BULLET, CHAPTER EIGHT

[a_sporking_rat]

BULLET, CHAPTER EIGHT

Asher takes off his pants, hesitates for a second, and according to Anita it's because he's embarrassed that Richard's upper body is perfect while his own is scarred. JC and Anita fret about this, but Richard just tells him to strip, Asher snarks back, Richard "opened his mouth to say something harsh" but JC gives him a look so instead he tells Asher that the scars he got from silver bullets last summer were terrible and that "I didn't like being less than perfect". Gee, I'm sure this would make Asher feel like he totally has a kindred soul except for the part where you were able to take energy from the triumvirate to heal those wounds SO YOUR SCARS DIDN'T LAST LIKE HIS.

This prompts Anita to think about how without the power of the triumvirate to heal wounds on both Richard and JC that even supernaturals couldn't ordinarily heal (such as from holy items or fire) "there would be three men in the room with serious scars on all that creamy and tanned goodness, respectively."

Creamy and tanned goodness meaning their skin. Keep the weirdness of the phrase in mind, because it reappears in an even weirder way on the next page.

Asher points out he doesn't have a triumvirate to heal up his scars. Richard responds that "I've tried nice, but sympathy just makes you angry." Maybe because YOUR SYMPATHY SUCKS. And Asher doesn't strike meas the type that even wants sympathy, because that reminds him of his scars and hurts his pride; he doesn't want to be PITIED. Maybe you should just try IGNORING THEM instead of bringing them up right before sex and then recounting how you had some scars once for a very short time but you don't anymore and expecting THAT to make him feel better.

Richard's solution is to instead grab Asher by the hair in one hand and around the waist in the other, violent pull Asher to him, and tell him, "I want you naked. I want to see it all. I want you tied up and naked, and if you make me tell you to strip again I'll rip your clothes off your back." and then tosses Asher to the floor.

I don't think you want that, Richard. I think LKH just thinks it's hot for you to say so.

Asher catches himself on the bed and strips, and Anita tells us that what Richard said "reassured him, made him feel desired" because he didn't hesitate again. Uh, yeah, there's no OTHER reason he wouldn't, right? Even though she could very well be right, the way she says this as statement of fact just annoys me.

They tie Asher up and Anita yammers to us a lot about the bed frame and learning from Asher how to top Nathaniel on it and some more BDSM 'rules' and apparently Asher's safeword is "no mas"...dude, "no mas" means "no more". His safeword is "no more"? That is a terrible safeword. It's as bad as Anita's being "enough". The whole point of safewords is that words and phrases like no, don't, stop, enough, etc., are all almost always part of the fantasy and thus are not to be treated as actual requests to stop, and the safeword is therefore selected specifically as something you WOULDN'T normally say to get someone to stop hurting you, like "purple buffalo!" or "froggie pudding!" or something. Good gimp-masks, even I know that!

JC gets out their toy trunk and anita talks about how she never thought she'd see Richard digging through the toys even though "I'd known he liked this kind of sex". Someone enlighten me, has there been any indication in the past that Richard liked BDSM at all? Or is this just an Anita Is Always Right/Knew Everything All Along Retcon? JC is shirtless, but considering that he was already wearing leather pants and boots, this is, as Anita herself says, pretty much a bondage costume in itself. Anita gets a bondage dress to go change into in the bathroom. It's made of leather, zips up to the neck, is belted at the waist ("making my waist look even tinier" in case you didn't know her waist was tiny, heaven forbid), and has a short but full skirt. "June Cleaver does bondage" as she puts it. We get a paragraph about Anita's tits and the way they sit in the dress depending on how high or low she zips it, and she decides to zip it low enough "until my breasts looked like they were spilling out, or would at any moment" that is probably the only time the word 'spill' has made CLOSE to any sense in context.

And the, get ready for this...she looks in the mirror, ogles her own breasts , and thinks "Wow, look at all that creamy goodness."

Creamy goodness. CREAMY. GOODNESS. I had heard fellow anti-fans talk of the phrase before, but I had yet to truly believe she'd ever actually used it in reference to her own damn tits before now.

You know, if you like your boobs, great for you. I'm serious, I think it's awesome when women love their bodies in general. But I didn't need nine sentences about your 'creamy goodness" titties. And I'm someone who LIKES tits. Not to mention it's just the strangest way ever to refer to them. Even weirder than 'sweater hogans".

When she re-emerges, JC and Asher gape at her and make such a fuss about how hot she is and how much they want her, and JC in fact, as "part of the game", taunts Asher about how "you don't get to touch her tonight." Anita thinks about how if SHE were the one tied up, "humiliation or taunting" like that would make her stop being in bottom mode and start being an angry asshole like she usually is. Okay, well, Asher has different limits and kinks than you do, Anita, and since he's the one tied up right now, knowing what yours are don't really matter. But thanks for pointlessly informing the reader of this anyway. It's so boring when everything isn't about YOU every sentence, after all.

Richard, meanwhile, is trying to get on some leather pants, but he says they won't fit because he's gained too much muscle from the gym. I guess shapeshifters never have trouble fitting into leather pants for any reason except 'sexy' ones, unlike us common folk. I'm almost surprised he didn't say it didn't fit because of his dick instead. Seriously, I could see that happening in these books, I really could. the Richard looks up and sees Anita and is all staring because she's so sexy "Gob-smacked, Byron, one of our newer British vampires would have called it." Is this a real British phrase? And he's not new. He arrived in Incubus Dreams, that's the twelfth book, and this is the nineteenth.

Then Richard needs to hold on to the bed to keep standing, because I guess she's so sexy she's upset his sense of balance. He drops the leather pants and "let me see that it wasn't just his face that had reacted to the sight of me in the dress." So he has a boner. You're writing about a pseudo-BDSM four-way and you can't type the word 'erection'? The Anita thinks about how hot Richard is now that she can see his boner. Although she doesn't SAY that of course. And she thinks about the time she first saw him. Richard says that he can tell she isn't ogling him anymore and asks who she's thinking of and now he's getting angry again. "Of all the men in my life, only he'd ever used his rage against me." I thought it turned out to be YOUR rage inside him?

JC just says "Ma petite" and these words give Anita a paragraph of sudden understanding and introspection that she needs to fix this because "we needed this to work the way kids need their fighting parents to make up before the divorce splits the family" because a divorce could never actually be the best option for that very family I suppose "and the possessions. The problem with the three of us was that the "possessions" included people. More than any child, the vampires and werewolves and other shapeshifters in this city were possessions. We needed to grow up and fix this."

I thought that when she said "fix this" that she meant STOP HAVING/THINKING OF/TREATING PEOPLE AS POSSESSIONS but actually what she meant was fix the fight with Richard so that "the possessions" won't get split up like in a divorce. Holy hell, do I even need to explain how fucked up that is?

Anita tells him she was thinking about him, the past him when she first saw him nude at the Circus of the Damned with a nude woman also in the room and how "I never asked how you ended up there like that." Richard understandably looks confused and asks what she wants to know about that. Anita says "I don't know. I was just thinking I never questioned it. I never asked if you and Rashada were lovers. You asked me out the same night, so I assumed you weren't dating anyone else. Was I naive, Richard? Was I just naive then?"

Her name was Rashida, not Rashada. I've still got the library copy of Circus of the Damned right here and I checked. And honestly, it would seem more naive to me for Anita to have assumed Richard was boning Rashida, given that she seems to have always been aware how casual that shapeshifters are about nudity. Considering she also knew, I think, that shifting back to human form leaves most comatose for awhile, I'd have thought her first assumption was that they'd both been out cold and were put in bed together until they woke up. That was always my guess. The only thing I think Anita was naive about was assuming Richard was human, given where he was.

Richard though just gets all gentle and has an honest expression and touches herr face and says "We both were." No, you were both just decent characters. Okay, Anita has always been an asshole, but she wasn't as bad as she is now, and at that point she had potential to get better. And then her and JC and Richard all kind of huddle together and stroke each other's hair and stuff and he "pressed our faces together" (the mental image I get from that is probably not what LKH intended) and asks "If we'd known what would happen, would we have run from each other?"

One, Anita ran from Richard. Two, if I were Richard and I knew what Anita would become, I would have run like a meep-meeping desert bird away from a certain coyote.

Jean-Claude recommends thinking positive instead and says that "if we had not had each other to turn to in times of trouble" (WHEN I FIND MYSELF IN TIMES OF TROUBLE, MOTHER MARY COMES TO--oh wait wrong thing) then they might not be alive and "many of our vampires and wolves" would be "dead or trapped by sadistic masters" and Richard kisses ass some more by saying "Not just my wolves. Anita and Micah have helped a lot of shapeshifters in town." He then says Asher will need to be "tamed" if JC wants to keep him as second and the werehyenas in town. JC agrees, and Anita asks him to "define tamed".

...uh, maybe someone who won't ditch you and take the hyenas, Anita? I think that's the general goal for THIS ENTIRE ORGY? The orgy that you have STILL not gotten to? And not in the sexy-buildup way but in the constant-derailment way.

Richard says that "the suspicious tone in your voice, it's so you, Anita" and Anita says that she's her so how else would she sound? I think maybe she's supposed to be witty here, I'm not sure. Richard then asks "How can I love you and still want to do such terrible things to you and with you? How can it be okay with you that I like what I like?"

GREAT. MORE DERAILMENT, THIS TIME WITH BONDAGE-ANGST.

Anita for once is actually useful and nips this one in the bud by telling Richard she doesn't want to have this talk again. He says he doesn't either. Then he talks about how he wants to have sex with Anita, taunt Asher that he doesn't get to have him, and is willing to do touching with Jean-Claude. Then he talks about the stuff he wants to do with Anita and have JC do with Anita while making Asher watch. And gets another hard-on that is not referred to as a hard-on but as "his body was responding to the thought". Anita looks at his hard-on, he asks if she wants him, she says what, he repeats the question, she doesn't know what to say, JC says for her to tell the truth, she says yes. GOOD FREAKING GRIEF THAT WAS NOT A DIFFICULT QUESTION.

Richard says that's good because he's missed her, then grabs her around the waist so fast that "I made that girl-scream squeal." Uh, okay, if you must call it that. He picks her up off the ground and says that her skin smells good because she's afraid of him and asks if she understands that. She gulps and says yes. He asks if she understands that he wants her afraid, she says "It's that chase-the-prey thing, I get it." He growls and then asks if she trusts him. She can't seem to talk so she just nods yes, even though she tells us that the real answer is just a maybe. Again, no expert in bondage, but I don't think you're supposed to say you're okay with something unless you really seriously 100% are.

Then he says good and throws her on the bed like a projectile: "I felt his muscles tense, and then I was airborne and falling toward the bed."

That is much more hilarious in my head than it is sexy.

Comments

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/"there would be three men in the room with serious scars on all that creamy and tanned goodness, respectively."/

First of all, yeah, I can see how you’re able to look past Asher’s scars. The way that you keep bringing them up like that, I’m sure that you’re not shallow at all.

Second of all, can you imagine what would happen if somebody described the Phantom of the Opera as having “serious scars on all that creamy and tanned goodness” to his face? I don’t know why, but that image just cracks me up.

Third of all, stop pretending as if this pointless sex scene has any purpose other than for Anita to once again have sex with good-looking men. “For the greater good,” my foot. You’re obviously not that too concerned about your duty if you can bother spending fifteen minutes outlining how hot your partners are. At least James Bond didn’t try to claim that all of his one-night-stands were done in order to save the world or something.

/"Wow, look at all that creamy goodness."/

Whatever happened to all of your complaints about your pale skin, Anita, and how people supposedly looked down on you for being a “pale-skinned half-Mexican?” Whatever happened to all of your whining about being “short?” Does this mean that we’ll never have to hear you whine and complain about your appearance in the following books? Does that mean that you’ll stop being so stupidly jealous of other women, since you have all of this “creamy goodness?” Ha, of course not.

/I thought that when she said "fix this" that she meant STOP HAVING/THINKING OF/TREATING PEOPLE AS POSSESSIONS but actually what she meant was fix the fight with Richard so that "the possessions" won't get split up like in a divorce./

First of all, children are not possessions. Second of all, *people* are not possessions. Third of all, wow, Mommy Dearest much? Actually, no, it’s Mommy Dearest on steroids. Anita’s not content with controlling one person; oh, no, she wants to control an entire city and views its inhabitants as her children. As if she were some mighty mother goddess whose duty is to protect those poor, infantile shapeshifters as if they were children instead of adults. That’s just so patronizing and paternalistic and downright *creepy.* I could easily see those words coming out of the mouth of some evil overlord who pretends to be fatherly in order to fool his subjects into complacency when he slaughters them. Or an evil overlord who literally views people as pawns for him to control and sacrifice at will. These are *people* that you’re talking about, Anita. Full-grown adults, who don’t need you to hold their hands and tug them around, thank you very much.

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

I feel fairly sure there is probably some Phantom fic out there with something similar in it.

At least James Bond didn’t try to claim that all of his one-night-stands were done in order to save the world or something.
Hence why I roll my eyes at her claims of trying to subvert the fact men are allowed to have sex onscreen in books but not women. She's STILL going on the same ideas--that women shouldn't be allowed to have sex just cuz they want to! So she has to make these incredibly bogus excuses. It's annoying AND contradicts what she claims to want the message to be.

Second of all, *people* are not possessions.
Oh, it's okay! They're not people! Nathaniel is "our kitten" remember?

Full-grown adults, who don’t need you to hold their hands and tug them around, thank you very much.
And good thing too, since they'd be shit out of luck if that were the case. She might be 'queen' of all these weregroups, but she really does jackshit when it comes to being leader on a day to day basis with anything that doesn't involve sex and the occasional killing.

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

At least James Bond didn’t try to claim that all of his one-night-stands were done in order to save the world or something.

At least James Bond gets bitten/stomped/shot at when he has a one night stand with the wrong girl and has to deal with the aftermath as a direct result later in the story. None of this orgy induced mindwipe crap.