A rant worth of Hamilton. A Hamilton worthy of rant.
If I had a whole lot of patience and a calculator, I’d go through all the Laurell K. Hamilton books and do a percentage by page per book analysis of how much of her writing was plot and how much was smut. Now mind, it’s not as though I care one way or the other about smut, particularly where it forwards plot, but plot should remain ruler of all - for when it doesn’t it’s the old and unfortunate theory of beating a dead horse. In Hamilton’s case said horse now peacefully coexists with borax, having been rendered down to powder under repeated blows from a number twelve sledge.
I read, I read, and I don’t mind the smut. Trust me, plot can be forwarded with sex - you can even have a story that contains little other than a centrally smutty theme and make it work - but you bloody well cannot objectify sex as the be-all end-all content and have it work if pure description of act for chapters on end is all you use. It’s like devoting 20k words of 60k to pudding in a book about murder. Or 20k words of murder in a book on pudding.
I own a book on pudding, and it’s fascinating - there’s a whole assortment of pudding subcategories, and if I want a book on pudding, I’ll go get that one. Hamilton, however, frustrates the bejesus out of me because her early books were so very well (comparatively) written. Her later ones, bloody everything after Obsidian Butterfly, are vehicles for smut rather than character development, problem solving, or any of the other sub contexts and subplots her earlier work was driven by.
Maybe it’s that I’m a wetdryvac by nature and just can’t give a crap about porn of any sort. I spent my whole college career in a basement where the pornographic was used not as object but as defense, along with everything else imaginable of shock value. People stayed away because they’d see things they were horrified by - more often cellar dwellers having conversations than by the background, it might be added, though oh so lurid the lurid background - but I think I might just be shocked out on a large variety of topics.
Knowingly consent to something? Go for it. I won’t take part perhaps, but your 56 varieties or 24 flavors don’t bother me. I have this book on pudding, you see, and a story somewhere of a man who puddinged himself.
Perhaps it’s that Hamilton seems to be writing as though she is attempting to be shocked by her content. Perhaps it’s that I want to set her editing staff on fire for having worse error to word count ratios than a manga scanlation, or that if you want a non-schnockered version of her work, you need to troll the e-book theft communities because those illegal monkeys actually correct for scan errors and thus inadvertently un-pooch the stuff Hamilton’s editing team misses.
And perhaps I’m just feeling pissy because I’m reading her most recent Merideth Gentry book and she made 60 pages this time around before miring down in the frankly trite and uninteresting pornographic subset. I find I’m muttering offensive this’n’thats under my breath as I go, sloganizing her different character interactions.
“Shag for power!” Is my favorite so far. I wish she’d incorporate some portion so I could use, “Shagging for the man.” Or a Rage Against the Machine parody, “Shag the Power!”
Most of all though, I loathe the presentation crossover between sensation for sensation’s sake and the idea that (particularly in the Anita Blake books) there’s something dirty in the process of having one form of fun or another.
Dirty is oath-breaking, lying, and deception. Dirty is inflicting will upon that which cannot or will not consent. Dirty is not sensation of any sort willingly experienced. The selfsame concepts which enrage me over banning reading material do so when one person looks at another doing something they want to do and saying, “Stop! That’s icky!” When no harm is taking place. Yes, if I’m consenting, I get to choose what I define as harm unto myself, even to the point of my own death.
Right to sensation, right to experience, right to die, right to live…
And damnit, that’s why I’m pissed off. It’s my perception that Hamilton presents some of her material as being immoral and wrong while simultaneously reveling in it. All of a sudden I’m reading her material the way I would an anti-drug or pro-fluoride advertisement. There’s a non-correlation sale taking place, and I hate to be sold illogically on anything.
Meanwhile, since she’s spent 60 pages making me want to find out about the plot, I get to struggle through the equivalent of Dickens’ more preachy moments when what I really want is ethics, forensic science, and maybe - if I’m stunningly lucky - smut that shows up in a context other than retexturing of the same dratted last-time-I-read-this-crap lighting-up-from-within annoyance. New powers, new positions, new whatever - redesigning the same ten paragraph method a dozen times in the course of a book irks.
Pick a power, if it’s power you want. Put some meat on its bones, make it central to the bloody story, and I’m hooked. Same for a new character, or a choice mode of horror - whatever it is, brushing a thing irreverently renders it irrelevant to the reader, unworthy of care. I’m offended even, and from a literary perspective now - that which is brushed off or repeated without context becomes banal, trite, and useless to the whole purpose of reading.
Put another way, when I run a game, the players and I are telling a story. I create backdrop against which things the players do happen. My job is to keep things flowing, keep track of both minute and global detail, and to make sure that at all times intensity is driven by characterization. Certainly I have the advantage that the characters drive themselves, but someone who runs a game cheats their players by having things appear merely to be shot and die.
Better an entire game of bargaining with the utter unknown in currencies similarly unknown to obtain materials for a cat and learning throughout than moving flicker-flicker through a world where everything’s transient and nothing beyond mortality and racking up points/experience/booty matters. It’s the myth, it’s the story told around a fire not for personal prowess but because of the story’s moving capabilities. It’s the working within limitations of character and background that define how moved a player or reader will be by a set of - let’s face it - imaginary events.
Smut? I don’t include smut in games because wetdryvacs are astonishingly bad at making the purely biological interesting. Stories about David Bowie drinking catnip liquor? Now that’s interesting, and the possibilities are endless - but the interest is a plot that moves, has character driven goals, and so on. Go ahead, ask yourself, does David Bowie get visited after his carousing by miss Pamphella Dots, who likes the warm and sunny spots?
In writing - I read almost anything - smut can be well done, but it needs driving by character and story. Yes, I’m repeating myself. Assuredly I shall do so again. Smut is not the point, smut is happenstance, a vector by which emotional content and plot can be delivered, and I know people who do it fantastically well. In the same way that science fiction isn’t about the latest and greatest ray-gun, smut… isn’t about the latest and greatest ray-gun.
And in my annoyance, I’m not giving Hamilton credit for some of the best emotionally driven plot-centered work I’ve seen. Obsidian Butterfly stands beyond genre as a purely fantastic read, and much of what came before it is nearly as well done. I just wish I didn’t feel that having reached this pinnacle, Hamilton has taken an easy and rapid to print method of spewing forth books in a careless torrent.
A Stroke of Midnight? I’m sixty pages in and the smut only just started - it could be more of the same, and I’ll be amazingly annoyed. On the other hand, the plot could hold - the plot could hold. At which point I’ll be back editing this shortly to say:
1) Holy crap!
2) About bloody time.
*wanders off to read*
EDIT:
1) Holy crap!
2) About bloody time.
Plot. A back-reaching plot, no less, that nearly makes the pain of the middle to books so far worth it. I still and most particularly want to beat those middle two Gentry books and the latter Blake books with a stick, but at least now I know there was... to some degree in the Gentry stuff... a purpose to all this. Doesn't change the ten paragraph repetition annoyance, but plot, and within political structures no less. Maybe she's coming back on form.
Micah comes out on the 28th. I guess I'll know then.
And how about that? I'm so judgmental I just rendered a complaint against the entire latter half of an author's work. I get a cookie. *kicks self*
I read, I read, and I don’t mind the smut. Trust me, plot can be forwarded with sex - you can even have a story that contains little other than a centrally smutty theme and make it work - but you bloody well cannot objectify sex as the be-all end-all content and have it work if pure description of act for chapters on end is all you use. It’s like devoting 20k words of 60k to pudding in a book about murder. Or 20k words of murder in a book on pudding.
I own a book on pudding, and it’s fascinating - there’s a whole assortment of pudding subcategories, and if I want a book on pudding, I’ll go get that one. Hamilton, however, frustrates the bejesus out of me because her early books were so very well (comparatively) written. Her later ones, bloody everything after Obsidian Butterfly, are vehicles for smut rather than character development, problem solving, or any of the other sub contexts and subplots her earlier work was driven by.
Maybe it’s that I’m a wetdryvac by nature and just can’t give a crap about porn of any sort. I spent my whole college career in a basement where the pornographic was used not as object but as defense, along with everything else imaginable of shock value. People stayed away because they’d see things they were horrified by - more often cellar dwellers having conversations than by the background, it might be added, though oh so lurid the lurid background - but I think I might just be shocked out on a large variety of topics.
Knowingly consent to something? Go for it. I won’t take part perhaps, but your 56 varieties or 24 flavors don’t bother me. I have this book on pudding, you see, and a story somewhere of a man who puddinged himself.
Perhaps it’s that Hamilton seems to be writing as though she is attempting to be shocked by her content. Perhaps it’s that I want to set her editing staff on fire for having worse error to word count ratios than a manga scanlation, or that if you want a non-schnockered version of her work, you need to troll the e-book theft communities because those illegal monkeys actually correct for scan errors and thus inadvertently un-pooch the stuff Hamilton’s editing team misses.
And perhaps I’m just feeling pissy because I’m reading her most recent Merideth Gentry book and she made 60 pages this time around before miring down in the frankly trite and uninteresting pornographic subset. I find I’m muttering offensive this’n’thats under my breath as I go, sloganizing her different character interactions.
“Shag for power!” Is my favorite so far. I wish she’d incorporate some portion so I could use, “Shagging for the man.” Or a Rage Against the Machine parody, “Shag the Power!”
Most of all though, I loathe the presentation crossover between sensation for sensation’s sake and the idea that (particularly in the Anita Blake books) there’s something dirty in the process of having one form of fun or another.
Dirty is oath-breaking, lying, and deception. Dirty is inflicting will upon that which cannot or will not consent. Dirty is not sensation of any sort willingly experienced. The selfsame concepts which enrage me over banning reading material do so when one person looks at another doing something they want to do and saying, “Stop! That’s icky!” When no harm is taking place. Yes, if I’m consenting, I get to choose what I define as harm unto myself, even to the point of my own death.
Right to sensation, right to experience, right to die, right to live…
And damnit, that’s why I’m pissed off. It’s my perception that Hamilton presents some of her material as being immoral and wrong while simultaneously reveling in it. All of a sudden I’m reading her material the way I would an anti-drug or pro-fluoride advertisement. There’s a non-correlation sale taking place, and I hate to be sold illogically on anything.
Meanwhile, since she’s spent 60 pages making me want to find out about the plot, I get to struggle through the equivalent of Dickens’ more preachy moments when what I really want is ethics, forensic science, and maybe - if I’m stunningly lucky - smut that shows up in a context other than retexturing of the same dratted last-time-I-read-this-crap lighting-up-from-within annoyance. New powers, new positions, new whatever - redesigning the same ten paragraph method a dozen times in the course of a book irks.
Pick a power, if it’s power you want. Put some meat on its bones, make it central to the bloody story, and I’m hooked. Same for a new character, or a choice mode of horror - whatever it is, brushing a thing irreverently renders it irrelevant to the reader, unworthy of care. I’m offended even, and from a literary perspective now - that which is brushed off or repeated without context becomes banal, trite, and useless to the whole purpose of reading.
Put another way, when I run a game, the players and I are telling a story. I create backdrop against which things the players do happen. My job is to keep things flowing, keep track of both minute and global detail, and to make sure that at all times intensity is driven by characterization. Certainly I have the advantage that the characters drive themselves, but someone who runs a game cheats their players by having things appear merely to be shot and die.
Better an entire game of bargaining with the utter unknown in currencies similarly unknown to obtain materials for a cat and learning throughout than moving flicker-flicker through a world where everything’s transient and nothing beyond mortality and racking up points/experience/booty matters. It’s the myth, it’s the story told around a fire not for personal prowess but because of the story’s moving capabilities. It’s the working within limitations of character and background that define how moved a player or reader will be by a set of - let’s face it - imaginary events.
Smut? I don’t include smut in games because wetdryvacs are astonishingly bad at making the purely biological interesting. Stories about David Bowie drinking catnip liquor? Now that’s interesting, and the possibilities are endless - but the interest is a plot that moves, has character driven goals, and so on. Go ahead, ask yourself, does David Bowie get visited after his carousing by miss Pamphella Dots, who likes the warm and sunny spots?
In writing - I read almost anything - smut can be well done, but it needs driving by character and story. Yes, I’m repeating myself. Assuredly I shall do so again. Smut is not the point, smut is happenstance, a vector by which emotional content and plot can be delivered, and I know people who do it fantastically well. In the same way that science fiction isn’t about the latest and greatest ray-gun, smut… isn’t about the latest and greatest ray-gun.
And in my annoyance, I’m not giving Hamilton credit for some of the best emotionally driven plot-centered work I’ve seen. Obsidian Butterfly stands beyond genre as a purely fantastic read, and much of what came before it is nearly as well done. I just wish I didn’t feel that having reached this pinnacle, Hamilton has taken an easy and rapid to print method of spewing forth books in a careless torrent.
A Stroke of Midnight? I’m sixty pages in and the smut only just started - it could be more of the same, and I’ll be amazingly annoyed. On the other hand, the plot could hold - the plot could hold. At which point I’ll be back editing this shortly to say:
1) Holy crap!
2) About bloody time.
*wanders off to read*
EDIT:
1) Holy crap!
2) About bloody time.
Plot. A back-reaching plot, no less, that nearly makes the pain of the middle to books so far worth it. I still and most particularly want to beat those middle two Gentry books and the latter Blake books with a stick, but at least now I know there was... to some degree in the Gentry stuff... a purpose to all this. Doesn't change the ten paragraph repetition annoyance, but plot, and within political structures no less. Maybe she's coming back on form.
Micah comes out on the 28th. I guess I'll know then.
And how about that? I'm so judgmental I just rendered a complaint against the entire latter half of an author's work. I get a cookie. *kicks self*