(no subject)
Aug. 19th, 2006 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSometimes I feel like my life consists of poor judgment events followed by Bart Simpson blackboard lessons. Like with Bart, I never really get any better... I just drift into different incorrect behaviors.
The Bart Simpson blackboard lesson for today is I will not stay up all night reading elf porn books. It's not even as if it were a particularly *stellar* elf porn book. It was a satisfactory elf porn book, equipped with elves that come in (sorry) about as many not-found-in-nature colors as My Little Ponies. I mention this because the elves in question are described in a detailed and loving fashion, the better to make them sock puppets dancing in the reader's head. There isn't anything wrong with this, precisely, and it's conveniently nice in a smut book so that I don't have to resort to my sterling imagination to *ahem* flesh out the characters. I'm also mostly inured to purple prose from (literally) years of reading gushy slash fanfic. That said, I am kind of glad that Mr. Pink-hair-and-lavender-skin got morphed into a ball of flesh with his twin sister, though. I don't know if I could have tolerated hawt sexor with someone colored like easter candy. (That'd be just *wrong*. Unless, of course, it's anime. Anime people are allowed.)
On the plus side of the elf porn book, they have better names than My Little Ponies and the Care Bears, which is reassuring. They're also unexpectedly pronounce-able. Yay! Also, they have sex, which I'm virtually certain My Little Ponies never did. (Care Bears, on the other hand -- I'm sure you all remember the link, right? Care Bears have bdsm sex0r. It's true! I read it on teh intarweb.) Anyway, the elf porn was amusing enough to keep me up way past bedtime even though I'm out of practice at reading het. Seriously. That part was weird. Tentacles -- well, I'm an old hand at tentacles (it's the anime), so that wasn't much of a problem for me.
You get a plot summary because I'm feeling generous and because, well, I have a lot of mocking bottled up inside of me to use up. (Mostly this is guilt-related because I really should not have enjoyed the elf porn as much as I actually did. Admittedly, some of the enjoyment was meta-enjoyment at the amount of mockery I would be able to generate regarding the novel but there was also a nontrivial amount of enjoyment over the book itself. That Doyle is a hottie.)
Meredith (our heroine) is an elf princess in hiding. She is leading a more-or-less normal life in a detective agency but things go wahoonie-shaped and she gets drug back to court (her aunt is queen, her cousin is second in line to the throne, and she's third.) where she discovers that her aunt, who is not particularly nice, is naming her co-heir with her sick fuck of a cousin. The person who gets to be monarch (the cousin is male) is the one who breeds first. So that our heroine has a good selection, the aunt-queen offers up her guard of nearly thirty celibate (by the queen's order) elf men. (That's where things got a bit My Little Pony, imho.) The cousin (and/or his underlings) keep trying to kill her but Meredith (who is largely not stupid) gets him locked away for six months or so. And then she gathers up a stable of suitably pretty elf men from what amounts to the secretarial pool and heads back to LA to resume detectoring when she's not busy having sex.
I love this. Not only does Meredith have her pick of pretty elf men (all of which have hair down to their asses or longer -- and amazingly, every fucking bit of elf sex takes place without anyone ever being on anyone else's hair -- urinating dog, urinating dog. If you have long hair or have ever fucked anyone with long hair, you know that this is not particularly realistic.), but she has permission from her sovereign to fuck 'em with enthusiasm. They are not *allowed* to get upset about the others being there and, since they've mostly been celibate (and that includes wanking, we're told) for hundreds of years, she could be a troll and they'd still want her. And she's not a troll.
Yeah. I realize that this is not particularly a realistic book. It's a fantasy novel. If I were going for a fantasy where there were pretty elf men for me to fuck, I'd want a nice selection of same and the freedom to bang 'em singly or in groups without having to administrate dumb-ass jealous infighting. Works for me, honestly, and I'm not going to be mad about it for being what it is.
People who might be wanting to read the elf porn book are advised that it's really not stellar. It's satisfactory, if what you're looking for is tolerable het elf porn. I mean, there's a plot and stuff. There's some detectoring. There's political stuff. There are *lots* of dangling plot threads and, as you might reasonably expect, there are sequels. But it's not literature, okay? Don't go get this and tell me that I led you into slushy chick-wank-books involving elves when you were expecting something more literary. The author DOES write better than Night Travels of the Elven Vampire (which I think will probably be my gold standard for shitty writing for now and ever) but so do a lot of people, including me.
Anyway, here's the elf porn book, which is called A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton.
The Bart Simpson blackboard lesson for today is I will not stay up all night reading elf porn books. It's not even as if it were a particularly *stellar* elf porn book. It was a satisfactory elf porn book, equipped with elves that come in (sorry) about as many not-found-in-nature colors as My Little Ponies. I mention this because the elves in question are described in a detailed and loving fashion, the better to make them sock puppets dancing in the reader's head. There isn't anything wrong with this, precisely, and it's conveniently nice in a smut book so that I don't have to resort to my sterling imagination to *ahem* flesh out the characters. I'm also mostly inured to purple prose from (literally) years of reading gushy slash fanfic. That said, I am kind of glad that Mr. Pink-hair-and-lavender-skin got morphed into a ball of flesh with his twin sister, though. I don't know if I could have tolerated hawt sexor with someone colored like easter candy. (That'd be just *wrong*. Unless, of course, it's anime. Anime people are allowed.)
On the plus side of the elf porn book, they have better names than My Little Ponies and the Care Bears, which is reassuring. They're also unexpectedly pronounce-able. Yay! Also, they have sex, which I'm virtually certain My Little Ponies never did. (Care Bears, on the other hand -- I'm sure you all remember the link, right? Care Bears have bdsm sex0r. It's true! I read it on teh intarweb.) Anyway, the elf porn was amusing enough to keep me up way past bedtime even though I'm out of practice at reading het. Seriously. That part was weird. Tentacles -- well, I'm an old hand at tentacles (it's the anime), so that wasn't much of a problem for me.
You get a plot summary because I'm feeling generous and because, well, I have a lot of mocking bottled up inside of me to use up. (Mostly this is guilt-related because I really should not have enjoyed the elf porn as much as I actually did. Admittedly, some of the enjoyment was meta-enjoyment at the amount of mockery I would be able to generate regarding the novel but there was also a nontrivial amount of enjoyment over the book itself. That Doyle is a hottie.)
Meredith (our heroine) is an elf princess in hiding. She is leading a more-or-less normal life in a detective agency but things go wahoonie-shaped and she gets drug back to court (her aunt is queen, her cousin is second in line to the throne, and she's third.) where she discovers that her aunt, who is not particularly nice, is naming her co-heir with her sick fuck of a cousin. The person who gets to be monarch (the cousin is male) is the one who breeds first. So that our heroine has a good selection, the aunt-queen offers up her guard of nearly thirty celibate (by the queen's order) elf men. (That's where things got a bit My Little Pony, imho.) The cousin (and/or his underlings) keep trying to kill her but Meredith (who is largely not stupid) gets him locked away for six months or so. And then she gathers up a stable of suitably pretty elf men from what amounts to the secretarial pool and heads back to LA to resume detectoring when she's not busy having sex.
I love this. Not only does Meredith have her pick of pretty elf men (all of which have hair down to their asses or longer -- and amazingly, every fucking bit of elf sex takes place without anyone ever being on anyone else's hair -- urinating dog, urinating dog. If you have long hair or have ever fucked anyone with long hair, you know that this is not particularly realistic.), but she has permission from her sovereign to fuck 'em with enthusiasm. They are not *allowed* to get upset about the others being there and, since they've mostly been celibate (and that includes wanking, we're told) for hundreds of years, she could be a troll and they'd still want her. And she's not a troll.
Yeah. I realize that this is not particularly a realistic book. It's a fantasy novel. If I were going for a fantasy where there were pretty elf men for me to fuck, I'd want a nice selection of same and the freedom to bang 'em singly or in groups without having to administrate dumb-ass jealous infighting. Works for me, honestly, and I'm not going to be mad about it for being what it is.
People who might be wanting to read the elf porn book are advised that it's really not stellar. It's satisfactory, if what you're looking for is tolerable het elf porn. I mean, there's a plot and stuff. There's some detectoring. There's political stuff. There are *lots* of dangling plot threads and, as you might reasonably expect, there are sequels. But it's not literature, okay? Don't go get this and tell me that I led you into slushy chick-wank-books involving elves when you were expecting something more literary. The author DOES write better than Night Travels of the Elven Vampire (which I think will probably be my gold standard for shitty writing for now and ever) but so do a lot of people, including me.
Anyway, here's the elf porn book, which is called A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 08:47 pm (UTC)Your reply was quite interesting -- I... thought I was doing rather better than I actually am on the gender equality front as the following two items will clearly illustrate.
Item the first: Uhm. But... but.. these are books for girls. (I am reminded of Zettai Reido, a manga anthology that says "SM Comic For GIRLS" on the cover.) These are for girls to read. For girls. You're not a girl. Are you?
Item the second: I'm having inexplicable issues with the fact that you don't read much garden-variety het smut. This makes no sense at all. I read so little garden-variety het smut that I kept looking for the other guy's cock in this book. (The other guy in this case was named Meredith, which explains why I was having a problem...) But that's okay because it's me doing it. Of *course* it's okay when it's me. But you. Lesbians? What's with that? Aren't you like, y'know, a straight guy? Don't you like normal people sex?
Clearly, I need to update my brain. *sigh* I probably missed an update somewhere.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 08:58 pm (UTC)As for the other bit, I don't read much smut that's not printed by Penthouse. That sort is most definitely not the kind meant for girls. I like hetsex just fine, of course, but I've found that...........you know, you probably don't really want to know enough about my personal preferences to let me finish that sentence.
I'll get me hat.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 09:04 pm (UTC)As for the sorts of unrepentant smut that you read -- I don't have any room to talk on that front. None at all.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 11:00 am (UTC)There are at 3 sequels already in print and the 5th book is due out later this year. It says something about me that I have not only read them, I have in fact checked them out of the library more than once so I can reread them on occasion (books having the advantage over the internet in that they are *portable* porn, which my desktop is not.)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 12:32 pm (UTC)Um, you are aware that vast thundering reaches of porn aimed at het males are largely, if not exclusively, populated by "lesbians"? Stuff produced for those so homophobic that the presence of the cock in the picture-frame (rhetorical or pictoral, although they don't seem to have published an actual male-oriented pornographic novel undisguised as a later Heinlein novel since about 1965, which come to think of it, is when Heinlein started inserting spank-book material in between the spacesuitery and the libertarian philosophizing) deflates the mood. For all the same reasons that slash and yaoi clears the room of excess X-chromosomes prior to the "hawt sex0r", really.
I'd have to disagree with the assertion that there isn't a lot of homoerotic material in the later Blake books, btw. And there might be a few lesbians hanging around the edges of the stories, although never in the centre of the action. I think Incubus Dreams was the point at which I gave up on both Blake & Hamilton. There wasn't enough plot left in between the increasingly depressing sex-grotesqueries to make it worth my time.
I definitely bought and read the first of the elf-porn books, not sure if I bothered with the rest of 'em. I have a limited tolerance for faerie bushwalla, and what passed for a plot wasn't enough to get me through Hamilton's awful sex-prose.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 03:54 pm (UTC)I can tolerate rather a lot of faerie bushwalla, particularly if it involves a selection of My Little Pony elves. I might could also tolerate more than a little of the dating of werewolves and vampires. I'll see what the local book shop has available. They are, as
no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 09:31 pm (UTC)hmm. i wasn't aware that ms hamilton wrote anything other than vampire smut, which are fine as far as they go, but it did seem pointless to read more than a couple/three of them. those are conveniently shelved in the "horror" section, where they occupy a space only slightly smaller than stephen king (and between the two of them, they tend to account for over 50% of available shelf space). but all in all it seemed to present the vanilla icing of the dark side.
for something less wholesome, check out http://www.caitlinrkiernan.com/sirenia.html
no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 03:41 pm (UTC)Her other books are even more about sadism, which is sort of sad for the characters.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-20 03:44 pm (UTC)I like erotica. I just get tired of the same darn descriptors used to tell about acts that don't sound very fun or enthralling to me. We're at the point where I'm like, "ok. Sex bit. Let's find the single point of the plot that's hidden in here, then move on."