BULLET, CHAPTER 13
Apr. 6th, 2013 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratFirstly, Thursday was World Rat Day! Yes, really! In honor of that, please enjoy this list of rat facts at my personal LJ!
http://rodentfanatic.livejournal.com/50267.html
As for my own babies, the rats are fine, but I am pretty much running a mouse hospital. I'm treating Tiras for an eye infection, Joram for what I think is an abscess (it could be a tumor, but he has the same symptoms that Scurvy's abscess gave him--scabs on his face and shoulders, fatigue, just looking rough/tired), and Jabez...has a prolapsed penis. If that thing doesn't go back in its sheath, he could get an infection and die from that. Or it could become necrotic and he could die from that. So I just give him mineral oil rubs and hope for the best. Yeah, he's pretty much getting handjobs in order to survive.
Which is something that would probably happen in...
BULLET, CHAPTER 13
"If I had ever wanted to give in to hysterics, it was then. How do you fight something with no body to kill? How do you fight something that can posess the most powerful vampires in the world and use them like puppets? How the fuck does anyone fight something like that?"
Dammit, I'm almost EXCITED here. But...I know I will be disappointed. I must keep my expectations low so as not be betrayed by them as with Skin Trade.
A cell phone rings and is playing the theme song to the old Mike Hammer show. I have no idea what that is. Nathaniel "spilled off the bed" to find the phone, and says that "It's the ring tone for Max, the Master of Las Vegas." Versus Max the pizza delivery guy or Max that cute girl that does his hair with whatever the fuck makes it produce its own vanilla scent. "We were so going to have to talk about what new ring tones he'd put on my phone. I'd just gotten "Wild Boys" off it as my main ring tone and put it to a default peal of church bells." Anita. Church bells. Oh that is HILARIOUS.
Anita, who is wedged between jean-Claude and Asher yet also somehow has Nicky on top of her too, takes the phone and asnwers it. Max asks "what the fuck are you guys doing tonight?" Oh wow, how do you give an honest answer to THAT one, huh? Anita also deems it fit not only to tell us what his voice sounds like, but also what he looks like too, which includes the hilarious line "almost totally bald in that I've-lost-my-hair kind of way." As opposed to, she points out, a "fashion-statement way" but on its own that sentence is just so funny to me. BALD IN THAT I'VE-LOST-MY-HAIR KIND OF WAY. Anita just responds snippily to him, and instead of thinking 'hey, maybe you should try to maintain good relations with other MotCs' she feels "a little better that I could still be grumpy". I hope you grump yourself right into getting him to declare war on your city then, Anita. Seriously, no matter how rude he was, he's an MotC, and you're the Human Servant of another MotC, have some goddamn sense.
Max has called because "Bibi woke up screaming about the dark trying to eat her" and said that Anita and JC would know what was happening to her. He asks if they do indeed know. Anita tells us about how he was a mob boss in life and still was, which is one of the reasons why "Vegas was still an old-fashioned mob town in spite of new blood from Ukraine and other places east." I know nothing about Vegas except that is has gambling and showgirls and tigers, so I have no idea if this is reflective of our real-world Vegas or just the Anitaverse Vegas. "But he loved his wife and he was worried about his little tiger queen."
His. Little. Tiger. Queen.
HIS LITTLE TIGER QUEEN
ANITA, YOU ARE A CONDESCENDING SHIT AND I AM SICK OF BIBIANA BEING TREATED LIKE THIS
YOU HAVE NOW STIRRED BACK UP ALL MY RAGE FROM SKIN TRADE OVER THAT
BIBI STAN 4 LIFE OVER HERE
Anita says she does know what's happened, but instead of telling Max what, makes the snide remark that "when Bibiana calms down I'd love to hear exactly what the dark did to try to eat her." Like, maybe she's being serious and really does want to know, but this being Anita I just can't help but hear it in my head in the most obnoxious of tones. Max says that "the dark can't be who it used to be" because Anita had told him that the MOAD was dead and that Anita herself had felt her die. Max sounds angry about this, and instead of thinking that he probably has a right to be upset even though it was an honest mistake, seeing as how it's such a huge deal and all, Anita decides that the only reason he's upset with her is to keep himself from feeling vulnerable emotions like being worried about his wife. NEVER MIND BEING WORRIED ABOUT HIS WIFE COULD BE *WHY* HE'S UPSET, SEEING AS THE MOAD SEEMS TO HAVE PAID HER A PERSONAL VISIT TOO.
Anita tells Max she really thought it was true and that tonight they got a visit from the MOAD as well, adding "it wasn't just Bibiana who had a rough night." Max says it's been almost a year since the bombing, and asks how did this happen, and what happened to Anita tonight. Meanwhile, the shifting goop from Nicky is "beginning to dry in our hair" and I suspect that will be the only genuinely gross thing in this novel that is INTENTIONALLY gross. Anita asks JC what she should tell Max, and JC gives her the obvious answer that Max is their ally so tell him the truth. Anita gives Max 'an abbreviated version"...so that lucky asshole doesn't have to go through the verbal equivalent of fifteen pages of nonsense. Dammit, why couldn't *I* get that deal too?! As she does, JC tells the others to "go and clean up before the gunk dried. Most of the men looked to me to see if I wanted them to go." Oh good grief. "Honestly, I wanted some hand-holding." When does she NOT?
So Nathaniel and JC and Micah and Damian stay and hold her while she talks to Max. Because I guess anita is the ONLY one who this was scary for. Oh, and "Cardinal tried to get Damian to leave too, but he wanted to know what we were going to do about Mommie Dearest and the Council. He was vampire enough to need to know that before he died for the day. Cardinal was woman enough to need her boyfriend farther away from me." I think I'm supposed to see Cardinal as a silly wimminfolk who needs to get her priorities in order, but all I can think is 'smart girl'.
Richard kisses Anita on the forehead and says he'll clean up while "you do the vampire politics". Or just do vampires, same thing really. Anita is surprised when Micah follows Richard to the door because...Micah and Richard aren't together? No really that's her reason. Because Micah might not just want to get a shower due to being covered in gunk? Oh but god forbid he leave your side for a nanosecond!
Max says "Motherfucker" after Anita finishes telling him everything. he also says that Victor, Cynric, Rick, and others are on their way by plane to St. Louis right now. The meeting with the weretigers, remember that? Anita has decided that "we have bigger fish to fry" than that. Uh, yeah, bigger fish to fry than potentially gathering MORE ALLIES? God, she is dim. And this isn't her call to make either, since she's not MotC. Instead of pointing any of this out though, Max makes the cryptic remark that "Bibi says that our only hope to defeat the Dark is to have another Master of Tigers, another Father of the day." GUESS WHO THIS IS GOING TO BE. Anita shockingly does not realize that anything important is always going to be her, and she thinks he means Jean-Claude, whom she says will not work because he doesn't call tigers "and the only vampire we have who's able to walk in the day isn't a master of anything." Max asks if she means Damian by this, she does (way to talk about him, geez, Anita), and Max says that it was Anita who made him a "day walker", who made "a weak vampire able to do one of the rarest feats among us bloodsuckers."
Anita tries to protest and Max says he's not sending the tigers (whom he calls "our boys", making me think they may, alas, be all men, of course) to JC but to Anita. He adds that Auggie (remember him? from Danse Macabre) "says we should send him some more of our women, something about maybe he'd inherit your power to call tiger like you inherited his ability to call wolf."
Anita says "What?" to this and that was my reaction. Anita did not inherit the ability to call wolves from Auggie. She had it back in Burnt Offerings, Padma just last chapter referenced her using it against him. And Auggie doesn't call wolves, he calls lions. Maybe he means "Auggie thinks he may have inherited the ability to call tigers from Anita the same way Anita got the ability to call wolves from Jean-Claude" and the phrasing is just confusing? I think that's it. But it still makes no sense. Anita got that ability because she was linked to JC through their triumvirate AND she has that super-special thing going where she absorbs powers from vampires and was in contact with JC and Padma, who can both call wolves. Auggie doesn't have any kind of connection that way with Anita at all, why would he get any abilities, let alone that one specifically, from her? Maybe Auggie just wants some tiger ladies?
Or maybe he means "Auggie thinks that JC may have inherited the ability to call tigers from Anita just like Anita got the ability to call wolves from him." Okay, that makes the most sense. I'm going with that. Goddamn, LKH, please, get better at phrasing, that was confusing as fuck all.
There's a sound on the other end of the phone, and Anita can hear Max asking Bibi if she's okay to do this. "A moment later Chang-Bibi of the White Tiger Clan was on the phone, so I guess she was okay to do this. Or Max couldn't stop her from taking the phone. Sometimes he loved his wife a little too much." Men are totally pussywhipped if they ever let their wives/girlfriends talk at all ever, got it. Especially about something important to the one person who might be able to do something about it.
Anita describes Bibi as "one of the scariest weretigers I'd ever met" and I sigh because she did start out that way, didn't she? She totally fucked with Anita bigtime, and for no other reason really than that she could, that she wanted to test her, to play with her and figure out how she worked. But then by the end it turns out she's a victim who needs to be saved from Vittorio by Anita whereas her son and some other random male can totally resist him, wtf. It's like even when LKH *wants* to make a powerful, capable woman, she just can't.
Bibi tells Anita that "you must embrace my tigers when they arrive. You must bring the tigers with you into their full power." For those who don't recall, each tiger bloodline used to have the respective powers of an element--water, fire, etc. Modern ones, however, do not, except for the men that Anita fucks. The ones she fucks display the powers that their bloodline once had, like how Crispin can now make little shocks of electricity. So basically Bibi just told Anita that she has to fuck a bunch of weretigers in order to make them power up. Great, so that's her excuse this time.
Anita says that "the other tiger clans don't want you favored above everyone else." I have a feeling then that the solution to this will be to fuck the weretiger men from ALL tiger clans then, not just Bibiana's. I think Bibi says as much when she tells Anita that "All their Changs have had the same nightmare that I had, Anita. They have seen the Darkness, and they remember in the heart of them when she tried to rule us all. The Father of the Day, he saved us. He controlled us and kept her from harnessing all the power of the tigers. She only defeated him by destroying the last golden queen."
The last golden queen until, y'know, Anita. Also, wow, that is a sucky history---the only way the tigers get saved from MOAD controlling them is by having Vittorio controlling them instead. How are they getting saved at all then? They've still got an evil vampire god ruling them either way. Goddamn, I get really sick of how vampires always have a monopoly on therianthropes; they're BOTH children of Marmee Noir, dammit, and she was a therian BEFORE she died and became a hybrid beast. Yet now she seems to only be classed as a vampire, only associated with vampires, etc. Which gives me all sorts of fan theories and fanfic ideas about how at some point vampires basically stole her away for themselves, how they probably got their animal-calling abilities (which is what allows them dominate the therians like they do) from having a monopoly on her, etc. And how one day Marmee is going to come back to her OTHER children and the tables will turn. Maybe THAT'S the real reason why the Council doesn't want her waking up!
Anita asks Bibi how she knows that now since she didn't know it before. Uh, how do you know she didn't know it before, Anita? She never mentioned in in Skin trade, no, but why would she? She had no fucking idea that Vittorio was the murderer or that he was the fabled Father of the Day. She just knew he was able to call tigers, and other vampires, including her own husband, can do that. She probably didn't realize who he was until AFTER you killed him and told her all about it. But since Anita is never wrong about any of her assumptions, Bibiana tells her she never believed "the stories of the Living Dark, a dark Goddess and a God of Living Light, who created our people" because "it was legend, fairy tales" and she asks "Who believes such things?" Uh, maybe therians and vampires do, since the MOAD is common knowledge, as is the belief that she is likely the progenitor of both species? Considering that she's generally considered to be the source of both therians and vampires, I wonder how such a legend would spring up in the first place, given that legends like that are usually there to explain something there's not already an explanation for. I would say maybe it's their alternative to the idea that Marmee was the first (since some believe she's not the first one ever period, just the 'mother' of the vampire culture) but then why have a different Living Dark/Dark Goddess figure as one of the race's creators in there since that's pretty much MOAD's entire gig as it is? Like, that's not really an 'alternative' origin story at all. It just throws in Vittorio's useless defeated-by-an-orgasm ass.
Anita says he understands not believing a creation story like that because "I know as a good little Christian I should really buy all that Old testament stuff, but I thought of it as representative stories trying to explain why a God of Love would make a world where people suffered so much."
WOW, HOW ENLIGHTENED. Seriously, does she really think she's so unusual in this? A lot of modern-day Christians, including a good deal of PRIESTS, believe that the stories in the Bible are parables rather than accounts meant to be taken literally. It is not some incredibly insightful unusual special-snowflake thing to take this viewpoint at all. And "good little Christian"? Firstly, she's NOT a good one at all. Secondly, is it just me or does that sound super-condescending? It sounds like something a sneering atheist would say. I should know, I used to be one (I'm still an atheist, but I ceased to be the sneering type around the same time I graduated high school. LKH is old enough to be my mother). What's more, Christianity is much more about the New Testament anyway, not the old. And the whole God of Love deal really doesn't show up until the New testament, does it? I mean, that's why Jesus died, right? I thought LKH was raised Catholic, shouldn't she know that? But given how little she seems to understand her current faith, I guess it should be expected for her not to understand the jist at all of her previous one.
Bibi won't tell Anita what she dreamed because "to talk of such things gives them power" but she does say that "it was only the Light, the God, that kept us from her power the first time." Because therians of this incredibly powered type need protection from one vampire...from another vampire. "It was the combined power of all the tiger clans that gave him the power to keep her from conquering the world." So why didn't all the tiger clans combine on their own to fight her? Why did they need him? THEY ARE GIANT CATS WITH ELEMENTAL POWERS. VITTORIO WAS JUST SOME SEXIST LOSER.
Anita says that "being able to call a little electricity and fire isn't going to defeat Mommie Dearest." Bibi says that Anita has only seen what the weaker can do, that "you haven't even seen what Domino's black tiger side is capable of" and that if the MOAD and Master of Tigers/Father of the Day are real, then "the powers that our clans once had must be true, too."
Was it ever in doubt that any of this was real? Everyone knows the MOAD is real. They've also known the powers of the clans are real too ever since Anita boinked Crispin and Alex into being able to have, as she mentioned, abilities of electricity and fire. YET ANITA DOES NOT BELIEVE BIBIANA. She tells her to "come on" and Bibiana has to point to out that Alex is now a pyrokinetic and Anita says okay but all Crispin can do is "basically really uber-static electricity. It's not a weapon." BUT IT'S REAL, DUMBASS. AND BIBI JUST SAID YOU'VE ONLY SEEN WHAT THE WEAKER ONES CAN DO. WHY ARE YOU SO DENSE. WHY ARE YOU DISAGREEING WITH STUFF YOU ALREADY KNOW TO BE TRUE.
Bibi then says that "Black tiger is water, Anita. The human body is made up of mostly water." Anita asks what she means by that. OH COME ON, YOU CAN'T BE THIS DUMB. YOU CAN'T BE. Bibi repeats that she's barely seen the least of what they can do "if you give us back all our powers." Which only Anita can do, of course. Because reasons. Which are never explained.
Anita says that Cynric hasn't gotten any new powers. Bibi says he's young and she only banged him once. Anita says once was plenty. YEAH, YOU SAY THAT NOW, BUT I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN KISS THE DEAD. According to Bibi, the element of the blue tigers is air and that they could create and control storms, and that golden tigers, just as Paula Chu said in SKin Trade, "controlled earth and all energies upon it." Anita has to ask what that means. "They could make the very ground obey their will." And Anita has to ask if she means earthquakes, and is disbelieving. Bibiana reminds her that MR. OLIVER WAS CALLED THE EARTHMOVER FOR A REASON, YOU DINGBAT, IT'S POSSIBLE. Anita suddenly remembers that, oh, that's right, he could do that. We get a paragaph-long recollection of how she killed Mr. Oliver.
...I really hate that staking is all it takes to take down a Council member. You'd think they'd be a cut above that standard weakness.
Anita says that if Cynric can call storms, she doesn't much fancy the idea of a 17 year old being able to do that in her city. Bibana assures her that "it won't be his power, Anita, it will come to you. if you raise it in the tigers it will come to you, and you will be too power for the Darkness".
ANITA WILL GET ELEMENTAL POWERS? OH GOOD GRAVY.
I mean, in fanfic and roleplay we've actually given her the elemental abilities of the tigers based on her having all the colors in her, but only to make her an even bigger Big Bad for our characters to face. It's not something I ever wanted to see in canon.
For some reason, this information prompts Anita to tell Bibiana that "I'm not a vampire." Uh, how would gaining elemental abilities via the tigers make you a vampire? Because Vittorio allegedly did it back in the day? But you've faced him, so you can probably do what he does, because you've got those Super Sue power-copying abilities. Also, you're always talking about how you're a living vampire, so...
Bibiana tells Anita that she is, she just doesn't drink blood, which was exactly what Anita kept saying all through Skin trade with her "living vampire!" schtick she wouldn't shut up about. Bibi tells her that if Anita has to save them all and that if she doesn't, the MOAD will posess all the tigers, and take Anita to be her vessel, and since Anita is a golden queen she will be able to "destroy us all" through her. Anita says she's not a weretiger because she can't shift. Instead of giving a retort ton this, Bibi randomly informs Anita that "Yellow was meant to be our ruler over all, a sort of High Queen." That's why I always call them golden instead of yellow. If they were just another color, they'd be yellow to me. But no, they're special and rare and the best of all, so they're GOLDEN. And of course, Anita is the last golden queen, so she's the most rare and special and powerful of them all. GAG.
Anita again says this is all speculation and they can't know any of it is true. She tells Anita that she must harness the power of the clans. Anita's response is "I don't must."
She started out this chapter grasping for some way to be able to fight something like MOAD. Now that someone is offering her a potential way, she's poo-pooing it to the point of not even being interested in trying. She does not read to me as desperate here as she should be and supposedly is, nor as particularly intelligent or helpful in any way herself. At least Bibi has an idea!
Bibi tells her that if she doesn't, the MOAD will consume the world, and that it was the MOAD who caused the First Emperor of China to try to wipe the weretigers out, and that the Master of Tigers was unable to stand against her without the power of the golden tigers on his side, and thus she crushed him and nearly destroyed the weretigers as a people. Anita asks if Bibi knows how the MOAD ended up in her coma in the underground castle/cavern, and we get some REALLY cool info:
- "The Council had tried to abandon her a few times when world wars had forced them to move countries, but there had been a compulsion that wouldn't let them leave her body behind."
- As far as any vampires know of (as far as Anita knows) no one knows why she fell into this sleep. She just didn't wake up one night.
- Bibi says that according to legend, her own guards, the Harlequin, did it by use of a spell and a sacrifice of lives. They wanted to kill her, but couldn't figure out how to do it permanently, so the best they could do was put her to sleep, tie her to the body she last inhabited (so my headcanon about her being a body-hopper long before her current escapades was right!) and left her there.
- MOAD spared some golden tigers so that the Harlequin could keep them as their animals to call, as she believed the Harlequin were loyal to her. The guards told the tigers of this so that, if they died, there would be some memory left of what happened and what was needed to defeat the MOAD again.
Anita:"Bibiana, I can't be some sort of weretiger savior."
Bibi: "Not savior, Anita, master. You must be Mistress of Tigers. You must be the daywalking vampire who defeats the night once and for all."
OH FUCK THIS SHIT. FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT WITH A RUSTY SPORK CHAINSAW GUJSDFGKSKKG
Also, the "light equals good, dark/night equals bad" schitck bugs me at the best of times a bit, and it's especially bothersome right now because...therians and vampires are creatures of the night. That's what they're CALLED. And it's true--vampires can only come out at night, and therians are tied to the moon. They can see in the dark. it is not unkwnon to them. It is not blinding. It presents none of the scariness or dofficulty to them that it does to humans. It's when they get to be themselves. Night is not bad to them. Night is not an enemy to them. Framing their villain as darkness and their savior (oh, pardon me, their master) as light just doesn't make sense for these people in the slightest. It's a totally human perspective.
Anita asks if the legend includes how to kill or re-spell the MOAD back into slumber. Bibi says that "the guards that have no name" (she's yet to call them the Harlequin, but that's who she's talking about) are still around so Anita should ask them. Anita tells us about a charm given to her by the Harlequin the first time the MOAD messed with her, a piece of metal with an imprint of a many-headed tiger on it. And we get this headbanger: "It was supposed to keep her out of my head and my body. It worked, but it had to be cleansed and recharged periodically, like a gun that needed reloading. My cross just worked, but then it was about faith, and the charm with its imprint of a many-headed tiger on it was magic, not faith. The more witches I knew, the more I realized that there was a difference."
YOU DIDN'T REALIZE IT BEFORE?
ANITA
YOU LIVE IN A UNIVERSE WHERE WITCHES AND MAGIC ARE REAL
AND PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT WITCHES AND HAVE NO MAGIC CAN STILL WARD OF VAMPIRES WITH FAITH
THE DIVIDE IS ACTUALLY PRETTY CLEAR AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN
WHY ARE YOU SO DENSE
I mean, I can like dumb heroes sometimes depending how they're done, but Anita isn't MEANT to be dumb and she also takes it to really frustrating levels.
And then Anita fills us all in on the Harlequin and what they are and I still don't understand how they can be summoned to come kill you just by saying their name. I also don't understand why their organization and all its members are named after characters in the Commedia dell'Arte. MOAD has been asleep a thousand years. The Harlequin are the ones who put her to sleep. But the Commedia dell'Arte only started in the 16th century, which was centuries after that happened. So what were they called before then? And why did they take those names? Maybe the Commedia dell'Arte in this world got their names from the Harlequin instead of vice versa, but then why would the names of killer vampire assassins be given to characters like the ones in Commedia dell'Arte, none of which are particularly evil or deadly?
Anita also repeats how it was the council that hired mercenaries to blow MOAD up. Now, I already ranted about 'when did this information happen' but now that the Council has shown up possessed by MOAD, I have another bone to pick with it: Belle Morte herself says they let the MOAD enter them because without her power, they might all die since she's the all-mother. So...if that's the case, why the heck would the Council have had her blown up in the first place? "Oh yeah, we're gonna have her killed. Wait, wait, that might kill us too, better save her now!" Seriously, what the fuck?
Anita says Bibi has given her a lot to process and that she needs to think. Bibi tells her not to think too long and that she is going to call the other queens and urge them to send people to Anita because "our only hope lies in a swift rise to power." Sudden random power-ups? Oh Bibi, don't fret, Anita can do those in her sleep!
Anita says she hasn’t agreed to all of this. Bibi says she knows (but I doubt she CARES, Anita, given this is the survival of her species on the line from her point of view) and calls Anita “skeptical by nature” (a phrase which here means ‘doubting fantastic things in a world of fantastic things when said new fantastic things line up perfectly with the other fantastic things already established as real’ aka really illogical stupidity) but reminds her that they’re losing time and, again, Anita must take action swiftly. Yeah, good luck with that Bibi, it took us HOW long to even get to the orgy after it was agreed upon?
“So, what, I fuck everyone into their next power level like some pornographic computer game?” It’s really amusing to me that Anita asks this so scornfully while Nathaniel and Damian are cuddling her and Asher has his head in her lap. Because it just illustrates so nicely how she’s been doing that all along anyway. Bibi tells her to joke all she likes “but do what we need you to do” meaning, yes, do all the weretigers or else Marmee Noir is going to get everyone.
Honestly, how can LKH even remotely believe that she’s writing a horror series when the solution to everything, including what should be an Eldritch Abomination Goddess beyond human understanding that is body-hopping through the most powerful of supernatural hosts…is sex? Seriously, I just don’t get it.
Bibi says that if Anita doesn’t get moving, the MOAD will possess the queens of the tiger clans. Anita says that she can’t possess anyone who isn’t a vampire. Uh, what? When the fuck was THIS established, Anita? And you say you’re not a vampire just two pages ago, but the MOAD tried to possess you and nearly did, so which is it? Bibi snarkingly asks if Anita thinks this because the Traveller can only take vampires, and Anita says yes, and Bibi totally schools her on SHE IS THE FIRST, SHE CAN DO SHIT WAY BEYOND ALL THE OTHERS, EVEN THE COUNCIL, YOU STUPID TWIT. Okay, she doesn’t call her a stupid twit, but she makes it very clear that the MOAD is god-tier and can take whomever she damn pleases…which Anita should fucking know by now.
Anita asks if MOAD can take humans. Bibi says she doesn’t think so, just vampires and werecats. That actually surprises/disappoints me. I can see the logic, yes, but I’m still surprised her range is that limited because, again, god-tier. Especially since most humans have zero defenses against even the lowest level of vampire psychic powers. Anita says a lot of this is guesswork (yes, Anita, because no one actually KNOWS much of anything about MOAD for sure, so guesswork is the best you’re going to get, why don’t you just shut up and listen for once) and Bibi says that if Adam and Eve showed up at your door, you’d also have to believe in the serpent. Anita asks what she means by this.
Anita, seriously? It means that if part of a legend is shown to be true, no matter how fantastic, then there’s reason to give credence to the possibility that rest of the legend might be true as well. Bibiana breaks this down for her, but Anita still argues against Bibi’s claims that her people’s stories about the Darkness conquering the world are just because “every creation story as an end-of-the-world clause, Bibiana. It’s usually just stories of floods or earthquakes that were local to the original people. Disasters that seemed world-destroying, but if you traveled a hundred miles, it wasn’t.”
Anita. This is not Noah’s Flood, okay? We know of the MOAD. We know of Vittorio. We know of both their connections to tigers. And we know that the tigers clearly do have some form of elemental powers that they can at this time only access by you screwing them. Bibiana has not told you anything that is particularly out-there in any way as compared to everything we already know. If anything, it actually all fits pretty well. LKH, Anita does not look intelligent and modern here. She looks like a total moron trying to sound smart, and a pretentious moron at that.
“You have felt her power, Anita. You have felt that she does not love, or care; she is an intellect and a nearly pure sociopath. She cares only for her own pain; all else is just toys for her to use, not real people, real beings. Do you really believe that she will stop with the destruction of just the vampires?”
Anita says no, and Bibi tells her to therefore “stop trying to throw logic at nightmares.” Actually, Bibi, the only one being logical here was you. But I have some problems with the MOAD being classed as a sociopath. I realize she was alive once as a human or pre-human hominid, but she’s been dead so long, been a sheer FORCE for so long, that qualifying her in human terms seems wrong. I mean, she gets called things like “the dark itself” and “the night given flesh” which frames her as a force of nature, something beyond good and evil, something definitely beyond human in any sense. It’s like calling Cthulu a sociopath--yeah, he’s got no empathy, sure, but he’s not supposed to. He’s not human. He’s not anything close to human, and neither is she, and framing her in those terms, as if she’s supposed to have human qualities like empathy but is lacking it and therefore needs a condition to explain that lack, is just silly.
I think it’s just another case of “LKH has no clue what being a sociopath even means but really likes to throw the term around a lot”.
Bibi says that monsters are real (DUH) and sometimes the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster…which I think that Anita has down pat as it is. Anita asks if she would be the bigger monster if she could do everything that Bibi says. Honey, it’s not your abilities, myriad and ridiculous as they are, that make you the worst monster I’ve yet to read about. Bibi doesn’t answer this but asks if Anita thinks she could have all this power and resist the temptation to (mis)use it. Anita says yes, and I LAUGHED SO MUCH. Bibi apparently shares my opinion because her response is that “she said my name the way my stepmother had said it when I was about fifteen.” Because Judith was on to your bullshit then, and Bibi is on to it now. I like that Bibi is in fact aware that Anita is a terrible person to have in power of any sort, but she’s still urging her to take it because it will save her own people. I want a book about Bibi, she’s interesting and makes tough choices, not to mention makes it clear she sees through the crap of folks like Anita the Queen of Everything no matter how much she needs her.
Anita asks “Don’t you want me to use the power if I could get it? Isn’t that the point?” and Bibi explains that she’s just trusting (which I bet she doesn’t actually) that once Anita gets this power her “sense of honor and morality” will prevent her from turning it against the weretigers instead. I’ll give you all a moment to laugh about the idea of Anita having ANY sense of honor or morality in the slightest. To be fair to Bibi, she probably doesn’t have the best sense of what honor and morality even are herself, since it’s been stated that she doesn’t think like a human but like a tiger with a human brain. So her definitions of what’s right probably do center all around survival, predation, etc. It’s just that, unlike Anita, she’s got a good excuse, having never been human at all as a born weretiger who was likely raised within the culture of her clan.
Anita says that’s a lot of trust for someone she’s only met once. Bibi says that if she didn’t have faith in her, she wouldn’t be sending some of her most powerful weretigers to her, as well as Cynric, the only known blue tiger in existence. Anita tells her she’ll “try my best not to hurt anyone.” I wonder if she includes ‘rape and lobotomy’ under her definition of hurting people? Bibi starts praising Anita, saying that the fact she promises this rather than just “I’ll do my best” proves that she is a good person. “You believe your moral compass is broken because of the sex, but I believe if you can get past the idea of it being a sin, your moral compass points true north.”
If LKH could get past her idea of sex being a sin, maybe she could actually allow Anita to have sex that both she and her partner(s) consented to because they just wanted to have sex rather than NEEDING to for some really bizarre plot reason that results in rape, mind-wiping, and shit I don’t even have words for.
Anita tells Bibi not to put her faith in her. Bibi asks “Where else can I put it?” and my personal interpretation of this is that Bibi knows Anita is a Canon Sue and therefore knows she is her best shot for the survival of her people, so she’s going to butter her up as much as it takes even if she is, as she says, the bigger monster. Because at least she’ll be a monster on her side.
Poor Bibi. I really do want a book about you.
Anita decides that they’ll need a backup plan too, and the chapter ends.
http://rodentfanatic.livejournal.com/50267.html
As for my own babies, the rats are fine, but I am pretty much running a mouse hospital. I'm treating Tiras for an eye infection, Joram for what I think is an abscess (it could be a tumor, but he has the same symptoms that Scurvy's abscess gave him--scabs on his face and shoulders, fatigue, just looking rough/tired), and Jabez...has a prolapsed penis. If that thing doesn't go back in its sheath, he could get an infection and die from that. Or it could become necrotic and he could die from that. So I just give him mineral oil rubs and hope for the best. Yeah, he's pretty much getting handjobs in order to survive.
Which is something that would probably happen in...
BULLET, CHAPTER 13
"If I had ever wanted to give in to hysterics, it was then. How do you fight something with no body to kill? How do you fight something that can posess the most powerful vampires in the world and use them like puppets? How the fuck does anyone fight something like that?"
Dammit, I'm almost EXCITED here. But...I know I will be disappointed. I must keep my expectations low so as not be betrayed by them as with Skin Trade.
A cell phone rings and is playing the theme song to the old Mike Hammer show. I have no idea what that is. Nathaniel "spilled off the bed" to find the phone, and says that "It's the ring tone for Max, the Master of Las Vegas." Versus Max the pizza delivery guy or Max that cute girl that does his hair with whatever the fuck makes it produce its own vanilla scent. "We were so going to have to talk about what new ring tones he'd put on my phone. I'd just gotten "Wild Boys" off it as my main ring tone and put it to a default peal of church bells." Anita. Church bells. Oh that is HILARIOUS.
Anita, who is wedged between jean-Claude and Asher yet also somehow has Nicky on top of her too, takes the phone and asnwers it. Max asks "what the fuck are you guys doing tonight?" Oh wow, how do you give an honest answer to THAT one, huh? Anita also deems it fit not only to tell us what his voice sounds like, but also what he looks like too, which includes the hilarious line "almost totally bald in that I've-lost-my-hair kind of way." As opposed to, she points out, a "fashion-statement way" but on its own that sentence is just so funny to me. BALD IN THAT I'VE-LOST-MY-HAIR KIND OF WAY. Anita just responds snippily to him, and instead of thinking 'hey, maybe you should try to maintain good relations with other MotCs' she feels "a little better that I could still be grumpy". I hope you grump yourself right into getting him to declare war on your city then, Anita. Seriously, no matter how rude he was, he's an MotC, and you're the Human Servant of another MotC, have some goddamn sense.
Max has called because "Bibi woke up screaming about the dark trying to eat her" and said that Anita and JC would know what was happening to her. He asks if they do indeed know. Anita tells us about how he was a mob boss in life and still was, which is one of the reasons why "Vegas was still an old-fashioned mob town in spite of new blood from Ukraine and other places east." I know nothing about Vegas except that is has gambling and showgirls and tigers, so I have no idea if this is reflective of our real-world Vegas or just the Anitaverse Vegas. "But he loved his wife and he was worried about his little tiger queen."
His. Little. Tiger. Queen.
HIS LITTLE TIGER QUEEN
ANITA, YOU ARE A CONDESCENDING SHIT AND I AM SICK OF BIBIANA BEING TREATED LIKE THIS
YOU HAVE NOW STIRRED BACK UP ALL MY RAGE FROM SKIN TRADE OVER THAT
BIBI STAN 4 LIFE OVER HERE
Anita says she does know what's happened, but instead of telling Max what, makes the snide remark that "when Bibiana calms down I'd love to hear exactly what the dark did to try to eat her." Like, maybe she's being serious and really does want to know, but this being Anita I just can't help but hear it in my head in the most obnoxious of tones. Max says that "the dark can't be who it used to be" because Anita had told him that the MOAD was dead and that Anita herself had felt her die. Max sounds angry about this, and instead of thinking that he probably has a right to be upset even though it was an honest mistake, seeing as how it's such a huge deal and all, Anita decides that the only reason he's upset with her is to keep himself from feeling vulnerable emotions like being worried about his wife. NEVER MIND BEING WORRIED ABOUT HIS WIFE COULD BE *WHY* HE'S UPSET, SEEING AS THE MOAD SEEMS TO HAVE PAID HER A PERSONAL VISIT TOO.
Anita tells Max she really thought it was true and that tonight they got a visit from the MOAD as well, adding "it wasn't just Bibiana who had a rough night." Max says it's been almost a year since the bombing, and asks how did this happen, and what happened to Anita tonight. Meanwhile, the shifting goop from Nicky is "beginning to dry in our hair" and I suspect that will be the only genuinely gross thing in this novel that is INTENTIONALLY gross. Anita asks JC what she should tell Max, and JC gives her the obvious answer that Max is their ally so tell him the truth. Anita gives Max 'an abbreviated version"...so that lucky asshole doesn't have to go through the verbal equivalent of fifteen pages of nonsense. Dammit, why couldn't *I* get that deal too?! As she does, JC tells the others to "go and clean up before the gunk dried. Most of the men looked to me to see if I wanted them to go." Oh good grief. "Honestly, I wanted some hand-holding." When does she NOT?
So Nathaniel and JC and Micah and Damian stay and hold her while she talks to Max. Because I guess anita is the ONLY one who this was scary for. Oh, and "Cardinal tried to get Damian to leave too, but he wanted to know what we were going to do about Mommie Dearest and the Council. He was vampire enough to need to know that before he died for the day. Cardinal was woman enough to need her boyfriend farther away from me." I think I'm supposed to see Cardinal as a silly wimminfolk who needs to get her priorities in order, but all I can think is 'smart girl'.
Richard kisses Anita on the forehead and says he'll clean up while "you do the vampire politics". Or just do vampires, same thing really. Anita is surprised when Micah follows Richard to the door because...Micah and Richard aren't together? No really that's her reason. Because Micah might not just want to get a shower due to being covered in gunk? Oh but god forbid he leave your side for a nanosecond!
Max says "Motherfucker" after Anita finishes telling him everything. he also says that Victor, Cynric, Rick, and others are on their way by plane to St. Louis right now. The meeting with the weretigers, remember that? Anita has decided that "we have bigger fish to fry" than that. Uh, yeah, bigger fish to fry than potentially gathering MORE ALLIES? God, she is dim. And this isn't her call to make either, since she's not MotC. Instead of pointing any of this out though, Max makes the cryptic remark that "Bibi says that our only hope to defeat the Dark is to have another Master of Tigers, another Father of the day." GUESS WHO THIS IS GOING TO BE. Anita shockingly does not realize that anything important is always going to be her, and she thinks he means Jean-Claude, whom she says will not work because he doesn't call tigers "and the only vampire we have who's able to walk in the day isn't a master of anything." Max asks if she means Damian by this, she does (way to talk about him, geez, Anita), and Max says that it was Anita who made him a "day walker", who made "a weak vampire able to do one of the rarest feats among us bloodsuckers."
Anita tries to protest and Max says he's not sending the tigers (whom he calls "our boys", making me think they may, alas, be all men, of course) to JC but to Anita. He adds that Auggie (remember him? from Danse Macabre) "says we should send him some more of our women, something about maybe he'd inherit your power to call tiger like you inherited his ability to call wolf."
Anita says "What?" to this and that was my reaction. Anita did not inherit the ability to call wolves from Auggie. She had it back in Burnt Offerings, Padma just last chapter referenced her using it against him. And Auggie doesn't call wolves, he calls lions. Maybe he means "Auggie thinks he may have inherited the ability to call tigers from Anita the same way Anita got the ability to call wolves from Jean-Claude" and the phrasing is just confusing? I think that's it. But it still makes no sense. Anita got that ability because she was linked to JC through their triumvirate AND she has that super-special thing going where she absorbs powers from vampires and was in contact with JC and Padma, who can both call wolves. Auggie doesn't have any kind of connection that way with Anita at all, why would he get any abilities, let alone that one specifically, from her? Maybe Auggie just wants some tiger ladies?
Or maybe he means "Auggie thinks that JC may have inherited the ability to call tigers from Anita just like Anita got the ability to call wolves from him." Okay, that makes the most sense. I'm going with that. Goddamn, LKH, please, get better at phrasing, that was confusing as fuck all.
There's a sound on the other end of the phone, and Anita can hear Max asking Bibi if she's okay to do this. "A moment later Chang-Bibi of the White Tiger Clan was on the phone, so I guess she was okay to do this. Or Max couldn't stop her from taking the phone. Sometimes he loved his wife a little too much." Men are totally pussywhipped if they ever let their wives/girlfriends talk at all ever, got it. Especially about something important to the one person who might be able to do something about it.
Anita describes Bibi as "one of the scariest weretigers I'd ever met" and I sigh because she did start out that way, didn't she? She totally fucked with Anita bigtime, and for no other reason really than that she could, that she wanted to test her, to play with her and figure out how she worked. But then by the end it turns out she's a victim who needs to be saved from Vittorio by Anita whereas her son and some other random male can totally resist him, wtf. It's like even when LKH *wants* to make a powerful, capable woman, she just can't.
Bibi tells Anita that "you must embrace my tigers when they arrive. You must bring the tigers with you into their full power." For those who don't recall, each tiger bloodline used to have the respective powers of an element--water, fire, etc. Modern ones, however, do not, except for the men that Anita fucks. The ones she fucks display the powers that their bloodline once had, like how Crispin can now make little shocks of electricity. So basically Bibi just told Anita that she has to fuck a bunch of weretigers in order to make them power up. Great, so that's her excuse this time.
Anita says that "the other tiger clans don't want you favored above everyone else." I have a feeling then that the solution to this will be to fuck the weretiger men from ALL tiger clans then, not just Bibiana's. I think Bibi says as much when she tells Anita that "All their Changs have had the same nightmare that I had, Anita. They have seen the Darkness, and they remember in the heart of them when she tried to rule us all. The Father of the Day, he saved us. He controlled us and kept her from harnessing all the power of the tigers. She only defeated him by destroying the last golden queen."
The last golden queen until, y'know, Anita. Also, wow, that is a sucky history---the only way the tigers get saved from MOAD controlling them is by having Vittorio controlling them instead. How are they getting saved at all then? They've still got an evil vampire god ruling them either way. Goddamn, I get really sick of how vampires always have a monopoly on therianthropes; they're BOTH children of Marmee Noir, dammit, and she was a therian BEFORE she died and became a hybrid beast. Yet now she seems to only be classed as a vampire, only associated with vampires, etc. Which gives me all sorts of fan theories and fanfic ideas about how at some point vampires basically stole her away for themselves, how they probably got their animal-calling abilities (which is what allows them dominate the therians like they do) from having a monopoly on her, etc. And how one day Marmee is going to come back to her OTHER children and the tables will turn. Maybe THAT'S the real reason why the Council doesn't want her waking up!
Anita asks Bibi how she knows that now since she didn't know it before. Uh, how do you know she didn't know it before, Anita? She never mentioned in in Skin trade, no, but why would she? She had no fucking idea that Vittorio was the murderer or that he was the fabled Father of the Day. She just knew he was able to call tigers, and other vampires, including her own husband, can do that. She probably didn't realize who he was until AFTER you killed him and told her all about it. But since Anita is never wrong about any of her assumptions, Bibiana tells her she never believed "the stories of the Living Dark, a dark Goddess and a God of Living Light, who created our people" because "it was legend, fairy tales" and she asks "Who believes such things?" Uh, maybe therians and vampires do, since the MOAD is common knowledge, as is the belief that she is likely the progenitor of both species? Considering that she's generally considered to be the source of both therians and vampires, I wonder how such a legend would spring up in the first place, given that legends like that are usually there to explain something there's not already an explanation for. I would say maybe it's their alternative to the idea that Marmee was the first (since some believe she's not the first one ever period, just the 'mother' of the vampire culture) but then why have a different Living Dark/Dark Goddess figure as one of the race's creators in there since that's pretty much MOAD's entire gig as it is? Like, that's not really an 'alternative' origin story at all. It just throws in Vittorio's useless defeated-by-an-orgasm ass.
Anita says he understands not believing a creation story like that because "I know as a good little Christian I should really buy all that Old testament stuff, but I thought of it as representative stories trying to explain why a God of Love would make a world where people suffered so much."
WOW, HOW ENLIGHTENED. Seriously, does she really think she's so unusual in this? A lot of modern-day Christians, including a good deal of PRIESTS, believe that the stories in the Bible are parables rather than accounts meant to be taken literally. It is not some incredibly insightful unusual special-snowflake thing to take this viewpoint at all. And "good little Christian"? Firstly, she's NOT a good one at all. Secondly, is it just me or does that sound super-condescending? It sounds like something a sneering atheist would say. I should know, I used to be one (I'm still an atheist, but I ceased to be the sneering type around the same time I graduated high school. LKH is old enough to be my mother). What's more, Christianity is much more about the New Testament anyway, not the old. And the whole God of Love deal really doesn't show up until the New testament, does it? I mean, that's why Jesus died, right? I thought LKH was raised Catholic, shouldn't she know that? But given how little she seems to understand her current faith, I guess it should be expected for her not to understand the jist at all of her previous one.
Bibi won't tell Anita what she dreamed because "to talk of such things gives them power" but she does say that "it was only the Light, the God, that kept us from her power the first time." Because therians of this incredibly powered type need protection from one vampire...from another vampire. "It was the combined power of all the tiger clans that gave him the power to keep her from conquering the world." So why didn't all the tiger clans combine on their own to fight her? Why did they need him? THEY ARE GIANT CATS WITH ELEMENTAL POWERS. VITTORIO WAS JUST SOME SEXIST LOSER.
Anita says that "being able to call a little electricity and fire isn't going to defeat Mommie Dearest." Bibi says that Anita has only seen what the weaker can do, that "you haven't even seen what Domino's black tiger side is capable of" and that if the MOAD and Master of Tigers/Father of the Day are real, then "the powers that our clans once had must be true, too."
Was it ever in doubt that any of this was real? Everyone knows the MOAD is real. They've also known the powers of the clans are real too ever since Anita boinked Crispin and Alex into being able to have, as she mentioned, abilities of electricity and fire. YET ANITA DOES NOT BELIEVE BIBIANA. She tells her to "come on" and Bibiana has to point to out that Alex is now a pyrokinetic and Anita says okay but all Crispin can do is "basically really uber-static electricity. It's not a weapon." BUT IT'S REAL, DUMBASS. AND BIBI JUST SAID YOU'VE ONLY SEEN WHAT THE WEAKER ONES CAN DO. WHY ARE YOU SO DENSE. WHY ARE YOU DISAGREEING WITH STUFF YOU ALREADY KNOW TO BE TRUE.
Bibi then says that "Black tiger is water, Anita. The human body is made up of mostly water." Anita asks what she means by that. OH COME ON, YOU CAN'T BE THIS DUMB. YOU CAN'T BE. Bibi repeats that she's barely seen the least of what they can do "if you give us back all our powers." Which only Anita can do, of course. Because reasons. Which are never explained.
Anita says that Cynric hasn't gotten any new powers. Bibi says he's young and she only banged him once. Anita says once was plenty. YEAH, YOU SAY THAT NOW, BUT I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN KISS THE DEAD. According to Bibi, the element of the blue tigers is air and that they could create and control storms, and that golden tigers, just as Paula Chu said in SKin Trade, "controlled earth and all energies upon it." Anita has to ask what that means. "They could make the very ground obey their will." And Anita has to ask if she means earthquakes, and is disbelieving. Bibiana reminds her that MR. OLIVER WAS CALLED THE EARTHMOVER FOR A REASON, YOU DINGBAT, IT'S POSSIBLE. Anita suddenly remembers that, oh, that's right, he could do that. We get a paragaph-long recollection of how she killed Mr. Oliver.
...I really hate that staking is all it takes to take down a Council member. You'd think they'd be a cut above that standard weakness.
Anita says that if Cynric can call storms, she doesn't much fancy the idea of a 17 year old being able to do that in her city. Bibana assures her that "it won't be his power, Anita, it will come to you. if you raise it in the tigers it will come to you, and you will be too power for the Darkness".
ANITA WILL GET ELEMENTAL POWERS? OH GOOD GRAVY.
I mean, in fanfic and roleplay we've actually given her the elemental abilities of the tigers based on her having all the colors in her, but only to make her an even bigger Big Bad for our characters to face. It's not something I ever wanted to see in canon.
For some reason, this information prompts Anita to tell Bibiana that "I'm not a vampire." Uh, how would gaining elemental abilities via the tigers make you a vampire? Because Vittorio allegedly did it back in the day? But you've faced him, so you can probably do what he does, because you've got those Super Sue power-copying abilities. Also, you're always talking about how you're a living vampire, so...
Bibiana tells Anita that she is, she just doesn't drink blood, which was exactly what Anita kept saying all through Skin trade with her "living vampire!" schtick she wouldn't shut up about. Bibi tells her that if Anita has to save them all and that if she doesn't, the MOAD will posess all the tigers, and take Anita to be her vessel, and since Anita is a golden queen she will be able to "destroy us all" through her. Anita says she's not a weretiger because she can't shift. Instead of giving a retort ton this, Bibi randomly informs Anita that "Yellow was meant to be our ruler over all, a sort of High Queen." That's why I always call them golden instead of yellow. If they were just another color, they'd be yellow to me. But no, they're special and rare and the best of all, so they're GOLDEN. And of course, Anita is the last golden queen, so she's the most rare and special and powerful of them all. GAG.
Anita again says this is all speculation and they can't know any of it is true. She tells Anita that she must harness the power of the clans. Anita's response is "I don't must."
She started out this chapter grasping for some way to be able to fight something like MOAD. Now that someone is offering her a potential way, she's poo-pooing it to the point of not even being interested in trying. She does not read to me as desperate here as she should be and supposedly is, nor as particularly intelligent or helpful in any way herself. At least Bibi has an idea!
Bibi tells her that if she doesn't, the MOAD will consume the world, and that it was the MOAD who caused the First Emperor of China to try to wipe the weretigers out, and that the Master of Tigers was unable to stand against her without the power of the golden tigers on his side, and thus she crushed him and nearly destroyed the weretigers as a people. Anita asks if Bibi knows how the MOAD ended up in her coma in the underground castle/cavern, and we get some REALLY cool info:
- "The Council had tried to abandon her a few times when world wars had forced them to move countries, but there had been a compulsion that wouldn't let them leave her body behind."
- As far as any vampires know of (as far as Anita knows) no one knows why she fell into this sleep. She just didn't wake up one night.
- Bibi says that according to legend, her own guards, the Harlequin, did it by use of a spell and a sacrifice of lives. They wanted to kill her, but couldn't figure out how to do it permanently, so the best they could do was put her to sleep, tie her to the body she last inhabited (so my headcanon about her being a body-hopper long before her current escapades was right!) and left her there.
- MOAD spared some golden tigers so that the Harlequin could keep them as their animals to call, as she believed the Harlequin were loyal to her. The guards told the tigers of this so that, if they died, there would be some memory left of what happened and what was needed to defeat the MOAD again.
Anita:"Bibiana, I can't be some sort of weretiger savior."
Bibi: "Not savior, Anita, master. You must be Mistress of Tigers. You must be the daywalking vampire who defeats the night once and for all."
OH FUCK THIS SHIT. FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT WITH A RUSTY SPORK CHAINSAW GUJSDFGKSKKG
Also, the "light equals good, dark/night equals bad" schitck bugs me at the best of times a bit, and it's especially bothersome right now because...therians and vampires are creatures of the night. That's what they're CALLED. And it's true--vampires can only come out at night, and therians are tied to the moon. They can see in the dark. it is not unkwnon to them. It is not blinding. It presents none of the scariness or dofficulty to them that it does to humans. It's when they get to be themselves. Night is not bad to them. Night is not an enemy to them. Framing their villain as darkness and their savior (oh, pardon me, their master) as light just doesn't make sense for these people in the slightest. It's a totally human perspective.
Anita asks if the legend includes how to kill or re-spell the MOAD back into slumber. Bibi says that "the guards that have no name" (she's yet to call them the Harlequin, but that's who she's talking about) are still around so Anita should ask them. Anita tells us about a charm given to her by the Harlequin the first time the MOAD messed with her, a piece of metal with an imprint of a many-headed tiger on it. And we get this headbanger: "It was supposed to keep her out of my head and my body. It worked, but it had to be cleansed and recharged periodically, like a gun that needed reloading. My cross just worked, but then it was about faith, and the charm with its imprint of a many-headed tiger on it was magic, not faith. The more witches I knew, the more I realized that there was a difference."
YOU DIDN'T REALIZE IT BEFORE?
ANITA
YOU LIVE IN A UNIVERSE WHERE WITCHES AND MAGIC ARE REAL
AND PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT WITCHES AND HAVE NO MAGIC CAN STILL WARD OF VAMPIRES WITH FAITH
THE DIVIDE IS ACTUALLY PRETTY CLEAR AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN
WHY ARE YOU SO DENSE
I mean, I can like dumb heroes sometimes depending how they're done, but Anita isn't MEANT to be dumb and she also takes it to really frustrating levels.
And then Anita fills us all in on the Harlequin and what they are and I still don't understand how they can be summoned to come kill you just by saying their name. I also don't understand why their organization and all its members are named after characters in the Commedia dell'Arte. MOAD has been asleep a thousand years. The Harlequin are the ones who put her to sleep. But the Commedia dell'Arte only started in the 16th century, which was centuries after that happened. So what were they called before then? And why did they take those names? Maybe the Commedia dell'Arte in this world got their names from the Harlequin instead of vice versa, but then why would the names of killer vampire assassins be given to characters like the ones in Commedia dell'Arte, none of which are particularly evil or deadly?
Anita also repeats how it was the council that hired mercenaries to blow MOAD up. Now, I already ranted about 'when did this information happen' but now that the Council has shown up possessed by MOAD, I have another bone to pick with it: Belle Morte herself says they let the MOAD enter them because without her power, they might all die since she's the all-mother. So...if that's the case, why the heck would the Council have had her blown up in the first place? "Oh yeah, we're gonna have her killed. Wait, wait, that might kill us too, better save her now!" Seriously, what the fuck?
Anita says Bibi has given her a lot to process and that she needs to think. Bibi tells her not to think too long and that she is going to call the other queens and urge them to send people to Anita because "our only hope lies in a swift rise to power." Sudden random power-ups? Oh Bibi, don't fret, Anita can do those in her sleep!
Anita says she hasn’t agreed to all of this. Bibi says she knows (but I doubt she CARES, Anita, given this is the survival of her species on the line from her point of view) and calls Anita “skeptical by nature” (a phrase which here means ‘doubting fantastic things in a world of fantastic things when said new fantastic things line up perfectly with the other fantastic things already established as real’ aka really illogical stupidity) but reminds her that they’re losing time and, again, Anita must take action swiftly. Yeah, good luck with that Bibi, it took us HOW long to even get to the orgy after it was agreed upon?
“So, what, I fuck everyone into their next power level like some pornographic computer game?” It’s really amusing to me that Anita asks this so scornfully while Nathaniel and Damian are cuddling her and Asher has his head in her lap. Because it just illustrates so nicely how she’s been doing that all along anyway. Bibi tells her to joke all she likes “but do what we need you to do” meaning, yes, do all the weretigers or else Marmee Noir is going to get everyone.
Honestly, how can LKH even remotely believe that she’s writing a horror series when the solution to everything, including what should be an Eldritch Abomination Goddess beyond human understanding that is body-hopping through the most powerful of supernatural hosts…is sex? Seriously, I just don’t get it.
Bibi says that if Anita doesn’t get moving, the MOAD will possess the queens of the tiger clans. Anita says that she can’t possess anyone who isn’t a vampire. Uh, what? When the fuck was THIS established, Anita? And you say you’re not a vampire just two pages ago, but the MOAD tried to possess you and nearly did, so which is it? Bibi snarkingly asks if Anita thinks this because the Traveller can only take vampires, and Anita says yes, and Bibi totally schools her on SHE IS THE FIRST, SHE CAN DO SHIT WAY BEYOND ALL THE OTHERS, EVEN THE COUNCIL, YOU STUPID TWIT. Okay, she doesn’t call her a stupid twit, but she makes it very clear that the MOAD is god-tier and can take whomever she damn pleases…which Anita should fucking know by now.
Anita asks if MOAD can take humans. Bibi says she doesn’t think so, just vampires and werecats. That actually surprises/disappoints me. I can see the logic, yes, but I’m still surprised her range is that limited because, again, god-tier. Especially since most humans have zero defenses against even the lowest level of vampire psychic powers. Anita says a lot of this is guesswork (yes, Anita, because no one actually KNOWS much of anything about MOAD for sure, so guesswork is the best you’re going to get, why don’t you just shut up and listen for once) and Bibi says that if Adam and Eve showed up at your door, you’d also have to believe in the serpent. Anita asks what she means by this.
Anita, seriously? It means that if part of a legend is shown to be true, no matter how fantastic, then there’s reason to give credence to the possibility that rest of the legend might be true as well. Bibiana breaks this down for her, but Anita still argues against Bibi’s claims that her people’s stories about the Darkness conquering the world are just because “every creation story as an end-of-the-world clause, Bibiana. It’s usually just stories of floods or earthquakes that were local to the original people. Disasters that seemed world-destroying, but if you traveled a hundred miles, it wasn’t.”
Anita. This is not Noah’s Flood, okay? We know of the MOAD. We know of Vittorio. We know of both their connections to tigers. And we know that the tigers clearly do have some form of elemental powers that they can at this time only access by you screwing them. Bibiana has not told you anything that is particularly out-there in any way as compared to everything we already know. If anything, it actually all fits pretty well. LKH, Anita does not look intelligent and modern here. She looks like a total moron trying to sound smart, and a pretentious moron at that.
“You have felt her power, Anita. You have felt that she does not love, or care; she is an intellect and a nearly pure sociopath. She cares only for her own pain; all else is just toys for her to use, not real people, real beings. Do you really believe that she will stop with the destruction of just the vampires?”
Anita says no, and Bibi tells her to therefore “stop trying to throw logic at nightmares.” Actually, Bibi, the only one being logical here was you. But I have some problems with the MOAD being classed as a sociopath. I realize she was alive once as a human or pre-human hominid, but she’s been dead so long, been a sheer FORCE for so long, that qualifying her in human terms seems wrong. I mean, she gets called things like “the dark itself” and “the night given flesh” which frames her as a force of nature, something beyond good and evil, something definitely beyond human in any sense. It’s like calling Cthulu a sociopath--yeah, he’s got no empathy, sure, but he’s not supposed to. He’s not human. He’s not anything close to human, and neither is she, and framing her in those terms, as if she’s supposed to have human qualities like empathy but is lacking it and therefore needs a condition to explain that lack, is just silly.
I think it’s just another case of “LKH has no clue what being a sociopath even means but really likes to throw the term around a lot”.
Bibi says that monsters are real (DUH) and sometimes the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster…which I think that Anita has down pat as it is. Anita asks if she would be the bigger monster if she could do everything that Bibi says. Honey, it’s not your abilities, myriad and ridiculous as they are, that make you the worst monster I’ve yet to read about. Bibi doesn’t answer this but asks if Anita thinks she could have all this power and resist the temptation to (mis)use it. Anita says yes, and I LAUGHED SO MUCH. Bibi apparently shares my opinion because her response is that “she said my name the way my stepmother had said it when I was about fifteen.” Because Judith was on to your bullshit then, and Bibi is on to it now. I like that Bibi is in fact aware that Anita is a terrible person to have in power of any sort, but she’s still urging her to take it because it will save her own people. I want a book about Bibi, she’s interesting and makes tough choices, not to mention makes it clear she sees through the crap of folks like Anita the Queen of Everything no matter how much she needs her.
Anita asks “Don’t you want me to use the power if I could get it? Isn’t that the point?” and Bibi explains that she’s just trusting (which I bet she doesn’t actually) that once Anita gets this power her “sense of honor and morality” will prevent her from turning it against the weretigers instead. I’ll give you all a moment to laugh about the idea of Anita having ANY sense of honor or morality in the slightest. To be fair to Bibi, she probably doesn’t have the best sense of what honor and morality even are herself, since it’s been stated that she doesn’t think like a human but like a tiger with a human brain. So her definitions of what’s right probably do center all around survival, predation, etc. It’s just that, unlike Anita, she’s got a good excuse, having never been human at all as a born weretiger who was likely raised within the culture of her clan.
Anita says that’s a lot of trust for someone she’s only met once. Bibi says that if she didn’t have faith in her, she wouldn’t be sending some of her most powerful weretigers to her, as well as Cynric, the only known blue tiger in existence. Anita tells her she’ll “try my best not to hurt anyone.” I wonder if she includes ‘rape and lobotomy’ under her definition of hurting people? Bibi starts praising Anita, saying that the fact she promises this rather than just “I’ll do my best” proves that she is a good person. “You believe your moral compass is broken because of the sex, but I believe if you can get past the idea of it being a sin, your moral compass points true north.”
If LKH could get past her idea of sex being a sin, maybe she could actually allow Anita to have sex that both she and her partner(s) consented to because they just wanted to have sex rather than NEEDING to for some really bizarre plot reason that results in rape, mind-wiping, and shit I don’t even have words for.
Anita tells Bibi not to put her faith in her. Bibi asks “Where else can I put it?” and my personal interpretation of this is that Bibi knows Anita is a Canon Sue and therefore knows she is her best shot for the survival of her people, so she’s going to butter her up as much as it takes even if she is, as she says, the bigger monster. Because at least she’ll be a monster on her side.
Poor Bibi. I really do want a book about you.
Anita decides that they’ll need a backup plan too, and the chapter ends.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-04-06 04:25 pm (UTC)The running theme in the later books seems to be that LKH thinks vampires are all awesomeness with a few drawbacks, and shapeshifters are all drawbacks with a few bits of awesomeness. Therefore, in her mind, clearly one should be ruling the other. Which, hey, her universe I guess. But I find it much less fun to read about them when she describes shapeshifters in ways that make them sound complex and powerful, and then neuters them in the next paragraph. :/
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Date: 2013-04-06 04:36 pm (UTC)Yes, exactly. I could get behind the 'vampires dominating therians' thing if it wasn't like that.
Jabez had this before and it reversed itself in a few days. I'm hoping the same will happen this time, since there's really not anything else to be done if I can't massage it back in there with the mineral oil.
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Date: 2013-04-06 05:42 pm (UTC)Someone needs to write that book about Chang Bibiana. I would totally read that.
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Date: 2013-04-06 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-06 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-06 09:30 pm (UTC)Where is this evil!Anita fanfic? *puppy eyes*
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Date: 2013-04-06 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-04-06 09:53 pm (UTC)2. *convulses* LKH. STOP WITH THE SPILLED. I think we should start a word count for the times LKH uses "spill" in her books. Because it's so fucking ridiculous that she uses it for literally EVERY TYPE OF SCENE.
3. ... Church... bells? Church bells? CHURCH BELLS? WHY DOES ANITA HAVE CHURCH BELLS FOR A RINGTONE? Also totally imagining them as playing wedding-esque melodies, or maybe the Kyrie Eleison.
4. "other places east"? East of what? Ukraine? So... Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Japan, the Koreas? Because those are mostly due-East. Not including everything south-East or just north or south of Ukraine. Or anything that's just East of Las Vegas. WHICH IS ALL OF FUCKING EUROPE. This is so fucking stupid and nonsensical. Is LKH/Anita trying to imply that Las Vegas is run by not only the Ukrainian/Russian mob, and but also the Chinese triads, and the Japanese yakuza? BECAUSE DEAR GOD WHAT?
5. What? *GASP* BUT I THOUGHT YOU WERE A MANLY MAN OF MANLY PROPORTIONS, ANITA! MEN DON'T NEED HAND-HOLDING! THAT'S AN ICKY GIIIIRLY THING TO WANT! OH NO YOU ARE LOSING YOUR MOJO! I don't know why you would possibly want hand-holding. Nothing even fucking happened to you, besides your lion clawing at your belly like
Freddy Kruegera mutant baby. And you writhing around on the bed more than you do during sex AND orgasm COMBINED. So, yeah, no idea why you'd want hand-holding.6. Cardinal was woman enough to need her boyfriend farther away from me. HOW DARE THAT HUSSY WANT HER BOYFRIEND AWAY FROM THE GOO-COVERED PILE OF PEOPLE THAT ALMOST GOT METAPHYSICALLY MURDERED BY THE MOAD-POSSESSED TWO MEMBERS OF THE VAMPIRE COUNCIL! SHE'S SO IRRATIONAL AND HYSTERICALLY FEMALE! AND HOW DARE SHE BE JEALOUS AND WANT HER LOVER AWAY FROM THE DOOM-CROTCH WHO USES HER MEN LIKE PAWNS IN A FUCKED UP CHESS GAME! THAT'S MORE VIOLENT THAN WIZARDING CHESS! CARDINAL IS COMPLETELY OUT OF LINE.
7. I like how it's two of the shifters who are like "Babe, I'm gonna get this goop off me" and leave her there when she SO DESPERATELY WANTS HAND-HOLDING. Not just that, but it's
JONMICAH.8. I AM SO CONFUSED BY ALL THESE SUE-TIGERS. THERE ARE SO MANY COLORS AND THEY HAVE POWERS AND WHAT THE FUCK? WHY? BITCH PLEASE. THERE ARE TWO TIGERS. Well, not true. There are 6 subspecies of tiger that are currently on the planet, and 3 extinct subspecies. There's also 3 hybrids (panthera, liger, tigon). Of the colors, white and gold are the most common. There is only one documented black tiger, and it was dead, because a black tiger isn't going to survive very long BECAUSE IT WON'T BLEND IN AND BE ABLE TO HUNT. There is also reportedly a "blue"/slate-colored/Maltese tiger (of the South Chinese subspecies--they're super pretty, look them up!) but they're rare and also--just like the black--reportedly a mutation of alleles. Just like all-black lions. Albinism and melanism (and other weird colorations) DON'T LAST LONG IN THE WILD OKAY. But seriously, THIS WHOLE BULLSHIT WITH THE ANITAVERSE TIGERS IS REALLY FUCKING CONFUSING AND I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THE GOLD AND MAGIC POWERS. LIKE NOW THEY JUST NEED A PURPLE TIGER AND IT'S PRETTY MUCH SET.
9. Wait. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIT. HER CROSS WORKS ON FAITH? WHAT FAITH? SHE DOESN'T DO SHIT WITH HER FAITH AND DOESN'T REALLY BELIEVE IN GOD AT ALL AND DOESN'T DO ANYTHING WITH HER CHRISTIANITY AND ISN'T A "GOOD" CHRISTIAN AND ISN'T REALLY A CHRISTIAN AT ALL ANDALSKDJF;KLASDJFKLASJ;DKFJ;LSKDJF;LKADSJ;FLKJSDLKJFA;SLDKJF;ALKSDJFSDFA *blue screen tone*
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Date: 2013-04-06 10:44 pm (UTC)5. If it were handled better, I think I'd like Anita's need for reassurance and how she likes physical contact from people she loves, etc. It would make her seem human, and show that she has vulnerabilities and gets scared and has a heart and all that stuff under the 'tough as nails, no-fear, vampire-killing badass extraordinaire' image she likes to project. But it's not handled well at all. Firstly, the badass image is treated as entirely true. We are constantly told what a flawless (morally and as a fighter) person she is, what a self-sufficient powerhouse who needs no help she is, etc. Yet she also gets to cry, and faint, as a result be held and fawned over by men like a precious delicate flower...but you can bet that if another woman even LOOKS like she's scared or going to shed a tear, she's treated as this inferior twit who is The Reason For Sexism and utterly unlike Super Strong Perfect Anita. There's absolutely zero effort at acknowledging Anita's own weaknesses and making them work together with her strengths to make a whole person; she just has her cake and eats it too, getting all the credit for being SUPER STRONG PERFECT PARAGON WOMAN but also the benefits of attention when she cries/vomits/faints/someone might say something nasty to her.
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Date: 2013-04-07 09:30 am (UTC)8) Hmmm ... I heard a black tiger is pretty much just a tiger with really thick stripes, which you pretty much said when you referred to the melanism so IGNORE ME! However, I don't think there are ever been proof of the blue tiger. There were reported sightings in 18something or another, if I recall, but no one knows if that is true or not.
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Date: 2013-04-06 09:58 pm (UTC)11. FUCK ALL OF THIS. I DEMAND A BOOK ABOUT THE INQUISITION OF GOLDEN TIGERS THAT HAPPENED IN ANCIENT CHINA. RIGHT NOW. I DEMAND THIS TO HAPPEN. I mean I'd love it if it was Korea, because I love anything Joseon Dynasty, BUT I WILL SETTLE FOR ANCIENT CHINA BECAUSE IT IS STILL MORE BADASS THAN THIS BULLSHIT. I WANT IT NOW. And not by LKH because she will BUTCHER THE HISTORY AND THE CHINESE CULTURE AND ALL THINGS BEAUTIFUL ABOUT CHINA. Ready go! *
*I'm not serious, but this would be epic and really awesome to read.
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Date: 2013-04-06 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-06 10:33 pm (UTC)Church bells were supposed to be able to chase away evil spirits, weren't they? I wonder if it works in ABverse, and whether a high-quality recording would do the same (and now I have the image of Anita chasing off 'bad guys' with her ringtone...)
How do you get 'loving someone too much' from 'letting them join in a phone conversation that directly relates to them and involves things which happened to them'? Answer: Be LKH.
The 'lying around covered by naked men while having a completely unrelated conversation' thing happened in one of the Merry books, too, only there it was because the man Merry was having the conversation with kept trying to do the faerie equivilent of rolling her and the touching stopped it from being as effective. It's a sad thing when the series that most people believe was started as an excuse for writing bad pr0n has more of an excuse for that sort of behaviour than the comparatively serious series.
All I can think of with the combining powers is: "With your powers combined, I AM CAPTAIN PLANET!" - Which I'm sure someone else has already commented.
Also, Merry became the avatar of the Consort - LKH has a thing for her avatars channelling/becoming men or (symbols of) 'masculine' power.
Part of the issue with the Council is that LKH always talks about them as a group - if she said, "A, B and C thought that getting rid of the MOAD would be a good idea and took out a hit on her, but X, Y and Z were scared that her loss would destroy all vampires and absorbed her to preserve themselves," that would be an entirely different thing. Instead, we've got a single entity making two directly opposed decisions.
I want the series to end with Anita being put to 'sleep', the same way the MOAD was. I want it to be because they think Anita is/has become the MOAD, and I want them to be wrong, and I want the final scene to be Bibiana forming a symbiosis with the MOAD to give her neglected children the power that her favoured had turned against her...
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Date: 2013-04-06 10:50 pm (UTC)AAAAH THIS IS THE BEST IDEA EVERRR!
All I can think of with the combining powers is: "With your powers combined, I AM CAPTAIN PLANET!" - Which I'm sure someone else has already commented.
hahahahah!
LKH has a thing for her avatars channelling/becoming men or (symbols of) 'masculine' power.
...why am I not surprised
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Date: 2013-04-07 12:02 am (UTC)Welp. That just gave me a psychological look into her and Jon's sex life that I did NOT want.
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Date: 2013-04-07 02:16 am (UTC)*coolly* Oh, really, Anita? I thought that you were going to refer to her as “a little tiger-kitten,” the way that Edward Cullen referred to Bella in “Midnight Sun.” Besides, who wants to bet that Anita would flip out if anyone dared to call her a “little pan-were queen?” Shut up, you condescending nitwit.
/NEVER MIND BEING WORRIED ABOUT HIS WIFE COULD BE *WHY* HE'S UPSET/
No, see, that’s the reason that Anita’s sneering at him. She can’t understand why men could possibly care about women other than herself. When her harem shows tenderness towards her, it’s sweet; when men show consideration to other women, it’s contemptible. After all, this is the same woman who threw a murderous tantrum when the man that she wanted to have sex with turned her down because he didn’t want to cheat on his wife.
/Most of the men looked to me to see if I wanted them to go."/
Because heaven forbid that they do anything without asking Queen Anita’s permission.
/"Honestly, I wanted some hand-holding." When does she NOT?/
Yes, this is our “strong and independent” action heroine, folks. Somebody who can’t even talk on the phone without one of her boyfriends literally holding her hand.
/Cardinal was woman enough to need her boyfriend farther away from me." I think I'm supposed to see Cardinal as a silly wimminfolk who needs to get her priorities in order, but all I can think is 'smart girl'./
Oh, yes, because it’s only women who can get jealous and insecure when their husbands are around other women, particularly women who have a habit of forcing sex on anyone within a three-mile radius of them. It’s not like men could ever be possessive or insecure. Your misogyny is showing, Anita.
/Men are totally pussywhipped if they ever let their wives/girlfriends talk at all ever, got it./
Now I wonder what would happen if someone gave Anita a taste of her own medicine. “Oh, Jean-Claude’s letting you talk on the phone, Anita? Wow, he must love you too much. God knows that I’d rather shoot myself in the head than listen to another self-hating, hypocritical woman like you prattle on in that sniveling little-girl voice of yours.”
/So basically Bibi just told Anita that she has to fuck a bunch of weretigers in order to make them power up. Great, so that's her excuse this time./
Does *everything* in this series have to tie back to sex?
/It’s really amusing to me that Anita asks this so scornfully/
Especially when she’s had no problem with doing this before.
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Date: 2013-04-07 02:37 am (UTC)Hahaha, that would be great!
Yes, this is our “strong and independent” action heroine, folks. Somebody who can’t even talk on the phone without one of her boyfriends literally holding her hand.
For real. I mean, I'd rather her have weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and emotional needs than not, because I can't relate to this totally self-sufficient stone who never has a moment where she wants reassurance or is afraid, and that's really not a human character to me at all...but Anita takes it to really ridiculous levels while also damning women who do the same to any degree, and continuing to enjoy all the privilege of the text clouting her as being just as tough as she pretends.
Does *everything* in this series have to tie back to sex?
At this point? Yes, I'd say yes.
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Date: 2013-04-07 10:38 pm (UTC)Says the woman who wont let two of her lovers that she barely spends time with fuck without her.
JUST SAYING
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Date: 2013-04-07 09:47 am (UTC)What? What? .... What?
That's right, ladies, if you aren't jealous and feel the need to get your man away from other women, you are not woman enough. True women cannot be secure if their boyfriend is flirting, nay, talking with another female. So if you don't feel like getting in a mad and jealous rage next time your beau is chatting with any sort of girl, you might as well hang up your ovaries and get a sex change, because you, my friend, are not woman enough.
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Date: 2013-04-07 02:37 pm (UTC)Considering that's exactly how Anita is, I'm not too surprised she thinks it's a universal female trait.
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Date: 2013-04-07 02:11 pm (UTC)...Is English Anita's first language?
I'm sure LKH is trying to be cute/clever with that kind of thing, but it just ends up sounding stupid. Like really weaksauce Buffyspeak. Joss Whedon she is not.
But the Commedia dell'Arte only started in the 16th century, which was centuries after that happened. So what were they called before then? And why did they take those names?
Perhaps secretly, the Harlequin are incredibly whimsical!
I wonder if she includes ‘rape and lobotomy’ under her definition of hurting people?
Yeah, I think the series has made it abundantly clear that she does not.
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Date: 2013-04-07 02:36 pm (UTC)That seems to happen a lot. I mean, I'm no good at witty lines or Buffyspeak either, and I worry my dialogue isn't as entertaining as it could be for it, but at least I'm aware of it.
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Date: 2013-04-07 10:25 pm (UTC)"She was women enough, which means that she was immune to my ardour(sp?) and is wise enough to see what a monster I am."
Ug, "woman enough" just gave me cis-sexist shudders.
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Date: 2013-04-08 01:14 pm (UTC)Oh, you think Anita has too much sex? Well she thinks she has too much sex too and she hates it, but she has to have all that sex.
Anita has too many power? She thinks it's crazy too, but it makes sense in her universe, look I'll have other characters explain it to her over and over again.
You think Anita is a monster? Well she has to be, other characters will keep telling her that. And look, I'll show you real monsters like Chimera and Belle Morte. I'll keep mention Chimera so that Anita looks better by comparison, doesn't matter that he's dead, I'm going to keep talking about him. Every. Book.
I love that dig at Cardinal. It's supposed to show how insecure other women are around Anita, practically when it involves their men, but all it makes Anita look like she's jealous of every woman. Anita is always the one making cutting remarks about another woman's appearance and relationships. Anita is the one who can't handle having another woman in the room (unless she's a submissive bootlicker). Anita/LKH is afraid of strong women, especially ones who are single, because that must mean that they are after her men.
LKH, dear, you can't write a book series and claim it's about empowering women and features a 'strong woman lead', then hate on every other woman in the series (complete with slut-shaming and catty remarks about looks). It makes you look more anti-feminist than Rush Limbaugh.
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Date: 2013-04-08 02:49 pm (UTC)Oh my gosh, you are entirely right.