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[personal profile] hoisinsauce posting in [community profile] secretfanspace
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)

Depth: 1

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

Date: 2023-07-05 09:22 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
"A few weeks after Asher and I tell [cop] about Maya's confession, it is time for the first honey harvest."

...

I was just going to leave this on its own, because it was silly, but as I substituted the love-interest cop's name for something easier for our nonnies to follow, I noticed.

The cop's name is Newcomb

New comb.

It's a bee pun.



GjskfhskfhslahfjfkdjKdhakda
Depth: 2

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

Date: 2023-07-05 09:40 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
"I thought you'd want to know that the prosecutor isn't bringing charges against Maya," Mike says.

Something flickers in Asher's eyes-- relief, but also confusion about why she'd been absolved, while he was put through the wringer.


You and me both, buddy!

It's not explained. Mike says "sometimes accidents are just accidents", and that's that. Dafuq? But I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth! If it means the end of the book, that's the main thing. Completely ruins the structure, but who's keeping score; we already had a tonally-inappropriate skunk. We're on page 429, now. I think the authors have got bored because they've run out of stonewall copypasta.

More great prose, this time of the pastoral persuasion:

In late September, the trees turn vain, wearing their fiery tiaras.

And another:

Her car is packed to the gills

Oh, I was wrong! There IS time for a bit more copypasta, albeit mermaids, not stonewall. Here's Lily's mother with the coup de grace:

Her eyes shutter. "I lost a son once, but that was okay, because I gained a daughter. But now..." She shrugs. "Now I have nothing."

We are told that "sadness orbits around" lily's mother. Understandable!

But wait!

Narrator has a plan!

Brb while I get a screenshot of the last page of this masterpiece.
Depth: 3

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

Date: 2023-07-05 09:45 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
https://imgur.io/YtiHbwj?r
Depth: 4

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

Date: 2023-07-05 09:48 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
It's over. I rest.
Depth: 5

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

Date: 2023-07-05 10:05 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
So, to recap:

A girl called Maya killed the poor sweet innocent tim

The courts just left her to it

The book ends with a bunch of recipes using honey, which makes me feel slightly better about my poor relative having spent actual money on it. Then again, knowing these authors, they've pasted the results of a search: "what foods make with honey".

There are some closing notes from each author. At a glance, Mr. B writes some cringey shit about how great he is, and Jodi P uses it as an opportunity for yet another TRA lecture. Looks like she has a friend who has just "come out" as a "trans man". That's how uncool it's all got.

If there exists such a thing as a fan of this book, avoid them; behind their eyes there blinks the void.
Depth: 6

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

Date: 2023-07-06 10:26 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
So I have a question. Does the tim's mom ever have any sort of ugly breakdown? Because suddenly losing a child will fuck you up but I didn't notice any sort of ugly outbreak or expression of grief in your writeups....

Especially if your child was killed by a friend of his!! There is no way you'd adopt a live and let live perspective!
Depth: 7

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

Date: 2023-07-06 10:56 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
We don't see an ugly breakdown. She is described as v sad in various ways, tbf; me not quoting is just because it was the default assumption rather than because the authors left it out. and the narrator is the mother of the accused. So she glares at the narrator a bunch, and tbf the narrator probably wouldn't witness her worst moments. The scene at the end of the book is her visiting the narrator's house as a kind of apology, going "I'm glad YOUR kid isn't dead". (paraphrased. Just to be scrupulously fair to picoult.) So narrator responds by giving her a jar of honey, and the curtain falls!

The narrator assumes that tim's mother must desperately want a second trial, but the cop says tim's mother doesn't mind because she reckons she won't survive another one. It's literally one sentence. So maya skips off to college. =D

So yeah, total empathy fail, but I didn't personally find much problem with the depiction of her ongoing grief until the ridiculous twist.

I think they wrote this just so that people would say things like "maya should have gone to jail" and it would muddy the waters, reinforce a negative association, etc. Lets ppl say things like "Oh, is she the one that killed that trans girl?" Or even give death threats and then pretend they were aimed at the fictional character. I put nothing past these creeps.

But hm. Maybe an argument can instead be made for this as an edgy work of antiracism; observe:

tim: u have mysterious asian wisdom

maya: *pushes tim down the stairs*
Depth: 8

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

Date: 2023-07-06 11:03 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
This whole expedition does make me wish I had a review blog with decent seo, though, so I could offer a terven tour of this trashheap. Maybe I'll get a substack after all.
Depth: 4

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

Date: 2023-07-05 10:17 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Friend's summary:

"So she lost a son to gain a daughter to lose a daughter to gain a jar of honey!"
From: (Anonymous)
I'm only just beginning to process what I've been reading, the sheer absurdity of it. I looked up amazon reviews and these have just been making me shake with laughter:

This was an interesting concept but was too full of information about bees which took from the story in my opinion. I’m not anti bee but don’t want long tracts of information on them in a book of fiction
.
It’s doesn’t grip the readers attention very well. This book is basically about 2 things: bees and transgenderism.
.
"Mad Honey” by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan is a feast for the mind!
From: (Anonymous)
Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/600262.html?thread=3678988230#cmt3678988230

All the delights that await the fearless reader within this book, yet *that* is what we can expect from ffa.
From: (Anonymous)
I miss the old FFA. It would have mocked the crap out of the new FFA for the most part.
From: (Anonymous)
I know, right? Where IS everyone?
From: (Anonymous)
Reminisce fondly about the old days for me, nona. I didn't even know about FFA back then.
From: (Anonymous)
Something I found interesting about some reviews I saw, which really wasn't on my radar: a lot of readers found the book too heavy. For me, it definitely wasn't, because it was too ridiculous and I couldn't take any of it seriously. I had wondered, if you were the intended reader of this book, ie: someone who could actually believe in it, who didn't notice, much less care about, prose... would it work even then? The rushed ending, the pages of lectures... And I had considered how I would react to it, pre-peak, and concluded that I would still find it stupid overall.

But what I hadn't considered was that many people would feel depressed by the "ambient sound" of this book-- abuse, suicide and whatnot. For me, the depiction is just too silly, and my brain lives in that key anyway. For them, it's a sudden onslaught of misery. It hadn't occured to me that you could find this a heavy book, because it's such a BAD book.
From: (Anonymous)
I love the idea that being "anti-bee" is something one might... be.
Depth: 4

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

Date: 2023-07-06 04:37 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
"I've always hated honey"

>.<

You can't make this up. Is the dissonant tone supposed to make this passage poignant or ? What is the point of including that?
Depth: 5

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

Date: 2023-07-06 07:53 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I assume to make me laugh incredulously, because that's what happened!
Depth: 3

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

Date: 2023-07-06 10:23 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Oh it's total garbage that they didn't charge Maya. Not even with involuntary manslaughter? C'mon.

From the doylist side, I guess that trial would be a lot terfier because the tim's hormone-induced blood condition would be a major boon to the defense. Can't have that.

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