Danse Macabre, Chapter 24
Apr. 27th, 2014 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lliiraCN: Anita Blake book
Sorry about the delay. Life's been kicking my ass. Also, more nothing happens in this chapter than has happened in the rest of the book so far, which makes it very difficult to deal with. Its existence doesn't even make sense from an authorial wank perspective, unless LKH is even weirder than I thought.
The chapter starts with, "Another mess. Another bath." (217). Anita talks about bathing and showering a LOT in these books. She's so intent on telling us about it, in fact, that I assume she never bathes without telling us. She gets slime of all sorts smeared on her a lot, too. I think LKH has a goop fetish. It mildly squicks me, but I don't think the way it appears in this book so far is actually bad because, unlike her hair fetish, it's not overpowering.
Anita tells us the shapeshifters are eating "legal food, and that meant animals." First, the fact that she felt the need to specify that her lovers were not eating other human beings is creepy as hell. Second, the fact that she defines this strictly in terms of legality is frankly terrifying. If it were legal, I don't think Anita would have a problem with her lovers eating other people, especially if said people were women. Hell, if they ate tall blonde teenage girls with good cheekbones, she'd be in the kitchen with a cleaver. Third, Anita isn't eating anything and hasn't eaten anything since the book started.
We learn that Pierce and Octavius "badly hurt" the wererats who were guarding their door and don't care if they killed them. Anita does not tell us what she thinks of this. She does say that Meng-Die got a "power rush" strong enough to break out of her coffin when Anita and JC raped all of Auggie's people. "Meng Die, more powerful, not a good thought." Pierce and Octavius, who badly hurt two people working for Anita's group, who serve a vampire who is more powerful than JC, and who have good reason to hate Anita? Meh. A WOMAN with more power, that's what's truly terrifying, even when she's (nominally) part of Anita's group. Meng Die did behave badly, but she is not as dangerous as Auggie's people. But, besides the fact that she's a woman, Meng Die also hurt vampires to whom Anita is attracted. Auggie's guys only nearly killed a couple wererats, and wererats don't count.
JC and Anita are in the bathtub again. Anita asks, "didn't we just do this?" (218) Hanging a lampshade on your repetitive writing does not make it all okay, LKH. But as JC points out, it's not "precisely" the same: Micah's there! His hair is, anyway. And his hair and Anita's hair touch, which is probably the height of intimacy for her. Then she goes into how his hair is "impossibly rich, dark brown, but not black." Oh yay, my hair color's impossible! Also, it feels like she's subtly insulting Micah for not having hair that's actually black, unlike her or JC.
Micah says that JC was breathing while he was asleep. JC finds this "interesting", and gets all mysterious about it. For the next few pages, JC and Micah talk about how powerful Anita is, with Micah knowing as much as JC for some reason. I guess it's the power of the penis. Anita keeps staring at them and asking them questions to which she does not comprehend the answers. She's like a female character from the worst Star Trek original series episodes. I am in serious doubt as to her possessing a neocortex.
They go over what the MOAD is. Anita is scared of the name because it makes "the room not quite bright enough" (218). This is what LKH thinks a brave female character is. JC clarifies the MOAD's name as "Marmee Noir" for no reason. It's one of those little unnecessary out-of-character moments that occurs continually in this book. JC informs Anita of what she should already know: that the MOAD is the first vampire, and some people think she's the mother of "us all", so possibly the first human. Then they go into dreams and Anita's powers and it's all dull, shallow, pointless, and self-contradictory. There's also some height bullshit, and this sentence: "Micah came to us, tucked himself against me, pressing Jean-Claude's arm between us, his own arm going across Jean-Claude's shoulders" (219). That sentence gives me pain.
I think Anita is supposed to be an audience stand-in for all this infodumping, but it's commonly said that the worst kind of infodumping is when a character tells another character things they already know. Perhaps LKH knows this, and so has decided to make Anita not know these things, which means she has decided on an even worse form of infodumping: X informing Y of something Y would already know if Y were not criminally stupid. On top of that, I think it would make some sense for Micah not to know this stuff and therefore ask these questions; unlike Anita, he's not a necromancer with a degree in preternatural biology. But LKH decided to make Anita a complete dumbass instead.
They talk about Chimera again. Because Micah is talking, so he must talk about Chimera. I get the impression that LKH is super proud of Chimera and that's part of why she brings him up so damn much. That, and because Micah has no characterization that does not revolve around his victimization by Chimera. No other characterization intended by the author, that is. Besides his supposedly huge and actually smallish penis. Anyway, there's stuff about how Anita has powers that are like Chimera's that she absorbed from fighting him, because LKH cannot bear that anyone in her universe have a power that Anita does not have. This is supposed to be creepy, I guess. Anita has no emotions about it, however, and continues to say nothing that is not unbelievably thickheaded, so it is not creepy; it is merely annoying.
Anita asks JC, "are you always thinking about how I can help you be more powerful?" (221) Noooo, I'm sure you're there because this centuries-old vampire truly loves you, Anita. JC, as usual, responds with a deflecting non-answer: "We must be powerful, and stable. We must show the other masters that we do not pose a threat to the council in Europe or anyone else." It's the equivalent of someone claiming they're stockpiling weapons in order to prove they aren't dangerous. And Anita buys it.
Micah says that they aren't a threat to the council, "but they may not believe that." Jean-Claude responds, "they may not." I picture him hiding a knowing, superior smile there. Yes, Micah, they may not be foolish enough to believe what you and Anita believe, because no one is that foolish.
A therian (wererat?) named Remus walks in. Anita proceeds to spew some gross lookism about how his face doesn't look quite right and how she wants "badly" for him to look at her so she can study his face to "make complete sense" of it (222), but she does acknowledge it's none of her business so she doesn't demand he look at her. Every time he says something, LKH has to tell us how his face is weird. And he's afraid of Anita because if she shifts she'll be so powerful. He asks her if she's sure she won't be an "uber-preternatural power" and she can't answer. Micah answers for her instead while patting her arm. (223) EW. This ends with Anita having no clue what to do and Micah saying that she must have a powerful shapeshifter with her at all times. Again, EW. She is never going to be allowed to be alone. This is such a cult.
Micah calls ex-military, ex-cops, and professional bodyguards "very hardcore". Um. Do you think Laurell K. Hamilton thinks Prince Harry is some kind of super-macho coldhearted hardass? Also, here's one of Justin Bieber's bodyguards doing his job. It's not a job I'd want, but "very hardcore"? I think LKH would actually learn significantly more than she now knows about the way the world works if she read Hollywood gossip sites, and that's just sad.
We end on JC saying Remus isn't an amateur and Remus replying that he isn't. So it sounds like Remus is going to be somehow important in the rest of the book. Unless you know anything about LKH's writing, in which case you, like me, are probably guessing that he's there for no reason and ends up doing nothing. Also, I thought LKH was pretty good at ending chapters with sentences that were somewhat interesting before. But not this one.
This chapter should not exist. It mostly consists of unecessary infodumping that makes the protagonist look completely asinine. It is neither informative nor entertaining, and I don't know why LKH thought it was either. The only reason I can imagine for her to have even written this thing in the first place is that she somehow gets off on her self-insert being utterly ignorant and talked down to by men. That seems exceptionally strange even for her, though, so I'm left with no real hypothesis as to why she wrote it.
Sorry about the delay. Life's been kicking my ass. Also, more nothing happens in this chapter than has happened in the rest of the book so far, which makes it very difficult to deal with. Its existence doesn't even make sense from an authorial wank perspective, unless LKH is even weirder than I thought.
The chapter starts with, "Another mess. Another bath." (217). Anita talks about bathing and showering a LOT in these books. She's so intent on telling us about it, in fact, that I assume she never bathes without telling us. She gets slime of all sorts smeared on her a lot, too. I think LKH has a goop fetish. It mildly squicks me, but I don't think the way it appears in this book so far is actually bad because, unlike her hair fetish, it's not overpowering.
Anita tells us the shapeshifters are eating "legal food, and that meant animals." First, the fact that she felt the need to specify that her lovers were not eating other human beings is creepy as hell. Second, the fact that she defines this strictly in terms of legality is frankly terrifying. If it were legal, I don't think Anita would have a problem with her lovers eating other people, especially if said people were women. Hell, if they ate tall blonde teenage girls with good cheekbones, she'd be in the kitchen with a cleaver. Third, Anita isn't eating anything and hasn't eaten anything since the book started.
We learn that Pierce and Octavius "badly hurt" the wererats who were guarding their door and don't care if they killed them. Anita does not tell us what she thinks of this. She does say that Meng-Die got a "power rush" strong enough to break out of her coffin when Anita and JC raped all of Auggie's people. "Meng Die, more powerful, not a good thought." Pierce and Octavius, who badly hurt two people working for Anita's group, who serve a vampire who is more powerful than JC, and who have good reason to hate Anita? Meh. A WOMAN with more power, that's what's truly terrifying, even when she's (nominally) part of Anita's group. Meng Die did behave badly, but she is not as dangerous as Auggie's people. But, besides the fact that she's a woman, Meng Die also hurt vampires to whom Anita is attracted. Auggie's guys only nearly killed a couple wererats, and wererats don't count.
JC and Anita are in the bathtub again. Anita asks, "didn't we just do this?" (218) Hanging a lampshade on your repetitive writing does not make it all okay, LKH. But as JC points out, it's not "precisely" the same: Micah's there! His hair is, anyway. And his hair and Anita's hair touch, which is probably the height of intimacy for her. Then she goes into how his hair is "impossibly rich, dark brown, but not black." Oh yay, my hair color's impossible! Also, it feels like she's subtly insulting Micah for not having hair that's actually black, unlike her or JC.
Micah says that JC was breathing while he was asleep. JC finds this "interesting", and gets all mysterious about it. For the next few pages, JC and Micah talk about how powerful Anita is, with Micah knowing as much as JC for some reason. I guess it's the power of the penis. Anita keeps staring at them and asking them questions to which she does not comprehend the answers. She's like a female character from the worst Star Trek original series episodes. I am in serious doubt as to her possessing a neocortex.
They go over what the MOAD is. Anita is scared of the name because it makes "the room not quite bright enough" (218). This is what LKH thinks a brave female character is. JC clarifies the MOAD's name as "Marmee Noir" for no reason. It's one of those little unnecessary out-of-character moments that occurs continually in this book. JC informs Anita of what she should already know: that the MOAD is the first vampire, and some people think she's the mother of "us all", so possibly the first human. Then they go into dreams and Anita's powers and it's all dull, shallow, pointless, and self-contradictory. There's also some height bullshit, and this sentence: "Micah came to us, tucked himself against me, pressing Jean-Claude's arm between us, his own arm going across Jean-Claude's shoulders" (219). That sentence gives me pain.
I think Anita is supposed to be an audience stand-in for all this infodumping, but it's commonly said that the worst kind of infodumping is when a character tells another character things they already know. Perhaps LKH knows this, and so has decided to make Anita not know these things, which means she has decided on an even worse form of infodumping: X informing Y of something Y would already know if Y were not criminally stupid. On top of that, I think it would make some sense for Micah not to know this stuff and therefore ask these questions; unlike Anita, he's not a necromancer with a degree in preternatural biology. But LKH decided to make Anita a complete dumbass instead.
They talk about Chimera again. Because Micah is talking, so he must talk about Chimera. I get the impression that LKH is super proud of Chimera and that's part of why she brings him up so damn much. That, and because Micah has no characterization that does not revolve around his victimization by Chimera. No other characterization intended by the author, that is. Besides his supposedly huge and actually smallish penis. Anyway, there's stuff about how Anita has powers that are like Chimera's that she absorbed from fighting him, because LKH cannot bear that anyone in her universe have a power that Anita does not have. This is supposed to be creepy, I guess. Anita has no emotions about it, however, and continues to say nothing that is not unbelievably thickheaded, so it is not creepy; it is merely annoying.
Anita asks JC, "are you always thinking about how I can help you be more powerful?" (221) Noooo, I'm sure you're there because this centuries-old vampire truly loves you, Anita. JC, as usual, responds with a deflecting non-answer: "We must be powerful, and stable. We must show the other masters that we do not pose a threat to the council in Europe or anyone else." It's the equivalent of someone claiming they're stockpiling weapons in order to prove they aren't dangerous. And Anita buys it.
Micah says that they aren't a threat to the council, "but they may not believe that." Jean-Claude responds, "they may not." I picture him hiding a knowing, superior smile there. Yes, Micah, they may not be foolish enough to believe what you and Anita believe, because no one is that foolish.
A therian (wererat?) named Remus walks in. Anita proceeds to spew some gross lookism about how his face doesn't look quite right and how she wants "badly" for him to look at her so she can study his face to "make complete sense" of it (222), but she does acknowledge it's none of her business so she doesn't demand he look at her. Every time he says something, LKH has to tell us how his face is weird. And he's afraid of Anita because if she shifts she'll be so powerful. He asks her if she's sure she won't be an "uber-preternatural power" and she can't answer. Micah answers for her instead while patting her arm. (223) EW. This ends with Anita having no clue what to do and Micah saying that she must have a powerful shapeshifter with her at all times. Again, EW. She is never going to be allowed to be alone. This is such a cult.
Micah calls ex-military, ex-cops, and professional bodyguards "very hardcore". Um. Do you think Laurell K. Hamilton thinks Prince Harry is some kind of super-macho coldhearted hardass? Also, here's one of Justin Bieber's bodyguards doing his job. It's not a job I'd want, but "very hardcore"? I think LKH would actually learn significantly more than she now knows about the way the world works if she read Hollywood gossip sites, and that's just sad.
We end on JC saying Remus isn't an amateur and Remus replying that he isn't. So it sounds like Remus is going to be somehow important in the rest of the book. Unless you know anything about LKH's writing, in which case you, like me, are probably guessing that he's there for no reason and ends up doing nothing. Also, I thought LKH was pretty good at ending chapters with sentences that were somewhat interesting before. But not this one.
This chapter should not exist. It mostly consists of unecessary infodumping that makes the protagonist look completely asinine. It is neither informative nor entertaining, and I don't know why LKH thought it was either. The only reason I can imagine for her to have even written this thing in the first place is that she somehow gets off on her self-insert being utterly ignorant and talked down to by men. That seems exceptionally strange even for her, though, so I'm left with no real hypothesis as to why she wrote it.
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no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 07:38 am (UTC)I'm up at the ungodly hour of 2:30 AM, and reading this made me crack up. Thank you for posting this. And thank you for your fearless and brave slogging through this book. You suffer the pain so we don't have to! You have the BEST commentary for any LKH series I've ever read!
no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 10:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-02 04:47 pm (UTC)- Yeah, the fact she mentions everything she does in such detail, like the bathing, does indeed have that effect on me too, that I assume she didn’t do it if she didn’t mention it, which I wouldn’t with most other works where these things never get mentioned. I do like the occasional mention of a character needing to go to the bathroom or getting their period, myself, especially if it’s first person POV, but LKH does it to a boring/strange point
- I’ve noticed her definitions of right and wrong pretty much are based on legality. Exempting when they’re based on sexism, I mean.
- Didn’t she say something similar about Ellen’s not-quite-black hair in Shutdown?
- If she’s the first human, then Oliver the Earthmover was older than her, because he was a Homo erectus…soooo, how could she be the first vampire then?
- Wait, what the fuck kind of position are Micah/JC/Anita in? The hell?
- LKH is so obsessed with cops/military/bodyguards
no subject
Date: 2014-05-02 11:08 pm (UTC)Yep! It was definitely meant to be an insult there.
If she’s the first human, then Oliver the Earthmover was older than her, because he was a Homo erectus…soooo, how could she be the first vampire then?
Maybe he meant first... I dunno, primate? Rapist? I have no idea. Unlike with the precise shade of everyone's hair, LKH feels no need to go into detail even once on this point, let alone multiple times.
Wait, what the fuck kind of position are Micah/JC/Anita in? The hell?
An impossible one. They're all in that ridiculously deep tub too, so they must be floating at least a bit, especially Anita and Micah. LKH's descriptions of where people are in relation to each other never make any sense, but this scene's especially egregious.
LKH is so obsessed with cops/military/bodyguards
And she's known at least one: the guy Haven was based on. And from what I've seen people who know him say about him, he's a geeky goofball, not a sociopathic hardass. But LKH's grasp on character in the real world seems about as good as her grasp on character in her books.