FLIRT, CHAPTER FIVE
Jan. 23rd, 2013 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratTiras is such a tunneler! He's built multiple routes through the bedding of his cage, and has linked up tunnels underneath all the little cardboard boxes he has in his cage (and has gnawed secret escape trapdoors through the bottom of said boxes). He's the shyest of the mice, and he uses these secret rotes to avoid me. Many a time I've seen him dart into or under one box, only to pick it up and find he's not under there---he's underneath the box on the opposite side of the cage! He took one of his little tunnels to get away from the big scary hand!
I am planning to introduce Sam to water sometime this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7end071b3zA
I never got past the paint roller tray'n'pebbles stage with Justin, Jenner, and Scurvy. They all eventually realized treats were in the water and that the water was harmless, but beyond getting to the treats they just had no interest in the water itself. Given their personalities, I can see why. Jenner is Mister Alpha, and since he can't really mark the water as 'his' by pissing on it or chewing it up, he doesn't think it's worth bothering with. Justin is concerned with food and food only, and has never been much for exploring. Scurvy, being a people rat rather than a pool rat, was far more interested in getting cuddles and picked up by me than he was in splashing around, and would basically ignore the water in favor of begging me for attention. I think that Sam might be up for it though! She's an enthusiastic explorer like Jenner, but unlike him she isn't interested in conquering what she explores, so she won't be turned off by being unable to 'claim' the water. She's also not very treat-motivated in the first place, so water won't lose its allure the second there ceases to be food in it like with Justin. And while she is a sweetie pie and clamors for my attention when she's in the cage the way Scurvy did, she's a lot more interested in things OTHER than me once she's outside the cage! I might try it with Blatz too; she's blind, and Justin was very slow at this owing to his vision problems, but I don't mind being patient. Plus, she frets if Sam is away and starts searching for her if she wasn't awake when I took Sam out and thus doesn't realize she's with me.
In vampire news, I came across this and thought I'd share it. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, especially not the "all killer child vampires are Claudia" bit, but I do agree with the bit about Gifts, flammable blood, and maybe Baby Jenks/Bree Tanner. Though I am bugged by how the term "European" is used the same way LKH uses it, as if it's just one big mass culture/place/way of being.
http://satireknight.wikispaces.com/Satireknight+Rants+-+Stephenie+Meyer+vs.+Anne+Rice
I've only read Interview and Queen of the Damned, so I didn't know about most of the Gifts, and I've never read any of Twilight (and don't plan to, not even for sporking) so I had never had occasion to make comparisons, but I found the ones here pretty interesting, and I thought that people have read one or the other or both, or are just enthusiasts of vampires, might like to read it too.
It also got me thinking about Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles in general and how much they shaped the modern vampire genre.
She's the first, to my knowledge, to write about vampires as a species. Varney, Dracula, Carmilla, Lord Ruthven/Lord Strongmore (depending on your edition of Polidori's 'The Vampyre'), they were all solitary, singular entities, and while there were suggestions in some they were not the only ones of their kind, they were the only ones around. Rice's vampires were the first I know of that lived in groups, and had a species-wide culture, rules, etc., including a worldwide code of secrecy as a species. Hers are also the first I know of with an origin story of how vampires came to be at all. Rice's vampires are also, I think, what solidified 'super strength, super speed, super senses' as the trinity of traits that all or most vampires in modern fiction seem to have.
LKH was one of the first to set a lot of the conventions for current urban fantasy trends--the snarky first-person usually-female protagonist who is a detective or investigator of some type, for instance--but as far as vampires go, I think she did get the aforementioned building blocks from Rice (the superpowers trinity, organized versus solitary, an all-mother, extremely vulnerable to fire). Which is not to say she copied (ok, I think MOAD is a little too much a rip-off of Akasha in some ways) because for the most part her vampires very much became her own, what with their various positions, terminology, bloodlines, culture, etc. It's just interesting for me to see what could have come from where is all. Any thoughts?
FLIRT, CHAPTER FIVE, in which the bad guy is revealed and Anita nearly fucks the lion dudes in his house
"We drove to a very nice subdivision of St. Louis where the yards are large, the houses larger. Some of the smaller yards had the bigger houses, as if the owners felt insecure and had to compensate for something."
Or maybe when a bigger house is built, it will take up more space, and therefore the yard will of course be smaller. Sometimes Anita just has the most non-sensical thoughts.
They pull into a long driveway to a big house with a big yard that is professionally landscaped and everything about the place "breathed money and care." Nicky observes that "You don't smell surprised" when they get out. Should she be? I mean, she had no idea where you were taking her, so it's unlikely she was expecting anything in particular. Not to mention whoever hired you two dopes had to have had the money for it, so a rich neighborhood is actually less shocking than, say, a shanty town little shack might be. He asks if she knew the client's address, she says no, he asks if she's lying, she says she didn't know he'd bring her here exactly but that whoever hired them did have to be rich. Internally, she is personally betting on Natalie Zell, given her batshit sadistic vengeance streak.
He says that "she smells like truth". I guess he means that she smells like she's TELLING the truth. Nicky is crowding her, and Jacob wisely tells him to give her some room so they don't touch. They all go to the front door, and Anita wonder is modern mansions still have servant entrances. Nicky notes that Anita has no questions, and he says that "Most people would have questions, especially women. They always talk too much."
My headcanon is now that Nicky is in an nearly-all-male Pride for his own safety. The werelioness he claims isn't into guys is actually a 100% heterosexual woman, he just pisses her off for reasons that are clear to everyone but him so he figures she just must be gay. The fact he is still alive suggests to me she must be a very mellow, forgiving sort.
Anita asks if he makes a habit of kidnapping women, he reminds her that's his job, then says they talk because they're nervous. Anita points out the only one talking is him. Ahh, I see, we get a sexist strawman so Anita can look good by PWNing him and surpassing all his stereotypes about women (but only her!). He says he's not nervous, but Anita can tell from his tone that he is, and calls him a liar. I swear, they are in gradeschool. And Jacob, who apparently is stuck being the gradeschool teacher, tells Nicky to drop it. Then the door opens, and there's Tony Bennington, which prompts Anita to say "Son of a bitch" because of how surprised she is to see that he's not Natalie Zell. You know, a WOMAN. She then thinks to us readers that she had thought he was "just another grief-stricken husband trying to bargain with God to get his wife back, but I guess when God didn't listen he'd bargained with someone else, someone lower. When God ignores you, the devil starts looking good."
Anita, it's not clever if you have to EXPLAIN it. We *knew* you meant the devil. You could have just said something like "He would have bargained with God to get her back, but it look like he'd tried someone a little lower instead" and left it at that. It's like when she said that a Vittorio-possessed dude in Skin Trade "talked like he had Vittorio's hand stuck up his ass" and then explained that she meant Vittorio was possessing him, was his puppeteer, etc. It's insulting to the intelligence of readers, and it wipes out any charm we might have felt from the cleverness of the original statement.
Nicky can tell she's surprised this time, and comments on it. Tony welcomes Anita to his home, and "actually did the arm-sweeping gesture to invite us all inside." Anita wants to punch him so much that she tenses, which Nicky observes, and whispers to her not to do it. She thinks for a small paragraph about how much she wants to hurt Tony. But that makes her lioness stir so she closes her eyes and calms herself down a bit. Then she opens him and sees that Tony "was looking at me, his gray eyes uncertain, like someone who had purchased a dog but hadn't done their research, and now the dog was trying to eat the cat." Okay, firstly, if the dog was trying to eat the cat, the owner would be past the point of just looking uncertain and would be in a full-blown panic instead. Uncertain would be if the dog had growled at the cat or something. Secondly, I fail to see how you just closing your eyes for a moment could freak someone out this much. He didn't know you wanted to hit him, he can't feel your beast, etc. Not everyone thinks everything you do is dark and threatening, or at least they shouldn't.
Tony says he understands her anger and is sorry that it had to come to this. This reminds Anita of what she told him, and she gets really angry that he's echoing his own words back at her, causing Nicky to grab her arm. I thought they had a no-touching rule going on? But his touch reminds her of the snipers (I wouldn't think someone would NEED reminding of something like that?) so she holds it together and states the obvious: "You want me raise your wife as a zombie." Her voice is "utterly empty" and she starts "to fold away inside, going to that quiet place I went to when I killed someone not in a firefight, but when I stared down the barrel of a gun and pulled the trigger with thought and time to change my mind. It was the quiet inside my mind when I had decided to take a life even if there was opportunity to save it. When I decided that someone deserved to die, and my conscience was clear."
So basically Anita is a murderous sociopath who kills even when she doesn't have to and feels just fine about it. Because "it was a cold place, the place I went when I killed" it drives away "the heat of the lions." I am getting tired of this temperature bullshit, where the fuck did this come from? And then she thinks about Tony "dead with my bullet in his forehead, and it gave me comfort. It helped me smile and be calm." Because thinking about your loved ones being safe and sound instead wouldn't be good enough, I guess.
Nicky lets go of her and remarks that she's calm, and Jacob says that she is "calm the way Silas gets." to which Nicky replies that "You're comparing her to Silas. Shit." Oooh, scary! Anita thinks how she doesn't care who Silas is even though she also says she probably should, and looks around Tony to check out the inside of his house to look for entrances/exits. Except instead of observing any of those, she describes the decor and color scheme of his home instead, and then sees a life-size portrait of his wife (who is called "Bennington's wife" again rather than Ilsa) which she then describes to us in great detail--what pose she's in, the furniture in the picture, what that furniture appears to be made of, what colors the flowers are around her, the color and length of her dress, and, of course, that she is "model thin, which meant too thin for my tastes, but no one had asked me." That's right, Anita, no one did. And what woman *is* to your taste anyway? That's kind of a weird thing for a straight lady to say. Especially a hugely misogynistic one like yourself.
And then finally after the paragraph about the painting, she notices some doors. Nicky then leans over and whispers to her to not bother scouting the room, and Anita thinks how both werelions being so alert to her action limits her chances at escape. Tony asks Jacob if "your man" got what they need for the night, Jacob says that Silas will, Tony reminds him that he's paying him loads and calls him Mr. Leon. Anita then consciously decides to be a "smart-ass." That's right, she says to us that she is DECIDING to be a "smart-ass" and thinks it is a good idea. NO, ACTUALLY I THINK THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF A GOOD IDEA, ANITA. "when it doubt, it's always a possibility." Yeah, no, when it doubt, keep your yap SHUT, I don't care how snarky and clever you want to look to the readers.
She doesn't say anything too snarky and clever at all though, or even really smart-ass as she claims, just says that Leon is "so not your real last name." Anita, what did I say about your random bouts of Valley Girl speak? Jacob gives her an unfriendly look, and Anita smiles at him and thinks about how cool she is for how she "calmed myself with images of violence" and how she scouted the room and how that's "not a technique they teach you in business school" and she is just so snotty and smug I can't stand it. Tony asks her why Leon can't be his name, and Anita explains to him that Leon is based on the word 'leo' which is Latin for lion and that she thinks this is hilarious. I also like how she's smart and educated enough (apparently more than Tony) to know this but not to know that the word Leon itself is Greek for 'lion' and the Latin word 'leo' comes from that.
Jacob says he liked it better when Anita wasn't talking, I agree, and Tony tells Anita that "they come highly recommended". I don't know what that has to do with anything (or why Anita thinks that a hired gun *would* use his real name) but Anita then says that the spying on her boyfriends has been going on since a few days before he came to her office. I don't know how she figures that, exactly, since this is taking place two weeks after that and there's no mention of the photos being dated. There was one of when they were all in that restaurant together, but technically that's AFTER Tony met Anita, albeit immediately after. So she's probably right that he had this set up ahead of time, but I don't know she figures it was by specifically a few days. And then she pictures him dead again and her beast (she doesn't specify which, but I'm guessing the lioness since that seems to be the one in the spotlight for this book) wants her to kill him now.
Tony explains that, since he had researched her, he knew she was likely to turn him down, and thus had a "contingency in place" and Anita asks if that's "what they call kidnapping and murder for hire these days?" This causes Tony to "flinch a little around his eyes, as if it were all too blunt for his sensibilities." Boo, hiss, weakling, wimp...is that the reaction you want from me, LKH, for him not being all about murder and death like Anita is? He says that he hopes it won't come to that and that they can all go back to their lives if she raised his wife. Anita turns to Jacob and says "He may be an amateur, but you aren't. How are you going to make it safe for us all to go back to our lives?" Uh, call off the snipers, maybe? They're presumably working for a fee as well, not out of personal beef against you and your guys (though I'd kind of love it if that were the case, as Anita so richly deserves it) so if there's no paycheck to be had, why would they pull the trigger and risk the resultant investigation? Also, I have no clue what makes Anita think that Nicky and Jacob are not totally amateurs at this, because I certainly do.
Jacob suggests that they all sit down, and Tony stammers agreement and "how rude of me" and Anita comments on how it must always be hard to know how to be polite to his victims. Always? As in you think he does this a lot? You just said he's an amateur. And clearly you've also never heard of being Affably Evil. Jacob tells her to sit down, and Nicky says that Anita is tense and wants to fight and tells Jacob not to posture. Nicky, Jacob has been handling Anita a lot better than you. You just hit on her and talk about how tough/cool/not like other women she is...which makes me suspect sex is in store for you, and death for Jacob. I mean, he's *graying* for crying out loud, ewww right? Tony asks if he's missing something, Anita says lots, Jacob says in a reasonable voice that they should all sit down and discuss how they're gonna get through this. Anita wonders if he got control of himself (because he was out of control before...?) and wonders if it was by picturing himself hurting or killing her. Because everyone is a sick fuck when you're a sick fuck, I guess.
Then they sit down a very large living room and Anita talks about how she hates these types of rooms because they are "too open" and "absolutely indefensible and seem designed to make a burglar's job easier." Wouldn't a small room be easier for a burglar, since all the valuables wouldn't be spaced out? And then she basically describes the whole damn floor plan to us and how it's uncomfy since there are people out to get her except that it doesn't matter because the people out to get here are already right here and not up the stairway so...yeah, I have no idea where she meant to go with this. Jacob says they'll wait till Silas calls, then head out to the cemetery. Anita is snarky to Tony, and he responds that he's being reasonable and that he could have had them kill Micah already for incentive because "you, unlike me, have spares."
Anita gets all pissed at him calling them spares because "they're people, not extra tires in case of emergency" and I would agree with her except basically they are about that interchangeable and Anita only seems to care about them for utilitarian purposes. And by utilitarian I mean filling that hot wet tight hole of hers whenever the ardeur dinner bell rings. The lioness suggests that she could kill Tony before the werelion dudes could stop her, and Anita considers the idea, since she probably could and if she kills him, the money would go away. Uh, yes, and the money going away would very much piss off the men with guns, don't you think? I know I just said that they wouldn't shoot without a paycheck, but there's a difference between having been called off after getting paid and suddenly finding out you won't be getting paid at all while you still have the gun pointed at the person most dear to the person responsible for you not getting paid.
Jacob says he can tell Anita is thinking of something "in the set of your shoulders, the way you sit still" and advises her not to do it, whatever it is. Anita tells us that "the trouble with wereanimals that were also professional bad guys is that it's very hard to surprise them." Professional bad guys? Seriously? Did she just SAY that? And then she says the way to surprise 'em is basically to act before thinking, without thinking. I don't really see how this applies specifically to wereanimals who are professional assassins/hired guns, or why. Anita then considers the idea that if she kills Tony, they might kill one of her lovers in response, and so she isn't sure if she'd "dare kill Bennigton if the chance came".
Jacob sits down next to Anita on the couch and put his "arm on the back of it, like were a couple" and she moves away so he won't feel the knife hilt under her shirt and says to us that he can go ahead and think she's "unfriendly" for it. Yes, because the hired gun is sooo concerned about how friendly you are to him, I'm sure. Jacob leans over to her and says that whatever she is thinking won't work, and reminds her they have a sniper on Jacob, Micah, and Nathaniel, and if they are not called periodically they'll fire. Anita says she understands, but inwardly thinks that Jacob doesn't have to be the one to call the snipers, that Nicky could do it, and "I only needed one of them alive and on my side". She struggles to think through her anger and "that edge of fear" and she needs to emotionless to plan and yadda yadda. I think what annoys me about this passage isn't so much that it's illogical, because it's not, it's just that it's so...instructive. She doesn't simply say what she's doing, she specifically tells the reader that this is what YOU should do. Act this way, don't act that way, and so on. She does that a lot, and it always bugs me.
Tony says he's sorry to force her, but has to have his wife back. Anita says she'll do her best, but "it will still only be a zombie" and will not stay lifelike. Wow, funny how Ilsa went from a she to an it AFTER Anita found out she was blonde. Tony says he's been told there's one way that a zombie can be kept intact. Anita says that's news to her, and Jacob moves so that their hips touch on the couch, and Anita mentally compares it to a date getting feely. Jacob advises Tony not to tell Anita too much and that "once Silas does his part we'll head to the gravesite." Tony gives Anita a hostile look and says that he wasn't sure he could go through with this, thought about just paying the snipers for what they'd done so far and then calling it off, but then he saw the pictures of Anita having lunch with the trio (weird thing, why have only three shown up? she has a load more...) and how Jason and Nathaniel flirted (how could he tell that from photos?) and "my Ilsa liked to flirt; in fact, she loved it. She loved attention and she had a fascination with shapeshifters."
So...why does that motivate him to go through with this? He's jealous of Anita because she has so many lovers and he lost his only one? And they remind him of her because they like to flirt too? And are therians like she liked, I guess? And maybe that makes him jealous? Yeah, I guess that sounds about right.
Anita just thinks to herself that "so he knew she was a fur-fucker" and that "he was in that villain speech mode that only the amateurs do". Firstly, I thought it was obvious that he knew; she told him about going to Guilty Pleasures to watch therian strippers shift and how much she liked it. Secondly, I like that Anita has apparently dealt with so many amateur versus experienced 'villains' that she knows what they do or don't do. it's kind of funny, and also correct? I mean, this is book number WHAT? She could probably give classes!
"I watched them comfort you, and then watched you flirt with the waiter. You wouldn't give me back my flirt, so I took yours, and if you take my Ilsa away from me again, I will take your men away from you forever."
Oh, I guess that's why the book is called Flirt. Well, that's dumb, but not as dumb as if it had been because of the whole flirting-with-the-waiter thing.
Anita tries to stand up, Jacob grabs her, she still manages to get to her feet, but then Nicky grabs her from behind and "this time he wasn't distracted by lion hormones" well thank god for that. Anita asks "what the hell is that?" and Jacob says "something big you missed" and I have no idea what either of them are talking about. Anita's lion growls out of her mouth as she struggles against Nicky and that causes her to heat up like she's got a fever, which Nicky comments on, and Jacob says he can feel the energy. Tony gets up too, and explains the deal to Anita: they will use a human sacrifice to raise Ilsa (instead of the usual chicken or goat) and that will be enough energy "to make her beautiful forever" and Anita will never be able to tell anyone about it or she'll be risking the death penalty for committing murder.
Normally I'd argue that Anita would likely not be charged for murder, or at least would not get such a harsh penalty, due to the circumstances, but given the way that vampires, therians, and witches are treated by the law in this world, I can actually buy Tony being right on this. Anita asks if that's the errand that Silas is on, meaning is he the one getting a human to be sacrificed. Nicky tightens his grip so much it hurts, but the pain helps Anita focus and not give in the lioness inside her. Still, she's thinking again about how she could kill Tony and how she doesn't think these professionals will kill her or her men for free. Honestly, I'm on the fence if they would or not, it really depends on their tempers, but I don't think it's a good idea to risk it. Her lioness starts charging inside her, Nicky whispers to her to fight it, Anita asks why, and Jacob gets between her and Tony and says that if she shifts she won't be able to raise the dead and will be no good to them and "Don't make us kill you, Anita."
No, please do, Anita!
"Don't make us kill your men."
PLEASE DO
Jacob grabs her face and makes her look at him, which also causes their bare skin to touch and she snarls at him and she feels "her rage, her need, her hunger" from her lioness and Nicky says "God, she smells good." OH NO, HERE WE GO AGAIN. Jacob says "Don't you start" to Nicky and once again, I like Jacob the most...but Jacob is also still touching Anita's face and Anita can tell that "his lion was talking to him too. Would it help me to force them to change?" It pisses me off so much that she has enough power that this is a possibility for her.
Jacob tells Tony that Anita is not safe, to get out until they call him. The lioness sreams, it comes out Anita's throat "and it rubbed raw things that should never have held the sound." What things...? Huh? Jacob seems to be a mind-reader because he tells her that if she makes 'em shift they'll either fight each other over Anita or fuck Anita. Oh, what a surprise. Jacob, this will not discourage her, I assure you. She'll say it does, but she'll then do everything she can to instigate it, I promise. Even though, as he also tells her, this means they'll likely miss calling the snipers.
Nicky begs her to "put your beat in the deep freeze, Anita, please" and Anita can tell he means the 'please' part and also that "he was holding me tight enough that I knew his body was happy to be pressed against mine." Oh, so he has an erection. Just peachy.
Jacob's phone rings, he tells her to get control of herself while he answers it, which he does, and he tells whoever is on the other end to "just follow and observe" and to "stand down until further orders." Anita then somehow decides that this call means her men are permanently safe UNLESS Jacob calls again to say otherwise and so "him dead or unable to phone would fix that."
...what? Anita, are you high or just stupid? The whole thing so far, which they and you have been repeating over and over obnoxiously as if all readers are morons, is that Jacob or Nicky has to call periodically or the snipers will fire. How is it suddenly the other way around now, with him having to call or they WON'T fire?
...oh, because LKH has realized that way will get Anita sex more easily, and is too lazy to go back and change it so that it was that way the whole time. Seriously, that's the only explanation besides the idea that Anita's head has just gotten too clouded from all this anger and lust and lioness...which can't be the case, because Anita Is Perfect, unfortunately.
Nicky tells Anita to chill and nuzzles her hair. How that will help her chill when it seems to stir her lioness up is baffling to me, and speaking of that it makes her lioness sniff the air and Anita grind her hips against Nicky a bit which makes him make a "soft wordless sound." Jacob says "shit" which is about how I'm feeling too. Then Jacob finds the big knife on her and takes it away and Nicky and Jacob marvel over it and Jacob asks Nicky how the fuck he could have missed this when he was searching her and Nicky says it's because "the lioness did its thing" and Jacob just sighs and says it's okay, that Nicky has "never been around a Regina when she's in heat. A pride can tear itself apart before she picks a mate."
So Anita/her lioness is a Regina. Just like her leopard is a Nimir-Ra, her tigers are queens, etc. She never has to fight to earn this position like other leaders, she isn't ever in danger of losing it like other leaders because it's innate to her, etc. And she's the ONLY one like this besides the Swan King and it pisses me off SO much. And if heat is such a damn problem in a Pride, why don't all the members just stay away from each other until it's over? It's not that hard to think up! And this doesn't happen in regular lion Prides at all by the way! That's nothing close to how it works! Where the FUCK is she coming up with this from? Why do NONE of the wereanimals work in any way that even slightly resembles how their corresponding animals do and have no explanation from the human side either? Also, of course, evil women with their evil sexualities turning the poor men against each other, of course.
The the lioness inside Anita rolls on her back and it makes Anita "writhe against Nicky, and he didn't exactly fight the sensation. I was going to lose control, and sex would be the least of what we might do." Oh? What else might you do? Take a dump in the house? Claw up the furniture? Maybe find out if Tony has a pet and eat it? You know, things I could actually see a wild animal doing?
Jacob continues by saying that "my first Pride died that way, because the Regina wanted the strongest Rex, so she waited for the winner. I promised I would keep my men away from shit like that." This should be Nicky's cue to let go of Anita, but instead he picks her up around the waist. Anita thinks that she has no weapons, wondering what will help her stop these two, and that even though she is "good at sex, or so the men in my life told me, but good enough to make them turn down a shitload of money and betray their other men? No one was that good." I will put money on Anita turning out to be that good exactly. "If sex wouldn't help me, I had to stop what was happening." Uh, yes, that's what you were just trying to figure out how to do, and you were considering sex as a possibility of HOW to stop it, asinine as that is.
Anita then tries to call her necromancy, "but the lion was too loud in my head' and "I didn't want cold blood, I wanted hot." Then Nicky collapses on the couch with Anita under him and his hands go up her skirt AND I DON'T THINK TONY WILL APPRECIATE STAINS ON HIS FURNITURE NICKY HE WILL PROBABLY TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR SALARY and then "I struggled out from under him, spilling myself on to the carpet" whoo our first spill and Nicky stays on the couch but has labored breathing and is staring at Anita. Anita crawls away from him (why can't she get up?) but she's not thinking clearly because "the lioness was eating what made me me" well good then, because you suck. She then "crawled into Jacob's legs and started forward" and Jacob pulls her to her feet and looks her in the face and says "Oh god" and "it was more a cry for help than a sound of passion." POOR JACOB, HE KNOWS HE'S GONNA GET SUCKED INTO THE DOOMCROTCH!
Then Anita realizes he's about to try to stab her with one of her own knives that he took from her (good man!) but she blocks it and asks, "Is this really what you want to stick in me, Jacob?"
Oh god, seriously?
Jacob asks her not to do this, she whispers "you first" which makes no sense and Jacob must not think it makes sense either because he asks "what?" and she tells him to call off the others and forget the second half of the money. Jacob says "You aren't my queen yet."
Yet. That's the same thing Domino said to her. Remember how it turned out with him? It's like these guys KNOW that they're doomed and are determined to just stick it to her as much as they can BEFORE they end up sticking it to her in a different way and lose their spines/minds/personalities/free will. It's tragic.
Nicky comes up from behind Anita and paws her back, which makes Jacob growl at him, but Nicky says that "we don't have to fight, she shares just fine." No, Anita never ever shares, it's her men who share her, that's the rule. You look at another woman, you're out of the damn harem, probably via death because you 'turned evil' and thus 'had' to be killed through no fault of Anita's own of course.
Nicky grinds into her from behind, which shoves her against Jacob and she feels that they are "both hard and ready" and starts "writhing between the two of them" and then THANK GOODNESS Jacob pulls her away from Nicky so that stops, and tells him that "I'm Rex of the Pride. I don't share."
Wow, the first technically true lion fact! When lionesses make a kill, they share with each other and the cubs...and also the male lion whether they like it or not, because he comes in to bully it away from them and they're too tired from the hunt to fight back against him, the prick. But on the rare occasion when the male *does* hunt, he does not share with the lionesses, though he might with the cubs. As for sharing females, that's generally a non-issue since there's usually just one male per pride, though sometimes there are two and I'm not really sure how it goes then (although an awesome commenter from last post mentioned prides where there is more than one male and how it works, so I'm going to have to have a look back at that once I'm done with this. I suggest you do the same, there were LOADS of amazing lion facts said commenter brought up!). My headcanon, however, is that for most werelion Prides, the ones that AREN'T made up of idiots, it's also a non-issue because they are just a mixed-gender group who are ruled by the two most capable members, who shouldn't need to be mated to be good leaders, let alone a necessarily heterosexual pair, and are not all having sex with each other for crying out loud and are probably just everyday people with a human partner at home who are in the Pride for mutual support and guidance on navigating life with a beast in you.
Maybe it's not that ~edgy~ because there's not a ton of violence and rape and sex and fighting and dominance hierarchy, but it makes more SENSE to me than the way it's being set up here, and I'm someone who LIKES violence and fighting and monsters being real monsters...I just like things making sense even more.
Nicky asks if Jacob didn't learn anything from how his first Pride got destroyed, and Jacob says that he learned "if you are king, then be king" which I guess means keep the ladies in their place and as your bedmate. Jacob kisses Anita "hard and fierce" so she "had to open my mouth". Yeah, she HAD to! Don't you judge her! But her lioness doesn't like him (probably because he has graying hair) and snarls inside Anita's head because "he didn't share, the Pride was all about sharing. My life was all about sharing."
Yeah, I've just said why this statement is bullshit, both in terms of lion behavior/expectations for a male lion, and in terms of Anita's own sharing or lack thereof. Anita is NOT about sharing, she is about being shared, but her lioness would expect to share a man, not vice versa.
So Anita pushes him back, snarls, and says "I rule myself! I don't need another king!" Ooh, so feisty and independent! Remember, writers, it doesn't matter if your heroine ever actually DOES anything, as long as she says sassy defiant stuff she counts as a Strong Woman...or is that a Faux Action Heroine that I'm thinking of?
Nicky crashes into Jacob and then they're rolling around on the ground fighting over her and Anita grabs the big knife they took off her back and runs for the door that Tony went through when he left the room, planning to kill him. However, on the other side is a "tall, dark-haired man" who smells like lion and she stabs him and tries to stab him again but then he hits her in the face and she passes out.
I'm guessing this is Silas. Whoever he is, I love him oodles already for punching Anita.
I am planning to introduce Sam to water sometime this week.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7end071b3zA
I never got past the paint roller tray'n'pebbles stage with Justin, Jenner, and Scurvy. They all eventually realized treats were in the water and that the water was harmless, but beyond getting to the treats they just had no interest in the water itself. Given their personalities, I can see why. Jenner is Mister Alpha, and since he can't really mark the water as 'his' by pissing on it or chewing it up, he doesn't think it's worth bothering with. Justin is concerned with food and food only, and has never been much for exploring. Scurvy, being a people rat rather than a pool rat, was far more interested in getting cuddles and picked up by me than he was in splashing around, and would basically ignore the water in favor of begging me for attention. I think that Sam might be up for it though! She's an enthusiastic explorer like Jenner, but unlike him she isn't interested in conquering what she explores, so she won't be turned off by being unable to 'claim' the water. She's also not very treat-motivated in the first place, so water won't lose its allure the second there ceases to be food in it like with Justin. And while she is a sweetie pie and clamors for my attention when she's in the cage the way Scurvy did, she's a lot more interested in things OTHER than me once she's outside the cage! I might try it with Blatz too; she's blind, and Justin was very slow at this owing to his vision problems, but I don't mind being patient. Plus, she frets if Sam is away and starts searching for her if she wasn't awake when I took Sam out and thus doesn't realize she's with me.
In vampire news, I came across this and thought I'd share it. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, especially not the "all killer child vampires are Claudia" bit, but I do agree with the bit about Gifts, flammable blood, and maybe Baby Jenks/Bree Tanner. Though I am bugged by how the term "European" is used the same way LKH uses it, as if it's just one big mass culture/place/way of being.
http://satireknight.wikispaces.com/Satireknight+Rants+-+Stephenie+Meyer+vs.+Anne+Rice
I've only read Interview and Queen of the Damned, so I didn't know about most of the Gifts, and I've never read any of Twilight (and don't plan to, not even for sporking) so I had never had occasion to make comparisons, but I found the ones here pretty interesting, and I thought that people have read one or the other or both, or are just enthusiasts of vampires, might like to read it too.
It also got me thinking about Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles in general and how much they shaped the modern vampire genre.
She's the first, to my knowledge, to write about vampires as a species. Varney, Dracula, Carmilla, Lord Ruthven/Lord Strongmore (depending on your edition of Polidori's 'The Vampyre'), they were all solitary, singular entities, and while there were suggestions in some they were not the only ones of their kind, they were the only ones around. Rice's vampires were the first I know of that lived in groups, and had a species-wide culture, rules, etc., including a worldwide code of secrecy as a species. Hers are also the first I know of with an origin story of how vampires came to be at all. Rice's vampires are also, I think, what solidified 'super strength, super speed, super senses' as the trinity of traits that all or most vampires in modern fiction seem to have.
LKH was one of the first to set a lot of the conventions for current urban fantasy trends--the snarky first-person usually-female protagonist who is a detective or investigator of some type, for instance--but as far as vampires go, I think she did get the aforementioned building blocks from Rice (the superpowers trinity, organized versus solitary, an all-mother, extremely vulnerable to fire). Which is not to say she copied (ok, I think MOAD is a little too much a rip-off of Akasha in some ways) because for the most part her vampires very much became her own, what with their various positions, terminology, bloodlines, culture, etc. It's just interesting for me to see what could have come from where is all. Any thoughts?
FLIRT, CHAPTER FIVE, in which the bad guy is revealed and Anita nearly fucks the lion dudes in his house
"We drove to a very nice subdivision of St. Louis where the yards are large, the houses larger. Some of the smaller yards had the bigger houses, as if the owners felt insecure and had to compensate for something."
Or maybe when a bigger house is built, it will take up more space, and therefore the yard will of course be smaller. Sometimes Anita just has the most non-sensical thoughts.
They pull into a long driveway to a big house with a big yard that is professionally landscaped and everything about the place "breathed money and care." Nicky observes that "You don't smell surprised" when they get out. Should she be? I mean, she had no idea where you were taking her, so it's unlikely she was expecting anything in particular. Not to mention whoever hired you two dopes had to have had the money for it, so a rich neighborhood is actually less shocking than, say, a shanty town little shack might be. He asks if she knew the client's address, she says no, he asks if she's lying, she says she didn't know he'd bring her here exactly but that whoever hired them did have to be rich. Internally, she is personally betting on Natalie Zell, given her batshit sadistic vengeance streak.
He says that "she smells like truth". I guess he means that she smells like she's TELLING the truth. Nicky is crowding her, and Jacob wisely tells him to give her some room so they don't touch. They all go to the front door, and Anita wonder is modern mansions still have servant entrances. Nicky notes that Anita has no questions, and he says that "Most people would have questions, especially women. They always talk too much."
My headcanon is now that Nicky is in an nearly-all-male Pride for his own safety. The werelioness he claims isn't into guys is actually a 100% heterosexual woman, he just pisses her off for reasons that are clear to everyone but him so he figures she just must be gay. The fact he is still alive suggests to me she must be a very mellow, forgiving sort.
Anita asks if he makes a habit of kidnapping women, he reminds her that's his job, then says they talk because they're nervous. Anita points out the only one talking is him. Ahh, I see, we get a sexist strawman so Anita can look good by PWNing him and surpassing all his stereotypes about women (but only her!). He says he's not nervous, but Anita can tell from his tone that he is, and calls him a liar. I swear, they are in gradeschool. And Jacob, who apparently is stuck being the gradeschool teacher, tells Nicky to drop it. Then the door opens, and there's Tony Bennington, which prompts Anita to say "Son of a bitch" because of how surprised she is to see that he's not Natalie Zell. You know, a WOMAN. She then thinks to us readers that she had thought he was "just another grief-stricken husband trying to bargain with God to get his wife back, but I guess when God didn't listen he'd bargained with someone else, someone lower. When God ignores you, the devil starts looking good."
Anita, it's not clever if you have to EXPLAIN it. We *knew* you meant the devil. You could have just said something like "He would have bargained with God to get her back, but it look like he'd tried someone a little lower instead" and left it at that. It's like when she said that a Vittorio-possessed dude in Skin Trade "talked like he had Vittorio's hand stuck up his ass" and then explained that she meant Vittorio was possessing him, was his puppeteer, etc. It's insulting to the intelligence of readers, and it wipes out any charm we might have felt from the cleverness of the original statement.
Nicky can tell she's surprised this time, and comments on it. Tony welcomes Anita to his home, and "actually did the arm-sweeping gesture to invite us all inside." Anita wants to punch him so much that she tenses, which Nicky observes, and whispers to her not to do it. She thinks for a small paragraph about how much she wants to hurt Tony. But that makes her lioness stir so she closes her eyes and calms herself down a bit. Then she opens him and sees that Tony "was looking at me, his gray eyes uncertain, like someone who had purchased a dog but hadn't done their research, and now the dog was trying to eat the cat." Okay, firstly, if the dog was trying to eat the cat, the owner would be past the point of just looking uncertain and would be in a full-blown panic instead. Uncertain would be if the dog had growled at the cat or something. Secondly, I fail to see how you just closing your eyes for a moment could freak someone out this much. He didn't know you wanted to hit him, he can't feel your beast, etc. Not everyone thinks everything you do is dark and threatening, or at least they shouldn't.
Tony says he understands her anger and is sorry that it had to come to this. This reminds Anita of what she told him, and she gets really angry that he's echoing his own words back at her, causing Nicky to grab her arm. I thought they had a no-touching rule going on? But his touch reminds her of the snipers (I wouldn't think someone would NEED reminding of something like that?) so she holds it together and states the obvious: "You want me raise your wife as a zombie." Her voice is "utterly empty" and she starts "to fold away inside, going to that quiet place I went to when I killed someone not in a firefight, but when I stared down the barrel of a gun and pulled the trigger with thought and time to change my mind. It was the quiet inside my mind when I had decided to take a life even if there was opportunity to save it. When I decided that someone deserved to die, and my conscience was clear."
So basically Anita is a murderous sociopath who kills even when she doesn't have to and feels just fine about it. Because "it was a cold place, the place I went when I killed" it drives away "the heat of the lions." I am getting tired of this temperature bullshit, where the fuck did this come from? And then she thinks about Tony "dead with my bullet in his forehead, and it gave me comfort. It helped me smile and be calm." Because thinking about your loved ones being safe and sound instead wouldn't be good enough, I guess.
Nicky lets go of her and remarks that she's calm, and Jacob says that she is "calm the way Silas gets." to which Nicky replies that "You're comparing her to Silas. Shit." Oooh, scary! Anita thinks how she doesn't care who Silas is even though she also says she probably should, and looks around Tony to check out the inside of his house to look for entrances/exits. Except instead of observing any of those, she describes the decor and color scheme of his home instead, and then sees a life-size portrait of his wife (who is called "Bennington's wife" again rather than Ilsa) which she then describes to us in great detail--what pose she's in, the furniture in the picture, what that furniture appears to be made of, what colors the flowers are around her, the color and length of her dress, and, of course, that she is "model thin, which meant too thin for my tastes, but no one had asked me." That's right, Anita, no one did. And what woman *is* to your taste anyway? That's kind of a weird thing for a straight lady to say. Especially a hugely misogynistic one like yourself.
And then finally after the paragraph about the painting, she notices some doors. Nicky then leans over and whispers to her to not bother scouting the room, and Anita thinks how both werelions being so alert to her action limits her chances at escape. Tony asks Jacob if "your man" got what they need for the night, Jacob says that Silas will, Tony reminds him that he's paying him loads and calls him Mr. Leon. Anita then consciously decides to be a "smart-ass." That's right, she says to us that she is DECIDING to be a "smart-ass" and thinks it is a good idea. NO, ACTUALLY I THINK THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF A GOOD IDEA, ANITA. "when it doubt, it's always a possibility." Yeah, no, when it doubt, keep your yap SHUT, I don't care how snarky and clever you want to look to the readers.
She doesn't say anything too snarky and clever at all though, or even really smart-ass as she claims, just says that Leon is "so not your real last name." Anita, what did I say about your random bouts of Valley Girl speak? Jacob gives her an unfriendly look, and Anita smiles at him and thinks about how cool she is for how she "calmed myself with images of violence" and how she scouted the room and how that's "not a technique they teach you in business school" and she is just so snotty and smug I can't stand it. Tony asks her why Leon can't be his name, and Anita explains to him that Leon is based on the word 'leo' which is Latin for lion and that she thinks this is hilarious. I also like how she's smart and educated enough (apparently more than Tony) to know this but not to know that the word Leon itself is Greek for 'lion' and the Latin word 'leo' comes from that.
Jacob says he liked it better when Anita wasn't talking, I agree, and Tony tells Anita that "they come highly recommended". I don't know what that has to do with anything (or why Anita thinks that a hired gun *would* use his real name) but Anita then says that the spying on her boyfriends has been going on since a few days before he came to her office. I don't know how she figures that, exactly, since this is taking place two weeks after that and there's no mention of the photos being dated. There was one of when they were all in that restaurant together, but technically that's AFTER Tony met Anita, albeit immediately after. So she's probably right that he had this set up ahead of time, but I don't know she figures it was by specifically a few days. And then she pictures him dead again and her beast (she doesn't specify which, but I'm guessing the lioness since that seems to be the one in the spotlight for this book) wants her to kill him now.
Tony explains that, since he had researched her, he knew she was likely to turn him down, and thus had a "contingency in place" and Anita asks if that's "what they call kidnapping and murder for hire these days?" This causes Tony to "flinch a little around his eyes, as if it were all too blunt for his sensibilities." Boo, hiss, weakling, wimp...is that the reaction you want from me, LKH, for him not being all about murder and death like Anita is? He says that he hopes it won't come to that and that they can all go back to their lives if she raised his wife. Anita turns to Jacob and says "He may be an amateur, but you aren't. How are you going to make it safe for us all to go back to our lives?" Uh, call off the snipers, maybe? They're presumably working for a fee as well, not out of personal beef against you and your guys (though I'd kind of love it if that were the case, as Anita so richly deserves it) so if there's no paycheck to be had, why would they pull the trigger and risk the resultant investigation? Also, I have no clue what makes Anita think that Nicky and Jacob are not totally amateurs at this, because I certainly do.
Jacob suggests that they all sit down, and Tony stammers agreement and "how rude of me" and Anita comments on how it must always be hard to know how to be polite to his victims. Always? As in you think he does this a lot? You just said he's an amateur. And clearly you've also never heard of being Affably Evil. Jacob tells her to sit down, and Nicky says that Anita is tense and wants to fight and tells Jacob not to posture. Nicky, Jacob has been handling Anita a lot better than you. You just hit on her and talk about how tough/cool/not like other women she is...which makes me suspect sex is in store for you, and death for Jacob. I mean, he's *graying* for crying out loud, ewww right? Tony asks if he's missing something, Anita says lots, Jacob says in a reasonable voice that they should all sit down and discuss how they're gonna get through this. Anita wonders if he got control of himself (because he was out of control before...?) and wonders if it was by picturing himself hurting or killing her. Because everyone is a sick fuck when you're a sick fuck, I guess.
Then they sit down a very large living room and Anita talks about how she hates these types of rooms because they are "too open" and "absolutely indefensible and seem designed to make a burglar's job easier." Wouldn't a small room be easier for a burglar, since all the valuables wouldn't be spaced out? And then she basically describes the whole damn floor plan to us and how it's uncomfy since there are people out to get her except that it doesn't matter because the people out to get here are already right here and not up the stairway so...yeah, I have no idea where she meant to go with this. Jacob says they'll wait till Silas calls, then head out to the cemetery. Anita is snarky to Tony, and he responds that he's being reasonable and that he could have had them kill Micah already for incentive because "you, unlike me, have spares."
Anita gets all pissed at him calling them spares because "they're people, not extra tires in case of emergency" and I would agree with her except basically they are about that interchangeable and Anita only seems to care about them for utilitarian purposes. And by utilitarian I mean filling that hot wet tight hole of hers whenever the ardeur dinner bell rings. The lioness suggests that she could kill Tony before the werelion dudes could stop her, and Anita considers the idea, since she probably could and if she kills him, the money would go away. Uh, yes, and the money going away would very much piss off the men with guns, don't you think? I know I just said that they wouldn't shoot without a paycheck, but there's a difference between having been called off after getting paid and suddenly finding out you won't be getting paid at all while you still have the gun pointed at the person most dear to the person responsible for you not getting paid.
Jacob says he can tell Anita is thinking of something "in the set of your shoulders, the way you sit still" and advises her not to do it, whatever it is. Anita tells us that "the trouble with wereanimals that were also professional bad guys is that it's very hard to surprise them." Professional bad guys? Seriously? Did she just SAY that? And then she says the way to surprise 'em is basically to act before thinking, without thinking. I don't really see how this applies specifically to wereanimals who are professional assassins/hired guns, or why. Anita then considers the idea that if she kills Tony, they might kill one of her lovers in response, and so she isn't sure if she'd "dare kill Bennigton if the chance came".
Jacob sits down next to Anita on the couch and put his "arm on the back of it, like were a couple" and she moves away so he won't feel the knife hilt under her shirt and says to us that he can go ahead and think she's "unfriendly" for it. Yes, because the hired gun is sooo concerned about how friendly you are to him, I'm sure. Jacob leans over to her and says that whatever she is thinking won't work, and reminds her they have a sniper on Jacob, Micah, and Nathaniel, and if they are not called periodically they'll fire. Anita says she understands, but inwardly thinks that Jacob doesn't have to be the one to call the snipers, that Nicky could do it, and "I only needed one of them alive and on my side". She struggles to think through her anger and "that edge of fear" and she needs to emotionless to plan and yadda yadda. I think what annoys me about this passage isn't so much that it's illogical, because it's not, it's just that it's so...instructive. She doesn't simply say what she's doing, she specifically tells the reader that this is what YOU should do. Act this way, don't act that way, and so on. She does that a lot, and it always bugs me.
Tony says he's sorry to force her, but has to have his wife back. Anita says she'll do her best, but "it will still only be a zombie" and will not stay lifelike. Wow, funny how Ilsa went from a she to an it AFTER Anita found out she was blonde. Tony says he's been told there's one way that a zombie can be kept intact. Anita says that's news to her, and Jacob moves so that their hips touch on the couch, and Anita mentally compares it to a date getting feely. Jacob advises Tony not to tell Anita too much and that "once Silas does his part we'll head to the gravesite." Tony gives Anita a hostile look and says that he wasn't sure he could go through with this, thought about just paying the snipers for what they'd done so far and then calling it off, but then he saw the pictures of Anita having lunch with the trio (weird thing, why have only three shown up? she has a load more...) and how Jason and Nathaniel flirted (how could he tell that from photos?) and "my Ilsa liked to flirt; in fact, she loved it. She loved attention and she had a fascination with shapeshifters."
So...why does that motivate him to go through with this? He's jealous of Anita because she has so many lovers and he lost his only one? And they remind him of her because they like to flirt too? And are therians like she liked, I guess? And maybe that makes him jealous? Yeah, I guess that sounds about right.
Anita just thinks to herself that "so he knew she was a fur-fucker" and that "he was in that villain speech mode that only the amateurs do". Firstly, I thought it was obvious that he knew; she told him about going to Guilty Pleasures to watch therian strippers shift and how much she liked it. Secondly, I like that Anita has apparently dealt with so many amateur versus experienced 'villains' that she knows what they do or don't do. it's kind of funny, and also correct? I mean, this is book number WHAT? She could probably give classes!
"I watched them comfort you, and then watched you flirt with the waiter. You wouldn't give me back my flirt, so I took yours, and if you take my Ilsa away from me again, I will take your men away from you forever."
Oh, I guess that's why the book is called Flirt. Well, that's dumb, but not as dumb as if it had been because of the whole flirting-with-the-waiter thing.
Anita tries to stand up, Jacob grabs her, she still manages to get to her feet, but then Nicky grabs her from behind and "this time he wasn't distracted by lion hormones" well thank god for that. Anita asks "what the hell is that?" and Jacob says "something big you missed" and I have no idea what either of them are talking about. Anita's lion growls out of her mouth as she struggles against Nicky and that causes her to heat up like she's got a fever, which Nicky comments on, and Jacob says he can feel the energy. Tony gets up too, and explains the deal to Anita: they will use a human sacrifice to raise Ilsa (instead of the usual chicken or goat) and that will be enough energy "to make her beautiful forever" and Anita will never be able to tell anyone about it or she'll be risking the death penalty for committing murder.
Normally I'd argue that Anita would likely not be charged for murder, or at least would not get such a harsh penalty, due to the circumstances, but given the way that vampires, therians, and witches are treated by the law in this world, I can actually buy Tony being right on this. Anita asks if that's the errand that Silas is on, meaning is he the one getting a human to be sacrificed. Nicky tightens his grip so much it hurts, but the pain helps Anita focus and not give in the lioness inside her. Still, she's thinking again about how she could kill Tony and how she doesn't think these professionals will kill her or her men for free. Honestly, I'm on the fence if they would or not, it really depends on their tempers, but I don't think it's a good idea to risk it. Her lioness starts charging inside her, Nicky whispers to her to fight it, Anita asks why, and Jacob gets between her and Tony and says that if she shifts she won't be able to raise the dead and will be no good to them and "Don't make us kill you, Anita."
No, please do, Anita!
"Don't make us kill your men."
PLEASE DO
Jacob grabs her face and makes her look at him, which also causes their bare skin to touch and she snarls at him and she feels "her rage, her need, her hunger" from her lioness and Nicky says "God, she smells good." OH NO, HERE WE GO AGAIN. Jacob says "Don't you start" to Nicky and once again, I like Jacob the most...but Jacob is also still touching Anita's face and Anita can tell that "his lion was talking to him too. Would it help me to force them to change?" It pisses me off so much that she has enough power that this is a possibility for her.
Jacob tells Tony that Anita is not safe, to get out until they call him. The lioness sreams, it comes out Anita's throat "and it rubbed raw things that should never have held the sound." What things...? Huh? Jacob seems to be a mind-reader because he tells her that if she makes 'em shift they'll either fight each other over Anita or fuck Anita. Oh, what a surprise. Jacob, this will not discourage her, I assure you. She'll say it does, but she'll then do everything she can to instigate it, I promise. Even though, as he also tells her, this means they'll likely miss calling the snipers.
Nicky begs her to "put your beat in the deep freeze, Anita, please" and Anita can tell he means the 'please' part and also that "he was holding me tight enough that I knew his body was happy to be pressed against mine." Oh, so he has an erection. Just peachy.
Jacob's phone rings, he tells her to get control of herself while he answers it, which he does, and he tells whoever is on the other end to "just follow and observe" and to "stand down until further orders." Anita then somehow decides that this call means her men are permanently safe UNLESS Jacob calls again to say otherwise and so "him dead or unable to phone would fix that."
...what? Anita, are you high or just stupid? The whole thing so far, which they and you have been repeating over and over obnoxiously as if all readers are morons, is that Jacob or Nicky has to call periodically or the snipers will fire. How is it suddenly the other way around now, with him having to call or they WON'T fire?
...oh, because LKH has realized that way will get Anita sex more easily, and is too lazy to go back and change it so that it was that way the whole time. Seriously, that's the only explanation besides the idea that Anita's head has just gotten too clouded from all this anger and lust and lioness...which can't be the case, because Anita Is Perfect, unfortunately.
Nicky tells Anita to chill and nuzzles her hair. How that will help her chill when it seems to stir her lioness up is baffling to me, and speaking of that it makes her lioness sniff the air and Anita grind her hips against Nicky a bit which makes him make a "soft wordless sound." Jacob says "shit" which is about how I'm feeling too. Then Jacob finds the big knife on her and takes it away and Nicky and Jacob marvel over it and Jacob asks Nicky how the fuck he could have missed this when he was searching her and Nicky says it's because "the lioness did its thing" and Jacob just sighs and says it's okay, that Nicky has "never been around a Regina when she's in heat. A pride can tear itself apart before she picks a mate."
So Anita/her lioness is a Regina. Just like her leopard is a Nimir-Ra, her tigers are queens, etc. She never has to fight to earn this position like other leaders, she isn't ever in danger of losing it like other leaders because it's innate to her, etc. And she's the ONLY one like this besides the Swan King and it pisses me off SO much. And if heat is such a damn problem in a Pride, why don't all the members just stay away from each other until it's over? It's not that hard to think up! And this doesn't happen in regular lion Prides at all by the way! That's nothing close to how it works! Where the FUCK is she coming up with this from? Why do NONE of the wereanimals work in any way that even slightly resembles how their corresponding animals do and have no explanation from the human side either? Also, of course, evil women with their evil sexualities turning the poor men against each other, of course.
The the lioness inside Anita rolls on her back and it makes Anita "writhe against Nicky, and he didn't exactly fight the sensation. I was going to lose control, and sex would be the least of what we might do." Oh? What else might you do? Take a dump in the house? Claw up the furniture? Maybe find out if Tony has a pet and eat it? You know, things I could actually see a wild animal doing?
Jacob continues by saying that "my first Pride died that way, because the Regina wanted the strongest Rex, so she waited for the winner. I promised I would keep my men away from shit like that." This should be Nicky's cue to let go of Anita, but instead he picks her up around the waist. Anita thinks that she has no weapons, wondering what will help her stop these two, and that even though she is "good at sex, or so the men in my life told me, but good enough to make them turn down a shitload of money and betray their other men? No one was that good." I will put money on Anita turning out to be that good exactly. "If sex wouldn't help me, I had to stop what was happening." Uh, yes, that's what you were just trying to figure out how to do, and you were considering sex as a possibility of HOW to stop it, asinine as that is.
Anita then tries to call her necromancy, "but the lion was too loud in my head' and "I didn't want cold blood, I wanted hot." Then Nicky collapses on the couch with Anita under him and his hands go up her skirt AND I DON'T THINK TONY WILL APPRECIATE STAINS ON HIS FURNITURE NICKY HE WILL PROBABLY TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR SALARY and then "I struggled out from under him, spilling myself on to the carpet" whoo our first spill and Nicky stays on the couch but has labored breathing and is staring at Anita. Anita crawls away from him (why can't she get up?) but she's not thinking clearly because "the lioness was eating what made me me" well good then, because you suck. She then "crawled into Jacob's legs and started forward" and Jacob pulls her to her feet and looks her in the face and says "Oh god" and "it was more a cry for help than a sound of passion." POOR JACOB, HE KNOWS HE'S GONNA GET SUCKED INTO THE DOOMCROTCH!
Then Anita realizes he's about to try to stab her with one of her own knives that he took from her (good man!) but she blocks it and asks, "Is this really what you want to stick in me, Jacob?"
Oh god, seriously?
Jacob asks her not to do this, she whispers "you first" which makes no sense and Jacob must not think it makes sense either because he asks "what?" and she tells him to call off the others and forget the second half of the money. Jacob says "You aren't my queen yet."
Yet. That's the same thing Domino said to her. Remember how it turned out with him? It's like these guys KNOW that they're doomed and are determined to just stick it to her as much as they can BEFORE they end up sticking it to her in a different way and lose their spines/minds/personalities/free will. It's tragic.
Nicky comes up from behind Anita and paws her back, which makes Jacob growl at him, but Nicky says that "we don't have to fight, she shares just fine." No, Anita never ever shares, it's her men who share her, that's the rule. You look at another woman, you're out of the damn harem, probably via death because you 'turned evil' and thus 'had' to be killed through no fault of Anita's own of course.
Nicky grinds into her from behind, which shoves her against Jacob and she feels that they are "both hard and ready" and starts "writhing between the two of them" and then THANK GOODNESS Jacob pulls her away from Nicky so that stops, and tells him that "I'm Rex of the Pride. I don't share."
Wow, the first technically true lion fact! When lionesses make a kill, they share with each other and the cubs...and also the male lion whether they like it or not, because he comes in to bully it away from them and they're too tired from the hunt to fight back against him, the prick. But on the rare occasion when the male *does* hunt, he does not share with the lionesses, though he might with the cubs. As for sharing females, that's generally a non-issue since there's usually just one male per pride, though sometimes there are two and I'm not really sure how it goes then (although an awesome commenter from last post mentioned prides where there is more than one male and how it works, so I'm going to have to have a look back at that once I'm done with this. I suggest you do the same, there were LOADS of amazing lion facts said commenter brought up!). My headcanon, however, is that for most werelion Prides, the ones that AREN'T made up of idiots, it's also a non-issue because they are just a mixed-gender group who are ruled by the two most capable members, who shouldn't need to be mated to be good leaders, let alone a necessarily heterosexual pair, and are not all having sex with each other for crying out loud and are probably just everyday people with a human partner at home who are in the Pride for mutual support and guidance on navigating life with a beast in you.
Maybe it's not that ~edgy~ because there's not a ton of violence and rape and sex and fighting and dominance hierarchy, but it makes more SENSE to me than the way it's being set up here, and I'm someone who LIKES violence and fighting and monsters being real monsters...I just like things making sense even more.
Nicky asks if Jacob didn't learn anything from how his first Pride got destroyed, and Jacob says that he learned "if you are king, then be king" which I guess means keep the ladies in their place and as your bedmate. Jacob kisses Anita "hard and fierce" so she "had to open my mouth". Yeah, she HAD to! Don't you judge her! But her lioness doesn't like him (probably because he has graying hair) and snarls inside Anita's head because "he didn't share, the Pride was all about sharing. My life was all about sharing."
Yeah, I've just said why this statement is bullshit, both in terms of lion behavior/expectations for a male lion, and in terms of Anita's own sharing or lack thereof. Anita is NOT about sharing, she is about being shared, but her lioness would expect to share a man, not vice versa.
So Anita pushes him back, snarls, and says "I rule myself! I don't need another king!" Ooh, so feisty and independent! Remember, writers, it doesn't matter if your heroine ever actually DOES anything, as long as she says sassy defiant stuff she counts as a Strong Woman...or is that a Faux Action Heroine that I'm thinking of?
Nicky crashes into Jacob and then they're rolling around on the ground fighting over her and Anita grabs the big knife they took off her back and runs for the door that Tony went through when he left the room, planning to kill him. However, on the other side is a "tall, dark-haired man" who smells like lion and she stabs him and tries to stab him again but then he hits her in the face and she passes out.
I'm guessing this is Silas. Whoever he is, I love him oodles already for punching Anita.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-01-23 06:54 pm (UTC)Great, now I have to clean tea off my monitor. :)
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Date: 2013-01-23 07:09 pm (UTC)Though she's sort of a dump in the house just by existing, really.
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Date: 2013-01-23 09:54 pm (UTC)That's because Zell would have had the good sense to hire competent professionals. She had the sense to wait until her husband was dead before trying to pretend axe murder him.
Anita gets all pissed at him calling them spares because "they're people, not extra tires in case of emergency" and I would agree with her except basically they are about that interchangeable and Anita only seems to care about them for utilitarian purposes.
I shall henceforth call the harem the Spare Rubbers.
Secondly, I like that Anita has apparently dealt with so many amateur versus experienced 'villains' that she knows what they do or don't do. it's kind of funny, and also correct? I mean, this is book number WHAT? She could probably give classes!
She could, but I'm sure it would be long, meandering and rambley when one could simply read the Evil Overlord's Handbook instead.
So Anita pushes him back, snarls, and says "I rule myself! I don't need another king!" Ooh, so feisty and independent! Remember, writers, it doesn't matter if your heroine ever actually DOES anything, as long as she says sassy defiant stuff she counts as a Strong Woman...or is that a Faux Action Heroine that I'm thinking of?
She's Queen Bee of the Doomcrotch and no one should forget it! I think it's Faux Action Heroine BTW. And it's more that she does everything with male genitals and the power up of the week. I'd rather she did nothing.
It was too much to hope for that dubiously hidden knife getting used wasn't it? :P
I'm guessing this is Silas. Whoever he is, I love him oodles already for punching Anita.
And thank goodness he's here! Someone with the sense to knock out the rampaging magic-thingie!
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Date: 2013-01-23 10:06 pm (UTC)LOL SPARE RUBBERS
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Date: 2013-01-23 11:13 pm (UTC)I think I might hate LKH's use of that phrase even more than "bad guys." Honestly, who the fuck would say that in a context like this? It's so cutesy. Maybe acceptable to say to someone when you're going to have sex with them, if you're being flirty/silly. Absolutely ridiculous when you're trying to fight your kidnappers and save the lives of the men you allegedly love. I suppose LKH is going for sardonic, but it just comes off as stupid.
I somehow missed that Tony left the room at some point here, and I was imagining him watching this whole thing with a what the actual fuck look on his face. I just put it down to bad writing that he hadn't said a word. I'm almost disappointed to find I was wrong, because it was a funny visual.
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Date: 2013-01-23 11:35 pm (UTC)Oh, sorry, the confusion might have been due to how I drew up the sporking. I like that idea though, it is indeed funny!
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Date: 2013-01-24 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 12:27 am (UTC)ALL MUST CRINGE BEFORE ANITA!
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Date: 2013-01-24 12:36 am (UTC)But even if that wasn't happening, it's true it only takes about that much for her to consider getting violent.
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Date: 2013-01-24 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 02:38 am (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXs8OS6EdAE All I can think of is this.
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Date: 2013-01-24 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 08:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 01:44 pm (UTC)Just to let you know; the whole bloodlines and vampire culture that LKH has set up, while it didn't come from Rice, it's clear that LKH had been influenced by Vampire: The Masquerade for that (if she didn't outright steal it). It's a RPG, where you have different vampire clans, each clan has different powers, strengths and weaknesses. Every city is ruled by a vampire Prince, who makes sure that all the vampires within the city follow the set of vampiric law known as the Masquerade. I have the Bloodlines computer game and it's a lot of fun if you ever want to check it out.
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Date: 2013-01-24 04:02 pm (UTC)I've never played The Masquerade, but I'd heard of it from friends (it sounds neat!) and I knew there were different types of vampires within it. I really don't know anything about those types or when the game came out though, but I think I did hear that same theory on lashouts.
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Date: 2013-01-24 08:40 pm (UTC)Plus my boyfriend isn't enthused by the idea of pet rats. I'm having trouble convincing him how awesome it would be.
But yeah, after playing Bloodlines, I'm pretty sure that LKH was at least influenced by the game. The Masquerade explores the different clans and vampire culture more. At one point it seemed like LKH was trying to flesh out the vampire world, then she skipped out to write sex, so now we focus on the 'sex vampire lines' and sex and sex and more sex.
At this point, when people try to claim that LKH created a really interesting and in-depth vampire world, I just tell them to play Bloodlines and see what a real 'in-depth' vampire world looks like.
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Date: 2013-01-24 10:30 pm (UTC)YOU MUST CONVERT HIM!
I feel like her world has more POTENTIAL to be in-depth, but it's been wasted. I'd be all for checking out one that actually explored what it set up. If I got the computer game, would I still need to find a group to play with, or could I play it on my own?
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Date: 2013-01-24 11:32 pm (UTC)You can play on your own, that's the way I've been playing it. I got Bloodlines through the Steam sale, it's an old game but very well-done, it doesn't feel dated.
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Date: 2013-01-24 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 10:26 pm (UTC)