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)]

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)]

"How my surgeon managed to magically make a vagina and clitoris and labia out of nothing more than superfine sugar and marzipan I can't tell you. But I know everything looks and feels like it's supposed to."

I'm trying not to quote too much of this bullshit, but that one was irresistible.

"Nobody ever threw me a Pride parade."

Yeah, because that's not a thing...

Am not bothering to paste the mermaids propaganda; you've heard it a million times. Did smirk at the mention of an enby student called Caeden. And the book quotes the princess bride a bunch, because everyone's a bit too online. They claim they're quoting the book, not the film, but I don't believe them because then they'd know that the book opens with a bully father who would remind lily of his own dad. Protip: your published novel is not the best place to pretend you've read a book you haven't read.

the book jumps around in time, in case I forgot to say. tim tells his bf, whom he has fucked, that he is male. bf freaks out and leaves to go think. tim is heartbroken. Bf's feelings skimmed over, at best. Suppose we know he went home and punched a hole in a wall and felt betrayed.

Back to courtroom. "How the hell did we miss this?!" goes attorney. Narrator goes: I know the answer to that. No one was looking for it. People see what they want to see.

Not this terf. You can be assured this terf has been seeing exactly what she hasn't wanted to see.

The defense are worried; trans panic gives defendant a motive where there wasn't an obvious one before. This is a slightly odd turn, because a few pages back the book was all "we get murdered all the time and nobody cares, trans panic is even allowed as a defense", and there is currently no other suspect and loads of circumstantial evidence. So if anything, the lawyer has just got a new tool he can try to get his client off the hook. But this book doesn't really do logic.

Flashback to the mother's first date with abusive ex husband. They exchange facts about their areas od expertise. everyone in this book flirts by giving brief Wikipedia-style facts to each other, and it's really fucking weird.

On pg 232 we get a good passage about his earliest controlling behaviour, so that makes 2 good passages in the book.

THEN THE BOOK IMMEDIATELY BRINGS UP CLOWNFISH

"A change of sex occurs, in the animal world, when it is beneficial to the continuation of the species.
I think about Lily, and her suicide attempt, and consider that you could make the same argument."

I can't parse this. Whatever way I turn it, it makes no sense. Apart from anything, "sex-change" in humans involves sterilising them. Am wondering if these authors actually understand how reproduction works.

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

[(Anonymous)]

(That reads like that's supposed to be the clownfish section; nope; there's like half a page where she lists every marine animal that changes sex. I was never mad keen on that francis aaron song but can't stop thinking of that refrain: "'but what about clownfish--' 'Human beings aren't clownfish.'" xDD)

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

[(Anonymous)]

Now the mother is going "wow, I never really thought about what it means to be trans!" for page after page.

"If I am being painfully honest-- is this a terrible thing to say?-- I have not really given any time to understanding what it means to be transgender."

Sure, her son is on trial for murder, sure she's had to get back in context with her abusive ex, sure her only source of income is in ruins, but who cares. Traaaaaaans! It's all she can think about.

She wonders about the difference between trans, transsexual and transgender.

"I know about clown fish and slipper limpets, but not so much about humans."

Authors speaking through the character, there.

We get a sudden ramble about how she doesn't like everything about being a woman, that comes out of nowhere and is in way too much detail, because the preaching demands it. Feels pointless to begin to criticise this because it's just the usual transactivist lecture.

She thinks for a bit, then dashes out to the older tim she doesn't know, to ask him about his Lived Experience... because that's what you do. You can guess how this reads, but I bet you are probably still underestimating just how clunky it is, so I'll quote a snippet:

"I can't even call Elizabeth an acquaintance. I know she has a job, and a store to run, and a life that doesn't involve educating me; that for her I am at best an annoyance and, at worst, an audacious imposition from someone privileged. She owes me no time, no answers, no tutorials."

(You'd think this character would here notice certain patterns of thought that matched how she approached her abusive husband, hnnn.)

So I guess in the next section we're going to get TIM-Jesus, but here I break for food!

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

[(Anonymous)]

As I was reading your review, I was thinking a realistic rewrite would be really interesting. Get on it, nonas! You could call it “Insanely Jammy”.

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

[(Anonymous)]

We laughed very hard at this.

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

[(Anonymous)]

Y'know, the mother of the kid on trial for murder is having her barn vandalised and stuff, and it has suddenly occurred to me that irl, the people doing this would be transactivists. If this happened tomorrow, reckon these authors would have a good word for the woman they've made a pov character of this book? I doubt it. And I bet all their fave orgs would be calling for her blood. She'd probably need police protection from TRAs.

There's also a missed opportunity to get into the real cruelty from the shittier parts of the gc crowd and conservatives that you'd see in the wake of something like this. There would be horrible online "41%" comments and all the rest. Maybe that's still to come; suppose I've got another 100+ pages. (💀)

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.