Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 61

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 21

This is another traveling chapter. This is another terrible traveling chapter.

I've read books with objectionable and offensive content before. John Ringo has, um...let's call it a history. I read that book. More than once. He also wrote the Council Wars series (WHY IS THERE NOT ANOTHER BOOK?) and every time I read about violence and/or leadership in this book, I think about a major sub plot in the Council Wars. It involves a character (Megan Travenite) who is abducted by another major character, and basically all the terrible parts of Gor and this book combined happen to Megan. Megan even falls in love with her rapist, and there are many long monologues about how this is a natural psychological response to extended violence and trauma, and the brain's way of protecting itself from a broken situation.

And then Megan kills her rapist by pouring acid down his throat and beating him to death with the bottle. Because no matter how her psyche reacted, what was happening to her was wrong and fuck if she was going to endure it any longer than she had to. She regrets it, but it's less "I killed my one true wub" and more "Damn that bastard for what he did to me, I'm glad I killed him."


I think the difference between Anita and every other heroine in books like this ever is...well, you don't fuck with Mercy Thompson. You don't fuck with Megan. You DO NOT EVER fuck with Honor Harrington, holy shit, I think the last guy who tried had to have plastic surgery and I'm not even kidding. But everybody gets to fuck with Anita. Mercy, Megan and Honor (NEXT BOOK NOW, DAVE. NEXT BOOK NOW.) all earned respect by being sweet, honorable and efficient when life is good, and turning into efficient buzzsaws of death when things went sideways. Anita is a buzzsaw when life is good, and she seems to collapse every time things go sideways.

Also, Megs, Mercy and Honor are all genuinely good people. Anita is not. Which means I don't give a fuck about what happens to her, bad or good.

I've put this chapter off long enough, haven't I?

Rafael the rat-king has a limo. My reaction would be "SWEET!" Anita's is "...he doesn't look like a limo kind of guy."

Lemme guess. You were expecting a low-ridered camaro with flashy LED lights on the runners. And spinners. Weren't you?

Anita tells us all about how tough Merle is. How she gets a tough "vibe" from him. You know, in good books they actually show you this shit. Also, is it just me, or is the cast right now fucking huge? Yes. I know. LKH never kills off characters. I understand this, but I don't *get* it. It's a writer thing. Books work off of emotional investment and emotional energy. And I don't mean metaphysical psychic stuff. I just don't have a better word for it. Intense emotion triggered at the right time (Ie Obi Wan dying in Star Wars) can drive the rest of a story to the ending (Seriously. That movie would not have been as good without that emotional hit at that exact time)

If you're so worried about your fucking cast being happy that nothing really bad ever happens, your book has no energy and your readers will be bored as fuck. And whatever you do with them, Laurell, for the love of God:

SHOW, DON'T TELL.
Jesus.

Oh, and now dating Richard isn't healthy for Anita. This is a retcon so big I didn't think the universe could even hold it. Dating your rapist is now healthier than dating a high school teacher who loves you. Even the Richard in this book would be healthier than Jean Claude and Micah.

And then we meet the Swan King, Donovan Reece, who is greatful to Anita for rescuing the swanmanes.

I want to know more about these characters. Seriously. were-swans sound almost as awesome as the were-chickens and were-gila monsters in Sunshine. And as anybody who's ever had to deal with a pissed off waterfowl can tell you, they are not sweet and fluffy babies.

Instead he was going with us into a gathering of werewolves where he would be the only nonpredator there. That didn’t sound like a good idea to me.

You do realize that prey animals with natural predators can be fucking intense, right? You ever noticed how those wild-life show people like Steve Irwin are always jumping on the crockadiles and handling the venomous snakes but when they find a moose they stay about fifteen feet away? That is not because they don't want to scare Mr. Moose off. Mr. Moose is probably habituated to humans and very courious about what Mr. Cameraman has in his bag. They stay fifteen feet away because they don't want Mr. Moose to open a can of Mr. Woop-ass all over Mr. Camera. Yes. Predators kill the prey animals. The prey animals kill them back. 

“You saved my swanmanes, Ms. Blake. You nearly got yourself killed doing it. I couldn’t risk the girls coming, they are not  .  .  .” He looked down at his folded hands, then raised those changeable eyes to me. “They are like your Nathaniel— victims.”

"Having to endure shit" does not equal "victim". "Wanting to endure shit" certainly does not equal victim. And victim is not a word that defines a person. It defines a temporary, transitory role of horribleness. Being a crime victim or an abuse victim does not make you a whimpering sack of uselessness. It just means you were on the receiving end. NO ONE is a victim outside of an event. NO ONE is defined by their victimization at the hands of someone else. And unless the bad things are happening to you right now, the word "victim" is always past tense. You were a victim. You might still have emotional pain from what happened, but that event neither defines nor confines you.

And I'd like to see Anita go through some kind of twelve step recovery program. I think she'd melt.

But you know, I think that this predator/prey thing is a male/female thing. And that might just be kind of intentional on LKH's part. Only predators get to survive. Prey must be protected, guarded and nurtured, lest it become meat for a bad predator. Switch out the words and it's HELLO MISOGYNY.

As proven by Donovan insisting he has strong control over his inner swan and Anita dismissing this as a severe case of arrogance. It's confidence, sunshine, and it might look unfamiliar to you because for once it's not being backed by a gun.

Anita is skeptical when Donovan insists he won't be a burden. I am reminded of the terrible western I tried to read once. Only the role of Donovon was played by a pretty blond thing that wound up banging the hero halfway through the book.

And then Anita freaks out because Donovan smells like food.   And everyone freaks out because her self control is so bad she almost chows into Donovan. Who refuses to be freaked out because Anita is one of the good guys, and his confidence in her abilities is played off as stupidity on his part.

Let me say that again. Donovan's confidence in Anita's self-control and innate goodness is played off as stupidity on his part. 

Then it is explained that swanmanes are either cursed or born. Look, see? One sentence. It takes about five paragraphs for us to get through that part. It includes Anita losing her control again and Donovon showing off his feathery belly.

Then more nonsense about how Anita and Micah are perfectly mated. One true wub.

And then Anita says that maybe she and Richard could have worked out, if he could only have dumped his moral code and been okay with anything goes.

NO. Nope. Sorry. Given that in another dozen books or so you're going to be literally fucking a teenager, I think you need to go back to your room and start thinking about your life choices. Morality might be a...pain in the ass, but it keeps you from violating other people. Morality is not a bad thing.

And then it says that healthy packs form a group mind, and...you know, it's a little late to be springing this part of pack life TEN BOOKS INTO THE SERIES.

And then Anita asks questions about Gina, who is apparently one of Micah's leopards, and who is radiating "I am abused".

PEOPLE DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.

Anita then asks why Micah hasn't done something for Gina's unspecified victimization. And not as in therapy. As in killing whoever it is hurting her. Let me remind you guys, THIS WOMAN IS A SHAPE-SHIFTING LEOPARD. SHE COULD DO HER OWN KILLING IF SHE WANTED TO. SHE DOES NOT NEED A GUY TO DO WHAT SHE COULD DO ON HER OWN. Get her healthy, and she'll take care of it on her own.

And then Micah drops that something is after him and his pard.

...that's gonna be the other half of this book, isn't it? Anita rescues her rapist from the trouble he isn't man enough to handle. Please tell me I'm wrong. Please.

And then we get "Anita is a bad-ass" speech number 2,947. Given that she has done NOTHING I would call bad-ass, I call bullshit.

And then we find out that precious Anita is a victim of racial prejudice. She's half hispanic, and her nordic boyfriend's family, reffered to as "good little Aryans" here, didn't want to have mexican babies in the house.

I cannot touch this one with a ten foot pole, so I'm just gonna leave it there.

And then the chapter ends on a note. I don't know what to call it.

But guys? Kindle will mark frequently underlined parts of books. IDK, give us e-book readers a sense of community I guess? And all I can say is this:

Maybe they know what I know, that the true way to a man’s heart is six inches of metal between his ribs. Sometimes four inches will do the job, but to be really sure, I like to have six. Funny how phallic objects are always more useful the bigger they are. Anyone who tells you size doesn’t matter has been seeing too many small knives.

99 of you cannot read, and are melodramatic as fuck.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 20

So Anita finally reaches her house. She explains that she rented the house because it has few neighbors, and if she has a crisis she doesn't have to worry about shooting anybody. I did that in one sentence. It took LKH six. Plus a couple existential statements about trees.

Apparently Anita's house is full of people. So many people she has to park down the street from her own house-with-no-neighbors. My first reaction is to shout "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT" and go charging in. Hers is to sit in the car and look at it.

For a vampire hunter with a kill count longer than most rap sheets, Anita sure doesn't do much.

Anita also apparently never thought of Nathanial as a person. Why is she our heroine again? And just because she isn't terrible enough, we find out she always thought of Nathanial as a poor, abused child she had to take care of. This tells me two things:

1. If Anita were a man, everybody would be screaming "chauvinist" at her. I've met men with this attitude. They turn women into something for them to rescue, admire, and care for, and in the process ignore the woman's real wishes and ambitions. When I meet men like that I usually revive my "Women in the military" arguement because it is fun watching them go up in flames. This is called objectifying. Anita has turned Nathanial into an object she has to take care of, and not a person that she has to deal with. This is not okay.

2. Anita is a patronizing, egotistical waste of skin. But we already knew that part.

I know I keep getting hung up on little stuff, but writing is all about little stuff. And these little things are hints of extremely unhealthy and abusive behavior. They are inadvertant on the author's part (I hope) but they're FREAKING THERE. And turning a person into an object of value is the first step in turning them into an object of abuse. If "my wife" or "my husband" ever equals "my dog" or "my boots" in someone's attitude, they are the LAST person who should have a significant other. And then a couple paragraphs later...

My breast was aching, faintly, from his teeth marks. We’d shared a bed so often that it felt odd when he wasn’t beside me. But I still didn’t see him as a grown-up. Sad, but true.

Moving on.

Nathanial explains what Anita will need to do for the ardeur. Apparently Jean Claude explained it all to him, because poor Anita is too fragile to handle information that will keep her from hurting herself or other people via sexpire powers. I'm starting to miss sparkling vampmeyers and stalkering, because compared to Jean Claude's passive-aggressive bullshit Edward Cullen was a paragon of well-adjusted masculinity.

Also, fuck you Jean Claude.

Nathanial is also worried that Anita isn't going to sleep in the Circus of the Damned. A couple days ago I responded to a comment by mentioning that Jean Claude's behavior re: Anita so far has been textbook for cult leaders trying to brainwash someone. This HAS to be unintentional because it's really subtle, but if you're looking for it it kind of jumps out in neon. Anita should have been taken home last night. She should have been given a shower, a set of comfy PJs, time to fix herself something warm and comforting to drink, and allowed to sleep in an enviroment that was not so highly sexualized it could make a dead stick stand up and salute. The human psyche is VERY vunurable to suggestion in the time after emotional trauma. Anita is isolated from everyone she trusts (She loves JC, but she's never ever ever EVER trusted him. Nathanial is not a person to her, Jason is JC's boy toy) verbally abused, and then force-fed information while she's given positive experiances, such as they are. JC is repeating over and over, you can't control yourself and you need me. And the fact that HE isn't comfortably letting Anita go home is another sign of an abusive situation.

NOTHING  about this book is healthy, in other words.

After rehashing everything they talked about in the last chapter (Seriously, this book is almost as bad as City of Bones in the stand-around-and-talk-about-it department. It's not exposition IMHO if it's been mentioned NINTEEN OTHER TIMES in the previous chapter) Anita and Nathanial finally leave the car. She's met by two of the other wereleopards, a male named Zane and a girl named Cherry.

If this were any other book, I wouldn't have noticed. I do not think I can trust a female character in vampire/shapeshifter erotica who is named Cherry.

Also, apparently the way to greet your Nimir-Ra is to get on your knees and rub your face all over their hands like you're a for-real cat. This is the "Formal" greeting.

I used to do this when I pretended to be a cat...way back when I was six. These are grown-ass professionals. And they're doing it in Anita's front yard. When they're done with the hand rubbing, they then twine through Anita's legs like a hungry house cat.

These are not shape-shifted wereleopards. They look perfectly human. They're just down on all fours rubbing their whole bodies against Anita's legs.

And then we meet the pard's central trouble-maker, Elizabeth.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Laurel K. Hamilton's nuanced and sensative description of an antagonistic female:

It was Elizabeth. Her walk was always a cross between a strut and a glide, the ultimate hooker’s walk...Her hair fell in curls to her waist, a brunette so dark you would have called it black if you didn’t have my hair to compare it to. She was pretty in a pouting, lush sort of way, like some sort of tropical plant with thick, fleshy leaves and beautiful but deadly blossoms. She was wearing a skirt so short the tops of her black hose and the garters that held them up showed... The shirt was sheer enough that even by starlight you could see she wasn’t wearing a bra, and she, like me, was a woman who needed one.

 I seem to remember in one of these books--I think it was Kiss the Dead--that Anita showed up for an interrogation in a short-short-SHORT skirt, tiny blouse and five inch heels and said that it wasn't her fault, her live-in "stripper sweetie" (AKA Nathanial) had picked her clothes out for her. A LARGE portion of the cast in this series are sex workers. And I don't mean a realistic representation of sex workers. I mean LKH's idea of what sex workers are like. I do not remember if Elizabeth is one of them, as I suspect she's not going to be around much longer. My point? I do not think a respectful depection of a marginalized group is one of LKH's priorities.

Also...wow, Anita sure is a catty b--

Aw, come on! It fits!

Anyway, I don't think we've got Elizabeth truely established as an antagonis--

She fake-pouted at me. “Oh, did our little Nimir-Ra get her feelings hurt because I wouldn’t come and sleep naked beside her?”

Yep, there we go. Dresses like an oversexed clubbing idiot, check, is promiscuious (re: sleeping with the guy escorting her) check, and is nasty to Anita. Check, check, and check.

Anita threatens to kill Lizzie here for not watching over Nathanial like she was supposed to. Personally, I'd go with a severe maiming. Lizzie says it's no fun, Nathanial has "standards now." Anita says "Which means he won't fuck with you" and Elizabeth gets pissed. And frankly, I'm seeing no difference between these two characters at all. It's like when two women show up at the party wearing the same hat, only in this case it's personalities.

Also, the word "sweetie" is starting to not look like a word anymore. I had a boyfriend who called me sweetie. It didn't last long, and after a while the pet name just kind of grated. A sweetie is a kind of candy that you blow through in two seconds. It's not somebody you feel strongly attached to.

And then we are introduced to Gina. I don't know who this girl is, but I think she's a "friendly" female.

Women in this book seem to be sorting out into two groups. "Bad" girls, who are girly, sensual, attracted to Anita's men and not fans of Anita, and "good" girls, women who show up in steriotypically "man" clothes (ie a t-shirt) who don't go for girly frills, who are not attracted to Anita's men and who are fans of Anita. By this I mean that if you are an antagonist, you're in a mini-skirt and thigh-highs, and you're single. If you're help, you're packing heat and already married. It's almost like a virgin/whore complex. Let's call it "Matron/Whore", 'cause in this book virgin is pretty much a synonym for victim.

Anyway, Gina shows up in a t-shirt, is beautiful without makeup and strikes Anita as dangerous. Either she's gonna be a "good guy" or LKH is trying to be subtle.

And then we find out that one of the Leopards, Vivian, is dating Gregory's (the wereleopard being held by the werewolves) twin brother Stephen, who is a werewolf.

Werewhatever is supposed to be rare in this universe, right? So what are the odds that identical twin brothers would be struck by two different strains of lycanthropy? Was this established in another book? Because without a DAMN good plot I think we're approaching "bolt from the blue" odds here.

And then everybody starts questioning Nathanial about who he slept with, because apparently they made a new rule without Anita's imput that Nathanial has to run his potential sex partners by the whole group first. And Anita gets nervious about it, hides the fact that she's the one who slept with Nathanial, is forced by the group to confess, and is taunted by Caleb, who turns out to be one of Micah's leopards.

Sadly, Anita doesn't just shoot the bastard.

It keeps going. Apparently Elizabeth wants a real shape-shifter as a Nimir-Ra and is trying to force Anita out. Anita isn't standing for it, and...uh...

I looked at her, and I let the darkness fill my eyes that was my own version of a beast.

What the fuck does that even mean? Her eyes are her beast? What the hell?

And then Micah shows up, and the description of him is basically this:


Micah insists Anita show him the bite marks from having not-sex with Nathanial. She does. This scares the shit out of Elizabeth for some reason, and Lizzie starts repeating "You can't be Nimir-Ra for real. You can't. You can't."

And then Micah tells Anita that they are soul mates. Literally:

He held my face in his hands, making very serious eye contact. “We are a mated pair, Anita. It’s legend among the leopards that you can find your perfect mate, and from the first moment you have sex you’re bound, more than marriage, more than law. We will always crave each other. Our souls will always call to each other. Our beasts will always hunt together.”

This is still the dude that raped Anita yesterday. There are no words, boys and girls, that can ever make this okay.

Anita still has to deal with Elizabeth, though. For the record, I was kidding about maiming a a punishment. Anita, however, is not:

I shot her twice in the chest, while she was still telling me I wouldn’t shoot her. She went over backwards, spine bowing, hands scrabbling at the road, legs kicking while she tried to breathe. Everyone had cleared a big space around her. I stood over her and stared down while she tried to breathe, and her heart struggled to beat around the hole I’d put in it. “You keep saying I can’t kill you like a real Nimir-Ra by tearing your throat out, or gutting you. Maybe that’s going to change soon, but until then I can shoot you, and you’ll be just as dead.”

Our heroine, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry. There is nothing bad-ass about walking up to somebody and shooting them in cold blood. Mostly because the build up before this is too long and drawn out, and too devoid of emotional energy. Also, because Elizabeth is just fucking standing there.

Oh, but Anita murdering Elizabeth is alright, because Elizabeth has an unconsious death wish and really, really wants to die. She just doesn't know it. What. The. Fucking. Hell.

The only person in the group turned off by this display of sociopathy is Caleb, the bad guy. Everybody else is pleased as punch that Anita just filled another person full of holes. Lizzie heals up while they watch.

We get the required "Anita is a badass exchange" which we don't buy any more than we did the last one, the plot is over in a corner sobbing quietly to itself, and the chapter has ended. 

Next chapter: They're taking the leopards to the lupanar. Or, as my brain just put it



You're welcome.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 19

Okay. They had sex. So we're going to get to the point now, right?

I WAS NAKED again. It seemed to be a theme that night. The five of us lay in a heap, breathing hard, bodies tingling, with that rush that magic will leave behind sometimes— where you feel both tired and exhilarated at the same time— sort of like sex.

...you did just have sex. Sex does not equal penetration.

Also, Anita ate a big chunk out of Jason's neck. This was not in any way, shape or form sexy or okay. Anita promptly runs to the bathroom and throws it up, and then starts freaking out yet again.

I think I'd be more okay with the whole "WE HAVE NO LIMITS GIVE IN TO YOUR DESIRES" thing this book has if Anita weren't collapsing every single time her own boundaries get pushed. This is not empowering and sexy. It's frightening and predictable and boring. Even more boring is the litany of injuries Anita both received and inflicted during the orgy. Also presented in a shocky, not-at-all-okay manner that I do not find sexy.

But Jean Claude brings Anita her tooth brush, so everything is okay.

And then there is more speculation about whether or not Anita will become a Wereleopard (She won't) and why she's happy that Nathanial bit her, and what Bella Morte is doing and...yeah, there's a plot somewhere in  here, right? Can we let it back into the room, maybe?

Nope. Instead Jean Claude postulates that leopards might be sexpire Anita's "animal to call".

This is kind of one of LKH's contributions to vampire lore. Powerful vampires can summon a shapeshifter of a certain type. Jean Claude's animal-to-call are wolves, I believe. This would be kind of cool, but after this point Anita collects animals-to-call like the crazy cat lady down the street. If you're hoarding animals, you have a mental illness. I don't even want to start approaching what it means if you're hoarding people.

Also we find out that Asher's bite is orgasmic and Jean Claude's isn't.

...do they make dental Viagra?



And then Anita claims that what just happened wasn't sex, and Jean Claude stomps on her verbally until she agrees that yes it was.

Look, I agree with JC that it was sex, but for fuck's sake, the woman has endured more trauma in the last twenty four hours than most people do in a year, and she is NOT handling it very well. Dude. Back the fuck off. 

 And then we find out that a wolf, any wolf, can act in the magical vampire-necromancer-shapeshifter thing that got Anita into this mess in the first place. Thus justifying the absolute shit-storm of nonsense Richard is about to get showered with.

I do not view any of these characters as people. They are more like pistons in an engine to me. Things that make the story go vroom when supplied with enough crisis-fuel. My issue with this bullshit is we spent nine books getting attached to the Richard-Piston and now, because for whatever reason LKH might have, sand is getting dumped in the engine. I mean...does anybody here rememeber Charmed? Does anybody remember how they got rid of Pru when Shannen Doherty was a pain in the ass? They gave her a beautiful send-off, killed her in a blaze of glory, and then used that crisis to introduce a new character the viewers could accept.

I do not understand why LKH won't do the same thing, ever. Oh, I've heard her excuse (My characters are PEEEEEPOOOOLEEEEEEE) but I don't understand that mindset. They're not real. Major character death is a great crisis point to wrap a novel around. I just....I don't get it!

And then we find out that nobody has ever thrown Bella Morte out of their head the way Anita just did. I am sure this repetition will have some point in the future, but I really want to just skim the damn thing now.

And then Jean Claude tells her she needs to pick out a permanent sex partner so that when the ardeur rises she'll have someone to drain. And that it ought to be Nathanial.

Anita repeats that she can't have sex with Nathanial because he'll never say no and having sex with someone who consents to everything is rape. Hey, Robot Susan, how do you feel about that?

And then Anita freaks out more. And then we get an info-dump on Belle Morte's history. Because doing this before she tried to possess Anita would be bad. And Jean Claude apologizes for not warning Anita about Belle's head-jumping skills because he didn't think it would effect her.

You know, Edward Cullen was an asshole, but at least he told Bella some of what was happening before it bit her on the rear.

And then Jean Claude tells Anita that somewhere in the world there is a vampire who has a six-inch-wide, foot long penis. So basically this dude has half a floor tile for a dong.

Plot? Plot? Hello? Can you please make an appearance?

Now we have to establish rules about who Anita can sleep with. Jean Claude is basically like "One night stands only, nobody else you might love more than me." And just to cement his status as asshole of the year, he says this:

There are many things I would have told you today, if you had been in the mood for truth.

To translate this out of asshole speak, "if you weren't crying and pouting because you were just raped, posessed by a sex-power and worried because the man you love is going to kill one of your charges, I probably would have told you more about how to deal with the vampire sex power I've just cursed you with. But you're mad at me, so this is how I'm going to passive-aggressively punish you for thinking you're a person with feelings."

Fuck you, Jean Claude.

And then the book takes a left turn right into retrospectively hilarious:

“Please, don’t tell me that I’m going to turn into slut-girl.” 

He smiled. “I do not think you need to fear that. You are stronger willed than that.”

I promise I will not call Anita a slut. But given that she's throwing the S-word around after only having five lovers assigned her, it makes the later books kind of funny. I know there's way more than ten now, probably more than fifteen. If you have to use fingers AND toes to count your permanent lovers, you are not a slut, but you do probably have some kind of severe mental issue and probably need to go get therapy. If you can't have fifteen pet cats, you shouldn't have fifteen pet men.

And THEN we find out that Anita mind-raped a vampire several books back, and when she abandoned him Jean Claude locked him into a coffin topped with crosses. He's been locked in there for six months without food, water, or human contact. Anita freaks out, and Jean Claude just repeats that it was what he had to do to control him.

Because picking up a fucking phone six months ago was more work.

But he magnanimously decides to give her the vampire so she can nurse him back to health like a kitten.

Anita leaves the Circus of the Damned to go find where the plot went. On the way, she thinks about how she ignored most of her metaphysical lessons because witchcraft is too scary for her good-girl Christian ways.

Why is Christianity not equipped to deal with magic in this universe? Seriously? If it's real enough for Wiccans to heal wounded werewolves and zap undead baddies, it should be real enough for there to be some kind of Christian variation. And I'm trying to say this without exposing my bias.

The chapter ends with the strong implication that God wants Anita to choose Jean Claude and not Richard to be a permanent lover.

The plot has still not shown up.

Narcissus in Chains chapter 18

And once more, I have to get creative with my posting. Because all they do in this chapter is have sex.

I am the wrong audience for a sex scene, okay? I'm not offended by sex. I am bored by it. I think part of it is, well...I can't really relate to a sex scene. Maybe eventually I'll get it. As of now, though, I have NO IDEA why this would be stimulating for anybody.

And it doesn't help that we get sentences like this:

But the ardeur colored all of it, whether I was craving flesh, or blood, the sex was there in all of it.

LKH, I hate to break it to you, but not everybody has a vore fetish.

I think part of the appeal of vampire fiction, at least for me, is the usual "I have to fit in" sub-plot. A character has a natural instinct to kill, and must choose between surrender to their instincts and being a social outcast (and being murdered by the torch-wielding villagers) and supressing their instincts, suffering, and reaping the benefits of having a social life. And then you get the sub-sub-plot of finding that one person who understands the vampire well enough to indulge in some of their instincts, while still being safe.

Basically, it's a metaphore for sex and relationships. You don't do asocial shit, you get to have friends. You don't abuse potential love interests, eventually you get one that will stick around for a while.

That's why even Twilight had a little (VERY little) appeal to me, and of course I read P.N. Elrod's vampire mysteries like candy (First book: PI wakes up as a vampire, and must solve his own murder while his murderers--assuming vampires aren't real--continue to try to kill him. BEST. PLOT. EVER.) And why Anita Blake kept my interest for nine books. The subtext is about finding balance, I guess, and that's why we start with violent characters who slowly become un-violent, and peaceful characters who learn how to value swords, or a well-aimed left hook. It's not something you even need to be aware of as a writer, though if you ARE aware of it you can really fuck with the audience.

And I guess the reason this series became a turn off for me is...it stopped being about finding balance and became pure indulgance without consequence. Which is bullshit.

“Ma petite, ma petite, I would change this if I could, but I cannot. We must make the best of what is given us.”

Yeah. Fuck you, Jean Claude.

Let's go ALL the way back to Guilty Pleasures and remind ourselves what the dynamics were back then. Richard did not exist. You had Anita Blake, necromancer and vamp killer, Edward the sociopath, Anita's various female friends which included Ronnie, The...uh, stripper dude whose name I can't remember, which is sad because he was the best damn character in the book. And in contrast to this simi-normal collection of humanity you had this backdrop of lawlessness that was the vampire community, and the amoral law of the shapeshifters--their rules were more about dominance games than morality. Anita's primary influience on the preternatural community was morality. She replaced Nickolaus with Jean Claude, the truely fucked up Alpha/Lupa of the werewolves with Richard. In Obsidian Butterfly she killed a bad vampire-god-thing but left the "not killing people" vampire-goddess-thing alone. Whenever someone did something amoral and wrong Anita was the one who stepped in. In a way Anita was the Bran of this universe. You do not fuck with Mercy's Bran, and you did not fuck with Anita. She was good, she was fair, and if you crossed the line into hurting people, she stepped in and killed your ass. She provided restraints that made the preternatural safe. In return, the preternatural gave her danger and excitement. She was finding balance, the preternatural community was finding balance, and a good time was had by all.

And that all went out the window in this book.

I turned and caught sight of myself in the standing mirror in the corner. My eyes had filled with pale brown fire, not the darkness of my own eyes, but hers. “No,” I said, softly. I felt her thousands of miles away. Her pleasure at my terror rolled through my body, raised my beast and sent me falling onto the bed. My hands strained for something to hold on to, some help, but there was nothing to fight; it was power and it was inside me.

Oh, by the way? that "her" thing caught me just as out of the blue as it did you. The "her" is Bella Morte, Jean Claude's sire's sire. Or something like that. She's the source of the ardeur. And she's just possessed Anita's body, so all we're going to see from her POV is curtain flutters and a thin glaze of non-con.

So even when it's consensual, in that she's gonna agree to do it, it's not gonna be consensual.

How does this book lose balance?

This whole scene here, for example. It's not about finding control, it's about losing control. It's about running right up to the end of the cliff and falling off. There are no limits anymore. Nothing is safe, nothing is sacred. It's whatever the author wants it to be.

Hands slid along my skin, a mouth closed on my mouth, and I couldn’t see who was right above me, kissing me. I could feel the weight of their body, another set of hands, but I could see nothing but a shining amber light.

Sexy.

We've gotten this idea in pop culture that limits are a bad thing. We think we want to be out of control, but in reality we just want a couple of the restraints vaguely loostened so we have a little more wriggle room. Limits and Boundaries keep people safe, both physically and emotionally, and it is a good thing to find the hard rules (IE Rape and murder are both bad) and the ones that can be flexed into a pretzel for the enjoyment of all participants. Vampires are sexy because they are dangerous. Vampires become sexy and attractive when the audience believes they could sex them up and not be hurt in the process. Vampires with limits, in other words. They'll break the skin, but they won't drain you dry.

Yay. Anita has flung Belle Morte out of her body using the power of orgy sex. Thrilling.

What you get without limits is basically the entire Anita Blake series from this point on. Rape. Murder. Rape again. Respect that only exists because you have a bigger threat/gun/beast/penis/power than the other guy. The only limits are the ones you create for yourself. And the sad thing is the series tries so hard to pass this off as a good thing. It's almost like reading an Ayn Rand book. You know, the parts where they try to pass off taking care of orphans and the elderly as bad things.

Anita has now insulted a very powerful vampire. And the chapter has ended. I can't even hope that Belle Morte shows up and bashes skulls in, because everybody in this bed is in the latest book.

The most telling thing about it is, nobody suffers concequences for their actions. Micah becomes Anita's primary love interest from here on out. Jean Claude is the Most Powerful Vampire for quite a long time. Richard, who continues to try to impose limitations on his pack, gets thrown aside for an endless progression of were-felines. Anita has so many live-in-lovers you lose count. I am not saying it's bad to have sex with multiple partners, but when you have enough men in your harem to qualify as a hoarder if they were cats, you have ISSUES. And none of them, except maybe Richard, have anything near what I would call a good life. The books don't seem fun from here on out.

In other words, there's a reason why we don't eat nine billion bon-bons in one sitting, kids. Technicolor vomit isn't fun to clean up. Most social rules we have? Exist for the same reason. 

And now that THAT boring chapter is out of the way...on with the parade of awful!

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 17

I'm going to say something that will probably be controversial and easy to take out of context, but I'm going to say it anyway. And no, it's not that Anita is a--


--whatever. Bear with me for a couple seconds, okay?

The Gor novels are better than this series.


That is not a compliment.

The Gor books are terrible. They are a waste of space. Trees died so those books could exist, and that means everyone involved in their publication should be brought up on some kind of crime against the plant kingdom. But John Norman, sick and twisted as he was, did want to make humanity better. His basic thesis was so wrong it was a literal hate crime, but his goal, in his own sick, twisted way, wasn't all that different from, say, Ayn Rand. He identified that something was "wrong" with the world and tried to fix it through his writing. He should be shot into space without oxygen, but he's a better writer in every possible category than Laurell K. Hamilton.

Yes. I just said that. See, I read ahead last night, and I have never been so throughly pissed off at a chapter in a book as I am right now. I said yesterday this book has surpassed all our abilities to feel shock and horror. I was fucking wrong.

I really hope the words "fuck you" don't irritate anybody, because you're going to be hearing them a lot. In the back of my head I expected the section to be one big, long, rolling, nasty sex scene. It is not. It takes literally FOREVER for us to get to the sex. And what happens between now and the sex is just...

In fairness, this whole book would make Applebloom pukeSo lets just dive in, shall we?

When we last left our (gag) "heroes" they had all decided to feed Anita's lust demon by having JC feed on Jason and Asher feed on Nathanial and Anita feed on everybody, because apparently being bitten by vampires feels really good. I'm not criticizing that last little bit, by the way. That's legit lore. At least they're not sparkling. So now they all pile into bed, and a freaking miracle happens, boys and girls:

Somebody asks somebody else for their consent.

“Do you want Asher to feed from you?” 

“Oh, yes,” Nathaniel said,

Wow. Somebody in this book finally commits an act of human decency. I'm starting to get im--

My voice sounded as breathless as his when I said, “I’m not on birth control.”
 
Everyone froze. Jean-Claude peered over Jason’s shoulder. “What did you say, ma petite?”

 “I stopped taking the pill six months ago. I’ve only been on it for two weeks. No guarantee for another two to four weeks.”

 “You made love to the Nimir-Raj.”

 “He’s been fixed.” 

Asher said, “She did what?”

That's the rape scene he's referencing there. Now, to get it out of my system: 




There really aren't any words that aren't on macros that I can use right now. She did not make love to him, she did everything she could to get out of the situation, she didn't want it to happen in the first place, and now, boys and girls, the people she loves are shoving her face back into it at the drop of a hat. And the rape scene was still less than twenty-four hours ago.

Fuck you, Jean Claude.

So now we get an unbearably long scene in which everybody talks about how careless Anita is for not being on birth control and how awful it would be if there were surprise penis during this thing and she were to get preggers with an unwanted baby.

Because birth control is totally all about avoiding getting pregnant, and there is no other reason a woman would get on it, ever.

I can't speak for other women, but when I was on birth control I had no intention of having sex with anybody. I was on it because I read that it alleviated menstrual cramps. At the time, mine were fucking debilitating. There is pain, there is pain so big you cannot function, and then there is pain so big you pass out on the floor of a public bathroom. I've had infected teeth that haven't hurt that bad. And the pill worked.

And you know what else I "Love?" How it's totally the woman's job to take care of icky reproductive issues. What happened to keeping a rubber in your wallet, guys? 

And it's Anita who whines the whole time--and you have no idea how much I would like to not be using that word, but that's the only thing that fits--about how they said no sex and condoms just complicate things and she doesn't want her boys using condoms...and then the worst thing I have ever read commences. 

Jean Claude decides that everybody needs to wear condoms. And this is how he talks her into it.

“I think I can keep from fucking them.” I sounded angry, but it wasn’t anger that I felt, it was a seed of doubt. That hesitation made the anger worse. I always hid behind anger when I could.

 “And before this morning, you would have sworn even more strongly that you would not fuck a strange man you had just met.”

 The blush was so hot, it almost hurt. “I didn’t mean to.” That sounded weak even to me. “I couldn’t  .  .  .” 

“You could not control yourself, ma petite, I know. But if you lose control again, would you not rather be safe?”

And now they are using her rape to manipulate her. Oh god, she's so wonton. Oh, god, she loses control around people. Oh, god, we have to remind her of this to keep her horrible uncontrolable female sex drive from making our lives miserable with an unwanted pregnancy.

Let me go turn off Robot Cyborg Susan for a second. This part isn't going to be funny.

This bullshit is why I called Anita a bitch earlier. And while I'll admit that it's wrong to use a gendered word as shorthand for "terrible waste of human skin" I stand by the underlying meaning of what I said: If you do this, you are a terrible waste of human skin. You do not identify the weakest point in someone's psyche and then use it to manipulate the other person and get what you want. It's like Jean Claude decided to tickle Anita's third degree burns to get her to lie down and be a sport about things. This shit is not okay. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not three million years from now. Not ever. If you are aware that someone else has a deep emotional wound, like from being cheated on OR BEING RAPED LESS THAN A DAY AGO, you do not use that wound as leverage to get what you want out of the other person.

And even if it's not rape--it totally is, but let's play devil's advocate here--it's still fucking wrong. She's upset that she made a mistake with a stranger, she's doubting herself, she's very fucked up inside. YOU DON'T USE SOMEONE ELSE'S PAIN AGAINST THEM. EVER.

In short, Fuck you, Jean Claude. Fuck you, Micah, and FUCK YOU Laurell K. Hamilton for passing this psychological fuckery off as something morally acceptable in ANY relationship.

Okay. Turning Susan back on.

Jean Claude does it again less than two paragraphs later. So he's brought up her lack of control twice, her "sex with a stranger" twice, AND SHE WAS FUCKING RAPED WHEN IT HAPPENED.

How could no one see what was wrong with this?

Finally, though, Anita agrees with everything Jean Claude said, because she can't argue with him.

 The problem with battling a manipulator is that they are convincing. They know how to twist your words and actions against you in ways you cannot easily fight. They're wrong, they know they're wrong, YOU know they're wrong, but they know how to make it look like they're right, and with a manipulator, the appearance is the only thing that matters. The result of arguing with a manipulator is usually you either storming off, voiceless and angry, or you agreeing even though every cell in your body is screaming they're wrong, simply because you can't think your way out of what they just said.  

You cannot argue with a manipulator, kids. You can only disengage, and then distance yourself from them. And if you have to confront them, have witnesses. 

Now can we just have disgusting five-way sex and get this scene over with?

No, we can't. Because we have to make this even worse. Anita says "Well, I can go to the lupanar anyway," And Jean Claude replies with the following:

He tried not to meet my gaze. His shields were back in place, and I couldn’t tell what he was feeling. “You would be attracted to all the men. You would  .  .  . I cannot guarantee what you would do, ma petite, or who you would do it with.”

There really aren't words anymore. Not only is Jean Claude slut-shaming, he's slut-shaming a rape victim.

But CW! I hear you saying. He might not know that it's a rape! LKH intended the rape scene to be loving intercourse. She herself never considered it to be a rape scene. How do we know that unfair manipulation and slut shaming are what Jean Claude is really doing? How do we know CW isn't interpreting this the wrong way?

Because this happens two paragraphs later:

“Let me spare you such degradation, ma petite. You are not as I was. You have never given yourself freely. I fear what you would do, or think of yourself, if you did these things. I do not think your sense of yourself would survive intact.”

In other words, my dear blog-readers,

HE FUCKING KNOWS SHE WAS RAPED.
  He knows, and so does LKH. It's right there in the text. The bolded part.

Jean Claude then goes on about how he was able to learn how to feed the ardeur from a distance, but it took him five years and he had to learn control all on his lonesome, and Anita is getting more and more horrified as she realizes she's going to have to live with uncontrollable lust for lust for the rest of her life (and no, that's not a typo) and then Jean Claude does it again: 

“If you had withstood the Nimir-Raj’s advances, then I would say that your strength of will might conquer it.

She was raped, you undead piece of shit. She did resist his advances. She just didn't try to claw his eyes out.

And then Jean Claude tells her that if she doesn't feed the ardeur, she'll start literally eating her friends.

And then Anita says "fine, but everybody needs to be wearing pants. I'll go get my underwear."

And then Jean Claude says "yes, but you might order them to take it all off, because you'll lose control of your mouth, too."

The chapter ends with Anita thinking that maybe just throwing in the towel and becoming a psychopath isn't such a bad idea after all.

This chapter was the worst part of the book that I've read...so far. And I know it will probably get worse. I just don't want to think about what "worse" might mean for now. I'm going to go play a video game for an hour, and then paint until I have to go to work. Not noble, but shiny pretty video games should get the taste out of my mouth.

Artwork Ho!

And the cover art is begun!

I hate painting men. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate painting men?

I will be posting quite a few WIPs a I progress. Hopefully this one will look just as cool as the last one.

Which is free right now. Do you have a copy? Why don't you have a copy.

Go get a copy.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 16

Free book today, guys. If you haven't read it yet, go get a copy. Go. Go! It's free!


If there is one thing that squicks me out hard, it is people that I don't know knowing me.

Look, I know that's a weird thing to say given that I run a blog and have books and continually spew my guts everywhere, but that's 'cause this place? Is my place to be honest about shit. I'm not going to put up a front and pretend to be anything but what I am: A screwed up, exposed-as-slightly-mysogynistic, more than a little crazy person who really likes over analyzing things. But IRL I don't get to do that. IRL I have to be fucking perfect. How so?

I have been publishing my own books for almost six months. I have told my parents. I have told a few very close friends who do not work with me, and you can count those on one hand. I have not told my boss, or anyone else who works for her, because if I did tell my boss, she would be fake pleased for me, and my life at work would be a living hell until she forgot about it, which would take about three weeks. And my life is my work. From three in the afternoon until nine o'clock at night, I am not me. I am a waitress who has to obsess over the corners in the room, the finger prints on the glasses, the quality of the food, the volume of the music, and the number of people in the restaurant. And if my boss wants me to come in at eleven AM? I come in at eleven AM.

So when a customer 1. asks for my name and 2. uses it, I get creeped the fuck out. If you are a regular, that's fine. I know your name too, and I can probably predict what you're going to order. But if I have never met you before, I don't want you calling me by name. I want you to order your food, order your drinks, be happy and leave a tip. Don't ask me where I went to college, because then I'll have to explain why I've never gone and the real reason has never flown anywhere. I have to be with you, I have to wait on you, I have to watch your table like a hawk and make sure every tiny piece of paper gets cleaned up and that your water never runs dry. I am in here, I have no life. My name is the only thing I've got that's mine in that place, and I do NOT want you to use it if I don't know you. At best, it feels like you're trying to own me as me, and not just me as waitress. At worst, it feels like you're flirting with me, and that makes me VERY uncomfortable. Especially when you are male and my father's age.

Why do I bring this up? Because Anita casually violates the thoughts and emotions of both Jason and Nathanial in the first fucking paragraph and acts like it's no big deal.

If you don't understand why this is wrong, go read this book. I'll wait (or if you've got a better book worth recommending, I'll post it here too)

You should not be casual about peeking into another person's head. You should definitely not feel casual about doing it without their permission.

Asher shows up. He notices Nathanial bleeding on the bed from Anita's numerous "love" bites. He asks if he can taste Nathanial, only he uses the phrase pomme de sang, or apple of blood, thus turning Nathanial from a person into an object. Anita asks Nathanial if it is alright for Asher to lick his wounds. Nathanial says yes.

Boys and girls, the fucked-up-ed-ness just never stops. 

...you know, I just said that faceously. I honestly expected to get further into the book before I found something worse. I just found something worse:

It made me wonder. I curled closer to Nathaniel’s body, one leg entwining over his. I didn’t ask permission, because he was mine, and I knew him well enough to know he would not only not mind, but he would welcome it.  

Okay, guys and gals. This might come as a shock to you, but Marital rape is a thing. It is a thing that happens more often than anybody is willing to talk about. And the mindset that allows for that shit? Is the bolded part right there.

Newsflash, Anita: You cannot own people. People are not posessions. He is NOT yours. Have the fucking decency to ask him what he'd like for you to do. Yes. He will probably say yes. But you only have to guess wrong one time.

The book also raises the idea of Anita literally eating Nathanial one bite at a time. And not in the cool oral sex way. In the fava-beans-and-chianti sort of way.


I also want to bring up something really disturbing: Anita is not having sexy feelings on her own. Each time she touches a person, it isn't Anita wanting to have sex with them. It's the arduer, this magical fount of vampiric sex that Jean Claude gave her during their "marriage of the marks" several chapters back. Anita is literally not in control of her actions right now. Her sex drive is.

This is disturbing. This loops all the way past disturbing, through pathetic, into anger-producing, and out into WTF should I even think territory.

I also want to point out that Jean Claude knew all of this, and he left her alone in a room with two men, one of whom has no healthy boundaries whatsoever, while he went to bed. Knowing full damn well that she was going to "feed" on them, and that there was a good chance she would kill Nathanial in the process.

Nobody in this story is healthy. Nobody in the main cast is anywhere close to being a good person.

Jean Claude gets into bed, too. Someone once told me that an orgy is legally defined as a locked door and five people who have no shoes. Boys and girls, I think we are there.

Then Asher has an attack of self confidence, and Anita steals Jean Claude's memories of Asher and realizes how sad Asher's life has been, and begs Asher to stay.

Asher gets pissed off because Jean Claude had "no right to share those memories with her." Wait, there's somebody with actual healthy boundaries in this book? Who gets angry when those boundaries are violated without their permission?

Anita decides that Asher needs to be comforted. With her sex.

You know, one thing I really hate is when people pin you down and go all "you can tell me anything" at you when you feel mildly upset, and then push, and push, and push, and push, until you finally start sobbing, not because you actually feel upset but because you know that once you calm back down, the other person will leave you alone again. That's kind of what we're seeing here. Asher wants to go because the bedroom fun has triggered unpleasant memories and he can't quite handle it. Don't chase him down and force him to be happy just because YOU can't stand his pain.

But she does push the issue, and since this is the Anitaverse, the offering of sex makes everything alright.

Anita then discusses what feeding the ardeur entails. It's basically sex. Anywhere, anytime, all the places everytime. She asks Jean Claude how he handles it, and he says when he has no better substitute, he "feeds" on sex from a distance via his strip clubs. It's still icky, but it sounds better than draining your sex partner of...uh...whatever it is you drain when you feed on sex. Anyway, Anita asks to learn how to do that. Jean Claude says no, you have to have real sex now, I'll teach you how not to treat your loved ones like food later.

Jean Claude is not a good person.

Anita realizes that if she goes to the lupanar feeling like this she will have sex with Richard right there on the floor, so she gets back into the bed. And everything that passes is described in idealized detail, and...uh, yeah.

You know what one of my biggest problems with this book is? Everybody has long hair. I have long hair, mid-back leingth. It is very pretty, which is why I haven't cut it, and it is also easy to restrain, ditto. But you know what happens when I let it long and loose?

I break a hairbrush trying to detangle it.

This is a bed full of people whose hair is waist leingth or longer. I think in Nathanial's case it goes down to his ankles. Nobody talks about stepping on hair, or tangling hair, or getting hair caught in unmentionable places. Hell, I pull my hair in my sleep sometimes, and that's just me in bed by myself. Long luxurious hair is great, but it's also why God invented pony-tail holders, and why folk with long hair keep one or nine of them beside the bed.

There is a lot of flirting, a lot of "Can Asher even have sex?" and an awful, awful lot of "poor injuried ruined man, how much not-pity-at-all we have for thee, let us cure thy pain with girl sex."

I'm going to let my collegue speak for me, here:

 The chapter ends. Unfortunately, the sex will continue well into the next chapter. And I don't think it will get any better.

PLANET BOB--update and info

So here's where we stand on Planet Bob, boys and girls.

I'm about halfway done with the final edit. This gives me the usual week to get the artwork done. In other words, we're on track for the first.

It's gonna be 2.99. No spoilers, but, fair warning, folks? No HEA just yet. That will happen, I promise. I just don't want anybody getting their hopes up. I like it. A lot.

The preview is over here.

Finally...


 Starbleached is free, all day today. Go get copies and be ready to buy Planet Bob.

Narcissus in Chains--chapter 15

Business first:

Starbleached will be free on Amazon all day tomorrow. Snag a copy and be ready for the sequel, Planet Bob, coming out January 1st.
In other words, ladies and gents:

Back to our regularly scheduled bi--

...that one was directed at me. You can't--

Fine. FINE! Sheesh, give a robot authority figure an inch, they take a mile. So anyway, back to this terrible, terrible book.

Anita is awakened from spooning in bed with two formerly minor characters by Rafael, the wererat king. This is apparently something like the werewolf Alpha. Because rats have that.

Somebody pointed out to me the other day, correctly, that wolves don't actually have this pack system. That info was due to a study carried out on a large number of wolves in a small, enclosed area. Wolf packs are actually family groups. Mom. Dad. Kids. There are no alphas. There are no omegas. The "pack" is an artifically created construct due to too many beings in too small an area. It's the wolf version of Universe 25 (Google it. Humanity is doomed)

In short...WHY DO OTHER THINGS THAT NEVER WERE PACK CREATURES HAVE A PACK? Leopards are loners. Lions have a pride, I'd buy that. Tigers...oh god, thank God there are no weretigers in this book. That happens in another book. The fuckery in those books apparently outweigh this one.

So it turns out Anita must go rescue the other Wereleopard tonight. I do not remember this being mentioned, but it's better than screwing around until the full moon, which...is not established as being X number of days away. Maybe it is tonight.

Anyway, Rafael the were-rat king jumps through political hoops until he agrees to be Anita's backup when she rescues the wereleopard. Rafael has a treaty with Richard, the pack assumes the treaty is with all of them, and Rafael wants to send the message that he only has a treaty with Richard. Meaning if Richard is killed, the wererats go bye bye.

This was the fun part of the Anita Blake series, IMHO. And this would be more interesting if the wererats had EVER had to come to the rescue of the werewolves or vice versa. I'm kind of realizing this as I type, but there are never any conflicts with outside groups in this. Which might be part of the problem with the internal politics. No outside threat=everybody inside the group gets grabby. The only group that has to deal with outsiders on a regular basis are the vampires, and the vamps are the least fractionalized group in St. Louis.

What I'm saying is...Anita Blake? Needs a war. Stat. Conflict makes for interesting stories. Were-whatevers coming in force against St. Louis? That would make for a damn interesting story. Especially if the author used it to teach Anita that she doesn't need violent bravado to be accepted as a cop and a warrior, that other people's bounderies have value, and that her first answer to everything needn't be a gun.

Of course, this is Anita Blake and LKH we're talking about. That will never happen.

In fact, I've just realized what I find so obnoxious about this series. You know how the end of Breaking Dawn was everyone standing around talking? When there was all this lovely cannon fodder Stephenie Meyer had taken time to get you sort of attached to? AND THERE WAS NO CLIMAX? Yeah, the entire Anita Blake series is kind of like that, but everything after Obsidian Butterfly is nothing but that, peppered with sex scenes that are about as sexually stimulating as a weed whacker.

And then Anita and Rafael decide to keep this a secret from Richard because:

“Sometimes you have to keep things from Richard to help him.”

NO 

I've been very lucky in relationships. I've never been directly involved with an abuser or a control freak. I've watched it happen with my nearest and dearest, though, and that statement right there? Is textbook.

No. It is not okay to keep secrets from your significant other "to help them". You can hide birthday parties. You can hide Christmas presents. You can hide something that you want to reveal later because it will make them happy. But you don't hide relationship breakers. You don't hide the hole you've dug financially, or the way you're being treated at work, or the fact that you've been fired. If you are in a relationship where you have to hide big, major, huge things from your SO because you're afraid of how they'll react? Either you're vastly underestimating them as people, or they are horrible, dangerous human beings and you need to leave.


Anita isn't proposing they hide Richard's surprise party from him. She's about to make a move that will potentially put his life in danger. She's going in to his political adversaries with one of his few major allies at her side, not his. Richard will have to spin it so that it is clear the rats are with him and not the pack. The wolves might react badly. The whole situation might go up in flames if all three of them do not have a plan in place for spin. Hell, if Richard knew about it ahead of time he could use this as leverage for more control over the pack.

Every time Anita makes a political call, all I can hear is GlaDOS: YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON. IT SAYS SO. RIGHT HERE. A HORRIBLE PERSON. WE WEREN'T EVEN TESTING FOR THAT.

And then Anita hangs up the phone, snuggles down under the covers and realizes *gasp* there are naked men here! And then...*reads ahead*

Sorry. That's my automatic reaction to any A/B sex scene now.

So Anita sees a mostly naked Nathanial and the "ardeur" kicks in. She wants to sex up Nathanial. Jason tells her that Jean Claude stuck him in the room so that Anita wouldn't "feed" off Nathanial, so suddenly she wants to sex up Jason. Nathanial snuggles her, the ardeur gives her some magical insight into their hearts, about how "pure" they are, and to her credit she tells both of them to leave. Nathanial says he doesn't want to go, so I guess it's all okay when Anita picks him up by his hair.

And then the book blows my mind.

If someone can’t tell you no, it’s rape, or something like it.

If someone can’t tell you no, it’s rape, or something like it.

If someone can’t tell you no, it’s rape, or something like it.

To me (and I know I'm the last person who should talk about this) the worst part of any sexual assault is accepting said assault as your fault. It's your fault that the person did whatever it was to you because you were out late. It's your fault that you were hurt because you were dressed like that. It's your fault, because you did something nice that they interpreted as being a come on. None of this is true, but your brain is so desperate to regain some kind of control over your body and your life that you take on responsibility for what you cannot and will never be responsible for: The reactions of others.

It's a very hard habit to break.

Anita was raped twice, less than twenty  four hours ago. Once by Jean Claude, and once by Micah. She took on responsibility for both rapes when they were not her fault. She allowed one of her rapists to reenforce this bullshit on the drive home. And now she is redefining rape as "taking advantage of someone so willing, they'll never tell you no."

Great. So what about the five or six times you told Micah no? The two times you made it clear you wanted to leave? The way you hugged the door until he dragged you out into the shower? Why is what you want to do to Nathanial wrong, but what actually happened to you perfectly right?

I'm not angry at Anita here, because Anita is not a real person. Anita does, thinks and says whatever her author wants her to. I am angry, because I went through this bullshit. I got fed the wrong information by someone who meant very well, and I called it "the incident" and never talked about it again, until I mentioned it to a friend in a discussion on triggers, and he responded with "You were raped". And then repeated it until I understood, and that was when I really began to start to heal. I am angry because somebody dealing with a rape of their own would be easily influenced by this book. "Oh, it's not rape because Anita had an orgasm. I had an orgasm, ergo I was not raped either, and I'm being silly for pressing charges against that very nice man who forced me to have an orgasm against my will. Therapy is just a waste of my time." When you're casting around for control over your life due to some asshole's actions, you'll grab any twig that will give you the illusion you're not about to fall. LKH has provided rape victims with a big, dangerous, termite riddled branch.

Ugh, I just need to move on.

 Hands on me, holding me down. I opened my eyes to find Nathaniel and Jason holding me down. They each had a hand on one wrist and one leg. They could bench press small elephants, but as my body writhed against the bed, I raised them up, made them struggle to hold me. 

“Anita, you’re hurting yourself,” Jason said.

 I looked down my body and found bloody scratches on my arms and legs. I had to have done it, but I didn’t remember doing it. The sight of those bloody scratches calmed me, made me lie still under their hands.

Hey. LKH wrote about Self Injury! That's my own special brand of crazy! Wow! For those of you who don't know, I have issues with S/I. I've managed to go a year without an episode, but the temptation can be STRONG. I'm getting my chosen cutting place tattooed as both a celebration and a deterrent. I am...very surprised to find this here. LKH even got the stuff before an "episode" right too. The swirling blackness, the absolute desire to do anything to get relief. I am sure that LKH will now have the other characters react in a gentle and understa--

“I’m going to get something to tie you down with just until Jean-Claude rises,” Jason said.

Things you should never do to a person with S/I issues:

-inspections
-restraints
-confrontations
-going through their room to find the S/Iers implement of choice.
-tie them down because you think they have gone crazy.

Episodes occur during transitory states of strong emotion that, for one reason or another, the cutter can't vent in a safe manner. The first episode--ie, this one--is usually bad. I remember actually blacking out for a couple seconds immediately prior to the first time I cut. Once you've broken that barrier and drawn blood, it gets frightfully easy to justify damaging yourself. People do not harm themselves because they have gone crazy. People harm themselves because they feel cornered by their emotions and don't know where else to go. And if a cutter feels cornered by you? They will never go to you for help. Ever.

The way to react to an episode of self-injury is to, very calmly, get the person to talk about why they did it, and when they're done crying on your shoulder, ask them if they would like to get help. All the inspections and restraints in the universe won't do half as much for a cutter as a solid, trustworthy shoulder to cry on will.

And of course, Jason has to go get ropes to tie her down with, leaving Nathan straddling her body so he can hold onto her wrists.

Boys and girls, this was self injury as a convoluted excuse to force two major characters to have sex. Which they do in excruciating detail.

And then Jean Claude wakes up, and mercifully, the chapter ends.

I am not touching this book again until tomorrow.

State of the CW

So. Today was a cluster fuck, wasn't it?

Not just me getting called on my shit, of course. I have to assume I deserved that. In fact, I have to assume that I am a terrible, horrible human being without hope of redemption to deserve what's happened in the last twenty four hours. Otherwise, it's the other people who are the terrible people. And I won't accept that. The only person whose behavior I can change is me. If I am not responsible for the way I am treated by other people, then I have no control over my life whatsoever.

And I refuse to accept that.

So. I am a terrible person. Well, I knew I was a terrible writer already, so it's not that big a jump to make. It's sad. It hurts. It's going to take a while for me to really internalize what a horrible human being I am. But I will do it. Because that, my friends, is the first step to becoming a better human being. Accepting my failings.

I used the word Bitch, and applied it to someone who wasn't me.

I am not going to give up that word, loyal blog readers. I am  a bitch. I like being  a bitch. I actively enjoy being a foul-mouthed, more than slightly offensive person. But I am going to make you a promise. I will stop applying that word to other people.

In short. I get to be a bitch, but you don't get to be. Not ever. It's my word, boys and girls. It's something that I own. It might be a baggage ridden garbage word to you, but to me, it is a declaration of a type of personhood. I am a bitch. I do not take any shit from you, or from anyone else. I am a terrible person. I will accept this, and endevor to change those parts of me that might damage other people, but my core, my loyal blog readers, my core will remain the same. In short:

However, it is hard for me to be funny without being offensive. And that is important. Because this is a humor based blog. Actually, this is a blog intended to promote my books, but that hasn't worked for the last few weeks anyway. So this is a humor based blog. And it is hard for me to avoid those heavily charged, ugly trigger words, because those words are a short-hand for what I really mean.

In a way, that's why those words are wrong. I use the word "hooker" and what I really mean is "woman who is dressed to advertise her sexuality as easily avaliable". This is an offensive word to sex workers. I promise not to use it anymore. I can't promise to understand why, but then I'm a bitch. I'm a horrible human being. You can't expect an overnight change all at once.

Bitch, though, that's a harder one. In retrospect, it is short hand for "horrible waste of human skin who also has a vagina." And that's why that word is wrong. Except in my case, because I've already established that I'm a bitch. Anyway, it isn't right to use a gendered word as short hand for "horrible waste of human skin". If a person is a waste of their basic building blocks, and if you say these people do not exist I will slap you, I have met them in person, then we should state what they are: A traitor to their very DNA. The reason why we began handing out Darwin Awards. The last person on earth who should procreate.

When applied to fiction, this indicates a morally offensive character. A creation that exists only as a mouthpiece for the author's own objectionable views. In Anita Blake's case, a character that says that rape is okay, as long as the rapee orgasms afterwards. Apparently, by calling her a bitch for defending her own rapist against someone genuinely concerned for her wellfare, I distracted everybody from the true point: That this behavior is unhealthy and not anywhere near safe for the female involved.

And this is why I will not use that word anymore. Except when applied to me. Because I am a bitch.

I will not use that word anymore because it distracts people from my true point. I will not use this word anymore because it confuses the issue. I don't understand the baggage attached to it, and until I do get it, which will be a while (given that I'm a bitch) I'll ignore it. It's more important to me to get the point of whatever I'm saying across than it is to stand up for free speech or what-the-fuck ever.

But it will be hard to give up the word. I like it. It's effective shorthand. When used properly, it's very funny. So I am enlisting help.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Robot Cyborg Susan B. Anthony. She has agreed to correct me every time I start using trigger words on the blog. She'll do it this way:

It'll be effective. I will learn not to use bad words. And most importantly, I will still be funny.

However, Robot Cyborg Susan B. Anthony is from the eighteen hundreds. She does not know all the nasty words that we are not supposed to use these days. I think I know most of them, but obviously I do not know all of them. So please. Correct me when I fuck up, and I will add the words that shall not be used again, ever, to Robot Cyborg Susan B. Anthony's programming. And I learn how not to trigger other people into conniptions, like what happened today.

Remember this. It is the plan.