FLIRT, CHAPTER TWO
Jan. 8th, 2013 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratThis chapter. Oh my god, this chapter. I just...it's terrible. I don't know how I'm even going to begin. All I know is that it's going to be a very long, very ragey spork, because there is SO much fail here in SO many ways.
In order to help you get through it, here is some cute ratty news: When I fed the girl rats on Friday night, Blatz picked out a peanut from the feed mix, and I thought of course she was going to eat it because that's a choice treat but instead she PUT IT IN FRONT OF SAM AWWW!
"here u r baby eat up nao"
Sam is still totally itty bitty too, I need to get photos of her while she's still tiny enough to be getting this special treatment from her cagemate.
FLIRT, CHAPTER TWO
They go to a circular booth in a restaurant near enough to Anita's workplace that they are able to walk to it, "Micah and I in our suits, and the other two looking like gym bunnies who'd escaped to be among us mere mortals." At first I didn't understand the implication that 'gym bunnies' were snobs towards those who weren't, but given what I know of LKH's attitudes and her exercise life (don't look at me like a creep, she puts personal stuff on her professional blog all the time, you learn LOTS of stuff about her you don't wanna know) it makes sense.
Firstly, LKH has had struggles with her own weight, and as a result as taken up regular exercise. This has made her rather snobby on the subject of fitness and weight loss/control, to the point where she's said that she'd look down on someone not having a salad like she is. Secondly, notice how Anita is treated as the ideal in any scenario of extremes. Any women more feminine than Anita are gross for being girly, but any woman more masculine than she is is depicted as equally gross for being butch. Women who are skinnier than Anita are derided for being "boys with breasts" but women who are plumper than she is are described in very cruel terms. So, given that Anita is very obviously LKH's wish-fulfillment avatar, I'm guessing that this is coming from LKH deciding that while it's fine for her to look down on others for being gluttonous slobs, anyone who goes to the gym and works out more than she does is a fitness snob.
We then get an entire paragraph on how Jason and Nathaniel have put on workout pants over their shorts and Nathaniel also put on a jacket and how he knew that Anita wasn't comfy with attracting so much attention and how Micah "looked as cute in less clothes as they did" but "like me" he only wears them at home and how "We were shy, but it was a sliding scale. We were shy in comparison to Jason and Nathaniel, but then so were most people." THEN YOU'RE NOT SHY, STUPID. YOU'RE JUST NOT FLASHY. Well, not now. In Kiss the Dead, however, Anita is in a mini-skirt, fishnet stockings, and stiletto heels...to go to WORK. Not just animating work either, but interrogating a vampire, which she gets in a fight with. Yeah, when I'm going up against something stronger than any human, faster than any human, and pissed off to boot, shoes I can't walk in is exactly what I'd wanna be in. And it makes so-o-o-o much sense for Miss Practical Tomboy Anita to be tottering around in them by choice, right?
Okay, back to the now, Anita asks them why, if they had more clothes with them all along, did they pick her up wearing as little as they did? They say that Mary likes it when they flirt with her, and Anita asks if it been night and it was just the janitor there would they have worn more and they say yes. Well, you're a couple of thoughtless, stupid, callous assholes then. Animators Inc is all about raising zombies. Pretty much every and any time you go in during or just after work hours, there's going to be a client, who has a good chance of being someone in mourning. It's like a funeral home; you don't go prancing around in your skivvies making a scene with the secretary, I don't care how fun it is.
They sit down and we get told what order they're sitting around the booth and how they can still all touch each other, and then Micah demonstrates this for us by basically having hand sex with Anita. Lots of drawing circles on each others hands and such, which is harmless enough, but then they get nails involved which makes Micah "close his eyes, lips parting" and Anita having to "fight off a visible shudder." At that point, they thankfully decide they should quit, and Jason comments that they are "so much fun" which Nathaniel agrees with. Yeah, I can see why Jason and Nathaniel want to watch these two before lunch---being strippers, they have to maintain a trim figure, and this will destroy their appetite for sure!
Nathaniel's agreement makes Anita look at him and worry that she "neglected" him because of the tone in his voice. If he is feeling neglected just over this, the kid has issues. Besides the ones we knew about, I mean. Before she can even ask though he comments on how Micah and Anita "always have to touch each other more than just a hug and kiss. Until you do there's this tension between you; always." SO basically they're that annoying super-PDA couple. Not surprised. Also, that is semi-colon abuse, I'm pretty sure. Anita asks if she should apologize for that and her voice is "still breathy" from the hand-gasm that Micah nearly gave her. Anita considers Mary's "long lunch" suggestion. Oh god no, no, please don't.
Nathaniel then explains that he's "not jealous of you and Micah, because you still react as if me touching you is new."
Oh great, we're gonna be in for a "Anita is the most perfect lover ever and everyone else is terrible" story from yet another harem member, I can tell. Anita asks if this means that other people have gotten tired of Nathaniel touching them, and Jason complains that making Anita ask about this isn't going to make her smile, because everything is all about Anita, but Anita, being a benevolent saint willing to listen to the woes of her chosen concubines despite this, sends him a mean look to shut him up.
Nathaniel says no and that "you're the same way with me" and then he...oh god, am I really reading this? Is this for real? HE STARTS FEELING UP HER LEGS. AND HE GETS SO FAR UP ON HER THIGH THAT HE WORKS HIS HAND UNDER HER HOSE STOCKING TO TOUCH HER BARE INNER THIGH. DUDE YOU ARE IN PUBLIC, PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO EAT HERE!
He then explains that "I'm saying that other people have wanted me for a night, or a few days a week, or a month, but you never seem to grow tired of me." Anita tells him that those people were crazy. Ugggh, yup, I called it. This is very much a 'Anita is the most perfect lover and the fact that everyone else was bad for her boyfriends proves it'. There was Micah's bawwing about how other women wouldn't be with him because of his ridiculously huge cock, Domino crying about how they wouldn't be with him because of his mixed bloodlines (which re-occurs in Hit List with another tigers, btw), and I can't remember Asher ever whining similarly but maybe he did. If he hasn't, I'm sure he will these days. Not only is this getting old and a really stupid, lazy ploy at making Anita look good (rather than having her actually be a good partner in any way, just say at least she's better than the ones they had before!) but Nathaniel is pretty much the worst character she could have picked for this. Why?
Firstly, Nathaniel was a prostitute since he was a kid and still was when he met Anita (at all of nineteen years old) and she got him off the streets, if I recall right. So, basically, all those other people he's talking about...are most likely johns. And Nathaniel, sweetie, I get that maybe the difference between clients and relationships doesn't register to you because of your trauma, I don't know, but we the readers know that the POINT of being with a prostitute is that is not long term and is no strings attached, etc. Anita being 'better' than them...doesn't make her that good a person at all.
Secondly, if Nathaniel actually is talking about real relationships and not people he was pimped out to, then I frankly find this unbelievable. Nathaniel is a ridiculously beautiful sex god who submits to every demand. How many people do you think are going to get TIRED of that? And I don't even mean a relationship with that, because his doormat personality (and lack of any traits besides that) would be irritating and unhealthy, but they're talking about touching, about sex. I don't see how EVERY PERSON HE'S EVER BEEN WITH has decided this just isn't good enough for him except our super special sex saint Anita.
Nathaniel smiles when Anita says this, and she gives us an entire paragraph about it, including that it makes him look younger (squick) than his current age, twenty-one, and that he had lost his family and been on the streets since before he was even ten, because Child Services doesn't exist.
Then Jason says this is why he doesn't go to lunch with "all of you" and Anita asks why and then Micah says he thinks that Jason feels left out. Oh good lord, you mean from just what happened NOW? Just because she got touched by them in this one instance and not him yet? How insecure is he? That would be ridiculous for a boyfriend in a poly relationship, let alone just a buddy that you have sex with.
"It was one of those moments that Miss Manners didn't cover. I had sex with Jason, but he was my friend, not my boyfriend. There was a difference. So if your guy friend and sometimes lover feels left out when you're cuddling your boyfriends at lunch, do you owe him a cuddle?"
1) Anita, you don't know if Miss Manners ever covered it because I will bet good money you have never even glanced at an etiquette guide of any sort unless it was to take a big shit all over it to show how you are too edgy for such things.
2) At least she's now calling them "boyfriends" and not "sweeties"
3) You never 'owe' anyone any affections, it doesn't matter their relationship to you or who else you are giving affection to. Affection is something you give because you want to, not because you have to because you 'owe' it. Two chapters in and there is already so much creepy in this book.
Nathaniel says that he's closer to Jason but that he thinks Jason would (of course) rather be kissed by Anita. Jason confirms, saying that "nothing personal, dude, but she's not a dude." Keep in mind, Jason is supposed to be bisexual. Now, I'm not saying that liking men means he needs to like Nathaniel any more than my being a lesbian means I need to like every single girl, but the thing is, while he's SAID to be bisexual, he never goes anywhere beyond flirting or cuddling with other men, and that's only in front of Anita for her slash fetish. And as for other women besides Anita, when he's SUPPOSED to be just her friend and not her boyfriend, and thus should be free to go out with girls? Yeah, not to get this spork off track, but he's had two--one never appeared on-screen but was apparently a sucky jealous prude who wouldn't have sex in public places with him or share him with other women and Anita was horrified and sympathetic when she found this out and Jason dumped her, and the current one, well...she's blonde so I'm betting soon she'll get the same treatment.
So Anita leans over and kisses him, problem solved. "Now that we had the touching out of the way we could talk." God, can you imagine if Anita had to attend board meetings? How would that go? "Okay we all have to touch at least once before we can start this thing, people, standard procedure." And just what do they talk about now? Jason is having a little problem! See, he's been teaching some dancers from Jean-Claude's other clubs besides Guilty Pleasures, such as the Circus of the Damned and Danse Macabre. What's the problem? They keep hitting on him! Oh noes, those skanky strippers are trying to get their mitts on Anita's man!
And what's worse? They're lazy and un-talented too! Yup, according to Nathaniel "most of the women come from a stripper background, and most strip clubs aren't like Guilty Pleasures. They don't really want you to dance at most clubs, just move a little and take your clothes off. Jason is asking them to dance, really dance." Jason concurs that "Dancing is hard work, and some of these women have used their beauty to avoid hard work all their lives."
1) Wasn't Danse Macabre supposed to be a high-end dance club? I didn't read that book so maybe I'm wrong, but Jean-Claude does own it so I'd assume it would have to be ~the best~ and thus have professionally trained dancers, not ladies who just dropped their clothes.
2) Many strippers are actually professionally trained dancers, including in arts such as ballet, and just unfortunately aren't able to find work that puts their beautiful, hard-earned talent to use and also pays as much as stripping does. And honestly, I think good pole dancing should be an Olympic sport.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=professional+pole+dancing+competitions&oq=professional+pole+dan&gs_l=youtube.3.0.0l7.437.3292.0.4449.21.11.0.4.4.1.223.1360.5j4j2.11.0...0.0...1ac.1.WvmbMs3PTnY
Yup, just taking off their clothes and moving around! I'm sure that's the case in some places, but when it comes to 'most' of them, I think LKH is talking out her ass.
3) Using their looks to get by, only flirting with Jason because they're lazy and want to get out of work, do I even need to unpack the misogyny here? Not to mention the undertone of strippers specifically as lazy, manipulative women.
4) And of course it's just women that he's having this problem with. Of course. Micah, in fact, asks if there aren't men too, and Jason says there are but most of them are from Guilty Pleasures and "Jean-Claude always made us put on a real show." Then why are they in the class at all? Oh, right, to show how the men are behaving so well in comparison to the women, of course. No flirting with Jason unless it's in front of Anita and she is explicitly told it's for her benefit! And of course there are no men from the Circus or Danse Macabre where for some reason JC didn't make everyone put on a real show, I suppose.
The wereanimals also aren't said to be arguing about it much and Micah says that "they know that if they don't do what they're told, it will get back to the head of their animal group." Uh, maybe this isn't what he meant, but to me that sounds like they're being forced by said head to strip? And according to Jason, who says it with a smile, some guy named Caleb is "sooo not happy" that Micah "made" him stop being a waiter at GP and become a dancer instead. DUDE, WTF? I thought forcing people to strip was supposed to be what the Bad Leaders did and when Anita took over, the snuff films and pimping stopped, so shouldn't the forced stripping?! It doesn't matter that it doesn't involve sex, they're still being made to do something they don't want, and something that might personally feel very degrading to them. How is that a laughing matter?
Oh, but according to Micah he didn't make him do anything. Apparently Caleb wanted to make more money, so Micah helped him brainstorm some new jobs, and offered him a choice of jobs that would pay more (he doesn't say what the other choices were...) and Caleb thought that "stripping was the lesser evil". Okay, now I really want to know what those other choices were, because if you offered him jobs that were really terrible in some way, then it wasn't a friggin' choice at all, it was a set-up. Anita does not soothe my suspicion at all by saying that "We got tired of him bitching." Yup, this convinces me. They must have got fed up at him asking for more pay as a waiter, so they made him be a stripper, which he apparently does not like. Interesting, how in both cases he'll be working at an establishment owned by Jean-Claude, which means he'll be making money for Jean-Claude, who is closely allied, to say the least, to the Nimir-Ra and Nimir-Raj (Micah and Anita) of the leopards. Yeah, this is definitely one big disgusting scheme we're getting hints of here, I have no doubt. Seriously though, does LKH realize at all what this dialogue suggests, or does she fully intend it and thinks there's no problem with that scenario? I don't expect vampires and wereanimals in general to do things nice when they rule, given the types of leaders and hierarchies we've thus far seen in canon, but Anita is supposed to be our heroine and this particular wereleopard and vampire are supposed to be good guys. Key word, of course, is 'supposed'.
We then get an obnoxious long info-dump on how Anita is the Leopard Queen and Micah is the Leopard King, how Anita is "technically" human and doesn't change shape but carries all these strands of lycanthropy (THERIANTHROPY!) and how there are about forty people worldwide with this condition (multiple strains but not shifting) and they had been the inspiration for vaccines. I bet that they aren't super special sues like she is--for instance, she tells us that with every new strain she gets, there's the potential she'll be able to call that animal like a vampire might, and that she's trying to avoid that happening again. Sure you are, lady--after all, you already got all the ~kewl~ strains of wolf, leopard, lion, and tiger, so what else do you need, right? Since LKH only likes animals that are both 'big and badass and powerful' and also 'culturally considered majestic and beautiful and regal' so that rules out swans, rats, bears, snakes, hyenas, etc.
Now that we've been told some more about how special she is, Anita asks Nathaniel if he recognized "Bennington's wife" oh you mean Ilsa. Sorry, but after Bibi, it really really bugs me now anytime a woman is just referred to as so-and-so's wife when we know her damn name. Anyway, Nathaniel says that she was a "fur-fucker" and for some reason Anita, despite being entrenched in preternatural culture and knowing about 'vampire freaks' since the first book, does not know what this means: someone, as Jason explains, who likes to fuck shapeshifters just because they're shapeshifters. Nathaniel says she used her money to get private dances and, like most fur-fuckers, "seemed to think that we were animals and wouldn't be able to resist our baser urges, as if because we have a beast inside us we can't say no, or don't have the right to."
We're supposed to see this as terrible on Ilsa's part, I know, but everything else in the series since it jumped off the deep end has shown Ilsa to be totally right in this. Like how Domino didn't like Anita at all, but then their black tigers said they had to get together so they did (not able to resist urges), or how Micah raped Anita, penetrating her even as she was saying no, but it was okay and Not Rape because her leopard was calling to his as Queen to King (no right to say no). Yet it only gets called out as wrong here because a blonde woman is doing it now instead of Anita or hot boys.
Jason says that he used to do them after work for fun, but even his horndog self got tired of it because "it was as if they'd fuck the tiger in the zoo if it wouldn't eat them" and he thought they saw him the same way. Anita hugs Jason and Nathaniel and says she's sorry that people are so stupid. Then Micah joins into the group hug. That's the second one of these in as many chapters. Yup, truly a dark and edgy and sexy series, this one.
You know, this fur-fucker thing is exactly like the ardeur. We're supposed to condemn women in this series who have sex, especially lots of it, but it's okay when Anita does it because it's the ~ardeur~ that makes her do it (even though she makes no fucking effort, pun intended, to control to ardeur by eating as often as she should, having sex with the partners she already has before going into situations where she might add someone new, etc.) Likewise, Anita only has sex with vampires and werebeasts, never humans, but it's not because she has a fetish, it's just because she somehow keeps falling into situations where she HAS to, so that's okay, it's only the other women who do it by choice that we should be appalled by. LKH wants her Mary Sue to be able to do all the things we're supposed to hate the Other Women for, and so sets up all kinds of ridiculous reasons that Anita ends up being forced to do said things (but really really enjoying it and having no trauma regarding said forcing, making it okay!) so that she can have her cake and eat it too, that is, still have the moral high ground enabling her to sneer down her nose at the women who do the same thing WITHOUT metaphysical forces and preternatural politics making them and are instead just *gasp* engaging in consensual sex with another adult!
Anita asks if anyone at the club ever did have sex with "the wife" (HER NAME IS ILSA. OR EVEN MRS. BENNINGTON. BUT NOT JUST THE WIFE/HIS WIFE FFF-) and Nathaniel says no (ew, of course not, she's a woman other than Anita, and she's blonde too!) because JC is really strict about that and even though a few dancers and bouncers (pfff, bouncers? they're not pretty!) were willing to do it, Ilsa's fantasy was to get it on in the private dance room, and wouldn't settle for hooking up later at a hotel, or at least that's what Graham says she said when he offered to meet her after work.
Graham is a werewolf that works as a bouncer at GP, and he is of Japanese and Nordic ancestry and he reeeeeally wants to get in Anita's bed/pants. Anita keeps turning him down, however. I personally suspect it's because LKH doesn't like putting Anita with any man who isn't white; heck, the only reason I think she got it on with Rafael that one time is because LKH wanted her to have banged every shifter leader in St. Louis--which, by the way, she has succeeded in aside from Narcissus, but he doesn't count cuz he has GIRL parts eeeew!
Anita says that Ilsa refusing to do it with him anywhere else must have been a blow to his ego (I don't see why?) and Jason says not as much as how Anita keeps refusing him is (of course) and Anita tells us this is a "sore point" with her but doesn't say why. I would rather like to know, myself. Anita asks if Ilsa got kicked out, and Nathaniel says that she had to be escorted out by security because "she wouldn't take no from us, and she kept trying to up the price as if we were whores." Just what I would expect from a beautiful blonde woman! Also, discussing the sexual kinks of a dead lady that you didn't even know and whose tearful husband you were trying to get *away* from seems like totally a lunch conversation you'd want to have, yup.
Anita then tells us how she doesn't know what to say to Nathaniel since he was a whore when she first met him (but...he's not now, and people who are whores should still be respected as human beings instead of spoken of in a derogatory way the way he himself did when he said the 'as if we were whores' bit?) and that though he had "been a high-priced one catering to an elite clientele" (I guess that must have been AFTER Gabriel got him off the streets?) but that there ended up being too many clients who wanted him just for being a wereanimal because that meant he could "take a lot of damage and still survive" because I guess everyone is into insanely violent sex or something and "it was too much rough trade, even for someone who enjoyed pain the way Nathaniel did."
....PFAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, LKH, honey. Rough trade does not mean doing rough sex/violent sex/torture/etc. Rough trade means straight men who prostitute themselves to gay male clients in order to make a living. Oh my god I am DYING. This isn't some underground lingo either, you can find it on freaking Wikipedia. What was all that stuff she liked to say about she does ~research~ on BDSM and such?
Back to our utterly pointless and kind of creepy (not the sex part, but the dead lady's kinks parts) conversation, Jason says a lot of people think that about strippers and Nathaniel says he knows (uh, yeah, he would, seeing as he's one too?) and Micah says that they're supposed to cheer Anita up, not be gloomy. Yeah, the problems and prejudices they experiences don't matter, how dare they think they can talk about them around a loved one, it's ALL ABOUT ANITA! Anita, however, does not protest, and nor do they. Instead, Jason remembers that "I think we promised to flirt outrageously" and Nathaniel says Jason just assumed he'd go along with it and Jason says won't you and Nathaniel smiles, shrugs, and nods. Just another day entertaining the mistress, I suppose. Anita says that though she's a bit nervous about what 'outrageously' might be, she prefers them being embarrassing to being sad...honey, I know it's hard to see someone you 'love' feeling terrible in some way, but in this scenario they're very clearly burying their feelings and putting on an at for you. They've said it out loud. You shouldn't be okay with this, it's not okay for them. Basically, by going along with this, Anita is implicitly agreeing that only her feelings, amusement, and enjoyment matter, at the expense of whatever her so-called sweeties and friends are going through.
Anita assumed that they would just be flirting with each other or with her and Micah, but "the plans changed" when the waiter comes to their table. All Nathaniel does is look up at the waiter, and he "went from reasonably intelligent and competent to stammering." All the waiter said was he was sorry no one had gotten to their table yet, how do you know he was smart and competent? Maybe he stammers with everyone. Maybe he has a stutter, did you ever think maybe that's why he has "a lot of uhs, and hums, and words not in the right order". Not everything is about you and your boytoys. And then Nathaniel smiles at him and that makes it worse, and the waiter finally asks if he can bring them some drinks, and stares at Nathaniel the whole time while not writing any drink orders down.
Yeah, this is stupid. I realize some people get ridiculously twitterpated when they're around someone very attractive to them (I do, for instance) but this guy is a waiter. He sees lots and lots of people every day, and some are bound to be attractive to him. Unless he just started, he has to have learned by now to stay professional no matter what, or he probably wouldn't have a job. This is just to show how preeetty Anita's property is, and for LKH's stupid slash kink (not that I'm saying liking slash is stupid, but that her execution of it is).
Jason asks if Nathaniel can flirt with the waiter, and Micah and Anita both say no, with Micah saying that "we'll either get great service or terrible service, and we need to get Anita back to work." Yeah, that would be nice, at least it's better than this. Also, so if they're not gonna flirt with the waiter after all, then plans DIDN'T change. Anita asks if Nathaniel wants to flirt with the waiter, and specifies that she asks because "it being me" she totally cares and respects the choices of her sweeties, really! Sure, yeah, uh-huh. Nathaniel says that "before I was with the two of you, I would have, but I know it makes you uncomfortable" and Jason says that's why he asked for him. Anita looks at Micah and she thinks he understands whatever she's thinking but that "being the girl I couldn't trust to silent communication. I had to say something." What does this even mean. WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN.
She asks if they take the fun out of some things for Nathaniel, and Nathaniel says that he would never trade being able to flirt with strangers for living with them, because he wasn't happy when he could flirt with whoever he liked and now he is. So, basically, he likes being in a relationship? Whoop de do. This should not be a huge breakthrough or some kind of tender emotional reveal. People are supposed to like being in a relationship; if you don't like it, then you shouldn't be in it. But it makes Anita kiss him, which she does so "gently" because she is wearing "bright lipstick."
Okay, putting the sporking on pause for a minute just to comment on this. Anita, so we all know, is really pale, because LKH is really pale, which she has mentioned in her blog. She is the palest of the pale, according to herself, which is probably why Anita is drawn in the comic books (which Hamilton helped work on and thus probably approved of or even ordered how Anita was drawn) as having skin as pale as the vampires do, which no other living person is depicted with. Now, speaking as a very pale white girl myself, bright lipstick will really, really stand out if you are pale. I really can't even wear most lipsticks, because even the really pale natural-looking (for those with pink lips) ones just look really too strong on me and I don't like that. If you do like that, however, that's fine. I have no problem with other pale women, including Anita, wearing bright lipstick if they want for whatever reasons they want. But she just came from work, and the dress code for most workplaces is that makeup must be light and natural-looking. I'd think that would especially apply at a place like Animators, Inc. since it is, as mentioned, a lot like a funeral home in terms of the clientele. It seems inappropriate to me for that setting, and I'm someone who normally loves seeing strong makeup done on others. (I admit I have a white character on the pale-ish side who wears bold red lipstick at work, but firstly her company has nothing to do with dead people, and secondly she's CEO, she can do what she wants kthnx)
Also I doubt it is coincidence that LKH too wears very bright loud red lipstick. Just saying.
Jason says that the waiter is coming this way and that Anita can't be hanging all over Nathaniel if she wants to "play with him". I do not like the sound of that. Anita trusts him on this because "if anyone knew the rules of teasing people, it was him." I really do not like the sound of this. The waiter returns, and he got their drink orders right (I'm surprised we don't get a detailed list of what they're each having) and Anita thinks that means they may get good service after all. Well, Anita, you could guarantee that by not flirting/teasing and not letting anyone else do it either. The waiter still stares at Nathaniel the entire time though, not looking at anyone else while taking their orders. Super-unprofessional, dude. Again, someone in this business would know how to control that sort of thing, in my opinion. Anita says that Nathaniel doesn't do anything but just "looked pleasantly at him" and according to Anita, this is flirting as well, because "just letting another human being know that you "see" them is perhaps the most important part of flirting."
And here's where it gets WEIRD.
"Nathaniel had taught me that not all flirting is about sex. You flirt, in a way, with friends, family, even a job interviewer; you want them to like you, or you want them know that you are listening, that you care. I'd learned that I wasn't very good at letting anyone know I liked them unless I was trying to date them."
Wha...buh...huh....WHAT THE FRIGGING FUCK FLYING MONKEYS?! That's not flirting! That's just social skills, people skills, general human interaction! Can Anita seriously not understand the concept of 'be pleasant and polite to other people' unless a sex-related term is applied to it? And speaking of that, Anita, no, sometimes flirting isn't about sex, sometimes it is for fun, or to get a date, etc. But I guess anything romantic that ISN'T related to sex is a foreign concept with you, as demonstrated with your assumptions about what Tony wanted to do with zombie-Ilsa. Anita also cannot be nice to other people unless she wants a date from them too, nice to know. She just comes off as a sex-obsessed sociopath in the book thus far. A sex-obsessed sociopath with a lot of power and positions and powerful people on her side/in her bed with authority over others. God, this is terrifying, and what's more terrifying is that LKH doesn't realize how terrifying it is.
Anita realizes it's gone silent and then she realizes everyone is staring at her (oh, when aren't they?) and Micah asks what she wants to order and she says she doesn't know. That's why maybe you should have read the damn menu instead of playing Bash the Blonde and getting your ass kissed and thinking creepy creepy thoughts about flirting and what it is. The waiter says he'll give her a few minutes, she smiles at him, and he gives her a "brilliant smile that lit his face up" but our modest Anita thinks that's just cuz she's sitting close to Nathaniel and it's really meant for him but she smiles back anyway (again?) and then "noticed that he was tanned and his hair was almost black, straight and tucked into a short ponytail, with a long wisp of hair escaping to trace the edge of a triangular face. His eyes were dark, and sparkling with the desire to catch Nathaniel's attention. He was cute, and that was the problem with this kind of flirting. I couldn't figure out how to let someone know I "saw them" without really seeing them. I couldn't pretend to notice someone , I either noticed them or didn't."
So basically Anita can't do decent human interaction unless the person is hot, and she can't pretend-flirt without ending up REALLY wanting to flirt with the person? I think that's what this says? I don't know, it's just a bundle of very confusing purple.
Also, I am betting based on this last sentence of that long paragraph that she didn't have an editor for this book:
"He smiled flashed that brilliant white smile in his tan and left me to my menu." Wut. Smiled flashed? In his tan? What?
Jason said that if they'd bet on this one, he'd have lost, and Nathaniel, to spare the reader confusion of what he's talking about, says that "You thought he was gay." and Jason says yes. Anita, meanwhile, is thinking about if she wants a pulled pork sandwich or some kind of salad, while the boys say that since he smiled at both Anita and Nathaniel he's probably bi. Because employees never smile at customers unless they're hot for them, right? Anita then announces to the others that she will have a pulled pork sandwich and why, and then says that the waiter was not smiling at her, it was just that he was smiling at Nathaniel, whom she was close to.
Nathaniel says that "you made him see you when you looked up and smiled". What does that friggin' mean? I mean, I get it apparently means 'notice that you are hot' but that is really weird terminology to use for it in that it suggests anyone who isn't hot is invisible and not worthy of notice. Whatever it means, Anita says she didn't do it on purpose. Of course not, our dear darling angel Anita never ever does! She just can't help how hot she is! Micah says they've all been taking on "some of Nathaniel's charms" and that being a little charming helps a lot in politics because you want people to like you and "no one is better at getting people to like them than these two." Jason teases him about that, so Micah scowls at him, and Anita realizes that the scowl is more like her and wonders if all couples pick up mannerisms from each other. Uh, probably, I guess? I dunno, I think you're all boring twits. She tells us that she's picked up stuff from Jean-Claude but that this is because she's his Human Servant and so "personality and psychic gifts literally mingled, or were contagious" (that's...scary, but interesting, I like it!) and wonders if her connection to Micah as his Queen and to Nathaniel as him being her Animal to Call could do the same. Uh, maybe ask them, then? They'd know, you're not the first Leopard Queen or first person with an Animal Servant.
We then get the info-dump about how "the powers of Belle Morte's line were lust and love, with the caveat that for most of them you could only control someone to degree you were willing to be controlled" and how that "for me it was truly a double-edge sword" especially because Anita is special and how she'd been "willing to cut to the heart" with Nathaniel and Micah (because they're avatars of LKH's hubby) and how she'd only (of course) made Jason her Wolf to Call by accident during a crisis. Ugh, this 'Belle Morte's line is about love!' shit showed up in Skin Trade, and it seems to have started in Danse Macabre. Just to add to the stupid of it, it was pointed out by a reader of one of my Skin Trade sporkings that the whole 'cuts both ways' thing doesn't really make sense, since we never saw any other Belle Morte line vampire, including Belle Morte herself, exhibiting this, just Anita. Heck, not even Jean-Claude seems to have this issue at all. It's just an excuse to make Anita in insta-love with whatever new boytoy she's with so she's not just having sex with this stranger, she really cares about them, the metaphysics say so, really! Which isn't creepy as fuck at all or anything, right?
Nathaniel asks Anita if she really doesn't get that the waiter was flirting with both of them, Anita repeats her theory, Nathaniel asks what Micah thinks, Micah kisses her hand and says that "she doesn't see herself the way we do."
Oh god, I am so fucking tired of these scenes. It's not that I can't believe someone could have a self-image so bad that they could be really pretty and have loads of men telling them how pretty they are and still not believe it, but it is extremely boring and obnoxious to read about it over and over and OVER. These scenes exist because LKH loves to write about hot men lavishing praises on her avatar, and that's why Anita will probably never ever get over it...not permanently, anyway. Remember how she said the whole "I'm a girl and I'm pretty, get over it" junk to Shaw in Skin Trade? What happened to that now, huh? This inconsistency makes her look like she's actually fishing for compliments, which I don't think LKH intended. That's what you get for not keeping track of this stuff, LKH!
Anita protests that she doesn't look good first thing in the morning when she rolls out of bed. Oh my god, SERIOUSLY? You're trying to write this woman as modest, possibly even thinking herself unattractive, and the worst thing she has to say about herself is that she doesn't look good first thing in the morning aka when NO ONE LOOKS GOOD? Oh, but even then her boys still think she's hot, according to Micah, but Anita pulls her hand away and says that "I was told all my childhood that I wasn't pretty, and you guys love me because of my vampire powers. You may not be able to help that."
So, you think they're only with you because they have no choice, yet you're still with them? That's really, really messed-up on your part, Anita.
Nathaniel hugs her, and Micah kisses her and tells her she's beautiful. Which, uh, is not a reason for loving someone, but seems to get treated like it in the ABverse, disturbingly enough. Anita thinks about how her step-mother had been "blonde and blue-eyed, tall and Nordic, as had her daughter from her first marriage and the son they had together later." Gee, how awful. At least this finally clears up whether Andria (the sister, who doesn't get named here but the brother does, pff) and Josh are her half-siblings or step-siblings, because she's called them both in different books. I don't know if LKH doesn't know the difference or what, but now we do: Andria, the girl, is the step-sister, while Josh, the boy, is the half-brother. I'm somehow not surprised by this. Icky blonde girls don't get to be related by blood to Anita!
"I loved my brother Josh, but I'd always looked like the dark secret in family photos." What does that mean? It's not freaking unusual for someone to not have the same hair color as the rest of their family. You've got dominant coloring in a family of recessive gene types, which is a little more unusual than the reverse, but that does not make you look like a ~dark secret~ or whatever you mean by that. Also, I love how she says she loves Josh, but makes no mention of loving Andria, or even Andria's name. We know absolutely nothing of Andria, by the way, just her name and, now, that she came from Judith's vagina and not Anita's freaking sainted nameless dead mother and this plus her being blonde probably means she's a huge evil bitch I suppose, if we ever meet her or find out anything about her.
"Judith had been very quick to explain to friends that I wasn't hers; that my mother had been Hispanic."
Aside from wishing Anita were more ladylike, this is the big crime that we're all supposed to hate Judith for. To be honest, I don't see how this is such a terrible thing. Maybe she didn't want her friends to think she cheated on her blonde husband. Maybe her friends knew her and her blonde daughter before she got married, and thus would have no idea who this random snotty little brunette in the house is, so of course she'd tell them "she's my husband's daughter, from his first wife" (Mr. Blake never gets a name either, oddly) instead of "she's my daughter" because that would just confuse them. And maybe, shock and awe, she did it to be NICE to Anita. It's common for children to resent the new spouse when their parent re-marries, and to not want to be regarded as their child, especially in a case where the other parent died. Anita was clearly one of these kids, so Judith may have figured that Anita wouldn't want to be introduced as Judith's daughter, and instead have the memory of her mother honored by being called hers, instead of ignored by being falsely called Judith's own, especially for an older kid (Anita was ten when her dad re-married, eight when her mother died) who can very much remember her mother and knows full well that Judith isn't her. Honestly, if I were a step-parent, that's probably what I'd do, though I think I'd talk to the kid about it first. This honestly seems to the most likely case to me. Why would she include the bit about Anita being part Hispanic? Who knows. We're supposed to take it here as Judith explaining Anita being a dark-eyed brunette and being ~racist~ by pointing it out, but in Logical People Land that really makes no sense, so I'm just going to go with the idea that it came up in conversation naturally once and Anita held on to it forever so that she now remembers it in a totally warped way.
"My Grandmother Blake took care of me while my father worked for about a year. I'd just lost my mom, and she told me that I was ugly, that I better not count on finding a husband, but get an education and a job and take care of myself."
This pisses me off so much, and not for the reasons LKH wants it too. I can totally believe this happened, yes. I had a friend once who said her grandmother had told her she was ugly. Parents can be incredibly cruel, I'm sure grandparents can too. What pisses me off about it isn't the issue of whether it's realistic, it's why it was included. It's a fucking cheap sympathy ploy for Anita. It's just a big goddamn set-up where we HAVE to feel bad for her, because omg, how can you not? Telling a little kid that they're ugly! And it's her own grandma! And her mother just died! The readers CAN'T not be moved by this, surely! It's manipulative as all fuck, because it's not being done for character development purposes--we've been through this not-blonde-angst loads of times already, it doesn't change, Anita doesn't change--it's being done to get the readers to do exactly what all her men do in response: smother her with sympathy and then telling her it's not true, that she's gorgeous, that she's perfect.
Oh, and telling a young girl the bit about getting an education, a job, and being self-sufficient so she won't have to rely on a husband is actually a pretty good thing to do, in my opinion. It makes the grandmother seem a lot less heinous than if she'd just left it at the calling her ugly bit. Also, for those who don't know, LKH lost her mother in the exact same way (car crash) at the same age as Anita, and her grandmother did help take care of her afterwards, and according to LKH she was a big mean asshole. Surprise surprise.
Anita then mopes about how "I see how people react to me because I know I clean up well, but I can't really see why you guys react to me" because they're so hot and luscious and thus should only be interested in similarly hot people. Because that's what love is all about. And the irony is, Anita really is super hot, so her idea that hot people can only go for hot people isn't her own issues, it's actually the facts of this universe, just like how her ideas about women, law enforcement, and everything else are always proven right.
"I just see what my grandmother and then my stepmother told me wasn't tall enough, white enough, pretty enough."
This is the first we've ever heard of Judith telling Anita anything of the sort. Up until now, Judith came across as a woman who was a different from Anita but still tried to have a relationship with her (sent her gifts, that sort of thing) and that Anita just spitefully hated for being blonde. Suddenly she was verbally abusive too? Just when Anita is trying to get as much sympathy as possible? Veeeery interesting. Also, lol, tall enough? Because women being tall is totally considered desirable and not awkward or masculine. You're supposed to be tall if you're a catwalk model, but that's it. Anywhere else, short (as long as you're not a literal midget) is considered to be more attractive for women. Hell, can you think of any movie where the girl is taller than the male lead she hooks up with? And five-foot-three is hardly the dwarf she makes herself out to have been treated as.
So the guys ramble about how she is "beautiful and desirable" and how that was "evil" of the grandma (which it was, but that's because she's a 2D strawman made for us to feel bad for Anita) and something about Jason learning things in therapy (since when is he in therapy, why does everyone BUT Anita seem to get trundled off to therapy in this series) and Nathaniel is in therapy too (okay, well, with him I understand) and how Anita feels safe now because she has a support network (no, she has a harem of spineless yes-men; a support network would call her out and intervene) and they have a conversation that last a third of the page about whether Anita is going to cry and how she's not going to cry because she never wants to cry and she'll just cry at home later and how Micah and Nathaniel could read her feelings but have better "psychic manners" than that and now how Anita feels fragile and hates it and they all cuddle her and tell her that "It's okay, we're here" and Anita thinks "that was the problem with loving people. It made you weak. It made you need them."
This reminds me of the bit in Skin Trade about how she treated it as weakness when a cop didn't like the 'adventure' of going into dangerous situations and instead wanted to come home alive to his family. And wasn't the 'moral' of Skin Trade at the end that 'love' is the most powerful thing? And Anita really needs to read Harry Potter and watch Sailor Moon if she thinks loving people makes you weak.
Then she thinks about how in addition to losing her mother, she also "lost" her fiancee in college, meaning not that he died but that he broke up with her "due to his mother's pressure" (of course it was an awful woman who did it--no man would ever leave Anita willingly!) because she didn't want her "family tree darkened" by Anita not being "blonde and Caucasian enough". Oh come the fuck on. As with the grandmother issue, I can believe this happened, since someone also once told me that their family had had an issue with their Korean spouse because they wanted grandbabies with blue eyes, but again it's not really developing Anita, because we already knew this, we've already been through this. Also, how in the hell did the mother know that Anita wasn't white? She looks white (no matter what she claims), she has no accent, and her last name is a European one. True, the name 'Anita' itself is Spanish, but it's used all over the world. A quick Wiki on famous people with that name yields bearers who are Norwegian, African-American, British, German, Swedish, Albanian, Polish, Hungarian, and French. I'm betting you they don't all have the ~dark secret~ of Hispanic heritage. And if you're almost thirty and only one person you love has died, you've only had one relationship that ended badly, you're actually damn lucky.
Then the waiter comes back and smiles at her and she smiles back and talks an entire paragraph about it and the chapter mercifully ends.
I really hope this chapter is NOT why the book is called Flirt.
In order to help you get through it, here is some cute ratty news: When I fed the girl rats on Friday night, Blatz picked out a peanut from the feed mix, and I thought of course she was going to eat it because that's a choice treat but instead she PUT IT IN FRONT OF SAM AWWW!
"here u r baby eat up nao"
Sam is still totally itty bitty too, I need to get photos of her while she's still tiny enough to be getting this special treatment from her cagemate.
FLIRT, CHAPTER TWO
They go to a circular booth in a restaurant near enough to Anita's workplace that they are able to walk to it, "Micah and I in our suits, and the other two looking like gym bunnies who'd escaped to be among us mere mortals." At first I didn't understand the implication that 'gym bunnies' were snobs towards those who weren't, but given what I know of LKH's attitudes and her exercise life (don't look at me like a creep, she puts personal stuff on her professional blog all the time, you learn LOTS of stuff about her you don't wanna know) it makes sense.
Firstly, LKH has had struggles with her own weight, and as a result as taken up regular exercise. This has made her rather snobby on the subject of fitness and weight loss/control, to the point where she's said that she'd look down on someone not having a salad like she is. Secondly, notice how Anita is treated as the ideal in any scenario of extremes. Any women more feminine than Anita are gross for being girly, but any woman more masculine than she is is depicted as equally gross for being butch. Women who are skinnier than Anita are derided for being "boys with breasts" but women who are plumper than she is are described in very cruel terms. So, given that Anita is very obviously LKH's wish-fulfillment avatar, I'm guessing that this is coming from LKH deciding that while it's fine for her to look down on others for being gluttonous slobs, anyone who goes to the gym and works out more than she does is a fitness snob.
We then get an entire paragraph on how Jason and Nathaniel have put on workout pants over their shorts and Nathaniel also put on a jacket and how he knew that Anita wasn't comfy with attracting so much attention and how Micah "looked as cute in less clothes as they did" but "like me" he only wears them at home and how "We were shy, but it was a sliding scale. We were shy in comparison to Jason and Nathaniel, but then so were most people." THEN YOU'RE NOT SHY, STUPID. YOU'RE JUST NOT FLASHY. Well, not now. In Kiss the Dead, however, Anita is in a mini-skirt, fishnet stockings, and stiletto heels...to go to WORK. Not just animating work either, but interrogating a vampire, which she gets in a fight with. Yeah, when I'm going up against something stronger than any human, faster than any human, and pissed off to boot, shoes I can't walk in is exactly what I'd wanna be in. And it makes so-o-o-o much sense for Miss Practical Tomboy Anita to be tottering around in them by choice, right?
Okay, back to the now, Anita asks them why, if they had more clothes with them all along, did they pick her up wearing as little as they did? They say that Mary likes it when they flirt with her, and Anita asks if it been night and it was just the janitor there would they have worn more and they say yes. Well, you're a couple of thoughtless, stupid, callous assholes then. Animators Inc is all about raising zombies. Pretty much every and any time you go in during or just after work hours, there's going to be a client, who has a good chance of being someone in mourning. It's like a funeral home; you don't go prancing around in your skivvies making a scene with the secretary, I don't care how fun it is.
They sit down and we get told what order they're sitting around the booth and how they can still all touch each other, and then Micah demonstrates this for us by basically having hand sex with Anita. Lots of drawing circles on each others hands and such, which is harmless enough, but then they get nails involved which makes Micah "close his eyes, lips parting" and Anita having to "fight off a visible shudder." At that point, they thankfully decide they should quit, and Jason comments that they are "so much fun" which Nathaniel agrees with. Yeah, I can see why Jason and Nathaniel want to watch these two before lunch---being strippers, they have to maintain a trim figure, and this will destroy their appetite for sure!
Nathaniel's agreement makes Anita look at him and worry that she "neglected" him because of the tone in his voice. If he is feeling neglected just over this, the kid has issues. Besides the ones we knew about, I mean. Before she can even ask though he comments on how Micah and Anita "always have to touch each other more than just a hug and kiss. Until you do there's this tension between you; always." SO basically they're that annoying super-PDA couple. Not surprised. Also, that is semi-colon abuse, I'm pretty sure. Anita asks if she should apologize for that and her voice is "still breathy" from the hand-gasm that Micah nearly gave her. Anita considers Mary's "long lunch" suggestion. Oh god no, no, please don't.
Nathaniel then explains that he's "not jealous of you and Micah, because you still react as if me touching you is new."
Oh great, we're gonna be in for a "Anita is the most perfect lover ever and everyone else is terrible" story from yet another harem member, I can tell. Anita asks if this means that other people have gotten tired of Nathaniel touching them, and Jason complains that making Anita ask about this isn't going to make her smile, because everything is all about Anita, but Anita, being a benevolent saint willing to listen to the woes of her chosen concubines despite this, sends him a mean look to shut him up.
Nathaniel says no and that "you're the same way with me" and then he...oh god, am I really reading this? Is this for real? HE STARTS FEELING UP HER LEGS. AND HE GETS SO FAR UP ON HER THIGH THAT HE WORKS HIS HAND UNDER HER HOSE STOCKING TO TOUCH HER BARE INNER THIGH. DUDE YOU ARE IN PUBLIC, PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO EAT HERE!
He then explains that "I'm saying that other people have wanted me for a night, or a few days a week, or a month, but you never seem to grow tired of me." Anita tells him that those people were crazy. Ugggh, yup, I called it. This is very much a 'Anita is the most perfect lover and the fact that everyone else was bad for her boyfriends proves it'. There was Micah's bawwing about how other women wouldn't be with him because of his ridiculously huge cock, Domino crying about how they wouldn't be with him because of his mixed bloodlines (which re-occurs in Hit List with another tigers, btw), and I can't remember Asher ever whining similarly but maybe he did. If he hasn't, I'm sure he will these days. Not only is this getting old and a really stupid, lazy ploy at making Anita look good (rather than having her actually be a good partner in any way, just say at least she's better than the ones they had before!) but Nathaniel is pretty much the worst character she could have picked for this. Why?
Firstly, Nathaniel was a prostitute since he was a kid and still was when he met Anita (at all of nineteen years old) and she got him off the streets, if I recall right. So, basically, all those other people he's talking about...are most likely johns. And Nathaniel, sweetie, I get that maybe the difference between clients and relationships doesn't register to you because of your trauma, I don't know, but we the readers know that the POINT of being with a prostitute is that is not long term and is no strings attached, etc. Anita being 'better' than them...doesn't make her that good a person at all.
Secondly, if Nathaniel actually is talking about real relationships and not people he was pimped out to, then I frankly find this unbelievable. Nathaniel is a ridiculously beautiful sex god who submits to every demand. How many people do you think are going to get TIRED of that? And I don't even mean a relationship with that, because his doormat personality (and lack of any traits besides that) would be irritating and unhealthy, but they're talking about touching, about sex. I don't see how EVERY PERSON HE'S EVER BEEN WITH has decided this just isn't good enough for him except our super special sex saint Anita.
Nathaniel smiles when Anita says this, and she gives us an entire paragraph about it, including that it makes him look younger (squick) than his current age, twenty-one, and that he had lost his family and been on the streets since before he was even ten, because Child Services doesn't exist.
Then Jason says this is why he doesn't go to lunch with "all of you" and Anita asks why and then Micah says he thinks that Jason feels left out. Oh good lord, you mean from just what happened NOW? Just because she got touched by them in this one instance and not him yet? How insecure is he? That would be ridiculous for a boyfriend in a poly relationship, let alone just a buddy that you have sex with.
"It was one of those moments that Miss Manners didn't cover. I had sex with Jason, but he was my friend, not my boyfriend. There was a difference. So if your guy friend and sometimes lover feels left out when you're cuddling your boyfriends at lunch, do you owe him a cuddle?"
1) Anita, you don't know if Miss Manners ever covered it because I will bet good money you have never even glanced at an etiquette guide of any sort unless it was to take a big shit all over it to show how you are too edgy for such things.
2) At least she's now calling them "boyfriends" and not "sweeties"
3) You never 'owe' anyone any affections, it doesn't matter their relationship to you or who else you are giving affection to. Affection is something you give because you want to, not because you have to because you 'owe' it. Two chapters in and there is already so much creepy in this book.
Nathaniel says that he's closer to Jason but that he thinks Jason would (of course) rather be kissed by Anita. Jason confirms, saying that "nothing personal, dude, but she's not a dude." Keep in mind, Jason is supposed to be bisexual. Now, I'm not saying that liking men means he needs to like Nathaniel any more than my being a lesbian means I need to like every single girl, but the thing is, while he's SAID to be bisexual, he never goes anywhere beyond flirting or cuddling with other men, and that's only in front of Anita for her slash fetish. And as for other women besides Anita, when he's SUPPOSED to be just her friend and not her boyfriend, and thus should be free to go out with girls? Yeah, not to get this spork off track, but he's had two--one never appeared on-screen but was apparently a sucky jealous prude who wouldn't have sex in public places with him or share him with other women and Anita was horrified and sympathetic when she found this out and Jason dumped her, and the current one, well...she's blonde so I'm betting soon she'll get the same treatment.
So Anita leans over and kisses him, problem solved. "Now that we had the touching out of the way we could talk." God, can you imagine if Anita had to attend board meetings? How would that go? "Okay we all have to touch at least once before we can start this thing, people, standard procedure." And just what do they talk about now? Jason is having a little problem! See, he's been teaching some dancers from Jean-Claude's other clubs besides Guilty Pleasures, such as the Circus of the Damned and Danse Macabre. What's the problem? They keep hitting on him! Oh noes, those skanky strippers are trying to get their mitts on Anita's man!
And what's worse? They're lazy and un-talented too! Yup, according to Nathaniel "most of the women come from a stripper background, and most strip clubs aren't like Guilty Pleasures. They don't really want you to dance at most clubs, just move a little and take your clothes off. Jason is asking them to dance, really dance." Jason concurs that "Dancing is hard work, and some of these women have used their beauty to avoid hard work all their lives."
1) Wasn't Danse Macabre supposed to be a high-end dance club? I didn't read that book so maybe I'm wrong, but Jean-Claude does own it so I'd assume it would have to be ~the best~ and thus have professionally trained dancers, not ladies who just dropped their clothes.
2) Many strippers are actually professionally trained dancers, including in arts such as ballet, and just unfortunately aren't able to find work that puts their beautiful, hard-earned talent to use and also pays as much as stripping does. And honestly, I think good pole dancing should be an Olympic sport.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=professional+pole+dancing+competitions&oq=professional+pole+dan&gs_l=youtube.3.0.0l7.437.3292.0.4449.21.11.0.4.4.1.223.1360.5j4j2.11.0...0.0...1ac.1.WvmbMs3PTnY
Yup, just taking off their clothes and moving around! I'm sure that's the case in some places, but when it comes to 'most' of them, I think LKH is talking out her ass.
3) Using their looks to get by, only flirting with Jason because they're lazy and want to get out of work, do I even need to unpack the misogyny here? Not to mention the undertone of strippers specifically as lazy, manipulative women.
4) And of course it's just women that he's having this problem with. Of course. Micah, in fact, asks if there aren't men too, and Jason says there are but most of them are from Guilty Pleasures and "Jean-Claude always made us put on a real show." Then why are they in the class at all? Oh, right, to show how the men are behaving so well in comparison to the women, of course. No flirting with Jason unless it's in front of Anita and she is explicitly told it's for her benefit! And of course there are no men from the Circus or Danse Macabre where for some reason JC didn't make everyone put on a real show, I suppose.
The wereanimals also aren't said to be arguing about it much and Micah says that "they know that if they don't do what they're told, it will get back to the head of their animal group." Uh, maybe this isn't what he meant, but to me that sounds like they're being forced by said head to strip? And according to Jason, who says it with a smile, some guy named Caleb is "sooo not happy" that Micah "made" him stop being a waiter at GP and become a dancer instead. DUDE, WTF? I thought forcing people to strip was supposed to be what the Bad Leaders did and when Anita took over, the snuff films and pimping stopped, so shouldn't the forced stripping?! It doesn't matter that it doesn't involve sex, they're still being made to do something they don't want, and something that might personally feel very degrading to them. How is that a laughing matter?
Oh, but according to Micah he didn't make him do anything. Apparently Caleb wanted to make more money, so Micah helped him brainstorm some new jobs, and offered him a choice of jobs that would pay more (he doesn't say what the other choices were...) and Caleb thought that "stripping was the lesser evil". Okay, now I really want to know what those other choices were, because if you offered him jobs that were really terrible in some way, then it wasn't a friggin' choice at all, it was a set-up. Anita does not soothe my suspicion at all by saying that "We got tired of him bitching." Yup, this convinces me. They must have got fed up at him asking for more pay as a waiter, so they made him be a stripper, which he apparently does not like. Interesting, how in both cases he'll be working at an establishment owned by Jean-Claude, which means he'll be making money for Jean-Claude, who is closely allied, to say the least, to the Nimir-Ra and Nimir-Raj (Micah and Anita) of the leopards. Yeah, this is definitely one big disgusting scheme we're getting hints of here, I have no doubt. Seriously though, does LKH realize at all what this dialogue suggests, or does she fully intend it and thinks there's no problem with that scenario? I don't expect vampires and wereanimals in general to do things nice when they rule, given the types of leaders and hierarchies we've thus far seen in canon, but Anita is supposed to be our heroine and this particular wereleopard and vampire are supposed to be good guys. Key word, of course, is 'supposed'.
We then get an obnoxious long info-dump on how Anita is the Leopard Queen and Micah is the Leopard King, how Anita is "technically" human and doesn't change shape but carries all these strands of lycanthropy (THERIANTHROPY!) and how there are about forty people worldwide with this condition (multiple strains but not shifting) and they had been the inspiration for vaccines. I bet that they aren't super special sues like she is--for instance, she tells us that with every new strain she gets, there's the potential she'll be able to call that animal like a vampire might, and that she's trying to avoid that happening again. Sure you are, lady--after all, you already got all the ~kewl~ strains of wolf, leopard, lion, and tiger, so what else do you need, right? Since LKH only likes animals that are both 'big and badass and powerful' and also 'culturally considered majestic and beautiful and regal' so that rules out swans, rats, bears, snakes, hyenas, etc.
Now that we've been told some more about how special she is, Anita asks Nathaniel if he recognized "Bennington's wife" oh you mean Ilsa. Sorry, but after Bibi, it really really bugs me now anytime a woman is just referred to as so-and-so's wife when we know her damn name. Anyway, Nathaniel says that she was a "fur-fucker" and for some reason Anita, despite being entrenched in preternatural culture and knowing about 'vampire freaks' since the first book, does not know what this means: someone, as Jason explains, who likes to fuck shapeshifters just because they're shapeshifters. Nathaniel says she used her money to get private dances and, like most fur-fuckers, "seemed to think that we were animals and wouldn't be able to resist our baser urges, as if because we have a beast inside us we can't say no, or don't have the right to."
We're supposed to see this as terrible on Ilsa's part, I know, but everything else in the series since it jumped off the deep end has shown Ilsa to be totally right in this. Like how Domino didn't like Anita at all, but then their black tigers said they had to get together so they did (not able to resist urges), or how Micah raped Anita, penetrating her even as she was saying no, but it was okay and Not Rape because her leopard was calling to his as Queen to King (no right to say no). Yet it only gets called out as wrong here because a blonde woman is doing it now instead of Anita or hot boys.
Jason says that he used to do them after work for fun, but even his horndog self got tired of it because "it was as if they'd fuck the tiger in the zoo if it wouldn't eat them" and he thought they saw him the same way. Anita hugs Jason and Nathaniel and says she's sorry that people are so stupid. Then Micah joins into the group hug. That's the second one of these in as many chapters. Yup, truly a dark and edgy and sexy series, this one.
You know, this fur-fucker thing is exactly like the ardeur. We're supposed to condemn women in this series who have sex, especially lots of it, but it's okay when Anita does it because it's the ~ardeur~ that makes her do it (even though she makes no fucking effort, pun intended, to control to ardeur by eating as often as she should, having sex with the partners she already has before going into situations where she might add someone new, etc.) Likewise, Anita only has sex with vampires and werebeasts, never humans, but it's not because she has a fetish, it's just because she somehow keeps falling into situations where she HAS to, so that's okay, it's only the other women who do it by choice that we should be appalled by. LKH wants her Mary Sue to be able to do all the things we're supposed to hate the Other Women for, and so sets up all kinds of ridiculous reasons that Anita ends up being forced to do said things (but really really enjoying it and having no trauma regarding said forcing, making it okay!) so that she can have her cake and eat it too, that is, still have the moral high ground enabling her to sneer down her nose at the women who do the same thing WITHOUT metaphysical forces and preternatural politics making them and are instead just *gasp* engaging in consensual sex with another adult!
Anita asks if anyone at the club ever did have sex with "the wife" (HER NAME IS ILSA. OR EVEN MRS. BENNINGTON. BUT NOT JUST THE WIFE/HIS WIFE FFF-) and Nathaniel says no (ew, of course not, she's a woman other than Anita, and she's blonde too!) because JC is really strict about that and even though a few dancers and bouncers (pfff, bouncers? they're not pretty!) were willing to do it, Ilsa's fantasy was to get it on in the private dance room, and wouldn't settle for hooking up later at a hotel, or at least that's what Graham says she said when he offered to meet her after work.
Graham is a werewolf that works as a bouncer at GP, and he is of Japanese and Nordic ancestry and he reeeeeally wants to get in Anita's bed/pants. Anita keeps turning him down, however. I personally suspect it's because LKH doesn't like putting Anita with any man who isn't white; heck, the only reason I think she got it on with Rafael that one time is because LKH wanted her to have banged every shifter leader in St. Louis--which, by the way, she has succeeded in aside from Narcissus, but he doesn't count cuz he has GIRL parts eeeew!
Anita says that Ilsa refusing to do it with him anywhere else must have been a blow to his ego (I don't see why?) and Jason says not as much as how Anita keeps refusing him is (of course) and Anita tells us this is a "sore point" with her but doesn't say why. I would rather like to know, myself. Anita asks if Ilsa got kicked out, and Nathaniel says that she had to be escorted out by security because "she wouldn't take no from us, and she kept trying to up the price as if we were whores." Just what I would expect from a beautiful blonde woman! Also, discussing the sexual kinks of a dead lady that you didn't even know and whose tearful husband you were trying to get *away* from seems like totally a lunch conversation you'd want to have, yup.
Anita then tells us how she doesn't know what to say to Nathaniel since he was a whore when she first met him (but...he's not now, and people who are whores should still be respected as human beings instead of spoken of in a derogatory way the way he himself did when he said the 'as if we were whores' bit?) and that though he had "been a high-priced one catering to an elite clientele" (I guess that must have been AFTER Gabriel got him off the streets?) but that there ended up being too many clients who wanted him just for being a wereanimal because that meant he could "take a lot of damage and still survive" because I guess everyone is into insanely violent sex or something and "it was too much rough trade, even for someone who enjoyed pain the way Nathaniel did."
....PFAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, LKH, honey. Rough trade does not mean doing rough sex/violent sex/torture/etc. Rough trade means straight men who prostitute themselves to gay male clients in order to make a living. Oh my god I am DYING. This isn't some underground lingo either, you can find it on freaking Wikipedia. What was all that stuff she liked to say about she does ~research~ on BDSM and such?
Back to our utterly pointless and kind of creepy (not the sex part, but the dead lady's kinks parts) conversation, Jason says a lot of people think that about strippers and Nathaniel says he knows (uh, yeah, he would, seeing as he's one too?) and Micah says that they're supposed to cheer Anita up, not be gloomy. Yeah, the problems and prejudices they experiences don't matter, how dare they think they can talk about them around a loved one, it's ALL ABOUT ANITA! Anita, however, does not protest, and nor do they. Instead, Jason remembers that "I think we promised to flirt outrageously" and Nathaniel says Jason just assumed he'd go along with it and Jason says won't you and Nathaniel smiles, shrugs, and nods. Just another day entertaining the mistress, I suppose. Anita says that though she's a bit nervous about what 'outrageously' might be, she prefers them being embarrassing to being sad...honey, I know it's hard to see someone you 'love' feeling terrible in some way, but in this scenario they're very clearly burying their feelings and putting on an at for you. They've said it out loud. You shouldn't be okay with this, it's not okay for them. Basically, by going along with this, Anita is implicitly agreeing that only her feelings, amusement, and enjoyment matter, at the expense of whatever her so-called sweeties and friends are going through.
Anita assumed that they would just be flirting with each other or with her and Micah, but "the plans changed" when the waiter comes to their table. All Nathaniel does is look up at the waiter, and he "went from reasonably intelligent and competent to stammering." All the waiter said was he was sorry no one had gotten to their table yet, how do you know he was smart and competent? Maybe he stammers with everyone. Maybe he has a stutter, did you ever think maybe that's why he has "a lot of uhs, and hums, and words not in the right order". Not everything is about you and your boytoys. And then Nathaniel smiles at him and that makes it worse, and the waiter finally asks if he can bring them some drinks, and stares at Nathaniel the whole time while not writing any drink orders down.
Yeah, this is stupid. I realize some people get ridiculously twitterpated when they're around someone very attractive to them (I do, for instance) but this guy is a waiter. He sees lots and lots of people every day, and some are bound to be attractive to him. Unless he just started, he has to have learned by now to stay professional no matter what, or he probably wouldn't have a job. This is just to show how preeetty Anita's property is, and for LKH's stupid slash kink (not that I'm saying liking slash is stupid, but that her execution of it is).
Jason asks if Nathaniel can flirt with the waiter, and Micah and Anita both say no, with Micah saying that "we'll either get great service or terrible service, and we need to get Anita back to work." Yeah, that would be nice, at least it's better than this. Also, so if they're not gonna flirt with the waiter after all, then plans DIDN'T change. Anita asks if Nathaniel wants to flirt with the waiter, and specifies that she asks because "it being me" she totally cares and respects the choices of her sweeties, really! Sure, yeah, uh-huh. Nathaniel says that "before I was with the two of you, I would have, but I know it makes you uncomfortable" and Jason says that's why he asked for him. Anita looks at Micah and she thinks he understands whatever she's thinking but that "being the girl I couldn't trust to silent communication. I had to say something." What does this even mean. WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN.
She asks if they take the fun out of some things for Nathaniel, and Nathaniel says that he would never trade being able to flirt with strangers for living with them, because he wasn't happy when he could flirt with whoever he liked and now he is. So, basically, he likes being in a relationship? Whoop de do. This should not be a huge breakthrough or some kind of tender emotional reveal. People are supposed to like being in a relationship; if you don't like it, then you shouldn't be in it. But it makes Anita kiss him, which she does so "gently" because she is wearing "bright lipstick."
Okay, putting the sporking on pause for a minute just to comment on this. Anita, so we all know, is really pale, because LKH is really pale, which she has mentioned in her blog. She is the palest of the pale, according to herself, which is probably why Anita is drawn in the comic books (which Hamilton helped work on and thus probably approved of or even ordered how Anita was drawn) as having skin as pale as the vampires do, which no other living person is depicted with. Now, speaking as a very pale white girl myself, bright lipstick will really, really stand out if you are pale. I really can't even wear most lipsticks, because even the really pale natural-looking (for those with pink lips) ones just look really too strong on me and I don't like that. If you do like that, however, that's fine. I have no problem with other pale women, including Anita, wearing bright lipstick if they want for whatever reasons they want. But she just came from work, and the dress code for most workplaces is that makeup must be light and natural-looking. I'd think that would especially apply at a place like Animators, Inc. since it is, as mentioned, a lot like a funeral home in terms of the clientele. It seems inappropriate to me for that setting, and I'm someone who normally loves seeing strong makeup done on others. (I admit I have a white character on the pale-ish side who wears bold red lipstick at work, but firstly her company has nothing to do with dead people, and secondly she's CEO, she can do what she wants kthnx)
Also I doubt it is coincidence that LKH too wears very bright loud red lipstick. Just saying.
Jason says that the waiter is coming this way and that Anita can't be hanging all over Nathaniel if she wants to "play with him". I do not like the sound of that. Anita trusts him on this because "if anyone knew the rules of teasing people, it was him." I really do not like the sound of this. The waiter returns, and he got their drink orders right (I'm surprised we don't get a detailed list of what they're each having) and Anita thinks that means they may get good service after all. Well, Anita, you could guarantee that by not flirting/teasing and not letting anyone else do it either. The waiter still stares at Nathaniel the entire time though, not looking at anyone else while taking their orders. Super-unprofessional, dude. Again, someone in this business would know how to control that sort of thing, in my opinion. Anita says that Nathaniel doesn't do anything but just "looked pleasantly at him" and according to Anita, this is flirting as well, because "just letting another human being know that you "see" them is perhaps the most important part of flirting."
And here's where it gets WEIRD.
"Nathaniel had taught me that not all flirting is about sex. You flirt, in a way, with friends, family, even a job interviewer; you want them to like you, or you want them know that you are listening, that you care. I'd learned that I wasn't very good at letting anyone know I liked them unless I was trying to date them."
Wha...buh...huh....WHAT THE FRIGGING FUCK FLYING MONKEYS?! That's not flirting! That's just social skills, people skills, general human interaction! Can Anita seriously not understand the concept of 'be pleasant and polite to other people' unless a sex-related term is applied to it? And speaking of that, Anita, no, sometimes flirting isn't about sex, sometimes it is for fun, or to get a date, etc. But I guess anything romantic that ISN'T related to sex is a foreign concept with you, as demonstrated with your assumptions about what Tony wanted to do with zombie-Ilsa. Anita also cannot be nice to other people unless she wants a date from them too, nice to know. She just comes off as a sex-obsessed sociopath in the book thus far. A sex-obsessed sociopath with a lot of power and positions and powerful people on her side/in her bed with authority over others. God, this is terrifying, and what's more terrifying is that LKH doesn't realize how terrifying it is.
Anita realizes it's gone silent and then she realizes everyone is staring at her (oh, when aren't they?) and Micah asks what she wants to order and she says she doesn't know. That's why maybe you should have read the damn menu instead of playing Bash the Blonde and getting your ass kissed and thinking creepy creepy thoughts about flirting and what it is. The waiter says he'll give her a few minutes, she smiles at him, and he gives her a "brilliant smile that lit his face up" but our modest Anita thinks that's just cuz she's sitting close to Nathaniel and it's really meant for him but she smiles back anyway (again?) and then "noticed that he was tanned and his hair was almost black, straight and tucked into a short ponytail, with a long wisp of hair escaping to trace the edge of a triangular face. His eyes were dark, and sparkling with the desire to catch Nathaniel's attention. He was cute, and that was the problem with this kind of flirting. I couldn't figure out how to let someone know I "saw them" without really seeing them. I couldn't pretend to notice someone , I either noticed them or didn't."
So basically Anita can't do decent human interaction unless the person is hot, and she can't pretend-flirt without ending up REALLY wanting to flirt with the person? I think that's what this says? I don't know, it's just a bundle of very confusing purple.
Also, I am betting based on this last sentence of that long paragraph that she didn't have an editor for this book:
"He smiled flashed that brilliant white smile in his tan and left me to my menu." Wut. Smiled flashed? In his tan? What?
Jason said that if they'd bet on this one, he'd have lost, and Nathaniel, to spare the reader confusion of what he's talking about, says that "You thought he was gay." and Jason says yes. Anita, meanwhile, is thinking about if she wants a pulled pork sandwich or some kind of salad, while the boys say that since he smiled at both Anita and Nathaniel he's probably bi. Because employees never smile at customers unless they're hot for them, right? Anita then announces to the others that she will have a pulled pork sandwich and why, and then says that the waiter was not smiling at her, it was just that he was smiling at Nathaniel, whom she was close to.
Nathaniel says that "you made him see you when you looked up and smiled". What does that friggin' mean? I mean, I get it apparently means 'notice that you are hot' but that is really weird terminology to use for it in that it suggests anyone who isn't hot is invisible and not worthy of notice. Whatever it means, Anita says she didn't do it on purpose. Of course not, our dear darling angel Anita never ever does! She just can't help how hot she is! Micah says they've all been taking on "some of Nathaniel's charms" and that being a little charming helps a lot in politics because you want people to like you and "no one is better at getting people to like them than these two." Jason teases him about that, so Micah scowls at him, and Anita realizes that the scowl is more like her and wonders if all couples pick up mannerisms from each other. Uh, probably, I guess? I dunno, I think you're all boring twits. She tells us that she's picked up stuff from Jean-Claude but that this is because she's his Human Servant and so "personality and psychic gifts literally mingled, or were contagious" (that's...scary, but interesting, I like it!) and wonders if her connection to Micah as his Queen and to Nathaniel as him being her Animal to Call could do the same. Uh, maybe ask them, then? They'd know, you're not the first Leopard Queen or first person with an Animal Servant.
We then get the info-dump about how "the powers of Belle Morte's line were lust and love, with the caveat that for most of them you could only control someone to degree you were willing to be controlled" and how that "for me it was truly a double-edge sword" especially because Anita is special and how she'd been "willing to cut to the heart" with Nathaniel and Micah (because they're avatars of LKH's hubby) and how she'd only (of course) made Jason her Wolf to Call by accident during a crisis. Ugh, this 'Belle Morte's line is about love!' shit showed up in Skin Trade, and it seems to have started in Danse Macabre. Just to add to the stupid of it, it was pointed out by a reader of one of my Skin Trade sporkings that the whole 'cuts both ways' thing doesn't really make sense, since we never saw any other Belle Morte line vampire, including Belle Morte herself, exhibiting this, just Anita. Heck, not even Jean-Claude seems to have this issue at all. It's just an excuse to make Anita in insta-love with whatever new boytoy she's with so she's not just having sex with this stranger, she really cares about them, the metaphysics say so, really! Which isn't creepy as fuck at all or anything, right?
Nathaniel asks Anita if she really doesn't get that the waiter was flirting with both of them, Anita repeats her theory, Nathaniel asks what Micah thinks, Micah kisses her hand and says that "she doesn't see herself the way we do."
Oh god, I am so fucking tired of these scenes. It's not that I can't believe someone could have a self-image so bad that they could be really pretty and have loads of men telling them how pretty they are and still not believe it, but it is extremely boring and obnoxious to read about it over and over and OVER. These scenes exist because LKH loves to write about hot men lavishing praises on her avatar, and that's why Anita will probably never ever get over it...not permanently, anyway. Remember how she said the whole "I'm a girl and I'm pretty, get over it" junk to Shaw in Skin Trade? What happened to that now, huh? This inconsistency makes her look like she's actually fishing for compliments, which I don't think LKH intended. That's what you get for not keeping track of this stuff, LKH!
Anita protests that she doesn't look good first thing in the morning when she rolls out of bed. Oh my god, SERIOUSLY? You're trying to write this woman as modest, possibly even thinking herself unattractive, and the worst thing she has to say about herself is that she doesn't look good first thing in the morning aka when NO ONE LOOKS GOOD? Oh, but even then her boys still think she's hot, according to Micah, but Anita pulls her hand away and says that "I was told all my childhood that I wasn't pretty, and you guys love me because of my vampire powers. You may not be able to help that."
So, you think they're only with you because they have no choice, yet you're still with them? That's really, really messed-up on your part, Anita.
Nathaniel hugs her, and Micah kisses her and tells her she's beautiful. Which, uh, is not a reason for loving someone, but seems to get treated like it in the ABverse, disturbingly enough. Anita thinks about how her step-mother had been "blonde and blue-eyed, tall and Nordic, as had her daughter from her first marriage and the son they had together later." Gee, how awful. At least this finally clears up whether Andria (the sister, who doesn't get named here but the brother does, pff) and Josh are her half-siblings or step-siblings, because she's called them both in different books. I don't know if LKH doesn't know the difference or what, but now we do: Andria, the girl, is the step-sister, while Josh, the boy, is the half-brother. I'm somehow not surprised by this. Icky blonde girls don't get to be related by blood to Anita!
"I loved my brother Josh, but I'd always looked like the dark secret in family photos." What does that mean? It's not freaking unusual for someone to not have the same hair color as the rest of their family. You've got dominant coloring in a family of recessive gene types, which is a little more unusual than the reverse, but that does not make you look like a ~dark secret~ or whatever you mean by that. Also, I love how she says she loves Josh, but makes no mention of loving Andria, or even Andria's name. We know absolutely nothing of Andria, by the way, just her name and, now, that she came from Judith's vagina and not Anita's freaking sainted nameless dead mother and this plus her being blonde probably means she's a huge evil bitch I suppose, if we ever meet her or find out anything about her.
"Judith had been very quick to explain to friends that I wasn't hers; that my mother had been Hispanic."
Aside from wishing Anita were more ladylike, this is the big crime that we're all supposed to hate Judith for. To be honest, I don't see how this is such a terrible thing. Maybe she didn't want her friends to think she cheated on her blonde husband. Maybe her friends knew her and her blonde daughter before she got married, and thus would have no idea who this random snotty little brunette in the house is, so of course she'd tell them "she's my husband's daughter, from his first wife" (Mr. Blake never gets a name either, oddly) instead of "she's my daughter" because that would just confuse them. And maybe, shock and awe, she did it to be NICE to Anita. It's common for children to resent the new spouse when their parent re-marries, and to not want to be regarded as their child, especially in a case where the other parent died. Anita was clearly one of these kids, so Judith may have figured that Anita wouldn't want to be introduced as Judith's daughter, and instead have the memory of her mother honored by being called hers, instead of ignored by being falsely called Judith's own, especially for an older kid (Anita was ten when her dad re-married, eight when her mother died) who can very much remember her mother and knows full well that Judith isn't her. Honestly, if I were a step-parent, that's probably what I'd do, though I think I'd talk to the kid about it first. This honestly seems to the most likely case to me. Why would she include the bit about Anita being part Hispanic? Who knows. We're supposed to take it here as Judith explaining Anita being a dark-eyed brunette and being ~racist~ by pointing it out, but in Logical People Land that really makes no sense, so I'm just going to go with the idea that it came up in conversation naturally once and Anita held on to it forever so that she now remembers it in a totally warped way.
"My Grandmother Blake took care of me while my father worked for about a year. I'd just lost my mom, and she told me that I was ugly, that I better not count on finding a husband, but get an education and a job and take care of myself."
This pisses me off so much, and not for the reasons LKH wants it too. I can totally believe this happened, yes. I had a friend once who said her grandmother had told her she was ugly. Parents can be incredibly cruel, I'm sure grandparents can too. What pisses me off about it isn't the issue of whether it's realistic, it's why it was included. It's a fucking cheap sympathy ploy for Anita. It's just a big goddamn set-up where we HAVE to feel bad for her, because omg, how can you not? Telling a little kid that they're ugly! And it's her own grandma! And her mother just died! The readers CAN'T not be moved by this, surely! It's manipulative as all fuck, because it's not being done for character development purposes--we've been through this not-blonde-angst loads of times already, it doesn't change, Anita doesn't change--it's being done to get the readers to do exactly what all her men do in response: smother her with sympathy and then telling her it's not true, that she's gorgeous, that she's perfect.
Oh, and telling a young girl the bit about getting an education, a job, and being self-sufficient so she won't have to rely on a husband is actually a pretty good thing to do, in my opinion. It makes the grandmother seem a lot less heinous than if she'd just left it at the calling her ugly bit. Also, for those who don't know, LKH lost her mother in the exact same way (car crash) at the same age as Anita, and her grandmother did help take care of her afterwards, and according to LKH she was a big mean asshole. Surprise surprise.
Anita then mopes about how "I see how people react to me because I know I clean up well, but I can't really see why you guys react to me" because they're so hot and luscious and thus should only be interested in similarly hot people. Because that's what love is all about. And the irony is, Anita really is super hot, so her idea that hot people can only go for hot people isn't her own issues, it's actually the facts of this universe, just like how her ideas about women, law enforcement, and everything else are always proven right.
"I just see what my grandmother and then my stepmother told me wasn't tall enough, white enough, pretty enough."
This is the first we've ever heard of Judith telling Anita anything of the sort. Up until now, Judith came across as a woman who was a different from Anita but still tried to have a relationship with her (sent her gifts, that sort of thing) and that Anita just spitefully hated for being blonde. Suddenly she was verbally abusive too? Just when Anita is trying to get as much sympathy as possible? Veeeery interesting. Also, lol, tall enough? Because women being tall is totally considered desirable and not awkward or masculine. You're supposed to be tall if you're a catwalk model, but that's it. Anywhere else, short (as long as you're not a literal midget) is considered to be more attractive for women. Hell, can you think of any movie where the girl is taller than the male lead she hooks up with? And five-foot-three is hardly the dwarf she makes herself out to have been treated as.
So the guys ramble about how she is "beautiful and desirable" and how that was "evil" of the grandma (which it was, but that's because she's a 2D strawman made for us to feel bad for Anita) and something about Jason learning things in therapy (since when is he in therapy, why does everyone BUT Anita seem to get trundled off to therapy in this series) and Nathaniel is in therapy too (okay, well, with him I understand) and how Anita feels safe now because she has a support network (no, she has a harem of spineless yes-men; a support network would call her out and intervene) and they have a conversation that last a third of the page about whether Anita is going to cry and how she's not going to cry because she never wants to cry and she'll just cry at home later and how Micah and Nathaniel could read her feelings but have better "psychic manners" than that and now how Anita feels fragile and hates it and they all cuddle her and tell her that "It's okay, we're here" and Anita thinks "that was the problem with loving people. It made you weak. It made you need them."
This reminds me of the bit in Skin Trade about how she treated it as weakness when a cop didn't like the 'adventure' of going into dangerous situations and instead wanted to come home alive to his family. And wasn't the 'moral' of Skin Trade at the end that 'love' is the most powerful thing? And Anita really needs to read Harry Potter and watch Sailor Moon if she thinks loving people makes you weak.
Then she thinks about how in addition to losing her mother, she also "lost" her fiancee in college, meaning not that he died but that he broke up with her "due to his mother's pressure" (of course it was an awful woman who did it--no man would ever leave Anita willingly!) because she didn't want her "family tree darkened" by Anita not being "blonde and Caucasian enough". Oh come the fuck on. As with the grandmother issue, I can believe this happened, since someone also once told me that their family had had an issue with their Korean spouse because they wanted grandbabies with blue eyes, but again it's not really developing Anita, because we already knew this, we've already been through this. Also, how in the hell did the mother know that Anita wasn't white? She looks white (no matter what she claims), she has no accent, and her last name is a European one. True, the name 'Anita' itself is Spanish, but it's used all over the world. A quick Wiki on famous people with that name yields bearers who are Norwegian, African-American, British, German, Swedish, Albanian, Polish, Hungarian, and French. I'm betting you they don't all have the ~dark secret~ of Hispanic heritage. And if you're almost thirty and only one person you love has died, you've only had one relationship that ended badly, you're actually damn lucky.
Then the waiter comes back and smiles at her and she smiles back and talks an entire paragraph about it and the chapter mercifully ends.
I really hope this chapter is NOT why the book is called Flirt.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-01-08 11:42 pm (UTC)"Can Anita seriously not understand the concept of 'be pleasant and polite to other people' unless a sex-related term is applied to it?"
But, but, but why would you even want to be nice to someone if there's not even the possibility of sex later? Don't you know kindness makes you dumb?
OMG, a cashier smiled at me this morning! She must have been coming onto me.
Anita's thing about blonde women could be a decent flaw, if it was actually treated like a flaw and every single blonde woman wasn't portrayed as being stupid and evil. (I don't know if that's really the case since I haven't read all the books, but it seems likely.)
I will say that being short can be seriously inconvenient sometimes and I can see how say, 5'3'' could feel shorter than it is if you're comparing yourself to the whole population and not just women. Really, though, I don't think that many women are rejected for being short. It seems like the characters have flaws that aren't normally perceived as flaws so they can feel sorry for themselves without being ewww, flawed.
The grenade fishing for compliments is really just obnoxious.
I will stop rambling now.
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Date: 2013-01-09 12:03 am (UTC)Yup. I feel like her internalized misogyny in general could be a GREAT character flaw. It's one that a lot of women do have issues with, and also one that I've never really seen tackled for what it is. Unfortunately, the case is indeed that it's not treated as a flaw at all by LKH and all women, especially blondes, turn out to be exactly what Anita thinks they are.
OMG, a cashier smiled at me this morning! She must have been coming onto me.
Totally! Servicepeople never EVER smile at customers and clients otherwise!
It seems like the characters have flaws that aren't normally perceived as flaws so they can feel sorry for themselves without being ewww, flawed.
Yup, pretty much. God forbid she have a crooked nose or really large noticeable mole or something. Come to think of it, why aren't her SCARS being given attention here? If I recall right, she has some nasty ones on her arms and neck, and they did used to be acknowledged as existing and being very off-putting to people back in the early books. I'm pretty sure she never got rid of them,since she showed them off to the SWAT guys in Skin Trade and she'll be showing them off to the baddies in another couple of chapters, but unless she's deliberately flaunting them to people to show how cool and tough she is, no one notices them anymore. Um, have them or don't, LKH, but having her only have them when it's cool and not when it's just ugly is...no.
The national average female height in America is 5'4 (and that's still taller than the average female height for a lot of non-white ethnic groups in America) but since men are on-average 5'10 in America I guess she could feel short next to guys (or just against her own family--no matter how many times I quote this national average at my family, they insist I'm short because they're all significantly taller than my 5'4 self). But she seems convinced she's unusually tiny in general, and everyone else sees her as such. It just gets weird/stupid after awhile, and I knew one person who actually was like 4'10 or 4'11 and it pissed her off tremendously that Anita was seriously complaining about her height.
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Date: 2013-01-09 07:20 am (UTC)BTW, LKH's own grandmother told her that she wasn't pretty and shouldn't count on being able to land a husband so she'd better do well in school so could get a good job and support herself. The funny thing about that is that I could see my own grandmother sayinv the same thing. She'd consider it being helpful and wouldn't have said it to knock me down.
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Date: 2013-01-09 03:30 pm (UTC)So basically she's inserting more of her own past on to Anita. What a surprise. I mean, it's a shame anyone would have that said to them, regardless of the grandmother's intent, but it's bad writing to do that and frankly has stunted Anita's own development in my opinion.
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Date: 2013-01-09 06:01 pm (UTC)I'm about 4 years older than Hamilton. If I was to spend much of my time angsting and whining about all the mean things anyone has ever said to me I wouldn't have time for anything else. And I'd be a dead bore.
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Date: 2013-01-09 06:48 am (UTC)Anita says that though she's a bit nervous about what 'outrageously' might be, she prefers them being embarrassing to being sad...honey, I know it's hard to see someone you 'love' feeling terrible in some way, but in this scenario they're very clearly burying their feelings and putting on an at for you. They've said it out loud. You shouldn't be okay with this, it's not okay for them. Basically, by going along with this, Anita is implicitly agreeing that only her feelings, amusement, and enjoyment matter, at the expense of whatever her so-called sweeties and friends are going through.
Anita has never been interested in what her bedmates think or want except as it directly relates to her interests. *cough* London *cough cough* She wants them, so she manipulates the situation so that she is "forced" into unleashing the ardont (which she doesn't bother to control anyway) on some poor guy who happens to be her type.
Since LKH only likes animals that are both 'big and badass and powerful' and also 'culturally considered majestic and beautiful and regal' so that rules out swans, rats, bears, snakes, hyenas, etc.
Which is sad because werebears would totally kick their asses. I'll bet all of them are rather homely, but mostly kind and have very long fuses. But when that fuse runs out they remove the offending person's head from their shoulders.
And Anita really needs to read Harry Potter and watch Sailor Moon if she thinks loving people makes you weak.
This. LKH needs to read more in general.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 07:26 pm (UTC)Also more badass than anyone gives them credit for? Pumas. They have the biggest range of all the larger cats (all the way through both American continents) and cover the biggest variety of terrain and a wide variety in their diet.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 06:42 pm (UTC)The book... There's just so much fail here that it sort of blends together. There's a manga series where the title character is literally God, and the world revolves less around her than this world revolves around Anita.
I'm hoping that this is all we see of the waiter, because since we get nothing about his personality I'm free to imagine him as a nice person who doesn't deserve to get dragged into Anita's crap. (I jinxed myself, didn't I. He's going to be a recurring character.)
Ilsa seems to have had a too-specific fetish. If all someone wants is to bang a werebeast, what's wrong with doing it in a hotel? I'm pretty sure you can find some with fancy rooms instead of just a motel, if that's your thing - and since her husband already knew about the club visits, it shouldn't have been too difficult to explain the price away somehow... if she even needed to.
That line about "I loved my brother Josh, but I'd always looked like the dark secret in family photos." just makes me think of Flowers In The Attic.
Poor Judith. Imagine being Anita's stepmother: "Anita, did you steal Andria's make-up? That shade of foundation doesn't go with your colouring at all."
"You're saying I'm too dark!"
"No, I'm saying -" *doorslam*
"Your skirt is really pretty - can I borrow it?"
"No, because you'd need to take the hem up, and I happen to like it at this length -"
"YOU'RE SAYING I'M TOO SHORT!" *doorslam*
And I could probably come up with scenes for all the other 'insults', too.
The whole 'I am looked down on for my looks' worked a lot better for Merry, I think. It's the difference between 'You don't look exactly like me' and 'You look like our rivals/enemies'. The Shining Court and the Dark Court have a long and continuing history of mutual antagonism. Blondes and brunettes... don't. I think there might be some blurring in LKH's sense of what's shaped her mouthpieces.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 07:10 pm (UTC)The Melancholy of Haruhi something, right? I haven't read it but I've heard of it, and I 100% believe you completely on the revolving issue.
I am pretty sure Ilsa's kink was made that specific just for LKH to find a reason for her to be kicked out by security, and so that even the bouncer would not end up actually sleeping with her.
THAT IS EXACTLY HOW IT PROBABLY WAS WITH KID ANITA, YES.
I haven't read the MG series, but that does sound more reasonable, yes. The closest thing to any blonde/brunette 'antagonism' there is in the real world is that sometimes one is more in vogue, sometimes the other is, but I am pretty sure there's been no point in the last century where one was seriously considered ugly compared to the other.
ETA: The waiter does show up again, but he does not become a recurring character
no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 08:59 pm (UTC)Of course. What was I thinking? The evil blondes cannot be allowed to have sex, for sex is solely Anita's province! (Sorry. Not sure where the pseudo-archaic phrasing came from.)
I'm not promising that the Merry Gentry series is any better, but the family strife was more appropriate there - mother from the Shining Court forced to marry father from the Dark Court and hating her daughter for being the reason that she was tied to him (pregnancy is what makes a Fae marriage binding, IIRC).
I am pretty sure there's been no point in the last century where one was seriously considered ugly compared to the other.
Same here. Individuals have always had their preferences, but if you want large-scale prejudice, you'd have to go back further and use red hair - the colour of witches in the UK, the colour of half-demons/half-foreigners in Japan (these are the two examples I'm sure of; there are probably others). And that wasn't calling them ugly, it was calling them not-quite-human.
ETA: The waiter does show up again, but he does not become a recurring character.
Does he get (what LKH thinks of as) character development?
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Date: 2013-01-10 08:58 pm (UTC)What, you mean does he develop an attraction to Anita and lose all character because of it?
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Date: 2013-01-10 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-15 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 06:43 pm (UTC)That bit where they're like "no no, can't discuss our stuff, we're trying to make Anita happy!" is really creepy. If LKH wanted to move on from the topic, it would be SO EASY to do so and not look like Anita's crazy selfish.
ANITA: "You don't need to spend every second trying to cheer me up. It's not like I just went through something horribly traumatic. Let's keep talking about it."
NATHANIEL: "It's okay; I'm not actively upset about it at the moment, and I don't really want to get into it when we're in public and we only have the length of your lunch break. We can talk about it at home tonight."
WOW. Challenging. That took me all of thirty seconds. (I mean, that wasn't me trying to write good dialogue, but you see what I'm saying.)
Regarding the whole lust/love as part of Belle Morte's line - didn't they say at some point that Jean-Claude had become powerful enough that he was now the head of his own line? In which case, it would make sense that his line could have some differences from Belle Morte's. Of course, LKH keeps calling it Belle Morte's line anyway, so she's not exactly helping. And that doesn't address the fact that only Anita seems to have the love issue.
Oh god.
Anita's going to be the first non-vampire to become a sourdre de sang, isn't she?
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Date: 2013-01-09 07:00 pm (UTC)Yeah, supposedly he has, even though we've never been told what the individual qualities of this line is, nor have we even seen any vampires, I don't think, that were even turned by JC. And yeah, she does keep referring to him as from Belle's line...even though the Moroven was also from the line of Belle Morte but she's never referred to as such because SHE STARTED HER OWN LINE WITH UNIQUE QUALITIES. Which we haven't seen from JC, who only seems to have Belle Morte's deal going on.
Anita's going to be the first non-vampire to become a sourdre de sang, isn't she?
Uggggh, probably! She's already this super-special 'love' vampire PLUS has powers not only of Belle Morte (lust) but also the Moroven (fear) and the Dragon (anger) and Padma (she calls so many damn critters!) it's pretty much inevitable. Maybe the reason JC gets counted as a sourdre de sang is because he 'made' her in a way and thus brought this hybrid monstrosity into being...? But one person isn't a line. So yeah. Doesn't make much sense. At all.
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Date: 2013-01-09 07:30 pm (UTC)1.) Gretchen, who is blonde and crazy in love with JC even though she knows that it's hopeless. Interestingly, from what I remember, she doesn't hate Anita for 'having' JC when she can't. She hates Anita for being not right for JC. I think she says she could easily accept a woman who was better than her, or at least better for JC than her, but Anita is neither. (And, I'd like to add, she is not wrong.) Obviously, Gretchen has to get dumped in a coffin for several years, fed on by JC while she's unable to feed herself, and made fragile and nuts by the experience. The only powers I remember her having that were unique, and possibly from JC, was that she was capable of ignoring/turning off her pain when Anita stabbed her in the throat. And she was damn durable.
2.) Meng Die, who is Asian and does not particularly want JC at all. She just wants him not to be with Anita, who claims its because Meng Die is a jealous h8er. I suspect, however, it's because Anita makes her life infinitely harder, makes JC's life infinitely harder, and she doesn't want to end up like Gretchen. Meng Die is apparently good at (and gleeful about) maiming Anita's boytoys and also incredibly durable. (No word on the turning off pain front.)
Interestingly, neither Gretchen nor Meng Die got sexpiring off of JC. And I think they had horrible human lives that JC was trying to save them from by turning them. (Why he would think that vamping them would make their lives better, especially considering his own experiences as a vamp, I don't know.) But neither of them seems to regret being turned. Gretchen, I think, said that she was grateful to JC for turning her. At any rate, Gretchen came when JC first stole St. Louis and needed 'strong' vampiric support. JC had to call Meng Die home when Anita was off 'finding herself' and making eyes at Olaf/Edward/Indian guy with the enormous boy-parts in New Mexico. Meng Die was pissed about that since she was in the middle of leading a coup and killing the master of her then-current city so that she could be master of that city.
....I liked those two characters. Can you tell?
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Date: 2013-01-09 08:30 pm (UTC)Gretchen and Meng Die have my appreciation, yes. And since they don't seem to have any unique new-bloodline powers, they add to the JC-is-not-a-fountainhead arguement, whoo!
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Date: 2013-01-09 07:30 pm (UTC)Back when I was in college, my creative writing class had an exercise where we'd go to a place and just watch people for an hour. Watch them and then go write about it. I went to the botanic gardens to watch people feeding the ducks. The whole point was to create a story and not just report back "this happened, and then this happened, and then this other thing happened" which is what I feel like LKH is doing here -- right down to the blow-by-blow revelation that she finally understands the art of flirtation. Rather than having a "oh, so that's what it's about? Neat!" moment and mentally filing it away for later, we've got the painful dissection about "seeing" someone and how to interact with other human beings so LKH can be "This Is A Thing, Let Me Tell You!" Which makes me sarcastically go, "man, I have no idea how I coped with life until this moment." Since the whole point of Flirt was meant to be LKH being all "if I were to tell this story of this hilarious anecdote, I'd totally make it DARK with ZOMBIES and MONSTERS!" she's...really not doing a very good job about it. For starters, the anecdote is almost verbatim to the IRL equivalent, for another there aren't any zombies/monsters in this particular moment and a zillion other ways it could go down to be more terrifying/entertaining/relevant/coherent.
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Date: 2013-01-09 08:36 pm (UTC)I know. I saw the comics in the back of the book. And I plan on sporking those and her afterward about it because it's just so...blargh.
the whole point of Flirt was meant to be LKH being all "if I were to tell this story of this hilarious anecdote, I'd totally make it DARK with ZOMBIES and MONSTERS!" she's...really not doing a very good job about it. For starters, the anecdote is almost verbatim to the IRL equivalent, for another there aren't any zombies/monsters in this particular moment and a zillion other ways it could go down to be more terrifying/entertaining/relevant/coherent.
Ugh, tell me about it. This is seriously the most pointless chapter ever. There's no character development, there's no plot development, and while the bad guy does refer to this scene it's done in a way that didn't actually need the scene to happen--basically him referring to photos of Anita with her men there. And since we knew already that she and her men went to this joint from the end of the last chapter, the reader knows what he's talking about WITHOUT THIS TOTALLY POINTLESS, STUPID, OBNOXIOUS WASTE OF PAGES!
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Date: 2013-01-09 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-10 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-10 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-10 02:04 am (UTC)THIS BINGO CARD. IT IS A PERFECT THING OF BEAUTY. I LOVE IT. YOU MUST POST IT TO LASHOUTS!
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Date: 2013-01-10 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-10 06:00 pm (UTC)