 2D Mary Sue!
Ah, ok, she wasn't living at the manor, she came for four hours an evening five days a week and "within a matter of a month she conquered everybody on Blackwood Farm with her energy, her charm, her optimism, and her effervescence, and she positively altered the course of my life."
Okay, that last bit there is FINALLY something interesting that sounds like it might actually be RELEVANT and WORTH taking a break from the very intriguing story of a bloodthirsty doppelganger that feeds on its vampire host. But we're not told how she altered it. No, first we have to be told how Lynelle taught Quinn to phonetically read big words, about grammar and arithmetic and geography and history and YOU KNOW I THINK I COULD HAVE GUESSED SHE TAUGHT HIM BASIC SCHOOL SUBJECTS BY VIRTUE OF THAT BEING HER FUCKING JOB, YOU KNOW and how they watched French movies and how "most great men" like Napoleon and Henry VIII were "insane" and how she had lots of videos and documentaries to show him (apparently this makes her "irrepressibly resourceful" even though that's done even in public schools as routine) and how she persuaded Pops to get Quinn a giant-sized TV for educational purposes.
We then get a list of every movie she showed him and why, such as The Red Shoes "which ignited me with fire to be around people of grace and culture" and for some reason he feels compelled to tell us about who played who in each one as well, like how "Immortal Beloved, in which Gary Oldman plays Beethoven to such perfection that every time we watch it I cried" BUT COCK-FIGHTS AND KILLING WOMEN IS A-OKAY "Then there was Amadeus with Tom Hulce as Mozart and F. Murrary Abraham as Salieri, a masterpiece of a film that left me breathless."
....oh, my god. This is the most boring, irrelevant shit. This doesn't advance the plot, and it doesn't give insight into Quinn's character. The books and movies that a character likes *can* be used to show things about them, but this is nothing but a prattling list of things that either Rice herself likes or that she thinks is "cultured" and Quinn shallowly gushing about it in the most stilted, unnatural way of talking I have ever seen. Not even fancy big-vocab people talk about movies like this, ok? He sounds like someone trying to write a film review and not being very good at it. He doesn't say what he liked about the movies, just that they were classy or moving or starred such and so who did an amazing performance, but there's nothing in there about WHY he thinks so. Well, except for two, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman, which move him so much he's put into actual physical pain by it, so much so that he cries out....unfortunately, the reason he gives for this pain is extremely shallow:
"so lofty, so exalted was their world"
So...because the people in those movies are rich and fancy. And just in case you're wondering if maybe he means something else, no, because he tells us Lynelle's response when he cried out in pain was to tell him that
"Don't you understand, Quinn? You live in a gorgeous house and you're eccentric and gifted like the people in these films. Aunt Queen keeps inviting you to meet her in Europe, and you won't do it. That's wrong, Quinn. Don't make your world small."
So that's what moves Quinn so emotionally as to cause him real pain: rich people being rich. You know, if he was growing up poor, I'd understand that. The fantasy world of the rich, especially in film, would represent so much more for a poor person, I'm sure, and I would NOT sneer at that at all; it would make sense to me, and it would move me in turn. But for someone already living that life, who is already stupidly wealthy and surrounded by people who cater to him, this comes off as both sickening and bizarre.
But the issue isn't "Quinn, wtf", it's apparently that Quinn had no idea that Aunt Queen wanted him to come to Europe with her, and all this time his grandparents had been refusing her on it and not telling him about it. Gosh, what trauma, what betrayal, what hardship poor little Quinn has undergone!
Look, I have no problem with protagonists who are rich, sheltered, spoiled, and/or who have had easy lives. They can still be interesting people, have interesting journeys, etc., and they've certainly got room to grow, and I very much dislike the trope that anyone from an upper-class background must be a vain callous snob or that a character can only be interesting if their past is full of tragedy......what I have a problem with is being asked to see shit like "not getting to go with my aunt to Europe" as something I should give a shit about. Quinn's only actual problems are that he's a spoiled, self-centered, obnoxious, classist little fuck! And I could be down with that if it were just ACKNOWLEDGED as a character flaw, but honestly, all of Anne Rice's previous books have given me the impression she's in love with rich people as a concept, so I'm not hopeful that this bullshit is gonna get called out by the text. Seriously though, fucking physical pain because, oh, these people are gorgeous and rich and amazing like me but they also get to travel and experience culture? THAT'S what I'm expected to want to read about instead of the whole current problem with Goblin being out for blood? FOR REAL?!
Quinn asks Lynelle to teach him to be a person worthy of going to Europe with Aunt Queen, Lynelle says it'll be easy, Quinn spends the rest of the page continuing to list all the things she taught him and how "I was in heaven with Lynelle." Luckily things get interesting when Lynelle gets him a computer and uses Quinn to type words, and Quinn says that later Goblin would learn to make the words appear without needing Quinn to type them, like he did a few chapters ago. Unfortunately, after this intriguing tidbit, we go back to hearing all the things he did with Lynelle, like exploring the swamp where she got scared by a snake and her taking him to New Orleans for museums and aquariums and mass. Interestingly, she educated him for his First Communion and his Confirmation. I guess presumably his grandparents asked for her to do this? I know that's certainly not something that would be done in public schools, but private tutors are surely another matter.
Anyway, we also have to hear all about what church this was at and what days he had these events, and the only relevance is that Quinn, learning that the saints had visions of angels, wondered if Goblin might be from Hell since he's not an angel. He never gets the guts to ask a priest about Goblin, but Lynelle says no and asks if Goblin ever puts him up to evil. When he says no, she says therefore he doesn't need to ask a priest about him, since he has no connection with sin.
"I think, all in all, the six years I had with Lynelle were the happiest in my life." Okay so she was with him from ten to sixteen, I can understand him noticing her tits then. Still shitty of him to mention those before almost anything else.
Even though Quinn previously says his grandparents were suspicious of her, he now says Pops liked Lynelle; I guess he's among the "everybody" she won over in a month. More interesting to me, though, is her relationship with Patsy. In fact, it's the only interesting thing in this section thus far.
"Even Patsy was drawn to Lynelle, and joined us for some of our adventures" and Quinns "most poignant memory" of this is "the shock of Lynelle when Patsy cursed at me to stop talking to that disgusting ghost."
Quinn says that "Lynelle softened and intimidated Patsy" and that, now as he looks back as an adult, he sees that Lynelle's respect for Quinn and Goblin inclined Patsy to respect him more as well, that Patsy never really saw him as "the person I was" until Lynelle drew her attention to him. This is odd, because I thought that they'd worked things out years ago, in that scene after Pops and her got into the big fight, but apparently it's now according to Quinn that "a vague interest substituted for the condescending and arrogant pity--"You poor sweet darlin'--that Patsy had felt before." Shit, she can't do anything right, can she? When she ignored or spoke ill to Quinn, he complains about it, but when she said he was cute in previous chapters he complained about that too, and now when she shows him sympathy---a kid being raised by his grandparents with no friends and apparently a little whack in the head to all appearances---she's arrogant. Gawd. I think I'm a little biased towards Patsy just because Quinn hates her so much, but the fact is that her flaws and failings (and the textual acknowledgements of them as such) have actually made her the most human (and thus the most interesting and likeable) character to me so far. Sorry, Anne Rice, but I can't connect with your perfect brilliant Lynelle who just automatically accepts all of Quinn's weirdness and thinks he's great and perfect and is so great and perfect herself. Now, this is all from Quinn's POV, and Rice has showed in the past she's capable of understanding character's can be wrong in that, so if this turns out to be a case of that, all my apologies, but until then...
Quinn lists all the movies they watch with Patsy and the genres and the actors and who liked what best, and that's pretty boring, but then he says something interesting again about Lynelle and Patsy:
"Patsy felt stupid around Lynelle, and for that reason the connection petered away and at one point threatened to break. Patsy wouldn't stay around anyone who made her feel stupid, and she didn't have an open mind with which to learn."
Again, he just can't help getting a slam in there on her, huh? But you know what, I get this. Lynelle would probably make just about anyone feel stupid, and I get the feeling that Patsy definitely doesn't have even a college education, might even be a high-school drop-out, and unfortunately, intelligence tends to be thought of as directly tied to education level in our culture. I can definitely see how Lynelle would "intimidate" her just by this alone, especially since Pops probably just sees her as a dumb slut and treats her as such, to say nothing of how Lynelle is beloved by everyone and connects with Quinn and seems to have a lot of classist attitudes that Patsy, with her experience from Pops, might be wary of lest Lynelle also think her "trashy" like he does. And she might be wrong in this suspicion (I'm sure she is, since Lynelle is so perfect) but the fact it's there, the idea that she might break off a friendship with someone because they make her feel dumb, of feeling bad about her flaws and having insecurities and wrongly pushing someone away because of it, is so human to me. Once again, I think I'm meant to be judging her, but instead I sympathize.
As for Lynnelle, she tells Patsy she likes her music, asks if she and Quinn can come listen, and praises her for what she's doing with her current "one-man-band" a 'friend' of Patsy's (get it, friend is in quotes cuz she's banging him, lol Patsy is a skank SEE SEE SEE SHE'S BAD) named Seymour who does harmonica and drums. "Seymour was an opportunistic jerk, or so I thought at the time. Fate had punishment in store for Seymour." Of course it did, as I'm sure happens to anyone you dislike, Quinn. We don't learn what happened to Seymour yet, but we're told about Lynelle and Quinn going to concerts in the garage, with Quinn sure to mention how Lynelle liked it more than him, and how surprised and happy Patsy was that Lynelle thought well of her music. Well, I'm glad for her, about time someone around Blackwood Farm started supporting her creativity.
Of course, she might not actually, because Quinn then tells us that this was all "deliberate design" on Lynelle's part because she'd noticed how Patsy "was afraid of her and backing off from us" Oh well, I guess her heart was in the right place, that she did this either to remain friends with Patsy herself or to try to make a better connection between Quinn and his bio-mother. Not really her business, but still well-intentioned.
Quinn tells us about going down to Missispi with Lynelle to see Patsy perform at a country jamboree, and though he first makes mention of her teased hair and heavy makeup and how "plastic pretty" she looks, he then admits that her singing is very good, that the crowd went wild for her, and that he remember thinking that "her life wasn't in vain." Wow, how generous of you, Quinn. Nice to know that even though you were barely in your own double digits, you'd been judging her life as being just that all this time. What a dislikeable little shit of a kid you were. Hey, Quinn, what have you grown up to do with your life? There's been no mention of a job. At least Patsy had talent and drive and the ability to pay her own bills without being pampered by Pops.
.....sorry, I just really cannot stand this, I cannot stand obnoxious spoiled everyone-loves-me Quinn constantly shitting on someone who is trying to make their own way in the world, who stood up to her asshole father to do what she really wants to do and is clearly good at it, and who is constantly disliked by everyone just because, oh, she's trashy and plays country music and had a baby when she was sixteen and worse yet, had the maturity to recognize she couldn't take care of that child and thus let someone who could do it instead of becoming an unfit mother at Quinn's expense, how dare she. It's really not cool that she yells at Quinn about Goblin, I grant, but that's really the only thing I think she's done wrong so far...as opposed to Quinn, who has thus far shown himself to be a huge asshole both as a child and as an adult.
Speaking of, immediately after this grudging compliment comes: "Sure, Patsy was a hit with the yokels, but I had Beethoven's Ninth."
...yeah, you're a fucking insufferable little snob, Quinn. And from this he concludes that "I didn't need Patsy. I'm not sure I've ever needed Patsy." Oh, okay, so all her potential value to you was entertainment. Up until now, I held out hope that his constant dumping on her was due to feeling rejected by the fact she gave him to his grandparents to raise, that he felt she'd chosen her band over him, something like that, and not just that he was peeved she didn't worship the ground he walked like everyone else, but I guess I was wrong and he's not actually got any issue but that. THANKS FOR CLEARING THAT UP, QUINN!
To tide you over till my next update, whenever than may be...first Anne Rice, then LKH, and now I find out about this? What *is* it with vampire authors?!
http://forthegothicheroine.tumblr.com/post/115447092891/can-you-tell-me-more-about-the-misogyny-in-the
And now...to help you get over all the awful...Nikolai pics!
