Enemy of Entropy

Archive for 5 September 2008

Methinks I Need to Safeword

5 September 2008, 10:25 pm. 5 Comments. Filed under Family, Reading.

I’m about 3⁄4 of the way through The Devil’s Right Hand by Lilith Saint­crow — 3rd of 5 or 6 books in the Dante Valen­tine series — and I don’t think I can take any more.

I want to know how the story ends. I really like some of the char­ac­ters. I just can’t stand the main char­ac­ter! She’s a total har­ri­dan. I’m start­ing to think that Saint­crow is inca­pable of writ­ing a female pro­tag­o­nist who isn’t set to the high­est bitch lev­els at all times, espe­cially with any­one who is nice to her. What are this woman’s per­sonal rela­tion­ships like, I wonder?

When I was in 10th grade, a new girl moved to my neigh­bor­hood. We quickly became close friends. A few months into our friend­ship, I remem­ber her say­ing some­thing about me and my friends being “so pas­sive.” What? That is not an adjec­tive I had ever imag­ined any­body had ever used in ref­er­ence to me or the peo­ple I hung out with. We were all pretty opin­ion­ated, intel­li­gent, tal­ented, and most of us were some­what prickly in one way or another. Not door­mats, pushovers, or “pas­sive” people.

We didn’t fight, which, to her, meant pas­siv­ity. I tried to explain that we could dis­agree with­out fight­ing, and knew the dif­fer­ence between debates and argu­ments, but we never did see eye to eye on that issue. I’m sure that a major dif­fer­ence in our fam­ily back­grounds had a lot to do with her per­cep­tions. In her fam­ily, scream­ing was a daily occur­rence, after which the air was cleared and all was well. In mine, raised voices meant phys­i­cal vio­lence. If some­one raised his voice any­where near me, I expected vio­lence, and the whole fight-​​or-​​flight thing started. I never con­sid­ered wast­ing energy by yelling back. If she heard yelling, she’d wade right in and yell back fear­lessly. (I’m pretty sure that she wasn’t ever hit in anger, prob­a­bly not ever hit at all by a fam­ily member.)

I’m not going to be friends with some­one who is con­stantly pick­ing fights with me or any­one else. I have zero inter­est in argu­ment for the sake of argu­ment. What’s the point? I value my peace too much for that, so com­bat­ive, aggres­sive peo­ple quickly get an invi­ta­tion to the world when I encounter them.

I think that friend might relate to Saintcrow’s female char­ac­ters. Valen­tine sure as hell isn’t pas­sive. She can’t man­age assertive, either, though — she’s unhealth­ily aggressive.

 

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