![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lliiraI am finally mostly recovered from surgery, so back to Danse Macabre. Um... yay?
CN: Anita Blake book
I was wrong about Chapter 8 being a sex scene. It's a foreplay scene, Anita Blake style. That means violence, angst, and yammering.
This chapter exists so LKH can have an excuse for Anita to have sex. Anything that moves characters from point A to point B can be called an “excuse” if one is jaded, of course. But this is different. Most writers would likely think, “I want Anita to have sex. Therefore, I will have her attracted to this character and vice versa and there will be some affection or seduction or even merely curiosity involved so that she will want to have sex with them. Or possibly she will want to have sex with the character for political or economic or some other gain.” Etc. It would be different if they were writing a rape scene – then the motivations of the people involved would be drastically different, as would the outcome.
However, LKH has a problem. She doesn't want to write Anita wanting to have sex, because she is a sexist prude at heart and thinks women who seek out sex are bad, but she wants to write Anita having lots and lots of sex with lots and lots of different men. So she gave Anita the ardeur, which is basically a magical rape drug. But LKH also doesn't want Anita to face any serious problems because of this. That might get in the way of the sexy times. Also, it would be work, and if there's one thing I am sure of regarding LKH, it is that she is an incredibly lazy writer.
On to the words LKH put on the page. They are bad, the end. Can I do that? Because they are BAD. I feel like simply quoting a bunch of stuff and saying LOOK HOW BAD THIS IS!!!
LKH starts with a stupid simile. She then explains the stupid simile.
“Passion like something touchable, solid, spilled up through my body and over his. Lust like some thick, heavy paint flowed over us, covering us, trapping us.” (71)
LOOK HOW BAD THIS IS!!! I'm picturing them trapped in plaster. I either saw or read or had a nightmare about that once. Also, I don't think paint would trap living adults. LKH plopped down the first word she thought of and called it a day, rather than trying to make her stupid metaphor work by calling it plaster or glue. I think what might have both worked and managed a modicum of sexy is a comparison to the victims of the Pompeii eruption. A volcano can easily work as a sexual metaphor, whereas paint dumped over people, not so much.
Anita had started to dislike Auggie (only started), but now she wants to “be naked with him” because of the ardeur. Be naked with him? Woah, turn down the temperature in here, that's super risqué! It makes me think of a locker room.
So Anita's trying to fight the ardeur and Auggie isn't, which somehow means Auggie is offering himself up as “food”, which means he's lost because “Vampire rules: food loses.” I hate LKH's vampire society, I really and truly do. Anita thinks about calling for JC's help telepathically, but is afraid he'll get all hot and bothered if she does, so she just keeps standing there, perfectly still, terrified that if she moves at all she will inadvertantly have sex with Auggie. Or rather, be raped by him, because he knew exactly what he was doing when he ripped control of the ardeur away from her. But, though Anita's actions seem to show that she fears rape, she hasn't called it rape, and I doubt the text will ever treat it like rape.
Auggie extends the lust-as-paint metaphor, and I'd hate him for that alone even if he hadn't done anything rotten. Then he says, “let us drown together,” because what this book was missing was a line from a Harlequin romance. (I would not mind a line like that if the buildup had earned it, btw.) Anita continues to resist, and she randomly thinks of someone else, which makes me think she's not as lust-crazed for Auggie as she's pretending.
“Requiem, one of our imports from Britain, could cause instant body reaction, hours of really good foreplay in seconds of power.”
HOURS? Uh. Look. I like foreplay n'all, but hours of it is too damn much. There's only so much a person can take, whether physically or emotionally, before getting bored and wandering off to browse the internet instead. I'm sure there are some people out there for whom spending hours on foreplay sounds like a great plan and who enjoy it very much. But it's not a universal the way LKH thinks it is. Requiem's power sounds simultaneously frustrating and boring.
“Could Auggie hit the emotional markers as fast as Requiem could hit the physical ones?”
LKH thinks the physical and emotional components of foreplay are entirely separate. This is so weird I don't know how to begin, so... moving on.
Anyway, Auggie can apparently make people feel like they have a strong romantic relationship with him that's developed over time. That's his vampire power. I think comparing this directly to Requiem's lust power diminishes it. Requiem can (supposedly) turn you on really fast. Auggie can make you fall in love him. Why is Auggie not the boss of all vampires? Hell, why is Auggie not the boss of the entire world? All should love him and despair.
Anita prays silently, and that helps her, as faith in Anitaland always helps against vampire powers. Which makes me wonder why therians don't use this to escape vampire control. Why didn't Joseph pray to break Auggie's hold over him? Is it that Anita's faith is so much better than anyone else's could ever be?
What happens next confuses me. Maybe if I'd read more of these books I'd understand it. Auggie says, “Do you really believe Jean-Claude will win against me? Feed and you win, and so does he.” That part makes sense; Auggie is pointing out what Anita's already realized, that Auggie is offering himself up as “food” and therefore surrendering, in a way. However, Anita thinks, “He was implying what I'd already thought of, that if Jean-Claude hit the door before I'd won, that we would lose, badly” (73). I thought Anita was resisting Auggie because she didn't want to have sex with him. Now it seems she's resisting him because doing otherwise would mean she “loses”, even though we've been told repeatedly that Auggie = food = Auggie's the one losing here. Why is Anita suddenly worrying about JC's power level vs. Auggie's? Auggie's much higher level than JC, but what does that matter when Auggie's offered himself up as “food”? I made a picture to illustrate my confusion.
Anita regains enough emotional control to start moving again. The next part is seriously disturbing. Auggie forces a kiss on her and she bites his lip hard enough to make it bleed profusely, and good for her. She fights back against him, kicking and biting and scratching – in other words, doing anything she can to get away from him. She acts realistically for someone trying to escape a rapist. Meanwhile, Auggie is spewing Harlequin romance dialog. The mixture makes me literally nauseated. Again, LKH is writing someone trying to rape Anita and Anita acting realistically to that without the text ever acknowledging that this is rape.
We get told again that Auggie's vampire ability is to make you love him, as if we haven't been told so before. So he makes Anita “love” him. The way she phrases this, she thinks that this is the same as him driving her insane. Hm.
Belle Morte possesses Anita and everything smells like roses. LKH apparently fears that we will not understand that everything smells like roses unless she writes the word “roses” five times in four sentences. This removes from the intended drama of the scene, to put it mildly.
Anita is pulled into the astral plane or something to talk to Belle Morte face-to-face or whatever. I tend to like this kind of scene, but I need some kind of explanation as to how it happens, or at least some kind of segue. There's nothing like that here; one second, Anita's looking at Auggie, and the next, she's looking at Belle Morte on a bed.
Belle Morte originated the ardeur and is a petite, pale brunette with brown eyes. Anita thinks about how superficially similar they look; Belle Morte gets pissed off that Anita would compare herself to Belle, who “was the greatest beauty in all of Europe”, and Anita apologizes (74). Am I misremembering, or did this exact same passage occur in another of LKH's books as well? Also, “all of Europe” is a pretty big place. I find it unlikely that Belle would refer to it that way, rather than saying “France”. I wouldn't notice this if LKH didn't invariably refer to Europe as if it were all one country.
She's angry that Auggie forced Belle to love him the way he has just forced Anita. He apologizes. He's still touching Anita, but “gently”, and she thinks about how she could break away now but it doesn't matter. Because “we had bigger problems than the ardeur.”
I Am. So. Fucking. Angry. I – just – flames. Flames on the side of my face. This man was JUST trying to rape Anita. He purposefully called up the ardeur in order to rape her. Then he forced some kisses on her. She was struggling to get away from him, doing everything she could. And now she's acting like they're on the same side. Fucking hell.
Belle says, “all love Belle Morte” (75). THIS IS SO BAD. Anita replies all lust after Belle Morte. Belle says, “lust, love, what difference the word, it means the same.” Anita thinks that they aren't the same at all. Uh-huh. How many books does that last after DM, three or so? I don't trust a writer who said she'd never written a musician character because she'd never dated a musician to understand the difference anyway. I'm not sure whether I prefer Anita's pretense of understanding the difference here, or her honesty in thinking they're the same thing when she talks about them later. Then again, this could be simply Anita's normal behavior of taking the opposite position from whomever she's talking to.
By the way, the word “ardeur” doesn't mean either love or lust in French. It means something like fervor or zeal, and often has a religious connotation. I do not get why Belle Morte would choose this word to describe her power. Imo, it should be désir or amour. (Or concupiscence – I would like that, it would amuse me.)
JC and Asher were able to leave Belle but they returned to her, blah blah blah, Belle Morte intermittently talks like Pepe le Pew and she also talks about herself in the third person. This is supposed to be both scary and sexy? And like everyone else in the book except Claudia and Haven, Belle Morte can't shut the fuck up and get on with it. I actually like talkative villains, they're fun, but Belle is not fun. Haven was the only character in this book with the potential to be fun, until Anita turned his libido on and his brain off. Claudia still has some potential, possibly.
There's an idea: Haven and Claudia as stars of their own books. One's a flash bastard werelion, the other's a huge no-nonsense female wererat, and together, they fight crime!
Belle throws her ardeur into the room. Spills, actually. Auggie and Anita try to hold it back. Why is Auggie trying to hold it back when it will give him what he wants? I have no idea. Possibly because, as he is the antagonist of a woman who is not Anita, he must be on Anita's side now. Auggie orders everyone out of the room. Micah argues with him about it because Micah is the most useless person to have existed since the universe began. Okay, ostensibly it's that Micah doesn't understand that Belle's ardeur is powerful enough to spread without touch. And by the way, Micah, what were you and Nathaniel doing while someone was trying to rape your girlfriend? USELESS. (This is the paragraph where I got sick of italicizing “ardeur”.)
Jean-Claude is here. Which means this happens to the narrative: screeeeeech. 16 sentences on his appearance. For some reason, LKH has chosen to describe him as if Belle's looking at him, but she sees him exactly as Anita would. JC looks utterly ridiculous. He is wearing leather pants that look “poured on”, a short black velvet jacket, and knee-high black boots. He's dressing more plainly than usual in order to give the other vampires the wrong impression, you see.
JC is able to drive Belle out by touching Anita. Before leaving, Belle says JC and Auggie and Anita are all gonna be fuckin' (though in evasive language), and that JC and Auggie used to be lovers. Anita is not surprised by this information and does not know why she is not surprised, and thinks for a while about the fact that she is not surprised. Why hello there, Bella Swan! Is this a common thing in vampire novels, the main character thinking about the fact that she is thinking but without insight into it?
Then Anita dwells on Auggie's eyes some more. Anita had apparently been all judgy about gray eyes before, but seeing his, she realizes they can be as beautiful as blue eyes. Is there ANYTHING this woman won't put into a hierarchy? Oh and now Auggie looks sad, so she feels bad for him. THIS MAN TRIED TO RAPE YOU. But a woman was mean to him (for some value of mean that I do not understand), so now he has been hurt by a woman (whom he used his forced-to-love-me power on), so poor poor widdwe Auggiekins.
LKH's misogyny is intertwined with taking away power from men in a really strange way. But I want to get on with this stupid chapter, so I'll just note it and try to move on.
Anita has a flashback through Belle's eyes of Belle looking at Auggie and then Asher and JC. Then to JC and Auggie starting to make out, and I think there's an implication that JC is about to rape Auggie in the flashback but I can't seem to make myself care because why the hell are we in a flashback right now? Belle's evil power is flashbacks?
Belle then tells them that she will leave the ardeur with them, and also informs them that Anita can use abilities that are used against her. MWAHAHAH... huh? JC says that Anita is his, not Belle's, and Belle pretends to leave, but Anita can still feel her, and of course Belle is jealous of Anita for the mens with Anita. At least one rapist and a man with absurd fasion sense who claims Anita as his property. Oh yeah, those are some prizes for the most beautiful woman in all Europe.
And they still won't shut the fuck up and get on with it. Anita thinks that Auggie had “behaved himself admirably” (80). Attempted rape: admirable!
The people who used to be in the room aren't in it any more, but Requiem and Asher are there. Requiem looks “like something big had hit him on the side of the face” (81). I do not know if this is metaphorical or if he has a big bruise. Asher and Requiem are stopping the ardeur from spreading outside the room somehow.
Then we flashback to Auggie and JC fucking again. Except no, of course they're not fucking, they're TALKING AGAIN. FFS. Auggie doesn't get why JC is leaving Belle voluntarily. They yammer, they both establish that they prefer women, Belle doesn't share her men with other women, this just won't end.
Here's weirdness: “it wasn't the sex that was important to me, or Jean-Claude, or even Augustine. It was the emotion of it” (83). Emotion and sex are not separate entities. Almost everyone feels emotion during sex – that's part of the point of it. It doesn't have to be anything like romantic love forever, but there is an emotional connection with the other person/s.
Oh and she uses this as an excuse not to show JC and Auggie screwing each other. Because it's the emotion that's important, not the sex. Uh-huh. I just think LKH didn't want to show men getting it on without Anita there. Which I can't really blame her for; I can't write, and have no desire to write, sex scenes without a woman in them either. But LKH is such a tease about it.
Speaking of which, after all this yammering, at the end of the chapter Auggie and JC both drop their shields at the same time to let the ardeur take over. Auggie apologizes about it. Uh, yeah, that makes sense, seeing as how he was trying to rape Anita at the beginning of the chapter.
So, that was the foreplay chapter. They're going to fuck because Belle Morte basically cast a spell on them so that they will fuck. What is her motivation for doing this, when it's giving Auggie what he wants and she is supposedly furious at Auggie, and when it will cause Anita to be fucked by two guys Belle wants and is jealous of Anita for having? Hell if I know!
I think I know LKH's motivation: get Anita in a threesome with Auggie and JC without it being the “fault” of any of the three of them, and make a woman at fault rather than a pretty man. There's a strange feeling to this chapter, like originally LKH intended Auggie to be the one at fault and then couldn't make herself do it, so she pulled in Belle instead.
CN: Anita Blake book
I was wrong about Chapter 8 being a sex scene. It's a foreplay scene, Anita Blake style. That means violence, angst, and yammering.
This chapter exists so LKH can have an excuse for Anita to have sex. Anything that moves characters from point A to point B can be called an “excuse” if one is jaded, of course. But this is different. Most writers would likely think, “I want Anita to have sex. Therefore, I will have her attracted to this character and vice versa and there will be some affection or seduction or even merely curiosity involved so that she will want to have sex with them. Or possibly she will want to have sex with the character for political or economic or some other gain.” Etc. It would be different if they were writing a rape scene – then the motivations of the people involved would be drastically different, as would the outcome.
However, LKH has a problem. She doesn't want to write Anita wanting to have sex, because she is a sexist prude at heart and thinks women who seek out sex are bad, but she wants to write Anita having lots and lots of sex with lots and lots of different men. So she gave Anita the ardeur, which is basically a magical rape drug. But LKH also doesn't want Anita to face any serious problems because of this. That might get in the way of the sexy times. Also, it would be work, and if there's one thing I am sure of regarding LKH, it is that she is an incredibly lazy writer.
On to the words LKH put on the page. They are bad, the end. Can I do that? Because they are BAD. I feel like simply quoting a bunch of stuff and saying LOOK HOW BAD THIS IS!!!
LKH starts with a stupid simile. She then explains the stupid simile.
“Passion like something touchable, solid, spilled up through my body and over his. Lust like some thick, heavy paint flowed over us, covering us, trapping us.” (71)
LOOK HOW BAD THIS IS!!! I'm picturing them trapped in plaster. I either saw or read or had a nightmare about that once. Also, I don't think paint would trap living adults. LKH plopped down the first word she thought of and called it a day, rather than trying to make her stupid metaphor work by calling it plaster or glue. I think what might have both worked and managed a modicum of sexy is a comparison to the victims of the Pompeii eruption. A volcano can easily work as a sexual metaphor, whereas paint dumped over people, not so much.
Anita had started to dislike Auggie (only started), but now she wants to “be naked with him” because of the ardeur. Be naked with him? Woah, turn down the temperature in here, that's super risqué! It makes me think of a locker room.
So Anita's trying to fight the ardeur and Auggie isn't, which somehow means Auggie is offering himself up as “food”, which means he's lost because “Vampire rules: food loses.” I hate LKH's vampire society, I really and truly do. Anita thinks about calling for JC's help telepathically, but is afraid he'll get all hot and bothered if she does, so she just keeps standing there, perfectly still, terrified that if she moves at all she will inadvertantly have sex with Auggie. Or rather, be raped by him, because he knew exactly what he was doing when he ripped control of the ardeur away from her. But, though Anita's actions seem to show that she fears rape, she hasn't called it rape, and I doubt the text will ever treat it like rape.
Auggie extends the lust-as-paint metaphor, and I'd hate him for that alone even if he hadn't done anything rotten. Then he says, “let us drown together,” because what this book was missing was a line from a Harlequin romance. (I would not mind a line like that if the buildup had earned it, btw.) Anita continues to resist, and she randomly thinks of someone else, which makes me think she's not as lust-crazed for Auggie as she's pretending.
“Requiem, one of our imports from Britain, could cause instant body reaction, hours of really good foreplay in seconds of power.”
HOURS? Uh. Look. I like foreplay n'all, but hours of it is too damn much. There's only so much a person can take, whether physically or emotionally, before getting bored and wandering off to browse the internet instead. I'm sure there are some people out there for whom spending hours on foreplay sounds like a great plan and who enjoy it very much. But it's not a universal the way LKH thinks it is. Requiem's power sounds simultaneously frustrating and boring.
“Could Auggie hit the emotional markers as fast as Requiem could hit the physical ones?”
LKH thinks the physical and emotional components of foreplay are entirely separate. This is so weird I don't know how to begin, so... moving on.
Anyway, Auggie can apparently make people feel like they have a strong romantic relationship with him that's developed over time. That's his vampire power. I think comparing this directly to Requiem's lust power diminishes it. Requiem can (supposedly) turn you on really fast. Auggie can make you fall in love him. Why is Auggie not the boss of all vampires? Hell, why is Auggie not the boss of the entire world? All should love him and despair.
Anita prays silently, and that helps her, as faith in Anitaland always helps against vampire powers. Which makes me wonder why therians don't use this to escape vampire control. Why didn't Joseph pray to break Auggie's hold over him? Is it that Anita's faith is so much better than anyone else's could ever be?
What happens next confuses me. Maybe if I'd read more of these books I'd understand it. Auggie says, “Do you really believe Jean-Claude will win against me? Feed and you win, and so does he.” That part makes sense; Auggie is pointing out what Anita's already realized, that Auggie is offering himself up as “food” and therefore surrendering, in a way. However, Anita thinks, “He was implying what I'd already thought of, that if Jean-Claude hit the door before I'd won, that we would lose, badly” (73). I thought Anita was resisting Auggie because she didn't want to have sex with him. Now it seems she's resisting him because doing otherwise would mean she “loses”, even though we've been told repeatedly that Auggie = food = Auggie's the one losing here. Why is Anita suddenly worrying about JC's power level vs. Auggie's? Auggie's much higher level than JC, but what does that matter when Auggie's offered himself up as “food”? I made a picture to illustrate my confusion.
Anita regains enough emotional control to start moving again. The next part is seriously disturbing. Auggie forces a kiss on her and she bites his lip hard enough to make it bleed profusely, and good for her. She fights back against him, kicking and biting and scratching – in other words, doing anything she can to get away from him. She acts realistically for someone trying to escape a rapist. Meanwhile, Auggie is spewing Harlequin romance dialog. The mixture makes me literally nauseated. Again, LKH is writing someone trying to rape Anita and Anita acting realistically to that without the text ever acknowledging that this is rape.
We get told again that Auggie's vampire ability is to make you love him, as if we haven't been told so before. So he makes Anita “love” him. The way she phrases this, she thinks that this is the same as him driving her insane. Hm.
Belle Morte possesses Anita and everything smells like roses. LKH apparently fears that we will not understand that everything smells like roses unless she writes the word “roses” five times in four sentences. This removes from the intended drama of the scene, to put it mildly.
Anita is pulled into the astral plane or something to talk to Belle Morte face-to-face or whatever. I tend to like this kind of scene, but I need some kind of explanation as to how it happens, or at least some kind of segue. There's nothing like that here; one second, Anita's looking at Auggie, and the next, she's looking at Belle Morte on a bed.
Belle Morte originated the ardeur and is a petite, pale brunette with brown eyes. Anita thinks about how superficially similar they look; Belle Morte gets pissed off that Anita would compare herself to Belle, who “was the greatest beauty in all of Europe”, and Anita apologizes (74). Am I misremembering, or did this exact same passage occur in another of LKH's books as well? Also, “all of Europe” is a pretty big place. I find it unlikely that Belle would refer to it that way, rather than saying “France”. I wouldn't notice this if LKH didn't invariably refer to Europe as if it were all one country.
She's angry that Auggie forced Belle to love him the way he has just forced Anita. He apologizes. He's still touching Anita, but “gently”, and she thinks about how she could break away now but it doesn't matter. Because “we had bigger problems than the ardeur.”
I Am. So. Fucking. Angry. I – just – flames. Flames on the side of my face. This man was JUST trying to rape Anita. He purposefully called up the ardeur in order to rape her. Then he forced some kisses on her. She was struggling to get away from him, doing everything she could. And now she's acting like they're on the same side. Fucking hell.
Belle says, “all love Belle Morte” (75). THIS IS SO BAD. Anita replies all lust after Belle Morte. Belle says, “lust, love, what difference the word, it means the same.” Anita thinks that they aren't the same at all. Uh-huh. How many books does that last after DM, three or so? I don't trust a writer who said she'd never written a musician character because she'd never dated a musician to understand the difference anyway. I'm not sure whether I prefer Anita's pretense of understanding the difference here, or her honesty in thinking they're the same thing when she talks about them later. Then again, this could be simply Anita's normal behavior of taking the opposite position from whomever she's talking to.
By the way, the word “ardeur” doesn't mean either love or lust in French. It means something like fervor or zeal, and often has a religious connotation. I do not get why Belle Morte would choose this word to describe her power. Imo, it should be désir or amour. (Or concupiscence – I would like that, it would amuse me.)
JC and Asher were able to leave Belle but they returned to her, blah blah blah, Belle Morte intermittently talks like Pepe le Pew and she also talks about herself in the third person. This is supposed to be both scary and sexy? And like everyone else in the book except Claudia and Haven, Belle Morte can't shut the fuck up and get on with it. I actually like talkative villains, they're fun, but Belle is not fun. Haven was the only character in this book with the potential to be fun, until Anita turned his libido on and his brain off. Claudia still has some potential, possibly.
There's an idea: Haven and Claudia as stars of their own books. One's a flash bastard werelion, the other's a huge no-nonsense female wererat, and together, they fight crime!
Belle throws her ardeur into the room. Spills, actually. Auggie and Anita try to hold it back. Why is Auggie trying to hold it back when it will give him what he wants? I have no idea. Possibly because, as he is the antagonist of a woman who is not Anita, he must be on Anita's side now. Auggie orders everyone out of the room. Micah argues with him about it because Micah is the most useless person to have existed since the universe began. Okay, ostensibly it's that Micah doesn't understand that Belle's ardeur is powerful enough to spread without touch. And by the way, Micah, what were you and Nathaniel doing while someone was trying to rape your girlfriend? USELESS. (This is the paragraph where I got sick of italicizing “ardeur”.)
Jean-Claude is here. Which means this happens to the narrative: screeeeeech. 16 sentences on his appearance. For some reason, LKH has chosen to describe him as if Belle's looking at him, but she sees him exactly as Anita would. JC looks utterly ridiculous. He is wearing leather pants that look “poured on”, a short black velvet jacket, and knee-high black boots. He's dressing more plainly than usual in order to give the other vampires the wrong impression, you see.
JC is able to drive Belle out by touching Anita. Before leaving, Belle says JC and Auggie and Anita are all gonna be fuckin' (though in evasive language), and that JC and Auggie used to be lovers. Anita is not surprised by this information and does not know why she is not surprised, and thinks for a while about the fact that she is not surprised. Why hello there, Bella Swan! Is this a common thing in vampire novels, the main character thinking about the fact that she is thinking but without insight into it?
Then Anita dwells on Auggie's eyes some more. Anita had apparently been all judgy about gray eyes before, but seeing his, she realizes they can be as beautiful as blue eyes. Is there ANYTHING this woman won't put into a hierarchy? Oh and now Auggie looks sad, so she feels bad for him. THIS MAN TRIED TO RAPE YOU. But a woman was mean to him (for some value of mean that I do not understand), so now he has been hurt by a woman (whom he used his forced-to-love-me power on), so poor poor widdwe Auggiekins.
LKH's misogyny is intertwined with taking away power from men in a really strange way. But I want to get on with this stupid chapter, so I'll just note it and try to move on.
Anita has a flashback through Belle's eyes of Belle looking at Auggie and then Asher and JC. Then to JC and Auggie starting to make out, and I think there's an implication that JC is about to rape Auggie in the flashback but I can't seem to make myself care because why the hell are we in a flashback right now? Belle's evil power is flashbacks?
Belle then tells them that she will leave the ardeur with them, and also informs them that Anita can use abilities that are used against her. MWAHAHAH... huh? JC says that Anita is his, not Belle's, and Belle pretends to leave, but Anita can still feel her, and of course Belle is jealous of Anita for the mens with Anita. At least one rapist and a man with absurd fasion sense who claims Anita as his property. Oh yeah, those are some prizes for the most beautiful woman in all Europe.
And they still won't shut the fuck up and get on with it. Anita thinks that Auggie had “behaved himself admirably” (80). Attempted rape: admirable!
The people who used to be in the room aren't in it any more, but Requiem and Asher are there. Requiem looks “like something big had hit him on the side of the face” (81). I do not know if this is metaphorical or if he has a big bruise. Asher and Requiem are stopping the ardeur from spreading outside the room somehow.
Then we flashback to Auggie and JC fucking again. Except no, of course they're not fucking, they're TALKING AGAIN. FFS. Auggie doesn't get why JC is leaving Belle voluntarily. They yammer, they both establish that they prefer women, Belle doesn't share her men with other women, this just won't end.
Here's weirdness: “it wasn't the sex that was important to me, or Jean-Claude, or even Augustine. It was the emotion of it” (83). Emotion and sex are not separate entities. Almost everyone feels emotion during sex – that's part of the point of it. It doesn't have to be anything like romantic love forever, but there is an emotional connection with the other person/s.
Oh and she uses this as an excuse not to show JC and Auggie screwing each other. Because it's the emotion that's important, not the sex. Uh-huh. I just think LKH didn't want to show men getting it on without Anita there. Which I can't really blame her for; I can't write, and have no desire to write, sex scenes without a woman in them either. But LKH is such a tease about it.
Speaking of which, after all this yammering, at the end of the chapter Auggie and JC both drop their shields at the same time to let the ardeur take over. Auggie apologizes about it. Uh, yeah, that makes sense, seeing as how he was trying to rape Anita at the beginning of the chapter.
So, that was the foreplay chapter. They're going to fuck because Belle Morte basically cast a spell on them so that they will fuck. What is her motivation for doing this, when it's giving Auggie what he wants and she is supposedly furious at Auggie, and when it will cause Anita to be fucked by two guys Belle wants and is jealous of Anita for having? Hell if I know!
I think I know LKH's motivation: get Anita in a threesome with Auggie and JC without it being the “fault” of any of the three of them, and make a woman at fault rather than a pretty man. There's a strange feeling to this chapter, like originally LKH intended Auggie to be the one at fault and then couldn't make herself do it, so she pulled in Belle instead.
