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Danse Macabre, Chapter Six
CN: Anita Blake book, pregnancy
So someone whom I think (hope) must not have actually read the Anita Blake books decided to defend them: http://lkh-lashouts.livejournal.com/592503.html. I love the accusation of prudishness especially. It amuses me. Now, I consider "prude" to be one of the worst insults there is because I think it's one of the worst things to be, but the accusation is so incredibly wrong, it gives me the giggles.
Danse Macabre does too, though for different reasons. As offensive as LKH's books are, the goofily terrible and terribly goofy way they're written is almost a saving grace. It makes me sometimes suspect LKH is trolling us all. Consider the first paragraph of Chapter 6, during which Thea is forcing a kiss on Anita:
"Her mouth was warm, so warm against mine" (44). I don't like that sentence, but I can live with it. "Warm like hot chocolate." That's a weird specificity, and I don't think it works for Thea. She's a mermaid -- I would expect her to be more cool and salty. "Something you wanted to open your mouth and sip from." This explanation of the metaphor is insulting to the reader's intelligence, but what I find particularly weird is using the term "open your mouth" to describe sipping. The first gives one picture, the second gives another. Now I am confused.
Thea's trying to get Anita to open her mouth by insinuating herself into Anita's thoughts, and Anita doesn't like that, so she draws back. That's a normal reaction. Then Thea tries physical force, and Anita says this:
If she'd been a man I would have just let her kiss me -- was I really this homophobic?
There goes the fun goofiness, because that is seriously disturbing. Anita was raped by Micah, though she doesn't acknowledge this. She's also been at least coerced into a relationship with J.C.; initially, Anita dated him because he said if she didn't, he'd kill her boyfriend Richard. Then Anita got the ardeur from J.C., which I've never actually seen explained, so I'm not sure how that came about. The ardeur has been forcing her to have sex left and right. It is common for rape victims to let men do what they want to them, fearing being raped or physically harmed in another way if they don't. But Anita's pretending this is about homophobia, rather than about the fact that Thea is trying to force Anita to do something sexual. What strikes me as strange about this sentence, though, is that LKH wrote it at all. She's writing Anita like Anita's been raped while refusing to acknowledge that Anita's been raped.
Of course, even if force weren't involved, not wanting to kiss a woman when you are a woman doesn't mean you're homophobic; it means you're not attracted to women, or not attracted to this woman, or not in the mood, or in a monogamous relationship with someone else, or at least a dozen other reasons. One doesn't need an excuse to not do something sexual with someone else.
Anyway, Anita doesn't want to open her mouth, and Thea gets mad at her for not doing it, and Thea says, "the walls of your inner tower are high and wide, but not impenetrable." I think the sex metaphor was intentional there, but it's still not an answer as to why Thea wants Anita to open her mouth in the first place. Thea's stronger than Anita, both physically andmagically metaphysically, and Anita says she'd have to shoot her to break free. Samuel steps in to save Anita by telling Thea maybe she could try just asking Anita if she'll do what they want. Thea is shocked by this idea, laughs, and decides that's what she'll do. She tells Anita, "My deepest apologies. I underestimated you, and I am ashamed of my actions" (45). In other words, the only reason Thea is ashamed is that Anita was strong enough to resist her. If Anita had not been strong enough, well then, she'd have gone ahead and done what she wanted to her without any shame at all.
The worst part of this is, I think we're supposed to see this as a compliment to Anita. Anita's not like those other weak people whom Thea mentions mindraping. Those people don't count because they couldn't fight back. Therefore they don't deserve to be complimented by their rapist.
Anita accepts Thea's "apology" (gee I'm sorry I tried to rape you and it turned out you were too strong, if you hadn't been able to resist me I wouldn't have done anything wrong by raping you of course, tee hee), they start yammering about why Thea and Samuel brought their sons as pomme de sang candidates. (I still do not know why Thea wanted to force Anita's mouth open.) They want to find out if one of their sons is a siren like Thea. The only way to unleash this power is for a potential siren to have sex with a full siren, and Thea is the last siren in the world, so they're hoping Anita's power will be enough like Thea's that Thea won't have to screw her own sons.
Merpeople apparently kill sirens as soon as they're found because sirens can control merpeople. This annoys me. Sirens in myth sing human sailors to their doom. It's fine if LKH wants to change myths, but I dislike this change. I don't understand why it has to exist. Why couldn't Thea be the last siren because the rest were hunted down and killed by humans? It would make far more sense. I am also disappointed that the siren has nothing to do with music. Considering the book is called Danse Macabre, and is supposedly about a vampire dance company, I have a feeling LKH originally meant Thea to be musical in some way, but then wandered off into these rapey metaphysical weeds and forgot about it.
Now people stand around talking for five and a half pages. I normally love lots and lots and lots of conversation. Books, movies, video games, whatever, I like people talking. However, this is a brick wall of nattering. I got stuck for days on it because I had such a hard time paying attention to what people were saying. I would read two pages and realize that I hadn't taken in a thing, as if I were exhausted or trying to read a Freudian-postmodern historiography article. It's like my brain is refusing to acknowledge what it's seeing. So if I miss something important, I apologize.
Anita is disturbed that Thea (and she just blames Thea) is "pimping out" her sons. Thea has to ask what "pimping out" means. Bullshit. That Thea was born centuries ago does not mean she's unaware of modern mores and language. She has not been asleep for hundreds of years. I think this is where my brain shuts down every time I try to go on. It's not believable.
Anita thinks, "great, one of those moments when you really don't want to explain the slang" (47). I hate this. If you're going to accuse someone of something, you had better be ready to explain what you mean by it. And this shows what an incredible prude Anita actually is. She can boff dozens of men, but she gets all weird when actually talking about sex. This pushes so many of my buttons. I'm going to try to move on or I'll be here all day ranting.
Nathaniel persuades Anita to feed the ardeur from the sons without sex. Micah says a couple completely useless things. Anita asks the oldest son, Sampson, if he wants this. He understands the need to expand their family's power, but doesn't want to have sex with Anita because he doesn't know her, and doesn't like the thought of being forced to have sex with her. Anita moves on to the twins, Thomas and Cristos, who are seventeen. Anita's response to this is that "that's not legal" (49). Not that it's not right, that they're too young -- the legality is what bothers Anita.
I hope LKH never discovers one of the European countries in which age of consent is 14 or less.
Thea says, "it is legal in Missouri." And 16 is the age of consent in a whole lot of states. It's 16 in Massachussets, for example, which would be germane for the family of the Master of Cape Cod. That doesn't mean it's okay for 27 year olds to go around seducing 16 year olds in those states.
Anita angsts about possibly fucking Cristos or Thomas. Thomas wants to have sex with her because she's "pretty". I don't get why she's so dead set against having sex with Thomas. Yes, he's young, but if we're just talking about a quick shag for an alliance and to possibly get him power and save his family, I dunno. In this particular context, I don't think it's such a big deal. Honestly I think she just doesn't want to have sex with Thomas because he wants it. You don't need an excuse to not do something sexual with someone, but Anita's contortions are simply weird. She says, "I don't do teenagers. Hell, I didn't do teenagers when I was one" (49). So did she not have sex when she was a teenager, or did she only have sex with people older than her when she was? And I thought Nathaniel was 19 when she first fucked him. And are those of us who did have sex with teenagers when we were teenagers supposed to flay ourselves now? I'm probably being oversensitive with that last part, but I just -- I really hate this chapter.
About Cristos, whom she can tell is a virgin solely by a look he gives her (yeah right), she thinks, "your virginity should go to someone you love" (49). PRUDE. One does not give one's virginity to someone else; it is not a thing to be lost or kept. It is, of course, perfectly fine for someone to decide they need to have love with sex. It is not fine to decide it for others. And for Anita fucking Blake, of all people, to make this judgment -- hypocritical prude.
Why do these people have to be so young anyway? Why did LKH choose to write this? It's icky. Nathaniel's only a couple years older than these kids, btw. He's not legally allowed to drink alcohol yet. I think his background of being horribly sexually abused is supposed to make him more mature. That's not the way it works.
Thinking about how the twins are children of Thea and Samuel, Anita wangsts about how she might be pregnant. She could have and should have peed on a stick a long time ago. Why did LKH do this? If Anita were a few days late, I would have a lot more sympathy for her regarding the possible pregnancy. But Little Ms. Clockwork is two whole weeks late and had to be badgered into getting a pregnancy test. It makes her look deeply irresponsible. It also makes me wonder: for all her angsting about it, does Anita actually want a baby? Putting off finding out whether she's pregnant is something that would seem to take the choice away from her, but it's actually a choice to have a baby. This isn't Schrodinger's zygote.
Anita finally decides that, rather than fucking one of the boys, she will simply let Thea kiss her. All this wanking over that. During the kiss, she thinks about how tall Thea is, puts her hand on Thea's face, and then closes out the chapter by being annoying.
Sometimes I touched someone's face because it was intimate. Sometimes I touched them because a hand on the face helps you control the kiss more if things get out of hand. [What the hell?] Two guesses which reason it was this time, and the first guess doesn't count. (51)
Oh aren't you precious and hardboiled all at once, Anita. If this weren't a hardcover library book, I'd throw it.
So someone whom I think (hope) must not have actually read the Anita Blake books decided to defend them: http://lkh-lashouts.livejournal.com/592503.html. I love the accusation of prudishness especially. It amuses me. Now, I consider "prude" to be one of the worst insults there is because I think it's one of the worst things to be, but the accusation is so incredibly wrong, it gives me the giggles.
Danse Macabre does too, though for different reasons. As offensive as LKH's books are, the goofily terrible and terribly goofy way they're written is almost a saving grace. It makes me sometimes suspect LKH is trolling us all. Consider the first paragraph of Chapter 6, during which Thea is forcing a kiss on Anita:
"Her mouth was warm, so warm against mine" (44). I don't like that sentence, but I can live with it. "Warm like hot chocolate." That's a weird specificity, and I don't think it works for Thea. She's a mermaid -- I would expect her to be more cool and salty. "Something you wanted to open your mouth and sip from." This explanation of the metaphor is insulting to the reader's intelligence, but what I find particularly weird is using the term "open your mouth" to describe sipping. The first gives one picture, the second gives another. Now I am confused.
Thea's trying to get Anita to open her mouth by insinuating herself into Anita's thoughts, and Anita doesn't like that, so she draws back. That's a normal reaction. Then Thea tries physical force, and Anita says this:
If she'd been a man I would have just let her kiss me -- was I really this homophobic?
There goes the fun goofiness, because that is seriously disturbing. Anita was raped by Micah, though she doesn't acknowledge this. She's also been at least coerced into a relationship with J.C.; initially, Anita dated him because he said if she didn't, he'd kill her boyfriend Richard. Then Anita got the ardeur from J.C., which I've never actually seen explained, so I'm not sure how that came about. The ardeur has been forcing her to have sex left and right. It is common for rape victims to let men do what they want to them, fearing being raped or physically harmed in another way if they don't. But Anita's pretending this is about homophobia, rather than about the fact that Thea is trying to force Anita to do something sexual. What strikes me as strange about this sentence, though, is that LKH wrote it at all. She's writing Anita like Anita's been raped while refusing to acknowledge that Anita's been raped.
Of course, even if force weren't involved, not wanting to kiss a woman when you are a woman doesn't mean you're homophobic; it means you're not attracted to women, or not attracted to this woman, or not in the mood, or in a monogamous relationship with someone else, or at least a dozen other reasons. One doesn't need an excuse to not do something sexual with someone else.
Anyway, Anita doesn't want to open her mouth, and Thea gets mad at her for not doing it, and Thea says, "the walls of your inner tower are high and wide, but not impenetrable." I think the sex metaphor was intentional there, but it's still not an answer as to why Thea wants Anita to open her mouth in the first place. Thea's stronger than Anita, both physically and
The worst part of this is, I think we're supposed to see this as a compliment to Anita. Anita's not like those other weak people whom Thea mentions mindraping. Those people don't count because they couldn't fight back. Therefore they don't deserve to be complimented by their rapist.
Anita accepts Thea's "apology" (gee I'm sorry I tried to rape you and it turned out you were too strong, if you hadn't been able to resist me I wouldn't have done anything wrong by raping you of course, tee hee), they start yammering about why Thea and Samuel brought their sons as pomme de sang candidates. (I still do not know why Thea wanted to force Anita's mouth open.) They want to find out if one of their sons is a siren like Thea. The only way to unleash this power is for a potential siren to have sex with a full siren, and Thea is the last siren in the world, so they're hoping Anita's power will be enough like Thea's that Thea won't have to screw her own sons.
Merpeople apparently kill sirens as soon as they're found because sirens can control merpeople. This annoys me. Sirens in myth sing human sailors to their doom. It's fine if LKH wants to change myths, but I dislike this change. I don't understand why it has to exist. Why couldn't Thea be the last siren because the rest were hunted down and killed by humans? It would make far more sense. I am also disappointed that the siren has nothing to do with music. Considering the book is called Danse Macabre, and is supposedly about a vampire dance company, I have a feeling LKH originally meant Thea to be musical in some way, but then wandered off into these rapey metaphysical weeds and forgot about it.
Now people stand around talking for five and a half pages. I normally love lots and lots and lots of conversation. Books, movies, video games, whatever, I like people talking. However, this is a brick wall of nattering. I got stuck for days on it because I had such a hard time paying attention to what people were saying. I would read two pages and realize that I hadn't taken in a thing, as if I were exhausted or trying to read a Freudian-postmodern historiography article. It's like my brain is refusing to acknowledge what it's seeing. So if I miss something important, I apologize.
Anita is disturbed that Thea (and she just blames Thea) is "pimping out" her sons. Thea has to ask what "pimping out" means. Bullshit. That Thea was born centuries ago does not mean she's unaware of modern mores and language. She has not been asleep for hundreds of years. I think this is where my brain shuts down every time I try to go on. It's not believable.
Anita thinks, "great, one of those moments when you really don't want to explain the slang" (47). I hate this. If you're going to accuse someone of something, you had better be ready to explain what you mean by it. And this shows what an incredible prude Anita actually is. She can boff dozens of men, but she gets all weird when actually talking about sex. This pushes so many of my buttons. I'm going to try to move on or I'll be here all day ranting.
Nathaniel persuades Anita to feed the ardeur from the sons without sex. Micah says a couple completely useless things. Anita asks the oldest son, Sampson, if he wants this. He understands the need to expand their family's power, but doesn't want to have sex with Anita because he doesn't know her, and doesn't like the thought of being forced to have sex with her. Anita moves on to the twins, Thomas and Cristos, who are seventeen. Anita's response to this is that "that's not legal" (49). Not that it's not right, that they're too young -- the legality is what bothers Anita.
I hope LKH never discovers one of the European countries in which age of consent is 14 or less.
Thea says, "it is legal in Missouri." And 16 is the age of consent in a whole lot of states. It's 16 in Massachussets, for example, which would be germane for the family of the Master of Cape Cod. That doesn't mean it's okay for 27 year olds to go around seducing 16 year olds in those states.
Anita angsts about possibly fucking Cristos or Thomas. Thomas wants to have sex with her because she's "pretty". I don't get why she's so dead set against having sex with Thomas. Yes, he's young, but if we're just talking about a quick shag for an alliance and to possibly get him power and save his family, I dunno. In this particular context, I don't think it's such a big deal. Honestly I think she just doesn't want to have sex with Thomas because he wants it. You don't need an excuse to not do something sexual with someone, but Anita's contortions are simply weird. She says, "I don't do teenagers. Hell, I didn't do teenagers when I was one" (49). So did she not have sex when she was a teenager, or did she only have sex with people older than her when she was? And I thought Nathaniel was 19 when she first fucked him. And are those of us who did have sex with teenagers when we were teenagers supposed to flay ourselves now? I'm probably being oversensitive with that last part, but I just -- I really hate this chapter.
About Cristos, whom she can tell is a virgin solely by a look he gives her (yeah right), she thinks, "your virginity should go to someone you love" (49). PRUDE. One does not give one's virginity to someone else; it is not a thing to be lost or kept. It is, of course, perfectly fine for someone to decide they need to have love with sex. It is not fine to decide it for others. And for Anita fucking Blake, of all people, to make this judgment -- hypocritical prude.
Why do these people have to be so young anyway? Why did LKH choose to write this? It's icky. Nathaniel's only a couple years older than these kids, btw. He's not legally allowed to drink alcohol yet. I think his background of being horribly sexually abused is supposed to make him more mature. That's not the way it works.
Thinking about how the twins are children of Thea and Samuel, Anita wangsts about how she might be pregnant. She could have and should have peed on a stick a long time ago. Why did LKH do this? If Anita were a few days late, I would have a lot more sympathy for her regarding the possible pregnancy. But Little Ms. Clockwork is two whole weeks late and had to be badgered into getting a pregnancy test. It makes her look deeply irresponsible. It also makes me wonder: for all her angsting about it, does Anita actually want a baby? Putting off finding out whether she's pregnant is something that would seem to take the choice away from her, but it's actually a choice to have a baby. This isn't Schrodinger's zygote.
Anita finally decides that, rather than fucking one of the boys, she will simply let Thea kiss her. All this wanking over that. During the kiss, she thinks about how tall Thea is, puts her hand on Thea's face, and then closes out the chapter by being annoying.
Sometimes I touched someone's face because it was intimate. Sometimes I touched them because a hand on the face helps you control the kiss more if things get out of hand. [What the hell?] Two guesses which reason it was this time, and the first guess doesn't count. (51)
Oh aren't you precious and hardboiled all at once, Anita. If this weren't a hardcover library book, I'd throw it.