Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 22

Danse Macabre--chapter 21-22

Jean Claude gets to sleep with Anita anyway, and so we get the obligatory freak out when she wakes up and he's dead.

It's so nice how everyone in this series respects everyone else's issues.

There's a bigger problem, however: The Mother of All Darkness is sitting at the foot of Anita's bed. Okay, okay, it's her astral projection, but still.

 Anita asks why MOAD is there. She says Anita "interests" her. Because all roads lead back to Anita. This cycles back and forth for a few minutes. MOAD sighs and says she's "forgotten the knack" of being human, though I'd prefer that maybe she's a little fuzzy on the lyrics to "My Sharona" and wants Anita to help her out.

Then the MOAD turns into the darkness and psychically drowns Anita, and Anita has to call her inner wolf to save her. It does. End of chapter.

Next chapter: Anita wakes up in the bed with Jean Claude and Nate and Micah all around her. It was only a dream.

...at least it didn't end like that.

Her Inner Wolf has decided that it wants to become her Outer Wolf and is now trying to make Anita shape-shift. Everyone starts freaking out because if Anita shifts for the first time she'll *gasp* lose the baby! They dogpile on top of her and somebody dislocates her shoulder. The smell of wolves and leopards calms her down. Nobody takes credit for the injury, though.

I think one day somebody will write a story about a were-whatever that respects the boundaries and physical integrity of other members of its group, and then the world will end. Or at least the paranormal romance industry.

Also: the two dudes that Anita never wanted in her bed are now naked in her bed. Because they're the "only wolves they have" and nobody will let her kick them out.

And then they go call Richard. And I'm actually not pissed off this time because in a crisis involving a potentially new werewolf calling the Alpha is exactly the right thing to do.

Of course he and Jean Claude have to dick around for a few minutes, and Richard has to refuse to help Anita because she's got a large number of naked men in her bed. Jean Claude talks him into assisting. He crouches on top of her, which her wolf assumes means he's dominant to her, and they fight about him getting off for a few minutes.

Anita is having a bona-fide medical emergency. Supernatural, but it's real. Stop with the dick-measuring shit and get her stabilized.

 Then we get a description of her inner wolf and once again, it's...special.

It wasn’t truly white, but the color of cream, with dark markings like a saddle across its back and head. That dark cape was every shade of gray and black intermingled, and even the white and cream wasn’t truly white or cream, but mixed like milk and buttermilk.

...It's many a day I've traveled/ a thousand miles or more/but a wolf with a saddle on/I never saw before. Yeah, that image is kind of priceless. Also: milk and buttermilk. What the blazing blue fuck do you think buttermilk is, Anita? It's milk. It's the same color as milk. It just smells really bad and tastes about the same.

And everyone's all like "Make Anita shift!" And Richard is all "She'll lose the baby" and everyone says "She'll lose the baby anyway" because that's the most important thing when a pregnant woman is in a crisis--the baby. That by all accounts she doesn't actually want.

He let down his shields, not all the way, but as if he blinked metaphysically. I got a glimpse at his emotions, his thoughts, just a glimpse. If I shifted for real, he wouldn’t want me. He valued my humanity, because he felt like he had none. If I shifted, I would cease to be Anita to him. He still didn’t understand that being a werewolf didn’t stop you being a human being.

Nice. Also, the book points out that if Anita shifts for real, and it's wolf, she loses the leopards and Micah. FYI that means Micah is just as much of a shit as Richard. He's never been interested in Anita outside of her role as Nimir-Ra.

Anita decides to call her leopard. She kicks Richard out of bed, though she makes Graham stay because he keeps the wolf calm (Again: I'm imagining Grahame Coats. Being played by Steve Buscemi.) I guess that's that pick decided. Welcome to the harem. You might want to invest in a chastity set up for your penis.

Anita calls the leopard and gets both her inner leopard and her inner lion. The leopard is, naturally, pitch black. Because that's *special*. Apparently there's no way to make a lioness special, so it's just a normal lioness. This, BTW, means that Anita will never ever ever ever EVER shift into a lion.

She gives Nate her inner leopard, but the lion is still there, so she has to call a lion. She gets one of Auggie's people. The guy is Cookie Monster.

I'm not kidding. That's his nickname. He's got blue hair and a Cookie Monster tattoo. We've got a reject from the Sesame Street Porno on our hands.

Auggie's second in command, Octavius--the guy who broke his fingers during the forced orgasm--follows after to scream at Anita for raping his master (AND HIM) and stealing his people. Cookie is all like "Orgasm?!? WHERE" and Anita is just enjoying the view.

Cookie wanders over to the bed, and that's where the chapter ends.

we are 45% of the way through the book. There isn't a plot in sight. HELP.

Danse Macabre--chapter 20

So today I started having computer issues. It overheated and turned itself off in the middle of editing (it's coming soon, I promise) and came back up an hour later. I did what I could, shut it down, went to work, turned it back on when I got home, ate dinner and went for a walk. When I came back it was down again. I panicked, figuring that my computer could now only stay on for an hour at a time, and that meant I couldn't/shouldn't use it. Except there were things on it that I needed.

I did this fun three ring circus act of trying to get my major files over to my mother's computer, which worked, and then trying to get the tablet drivers to function so I could do my artwork. I tried every USB on her thing that I could find and got no joy whatsoever. I unplugged her printer and tried that plug. No dice. Finally, on the verge of tears, I asked her if she ever had trouble getting her printer to work, hoping that maybe she had some fun workaround for non-functional USB plugs.

She said, "Oh, well the power went off, so you might have to restart it."

I am sitting there with half my art equiptment in my lap and several important files sitting in internet limbo. "When did the power go off?"

"When you left for your walk."

Yeah. There are still computer issues but they're not that bad. Also: Communication is IMPORTANT, my lovelies.

...chapter twenty consists of Anita, Micah and Nate fucking each other. It opens with blowjobs.

Again. I have issues with blowjobs. I am going to assume that Anita Blake gives perfect, amazing head every time, and move on. I do not gaurentee that I will make it through this whole chapter.

We get a memory of Belle torturing Jean Claude by making him watch sex. We are supposed to feel sympathy for Jean Claude for how bad his life is.

There's an ongoing spork of a horrible webcomic I've been reading (The spork. Not the webcomic. NOBODY should read that webcomic. EVER. I don't really want to link to it because while the spork is AMAZING, the webcomic doesn't deserve even that much press.) The author's self-insert (as in this character's name is also his internet handle everywhere) is a serial rapist/murderer and there's an ongoing plot thread attempting to redeem the son of a bitch because he's the author's self insert. The tactic the author has chosen hasn't been repentance/redemption ("Gee, I'm a horrible rapist who rapes women. I really ought to be punished for this, I feel so sorry.") but rather a "My life is worse than yours" plot thread. Yes, he rapes and kills countless women horribly, but he was beaten by his grandmother. That has to count for something, right? How about the molestation by a schoolteacher? That's got to be a "Get out of conviction free" card right there, right? I'm getting the same feeling every time Anita brings up Jean Claude (or Micah. Or Nate's) pasts. Nate's a manipulative shit, Micah's a rapist, Jean Claude is an all out amoral monster, but they all had nasty childhoods. This justifies everything. No. No it doesn't. It might explain their behavioral patterns, but it does not excuse them. Micah being tormented by Chimera does not excuse the things that he did/has done. Nate's childhood of rape and forced prostitution does not excuse how he manipulates the people around him to get what he wants. Jean Claude's overly long history of sexual abuse at the hands of everyone ever does not excuse what he does to other people. There comes a point where we become responsible for our own behavioral patterns, and that moment is when we damage someone with those behaviors--even if that person is just ourselves. We might not bear the full responsibility, but some of it is ours and it is still our job to apologize and fix things as best we can. And if you understand that these behaviors will hurt someone before you preform them? The responsibility is fully yours. Any justifications you use--shitty childhood, victimless crime, they did it first--are just so much smoky bullshit.

He kissed that drop away, and stared down at me, as he knelt in front of me. His face was fierce and full of some wonder, as if I’d done something amazing. I hadn’t. I’d just finally decided to get out of my own way; out of everyone’s way.

I can't quite put my finger on why this bothers me, but it does. It sounds a bit too much like "It's for your own good."

...apparently it is really difficult to play with three dicks at once. Also, it takes some significant logistics to gain access to the dicks' penises.

There's a moment where Nate puts his hand on the back of Anita's head to force her further down on his penis. She panicks. Nate is all hurt that she panicked. "You let me do it before..."

When he looked at me again, he was smiling, but there was still a flinching around his eyes; a shadow of that hurt. There was only one thing that would take that hurt from his eyes, I had to prove I trusted him.

LADY. TRIGGERING A PANIC REACTION IS NOT GROUNDS FOR THE TRIGEREE TO FEEL GUILTY FOR PANICKING. ALSO: YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER HAVE TO PROVE YOU TRUST SOMEONE. WHOMEVER YOU ARE TRUSTING SHOULD BE THE ONE PROVING THEIR WORTH. JESUS. FUCKING. CHRIST.

And speaking of panic reactions, I was doing really well until we got to the discussion of taste and texture, but we're there now and it's pretty much shut me down for the night (not panic, but I don't want to go down that road tonight). Quick skimming shows that the chapter ends with orgasm and a promise to recruit men until the harem can fuck Anita unconsious. Nice.

I hate this fucking book.

Danse Macabre--chapter 19

So Richard leaves because he doesn't like sharing Anita--it's fair, some people are naturally monogamous. Richard is a shit for not accepting that Anita isn't and either dealing or moving the fuck on, but that's penny ante-shit compared to, you know, being Anita's fucking rape victim--and everybody is happy because that means everybody gets to dog-pile in bed with Anita...

...with one very big exception. Anita doesn't like waking up next to Jean Claude because Jean Claude wakes up dead. Nate calls attention to how unfair it is to "kick you out of your own bed" and Jean Claude displays the hypocritsy of a champ:

Jean-Claude turned back, and said, “Ma petite is not comfortable when I die at dawn. We will respect her sensibilities in this tonight. She has had enough shocks for one night.”

Richard doesn't like having sexual contact with other men. He's an evil mcevil evilstine homophobe for this. Anita doesn't like having sexual contact with things that are openly dead. Not sticking dead things in her bed is "respecting her sensibilities".

We don't know why Richard doesn't like having sex with men. (Being in Rania and Marcus's pack back when Rania and Gabriel were making pornographic torture-snuff films with other weres specifically because weres will heal from just about everything so they did everything they could MIGHT have something to do with that) We don't need to know why Richard doesn't want to have sex with men. He doesn't want to have sex. If a woman doesn't want to have sex with other women, it doesn't mean she's a homophobe either. It means that's not a turn on. Stating that not desiring something is indicative of -ist-ish behavior on your part is a manipulative tactic to get what the other person wants. If a dude of some other race told me that I was a racist because I didn't want to have sex with him, the gut reaction I'd get would be to have the sex to prove him wrong. (This does not necessarily mean that the racism accusation is or is not true. It's just that under those circumstances the accusation is manipulative)

And so to have Anita have the exact same reaction to one of her primary lovers and not get called an -ist for having it shows you exactly where the point is. It's not that Richard is a homophobe. It's that Richard isn't giving Anita what she wants ,which is friction free sex with lots of men and also Richard. She does not give one flying fuck what Richard wants (as evidenced when she raped him) but oh she sure does care about what she wants. For all we know, Marcus let Rania and Gabriel play "hide the gensui knife" with Richard during one of their porno flicks. Anita's reason for not wanting to wake up next to a dead Jean Claude is pretty shallow: She doesn't like dead things. She is not condemned for that. She shouldn't be condemned for that.

Micah then pushes for Antia to keep Jean Claude with her. Thus proving that Micah is just as big an asshole as Anita, if not moreso. And of course the Wondercock himself gets what he wants. Asher flounces out of the room.

You can throw whatever accusations you want at me for this statement, but I swear to god, I want a fucking gay character who is, in all other respects, fucking Thor.  BAMF, takes no shit, does not give a flying fuck what color his shirt is, let alone if it coordinates with his socks, and above all does not fucking flounce.

He'd get played by Ian McKellen.

Jean Claude's bed is black and red. Black and red theme for vampires. In other news, water's wet, hurricanes blow shit around and vacuums suck.

Jean-Claude had a room the size of a small warehouse that was full of clothes.

ppppffffHAHAHAHAHA Yeah. Jim Henson called. He came back from the dead to get his costume department back.

Nathaniel came back to the bed wearing absolutely nothing. I had one of those moments of discomfort. I’d seen him nude more times than I could count. I’d seen him nude in front of Micah and Jean-Claude more times than I could count. So why was I blushing?

Maybe because your author has a serious thing against consensual, openly desired sex?

“Come to bed, Anita,” he said, “you know you want to.” 
The anger was instantaneous. I wasn’t blushing when I raised my eyes back to him. “I don’t like being taken for granted, Nathaniel.” 

He sighed, and sat up, putting his muscular arms around his knees. “Don’t let the whole baby thing push you back. You’ve made a lot of progress in your comfort zones, don’t lose ground now.”

WOW. Just fucking WOW. So, like the stockholm syndrome and emotional manipulation is wearing off and it's all the baby's fault. HOW DO YOU THINK OF THIS SHIT? Wait. Nevermind. I don't want to know.

 Anita then starts freaking out over the anal sex between Jean Claude and Auggie.

You know, it seemed that Richard's disgust with the whole JC/Auggie/Anita thing centered on the issue of consent. Anita and Jean Claude Raped Augistine and all of his people. Richard did not say "How could you let that disgusting homosexual pair of monsters fuck each other on top of you" or anything like that. His issue was that Jean Claude and Anita collectively rolled another person and then screwed him and every person tied to him while he was in a state of dubious consent.

Anita is having issues with the actual sex act.

Richard is supposed to be the homophobe.

So now we watch Anita struggle through the realization that she liked watching homosexual sex between men. It takes a very long time for her to work her way through it. She asks Nate and Micah how they feel sleeping with someone who views them as a sex object.

Seriously. She asks them that.

Claudia points out that JC has been feeding off men exclusively since he started dating Anita because she'd have *issues* if he fed off other women.

Anita finally gets into the bed and the heavy petting session commenses.

Nathania tells Anita that she is his "favorite toy."

I know how I'd react to that:


Anita then compares everyone's penises to each other.

Jean Claude then offers to leave because he can't have sex without feeding first...but he doesn't leave, so it's just a lot of back and forth where Jean Claude says he needs to go and Anita plays with Micah's penis.

The chapter ends with a timeless quote from Nathanial:

"Suck my dick, so we can fuck."

Danse Macabre--chapter 18

So Anita goes into the bathroom. pees in the cup, and sticks the pregnancy test in. This whole sequence is rather good. It's rather well paced, you get the sense of the passage of time and her nerviousness, and even the endless repition serves to put your teeth on edge, so you're in the same shoes as Anita. It works.

...right up until she reads the results, and I had to reread the paragraph three times to find where it says the test is positive. Because it's not the test that's important, kids. It's how Anita feels about it.

As for her reaction...yeah. All I can see is this:



So after panicking for a few minutes and thinking about how lucky the men are because they don't know that the world's ended (seriously. She says this) Claudia comes in and notices the positive pregnancy test. She has to help carry Anita out of the bathroom.

Richard is happy that Anita might be pregnant. Anita takes this as a deathly offensive reaction.  Anita, you've already stated that you'll be keeping the baby (for the pregnancy anyway) so let him be happy. The only question right now is who will raise the kid (which won't happen because she isn't actually pregnant).

Micah wistfully wishes he could have his own kid, but he got fixed, so...and Richard finally sticks his foot in it.

“Why did you have yourself fixed?” Richard asked. “You’re not thirty yet, why would you do that to yourself?” 

Well fuck you too, dick. And of course this is just so we can segue into "My life is more fucked up than yours."

Micah wrapped his arms around me, held me close. “My old alpha, Chimera, liked pregnant shapeshifters. If one of the women came up pregnant by someone else, someone she cared for, Chimera would take her until she lost the baby. He got off on taking her from her lover, from fucking her while she was pregnant with someone else’s child, and from her losing it.”

Congradulations, that's the most fucked up thing I've ever heard off.

Richard then boo-hoos that he's left out, but he can't deal with a poly relationship, and it's time for us to start fighting again. He points out that everything with Jean Claude is about sex. That's fair. Micah jumps to Jean Claude's defense. And then all of a sudden Anita and Richard are making out, and everybody comes over for a snuggle. They dog-pile onto Richard for a few minutes and he comes up looking like he just got a hit off a really great bong. But he won't be sleeping with Anita because he doesn't like group sex. He heads off to bed with Clay and the chapter ends.

Danse Macabre--chapter 17

And so we continue with "How LKH thinks people deal with a crisis."

It's painful.

That said, it's a plot thread that, while tangentally related to sex, is not founded on sex, solved by sex, or complicated by sex (other than the sex that has already happened). So while it's a really thin thread, it's basically a big improvement over the sex of the preceeding chapters.

THAT. SAID.

Richard starts the chapter off by asking Anita how she can love Nathanial. Nate's choice in careers aside, he's a manipulative, passive-aggressive, emotionally abusive prick with the empathy of a turnip, so that's a pretty valid question. Anita is, of course, the steller person of unempeachable character we all know her to be.

I turned to look at him. He stood, shoulders hunched, rubbing his hands up and down his arms, as if he were cold. But I knew he wasn’t cold, or at least not the kind of cold that blankets and skin warmth could fix. It was a coldness of the heart, or the soul, or the mind. That cold that eats a hole through the middle of who you are, and leaves something dark and awful behind.

On the one hand, this is a psychologically accurate reaction. Many women trapped in abusive relationships assume that other people just don't understand, when in reality the other person understands damn well how the relationship is working, and just can't comprehend why their loved one is still in the relationship. On the other hand: Fuck you Anita. YOU RAPED THIS MAN. You continually ignore his boundaries re: sex and sexual contact, and you repeatedly tell him to suck up and deal when he has crippling emotional crisises that you started in the first place. You want us to see Richard as a judgemental asshole, but he mostly comes off as a very confused victim of many many many people, INCLUDING you, INCLUDING Jean Claude, and also including Rania and Marcus, who has finally gotten something approaching control in his life and is now trying to work through his issues with no help from you whatsofuckingever. His PTSD probably has PTSD is what I'm saying here. If his heart was cold, Anita, he wouldn't be there.

 However, anything remotely resembling character development is about to be hijacked by "How LKH Thinks Judgemental Christian-ish Nasty Straight People Handle A Horrible Crisis."

Anita tells Richard to suck it up, Nate's willing to uproot his entire life to take care of the hypothetical baby.

Richard offers to marry Anita.

Anita laughs in his face, which is the first rational reaction I've seen her make in three books. She says that the problem isn't marrige, the problem is that they've made a person and now have to take care of it. Richard insists that marrying will fix everything.

I'm starting to get plot whiplash again.

The arguement bounces back and forth, and finally Anita says that she has no intention of marrying anyone and Richard is all "DON'T YOU WANT A FATHER FOR YOUR BAYYYYBEEE". 

This is the point where I cringe. On the one hand, I don't buy the whole "man and a woman" thing. On the other hand (I think I'm a fucking octopus by now) the role models raising the child need to be the same role models. The worst thing you can do to a child, especially during the first three years of their life, is trade parent figures out like they're light bulbs. So Richard's got something of a point there, too. Whoever and whatever takes care of the kid needs to keep taking care of the kid. Consistancy is the single most important thing you can do for a child. 

Claudia interrupts and tells Richard he's making Anita feel worse, because he's trying to trap her into a normal life.

Richard, naturally, makes my own point for me.

“No,” he said, and he meant it. He turned back to me. “You said it yourself, Anita, whatever’s best for this little person. Do you really think being a federal marshal, and dealing with all kinds of violent crime and monsters, is the kind of life that a baby needs?” 

 If Anita had ever made any kind of effort to keep her home safe, I'd say that Richard was full of shit. But she never has. She doesn't give one flying fuck about staying secure, and there's at least one killer vampire on the rampage with an axe to grind against her.

“Jesus, Richard,” I said, “you’re still trying to take away my life. To take away what makes me who I am. You love me, but not who I am. You love who you want me to be.”

Alright, good point on the "you love who you want me to be". I'd give a better point if who Richard wanted Anita to be wasn't healthy. She doesn't have good relationships. Everyone she's got in her life is using her for something. Micah gets power through her. JC gets power through her. Nate gets something. And she's using back just as hard. It's like an addict's family trying to get them to sober up. Should she give up police work? No. Should she give up the confrontational runaway train "I can do it all because I'm just that good" attitude that keeps getting her in trouble? Probably so.

And I have to ask, what the fuck did a white picket fence ever do to Laurel K. Hamilton for it to be the be-all end-all symbol of evil?

Samuel gives a speech about how having children made Thea even more ruthless because we had the momma-bear thing, and all Anita focuses on is how breast feeding is totally not her thing.

So...those EEE breasts are fake, then, right?

Anita decides to change the topic. She and Richard fight over whose right it is to change the topic.

I'd say they're both six, but I've met six-year-olds with more maturity. RECENTLY.

They switch over to talking about Anita's hunt for a new blood apple, and how they should introduce a new vampire to the mix early so that they can see how haywire her powers are currently. For some reason this planning session requries copious kissing of Anita's ass.

They make the Cinderella comparison again, and Anita reminds them all that she's the prince, again, and I'm kind of getting sick of this plot point already. Let's go back to fighting over a pregnancy.

Claudia herds Anita into the bathroom so she can take the pregnancy test. End of chapter.

Danse Macabre--chapter 15-16

This is so fucking stupid. It's like..."Hey, let's have unprotected sex. AND A PREGNANCY SCARE. And more unprotected sex. Let's not do birthcontrol EVER. Now let's go on about how awful a baby would be because having an actual plot would be too difficult."

Yeah, so all the guys and most of the visitors now know that Anita is possibly preggers. Richard is glowering pissed, Samuel is congradulating everyone and Jean Claude is furniture.

There's a long exchange between her and Richard where he's all like "Anita, could you really kill OUR BABY" and Anita is all like "Well I'd like to say yes to hurt you but BABIES BABIES BABIES what were we talking about again?" and I am reminded why all of these characters are terrible.

Oh, hey, let's break the world for a minute:

“Why, just because Jean-Claude and Asher, and hell, Damian are several hundred years old? That doesn’t mean it’s not theirs; look at Samuel. He has three sons, two separate pregnancies.”

There it is in black and white: Sam is the biological dad of Thea's kids, and the universe just broke in little pieces. I strongly remember Anita's traitor friend, I think it was Monica? The one that set up the other friend to get rolled in Guilty Pleasures? That one. I remember her and her vampire hubby having to camp out in hottubs and pray a lot to try to get pregnant and there was a lot of "Well, maybe we've got a chance; he's only a few years dead." I think the moon is more fertile than Jean Claude (or Samuel) so the vamps being a dad EVER would be unlikely. I do not think they're the parents in this "Whoopsie-daisy there's a baby" plot thread.

Anita brings up that it could be Micah or Nate's baby. Richard reminds Anita that Micah "got fixed". (because vacetomies are always perfect. Just like birth control) which leaves Nathanial as the primary not-a-father. And now we have a big long thing about how Nathanial will make a better father than any of the others because he can make more money stripping part time than the rest of them can make at a full time job. This is probably true. Nate has also shown the maturity of sugar snap peas and I think if I were given a choice between letting a vegitable parent a child and letting Nate have it, I'd go with a nice head of cauliflower.

And then the book kind of makes my own point for me by bringing Valentina into the room. She's a child vampire and she spends a lot of time making very creepy comments about how much she'd like a playmate. There's filler where Valentina rolls Sampson and Samuel is like "Huh. My son's strong enough, or else he can just go die."

I am beginning to think there's a slight bit of dysfunction in Samuel and Thea's family.

Eventually he throws Valentina off with his mother's power, and that's the end of that.

Richard and Nathanial get into a power magic fight...thing. LKH tries for subtlty.

Richard tried to move back, while I tried not to move, and Nathaniel just watched us, from an inch away. Richard wasn’t willing to move without me, or leave me alone with Nathaniel. The symbolism was too raw for words.

Yeah. Laurel? The thing about symbolism is, when you call it out that blatently it kind of loses its everything, you know?

Finally, Claudia rescues Anita so she can go pee on blotting paper. End of chapter.

ARTWORK

Cover art is trucking along VERY nicely. Abra and Joey are very photogenic. I'm just not 100% happy with either the clouds in the upper right, or the spires in the lower left .Will need to do more work to get them done right.

Danse Macabre--chapter 14

Anita and Richard are now going to talk/fight about Anita sleeping with Thea's sons.

On the one hand, this is going to be monotonous, awful, boring, pointless, and completely without impact on plot or character development, and will simply serve as filler to make the book longer. On the other hand, it's delaying the actual sleeping with Thea's sons, so let's hope Richard pulls a puppy and pukes on Anita's shoes while he's at it.

“And if we were talking about me having sex with three new women, two of them seventeen years old, wouldn’t you be angry?”

THIS IS WHY YOU DO NOT INVOLVE EX LOVERS IN NEW RELATIONSHIPS. ALSO: If we were talking about you taking three new lovers and two of them are underage, I would be calling the fucking cops.

Samuel and his son try to leave, because this is the kind of dirty laundry you're supposed to bury under the basement concrete. Jean Claude tells Sam that he needs to stay and help JC figure out if taking Anita to the City Masters Conclave or whatever it is he'll be taking Anita to, will turn the business party into more of an orgy. Sam is willing, but Sampson, his son, has a more pressing issue.

“Are these questions that only a vampire can answer?” Sampson asked.
 “It is from a master like your father that I need advice,” Jean-Claude said.

 “Then, I could go back to the hotel and check on Mother and the twins.”

There is no way anybody could read that line having read the preceeding chapter and not immediately think that Sampson is more concerned about the twins than his mother.

Richard realizes that Sampson is trying to be helpful and thanks him. Sampson then drops this lovely bombshell on us.

“You obviously don’t like sharing Anita, and now here I am asking you to share her again. We need her to help us. I don’t want to lose my mother and one, or both, of my little brothers.”

Sampson: CALL. THE. POLICE. I am sure that there is SOME unit, SOMEWHERE, that is set up to intervene in senarios like this. If nothing else, go get therapy. Go get massive, massive amounts of therapy so you'll stop accepting responsibilities that are not yours. REAL therapy, not LKH lobotomy therapy. The kind where a councelor will spend about ten minutes listening to your family woes, stop you and say "I'm very sorry, but I need to notify the police that this situation exists. Otherwise I'm the one breaking the law."

And he says it over and over and over again: He's not on Anita's fuck list because he wants to have sex with her. He's doing it to save his family. This is not his choice. His dad is literally saying "Fuck the nice lady, or your mother will rape your brothers and I'll have to kill all of them." This is emotional blackmail.

And then the fight begins, and it's beautiful. Richard is calling Anita on all her shit. He gets shot down immediately with the convoluted arguements that make no sense at all, and I swear to god these books are reading like a republican comic strip on acid, but shit is being called.

He waved his hands around the room. “This is not where I want to be, Anita. I don’t want to live where my choices are sharing you with other men, or having people die. I don’t want those choices.”

Then leave. Let Jean Claude and Anita hang themselves. Let the whole fucking world burn if that's what happens. You cannot and should not be obligated to stay in a relationship to protect yourself, your partner, or a third party. And if you are being guilted into staying, or outright blackmailed? LEAVE. GET OUT. RUN. Make your plan, and the second it is safe bolt like there's no tomorrow. THIS SITUATION IS NOT OKAY. DO NOT STAY IN THIS NOT OKAY SITUATION.

“I think we could have made it, our version of the white picket fence, without him,” and he pointed at Jean-Claude.

YES. YES YOU COULD HAVE.

So at the end of the arguement Richard lets his sheilds down and reveals that (like about ten thousand battered, slightly obsessed ex partners before him) he hopes when Anita gets her addiction/Ardeur under control she'll dump Nate and Micah and move back in with him. Anita lets her sheilds down and thinks "OH NO FUCKING WAY and oh yeah I might be pregnant."

Which Richard repeats to the entire room and then that's the end of the chapter.  YES. WE MADE IT WITH NO SEX SCENE.

I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that LKH gets distracted by a random bunny or something and the whole Anita/Sampson thing never actually happens. PLEASE let it never happen. PLEASE.

Danse Macabre--chapter 13

Something else annoying that LKH does is ruin point out her own logical holes and then not fix them. Example? Example. She points out that Jean Claude's underground lair is lit with electric lights, but the hallway is lit with torches and the combination of the two is kinda weird. You know what? It IS weird. Why would you run wires through the rock hallways (given that it'd be easier than drilling new holes in the fucking rock to run your wires) and then NOT USE THE WIRES. WHY in the name of FUCK would anyone want torches if they have access to electric light? It made kind of sort of sense with Nikolaus but Jean Claude likes his toys. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS.

Asher's introductory paragraph is...special.

Asher glided toward us, and it was almost as if his feet didn’t touch the ground, as if he were floating. He was always graceful, but not like that. He was one of the best at levitating that I’d ever seen, so that he could do what the legends say: Asher could fly.

I am not the best at grammar in the whole wide world, and I try not to make statements if I am not sure, so fucking trust me. COLONS. DO NOT. WORK. THAT. WAY. 

A colon is an equals sign. Everything on this side=everything on this side. One rule: Make them fucking balance. And even if it kind of sort of works if you squint at it sideways, it's ugly.

Tonight it was as if he could barely force himself to walk when he knew he had wings and longed to use them. He was like some earthbound angel waiting to fling himself skyward.

His clothes helped the angelic illusion. He was all in white with gold and copper thread worked through the frock coat, and along a pair of silk pants that ended at his knees, where white hose took up, and ended in white high heels with golden buckles. The shoes reminded me that the original high heel was meant for men.

I swear to god every time LKH walks into a Joann's it must be fucking embarrassing. I'm a fiber-phile and even I don't go that ape-shit over clothes.

 The Drunk-Krunk descriptions continue for a minute, and then Asher reveals that he's gotten new powers too. So apparently the level up evolved all the pokemon, and not just Anita and her tri-whatevers. HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT you know what, I'm not even going to bother. Fine. She's leveled up all her friends and none of her enemies. Moving on.

So the first thing Cape Cod dude (I am not writing Master of Cape Cod. Fewest possible words, my lovelies) does is apologize for his wife causing Anita's little episode. Anita pounces on that like white on rice. It's all somebody else's fault. Lady, unless he's got Sleez's mind-control rape stick, you did it all on your own. Own your fucking shit, Anita. Own your shit.

 Also, apparently Anita inspired Thea. That is one scary lady Cape Cod is married to.

Samuel finished for him. “Thea is other, and she reasons in ways that do not always make much sense to those of us who began life as human beings.” He didn’t sound entirely happy about it, but he stated it as truth.

On the one hand, I like that concept a lot, and I really enjoy playing with the concept of non-human sentience and how that might work. On the other hand, the whole "other=non human" thing is kind of icky for reasons I can't really articulate right now, and also that is the biggest fucking copout oh my fucking god. Just say that the woman is ruthless and stick with it. She wants her powerbase to be very big, and that means making her sons big mojo. There. There you go. It's not that hard.

And again, Samuel threatens to shatter one of the few established rules of this universe: Vampires can't reproduce biologically unless they are REALLY young and go through a lot of work to make it happen. There's no open confirmation on the biology of Thea's kids, but it's strongly implied that's he's the biological dad.

Samuel and his kid, Sampson, both point out that Anita is enslaving everyone she fucks. She's like "What? I don't do that." And everyone else is like YES YOU FUCKING DO and isn't this a book about dancing? Do you think maybe we could get to the dancing parts? This is getting boring. No?

Then Jean Claude risks shattering the known universe by asking Samuel for advice. It's reguarding Anita and her growing powers. Because treating her like a side of beef is how you solve issues in this universe.

And then oh my god, my lovelies. We're about to wander off into the deep end of the suck. Because just when I thought I was desensitized to all the awful, we go leaping into whole new realms. And I am not kidding here. The fun, oooh-look-how-awful element of the snark? It's about to go away. I can't even point and laugh after this point. All I can do is try not to hurl.

He shook his head. “No, I am master, and father, and I will do it.” He looked back at Jean-Claude. “Thea tried to bring Sampson into his powers as a siren.”

\
“Thea tried to bring Sampson into his powers as a siren.”

Well, okay, now maybe it's not that bad. They're both consenting adults, they could be into it mutually. Maybe--

He nodded. “Sampson came to me, and I told her, in no uncertain terms, that if she ever tried to do it again I would kill her. When the twins began to exhibit faint signs of power, I gave her the talk again.”

“In my mother’s defense,” Sampson said, “when I said no, she took no for an answer. She didn’t have to. I’m her son, but I’m not a siren yet; if she’d pushed her powers, then I wouldn’t have had a choice. She stopped when she realized I was horrified. She didn’t understand why it bothered me, but she accepted it.”

Yeah. You don't threaten to kill a family member over consensual sex. And "stopped" implies that something had started when Sampson finally talked his mother into stopping her assault. So I'm going to let you work through all the squick inherent in this. It'll take a while. There's lots of awful layers.

Samuel, it turns out, is pushing his kids onto Anita because he's trying to save them from their mother.

And Sam's reasoning isn't any better. He's not trying to save them because their mother is a sexual predator, this is morally wrong and the therapy bills. Nope. He wants the power and he's willing to let Thea do it, but he's worried it might "break their sanity". Please explain what that word means in this context, dude. Also, very nice, implying that incest victims are insane. Get fucked, please.

I do not wish to be forced to either imprison or kill my own child, Jean-Claude, and that is what we might have to do.”

Your wife is a sexual predator, then. If she can't keep herself from raping her own fucking children then she is a sexual predator and you need to not be married and/or reproducing with her anymore. Also, OH MY FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING GOD. HE MIGHT HAVE TO KILL HIS CHILD BECAUSE HIS WIFE RAPED THEM. HEY, CAN WE TALK ABOUT VICTIM BLAMING FOR A MINUTE, BECAAUSE HOIHO:IHIOFOJKHA:OKDLkhs;lkfs;lkjf;awlekj;oi I'm sorry, I think I just rage-broke my brain.

THIS IS THE ONLY SANE REACTION. DISCOVER PARTNER IS BAD PERSON: GET AWAY FROM BAD PERSON. ANYTHING ELSE IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE AND WRONG.

 Richard then takes issue with the fact that Anita is even considering this.

Of course it is because Richard is jealous and confused--perfectly understandable, given that Anita is an abusive fucking rapist that will NOT let him just cut ties and disappear, I'd be confused too--and not because, you know, IT'S FUCKING WRONG. But I really can't see how this could get any wors--

“God help me, but you and your brothers are actually in a more perverted sexual mess than we are. If I say no, and the worst happens…”

So if Thea rapes her sons, it's Richard's fault.

There is only one sane response to this.

Then there's a big long speel about how Anita is saving Samuel's family from destruction and I have to stop that bullshit before it gets started. Anita is not saving shit. Anita is in no way responsible for Thea's behavior or misbehavior.

Samuel had accepted that someday the worst would happen, and suddenly he was saved.

Yeah. That's squick inducing nonsensical bullshit. NO. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ACCEPT THAT ABUSE WILL HAPPEN EVER. NOT TO YOU and sure as FUCKING FUCK you do not have to accept that abuse will happen to your children. If you think there's even a CHANCE of shit going down like this? GET OUT. RUN. RUN AS FUCKING FAR AS YOU FUCKING CAN. NOTHING IS WORTH LETTING THAT LEVEL OF HARM HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILDREN. And if one of your children come to you and say the other parent did something? Fucking evaporate. And if you can't do that, start making phone calls and send the kids someplace safe as often as you can. NEVER EVER EVER LEAVE THEM IN THE ROOM ALONE WITH THE DANGEROUS INDIVIDUAL. EVER. DO NOT EVER LEAVE A CHILD IN A DANGEROUS SITUATION. YOU ARE A GROWN ADULT. YOU MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO PROTECT THEM COMPLETELY BUT YOU CAN GIVE YOURSELF A HERNIA TRYING.

I still wasn’t sure how I felt about adding to my men, but it was nice, for a change, to be someone’s salvation instead of their doom. Yeah, being the savior instead of the executioner, that sounded pretty damn good.

I am deep inside the brain pan of a rapist. I am making no judgements on the author--actually, yes I fucking am but I'm not sharing them because that's not what this blog is for, let's please not do that mkay?--but as far as Anita's thought processes, this is how they work. This is how they think. You ever want to know what a sexual predator's thinking looks like? Read this chapter and focus on that last paragraph. I do not see how any sane, rational, well-meaning human being can look at that situation and go "HEY, HAVING SEX WITH CHILDREN TO SAVE THE CHILDREN FROM INCEST IS THE BEST MOVE". A sane human being would call Child Services first (the two boys are still underage and the father has ADMITTED there is a chance Mom could molest them, and that Mom has molested other kids. An intervention of some kind should damn well be a given) and then, when that failed, would call the armed assassins they have for buddies because you don't solve this shit by saying "at least Mommy isn't the one hurting you". You solve it by making sure the shit stops, and that sex is involved in the solving approximately never. The thought of Edward and Guilty Pleasures era Anita going sawed-off-shotgun on Thea and Current Anita's asses right now is the only thing keeping me from foaming at the fucking mouth. THEY ARE ACTIVELY CONTEMPLATING THIS. FUCK. THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE NEXT FEW CHAPTERS.  I am at the point where I really don't want to sort through this to find the words to explain this judgement call to anybody, because nothing about this shit is okay. NOTHING. This chapter is over and I can go scrub off and get clean and that's exactly what I'm going to go do.

This is awful. This is so incredibly bad.

Dragon Breath Pt 3 update

It's with the editor, who has already sent back partial edits for me to work on. She's not the same one who worked on the other two thirds, but she's really good, and I'm happy with what I've seen so far. Artwork is in progress and trucking along nicely. I'm going to set an ETA for next weekend, the 8th or 9th, depending on how much I can get done between now and then. And I'm (Gasp!) starting the countdown clock. WHEE BOYS AND GIRLS THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

Indiegogo donators will get their copies of pt three e-mailed to them, and yes, I know I still owe two of you pictures and things. Those are coming too. Those will be sent before Christmas.

No Anita Blake today. Last night I was drugged to the gills (I hate being a girl. I hate it. Every time one of those womb-centric feminist "peroids are only bad because the patriarchy makes it so" routines all I can think about is that scene in Fight Club where Tyler gets beat up by the bar owner. "YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE I'VE BEEN, LOU. YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE I'VE BEEN." Pain has an amazing way of reducing you down to your base components and them making those little pieces squirm.) and today I wasted too much time trying to figure out why my computer wouldn't turn on (Good news: I made it turn on. Bad news: I have to figure out why my backup battery isn't working anymore)
 
So there you go. Updates and shit. It's happening this time, kids. I promise.