Okay I am noticing two things going on in books. Now I have been reading a lot of book that are parts of series, even if it is my first or second in the batch, so that may add to my feeling that there are disturbing trends out there.
Issue #1
The use of Geezus and Keerist in place of Jesus and Christ. Even stranger, in each case, the character who thought, "Geezus" later said aloud, "Jesus" so it was not some mandate to prevent the use of Jesus or Christ. I realize I am nitpicking to a high level here but when someone says or thinks, "Jesus" I know what it means and how it sounds and I can continue reading apace. "Geezus" and "Kee-rist" look weird and require me to stop and re-read. It annoys me. And since it's not an effort to prevent the use of H/his name and it is not a colloquial change, as beeyotch is, stop it. Please authors, stop it.
Issue#2
Again I return to my pet peeve - safe* sex or lack thereof in fiction. Again I want to clarify that I do not expect fictional characters to be any better at this than real people, and I have really even given up for the most part expecting characters to acknowledge the need for discussions or parameters surrounding their sexual behavior. However, there are some scenarios that are so stupid I have to wonder if I am expected to think that the characters themselves are stupid. Because if not, I need the book to explain more - otherwise I default to stupid. Two recent books I read had the characters forgoing or forgetting condoms. Now in one they talked a smidge, she said ditch the condom, and he did. So apparently they had psychically established a level of trust (remember in most of these books these people are having sex within hours of their first meeting, so we're not talking a lot of time for trust to build here) where he was sure she wouldn't suggest no condoms if she wasn't disease free, and he knew he was disease free (although she never asked but she must have known psychically) so they were all good. Again, these characters seem to have forgotten the reason contraceptives are also called birth control, or perhaps that psychic connection extended further than I realized.
Another story had the two characters (met that day, reason to suspect one of them is a terrorist) 'forgetting' the condom. Forgetting is in quotes because the heroine actually started to remember and then decided internally it was probably okay so didn't bring it up. When the hero later mentions the big oops (since they have now repeatedly forgotten) she says its okay because when she was raped the guy used a condom. And okay, her life had been stressful so I understand that getting herself checked out medically was not high on her list but - arggh!
Again, we have totally skipped the birth control aspect. Perhaps one or both of them is working under a "I'll probably die anyway" attitude and therefore figuring it doesn't matter. (I don't need everything spelled out, but that - I can't infer from what I was given.) But condoms do a lot of things, but they do not protect you from all communicable diseases. But, anything that a condom wouldn't prevent, would kind of put a damper on sex anyway so why would we waste valuable time talking about that.
And part of what is ticking me off is I feel that these half-assed discussion are worse than no discussions. Imagine a special episode of [insert TV show here] where the resolution was that yay, we fixed that whole racism issue. It would be ridiculous. Worse than having a show set in a major metropolitan city that never seemed to have non-white people. And I may be overinterpeting, but I feel like it's trying to say, oh they're in love, and people who are in love don't need condoms. So, it's all good. And that annoys me.
*I know that safe sex is a bit of a misnomer, but everyone understand the parameters associated with safer, responsible sex, so I'm going with the term.
Rants About New (and old) Things
