"You did it all at once? Your fortitude is amazing. I thought it was hard enough reading it all in one day with hours of breaks in-between." Technically, two sittings, since I had to go to sleep in-between. But each half was done in one run.
"People who spork things often joke and use hyperbole about things making them feel awful, but this story really does feel like some form of psychological torture. If I believed in magic, I'd wonder if there was a black magic spell in it." I wouldn't go quite that far, but this may be the worst-written story I've ever read. Even the Eye of Argon has a plot, action, and a sense of direction. This is just The [Non-Sexual] Worst of Anita Blake compacted into 30 pages or less.
"I've been thinking about why I find it so much more awful than a typical spitefic, and I think it's because it reads like it's based on something that really happened. Instead of the Mary Sue lecturing and beating up on other female characters, she's lecturing and beating up on an actual woman." For me, I think it was because it's a raw, completely undisguised look into a very ugly person's psyche. There's no semblance of a plot, world-building, or conflict to give it any sort of justification or pretense that the characters aren't the author's Barbies.
Anita makes it ABUNDANTLY clear that she's not just that much of a shit due to "preternatural power games", "having to prove herself to bigots", 'blonds-suck-LOL', or whatever her excuse is this week - she's equally shitty to a woman almost identical to how she used to be, who poses no threat to her whatsoever, and who starts off the lunch with zero hostility and an almost-completely open mind.
Micah isn't talking Anita down from a situation where her throwing a fit could literally endanger their lives - he's creepily pulling the puppet strings over an ORDINARY CONVERSATION between two women at a perfectly harmless restaurant. And Anita literally doesn't know what to say without his putting words in her mouth.
Richard is sitting right next to a woman with whom he supposedly wants to spend the rest of his life, and he does nothing to defend her. If anything, he takes Anita and Micah's side all the way through the conversation.
Ellen isn't one of Anita's typical bigots - she asks innocent, if ignorant, questions until Anita drives her over the edge, and only THEN does she collapse into Anitaverse bigotry. But Anita behaves exactly as though she was responding to such a bigot, confirming once and for all that it truly has nothing to do with the behavior of the person with whom she's disagreeing - she regards being boring as equivalent to being abusive, after all.
At least spitefics usually have an Excuse Plot, a semblance of internal consistency, and awful behavior from the strawmen to "justify" the authorial-mouthpieces' awful behavior in return. This is pure vomiting onto a page and waving it about for download.
"Also that she insults my sexuality, and the sheer level of spite, and the hair." The interesting thing is that she insults pretty much EVERY sexuality except for out-and-out domination, including her own. Is there a stereotype of the subphobic submissive, in the same vein as the closeted homophobe? Because her obvious disgust towards submissives IS verging on a phobia at this point. It certainly pervades the books far more than her supposed overwhelming fear of flying.
"And not just triple-E, but so big she cannot cross her arms over them." Indeed. I think she does qualify as a Silent Hill monster at this point.
"The booty thing is just... I'm a white woman, and my booty is... Rubenesque. I don't understand why LKH thinks someone must be not-white in order to have black hair, a big butt, etc. She seems to think all white women are skinny and tall and blonde, even when she writes white women who aren't those things, and it is very confusing." Even though SHE is a white woman who isn't any of those things. More on this in a bit...
"I thought chestnut and deep brown were different shades. Chestnut is a rich medium brown with a little red, while dark brown is, well, dark brown." That's actually what I was thinking, though I might have botched the comment - if you've already specified one shade, why specify another? It's like saying "teal cerulean" or "a light midnight blue".
"Micah's wang is now so large it requires him to use the plural.
Lol irl." I'm glad you liked that line! :D
"I kinda sorta get it, I think. It's where "white American descended from people in northwest Europe" is so completely normalized that it doesn't feel like it's even there, so one starts envying people whom one sees as having a culture and ethnicity, which one thinks one lacks. Which is bollocks, but understandable for a 13-year old. Not for LKH.
[...] I have high cheekbones that appear to come from my Dutch ancestry, because they seem to come from my maternal grandmother, but really who knows, because genetics is not that simplistic. I think LKH's obsession with putting human parts in boxes based purely on ethnicity is also a fetish, though not necessarily a sexual one." That's the really warped thing about her insistence that black hair is a special racial trait. It's literally there just so she can play with being mixed-race as... some sort of creepy racial template. 'You are half-Not-White! You get +4 to Wangst checks and +2 to Charisma because you're EXOTIC. However, you also receive a -10 penalty to Diplomacy checks involving tall, skinny blondes.'
...And then there's also the factor that she subtly treats non-white people as inferior (most notably by not having any in her harem), and that she's very careful to specify that her favored mixed characters are basically white people with some random 'ethnic' trait glued on, and that she's suspiciously quick to mention that any darker-than-printer-paper skin amongst her boytoys just comes from a tan -
I... really am oblivious to racial things most of the time (because I'm dense and have a fairly privileged mix), but her attitude towards being mixed just makes my skin crawl. I'm not really exaggerating about the "slice-off-your-skin-and-wear-it-as-a-suit" level of creepiness.
"And being told you're pretty all the time as a little girl is no picnic either. It makes you think that's all there is about you, and stuff like "I bet you break all the boys' hearts" when you're 6 years old feels seriously gross, at least it did to me." That... is pretty gross. D:
"Besides the fact that it's creeptastic when coming from certain people." ...No kidding. o_o Do people really make a habit of telling 6-year-olds that?
"I'm sure it hurts to be told by your grandmother that you're not pretty, and emotional abuse is real abuse, but the way this is handled like it's the WORST THING EVER OMG -- yeah. What you said." Thanks. ...In retrospect, that was doubly creepy because two people at the table have suffered severe psychological and physical (and in Richard's case, sexual) abuse, and yet Anita acts as though her old emotional wounds are the very pinnacle of suffering.
"I've dated some gorgeous men, and yeah, it's an ego boost, but I never dated anyone solely because he was gorgeous. Besides being sad on Anita's part, it's sad for her dudes. She doesn't care about who they are, just how pretty they are. Ick." And the corollary is that she doesn't care about their tragic pasts because she actually cares about how that affected them, but because it gives her a chance to be all ~understanding~ and ~compassionate~. [Yes, I know that was always the case, but this makes it almost canon.] Double ick.
"THE STORY STARTED SPORKING ITSELF AT THAT POINT AND I WILL NOT PRETEND OTHERWISE
SERIOUSLY IT DID. It's like a parody of Anita Blake by someone who passionately hates LKH." I don't think even most parodies get that blatant about it. Or, if they do, they're playing it as parody, not a dead-serious representation of Anita's thought processes.
I honestly don't know how her betas let that slip. I understand that they probably did zero actual editing, but you'd think someone could have hastily deleted that sentence from the story before they turned it into a PDF and uploaded it. That line... just is one of the worst lines in all of the Anita Blake series. And it's facing stiff competition.
"With zero nice points. Actually, where would her points go? She likes showers and baths, but mainly for the sex, so she's not particularly neat. She's not playful at all. She's not active; even during sex, she just lies there and screeches. She would probably jump into a public hottub naked, so I guess she'd have full outgoing points." I've actually had that problem when stuffing various Sues (Edward Cullen, Bella Swan, Jace Wayland, etc.) into an Asylum Challenge. I tend to end up putting extra points in Neat on the grounds that the cruelty and laziness are more important than sloppiness or lack thereof... :\
"My Romance Sims often go to the bed, then the hottub, then the photo booth, then the car on the first date, then end that date and start one with someone else with whom they do the same thing." You're better than I am. *impressed* (In context, I'm trying to do this with freshly-met Townies at Downtown, so it might be easier to do with already-befriended Sims. Still - nice job.) "But it is ALL CONSENSUAL. I don't think Anita would know what to do if she couldn't rape anyone or be raped :(." ...The terrifying thing is that this oneshot may be representative of what she does when she isn't raping and being raped. Since sex is apparently her whole life otherwise. :\
"WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE GIVE HIM A CONCUSSION WITH HIS OWN DONG
Laughing so hard I can't tell my husband why I'm laughing." Glad you liked that line! :D
"Great sporking! It was hilarious, which is no mean feat with this so-called "story"." Thanks! Do you think I should post a link to it on lkh_lashouts? Don't know if it would be stale by this point and/or redundant since someone already did a sporking...
no subject
Technically, two sittings, since I had to go to sleep in-between. But each half was done in one run.
"People who spork things often joke and use hyperbole about things making them feel awful, but this story really does feel like some form of psychological torture. If I believed in magic, I'd wonder if there was a black magic spell in it."
I wouldn't go quite that far, but this may be the worst-written story I've ever read. Even the Eye of Argon has a plot, action, and a sense of direction. This is just The [Non-Sexual] Worst of Anita Blake compacted into 30 pages or less.
"I've been thinking about why I find it so much more awful than a typical spitefic, and I think it's because it reads like it's based on something that really happened. Instead of the Mary Sue lecturing and beating up on other female characters, she's lecturing and beating up on an actual woman."
For me, I think it was because it's a raw, completely undisguised look into a very ugly person's psyche. There's no semblance of a plot, world-building, or conflict to give it any sort of justification or pretense that the characters aren't the author's Barbies.
Anita makes it ABUNDANTLY clear that she's not just that much of a shit due to "preternatural power games", "having to prove herself to bigots", 'blonds-suck-LOL', or whatever her excuse is this week - she's equally shitty to a woman almost identical to how she used to be, who poses no threat to her whatsoever, and who starts off the lunch with zero hostility and an almost-completely open mind.
Micah isn't talking Anita down from a situation where her throwing a fit could literally endanger their lives - he's creepily pulling the puppet strings over an ORDINARY CONVERSATION between two women at a perfectly harmless restaurant. And Anita literally doesn't know what to say without his putting words in her mouth.
Richard is sitting right next to a woman with whom he supposedly wants to spend the rest of his life, and he does nothing to defend her. If anything, he takes Anita and Micah's side all the way through the conversation.
Ellen isn't one of Anita's typical bigots - she asks innocent, if ignorant, questions until Anita drives her over the edge, and only THEN does she collapse into Anitaverse bigotry. But Anita behaves exactly as though she was responding to such a bigot, confirming once and for all that it truly has nothing to do with the behavior of the person with whom she's disagreeing - she regards being boring as equivalent to being abusive, after all.
At least spitefics usually have an Excuse Plot, a semblance of internal consistency, and awful behavior from the strawmen to "justify" the authorial-mouthpieces' awful behavior in return. This is pure vomiting onto a page and waving it about for download.
"Also that she insults my sexuality, and the sheer level of spite, and the hair."
The interesting thing is that she insults pretty much EVERY sexuality except for out-and-out domination, including her own. Is there a stereotype of the subphobic submissive, in the same vein as the closeted homophobe? Because her obvious disgust towards submissives IS verging on a phobia at this point. It certainly pervades the books far more than her supposed overwhelming fear of flying.
"And not just triple-E, but so big she cannot cross her arms over them."
Indeed. I think she does qualify as a Silent Hill monster at this point.
"The booty thing is just... I'm a white woman, and my booty is... Rubenesque. I don't understand why LKH thinks someone must be not-white in order to have black hair, a big butt, etc. She seems to think all white women are skinny and tall and blonde, even when she writes white women who aren't those things, and it is very confusing."
Even though SHE is a white woman who isn't any of those things. More on this in a bit...
"I thought chestnut and deep brown were different shades. Chestnut is a rich medium brown with a little red, while dark brown is, well, dark brown."
That's actually what I was thinking, though I might have botched the comment - if you've already specified one shade, why specify another? It's like saying "teal cerulean" or "a light midnight blue".
"Micah's wang is now so large it requires him to use the plural.
Lol irl."
I'm glad you liked that line! :D
"I kinda sorta get it, I think. It's where "white American descended from people in northwest Europe" is so completely normalized that it doesn't feel like it's even there, so one starts envying people whom one sees as having a culture and ethnicity, which one thinks one lacks. Which is bollocks, but understandable for a 13-year old. Not for LKH.
[...]
I have high cheekbones that appear to come from my Dutch ancestry, because they seem to come from my maternal grandmother, but really who knows, because genetics is not that simplistic. I think LKH's obsession with putting human parts in boxes based purely on ethnicity is also a fetish, though not necessarily a sexual one."
That's the really warped thing about her insistence that black hair is a special racial trait. It's literally there just so she can play with being mixed-race as... some sort of creepy racial template. 'You are half-Not-White! You get +4 to Wangst checks and +2 to Charisma because you're EXOTIC. However, you also receive a -10 penalty to Diplomacy checks involving tall, skinny blondes.'
...And then there's also the factor that she subtly treats non-white people as inferior (most notably by not having any in her harem), and that she's very careful to specify that her favored mixed characters are basically white people with some random 'ethnic' trait glued on, and that she's suspiciously quick to mention that any darker-than-printer-paper skin amongst her boytoys just comes from a tan -
I... really am oblivious to racial things most of the time (because I'm dense and have a fairly privileged mix), but her attitude towards being mixed just makes my skin crawl. I'm not really exaggerating about the "slice-off-your-skin-and-wear-it-as-a-suit" level of creepiness.
"And being told you're pretty all the time as a little girl is no picnic either. It makes you think that's all there is about you, and stuff like "I bet you break all the boys' hearts" when you're 6 years old feels seriously gross, at least it did to me."
That... is pretty gross. D:
"Besides the fact that it's creeptastic when coming from certain people."
...No kidding. o_o Do people really make a habit of telling 6-year-olds that?
"I'm sure it hurts to be told by your grandmother that you're not pretty, and emotional abuse is real abuse, but the way this is handled like it's the WORST THING EVER OMG -- yeah. What you said."
Thanks. ...In retrospect, that was doubly creepy because two people at the table have suffered severe psychological and physical (and in Richard's case, sexual) abuse, and yet Anita acts as though her old emotional wounds are the very pinnacle of suffering.
"I've dated some gorgeous men, and yeah, it's an ego boost, but I never dated anyone solely because he was gorgeous. Besides being sad on Anita's part, it's sad for her dudes. She doesn't care about who they are, just how pretty they are. Ick."
And the corollary is that she doesn't care about their tragic pasts because she actually cares about how that affected them, but because it gives her a chance to be all ~understanding~ and ~compassionate~. [Yes, I know that was always the case, but this makes it almost canon.] Double ick.
"THE STORY STARTED SPORKING ITSELF AT THAT POINT AND I WILL NOT PRETEND OTHERWISE
SERIOUSLY IT DID. It's like a parody of Anita Blake by someone who passionately hates LKH."
I don't think even most parodies get that blatant about it. Or, if they do, they're playing it as parody, not a dead-serious representation of Anita's thought processes.
I honestly don't know how her betas let that slip. I understand that they probably did zero actual editing, but you'd think someone could have hastily deleted that sentence from the story before they turned it into a PDF and uploaded it. That line... just is one of the worst lines in all of the Anita Blake series. And it's facing stiff competition.
"With zero nice points. Actually, where would her points go? She likes showers and baths, but mainly for the sex, so she's not particularly neat. She's not playful at all. She's not active; even during sex, she just lies there and screeches. She would probably jump into a public hottub naked, so I guess she'd have full outgoing points."
I've actually had that problem when stuffing various Sues (Edward Cullen, Bella Swan, Jace Wayland, etc.) into an Asylum Challenge. I tend to end up putting extra points in Neat on the grounds that the cruelty and laziness are more important than sloppiness or lack thereof... :\
"My Romance Sims often go to the bed, then the hottub, then the photo booth, then the car on the first date, then end that date and start one with someone else with whom they do the same thing."
You're better than I am. *impressed* (In context, I'm trying to do this with freshly-met Townies at Downtown, so it might be easier to do with already-befriended Sims. Still - nice job.)
"But it is ALL CONSENSUAL. I don't think Anita would know what to do if she couldn't rape anyone or be raped :(."
...The terrifying thing is that this oneshot may be representative of what she does when she isn't raping and being raped. Since sex is apparently her whole life otherwise. :\
"WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE GIVE HIM A CONCUSSION WITH HIS OWN DONG
Laughing so hard I can't tell my husband why I'm laughing."
Glad you liked that line! :D
"Great sporking! It was hilarious, which is no mean feat with this so-called "story"."
Thanks! Do you think I should post a link to it on lkh_lashouts? Don't know if it would be stale by this point and/or redundant since someone already did a sporking...