BULLET, CHAPTER TWELVE, PART ONE
Mar. 29th, 2013 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratThis one's gonna be a three-parter, folks! LKH is making up for the last two chapters being less than five pages each by having this one be fifteen. Fifteen is a decent length, but it does take me longer to spork, hence breaking it up into three parts so my fingers can take a rest AND you don't have to wait extra for the next update!
BULLET, CHAPTER TWELVE, PART ONE
Belle Morte is not physically there, but they can all see her "in our heads like a bad dream. She was dressed in gold, a deep rich satin that made her pale brown eyes look even more amber than they were, but I had Richard's wolf amber to compare with and I knew that as she might her eyes were not truly anything but brown." Your eyes are brown too, Anita, stop acting all snotty that Belle actually knows how to use color to bring out her best features. Also, way to go Belle for proving that you can be one of the most beautiful women in history (which she supposedly is, right?) and not need Super Special Sue Eyes like Anita's redheaded cousin Merry Gentry or Anita's own, oh, what did Vittorio call them, 'cognac diamonds"? Oh, and her hair is done up in ringlets that look "complicated and not touchable, as if she'd yell at you if you messed it up." Again the judgmental tone for Belle daring to care about her appearance and *gasp* looking pretty! You'd almost think she was the head of a vampire line that is explicitly stated to be all about looks and seduction--OH WAIT SHE IS. And I bet you Anita would raise holy hell if someone messed up her mens' hair, so whatever.
Belle Morte spreads her arms out and says "I am Belle Morte, I am Beautiful Death, gaze upon me, desire me, but come to me, my petite ones, and I will give you all you desire." My petite ones? Is that just me or does that sound extremely awkward? I know she's supposed to be OMG SOOO FRENCH but 'little ones' just sounds a lot more 'right' in my head. Also, she's pretty much asking them to do exactly what Anita makes everyone do, so if this is supposed to make me immediately see her as vain and bad, it fails. All it does is make me see her as less pushy and more honest than Our Heroine instead.
Anita gets a flashback from both Asher and JC via her pyschic link of Belle giving each of them this speech separately and "I saw her offer herself to others in front of them, countless others." Unlike Anita, who waited until she was in Las Vegas to add three more men to her harem when she'd told JC she'd stop. Again, all I can think here is just that Belle is the more honest one, and that makes me prefer her immensely. "But none of us wanted her, none of us were tempted" The tone that Anita's voice has in my head here is one full of both snobbery and denial. But "that had so not been the case the last time she'd visited us" SO NOT BEEN THE CASE, LIKE, TOTALLY "I'd known then that Jean-Claude would always love her" but "now the three of us who had been touched by her didn't want to be touched again, and Richard was the difference. He hadn't been there through any of the other times, and now he was our rock in the tide of temptation, because he wasn't tempted."
I call bullshit on that. Belle Morte is the master of the ardeur. I think she could make ANYONE want hers, regardless of if she wasn't their type. Maybe she's just not trying that hard yet is all. After all, when it comes to the ardeur, Anita pretty much has no resistance, so why waste the effort?
"Jean-Claude took Richard's lack of interest and built on it so we could all stare at her with cold eyes." Ok, so JC can take Richard's magical bullshit disinterest and spread it telepathically to himself and Anita, but how does he get it it to Asher? Again, Asher doesn't have the psychic link to JC that the others do. I know that AB vampires have some degree of psychic ability in general, but does it extend to this level?
"Rejection wasn't something that Belle Morte had dealt with much in the last two thousand years. She didn't deal well with it." I don't think Anita has any space at all to say this about someone else. Remember Joseph? Belle's eyes fill with anger and she tries too use the ardeur on them but their ardeur is sated because of all the sex they just said. Again, I call bullshit. She's Belle Morte. She can make them have sex until they die from it, I'm sure. She should be able to make that ardeur come up as if they haven't screwed in years. But instead of boner-owning them all like she should, she claims that lust isn't her only power and that they will "feel my new power and learn to fear me again." Well, that's fine by me, I didn't want more sex anyway, even if logically she should have been able to make them go nuts for her if she wanted to. The scent of roses gets thicker, but there's still an undertone of jasmine too it AND ONLY THEN does it FINALLY hit Anita that jasmine is the scent of the MOAD. Yeah, it's not like the MOAD forced the smell of jasmine to overwhelm you more than once in Skin Trade, Anita, no reason you should have associated the odor with her THE SECOND IT HIT YOU or anything.
Anita reminds us that the MOAD is "dead, her body destroyed by mercenaries from the Vampire Council". Wait, the Council hired the people who blew her up? When the hell was that found out? Because it wasn't revealed in Skin Trade or in Flirt who had ordered for the MOAD to be blown up, or even who had done the job itself. WHEN AND HOW AND FROM WHOM WAS THIS INFO OBTAINED? COME ON, YOU ARE QUEEN OF INFODUMPS AND EXPOSITION, TELL ME. WHY IS THERE NO EXPLANATION?
Jean-Claude is using his connection to wolves in order to help them (it's not stated in what way) through Richard being there, but Belle can call cats and Anita smells leopard and the leopard inside Anita wakes up and "my beast inside me liked the scent of the leopard touching Belle, and we liked Belle." Ooh baby. "For the first time she tried to call me as if I were just another werelopard and she my master." Considering you've had that Nimir-Ra inside you since at least NiC, it's ridiculous to me that it's taken Belle this long to think of doing that. Anita can feel that Micah and Nathaniel, whom she refers to as "my leopards" (talking about owning people is okay if you just refer to them as their animal forms!), are coming, and so she calls Damian. My guess is that she wants to use him like JC is using Richard, since Damian is her Vampire Servant like Richard is JC's Animal Servant.
"Belle had opened us too wide and I could feel so many people" and "I couldn't keep her out, but I was suddenly sensing people that I'd never been able to sense before." Anita suddenly knows where anyone and everyone she has ever fed the ardeur with is and what they're doing, and that "Belle was shifting through them like shuffling a deck of cards". We are reminded that this includes the swan king and Rafael, the wererat king. Did you know Rafael was the wererat king? That the wererat king is Rafael? Because luckily, she reminds us! Just in case you forgot from when he was mentioned a few chapters ago as being the wererat king!
After having a look at everyone Anita has ever victimized with the ardeur, Belle Morte congratulates Anita on having "done my bloodline proud." Oooh, burn. Anita's leopard starts to run inside her towards the surface, and Belle laughs. Oh no! But then JC touches Richard and "he thrust that coolness, that calmness that Richard had learned the tigers, into my leopard, and my beast did slow, but she was still walking". Richard lays on one side of Anita, Asher on the other, and the latter starts cuddling with her. I have a sinking feeling that THIS is going to be how they drive off Belle Morte.
"Asher was still boneless and fighting back to full awareness" Asher had sex so good that HE LOST ALL HIS BONES AHAHAHA?
"As he'd said, he didn't have a triumvirate so he didn't have the energy we did to fight her. He needed a werehyena, which was his animal to call. I thought it to Nathaniel and Micah, and more-distant Damian." WHOA, THE HYENA IS ASHER'S ANIMAL TO CALL? I HAD NO IDEA, IT WAS ONLY MENTIONED AT LENGTH SIX CHAPTERS AGO. I'D TOTALLY FORGOTTEN ALREADY. Also, I wish that being a triumvirate could also give them a level boost in badass physical skills as well as metaphysical energy so we could get super cool action scenes of them all fighting baddies versus just telepathic battles like this, which seem to be the only type done anymore.
They're all touching each other and this makes them "more solid" whatever that means, but then the scent of jasmine gets even stronger and Anita can feel her (Belle or MOAD, it's not clear) "pushing lion and leopard at us". JC asks "Belle, what have you done?", Anita pointlessly points out that "The roses are your scent, but jasmine is Marmee Noir" and JC asks again "What have you done, Belle?" because I guess moving the words around in your question makes it worth repeating.
Belle: "She was the Mother of us all. If we had let her power die with her, we would have all died."
JC: "That is a lie, a lie to keep us from attacking those that made us."
Belle: "We were not willing to take that chance."
1) Huh, an all-mother of the vampire race that slept for centuries AND if she dies, the race dies with her? Akasha, Queen of the Damned, is that you?
2) Jean-Claude, how the fuck would you even know anything about it?
3) I'm with Belle Morte, it's not worth the risk
Anita feels Belle's power reaching out to them and "I didn't know what she meant to do with it, but if she had truly swallowed some of the Mother of All Darkness, then I didn't want any of that power to touch us." So I guess Merry isn't the only one Swallowing Darkness!
Anita can feel a claw digging under her ribs, and she starts bleeding down her front. "Belle had never been able to cut from a distance with her animals." Say what? I know that some vampires are able to draw blood from a distance, but what does Anita mean 'with her animals'? I would think that she means 'Belle had never been able to draw blood from a distance with werecats' since cats are her animal, but the fact that Anita feels a claw doing it, and feels that claw being offered to her leopard like a hand to take, makes it sound like Belle *has* animals in her like a werebeast does. WTF? And again, I could explain that by saying that Belle *does* have a werecat in her now because she has the MOAD, a werecat herself, inside her, but the way Anita phrases it makes it seem like Belle has always had "her animals" and just never been able to use them like this. I am so confused, you guys.
And Anita's beasts are frustrated that they can't come out like Belle's invisible paw is offering for them to do and Belle says "Here, kitty, kitty" in French and Anita writhes around and Richard puts his hand on Anita and "he stroked my leopard as he'd petted the wolf before." THESE ARE NOT DOMESTIC DOGS AND CATS, DAMMIT. The leoaprd does at least snarl at him, but it also stops racing for the surface. Belle claws at Anita again and scratches her belly. Belle tells her she can't be stopped so easily, has the power of the Mother in her, and that they can't beat her.
"The door opened and Nathanierl, Micah, and Damian were there with one of our new female vampires holding Damian's hand." Oh, so that's why Damian hasn't been in a book since Danse Macabre (#14) until now (#19). He was busy getting a girlfriend! Who is now doubtlessly going to be a horrible person, have horrible things happen to her, or both. Anita tells us Cardinal got her name because of her red-gold curls and then immediately talks about how they're so not as red as Damian's own straight long bloodred hair and how his green eyes are inhumanly beautiful and by the way "he was almost six feet tall, which made Cardinal very tall for a woman in the century she'd died in". Uh, this sentence would only make sense if you'd also said that Cardinal is the same height as Damian or close. But you didn't. So instead it just seems like Damian being tall somehow makes Cardinal also tall for no particular reason. Also, in addition to being tall AND holding hands with one of Anita's pet men, she's also "thin and small breasted, boyishly hipped under her silk robe" OH GOD CARDINAL RUN, GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN! "In her day she'd have been too thin, but now she looked like a model." So presumably she was turned for a reason OTHER than her looks and thus might actually have some USEFUL skills?
The idea of a line of vampire specifically chosen for their beauty used to make sense to me. Beauty and seduction are tools that could be used to gain a lot of power, influence people, etc. So vampires made specifically to be eye candy armed with the ardeur seemed like a logical thing that would be needed for that...until I remembered that ALL vampires, even the low-level flunkies, can roll a human mentally just by making eye contact. So why the fuck would you NEED to be beautiful or good at seduction, let alone have a class of people in your race that are good for nothing else or a power that is way more trouble than it's worth, centered around those things? Just look at the King or Mayor or whoever in the eyes and he'll take whatever commands you send him! Hell, a more talented vampire could just make the Big Cheese Human a Renfield. I guess maybe the abilities of Belle's line are meant to be used on other vampires who would be immune to those tricks, especially since the ardeur can make slaves of other vampires specifically, that's my best guess. Which makes you wonder why other vampires let this line happen at all.
Micah and Nathaniel climb on to the bed. Micah is in purple silk boxers (how do you notice that at a time like THIS?) and Nathaniel is nude, which Anita says means he must have been sleeping because "most of the wereanimals wore nothing to bed if I didn't make them. Lately I'd stopped insisting on it." Who the fuck was she to insist on it in the first place? Seriously, she implies she has been dictating what ALL the wereanimals at the Circus wear to sleep, wtf. "It was only the group leaders who seemed to throw something on for walking around the circus." So Nathaniel has nothing on so therefore he must have been sleeping because wereanimals sleep naked...but they also just walk around the Circus naked? So couldn't he have also just been walking around the Circus? LOGIC FAIL.
Anita touches Nathaniel, feels power, red scratches appear on Nathaniel because he is sharing the damage she took from Belle Morte. Micah touches them both, Anita feels more power and it's a calm deep pool of water and she feels their leopards greet each other and rub each other and their leopards become one and snarl at Belle Morte's power. Forgive me, but considering this woman calls leopards, maybe it was a bad idea to BRING MORE LEOPARDS IN HERE? Especially the super submissive zero-power one?
"Micah and I had been enough to chase Belle out once before. She hadn't been prepared for us to be a true Nimir-Ra and Nimir-Raj." Okay, so bringing in Micah was a good idea then. But I stand by Nathaniel being a bad one, even if he is your Leopard to Call. You should have telepathically rung up Jason instead; being your wolf to call, he's all of the benefits and none of the risks here!
Micah and Anita push belle's power back and the scent of flowers begins to fade, but then Belle calls Anita's lioness: "You have no lion to call yet, and you have not joined yourself to the local Rex. You cannot win this. I will bring your beast and make you my animal to call, Anita."
Hey, what did I say in Skin Trade? And in Flirt? THAT JC NEEDS TO GIVE ANITA THE FOURTH MARK ALREADY OR PEOPLE ARE GOING TO KEEP TRYING TO MAKE HER THEIRS TO CALL DAMMIT. And considering that Anita's had a load of werecats inside her for awhile, I'm surprised that Belle Morte hasn't tried this before.
Anita tries to reach for lions telepathically, and she feels two: Haven and Nicky. She explains Nicky as "something less than an animal to call, and something more." No, I'd say he falls squarely into the 'less' category alone. "He was a Bride, my Bride" which means "I'd rolled his mind so completely that he was worse than a slave." Because slaves can still THINK their own thoughts "I'd meant to roll him, but the results were frightening even to me." But you'll never show a bit of genuine regret over it or even attempt to find out if there's any way to put it right. She tells Nicky to come, but tells Haven not to, and recounts to us how "The local Rex was off my feeding schedule" SERIOUSLY, SHE CALLS IT THAT "for starting a fight with Nathaniel and Micah one morning." I do not believe starting a fight with Nathaniel is even possible. It implies he participated versus just lying there and waiting for Anita to save him. "and for "marrying" a female werelion" whom we never, to my knowledge, ever even see "and lying to her and me that she was his Regina. It had been a ploy to make me jealous" Because no one ever does anything without it relating to Anita SOMEHOW "when it hadn't worked he'd annulled the marriage" So if he had to anull it, that means it was a real legal marriage, so why the quotation marks around it? "and sent her packing." So she's out of the way now, I'm sure that's not wish fulfillment in any way on LKH's part relating to Charles and his wife. "It was like he was stuck in a sitcom mentality" A sitcom about WHAT? He's a werelion mob boss! Why would he have a sitcom mentality? What does that even mean? "and didn't know how to behave in the real world." Unlike Anita, who has sex in her office, is horrendously rude to her clients, forgets to eat, and walks around with a small armory on a regular basis.
Haven sends her a thought that he's coming anyway; Anita tells him not to because "I had a werelion closer; I didn't need two." Yet you have two leopards, and between Nicky and Haven, Haven is the one who is Rex, he's stronger, he's an alpha, he's a better bet against Belle if you really think you HAVE to risk having werecats there at all.
Damian (who, by the way, is wearing "a new silk robe that was almost the same green as his eyes" if you wanted to know) is still not in the bed. This is because Cardinal is pulling at his hand. Gasp! She's trying to keep him from Anita! Damian scolds Cardinal, "You've seen Belle's court. Do you want her in charge here, too?" Cardinal shakes her head and lets go of Damian and he gets in the bed. She says nothing, because props that are there to get pushed aside for Anita don't deserve to have lines. Especially when they're skinny, tall, blue-eyed girls with red-gold (that's almost blonde!) hair.
I want her and JJ to run off together before something bad happens to them.
BULLET, CHAPTER TWELVE, PART ONE
Belle Morte is not physically there, but they can all see her "in our heads like a bad dream. She was dressed in gold, a deep rich satin that made her pale brown eyes look even more amber than they were, but I had Richard's wolf amber to compare with and I knew that as she might her eyes were not truly anything but brown." Your eyes are brown too, Anita, stop acting all snotty that Belle actually knows how to use color to bring out her best features. Also, way to go Belle for proving that you can be one of the most beautiful women in history (which she supposedly is, right?) and not need Super Special Sue Eyes like Anita's redheaded cousin Merry Gentry or Anita's own, oh, what did Vittorio call them, 'cognac diamonds"? Oh, and her hair is done up in ringlets that look "complicated and not touchable, as if she'd yell at you if you messed it up." Again the judgmental tone for Belle daring to care about her appearance and *gasp* looking pretty! You'd almost think she was the head of a vampire line that is explicitly stated to be all about looks and seduction--OH WAIT SHE IS. And I bet you Anita would raise holy hell if someone messed up her mens' hair, so whatever.
Belle Morte spreads her arms out and says "I am Belle Morte, I am Beautiful Death, gaze upon me, desire me, but come to me, my petite ones, and I will give you all you desire." My petite ones? Is that just me or does that sound extremely awkward? I know she's supposed to be OMG SOOO FRENCH but 'little ones' just sounds a lot more 'right' in my head. Also, she's pretty much asking them to do exactly what Anita makes everyone do, so if this is supposed to make me immediately see her as vain and bad, it fails. All it does is make me see her as less pushy and more honest than Our Heroine instead.
Anita gets a flashback from both Asher and JC via her pyschic link of Belle giving each of them this speech separately and "I saw her offer herself to others in front of them, countless others." Unlike Anita, who waited until she was in Las Vegas to add three more men to her harem when she'd told JC she'd stop. Again, all I can think here is just that Belle is the more honest one, and that makes me prefer her immensely. "But none of us wanted her, none of us were tempted" The tone that Anita's voice has in my head here is one full of both snobbery and denial. But "that had so not been the case the last time she'd visited us" SO NOT BEEN THE CASE, LIKE, TOTALLY "I'd known then that Jean-Claude would always love her" but "now the three of us who had been touched by her didn't want to be touched again, and Richard was the difference. He hadn't been there through any of the other times, and now he was our rock in the tide of temptation, because he wasn't tempted."
I call bullshit on that. Belle Morte is the master of the ardeur. I think she could make ANYONE want hers, regardless of if she wasn't their type. Maybe she's just not trying that hard yet is all. After all, when it comes to the ardeur, Anita pretty much has no resistance, so why waste the effort?
"Jean-Claude took Richard's lack of interest and built on it so we could all stare at her with cold eyes." Ok, so JC can take Richard's magical bullshit disinterest and spread it telepathically to himself and Anita, but how does he get it it to Asher? Again, Asher doesn't have the psychic link to JC that the others do. I know that AB vampires have some degree of psychic ability in general, but does it extend to this level?
"Rejection wasn't something that Belle Morte had dealt with much in the last two thousand years. She didn't deal well with it." I don't think Anita has any space at all to say this about someone else. Remember Joseph? Belle's eyes fill with anger and she tries too use the ardeur on them but their ardeur is sated because of all the sex they just said. Again, I call bullshit. She's Belle Morte. She can make them have sex until they die from it, I'm sure. She should be able to make that ardeur come up as if they haven't screwed in years. But instead of boner-owning them all like she should, she claims that lust isn't her only power and that they will "feel my new power and learn to fear me again." Well, that's fine by me, I didn't want more sex anyway, even if logically she should have been able to make them go nuts for her if she wanted to. The scent of roses gets thicker, but there's still an undertone of jasmine too it AND ONLY THEN does it FINALLY hit Anita that jasmine is the scent of the MOAD. Yeah, it's not like the MOAD forced the smell of jasmine to overwhelm you more than once in Skin Trade, Anita, no reason you should have associated the odor with her THE SECOND IT HIT YOU or anything.
Anita reminds us that the MOAD is "dead, her body destroyed by mercenaries from the Vampire Council". Wait, the Council hired the people who blew her up? When the hell was that found out? Because it wasn't revealed in Skin Trade or in Flirt who had ordered for the MOAD to be blown up, or even who had done the job itself. WHEN AND HOW AND FROM WHOM WAS THIS INFO OBTAINED? COME ON, YOU ARE QUEEN OF INFODUMPS AND EXPOSITION, TELL ME. WHY IS THERE NO EXPLANATION?
Jean-Claude is using his connection to wolves in order to help them (it's not stated in what way) through Richard being there, but Belle can call cats and Anita smells leopard and the leopard inside Anita wakes up and "my beast inside me liked the scent of the leopard touching Belle, and we liked Belle." Ooh baby. "For the first time she tried to call me as if I were just another werelopard and she my master." Considering you've had that Nimir-Ra inside you since at least NiC, it's ridiculous to me that it's taken Belle this long to think of doing that. Anita can feel that Micah and Nathaniel, whom she refers to as "my leopards" (talking about owning people is okay if you just refer to them as their animal forms!), are coming, and so she calls Damian. My guess is that she wants to use him like JC is using Richard, since Damian is her Vampire Servant like Richard is JC's Animal Servant.
"Belle had opened us too wide and I could feel so many people" and "I couldn't keep her out, but I was suddenly sensing people that I'd never been able to sense before." Anita suddenly knows where anyone and everyone she has ever fed the ardeur with is and what they're doing, and that "Belle was shifting through them like shuffling a deck of cards". We are reminded that this includes the swan king and Rafael, the wererat king. Did you know Rafael was the wererat king? That the wererat king is Rafael? Because luckily, she reminds us! Just in case you forgot from when he was mentioned a few chapters ago as being the wererat king!
After having a look at everyone Anita has ever victimized with the ardeur, Belle Morte congratulates Anita on having "done my bloodline proud." Oooh, burn. Anita's leopard starts to run inside her towards the surface, and Belle laughs. Oh no! But then JC touches Richard and "he thrust that coolness, that calmness that Richard had learned the tigers, into my leopard, and my beast did slow, but she was still walking". Richard lays on one side of Anita, Asher on the other, and the latter starts cuddling with her. I have a sinking feeling that THIS is going to be how they drive off Belle Morte.
"Asher was still boneless and fighting back to full awareness" Asher had sex so good that HE LOST ALL HIS BONES AHAHAHA?
"As he'd said, he didn't have a triumvirate so he didn't have the energy we did to fight her. He needed a werehyena, which was his animal to call. I thought it to Nathaniel and Micah, and more-distant Damian." WHOA, THE HYENA IS ASHER'S ANIMAL TO CALL? I HAD NO IDEA, IT WAS ONLY MENTIONED AT LENGTH SIX CHAPTERS AGO. I'D TOTALLY FORGOTTEN ALREADY. Also, I wish that being a triumvirate could also give them a level boost in badass physical skills as well as metaphysical energy so we could get super cool action scenes of them all fighting baddies versus just telepathic battles like this, which seem to be the only type done anymore.
They're all touching each other and this makes them "more solid" whatever that means, but then the scent of jasmine gets even stronger and Anita can feel her (Belle or MOAD, it's not clear) "pushing lion and leopard at us". JC asks "Belle, what have you done?", Anita pointlessly points out that "The roses are your scent, but jasmine is Marmee Noir" and JC asks again "What have you done, Belle?" because I guess moving the words around in your question makes it worth repeating.
Belle: "She was the Mother of us all. If we had let her power die with her, we would have all died."
JC: "That is a lie, a lie to keep us from attacking those that made us."
Belle: "We were not willing to take that chance."
1) Huh, an all-mother of the vampire race that slept for centuries AND if she dies, the race dies with her? Akasha, Queen of the Damned, is that you?
2) Jean-Claude, how the fuck would you even know anything about it?
3) I'm with Belle Morte, it's not worth the risk
Anita feels Belle's power reaching out to them and "I didn't know what she meant to do with it, but if she had truly swallowed some of the Mother of All Darkness, then I didn't want any of that power to touch us." So I guess Merry isn't the only one Swallowing Darkness!
Anita can feel a claw digging under her ribs, and she starts bleeding down her front. "Belle had never been able to cut from a distance with her animals." Say what? I know that some vampires are able to draw blood from a distance, but what does Anita mean 'with her animals'? I would think that she means 'Belle had never been able to draw blood from a distance with werecats' since cats are her animal, but the fact that Anita feels a claw doing it, and feels that claw being offered to her leopard like a hand to take, makes it sound like Belle *has* animals in her like a werebeast does. WTF? And again, I could explain that by saying that Belle *does* have a werecat in her now because she has the MOAD, a werecat herself, inside her, but the way Anita phrases it makes it seem like Belle has always had "her animals" and just never been able to use them like this. I am so confused, you guys.
And Anita's beasts are frustrated that they can't come out like Belle's invisible paw is offering for them to do and Belle says "Here, kitty, kitty" in French and Anita writhes around and Richard puts his hand on Anita and "he stroked my leopard as he'd petted the wolf before." THESE ARE NOT DOMESTIC DOGS AND CATS, DAMMIT. The leoaprd does at least snarl at him, but it also stops racing for the surface. Belle claws at Anita again and scratches her belly. Belle tells her she can't be stopped so easily, has the power of the Mother in her, and that they can't beat her.
"The door opened and Nathanierl, Micah, and Damian were there with one of our new female vampires holding Damian's hand." Oh, so that's why Damian hasn't been in a book since Danse Macabre (#14) until now (#19). He was busy getting a girlfriend! Who is now doubtlessly going to be a horrible person, have horrible things happen to her, or both. Anita tells us Cardinal got her name because of her red-gold curls and then immediately talks about how they're so not as red as Damian's own straight long bloodred hair and how his green eyes are inhumanly beautiful and by the way "he was almost six feet tall, which made Cardinal very tall for a woman in the century she'd died in". Uh, this sentence would only make sense if you'd also said that Cardinal is the same height as Damian or close. But you didn't. So instead it just seems like Damian being tall somehow makes Cardinal also tall for no particular reason. Also, in addition to being tall AND holding hands with one of Anita's pet men, she's also "thin and small breasted, boyishly hipped under her silk robe" OH GOD CARDINAL RUN, GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN! "In her day she'd have been too thin, but now she looked like a model." So presumably she was turned for a reason OTHER than her looks and thus might actually have some USEFUL skills?
The idea of a line of vampire specifically chosen for their beauty used to make sense to me. Beauty and seduction are tools that could be used to gain a lot of power, influence people, etc. So vampires made specifically to be eye candy armed with the ardeur seemed like a logical thing that would be needed for that...until I remembered that ALL vampires, even the low-level flunkies, can roll a human mentally just by making eye contact. So why the fuck would you NEED to be beautiful or good at seduction, let alone have a class of people in your race that are good for nothing else or a power that is way more trouble than it's worth, centered around those things? Just look at the King or Mayor or whoever in the eyes and he'll take whatever commands you send him! Hell, a more talented vampire could just make the Big Cheese Human a Renfield. I guess maybe the abilities of Belle's line are meant to be used on other vampires who would be immune to those tricks, especially since the ardeur can make slaves of other vampires specifically, that's my best guess. Which makes you wonder why other vampires let this line happen at all.
Micah and Nathaniel climb on to the bed. Micah is in purple silk boxers (how do you notice that at a time like THIS?) and Nathaniel is nude, which Anita says means he must have been sleeping because "most of the wereanimals wore nothing to bed if I didn't make them. Lately I'd stopped insisting on it." Who the fuck was she to insist on it in the first place? Seriously, she implies she has been dictating what ALL the wereanimals at the Circus wear to sleep, wtf. "It was only the group leaders who seemed to throw something on for walking around the circus." So Nathaniel has nothing on so therefore he must have been sleeping because wereanimals sleep naked...but they also just walk around the Circus naked? So couldn't he have also just been walking around the Circus? LOGIC FAIL.
Anita touches Nathaniel, feels power, red scratches appear on Nathaniel because he is sharing the damage she took from Belle Morte. Micah touches them both, Anita feels more power and it's a calm deep pool of water and she feels their leopards greet each other and rub each other and their leopards become one and snarl at Belle Morte's power. Forgive me, but considering this woman calls leopards, maybe it was a bad idea to BRING MORE LEOPARDS IN HERE? Especially the super submissive zero-power one?
"Micah and I had been enough to chase Belle out once before. She hadn't been prepared for us to be a true Nimir-Ra and Nimir-Raj." Okay, so bringing in Micah was a good idea then. But I stand by Nathaniel being a bad one, even if he is your Leopard to Call. You should have telepathically rung up Jason instead; being your wolf to call, he's all of the benefits and none of the risks here!
Micah and Anita push belle's power back and the scent of flowers begins to fade, but then Belle calls Anita's lioness: "You have no lion to call yet, and you have not joined yourself to the local Rex. You cannot win this. I will bring your beast and make you my animal to call, Anita."
Hey, what did I say in Skin Trade? And in Flirt? THAT JC NEEDS TO GIVE ANITA THE FOURTH MARK ALREADY OR PEOPLE ARE GOING TO KEEP TRYING TO MAKE HER THEIRS TO CALL DAMMIT. And considering that Anita's had a load of werecats inside her for awhile, I'm surprised that Belle Morte hasn't tried this before.
Anita tries to reach for lions telepathically, and she feels two: Haven and Nicky. She explains Nicky as "something less than an animal to call, and something more." No, I'd say he falls squarely into the 'less' category alone. "He was a Bride, my Bride" which means "I'd rolled his mind so completely that he was worse than a slave." Because slaves can still THINK their own thoughts "I'd meant to roll him, but the results were frightening even to me." But you'll never show a bit of genuine regret over it or even attempt to find out if there's any way to put it right. She tells Nicky to come, but tells Haven not to, and recounts to us how "The local Rex was off my feeding schedule" SERIOUSLY, SHE CALLS IT THAT "for starting a fight with Nathaniel and Micah one morning." I do not believe starting a fight with Nathaniel is even possible. It implies he participated versus just lying there and waiting for Anita to save him. "and for "marrying" a female werelion" whom we never, to my knowledge, ever even see "and lying to her and me that she was his Regina. It had been a ploy to make me jealous" Because no one ever does anything without it relating to Anita SOMEHOW "when it hadn't worked he'd annulled the marriage" So if he had to anull it, that means it was a real legal marriage, so why the quotation marks around it? "and sent her packing." So she's out of the way now, I'm sure that's not wish fulfillment in any way on LKH's part relating to Charles and his wife. "It was like he was stuck in a sitcom mentality" A sitcom about WHAT? He's a werelion mob boss! Why would he have a sitcom mentality? What does that even mean? "and didn't know how to behave in the real world." Unlike Anita, who has sex in her office, is horrendously rude to her clients, forgets to eat, and walks around with a small armory on a regular basis.
Haven sends her a thought that he's coming anyway; Anita tells him not to because "I had a werelion closer; I didn't need two." Yet you have two leopards, and between Nicky and Haven, Haven is the one who is Rex, he's stronger, he's an alpha, he's a better bet against Belle if you really think you HAVE to risk having werecats there at all.
Damian (who, by the way, is wearing "a new silk robe that was almost the same green as his eyes" if you wanted to know) is still not in the bed. This is because Cardinal is pulling at his hand. Gasp! She's trying to keep him from Anita! Damian scolds Cardinal, "You've seen Belle's court. Do you want her in charge here, too?" Cardinal shakes her head and lets go of Damian and he gets in the bed. She says nothing, because props that are there to get pushed aside for Anita don't deserve to have lines. Especially when they're skinny, tall, blue-eyed girls with red-gold (that's almost blonde!) hair.
I want her and JJ to run off together before something bad happens to them.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-03-29 04:58 pm (UTC)JC: "That is a lie, a lie to keep us from attacking those that made us."
Belle: "We were not willing to take that chance."
3) I'm with Belle Morte, it's not worth the risk
Wait, if this was the case, why would the Council try killing MoAD in the first place?
"Asher was still boneless and fighting back to full awareness" Asher had sex so good that HE LOST ALL HIS BONES AHAHAHA?
Quick! Someone get that boy some skele-grow!
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Date: 2013-03-29 05:31 pm (UTC)EXACTLY, SRSLY WTF
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Date: 2013-03-29 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-29 06:30 pm (UTC)Thank God that the TV series plan fell through. Can you imagine how that would of worked out? I know LKH is all jelly of Harris and True Blood, but we would have gotten something like a warped Abrocrombie and Fitch ad, collided with Hot Topic. The casting alone would be hell, I'm imagining LKH showing up in her leather jacket, claiming that she can play Anita, with Jon in tow as Micah or Nate, or both.
The psychic battles would be hilarious. Imagine a bunch of people writhing on a massive bed in a bedroom that looked like Tim Burton threw up all over it. We would see wispy, colorful shapes of animals running around in the air, while the people on the bed moan and roll around. Maybe Belle's eyes would glow above the bed, but Anita would grab her lovers hands and demand 'more flesh.' They would start making out and Belle would scream and fade away.
And that would just be the teaser.
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Date: 2013-03-29 05:58 pm (UTC)Seriously, you can get used to people you're not involved with being casually naked. We had a buddy stay with us while he was going through some major housing issues (long story) and his preferred comfort level at home is being nude. He checked that we were cool with it first, and we got so used to it that stopped even registering. Nudity is not by definition sexual - which oddly is something LKH keeps harping on and then has Anita react in the exact opposite manner.
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Date: 2013-03-29 06:02 pm (UTC)It's almost hilarious, isn't it?
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Date: 2013-03-29 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-30 06:32 pm (UTC)I also find it grating when LKH's commentary on "this is sexual" and "this is so not sexual" with interactions, like we need to have labels to understand when two characters are touching for some other reason than sex.
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Date: 2013-03-30 08:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-03-29 06:14 pm (UTC)Anita has a slave...
A slave...
SLAVE.
But no one judges her about it or think that it's horrible that she has sex with this man who cannot consent of his own free will to anything. She is raping him daily and no one cares. LKH just pays lip service with throw-away lines of 'it scares me a bit, but then I have sex with him and it doesn't matter.' We never see her try to free him, we never see her try to resolve this situation. Nate fucking refers to their slave as a 'pet.' This is our hero, a woman who has enslaved another human being, and keeps him as a pet that sleeps on the floor next to her bed. Anita Blake, Defender of Freedom, along with her slave/pet Nicky.
I just...I can't even...why do people even like these books? Do people even read the sex scenes with Nicky and think, "yeah that's hot that she's raping her slave now." Because that's what it is, rape. Nicky can't consent, ever, he can only do what Anita wants. They admit he's a slave and she still fucks him, she rapes her slave. She is raping a slave, I cannot stress that enough.
And some fans will argue that Nicky was a bad man, he deserved it (One pro-slaver argument was that the black man was 'designed' to be a slave, it was his natural lot in life, he deserved it as an 'inferior' being to the white man.)
Anita has to do what needs to be done, her life is hard and she didn't mean to enslave Nicky. (Slaveholders claimed that slavery was necessary, something that needed to be done, that the economy would collapse if we didn't keep slaves. It was the only option).
Some will even say that Nicky is happy with his new life. (Many slaveholders claimed that their slaves were better off and better cared for as slaves. John C. Calhoun said, "Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.")
The sad thing is that a better writer could have handled such a tricky situation and character a lot better than LKH. I don't think that LKH quite understands how offensive she is being. But hey, LKH, let's get Picard and Guinan to explain it to you:
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Date: 2013-03-29 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-30 03:15 am (UTC)So? What’s wrong with brown eyes?
/My petite ones?/
And here I thought that Jean-Claude was overdoing it with all of the “ma petites” that he gives Anita. Does LKH think that all French people constantly use the word “petit” when addressing people?
/I don't think Anita has any space at all to say this about someone else. Remember Joseph?/
Oh, I sure do. *cracks knuckles*
/Anita tells us Cardinal got her name because of her red-gold curls and then immediately talks about how they're so not as red as Damian's own straight long bloodred hair/
Umm, aren’t you battling Belle Morte right now? Why do you care about this random woman’s hair color? Priorities, Anita!
/A sitcom about WHAT? He's a werelion mob boss! Why would he have a sitcom mentality? What does that even mean?/
Oh, maybe it’s because he got *married* and only boring, bourgeois suburbanites get married! It’s only whitebread sitcom families who choose to limit themselves to something as stifling and antiquated as monogamy, instead of the exciting and liberating one-way harem! After all, it’s not like LKH is married and…oh, wait.
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Date: 2013-03-30 08:05 pm (UTC)I sometimes wonder if LKH forgets this is supposed to be from Anita's POV or...?
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Date: 2013-03-30 03:23 am (UTC)2. It would look better if like italicized with the proper French accents and stuff... so, y'know, we know that she's saying it in French and note just calling everyone "short ones". Belle Morte really has a short person kink? OH MY GOD NOW WONDER ANITA HATES HER!
3. ... Some of these sentences are missing words and I'm confused and have to reread them. I'm not sure if it's LKH leaving them out or what.
4. HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LOVE BELLE MORTE YET?!
5. ... I love chapters where nothing happens except Anita gets to look more and more like the Doomcrotch! And I don't even care. At least Belle Morte is up front about who she is. There was so little to even comment on because it was all "OMG I NEED THIS THERIAN FOR MY INSIDE ANIMAL AND I NEED THIS LOVER FOR THIS ANIMAL AND OH SHIT THIS ONE WANTS OUT SO I NEED HIM AND" and... blahblahblah, Anita, tl;dr.
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Date: 2013-03-30 08:10 pm (UTC)3) It might have been me. Then again, LKH is notorious for making sentences that are very difficult to parse.
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Date: 2013-03-30 05:44 am (UTC)"He was a Bride, my Bride" which means "I'd rolled his mind so completely that he was worse than a slave."
So being a married means you're worse than a slave? I get that it's a Dracula reference, but the word choice has really disturbing implications.
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Date: 2013-03-30 08:07 pm (UTC)So being a married means you're worse than a slave? I get that it's a Dracula reference, but the word choice has really disturbing implications.
It doesn't get any better when you consider that it's stated that besides Anita, only male vampires have done this to women, never women to men.
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Date: 2013-03-30 06:54 pm (UTC)Worth noting: Belle Morte's already stuck two of the vampire marks on Anita, so technically she's also BM's servant too. MORE REASON FOR JC TO SEAL THE DEAL, TO STOP THIS SHIT FROM HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE. This is a thing that's been hanging since Cerulean Sins.
But oh, the last two marks would require Belle Morte showing up in person. My kingdom for this, rather than the Council beaming themselves into Anita's bedroom via satellite. Because all this is just extremely passive bullshit. Anita's painted as this kick-ass heroine that does what's necessary to protect the people she loves but all she really does is stay at home until someone interrupts her life and she has to do something about it. It's the supernatural equivelent of telemarketers calling during dinner. But if she could somehow have the Council marked as spam and filtered/blocked, then there'd be even less conflict.
But oh man, imagine if the Council had some old fashioned Age of Sail armada that cruised over to the nearest sea port and spewed forth a small army of loyalist vampires and therians to take over, then takes a steam engine to St Louis. *__* Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
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Date: 2013-03-30 08:09 pm (UTC)Really? GOOD LORD WOMAN, TAKE THE FOURTH MARK!
My kingdom for this, rather than the Council beaming themselves into Anita's bedroom via satellite. Because all this is just extremely passive bullshit.
And all it fucking takes to defend against it is Anita touching dudes she's connected to.
But oh man, imagine if the Council had some old fashioned Age of Sail armada that cruised over to the nearest sea port and spewed forth a small army of loyalist vampires and therians to take over, then takes a steam engine to St Louis.
FUCK. YES.
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Date: 2013-03-30 08:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-03-30 08:49 pm (UTC)But no, because Anita is always right and never has to face any consequences for her actions. So she's allowed to hold out with three marks and keep JC and Richard hanging indefinitely (possibly literally because of her ties with Damian now - she's not sure if he'll age like a human or if she'll be essentially immortal) and vulnerable. By that token, nobody's tried to court Richard away from the triumvirate as someone else's wolf to call because he's not Anita and therefore nobody could possibly desire an incredibly powerful Ulfric or his pack.
And all it fucking takes to defend against it is Anita touching dudes she's connected to.
AND THEN IN HIT LIST, ALL IT TAKES IS ANITA THINKING ABOUT THE DUDES SHE'S CONNECTED TO AND HOW MUCH SHE LOVES THEM TO DEFEAT MOAD. I'm never getting past this. Mostly because I'm tired of Anita's tactics to be "[villain of the moment] doesn't understand [love/life/wolves] so I'll concentrate/surround myself with that!" Like, Belle Morte doesn't understand True Love (tm)! She only knows about lust/sex/seduction! MOAD doesn't understand the value of life because she's been dead for so long! This doesn't make Anita clever or especially tough in fighting back. It makes everyone look incredibly stupid. I'd love a villain to come along who gives zero fucks about human emotions and life in general so Anita can pull this Care Bear Stare thing and they're just LOLOLNO *rips out someone's spine* At the very least, Anita may be forced to bust out one of those thermal grenades she never uses.
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Date: 2013-03-30 10:59 pm (UTC)Whoa, wait what, whoa. Back up a bit here. Charles and his wife? Is Charles someone she knows IRL? A married bodyguard perhaps?
I'm missing something here. Something squicky.
"You've seen Belle's court. Do you want her in charge here, too?"
....Actually, yes I do. She'd be a damn sight better than Anita. Belle may be evil, but at least she's not completely bloody fucking stupid.
And why oh why won't Anita just take the damn fourth mark already after...how many books? 15? 20? I've honestly lost count at this point.
Oh, but solidifying her power base and shoring up her weaknesses would be actually logical. And we can't have that in this universe, now can we?
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Date: 2013-03-30 11:06 pm (UTC)I met Charles a couple times, and I have to say that he has fun to talk to. Very flirty as well, which can be fun (unless someone thinks you are wanting more than just to flirt). However, I am glad to see that he managed to get away from LKH.
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Date: 2013-03-30 11:34 pm (UTC)And yeah, it's a good thing he got away from her too. LKH gives of such a creep factor. Bleurgh.
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