Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 58
January 18, 2013
Narcissus in Chains Chapter 42
In the interests of honesty, I have to admit, the first paragraph of this chapter, minus the first clause in the first sentence, and the last clause in the last, is good:
I don't like the first clause because policemen responding to violent murder and gunfights wouldn't wander away. I'm not even confident that they'd leave at all. Anita did not kill all the snakes. They could come back. Given that these are weres and (apparently) always waiting for a chance to take out someone in a weak moment, someone else could show up and try to kill Anita. Anita could jump town. If I were the police, if I could get it past Anita there would be cops parked in her driveway overnight. If it were not okay, there would be cops parked across from her driveway in the most visible car I could assign to the job.
And I don't like the last sentence because it's all about how badass they are, and also because it's wrong. They did not have superior firepower. They had good people. There's a big difference.
But I like the emotional connotation of everything else. Police interrogation allows for a certain level of adrenaline rush to remain. The drama is still there. But when they're gone and you have to pick up the bits and pieces of your life, you don't have your action-mode to protect you from the emotional fallout. And if Anita had not been so callious through the rest of the book, I'd say her crack about blood in the woodwork was an attempt to distract herself from how her friends had been shot and killed in her kitchen.
Of course, that gets blown when she talks about calling Raphael and telling him about his people. It sounds like she's contemplating picking up Richard's dry-cleaning. She doesn't really want to, but it's the right thing to do.
And then she freaks out.
I'm not going to criticize Anita for crashing. That's the normal reaction to this shit. But guys? This woman should not be walking right now. In a forty-eight hour period she's found out she's potentially a shapeshifter, been raped mentally, been raped physically, found out she has become a sex-pire, been manipulated into four-way sex, been dumped by her fiancee, had to rescue a friend first from a slow and awful death and then from being deaf for life, been reaccepted by her fiancee, been dumped by her fiancee again, and been shot at by a dangerous snake gang. She's going to have PTSD tonight.
Nathanial tries to comfort her. She tells him no. He forces her to accept a hug. Guys, even the post-trauma comfort in this book is rapy.
And then Micah shows up.
He is perfectly manly. He looks like a girl. He is beautifully perfect. He has a broken nose that doesn't ruin the perfection of his face. Ect. Ect. Ect.
Anita supposes that either lust is like love, or there's two kinds of love. You know what? I hate Micah with passion and fire because he's a fucking rapist, but if fucking him will make the author stop writing like this, I will gladly provide the bedroom. (I could always put cayanne pepper in the sheets)
And they hug, and hug, and Micah starts purring, and there is more hugging and it is described as spooning, and right when I think I need to go get a bucket for Applebloom, the chapter ends.
So things that happened in this chapter:
-cops left (offscreen)
-Anita freaked the fuck out
-Nathanial hug-raped Anita
-Micah is hot.
-Spooning is fun.
This is not a chapter. Chapters have things that are plot related happen. But the ending is on its way. We can't hope for all that much.
WHEN THE LAST policeman had wandered away, the last emergency vehicle driven off, the summer silence settled over the house. The kitchen was a mess— broken glass ground into the floor, blood drying to black-red puddles on the polished wood. I’d never get all the blood out from the crevices in the wood. It would be there forever, a reminder that superior fire power had prevailed, but not without cost.
I don't like the first clause because policemen responding to violent murder and gunfights wouldn't wander away. I'm not even confident that they'd leave at all. Anita did not kill all the snakes. They could come back. Given that these are weres and (apparently) always waiting for a chance to take out someone in a weak moment, someone else could show up and try to kill Anita. Anita could jump town. If I were the police, if I could get it past Anita there would be cops parked in her driveway overnight. If it were not okay, there would be cops parked across from her driveway in the most visible car I could assign to the job.
And I don't like the last sentence because it's all about how badass they are, and also because it's wrong. They did not have superior firepower. They had good people. There's a big difference.
But I like the emotional connotation of everything else. Police interrogation allows for a certain level of adrenaline rush to remain. The drama is still there. But when they're gone and you have to pick up the bits and pieces of your life, you don't have your action-mode to protect you from the emotional fallout. And if Anita had not been so callious through the rest of the book, I'd say her crack about blood in the woodwork was an attempt to distract herself from how her friends had been shot and killed in her kitchen.
Of course, that gets blown when she talks about calling Raphael and telling him about his people. It sounds like she's contemplating picking up Richard's dry-cleaning. She doesn't really want to, but it's the right thing to do.
And then she freaks out.
I'm not going to criticize Anita for crashing. That's the normal reaction to this shit. But guys? This woman should not be walking right now. In a forty-eight hour period she's found out she's potentially a shapeshifter, been raped mentally, been raped physically, found out she has become a sex-pire, been manipulated into four-way sex, been dumped by her fiancee, had to rescue a friend first from a slow and awful death and then from being deaf for life, been reaccepted by her fiancee, been dumped by her fiancee again, and been shot at by a dangerous snake gang. She's going to have PTSD tonight.
Nathanial tries to comfort her. She tells him no. He forces her to accept a hug. Guys, even the post-trauma comfort in this book is rapy.
And then Micah shows up.
He is perfectly manly. He looks like a girl. He is beautifully perfect. He has a broken nose that doesn't ruin the perfection of his face. Ect. Ect. Ect.
Anita supposes that either lust is like love, or there's two kinds of love. You know what? I hate Micah with passion and fire because he's a fucking rapist, but if fucking him will make the author stop writing like this, I will gladly provide the bedroom. (I could always put cayanne pepper in the sheets)And they hug, and hug, and Micah starts purring, and there is more hugging and it is described as spooning, and right when I think I need to go get a bucket for Applebloom, the chapter ends.
So things that happened in this chapter:
-cops left (offscreen)
-Anita freaked the fuck out
-Nathanial hug-raped Anita
-Micah is hot.
-Spooning is fun.
This is not a chapter. Chapters have things that are plot related happen. But the ending is on its way. We can't hope for all that much.
January 17, 2013
Narcissus in Chains chapter 41
Last night was one of my rare movie nights. I took a simi-break from editing the next Exiles book and watched End of Watch. If you have not seen this movie yet, and you can stomach violence and enough "fucks" to sink a soundtrack, GO WATCH IT. Seriously. Best three movies last year were Hunger Games, Hobbit, and End of Watch.
Anyhoo, the movie opens with two cops, Taylor and Z, shooting a couple of gangsters very dead after the credits-long car chase. The movie ends with a bunch of cops shooting four extremely bad gangsters extraordinarily dead after they attempt to kill all the cops in the room (This is not a spoiler, IMHO, as it probably appeared in the trailer). At no point do the cops have to worry about how to explain this to the other cops. They shot bad people in their own self defense.
Anita should be in the clear right now.
Chapter opens with Anita talking to Zerbowski. You know, I really wonder what this looks like from his POV. Anita has been relatively upstanding and a friend of the department for years, but her romantic connections are only so-so. One of them is the vampire Master of the City, and he runs a large number of sex-related businesses. They can't pin trafficking charges on him, but there's a lot of chatter. The other guy Anita's been dating is Richard, who seemed to be pretty upstanding too, but they got an anonymous tip that he's now in charge of the werewolf gang--they call themselves a pack, but Zerbowski's seen that one before--and they've been kicking up a lot of trouble between the two. Still, Anita's kept her nose clean until recently...and then she was kidnapped and he damn near thought killed, and now she's just been attacked by a bunch of men with way, way more firepower than he would have thought necessary, and she is the one acting like she's got something to hide.
Yep. She's on drugs.
Also? I want Anita to stop turning the wereleopards into children. Caleb is huddled on the end of the couch in a blanket having a minor freak out, and Anita says he looks like a ten-year-old. Given how often Anita screws the people she protects, she should NOT be comparing them to kids.
Anita, being an idiot, goes for the "Someguy" excuse. Cops and ER personel, you see, understand that the most dangerous place in the world is standing on your own porch, minding your own business, and this "Someguy" dude keeps walking up to people and stabbing them, or shooting them, or beating the ever loving shit out of them without any provocation at all. Anita swears up and down that the snakes attacked her for no reason at all, and every cop in the room gives her a long, long look: "That's the best you can do?"
And you know? I have to say this: Dolph is a good cop. The text is trying to paint him as a bad boy, but look at what he has to deal with. A woman who is WAY in over her head with the local heavies gets shot at. This woman is also a friend of the department and of himself personally. So what does he do? Put everybody in seperate rooms and question them. If everybody's being honest, the stories won't change and he can clear everybody without being accused of a bias. If he gets different stories from room to room, he knows something is up. He's trying to run an investigation, not Anita's maid service.
And then...wait. Wait. WAIT A SECOND.
Anyway, this bit of possible continuity break allows Anita to wonder what the hell the snakes really are if they don't change back into humans.
Dolph questions Anita. She tells the truth, up until he asks her why they might have targeted her, and she lies and says she has no idea. Well, first off, you DO have no idea. She thinks it might be because she killed their leader, but she hasn't talked about that, but that's only a might-be. Second...he's your friend. You could have told him the truth back at the station, where you manipulated the fuck out of him instead.
And yeah, we're not going to leave that alone. It's time for us to find out how horrible a human being Anita Blake really is.
See, way back in chapter twelve Dolph questioned Anita, who he'd thought was dead, about where she'd been. Anita, having just been raped mentally by Jean Claude and physically by Micah, decides not to talk but to insist that Dolph is only prosecuting Jean Claude because a woman in his life is sleeping with a vampire. I called her a *turns off robot Susan* bitch *turns on robot Susan* and got shouted at for it, and I accept the word is wrong, but I stand by the attitude. You don't yank on somebody else's pain just to win your arguement.
See, it's not Dolph's wife. It's his son. And the big tragety of all this is that the vamp the kid is dating can't have kids, and his other son and wife can't have kids, so that means NO GRANDCHILDREN EVAR, and Dolph sits down to have a cry.
Here are the options when you cannot have kids:
-Adoption
-Surrogate mothers
-Adoption
-Start a foster home
-Adoption
-Adoption
-Adoption
I mean...FUCK guys, this implies that the only reason to get married is to pop out kids, and that the only kids that count are the biological ones between man and wife.
Anyway, after Dolph has his crying jag he goes hard on Anita again, and starts both drilling her on what happened and going all "anti-non-humans" on her. And THEN we bring the rape back up. Remember, kids, Anita only had sex with Micah once so far, and it was not consensual on her part:
Dolph then tells Anita to get out, but not before asking advice for how to deal with his undead new daughter-in-law. Because Undead for Dummies apparently does not exist, nor do internet searches, nor do sensativity training for cops, apparently.
Chapter ends. We are over three quarters of the way done with the book. There are twenty chapters left to go.
This does not encourage me.
Anyhoo, the movie opens with two cops, Taylor and Z, shooting a couple of gangsters very dead after the credits-long car chase. The movie ends with a bunch of cops shooting four extremely bad gangsters extraordinarily dead after they attempt to kill all the cops in the room (This is not a spoiler, IMHO, as it probably appeared in the trailer). At no point do the cops have to worry about how to explain this to the other cops. They shot bad people in their own self defense.
Anita should be in the clear right now.
Chapter opens with Anita talking to Zerbowski. You know, I really wonder what this looks like from his POV. Anita has been relatively upstanding and a friend of the department for years, but her romantic connections are only so-so. One of them is the vampire Master of the City, and he runs a large number of sex-related businesses. They can't pin trafficking charges on him, but there's a lot of chatter. The other guy Anita's been dating is Richard, who seemed to be pretty upstanding too, but they got an anonymous tip that he's now in charge of the werewolf gang--they call themselves a pack, but Zerbowski's seen that one before--and they've been kicking up a lot of trouble between the two. Still, Anita's kept her nose clean until recently...and then she was kidnapped and he damn near thought killed, and now she's just been attacked by a bunch of men with way, way more firepower than he would have thought necessary, and she is the one acting like she's got something to hide.
Yep. She's on drugs.
Also? I want Anita to stop turning the wereleopards into children. Caleb is huddled on the end of the couch in a blanket having a minor freak out, and Anita says he looks like a ten-year-old. Given how often Anita screws the people she protects, she should NOT be comparing them to kids.
Anita, being an idiot, goes for the "Someguy" excuse. Cops and ER personel, you see, understand that the most dangerous place in the world is standing on your own porch, minding your own business, and this "Someguy" dude keeps walking up to people and stabbing them, or shooting them, or beating the ever loving shit out of them without any provocation at all. Anita swears up and down that the snakes attacked her for no reason at all, and every cop in the room gives her a long, long look: "That's the best you can do?"
And you know? I have to say this: Dolph is a good cop. The text is trying to paint him as a bad boy, but look at what he has to deal with. A woman who is WAY in over her head with the local heavies gets shot at. This woman is also a friend of the department and of himself personally. So what does he do? Put everybody in seperate rooms and question them. If everybody's being honest, the stories won't change and he can clear everybody without being accused of a bias. If he gets different stories from room to room, he knows something is up. He's trying to run an investigation, not Anita's maid service.
And then...wait. Wait. WAIT A SECOND.
Shapeshifters always change back to their original form in death.I can't find it right now, so I might be wrong, but I swear I remember Anita saying earlier that dead shifters DIDN'T change back. That excused shootings of shapeshifters in their changed form.
Anyway, this bit of possible continuity break allows Anita to wonder what the hell the snakes really are if they don't change back into humans.
Dolph questions Anita. She tells the truth, up until he asks her why they might have targeted her, and she lies and says she has no idea. Well, first off, you DO have no idea. She thinks it might be because she killed their leader, but she hasn't talked about that, but that's only a might-be. Second...he's your friend. You could have told him the truth back at the station, where you manipulated the fuck out of him instead.
And yeah, we're not going to leave that alone. It's time for us to find out how horrible a human being Anita Blake really is.
See, way back in chapter twelve Dolph questioned Anita, who he'd thought was dead, about where she'd been. Anita, having just been raped mentally by Jean Claude and physically by Micah, decides not to talk but to insist that Dolph is only prosecuting Jean Claude because a woman in his life is sleeping with a vampire. I called her a *turns off robot Susan* bitch *turns on robot Susan* and got shouted at for it, and I accept the word is wrong, but I stand by the attitude. You don't yank on somebody else's pain just to win your arguement.
See, it's not Dolph's wife. It's his son. And the big tragety of all this is that the vamp the kid is dating can't have kids, and his other son and wife can't have kids, so that means NO GRANDCHILDREN EVAR, and Dolph sits down to have a cry.
Here are the options when you cannot have kids:
-Adoption
-Surrogate mothers
-Adoption
-Start a foster home
-Adoption
-Adoption
-Adoption
I mean...FUCK guys, this implies that the only reason to get married is to pop out kids, and that the only kids that count are the biological ones between man and wife.
Anyway, after Dolph has his crying jag he goes hard on Anita again, and starts both drilling her on what happened and going all "anti-non-humans" on her. And THEN we bring the rape back up. Remember, kids, Anita only had sex with Micah once so far, and it was not consensual on her part:
“The heart wants what the heart wants, Dolph. You don’t plan on making your life complicated, it just happens, and you don’t do it on purpose, and you don’t do it to hurt the people who love you.I have pounded this into the ground, so I'm just going to leave that here.
Dolph then tells Anita to get out, but not before asking advice for how to deal with his undead new daughter-in-law. Because Undead for Dummies apparently does not exist, nor do internet searches, nor do sensativity training for cops, apparently.
Chapter ends. We are over three quarters of the way done with the book. There are twenty chapters left to go.
This does not encourage me.
January 16, 2013
Narcissus in Chains chapter 40
I goofed off yesterday. I did nothing but play video games and go to my day job. It was fun.
This? will not be fun.
The snake men are holding Caleb hostage. I cannot, for the life of me, remember who Caleb is or be arsed to care. Anita seems to agree with me:
Claudia, on the other hand, gets to be bad-ass:
Meanwhile, her house is being surrounded by more snakes with guns. (...werebadgers. Can we have were badgers? We've already got "SNAAAKE! A SNAAAKE! so can we have werebadgers too?) Anita shouts a warning to everybody else. So now the bad guys know that the good guys know that the bad guys are trying to surround the house.
Anita would suck at poker.
And then the guns begin to fire. And it is, for a little while, the book we came to dance with. Claudia and Anita fire at the same time, evaporating the killer snake's head. Caleb escapes. The snakes release the fucking fury and turn the kitchen into, basically, a House of the Dead shooter special.
There is a lion man. Anita takes out the lion man, Claudia gets hit by a shotgun. She's out of the game. Damn, I thought LKH would kill her for being awesomer than Anita. Can Claudia have her own book, too? No, she's not out, she just switches hands. Ambidextrous theranthrope FTW. Nathanial has also grabbed a gun. You go, dude.
And then the fight is over, Micah arrives, and things go downhill fast.
First we have the purple of his were-form description, which actually isn't that bad. This is why you save purple for special occasions. But then LKH, via Anita, has to point out that even in Wereleopard form, Micah has a huge penis.
They check the dead and break out the first aid kit for Claudia, who is all "I'm fine, I'm fine, don't worry. Also, don't slip in the blood puddle, that's mine, I'm just leaving it there so the bad guys can slip in it."
Because, you know, when you're bad-ass you don't care if you bleed to death.
And then the police arrive.
I am not a fan of hiding shit from the cops, kids. So I read the words "We don't have time to hide the bodies" and I was all like fucking YES this is gonna be good. And it is...and it isn't.
Micah can, apparently, shape-shift at will and make it look pretty. Because it'd be bad for the plot if the police shot him. Because NATURALLY nobody on the force has to take a shape-shifter education class or run a gauntlet where sometimes the werewolves are snarling ugly monsters and sometimes they're in a pink dress holding a baby. (...seriously? If shapeshifting is this prevelant and EVERY. FUCKING. ANIMAL is included, shouldn't there be some kind of "how to recognize a human" class hunters have to take before they get their deer hunting license?)
And then we get the next to last sentence in the chapter:
Next chapter: LKH ruins everything.
This? will not be fun.
The snake men are holding Caleb hostage. I cannot, for the life of me, remember who Caleb is or be arsed to care. Anita seems to agree with me:
I didn't much like him, but I couldn’t let the bad guys blow his head off, could I?Also, she somehow magically intuits that there is silver shot in the gun, right before the bad guy says there is silver shot in the gun. Look, it's reasonable to intuit the presence of were-killing ammo when you are dealing with weres. but don't have both characters spend a page talking about it. Jesus.
Claudia, on the other hand, gets to be bad-ass:
“The second after he dies, so do you.” Claudia said it, her voice as quiet and steady as the arm that held the gun that was pointed at the snake man’s head.And is it just me, or is that last sentence constructed like "the House that Jack Built?" This is the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that kicked the dog that worried the rat that (ect. ect. ect) Laurel, is there a reason we've regressed to nursery rhymes here?
Meanwhile, her house is being surrounded by more snakes with guns. (...werebadgers. Can we have were badgers? We've already got "SNAAAKE! A SNAAAKE! so can we have werebadgers too?) Anita shouts a warning to everybody else. So now the bad guys know that the good guys know that the bad guys are trying to surround the house.
Anita would suck at poker.
And then the guns begin to fire. And it is, for a little while, the book we came to dance with. Claudia and Anita fire at the same time, evaporating the killer snake's head. Caleb escapes. The snakes release the fucking fury and turn the kitchen into, basically, a House of the Dead shooter special.
There is a lion man. Anita takes out the lion man, Claudia gets hit by a shotgun. She's out of the game. Damn, I thought LKH would kill her for being awesomer than Anita. Can Claudia have her own book, too? No, she's not out, she just switches hands. Ambidextrous theranthrope FTW. Nathanial has also grabbed a gun. You go, dude.
And then the fight is over, Micah arrives, and things go downhill fast.
First we have the purple of his were-form description, which actually isn't that bad. This is why you save purple for special occasions. But then LKH, via Anita, has to point out that even in Wereleopard form, Micah has a huge penis.
They check the dead and break out the first aid kit for Claudia, who is all "I'm fine, I'm fine, don't worry. Also, don't slip in the blood puddle, that's mine, I'm just leaving it there so the bad guys can slip in it."
Because, you know, when you're bad-ass you don't care if you bleed to death.
And then the police arrive.
I am not a fan of hiding shit from the cops, kids. So I read the words "We don't have time to hide the bodies" and I was all like fucking YES this is gonna be good. And it is...and it isn't.
Micah can, apparently, shape-shift at will and make it look pretty. Because it'd be bad for the plot if the police shot him. Because NATURALLY nobody on the force has to take a shape-shifter education class or run a gauntlet where sometimes the werewolves are snarling ugly monsters and sometimes they're in a pink dress holding a baby. (...seriously? If shapeshifting is this prevelant and EVERY. FUCKING. ANIMAL is included, shouldn't there be some kind of "how to recognize a human" class hunters have to take before they get their deer hunting license?)
And then we get the next to last sentence in the chapter:
How do you explain five bodies in your kitchen, some of which even in death didn’t look very human?You tell the truth: They broke into your home, held a gun to the head of one of your people, threatened you, surrounded you, and you turned them into swiss cheese because that is how you roll. Given that several of your people are wounded and/or dead? I think the cops will buy it.
Next chapter: LKH ruins everything.
January 15, 2013
Woot!
Starbleached 3 is written! Drafted and done folks!
It was an UNGODLY BI...uh...PAIN IN THE ASS TO DO. I left a few loose ends in Planet Bob on purpose, and tying them all together was so satisfying.
Now. To bed.
Tomorrow we start editing the next Exiles book.
That really is going to be a bit--
Yeah. Whatever. I'm gonna go medicate now.
It was an UNGODLY BI...uh...PAIN IN THE ASS TO DO. I left a few loose ends in Planet Bob on purpose, and tying them all together was so satisfying.
Now. To bed.
Tomorrow we start editing the next Exiles book.
That really is going to be a bit--
Yeah. Whatever. I'm gonna go medicate now.
January 14, 2013
Narcissus in Chains chapter 39
I watched Speed today. I like Speed. It's kind of hard to believe it's not a Micheal Bay movie (for the record, it was by Jan de Bont) but it's very interesting. The problem comes after the bus explodes. Keanu Reeves kisses Sandra Bollock, which come.s off surprisingly like Sandra Bollock kissing a block of wood, and the movie is emphatically DONE, emotionally. Only it's going to go on for another thirty minutes, because nobody attached to the project understood that that kind of big finish means there IS NO MORE MOVIE.
My point? This book feels done to me. There are sixty plus chapters to this, but it's emotionally done at chapter 39. I do not know how LKH is going to pull another twenty plus chapters out of her ass, but she should have backloaded this book and used this chapter, plus an epilogue to finish things. It's done, folks. All major plot lines are resolved. We can retire now.
But that is not how things work.
Anita is asleep when someone wakes her up by licking her cheek.
FUCKING. EW.
Why would this be alright? Why would this be romantic? What person--EVEN AN ANIMAL SHAPESHIFTER PERSON--would think that is acceptable behavior? EW. ew ew ew ew EWWW.
And it's Cherry. And she's naked, and so is everybody else in the bed. Which is more than five people. In one bed.
Leaving aside the "it's nonsexual" bullshit...wouldn't that get heavy? Anita keeps calling them "puppies" but they. are. not. puppies. They are human beings who, if they are healthy, weigh 130+ pounds each. Whoever is on the bottom of the pile is gonna have problems breathing.
Anita kicks everybody out, tells them to get some clothes on, and then she gets dressed herself. In nothing but black. She also puts on her guns, plural, so I guess they finally found a heart transplant for the plot, and as soon as the surgery is over it will be joining us.
Anita thinks about Richard, and how she's probably lost him now, and she hopes he still wants her to be the pack's designated killer because she can lose him, but she'd rather not lose the pack to his moral stupidity, which is less moral stupidity and just plain old bad leadership, but we've already had that rant.
And then this happens:
Guns are not an acceptable character substitute. This is what psychopaths do. Character wise, this is shedding one of Anita's few positive character traits--the "show" of her inner softness--for psychopathic un-reasoning and hardness. And it's probably intentional, and it's definitely stupid. I don't think Dolph or Zerbrowski are going to buy Anita cutesy Desert Eagles when her old ones get undead rotting brain goo on them.
Hide your eyes, Applebloom. This is not the book for you.Yeah. Somebody wrote that and was completely serious. Moving on.
We get full, long and loving descriptions of what everybody looks like and what everybody is wearing. In the latter case, it appears to be a combination of Hot Topic and Hillbilly Hobo, as filtered through the brain of Hugh Hefner. None of the men are wearing shirts.
Cannon fodder assembled, they go out of their way to tell us Gregory is no longer on the property, and neither are the other two "victims" Violet and Stephen. Nathanial, apparently, either doesn't count or Anita needs a damsel to distress for a while.
And then the doorbell rings. Nathanial ordered Chinese takeout. Anita has to tell us just how big a tip it takes to get people to deliver "way out here" when "way out here" has never been established. Caleb vollenteers to get the food. He does everything except say "I'll be right back" on his way to the door. Anita asks what his problem is. Several of the girls explain that he tried to get "friendly" with them. Anita asks why he isn't bleeding or bruised:
Ah, the voice of sanity. Also, Anita? YOU ARE SEXIST. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Also, Claudia is officially a bigger badass than Anita. She's doomed, folks.
Suddenly everyone stiffens up. Anita wonders what the hell is going on, and then smells snakes. A snake-man comes into the room with Caleb at gunpoint, he says threatening things, the chapter ends, and OMG yay, THE PLOT IS BACK! Oh Plot, how very very much we've missed you. Please make sure you take all your anti-rejection medications, because we really, really need you to be in top shape for the next little while.
Next chapter: Anita finally shoots a gun. 40 chapters into the book. Ah, for the days when undead terror zombies would try to eat her stuffed penguins. I weep.
My point? This book feels done to me. There are sixty plus chapters to this, but it's emotionally done at chapter 39. I do not know how LKH is going to pull another twenty plus chapters out of her ass, but she should have backloaded this book and used this chapter, plus an epilogue to finish things. It's done, folks. All major plot lines are resolved. We can retire now.
But that is not how things work.
Anita is asleep when someone wakes her up by licking her cheek.
FUCKING. EW.
Why would this be alright? Why would this be romantic? What person--EVEN AN ANIMAL SHAPESHIFTER PERSON--would think that is acceptable behavior? EW. ew ew ew ew EWWW.
And it's Cherry. And she's naked, and so is everybody else in the bed. Which is more than five people. In one bed.
Leaving aside the "it's nonsexual" bullshit...wouldn't that get heavy? Anita keeps calling them "puppies" but they. are. not. puppies. They are human beings who, if they are healthy, weigh 130+ pounds each. Whoever is on the bottom of the pile is gonna have problems breathing.
Anita kicks everybody out, tells them to get some clothes on, and then she gets dressed herself. In nothing but black. She also puts on her guns, plural, so I guess they finally found a heart transplant for the plot, and as soon as the surgery is over it will be joining us.
Anita thinks about Richard, and how she's probably lost him now, and she hopes he still wants her to be the pack's designated killer because she can lose him, but she'd rather not lose the pack to his moral stupidity, which is less moral stupidity and just plain old bad leadership, but we've already had that rant.
And then this happens:
I huddled my weapons around me like comfort objects. If I’d been alone in the house, or if it had just been Nathaniel, I would have carried Sigmund, my stuffed toy penguin, around with me.The thing I loved about Old Anita the most were her penguins. How her stuffed animals were her deep dark secret and how the cops, once they discovered this, began buying many stuffed penguins so that every time she visited their offices, the penguins would appear on every desk. More than the nine gazillion "Anita is a tough girl" statements in those early books, that, right there, told me how much the cops respected her. Also how much they loved her, because they discovered her penguins only after they had been destroyed by a zombie fight in her bedroom, and I believe eventually the cops gave Anita most of the penguins. Sigmund was one of the few original survivors.
Guns are not an acceptable character substitute. This is what psychopaths do. Character wise, this is shedding one of Anita's few positive character traits--the "show" of her inner softness--for psychopathic un-reasoning and hardness. And it's probably intentional, and it's definitely stupid. I don't think Dolph or Zerbrowski are going to buy Anita cutesy Desert Eagles when her old ones get undead rotting brain goo on them.
I looked almost ethereal, like a wingless angel on a bad day. Alright, maybe a fallen angel, but the effect was still striking. I’d learned long ago that if you’re feeling unloved by the man in your life, the best revenge is to look good.
Hide your eyes, Applebloom. This is not the book for you.Yeah. Somebody wrote that and was completely serious. Moving on.We get full, long and loving descriptions of what everybody looks like and what everybody is wearing. In the latter case, it appears to be a combination of Hot Topic and Hillbilly Hobo, as filtered through the brain of Hugh Hefner. None of the men are wearing shirts.
Cannon fodder assembled, they go out of their way to tell us Gregory is no longer on the property, and neither are the other two "victims" Violet and Stephen. Nathanial, apparently, either doesn't count or Anita needs a damsel to distress for a while.
And then the doorbell rings. Nathanial ordered Chinese takeout. Anita has to tell us just how big a tip it takes to get people to deliver "way out here" when "way out here" has never been established. Caleb vollenteers to get the food. He does everything except say "I'll be right back" on his way to the door. Anita asks what his problem is. Several of the girls explain that he tried to get "friendly" with them. Anita asks why he isn't bleeding or bruised:
“It wasn’t necessary to hurt him,” Claudia said, “only to be very, very clear.” The tone in her voice and the look in her eyes made my own eyes go cold. I don’t know if I’d ever met a woman that had that effect on me. It made me feel sexist to say that it was more unnerving because she was a woman, but it was still true.
\
Ah, the voice of sanity. Also, Anita? YOU ARE SEXIST. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Also, Claudia is officially a bigger badass than Anita. She's doomed, folks.
Suddenly everyone stiffens up. Anita wonders what the hell is going on, and then smells snakes. A snake-man comes into the room with Caleb at gunpoint, he says threatening things, the chapter ends, and OMG yay, THE PLOT IS BACK! Oh Plot, how very very much we've missed you. Please make sure you take all your anti-rejection medications, because we really, really need you to be in top shape for the next little while.
Next chapter: Anita finally shoots a gun. 40 chapters into the book. Ah, for the days when undead terror zombies would try to eat her stuffed penguins. I weep.
January 12, 2013
I. Have found. The Holy Grail.
Oh my God, guys.
OH MY GOD.
I like shitty books, right? And in the history of shitty books there is one author, my loyal blog readers, one author who is acknowledged as THE WORST AUTHOR EVER. Her name is Amanda McKittrick Ros. C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and the other Inklings used to have contests to see who could read the most of one of her books without laughing. One of her books, Delina Delancy, starts like this:
I have no idea what that means. It's something involving Ireland and a government funded agricultural study. BUT LOOK AT IT! LOOK! YOU COULD NOT DO THAT ON PURPOSE IF YOU TRIED.
Why do I bring this up?
I HAVE FOUND ONE OF HER BOOKS AS A FREE EBOOK. FOR FREE. FROM PROJECT GUTTENBERG.
This is the holy grail of shitty books. This is what Eye of Argon was to sci-fi fan fic.
I am laughing hystarically. I do not know when, my loyal blog readers, or in what form, but we most definately shall see the lovely Ms. Ros featured upon this blog.
I squee, my friends. I squee with joy and rapture.
OH MY GOD.
I like shitty books, right? And in the history of shitty books there is one author, my loyal blog readers, one author who is acknowledged as THE WORST AUTHOR EVER. Her name is Amanda McKittrick Ros. C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and the other Inklings used to have contests to see who could read the most of one of her books without laughing. One of her books, Delina Delancy, starts like this:
Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?
I have no idea what that means. It's something involving Ireland and a government funded agricultural study. BUT LOOK AT IT! LOOK! YOU COULD NOT DO THAT ON PURPOSE IF YOU TRIED.
Why do I bring this up?
I HAVE FOUND ONE OF HER BOOKS AS A FREE EBOOK. FOR FREE. FROM PROJECT GUTTENBERG.
This is the holy grail of shitty books. This is what Eye of Argon was to sci-fi fan fic.
I am laughing hystarically. I do not know when, my loyal blog readers, or in what form, but we most definately shall see the lovely Ms. Ros featured upon this blog.
I squee, my friends. I squee with joy and rapture.
Narcissus in Chains chapter 38
I will have you guys know I am ONLY doing this because I promised. And because if I do it now I don't have to do it in the morning. (Read as: next Starbleached book is going good all of a sudden).
(Also I have sold a MINIMUM of two books a day every day this week I am HAPPY CW)
Okay. Sucky book. This shouldn't be too painful, right? Right? It's post sex fluff. Right?
This is going to hurt, isn't it?
So Anita wakes up snuggling with Richard after having sex. In the morning.
Boys and girls, I have worked nightshifts for two years. I have stayed up all fucking night just because I can multiple times. I FREQUENTLY stay up until three AM because waitressing FTW and I can tell you very plainly that unless you have the alarm clock from hell? You do NOT wake up at anything RESEMBLING morning after pulling an all nighter. I woke up today at 12 pm having stayed up until three last night, and my first thought was OH FUCK I WILL GET NO WRITING DONE.
By this logic, given that AT MINIMUM Richard and Anita passed out five minutes after starting sex, they fell asleep at six AM. This is a 2-3PM wakeup time. In other words, Laurel:
HUMAN SLEEP RYTHEMS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.
And of course, they immediately start having sex again. Don't they need coffee? I would need coffee. My first things in the morning are PHONE>snuggle cat>Caffineated beverage. I would definately need coffee before I had sex.
And then the ardeur wakes up.
I have a major character in one of my books who has severe vampire-ish tendancies. A lot of the next book in this series is dedicated to him balancing his desire to be with people against his biological requirement to eat them. (He's a fun character. Lots of fun moral questions to explore). A lot of vampire books also dedicate quite a few pages to vampire protagonists trying to find the same balance. I guess the meat of the question, if you'll pardon the pun, is how do you live if the only thing you can eat are sentient cows? Which one of you has a better right to live? I think this is one of the reasons I heart vampire fiction as much as I do. Add in the fact that vampirism is a metaphore for both power and sex in relationships, and things get really interesting. Because the answer time and again is not about absolutes, but about compromise and balance, and about finding sanity, and of COURSE LKH ignores all of that, and doesn't have Anita bother trying to resist the ardeur at all.
Richard has already established that he will not be food. Ever. It is, to borrow a term first encountered in a horrible waste of tree, a hard limit. (My copy of Fifty Shades of Gray was an ebook, but a lot of trees still died for it) I have hard limits too. There are things that I will not do, ever, for anyone, because those things awake issues and make me feel not loving thoughts about other people. And when you love someone, my dear blog readers, you put their own good above yours.
So in a normal (read as: good) vamp fic, Anita would be screaming "Run away!" and Richard would attempt to comfort her. And given the context, he would be comforting her with his penis, and the drama about this moment would be a kind of "Gift of the Magi" only with sex and more sex, rather than hair and a pocket watch. But the point of this chapter is to dispose of Richard, and so Anita breaks the trust she has with Richard, and tries to force herself on him.
Protip, Anita: If your lover is running away from you, it usually indicates that he is not interested in sex.
And if you need me to be giving you protips, you have FUCKING FAILED at having sex.
Alright. What the FUCK is it with LKH, sex, and food? WHY CAN SHE NOT SEPARATE THESE TWO THINGS? I DO NOT WANT TO GET PENIS IN MY PASTA, IS WHAT I AM SAYING HERE. VAGINA VONGOLE SHOULD NOT BE A THING.
Richard maintains a good distance between himself and Anita, and the description of her ardeur-attack is abysmal, boys and girls. Oh, the writing itself is passable, but the amoral nature of it is nauseating. Over and over, the fact that Richard is backing the fuck out of the room is mentioned, but it is never acknowleged. It's less "He's leaving" and more "he's five feet further away from the bed." then they touch, their beasts do something, somehow Rania is involved, and Richard stumbles into her, and it is pretty much over.
There is a paragraph where Anita, using some kind of quasi psychic thing (AKA the author cheating at narration) percieves that Richard has a choice. To mantain control of this situation he must close the marks between himself and Anita, prevent himself from shape-shifting (Which would probably end in Dead Anita) and mantain his own psychic sheilds to keep her from feeding on him. WTF the marks have to do with this, IDK, but he decides the best thing he can do is stop fighting her, lock her out of the marks, and keep his beast reined in. And so in choosing to protect his psyche rather than his body, Richard creates an opening and Anita feeds on him without his consent.
Boys and girls, sports fans of all ages, ANITA HAS JUST RAPED RICHARD.
I'm going to go out on a very ugly limb politically, but I feel it must be done. It must be done because if we wish to have any value as human beings, we need to start treating each other like human beings. And that means this "oh, you can't be damaged by (x) becasue you have (privelage y)" bullshit needs to stop. If a bad thing happens to a person that bad thing damages a person, and as long as we keep that person from talking about that bad thing, the odds of that bad thing happening over and over and over will continue.
Here is what I am going to say: MEN GET RAPED TOO. By women, even. And just as it is not okay for women to be raped, it is not okay for men to be raped. It is not okay for genderless individuals to be raped. IT IS NOT OKAY FOR ANYONE TO HAVE ANYTHING HAPPEN TO THEM WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.
And Richard has just done what some rape victims do: Withdraw, shut down everything not vital to preservation of sense of self, and endure.
We get a description of Anita's orgasm. We get a description of Richard's orgasm, as felt through Anita's quasi-unacknowleged psychic connection thing. We get many implicatons that Richard having an orgasm fully justifies Anita feeding upon him without his consent.
I have already ranted on the fact that rape victims can and frequently do experiance orgasm during rape. I am not going to do it again. I am, however, going to tell everyone remotely connected to publishing this piece of garbage to go get fucked.
Richard gets away from her as fast as he possibly can. He tells Anita she had no right to do that.
Anita whines about how he won't be coming back. Richard says she had the same rule, he can't do it, he's not going to do it, it's not something he is or will ever be comfortable with, and all Anita can do is whine about who she can share the arduer with.
This is passive aggressive fuckery, folks. She KNOWS that Richard hates sharing her, she KNOWS he is naturally monogamous, he has asked her to be monogamous and has compensated for when she can't be, she knows that her sleeping around hurts his feelings, and she is trying to blackmail him into letting her do things he does not like. Folks, if you switched the genders and changed "feeding" into something like "anal sex" this would in NO FUCKING WAY be acceptable. Or hell, let's not change genders. Let's say she wants to repeat the scene in Myra Breckenridge where Myra "rides" Rusty. That's an even closer psychological parallel. THIS. IS NOT. ACCEPTABLE.
Then she tries to switch things around and ask him why he shut down the marks and his beast and not her feeding. The answer, boys and girls, is that in abusive situations you protect your sense of self first because if that breaks, you're fucked. But Anita wants to show that it means he loves her and really does want to let her feed on him. No. What it means is that he wanted to protect himself from you, and he knew the only way to do it was let you have your way for now, and then get away from you as fast as he possibly could.
And of course, his leaving breaks Anita's heart.
You know, I am sure that abusive men think they love their women just as hard as Anita thinks she loves Richard, but the truth is, if she loved him she would have respected his bounderies. Abusive men are broken when their wives leave them too. But it's not because they loved them. It's because having this person was part of what defined them. He had her as a wife. Anita had the Ulfric as her lover. She was lupa. She was somebody. She was desirable. And now Richard has left and her own sense of self is challenged, and the obvious answer (IT IS BECAUSE YOU BROKE HIS TRUST, YOU ABUSIVE WASTE OF SKIN) only damages that sense of self more. The only way to repair it is to either reaquire the person, or dehumanize them and demonize them and then, eventually, remove them.
And that is not love. That is how murder looks when you stop it mid-process.
And then the leopards find her and curl around her and make her feel all special.
Jesus. This makes me think of SEVERAL true crime books I've got scattered around here. If You Really Loved Me, Perfect Husband, Stranger Beside Me, et all, but the one it makes me think of most is Prophet of Death. You want to see what Anita Blake would look like IRL and Male? His name was Jeffery Lundgren and he was way, way, way beyond vile.
Anita whines about having to play a game she can't win, and the text COMPLETELY IGNORES the fact that she just RAPED RICHARD, and that's why he left. End chapter.
You know, I honestly thought this part wouldn't piss me off. Boy was I wrong. It's not so much what happens as it is the way that the wrongness is never even allowed to exist in the text, and you have to imagine yourself in that situation to understand just why this is WAY into Bad Touch territory. Anita just broke the trust of the guy she loves, and can't understand that the reason why he just booked is because she just proved she can't be trusted. If I were with a guy, and I told him "never hit me" and he hit me? I'm gone. (actually, "never hit me" is implied in any relationship. Guys, you are all wonderful, but you need to know better than that)
Fuck. This. Book. Fuck it. Fuck it with a frozen Edward Cullen sparkle dildo. I can't say I'm done, because I promised I'd read this whole book, but I can say there will not be another one of these until sometime Sunday afternoon. Come back tomorrow kids! For now, CW is out of steam.
(Also I have sold a MINIMUM of two books a day every day this week I am HAPPY CW)
Okay. Sucky book. This shouldn't be too painful, right? Right? It's post sex fluff. Right?
This is going to hurt, isn't it?
So Anita wakes up snuggling with Richard after having sex. In the morning.
Boys and girls, I have worked nightshifts for two years. I have stayed up all fucking night just because I can multiple times. I FREQUENTLY stay up until three AM because waitressing FTW and I can tell you very plainly that unless you have the alarm clock from hell? You do NOT wake up at anything RESEMBLING morning after pulling an all nighter. I woke up today at 12 pm having stayed up until three last night, and my first thought was OH FUCK I WILL GET NO WRITING DONE.
By this logic, given that AT MINIMUM Richard and Anita passed out five minutes after starting sex, they fell asleep at six AM. This is a 2-3PM wakeup time. In other words, Laurel:
HUMAN SLEEP RYTHEMS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.
And of course, they immediately start having sex again. Don't they need coffee? I would need coffee. My first things in the morning are PHONE>snuggle cat>Caffineated beverage. I would definately need coffee before I had sex.
And then the ardeur wakes up.
I have a major character in one of my books who has severe vampire-ish tendancies. A lot of the next book in this series is dedicated to him balancing his desire to be with people against his biological requirement to eat them. (He's a fun character. Lots of fun moral questions to explore). A lot of vampire books also dedicate quite a few pages to vampire protagonists trying to find the same balance. I guess the meat of the question, if you'll pardon the pun, is how do you live if the only thing you can eat are sentient cows? Which one of you has a better right to live? I think this is one of the reasons I heart vampire fiction as much as I do. Add in the fact that vampirism is a metaphore for both power and sex in relationships, and things get really interesting. Because the answer time and again is not about absolutes, but about compromise and balance, and about finding sanity, and of COURSE LKH ignores all of that, and doesn't have Anita bother trying to resist the ardeur at all.
Richard has already established that he will not be food. Ever. It is, to borrow a term first encountered in a horrible waste of tree, a hard limit. (My copy of Fifty Shades of Gray was an ebook, but a lot of trees still died for it) I have hard limits too. There are things that I will not do, ever, for anyone, because those things awake issues and make me feel not loving thoughts about other people. And when you love someone, my dear blog readers, you put their own good above yours.
So in a normal (read as: good) vamp fic, Anita would be screaming "Run away!" and Richard would attempt to comfort her. And given the context, he would be comforting her with his penis, and the drama about this moment would be a kind of "Gift of the Magi" only with sex and more sex, rather than hair and a pocket watch. But the point of this chapter is to dispose of Richard, and so Anita breaks the trust she has with Richard, and tries to force herself on him.
Protip, Anita: If your lover is running away from you, it usually indicates that he is not interested in sex.
And if you need me to be giving you protips, you have FUCKING FAILED at having sex.
I had a flash of what it felt like to taste him like so much meat, to feel his body respond, not just to the sex but to the hunger, and I knew for the first time why shapeshifters spoke of the hunger like it should be in all capital letters.
Alright. What the FUCK is it with LKH, sex, and food? WHY CAN SHE NOT SEPARATE THESE TWO THINGS? I DO NOT WANT TO GET PENIS IN MY PASTA, IS WHAT I AM SAYING HERE. VAGINA VONGOLE SHOULD NOT BE A THING.
Richard maintains a good distance between himself and Anita, and the description of her ardeur-attack is abysmal, boys and girls. Oh, the writing itself is passable, but the amoral nature of it is nauseating. Over and over, the fact that Richard is backing the fuck out of the room is mentioned, but it is never acknowleged. It's less "He's leaving" and more "he's five feet further away from the bed." then they touch, their beasts do something, somehow Rania is involved, and Richard stumbles into her, and it is pretty much over.
There is a paragraph where Anita, using some kind of quasi psychic thing (AKA the author cheating at narration) percieves that Richard has a choice. To mantain control of this situation he must close the marks between himself and Anita, prevent himself from shape-shifting (Which would probably end in Dead Anita) and mantain his own psychic sheilds to keep her from feeding on him. WTF the marks have to do with this, IDK, but he decides the best thing he can do is stop fighting her, lock her out of the marks, and keep his beast reined in. And so in choosing to protect his psyche rather than his body, Richard creates an opening and Anita feeds on him without his consent.
Boys and girls, sports fans of all ages, ANITA HAS JUST RAPED RICHARD.
I'm going to go out on a very ugly limb politically, but I feel it must be done. It must be done because if we wish to have any value as human beings, we need to start treating each other like human beings. And that means this "oh, you can't be damaged by (x) becasue you have (privelage y)" bullshit needs to stop. If a bad thing happens to a person that bad thing damages a person, and as long as we keep that person from talking about that bad thing, the odds of that bad thing happening over and over and over will continue.
Here is what I am going to say: MEN GET RAPED TOO. By women, even. And just as it is not okay for women to be raped, it is not okay for men to be raped. It is not okay for genderless individuals to be raped. IT IS NOT OKAY FOR ANYONE TO HAVE ANYTHING HAPPEN TO THEM WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.
And Richard has just done what some rape victims do: Withdraw, shut down everything not vital to preservation of sense of self, and endure.
We get a description of Anita's orgasm. We get a description of Richard's orgasm, as felt through Anita's quasi-unacknowleged psychic connection thing. We get many implicatons that Richard having an orgasm fully justifies Anita feeding upon him without his consent.
I have already ranted on the fact that rape victims can and frequently do experiance orgasm during rape. I am not going to do it again. I am, however, going to tell everyone remotely connected to publishing this piece of garbage to go get fucked.
Richard gets away from her as fast as he possibly can. He tells Anita she had no right to do that.
“You never said no.” I rolled onto my side, but didn’t try and sit up yet.
He nodded. “I know that. I’m not blaming you.”YES YOU DID. YOU FUCKING DID SAY NO. MULTIPLE TIMES. OVER. AND OVER. AND OVER. You did not say no right then, but Anita knew damn fucking well you did not want to be fed upon, ever, and you trusted her to respect your bounderies. SHE RAPED YOU.
Anita whines about how he won't be coming back. Richard says she had the same rule, he can't do it, he's not going to do it, it's not something he is or will ever be comfortable with, and all Anita can do is whine about who she can share the arduer with.
This is passive aggressive fuckery, folks. She KNOWS that Richard hates sharing her, she KNOWS he is naturally monogamous, he has asked her to be monogamous and has compensated for when she can't be, she knows that her sleeping around hurts his feelings, and she is trying to blackmail him into letting her do things he does not like. Folks, if you switched the genders and changed "feeding" into something like "anal sex" this would in NO FUCKING WAY be acceptable. Or hell, let's not change genders. Let's say she wants to repeat the scene in Myra Breckenridge where Myra "rides" Rusty. That's an even closer psychological parallel. THIS. IS NOT. ACCEPTABLE.
Then she tries to switch things around and ask him why he shut down the marks and his beast and not her feeding. The answer, boys and girls, is that in abusive situations you protect your sense of self first because if that breaks, you're fucked. But Anita wants to show that it means he loves her and really does want to let her feed on him. No. What it means is that he wanted to protect himself from you, and he knew the only way to do it was let you have your way for now, and then get away from you as fast as he possibly could.
And of course, his leaving breaks Anita's heart.
You know, I am sure that abusive men think they love their women just as hard as Anita thinks she loves Richard, but the truth is, if she loved him she would have respected his bounderies. Abusive men are broken when their wives leave them too. But it's not because they loved them. It's because having this person was part of what defined them. He had her as a wife. Anita had the Ulfric as her lover. She was lupa. She was somebody. She was desirable. And now Richard has left and her own sense of self is challenged, and the obvious answer (IT IS BECAUSE YOU BROKE HIS TRUST, YOU ABUSIVE WASTE OF SKIN) only damages that sense of self more. The only way to repair it is to either reaquire the person, or dehumanize them and demonize them and then, eventually, remove them.
And that is not love. That is how murder looks when you stop it mid-process.
And then the leopards find her and curl around her and make her feel all special.
Jesus. This makes me think of SEVERAL true crime books I've got scattered around here. If You Really Loved Me, Perfect Husband, Stranger Beside Me, et all, but the one it makes me think of most is Prophet of Death. You want to see what Anita Blake would look like IRL and Male? His name was Jeffery Lundgren and he was way, way, way beyond vile.
Anita whines about having to play a game she can't win, and the text COMPLETELY IGNORES the fact that she just RAPED RICHARD, and that's why he left. End chapter.
You know, I honestly thought this part wouldn't piss me off. Boy was I wrong. It's not so much what happens as it is the way that the wrongness is never even allowed to exist in the text, and you have to imagine yourself in that situation to understand just why this is WAY into Bad Touch territory. Anita just broke the trust of the guy she loves, and can't understand that the reason why he just booked is because she just proved she can't be trusted. If I were with a guy, and I told him "never hit me" and he hit me? I'm gone. (actually, "never hit me" is implied in any relationship. Guys, you are all wonderful, but you need to know better than that)
Fuck. This. Book. Fuck it. Fuck it with a frozen Edward Cullen sparkle dildo. I can't say I'm done, because I promised I'd read this whole book, but I can say there will not be another one of these until sometime Sunday afternoon. Come back tomorrow kids! For now, CW is out of steam.
January 10, 2013
State of the CW
I know, I know. Narcissus in Chains will (sadly) continue tomorrow. But it time for yet another one of these.
First up: Ho. Lee. Shit. Guys. This has been a good month so far on Amazon. Nineteen books sold so far this month, nine of which are Planet Bob. It's not earth-shakingly impressive, I know, but I told myself when I started this month I'd be happy if we ended with four. You guys totally rock.
That's the good news. Time for the so-so news.
The next book we release is going to be Gray Fox, the next Exiles book. I've decided that it'll be released Februrary 15th or later. Mostly because I'm drafting the sequel to Planet Bob right now, and it's harder than I thought it'd be. But! The good news is, it's gonna be Bryan's story this time around. From (mostly) his perspective. Which is part of why it's so hard to write this one. But I already know Gray Fox is going to be an ungodly slog, so release dates get pushed back a little bit.
I am in the process of assessing which series are successful (Starbleached! Holy crap!) and which ones are not. Right now my best sellers are Starbleached (62 copies since September) and Silver Bullet/Blue Ghosts (25 and 13 copies, respectively). Tales of the Gray Prince are not doing so well. There is one more book gaurenteed, as it's already been written. Possibly one more after that. But, if sales don't dramatically improve I may wind up putting that story on hold for a while.
I've got a couple of ideas I can replace it with, and I'll probably bring it back later. But if it's not selling it makes no sense to hold onto it.
I've sold 129 books in total, so far. I am still not ready to get excited. But I'm willing to admit that might change by the end of the month.
And I have to say it again: YOU GUYS ROCK!
First up: Ho. Lee. Shit. Guys. This has been a good month so far on Amazon. Nineteen books sold so far this month, nine of which are Planet Bob. It's not earth-shakingly impressive, I know, but I told myself when I started this month I'd be happy if we ended with four. You guys totally rock.
That's the good news. Time for the so-so news.
The next book we release is going to be Gray Fox, the next Exiles book. I've decided that it'll be released Februrary 15th or later. Mostly because I'm drafting the sequel to Planet Bob right now, and it's harder than I thought it'd be. But! The good news is, it's gonna be Bryan's story this time around. From (mostly) his perspective. Which is part of why it's so hard to write this one. But I already know Gray Fox is going to be an ungodly slog, so release dates get pushed back a little bit.
I am in the process of assessing which series are successful (Starbleached! Holy crap!) and which ones are not. Right now my best sellers are Starbleached (62 copies since September) and Silver Bullet/Blue Ghosts (25 and 13 copies, respectively). Tales of the Gray Prince are not doing so well. There is one more book gaurenteed, as it's already been written. Possibly one more after that. But, if sales don't dramatically improve I may wind up putting that story on hold for a while.
I've got a couple of ideas I can replace it with, and I'll probably bring it back later. But if it's not selling it makes no sense to hold onto it.
I've sold 129 books in total, so far. I am still not ready to get excited. But I'm willing to admit that might change by the end of the month.
And I have to say it again: YOU GUYS ROCK!
Narcissus in Chains chapter 37
Richard and Anita are now going to have sex. Unless a particular part about the screwing catches my eye, I'm probably not going to say a lot about that. Sex is sex.
Instead, we're going to talk about love and terrible people, and look in at the pair to see how long this is going to take.
I think part of the reason the sex scenes in Anita Blake, Merry Gentry et all fall so flat is because we, the readers, do not give one flying fuck about the characters. Merry is still (passably) an okay character. This is less because she's better written and more because she's not human and was not raised in a human enviroment, so her psycopathic tendancies are more understandable. She's a fairy princess from the days when they would eat your children. We don't expect human behavior from her, and we're not pissed when we don't get it.
Same thing goes with weres. We don't expect completely human behavior, and we let a lot of things float that we'd call bullshit on if the character were human, as long as the non-human behavior is in character for the animals. (Remember, sports fans: Leopards eat people too).
But Anita is human, and she doesn't get the same excuses other characters do. She's not fighting a beast inside of her. She never shape shifts. She does not get the excuse of instincts, heightened aggression, or full moon blues. She's held to a normal standard of behavior.
And normal people do not leave other people out on their back porch to die just because they don't want to get the carpet dirty.
Anyway, Anita's basic failure as a human being makes her unlikable, and that gives readers a problem. Readers don't like to see bad people rewarded. Anita gets rewarded all the fucking time with powers and sex and more sex and more powers, and more powers that come from sex, and pretty hot guys who, apparently, never heard about scissors. And that makes us angry because Anita does nothing in the books to deserve hot guys and sex and magic.
You know District 9? One of my all-time favorite movies? The story only worked because Wikus was a racist piece of shit at the beginning, and he stopped being one in the end. Because an awful, awful lot of bad things happen to him, and he earned every single one of them in the first thirty minutes of the movie. If he'd been a nice guy with no objectionable character traits, we probably would have hated the movie completely.
Richard is also horrible. He's horrible not because he fails at basic human morality, but because he fails at leadership. He is doing a terrible job with the wolves, he has no control over his emotions, he allows himself to be set up as his author's strawman for her arguements against conventional morality, and he lets Anita screw with him. He's a ball of aggression and teeth without a backbone to support it.
And now we're supposed to be aroused by watching them have sex.
And now their beasts are touching.
That's probably my biggest issue with LKH's sex scenes, beyond watching two horrible fake human beings get it on: The metaphysical shit. I can relate to most of the mechanics of normal sex, but how the fuck am I supposed to relate to this:
Ugh, and more talk about how big Anita's men are and how they have to be careful of her. I'm suddenly reminded of Mae West. "Forget about the six feet, let's talk about the seven inches." Aren't guys, like, you know, mostly the same size?
And good fucking GOD, people, don't ever use the words "Wet Hammering" in connection to lovemaking. It'd be a good band name, but I don't think "Oh!" when I see that, folks. I think OW.
The thing about books, kids, is we want our characters to earn their happiness. We want to see them do great things and then get a shiny reward. If the reward doesn't match the actions preformed, too big or too small, we become unsatisfied with the story. If Wikus had gotten to go home at the end of District 9 we would all have been unhappy. But the fact that he keeps paying for being a racist shithead long after the movie itself is over (Given that Blomkamp has NO PLANS to do the fucking sequel yet, goddamn it, we must assume it is forever) we are sated. Not happy, maybe, but sated. With Anita getting to bang Richard after making Gregory wait god knows how long for decent medical attention, we're just as unsatisfied. All Anita has done is whine, get hurt and have sex.
I'm not minimizing the rape, here. It was a horrible thing, and she'd be fully justified taking time off to recover from it.
But stories aren't interesting when a character licks their wounds onscreen. They are interesting when a character says "fuck it" and starts taking an active hand in their life. And Anita, for all her posturing and grandstanding and tough-girl attitude, is passive as fuck in this whole story.
...given what they're doing in the background, that MIGHT have been a poor choice of words.
Punishment/reward is a real dynamic in storytelling. It's one of those things that the consious mind doesn't see, but that the unconsious latches onto like a limpet. We want Cinderella to become the princess every time, and also for her stepsisters and stepmom to be punished.
Anita Blake stopped being Cinderella a long, LONG time ago.
YAY! The chapter's done! I'm now going to go wash my eyes out with bleach, and the rest of you are welcome to join me.
Instead, we're going to talk about love and terrible people, and look in at the pair to see how long this is going to take.
I think part of the reason the sex scenes in Anita Blake, Merry Gentry et all fall so flat is because we, the readers, do not give one flying fuck about the characters. Merry is still (passably) an okay character. This is less because she's better written and more because she's not human and was not raised in a human enviroment, so her psycopathic tendancies are more understandable. She's a fairy princess from the days when they would eat your children. We don't expect human behavior from her, and we're not pissed when we don't get it.
Same thing goes with weres. We don't expect completely human behavior, and we let a lot of things float that we'd call bullshit on if the character were human, as long as the non-human behavior is in character for the animals. (Remember, sports fans: Leopards eat people too).
But Anita is human, and she doesn't get the same excuses other characters do. She's not fighting a beast inside of her. She never shape shifts. She does not get the excuse of instincts, heightened aggression, or full moon blues. She's held to a normal standard of behavior.
And normal people do not leave other people out on their back porch to die just because they don't want to get the carpet dirty.
He half-walked, half-staggered to the bed, laying me on it, going to his knees beside it. He was laughing as he crawled onto the bed beside me. He lay beside me, his knees hanging over the side of the bed,There are about four words in that paragraph that no longer look like words to me.
Anyway, Anita's basic failure as a human being makes her unlikable, and that gives readers a problem. Readers don't like to see bad people rewarded. Anita gets rewarded all the fucking time with powers and sex and more sex and more powers, and more powers that come from sex, and pretty hot guys who, apparently, never heard about scissors. And that makes us angry because Anita does nothing in the books to deserve hot guys and sex and magic.
You know District 9? One of my all-time favorite movies? The story only worked because Wikus was a racist piece of shit at the beginning, and he stopped being one in the end. Because an awful, awful lot of bad things happen to him, and he earned every single one of them in the first thirty minutes of the movie. If he'd been a nice guy with no objectionable character traits, we probably would have hated the movie completely.
“I want to run my beast through you, Anita.”Oh, so THAT'S what they're calling it now. I thought we settled on Mr. Winky.
Richard is also horrible. He's horrible not because he fails at basic human morality, but because he fails at leadership. He is doing a terrible job with the wolves, he has no control over his emotions, he allows himself to be set up as his author's strawman for her arguements against conventional morality, and he lets Anita screw with him. He's a ball of aggression and teeth without a backbone to support it.
And now we're supposed to be aroused by watching them have sex.
And now their beasts are touching.
That's probably my biggest issue with LKH's sex scenes, beyond watching two horrible fake human beings get it on: The metaphysical shit. I can relate to most of the mechanics of normal sex, but how the fuck am I supposed to relate to this:
My beast rose as if from a great, warm, wet depth, up, up to meet the warm, burning rush of Richard’s energy. He pushed his beast through me, and I could feel it, impossibly huge, the brush of fur so deep inside me that I cried out. I felt his beast as if it had crawled inside me and was caressing things from the inside that his hands would never have touched. My power seemed less certain than his, less solid. But it rose around the hard, muscled fur like velvet mist, swirling through his power, through my own body.I don't have visions of deep forests and dark places here. I think that Richard's beast is pawing Anita's kidneys and lower intestine. That is not romantic.
Ugh, and more talk about how big Anita's men are and how they have to be careful of her. I'm suddenly reminded of Mae West. "Forget about the six feet, let's talk about the seven inches." Aren't guys, like, you know, mostly the same size?
And good fucking GOD, people, don't ever use the words "Wet Hammering" in connection to lovemaking. It'd be a good band name, but I don't think "Oh!" when I see that, folks. I think OW.
The thing about books, kids, is we want our characters to earn their happiness. We want to see them do great things and then get a shiny reward. If the reward doesn't match the actions preformed, too big or too small, we become unsatisfied with the story. If Wikus had gotten to go home at the end of District 9 we would all have been unhappy. But the fact that he keeps paying for being a racist shithead long after the movie itself is over (Given that Blomkamp has NO PLANS to do the fucking sequel yet, goddamn it, we must assume it is forever) we are sated. Not happy, maybe, but sated. With Anita getting to bang Richard after making Gregory wait god knows how long for decent medical attention, we're just as unsatisfied. All Anita has done is whine, get hurt and have sex.
I'm not minimizing the rape, here. It was a horrible thing, and she'd be fully justified taking time off to recover from it.
But stories aren't interesting when a character licks their wounds onscreen. They are interesting when a character says "fuck it" and starts taking an active hand in their life. And Anita, for all her posturing and grandstanding and tough-girl attitude, is passive as fuck in this whole story.
...given what they're doing in the background, that MIGHT have been a poor choice of words.
Punishment/reward is a real dynamic in storytelling. It's one of those things that the consious mind doesn't see, but that the unconsious latches onto like a limpet. We want Cinderella to become the princess every time, and also for her stepsisters and stepmom to be punished.
Anita Blake stopped being Cinderella a long, LONG time ago.
YAY! The chapter's done! I'm now going to go wash my eyes out with bleach, and the rest of you are welcome to join me.
January 8, 2013
Narcissus In Chains--Chapter 36
Business first, gang:
We are on a FREAKING ROLL with this book right now. I was bummed for a little while because it looked as if January were going to be a Book Sales Wasteland, but that is SO not true anymore. 15 books in two days, six of which are Planet Bob.
I know begging for sales is obnoxious, but I really, really, REALLY like this momentum. It's the best it's been like, EVER. So. If you guys have bought yourself a copy of a book, ESPECIALLY Planet Bob, THANK YOU thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU You rock harder than a beauty queen at a metal concert. And if you haven't bought a copy yet, but plan to, Now is the Time.
If you're just here for the reviews...here we go.
It's this part. Fuck.
Excuse me, gang. This requires medication.
Alright. Let's do this.
It was THREE AM when she and Richard went out to the deck to save Gregory. Did our lessons in beast-master summoning take three hours? And if it didn't take three hours what did you do between three AM and six?
Your issues with continuity are making me doubt your werewolf/leopard/vampire/BDSM/rape fic's veracity, Laurel. No cookies for you.
Nathanial is going to bed with Anita. She discusses his lovely auburn ankle length hair, and mentions that it disappears when Nathanial shifts. So...uh...WHERE DOES IT GO? Hair is not like a limb. Hair is more like clothing. Hair is dead. Why would Nathanial grow back six-odd feet of hair every time he turns into a panther?
Also: ankle. Length. Hair. Guys, my hair goes down to about mid-back. Long hair is easier to manage in food service than short hair, because you can stuff it all under a hat and be reasonably sure you got it all. I can BARELY manage to keep it under control. It takes much brushing. It takes much detangling. Much shampoo. Conditioner. Sweet Baby Jesus, the conditioner. I am glad hair products do not come from living things, because herds of things would have died to keep my hair nice. It's a pain in the ass, is what I'm saying. The ONLY way I can keep it under control is to wear it up. 90% of the time it's in a pony tail. I wear it up so often that the one time I wore it down at work (For five minutes, because my hair thing broke and fuck if I'm going to take my hat home with me) everybody was all like, "OMG YOU HAVE HAIR! AND IT IS PRETTY! YOU SHOULD WEAR IT DOWN MORE OFTEN!"
And then I say "tangles" and everybody nods sagely, because they have tangles too.
Point is, Nathanial should either be wearing nine zillion hair ties, or a rat's nest. Or he should be spending all of his time brushing his goddamn hair.
Also, Anita doesn't sleep with the leopards when they are leopards. Only people.
Seriously. Getting to snuggle with a big cat and know you are in no danger whatsoever would be, like, one of the perks of having a were-feline for a friend. I am SURE I am not the only person who has had that fantasy. WHY WOULD YOU NOT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS?
...because it leaves no room for sex. RIGHT. Also, Anita, if you describe sleeping a whole bunch of people in one bed as a "pile of puppies" one more time I will puke in your fucking lap I swear to GOD. It wasn't a good simile the first time.
But Anita is waiting for Richard, not Nathanial, and so she's wearing swanky PJs.
Once more with feeling, Anita: YOU WENT SIX MONTHS WITHOUT TALKING TO HIM. WITHOUT SEEING HIM PHYSICALLY A SINGLE TIME. THIS IS HOW GIRLS BREAK UP WITH BOYS WHEN THEY ARE TOO CHICKEN SHIT TO SAY "IT'S NOT ME, IT'S YOU."
And then a wereleopard comes in and tells Anita that Richard is crying in the kitchen.
*sigh* at least it's not the shower.
Yes. Because your sexual satisfaction is more important than the emotional well-being of a man you fucking dumped, who loved you passionately, who wanted to marry you, who still loves you just as passionately. God forbid you try to be strong for somebody else emotionally.
And you know what? I get that you're probably exhausted from all the shit that's happened in the last few days, but that attitude right there is shitty. It's not the worst thing ever, but it does make you the worst girlfriend in recorded history. If you want to have sex with somebody on a frequent basis, you should have the maturity to support them emotionally when you cheat on them with somebody else.
Anita goes to see Richard, and I shit you not, he is sitting in the kitchen with a fucking halo around his head. I am not kidding at all:
It's one thing to call a character holier-than-thou more times than I can count at this point. It's another thing entirely to give them a literal golden halo.
I am laughing, loyal blog-readers. Laughing so hard I think I might hurt something.
And then Richard hides his face from Anita by twisting away and shoving his face towards a wall. So basically, he acts like he's two. I think every character in this book has some form of low grade DID, only without the awesomness that comes with Tyler Durden.
And then Richard explains, and it has nothing to do with Anita, and everything to do with the core purpose of this book.
It's got one, and I just connected the fucking golden halo with what I'm about to blog about. I can't figure out what the bleeding fuck that purpose is, unless it's simply "Shit all over someone else's moral structure". But this has to be part of the core of everything.
Richard tells Anita that a member of his pack, Louisa, is in prison for killing her husband. Apparently they got married, went on their honeymoon, and Louisa lost control and shifted while she was losing her virginity. Anita says well, if she could have controlled herself during a non intercourse orgasm, she should have been able to control herself during sexual orgasm...and then Anita somehow works out that Louisa waited to have any sexual contact at all until after she was married.
Richard says this:
But here's the thing, sport fans: this is not a real universe. These rules are things that the writer makes up as they go along. And LKH has proven over and over again she can't even remember a character's eye color from book to book, let alone the structure of pack magic. There is ONE REASON why this scene is here, and it is to express how stupid the entire concept of celebacy is, and how stupid it is to hold to your convictions.
I am at a level of rage right now that I cannot properly express. I'm going to try, but whatever I say is going to fall infinately short of how FUCKING PISSED OFF I am by this.
If you believe something that does not affect anyone but you, you have the right to hold onto that. If you believe that having sex before marrige is wrong, you have the right to say no as long as you want to. If you want to sleep with five men, sleep with five men. If you want blue hair, dye your hair blue. And NOBODY has the right to pass judgement on you.
Things that do affect other people (Ie saying that homosexuality is wrong) are different. Because it's not your struggle, it's not your fight, you have no right to tell somebody else what they do or do not get to do with their lives. Fuck, if you want to bring Christianity into it, Romans 14:20, loosely paraphrased, says you have the right to believe that there is nothing wrong with what you're doing when you keep it between yourself and God.
When you throw in the saint-symbolism of having Richard sitting there with a fucking halo, this passage goes from being a part of the story to being a personal statement from the author. This fictional girl was created so that LKH could talk about how stupid chastity is. So that she could pass judgement on people who chose to live their lives differently from her. So that she could get on her high horse and tell us all how we're doing everything wrong.
Screw that.
Anita even goes on about how the doomed couple should have been "less religious" when Richard never mentioned faith at all. Yeah, because ONLY the religious might want to hold off on sex.
Fuck you, LKH, for writing this, and for deciding that this was something worth taking a stand on. It wasn't. It's total, judgmental garbage.
So then Richard collapses sobbing into Anita's arms, and she comforts him, and they talk pack politics, namely about how Richard has appointed "sexual surrogates" so that new werewolves can learn how to control themselves during sex. Because you totally need to have two people to have sex with every new member of the clan.
And then he basically asks Anita to become his executioner. Because every well-functioning group needs to have a fucking official murderer in charge of it.
And then they run off into the bedroom and have sex.
that's how it reads, people. Dead husband, celebacy is stupid, sex-surrogates for the pack, "hey, will you murder for me?" and "Lets have sex."
Mercifully, the chapter ends before they actually start making the beast with two backs.
GOOD GOD that was horrible. Am I the only one who thinks it was horrible?
I'm going to go do something sweet and fluffy so that horribleness isn't the last thing I have in mind before I go to bed.
We are on a FREAKING ROLL with this book right now. I was bummed for a little while because it looked as if January were going to be a Book Sales Wasteland, but that is SO not true anymore. 15 books in two days, six of which are Planet Bob.I know begging for sales is obnoxious, but I really, really, REALLY like this momentum. It's the best it's been like, EVER. So. If you guys have bought yourself a copy of a book, ESPECIALLY Planet Bob, THANK YOU thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU You rock harder than a beauty queen at a metal concert. And if you haven't bought a copy yet, but plan to, Now is the Time.
If you're just here for the reviews...here we go.
It's this part. Fuck.
Excuse me, gang. This requires medication.
Alright. Let's do this.
DAWN WAS SLIDING through the trees in a wash of white, white light that left the trees looking like black paper cutouts against the shining sky when I pulled the curtains and filled the bedroom with twilight dimness.Yes, we start with a blast of purple that is nearly incomprehensible. My God, this is almost like Amanda McKittrik Ros level purple. It's like, radioactive or something. I could see using purple like this for something important, but all she's saying is that it's dawn and she's closing the curtains and wait a goddamn fucking minute here.
It was THREE AM when she and Richard went out to the deck to save Gregory. Did our lessons in beast-master summoning take three hours? And if it didn't take three hours what did you do between three AM and six?
Your issues with continuity are making me doubt your werewolf/leopard/vampire/BDSM/rape fic's veracity, Laurel. No cookies for you.
Nathanial is going to bed with Anita. She discusses his lovely auburn ankle length hair, and mentions that it disappears when Nathanial shifts. So...uh...WHERE DOES IT GO? Hair is not like a limb. Hair is more like clothing. Hair is dead. Why would Nathanial grow back six-odd feet of hair every time he turns into a panther?
Also: ankle. Length. Hair. Guys, my hair goes down to about mid-back. Long hair is easier to manage in food service than short hair, because you can stuff it all under a hat and be reasonably sure you got it all. I can BARELY manage to keep it under control. It takes much brushing. It takes much detangling. Much shampoo. Conditioner. Sweet Baby Jesus, the conditioner. I am glad hair products do not come from living things, because herds of things would have died to keep my hair nice. It's a pain in the ass, is what I'm saying. The ONLY way I can keep it under control is to wear it up. 90% of the time it's in a pony tail. I wear it up so often that the one time I wore it down at work (For five minutes, because my hair thing broke and fuck if I'm going to take my hat home with me) everybody was all like, "OMG YOU HAVE HAIR! AND IT IS PRETTY! YOU SHOULD WEAR IT DOWN MORE OFTEN!"
And then I say "tangles" and everybody nods sagely, because they have tangles too.
Point is, Nathanial should either be wearing nine zillion hair ties, or a rat's nest. Or he should be spending all of his time brushing his goddamn hair.
Also, Anita doesn't sleep with the leopards when they are leopards. Only people.
Seriously. Getting to snuggle with a big cat and know you are in no danger whatsoever would be, like, one of the perks of having a were-feline for a friend. I am SURE I am not the only person who has had that fantasy. WHY WOULD YOU NOT TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS?...because it leaves no room for sex. RIGHT. Also, Anita, if you describe sleeping a whole bunch of people in one bed as a "pile of puppies" one more time I will puke in your fucking lap I swear to GOD. It wasn't a good simile the first time.
But Anita is waiting for Richard, not Nathanial, and so she's wearing swanky PJs.
Once more with feeling, Anita: YOU WENT SIX MONTHS WITHOUT TALKING TO HIM. WITHOUT SEEING HIM PHYSICALLY A SINGLE TIME. THIS IS HOW GIRLS BREAK UP WITH BOYS WHEN THEY ARE TOO CHICKEN SHIT TO SAY "IT'S NOT ME, IT'S YOU."
And then a wereleopard comes in and tells Anita that Richard is crying in the kitchen.
*sigh* at least it's not the shower.
I sighed. Although I was tired, I was excited at the thought of Richard being in the house, of him coming to me, maybe. Instead of sex we were going to have another session of hand-holding, and shoulder-crying. Damn it.
Yes. Because your sexual satisfaction is more important than the emotional well-being of a man you fucking dumped, who loved you passionately, who wanted to marry you, who still loves you just as passionately. God forbid you try to be strong for somebody else emotionally.
And you know what? I get that you're probably exhausted from all the shit that's happened in the last few days, but that attitude right there is shitty. It's not the worst thing ever, but it does make you the worst girlfriend in recorded history. If you want to have sex with somebody on a frequent basis, you should have the maturity to support them emotionally when you cheat on them with somebody else.
Anita goes to see Richard, and I shit you not, he is sitting in the kitchen with a fucking halo around his head. I am not kidding at all:
The early morning light made his hair look more golden than normal, less brown. He looked up, and I realized the gold glow was a halo effect of the rising sun. It painted a nimbus of shining gold around him, leaving his hair light brown around his face,
It's one thing to call a character holier-than-thou more times than I can count at this point. It's another thing entirely to give them a literal golden halo.
I am laughing, loyal blog-readers. Laughing so hard I think I might hurt something.
And then Richard hides his face from Anita by twisting away and shoving his face towards a wall. So basically, he acts like he's two. I think every character in this book has some form of low grade DID, only without the awesomness that comes with Tyler Durden.
And then Richard explains, and it has nothing to do with Anita, and everything to do with the core purpose of this book.
It's got one, and I just connected the fucking golden halo with what I'm about to blog about. I can't figure out what the bleeding fuck that purpose is, unless it's simply "Shit all over someone else's moral structure". But this has to be part of the core of everything.
Richard tells Anita that a member of his pack, Louisa, is in prison for killing her husband. Apparently they got married, went on their honeymoon, and Louisa lost control and shifted while she was losing her virginity. Anita says well, if she could have controlled herself during a non intercourse orgasm, she should have been able to control herself during sexual orgasm...and then Anita somehow works out that Louisa waited to have any sexual contact at all until after she was married.
Richard says this:
“I taught her to control the beast during anger, sadness, fear, pain, every extreme of emotion, but not sex. I respected her convictions.”
And Anita goes on a long inner monologue about how this was the height of stupidity on his part. And in the universe LKH has created, it might be.
But here's the thing, sport fans: this is not a real universe. These rules are things that the writer makes up as they go along. And LKH has proven over and over again she can't even remember a character's eye color from book to book, let alone the structure of pack magic. There is ONE REASON why this scene is here, and it is to express how stupid the entire concept of celebacy is, and how stupid it is to hold to your convictions.
I am at a level of rage right now that I cannot properly express. I'm going to try, but whatever I say is going to fall infinately short of how FUCKING PISSED OFF I am by this.
If you believe something that does not affect anyone but you, you have the right to hold onto that. If you believe that having sex before marrige is wrong, you have the right to say no as long as you want to. If you want to sleep with five men, sleep with five men. If you want blue hair, dye your hair blue. And NOBODY has the right to pass judgement on you.
Things that do affect other people (Ie saying that homosexuality is wrong) are different. Because it's not your struggle, it's not your fight, you have no right to tell somebody else what they do or do not get to do with their lives. Fuck, if you want to bring Christianity into it, Romans 14:20, loosely paraphrased, says you have the right to believe that there is nothing wrong with what you're doing when you keep it between yourself and God.
When you throw in the saint-symbolism of having Richard sitting there with a fucking halo, this passage goes from being a part of the story to being a personal statement from the author. This fictional girl was created so that LKH could talk about how stupid chastity is. So that she could pass judgement on people who chose to live their lives differently from her. So that she could get on her high horse and tell us all how we're doing everything wrong.
Screw that.
Anita even goes on about how the doomed couple should have been "less religious" when Richard never mentioned faith at all. Yeah, because ONLY the religious might want to hold off on sex.
Fuck you, LKH, for writing this, and for deciding that this was something worth taking a stand on. It wasn't. It's total, judgmental garbage.
So then Richard collapses sobbing into Anita's arms, and she comforts him, and they talk pack politics, namely about how Richard has appointed "sexual surrogates" so that new werewolves can learn how to control themselves during sex. Because you totally need to have two people to have sex with every new member of the clan.
And then he basically asks Anita to become his executioner. Because every well-functioning group needs to have a fucking official murderer in charge of it.
And then they run off into the bedroom and have sex.
that's how it reads, people. Dead husband, celebacy is stupid, sex-surrogates for the pack, "hey, will you murder for me?" and "Lets have sex."
Mercifully, the chapter ends before they actually start making the beast with two backs.
GOOD GOD that was horrible. Am I the only one who thinks it was horrible?
I'm going to go do something sweet and fluffy so that horribleness isn't the last thing I have in mind before I go to bed.
