Eighth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

It's one thing if mankind is hunted to extinction by ChatGPT, but I really do object to being executed by Bing.

(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3169743#cmt3169743 )

Welcome back! Fandom chat, misc creativity, internet weirdness, books, films, anything! Tell meme about it so we can get to the next post title!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

I will say, the idea at the heart of this book is a good one for a horror/thriller. Mother who escapes abuse fears she has raised her son to also be an abuser, and doesn't know what to believe. It's a shame it's so shittily told, but then I'm sure others have done it before and done it better, so doesn't matter too much that this particular telling is bad. I'm approx 1/5 through the book. Will it get good? Unlikely! But we shall see!

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

And immediately, another pointless bee interlude. I can't work out why the bees are so prominent in this book. Did they think it made it more literary?

Just passed a painfully cringe description of teens playing music. If you've read a Mary Sue play an instrument in a fanfic, you've read this scene. In general the book reads like at least one author is very smug that s/he knows the names of some instruments, and what a time signature is. I get the vibe the authors thought they were writing oscar-bait in novel form, which makes it all funnier.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

The teens discuss sex in front of the mother, because teens are well-known for wanting to discuss sex in front of their parents. Humans in general are well-known for that behaviour. These authors have definitely spent time with other humans before. Definitely.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

Selena--as usual-- looks like she has stepped out of a magazine instead of taking a red-eye and driving to the farmhouse. She's dark-skinned and model-thin, wearing a crisp white shirt and high-waisted pin-striped trousers, with red suede booties. Her hair is shaved neatly to the scalp; she has giant gold hoops in her ears. Her lipstick matches her footwear. I could plan outfits for weeks and still not come off as put together as Selena does with virtually no effort.
[...]
"I'm sorry I ruined your vacation," I say.
Selena shrugs. "I hated Ireland anyway. Has to be the whitest damn place I've ever been, and I've lived in New Hampshire half my life."

a) booties?!!

b) that dialogue is the whitest damn dialogue I've ever seen.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

Though in seriousness, that's the first thing in this book that's really pissed me off. Is it too much to ask authors like this to stop treating black characters like props to make them look edgy and cool. Can you not take one minute to think "hm, if I had been on holiday and cut it short to see my (white) sister in law whose son had just been accused of murder, what would I say?" and realise that it would NOT be that???

There's something very dehumanising about it but I struggle to put it into words. Depth for me but not for thee, I suppose.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

(kind of comical to compare anything in this book to purple hibiscus, but can't help but note the contrast with the scenes in there in which lots of characters talk shit about oyinbo, and it *adds* to the book because it is black ppl talking to *each other* in a casual context where OF COURSE that would come up. Whereas this reads like a white author's bad imitation of stupid things they have seen on twitter.)

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

Now a man is wisecracking at his sister about his sex life, like you do.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

https://imgur.io/7EhspYM?r

oh fuck oh no oh fuck no

(The page before this also has a scenario that makes fuckall sense, but idk if I can be bothered to get into it. But I HAD to show you all this page, for obvious reasons.)

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

(narrator is the tim)

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

This sounds like something the TRAs would accuse women on the Big O of doing while secretly, desperately wishing they were invited themselves.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

I would put money on that scene having been dreamed up by the agp half of the author team.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

DD

I think these are a real thing. At least, I’ve overheard a woman irl talk about throwing one for her daughter. The daughter wasn’t present; I worry she was being held hostage somewhere.

The bigger wtf for me is how they describe a party without guys. I *enjoy* low-key parties where you sit around chatting, but this description makes it sound so lifeless and sad.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

I can picture an adult trying to throw one for her daughter in a cringey way. I can't picture many teenagers wanting to throw or attend one. Imo it's the sort of thing a very sheltered kid might suggest, if they've grown up homeschooled and not socialised with other kids much, only to get bullied mercilessly by their new classmates.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

(actually, I could picture my friends doing it to be edgy -- but when they were 14, not 18. And not a big gathering; it would've been like 3 people, max.)

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

DD

A party without guys would be just fine. Nice switch from the sausagefest that has been my life and profession.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

I see them take in my pencil skirt and silk blouse, my blazer and heels. "Why do you look like a sexy librarian?" my brother asks.

🤸

Everyone in this book is pornbrained beyond repair.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

tim confirmed to have committed rape-by-deception against asher, not that anyone in the world of this book has so far suggested there is anything wrong with that. I still feel bad for tim because his mother got his dick cut off at some point while he was a minor. (She took him to "Dr Powers"; such a subtle disguise!) The book has hit the halfway mark so now it's abandoned all pretense of narrative and is just giving paragraphs of mermaids propaganda; I won't bore you with them.

I'm cackling over how this book will age, though.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

going to try to batch more comments per post so it's less spammy.

tim meets older tim. this description may well get the authors cancelled at some point:

"Obviously I have a well-tuned trans-radar, compared to most people, but you don't need t-dar to know this woman's history at a glance. Lizzy has big hands, an Adam's apple, a large frame, five o'clock shadow, the works."

Older tim runs a music shop, which is bullshit because that would imply there's time in his day he dedicates to anything other than Being Trans. Idk how much of the inevitable tim bullshit of this book I should describe. Feels like more of a big O post, but I'm ghosting that place for racism again. But I don't want this to be one of those places where we talk of nothing else. Otoh this book is hilaribad and I did choose it 100% by accident.

tim buys cheapest cello strings in the shop, which does not sound like prodigy behaviour to me. Wondering if these authors know how expensive cellos themselves are.

older tim has bad makeup. We can guess why, but narrator doesn't. Feel bad about the kid's situation again, but not for the reasons these authors want us to feel bad. Kid confirms he was put on PBs, and explains that that's why he doesn't think of himself as deceiving people, which doesn't wash with me, because he talks about being trans on every page. Aaaand it's just hit me that that's why everyone's going on about what a genius this kid is, despite all the textual evidence to the contrary; it's probably there to give a fake impression of puberty blockers. Along with adding to the general TRAGEDY.

Anyway this kid is in a legit horrible situation, drugged and castrated on his mother's watch, only to try to kill himself and then get murdered shortly thereafter, so I probably won't dwell on it and will stick to mocking the anime cello. A good book could have taken a lot of the same plot points and explored them with honesty. Guess the first step to being a good author is to have working perceptual faculties.

But in this world, this teen passes so thoroughly that all the men hit on him and nobody can guess his past, even his boyfriend when they fuck. Mayyyyybe you could handwave the boyfriend not noticing he was having sex with a guy as "he's a teen, he doesn't know what a vulva looks like", though the pornhub convo at the start of the book calls that into question. I assume all dans are well-familiar with the complications PBs create for cosmetic surgeries designed for adult men, so won't bother to get into that stupid, or how painful the romantically-described sex would be in reality. But I strongly recommend any detransitioned males avoid this book; it would be infuriating. Not that they'll see my disrecommend here.

I wonder if I would read a fic that just took this book and redid the whole thing with realism?

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

Selena shows up again, makes another comment about white people, and brings juneteenth up out of nowhere. This character is legit the most racist caricature I've encountered in a while.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

Now she's lecturing on the unfairness of the justice system, and the mother's relative privilege. Tbf I think a lot of what she's saying is stuff that a woman in her position would *think*. But not say out loud. Unless she was a fucking psychopath. I am just going to tell myself that Selena is supposed to be a fucking psychopath.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

Oh hey, nonnies, it gets even better!

There's a strange calm about Maya. She's what my mother would call an old soul. I wonder if growing up as an Asian girl, the daughter of two mothers, in this very white, very straight world of Adams is what's given her a kind of resilience, a kind of wisdom.

This book has everything.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

It's hard sometimes not to think that dogs can feel your emotions, the same way deaf people can hear music through the solar plexus.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

More bee sex. Then the narrator segues into her love life. At this point I assume one or both authors is a honeyfucker.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, there is one good detail in this book. After the mother leaves her abusive husband, she sleeps with some guy she isn't attracted to, just to make sure that her abusive husband isn't the last person she ever fucks. So, congratulations, it took 147 pages to get there, but there is a worthwhile paragraph at last.

Re: Books - mad honey (Jodi Picoult, Monsieur Boylan)

[(Anonymous)]

The narrator reflects that even if vandals smashed every jar of her honey, that would be better than her child dying. The fact that she thinks this is something she needs to clarify makes me wonder if this book was actually written by winne the pooh.