![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
BLACKWOOD FARM CHAPTER 24
May. 1st, 2017 10:32 pmBLACKWOOD FARM CHAPTER 24
They got to the cottages and have very good sex "like little jungle animals." Afterwards while they cuddle, she says that she "wanted to put my mouth on it" and "Come, let me wash you in the bathroom and I'll do it"
I guess Quinn thinks that's degrading or something, because he tells us "I protested gallantly. I required no such sacrificial adoration!"
Mona tells Quinn that she WANTS to do it "and I was led like a slave into the tiled bath where she performed the arousing ablutions" and then they go back to bed and she blows him and "then I died when I came."
Oh good, is the book over? Or is this when he becomes a vampire?
Neither, it was figurative. Pity. Aside from the cringey phrases here (sacrificial adoration, arousing ablutions) it's not bad. I wasn't aroused by it, but there was nothing obnoxious or ridiculous either, nor was it stupidly drawn out. It's definitely better than any LKH sex scene I recall, but that's not a high bar.
...could do without the slave bit there. I know she means like a Roman slave, but still. It's sort of mega-cringe coming from the guy with the happy slave staff.
She asks if no one has ever done that before, and he says no one has, and I wonder if he's telling the truth. Jasmine, Rebecca, and Goblin never did it? Come to think of it, as many issues as I have with Quinn and Jasmine on Quinn's end, I feel like I should also note I'm a little weirded out on Jasmine's end too because he's a barely-legal boy she's known since he was a baby. But I'll save that for another time.
He asks if they can sleep cuddled up together, and there's some description of that, of the moist heat from her boobs and groin and the cool air conditioner and stuff. Mona tells him he's a beautiful boy "and your ghost is here and he's watching us." Quinn tells Goblin to go away or he won't speak to him for a long time. Quinn asks Mona if she can see him, she says he's gone.
Then she starts talking about how "I am Ophelia once again. I am floating in the water, with only 'nettles, daisies, and long purples' to hold me up, and I will never sink to 'muddy death'. You can't imagine how it is with me."
Apparently consistently comparing herself to Ophelia, namely Ophelia's corpse/death scene, is a thing with Mona, and as someone who is a mentally ill oft-suicidal woman I really find this super gross, since she seems to be completely romanticizing this already grossly culturally romanticized thing. Like nothing turns me off faster then "The Ophelia" trope in media as is, so an apparently neurotypical woman (I can't find anything online about Mona being suicidal or insane in any way, unless you count super sexual and incestuous as mental illness) gushing about identifying herself with a woman famous for being ~oh so pretty~ WHILE KILLING HERSELF is super gross to me. Like, can we not? The Victorians were shitty for it, and it's shitty now. Stop. Maybe I'm overreacting and this will get better but it's making my hackles raise now for aforementioned personal reasons.
Also, what the fuck does it have to do with anything? Quinn asks this, though in a way that seems to encourage the fantasy:
"How so? I see you borne along forever, vital, precious, oh so sweet---" and then he starts getting tired, and Mona tells him to go on and sleep, that men sleep when it's over while women want to talk sometimes, then starts yammering more stuff about being Ophelia. She then says "they won't find me till tonight, and maybe not even then. I tip these hotels pretty high, I think I may have won them over."
Rather than asking what I want to know--who "they" are that won't find her--Quinn asks if she means she's done this before.
Mona: "Tarquinn, I have a huge family. And one time it was my goal to be intimate with every one of my cousins. I succeeded with more than I can count without the aid of a computer. Of course it wasn't always in a hotel. It was more often in the cemetery at night---"
Quinn: "The cemetery! You're serious?"
THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE CONCERNED ABOUT?! Like okay, fucking in a cemetery is kinda weird, but SHE JUST SAID SHE FUCKED HER FAMILY MEMBERS!
Mona says her life isn't normal, that "Mayfairs don't seek for a normal life" but her life is abnormal even for a Mayfair. She adds that her goal of cousin-fucking has been over for some time but she did fuck her cousin Pierce here, but "it doesn't matter, Tarquinn, it's all new with you, that's what matters. And I was never Ophelia with Pierce. I'm going to marry Pierce but I'll never be Ophelia."
Oh, so Pierce doesn't make you feel like a woman who kills herself tragically? Wow, clearly it's a loveless relationship.
Quinn responds that "you have to marry me"
Yeah, he says "have to"
No comment needed
He says his life isn't normal either and they're clearly meant for each other, that she has no idea. She says yes she does, that Father Kevin told her how his ghost goes everywhere he does and he grew up with adults and has never known other children. She adds that though Kevin is a gossip, he's a good priest, because she almost got him into bed but "he proved to be immovable" Well good for him, not sleeping with his cousin who is also only fifteen by the way, I flipped ahead and she mentions this in a few chapters or so. So who knows how young she was when she came on to him.
Quinn asks "Did he warn you off me? Did he tell you I was crazy?" and Mona says it's the other way around, that "they're out to protect you from me. 'Course, they do keep me under lock and key."
Well, I'm not normally one for controlling women's sexualities, but if I had an underage female relative who was so unusually sexually active so as to be obsessed with seducing her relatives, I would assume she was suffering some sort of psychological thing, probably stemming from sexual abuse, and try to keep her under close eye too because she might not be in the right mind to be making these decisions, and because a teenage girl running off to have sex with someone she literally met yesterday could get seriously hurt by some pervert. I'm trying to decide if that sounds victim blaming, like I'm saying girls get hurt by perverts because they're promiscuous, but that's NOT what I mean, what I mean is like...there are bad people out there who will try to pick up young girls, and if I were Mona's family, I would be doubtful if she was capable of realizing when she's in danger from these dudes. Hell, plenty of girls might not realize that even if they DON'T have any kind of psychological issues going on. That's WHY a lot of these monsters prey on teens.
Mona says she is "considered to be a raving slut" so it could be the scenario that I just posited, or it could also be that her family does consider her to be just that. That's not something I agree with, but it's how a lot of people would see her.
She adds that this is why she was at the door so fast, that "I had to see you before they did. And I'm not the only witch in the family."
Quinn asks what she means by witch, she asks hasn't he heard of "us" to which he seems to take to mean the Mayfair family in general, to which he responds he's only heard good things, like about Father Kevin or about Dr. Rowan of Mayfair Medical. Mona says that Father Kevin came to the South because "we needed him. Oh, there's so much I wish I could tell you, but I can't." She says when she saw Quinn talking with Quinn, she felt God had answered her prayers by sending her "someone with secrets! Only now I realize it doesn't change things with me. It can't. Because I can't tell you everything."
She starts to cry, Quinn begs her not to and tells her she can confide in him, she says she believes him and "I'm not sure Ophelia actually cries in the play, does she?"
Hey Mona, if you're going to proclaim yourself a famous character from a play, maybe you should actually see the play she's from?
"Maybe crying is what keeps people from going mad," she continues, "It's just that there are things that can't be told, and there are things nobody can do anything about."
I really would like to know what Mona would think is something that can't be told, given she's happy to admit to being obsessively incestuous. The Mayfairs already seem quite a bit more interesting than the Blackwoods, if only by being more apparently twisted. I mean, I guess that's not fair, Patsy and Aunt Queen are interesting, and Manfred murdering Rebecca is obviously interesting, as is just what's going on out there in his Hermitage, but a huge family of incestuous witches with secrets they can't even tell to people who know they're incestuous witches is a pretty big hook for a reader. Especially after sitting through so much of Quinn's boring narration.
Quinn says that "it's always been my way to tell" and how he embraced Goblin and never kept him a secret, and adds there's a ghost that haunts him and a mysterious stranger who beat him up and "I know I'm going to marry you, Mona. I know it. I know it's my destiny."
I keep going "wtf this is ridiculous" every time Quinn says something like that, but then I remember Quinn's very...peculiar upbringing and I'm like, you know, that makes sense.
Mona replies that won't happen, they can have a little while and talk to each other and "be with each other like this, but we can't really be together"
Quinn asks why, thinking that if he loses her he will always regret it, and believes Goblin knows it too, and that's why Goblin went away with no argument, and thinks about the damage Goblin could do if he wanted.
Quinn urges her to come live at Blackwood manor, saying she can stay with him in his room or in Pops' room, which he assures her Pops didn't die in, and says Jasmine can gets her some clothes and toiletries and things at Wal-Mart to tide her over.
...Wal-Mart? That's...not a name I would expect one of Rice's richie-rich types to drop.
Mona says "God, you're as mad as one of us. I thought we Mayfairs were the only ones who did things like that."
Quinn says no one in the house will bother her, just his 79 year old Aunt Queen might have "sage advice" (I feel like she might have more than that for Mona, given her earlier reaction) and that his private tutor Nash is a "perfect gentleman".
Mona says "So you don't have to go to school either. Cool!"
WHOA A TEENAGER THAT SOUNDS LIKE SHE COULD BE A TEENAGER FOR A SINGLE SENTENCE?!
So Quinn phones Jasmine and tells her Mona wears a petite everything "and away we went" and he realizes when he gets behind the wheel that he's been awake thirty six hours.
....yeah, that's a great time to drive a car. Mona must agree because she says to let her drive and Quinn agrees and he thinks about how she drives in a really SEXY way and "that somebody so delectable could drive" because I guess normally hot people can't drive or something, and he says to Goblin, "I love her, old boy, you understand, don't you?"
Goblin is looking at him with a "cold, contemptuous" expression from the backseat and tells him, "Yes, and I very much enjoyed her too, Tarquinn."
Has Goblin ever called Quinn by his full name before? Not that I can recall.
Quinn is angry, he wanted to choke him" and says "You're lying you bastard!" and "You think you can sneak inside me!" but Mona confirms, "as she pushed the car past eighty five miles per hour" that "Oh he was there. I could feel him."
I like the idea of every chapter ending with Mona saying something shocking and blunt while in a car.
They got to the cottages and have very good sex "like little jungle animals." Afterwards while they cuddle, she says that she "wanted to put my mouth on it" and "Come, let me wash you in the bathroom and I'll do it"
I guess Quinn thinks that's degrading or something, because he tells us "I protested gallantly. I required no such sacrificial adoration!"
Mona tells Quinn that she WANTS to do it "and I was led like a slave into the tiled bath where she performed the arousing ablutions" and then they go back to bed and she blows him and "then I died when I came."
Oh good, is the book over? Or is this when he becomes a vampire?
Neither, it was figurative. Pity. Aside from the cringey phrases here (sacrificial adoration, arousing ablutions) it's not bad. I wasn't aroused by it, but there was nothing obnoxious or ridiculous either, nor was it stupidly drawn out. It's definitely better than any LKH sex scene I recall, but that's not a high bar.
...could do without the slave bit there. I know she means like a Roman slave, but still. It's sort of mega-cringe coming from the guy with the happy slave staff.
She asks if no one has ever done that before, and he says no one has, and I wonder if he's telling the truth. Jasmine, Rebecca, and Goblin never did it? Come to think of it, as many issues as I have with Quinn and Jasmine on Quinn's end, I feel like I should also note I'm a little weirded out on Jasmine's end too because he's a barely-legal boy she's known since he was a baby. But I'll save that for another time.
He asks if they can sleep cuddled up together, and there's some description of that, of the moist heat from her boobs and groin and the cool air conditioner and stuff. Mona tells him he's a beautiful boy "and your ghost is here and he's watching us." Quinn tells Goblin to go away or he won't speak to him for a long time. Quinn asks Mona if she can see him, she says he's gone.
Then she starts talking about how "I am Ophelia once again. I am floating in the water, with only 'nettles, daisies, and long purples' to hold me up, and I will never sink to 'muddy death'. You can't imagine how it is with me."
Apparently consistently comparing herself to Ophelia, namely Ophelia's corpse/death scene, is a thing with Mona, and as someone who is a mentally ill oft-suicidal woman I really find this super gross, since she seems to be completely romanticizing this already grossly culturally romanticized thing. Like nothing turns me off faster then "The Ophelia" trope in media as is, so an apparently neurotypical woman (I can't find anything online about Mona being suicidal or insane in any way, unless you count super sexual and incestuous as mental illness) gushing about identifying herself with a woman famous for being ~oh so pretty~ WHILE KILLING HERSELF is super gross to me. Like, can we not? The Victorians were shitty for it, and it's shitty now. Stop. Maybe I'm overreacting and this will get better but it's making my hackles raise now for aforementioned personal reasons.
Also, what the fuck does it have to do with anything? Quinn asks this, though in a way that seems to encourage the fantasy:
"How so? I see you borne along forever, vital, precious, oh so sweet---" and then he starts getting tired, and Mona tells him to go on and sleep, that men sleep when it's over while women want to talk sometimes, then starts yammering more stuff about being Ophelia. She then says "they won't find me till tonight, and maybe not even then. I tip these hotels pretty high, I think I may have won them over."
Rather than asking what I want to know--who "they" are that won't find her--Quinn asks if she means she's done this before.
Mona: "Tarquinn, I have a huge family. And one time it was my goal to be intimate with every one of my cousins. I succeeded with more than I can count without the aid of a computer. Of course it wasn't always in a hotel. It was more often in the cemetery at night---"
Quinn: "The cemetery! You're serious?"
THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE CONCERNED ABOUT?! Like okay, fucking in a cemetery is kinda weird, but SHE JUST SAID SHE FUCKED HER FAMILY MEMBERS!
Mona says her life isn't normal, that "Mayfairs don't seek for a normal life" but her life is abnormal even for a Mayfair. She adds that her goal of cousin-fucking has been over for some time but she did fuck her cousin Pierce here, but "it doesn't matter, Tarquinn, it's all new with you, that's what matters. And I was never Ophelia with Pierce. I'm going to marry Pierce but I'll never be Ophelia."
Oh, so Pierce doesn't make you feel like a woman who kills herself tragically? Wow, clearly it's a loveless relationship.
Quinn responds that "you have to marry me"
Yeah, he says "have to"
No comment needed
He says his life isn't normal either and they're clearly meant for each other, that she has no idea. She says yes she does, that Father Kevin told her how his ghost goes everywhere he does and he grew up with adults and has never known other children. She adds that though Kevin is a gossip, he's a good priest, because she almost got him into bed but "he proved to be immovable" Well good for him, not sleeping with his cousin who is also only fifteen by the way, I flipped ahead and she mentions this in a few chapters or so. So who knows how young she was when she came on to him.
Quinn asks "Did he warn you off me? Did he tell you I was crazy?" and Mona says it's the other way around, that "they're out to protect you from me. 'Course, they do keep me under lock and key."
Well, I'm not normally one for controlling women's sexualities, but if I had an underage female relative who was so unusually sexually active so as to be obsessed with seducing her relatives, I would assume she was suffering some sort of psychological thing, probably stemming from sexual abuse, and try to keep her under close eye too because she might not be in the right mind to be making these decisions, and because a teenage girl running off to have sex with someone she literally met yesterday could get seriously hurt by some pervert. I'm trying to decide if that sounds victim blaming, like I'm saying girls get hurt by perverts because they're promiscuous, but that's NOT what I mean, what I mean is like...there are bad people out there who will try to pick up young girls, and if I were Mona's family, I would be doubtful if she was capable of realizing when she's in danger from these dudes. Hell, plenty of girls might not realize that even if they DON'T have any kind of psychological issues going on. That's WHY a lot of these monsters prey on teens.
Mona says she is "considered to be a raving slut" so it could be the scenario that I just posited, or it could also be that her family does consider her to be just that. That's not something I agree with, but it's how a lot of people would see her.
She adds that this is why she was at the door so fast, that "I had to see you before they did. And I'm not the only witch in the family."
Quinn asks what she means by witch, she asks hasn't he heard of "us" to which he seems to take to mean the Mayfair family in general, to which he responds he's only heard good things, like about Father Kevin or about Dr. Rowan of Mayfair Medical. Mona says that Father Kevin came to the South because "we needed him. Oh, there's so much I wish I could tell you, but I can't." She says when she saw Quinn talking with Quinn, she felt God had answered her prayers by sending her "someone with secrets! Only now I realize it doesn't change things with me. It can't. Because I can't tell you everything."
She starts to cry, Quinn begs her not to and tells her she can confide in him, she says she believes him and "I'm not sure Ophelia actually cries in the play, does she?"
Hey Mona, if you're going to proclaim yourself a famous character from a play, maybe you should actually see the play she's from?
"Maybe crying is what keeps people from going mad," she continues, "It's just that there are things that can't be told, and there are things nobody can do anything about."
I really would like to know what Mona would think is something that can't be told, given she's happy to admit to being obsessively incestuous. The Mayfairs already seem quite a bit more interesting than the Blackwoods, if only by being more apparently twisted. I mean, I guess that's not fair, Patsy and Aunt Queen are interesting, and Manfred murdering Rebecca is obviously interesting, as is just what's going on out there in his Hermitage, but a huge family of incestuous witches with secrets they can't even tell to people who know they're incestuous witches is a pretty big hook for a reader. Especially after sitting through so much of Quinn's boring narration.
Quinn says that "it's always been my way to tell" and how he embraced Goblin and never kept him a secret, and adds there's a ghost that haunts him and a mysterious stranger who beat him up and "I know I'm going to marry you, Mona. I know it. I know it's my destiny."
I keep going "wtf this is ridiculous" every time Quinn says something like that, but then I remember Quinn's very...peculiar upbringing and I'm like, you know, that makes sense.
Mona replies that won't happen, they can have a little while and talk to each other and "be with each other like this, but we can't really be together"
Quinn asks why, thinking that if he loses her he will always regret it, and believes Goblin knows it too, and that's why Goblin went away with no argument, and thinks about the damage Goblin could do if he wanted.
Quinn urges her to come live at Blackwood manor, saying she can stay with him in his room or in Pops' room, which he assures her Pops didn't die in, and says Jasmine can gets her some clothes and toiletries and things at Wal-Mart to tide her over.
...Wal-Mart? That's...not a name I would expect one of Rice's richie-rich types to drop.
Mona says "God, you're as mad as one of us. I thought we Mayfairs were the only ones who did things like that."
Quinn says no one in the house will bother her, just his 79 year old Aunt Queen might have "sage advice" (I feel like she might have more than that for Mona, given her earlier reaction) and that his private tutor Nash is a "perfect gentleman".
Mona says "So you don't have to go to school either. Cool!"
WHOA A TEENAGER THAT SOUNDS LIKE SHE COULD BE A TEENAGER FOR A SINGLE SENTENCE?!
So Quinn phones Jasmine and tells her Mona wears a petite everything "and away we went" and he realizes when he gets behind the wheel that he's been awake thirty six hours.
....yeah, that's a great time to drive a car. Mona must agree because she says to let her drive and Quinn agrees and he thinks about how she drives in a really SEXY way and "that somebody so delectable could drive" because I guess normally hot people can't drive or something, and he says to Goblin, "I love her, old boy, you understand, don't you?"
Goblin is looking at him with a "cold, contemptuous" expression from the backseat and tells him, "Yes, and I very much enjoyed her too, Tarquinn."
Has Goblin ever called Quinn by his full name before? Not that I can recall.
Quinn is angry, he wanted to choke him" and says "You're lying you bastard!" and "You think you can sneak inside me!" but Mona confirms, "as she pushed the car past eighty five miles per hour" that "Oh he was there. I could feel him."
I like the idea of every chapter ending with Mona saying something shocking and blunt while in a car.
