as_sporkive | Touched by Venom Parts Six and Seven

theepistler wrote in antishurtugal, 2017-05-11 10:39:00

MOOD:

sick
MUSIC: Incoherent screaming

Touched By Venom: Parts Six and Seven

Part Six: Ditch The Bitch

Zarq’s now mute mother is booted out of the clan and cursed never to be allowed to belong to another one. She leaves, taking Zarq with her and apparently intent on finding her a place at a convent or some such. Oh so now you give a rat’s rear about her, huh? The two of them enter some place known as the Zone of the Dead, which sounds cool but actually isn’t.

And that took an entire nine page chapter to get across.

Zarq and her mother end up at what is essentially a funeral home; dead people are brought here, mummified and hung from the ceiling because… uh… hey, what’s that over there?

It's a kitten! Yay, kittens!

The place is run by a pair of brothers known as makmakis, who I think are some kind of monk. I guess their vows didn’t include anything about celibacy, or homosexual behaviour. Or incest either, since the two of them apparently get it on all the time.

Incestuous gay brothers?? What is this, a slash fanfic written by a horny 15 year old girl? Either way, add this to the list of completely pointless sexual material stuffed into this book for reasons unknown. It sure as hell isn’t helping me to get my jollies off. None of the sexual stuff in this book is actually erotic – it’s just gross and nasty. I mean, really – what’s the point of filling your book up with sex if readers aren’t even going to want to whack off to it? It doesn’t even qualify as good porn.

Blah blah, boring descriptions of how the death rituals in this setting work, none of which will ever be relevant. Zarq’s mother gets a bit better, and the reader is treated to an absolutely disgusting description of Zarq beating poor innocent rats to a pulp with a stick.

The gay incestuous brothers are specifically noted as being “good”, and indeed they’re easily the least evil male characters to show up so far. They don’t even screw Zarq and Mumsy over like absolutely everybody else has.

And you know what? I think there’s an unintentional bit of subtext here. Because the brothers are gay, they don’t want to have sex with Zarq or her mother. Therefore, they are Good. Men who do want to have sex with women in this trilogy (ie. most of them) are almost invariably Bad, and most of them are rapey as well. At the very least there’s an ongoing theme of men losing their shit the moment a woman says no to them.

Women of the world: all straight men secretly want to do it with you, without exception, and when a man wants to have sex with you this is a Bad Thing. Because a man having sex with you is Bad. You should only have sex with weak, ineffectual men who will let you lord it over them and will never dare argue with you. But you’ll be even better off with a gay guy, because they’re “safe”.

Other women, meanwhile, are pretty much always going to screw you over because they’re all nasty, jealous bitches, again pretty much without exception.

This subtext resurfaces later in the series as well. Spoiler Alert: Zarq will eventually find herself a male lover, only to ditch him because his nasty old penis just isn’t good enough. Subsequently she becomes a lesbian out of the blue and this is much more desirable. If memory serves, you will not see a single straight couple in a happy loving relationship in this entire trilogy.

Yeah, I’m beginning to suspect Ms Cross has issues. Deep-seated, extremely serious, very off-putting issues. I’m also trying to figure out if she hates men or women more, because she writes both sexes as ugly stereotypes. Hell, maybe she just hates everybody. It would explain why everyone in this trilogy is a total douchecanoe.

Cue more boring description, blah blah blah, Zarq disguises herself as a boy (I bet you’re glad you don’t have “breasts and hips” now, you little freak) and they join up with some travelling merchants to leave this part of the country altogether. We also learn about an incident once upon a time when Mummy Dearest broke a kitten’s neck on purpose rather than let Zarq care for it, and apparently an Important Life Lesson was learned thereby. Oh, and some ham-handed symbolism about how you can’t survive outside the place where you belong, etc.

Or maybe the author just thought putting in some kitten murder would be “edgy”.

Mr. Mittens, nooooo!

During the boring journey Zarq randomly decides that it would be awesome if she was able to own and breed dragons of her own, even though that would be impossible (guess what she of course ends up doing).

Finally the caravan comes across a convent out in the middle of the jungle, and Mumsy wants to stay there for some reason. Here we get a nice little typo, plus yet another anachronism (I haven’t been noting them all, but there are quite a few):

‘They won’t take the likes of you, nor your dragon-bait son,’ the merchant master said, and he spat in the mud. ‘But it’s your prerogative to stay, of course.’

And that’s not the only typo in the book, either. Was this thing edited with a club, or what?

Anyway, so Zarq and her mother are then found by a creepy looking old hag who Zarq dubs “Yellow Face” (she has an odd habit of calling people by random nicknames she made up rather than using their real names). Yellow Face is from the convent and doesn’t want to take them in, but it turns out she’s prepared to take bribes, so they’re allowed in.

Might I add, Zarq’s mother has just deliberately taken her to a convent where she will be genitally mutilated so brutally that it runs a very real risk of killing her. There’s no indication that she knows this will happen, but given her track record I would not be the slightest bit surprised. Because once again, fuck Zarq. She’s treated with less regard than a freaking pet dog.

And yet I still don’t care.

Part Seven: Mommie Dearest Finally Dies And OH MY GODS WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARRRGH NO MAKE IT STOP WHY WOULD YOU EVEN WRITE THAT????!!!!

Here, have another kitten. You're going to need it.

They arrive at the convent, where a group of Not-Nuns care for old retired male dragons, and yep – Mother Dearest clearly does want Zarq to become one of them and therefore have her ladybits hacked off. Without anasthetic. Or consent. Or even being told what they’re going to do to her.

Am I actually supposed to like this character?

After several pages of tedious description of the convent, Mummy finally deigns to cuddle her starving and frightened daughter, then uses magic to give her a vision. Zarq lives out some of her mother’s past, from her mother’s point of view. So now we’ve got a nine year old kid experiencing the life of a grown woman.

This of course includes graphic sex.

The short version: in her original home Mumsy had the hots for another Djimbi. We also get another anachronism when she describes herself as being so thirsty for him (now there’s a term being used way before its time) that when he looks away from her she feels “dehydrated”.

Dude. Bronze Age Fantasy Serfs would not know that word. And you were doing so well with the realism so far!

The man is also described as being “piebald”.

Uh, Ms Cross? Piebald means “black and white”. The Djimbi aren’t black and white; they’re green. Even “skewbald” (brown and white) would be better. On top of that using the word piebald makes me picture a horse.

Word choice. It matters.

The two of them get it on in any case, but he’s worried about knocking her up with a Djimbi baby for unclear reasons. So they do it up the poop chute instead. Or, as the author so delicately describes it “…he denied me, rolled me onto my belly, took me from behind where he could spill his seed without growing a child. The pain of him was sweet and sharp…”

Yeah, and your grammar is causing me some pain as well, lady, though not the “sweet” kind.

Might I remind you, this is being experienced vicariously by a little girl. Just keep piling on the pedophilia vibes there, author. You couldn’t possibly have started with the eventual outcome of this little roll in the hay. You know, the part that’s actually relevant to the story.

Either way Mumsy-to-be won’t take no for an answer – she wants his baby, and hard. So they eventually do it the proper way. And by that I mean we get this: “When he finally relinquished – when he stayed atop me and with a gut-deep groan pushed into my womb…”

Um.

That’s physically impossible.

You don’t have intercourse by sticking the peepee into the baby bag. See, us women have this thing known as a vagina, and another thing known as a cervix. Penis goes in vagina, sperm have to make it the rest of the way themselves. Unless it’s in the process of pushing out a baby, a lady’s womb is not open to the public.

Considering that people in this setting apparently know what an ovary is, I’m having a lot of trouble buying it that they don’t know how vaginal sex works. And if this was supposed to be some sort of metaphor, it’s a godawful one.

Moving on, this results in the desired pregnancy (what, when they only did it breeding style once? Those are some pretty long odds), and much gnashing of teeth ensues. Rather hilariously, the conception of Waivia (yes of course it’s her) is treated with great symbolic importance, as if Mumsy has just been impregnated with The Chosen One or some such. Seriously, there’s so much drama and gravitas around the whole thing that you’d expect – given that this is a fantasy novel – the resulting child to be very important in the story.

Which she really isn’t. Waivia never does anything in this trilogy. She’s barely even in it. It kind of feels like the author is just jerking me around at this point. She keeps making it look like something cool might be about to happen, but it never does. Meanie.

Anyway, so Mumsy is pregnant and there was much ~~rejoicing~~ angsting. She tells her beau to compete for the right to make her his wi- uh, his “garden of children” (did I mention that there are no actual gardens in this setting? So why are they even using that word?). Apparently it’s forbidden for two half-breed Djimbis to breed. Because… uh… I have no idea. Because Racism, I guess. Completely pointless racism that makes no sense. Apparently this means the baby will be “cursed”.

Seriously, why isn’t Waivia the protagonist? Aside from the fact that she’s one of the only proactive characters in the trilogy, and the only one who bothers to try and make life better for herself, but we’ve got all this dramatic backstory for her, of the sort a lot of fantasy protagonists have. She’s the product of Forbidden Love, her parents are tragically torn apart when her mother is sold off to Clutch Re, her father is murdered, she’s a member of the Hated Minority and everyone hates her, etc. etc.

Instead we get stuck with Zarq, the utterly useless kid who plays no active role in the story and so far has basically been dragged around by her neglectful mother like a teddy bear.

Which is boring.

Seriously, why is the most ineffectual and useless character in the book the protagonist? She’s done precisely nothing to advance the plot other than piss on some weird plants, and that was an accident. Waivia is the one who’s gone out into the big wide world to make a new life for herself, and we later find out that she somehow manages to fall in with the nobility. And we see exactly none of this actually play out. All the potentially exciting stuff is happening elsewhere, while we watch some stupid whiny kid get kicked around for 181 pages and counting.

And the bored- uh, thrills just keep on coming! Zarq wakes up and finds out her mother died while she was asleep and they’ve already removed the body. She freaks the fuck out and runs around trying to find her mother, screaming at her to “come back” and “don’t leave me”, etcetera. She then collapses in a fit of grief.

The nuns are of course very sympathetic to her pain, so they comfort her by pinning her down and forcibly subjecting her to the lovely little operation known as Female Genital Mutilation. That should take her mind off things for a while. And because I hate you all, here it is.

“Burning pain radiated from my groin up into my belly and down deep into my thighs, a nauseating, engulfing, never-ending pain that threatened to split my head apart, and it didn’t end, it increased, and someone was wailing, a breathless ongoing scream” (don’t try reading that sentence aloud or you will turn blue and collapse on the floor).

“Tug, tug, something was ripping my sex out, flensing flesh from bone…”

Mr Cinnamon Bun, noooo!

And that noise you just heard was every woman in the entire universe crossing her legs so hard the bone cracked. I think my own external ladybits just retreated right inside my body out of sheer terror.

This leaves Zarq with a gaping wound where her muff used to be, and it takes her weeks to recover. Personally I’m not convinced that you could do something this brutal to a skinny, half-starved kid without killing her in the process, but what would I know? I’m not a doctor. Either way they keep the wound shut using beetle heads as primitive stitches, which is something native people in parts of the world actually do (you see it done with ants in the movie Apocalypto, set in South America, as a matter of fact).

Now, it’s not made clear just how much has been cut off, but much as I would prefer not to I must draw your attention to some of the word use in that scene. Note that it doesn’t refer to slicing off the labia, which if I’m not mistaken is how FGM usually works. No, it specifically refers to “ripping out”, and “flensing flesh from bone”, which implies something a lot more severe. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zarq doesn’t have a clitoris any more. *shudder*

Given how severely she’s just been mutilated, you would expect this to have serious consequences, right?

Wrong.

It has no consequences whatsoever other than being used as an incredibly lame plot point later on in the book. Zarq not only has no problem with urinating or having penetrative sex, but she’s able to masturbate and have lesbian sex as well.

I repeat: a woman whose genitals have been ripped out is able to masturbate and have sex without experiencing incredible amounts of pain.

Which renders the entire operation completely pointless.

So why is it there?

Shock value. That’s literally it. The author just wanted to include FGM because that’s a horrible thing that happens to some women living in oppressive patriarchies, and anything bad that can happen to a woman in real life will happen in this trilogy, usually to the protagonist. And yet despite the utterly horrific descriptions of this happening, the author completely cops out on actually making it stick. This should have caused Zarq lifelong problems and probably ruined sex for her for good, but it doesn’t.

Well, what’s the use in having a protagonist who has trouble with sex and dislikes it because it’s painful and brings back nasty memories if you want to keep on slathering your little trilogy with endless sex scenes? You might as well have a eunuch or an asexual as the hero, and where’s the fun in that?

Call me crazy, but I’m also sensing a distinct lack of any research here as well. I would prefer not to look into it because I’m feeling sick enough already, but I really doubt FGM has ever worked like this.

Also, how the hell does Zarq urinate when her snatch has been beetled shut?

…okay, I just decided I’d really rather not know the answer to that.

Either way Zarq – now renamed Zar-shi – for once feels some resentment toward her dumpster fire of a mother, wondering if she knew what the nuns would do to her and brought her to them on purpose anyway. Finally she starts to twig that just maybe her mother was the worst parent this side of Joan Crawford. Nice work, genius.

We now move on to a description of life and the convent, where I guess she’s happy to stay despite what they’ve done to her. She doesn’t even try to run off, which I sure as shit would do… immediately after setting the place on fire with everyone trapped inside, that is. But that would be because I take an active role in my life and Zarq could be more fucking passive if she were a straw doll.

Instead she just meekly accepts her new life, which surprise surprise is just as horrible as the one she was forced to leave. Everyone works their butts off for no pay, the place is a dump, and they’re always short on food. They have a hemp field for some reason (surprisingly nobody thinks to smoke the stuff, but I guess that would just give everyone the munchies and make the food shortage even worse). For some reason everybody completey sucks at catching, breeding or growing food. I have no idea why anybody thought this group of losers was capable of running a convent all by themselves.

Their main job is to look after a couple of bull dragons who have gotten too old and senile to be used for breeding (if bull dragons are so important that people literally worship them and invoke their names in place of saying “oh my god”, you’d think this place would be getting a bit more government funding). The nuns have to pray to the bulls eight freaking times a day, and the only supplies they get from the authorities have to be humbly begged for, and half the time the supplier gets the order wrong or doesn’t deliver anything at all.

Okay, that part actually is pretty realistic. Don’t even get me started on the time a certain delivery company not only couldn’t deliver one box from Sydney to Canberra in a week, but also managed to lose the package. They never did find out what happened to the thing, but presumably it ended up floating in a lake somewhere in the middle of New Zealand.

Life is temporary, but bureaucratic incompetence is forever.

Something semi-nice finally happens to Zarq (I refuse to call her Zar-shi), as one of the nuns teaches her how to read and write. Apparently the previous applicant failed her tutorship course because she was dyslexic (no, really. That’s actually in there). Like all book protagonists Zarq waxes lyrical about how awesome reading is, and apparently people in Malacar use “heiroglyphs” and “hieratic” for the short version.

Ms Cross, heiroglyphs and hieratic are Egyptian. They very firmly belong to that culture alone. This is not Egypt. I would have accepted “glyphs”, or “pictograms”, but not heiroglyphs. You do not build a fantasy world by making up a bunch of neologisms, then slipping in random very specific words from real life cultures which aren’t anywhere near each other, and calling it a day.

If this culture was based on Ancient China, then sure – you can have kowtowing. If it’s Japanese, sure you can use Japanese sounding words like “kiyu”. If it’s based on Ancient Egypt, there’s no problem with including heiroglyphs.

But as this setting is none of these things, it doesn’t work. Like, at all. In fact it’s incredibly distracting and annoying to read.

She makes this mistake again on page 195, when the word “witch” randomly pops up. Witch is a European word. This is not Europe, or based on Europe.

Zarq finally does some growing up, and as she enters her teen years she becomes a mischief maker for some reason. We are also informed that she makes friends among the nuns.

This is never actually shown. We’re just told she makes friends.

We are also informed through flat narration that a couple of nuns we’ve never seen before die. We’re informed about their qualities as well – apparently one of them was “sweet and quiet” and Zarq “loved her dearly”.

None of this is shown either. When your reaction to a character dying tragically isn’t “oh that’s so sad!” but rather “wait, who was that random person who just ate it?”, the author has massively failed at characterisation.

We’re also “told” about a prank Zarq pulls, rather than shown it, and the victim is someone we’ve never seen before and know nothing about. A new arrival who Zarq likes dies from her circumcision. This happens in one paragraph and we never get to actually meet this character before the narration kills her off. Uh… sad?

More “telling” takes place on the next page, where a bunch of asshole priests come by for an inspection. Because they’re men and therefore Bad and Evil, they eat the convent out of house and home, criticise everything, and rape one of the nuns.

We know nothing about this nun, by the way. She’s just another random weird name attached to some faceless cardboard cutout, just like all the other nuns.

I’m so bored.

Anyway, so after the rape this nun starts acting out (nobody knows she’s been raped, by the way), and starts making trouble for Zarq for reasons that aren’t properly explained. As far as we know the two of them have never had any friction before. She just randomly singles out Our Brave Protagonist.

We then get some exposition about a certain breed of parasitic snake which feeds on dragons. The youngsters have suction cup mouths, and they latch themselves between the scales and suck away until they reach adulthood, turn into regular snakes and slither off. Zarq informs us that “the reproductive cycles of host and parasite are synchronised”, and why the fuck is she talking like a biology textbook all of a sudden?

Narrator and narration, author. You can’t separate the two whenever it suits you.

The snakes will eventually become important, by the way, albeit in a highly ridiculous and biologically questionable fashion.

Naturally the raped nun, Kiz-dan, is pregnant (it’s so much more dramatic that way). She comes annoying Zarq while she’s de-snaking one of the bulls, and implies that there’s some sort of second initiation which Zarq has yet to go through. She’s also tried to abort her child repeatedly, and failed, and seems to think the birth will kill her.

Which given that she’s mutiliated just like all the rest of them is pretty likely if you ask me.

That night Zarq has a nightmare and feels the presence of her mother’s ghost, which fills her with the obsession to get Waivia back. Apparently this has been going on for a long time. See, this is how passive and useless Zarq truly is as a protagonist. She’s so utterly uninterested in doing anything to advance the plot that she needs to be possessed by the deranged ghost of her mother in order to shove her along.

And she still won’t do it, instead telling Ghost Mum to eff off.

I’m starting a petition to impeach Zarq for being terminally incompetent and not doing her job as a protagonist, and replacing her with someone else. Waivia, for instance. We could be learning all about the complicated politics of the high nobility and seeing world-changing events happen through her eyes, rather than reading about dreary labour, mud, and a bunch of cardboard cutouts doing fuck-all when they aren’t being horrible to each other.

Either way, Zarq decides to sneak out that night and find out about this mysterious second initiation.

Maybe then we can have a plot. But I’m not holding my breath.

34 comments

torylltales
May 11 2017, 13:34:49

theepistler
May 11 2017, 18:05:32
At least you got kittens in this installment...

Anonymous
May 11 2017, 15:09:16
I am going to read it when i come back cant wait

hergrim
May 11 2017, 18:13:13
Anyone interested in the side effects of FGM/C should read this recent study. Long story short, Ms Cross is an utter moron who fails to accurately portray the dangers and life long medical issues face by real women.

theepistler
May 11 2017, 18:17:46
Hah, I knew it.
I'm feeling oddly nostalgic to be reading an academic paper again, even given the subject matter. It's like I'm back at university!

syntinen_laulu
May 12 2017, 18:09:54
Also, here's a tiny sidelight on the results of FGM as practised in East Africa:

In 1944 my father, a refugee from Nazi Austria, left school in Kenya and his first job was as foreman in a brick factory; his workforce were recently-released Italian prisoners of war (Italy having recently changed sides).

Along the road leading to the factory Kikuyu prostitutes would sit every day, each with a mat, waiting for customers from the workforce or passing lorry drivers. As they waited, to make a pittance they would weave kikapus, the universal carrier bags of East Africa, out of palm leaves. When a customer hired a prostitute they would step a little way off the road and she would lie down on her mat with her half-woven kikapu off one end of the mat, and as her customer did his business she would have her hands above her head and continue weaving it, not to lose any of the tiny income she could make from a day's work.

My father's Italian workers hired these women's services, but were bitterly hurt and insulted by their failure even to feign an acknowledgement, let alone appreciation, of their virile prowess. They simply didn't grasp that as a result of FGM (then still near-universal among the Kikuyu and other Kenyan tribes in spite of the colonial government's campaigns against it), these women not only didn't feel a thing but didn't even know how to fake it, because they didn't have any concept of there being anything to fake.

theepistler
May 12 2017, 18:25:23 Edited: May 12 2017, 18:25:45
Well that's one of the most fucked-up things I've ever read. :(

And that's the whole reason why FGM exists: because women shouldn't be allowed to enjoy sex. If they do they might become vile slutty temptresses who cheat on their husbands and lead good honest men into sin! Far better, then, to mutilate them for life and potentially kill them in the process.

This is exactly why I'm so pissed off at the author for using FGM in such a casually exploitative manner. There's no delving into the true horrors and consequences of the procedure; it's just tossed in there for the cheap shock value and almost never mentioned again. The adult Zarq has ZERO problems with either having sex or achieving orgasm.

syntinen_laulu
May 12 2017, 21:59:17
Absolutely: the implausibility is the least of the issues here.

- I should say though that I don't think the Italian ex-prisoners in my father's story were to blame. When they were conscripted they had been mostly just young lads from unsophisticated backgrounds; they would never have heard of FGM and had quite likely never seen a woman's bits, not to look at properly anyway, so how could they have been expected to figure it out?

theepistler
May 12 2017, 22:15:36
Oh, I wouldn't have blamed them either, especially given the time period. Hell, I grew up in the 90s and my own knowledge of female genitalia is pretty shaky. During my teen years, sex was something you just didn't talk about. And I had no idea FGM existed until quite recently.

Shit, you know what? The first time I remember ever hearing about FGM was years ago when I read a review of this very novel. I remember thinking "wait, women can be circumcised? But we don't have foreskins! How does that even work?"

I have a feeling the author was just as ignorant and sheltered as I was in that respect. But she couldn't be bothered to do any research to correct that. -_-

syntinen_laulu
May 13 2017, 04:48:40
And the same of course used to be true of male genitalia. after the war one of my father's cousins, a doctor who had also made it out of Nazi Europe, was a general practitioner in South Wales for nearly 30 years. One day a woman brought in her son, a boy about 10 years old, about a urinary problem; the whole family had been his patients for years. My cousin examined him and found a penile malformation which could have been corrected very straightforwardly in early childhood. 'Good heavens, Mrs Jones!' he said: 'Why didn't you consult me about this years ago?' He was abashed when she replied 'But, Dr Beck, this is only the second one I've ever seen. How was I to know it wasn't supposed to be like that?'

hergrim
May 14 2017, 14:20:55
Damn, that story really got to me. It's just so sad on so many levels.

syntinen_laulu
May 15 2017, 19:12:30
Absolutely. It's truly terrifying that there are such huge swathes of the world where society is in such dread of female sexuality and independence that such a miserable alternative is actually seen as preferable.

theepistler
May 15 2017, 19:36:35
And SO much more justice can be done to sad stories like this one than has been done here. The way Touched By Venom handles it is beyond disgusting
and exploitative, and it's incredibly disrespectful to the real victims of this sort of hideously cruel treatment.

Some things you just don't write about unless you really know what you're doing. Rape is one. FGM is another. And you do do NOT get to pretend that
these things have no long-term consequences. You just don't. It's obscenely offensive, not to mention ignorant. If you include it in your book/movie/TV
show and treat it like something that can be just shrugged off like it's no big deal when all is said and done, then you've included it for cheap shock
value/titillation, and not because you actually care. And you do NOT get to do that, and fuck you if you think otherwise. Do the damn research,
and exercise some fucking sensitivity. The real life suffering of other human beings is not there to be used for cheap entertainment, you absolute piece of
shit, and yes I'm looking at you, Ms Cross. >:(

tt_7
May 13 2017, 22:40:39
I can't understand how Ms Cross can write things like that. One look at the FGM figure is already sending me squirming uncomfortably along with a side of nausea.

theepistler
May 14 2017, 10:31:46
Oh, well, you see it's "topical" and if you find that "confronting" that's just too bad, Square-O.
Or maybe she's just a complete sicko.

hergrim
May 14 2017, 14:19:30
I strongly suspect a combination of "Did Not Do the Research" and some really dark fetishes.

vaskrslacigla
May 11 2017, 23:01:16
Why did mom just suddenly die?
How is she mute (as it says in the beginning) when she clearly speaks with merchants?
Where is the kitten murder ?(Not that i want to read it. Nooooo thanks!)
What is this?
How was it published?
Why was it published?
How is it possible that i am still alive?
What is the point of life?
I like kittens.

theepistler
May 12 2017, 10:51:13
Why did mom just suddenly die?

It's not really made clear, but presumably complications from her injuries.

How is she mute (as it says in the beginning) when she clearly speaks with merchants?

She's mute initially thanks to the broken jaw, but after it heals a bit is able to get a few words out.

Where is the kitten murder ?(Not that i want to read it. Nooooo thanks!)

I only mentioned it in a few lines. Basically what happened was that Zarq had once found a baby "jungle cat" (so something like a jaguar, I guess) and wanted to keep it, but her dear mother explained that it would never survive and if it did it would be dangerous and nobody would want it around. So Zarq allowed her to snap its neck in cold blood. Charming.

What is this?

The absolute bottom of the barrel in exploitation pulp writing, masquerading as serious literature and failing.

How was it published?

Presumably in the usual way.

Why was it published?

Some cynical publishing executive thought they could make a few bucks off it.

How is it possible that i am still alive?

You're not drinking enough malt liquor, smoking enough cigarettes or participating in enough extreme sports.

What is the point of life?

To accomplish something fulfilling and hopefully useful, then die.

I like kittens.

And kittens like you too!

Anonymous
May 12 2017, 22:20:43
Yaaaay!! kittens!

theepistler
May 12 2017, 22:27:11
Kittens make everything better.

Anonymous
May 12 2017, 01:37:15
I think is pretty telling that you would prefer to stick with Waivia, (someone YOU SAID WAS AN ASSHOLE) than with Zarq, who is “just" boring.

I guess it was right the phrase I found on internet: “Making a protagonist nice is not as important as making it interesting and tolerable”

Waivia at least follows One of those conditions

theepistler
May 12 2017, 10:40:11
Yeah, Waivia is an insufferable bitch but at least she's semi interesting. I'll take a jerk over a dullard any day.
Hell, the protagonist of the novel I'm writing right now acts like an asshole most of the time but is still really interesting and complex, so I love writing about him. It helps that there's plenty of justification as to why he's such a huge douchebag. Waivia is just a bitch for no reason.

Anonymous
May 12 2017, 18:02:09
I heard that one of the biggest complaints you had about Eragon is not only that he is a sociopath, but is a boring one. That if he didn't angst inconsistently about things like killing ants and just wait to be told what to do you yould not mind so much the fact that he belives that the more people you kill, the more awesome you are.
Or I´m wrong?

theepistler
May 12 2017, 18:07:50
That's correct. I have absolutely no problem with a sociopathic protagonist provided that it's acknowledged in the text and that the character is actually interesting. I can forgive just about anything if the character isn't boring to read about. And the trouble is that when a reader gets bored, that's when they start to nitpick and notice stuff they might otherwise have overlooked or let slide.

Anonymous
May 13 2017, 03:38:02
Yeah, and that last sentence in particular is 1000% right. It was mentioned in another post you made comparing Paolini with other author, and that one of the comments defined as "reflecting" mistakes and "emitting" mistakes.

star_dragon5
May 12 2017, 20:21:15
How did you survive reading that?

theepistler
May 12 2017, 20:38:21

tt_7
May 13 2017, 22:45:57
If you don't mind, can I have shandy? :D
Um wait, we're reading TBV here? Nevermind, I'll have this instead.

Anonymous
May 17 2017, 21:41:00
Great spork, epistler. I'm sorry you have yo suffer for our pleasure.

I really wanted to interject at the bit about the word "witch", though. While i agree about the other words and anachronisms(/anageographisms?) in general I dont really think it applies to witch, since it is english and the book is (I presume) written in English.

Oh and by the way I actually didn't have any idea "kowtow" was adopted from Chinese until you mentioned in in your previous article. I thought the expression was "cowtow" and literally referred to towing cows somehow.

theepistler
May 17 2017, 21:43:03
Nah, witch is a specifically European word.

Oh and by the way I actually didn't have any idea "kowtow" was adopted from Chinese until you mentioned in in your previous article. I thought the expression was "cowtow" and literally referred to towing cows somehow.

LOL! You must be thinking of cow tipping. XD

Anonymous
May 18 2017, 23:07:38
Nah, witch is a specifically European word.

What makes you think that? And why European, when witches in the rest of europe isn't even called that (with variations on sorcerer/-ress or hexer being the most common among the western languages, dunno about the Slavic parts). In Sweden (where i am from, hello, this is Sviden kalling, ouer tvelve påjnts go to...), for example, the words are Häxa (hexer) or Trollkvinna/Trollpacka (magic woman/magic [derogatory term inferring femalitude]).

(Also yes, the word troll is synonymous with magic)

theepistler
May 18 2017, 23:14:11
Fine, I'll be more specific and say it's a word with English/German origins. It sure as hell doesn't belong in Pseudo India/China/Pakistan.

Anonymous
May 19 2017, 19:16:11
But why not? Why shouldn't it be used in a book written in English when it's the word for witch in English? How is it any different from, say, calling people who make barrels coopers, or people who build in stone masons?

What would you saythey should have put down instead? Should she have made a word up, which we-the-reader wouldn't have understood as meaning witch withour further exposition, or should she have used a word from Kannada/Urdu/Mandarin, which the English reader wouldn't have understood either? If so, how would that have been different from using the adopted expression of "kowtow"?

theepistler
May 19 2017, 19:26:45
Because the cultural connotations are far too obvious, that's why. The same goes for cooper and stonemason.

The context in this book is that she refers to the convent having a "medicine-witch". It would have been perfectly easy to use a more generic term, like "healer". Normally I probably would have passed it over, but this book is FULL of random terms taken from a mish-mash of different cultures and jammed together when they don't fit in the slightest. And once I started noticing it, I went on noticing.