(no subject)
Dec. 18th, 2012 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsA friend of mine lent me A Discovery of Witches a few weeks ago. "It'll be great!" he said. "It's got libraries and academia in!"
This is perfectly true! Our heroine is a witch who does not want to be a witch, she just wants to enjoy her tenure and keep on presenting papers at major faculty conferences. This is an ambition with which I totally sympathize. The entire plot is kicked off when she accidentally summons a magical book to use in one of her papers, and is like "WHOOPS, this is of no academic use to me whatever!" and sends it straight back to the stacks.
What my friend did not tell me is that it is also VAMPIRE ROMANCE starring the MOST HIPSTER VAMPIRE EVER -- well, actually, probably more of a yuppie. A yipster!
So in the first few hundred pages, Vampire Matthew Clairmont:
- takes Diana to a little cafe that she's probably never heard of
- sweeps Diana away to the special supernatural yoga class he hosts in his castle
- when pressed on how long he has been practicing yoga, explains loftily that he took it up three hundred years ago, but the practitioners these days are so much less spiritual than the ones he used to hang out with
- faux-pologizes for the gauche Tudor chimneys on his antique castle -- the architect worked for Wolsey at Hampton Court, you know, and just wouldn't take no for an answer
- name-drops his connections with pretty much every famous poet and scientist of the Renaissance -- but it's no big deal, honestly, he just knew them before they were cool
The plus side of this is that, when Matthew and Diana are sitting around having fancy dinners of raw-cooked food and sipping locally sourced five-hundred-year-old wine and talking about academic politics, I fully believe that they are a compatible couple who enjoy each other's company! I mean, not a couple I would ever want to have a dinner party with, because it would be really boring. But they're having fun, in their own pretentious yipster way.
The downside is that in addition to his pretentious yipster tendencies, Matthew ALSO has all the bad vampire skulking in windows and creepy protectiveness and abruptly announcing that BY VAMPIRE CUSTOMS, THEY ARE NOW MARRIED, HELLO WIFE, and so on that tend to distinguish the latest run of paranormal romances. The narrative thinks this is cute. I mean, you can tell the narrative is firmly on Matthew's side when Matthew confesses to his Best Gay Friend that he accidentally murdered the last two Great Loves of His Life, and his Best Gay Friend is all "Matthew, man, it's cool, you gotta stop beating yourself up over these things and get out there again! There are other fishes in the sea!"
I don't know, man, I found it kind of hard to root for those crazy kids after that. Go back to writing papers and hanging out with your lesbian aunts and wacky ghostly Salem family, Diana! Those were elements of the story I all deeply enjoyed.
But I think the part that weirded me out the most was when Diana gets a letter from her dead mom that goes, "Hey, honey! Sorry you can't use your powers properly yet! I figured out they were too dangerous for you to use as a kid, BUT there was this whole prophecy about how you were going to meet a totally hot dude later, SO I decided to lock your powers to this hot dude, whoever he happens to be. Have fun with your boyfriend, kiddo!"
Like, who EXPLICITLY makes the use of their daughter's power contingent on meeting her Predestined Boyfriend? Who does that? For all you know, he could be a murderous vampire! OH WAIT.
This is perfectly true! Our heroine is a witch who does not want to be a witch, she just wants to enjoy her tenure and keep on presenting papers at major faculty conferences. This is an ambition with which I totally sympathize. The entire plot is kicked off when she accidentally summons a magical book to use in one of her papers, and is like "WHOOPS, this is of no academic use to me whatever!" and sends it straight back to the stacks.
What my friend did not tell me is that it is also VAMPIRE ROMANCE starring the MOST HIPSTER VAMPIRE EVER -- well, actually, probably more of a yuppie. A yipster!
So in the first few hundred pages, Vampire Matthew Clairmont:
- takes Diana to a little cafe that she's probably never heard of
- sweeps Diana away to the special supernatural yoga class he hosts in his castle
- when pressed on how long he has been practicing yoga, explains loftily that he took it up three hundred years ago, but the practitioners these days are so much less spiritual than the ones he used to hang out with
- faux-pologizes for the gauche Tudor chimneys on his antique castle -- the architect worked for Wolsey at Hampton Court, you know, and just wouldn't take no for an answer
- name-drops his connections with pretty much every famous poet and scientist of the Renaissance -- but it's no big deal, honestly, he just knew them before they were cool
The plus side of this is that, when Matthew and Diana are sitting around having fancy dinners of raw-cooked food and sipping locally sourced five-hundred-year-old wine and talking about academic politics, I fully believe that they are a compatible couple who enjoy each other's company! I mean, not a couple I would ever want to have a dinner party with, because it would be really boring. But they're having fun, in their own pretentious yipster way.
The downside is that in addition to his pretentious yipster tendencies, Matthew ALSO has all the bad vampire skulking in windows and creepy protectiveness and abruptly announcing that BY VAMPIRE CUSTOMS, THEY ARE NOW MARRIED, HELLO WIFE, and so on that tend to distinguish the latest run of paranormal romances. The narrative thinks this is cute. I mean, you can tell the narrative is firmly on Matthew's side when Matthew confesses to his Best Gay Friend that he accidentally murdered the last two Great Loves of His Life, and his Best Gay Friend is all "Matthew, man, it's cool, you gotta stop beating yourself up over these things and get out there again! There are other fishes in the sea!"
I don't know, man, I found it kind of hard to root for those crazy kids after that. Go back to writing papers and hanging out with your lesbian aunts and wacky ghostly Salem family, Diana! Those were elements of the story I all deeply enjoyed.
But I think the part that weirded me out the most was when Diana gets a letter from her dead mom that goes, "Hey, honey! Sorry you can't use your powers properly yet! I figured out they were too dangerous for you to use as a kid, BUT there was this whole prophecy about how you were going to meet a totally hot dude later, SO I decided to lock your powers to this hot dude, whoever he happens to be. Have fun with your boyfriend, kiddo!"
Like, who EXPLICITLY makes the use of their daughter's power contingent on meeting her Predestined Boyfriend? Who does that? For all you know, he could be a murderous vampire! OH WAIT.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 09:47 pm (UTC)WHAT IS WITH THIS PLOT POINT LATELY? Here, let me be a scary, dominant stalker. That is not romantic in real life!! It is, in fact, SCARY.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 12:35 am (UTC)Which is the point where one WALKS AWAY, generally, but not if you're in a vampire romance! Also saying this apparently gives carte blanche for all future behavior to be like, "oh, well, you know, vampires will be vampires."
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 02:39 am (UTC)... and said somebody's other SO also thought it was romantic to be treated that way and honestly could not see my friend's problem.
yeah this relationship was kind of doomed.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 07:14 pm (UTC)I was just like GIRL ARE YOU HIGH!?
no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 09:51 pm (UTC)There should be PSAs for writers (especially scriptwriters) explaining how stalking doesn't really equal sexy.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 12:54 am (UTC)RAW MEAT AND HAZELNUTS! (Also, vampire yoga! But he is not Indian???? I'm imagining him with a very sleek version of the hipster faux-lumberjack beard.)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 01:00 am (UTC). . . now I'm trying to remember. He might ACTUALLY have that beard!)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 10:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 10:52 pm (UTC)I realize the narrative is never going to let her want that, or at least stick to it long, and it remains a bizarre and terrible parenting decision, but I'm still curious!
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 12:39 am (UTC)The vampire yoga, for example, is played even more dead straight than vampire baseball. (Er, no pun intended.)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 02:02 am (UTC)his actual name is matthew
(this was the first icon to come on shuffle)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 02:04 am (UTC)(oh god)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 02:11 am (UTC)AND I WAS BLINDED BY THE VAMPIRE YOGA
I CAN'T OH MY GOD
MATT IS MAKING SUCH WEIRD FACES IN MY HEAD
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 02:12 am (UTC). . . but not that sorry.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 03:01 am (UTC)OOPFSB
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 02:23 pm (UTC)Man, they would be SO HAPPY in Portland. They would antique shop by day and host pretentious dinner parties every night.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-20 11:02 pm (UTC)(I'm stalled out in it, but we can berate it together.)
no subject
Date: 2012-12-21 06:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 05:14 pm (UTC)