Eight deadly words

[lydy]

So, I was trying to read Nancy Kress's _Beggar's Ride_. She's got a fairly good rep, and I don't know that I've actually read anything by her, but it was lying about the house, it was time for a new book, and it looked interesting. So, I was then afflicted by the eight deadly words. Now, this is pretty unusual, for me. I tend to find most people at least interesting, and if I don't like them, I can usually entertain myself by disliking them. I wasn't real happy with the frequent reports on the state of one of the main character's erections. I dunno, maybe it's a girl-thing, but really erections are pretty much only interesting to me if they are of immediate relevance, that is to say, clothes are about to be removed and people are about to get busy. Nor am I particularly interested in fleeting and inappropriate sexual responses in non-sexual situations, unless what you are trying to do is make your character particularly unlikeable. I mean, everybody has fleeting, inappropriate thoughts. I get that. Why the only inappropriate thoughts that the author chooses to share with me are all of a sexual nature suggests that she thinks that this is somehow important. I'm still not sure if she actually wanted me to dislike the character, but I don't really care. Because he was basically very uninteresting. As was, you know, everybody else.

But then. But then. Then there was a chapter which began with a paean to clinical depression. And I was done. Out of there. Finished. No more of this book thank you very much.

Yes, friends, it is possible that it got better, that Kress doesn't actually think that pain and growth are synonymous, that the other characters have interesting motivations, that the world is profound in some sort of way. But I do not care. Sixty-six pages. I read sixty-six pages, and I'm done, now.

(Pro tip: clinical depression is not a gift. It is just barely possible that clinical depression, in some people, also comes with a gift attached, because brains are weird and squishy. But the depression? Not a gift.)

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sometimes with nipples, but more often I will see male authors who have attempted to write female characters and not done a very good job of it acting as though one is just constantly going to be going, "Ooh, hey, I have boobs! Here is what size they are! They're right here! Let me think about them again, just to be sure!"

She said, typing boobfully.

(I just had the hope that somewhere there is a piece of male-on-male porn in which the phrase "he said manfully" is used rather more literally than usual. I don't want to see it. I just hope it's out there somewhere.)

And no one writes about awareness of one's breasts in a way that's like I have when I'm just wearing a pair of panties and a big T-shirt and the phone rings and I sort of reflexively scoop up the tits as I jump up so that I don't give myself a black eye running for the phone without a bra, because that's completely unglamorous. Nobody would go, "Oh, how hott, the way she skittered through the kitchen with one arm keeping everything more or less corralled, that's sexy with at least two extra x's." So it doesn't get described.

Similarly, Nancy Kress wasn't writing, "And then I adjusted my balls so that I didn't pinch myself, because, duh, ow," because erections are apparently a lot more glamorous. Wheee.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I remember when I was a teen-ager and working in a library, one of the things I did was to put the plastic protective sheets around the hard cover dust covers. What with the height of the desk and only having two hands and such, quite unconsciously, I developed a system where I would hold down the dust jacket (which was trying to fold back up) with my tits while my hands were dealing with the top edge of the dust jacket. This amused and bemused my co-worker (the very, very hot Englishman, who eventually dated me for a while). I actually hadn't noticed I was doing it, it was just convenient. And this, or something like it, I have never seen in a book.

The times I have looked in a mirror and admired my own tits are not zero, but it sure isn't something that happens often, and it was most often when I was young and contemplating impressing some particular someone that I was going to be seeing soon. So, aspirationally, rather than recreationally, if you see what I mean.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I use mine to open jars.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

whoa! Now that's a useful superboobpower.

[laurel]

"!!!," said the smaller-busted woman who is always a bit agog at the notion of, you know, holding things with one's breasts or whatever.

When I encounter too much description of erections or nipples and their moods (!) in fiction, it always takes me out of the story. And then there's crazytown stuff I've seen in fanfic where a woman's uterus jumped or something. Ovaries did a jig? Also according to some bad fanfic, cocks twitch an awful lot, like divining rods or something at anyone who is attractive I guess. I think nipples sometimes do that too, in fanfic-land. Which is a very very strange land.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I think it might be Amy Thompson who is known for being able to keep an improbable number of fairly large objects in her cleavage when wearing a corset. Pen, paper, stapler, that sort of thing. Ok, I made up the stapler, but seriously, many and large objects. So, the tits themselves aren't particularly useful, but they do create space. I guess.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I'm actually trying to figure out how this works. Mine, at least, don't have much grip strength.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I do still have to use my hands, I hope obviously, but my cleavage is a useful place for wedging the jar when I'm trying to get it to open. Stick jar between breasts, push breasts together slightly with upper arms, proceed with jar opening as normal.