Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 59

Narcissus in Chains chapter 35

So FINALLY Anita and Richard troop out to go help Gregory. I am pretty sure leaving him out there all by himself counts as cruel and unusual punishment. Anita starts bitching about how much she hates being awake at three AM. Given that she's pulled several all-nighters and does all her resurrection business at night, I'd think she'd be used to it. She also mangles my favorite Robert Frost poem:

But I had promises to keep, and miles to go before I could sleep. Or at least a couple of miracles to perform before I could go to bed.

Because it's oh, so big of her to go work to save the man that she nearly killed with her own stupidity. Throwing him in the oubliette was Richard's doing, but summoning Rania makes this just as much her fault, and I STILL cannot get over how stupid that was.

By the way, the best horror story I ever read was a Robert Frost poem. No lie.

Anyway, they're all on the back porch. Now, this is going to be about Gregory, and rescuing him from his wounds, and making nice for the sake of a wounded man, right?

I just noticed that Anita never refers to her wereleopards as people, and she never calls them leopards unless she's actually talking. She calls them cats. It gives you the impression that these are small, sweet creatures who would absolutely allow a doctor to work them over when they are so badly injured.

I've had badly hurt cats before. They are just as likely to make you bleed, and they won't be nice about it. I cannot imagine what a hurt leopard could do, but I really doubt it'd be "huddle and snuggle"

And i know I've said that I love Laurel K. Hamilton's narrative voice, and I do, but dear sweet God:

Richard’s power crept on the summer darkness like close thunder, making the hot, sticky night even thicker and making it harder to breathe.

Does every noun need to have a tail? And look, "night" gets a twofer. And there's a lot of problems with those adjective choices. Summer would get a pass if it were alone. With everything else it just sets my teeth on edge. But "Richard's power crept like close thunder" doesn't work for shit. IDK about you, but in my universe thunder close to me does not "creep". That implies sneaking. It goes boom. Night cannot get thicker, and every time you pile more than one adjective in front of a noun, the verbal power of the other ones get diluted.

Richard is so angry Anita's body guards start circling the wagons. Anita tells them to knock it off, they kind of shrug and say "tell him that," and then, because we haven't had anything horrible happen in a while, LKH goes right back to the awful suck.

It's long, it goes on for several passages, but to sum it up in short, Richard rips Stephen's beast out of his body as quickly and painfully as he possibly can. It is explosive. People are standing around in pieces of his human body when it is over. Richard then smiles and says, "Now you try."

A few minutes later it's established that there IS a gentler way to do it, and Richard is so pissed off he did it the way he wanted to: the violent, rape-tastic way.

So to put this into better terms: Richard was brought here to help Anita summon the beast of a severely damaged wereleopard so that he doesn't die. Because Richard is pissed at Anita and angry with himself, he decided to teach Anita how to do it as violently as possible, probably hoping on some level that she'd violate the leopards the way he just violated the fuck out of his wolf.

And then he and Anita argue about it.

Gregory is still lying there.  Anita scores some good hits--Richard's in a nasty mood and he's taking it out on people who don't deserve it--but it's all kind of moot when you've got a dying man curled up on a picnic table.

And it's just because Richard is hurting so much, and he hates himself so much, and he's so angry and I so do not care because they are STILL ignoring somebody whose physical pain is 100% worse than theirs is.

And it's even more unforgivable when they stop fighting and start flirting. 

And then he summons Jamal's beast gently.

You know, I find it kind of weird that when bad things happen, they happen exclusively to the subs. Stephen was submissive and he got hurt bad by his master. Jamal is more of an equal, so he gets the soft treatment. Anita protects her subs, so far, but they still get lost and hurt more than anybody else.  I have no commentary, but it's disturbing as shit. Replace "sub" with "woman" and you'd get eye-bleeding rage.

And it gets proven when the only way Anita can get Gregory to shift is the nasty, rapy violent way, and not the gentle coaxing.

But he's healed, and according to this awful book, if the ending is good it doesn't matter how you get there. Everybody celebrates.

Except us. Because FUCK that sucked.

 

Narcissus In Chains--chapter 34

So, having made Richard bleed to show how well adjusted she is, Anita now calls Jean Claude to find out what, exactly, he told Richard.

At this point we can assume "Everything" and move on from there.

Also, apparently Richard has no issue sharing Anita with other Alpha-males, because competition is fine, but he doesn't like sharing with submissives.

Anita accuses Jean Claude of playing Machiavellian mind-games with Richard.

 And this would make sense if Jean Claude wanted Richard to ditch Anita and move on with his life. Jean Claude does not. Remember, Anita taking off for six months severely damaged his power base. He should be trying to get Richard back on Anita's side. Saying shit that antagonizes things is not majorly helping.

Anyway, apparently it is somehow worse for Anita to sleep with a submissive than it is for her to sleep with another dominant.

I am completely baffled by this and I can't even begin to understand it. So I'm just going to move on.

Now, I have heard a few people argue that these books are not horribly mysogynist. Rapy, yes. But that Anita's role is an empowering example of feminine freedom and that the whole thing with Richard is about her bucking male chauvinism. Or something.

“I am, after all, a man, ma petite. I believe I understand the male psyche a tiny bit better than you do.” 

I couldn’t argue with that. “Well, give me a heads-up next time you plan to do any maneuvering. You could have gotten one of us killed.”

OH yes you can, sunshine.

They continue talking about how much Richard might know about her and Nathanial. And CONTINUE TALKING ABOUT IT. Because it's not like we have a man lying on the verge of death outside on Anita's back porch. Yes, folks. NOBODY HAS HELPED GREGORY YET. We're hung up on Anita's fucked up relationships while Gregory is out back dying. 

At one point in the conversation Anita says that sleeping with the entire pard is not sexual. It's like a "great big pile of puppies." And that is the yuckiest thing in the entire chapter.

I was shaking my head, realized he couldn’t see it, and said, “I don’t do casual sex, Jean-Claude, you know that.” 
“Whatever you are doing with Nathaniel, ma petite, it is not casual.”

“I can’t use him as my pomme de sang. I can’t.”

 “Your morals have reared their ugly heads, ma petite, do not let them make you foolish.”

And that is the most rage-inducing part of it.

WHY is standing up for your morals such a bad thing? We're not talking about abortion rights here, folks. Anita is compromising a very important relationship that she still cares about under circumstances that make her feel very guilty. Every time any character tries to take a stand they get punched down for being wrong. Anita's entire character up until now has been about balancing a moral life with an amoral universe. Admittedly she's been losing ground the entire way, but she kept fighting.

If we were to translate this over into epic fantasy, it's like a knight being told "stop fighting" by his lady love, and he actually does it. Hangs up his lance and lets the big ugly dragon take things over because hey, why not? Fighting gets people hurt.

If Anita were to resist this until she found a partner she could have guilt-free sex with, this would be a much better story.  If she were to do anything that would involve "keep fighting" it would be a good story. Instead, we've got her throwing down her guns. And how's that for male domination, folks? She stops fighting because Jean Claude tells her to. Not because she wants to.

I just...UGH.

And then we move straight from "It's okay to screw whoever you want to" into "Anita is the most powerful, uber special princess alive." Jean Claude tells her that she's aquiring powers faster than an Alpha or a Master Vampire would, and Anita is basically like "Yeah, so?"

And then we go from That into some bullshit about how the only reason Jean Claude isn't a tyrant like Nickolaus is because the wolves were too powerful and Anita kept him in line anyway. Which...is probably true up to a point, but I doubt that a truely bad vampire would have tolerated Anita hanging around his neck the way she does.

And then...honestly I can't figure out what the fuck this conversation is about anymore. They're touching on plot point--Richard won't be fed on--to plot point--Gregory's still dying--to plot point--uh...they have to find witches?--without a lot of purpose behind it. I've written conversations and pages like this, but it's usually when I have no idea where I'm going next and I'm planning things out. Second or third time around, I take that shit out. Seriously. Can we have a point sometime soon?

No. No. Now we're back to how to manipulate Richard into sleeping with Anita. And how the ardeur will override her self control and make her fuck anything with a penis if she doesn't screw somebody first thing in the morning.

And then we bring up the shower-rape YET AGAIN as an example of what happens when Anita seduces somebody.

Dude. SHE FUCKING TOLD HIM NO. That is not seduction. That is why women carry mace. 

Richard comes in, Anita hangs up the phone, and that's the end of THAT chapter.

And it wasn't awful. Don't get me wrong. That was badly written and boring as fuck, but it didn't make me feel like I was watching somebody torture baby kittens. It won't last, I know, but it's nice to have the "vacation".

Narcissus in Chains chapter 33

So in the last few chapters we have:
-totally ignored the trauma of another human being in favor of Anita drama
-had Anita tell us that remembering abuse from the POV of the abuser is worse than remembering abuse that happened to you
-had conversations that have nothing to do with sex be accompanied with sexy motions
-Had Anita's very existance be blessed by God.

Also: remember how Anita came down hard on the concept of Christian witches? what the fuck is she, then? I'd say playing with herbs and oils is a little less offensive to the general population than raising the dead from the ground would be. If nothing else, it creates a MUCH bigger theological problem (Think about it: Jesus the Zombie.)

Anyway, Richard has now shown up. And I bring up the God thing because, having justified every little thing about herself for the last several chapters, we are now going to shit all over someone else's idealism.

This is not going to be fun.

Anita continues kissing Nathanial, because she doesn't want to feel like she's been caught doing something wrong. Girl, you stopped seeing this guy for six months. You are either done with him, in which case you're not doing anything wrong, or you're still very much romantically entangled with him, in which case you need to start making decisions.

Anita did that whole thing because she believed Richard didn't know about the ardeur. Well, Richard does know, so the whole thing is moot. Anita gets all huffy that Jean Claude told Richard about it. Richard's thing is apparently that he isn't anybody's food.

I think this is why I keep reading this god-awful series even when it hurts me. This dynamic--Anita as sexpire, Richard as nobody's food--has a lot of potential for drama in it. If the characters were more sympathetic, if they weren't fighting like cats, and if there were an actual plot behind it. It gives me hope. Hope that never pays off, sadly. It's going to get smashed like a Bambi when he met Godzilla. But it's still there.

And then Richard asks her how long she waited until she had sex with Micah.

You remember that? The rape in the shower? Yep. Richard is using it against her too.


This is the point where sane people drop the assholes like hot rocks and go find better boyfriends. Who aren't Jean Claude or Micah.

And then Richard basically strips Nathanial to inspect Anita's bite marks. This reminds me way too much of cut inspections to be comfortable. You don't violate someone else's privacy like that. You just don't.

This all eventually ends with Anita keeping Richard off Nathanial via a knife to Richard's throat. She cuts him, he threatens to leave Gregory to be deaf or dead, Anita guilt trips him and....we have an instant reversal. Richard almost starts crying, he agrees to help Gregory, he apologizes for manhandling Nathanial and says that he deserved to have his arm damn near cut open by Anita.

It's like we have two totally different characters here, and we only needed one.

Anita blames Jean Claude for telling Richard, Dr. Lillian gives Richard stitches, and the chapter ends.

Yep, I knew these chapters would be getting itty bitty here near the end. And we're over two thirds of the way there, guys. I am not looking forward to future chapters.
 

Narcissus in Chains chapter 32

So now Anita's actions have hurt Gregory more than being tortured by the wolves did.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Protagonist Characters should solve problems, not cause them. There should be no aura of "this is your fault" attached to a character's actions. Even if you're writing about a serial killer avoiding the cops, the problems they're dealing with should come from an outside source. DO NOT MAKE THE WORLD REVOLVE AROUND THEM.

But no. Gregory cannot suffer because terrible things happened to him. He must suffer because Anita did terrible things and Anita now needs guilt to wallow in for a little while.

And then we have a long passage where Anita and Nathanial curl sexily around each other and Nathanial talks about the torture porn Rania forced him to participate in.

There is no way I could do that. None. Discussing trauma shuts me down so hard it's hard to talk, let alone entwine bodies with someone else. And apparently either I am dense, or this writing is really vague because I didn't realize until now that in the memory, Rania was eating Gregory's penis. It becomes clearer now because apparently she did the same thing to Nathanial. Only this time she ate it in little bites.

This requires a .gif.

 Thank you.

Violence in books is hard to justify. Fight scenes are one thing. Abuse is something else entirely. It should always have a kind of emotional weight and realism. It shouldn't be trivialized. This passage? It's trivializing something so awful that my brain is having a lot of trouble processing it. There's so much awful packed into this book that I get the feeling you're supposed to breeze right past this and move on to Richard's arrival, and that all by itself is the wrong way to handle this. I'm trying to figure out how to pull something like that off so that the writing would work, and I'm failing. I would not want to write this. I think that John Ringo could pull it off, because he's really good at doing fucked up and giving it the right amount of weight. Yes. He writes severely fucked up material (the harem sequence in Council Wars makes Anita Blake look like My Little Pony, for example, and do not get me started on Ghost) but he does not excuse the wrongness of what he's writing. (Always excepting Ghost) and he usually has his victims endure, survive, and then kill the everloving fuck out of their abuser. But I don't think he'd cram that much terrible violence into so few chapters, and then add in "Oh, and a couple years ago I had my penis bitten off" as icing on the fun cake.

What are you supposed to DO with this? Everything is so fucked up that the main character is having screaming fits, and then you throw this into the mix? Why? There's no reason to have it here. Even with this awful book I've been able to get into the writing a little bit, and I'm so completely thrown out of it now, it's like...what the hell?

And then Anita feels guilty for biting him earlier.

And then Nathanial tells her that everything's alright, he really did like it, and she has nothing to feel guilty for. I'll give it a pass ONLY as long as they're discussing sex.

And you know what? I did it again. I got to thinking "Well, it can't get any worse."

Nope. It gets worse. Anita threatens to withhold sex from Nathanial because of the ardeur. And this conversation happens:

He held my hand so tight that it almost hurt. “Don’t do this to me.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t punish me for telling you about how Raina hurt me.” “I’m not punishing you.” “I tell you this horrible thing, and you start feeling protective of me, and guilty. I know you, Anita, you’ll let your head get in the way of what we both need.”

I think the earlier trauma has burned out my outrage center, so here's the practical thing: If someone has to ask you not to punish them for giving you information, the relationship is not healthy. Either they are manipulating you, or you have a history of shutting down on them when they tell you something you don't want to hear. I'm calling bullshit on both sides of this one, because Nathanial is being more than a little manipulative here too.

Nathanial gets on his knees and begs to become Anita's pomme de sang for the ardeur. That way he will "belong" somewhere.

If Nathanial were a chick, he'd be Bella Swan. That's how very much not-healthy this shit is.

And while Nathanial is weeping and sobbing in her lap and begging her to feed on him, and Anita is kissing him and hugging him and offering him support, Richard shows up! Yay!

Meanwhile the traumatized, brutalized human being now on the verge of death is still lying out on the back porch, now with an IV in his arm to keep him alive.

And the chapter has ended.

I hate this book.

Story advice FTW

So the other day I found this image graphic, and it changed my fucking reality.

This is now my bible

If I get ANY credit in storytelling, my first reaction was not "This is great advice!" and was more "OMG somebody else overanalyzes stories as much as I do I AM SO NOT ALONE! SQUEE!"

Now. For the hard part. Application.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 31

Anita goes on about how much she hated Rania.

You know, I think (in another book, with another author) the story of someone whose power comes from a spirit who hates the everloving fuck out of the magician would be very interesting. Especially if neither party were evil, and they hate each other just because.

Of course, in this story, Rania hates Anita because Rania is an evil hell bi--

Right. Sorry, sorry. Evil hell psychopath. Rania is an evil psychopath, and Anita is the sweet little angel afflicted by the ghosts of the people Anita helped kill.

I think anyone with magical powers needs to have the words "DON'T FUCK WITH EVIL SPIRITS" tattooed to their eyelids. Along with "BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM". You'd think dealing with a psychopathic murderer when she was alive would be your first clue not to deal with her spirit when she's dead. Really. Everything else in this story disgusts me, but "Let's summon the psycho from hell to heal one of her former victims" just...baffles me. I don't get how ANYBODY would think screwing with Rania would be a good idea.

Of course, Anita now requires medical attention:

Dr. Lillian was shining a tiny light in my eyes and trying to get me to follow her fingers. I wasn’t doing a good enough job apparently, because she wasn’t happy. “You are in shock, Anita, and so is Gregory. He was a little shocky before you began, but damn it.”

Okay, first up? I've had bad emotional reactions to things, too. Flashbacks included. And pitching a fit because the ghost of someone you killed showed you bad memories should not equal BEING IN SHOCK BECAUSE PSYCHOPATHIC WEREWOLVES PUNCTURED YOUR EAR-DRUMS.

However, Lillian points out that now, thanks to Anita's experiments in shamanism, Gregory's chances are now less than fifty-fifty. So Anita being STUPID (Seriously. DO NOT FUCK WITH EVIL SPIRITS.) might have real, serious concequences. I am absolutely sure that this will be played out in a mature and serious manner, and that I will not be driven into incoherent swearing in a few short paragraphs.

Ah ha. I kid. Seriously, you might want to banish small children from the room from here on out.

Lillian tells Anita that she actually saw the damage that Gregory went through, and that Gregory, who has already been trashed physically and emotionally, is on the deck enjoying the flashback from hell that is his right to experiance, and there is a heavy overtone of "GROW THE FUCK UP AND DEAL" in Lillian's tone. Anita responds:

I shook my head, and had to bury my chin on my knees to stop the movement. “It isn’t a memory with the munin, doc, it’s real. It’s like  .  .  . it’s like a live-action movie, but with me in the movie.” I hugged my knees and tried desperately not to think, not to revisit what I’d experienced.

Let me get this straight, Anita.YOU experiancing trauma from the POV of the ABUSER is worse than the already traumatized victim being forced to relive trauma from several years ago, when he hasn't even started to recover from the shit he went through less than two hours ago. 

Anita, you are a piece of shit. You don't even qualify as the gendered insult that cannot be mentioned. That, my dear lady, would be a fucking upgrade.

And aww. Nathanial brought Anita her baby penguin mug full of fresh coffee that he made with his own two widdle hands. How sweet.

Don't worry. I didn't let Applebloom see anything other than the baby penguin mug. And poor little Anita is so shocked out by her experiances she gives herself first digree burns on her coffee mug.

1. COFFEE SHOULD NOT BE THAT HOT. Holy shit, Nate, what'd you do, use a fucking pressure cooker?

2. Anita. Darling. You are about my age, you summon dead people for a living and you kill vampires in your spare time. GROW THE FUCK UP AND DEAL.

And everybody in the pard, and I do mean EVERYBODY, is crowded around Anita right now. NOT Gregory. NOT the man who actually needs comfort. No. They're being gentle and kind to the leader who is failing them, and failing them so hard I don't think Anita should be defined as a leader right now. Maybe healing Gregory is beyond her, and that's fine. But for the love of fuck, if you're a leader you should have better sense than to fucking summon a fucking psycho to try to fix something you can't do on your own.

Finally somebody comes kind of close to saying "grow the fuck up":

Cherry gripped my arm. “Don’t fall apart on us now, Anita, Gregory needs you.”

You know, my favorite book series from the last few years is Hunger Games. You have no idea how much I love that series. I did not fan out over Harry Potter, I was "hey, this is cool" for LOTR, and I was happy with the Narnia movies, but oh my GOD did I learn why we're called fans when I started reading the first book.

And, without spoiling everybody for the third book? There comes a point where a MAJOR character turns on Katniss. It fits with where the story goes, but it took me back a little bit, because I wanted the sunshine and the rainbows and instead we got...what we got. And then I realized that turn happened...well, in part because it's the writer's job to fuck with you, and that was a pretty good plot twist. But it also happened because SOMEBODY needed to call Katness on her shit. And it had to be somebody that she couldn't escape, that was inside her defenses the way all the other characters were not. It took all the little nagging voices in your subconsious and shoved them all into the book. And a part of you went "FUCKING FINALLY", even while the rest of you remained on Katness's side. It was something that had to happen, just as this (Cherry telling Anita to knock it off) is something that needs to happen.

So I think one of the tests of a good character is that another, equally good character should be able to call them on their bullshit, be completely right, and have the primary character accept the reality check and deal. Because EVERYBODY needs reality checks. 

How does Anita react?

The first flare of anger pushed through the shock. “I have done my fucking best for him tonight.”

Bullshit, sunshine. Yes, you "rescued" him. But Rania came damn near to starting a fucking war back at the Lupanar, and you elected to bring her back. You didn't take two seconds to consider what she'd do to someone both of you view as a victim who has no defenses whatsoever. You exposed a person who is fucking broken to a sadist whose entire goal in life was to inflict pain. You were stupid, Anita, and you almost got him killed, and now you're wallowing in how violated you feel instead of trying to find another way to save your leopard.

If you are a leader, you do not relax until everybody is home and safe and stable. That is why leaders should not ever want that job. It sucks. It requires more from you than you may have to give. A superhuman like Anita may not need to play nice all the time, but she does need to put her people's good over her own, otherwise she's no better than the psychopaths she spent ten books fighting.

Which is the total truth, now and forever.

So then Cherry backs down and starts sweet talking Anita, and I'm sitting here literally stunned. This is a textbook abusive situation. If this were a marriage, Anita would be the abusive spouse and Cherry, the bruised child trying to get Daddy to take her little brother to the hospital. WHY IS LKH WRITING HER CHARACTER THIS WAY? 

And now everyone is demanding that Anita call Nathanial's beast, because even though no Alpha ever could do that before they shifted even for the first time, Anita could definitely do it now. Consistency, LKH. It's not that hard.

And Anita whines about how she doesn't know how. Seriously. This is whining:

 “What do you want from me?...I don’t know how. When I was with Nathaniel, it was  .  .  .” I sighed.

Why is anyone putting up with her? Why?

Anita doesn't want to do it because calling the beast is sexual. the others tell her it doesn't have to be sexual. Anita says that she won't be able to touch Gregory without remembering Gregory's abuse, and that is the single most fucked up concept I have ever tried to wrap my brain around. ("I can't help him because I'll always remember what somebody else did to him and that will hurt my sexy-sexy.")

And now we find out why Gregory's had to suffer for three fucking chapters:

“You need to talk to someone who can call the beast from their people,” Merle said. I looked at him. “You got someone in mind?”

 “I am told your Ulfric can call the beast from his wolves.”

 I nodded. “So I hear.” 

“If he called a wolf into form, while you watched, then he might be able to show you how to do it.”

Fuck you. Fuck every single character in this book who did not immediately turn and run screaming from the page when presented with this morass of an awful plot. This entire thing--Gregory going deaf and not being able to shift, Anita summoning Rania and traumatizing Gregory even worse--was to give Anita and Richard an excuse to screw.

Another human being's pain is being written as justification for Anita to have sex.

I am sure that somebody who doesn't write in most of their free time would not see it that way. I do. I can see every step of this thought process. ("Gee. I want Anita and Richard to fuck. How can I justify it? Well, if Richard comes over, they could fight and then have makeup sex. But why would Richard want to come over? Well, maybe if Gregory is SO hurt, having him come over is the ONLY WAY..." you get the gist) and it's just...it's pathetic. The woman spends HOURS monologuing on her blog about how her characters are her babies and she can't stand the idea of hurting them...AND THEN SHE WRITES SHIT LIKE THIS. 

Ah, but the suck does not stop. Not even for one paragraph. Nathanial adds that Richard will come because he feels guilty for Gregory's injuries, and Anita realizes he's being insightful, and then thinks this:

It was one of the most insightful things I’d ever heard him say. It gave me just a little hope, that indeed Nathaniel could be made whole— that he was getting better.

So being a natural victim is now a result of mental trauma? And people with mental issues aren't capable of deep insights unless they're "getting better?" There's this whole patronizing, paternal aura to that thought that makes me want to hurt something.

And just in case you were wondering, I'm copying and pasting directly out of the e-book. I am not cross typing this. That is how this sentence was originally published, unnecessary comma, hyphen and all.

And then it's apparently "unnerving" that Nathanial knows Richard so well. No, it's called "observation". A two year old would know Richard feels guilty for hurting Gregory. Oh, but Anita then has an earth-shattering revelation!

It meant that I’d underestimated Nathaniel. I kept equating submissiveness with being inferior,

NO FUCKING SHIT. YA THINK?


And oh my God. OOOOH MY GOD there is so much fucking fail in the last few sentences of this chapter. First, some good old fashioned grammar fail:

I looked into his face and wondered what else I’d missed, or what else he’d show me?

Thing is? I know exactly how that unnecessary question mark got in there. Word has this funny habit of deciding that question words, ie "What" automatically mean you end with a question mark, even if no question is actually asked. But the problem is this: "I wondered what else he'd show me."
In other words, DO NOT LISTEN TO THE GRAMMAR CHECK, LAUREL. THE FUCKING THING LIES.

And here we have the penultimate fail. The thing above all things that lets me know even Laurel K. Hamilton knew she was fucking up this story:

How much worse could it get? Please, no one answer that.

How much worse could it get? Please, no one answer that.

How much worse could it get? Please, no one answer that.

How much worse could it get? Please, no one answer that.

And with that scream from the author's subconscious, the chapter ends. 

Narcissus in Chains chapter 30

First up: Business. PLANET BOB is out!

It is on Amazon right now! Go get your copy! Go!

Also, I'm starting to put a few of my titles back on Smashwords. I haven't put Planet Bob up yet, but that's mostly because I'll have to revise the formatting a little (read as: change EVERY LINK in the book so that it doesn't go to Amazon. That is my least favorite part of building books. Formatting? Easy. Editing? Favorite part of the process. Drafting? Chore but it gives me something to work with. Front matter, back matter and Table of Contents? DO. NOT. WANT.)

And for the record? I have no intention of offering Planet Bob for free. Ever. It'll be sad if it fails (I'll be sad if it fails) but that'll be the way things are.

Okay. Back to fun.

Wait. We're still doing this book. It won't be fun.

So when we last left things, Anita was going to summon the ghost of a woman who tortured her pard so that Anita, using the ghost, could heal Gregory. Who was one of the people tortured.

This is probably the worst idea I've ever read about. Ever.

Rania comes when called and immediately tries to molest Gregory through Anita. Anita is able to resist her, and this is treated as a wonderful victory, and not as one of the most fucked-up things I've ever tried to summarize. Anita reminds Rania what the rules are, though these rules are never explained (at least, I hope they're never explained, because the two sentences I just read CANNOT be the rules)  and they get down to kissing Gregory.

Who is still deaf, who has no idea that it is Anita and not Rania in control of this situation. He is scared. Understandably so.

Anita tries to heal Gregory. Rania insists on having "her reward", which is apparently to lick Gregory like he's a human lollypop. And then Rania has Anita remember back when Rania literally ate Gregory. Anita then freaks out and has to be comforted by the nearest man. Empowering.

That, boys and girls, is the third worst part of this scene.

The second worst part is...well, let's look at it from Gregory's perspective. He's already been brutalized and traumatized past what any human being should ever have to endure, and the ghost of literally the worst person he's ever met--Rania--has just spent the last several minutes pawing him, and he's had to endure it in the thin hope that maybe, just maybe, he'd get to hear again.

The worst part of this scene is...the healing never happens. We have a disgusting petting scene that makes me feel dirty in every single possible way, and nothing happens because of it. Not sex, not character development, not healing. Nothing but Anita having a screaming fit, because of course, it's all about her. In short, boys and girls, everything involving Rania is this:

Anita gets carried off to yet another bathroom so she can be coddled for a few minutes, and that's the end of the chapter.

I had a "friend" like this once. I'm not going to give too many details because I don't want them finding this entry and knowing it's about them, but I watched this happen. Everything was about them. EVERYTHING. They identified as a magic user, they could be kind of flaky sometimes, but I didn't have a problem with that, I'm a flake most of the time myself. But they had a relationship with another person, and so everything in their life revolved around The Relationship. Every conversation with them, every action, everything eventually turned into this death spiral about how The Relationship was the best thing ever and they hated that they were losing it, and why oh why couldn't the other person see how right everything was. And if anything bad happened, somehow it would be drawn back up into their own problems and how The Relationship was the only thing that ever fixed anything.

One evening I became drunk. Not extremely intoxicated, just nicely buzzed, and we began to talk about The Relationship. As we're talking I start crying, and I realize that it's the one year anniversary of the Black Truck incident, AKA when I was sexually assaulted. And once that memory chain gets tripped, I can't shut it down. It takes me a few minutes to explain why I just had a sobbing fit. They do, to their credit, tell me it's okay and assure me that I'm not being an idiot for crying.

Then they tell me how horrible thier own trauma is (admittedly worse than mine by a factor of ten thousand) and how The Relationship is the only thing that has ever made their trauma okay. My crying fit got to be about me for about ten minutes. And then it went right back to them.

That's what I get out of this passage. A horrible thing has happened to Gregory. And because nobody else can be allowed the spotlight, Anita must experiance trauma ten thousand times worse than what Gregory is enduring. Only it's not ten thousand times worse because it's something Anita brings on herself by being an idiot. Summoning the female version of Jeffery Dahmer is not now and never will be the smart thing to do. EVER. She gets to have her screaming fit, though, and gets to be comforted by the big strong males, while the weak feminine males are allowed to bleed and be deaf on the back porch.

This is offensive, kids, make no doubt about it, but it's also highschool age shit. I think we're regressing. By the end of the book Anita and company will be making faces at each other and talking like Furbies. It'll be the attack of the werefurbies. They'll be chanting "HUNGRY! AH-AH-AH! AH-AH-AH!"

...If only.

TOMORROW: Anita gets rescued by a male. Like we didn't see that one coming.

PLANET BOB IS LIVE!

Planet Bob is live! There it is! It's up! Go get it. Go! GO!

...Or not. Hey, I'm stoaked just seeing that it's there.

PLANET BOB--THE BUTTON IS PUSHED

And now we have the countdown until Planet Bob goes LIVE on Amazon.

Because there comes a point where I either quit and let the damn thing go, or I tear it apart into little tiny pieces and rebuild it from scratch. I hit that point HARD last night. I'm not perfect, I know I'm not perfect, and I know when I hit my limits. My limit, boys and girls, has been hit.

And BLOG MAKEOVER will be happening very, very soon.

Narcissus in Chains chapter 29

So I've spent the last two days going over and over AND OVER AND OVER Planet Bob, deleting things, rearranging things, and trying to correct most of the punctuation (I have done worse things than a find/replace search for (.") so I can catch every time I closed dialogue wrong, but JESUS CHRIST is it tedious. And it's not something I can catch without forcing my computer to go "Did you mean to use that here?") and I can no longer look at it objectively. I am that sick of working on it. So I have decided that it is either publish or push it back another month. So either late today or early tomorrow, it goes up.

PLANET BOB IS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED EITHER LATE TODAY OR EARLY TOMORROW. You may either rejoice or cringe as you want to. :D

Now. Back to terrible book. So everybody troops out onto the back deck, because shapeshifting in the Anitaverse makes an ungodly mess. Nathanial doesn't want to have to clean it up.

You know, Anita strikes me as one of those cult leader wives who get to lay around all day and never lift a finger because they know their followers will do it for them. Also, it's Nathanial, the weak little baby, who has to play housekeeper. Does he vacuum in pearls?

Stephen, Gregory's werewolf brother is here, and have I mentioned yet that the odds of two brothers both being lycanthropes of different animals is really fucking small? Because it is. Unless EVERYTHING in this universe is a shapeshifter. In which case there wouldn't be so many laws against them, and this book would probably be cool again (Shapeshifting=AIDS level pandemic. Think about it.) Anyhoo, Stephen is here, and he is just as baby-sweet fragile as Gregory is.

One of the cool things about the Kindle software I use, is it lets me take notes when I read ahead. I highlighted this part:

He was submissive, fragile in every walk of his life,

and I added the note: GO TALK TO FLUTTERSHY. Yes, my faithful blog readers. I have succumbed to the honey-sweet cuteness that is the new incarnation of My Little Pony. And I agree with its characterization completely. You can be a gentle, soft-hearted person who doesn't like ugliness and violence and still turn bad-ass awesome when you need to. SUBMISSIVE and FRAGILE does not equal BROKEN, you psychopath.

Also, the submissive members of Anita pack are now scared to death of her. Even the text acknowledges it's because Anita shot Elizabeth. Anita hates that they all have to be scared of her. Here's a tip, Anita baby: LEARN HOW TO LEAD WITHOUT SHOOTING YOUR PEOPLE.

We get a list of what everybody looks like and what everybody's wearing. And then Anita decides to try to heal Gregory with the munin. Specifically, by summoning Rania, the woman who did terrible things to every single leopard in the pard.

Yes. Let's summon the one female character more psychotic than Anita so that she can heal one of the people Rania brutalized in the first place. And it's all about sex with this character. So yeah, this is a GREAT idea. Especially because, like Nathanial, Anita views Gregory like a child.

They keep talking about Rania. Meanwhile, Gregory is still deaf and everybody is still worried. And there is one part where Anita says, basically "I want to protect him, not screw him, and this is a bad thing."

This book is like a septic tank.

We get more submissive=victim bullshit. Stephen says "call Rania". Anita reminds everyone that Rania thought the Saw movies were soft-core porn, and maybe bringing her into this situation would be bad. Everybody shrugs and says "So what? We need to heal Gregory." And Anita locks eyes with Stephen, who will do anything to help his brother.

So basically we have Stephen offering himself to be tortured and raped as a surrogate for his brother, because Anita can't force herself to  feel aroused by Gregory.  And that, mercifully, is where the chapter ends.

I am now SO glad I stopped reading this book where I did. So very, very, very glad. The plot collapsing under its own weight way back when Asher and Narcissus got it on was the WARNING, boys and girls. It was God's way of telling us "GO BACK. GO BACK NOW."

There is almost a third of the book left. I am TERRIFIED.