Danse Macabre, Chapter One
Jun. 5th, 2013 05:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lliiraCN: Anita Blake book, pregnancy, PDA, birth control
We start with Anita sitting at the kitchen table talking with a friend.
She makes the claim that “most unmarried but sexually active women” fear a missed period “most of all” (1). Bollocks. First, all married women are not overjoyed when they miss their periods. Marriage != yay pregnancy! Second, unmarried, sexually active women tend to fear things other than missed periods most. Imo, rape is often first on that list, then things related to their specific circumstances. Yes, pregnancy is usually on there, but the worst fear? No. Some are even trying to get pregnant.
For some reason, LKH introduces us to Anita's best female friend thusly: “Veronica (Ronnie) Sims.” Spoiler: Ronnie's only in this book in the first couple chapters. Why do we need to know her given name is Veronica? Anyway, Ronnie's a private detective in this world of vampires, werewolves, and magic. However, she doesn't act very smart. She proceeds to tell Anita that she shouldn't be worried about being two weeks (!) late.
Being two weeks late is a very big concern. Also, is Anita on hormonal birth control? The way this conversation goes, it doesn't sound like Anita's on hormonal birth control. She talks about always having had a very regular period as if it's just the way her body is.
There's a segue about how violent Anita's life is, and how she can't share all the nasty stuff she does and sees as a federal marshal with any of her female friends as they are not manly enough to hear about it. Ronnie's a private detective. I think she can handle it. Then Anita says something self-absorbed and selfish (get used to this): “I was just glad we'd made up a long-standing grumpiness in time to have her here for this particular disaster.” She's glad she and Ronnie made up so that Ronnie may be of use to her.
For this next bit, make sure you are surrounded by soft things. Put a pillow on your desk, if necessary. I ended up whapping myself with the book, or rather whapping the book with my head. “I was able to talk about the bad parts of my cases with some of the men in my life, but I couldn't have shared the missed period with any of them. It concerned one of them entirely too much.” (Emphasis mine.) Anita is having sex with multiple men – fine, not a problem. Anita cannot talk about possibly being pregnant with the person who possibly got her pregnant: NOT FINE. THIS IS A PROBLEM.
Anita talks about Ronnie's husband and boyfriend and neither of them matter to the book so I'll spare you. There is an interesting tidbit in which we learn that lycanthropes are discriminated against, but I think LKH could have revealed this in a better way than in a conversation about a character who isn't in this book. Ronnie continues to claim missing a period for two weeks isn't a big deal, and reading this whole conversation is like sandpapering my brain. I've had these conversations. This is not how they go. Finally, at the end of page two, Ronnie says what should have been the first thing she said: “Shit.” Then, on page three, “You need a pregnancy test.”
But we're in weirdsville again when, instead of offering to go to the store with or for her friend for the test right now, this second, Ronnie asks, “Can't you make a quick stop on the way to Jean-Claude's little tete-a-tete tonight?” And I suddenly realize that LKH is using this conversation as an opportunity to info-dump. It's been info-dump after info-dump after info-dump. This makes the conversation stilted and strange. These characters feel like puppets, and I can see both the strings and the puppeteer.
After smacking myself with a book, I needed a laugh, so I am grateful LKH provides one on page three. “Jean-Claude, Master Vampire of the City of St. Louis [ooh, he sounds important and scary, dangerous, not just a vampire but a Master Vampire], and my sweetie...”
I will try to stop giggling enough to write. I'm not an expert on vampires, but I never thought of them as twee before. Any menace that should be implicit in Jean-Claude is dead. His dignity and any possible sexiness have died with it. R.I.P. Master Vampire of the City. You were murdered by cutesiepoo.
So Anita's sweetie, Jean-Claude, is “throwing one of the biggest bashes of the year to welcome to town the first ever mostly-vampire dance company.” Vampires have been “out” in this world forever, and this is the first ever dance company they've had? Doubt it. LKH then attempts to ape Buffy by having Anita tell us, “it was like a Big Deal, and I, as his main squeeze, had to be on his arm, smiling and dressed up.”
Through more info-dumping poorly disguised as conversation, we learn that Anita lives with Micah and Nathaniel, both of whom are handsome. We also learn that Anita's hair is almost waist-length, because Micah will cut his if he cuts hers as he prefers to wear his hair short. But she wants his hair long. So they both have long hair because neither of them cares about the comfort of the other, just the (supposed) sexiness quotient. By the way, and I say this from experience: hair that long is a massive pain when you're having sex. It gets pulled all the time, and not in a sexy way. I would guess it would be even more of a pain as a vampire executioner/necromancer/federal marshal, like Anita supposedly is. Wouldn't she get all kinds of... gook in it? Especially since she apparently wears it down.
Anita and Ronnie proceed to have the abortion non-debate no one ever wanted to see. It sounds like LKH being ignorant on a soapbox, and is yet another opportunity for her to info-dump AGAIN. Anita used to be Catholic, but isn't any longer because the Pope excommunicated all zombie-raisers, though apparently raising the dead is something necromancers can't help doing. If not given an outlet to do it on purpose, they'll go around doing it by accident. That's actually pretty interesting. Anita says she'd accidentally raised a suicidal teacher in college, and I'd like to read that. Not written by LKH, though. Written by the excellent Nina Kiriki Hoffman, who explored a somewhat similar idea in A Fistful of Sky.
On page 5, Ronnie and Anita start having an argument because Ronnie doesn't like vampires and doesn't understand why Anita wants to live with two men with whom she is sexually involved. Basically, Ronnie is made to look stupid and we're supposed to side with Anita. This is when we learn that Ronnie is tall, slender, leggy, and blond. There should be a musical sting here to indicate the reveal that Ronnie is evil, because of course she's evil: she's tall, slender, leggy, and blond. (Btw, are blonde women ever short and plump in the LKH-verse? Are brunettes ever slender and tall? I'm a tallish, not-slender brunette with long legs, so does that make me ½ evil, or does my brunette-ness and not-slenderness cancel out my tallness and long legs?)
So Ronnie and Anita are sniping at each other, mostly because Anita wants to put off the pregnancy test until Monday, which is four days away. I agree with Ronnie in this argument. Ronnie tells Anita to start telling her lovers to use condoms (!!!). Anita has been having sex with a googleplex of men and apparently never using condoms, and I think she is not on birth control, and she's going to wait until her period is two weeks and four days late to take a pregnancy test, and right now if Ronnie shook Anita so hard her teeth chattered, I'd start a Ronnie fan club.
Honestly though, this whole conversation just got very confusing. Ronnie says, “what are you going to tell the boys about this sudden need for condoms?” (6). This sounds like Anita is going to stop taking the pill because she might be pregnant and doesn't want to hurt the possible fetus, but just in case she's not pregnant, she'll want her “boys” to use condoms. But I'm making that up to try to make some sort of sense of this, because it hasn't been mentioned in the book. Maybe the pregnancy scare makes Anita want to use condoms, or is an opportunity to get Ronnie to yell at Anita for not using condoms?
We learn old vampires usually aren't fertile, so if Anita's pregnant, it's not one of the three vampires she regularly fucks. Probably. Micah had a vasectomy (Anita calls it “fixed” as if he's actually a cat and not a human wereleopard), so that leaves Nathaniel, who is a 20-year old stripper. Ronnie is weirded out by this, and so am I, because Ronnie doesn't know the half of it. Ronnie basically blows up; she's angry at JC for making Anita have to feed off sex. I would be too. We are meant to believe Ronnie's in the wrong here, for JC doing this to Anita. And then Ronnie says she's jealous Anita has all these men, and Ronnie's about to commit to one forever. She's had a lot of lovers and doesn't really want to give that up.
Surround yourself with fluffiness again, because this has to be seen to be believed.
I wasn't sure that being able to number your lovers at over a hundred was a good thing, but it was something that Ronnie and I had agreed to disagree over a long time ago. I did not say, Look who's the whore, or other hurtful remarks I could have made.
Here is Maru in many too small boxes. Okay, ready? Here we go.
Anita, a whore is someone who has sex for tangible reward outside the sex itself and the rewards that normally brings, like pleasure, closeness, etc. You feed on sex, literally. You have sex for tangible reward that has nothing to do with the sex. YOU ARE A WHORE. Own it. There's nothing wrong with it (though oh my there is plenty wrong with you). But that is, literally, one of the things you are now: you are a whore. So's JC, since he has the same “ardeur” you have. Ronnie is not a whore, as Ronnie has sex because she wants to have sex and for no other reason, so far as we know. Moreover, Ronnie is perfectly right to be furious with JC for forcing this on you. He took away your choice when he stuck you with the ardeur, and the fact that, after everything he's done to you, you call him your “sweetie”, is sick.
Anita has a harem, and has sex with strangers all the time, which means on top of being a misogynist jerk, Anita is a hypocrite. Anita-centered morality: when Anita does it, it is good. When another woman does it, she is bad.
Finally, Anita admits that she's been having sex with Richard again too, who used to be her ex. So the maybe father could be him or Nathaniel. On page ten, we get an info-dump about how Richard is a werewolf, tall, muscular, handsome. Then we learn a bunch of stuff about how awful Richard is, like that “he hated a lot of things” and “would try for a white picket fence and a normal life.” Anita seems to think that there are two ways of life: stereotypical “white picket fence” (which she insults every chance she gets) or fucking every male vampire and werewolf who crosses her path.
Ronnie then acts surprised that Anita smiles at the sound of Micah and Nathaniel's voices, and I am getting very tired of this straw Ronnie. And then we get twelve lines describing Micah's physical appearance. The paragraph talking about how the Pope had excommunicated all necromancers is the only paragraph in the book longer than that so far, and that started off with a line of dialog.
Micah is short and muscular, with long brown hair, leopard-green eyes, and delicate features. Also, he's wearing short shorts. Twelve lines on that. Then we get three paragraphs of them kissing, thirteen lines. I can see kissing for thirteen lines being written well, but not when it stops the entire narrative like this. Anita even has a little argument with no one within the kiss, which is always sexy, yes? “Lust at first sight. They say it doesn't last, but we were six months and counting” (11). Wow, six whole months! Is she twelve? Who's “they”? Also, this man raped her and this was never resolved or even brought up again. That's six extraordinarily disgusting months.
Ronnie is angry that Micah and Anita had each other's tongues down their throats right after Ronnie told Anita she's having commitment issues. I'd be kind of ticked off that I was visiting my friend and she decided to make out with her boyfriend in front of me like that, because ick, and I don't even have commitment issues. Anita is rude to say the least. Then Nathaniel comes in, just to make everything ickier.
Nathaniel hears Ronnie being upset about the “show”. He says, “if it's a show you want, we can do that too” (12). Then he takes off his shirt, lets down his ponytail so his ankle-length (!) hair is falling around him, and now I'm thinking of The Birth of Venus which I don't think is what LKH was going for. So, this long-haired douche is also on the short side, being 5'6. He's angry for some reason, I guess because someone was other than utterly thrilled with Anita. He has “lavender” eyes. “His anger had turned them from lavender to the deeper color of lilacs, if flowers could burn with anger and force of personality” (12-13). What does the first clause have to do with the second? They're the color of lilacs whether or not flowers have emotion, aren't they? And btw, lilacs aren't all the same colors – I'd have chosen violet if I were to write that sentence, which I wouldn't, because as self-indulgent as I can be, there is a limit.
Anita and Nathaniel then start to dry hump right there in the kitchen, with her legs around his waist. Not kidding. Full-on dry-humping in front of a friend, and a friend whom they know was just bothered by seeing a kiss. I suspect Nathaniel is trying to cut Anita off from this friend. I suspect Nathaniel is a manipulative little shit who's full of himself. I know for a fact that Anita's a huge jerk. Also, there's this:
Lately almost any stress seemed to feed into sex. Scared? Sex would make me feel better. Angry? Sex would calm me. Sad? Sex would make me happy? Was I addicted to sex? Maybe.
Gee, ya think?
Then my girl Ronnie says, “And when the baby comes, are you going to fuck in front of it, too?”
Ronnie, this song is for you.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-08 06:47 pm (UTC)*is now gigglesnorting*
Of all the things to find absurd in the book I had to get the giggles at lavender eyes. :P
no subject
Date: 2013-06-10 04:18 am (UTC)