what I did to start the summer

[mimesere]

People are being all meta-y and smart!

Meanwhile, I am going, "Whee, I just finished re-reading poorly written soft core Mary Sue porn that I paid (admittedly discounted) hardcover price for! AND I LIKED IT*!"

What's hilarious about this is that I would never in a million years read fanfic that was as poorly written and ill-conceived and full of mystical sex shenanigans. Well, okay, I would if it were entertaining enough. But um, look, I will just 'fess up here, I know that Laurell K Hamilton is a crazy Mary Sue-ing godawful writer of ill-conceived soft core porn, and for some reason, I just don't care. I don't care that I think she's got some lesbian issues**. I don't even care that her fashion aesthetic seems stuck in Hair Metal of the 80s (seriously, LKH? SERIOUSLY? You want to see people dressed like that?) and that she wants to have lots of sex with violent, yet pretty barbie dolls whose brightly colored hair she can brush and Bedazzle. I. Don't. Care. The Anita Blake books make me sad because they started out okay with guns and violence and sex and plot! And then she ended up like, someone who didn't do anything except crazy nymphomania (yeah, whatever, she's got the mad succubus issues) and like, blood-gushing violence. But she gives decent werewolf and it's worth sitting in Barnes and Noble for the hour or two it'll take to read the Good Parts Version of Anita Blake. I totally admit, I read for the violence, the tattered remnants of plot, and the Incredibly Hilarious and Highly Improbable Sex.

But the Merry Gentry books are like crack. They're terrible and terrible for me. And yet, I'm like, "WOOHOO, more candy-colored sexin'!" Also, sometimes I want to photoshop the guards because it'd be hilarious. They're like My Little Ponies, only with swords and violence. They're brightly colored and have long brushable hair! Their eyes look funky! They all have pouty irritating manpain***!" The Merry Gentry world in my head is cracktastic, I am telling you, and full of bad porn. And this is actually okay by me, since they were never anything *but* an excuse for man-candy and porn and at least there's the built-in fertility god excuse.

If I were stronger, I would stop giving her my money. I have managed to stop giving her money for Anita Blake, but if I stopped totally I would be missing out on so much! Brightly colored porn! Violence! Fountains of gushing blood! OH MY GOD, I JUST FIGURED OUT THE APPEAL.

The Merry Gentry books fit that same exact niche that Sci Fi Original Pictures do. So much is explained! They are like watching Mansquito or Cerberus or Manticore! Only with porn!

Also, have you SEEN her official website? It's...it's like every bad web design element come home to roost in one place! There's an ANIMATED FAIRY GIF which is clearly meant to be on a black background but it is on a patterned one instead and it's wonderfully godawful. I would not be surprised to see the dripping blood divider gif somewhere.

Hilaaaaaaaaarity and My Little Sidhe Warriors****.

Oh, and I vidded some.

*sadly, not in the way I usually like my soft core porn, but still. There was much hilarity and a high entertainment value. Plus, you know, for all the crapass poorly written Mary Sue soft core porniness of it, I like the characters and do not mind them gettin' their mystical sex on.

**It seems vaguely like she's getting over the lesbian-phobia. At least in the Merry Gentry books.

***Granted, I like the ones best who have the irritating manpain and are like, "I do not wish to speak of the unspeakable horrors visited upon me in my ninety bazillion years of being an immortal and heartbreakingly beautiful celibate sidhe warrior. Look at my hair, isn't it pretty?"

****The tragedy of LKH is that there's a decent writer and imagination buried under all that self-indulgence. She suffers from Anne Rice syndrome and that is sad. But many authors seem to suffer from this, hello Raymond Feist and RA Salvatore I AM TALKING TO YOU. Ray Feist, you CAN'T KEEP WRITING THE SAME GODDAMN STORY OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. IT'S REALLY FREAKING OBVIOUS.

Comments

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

I have yet to understand what LKH obsession with long men's hair is. Also, could Jean-Claude and Asher hook up and leave Anita far, far behind?

[anonymous_sibyl]

Because, hello, Asher is far too good for any of them. DUH.

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

I think I'd still be faithfully reading these books if they were told from Asher's POV. I knew that LKH was in serious Mary Sue territory when Asher didn't bitchslap Anita and her homophobic issues and slink off into the sunset.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

It's not even her obsession with long hair that I find puzzling. It's her obsession with long hair and *really tight pants* that I find confusing as hell. That and the thigh high boots.

It's like she imprinted on KISS at a really early age and has never gotten past her crush on Gene Simmons.

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

:snerk: That would explain so, so much.

[anonymous_sibyl]

"I do not wish to speak of the unspeakable horrors visited upon me in my ninety bazillion years of being an immortal and heartbreakingly beautiful celibate sidhe warrior. Look at my hair, isn't it pretty?"

Oh my god, me too.

I see a Merry Gentry book, and I think, no, do not touch that book, don't do it, but, then, I have to. Because she must have sex with them all or her Aunt will off her or something.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

The fact that her aunt will off her if she doesn't have the orgytastic sex is maybe the best part. That plus the dialogue between Merry and her aunt is hilariously predictable.

Aunt: blah blah threatening cakes.
Merry: sullen apology, Aunt.
Aunt: It is funny how you can say that and still sound like you are saying Fuck Off and Die.
Merry: ...sullen apology, Auntie.
Aunt: Still with the fucking off.
Merry: OMG U R TEH DEVIL!
Aunt: Sweetie, I will totally have incestuous sadistic lesbian sex with you if I thought it would give me the magical power to light a candle.
Merry: ...my bad.
Aunt: Go fuck a guard. Or five.

[coniraya.livejournal.com]

LOL! I love it, It's every single book if you take away the sex distilled to like 30 words. See LKH, this is how you do things.

[juleskicks.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, LKH is so badly awesome. Such fun trash. <3 I need to re-read some.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I had a blast rereading them over the Memorial Day holiday so I highly recommend it.

[cyprinella]

Oh god, the website. That woman has to have money to order up a shiny pretty professionally made site adn yet it continues to look worse than the stuff I had up on Angelfire when I was a college freshman. Good god. I know I can't be the only (former)fan that's wanted to write and say "I will make you a good site for free!" and that there probably has been a number who actually sent that email.

I just picked up the last Merry Gentry at a booksale for a dollar. Woot! I'm looking forward to reading the crackfic. However, I've been promising my bookshelf that I will read one of my sitting-there-for-two-years-unread books before rereading anything. So I've got to get through one of those first. And before I do that, I'm processing aquarium photos. :)

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

The website is *so bad* it makes my eyes bleed.

and woo! aquarium photos!

[buhfly.livejournal.com]

I may love you just a little for this.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*G* I am always glad to entertain!

[minna.livejournal.com]

I love Merry Gentry and I'm a little ashamed. Not a lot, just in that teenage-boy-with-his-first-porn-mag way.

:D

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

That's exactly the way it feels.

Granted, the salacious covers don't really help mitigate that at all.

[wemblee.livejournal.com]

Please do the Photoshopping. Please. :D

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*snerk* Maybe one day, when I have time.

[mon-of-the-dead.livejournal.com]

sometimes I want to photoshop the guards because it'd be hilarious. They're like My Little Ponies, only with swords and violence.

*laughs so hard she falls off her chair*

Dude, they so are! Hee!

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*g* They are! it's kind of awesome.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

This is exactly how I feel about the Merry Gentrys. Exactly.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Heeeee. I can't help myself! The vague embarrassment and shame is as nothing compared to the crackheaded entertainment value.

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

Best LKH description EVAH!

LKH is one of my guilty pleasures. Luckily, my Editor in Chief's wife also loves her (or loves to hate her—we've never discussed it), and every now and then he brings a sackfull of books, including LKH's latest, and leaves them on the lunchroom table like stackable, porny orphans. I'm not sure if it's kindness, enabling, or just a way to get them out of his house. Either way, free, bad, soft core porn—yay!

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Woo!

LKH is one of the few things I can honestly say I am ashamed to spend money on. LKH and really *terrible* contemporary supernatural romance novels.

[slashkilter.livejournal.com]

I LOVE the Merry Gentry books I re-read them wayyyy too often, but I just can't help myself. As you say - pure crack. Do you have those adverts for M&Ms with the little walking, talking M&Ms? Because that's probably the general colour-scheme the guards would have. Just *thinking* of what Galen would look like in reality makes me giggle.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Oh, now I sort of want to do a manip of seven guards in the shades of the rainbow as a gay recruitment poster.

"The Queen of Air and Darkness wants *you*."

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

Oh, word. I've checked the Anita Blake books out from the library since Obsidian Butterfly (which, in retrospect, reads like *Tolstoy* compared to what came later) but I can't even bring myself to do that with the Merry Gentry books--it's skimming at Borders all the way.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*laugh* I am totally the opposite now. My expectations for the Merry Gentry books are *so low* that I can't help but be entertained by the candy colored sex crack. And apparently I cling to some notion of quality for Anita Blake and those invariably end up being disappointing for failing to have like, coherent plot.

Also, I swear to god, if I NEVER see the word vanilla in an AB book again, it will be too goddamn soon.

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

Ooh, my trigger words in AB are "thick and firm". Gack.

The books were never the same again once she stopped having her writing group take a look at them.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

From reading LKH's blog, it seems almost as if her problem is she turns in everything so late, no one has time to edit her. And everything is late because she writes at suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch length. It doesn't seem to me that she'd actually be averse to being edited, if anyone had the time to do a good job. But no one does, because she's writing two gajillion page tomes a year, at a page count of roughly 6 a day (to average the days when she's hopping and when she's nil.)

I just take hope from the last AB book, that she's remembered that people started buying the books because there were deaths that Anita was supposed to figure out who was doing them.

I don't take very much hope, though.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't take much hope either given that the book started with a murder and then sort of went, "Sex sex sex, all day long, sex sex sex, while I sing this -- oh by the way here is the guy OMG RAINMAKER who did the murder -- song."

It was absurd. Entertainingly crackheaded, but a little more absurd than I was hoping for.

[coniraya.livejournal.com]

I love the bad crack of Merry Gentry. I explain it to friends like this Anita Blake I can't read cause it evolved from good plot and story to pr0n with no warning and no reason. Merry Gentry however started out as CRACK, good crack but crack none the less. What I really would have loved to see was Merry with Sholto or anyone with Sholto really. The only things that can kind of erk me about Merry Gentry is that you can read a whole book and only like a day has passed in that universe. I just wanna scream "She went through all that in a day!? Damn!"

You like Jubilee and Marry Gentry you are my friend fo' life!

[auroramama]

you can read a whole book and only like a day has passed in that universe.

Yeah! Hey, I'm willing to dole out paperback prices for the candy-coated sex scenes so aptly described above, but if the pace gets any slower we're going to be buying a douzaine of novels just to find out whether she got pregnant this month.

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

*giggle* The last two books took place over...hmm. Three consecutive days? Two days in the first book and one day in Stroke of Midnight. That is kind of sad, dude.

[coniraya.livejournal.com]

I've had to go the library route otherwise I would end up tearing my hair out. It'll take us a dozen novels just to get through 2 freakin' weeks. I mean come on LKH!

[mimesere.livejournal.com]

Oh, Sholto. I heart him! And I find myself totally rooting for Rhys in the babydaddy department 'cause, you know, he's an arrogant dick, but he's an arrogant dick capable of learning from his mistakes. Or Doyle. *thinks* Or Mistral.

*high fives you* Also I have of the minority rage!

[coniraya.livejournal.com]

See I have trouble rooting for people cause all I can think of through the whole thing is They really don't want to have sex with Merry, they want each other. Sholto/Galen Rhys/Nissa Frost/Doyle. I think Merry should just become spontaneously pregnant, like one of the new powers that pops up is the power to impregnate herself. Although I don't mind her with Mistral. I actually kind of like him.

Also I have of the minority rage!
Specific rage this time or just general rage? I'm down with both! Revolution up in this bitch!