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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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From: (Anonymous)

Flashback to the day 11-year-old Liam's dad cut his hair off. Liam's dad says something mean, but we don't see what. Maybe it'll be dramatically revealed later, maybe the authors are too afraid to write anything mean, or maybe they just forgot about it. We'll see! That night, Liam's mum drives away with Liam. The next day, he says he wants to be called Lily.

"I'm going to be a girl from now on," I clarified.

"Lily," said Mom. "You've always been a girl."

Phenomenal parenting.

He has his first session with a 'gender counsellor' a few months later. So we can't blame corrupt doctors for this one, this is munchausens-by-proxy all the way.

But at the end of that year, I begain to feel left behind again as I looked at all of the bodies of my girlfriends, suddenly in flower.

Vomit break.

From: (Anonymous)

> I looked at all of the bodies of my girlfriends, suddenly in flower.

Out of context, this sounds like a serial killer admiring the corpses of all the girls he's seduced and murdered over the years. In context, I'm not really sure if it's any better.

From: (Anonymous)

I s2g they keep using this analogy. Along with breast budding

From: (Anonymous)

He's also compared his own genitals to flowers like 3 times, I just didn't bother to quote it since tbf a lot of bad romance does that, and even some good romance. I found it clunky but I have to be VERY discerning with my quotations or I'll never finish a page.

From: (Anonymous)

The only fucking flower I ever wanna see a tim compare his genitals to is cauliflower because if I have to deal with nonsense please go full hog

From: (Anonymous)

More carefully selected prose:

"Mom had been sanguine about delaying adolescence; but leaping into female puberty seemed, to her, like a whole other can of worms."

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/worms-jump-on-bees-electric-field/

It mentions tim's cup size, because of course it does. It also says he grows hips, because skeletons, how do they work.

"My mother and I spent a lot of time talking about what it means to be a woman, in this world, and at this moment in time, and she was determined that, if her child was going to be female, at the very least she would also be a feminist."

no offense but your mother missed the very first lesson there.

tim then mansplains the etymology of the word 'hysterical'. And this book shows as big a commitment to historical accuracy as biological accuracy; he implies that, as a matter of course, women in the 19th century would be locked away as insane for wanting to play music. Nobody tell him about the roaring trade in pianofortes. Come on, authors, you didn't even need to read a book; you could have just looked at an ADVERT from the time. THERE ARE SO MANY.

Honestly, this kind of historical ignorance scares me a bit. It's bad enough when young YA authors do it, but this is something else.

From: (Anonymous)

tim takes a wrong turn late at night, just so he can be followed by a creepy man through a warehouse district and we can see that he's JUST LIKE US. this scene gets 1 point for realism in that tim can't understand a word of the french the creepy guy is saying, because the creepy guy is french canadian. inorite. then again, actually, it says he struggles to recognise it AS french. hm, not in this nonny's experience; you hear french, and then you try to hear the words but you can't distinguish any of them, and it's a really weird feeling. so that's my pedantry of the day. scene also gets -100000 words for realism because tim sees a bar ahead, with a neon sign, but opts not to rush in and act for help, because 'there's no way of knowing whether this is a place of safety'. IT'S A BAR. WITH PEOPLE IN IT. WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT.

cop-who-used-to-date-suspected-murderer-mother-and-now-NAMALTS-her (did I mention he was a cop? he's the one who arrested asher, anyway, lol), anyway, er, cop spots tim on street, and gives him a lift. turns out tim was very clever not to go into the bar ("Le Chez"), because it looks like it's an EVIL bar!

"And stay away from Le Chez, all right?" He pronounces it *La Shay*. "Nothing good happens in there, especially to young women."

Mostly, I'm confused by that detail about his pronunciation. What other way would you pronounce 'chez'?

From: (Anonymous)

Like Chex, but with a Z sound at the end. I have a five-year-old's sense of humor and think it's funny to mangle the pronunciation of Chez Panisse every time I see it.

From: (Anonymous)

See, if they'd had him mispronounce it, that would have made sense! Instead, I'm wondering if the authors think we'll be impressed that the love-interest cop knows how to pronounce 1 out of 2 words in a french phrase, and it's a way to get us to like him, or what. I just can't work out why this detail is in here.

From: (Anonymous)

I'm still hung up on this. Why can't he pronounce "le"?????

From: (Anonymous)

Back to the trial.

Attorney must have had some kind of memory wipe (much like the authors), because now he's suddenly furious that the narrator went off-script in her testimony. Erm, yes, you spoke to her right afterward and were supportive! Tbf this attorney character has been a bit controlling and irrational all the way through, so it's consistent, but FOR SOME REASON I think it's bad writing rather than an intentional character-trait.

But yeah. She's fucked the case he was building. 👍

Attorney says things he should have said pages ago. Then the son interrupts.

He wants to go on the stand!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UFcJmOs8DRQ

Even the characters of this book know that this is a bad idea. But this is a Jodi Picoult, so I think we can guarantee he's going to end up on that stand.

Prediction: asher will tell the court that he knew lily was traaaaans, and everyone will clap.

From: (Anonymous)

Sure enough, asher insists on testifying!

prediction: asher exonerated, mother feeling guilty (boo! hiss!), judge will say something that only a racist could come up with.

Onwards!

From: (Anonymous)

Asher describes all the things he loved about tim. This consists in a list of all the random facts tim told him. "Wow, these must be some facts!" you say. Regard!

"She *knew* things -- all the lyrics to 'Bohemian Rhapsody'"

🤷

So, we pick ourselves up off the floor, and the scene continues. Sure enough, asher confirms he knew that tim was tim. Normally I am pleased when I accurately predict books, but this would be a hollow victory. It has been obvious from the moment they introduced this dumb "pretend you didn't know" plot that he was going to have a dramatic court moment in which he told a roomful of people that trans women are women! Thinking about it, I bet he's going to use that exact phrase, in a triumphant chant. Maybe the whole court will chant with him, and then spill out of the courthouse, onto the road, and roll up the whole fucking planet in a big chanting katamari that will zoom off into the sun and extinguish all life on earth

...where was I?

From: (Anonymous)

Asher's manner in court is described as "transcendent".

Also, it's just hit me that probably the reason for going so hard on making the mother wrongly suspect the son is just a big "see, terfs! You see abusers everywhere, but you're wrong! Not all men! And NEVER men who believe TWAW!"

Page 372, so the book still has time to redeem (well, no, improve) itself. Maybe they'll get dark and make asher have done it. Maybe they'll make him innocent but send him to jail anyway, because so far his defense has come down to his football coach and his mother saying he's a nice person, which isn't the best shield against a murder charge. Maybe tim will come back as a zombie and liven things up for the last 50 pages by playing a GHOST CELLO.

But who am I kidding.

From: (Anonymous)

Well, what else would he be? Ciscendent?

From: (Anonymous)

Another memory wipe. Asher understood the strategy earlier. But after his testimony, we get:

In the rearview mirror, I see Asher's wide, satisfied smile. 'That was great, right?' he says, beaming. 'I told you.'
Jordan twists in the passenger seat. "No, Asher, that was not great. In a single hour, you undermined my entire defense."

I laughed quite hard.

I will say, Asher has been consistently really thick, emotional and impulsive in this book. He doesn't feel like a real person, but it's something, I guess.

Atmosphere in the house bad, so mother goes out drinking with Selena, who is definitely a psychopath:

"My son is going to jail and he won't even say goodbye to me."

"Technically he'll go to prison," Selena says. "Jail's when it's for less than one year."

[...]

I look Selena in the eye. "You know Asher. You've known him his whole life. Do you think he's guilty?"

[...] "Good people do bad things all the time. Even Jeffrey Dahmer had a mother."

Then a bartender notices a thumb-shaped bruise on Selena's shoulder, and tells her to leave her husband, narrator's bro. Narrator is horrified that her bro is abusive. But fear not!

"Your brother isn't like Braden. He doesn't lay his hands on me... unless I expressly invite him to."

I recoil. "Ew," I say

From: (Anonymous)

Plot twist! tim's bruises are probably from taking estrogen, not from being attacked!

I kind of hope we get one final flashback, in which we learn he tripped over his own feet and caused a mountain of trouble for everyone, the end.

mother's son still feels betrayed and is not talking to her:

"We have existed in a silent ballet, him choreographing his movements to elegantly avoid contact with me."

👯

anyway some other expert pathologist is called to the stand to talk about the bruising stuff. He gives some tech details, then mentions that he likes Dire Straits, for no reason.

Anyway, bombshell. Lily had a raaaaare blood illness that made his brain bleed! It can apparently cause brain dysfunction, which explains a lot.

AND THEN

The pathologist explains that the fatal blood illness... can be caused by taking estrogen!

Holy shit this book is so cancelled.

🤣

From: (Anonymous)

Book says condition can be acquired by taking estrogen, and causes kidney, heart and brain dysfunction. Says it causes seizures in 20% of cases. Suggests Lily became dizzy, fell down stairs, hit head and died.

I know this book will probably spin this as "why we need MORE trans healthcare" but the accidental terfery of it all continues to amuse me.

383 pages into this courtroom thriller, it explains the concept of reasonable doubt. I cannot for the life of me work out who this dumb book is aimed at. It can't be children, because of the bladder orgasms. It can't be adults, because *waves hand at everything else*. Can it really be handcrafted for the chirpy spidermites of danspace?

"Your verdict needs to be unanimous," the judge says. "You need to listen to everyone else's opinions, but come to your own conclusion."

How ironic. Keep an open mind... But shut it, once you've decided.

I... huh? But that's not what that... what?

Ehhhh, I'll just assume narrator is just way too stressed and no longer capable of thinking rationally at this point.

Pages pass. Mother suddenly realises son is not guilty, because "you don't remove from your world the one person who fills it". This book ain't never seen no murder-suicide men.

But anyway. The defense pushes the "tim had rare condition and just fell down the stairs" story; the prosecution push the more plausible "abusive bf pushed tim down the stairs" story. This is all interspersed with bf's mother's revelations about how bf loved tim so couldn't possibly have done it. While I've consistently got the vibe that that's where the book has been headed with this (because otherwise the book might imply that a tim can never find true luff!), the bf HAS been the most accurate depiction of an abuser in the book, so oops.

What I'm skimming past is how fucking offensive this book is. As predicted, it's devolved into "silly women, stop suspecting the Nice men of abuse, you're projecting", and it is now comparing being "a different person" (or "who you've
always been inside") after leaving an abusive relationship to being "a different person" by disguising your sex and having some creep cut off your genitals. "when you were with Dad, he wanted you to be someone you weren't". OH PISS OFF.

But that's a downer, and it's time to stop for the day. So instead, you oughtta know that this chapter ends with bf and mother sharing a bowl of ice cream, in reconciliation. 😪 And I'm going to amuse myself my imagining that the authors deluded themselves into thinking that this would be The Book To Sway Rowling.

From: (Anonymous)

I was bad and just looked at an interview, I only looked at the first question and closed it, so no spoilers, but OMFG:

Literary Hub: Who do you most wish would read your book?

Jodi Picoult: J.K. Rowling. She is one of the most vocal trans-exclusive radical feminists, and she seems to be using her platform these days to exclude trans women from the overarching category of “women”—claiming that being inclusive somehow diminishes women. She also, as a victim of abuse, points to trans women and alleges that too many are really just men hoping to get into women’s safe spaces to hurt them… when in reality, a trans woman is far more likely to be hurt than a cisgender woman. One of the reasons for making Olivia a former victim of abuse in Mad Honey was to give an example of a battered women who can still choose compassion and understanding, when it comes to gender identity.

These people are such fucking morons.

That said, I wonder what it's like, to be Picoult? To be a being that has a mind that can be held entirely within the average dan's? Does time seem to pass faster for her, as her brain makes its calculations at leisurely pace? Does she hear as many sounds, see as many sights, taste as many tastes? When I try to picture the inner landscape of the being that could author this book, the images I get are of stones sinking into muddy ponds-- silently, and without trace. But then, I think of the sort of person who could be overwhelmed at the thought of counting in German backwards, and I think, perhaps the world is an assault on her senses after all.

From: (Anonymous)

(you may wonder why I ignore agp author. The answer is that I assume he did barely any work and just left it to her.)

From: (Anonymous)

And we're back! I've put some music on to get us in the party mood. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CvqmD0CZao

Scene of tim practicing for his school orchestra. he muses on how instruments are needlessly gendered (eg: girls playing flutes, boys playing basses), and how it's nice to see people breaking stereotypes with them, which is fair enough. this is the kind of awareness i was hoping would spread further via the trans movement, back when i thought it was a good thing. eh. tim reflects that his own choice was influenced by his socialisation; that he has been influenced by societal expectations even from childhood; indeed! but no deeper insight gained.

anyway, the main thing i take from this scene isn't political, it's that this sounds like a MASSIVE school orchestra. the school is meant to be out in the sticks, in a tiny rural town where everyone knows everyone, but they have: tubas (plural!), trombones, trumpets, french horn, bassoons, clarinets, flutes, basses (plural again!), cellos (at least 3!), violas, violins, A HARP, an oboe, percussion and kettle drums. maybe I should be relieved that it sounds like these authors have never set foot in a school.

the book presents the cello as associated with boys, which may be true somewhere but nearly every cellist I know is female, so feels a bit odd to harp on about it. (er, cello on about it? ANYWAY) but who knows how these things vary. what's dodgier is that he speculates that he wanted to play it because it was the shape of a woman. :/.

tim remembers people mistaking him for a girl as a kid, and wonders whether they sensed 'something in [his] spirit'. yeah, sure, it's probably that. his dad comes across as Not That Bad again; when tim is 7, his dad says he can't wear a dress outside the house, 'This shit has to stop somewhere'. This book isn't doing a great job of convincing me that the dad is evil rather than just clumsily trying to protect his kid from bullies. he hasn't prevented tim from wearing dresses outright, and around the same time it sounds like the other boys start excluding him, so it sounds like dad might have been reacting to that. (tim claims he phones a friend up, aged 7, and asks if he wants to come over and play vidya and friend says no. sounds a bit young to be organising via the phone like that, but maybe it varies).

though, tim is dramatic (*gasp!*), because he concludes that he has NO friends after a single phonecall with one kid, in which the kid says he doesn't feel like hanging out. since the kid doesn't have a reason, just doesn't feel like it, tim freaks out and bursts into tears at the rejection. so... well, he's 7, but this whole setup is told in the usual dramatic picoult style and it's just ?????? anyway this scenario is a great microcosm of the trans movement.

So, alone in the world, tim just plays vidya and cello a lot. "I got really good with the cello as a result, maybe because I have a good ear."

Nobody involved with the writing of this book has a good ear.

"Mostly, though, I was just driven by loneliness. I held that cello in my arms, and let her form the sounds I felt so keenly in my heart but had no other way to express."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVem8hpVwsw

then, one day, his mom gets him a dog. it's marvellous! tim's thrilled. thrilled even after this:

"There," she said. "*Now* you have a friend."

erm.

From: (Anonymous)

another tiresome scene of creepy jock hitting on tim. asher interrupts (their first meeting!) and scares off jock by putting his arm round tim's waist; red flag! but tim is pleased. asher is described as having blond curly hair. whoops, I've been picturing it as straight for the whole book. tbf, it might have said it was curly and I just zoomed past. I do a lot of zooming past while reading this book.

paragraphs in which everyone compliments the tim on his cello-playing. oh, fuck offffff. he is described as 'hardcore'. Maya tells him she can always tell when someone's serious about music. he replies that he's been playing since third grade. She says 'same'. the arrogance of these authors is so exasperating. (remember, this kid wants to study at a conservatory! it grates that the authors didn't even bother to learn the usual proficiency for music, before writing their Accidentally Average mary sue. admittedly i'm slightly grumpier than I would normally be because I've wanted a cello for a while, but there's no room, and reading this makes me feel like I've got a couple of tone-deaf creatures dangling my lack-of-cello over me. But envy aside, the music in this book is shittily written, and there's a lot of it. the tim comes across as a perfectly adequate high school cellist, while all the characters fall over themselves to praise him. tims gonna tim.)

From: (Anonymous)

I'm still hung up on this. Like, sure, there are a lot of people who would think 'hardcore!' if you said you started learning an instrument at 7. But not many in the potentially-serious-musician crowd; they're nearly all snobs who started as babies. :P Their families have usually been playing for generations, and if they're starting an instrument at 7, it's their third instrument.

(and it has just occurred to me that an earlier scene, where tim was finding the rest of the band played badly, wasn't just for humor, it was meant to show that he was 1000000x better than the rest of them... fuck's saaaake...)

anyway, enough Oddly Specific Band Gripes from this nonny. this had just been annoying me all the way through the book and I hadn't said that much on it.

From: (Anonymous)

Ha, I went to school in a swanky rich people neighborhood. Every student was expected to learn an instrument in fourth grade, and I don't just mean a recorder.

The orchestra composition is wild to me too, because even with our inflated parental budgets we couldn't find anyone to play the harp. We had one tuba player and a guy who had to do double duty on oboe and bassoon even though he was a pianist. No shortage of cellos and basses, though, although a lot of them were violinists who switched over so they could have a place in the orchestra.

Depth: 15

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

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2023-07-06 04:28 am (UTC) - Expand

Depth: 15

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

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2023-07-06 07:41 am (UTC) - Expand

Depth: 16

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

From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2023-07-06 07:50 am (UTC) - Expand

From: (Anonymous)

narrator remembers the eowyn scene from lotr (of course). pet lotr-fan dispatched to check whether she's describing the scene from the book, or describing the film and trying to pass it off as the book version again.

narrator talks about never getting to choose the books she read with her abusive ex as a couple, and lists the books she *would* have read, in an excuse for authors to namedrop some authors they think sufficiently highbrow. this isn't the first time they've done a list like this.

(lotr-researcher has returned with the results! ambiguous. events don't unfold quite as swiftly as written, but could be excused as a bit of dramatic flair. guess we'll let this one stand. this time. I'm disappointed; I was looking forward to mocking; but I am a nonny of principle.)

We're on page 401. 40 to go.

Jury is taking its time deliberating. 1 day. 2. Mother worries. Selena continues to be psychopath:

Just then Selena bombs into the kitchen. She drops her keys on the counter and brandishes a bottle of Tito's.

"You know what passes the time?" she says. "Shots"

The next day, you'll never guess what happens...

No, seriously, try to guess. I 100% promise you you won't guess the next plot twist of this book. I realise this sounds like I'm being sarcastic, I'm not. I would bet thousands that not one of you would guess the next twist. That sounds more sarcastic! I don't know how to sound not sarcastic.

Anyway, spend a few seconds trying to guess the next plot point.