Bitchery reader Sarah (not me, another Sarah) send me a link to a long rant from LK Hamilton’s bulletin board about why the genre gets no respect. Sarah (not me) attributes the rant to LKH’s PR person Darla, though I’m not easily able to figure out who it is specifically. I’m not logged in so I can’t view profile data, and I really don’t want to join or log in. So I’ll take her word for it.
Either way, the rant? All oooooover the place. Sarah (not me) says that she’s certainly speaking out, but she’s not sure what on exactly. Me either. However, a few parts of the many many words jump out at me:
But no one does genre bashing better than the romance genre.
Sadly, I think romance readers are its worst enemy. No other genre tags its authors with disparaging names like Mary Sue or any of its variations, flinging it about with disdain as if it was utter fact.
*chokes on coffee*
I’m not sure what to address first. As a reader of romance, am I its worst enemy for pointing out what works for me, what doesn’t, and what trends I wish would die already? I’m “bashing” the genre if I call an author to task for phoning it in and asking me to pay retail for it? Hardly! I’m the customer, and if the product isn’t up to my standards, I say so.
Here’s the thing: you don’t have to agree with me, or even listen. I’m one of two Bitches with a hot pink website, and if you don’t agree, there are at least a few other sites that might agree with your opinion. I fail to see how calling a book or a series on its flaws is bashing the genre, or specifically what damage I’m wreaking by doing so in the first place. You really think an editor says, “Well, Sarah didn’t like it so we can’t publish the sequel?” HA! As if!
After a description of what a “Mary Sue” is, the writer continues:
Mary Sue is often used against female authors who write anything with romance or sex in it. Often by those who are not happy or uncomfortable with the topic or the author. Americans are especially uncomfortable with sex. We use sex to sell everything from toothpaste to cars. But we are extremely uncomfortable with the topic to the extent most school districts won’t even teach sex education for fear it will encourage kids to experiment. Really? Then why do we discuss the dangers of drugs and alcohol? Should we worry that they will try that too? But I digress.
Oh, yes you do. I’m not sure how you got to American obsession and discomfort with sex from Mary Sue-ism and sexism against female authors, but I can only guess that the barge between those two points was named “Anita” and the accusation that’s being refuted has to do with her status as a gleaming orifice®.
No one suggests murder mystery authors secretly harbor a desire to go out and slaughter people enmasse. Do western writers all want to live out on the plains punching cattle and riding horses all day long? Do war authors all secretly harbor a fantasy of mass destruction of people and places? Would they act on them if they could? I don’t know, maybe a few do or would but I haven’t seen any of them say so. Yet, let a woman write about sex in a book and suddenly folks are positive that she is writing her sexual fantasies out on paper. I know there is the occasional author who has said it is so. But if any woman puts sex to paper a minority of readers are sure she is sharing her deepest, darkest fantasies and they want to pillory her for it.
I am officially dumbfounded. And I have to at this point surmise that the writer is indeed discussing Anita and the backlash against her gleaming orifice-ness®, so I will answer using that example.
Mystery books, westerns, and even fictional tales of war often feature sexual scenes. Sex, as part of human nature, is therefore a logical part of a human experience, and no matter the genre, good fiction is an account of a human experience. Yes, romance writers, readers, and the genre itself are held up for ridicule due to the sexual content, much of it purply purple in its purple prose, and yes, authors have marketed their books or dedicated them to their husbands and boyfriends or girlfriends with thanks for the help with “research” (My reaction: Do Not Want!) but if the problem being addressed here is the non-stop sexxoring in the Blake series, I think the point of the criticism has been missed entirely.
Sex is natural, sex is fun, but sex is Not a Plot. And in my opinion, the latter books in the Anita series are more sex than plot, and less about Anita’s evolution as they are about Anita’s orgasms. All ten of them. On one page.
Just because a female character enjoys sex doesn’t make her a bad person or is necessarily a reflection on the author.
As to whether Anita = LKH, I truly, truly do not want to go there. I rarely assume that the author = character in any book I read. But the concept of a Mary Sue is not always a clear and direct parallel, to my understanding. It’s wish-fulfillment in simple and obvious form, and in terms of fiction, it’s often elementary, self-pandering, and utterly boring. This is partly why I don’t read that series any longer.
I do, however, read a lot of romance in many, many different subgenres, and I do appreciate a female protagonist who enjoys sex. I also appreciate a well-written and evocative sex scene. Not once do I think, “Man, this author is messed up since she apparently likes what-what in the butt given how many times the hero and heroine use the back door.”
If anything is reflecting poorly on the author, it’s the continual unraveling of what used to be one of the best female protagonists I’ve ever read. I fail to see how I’m romance’s worst enemy as a reader for saying that and saying it often. I read the books up to a point and had to stop reading them for specific reasons. I’d have to say that those who dismiss the genre without ever having read it are far, far worse of an “enemy.”
The ranting argument rapidly falls apart, and really, I’m having a hard time following the rest.
So maybe everyone’s happily ever after doesn’t include belonging to a single someone for the rest of your life. Nothing wrong with that if it does or doesn’t. But if romance as a genre wants respect, then its own readers need to start by respecting themselves and others. Then books won’t have to transcend genre before they get respect and recognition. We need to accept that not everyone is us. And for those that are not us, then they too have the right to be different, to seek out different things that may not appeal to us. And that we can do that without trying to pass off caustic remarks as wit and intelligence simply because we disagree. If we want respect, we need to learn to give it.
I’m sorry, what now? I never said Anita had to be monogamous, and I never said that multiple partners was a bad thing. I said her character went from multi-faceted to, well, being a gleaming orifice®.
More importantly, there are some people who prefer a monogamous pair in their romance, and having a preference is not in and of itself disrespectful. They have a right to their preference just as I have a right to prefer certain qualities in the fiction I read.
I think what’s missing here is the definition of respect, and clearly yours differs from mine. If I give my time to read a book, and I don’t like it, it’s not respectful for me to tell everyone on the internet “This sucks. I didn’t like it.” It is, however, well within my right to say, “I really, really didn’t enjoy this, and here are 137 reasons why I didn’t like it,” thereby backing up my argument with my opinion.
Just because my opinion isn’t favorable to you doesn’t mean I’m necessarily disrespectful. And I’m well aware you probably aren’t directing this screed at me personally – though I do suspect that the target defined as “Anyone who isn’t us” is anyone who didn’t drink the Kool-Aid and who refuses to accept whatever is published in the Blake series as the Gospel of Everything That Is Right With Romance Fiction Amen.
And yes, I’m being caustic, but I’m irked at being told I’m disrespectful because I don’t like a particular set of books and detail a laundry list as to why I don’t.
Turning the argument that there are flaws in characterization and plot into an argument that those leveling the criticism have problems with sexuality, gender, or respect is a profoundly silly way to make a rebuttal.
However, the writer of this rant does raise a big issue that we deal with repeatedly here: why does romance “get no respect?” Is it because romance, as Nora Roberts once said, is the “hat trick of easy targets: the celebration of emotions, relationships, and sex?” Or is it more that the genre continues to flood with books of poor quality, and those that disagree with that claim attempt to silence those who protest with accusations of lack of respect and sexual frigidity? I think the answer might be somewhere between, or, to use the Smart Bitch Term of the Year, a conflation of the two.
Oh, Anne, I was joking. I know, it’s hard to tell because I’m not very clever at it. And I meant LI, didn’t I? Or was that a Juno cover I saw recently! Anywho, I appreciated your review more than I can say.
“No, Ciar, I meant it as a compliment. And I don’t write for Samhain. All I meant was that Love’s Alchemy should be a mass market paperback, alongside other popular authors. It did not encompass her decline in quality, or her interesting attitude toward her readers.”
SB Sarah wrote: “And how wrong of me is it that when I saw the title “A Lick of Frost,” my first thought was, “Yeah, and I know exactly where he’s lickin’ too.”
See, and I thought Frost was the _lickey_.
Briefly.
Went on LKH’s blog ONCE and have regretted ever since. Something about being out shopping and almost buying something for one of her characters before she remembered they didn’t exist.
Have you lost your mind? Why in the world… Anyway.
Before her NY Times best seller-ness (about 6 or so books into the series), I heard her get SERIOUSLY OFFENDED FOR BEING LABELED ROMANCE. Now that she’s big time, she’s decided to defend the genre or tell us stinking readers about ourselves or something (god help me I tried to understand that rant, truly I did)?
I don’t try to figure her out and I’ve stopped trying to understand the astounding direction she’s taken her series. I do think, though, that if someone she’s hired is behind this ranting nonsense, Ms. Hamilton should immediately fire this person.
As for the no respect in romance question: I think it’s a combination of all those things SB Sarah mentioned. I also think the fact that the genre is dominated by female writers is probably a part of it as well. Some romance is silly and badly written, but surely there must be unromantic male authors who contribute bad quality to their genre as well. Are they castigated for it up one hoo-hoo and down the other? Likely not.
Sorry. Wasn’t so brief after all.
DesertWillow, I wonder if the quiz was aimed from an o.c.-in-fanfic perspective? As in, if an original character is getting more attention than the canon characters in a fanfic (which people generally read for the canon characters, after all), then that’s often a sign of a Mary Sue. Though there’s probably also something wrong with the quiz if no matter what else you did to the answers, it still gave the same result.
Well we all know this is a false premise.
I wonder with all the male writers that have been found writing romance under a female pen name why has someone not reviewed their books in this light.
Are books written by men masquerading as a female writer any better than the average female romance writers at the time they were written? Are they worse for accentuating the romance cliches the men saw as mainstream and marketable?
That would be interesting to me.
I too have heard LKH get really offended at being labelled romance. She claims to have invented the Urban Fantasy genre.
Methinks that LKH is so sensitive to criticism is because she knows that the later books in the AB series have serious quality issues.
Another things that annoys a lot of readers is the atrocious editing of the books. There are far too many basic spelling and grammatical errors (Ardeur is never spelt the same twice). Shows a lack of respect for the reader.
Estelle, the quiz was for fanfic, RPG, and original characters. Here’s the link (if I did it right – this is my 1st time). It may be geared more towards anime, sci-fi, and fantasy, than urban fantasy (which is what I write) but why that would make a difference I don’t know.
http://www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
Please look at the quiz, if my link works, and tell me what you think.
One more thing about LKH. I started taking public transportation a couple of years back and wanted to read on the bus. I found the MG series on Amazon and read the whole thing, then went looking for the AB series. One evening I said to myself “This is crap! I can write crap!” and so I took up writing again after a very long break. But then I learned that only established writers can write dribble. I feel misled.
Re respect in romance, Stacey said this
“…And I think that is because to The Other, romance=women and womenz is stoopid.”
…way better than I did.
I’m afraid I have to call bullshit. I don’t believe she stopped halfway to the counter. I bet she’s got a whole room full of crap she’s bought for characters.
Although what would you get Anita as a gift now-a-days? A hefty gift certificate to Condomania? Industrial sized KY?
“I’m afraid I have to call bullshit. I don’t believe she stopped halfway to the counter. I bet she’s got a whole room full of crap she’s bought for characters.”
I believe you’re right.
I have to say, I’m a little uncomfortable with the direction the discussion is taking. By all means, discuss the decline in quality, attitude toward readers…
…but whether she is actually crazy or buys real presents for pretend people, I think that skirts a little close to the edge. I don’t understand how it relates to original discussion.
How does that impact her ability to write (or not write) as the case may be? At this point, people seem to assume she’s reached full-on celebrity status, which as we know, completely relocates them in the public domain, and they give up most of their privacy and personal rights as part of becoming famous. Is that the case with LKH? It seems to be. Do I think that’s a good idea? Not really. I admit many of her public comments and reactions seem to be a desperate plea for attention, but if anyone has (or had) five year olds, you know this close scrutiny only rewards and reinforces bad behavior.
Has anyone taken a look at the forum responses?
I think it’s fair to say that snotty persons of a reasonably high mental calibre would assess the information being presented and evaluate the source in relation to that, rather than making blanket statements that come off as very silly (even when not supposedly to be taken seriously) on the internet talking about Anita Blake books.
If someone, anyone, could provide a more “legitimate” source for the definition and use of the term “Mary Sue” besides Wikipedia and the links it provides, I’d like to see it. You’re not going to find anything on it in fuckin’ JSTOR, that’s for sure. The Clute & Nicholls SF encyclopaedia…if one believes in fairies, perhaps? (There’s actually supposed to be a new edition out soon so perhaps I have a sighting of winged beings to look forward to.)
“Bitch, please. I have a Master’s in English, so I’ve read plenty of challenging books. I hate your books because they are teh suck now.”
**SNORT**
🙂
I’m going to have to disagree here. Authors are generally able to keep their privacy. There are a few notable exceptions but for the most part you have to reach Stephen King/ JK Rowling status to reach the kind of celebrity status where privacy is lost. And even then King has more day to day privacy than, say, Lindsay Lohan.
Perhaps I did overstep a boundary a little. In my own defense, I’d like to say it’s freaking *hard* to stay away from the personal with LKH, primarily because she puts so much insanely personal stuff into the public domain, all on her own. Her lack of discretion makes it really tempting.
Sure, you do what you can to avoid reinforcing bad behavior. To me, that’s not buying the books. This thread is more like when you call your friend up after junior’s gone to bed and bitch to her about what a freaking heathen your child’s turning into.
Following Desert Willow’s suggestion, I wandered over to see the comments to the originl forum. One poster had pointed out that discussion of Mary Sue’s wasn’t allowed on the forum and sure enough rule 4 part h:
“Characters – Do not call the characters offensive names or say they are “acting/behaving like” an offensive name. Do not use the term Mary Sue and any of its derivatives. Do not post violence against any of the characters. Talking about violence in relation to the books is allowed. Saying you hate a character or want them to die is allowed.”
Obviously team LKH has been aware of the Mary Sue comparisons for some time, so why get up in arms now?
As an aside, after scrolling through the LKH forum rules, does she get an award for the forum with the most specific rules? If she doesn’t I’d hate to see the ‘winner’
Jo, the reason for those rules was they had so many blow-ups on her boards they would periodically have to suspend all postings or take the boards down entirely. I remember one post that Darla made that so attacked some of the fans who posted on the boards that they were ready to tar and feather her. So Team LKH took down the boards and months later when they brought them back they had all those rules in place. Last time I was nosy enough to look I saw that it had developed into a pretty fawning site with little to no criticism allowed. But if the comments in question were posted to the Amazon forums, then those rules wouldn’t apply. I guess it is a case of “do what I say, not as I do.”
Teddy, this a great point. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a listing of romance authors who are in fact men. Does anyone know if a list like that exists? That would be a very interesting topic. Anyone have knowledge on this one?
I too have heard LKH get really offended at being labelled romance. She claims to have invented the Urban Fantasy genre.
The only thing I’ve been able to come up with here is the idea that the author of the rant perceives the sheer numerical power in the genre (in terms of books sold and money spent) and is paying some kind of twisted homage to the influence of Romance readers and our money on the overall book market.
It’s interesting because when I read the rant I never really connected it to the overall question of whether or not Romance gets respect, because the piece seemed to be so baldly a slap at Romance readers by any means possible. And one of the most visible weapons, given the conversations across the online community, is the persistent complaint that the genre is not respected. So that gets used *against* Romance readers, even though it’s not, IMO, either logically or factually appropriate as it’s used there. Rather than making Romance readers look hypocritical, IMO that rant embodies those things it rails against (would that double irony of some sort?).
And crap it all, I’m pretty sure I agree with Robin again.
Heh, heh, heh. If only I had some kind of master plan for world domination—gotta give that some thought before your fever or whatever it is passes.
Here are names of male romance writers I have collected
Leigh Greenwood = Harold Lowry
Edwina Marlow, Jennifer Wilde, Katherine St Claire, Beatrice Parker = Tom E. Huff
Vanessa Royall = Mike Hinkemeyer
Fran Vincent = Vince Branch
Nicholas Sparks
Wayne Jordan
K.N. Casper = Ken Casper
Michael Little
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a listing of romance authors who are in fact men. Does anyone know if a list like that exists?
I’ve got a list here. There’s some overlap with Teddy Pig’s list but also quite a few others.
You know, I have to admit that I’ve never considered either of LKH’s series to be romance. Huh. Surely I’m not alone? I mean, they’re not found in the romance section of my bookstores.
Also count me as one who hasn’t heard the romance heroine = Mary Sue argument. Boy, my eyes are just being opened wide all day today…
Actually, I did above but it’s on paper:
If you want something more in depth about the Mary Sue phenomenon, I would recommend Camille Bacon-Smith’s Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. It’s out of print right
now, but I think most libraries would be able to lay hands on a copy.
Camille Bacon-Smith. Dr. Bacon-Smith is a folklorist and academic with two published books on the culture of fandom. She also has written three fantasy novels published by DAW.
wow, i had no idea that Emma Darcy was a m/f team – i like her (their) books. i always thought i could pick out men writers, except for this one, i guess.
She claims to have invented the Urban Fantasy genre.
I beg your pardon?
She did not.
She absolutely did not.
Charles de Lint is generally credited as being one of the founders of that subgenre. Along with Terri Windling, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly…
WTF. I’ve never read LKH, and generally enjoy the wank she stirs up. Now I’m just mad. De Lint rarely gets enough credit as it is.
In the name of unholy blather, who could actually read all the way through that thang? I’m glad more patient people are around, willing to paraphrase such posts. I have too great a respect for literacy, sense, and time to suffer through them myself.
Is Nicholas Sparks considered romance or just fiction?
Hmm. Interesting, in any event.
The genres, in one sense, are blending. I mean, look at how many sub-genres romance is trying to keep a strangle hold around to keep from bursting. In another sense… it’s like there’s a sense of peripheral panic. As if purists are terrified there will be contamination.
Am I making sense? Prolly not.
Gwynnyd!
Thank you for the story about the beginnings of Mary Sue. It was charming. And funny.
Also, Gary Stus? Bond. James Bond. Maybe Gary Stus aren’t as obvious as the first Mary Stu and her worthy successors, but I think male writers have a definite Gary Stu tendency to never let a male character go unlaid by a beautiful woman. No matter how ridiculous or gratuitous it is to the plot. Someone should mock the hell out of that.
Oooo size88. Yep, that’s probably a Gary Stu staple too.
DesertWillow:
Well, it looks to me like it probably is skewed towards certain fandoms/genres, even if it doesn’t know (specifying Japanese names even if the character is not Japanese, but not highly modern or American names when the setting is nineteenth century England…). But except for the fact that if we’re talking about the protagonist in an original universe, there’s nothing wrong with him/her saving the day a lot (so long as it isn’t messed up in context), the questions themselves seem valid as long as you only use the ones in the proper catagories. I’m not sure how one would go about testing whether the threshold for each level of Mary Sue-adge or lack thereof was sensible, though, and I don’t feel like plugging character-after-character in there tonight to test it.
Charles de Lint is generally credited as being one of the founders of that subgenre. Along with Terri Windling, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly…
Not to mention the enormous debt owed by LKH (and lots of vampire writers) to Ann Rice (and probably more, but she’s the one who immediately comes to mind). Like it or not…
I remember Camille Bacon-Smith from my days in X-files fandom.. I wonder if I can get my hands on that book..
Oh, good God. Is that woman STILL bitching? It’s been like two years now…
I think the hatred of her is well-placed. I was one of the bitter former fangrrls that loved Anita and hated the monster werewant size comparison chart the books turned into, but far from ‘author-hating’, though I was disappointed by the persistant shit sandwich, I resolved to move on… there were other series… for instance Mallory from O’Connell’s books is still a gunslinging uber-bitch, and that comforts me.
I think I had training from Stephen King, who does not seem to be an asshat, but was publishing books for a while that I absolutely couldn’t stand, and then he won me back, no antipathy or hatred required.
So with LKH, it was painful to watch Anita, who kind of have Mary Suu-ish qualities, but was still an enjoyable character, die a slow and clinical-sexful death, but it wasn’t a childhood trauma. Old Anita was flawed, not always likeable, but dynamic and interesting, and the dynamic between she, Richard, and Jean-Claude was smokey hawt…
So that was disappointing, and I said it was disappointing, but when I started reading her frenzied, immature prom queen rants not just against people hating on *her*, but against people that didn’t like the turn of her books! By her logic, if you were disappointed by 100-page sex scenes less arousing than a public service announcement on herpes, you were not SOPHISTICATED enough to grasp the nuanced, controversial style of true literature.
Bitch, please. I’m even generally a fan of the group sex scenes, but the woman writes them horrendously. Orgies with vampires and werecreatures should not be *boring*, and I’m honestly not sure how she managed to do it, since the phrase “vampire werecreature orgy” is usually sufficient to draw interest. But in Incubus Dreams, about the fourth time Richard burst into her anatomy lesson psychically, I was more interested in the color of my walls.
Also, apparently to make Anita even MORE of a Mary Sue, apparently like her “negative fans”, in the last book I read, all of Anita’s friends were turning on her because they went insane and were so jealous of her speshalness and superpowers, and sexual attractions, and great boyfriends, and blech.
I hadn’t really heard of “Mary Sue” associated with romance. I knew about it from X-Files fanfic and fantasy novels, and Anita fit almost every category I knew of for “Mary Sue”. When I think of Anita, while the sex is boring and decidedly unsexy, the “Mary Sue” aspect comes WAY more from the fact that she’s got more superpower than the bastard offspring of God and David Copperfield, everybody loves her and thinks she’s hawt, and everyone that doesn’t is insane, jealous, or evil. HELLO Anita Sue!
Whew sorry!! Two year old rant brewed and delivered!
Don’t hold back, Ishie, tell us how you really feel.
Bwa ha ha ha… remind me never to think about LKH when I’m studying for finals!