Danse Macabre, Chapter 15

[lliira]

CN: Anita Blake book, pregnancy

I've been having a hard time continuing Danse Macabre because I have 18 more pages of bickering to get through until the characters start talking about something else. By the time I am through with this section, I will have read 50 straight pages of bickering. That's ten times as much bickering as sex in this book so far, and that's only counting this section, not the bullying of Ronnie or the strange arguments with Auggie and Thea. Plus it's entirely centered on how Richard is unhappy with Anita's sex life and how terrible he is for that. It is not only poor writing; like “Shutdown”, it's also embarrassing.

Sampson and Samuel are still in the room. I thought they'd left. But I looked back, and they've been sitting here for the last three pages listening to Anita and Richard yell at each other about incredibly private things. Jeez. I feel like sinking into the floor if my husband and I have a short, mild argument in public over yogurt flavors. I feel bad that Sampson and Samuel have to listen to this. It's like the voyeurism Anita and Nathaniel forced on Ronnie in the beginning of the book. This is forced emotional voyeurism. JC is the crappiest host ever. He's the one who asked Samuel and Sampson to stay in the room through this nonsense.

“I slammed every shield I had in place, shut, tight, metal, closed. I thought metal, smooth and thick and impenetrable” (133).

I think what I said about NaNo and writing purely for wordcount applies here. I still think it's odd that LKH wrote this, but avoided writing foreplay or describing the one sex scene in this book so far with any clarity or making it longer than thrust-thrust-thrust-bang. She'll do anything for wordcount, but she won't do that.

Samuel congratulates Anita and Richard and says that a baby is “joyous news indeed.” He cannot understand why anyone would ever possibly be upset about a pregnancy, because he is from a time when no one was ever upset about pregnancy. So he is apparently a time traveler from the year 2449, when no one ever gets pregnant when they don't want to, and he also knows nothing of Earth history.

Besides the history fail, this idea that vampires follow every cultural more from their own time and place, and only the most stereotypical of those, is one of many things that make Anita Blake's world stupid. Vampires are not only stuck in time; there were apparently no vampires who saw any problems with the culture they lived in before they were vampirized, or had any tastes differing from each other, or were political activists in their time, or etc. And according to JC, no vampires have ever been artists. Apparently only the shallowest, dullest, most ignorant, most inflexible people are ever turned into vampires.

Anita is severely pissed off, though she doesn't say anything. Samuel asks why Anita is so angry. She tells him, “don't tell me how to feel, Samuel, you don't have that right.” Anita, he did not tell you how to feel. He asked why you are feeling the way you are. You stupid, stupid person.

JC is being neutral about this as he was about Richard because he says he's afraid of upsetting Anita. She demands he say something. He asks, “are you with child?” (134) Next I'm expecting JC to be shocked and amazed at the demons making the lights turn on and off when a person touches some strange thing sticking out of a wall. Then Samuel will be confused that a woman is allowed to wear trousers in public, and Thea will not understand that the state does not kill people by crucifixion any longer.

Richard and Anita argue about her possible maybe pregnancy. SHE HAS NOT EVEN TAKEN A PREGNANCY TEST YET. No. Just no. This argument is not happening. People do not behave like this in this situation, before they know. Anita: Take. The. Damn. Test.

Anyway, Richard keeps referring to this maybe pregnancy as a “baby”, so Anita says it's just a bundle of cells, if it exists, which they don't know yet. This is precisely the opposite opinion Anita took when discussing this with Ronnie. The only way in which Anita has stood strong regarding her pregnancy scare is in refusing to pee on a stick. It makes her look like she's milking it for every bit of drama and attention she can get. If she's not pregnant, people might stop paying attention to her for a half-second. Though the only way any of her friends, especially those who might have impregnated her, should be paying attention to Anita is to be telling her to go pee on the fucking stick already.

But instead, Richard asks if Anita would “really kill our baby” (I'm not sure if a biology teacher should be referring to the bundle of cells this way, but it's an emotional situation), and Anita tells us, “I wanted to scream yes, just to see the pain on his face” (135). Ugh. I get wanting to cause emotional pain to someone you love during a fight – it's not pretty, but it's a common impulse. But in this case, I do not understand why they're even fighting because 1) Anita hasn't peed on the bloody stick yet and 2) why is she so angry and hateful here.

She yells “NO!” at him instead (Harry Potter sent an owl, he wants his capslock back). Then Anita's terrified because Richard is acting all gooey toward her (for him) at the thought of having a baby with her. It makes her feel “as if I were suffocating in a nightmare”. I do not know why; Anita claims she loves Richard, so why doesn't she want him to love her back? Hm. I think this is connected to the fact that Anita never has sex that is consensual, that LKH does not describe Anita's emotions in sex scenes, and that Anita seems to avoid men who want her but rapes men who don't instead. It sounds cheesy, but I think Anita is terrified of love. Not solely romantic love, but that's the only kind she seems to recognize.

I'm often sad for Anita because she's such a pitiable example of a self-insert. Instead of men falling at her feet because she is awesome, they HAVE to fall at her feet; they are forced to by the ardeur, or because they sense an “animal” in her that matches theirs, or because no other woman wants them. Instead of men staying with her because they want to, they HAVE to stick around or they will die, or they're metaphysically bound to her by being her animal to call, or she's a therian queen to their king. It gets worse as the books go on, so that in her latest books, she has a mind-wiped sex slave who literally cannot do anything to displease her.

LKH has written a main character whom no one loves. Lots of men say they love her, but the only one who so far has shown anything like love in this book is Richard, and Anita is horrified by this. It's just really sad.

Anyway, to make Richard stop looking at her like he loves her, Anita says, “what if it's not yours?” She tells us that she wants this to hurt Richard. Whhhyyyyyy why do you keep beating up on Richard. Is it because you love him?

Richard thinks it's most likely that the non-existent kid is his, and Anita brings up the fact that Samuel has recently had kids, though he's an old vampire, so it could be a vampire's. “Jean-Claude sighed, and stepped back as if he'd given up trying to stop the fight.” When did he ever do anything to try to stop the fight? Did LKH forget JC was here, and stick that line in when she realized it?

Then Anita brings up Micah and Nathaniel. Richard says, “Micah's fixed.” Wow, that's a creepy way to talk about a human being who got a vasectomy. So “that leaves Nathaniel” and now Richard's so angry that Anita actually regrets bringing it up. Good. I wish for her to suffer.

“As if on cue,” Micah and Nathaniel pop up. Did LKH lampshade herself there?

Richard asks Nathaniel if they knew about “the baby”, and Nathaniel actually behaves like a normal person and asks, “are we sure?” Richard is pissy that Nathaniel and Micah knew first, and Anita says, “I didn't want any of you to know until I did the test.” WHICH SHE STILL HAS NOT DONE. She could easily have peed on that stick AND gone to a doctor in the time since she has started to worry about being pregnant. I think that she is lying. After all, if she's not pregnant, she can't get all this drama.

Richard says to Nathaniel that if Anita is pregnant, the father is one of them, and Richard is using his angry voice to say this. And then steam comes out of my ears.

Nathaniel had once of the most careful looks I'd ever seen on his face. He looked blank, pleasant, but not sorry, not submissive. [WTF do “sorry” and “submissive” have to do with each other?] Always before when dealing with Richard, Nathaniel had given off subservient vibes. Now, suddenly, there was nothing subservient about him. He might still bottom for me, but his days of doing it for Richard were over” (136).

Since when did Nathaniel ever “bottom” for Richard? They have never had sex. Also, bottoming and submitting ARE NOT SYNONYMS. They mean entirely different things, stop using them as synonyms! Because you just wrote that Nathaniel had been fucked by Richard in the past, and I do not think that was what you intended.

My expression right now is not careful, and it sure as hell isn't submissive. It is extreme fury. LKH, you know NOTHING about what a submissive is and is not. IT DOES NOT MEAN PUTTING UP WITH ENDLESS BULLSHIT FROM EVERYONE. How much bullshit do you think I put up with? And I am submissive to exactly one person, and not to him under all circumstances. There are submissives who submit to more than one person, and under more circumstances, but there are NONE who submit to everyone always. It would be like a heterosexual woman wanting to have sex with every man in the world and wanting sex at all times.  

Oh and then Anita says she's happy Nathaniel isn't being submissive toward Richard any longer. She quite obviously thinks there is something wrong with anyone who is a submissive, or at least any man who is.

Anita thinks Richard and Nathaniel are gonna have a physical fight, and that Richard would win it, but Anita would dump him over it. Apparently Anita, JC, Micah, Samuel, and Sampson would all stand around doing nothing while Richard kicked the crap out of Nathaniel. Since Richard is JC's “animal to call”, I think JC could force Richard to not kick Nathaniel's ass, but I guess he wouldn't. Perhaps his relative opinions of Richard and Nathaniel are the same as mine; namely, Richard's kind of an ass but redeemable, while Nathaniel is a vile manipulative bully who looks like Cousin It.

Comments

[guardians_song]

That's ten times as much bickering as sex in this book so far, and that's only counting this section, not the bullying of Ronnie or the strange arguments with Auggie and Thea. Plus it's entirely centered on how Richard is unhappy with Anita's sex life and how terrible he is for that. It is not only poor writing; like “Shutdown”, it's also embarrassing.
I'm beginning to think that the sex, contrary to popular opinion, IS what's keeping these books afloat. With the sex removed, it would become hideously apparent that these books are Shutdown, Expanded Edition: Volume I/II/III/IV/V...

I still think it's odd that LKH wrote this, but avoided writing foreplay or describing the one sex scene in this book so far with any clarity or making it longer than thrust-thrust-thrust-bang. She'll do anything for wordcount, but she won't do that.
For a woman who claims to be so liberated, she's clearly incredibly prudish. I think the thrust-thrust-thrust-bang writing is her way to write about Teh Hawt Se>< without having to actually go into detail about the sensations, the emotions, or any physical quirks beyond Cousin It hair and Wonderdong "bodies".

It really feels like an exaggerated template of what she thinks is Teh Hawt Se>< so that she doesn't have to think too hard about it. And then everyone has long and distracted conversations during all this can't-help-ourselves sex.

...And here we run into one of the great dangers of using writing as an unedited memory dump for one's id: the readers will be able to see it all, and feel very, very uncomfortable.

Apparently only the shallowest, dullest, most ignorant, most inflexible people are ever turned into vampires.
Actually, this explains so much. If they're all low-IQ psychopaths, that... actually does explain why they act like the worst imaginable prison population.

Anita is severely pissed off, though she doesn't say anything. Samuel asks why Anita is so angry. She tells him, “don't tell me how to feel, Samuel, you don't have that right.” Anita, he did not tell you how to feel. He asked why you are feeling the way you are. You stupid, stupid person.
In all fairness, some people (...with slight verbal-processing issues) do take questions like that as invalidating their emotions, since... apparently their every motivation and quirk of mental reasoning should be immediately clear to everyone for miles around?

I'm not actually sure that's sarcasm. Said people often display strange boundary issues with distinguishing between themselves and other people. On the one hand, this can glitch and make them extremely anxious and obsessed with others' opinions because their self-images are apparently synonymous with how others perceive them. On the other hand, this can make them go bugfuck bonkers with trying to convert people to whatever True Path they're on today, because, basically, their point of view is so obviously right that any heretics are clearly disagreeing out of spite, selfishness, and possible psychopathy.

I do think it's honestly a mental disability, and not voluntary behavior. Unfortunately, Anita's inability to Ever Be Wrong has escalated it to such levels that she's essentially become a psychopath. And one with a world condoning and enabling her psychopathy, because obviously The World Must Agree With Her...

(A general note - said people can be perfectly nice, naive, and normal-behaving. LKH herself is probably benign, though massively stupid. I don't want to indicate in any way whatsoever that Anita is anywhere near typical for those with such processing.)

Hm. I think this is connected to the fact that Anita never has sex that is consensual, that LKH does not describe Anita's emotions in sex scenes, and that Anita seems to avoid men who want her but rapes men who don't instead. It sounds cheesy, but I think Anita is terrified of love. Not solely romantic love, but that's the only kind she seems to recognize.
Additional creepy factor: she seems to treat men who want her as wanting her as a possession without a will of her own. And in Shutdown, this is obviously what her narration thinks Richard and Ellen want from each other. Ellen SUPPOSEDLY wants Richard without all the stuff that he ~needs~, and Richard obviously wants a good little wife he can play House with and who doesn't argue with ANYTHING else he chooses to do on the side. So it's evident that, in Anitaverse, it isn't just limited to Anita-based interactions.

And judging from Nicky? 'Mindless possession without will of its own' is exactly what her ideal man looks like. So she's playing some sort of perverse game of objectify-and-lobomotize-or-be-objectified-and-lobotomized.

I honestly don't know how these POVs reflect on that of the author herself. I don't want to know.

I'm often sad for Anita because she's such a pitiable example of a self-insert. Instead of men falling at her feet because she is awesome, they HAVE to fall at her feet; they are forced to by the ardeur, or because they sense an “animal” in her that matches theirs, or because no other woman wants them. Instead of men staying with her because they want to, they HAVE to stick around or they will die, or they're metaphysically bound to her by being her animal to call, or she's a therian queen to their king. It gets worse as the books go on, so that in her latest books, she has a mind-wiped sex slave who literally cannot do anything to displease her.
Eh. You think that's pitiable? I think that's being too charitable. Anita doesn't WANT anyone to serve of their free will. She WANTS slaves. And she doesn't want to have slaves by her own choice - she wants to be compelled into causing others to be enslaved.

That's a horrible thing for any sane person, but for a sociopath who can't quite shut up the last shreds of her conscience? Evidently, that's just lovely.


Anyway, to make Richard stop looking at her like he loves her, Anita says, “what if it's not yours?” She tells us that she wants this to hurt Richard. Whhhyyyyyy why do you keep beating up on Richard. Is it because you love him?
Naaaaah, because she loves him and he won't be her lobotomized possession. Once he gets a lobotomy 'therapy', she lets up on him a little.

“As if on cue,” Micah and Nathaniel pop up. Did LKH lampshade herself there?
I don't think it's INTENTIONAL lampshading. I think it's a result of LKH's poor separation between fiction and reality, such that Anita sometimes reacts as though she's a sane human being thrown into a ludicrous psychopathic talkalot Mary-Sue mainstream porn film and LKH doesn't quite connect the dots about this ACTUALLY being an indication that it's a ludicrous psychopathic talkalot Mary-Sue mainstream porn film.

I mean, in Bullet, we get the line -
"So I what, fuck everyone into their next power level like some pornographic computer game?"


Stop all the sporkings, Anita has just summed up all the AB plots from here 'til doomsday.

Nathaniel had once of the most careful looks I'd ever seen on his face. He looked blank, pleasant, but not sorry, not submissive. [WTF do “sorry” and “submissive” have to do with each other?] Always before when dealing with Richard, Nathaniel had given off subservient vibes. Now, suddenly, there was nothing subservient about him. He might still bottom for me, but his days of doing it for Richard were over”
Well, you get it right there. Anita sees submissive as equal to subservient. I think she also conflates humility with submissiveness, which explains what's going on with the 'sorry' and 'submissive'.

She also, as Shutdown abundantly demonstrate, thinks "bottom" is just like "submissive", only with less lobotomization.

It would be like a heterosexual woman wanting to have sex with every man in the world and wanting sex at all times.
*long face* Consider Anita's attitudes towards sexuality, then think about whether that's really such an absurd statement in Anitaverse...

Perhaps his relative opinions of Richard and Nathaniel are the same as mine; namely, Richard's kind of an ass but redeemable, while Nathaniel is a vile manipulative bully who looks like Cousin It.
Alternatively, that Richard is irritating but rather cute and provides a convenient foe for Anita, while Nathaniel is a sleazy manipulator who might interfere with HIS sleazy manipulations... :P


Great sporking, but dear gad you should get a stiff drink after this. From all accounts, the book doesn't get any better after this. (You have two more chapters of this before Anita even gets around to peeing on the stick! :D *dodges rotten tomatoes*)

[lliira]

I'm beginning to think that the sex, contrary to popular opinion, IS what's keeping these books afloat.

Somehow I got the impression that popular opinion was that sex was what was keeping the books afloat. I do think that's what is -- well, sex and relationship drama.

For a woman who claims to be so liberated, she's clearly incredibly prudish.

Yep. She also never writes flirting.

If they're all low-IQ psychopaths, that... actually does explain why they act like the worst imaginable prison population.

It does! Wow, your description actually does explain *all* of it. You've got the people who "win" by being rapists because they're (meta)physically the strongest, and those who "lose" by being raped and therefore scorned by everyone else (who are terrified they'll be next). The entire society is built around this.

In all fairness, some people (...with slight verbal-processing issues) do take questions like that as invalidating their emotions, since... apparently their every motivation and quirk of mental reasoning should be immediately clear to everyone for miles around?

Yes, and if this weren't Anita, I would have a response other than "STUPID!" to her. I might think she was behaving this way because she was embarrassed, scared, and confused in a very emotional situation, and this stranger is trying to calm her down or something, as if he has any right to have an opinion or talk to her about it, and so she lashes out to try to protect her boundaries. But this is Anita.

You think that's pitiable? I think that's being too charitable. Anita doesn't WANT anyone to serve of their free will.

This is true, and I think it's pitiable. It doesn't mean I excuse anything she does, or feel sympathetic toward her at all. I just think she's pathetic. Someone who can't love and is terrified of being loved -- it really is sad, I think.

In the L.M. Montgomery book A Tangled Web, one character warns another to find something to love or the devil will get them. (Not romantic love, but any love: a kitten, in that case.) I think that Anita's terror regarding love has made her evil. And her loveless life is so empty. I feel sorry for her while also wanting her to die.

Consider Anita's attitudes towards sexuality, then think about whether that's really such an absurd statement in Anitaverse...

I did that on purpose ;)

Alternatively, that Richard is irritating but rather cute and provides a convenient foe for Anita, while Nathaniel is a sleazy manipulator who might interfere with HIS sleazy manipulations

Ooh, good point. Nathaniel is also in that second triumvurate thingy, and that takes Anita's attention and possibly power away from JC.

You have two more chapters of this before Anita even gets around to peeing on the stick!

WHY SO STUPID, ANITA?

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

"Naaaaah, because she loves him and he won't be her lobotomized possession. Once he gets a lobotomy 'therapy', she lets up on him a little."

Sort of. As soon as he "improves" one thing (in the Anitaverse sense, anyway) she starts bashing him for something else. They take potshots at him in Affliction and he's not even in the damn book. Because Richard must suffer forever for the crime of his RL avatar having dared to leave the author without her permission. :/

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Are we sure LKH is a real person and not some kind of writing AI sent back in time by aliens who learned about human culture by examining our media?

[lliira]

They'd have to examine only the worst media. Mainstream porn -- and from the 70s at that -- and maybe some really bad romcoms and action flicks.

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

I would say 90's and 2000's porn - in the 70's stuff generally the people involved seem to be having fun, people have natural bodies and hair, and there's usually a plot, since they shot on film and film was expensive. The cheap, trashy direct-to-video stuff really hit its stride in the 90's and 2000's, and one body standard and no body hair became de rigeur. Definitely with you on the terrible romcoms and shoddy action flicks, though!

[lliira]

You're right about the porn, but I was thinking of how porn in the 70s was often very rapey. Like, not plotline roleplaying rapey, but actually really truly rape for the women involved :/. I can't remember the guy's name who was a big director/producer of porn then who made women do things they didn't want, and they had no recourse since of course no one would listen to them, they'd signed a contract to be in a porn movie and agreed to have SOME kind of sex so...

I might have the decade wrong, though, it might have been the 80s.

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I suspect that has been a happening ever since we invented the camera :(

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

But I looked back, and they've been sitting here for the last three pages listening to Anita and Richard yell at each other about incredibly private things. Jeez.
It is so incredibly awkward to me how often this sort of thing happens in the series, at least in Bullet and Skin Trade and the others I sporked.

This is forced emotional voyeurism
EVERYONE HAS TO PAY ATTENTION TO ANITA'S PROBLEMS AND PERSONAL LIFE

HAS TO!

because he is from a time when no one was ever upset about pregnancy.
Oh LKH. Even in the Generic Ye Olde-Timey Fantasy Europe that she thinks all of history is, most people would still have reason to be upset about a pregnancy because most people were peasants and thus could only afford to feed so many mouths. And even the nobility (aka the only people who ever matter enough to think about when fantasizing about Ye Olden Times that never existed as envisioned) would still have times when that would be anywhere from inconvenient to The Very Worst Thing because having a baby could very well kill you, issues of inheritance, all sorts of shit. Yeah, clearly Samuel's native time must be the fucking future.

Besides the history fail, this idea that vampires follow every cultural more from their own time and place, and only the most stereotypical of those, is one of many things that make Anita Blake's world stupid. Vampires are not only stuck in time; there were apparently no vampires who saw any problems with the culture they lived in before they were vampirized, or had any tastes differing from each other, or were political activists in their time, or etc.

Seriously, it is SO STUPID. LKH kinda tries to account for this in Skin Trade with Henry the non-important pudgey vampire having his most vivid memories "in a time when women still wore bustles" ..hang on, lemme find the spork
http://a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com/8872.html

I'm often sad for Anita because she's such a pitiable example of a self-insert. Instead of men falling at her feet because she is awesome, they HAVE to fall at her feet; they are forced to by the ardeur, or because they sense an “animal” in her that matches theirs, or because no other woman wants them. Instead of men staying with her because they want to, they HAVE to stick around or they will die, or they're metaphysically bound to her by being her animal to call, or she's a therian queen to their king.
Right? She's not actually portrayed as desireable at all. It makes me think that maybe the real fantasy that she's playing out for LKH isn't so much being beautiful and awesome and people wanting to be with her for that so much as a fantasy of total control and the whole point is that her lovers HAVE to be with her. Which says pretty freaky things about LKH.

WTF do “sorry” and “submissive” have to do with each other?
Because apologizing for anything ever is the same thing as submitting which is terrible. It's not about right or wrong it's about WINNING OR LOSING RRGH!

[lliira]

She's not actually portrayed as desireable at all. It makes me think that maybe the real fantasy that she's playing out for LKH isn't so much being beautiful and awesome and people wanting to be with her for that so much as a fantasy of total control and the whole point is that her lovers HAVE to be with her.

Yep, and it's not only yucky, it's also something I find not hot at all. I have rape fantasies, but a large part of the appeal is that the fantasy rapist is evil... idk. I don't know why rape fantasies appeal and haven't found a really good explanation for it yet. But LKH's rape fantasies don't appeal to me in any way, because not only does she not acknowledge what they are, they also revolve around "raping someone and therefore making them miserable through doing them harm (in really realistic ways) is hot and someone can be called 'good' for doing it, rape yay!" Which is antithetical to any rape fantasies I either have or understand.