Oryx and Crake part 7
Some wonderful sarcasm from bellatrys last Wednesday:Silly fanperson! Don't you know that we mere lowly members of the Caste of Readers are not *allowed* to laugh at our professional betters of the Caste of Published Writers, that we don't have the *right* to point out their too-frequent tropes, literary faux-pas, and apparent obsessions, but are merely supposed to accept the Gifts they bestow on us with chants of praise?
Subchapters: Roses, Pixyland Jazz, Sveltana, Purring
Summary
The next two subchapters are more backstory of Oryx: porn diva, and very unremarkable. Ironically enough, chapter 6 has been the easiest part of the book to read so far; Margaret's actually pleasant to read when she's just objectively describing a scene, but as soon as Jimmy opens his mouth my brain starts to hurt. He gives a brief Platonic dialogue about how not everything, like Love, has a price. He mentally bitches a bit about "math nerds." He gets jealous of Oryx and Crake doing things without him. There are only so many times I can write variants of "Jimmy/Snowman angsts" without wanting to dump these sporkings altogether.
Snowman eats, Snowman angsts, DryaUnda knows how Mom felt when she read jack London. Snowman's starving to death. Starve faster, Snowman! Snowman cynically reminices yet again. Snowman goes foraging in an abandoned Module (always capitalized). Snowman actually feels pangs of guilt for being such a crappy caretaker, they always do when they conviently feel it's too late to solve their self-created problems.
Along the way to get some food, we learn that the Craker males have been designed to mark their territory. This parahuman musking keeps away preditors and gives the men something to do, important since Crake didn't plan on civilized activities for his master race.
Crake did, however, design his Children to heal minor wounds by purring, "he'd discovered that that the cat family purred at the same frequency as the ultrasound used on bone fractures and skin lesions and were thus equipped with their own self-healing mechanism[.]" News to me, but the search terms 'purring ultrasound' don't look like something she just made up. I'll have to bring up purring with the Mythbusters. However, splicing in "cat genes" won't cause catlike characteristics to express themselves, even counting the false starts. "One of the trial batch of kids had manifested a tendancy to sprout long wiskers and scramble up the curtains[.]" No, no, no! Think of organisms as made up of lots of little machines, genes code for little machines, not "catness". To get a cat, you need to put together certain kinds of little machines in a certain kind of way.
We learn about this purring when one of the Children has a quick chat with Snowman. Abraham Lincoln -- Snowman named the Crakers after historical big names for kicks -- talks about a kid who was recently injured, and how the women would hold an apology ceremony for the rocks they threw at the bobkittens. Snowman feels so damn smug that Crake didn't eliminate the neuroanatomy that begat religiosity, "take out too much in that area and you got a zombie or a psychopath." What-the-fuck-ever.
Look, Crake also quadrupled the parahuman's maturity rate since "[f]ar too much time was waster in child-rearing, Crake used to say." Eeeeeeeeeeeeeevil. Look, Crake designed his lab-spawn to live on nothing but grass and eat their own poo! Eeeewwwww! Disgusting? Disgust is illogical, says Atwood's purile strawmanCrake. For the one time in this so-called story I find myself agreeing with Jimmy. Oh, also, if Crake doesn't care about aesthetics than why'd he give his creations perfect bodies?
Back to the actual so-called-story, the poo-eating parahumans want to tag along with Snowman, who feeds them a line of shit that isn't theirs. He then tots off, angsting, being jealous of Crake, and arguing with the voices in his head.
The voices in my head tell me to contemplate something easier on my mental health, like Bratz fanfiction.
Subchapters: Roses, Pixyland Jazz, Sveltana, Purring
Summary
The next two subchapters are more backstory of Oryx: porn diva, and very unremarkable. Ironically enough, chapter 6 has been the easiest part of the book to read so far; Margaret's actually pleasant to read when she's just objectively describing a scene, but as soon as Jimmy opens his mouth my brain starts to hurt. He gives a brief Platonic dialogue about how not everything, like Love, has a price. He mentally bitches a bit about "math nerds." He gets jealous of Oryx and Crake doing things without him. There are only so many times I can write variants of "Jimmy/Snowman angsts" without wanting to dump these sporkings altogether.
Snowman eats, Snowman angsts, DryaUnda knows how Mom felt when she read jack London. Snowman's starving to death. Starve faster, Snowman! Snowman cynically reminices yet again. Snowman goes foraging in an abandoned Module (always capitalized). Snowman actually feels pangs of guilt for being such a crappy caretaker, they always do when they conviently feel it's too late to solve their self-created problems.
Along the way to get some food, we learn that the Craker males have been designed to mark their territory. This parahuman musking keeps away preditors and gives the men something to do, important since Crake didn't plan on civilized activities for his master race.
Crake did, however, design his Children to heal minor wounds by purring, "he'd discovered that that the cat family purred at the same frequency as the ultrasound used on bone fractures and skin lesions and were thus equipped with their own self-healing mechanism[.]" News to me, but the search terms 'purring ultrasound' don't look like something she just made up. I'll have to bring up purring with the Mythbusters. However, splicing in "cat genes" won't cause catlike characteristics to express themselves, even counting the false starts. "One of the trial batch of kids had manifested a tendancy to sprout long wiskers and scramble up the curtains[.]" No, no, no! Think of organisms as made up of lots of little machines, genes code for little machines, not "catness". To get a cat, you need to put together certain kinds of little machines in a certain kind of way.
We learn about this purring when one of the Children has a quick chat with Snowman. Abraham Lincoln -- Snowman named the Crakers after historical big names for kicks -- talks about a kid who was recently injured, and how the women would hold an apology ceremony for the rocks they threw at the bobkittens. Snowman feels so damn smug that Crake didn't eliminate the neuroanatomy that begat religiosity, "take out too much in that area and you got a zombie or a psychopath." What-the-fuck-ever.
Look, Crake also quadrupled the parahuman's maturity rate since "[f]ar too much time was waster in child-rearing, Crake used to say." Eeeeeeeeeeeeeevil. Look, Crake designed his lab-spawn to live on nothing but grass and eat their own poo! Eeeewwwww! Disgusting? Disgust is illogical, says Atwood's purile strawmanCrake. For the one time in this so-called story I find myself agreeing with Jimmy. Oh, also, if Crake doesn't care about aesthetics than why'd he give his creations perfect bodies?
Back to the actual so-called-story, the poo-eating parahumans want to tag along with Snowman, who feeds them a line of shit that isn't theirs. He then tots off, angsting, being jealous of Crake, and arguing with the voices in his head.
The voices in my head tell me to contemplate something easier on my mental health, like Bratz fanfiction.