a_sporking_rat | Entries tagged with spork: flirt

Normally, I don't spork the words from the author, but I'm making an exception in this case, mainly because it explains so damn much about this book and why it had to exist (which is a crime). I really wish I could just copy and paste all of LKH's words, but as I have a hard copy here with me versus an electronic copy, I'll just be typing out select quotes.
( AFTERWARD )

Current Music: Tori Amos

Remember how Mr. Oliver was a Homo erectus (which I mistakenly remembered as a Neanderthal, causing confusion either here or at lashouts)?

As I recall being discussed then, Homo erectus were actually around average height (5'10 for males) yet Oliver is four feet. So my headcanon is that maybe in addition to being a pre-human homonid, he's also got some kind of dwarfism too. Of course, defining dwarfism by height alone is problematic because short stature in itself is not a disorder, and Anita says that Mr. Oliver doesn't have any other signs of having a medical conditions...but in humans there are about 200 distinct medical conditions that can cause dwarfism. I doubt Anita knows the physical indicators of each and every one. Plus who's to say those signs would even be the same in a homo erectus? or that they wouldn't have a type of condition causing smaller size that is specific to them that modern humans don't have and thus there's no way Anita would know the signs of it?

I miss Mr. Oliver. He was the only one of the Council who ever DID anything, who had a goal, who seemed to have any awareness of vampire issues at large, and, last but not least, his character wasn't focused around sex sex sex. Seriously, every other Council member that we know jack about is obsessed with sex, sadism, or both, while really not doing much else. Padma tortured Vivian, the Traveller spends most of his time trying to find new bodies to have sex in, we find out in Bullet that Morte D'Amor likes to do horrible sexual things to others because he gets off on their fear, and Belle Morte...'nuff said. We don't know about The Dragon or Queen of Nightmares in this regard, but that's because we don't know ANYTHING about them. Oliver showed up in the flesh, and did none of this. He just got to the goddamn point and didn't waste time dicking around (pun intended) plus he managed to have an 'evil' goal without straight-up FOR THE EVULZ motives and not much of an 'evil' personality, just a 'I'm doing what has to be done and what is my duty as a Council member' type deal.

Ugh, I miss him. Him and Melanie. So much.
( FLIRT, CHAPTER NINE )

At my request, this pretty awesome spork/chapter-by-chapter review blog is currently featuring the second Merry Gentry book
http://creativedoubledipper.blogspot.com/
Through this, I learned about Kitto. Kitto is one of Merry's men, a phrase which always makes me think of Robin Hood. Kitto is half sidhe, half snake goblin. Ok, so far so good.

Kitto is, like Nathaniel, described as very child-like...and he's also child-sized. Like about the size of a twelve year old. And she keeps him under her desk at work and pets him like a cat to calm herself. Uhhh.

And this excerpt...oh my god:

He clambered into my lap like a child, forcing my hands to encircle him to keep him from falling. My right hand slid over the slickness of the scales on his back; my left cupped the smooth, hairless curve of his thigh. The sidhe didn’t have much body hair, and snake goblins had none. The mixed heritage had left Kitto smooth and perfect like he’d been waxed from neck to toe. It added to the doll-like image and made him seem perpetually childlike.

I don't think I need to say anything at all. This points out all the creepy on its own.
( FLIRT, CHAPTER 8, PART 2 in which Anita commits needless murder now that she's covered needless rape (and it's not just Silas!) )

Remember in the situation with Joseph when Anita called in hostile werelions from another Pride to come in and take this one over after Joseph wouldn't bone her? I didn't read that book, but the a TVtroper says that Anita was explicitly told that it is standard for the female werelions to be raped during a takeover. She at no point told the incoming usurpers not to do this. Given that these usurpers are Chicago mob lions led by criminal Haven...oh god, I don't want to think about it. She did, however, tell them not to kill the lions who had jobs, as it would cost money for the Pride. Priorities!

It was also pointed out by the troper that since Richard has banned vengeance for crimes before his tenure as Ulfric, all the female werewolves have to be one big happy family with "the abusive male werewolves", except for the two that Anita killed, plus the remaining leopards, who used to rape the female leopards as punishment (which I think was done only under the command of Gabriel, but still-). I don't remember abusive male werewolves, but it's been awhile since I read the books from before Richard was Ulfric, can anyone tell me if the troper is right or not on this?

Also they said there was something about the swanmanes in St. Louis now being addicted to BDSM (because Chimera tortured them in a bondage club, I guess?) and the Swan King having to pay power tithes to Anita. Does anybody remember this?

I wish I couldn't remember...
( FLIRT, CHAPTER 8, PART ONE )

Current Mood: bleeding out your guts
Current Location: with your mistakes
Current Music: Words by Missing Persons

Yesterday I finished Moon Called, the first installment of the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. It was a pretty decent read, but there was just one big problem I had with it. So, naturally, I'll be making a post about that tomorrow, if you're interested.

PLOT BUNNY RITE NOW: I want to make an ABverse fic focusing on non-wolf canid shifters, both canon (foxes, dogs) and non-canon (jackals, coyotes) because dammit it Just Bugs Me how LKH only cares about wolves and big cats (besides the werejaguars which she forgot about, probably since she already had leopards) and jackals/coyotes/foxes are sort of in the same 'smaller and not glamorous and often associated with gross/bad stuff' camp as rats and hyenas are in human culture. Plus one of my friends, who is an amazing ABpedia but also shares all my digust and frustrations with what the series has become, came up with a really amazing headcanon about the origins of weredogs when I told her they didn't make sense to me since dogs are a man-made species. The same friend also brought up something that was said in the books once that she wishes would be revisited:

"There was a vampire of Belle's lineage who renounced the lust. He took only animals [to drink blood from], as well, and I believe would have rotted as Sabin did, but he did not have the time. He began to age in a matter of days. When he was a wizened thing, Belle had him killed."

We decided it would be a great idea to put Anita in a room she couldn't get out of, enchanted so that it cut her off from her men like Ellen did. As a Human Servant, she can't die of old age, but with no physical food and unable to draw energy from her men, she would quite likely start to wizen up like that other ardeur-vampire guy did. Which is why, given Anita's nasty brand of vain and false modesty, the room would also be well-lit and filled with mirrors =D I wish that was what happened in...
( FLIRT, CHAPTER 7, PART 2 )

For the lovely new follower who wanted information on how to introduce her rat to a potential new friend and cagemate!
http://www.ratfanclub.org/newrat.html
http://www.ratz.co.uk/ratintro.html
http://www.rmca.org/Resources/aintro.txt

Last night I let Blatz and Sam play in the water again! I put an empty paint roller tray with water containing toys and treats in the bathroom, put the girls on the bathroom floor, and just let them enter in at their leisure. Sam explored the bathroom first, and too late I realized that the toilet lid was open---she jumped/fell in! Luckily she jumped right out again and was fine. Silly ratty, that's NOT the water you're supposed to play in!

I am reading Bullet right now, and Ratsputin attacked it! He started by biting it, then he peed on the pages, then he came back after I shooed him off to bit through TEN pages! All the rats nibble on the books but they seem to hate AB/LKH as a species. It's so weird.

I checked out Circus of the Damned from the library as well, just to revisit Mr. Oliver and Melanie. Mr. Oliver is the last member of the Council that I can actually remember really DOING anything, honestly. I mean, yeah, Padma and his son were horrible people when they came to town, but I don't recall them having any actual evil plot or course of action like Oliver, I think they were just dropping by and took wereanimals to torture as a sort welcome-to-our-city gift?

Anyway, I love Melanie, and I loved revisiting WHY I love her. Melanie and her three-man harem show up at Anita’s apartment to ask her to come see Mr. Oliver. On the way out, she tells two of them to offer Anita their arms and tells Anita she’s trained them all to be gentleman. She explains that the third one, whose arm she’s holding, is her “special beau” of the lot and apologizes that therefore she doesn’t share him. Anita says “That’s fine, I’m not greedy.” HILARIOUS IN RETROSPECT. Melanie also says that a woman should have more than one man. AGAIN, HILARIOUS.

It gets better, though. Melanie is supremely NOT the jealous type, as in the car ride she tells Anita to feel free to make out with either of those two on the way and says they’re very good. They start to feel Anita up and Anita asks Melanie to call them off. Melanie says “Boys, she’s not interested” and they STOP. She then says to just let them know if she changes her mind “They love taking orders, don’t you boys?”

That lamia was the original monster-with-a-harem and she did it WAY classier than you, Anita. I used to want her revenge on Anita for killing her harem to be killing Anita, but now I want it to be that she takes Anita's harem for herself instead. I feel like that would be just the best kind of blow to the Sexecutioner.

Alas, that does not happen in...
( FLIRT, CHAPTER 7, PART 1 )

I noticed something about Flirt, and that is that we've kinda seen this plot already. In the second book, The Laughing Corpse, a guy shows in Anita's office, wants her to raise a zombie, offers to provide a human sacrifice to do so, offers Anita an exorbitant sum of money to do so, and, when she refuses, sends hired thugs after her. Sound familiar? There are some differences, like the zombie wasn't his wife and the tugs weren't therians, but it's similar enough that I, if I were the author, would not have used that plot this time time around for a new book. Just me there, YMMV.

Also a I found out from browsing the archives at lashouts that we've had a previous villain (or at least character) named Bennington in one of the books I didn't read (the ones between NiC and Skin Trade). I refer to the one for this book as Tony in the sporks because it's quicker to type, but in the text he's actually referred to only as Bennington most of the time, and if she did the same for the previous Bennington, that seems like it would be confusing for readers. Bennington is not so common a name that I feel you should be reusing it, especially if both characters are bad guys. The other Bennington also has a (live) wife, one who prefers very much to be referred to as "Mrs. Bennington" which Anita looks down on her for because it shows she is not a "liberated woman"...yet all Anita seems able to call the Mrs. Bennington in this book is "Bennington's wife." *eyeroll* But then, that hypocrisy makes sense for Anita I guess, because I don't think she actually wants any other women to be "liberated" because then she can't look down on them and be the only one and so special and independent and man-like and Not Like Other Girls. *eyeroll again*

Honestly, I think the big problem for LKH and authors with similar heroines (like Talia Gryphon *shudders*) is that they completely bought in to the sexist myth that any woman is non-stereotypical, independent, strong, feminist, etc., is a constantly-angry, needlessly mean, dominance-obsessed asshole that thinks anyone only ever has a problem with her because of her gender. This was how any woman "getting out of her place" was depicted in media for a long time, and often still is. And LKH, who seems to love this idea, clearly believes it as much as the people who hate such women (or rather, ideas of women). Seriously, you ask a lot of chauvinists what their picture of a "feminist" or "liberated woman" or similar phrase is, they'll probably describe someone a lot like Anita Blake or Gillian Keys. Anita and Gillian are in fact what said sexist men tend to come up with when asked to write a strong woman with sexual agency, as beautifully parodied here by Kate Beaton:
http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=336

It's ironic, really. These stereotypes were invented by a culture that was terrified of women gaining any kind of agency or thinking they deserved it, so that any time a woman or girl started to get "out of line", someone could point to the TV at the ugly images of harpies and viragos (who also always either get their commupence, are turned around by the love of a man, or both) and say "You don't want to be like THAT, do you?" to get them to behave again because, hey, no one would want to be like that. And so when LKH, who clearly bought into the myth, decides "I'm going to write a strong female character, because that's a good thing!" she still draws on the depiction of strong women as not only a very bad thing, but also one that still NEEDS men and male approval and male love rather than thinking outside this very outdated box. Thanks, LKH, for bringing back a repressive, sexist old stereotype we were starting to leave behind and grow beyond, and giving it a false sense of legitimacy by claiming it's supposed to be portrayed in a GOOD light this time. Because guess what, it doesn't matter. People are still going to read it and think 'god, that's what a strong woman is? How unpleasant!' just like they did back in the day.

Ditto for equating femininity with weakness, victimhood, uselessness, etc., and for portraying female sexuality as this monstrous force that must be contained or else, as something that a good girl would NEVER willingly give in to, something only bad women embrace by choice, etc., depicting women in power as out-of-control hell-goddesses that abuse/rape/enslave men, and oh I could go on. But instead, I'll just let her writing speak for itself, staring with...
( FLIRT, CHAPTER SIX, PART 2 )

RATTY BIRTHDAY! Justin and Jenner are now 2 years, 2 months, and 2 weeks!

Did you know that there is a carnivourous mouse species? It's called the grasshopper mouse, and it eats insects, scorpions, worms, snakes (ha!) and EVEN OTHER MICE. Weirder still, it stalks its prey in the manner of a cat and defends its territory by high-pitched "howling" like a small wolf. It's a very...unique rodent. It's also known as the Killer Mouse!

Tiras seems to be having a slight eye problem. He keeps his right eye closed all the time (but when he opens it, it seems fine) and I saw some discharge from it. I'll have to look this up to see if it's anything serious.

Blatz and Sam both seemed to like the water just fine, though Sam was more interested in exploring all over the bathroom!

Ratsputin is still nipping now and then, though he doesn't really break the skin. Still, I've never had this problem with one of my rats, and I've been keeping them since middle school. I asked my sister further on how much she handles them, and it turns out when she told me that she handles them regularly, she means she takes them out of the cage and lets them run around on the bed. No holding, no cuddling, etc. And now that Ratsputin is an adult, he's going to be a little harder to socialize. Luckily, I have all the patience in the world for ratties!

The ratties got a whole chicken carcass Wednesday night! Justin and Jenner got the bulk of the body, and the others got the smaller pieces divided up amongst them. There were even enough small bones left to give to the mice for chewing!

I wish they'd chew up...

( FLIRT, CHAPTER SIX, PART ONE )

Tiras is such a tunneler! He's built multiple routes through the bedding of his cage, and has linked up tunnels underneath all the little cardboard boxes he has in his cage (and has gnawed secret escape trapdoors through the bottom of said boxes). He's the shyest of the mice, and he uses these secret rotes to avoid me. Many a time I've seen him dart into or under one box, only to pick it up and find he's not under there---he's underneath the box on the opposite side of the cage! He took one of his little tunnels to get away from the big scary hand!

I am planning to introduce Sam to water sometime this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7end071b3zA
I never got past the paint roller tray'n'pebbles stage with Justin, Jenner, and Scurvy. They all eventually realized treats were in the water and that the water was harmless, but beyond getting to the treats they just had no interest in the water itself. Given their personalities, I can see why. Jenner is Mister Alpha, and since he can't really mark the water as 'his' by pissing on it or chewing it up, he doesn't think it's worth bothering with. Justin is concerned with food and food only, and has never been much for exploring. Scurvy, being a people rat rather than a pool rat, was far more interested in getting cuddles and picked up by me than he was in splashing around, and would basically ignore the water in favor of begging me for attention. I think that Sam might be up for it though! She's an enthusiastic explorer like Jenner, but unlike him she isn't interested in conquering what she explores, so she won't be turned off by being unable to 'claim' the water. She's also not very treat-motivated in the first place, so water won't lose its allure the second there ceases to be food in it like with Justin. And while she is a sweetie pie and clamors for my attention when she's in the cage the way Scurvy did, she's a lot more interested in things OTHER than me once she's outside the cage! I might try it with Blatz too; she's blind, and Justin was very slow at this owing to his vision problems, but I don't mind being patient. Plus, she frets if Sam is away and starts searching for her if she wasn't awake when I took Sam out and thus doesn't realize she's with me.

In vampire news, I came across this and thought I'd share it. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, especially not the "all killer child vampires are Claudia" bit, but I do agree with the bit about Gifts, flammable blood, and maybe Baby Jenks/Bree Tanner. Though I am bugged by how the term "European" is used the same way LKH uses it, as if it's just one big mass culture/place/way of being.
http://satireknight.wikispaces.com/Satireknight+Rants+-+Stephenie+Meyer+vs.+Anne+Rice

I've only read Interview and Queen of the Damned, so I didn't know about most of the Gifts, and I've never read any of Twilight (and don't plan to, not even for sporking) so I had never had occasion to make comparisons, but I found the ones here pretty interesting, and I thought that people have read one or the other or both, or are just enthusiasts of vampires, might like to read it too.

It also got me thinking about Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles in general and how much they shaped the modern vampire genre.

She's the first, to my knowledge, to write about vampires as a species. Varney, Dracula, Carmilla, Lord Ruthven/Lord Strongmore (depending on your edition of Polidori's 'The Vampyre'), they were all solitary, singular entities, and while there were suggestions in some they were not the only ones of their kind, they were the only ones around. Rice's vampires were the first I know of that lived in groups, and had a species-wide culture, rules, etc., including a worldwide code of secrecy as a species. Hers are also the first I know of with an origin story of how vampires came to be at all. Rice's vampires are also, I think, what solidified 'super strength, super speed, super senses' as the trinity of traits that all or most vampires in modern fiction seem to have.

LKH was one of the first to set a lot of the conventions for current urban fantasy trends--the snarky first-person usually-female protagonist who is a detective or investigator of some type, for instance--but as far as vampires go, I think she did get the aforementioned building blocks from Rice (the superpowers trinity, organized versus solitary, an all-mother, extremely vulnerable to fire). Which is not to say she copied (ok, I think MOAD is a little too much a rip-off of Akasha in some ways) because for the most part her vampires very much became her own, what with their various positions, terminology, bloodlines, culture, etc. It's just interesting for me to see what could have come from where is all. Any thoughts?
( FLIRT, CHAPTER FIVE, in which the bad guy is revealed and Anita nearly fucks the lion dudes in his house )

Current Mood: utterly empty
Current Location: a cold place

It used to be that baby Sam acted JUST LIKE BLATZ but she's developing her own personality now...and most of the new bits are more like Scurvy. She's like a hybrid of them, probably because Scurves was the only other rat she interacted with besides Blatz.

Ratsputin is healing up well, and what concerns me right now isn't his health, but that he acts as if he's not as used to being handled as my rats. He reacts a lot more warily to hands, and has even tried to nip me a few times. This makes me worry my sister isn't given her rats the attention they need, and is just counting on them automatically being the super-friendly docile ones mine have always been...but I handle mine really regularly. That's WHY they're so chill. Rats are wonderful pets, much like dogs in their temperament, but you do need to put effort in, just like with any animal. Not everyone can be an automatic wonder-rat like Scurvy. I asked her though, and she says he's always been like this, and that's why it took her awhile to realize he was getting bitten so much--he wouldn't let her handle him and inspect him for injuries. He's getting better though, I think :)

He also seems to be biased against other rats, probably because of his experience with Sid. I didn't expect him to like Justin and Jenner at all, since they're other adult males, but when I hold the girls up outside his cage, he has the same aggressive reaction to them that he has to the boys. I'm hoping he can learn to get over that so he can play with them in the future, as rat-on-rat interaction is something most rats need or at least benefit from.

On Friday, he ripped my bookmark out of Bullet and started destroying it. Clearly hating LKH is a species-wide trait with these guys. "Now she'll never find her place in that wretched book again! So she can't read it!"

Speaking of rats, I realized that they're the exact kind of werecritter would TOTALLY have the "puppy piles" that the leopards and wolves are always getting into in the Anitaverse. Rats are group animals, and they sleep/nest in piles on each other, all curled next to each other, etc., and they crawl all over one another like it’s no big thing, and groom each other as bonding and sometimes also in shows of dominance (you can tell it’s a dominance thing rather than an affectionate thing when they go overboard and “barber” another rat…meaning take the hair off his head and make him bald. I’m serious). But rats, because they are not majestic and sexy, do not get much attention in this series at all, and I am pretty sure Anita will never be in a vermin pile. Just fine by me, I don’t want her near my favorite animals. Also, unlike leopards and tigers, rats do really live in groups/colonies in the wild (fun fact: a group of rats is called a mischief!) with a hierarchy of dominance and a top rat that gets the privilege of living closest to the food source during times when food is scarce.

A commenter here (sorry, I forget who!) suggested MOAD made Vittorio and his Father of the Day thing in an attempt to give herself an equal and opposite (kinda a Neo-Pagan God and Goddess deal, I guess?). I have decided they are right...and that the reason she stripped him of his powers and left him to walk the world as an ordinary vampire is because HE FAILED MISERABLY AT IT. "Oh good grief you are failing. Just...not even worth destroying. And you suck as a lover. Ok, your powers and godhood privileges are revoked, mister, now gtfo my castle and my sight. I will run this show on my own from now on like I did from the start dammit." Because seriously, he was not worthy.

But even he was a better villain than the stupid schmucks in...
( FLIRT, CH. 4, PART 3 Final part, whoo! )

In which I am less than impressed with our bad guys, even less with Anita, and least of all with LKH's understanding of lions

( FLIRT, CH.4, PART 2 )

In addition to the usual snark, I also have to good things to say about this chapter. Firstly, it's 30 pages long, I had to split this spork into three parts. That made sporking take forever, yes, but it's commendable, because LKH has a bad habit of often making tiny chapters of a few pages for some reason, splitting one scene into several little chapters for no reason. This is one scene in one chapter, and it's a nice long one (hurr hurr) that doesn't snap the reader out of it with any breaks. The other good thing to say is that we get action (somewhat) and we get plot.
( FLIRT, CHAPTER FOUR, PART 1 in which it finally gets interesting )

Ratty news the first: Justin and Jenner are now two years and two months!

Ratty news the second: There is a new rat in the house! My sister's pair are sadly no longer getting along, and Ratsputin was beaten up pretty badly (as well as kept from his food) by his cagemate Sid. Since she doesn't have an extra cage and is currently dealing with a sick dog, she has given Ratsputin to me to nurse back to health. I think he's going to be just fine once I get some meat back on his bones!
( FLIRT, CHAPTER 3 )

This chapter. Oh my god, this chapter. I just...it's terrible. I don't know how I'm even going to begin. All I know is that it's going to be a very long, very ragey spork, because there is SO much fail here in SO many ways.

In order to help you get through it, here is some cute ratty news: When I fed the girl rats on Friday night, Blatz picked out a peanut from the feed mix, and I thought of course she was going to eat it because that's a choice treat but instead she PUT IT IN FRONT OF SAM AWWW!

"here u r baby eat up nao"

Sam is still totally itty bitty too, I need to get photos of her while she's still tiny enough to be getting this special treatment from her cagemate.
( FLIRT, CHAPTER TWO )

Alright everyone, we made it through Skin trade! Now get ready for...
( FLIRT, CHAPTER ONE in which Anita is rude to a grieving man and creepily sex-obsessed to boot )