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Jul. 30th, 2012
Must! Not! Buy! More! New! Dolls!
Jul. 30th, 2012 09:45 amSince January, I have acquired the following people [in chronological order]. I'm talking about dolls I purchased this year, not ones that I purchased last year, but finally received this year.
Mellifer [1:6 BJD], purchased in April
Steampink AJ [1:6 action fig], traded for in June
Nathaniel [1:3 BJD], purchased in June/July
Millie [1:6 action fig], purchased in July
August [1:3 BJD], purchased in July
Lura['s head] [1:3 BJD], purchased in July
June and July have been very busy doll-related months for me, what with Too Many Dolls: The Exodus and the purchase of 5 of this year's 6 new dolls. Most of the purchasing frenzy stems from having money available after Too Many Dolls: The Exodus and therefore being able to indulge some 1:6 and 1:3 whims.
I can't keep buying dolls like this, though. I don't have a) the space or b) the money. Well, technically, that's not true. In terms of a), I could always bring some to work to put on my new bookcase, which should be coming any day now. In terms of b), I can pretty much always finagle it so I cover my necessary expenses and then whatever doll-related purchases I want.
But anyway...we are ignoring technicalities! I need to watch my discretionary spending because we are saving up to move next summer. We need to pay for packing supplies, movers and/or truck rental, first + security, pet registration fee [meow!], furniture and all those other things you don't know you need until you get to your new house and realize you don't have them. I've been socking away $$$ steadily for at least 6 months, so I have a nice chunk of change already, but I'd rather have saved too much than too little.
Therefore I have made myself a resolution. I will not purchase any more 1:3 or 1:6 dolls until we move. Getting a body for Lura is fine. Trading for dolls is fine. Buying doll-related things [such as clothes + wig for Lura, 1:3 furniture and 1:6 stands] is acceptable too. Leaching from the bank account to increase the ranks, however, is not.
This way I can settle down and enjoy what I have. I will also ensure that I have plenty of $$$ to cover moving costs. It will be hard, but I can do it!
Mellifer [1:6 BJD], purchased in April
Steampink AJ [1:6 action fig], traded for in June
Nathaniel [1:3 BJD], purchased in June/July
Millie [1:6 action fig], purchased in July
August [1:3 BJD], purchased in July
Lura['s head] [1:3 BJD], purchased in July
June and July have been very busy doll-related months for me, what with Too Many Dolls: The Exodus and the purchase of 5 of this year's 6 new dolls. Most of the purchasing frenzy stems from having money available after Too Many Dolls: The Exodus and therefore being able to indulge some 1:6 and 1:3 whims.
I can't keep buying dolls like this, though. I don't have a) the space or b) the money. Well, technically, that's not true. In terms of a), I could always bring some to work to put on my new bookcase, which should be coming any day now. In terms of b), I can pretty much always finagle it so I cover my necessary expenses and then whatever doll-related purchases I want.
But anyway...we are ignoring technicalities! I need to watch my discretionary spending because we are saving up to move next summer. We need to pay for packing supplies, movers and/or truck rental, first + security, pet registration fee [meow!], furniture and all those other things you don't know you need until you get to your new house and realize you don't have them. I've been socking away $$$ steadily for at least 6 months, so I have a nice chunk of change already, but I'd rather have saved too much than too little.
Therefore I have made myself a resolution. I will not purchase any more 1:3 or 1:6 dolls until we move. Getting a body for Lura is fine. Trading for dolls is fine. Buying doll-related things [such as clothes + wig for Lura, 1:3 furniture and 1:6 stands] is acceptable too. Leaching from the bank account to increase the ranks, however, is not.
This way I can settle down and enjoy what I have. I will also ensure that I have plenty of $$$ to cover moving costs. It will be hard, but I can do it!
A while back, when I still lived in Massachusetts, I was housesitting overnight at someone's house. I found some cheap paperbacks by Nancy Collins there -- Sunglasses After Dark and In the Blood -- and read them quickly, staying up late. They followed the adventures of Sonja Blue, a reluctant vampire trying to suppress her monstrous nature, which she termed "the Other," while also taking vengeance on her maker and ridding the world of supernatural menaces along the way. Back before urban fantasy devolved into a set of cliches, this trilogy [capped by Paint It Black] entertained me and made an impression on me in the way that Sonja's vampirism was portrayed as an alien entity in her head against which she struggled.
Harboring happy memories of this trilogy, I recently got all 3 books off Amazon.com and settled in for a bit of fun. I quickly realized that the Sonja Blue series is a) full of cliches [not urban fantasy cliches, but cliches in general] and b) horribly misogynist.
Speaking of a), I don't even know where to start. All the characters are stock types, and they all speak exactly as expected. For example, the British pimp spews a debased version of Cockney slang ["ducks?" "guv'nor?!"] dreamt up by someone whose experience with the British idiom extends to a single viewing of Disney's Mary Poppins. The oleaginous evil dude makes a suave proposal to our male protagonist of In The Blood that's all ominous inneundo and silly euphemisms. I could go on, but I'd exhaust myself in listing the ways in which the characterization is lazy.
Speaking of b), the series doesn't come right out and hate women blatantly, but it does so in more insidious, structural ways. Sonja moves in a world where most of the people she meets are men, while the women are usually reduced to sexualized window dressing. The one exception, her main antagonist in Sunglasses After Dark, Caroline Wheele, is defined as the widow of a charismatic evangelist [she killed him] for whom, with her psychic talents, she was the power behind the throne. When Caroline dies, the spirits of her victims pull her to pieces, reducing her to an insensate object in the very way that the author reduces all female characters.
The trilogy apparently really hates sex too. Any sex scene is one of transactional exploitation, without any appreciation or emotional connection. Sexual and psychic violation forge both Sonja's and Caroline's personalities, and they go on to perpetrate the same abuses on others. Actually, now that I think about it, there's almost no sex acts in the trilogy. It's all rape, all the time. Anyone whose perspective automatically makes sex an abuse of power has a serious problem. Of course, the trilogy's hatred for sex ends up being a hatred for women, since all the women are reduced to sex objects.
Finally, Sonja herself is constructed as a misogynist character. She doesn't hate -- or at least tolerates -- male characters, with whom she occasionally forms mutually beneficial relationships. But she really doesn't like other women. At best, she feels comtempt for them, at worst, as with Caroline, hatred. Furthermore, Sonja is that most tedious of types, the Exceptional Woman [see my criticism of Brave for details], whose value only lies in her repudiation of her status as a woman and her embrace of pursuits and skills coded as masculine. Blah blah blah yuck.
I'm finishing this trilogy, and then I'm getting rid of it.
Harboring happy memories of this trilogy, I recently got all 3 books off Amazon.com and settled in for a bit of fun. I quickly realized that the Sonja Blue series is a) full of cliches [not urban fantasy cliches, but cliches in general] and b) horribly misogynist.
Speaking of a), I don't even know where to start. All the characters are stock types, and they all speak exactly as expected. For example, the British pimp spews a debased version of Cockney slang ["ducks?" "guv'nor?!"] dreamt up by someone whose experience with the British idiom extends to a single viewing of Disney's Mary Poppins. The oleaginous evil dude makes a suave proposal to our male protagonist of In The Blood that's all ominous inneundo and silly euphemisms. I could go on, but I'd exhaust myself in listing the ways in which the characterization is lazy.
Speaking of b), the series doesn't come right out and hate women blatantly, but it does so in more insidious, structural ways. Sonja moves in a world where most of the people she meets are men, while the women are usually reduced to sexualized window dressing. The one exception, her main antagonist in Sunglasses After Dark, Caroline Wheele, is defined as the widow of a charismatic evangelist [she killed him] for whom, with her psychic talents, she was the power behind the throne. When Caroline dies, the spirits of her victims pull her to pieces, reducing her to an insensate object in the very way that the author reduces all female characters.
The trilogy apparently really hates sex too. Any sex scene is one of transactional exploitation, without any appreciation or emotional connection. Sexual and psychic violation forge both Sonja's and Caroline's personalities, and they go on to perpetrate the same abuses on others. Actually, now that I think about it, there's almost no sex acts in the trilogy. It's all rape, all the time. Anyone whose perspective automatically makes sex an abuse of power has a serious problem. Of course, the trilogy's hatred for sex ends up being a hatred for women, since all the women are reduced to sex objects.
Finally, Sonja herself is constructed as a misogynist character. She doesn't hate -- or at least tolerates -- male characters, with whom she occasionally forms mutually beneficial relationships. But she really doesn't like other women. At best, she feels comtempt for them, at worst, as with Caroline, hatred. Furthermore, Sonja is that most tedious of types, the Exceptional Woman [see my criticism of Brave for details], whose value only lies in her repudiation of her status as a woman and her embrace of pursuits and skills coded as masculine. Blah blah blah yuck.
I'm finishing this trilogy, and then I'm getting rid of it.
CANCELLED!!!
Jul. 30th, 2012 12:26 pmI cancelled my New York Times online subscription today. The rep recorded my detailed comments about why I was cancelling. I doubt that will make any difference, though. On to slightly less offensive news sources...
Just finished the third book in the Sonja Blue trilogy, Paint It Black by Nancy Collins. Kinda funny how she took the title from a Rolling Stones song that was more original, memorable and deeply felt in a few verses than the entire Sonja Blue trilogy was in 3 books. Anyway, I think there was something in there about Sonja's consummation of her quest for vengeance against her vampire maker, but it was lost in an incredibly tedious string of rape, murder, murder by rape and rape by murder that was trying hard to pass for plot.
I was mostly reading the book because I was curious to see how Sonja's adopted vampire/human hybrid daughter Lethe would turn out. When Lethe went into a cocoon, popped out as a teenager after a few weeks and raped her adoptive father [Sonja's partner], then flew around the world [without a plane], raping 24 other guys, with the goal of producing some sort of master race with super psychic powers, I was disgusted. I was disgusted by the complete vacuity of the whole enterprise and its venomously misanthropic, morally bankrupt imagination. It was bad because it was stupid and stupid because it was bad.
I swore an oath to myself that I wouldn't swear any more in my LJ, but I have to break that oath now because the Sonja Blue trilogy was the shittiest shit that ever shat. It's an offense to good writing, good plotting and good character development. It's an offense to all people of any sex and gender presentation, but especially women. It's an offense against anyone who believes in kindness, respect, humanity and fairness. It's an offense to originality and creativity.
I've concluded that it's not actually a trilogy. Instead, it's an actively destructive vortex of hostility. It's a testament to the sad depths of banal depravity of the human imagination. It's a diseased mutation of novels, a literary cancer born from kyriarchical nastiness. It's deeply revolting on every level -- line by line, cliche by cliche, regurgitated theme by regurgitated theme -- and potentially damaging. I live in the kyriarchy; I already experience multiple axes of oppression daily; I don't need the inhumane dicta of the kyriarchy concentrated and injected directly into my amygdala in the form of this trilogy.
If, for some bizarre reason, you want to read a series that hates you and enjoys doing so, I heartily recommend the Sonja Blue trilogy. You can have my copies. Take them, please. I would burn them in cleansing fire, only I don't think there's any place around here where I can do so without violating some sort of city ordinance. Barring that, I'll settle for tossing them in the Dumpster or recycling them in the vain hope that the pages might contribute usefully to society in their next life.
I don't just hate this trilogy. I reject it. I repudiate it. It represents all the vile oppressions against which I struggle every day. This trilogy is just one of my many enemies and oppressors.
I will not let it win.
I was mostly reading the book because I was curious to see how Sonja's adopted vampire/human hybrid daughter Lethe would turn out. When Lethe went into a cocoon, popped out as a teenager after a few weeks and raped her adoptive father [Sonja's partner], then flew around the world [without a plane], raping 24 other guys, with the goal of producing some sort of master race with super psychic powers, I was disgusted. I was disgusted by the complete vacuity of the whole enterprise and its venomously misanthropic, morally bankrupt imagination. It was bad because it was stupid and stupid because it was bad.
I swore an oath to myself that I wouldn't swear any more in my LJ, but I have to break that oath now because the Sonja Blue trilogy was the shittiest shit that ever shat. It's an offense to good writing, good plotting and good character development. It's an offense to all people of any sex and gender presentation, but especially women. It's an offense against anyone who believes in kindness, respect, humanity and fairness. It's an offense to originality and creativity.
I've concluded that it's not actually a trilogy. Instead, it's an actively destructive vortex of hostility. It's a testament to the sad depths of banal depravity of the human imagination. It's a diseased mutation of novels, a literary cancer born from kyriarchical nastiness. It's deeply revolting on every level -- line by line, cliche by cliche, regurgitated theme by regurgitated theme -- and potentially damaging. I live in the kyriarchy; I already experience multiple axes of oppression daily; I don't need the inhumane dicta of the kyriarchy concentrated and injected directly into my amygdala in the form of this trilogy.
If, for some bizarre reason, you want to read a series that hates you and enjoys doing so, I heartily recommend the Sonja Blue trilogy. You can have my copies. Take them, please. I would burn them in cleansing fire, only I don't think there's any place around here where I can do so without violating some sort of city ordinance. Barring that, I'll settle for tossing them in the Dumpster or recycling them in the vain hope that the pages might contribute usefully to society in their next life.
I don't just hate this trilogy. I reject it. I repudiate it. It represents all the vile oppressions against which I struggle every day. This trilogy is just one of my many enemies and oppressors.
I will not let it win.