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!

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Comments

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)]

I feel like I read a cuckolding 'fic recently that sounded almost exactly like that snippet. If I were more into humiliation I could probably get off on it.

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

[(Anonymous)]

I reckon you definitely could! Here's a snippet of the mother Getting Educated:

https://imgur.io/3NAn0AG?r

(She doesn't ask for "lessons", the TIM just starts barking them at her.)

She of course does not notice he speaks to her abusively, or that she is falling over herself to pacify him, despite having been in an abusive relationship for years. Instead, she wonders if being trans feels like wearing clothes that are too small, because clothes are the only things understandable for a wimpund. She muses that she prefers to keep her history of being abused private, and supposes that this is the same as someone hiding their sex from a person they are having sex with.

AGP TIM reveals that he is estranged from his son; "I haven't been allowed to talk to him for over fifteen years. His mother told him I was dead."

Don't believe every thing you hear from random abusive men, narrator-san! But of course, nobody in this book can doubt elder timjesus. Instead of drawing the obvious conclusion, that THIS AGGRESSIVE MAN is abusive, and a liar; that his wife has gtfo, that his son knows he is not dead but wants nothing to do with him, that he is now spreading shit about his wife to make her life more difficult... narrator just believes him. Ffs.

Glad to hear his wife has been able to get away from him, anyway. Smiled quite broadly at that detail.

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

[(Anonymous)]

We flip back in time to before youngtim was murdered. And for some reason, we get this bit of dramatic irony:

"I rush out of the bathroom and fly down the stairs. There's a scary moment where I'm afraid that I'm about to tumble down the steps and kill myself."

You can't put the dramatic irony AFTER the scene where he has died falling down the stairs!

It has to go BEFORE!

Or it is just funny!

Guessing they wrote this book in chronological order and then cut it up afterwards and forgot this stupidity.

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

[(Anonymous)]

Son talks of mother, saying why he suspects she was abused by his father:

"And sometimes, when I come up behind her and she's not expecting it, she cringes."

Feeling a bit sickened by this. Really hoping it's a coincidence, but given the circumstances, I suspect these authors lifted a line from JKR's essay like the disgusting psychopaths they are.

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

[(Anonymous)]

tim gets violently abused by asher on a car ride (am not sure the authors appreciate that it's abuse; will see; asher scares him by driving too fast, then shoves him into the window; tim is bruised), then flashes back to when tim got violently transphobically bullied and humiliated at school (the students play "dude looks like a lady" on the prom sound system, spike his drink, crown him as both king and queen, and then rip his clothes off. This is what prompts the suicide attempt). Given this is set in 2017 and the school is a progressive one, with 'vegan hippy' students, I don't find it remotely believable, but it could happen somewhere (or, parts of it, at least), so whatever. But the scenario is too badly-written to be sad (this is no Carrie) and instead just reads as trans misery porn, and a rather desperate attempt to imply that trans suicide attempts result purely from others' abusive behaviour. I suppose at least the propaganda is being worked into a semblance of a plot, instead of just a lecture delivered by some jerk.

But am still only on page 258, whyyyyyy

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

[(Anonymous)]

oh fucking hell

So the reason they rush this kid through surgery as a minor is because he tries to kill himself after the assault

these clowns think this is a GOOD reason to rush a kid into surgery

"Once you chop your dick off, you're immune to bullying" said nobody ever.

So looks like this whole book is Making The Case For Cutting Off Kids' Genitals

I'm not surprised, just disappointed. These people always discover new lows to sink to.

I hope this book is taught on history courses, one day.

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

[(Anonymous)]

Quick! This child is mentally unstable! Surgically alter their body in a way that has major implications!

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

[(Anonymous)]

It's even more fucked up than that because the way it's set up, it really feels like the mother is just pulling the child along. 3 months after suicide attempt (during which time kid "mastered" the cello sonata from scratch, after allowing wrists to heal-- so "mastered" it in a month, maybe? Okay so I know there's not much point nitpicking timeline for anime cello, of all things, but), she takes kid out for picnic and then annouces out of the blue she has been speaking to Marci Bowers/Monica Powers about surgery. Kid is shocked, notes that you have to be 18! Mom tells kid that sometimes there are special exceptions when a kid has been on PBs and is living successfully as the other sex (tim even thinks something along the lines of "hm, but I'm not very successful though..."). Mom says she previously felt surgery was step too far, felt kid would be making a mistake, but now she has seen the error of her ways. (in fairness to mom, we could read this as her having a breakdown and losing her head; she has no friends or other family, her kid is her "best friend" and I assume mermaids is bullying the shit out of her online. So although the authors intend this as a sermon, it may actually have some realism... Just doesn't mean what they think it means).

So tim goes for the surgery, despite never having actually expressed any wish for it on the page. Dr powers tells him his neovagina will be so convincing, even his doctor won't be able to tell the difference. 🙄 But also, I'm curious; wasn't Marci Bowers in the Matt Walsh film, fleeing the sinking ship as fast as his little legs could carry him? I suspect he would rather they hadn't immortalised him in print like this. So I wonder how this happened!

Tim notes that transition is not about sex, for him. No shit; poor kid was apparently put on PBs when he was 12...

Anyway, we get a scene of tim's first time having sex, and it's bad sex writing but no worse than most, for the most part. The big issues are that the text claims he experiences orgasm (sorry, kid, no, that has been stolen from you), and that his non-virgin bf doesn't notice he's male. (Nah)

But yeah, most of the prose is just blah, not godawful. MOST of it. Because then we get this line:

"I'm wet as a harbor seal now, and Dr Powers's distant promise to me echoes deep in my memory: you'll be sensate, mucosal, orgasmic."

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

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno about you, but that sounds more like a description of a tentacle monster than anything I want to have sex with.

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

[(Anonymous)]

Mmmmmucosal

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

[(Anonymous)]

Rolls off the tongue.

And everything else, for that matter.

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

[(Anonymous)]

There's also more awful and bizarre authorial-musical-knowledge bragging:

"I know he is lying there listening to the sound of my heart pounding like the kettle drums in the molto vivace movement of Beethoven's Ninth.
Molto vivace means very lively."

I think we're meant to be wowed by this.

(There's also an odd bit earlier, where kid is asked if he's applying to a conservatory, and goes "maybe, not sure". Erm, that's a no, then. Music was a bad motif for these particular authors to choose...)

Cut to surgery room. Kid is having the anaesthetic. Meets dr. More of this cringe:

"I'm Dr. Strauss."
"The Waltz King!" I said, thinking, of course, of Johann Strauss, who wrote "The Blue Danube" and "Tales from the Vienna Woods," and all those corny old songs in three-four time.

...

MOVING ON.

They ask tim to count back from a hundred. He does this in German, and I think we're meant to be dazzled by this? This book is a great example of why authors would be wise to be very careful when attempting to write characters who are smarter than they are.

(Sidenote: is the counting a thing? I've never been asked to count while having general anaesthetic, and I've had it like 10 times.)

As the kid drifts off, we get this:

"When I wake up, I thought, the world will be different. In that new world, I would never be sad again."

This book is an accidental terf.

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

[(Anonymous)]

Also it has just hit me that Asher's abusive father is a surgeon. So according to rules of fiction, he's probably found out about liam/lily's surgery somehow. Maybe I overestimated this book and these dumbass authors really did have him kill lily.

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

[(Anonymous)]

("he" being the father)

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

[(Anonymous)]

We get more tim backstory. When he was 3 or 4, he said he wanted to dress "like the other girls". He continued to dress in a feminine way as he grew up, and his father was a conservative dick about it. Then other kids also bullied him at school. One day, after a bad bullying incident, his dad gave him a buzzcut, to "make it easier for him". So that night, his mum packed their bags, and left. She waited for the kid's hair to grow back before she enrolled him in a new school, and told everyone he was a girl. But the dad caught up with them, told the other kids that his son was really a boy. The kid was bullied again, culminating in the suicide attempt. After that, the mother took him to get surgery.

So let me get this straight. Cutting your kid's hair off in an attempt to protect him from bullying is the worst fucking evil you can commit, but cutting your kid's *dick* off is to be lauded?!!!!

*screaming break*

Back. So, tim has lived out same jackie green scenario we warn about all the damn time. Mother straight up quotes the infamous mermaids line.

Book continues to be accidental terf.

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

[(Anonymous)]

(tbf not yet clear if father actually trying to protect kid, or just bullying. Doesn't matter. Still no need to castrate anybody.)

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

[(Anonymous)]

Being in court this morning had already taught me that [tim mom] is a better mother than I am.

Really? *That's* what you took from that?!!

Oh yeah, also, on another note, forgot: earlier in the book, it mentioned that her abusive husband (who beat her for years, dislocated her shoulder and choked her repeatedly) just stopped bothering her completely once she got a restraining order. Oooooookay.

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

[(Anonymous)]

The defense are now going to summon the doctor who castrated Lily, "Monica Powers", to the stand as an expert witness. "Why?" asks a character, to which the defense attorney shrugs, because sure, that's how real courts work in the real world.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UEGVxLs6Sr0

(Hm, this book is set in 2019 and published in 2022. So maybe it was started in 2019, and that explains how Marci ended up making his celeb appearance. But who knows. Will read on.)

I'm 300 pages in. Only 100 left. I was hoping to finish this trash today, but suspect this readalong may take longer than expected; my eyes are getting tired from squinting at the page to make sure I am seriously seeing this shit.

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

[(Anonymous)]

(But yeah the main thing I am getting from this depiction of court is that this defense attorney is truly atrocious. Who the fuck puts some random on the stand, some random they haven't prepared, just because. A random who has a connection to the deceased and not to the defendant. And why is he making this case hinge on "nobody knew the dead kid was trans", which even if proven doesn't DISPROVE murder, rather than "the kid fell" or "someone else did it".

The narrator keeps praising the attorney, who is her brother, which makes it funnier.)

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

[(Anonymous)]

The counting may be a US thing. I was asked to count when I had it.

Aside: was thinking while reading the comments that all this felt like New England craziness. Looked up book and authors. It is indeed New England (and New York) craziness. 😎🙂🥲

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

[(Anonymous)]

In a way, that's comforting, since I had assumed this madness was US-wide.

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

[(Anonymous)]

More amazing prose. There are a lot of bad sentences I'm not typing up, because I need time to actually *read* this book, but this stupid line just got me:

By the time we get to court, it feels like I've already lived an entire day.

The sheer fucking craftsmanship of this novel.