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lliiraCN: Anita Blake book
The last chapter ended up being about how Anita would be fucking Sampson. Or that's what I thought it was about. So I expected her to be fucking Sampson this chapter. Silly me, thinking talking about sex would lead to sex in a supposedly sexy book.
Nope, this chapter is more talking. It's mostly Anita and Richard griping at each other. Hawt! The sfdebris guy said a scene in Enterprise was like a porn in which the woman complains about the upholstery the whole time. (http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/e101.php, scene starts 8:52 into part 2.) That's what this is like, except without the pretty people to stare at. It's not sexy arguing; it's petty bickering. And Anita continues to be self-centered and insufferable.
Richard asks Anita if she would be upset if she met three women he was going to fuck, two of whom were 17. She says yes, but "what am I supposed to do, Richard, apologize?" (127) Well, you could try not being an insensitive hypocrite. Then she says she'd decided against fucking "the seventeen-year old" (128). She seems to have forgotten that there are two of them. Or she's decided to fuck one of the twins but not the other.
Samuel and Sampson get up to leave JC and his minions to their petty bickering. *headdesk* I obviously don't like Samuel, but he's preferable to watching JC, Anita, and Richard babble more. Plus he's maybe possibly plot-relevant, whatever the hell the plot is to this thing. I thought it was about a vampire ballet, then I thought it was about Anita finding a new harem member, then I thought it was about power plays with vampires and a mermaid, then I thought Auggie was going to be the main antagonist, then I thought Thea's family would be central in some way (maybe that Anita would ally with them against Auggie), and now I don't know what the plot is supposed to be. A blocked writer would kill for half the plot bunnies in this book, but instead of scampering through the fields, the poor lobotomized bunnies are standing in their warrens drooling. The book's overcrowded, and yet nothing happens.
Sampson is sensitive to Richard's feelings. This upsets Richard. “If you'd acted like some kind of lustful asshole, I could have just gone” (129). This shows that LKH thinks lust = asshole.
Now there is a conversation between Richard and Anita about her and JC raping a whole lot of people (though it is not called rape) which I think is almost a direct transcription of a conversation LKH had with someone who criticized Anita and LKH's writing in general:
The next bit is important. Richard says, “This isn't the real world, Anita.”
Richard knows he is a character in a novel. He knows this isn't real. There are so many things to say about that, they're overcrowding my brain and in the scrum, all I can do is stare.
The next time LKH says she's a character writer; the next time she whines about killing someone off; the next time she says she bleeds for her work: remember this. Richard knows he is not real. He knows the world he lives in is not real. LKH's worldbuilding is so utterly terrible that even her characters can't believe in it.
Anita replies, “no, but it's our world.” So Anita also knows this is not the real world. The main character of this series knows that none of this is real.
Anita has been so overtaken, as a character, by LKH's fantasies, that she knows that's all she is. The separation between LKH and Anita is non-existent. Therefore, since LKH knows this isn't real, Anita does too. There's no fourth wall any longer in the author's head. I don't know what, if anything, that's done to LKH. It has destroyed Anita.
Richard says he doesn't want this life, in which he is constantly given the choice between sharing Anita with other men or people dying. Which, yeah. Even if someone is in a non-monogamous relationship, I don't think they're going to be happy with, “you must be okay with your partner having sex with this person or else DEATH.” Because that removes consent from everyone involved.
Anita says she likes her life now. She claims to hate the ardeur, which is a lie. She says, “I'd have liked to try that whole picket-fence thing, but I think even without the ardeur and the vampire marks, that wouldn't have been my gig” (130).
I have fucking had it with LKH's “picket fence” obsession. The choices in life are not Leave it to Beaver or RAPE ALL THE THINGS. There's nothing wrong with the pure Leave it to Beaver life if that's what you want, but I've never known anyone who actually wanted it. There is something seriously wrong with raping people – and I've also never known anyone who wanted that, or at least never anyone who admitted it if they did.
This points to what LKH really thinks about sex and life in general, especially for women. Unless you choose to be monogamous with one man, only have occasional missionary position sex with the lights off, are a housewife or at least don't really care about your career, have 2.5 children, live in the suburbs, and vacuum wearing pearls and high heels, you have exactly one other choice. That is to fall on every penis that crosses your path. As she sees it, you are either imprisoned by domesticity or you live a life of edgy danger and dangerous sex/rape. We have no other choices.
I don't think Richard wanted the Leave it to Beaver life. I think he wanted monogamy and children with a woman who loved him. I think he especially did not want his life to be controlled by vampires. LKH frames this as if he hates himself and what he is. Richard is a werewolf who enjoys BDSM, so he's lying to himself about being able to have monogamy and a family and a normal life. This is bullshit. LKH has tried to set up her world so that therians must accept being controlled by vampires, but looking at the way Joseph ran his pride until Anita murdered him, the way Raphael runs the wererats, and the way Richard could run the werewolves if given the chance, it is bullshit even within her world. Even if it were true, it would not be acceptable. I'd expect a normal author to set this up as a prelude to a war between shifters and vampires, in which the “good guys” (as LKH would put it) sided with the shifters.
As for the other part, about not being able to have monogamy and a normal life if you like BDSM, I think I've ranted enough about that, so I'll move on.
Richard says this is all JC's fault. “Jean-Claude was giving his most peaceful, empty face, as if he were afraid to say or do anything.” ICK. Oh god he is so slimy ick I hate him kill him Richard, I know it will kill you too but you will be a martyr for a good cause. I would get so much pleasure if Richard tore JC apart, god, it would be like Christmas and my birthday and Halloween and a honeymoon all at once. LKH is damned good at making characters whom I want to see die painfully, and also damned good at making a character I sympathize with and want to see do heroic stuff (Richard here); it's too bad she has wasted her talents on giving her creepy vampire everything he wants.
Anita claims JC saved Richard's life by giving him the marks. I do not know if this is true, but somehow I doubt it. If it is true, it's LKH's fetish for removing people's consent because the alternative is death cropping up again. Then Anita says she was “dying of loneliness” before she became a constant rapist and rape victim. She also says, “I was like a lot of people who do police work. I was my job.”
1) Whatever she was before, she seems very lonely now. She cannot talk to her penii about her worries about pregnancy unless forced. One of said penii drove her sole female friend out of her life by bullying her. Anita seems pretty miserable. 2) She was not a cop, stop pretending she was a cop. 3) Why do you hate the police so much, LKH? I'm neither pro- nor anti-cop. I like the idea of the police and some specific police officers, but cop culture in America is severely fucked up. LKH, however, pretends to be pro-cop, and then writes stuff like this, which puts them in a worse light than I ever would. Is this a 70s copsploitation hero thing?
Anita dwells on how terrible the police work was, and Richard responds that he'd asked her to give up the police work because “it was eating you up.” She claims he's not listening, even though that's exactly what she just said. He says, “maybe I'm right, and you're not listening,” which is the truth.
They continue arguing. Anita says she wouldn't have given up police work because “just because something's hard doesn't mean you give up on it” (131). No, but I think if it's destroying you, you do give up on it. This sounds like the way LKH often writes about her writing: as something that frightens and hurts her, as Jennifer Armontrout said. Anita doesn't say she's the only person who could do what she did, so she was forced to in order to save people. It would be preposterous if she did say that; she's not Superman. So why keep doing it? You don't get a medal for being miserable, Anita.
Anita thinks about how much sexier Richard is when he's angry than when he's not. I have no idea. This is the way Bella thinks about Edward when he's angry. Ooh, how hot he is now that he's mad at me. This is completely alien to me; am I the weird one?
“His power began to flow through the room, hot water, hotter than you'd want in the bath.” I want to take that line out back and shoot it.
Anita lectures Richard about how he has to accept that his life is awful now because nothing is going to change. She's sure not willing to change anything. Lawful Evil, right there. Richard says “no.” He lets down his shields because whenever you have a fight with someone, isn't it natural to want them to read your mind? Again, I have no idea. None of these people make sense. Anita thinks, “he still hoped, seriously, that some day we'd be a nice little monogamous pair.” What a wonderful person she is. So open-minded toward lifestyles that are not her own.
Anyway, Richard's unfathomable decision to let down his shields is explained when Anita (who isn't shielded because shut up and read LKH's crappy book) thinks about how she might be pregnant and he hears it. Tell me again how you're a character-driven writer, LKH.
The last chapter ended up being about how Anita would be fucking Sampson. Or that's what I thought it was about. So I expected her to be fucking Sampson this chapter. Silly me, thinking talking about sex would lead to sex in a supposedly sexy book.
Nope, this chapter is more talking. It's mostly Anita and Richard griping at each other. Hawt! The sfdebris guy said a scene in Enterprise was like a porn in which the woman complains about the upholstery the whole time. (http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/e101.php, scene starts 8:52 into part 2.) That's what this is like, except without the pretty people to stare at. It's not sexy arguing; it's petty bickering. And Anita continues to be self-centered and insufferable.
Richard asks Anita if she would be upset if she met three women he was going to fuck, two of whom were 17. She says yes, but "what am I supposed to do, Richard, apologize?" (127) Well, you could try not being an insensitive hypocrite. Then she says she'd decided against fucking "the seventeen-year old" (128). She seems to have forgotten that there are two of them. Or she's decided to fuck one of the twins but not the other.
Samuel and Sampson get up to leave JC and his minions to their petty bickering. *headdesk* I obviously don't like Samuel, but he's preferable to watching JC, Anita, and Richard babble more. Plus he's maybe possibly plot-relevant, whatever the hell the plot is to this thing. I thought it was about a vampire ballet, then I thought it was about Anita finding a new harem member, then I thought it was about power plays with vampires and a mermaid, then I thought Auggie was going to be the main antagonist, then I thought Thea's family would be central in some way (maybe that Anita would ally with them against Auggie), and now I don't know what the plot is supposed to be. A blocked writer would kill for half the plot bunnies in this book, but instead of scampering through the fields, the poor lobotomized bunnies are standing in their warrens drooling. The book's overcrowded, and yet nothing happens.
Sampson is sensitive to Richard's feelings. This upsets Richard. “If you'd acted like some kind of lustful asshole, I could have just gone” (129). This shows that LKH thinks lust = asshole.
Now there is a conversation between Richard and Anita about her and JC raping a whole lot of people (though it is not called rape) which I think is almost a direct transcription of a conversation LKH had with someone who criticized Anita and LKH's writing in general:
“Luxury,” Richard said. “This isn't luxury, Anita, it's morality. It's your conscience. That's not a luxury item, that's what separates us from animals.” [We're animals too, and I would argue that many animals do have consciences, as many have empathy, but I'm on Richard's side here. Conscience is not a luxury.]
Here we go again, I thought. [Oh sigh, someone wants her to behave in a moral fashion, how tiresome.] Out loud I said, “I have a conscience, Richard, and my own set of morals. [Your set of “morals” is based on you getting everything you want and taking pleasure in harming others. That's not morality.] Do I ever worry that I'm a bad guy? [Do you ever worry that you're a toddler?] Yeah, sometimes I do. [I think you revel in it.] Do I ever wonder if I've traded away pieces of my soul, just to survive? [I think JC took them from you in the first place, actually, and to deal with it, you decided to become everything he wants.] Yeah.” I shrugged. “It's the price of doing business in the real world, Richard.” [Everyone who thinks they've had to trade away part of their soul to survive in the real world, raise your hand. I haven't. Everyone has to make moral compromises, because none of us is perfect and neither is the world, but that's different from feeling you've traded away pieces of your soul. That's what happens when you're in a relationship with a mob boss.]
The next bit is important. Richard says, “This isn't the real world, Anita.”
Richard knows he is a character in a novel. He knows this isn't real. There are so many things to say about that, they're overcrowding my brain and in the scrum, all I can do is stare.
The next time LKH says she's a character writer; the next time she whines about killing someone off; the next time she says she bleeds for her work: remember this. Richard knows he is not real. He knows the world he lives in is not real. LKH's worldbuilding is so utterly terrible that even her characters can't believe in it.
Anita replies, “no, but it's our world.” So Anita also knows this is not the real world. The main character of this series knows that none of this is real.
Anita has been so overtaken, as a character, by LKH's fantasies, that she knows that's all she is. The separation between LKH and Anita is non-existent. Therefore, since LKH knows this isn't real, Anita does too. There's no fourth wall any longer in the author's head. I don't know what, if anything, that's done to LKH. It has destroyed Anita.
Richard says he doesn't want this life, in which he is constantly given the choice between sharing Anita with other men or people dying. Which, yeah. Even if someone is in a non-monogamous relationship, I don't think they're going to be happy with, “you must be okay with your partner having sex with this person or else DEATH.” Because that removes consent from everyone involved.
Anita says she likes her life now. She claims to hate the ardeur, which is a lie. She says, “I'd have liked to try that whole picket-fence thing, but I think even without the ardeur and the vampire marks, that wouldn't have been my gig” (130).
I have fucking had it with LKH's “picket fence” obsession. The choices in life are not Leave it to Beaver or RAPE ALL THE THINGS. There's nothing wrong with the pure Leave it to Beaver life if that's what you want, but I've never known anyone who actually wanted it. There is something seriously wrong with raping people – and I've also never known anyone who wanted that, or at least never anyone who admitted it if they did.
This points to what LKH really thinks about sex and life in general, especially for women. Unless you choose to be monogamous with one man, only have occasional missionary position sex with the lights off, are a housewife or at least don't really care about your career, have 2.5 children, live in the suburbs, and vacuum wearing pearls and high heels, you have exactly one other choice. That is to fall on every penis that crosses your path. As she sees it, you are either imprisoned by domesticity or you live a life of edgy danger and dangerous sex/rape. We have no other choices.
I don't think Richard wanted the Leave it to Beaver life. I think he wanted monogamy and children with a woman who loved him. I think he especially did not want his life to be controlled by vampires. LKH frames this as if he hates himself and what he is. Richard is a werewolf who enjoys BDSM, so he's lying to himself about being able to have monogamy and a family and a normal life. This is bullshit. LKH has tried to set up her world so that therians must accept being controlled by vampires, but looking at the way Joseph ran his pride until Anita murdered him, the way Raphael runs the wererats, and the way Richard could run the werewolves if given the chance, it is bullshit even within her world. Even if it were true, it would not be acceptable. I'd expect a normal author to set this up as a prelude to a war between shifters and vampires, in which the “good guys” (as LKH would put it) sided with the shifters.
As for the other part, about not being able to have monogamy and a normal life if you like BDSM, I think I've ranted enough about that, so I'll move on.
Richard says this is all JC's fault. “Jean-Claude was giving his most peaceful, empty face, as if he were afraid to say or do anything.” ICK. Oh god he is so slimy ick I hate him kill him Richard, I know it will kill you too but you will be a martyr for a good cause. I would get so much pleasure if Richard tore JC apart, god, it would be like Christmas and my birthday and Halloween and a honeymoon all at once. LKH is damned good at making characters whom I want to see die painfully, and also damned good at making a character I sympathize with and want to see do heroic stuff (Richard here); it's too bad she has wasted her talents on giving her creepy vampire everything he wants.
Anita claims JC saved Richard's life by giving him the marks. I do not know if this is true, but somehow I doubt it. If it is true, it's LKH's fetish for removing people's consent because the alternative is death cropping up again. Then Anita says she was “dying of loneliness” before she became a constant rapist and rape victim. She also says, “I was like a lot of people who do police work. I was my job.”
1) Whatever she was before, she seems very lonely now. She cannot talk to her penii about her worries about pregnancy unless forced. One of said penii drove her sole female friend out of her life by bullying her. Anita seems pretty miserable. 2) She was not a cop, stop pretending she was a cop. 3) Why do you hate the police so much, LKH? I'm neither pro- nor anti-cop. I like the idea of the police and some specific police officers, but cop culture in America is severely fucked up. LKH, however, pretends to be pro-cop, and then writes stuff like this, which puts them in a worse light than I ever would. Is this a 70s copsploitation hero thing?
Anita dwells on how terrible the police work was, and Richard responds that he'd asked her to give up the police work because “it was eating you up.” She claims he's not listening, even though that's exactly what she just said. He says, “maybe I'm right, and you're not listening,” which is the truth.
They continue arguing. Anita says she wouldn't have given up police work because “just because something's hard doesn't mean you give up on it” (131). No, but I think if it's destroying you, you do give up on it. This sounds like the way LKH often writes about her writing: as something that frightens and hurts her, as Jennifer Armontrout said. Anita doesn't say she's the only person who could do what she did, so she was forced to in order to save people. It would be preposterous if she did say that; she's not Superman. So why keep doing it? You don't get a medal for being miserable, Anita.
Anita thinks about how much sexier Richard is when he's angry than when he's not. I have no idea. This is the way Bella thinks about Edward when he's angry. Ooh, how hot he is now that he's mad at me. This is completely alien to me; am I the weird one?
“His power began to flow through the room, hot water, hotter than you'd want in the bath.” I want to take that line out back and shoot it.
Anita lectures Richard about how he has to accept that his life is awful now because nothing is going to change. She's sure not willing to change anything. Lawful Evil, right there. Richard says “no.” He lets down his shields because whenever you have a fight with someone, isn't it natural to want them to read your mind? Again, I have no idea. None of these people make sense. Anita thinks, “he still hoped, seriously, that some day we'd be a nice little monogamous pair.” What a wonderful person she is. So open-minded toward lifestyles that are not her own.
Anyway, Richard's unfathomable decision to let down his shields is explained when Anita (who isn't shielded because shut up and read LKH's crappy book) thinks about how she might be pregnant and he hears it. Tell me again how you're a character-driven writer, LKH.
