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Danse Macabre, Chapter 18
CN: Anita Blake book, pregnancy
18 more pages of talking until another sex scene. I've been reading old LKH wank, and she said at one point that people upset by her books should go read books with less sex in them. Like what, Dr. Seuss? I was led to believe LKH's later Anita Blake books have all had lots of sex in them. I think I was misled. What this book has, so far anyway, is lots of people standing around whining about sex. How hot and edgy. It's also really boring to spork. It is much easier to make fun of sex scenes than of this endless blabber.
Anita gives us the instructions for how to pee on a stick and how to read the pregnancy test. I can only imagine this is because LKH thinks her readers are morons. Anita also says “there's no dignity in it” (154).
FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU
Ahem. This shows us why Anita has put it off for four weeks FUCK YOU and also shows us what she thinks of her own bodily processes NO REALLY FUCK YOU. Here are a few things Anita has not mentioned as being undignified, or shown any shame over, so far in this book: dry-humping in front of an appalled and upset friend, watching her boyfriend bully said friend, wearing her ridiculous outfit, carrying around 73 weapons, being unable to make small talk with strangers, being told at length how perfect she is, staring blatantly at the boobs of a woman she did not know, drooling over every white man she sees, dating a man who is dressed even more ridiculously than she is, almost flat-out murdering someone, dating two men who just stand there while another man is trying to rape her, raping many people at once (almost killing one of them), being smugly uncaring about her rape victims' reactions, looking almost exactly like one of her boyfriends, caring deeply about her hair after she's raped a bunch of people, having a loud 50-page argument in front of at least a half-dozen uninvolved people about her sex life and the contents of her womb.
Taking care of your health is not undignified. That's all taking a pregnancy test is. It is nothing to be ashamed of or to feel bad about, no matter what Laurell K. Hamilton would like us to believe. Putting it off for four weeks and then being forced to take it by an employee, with lots of people waiting outside the bathroom door for the results: that's undignified. And super icky. This book is not even where sexy goes to die, because sexy would have too much self-respect to be buried here.
Anita stays in the bathroom and paces while waiting for the test. “Marble is cold on bare feet, but I usually didn't spend this much time walking on it” (155). Christ, that's bad writing. Anita is using Micah's watch, “a man's watch”, to time it, because she left hers on the bedside table. Fascinating. Micah had set a timer and not told her. She cannot even set a timer for this damn test. I'm surprised her men didn't siphon the pee out of her and run the test themselves – I'm sure if LKH had thought of it, that's what would have happened. The timer goes off, and “I gave that little eep scream that only girls seem to do” (156). Oh, the joys of random misogyny. And you're not a girl, Anita. You're a grown woman, at least I hope you are, considering the fact that you're fucking multiple men regularly.
There's supposed drama over Anita being scared to look at the pregnancy test. Anita almost faints when she sees that it's positive. Whatever. No one will ever convince me that Anita did not want to be pregnant.
You know, I'm seriously pissed off. (I'm sure it was difficult to tell.) Yet again, LKH is trying to deal with something real people really experience. Anita hasn't almost fainted through any of the dangerous stuff she's gone through or done in this book. No, it's pregnancy that's the big huge scary thing that takes her down. This bilge only reinforces the cultural idea that a woman who gets pregnant when she doesn't want to is Very Very Bad, that unwanted pregnancy is the Worst Thing Ever and Impossible To Deal With. No, it's really not. This is just life, Anita. It's the “real world” that you claim not to live in.
“I hated to treat the miracle of life like a disaster but that's how it felt” (156).
My eyes are crossing. I find it hard to believe that Anita would think of pregnancy, even WANTED pregnancy, as “the miracle of life”. A sperm got into your egg. That ain't a miracle, sister, that's sexual reproduction. It isn't something that somehow miraculously happened. Men put penii in your vagina and deposited their sperm inside you while one of your eggs was hanging around waiting for them. You did nothing to try to impede this, and you fucked men who also did nothing to try to impede this. You have the money, education, freedom, support, and time to end the pregnancy with relative ease, to have the baby and get it adopted, or to raise the kid yourself if you wish. You're supernaturally healthy, so the likelihood of this pregnancy threatening you physically is pretty much nil. Meanwhile, you just raped a bunch of people, a man who claims to love you ordered you to have sex with someone, and supposedly vampires want to kill you and everyone in your group. Those can be seen as legitimate “disasters”.
Claudia comes in the bathroom to offer Anita moral support. Anita is too scared to go out into the other room and tell the menz that she's pregnant. FFS! This is the opposite of a courageous, sexually liberated heroine.
I'm just going to get through the rest of this nonsense as quickly as I can, because it is upsetting me very seriously.
Anita finally leaves the bathroom, and Micah and Richard have some stupid posturing over who touches Anita first, because of course they do. They can tell that the test was positive. Richard picks her up and spins her around, he's “beaming”, and Anita is infuriated by this. How dare a man who loves her want to have a child with her! THE NERVE! Obviously he doesn't have a say in what she does with her own body, but he's still allowed to have emotions about it for crying out loud.
Well, at least Anita apologizes for getting angry with Richard. Then she asks Micah how he'd feel, and first he says he's sad that she is upset, then he says he'd be happy with a child of hers because he loves her. She's surprised he'd be happy even though it can't be “his”. Urge to kill... rising...
Then Richard finally does something to make me furious with him too. He asks Micah “why did you have yourself fixed?... You're not thirty yet, why would you do that to yourself?” (158)
Because he does not want children that are genetically his, you numbnut. Don't talk about it like it's some kind of mutilation. Jackass.
Oh but of course Micah only did it because sexual abuse yada yada oh the pain blah blah blah. Of course no one would possibly make that decision without some kind of serious emotional damage. Because birth control is a sign of degradation or something.
LKH thinks she's liberated and progressive, btw.
Asher is here. Wait, what? *skims back* It looks like Asher has been here the entire time, ever since JC and Anita and Richard exited the bath. He has had exactly nothing to say. Perhaps he was admiring his angst scars in a mirror, who knows. Nathaniel is also back. He has not had anything to say, even though he is one of the possible fathers. Now here's something interesting, and I think not in a way LKH intended. Nathaniel hugs Anita, and she's squished between him and Micah.
“It felt so safe... That had to be a good sign, didn't it?” (158)
A good sign of what? Sounds to me like Anita doesn't love Nathaniel and Micah. She's trying to persuade herself she does.
Asher and JC and Micah and Nathaniel are now all hugging up on Anita. Richard feels excluded, and he is sad. Micah says he could be included, and that as a shifter, he should know touch isn't always about sex. (LKH thinks touch is always about sex for humans, apparently.) Richard says, “It's always about sex with him,” pointing at JC (159). He is correct. It's also always about sex with Anita. Micah responds by hugging more on JC. I do not know what that's supposed to prove.
They have a little tiff about everyone being scared about how a baby will change their lives, all acting like abortion is not even an option. Urgh. Then Richard moves toward them “jerkily, as if his feet did not want to move. He moved like some reluctant robot...” I think JC is forcing him to do this. That's not what the text says, but the text doesn't say anything about this strange movement, and it's an explanation that makes sense.
Anita's throat tightens when she sees how much pain Richard is in. This surprises her. “Maybe I was just having an emotional night. Or maybe, if you love someone, you can never see that much pain in his eyes without wanting to fix it.” Wow, you are so wise in the ways of love, Anita Blake. I had never before imagined that love meant not wanting to see your beloved in pain.
“I had to go up on tiptoe to touch his face.” She has tiny t-rex arms, you see.
Richard is in lots of emotional pain, lots and lots. He starts to cry. Everyone starts pawing Richard. Then Clay – I guess Clay is here too – hugs up on Richard as well. Big hugging pile. Then Richard feels better for being hugged on. Because hugs make everything better! Even hugs from people you hate! This is just so stupid.
Richard leaves because he doesn't want to “share” Anita tonight, because of course there's gonna be fuckin'. Anita orders Clay to go with him. Richard doesn't protest, which Anita takes as a good sign, though I don't know why Richard would protest. Why would Richard be upset that there is one less man where Anita is for her to fuck?
The next chapter is a crapton of blather and sex. I'm still not sure LKH has ever actually had sex.
18 more pages of talking until another sex scene. I've been reading old LKH wank, and she said at one point that people upset by her books should go read books with less sex in them. Like what, Dr. Seuss? I was led to believe LKH's later Anita Blake books have all had lots of sex in them. I think I was misled. What this book has, so far anyway, is lots of people standing around whining about sex. How hot and edgy. It's also really boring to spork. It is much easier to make fun of sex scenes than of this endless blabber.
Anita gives us the instructions for how to pee on a stick and how to read the pregnancy test. I can only imagine this is because LKH thinks her readers are morons. Anita also says “there's no dignity in it” (154).
FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU
Ahem. This shows us why Anita has put it off for four weeks FUCK YOU and also shows us what she thinks of her own bodily processes NO REALLY FUCK YOU. Here are a few things Anita has not mentioned as being undignified, or shown any shame over, so far in this book: dry-humping in front of an appalled and upset friend, watching her boyfriend bully said friend, wearing her ridiculous outfit, carrying around 73 weapons, being unable to make small talk with strangers, being told at length how perfect she is, staring blatantly at the boobs of a woman she did not know, drooling over every white man she sees, dating a man who is dressed even more ridiculously than she is, almost flat-out murdering someone, dating two men who just stand there while another man is trying to rape her, raping many people at once (almost killing one of them), being smugly uncaring about her rape victims' reactions, looking almost exactly like one of her boyfriends, caring deeply about her hair after she's raped a bunch of people, having a loud 50-page argument in front of at least a half-dozen uninvolved people about her sex life and the contents of her womb.
Taking care of your health is not undignified. That's all taking a pregnancy test is. It is nothing to be ashamed of or to feel bad about, no matter what Laurell K. Hamilton would like us to believe. Putting it off for four weeks and then being forced to take it by an employee, with lots of people waiting outside the bathroom door for the results: that's undignified. And super icky. This book is not even where sexy goes to die, because sexy would have too much self-respect to be buried here.
Anita stays in the bathroom and paces while waiting for the test. “Marble is cold on bare feet, but I usually didn't spend this much time walking on it” (155). Christ, that's bad writing. Anita is using Micah's watch, “a man's watch”, to time it, because she left hers on the bedside table. Fascinating. Micah had set a timer and not told her. She cannot even set a timer for this damn test. I'm surprised her men didn't siphon the pee out of her and run the test themselves – I'm sure if LKH had thought of it, that's what would have happened. The timer goes off, and “I gave that little eep scream that only girls seem to do” (156). Oh, the joys of random misogyny. And you're not a girl, Anita. You're a grown woman, at least I hope you are, considering the fact that you're fucking multiple men regularly.
There's supposed drama over Anita being scared to look at the pregnancy test. Anita almost faints when she sees that it's positive. Whatever. No one will ever convince me that Anita did not want to be pregnant.
You know, I'm seriously pissed off. (I'm sure it was difficult to tell.) Yet again, LKH is trying to deal with something real people really experience. Anita hasn't almost fainted through any of the dangerous stuff she's gone through or done in this book. No, it's pregnancy that's the big huge scary thing that takes her down. This bilge only reinforces the cultural idea that a woman who gets pregnant when she doesn't want to is Very Very Bad, that unwanted pregnancy is the Worst Thing Ever and Impossible To Deal With. No, it's really not. This is just life, Anita. It's the “real world” that you claim not to live in.
“I hated to treat the miracle of life like a disaster but that's how it felt” (156).
My eyes are crossing. I find it hard to believe that Anita would think of pregnancy, even WANTED pregnancy, as “the miracle of life”. A sperm got into your egg. That ain't a miracle, sister, that's sexual reproduction. It isn't something that somehow miraculously happened. Men put penii in your vagina and deposited their sperm inside you while one of your eggs was hanging around waiting for them. You did nothing to try to impede this, and you fucked men who also did nothing to try to impede this. You have the money, education, freedom, support, and time to end the pregnancy with relative ease, to have the baby and get it adopted, or to raise the kid yourself if you wish. You're supernaturally healthy, so the likelihood of this pregnancy threatening you physically is pretty much nil. Meanwhile, you just raped a bunch of people, a man who claims to love you ordered you to have sex with someone, and supposedly vampires want to kill you and everyone in your group. Those can be seen as legitimate “disasters”.
Claudia comes in the bathroom to offer Anita moral support. Anita is too scared to go out into the other room and tell the menz that she's pregnant. FFS! This is the opposite of a courageous, sexually liberated heroine.
I'm just going to get through the rest of this nonsense as quickly as I can, because it is upsetting me very seriously.
Anita finally leaves the bathroom, and Micah and Richard have some stupid posturing over who touches Anita first, because of course they do. They can tell that the test was positive. Richard picks her up and spins her around, he's “beaming”, and Anita is infuriated by this. How dare a man who loves her want to have a child with her! THE NERVE! Obviously he doesn't have a say in what she does with her own body, but he's still allowed to have emotions about it for crying out loud.
Well, at least Anita apologizes for getting angry with Richard. Then she asks Micah how he'd feel, and first he says he's sad that she is upset, then he says he'd be happy with a child of hers because he loves her. She's surprised he'd be happy even though it can't be “his”. Urge to kill... rising...
Then Richard finally does something to make me furious with him too. He asks Micah “why did you have yourself fixed?... You're not thirty yet, why would you do that to yourself?” (158)
Because he does not want children that are genetically his, you numbnut. Don't talk about it like it's some kind of mutilation. Jackass.
Oh but of course Micah only did it because sexual abuse yada yada oh the pain blah blah blah. Of course no one would possibly make that decision without some kind of serious emotional damage. Because birth control is a sign of degradation or something.
LKH thinks she's liberated and progressive, btw.
Asher is here. Wait, what? *skims back* It looks like Asher has been here the entire time, ever since JC and Anita and Richard exited the bath. He has had exactly nothing to say. Perhaps he was admiring his angst scars in a mirror, who knows. Nathaniel is also back. He has not had anything to say, even though he is one of the possible fathers. Now here's something interesting, and I think not in a way LKH intended. Nathaniel hugs Anita, and she's squished between him and Micah.
“It felt so safe... That had to be a good sign, didn't it?” (158)
A good sign of what? Sounds to me like Anita doesn't love Nathaniel and Micah. She's trying to persuade herself she does.
Asher and JC and Micah and Nathaniel are now all hugging up on Anita. Richard feels excluded, and he is sad. Micah says he could be included, and that as a shifter, he should know touch isn't always about sex. (LKH thinks touch is always about sex for humans, apparently.) Richard says, “It's always about sex with him,” pointing at JC (159). He is correct. It's also always about sex with Anita. Micah responds by hugging more on JC. I do not know what that's supposed to prove.
They have a little tiff about everyone being scared about how a baby will change their lives, all acting like abortion is not even an option. Urgh. Then Richard moves toward them “jerkily, as if his feet did not want to move. He moved like some reluctant robot...” I think JC is forcing him to do this. That's not what the text says, but the text doesn't say anything about this strange movement, and it's an explanation that makes sense.
Anita's throat tightens when she sees how much pain Richard is in. This surprises her. “Maybe I was just having an emotional night. Or maybe, if you love someone, you can never see that much pain in his eyes without wanting to fix it.” Wow, you are so wise in the ways of love, Anita Blake. I had never before imagined that love meant not wanting to see your beloved in pain.
“I had to go up on tiptoe to touch his face.” She has tiny t-rex arms, you see.
Richard is in lots of emotional pain, lots and lots. He starts to cry. Everyone starts pawing Richard. Then Clay – I guess Clay is here too – hugs up on Richard as well. Big hugging pile. Then Richard feels better for being hugged on. Because hugs make everything better! Even hugs from people you hate! This is just so stupid.
Richard leaves because he doesn't want to “share” Anita tonight, because of course there's gonna be fuckin'. Anita orders Clay to go with him. Richard doesn't protest, which Anita takes as a good sign, though I don't know why Richard would protest. Why would Richard be upset that there is one less man where Anita is for her to fuck?
The next chapter is a crapton of blather and sex. I'm still not sure LKH has ever actually had sex.
no subject
Aye. I remember in Bullet how, even though I was pissed that the solution to EVERYTHING was sex, was just grateful when the sex actually happened because the chapters upon chapter spent discussing it beforehand were just unbearable. I think maybe they're LKH's way of amping herself up/justifying to herself to dare write them
I can only imagine this is because LKH thinks her readers are morons
I frequently get this impression as well
I'm weirded out by how Micah and everyone else refers to his vasectomy as getting "fixed". I've never heard anyone really talk about a vasectomy at length, but whenever I have heard in brought up IRL or on a TV show, no one says "fixed". They say a vasectomy.
“I had to go up on tiptoe to touch his face.” She has tiny t-rex arms, you see.
Omigosh, I knew she must have T-rex arms because she can't cross them over her chest, but that also explains this too, you're right! Hahaha!
Big hugging pile. Then Richard feels better for being hugged on. Because hugs make everything better!
This is a dark and edgy series!
no subject
I think she would have an easier time if she had Anita discover foreplay :P.
I knew she must have T-rex arms because she can't cross them over her chest, but that also explains this too
In the book that Dottie is writing about now (Blue Moon?), Anita goes on at length about how one needs someone else to wash one's back. More evidence of the tiny T-rex arms.
This is a dark and edgy series!
And the huggity huggings and other tweeness smack up against gun porn and rape are not nauseating at all!