Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 16

The Harlequin--chapter 24-25

Oh my god you were all correct. All of you. Oh my god my brain. Oh my god.

There is no saving this series. Even if from here on out it turned into perfectly written prose with truely erotic and edgy sex scenes it would not be worth salvaging. Oh my fucking god.

Nothing much happens in chapter twenty four.  Anita wakes up. Cherry the wereleopard is there (I still cannot trust any character in this series named Cherry) and is crying over Anita. Anita's throat is sore from where they intubated Richard. Because Anita has some kind of stigmata thing going on, apparently. Jean Claude is almost dead, too. Lillian shows up. Anita and she discuss the slapping. No judgement is passed. It's just discussed. Did you do this? Yeah, I did. Moving on. Apparently Lillian opted out of the mass rape. I guess even LKH clued in that raping your doctor isn't the smartest idea in the universe. Nate is eating non stop burgers and Damian is draining blood by the galleon just to keep Anita, JC and Richard alive.

Bully for them. I still don't buy that the tri-whatever made of two people who are so cannon-weak they're the crisis of the chapter over and over and over again can suddenly support the three biggest powers in the series. That's like spending all your time shoring up a dike and then expecting it to take the storm surge from a cat five. It's been hammered into our skulls that Nate and Damian are the weak children in need of being protected. Now we need to believe that they're rising to the challenge when over and over again we've been told that they have no hidden preternatural strengths. LKH, you cannot suddenly let your designated victims take a load that would burn them out completely in any other novel.

Edward shows up. End of chapter.

Next chapter: Anita realizes that Jean Claude is unconsious and her best backup is here. She gets out of bed, grabs her gun, walks into Jean Claude's room and shoots him in the head. Fade to black. Epilogue: It is so awesome getting myself back again.

*Sigh* Don't I fucking wish.

Nope. In Real life Anita admits she's glad to see Edward because that means she's finally safe.

Edward is a sociopathic killer who does not give one solitary fuck about Things. You should not feel safe.

He comments that Anita couldn't even stay alive for a full day. They had to restart her heart, so it fits. Lillian makes a funny joke (“Fine, but let’s ease her into it; she’s been mostly dead all day.”) and LKH ruins it by smashing it into our faces like a TV pie. Apparently Edward was talking to the ambulatory members of Anita's gang, and he has a plan.

“You feed the ardeur on the head of another animal group, and take their energy the way you did the wererats’.”

This is actually in character for Edward. He's a sociopathic killer who is established as Not Giving Fucks throughtout the series. Anita gets power by raping people, so to him, it makes sense to just go rape more people. And how this is supposed to work is Antia says "FUCK that shit" and begins carrying a heavier caliber whenever Edward is in town.

Instead, she praises Edward's problem solving skills.

 He didn’t flinch or hesitate, even though he’d only known about the ardeur for a few hours. He’d landed in the middle of a crisis of metaphysical proportions and it hadn’t fazed him, or if it had, it didn’t show. In that moment I loved him, in a guy-buddy sort of way. He’d never fail me, or fuck with me, and I loved him for it.

Edward is suggesting that Anita, who has just raped several hundred people, now go out and rape several hundred more people. Because she can and she needs more power. Anita's reaction isn't "What's wrong with you" or "What about the people I'm about to rape", nope, it's "Edward is so awesome, he takes such good care of me."

Note: None of Anita's victims are in the room. Lillian was exempt from the rapening. Anita is making this decision without having seen the reprocussions of her actions. At least last time one of her victims started freaking out in front of her. This time everyone is like "Hey, let's do it again!"

It's not even like their first thought is sex. Nope. Something that is cannon acknowledged as rape is the very first thing they're reaching for. They want rape. And more rape. And more rape.

And the best part? Anita's last thin excuse for raping people is that Jean Claude controls her. He's always been the one shoving her into the major sex acts. The sex with Auggie. The sex with Rafael. There's always that little note about Jean Claude's hunger or Jean Claude's lust. Well, this time Jean Claude is fucking unconscious and it is all Anita this time. This is her chance to say "Fuck no".   What does she say instead?

“Which animal group?” I asked.

Who should my victim be.

This is actually a really good setup for an entirely different protagonist. Someone is psychically raping hundreds of were-animals at once, weeding their way through the leadership like a roto-tiller on crack, and only Our Hero Of Unestablished Gender can stop this evil force from assaulting every preternatural group in St. Louis. Anita will be the half-crazed Renfeild guarding the door. The HUG shoots Jean Claude in the head and offers Antia a good rehab contact for once she gets into the prison system.

Anita's gonna go rape the swans.

Yeah, it's the first time she's choosing her rape victims on her own and she's going right for the prey animals.

Anita can't hit a more powerful group because she knocked out most of the were-rats and devistated Jean Claude's guards in the process. That means the wolves and the heyenas are off limits. The lions would work, but Jason, the leader, was like "FUCK no" when they called him.

Anita swears that the lions will get theirs for betraying her.

Yes. Refusal to let his entire pride be psychically raped=personal betrayal of Anita worthy of active vengence.

“The lions would let the vampires die.” I said it out loud, because I needed to hear it. I couldn’t quite believe it. “That’s how I’d take it,” he said. We looked at each other, and I felt my eyes go as cold as his. I think we were thinking the same thing. The lions would suffer for this. Ungrateful bastards.

Probably the most disturbing thing about this is that it's raising a good question: Whose life has priority over the lives of others? If the only way for a group to survive is by feeding off of and/or draining another group, do they have a right to do so? Saying yes means that you're subordinating the rights of one group to the other--the subordinate group is not deserving of free life. Saying no means the same thing to the other group--that the predatory group are not deserving of free life. But if the lives and individuality of both groups are equally valid and equally valuable, how can you say that neither group is deserving of life? It's wrong for the predators to consume the prey, but it's equally wrong for the predators to die. It's a shades-of-gray question that I don't believe has a good, clean answer. For both groups to exist in something approaching happiness, a very ugly compromise has to be made. (If you read 'em, that's the question behind Starbleached.) In my opinion (and you can scream at me if I'm wrong) it's a question with three answers: slavery, genocide, or the production of a third, never-before seen option that allows both parties to exist to each other's betterment, rather than at their expense.

LKH is answering that question in an extraordinarily ugly way. In effect, she's saying that the predatory group ALWAYS has right-of-life over the prey. The weaker group should always bow to the stronger. The dominant paradigm deserves everything belonging to the subordinate, including their possessions, joy, bodies, thoughts and lives. By stating that Jason and his pride deserve to suffer for placing their pride's physical and mental integrity over Jean Claude's need to survive--that this is a line they are not willing to cross, not even for him--Anita is stating that if she, the dominant figure, demands something the subordinate is not willing to surrender, the subordinate should surrender it anyway.

By having Anita make this statement, LKH is effectively condoning the slavery option.

There's a scene in That Hideous Strength where Mark, the male lead, chooses to do something illegal for the N.I.C.E for the very first time. To me, it pretty much sums up how disgusted I am with this scene:

But the moment of (Mark's) consent almost escaped his notice...There may have been a time in the world's history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.--C.S. Lewis

 THS is a very flawed book, but I love it because of observations like that. Anita Blake is consenting, for the very first time, to initiate a horrible crime of her own free will. And it goes by without any remark at all. Anita's only concern is that it won't be enough. There aren't that many swanmanes in the city.

Edward says that's fine. Donovan is Swan King of the entire country.

Anita is now contemplating nation wide rape. And she's completely okay with it. She's not asking Donovan to send a text to all his swans giving them a heads up. Nope. She's just like "Okay, can you hall his feathered butt over here so we can do this?" Not only that, but like the were-rats, Anita knows these people. She protects them. THEY STAY AT HER HOUSE SOMETIMES.

“He says that he leaves his swan maidens in the care of your leopards when he’s gone for a while.” I nodded. “There’s only three of them in town.” “They’ve stayed over at your house,” Edward said.

Anita does exactly one thing right, and by "right" I mean "Something that should go without saying for a decent human being". She makes Edward promise that he won't use any of the info she's giving him to hunt a were-whatever. He gets a shifter contract, he cannot use this information to act on it. I have no idea how that would work, but he promises so there is that.

The lions, though, are fair game. Anita just has to throw them out of the club first.

I used to worry about becoming like Edward. Lately, I counted on it.

And that is why most of the fanbase hates LKH's books. End of chapter.

The Harlequin--chapter 23

Everything else in this chapter cannot be outweighed by the fact that it is a rapist's afterglow. Like, literally, everything from this point on could be the best writing of LKH's career and it wouldn't redeem the bullshit we just read. We're supposed to root for Anita after she just raped hundreds of people, simultaneously. Many of whom were her bodyguards, supporters, and friends. Hey, she just raped Ronnie's fiancee! Let's see her explain that to her best  friend. Should go great over dinner.

Really. I could stop now. It's not theoretical anymore. Anita Blake consciously raped all the were-rats. She knew what she was doing the entire time.

But nope. Not only is this chapter irredeemable just because of it's context, we also have a great big beautiful WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT because of its context.

Anita Blake is about to have wild lesbian sex.

Not kidding. Not even remotely. Go get your booze of choice, guys and girls. It's...special.

The chapter opens with Anita describing herself being defibrillated. Pain, and she's out. More pain, and then she's out. Oh, hey, we get a full color description of how it feels when the paddles go over her boobs and what the paddles look like, which means she's responsive and consious and I didn't know it was possible to be in fibrillation and still be able to count the hairs on your doctor's nose.

I smelled burning, something was burning. I saw those little flat paddles I’d had used once before on my chest. I realized I was what was burning.

And I thought the "Edward stops my heart by kissing me" scene in Twilight was illogical. Anita, sadly, doesn't die. Dr. Lillian realizes that the defib isn't working so she starts hitting Anita in the face. And while the actual approved medical device failed, and the (presumable) CPR failed, getting hit in the face actually works.

Obviously casa Hamilton watched The Abyss the night before she wrote this.

Anita is apparently life support for Richard and Jean Claude, and they are draining her to stay alive, so she's dying too. Lillian gives her morphene. This sounds astoundingly stupid to me. However, given that Dr. Lillian is also one of the official rape victims (she's part of the Rodere, right?) I have to hope it's an intentional overdose. Either that, or Lillian is a fucking saint and the worst doctor in the history of the world.

Anita goes off into lala land and dreams about a ball. Everybody there is dressed up in Harlequin masks. Belle Morte shows up and the description stops making any fucking sense at all.

The hem of a crimson dress was at my hands. She knelt beside me. She was still the brunette beauty who had nearly conquered all of Europe once.

Is Anita wearing the dress? Is Belle Morte wearing a dress? I'm about to move into a lot of fail but it doesn't matter because I am fascinated by this damn dress. Anita does drop to her knees in front of Belle because her imaginary corset is too tight and it's strangling her. Belle, realizing that Jean Claude is dying, takes Anita to an imaginary bedroom and cuts the imaginary corset off with an imaginary knife. I am sure we're supposed to find this gothic and exciting but it's imaginary. Not interesting. It would be interesting if, say, the corset was symbolic of broken ribs or drowning or a punctured lung or--

“What happens in my dreams can be very real, ma petite. Corsets here made your breathing there harder. You don’t have enough breath to spare.”

What the fuck.

Belle offers to help Anita. She thinks Jean Claude is already dead. Anita contradicts her, so of course Jean Claude isn't dead. He and Richard are being kept alive by Anita's other tri-whatever, her, Damian and Nathanial. The tri-whatever that is established to be weak to the point of killing Damian. The one that's been the crisis-motivator for about three different sex scenes. We're supposed to believe that a power drain that has killed Damian about three times now is strong enough to keep Richard and Jean Claude alive. If Damian and Nate aren't dead-past-reviving when Anita wakes up I'm calling bullshit.

Something Jean-Claude did in this new emergency has taught you better control of the power between you and your other triumvirate; your kitty and your vampire.”

That's an ass-pull if I've ever seen one. Also: Belle Morte would not say "kitty". That's not in character. Try again.



Belle Morte then soul kisses Anita (IN THE DREAM) to find out how the Harlequin showed up. She and Anita begin trading memories. This is mericfully brief and Belle asks what color mask they got. Anita says White and Belle starts laughing because trying to kill Richard means the Harlequin have broken the rules. The idiots who attacked Anita will be killed and the Harlequin disbanded.

Alright, look. I have to ask. This is a "Who watches the Watchmen" situation if I ever saw one. The Harlequin are the all-powerful justice giving boogymen of the vampire world and they've just gone over to the dark side. Who in their right mind would try to stop them? Enforce Vampire law on them? The Council? They just said fuck the council. They will probably kill any master who tries to kill them. Great. They get disbanded. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ACCOMPLISH THIS.

 ...by making out, apparently.

No. I'm serious. Anita and Belle Morte start pawing each other and kissing and it is very, very much a makeout scene. I sat here mouth wide open going OH YOU ARE NOT GOING THERE ARE YOU and apparently we are. But it can't be a homosexual makeout scene so Anita is imagining herself as being Jean Claude and does male things with her body even though her body is still, in the dream-world, very much female.

I ended up on top of her, and my body kept forgetting that it wasn’t male. I pressed her to the bed, with my body between her legs. But I could not do what I was remembering. I swore in frustration , because more than anything in the world in that moment I wanted to pierce her body.

The lengths LKH is going through to avoid having a lesbian sex scene are astounding. Seriously, if she put half the effort into the bedroom gymnastics as she's putting into these mental ones, this series would at least be interesting. Anita is not gay people. She might be making out with an incredibly hot woman but she's imagining herself as a guy. So there.

Also, just to remind you: We are watching an admitted serial rapist get it on with another person not one hour after they raped hundreds of people.

...you know, it's rather amazing that when LKH wants to get edgy she starts doing oral sex. This time it's oral between Anita and Belle Morte, and for fucking once Anita is on the receiving end (But she's imagining that she's male! It's not gay!) but you know what? Oral sex is about as edgy as a spoon. Oral sex between lesbians, we'll upgrade to a spork. It's not that edgy.

Oral sex. Lots of comments from Anita about how weird and unusual it feels to be getting pleasure as a woman and not as a man.

I am not making this up. I am not drunk enough to be making this up.

In a legitimately good scene Belle tells Anita that the surviving Harlequin will have to kill Anita before she testifies that they broke the rules, and Anita rolls her eyes and tries to say "THEN TELL SOMEBODY WHEN YOU WAKE UP, BELLE"...but LKH ruins it by having Anita be too precious weak to get the words out. Belle could have said "It has to be said in real life" or "No one will take my word for it after the fiasco in Cerulean Sins" but nope. Anita has to be too weak to talk IN HER OWN FUCKING GODDAMN DREAM.

Belle says she'll make a psychic phone call to the rest of her people in St. Louis, and that Anita will need to fuck a great deal when she wakes up if she wants to keep Jean Claude and Richard alive. Because, you know, raping HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE AT ONCE BY YOUR OWN MOTHERFUCKING ADMISSION isn't nearly enough.

I do not even. There is no even. I will never even again.

End of chapter.

 

Harlequin--chapter 22

Anita and Rafael are having sex. God, shoot me now.

RAFAEL CARRIED ME out to the hallway with my legs wrapped around his waist, my arms around his shoulders, my mouth feeding at his.

That doesn't sound romantic to me. It sounds like something in a really bad romantic comedy.

Rafael apparently smells like smoked beef. Smoke and salt are repeated ad nauseum until both stop looking like words. Anita's eyes are glowing blue now, and Jean Claude makes her say cheesy, un-Anita like things because I guess you have to feel guilt for sweet talking during foreplay too? IDK. Anita's got about as much agency in this sex scene as a hamburger does in McDonalds.

There are implications that Rafael has lusted after Anita for years. Gag me.

Good God, they're not even gonna make it to the bedroom. Rafael tells her to "Climb me" while they're leaning against a wall.

The tip of him brushed along my bare skin, and I let my body slide those few inches lower, so he could guide himself to my opening.

GOD. LAURELL, USE THE WORD VAGINA. How about Labia? It's prettier than vagina. More lyrical.

Also penis. Because saying "The head of him" when you're talking about penis-in-vagina sex makes me think she's wrapping her labia around his actual head. The view must really suck.

Anita tries to feed on Rafael, but he's too well sheilded. And then this happens:

I wanted him to take me, to drive all that need, all that denial into my body. The ardeur tried to feed, but he was a king and it could not get past his shields. A tiny thought of panic from Jean-Claude, quickly swallowed, but he was urgent that we break Rafael.

One: You should not use the word "break" towards another human unless you're in a car, or you're letting them go to lunch. You do not break other people.

Two: Yes. Let's break the ONLY DECENT LEADER IN THIS SHITHOLE ORGANIZATION because HE STOOD UP TO YOU. Nice going, heroine. Great job.

Go die in a fire, Anita.

And then Rafael's sheilds break.

And you know what? I can almost cut Anita slack on one thing. She never, not once, consciously acknowledges that what she does is rape. She just views it as getting sex, and justifies it because her sex partners orgasm. It's a horrible thing, but that lack of acknowledgement makes it almost unconscious. You could almost feel sorry for her. As long as it's not open, you can almost justify her behavior as just the behavior of an addict who doesn't know any better.

As we’d fed once on Augustine and his people, now we fed on Rafael and his. I felt Claudia stagger, felt Lisandro fall to his knees, felt the wererats try to run, or fight, or keep us out, but they couldn’t. They’d given their protection over to their king; when he fell, they were ours. Ours for the taking, ours for the raping, ours for the eating.

No. No, guys. She knows. SHE FUCKING KNOWS. She's not giving crowds magical surprise sex. She is raping hundreds of people intentionally and she damn well fucking knows it.

These are not the lines of a heroine. These are the lines of a sociopathic serial killer who needs to be put down NOW.

And then Jean Claude tells her he did it because he was badly hurt and he was worried, blog-readers, worried that if he passed out he'd drain all his vampires and kill them so he had to rape all the rats. And you know how in the beginning of this book, Malcolm was going on about how blood oathing people was slavery and a bad idea? Jean Claude isn't making a good case for it.

The Harlequin stops the power they took from the rats, and Richard doesn't heal. Oh, gee, Laurel, I am so glad you remembered the plot, it was weeping over in the corner. So Anita turns to Rafael, the man she just raped hundreds of other people through, and asks for his help.

I got nothing, people.

Anita takes all the power from the rats and shoots it at the whatever that is killing Richard. Somehow striking at the whatever makes her scry the Harlequin's hotel room, where two petite female vampires are doing Something Bad. This is not established and they just look up at Anita with scared little girl faces and try to sheild each other with their bodies. Anita somehow manages to kill them and is happy about it.

So Anita gets power from something the text acknowledges as rape, and then goes and kills her enemy using imagry that is very, very rapy.

The Harlequin--chapter 21

Richard has an existential crisis because his eyes won't turn back to blue.

On the one hand, it's a good point. Richard's defining characteristic, no matter what his incarnation, is his love for his own humanity. He values being human and he doesn't enjoy losing it. Jean Claude has just given him another sign--I have no idea how--that said humanity is going away, and probably every bit of shit he's had to deal with since he turned furry is slamming down on him like a load of bricks.

On the other hand, this has derailed the thing that derailed the thing that derailed the plot, and we have to go through AT LEAST two trainwrecks to get back to the actual plot here. Richard may need time to himself but LKH needs to derail at least one less times to give character emergancies validity.

Richard says that's how his eyes would look if he were the vampire. No, they'd be freaky brown instead of freaky blue. Which I would actually pay to see. I mean, wasn't a major character point with Requiem, Jean Claude and Asher that Belle Morte changed them to have a matched set of blue eyes?

Anita isn't sympathetic enough to Richard--in her defense, she's been through this before and she knows it isn't that big a deal--and Richard threatens to call her wolf and force her to change.

Everybody in this novel is a piece of shit. With the possible exception of Rafael, who is probably sitting out there hoping that Anita will develop blisters or something and let him off the hook.

His power pressed against me like a hot mattress,

Really. REALLY? A HOT MATTRESS?

 Apparently when the wolf comes forward it actually drives Anita's body forward by several feet, because she knocks Richard into a wall. Meanwhile the people outside this room/bathroom/broom closet are trying to get in.

The fire poured out from underneath my nails. I raised my hands in front of my face, wondering how fire was pouring out from underneath my nails, but it was blood . Blood pouring like burning rain from underneath my nails.

I don't understand how you can write that, re-read it, and decide that it was perfect. "Blood poured like fire from beneath my nails." There. You're done, and it's much more dramatic.

Jean Claude comes in, says that the marks are keeping Anita human. Clay tries to get Anita to give him her wolf, and Richard refuses, because Clay is his pack and his pack won't do that shit anymore. Jean Claude pulls rank and says that the pack is actually his because Richard belongs to him and that means the pack does too. Richard knocks Jean Claude on his ass because that's bullshit.

She gives her wolf to Clay, who goes 'splody and drenches her in were-goo. Rafael then comes over to her and lovingly picks her up in his arms and carries her into the fight so that Jean Claude can end it. And then LKH does it again.She stops naval-gazing and writes something I really, REALLY like:

I felt (Jean Claude's power) almost like a series of tumblers in a lock: click, and he took Richard’s blood lust, like a cup in his hand; click, and he turned that blood lust into another kind of lust; click, and he spilled it into me.

It's a good image. It fucking works. WHY DO YOU NOT DO MORE OF THIS LAURELL THIS IS WHAT WE WAN--

Oh fuck, nevermind. Anita's about to fuck Rafael now.

God I hate this book.

State of the CW

So my computer is officially on life support. It won't stay on more than five minutes without "overheating". I put the quotes there because it's "overheating" doing text work in a fifty degree room. So either somebody's got it doing shit I don't know about, a sensor's busted, or it really is overheating in a freezing cold room. In all three cases I feel turning it on again would be a very bad idea. Taking it to a shop to have a new cooling system put in would be a good idea, but it's a three year old computer and I'm not sure the repair costs wouldn't be roughly the same as getting at least a refurbished, higher end model.

 Reviews are on hold until I get the kindle software set up on my mother's computer.

The good news is, my mother is a graphic artist and I can sponge off her computer and Photoshop for a while. (I redecorated the blog using the image files I posted the other day. All my fonts are on that other computer. All of them. I weep, my lovelies. WEEP)

The better news is that it's tax season and the return should be decent enough to let me get a good model. I'm just waiting on my W2s from the book retailers and hoping they won't spike the wheel too hard.

The Perilous Choice is out. I hope you are all enjoying it.Go get your copy if you haven't yet. It's awesome.

My goal for this year is to publish three full sized novels. Serialized like Dragon Breath. Starbleached: Liberty is the first one. Right now I'm bogged down on military research but I've got a good idea of where I'm going with it, and I'm just trying to get the details in place. How this should work, what I need to do for that. The big hint is Normandy.

Well, that's that. See ya'll when the reviews start up again.

Harlequin--chapter 19-20

Hey guys. Sorry about the late post. I had it nearly done when my computer decided it would start overheating in a sixty degree room. It did it again this morning, after being on for less than half an hour. I think it is almost officially dead. That really sucks. Anyhow, please understand if posts are late or don't happen. I need either a new computer or a good workaround.

I HAD A blurred image of black marble, glass. A second to realize that I was about to hit the mirrors around Jean-Claude’s tub.

Big strong powerful vampire hunter.

Cannot get out of a bathtub without seriously injuring herself. Anita Blake is outclassed by Buffy. (...actually most human beings are outclassed by Buffy)

A random fucking werewolf--Jake. Never introduced before this moment, and we take a break to info-dump about him for a sec--gets between Anita and the mirrors. It's official, sports fans. Anita Blake is the AU Bella. She's got an Edward, she's got a Jake, and they both have to come and rescue her FROM HERSELF all the fucking time.

Jake knocks himself out falling into the glass. Werewolf who can bench-press a truck and recover from nearly any wound knocks himself out falling into a mirror. Anita realizes that a big piece of glass is about to fall on them both and drags him away from the wall, and they both go into the tub.

Claudia pulls Anita out. I have no idea where Jean Claude's gone, and I actually feel like I missed something between chapters.

Claudia half-led, half-pulled me into the bedroom. The room was nearly black with bodyguards. A handful of red shirts stood out like berries in a muffin.

Well, we know what LKH had for breakfast that morning. Also, given that this is the FIFTH TIME the t-shirt thing is mentioned--black shirts are bodyguards, red shirts are food--I'm beginning to suspect LKH's merch shop got launched around the time she was writing this. It's reading like an advertisement, not a novel.

Jake is still bleeding profusely while they pick the glass out of his back. Meanwhile I'm thinking "I thought that shapeshifters healed very fast...why is he still bleeding?" and I guess LKH's editor/assistant/Jon HHJ called attention to it because all of a sudden Jake is the fastest healer in all the werewolves and they can't pick the glass out fast enough. PANIC PANIC PANIC.

Then there's an actual, honest-to-God GOOD SCENE while Juanito (New character, never mentioned before) Claudia and Anita discuss what the Harlequin are doing while Juanito cuts the remaining glass bits out of Jake's back. The rhythm is slightly off but the cutting bit makes my skin crawl. Laurell, you CAN still do this shit. THIS is the shit I came to the dance for. WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING THIS ANYMORE.

Anita then discusses the wolf smell she got when Mask Guy was fucking with her. She thinks that the only vampires she knows that smelled like their Animal to Call were Auggie and the MOAD, which makes this guy potentially powerful and dangerous as fuck. Which she doesn't say out loud because, she thinks, nobody needs to know.

Jake asks her what she's thinking about and she tells him the only people she knows who smelled like their AtC were Auggie and the MOAD.

This repetition, I shit you not, happens within three paragraphs. NOBODY is editing this shit anymore. The chapter ends with everybody hauling Jake off to Lillian.

Next chapter. More on the fucking shirts.

THIS TIME I chose a black shirt, because my last clean bra was hanging up to dry in the bathroom. I was never entirely comfortable without a bra. I wasn’t sure whether the fact that the black baby-doll shirt was tight enough that it helped support my breasts was a good thing or not. I think I would have preferred the shirt to be looser.

Anita's breasts are, according to Nate in Affliction, EEE breasts. Which means her boobs are bigger than her head. Lots of women have boobs bigger than their head, but usually not when they weigh less than 120, see as much excercise as Anita does and eats as seldom as Anita eats. No. There isn't a T-shirt on earth firm enough to support her boobs without a bra.

Also, that sentence  gives me a migrane.

Also, braless the shoulder holster fit, but if I had to draw the gun I’d brush the edge of my breast. It was a small irritation, but it could make you hesitate for a second.

Anita has difficulty shooting when her nipples rub against something.

WOW.

I dried my hair a little more with a towel and actually scrunched some hair-care product in the curls. I was half embarrassed that I used stuff on my hair, but Jean-Claude had convinced me there was no shame to a little pampering. It still felt girlie to do it. Should you be worried about your hair frizzing when you wear a gun at least twelve of any given twenty-four hours? Seemed like you shouldn’t.

FOR. FUCK'S. SAKE. EVERYBODY puts shit in their hair. Guys. Girls. Folks who are neither. It's called "TAKING CARE OF YOUR HAIR" and, in the case of friz, LOOKING PROFESSIONAL. When did caring about your appearance become a gender thing?

Anita finally stops looking at herself in the mirror and goes into the sitting room...and Sampson is there.

Sampson, if you remember, is the siren prince from Danse Macabre whose parents emotionally blackmailed Anita into sleeping with him. His mom wants to awaken his siren powers, the only way to do that is via another siren fucking you, and as Thea (Mom) is the only siren the only way to awaken her children is INCEST RAPE. Sampson is there to get it on with Anita because the alternative is that Mom rapes his two underaged brothers. Sampson doesn't want to sleep with Anita, Anita doesn't want to sleep with Sampson, but apparently the only way to have sex is to blackmail yourself into it.

Of course, I’d met his mother, Thea. She was like the ocean: calm one minute, rising up to kill you the next. I think she’d sort of broken him to the thought that women were moody.

Jesus Christ, can we STOP with this gender shit? Anita's breasts are too big to go without a bra, she can't shoot if something is rubbing her bare nipples, using hair products is girly and now we've got WOMEN ARE MOODY. IT ISN'T STOPPING WHY IS IT NOT STOPPING.

Anita infodumps about the Family of the Year for a while. It ends with:

I mean, I was like their only chance to avoid a family tragedy of epic proportions. But it still made me feel squeachy.

Anita has managed to take one of the, no shit, most fucked up situations in her book and turn it around so that it is (A. All about her and (B. a favor she's doing for a friend. And not, you know, EXTREMELY WRONG ON EVERY FUCKING LEVEL. My favorite part is how Thea isn't allowed to "approach" her sons for sex. Dance Macabre used language that made it clear "approaching" had nothing to do with it. She actively attempted to rape Sampson, and there are two underage children in their household. That's not "Favor" that's "CALL THE COPS".

Jake had a military background, so Richard had given him permission to carry weaponry. I’d asked Richard’s permission to take some of the wolf guards to the shooting range and see who could handle a gun. He’d said he’d think about it. I had no idea why he had a problem with the werewolves being armed, but he was Ulfric, wolf king, and his word was law.

ANITA. HAVE YOU SEEN THE WOLF PACK LATELY? That's probably the first honest-to-god sensible thing Richard's done in five fucking books, other than dumping your ass. The wolf pack is on the verge of civil war, they've got hair-trigger tempers, there's WAY TOO FUCKING MANY OF THEM in the pack, and most of the reliable people were there during the Marcus and Rania era, so they've probably got PTSD up the yin-yang. NOBODY in that pack needs a gun.

I was lupa, but in wolf society that’s more like an uber-girlfriend. It’s not a queen, and it’s not equal. I preferred leopard society; it was less sexist. Nimir-Ra truly was equal to Nimir-Raj.

...this retconning is going to break my fucking brain I swear to god. ALSO, DOES LAURELL NOT KNOW THAT THE FEMALE WOLVES RUN THE PACK?

Sampson escorts Anita into a sitting room where Richard and Jean Claude are sitting on sofas across from each other. Jean Claude doesn't give a shit, Richard is jealous, and we're SO VERY OBVIOUSLY supposed to see how Richard is an evil wicked hater and Jean Claude is a cool loving manly man.

The other men are in the room too, so Anita goes from guy to guy to bestow morning kisses, starting with Richard.

This goes on in detail. Anita rambles about how she's violated traditional protocol by greeting Richard first, and not Jean Claude, and then this happens:

Old-school meant that no one was more important than the vampires. The exception to this rule at Sampson’s home was his mother, Thea. Technically she was Samuel’s animal to call, but if Sampson’s father had any weakness it was Thea, so you ignored her at your peril. She was queen to Samuel’s king no matter what vampire rules said.

Having read about Thea, I get the feeling you greet Thea first because you do not fuck with Thea. You do not slight Thea, you do not do anything to make Thea decide to hurt you. NOT because Samuel likes her so much. Thea get's instant respect because she is that fucking dangerous.

But of course, all female empowerment must come from a guy because the girl is either theirs, or she earned it by being one of the guys all the time.

Clothing descriptions. Jean Claude raided Jareth's closet again. (I want his coat. I want his coat. I WANT his coat.) His shoes, though...

The tight pants smoothed into thigh-high boots that were black and leather and had silver buckles up the side of them from ankle to midthigh.

Yeah. Jareth's got nothing to do with that shit. How can you WALK in those things?

Anyhoo, Anita figures that everybody's all spiffy because some shit's about to go down, and it turns out Rafael wants a meeting to discuss payment for providing bodyguards all the time. Ten bucks says that he's gonna pull their protection at some point in the book (And be completely justified in doing so. JEAN CLAUDE IS THE MOTHERFUCKING MAFIA)

Rafael has decided that he wants to be Anita's blood apple. Yeah, that plot thread is still unresolved.

Rafael is probably the most underrated character in the book. He's hispanic, a demographic that's already shit upon by just about everybody in this country who isn't hispanic, and the only thing that gave the rats serious power was that rats were Nikolaus's AtC, and they allied with Anita because they didn't like Nikolaus that much anyway. He's managed to mantain his group's significance by providing security for JC and his crew, and he's worried that since he's a holdover from the last MotC and Asher now has wereheyenas as his Animal to Call, he'll get shoved out in the heyena's favor.

“Some in the shapeshifter community would like you to try to take on as many of their beasts as you can before you shift, so that they’ll have a tighter alliance with Jean-Claude.”

Oh god. Please. PLEASE tell me this does not happen. Anita is already a little too "ALL THE THINGS"-ish. WE DO NOT NEED HER COLLECTING MORE ANIMALS FOR THE INNER ZOO.

Sampson offers to pull info out of Rafael because he can use mermaid powers on them and...

...wait. I thought the whole point of the incest plot was that he didn't have mermaid powers. WHAT THE SHIT LAUREL.

Sampson gave him a patient look with just an edge of impatience. “I have been here for months and not pushed my claim. Partly because, until Anita tries to bring me into my siren abilities, my mother will leave my brothers alone...She knows how much I want to avoid her doing anything that will force my father to kill her. He adores her, but if she forces sex on me or my brothers he will do what he vowed...It would destroy him, and our family.”

 

CALL THE COPS. I am fucking serious. There has to be some cage, somewhere, that can hold Thea until her kids are of age and in hiding. And there's this awful veneer of nonchalance about all this. Like all they have to do is this this this and this and the damage won't happen. THEA IS THREATENING TO RAPE HER OWN CHILDREN. ALL THREE children need to be REMOVED from that situation NOW.

And of course now is when Richard has to go "you'll let him fuck you just like that? How'd you like it if I fucked a new woman every time you do a new man"

Rafael shows up. He's got Louie, Ronnie's boyfriend, with him. For some reason this makes LKH forget how to punctuate names. Also, apparently Ronnie does relationships wrong. She wants it to be about sex, and not an emotional connection.

Pot. Kettle.

Rafael greets all the wereleaders except Anita and Micah. Micah takes this as an insult. Rafael says "You're damn right it is" and points out that leopards aren't Animal to Call for anybody. Well, I don't think the rats are anymore either, but I don't care. I'm enjoying this sudden display of backbone too much.

Anita realizes that this means her bodyguards probably aren't on her side anymore, and demands that they get leopards and wolves into the room until the rats are outnumbered. So now we have lots of violent, possibly trigger happy people in a situation that was already tense as fuck.

For the record? My money's on the rats. NEVER underestimate a prey animal.

Rafael nodded and looked at the other man. “I am sorry, my friend, but if I cannot guarantee my people’s safety through strength of arms and traditional methods, then I am willing to whore myself for their safety.”

And that is a good leader. Not Jean Claude, not Anita, not Richard. Rafael has a position of authority and he understands that, to use that position correctly, his own needs are second. He's probably the ONLY were-leader in this series I'd be comfortable being under.

Anita keeps insisting that there's no problem, everything's fine, Rafael can just go home and forget about this. Rafael responds.

“If I had any liking for men, I’d offer myself to Jean-Claude and be done with it.”

Anita is, of course, shocked and offended that anyone would dare suggest they'd rather fuck Jean Claude than her.

They all move over to talk over food because Jean Claude thinks Narcissus has done something to Rafael and his people. I'm expecting some horrible inter-were war or something, but it's just a rehash of everything we already covered earlier in this LONG AS FUCK chapter. Rafael also brings up that Anita's lovers get more powerful after she fucks them.

Rafael finally demands to know if Jean Claude would have any of his rats and Claudia reacts with the psychic version of duck that.

We go back and forth on that for a while. Will you fuck me? No. Will you fuck any of my rats? Maybe. This cycles until Anita agrees to choose a couple rats and then Richard explodes and they have the usual fight. It's not fair that she sleeps with everyone else but him. He won't share.

It runs until Jean Claude gets sick of it and tells them "you know our pissed off ally is RIGHT THERE". He pulls out the psychic vampire powers and Anita does too, and the chapter closes with Anita's eyes turning black and Richard's randomly turning blue.

Harlequin--chapter 18

Jean Claude comes into the room. Anita is angsting about how Graham is addicted to the ardeur.

Wait. Scratch that. Anita is angsting about how she got Graham addicted to the ardeur and how she needs to fix it so she can feel better. BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE'S ADDICTION MUST BE ALL ABOUT MEEEEE.

Jean Claude tries to talk sense into her. God knows, I'm the last one to say that JEAN CLAUDE is doing anything right by Anita, but here you go:

I tried to say something, but he kept his finger touching my mouth. “The fact that Graham wants you is not proof of addiction, ma petite. You underestimate the pull of your sweet self.”

...I need a barf bucket.

Anyhoo, Anita INSISTS that Graham is addicted to the ardeur and MUST BE SAVED. Finally, Jean Claude realizes that Anita is being fucked with and hands her a cross.

There are some people who might go "THIS IS MYSOGYNISTIC" but I don't. I know how it feels when your emotions are out of control and there is nothing you can do to fix it. I can't drink diet sodas because I have an extremely bad reaction to aspartame, and my entire family voted that when I take OTC antihistamines, I sleep it off. My emotions are at the mercy of my body and my diet, and it is frighteningly easy for something as small as a spoonful of fake sugar to upset the balance. This would be a REALLY good scene in the hands of a good writer. It would make the Harlequin fucking scary. Not only can they fuck with you, they can control your thoughts. If the Harlequin can do this to Anita, they can induce severe depression and suicidal ideation and you cannot stop them.

But of course, because LKH chose to focus on sex and Anita's relationships and characters we don't care about, the psychic murderers who can alter your thoughts to suit their will are about as scary as a wet kleenex.

...outside of flu season.

Jean Claude hands her a cross, and takes a second to order her to handle the chain only. She takes it, and it goes supernova.

God. This scene could have been so fucking good. The timing is almost good, it's acutally something I relate to REALLY well, the psychology is right for once. WHY DO I NOT CARE ABOUT THIS SCENE.

I prayed,

Thank you for reminding me that the ONLY thing I hate more than Rania is Anita's take on my faith. Please. PLEASE leave theology out of it.

With the cross, Anita find's the psychic attachment ("seed") that the Harlequin vampire stuck on her at the movies. HOW AND WHEN are never explained, but he got her at the movies. Right. She attacks him without thinking and--for once--this backfires and drags her down into his mind instead. He looks at her from inside a silver mask and basically says "Boo!"

She drops back into her own headspace and the chapter ends.

This chapter really pisses me off. One, maybe two good revisions and it'd be hot enough to melt plastic. ALL SHE HAD TO DO WAS PUT IN THE WORK. I should like the HELL out of this. And I don't.

IT'S LIVE!

Barnes and Noble is ready to go, and it's live and kicking over on Amazon.

What are you waiting for? GO! GO!

Harlequin chapter 17 + BOOK THINGS

All formatting done, all buttons punched. The only site already live is Smashwords but Barnes and Noble and Amazon should be live in the morning.

I plan to take a little time off from publishing so I can fully plan and do a damn good job editing the next Starbleached book. It's going to be VERY complicated (To give you an idea: I am researching Normandy at the moment. It's going to involve something like that) and I want to make it really, REALLY good. That said, I've a few short stories that have been knocking around on my harddrive for a while (One of which is really...erm...weird) so there will still be writerly goodness, and omnibi shall be forthcoming. Including print books of EVERYTHING. If you want print books. (I am assuming that none of you want print books because nobody's ever bought the damn things but they're something I can send to my grandmother. Literally. That's the only reason I do print books. She asks me to repeatedly.) I do not promise anything until mid spring (March. April) to early summer.

Oh, and Indiegogo contributors who are still waiting for Things: I have not forgotten that I owe you pictures. The pictures are coming very soon.

...right. Shitty book time.

... Literally nothing happens in chapter 18. Like, nothing that contributes to plot, or storytelling, or character squee or anything. (Character squee is what I call things like the "Fuck you with the Cell Phones" rant in Leathal Weapon Four. Butters and Leo already had their character-establishing encounter, there's no reason to have them bond, their relationship doesn't change one iota. The whole point of it is to stick those two characters in a room, wind them up and let them go. It's my favorite part of the whole movie)

Anita has to go out of the bathroom to dress. This is the big delimma that the chapter opens with. All her clothes are out there and she has to leave the bathroom in a towel.

For some reason she absolutely has to have a gun to do this. She's got one taped under the sink.

Anita's life is highly fucked up, and she has every reason in the universe to keep a gun under the sink AND to not want to leave the bathroom unarmed, given that they're currently dealing with people who can sneak in and out of Jean Claude's power base. But we're not reminded of this, and the Harlequin isn't a part of Anita's thought process. No, Anita wants a gun because Richard made her feel weak. Guns are the new stuffed penguins.

You know, one of my big pet peeves with these later books is the absence of the stuffed penguins. Anita collected penguin shit. My mom's got the same thing for owls. Her stuffed owl collection is pretty impressive, though my favorite is the mahogany statue. There's a scene where Anita gets attacked by a zombie and blood, brains and shit go everywhere, including on her favorite comfort penguin. There's something about that scene where she soaks Sigmund in her bathtub in the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe she can get the zombie brains out of the plush (which fails, because you can't) that drives home how violated Anita is over the whole thing. Here's something she cares about, a lot, and she knows its silly but she still loves it, and it's gone because some magical shithead sent a zombie through her apartment door.

And then the ENTIRE POLICE DEPARTMENT discovers that Anita the killer zombie hunter collects stuffed penguins, and by the time she makes it back to HQ every desk has a stuffed penguin plush on it.

Which they give to Anita after the joke's over, because a random shithead destroyed part of her house and it's the only thing they can do.

  It's not about being strong, or a dick measuring contest, or sex, or anything like that. It's people doing stupid shit, and being silly, and giving each other a hard time, and then turning around and being goddamned decent to each other because that's what people do. It's a lot of credit to give LKH, but reading the penguin-washing scene in the comic book is what made me fall off the wagon years ago. I wanted to get to know these people again, because I thought that they were awesome. I didn't read the Anita Blake books because I thought the writing was awesome. I read them because I really liked the people.

In other words, it's COMPLETELY appropriate that LKH replaced Sigmund with a Sig-Sauer.

Clay and Graham are in the room. Clay is there to guard Anita, Graham is there to fuck her if she needs it.

Graham is also having a bad reaction to the ardeur. Anita and he argue for a while about why she won't fuck him, and he helps her dress.

Look, no woman is asking for it, okay? And men should have good self control because we are people and not dogs (and even dogs can be trained not to do shit, you know?) But there is NO EARTHLY REASON for Anita to have someone she has rejected over and over to help her dress. I can think of a thousand reasons for Anita to take her clothes and get dressed in the bathroom, starting with "It's nice to Graham" and ending with "There's every chance he'll say fuck it and rape her, because Graham obviously has the self control and brains of a fornicating rabbit." She could also demand that Graham leave her room for the same damn reasons. Or tell both idiots to get out of her room while she dresses. Nope. She lets the guy pressuring her for sex dress her like a doll.

That's not even shitty characterization. That's just bad fucking writing. This isn't even something I can get angry at. No human being in the world would do this.

Also: Apparently all of the ardeur meat have to wear red shirts.

 “You think I can’t be embarrassed, because I’m a whore.”

There's a scene in That Hideous Strength where the main character, Mark, projects his contentedness with his marital relationship onto his wife, Jane. He thinks she's happy because he's happy. In reality Jane is miserable, she's decided that getting married was a mistake, and she's making regular trips out of town to a convent run by (from her POV) a bunch of dodgy characters and old friends of Mark. My point here is people tend to project their own thoughts and feelings onto somebody else--ie, Anita thinks she herself is a whore--and then call the other on it. In a way, it allows us to address our own negative aspects without ever having to REALLY address our negative aspects. After all, it isn't that ANITA thinks poorly of herself. It's Graham. She has to change Graham's POV.

Also:

His mother was Japanese,

DING DING DING DING DING! LKH has mentioned a SPECIFIC ETHNICITY FOR A NON WHITE CHARACTER FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME!

Anita throws Graham out of the room after he buttons her blouse for her, and she and other guy (Clay) discuss how Graham got addicted to the ardeur just by an itty bitty taste here and there, and how careful Anita will have to be from now on.

It goes on for pages. It doesn't elaborate on anything at all.

Finally Jean Claude wakes up and Anita sends everybody out of the room. End of chapter.

Cover art!

I plan to use the full image for the eventual omnibus, but this looks really good as the cover IMHO.

Doing formatting and final proofreading as we speak.

I've got to deeply revise my schedule and my plans for the future, as I've taken on more duties at my job. It's sadly got very little to do with money and a great deal to do with trying to please members of my household, but it also means my part time job is now officially full time (35 hours a week). Sucks for the writing, but you do what you gotta do. We'll see how big of an impact this has on the publishing schedule.

I understand and accept that I will never be a professional writer or artist. I am, frankly, just not that good. It is still the only thing in my life I am seriously passionate about. Everything else, even the fiber stuff, I can live without. I like it when I do it, but I can go long stretches without knitting, or spinning, or playing with fuzzy stuff. I have never in my life not been writing. Even if it's just in my head, it's running. It may not be any good, but it's always there. I'd love to say ignoring that process is like an amputation, but that's melodramatic. Besides, I can't even ignore it. (Do other people get that? I've always kind of assumed that everybody else's head is that full of noise too)

Sorry for the melodrama. Life changes are never easy. Normal, non-fussy blog posts will resume as soon as the book makes drop.