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lliiraCN: Anita Blake book
This chapter is contemptible. All of them have been so far, but this one – this one. Anita's experiences in the book before this have been somewhat removed from what humans can actually experience, making her heinous morality a little bit unreal, and giving LKH the cover of fantasy. But in this one... you'll see.
Richard is not in the bathroom yet. First, he must have a pissing contest with Claudia. There's a bunch of “power” being thrown around, and I hate how LKH does not define how the magic in Anita's world works at all. It's just power levels whose exact strength can be sensed as it flies around doing something or other which we are not told and I do not like it.
One thing is clear: Richard is incredibly furious. Which means Anita must think about his hair, which has “finally grown back to brush the tops of his broad shoulders” (101). Besides the terrible phrasing that implies Richard's hair used to grow in a direction other than back: “finally”. Now that his hair is shoulder-length, he's a real boy. His hair is brown and blond and auburn all at once, somehow. It's Edward Cullen's hair! Also Richard's eyes are both amber and gold at the moment. And he has lots of muscles and is really really hot for half a page. Jesus, all bad vampire novel writers really are exactly the same.
Anita claims, “for the first time since I'd known him I realized he was spoiling for a fight.” Isn't this a lie? I've only read sporkings of previous Anita Blake books, but I seem to remember Richard getting angry and wanting to fight an awful lot in them. Anita thinks Richard might find it upsetting to see JC naked because Richard “was a touch homophobic; what he'd felt us do tonight wouldn't help that.” Oh, you mean the mass raping? Only a homophobe could possibly find a problem with that. Right.
Anita thinks about how she's not going to kill Richard. First, because it might kill her and JC if she did. Now, gaze upon this masterwork of LKH's pure and good and glorious brain:
...most of the time I loved him too much to want him dead. Right at that moment was not one of those times.
She wants a man she claims to love to die. Because he is angry with her. This is not the first time she has felt this way.
Having a big fight with someone we love is a common human experience. So, unlike with the metaphysical bullshit, it is something very easy for most humans to judge. Vampire politics don't really exist; fights with loved ones do. That Anita regularly wishes a supposed loved one she has fights with WOULD DIE points to something extremely disturbed in this relationship and/or within Anita. And she isn't wishing this because Richard is abusive and she can't get away from him. She's wishing it because he has a conscience.
That moment was one of those times when I wished he had fewer hang-ups, and had had more therapy.
THERAPY IS NOT SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU THINK RAPE IS OKAY.
Richard has gotten more of the rape energy from Anita and JC than anyone else because he's in that stupid triumvurate with them. He's also felt what's gone on through their bonds... somehow. Some kind of psychic bullshit that is, of course, not clearly explained. He can sense both their emotions and actions to some extent as the plot requires.
JC dismisses Claudia, and Lisandro (a bodyguard) gets a glimpse of Anita. “It was a man's look at a naked woman that he'd never seen naked before" (104). Thanks for telling instead of showing again, LKH. Look: every man is not the same. Every woman is not the same. Every situation is not the same. By telling instead of showing here, LKH has made me think of lots of reasons that what she is telling makes no bloody sense. She's making the reader do the work of inferring that Lisandro is leering. But there are plenty of situations in which a man would not leer at a naked woman, and every man gives different looks when they first see a woman naked even in sexual situations, and I think LKH lives in a tower surrounded by a glass mountain and has never met another human being in her life, let alone fucked one.
Then Anita says the rest of the men “might have been eunuchs as far as I was concerned” until that look. Lovely. Then she compares therians to animals directly, saying that one noticing you naked “would be like your cat thinking about not wearing pants.” This woman has sex with therians regularly.
After that, Anita thinks what I think might be a good point, that someone drooling over you isn't a great bodyguard. But Heidi Klum is in a relationship with her bodyguard, and I know pretty much nothing about bodyguarding people in contemporary America, so idk. And Anita ends up fucking nearly all of her bodyguards eventually, including raping Lisandro. This is only here so Anita can be lusted after inappropriately anyway, because it has no bearing on anything, so that's nice.
Richard begs Anita to put on a towel. A great show is made of this, like Anita is doing Richard some huge favor by deigning not to be naked while have a fraught conversation about how she just raped a bunch of people. It takes half a page. Then they all talk about Anita and JC drying their hair.
Fetish, used as a sexual term, has two different meanings of which I am aware. The first is as something one finds attractive and seeks out, but which is harmless and fun and does not negatively impact one's life in any way. LKH's hair fetish is the other one.
Richard “hugs his knees to him, and it was something that Nathaniel might have done, not my dominant Richard” (105).
Laurell K. Hamilton, you are an idiot. Being dominant does not mean you are never hurt and never need comforting and never feel vulnerable. Nor does it mean you never sit in certain positions, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! Again, she is talking about something real people experience, and showing how deeply ignorant and unpleasant she is by doing so. She needs to stick with the stupid vampire politics and metaphysics.
Anita thinks about how she won't cuddle with JC because sometimes that upsets Richard. That resolution lasts two short paragraphs. Because “it just seemed wrong to be this close and not touch” (106). This relationship is sick.
Richard says he thought Auggie and Samuel were JC's friends, and if this is how his friends treat them, how are his enemies going to treat them? Which is a good point. Vampires in Anita's world are all rapey assholes, and their entire culture (such as it is) is based around rape and dominating other people against their will. Why were these shitheads made legal citizens again? They don't respect anything about human society; why should human society respect them?
JC says, “we may have rolled Augustine as thoroughly as Belle Morte could have done.” Richard replies, “I wouldn't brag about that.” Yep, I like Richard. In this book, anyway.
As Richard and JC talk, Anita wants to touch Richard's hair. Otherwise I have no idea what she is feeling or thinking. Lines are strewn throughout about Richard inching closer to her and JC. Touchy touchy. It's creeping me out.
They talk about how every powerful vampire must want Anita even if he's JC's friend and should be keeping his mitts off her. Anita and JC think maybe it's the ardeur. Richard says, “maybe you just don't have any friends” (107). I think I'm falling in love with Richard.
Anita brings up how maybe the council or American vampires will kill them. Richard responds by saying, “this is a lose-lose situation. Why did you bring them all here, Jean-Claude?” (108) Richard may join my imaginary harem. I will even let him cut his hair.
JC says he wants to host this ballet because he wants vampires to be able to be artists, because they have never been able to do that before.
O_o
o_O
Thousands of years of vampires, and all they have ever been is rape-crazed monsters. Mmkay.
Instead of discussing why this might be and how to change it, Anita brings the conversation back to her sex life. She doesn't want to go to the ball, JC says she has to and calls her Cinderella, she says Nathaniel says she's Prince Charming, JC condescends to her. Anita does not tell him what she thinks of herself, only what Nathaniel does. I have never read a book in which the heroine so entirely defined herself by her relationships to men and was so entirely disallowed from having an independent thought or voice in her life, and that includes Twilight.
Richard is wanting to touch Anita and trying to stop himself. Anita claims that vampire marks for Belle's line make them want to touch. Then she exposits that “it didn't have to be about sex”(108). Liar liar towel on fire.
Anita has been too afraid to ask Richard if he wants to touch JC. She is such a damn coward. Then they talk about a guy named London whom Anita does not like, and Anita says “his own kiss [twee name for a vampire group] nicknamed him 'the Dark Knight.' I think that says something.” Yes, it says they are all twelve year old goffs. London is addicted to the ardeur and is desperate to avoid it at all costs. JC claims he's giving London sanctuary because “I try for kindness when I can” (109). That's a big fat lie if the summaries I've read of the previous books are anything to go on.
The vampires Wicked and Truth come up. Are we really sure LKH isn't trolling us all?
There's another page about Richard being jealous regarding Anita but about how he's fucked a lot of women in the past month and I think this is what LKH thinks unmarried, sexually active people's lives are really like, one big fuckfest. If Richard is having sex with multiple different people a month as a regular thing and not being paid for it, he's not like anyone I've ever known.
Richard says that the mass rape of Auggie et al felt good to him and he breaks down crying. For good reason. He was metaphysically raped too. It doesn't matter if it feels good; if there was not active and informed consent, it was still rape. Richard has that to deal with plus the guilt of knowing the people on his side, with whom he is permanently bound, at least one of whom he loves, did this terrible thing. He has acted realistically to this fact: first with anger, then with an attempt to understand, then with avoidance, and now with a complete breakdown. Richard is not the kind of guy who cries easily. He's only going to do it when he's torn apart inside.
So AGAIN LKH has written a realistic reaction to rape without calling it rape. She has to know what she's doing.
JC and Anita touch Richard to make him feel better. Because I'm sure the people who have just violated him pawing him is exactly what Richard needs right now.
This chapter is contemptible. All of them have been so far, but this one – this one. Anita's experiences in the book before this have been somewhat removed from what humans can actually experience, making her heinous morality a little bit unreal, and giving LKH the cover of fantasy. But in this one... you'll see.
Richard is not in the bathroom yet. First, he must have a pissing contest with Claudia. There's a bunch of “power” being thrown around, and I hate how LKH does not define how the magic in Anita's world works at all. It's just power levels whose exact strength can be sensed as it flies around doing something or other which we are not told and I do not like it.
One thing is clear: Richard is incredibly furious. Which means Anita must think about his hair, which has “finally grown back to brush the tops of his broad shoulders” (101). Besides the terrible phrasing that implies Richard's hair used to grow in a direction other than back: “finally”. Now that his hair is shoulder-length, he's a real boy. His hair is brown and blond and auburn all at once, somehow. It's Edward Cullen's hair! Also Richard's eyes are both amber and gold at the moment. And he has lots of muscles and is really really hot for half a page. Jesus, all bad vampire novel writers really are exactly the same.
Anita claims, “for the first time since I'd known him I realized he was spoiling for a fight.” Isn't this a lie? I've only read sporkings of previous Anita Blake books, but I seem to remember Richard getting angry and wanting to fight an awful lot in them. Anita thinks Richard might find it upsetting to see JC naked because Richard “was a touch homophobic; what he'd felt us do tonight wouldn't help that.” Oh, you mean the mass raping? Only a homophobe could possibly find a problem with that. Right.
Anita thinks about how she's not going to kill Richard. First, because it might kill her and JC if she did. Now, gaze upon this masterwork of LKH's pure and good and glorious brain:
...most of the time I loved him too much to want him dead. Right at that moment was not one of those times.
She wants a man she claims to love to die. Because he is angry with her. This is not the first time she has felt this way.
Having a big fight with someone we love is a common human experience. So, unlike with the metaphysical bullshit, it is something very easy for most humans to judge. Vampire politics don't really exist; fights with loved ones do. That Anita regularly wishes a supposed loved one she has fights with WOULD DIE points to something extremely disturbed in this relationship and/or within Anita. And she isn't wishing this because Richard is abusive and she can't get away from him. She's wishing it because he has a conscience.
That moment was one of those times when I wished he had fewer hang-ups, and had had more therapy.
THERAPY IS NOT SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU THINK RAPE IS OKAY.
Richard has gotten more of the rape energy from Anita and JC than anyone else because he's in that stupid triumvurate with them. He's also felt what's gone on through their bonds... somehow. Some kind of psychic bullshit that is, of course, not clearly explained. He can sense both their emotions and actions to some extent as the plot requires.
JC dismisses Claudia, and Lisandro (a bodyguard) gets a glimpse of Anita. “It was a man's look at a naked woman that he'd never seen naked before" (104). Thanks for telling instead of showing again, LKH. Look: every man is not the same. Every woman is not the same. Every situation is not the same. By telling instead of showing here, LKH has made me think of lots of reasons that what she is telling makes no bloody sense. She's making the reader do the work of inferring that Lisandro is leering. But there are plenty of situations in which a man would not leer at a naked woman, and every man gives different looks when they first see a woman naked even in sexual situations, and I think LKH lives in a tower surrounded by a glass mountain and has never met another human being in her life, let alone fucked one.
Then Anita says the rest of the men “might have been eunuchs as far as I was concerned” until that look. Lovely. Then she compares therians to animals directly, saying that one noticing you naked “would be like your cat thinking about not wearing pants.” This woman has sex with therians regularly.
After that, Anita thinks what I think might be a good point, that someone drooling over you isn't a great bodyguard. But Heidi Klum is in a relationship with her bodyguard, and I know pretty much nothing about bodyguarding people in contemporary America, so idk. And Anita ends up fucking nearly all of her bodyguards eventually, including raping Lisandro. This is only here so Anita can be lusted after inappropriately anyway, because it has no bearing on anything, so that's nice.
Richard begs Anita to put on a towel. A great show is made of this, like Anita is doing Richard some huge favor by deigning not to be naked while have a fraught conversation about how she just raped a bunch of people. It takes half a page. Then they all talk about Anita and JC drying their hair.
Fetish, used as a sexual term, has two different meanings of which I am aware. The first is as something one finds attractive and seeks out, but which is harmless and fun and does not negatively impact one's life in any way. LKH's hair fetish is the other one.
Richard “hugs his knees to him, and it was something that Nathaniel might have done, not my dominant Richard” (105).
Laurell K. Hamilton, you are an idiot. Being dominant does not mean you are never hurt and never need comforting and never feel vulnerable. Nor does it mean you never sit in certain positions, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! Again, she is talking about something real people experience, and showing how deeply ignorant and unpleasant she is by doing so. She needs to stick with the stupid vampire politics and metaphysics.
Anita thinks about how she won't cuddle with JC because sometimes that upsets Richard. That resolution lasts two short paragraphs. Because “it just seemed wrong to be this close and not touch” (106). This relationship is sick.
Richard says he thought Auggie and Samuel were JC's friends, and if this is how his friends treat them, how are his enemies going to treat them? Which is a good point. Vampires in Anita's world are all rapey assholes, and their entire culture (such as it is) is based around rape and dominating other people against their will. Why were these shitheads made legal citizens again? They don't respect anything about human society; why should human society respect them?
JC says, “we may have rolled Augustine as thoroughly as Belle Morte could have done.” Richard replies, “I wouldn't brag about that.” Yep, I like Richard. In this book, anyway.
As Richard and JC talk, Anita wants to touch Richard's hair. Otherwise I have no idea what she is feeling or thinking. Lines are strewn throughout about Richard inching closer to her and JC. Touchy touchy. It's creeping me out.
They talk about how every powerful vampire must want Anita even if he's JC's friend and should be keeping his mitts off her. Anita and JC think maybe it's the ardeur. Richard says, “maybe you just don't have any friends” (107). I think I'm falling in love with Richard.
Anita brings up how maybe the council or American vampires will kill them. Richard responds by saying, “this is a lose-lose situation. Why did you bring them all here, Jean-Claude?” (108) Richard may join my imaginary harem. I will even let him cut his hair.
JC says he wants to host this ballet because he wants vampires to be able to be artists, because they have never been able to do that before.
O_o
o_O
Thousands of years of vampires, and all they have ever been is rape-crazed monsters. Mmkay.
Instead of discussing why this might be and how to change it, Anita brings the conversation back to her sex life. She doesn't want to go to the ball, JC says she has to and calls her Cinderella, she says Nathaniel says she's Prince Charming, JC condescends to her. Anita does not tell him what she thinks of herself, only what Nathaniel does. I have never read a book in which the heroine so entirely defined herself by her relationships to men and was so entirely disallowed from having an independent thought or voice in her life, and that includes Twilight.
Richard is wanting to touch Anita and trying to stop himself. Anita claims that vampire marks for Belle's line make them want to touch. Then she exposits that “it didn't have to be about sex”(108). Liar liar towel on fire.
Anita has been too afraid to ask Richard if he wants to touch JC. She is such a damn coward. Then they talk about a guy named London whom Anita does not like, and Anita says “his own kiss [twee name for a vampire group] nicknamed him 'the Dark Knight.' I think that says something.” Yes, it says they are all twelve year old goffs. London is addicted to the ardeur and is desperate to avoid it at all costs. JC claims he's giving London sanctuary because “I try for kindness when I can” (109). That's a big fat lie if the summaries I've read of the previous books are anything to go on.
The vampires Wicked and Truth come up. Are we really sure LKH isn't trolling us all?
There's another page about Richard being jealous regarding Anita but about how he's fucked a lot of women in the past month and I think this is what LKH thinks unmarried, sexually active people's lives are really like, one big fuckfest. If Richard is having sex with multiple different people a month as a regular thing and not being paid for it, he's not like anyone I've ever known.
Richard says that the mass rape of Auggie et al felt good to him and he breaks down crying. For good reason. He was metaphysically raped too. It doesn't matter if it feels good; if there was not active and informed consent, it was still rape. Richard has that to deal with plus the guilt of knowing the people on his side, with whom he is permanently bound, at least one of whom he loves, did this terrible thing. He has acted realistically to this fact: first with anger, then with an attempt to understand, then with avoidance, and now with a complete breakdown. Richard is not the kind of guy who cries easily. He's only going to do it when he's torn apart inside.
So AGAIN LKH has written a realistic reaction to rape without calling it rape. She has to know what she's doing.
JC and Anita touch Richard to make him feel better. Because I'm sure the people who have just violated him pawing him is exactly what Richard needs right now.
