BULLET, CHAPTER 28
May. 8th, 2013 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratBULLET, CHAPTER 28
Anita exits the hospital room with Nicky and finds that Graham has been on guard duty outside her door. Graham is a werewolf that really really wants to have sex with Anita but she doesn't want to fuck him. My guess is that this is because while he has a "tall, Nordic father" he is half-Japanese on his mother's side and has "the little uptilt at the edges of his eyes and the straight black hair" that is "cut a little too long through the bangs."
Graham says he can't believe he missed last night, since it would have been a chance for him to get with Anita because "you fucked people that you've never touched." Anita asks Nicky if Graham knows everything that happens last night, Nicky nods, Anita tells Graham to guard this door and if anything happens to Nathaniel she'll kill him. Graham asks "What'd I say to piss you off?" and Anita says the fact he has to ask is why she doesn't fuck him. In a normal series, I'd say him not understanding that sex under the influence of the ardeur is rape is what the problem is, but since it wasn't treated like that here at all through Anita's eyes, then I don't know what he said that was so wrong either.
According to Nicky, it's because "she feels bad about Noel and Haven being dead." Oh, so her issue was that what caused the orgy to happen was a terrible thing, and if Graham does indeed know why it started than that is pretty shitty of him. Okay, that I can actually get behind. Graham tells her that "people are on rotating shifts" in the infirmary so she can find someone else there to take her place bunking with Nathaniel. For some reason, this prompts Anita to throw open her mental doors in order to find out who is close by among the people she's metaphysically connected to. I guess she's looking for someone to hang with Nathaniel, but...didn't Graham just say to check the infirmary? Maybe she wants someone she knows she can trust, which is understandable, but do note that she didn't do the same for Claudia.
She feels Nicky first because he's right next to her, she feels Jean-Claude and knows that he is coming this way and "he felt my urgency and my confusion" confusion about what? She feels sorrow from Jason and wonders why. Probably because this is a hell of a thing to happen while JJ is here? Since they don't see each other that often? Or god forbid, JJ might have been raped during the orgy? She feels that Damian is still awake, and concludes from that that all of the vampires that woke early today are going to continue to be awake...which is an odd conclusion to make based on Damian, since Damian is a daywalker to begin with. She feels Crispin and Domino, and then can tell that there are more tigers here too. These new tigers "flared brighter in my head. They shouldn't have been brighter on my metaphysical radar than the shapeshifters I was closest to." Oh god, does this mean that these tigers end up being her special pre-destined mates like Micah with his Nimir-Raj being meant for her Nimir-Ra crap? I hate that shit.
She doesn't feel Richard at the Circus at all, so she starts dialing his number to tell him about the assassin because "Richard was the least capable of the three of us to watch for this kind of danger." HE HAS SUPER SENSES! "He was still too trusting, and too tied to trying to be "normal" ". Yeah, I can see just how trusting he is from how he told Jean-Claude about how suspicious he was of him when Raina gave him to him.
Stephen comes down the hallway, and while dialing Anita has time to give us a paragraph about how he shares an apartment with Vivian but that during the day he often spends the day here at the Circus "being snack food for vampires among other things." But...how can he be food for VAMPIRES during the DAY? And what he's wearing and how he's wearing his hair and that "he wasn't on my food list" because he is "cute enough but just not that kind of friend." I like how the fact he's with Vivian isn't mentioned at all as a reason for him not being on her sex schedule.
Stephen asks Anita what's wrong just as the phone goes to voice mail and Anita leaves Richard a message telling him about the assassins and to come to the Circus and "call me back, damn it." The fact she ends it with 'damn it' just cracks me up because it's so...needlessly dramatic.
Graham advises her to text him instead. Anita responds with "What?" and Graham repeats to text him because "some people check their texts a lot more than they do their voice mail." Anita hands the phone to Graham and asks him to do it for her since she can't text. I feel bad sneering at this, because it took me forever to bother to learn to text and I still don't do it almost at all, but that's because I don't enjoy it. I have no use for it. Anita, on the other hand, has a damn good reason to learn how. Case in point, this scenario. Graham doesn't know how to spell 'assassins', so Stephen, whom we are reminded has cornflower-blue eyes, does it. Because Anita not liking him means Graham is dumb and useless, I guess, despite this being a pretty good idea on his part.
Stephen sends the text and then asks Anita what's going on with this whole assassins thing. He also asks what I want to know: How does she know they're even in town? Anita says she doesn't have time to explain (does saying "Remember that werelion Pride that kidnapped me not too long ago? Their leader was offered a contract on my, Jean-Claude, and Richard, and he turned it down but was forced to warn me about it because I rolled him when we first met" take that long?) and has to find Richard. Stephen says that "I'm supposed to be your replacement for Nathaniel's healing, but if you need me..." and Anita "started to dismiss him" because "I didn't think of him as a fighter" just as "someone who helped me do my hair and makeup for Jean-Claude's fancy events" but then remembers that "the first time I'd met him he'd waded into a giant snake gone amok in the Circus." Waded into? That makes it sound like the snake was made of Jell-O or something. "He was about my size, as delicate in his own way as Vivian, but he was also a werewolf and that meant something." Too bad that being a therian can't also 'mean something' for Nathaniel and every other werecreature that acts like a baby kitten supposedly because of, not in spite of, their beasts.
Even so, Anita decides that Stephen should still stay with Nathaniel and she'll be the one to retrieve Richard and "after that we'll have a meeting or something." Yes, a meeting with the tigers, remember? Remember, Anita? REMEMBER? Anita heads down the hallway and Nicky follows her and she decides to let him because "he might be creepily overattached to me" which you do nothing but encourage and enjoy "but his fighting skills were excellent and the only thing that kept his killing in check was my conscience." Oh, so he must have zero urge to kill at all then. "He didn't seem to have one of his own." Probably because YOU ATE IT. She also shockingly recalls she has "clients to see in the afternoon" at her job but that since "all it would take was one of the assassins signing up as a client and they'd get to be alone with me" she'll need guards with her. At work? Yeah, just see how that goes over with Bert....oh wait, I forgot, Anita gets to do whatever the fuck she likes at work. Including Nathaniel on the floor.
She keeps feeling "a small screaming part of me" saying that "Richard is in danger" and she reminds herself that "if he was really hurt I'd know it" like with Nathaniel. Anita decides to call Jamil or Shang-Da, since they're respectively his Skoll and Hati...it shocks me she does not tell the reader that Skoll and Hati mean primary and secondary enforcers. Wow. She usually over-defines everything. Nicky, meanwhile, is on the phone to Bobby Lee, telling him about the assassins and Anita thinks "he was right. I should have told our men first." THE WERERATS ARE NOT YOUR MEN YOU @&#%#%^%^##!!!
Jamil picks up, Anita tells him that he's got to get Richard back to the Circus now. He says "That's going to be a problem" and she turns to see that Jamil himself is coming down the hallway with Shang-Da. Anita asks why they aren't with Richard. Richard, it turns out, is on a date and his bodyguards don't follow him on dates. Yeah, I can see how that might be awkward to explain. Anita decides to "worry about it [the date] later" and tells them what's going on. Jamil curses and says that "If he's with the doc, he won't answer his phone" and despite saying she'd worry about the date later (as if she has any right to! they're still not back together!) Anita wants to ask if Richard is dating a doctor. Eh, I bet it turns out that this "lunch date" is just with Dr. Lillian over therian matters, not, as I'm sure Anita would say, a date-date,
Shang-Da says to just use her telepathic link to contact Richard and she says that she'll try but "he's been keeping me out the last few months." Good for him, I'd hate to have ANITA of all people rooting around in my head and able to shoot thoughts in there. Shang-Da suggests that "maybe you both quit trying." Wow, suggesting that Richard AND Anita are to blame for their problems is about the close as we're ever going to get the to fact that it's actually all Anita, I bet. Way to go Shang-Da!
Anita decides she'll argue that after Richard is safe, feels JC coming towards her, harrumphs about JC doesn't shut her out, and then "opened that link between Richard and me. Shang-Da was right; I'd stopped trying a while back. It was just easier that way." HAHAHAH ARE YOU SERIOUS? SHE'S ADMITTING THIS? SCORE TWO FOR SHANG-DA NOW!
Anita smells the environment of wolves--or, more properly, the environment of SOME wolves but not of many others--and she can then see Richard behind the wheel of his truck. He glances up, he knows she sees him, she loses focus and has to fight to see him again, and knows that he's close to his house by the trees near the road. She sees him looking at her again, and the road through his eyes. He pushes her out a little because he says it's hard to drive with her doing that. That makes sense. Anita tells him there's a contract killer out for him, her, and JC. He says "the council works fast" and Anita says it doesn't matter who ordered it (since it might not be the council, I think a LOT of people would want these three dead, if only because JC and Richard being killed means Anita is probably dead for sure) and that "we stay underground until we have a plan." Richard says "I can't hide forever." She didn't say forever, she said until there was a plan! Stop being stupid just so Anita can seem right! Anita says "Just for now" because she's "had enough emergencies for one day." Goddamn, I'm actually on Anita's side here. She even says please!
He starts to take the last turn on the route to his home, and then swiftly gets his comeuppance for not immediately obeying Anita--he sees a flash in the trees, the windshield cracks, Anita screams "Gun!" which I think he would figure out by a bullet hitting the windshield and then a second shot hits Richard and she's thrown out of his head and falls to her knees in the hallway with Nicky holding her. Her shoulder and half her chest are numb, and she gasps "Shot" and realizes by the fact she can barely breathe that Richard's lung has been hit, though his heart is still beating. "We were falling, and there was no air."
Great. This means there's probably going to be a healing orgy again, isn't there?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-05-08 07:01 pm (UTC)NVM, I forgot what series this was.ToT
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Date: 2013-05-08 07:08 pm (UTC)I'm on the next to last chapter and those assassins have not reappeared.
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Date: 2013-05-08 07:25 pm (UTC)...
...
...
I hope there's a nice long update about your delightful ratties as well as many pictures of baby guinea pigs and happy chinchillas getting scritches beforehand.
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Date: 2013-05-08 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-08 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-08 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-08 08:02 pm (UTC)Not only is Graham not white enough for Anita, but he is also mixed. It's very hard for LKH to admit that Anita is not the only mixed person in the universe, but she tries. The way she treats mixed characters is...weird. I can remember that mind-numbing conversation Anita had with Bernardo regarding 'passing' in Obsidian Butterfly. At any rate, any character who is mixed is handled just as badly as fully non-white characters.
Great. This means there's probably going to be a healing orgy again, isn't there?
Well...she's going to need magical energy...the problem is that the people available to donate are...yeah, not white enough. Just prepare yourself.
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Date: 2013-05-08 08:21 pm (UTC)Yeah, I've noticed this, hence how I had her be all confused over Sati. I think there's also been the implication that Anita is a 'better' mixed person because she DOESN'T identify with the culture of her Mexican side.
Well...she's going to need magical energy...the problem is that the people available to donate are...yeah, not white enough. Just prepare yourself.
I know. Oh god I got there and I was nearly screaming.
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Date: 2013-05-08 08:15 pm (UTC)And I really hated this chapter and the next because LKH just couldn't leave Richard alone with crawling on his knees begging for forgiveness and giving up the last of his dignity and morals for the Asher orgy. Now he must be saved by Anita in the worst possible way. The way he was horrified by way back in NIC when he made Anita feel bad about using dark powers. She isn't just going to castrate Richard, she is going to stuff them down his throat and make him say "thank you for saving me".
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Date: 2013-05-08 08:22 pm (UTC)And, yup, that's LKH for you.
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Date: 2013-05-08 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-08 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-08 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-09 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-08 11:46 pm (UTC)HAHAHAH
Yeah, LKH and race are weird. No real other word for it. There obviously are still trials and prejudices people who are mixed-race can and will have to deal with, but she clearly doesn't have a clue what those would actually be.
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Date: 2013-05-09 08:55 am (UTC)She's been insulted by either side, for being either white with black or black with white... but there seems to be a lot more mixed people...or I've just notice them more, since she was born 23 years ago. ;) maybe that's just me noticing more, but then I'm not that observant either. ;)
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Date: 2013-05-09 12:17 pm (UTC)And at a school I once worked at, there were far more children of mixed heritage than purely X or Y heritage. (Interestingly, the biggest racial issues I had to deal with at that school were between kids of X and Y. The mixed raced kids all just seemed to come up as "acceptable" or maybe "enough like me" on their classmates' internal radars.)
But that might've been the school/community I was working in because I've also worked at schools that were nearly all one thing or another with not much diversity at all.
...So I guess it really depends on where you are?
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Date: 2013-05-09 03:07 pm (UTC)Not to mention, LKH's belief that you can tell how 'mixed' Anita is because of her perfect, pure white skin and blackest blackity black hair. Because no one ever has that combination unless they are mixed ::coughBlackIrishcough::. Or how the disturbing fixation of how perfect and pure Anita's white skin is. Or, and we've all noticed this, how Anita never fucks anyone who isn't white.
LKH seems to think that all you have to do with a mixed character is just throw two different races together, forget about cultural background on each ethnicity and how that relates to being interracial. My background is predominately Jamaican, anyone familiar with the country will understand that Jamaica has a it's own history and perspective regarding mixed people, and that has influenced me along with growing up mixed in America, another differing perspective. LKH makes Anita half-Mexican and then ignores the Mexican part, the fact that the country already has some history and conflict regarding the ethnicity of it's own citizens (those of mainly Spanish descent vs those descended from indigenous Indians). I'm almost believe that her only experience with Mexico was watching the Zorro movie and eating Taco Bell. She'd probably be floored if you told her that Catherine Zeta-Jones isn't Mexican.
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Date: 2013-05-09 04:48 pm (UTC)As terrible as LKH's take on an interracial character is and as often as indiscriminately as Anita shrieks 'racist!' (at what are often understandable alternative points of view), we should probably be glad that LKH doesn't do more with Anita's heritage. Especially since I never quite worked out whether the voodoo priestess gene (which apparently came from the 'otherness' of her Mexican parent) was supposed to have come from the native tribes who lived in Mexico before the Spanish showed up or the Spanish people who squashed them. (Neither of which is historically accurate, as we all know.) I'm not actually certain that LKH ever bothered to discover how voodoo came into existence much less how it's practiced or that there are different branches that do things differently. It might be hilarious to see all of that in print but it also might be rage-inducing.
Because no one ever has that combination unless they are mixed ::coughBlackIrishcough::.
I have to admit, I have no idea what Black Irish-ness is. But your point is entirely valid. Everyone knows someone with that coloring who *doesn't* share Anita's "unique" background. And, ugh, yeah the skin thing is gross, especially since she's fetishising her own skin. It makes it so much harder to believe that she just 'happens' not to have banged a guy with more melanin than her. (And that there aren't that many of them in St. Louis of all places and that they all ended up as 'not sexy' were-animals.)
Anita's extreme lack of cultural context would make more sense if she was the product of a third or fourth generation (or even further beyond) interracial mix. Like her grandmother married a white man with a very prosaic family history, her mother married a white man with an equally uninteresting family history, and then Anita. Because at some point, time washes away a line's cultural markers if those cultural markers aren't renewed, either by marriage to another person produced by that culture or by living in that culture. The descendents might *look* predominantly like their grandmother's people but they don't think, act, or share a basic understanding of 'this is the world' with their grandmother or her people. They might, however, eat special noodles or eat certain foods on the holidays or whatever.
She'd probably be floored if you told her that Catherine Zeta-Jones isn't Mexican.
I admit, I know Catherine Zeta-Jones isn't Mexican but I don't know what ethnicity she actually is, either. I found out that she married Michael Douglas and that killed my interest in her personal life. I haven't seen her in anything for awhile but I have the impression that she's a good actress and that's about it. (To be fair, I apply this extreme lack of interest to most actor/actress' personal lives. As long as they're good at their craft and not a walking disaster zone, I generally don't want to know. Because what if I have to hate them and that ruins all of their future work in my eyes? *Yes, Mel Gibson, I'm looking at you.*)
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Date: 2013-05-09 07:35 pm (UTC)The difference here is that:
a.) you've considered the fact that even if she identifies as X, it's rare in America for anyone who's family has been here for any length of time to be purely X in their background.
b.) your has genetic diversity in her background. She's an admitted "mutt" as opposed to Anita's strict "Mexican"/WASP mix. Plus, it sounds like your choice of culture was deliberate. I think you know that "Mexican" does not cover ALL Spanish people EVERYWHERE unlike Anita/LKH. (She doesn't even account for the fact that everyone is from somewhere and Anita's mother would have been from a particular place/region in Mexico, which would vary from other places/regions like all countries/places do. Anita/LKH isn't even aware that not ALL Spanish food is spicy!)
c.) Voodoo is a set of beliefs/religious practices. In a magical world, the ability to perform certain rituals within that belief system to a higher standard/with a higher percentage of success could be based on certain "magic" genes, but the entire religion itself shouldn't be trivialized as a magic power of a Specialful Sue character. And yeah, Anita says she inherited "voodoo" from her mom who in turn inherited it from her family/mother-the-voodoo-practitioner. It's a direct line of descent from a carefully crafted 'other' source. It's just not the right 'other'.
(Which is a longer way of saying that genetically inheriting abilities like your character seems to isn't offensive in and of itself. Genetically inheriting an entire religious system as an innate and often evil magic power is ludicrous and possibly offensive to the practitioners of said religion.)
So I think your character might work?
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Date: 2013-05-10 10:22 am (UTC)I have seen another interpretation of 'Black Irish'; some Irish people (including a good friend of mine) have a very Mediterranean skin tone, instead of the paler 'standard', without knowing of any recent Mediterranean ancestry to explain it.
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Date: 2013-05-10 10:49 pm (UTC)I actually lived in England as a child but the term was never used there. In fact, I've only ever heard it in the States! (But until this chat, I had no idea what the were nattering on about. ^_^;;)
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Date: 2013-05-09 12:18 am (UTC)I'm now imagining Graham's texting skills: Cum back to Circ! Assess in town!
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Date: 2013-05-09 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-09 08:58 am (UTC)though I always try to spell things correctly in texts. ;) but then I have the unlimited texting plan. ;) maybe that helps. My daughter uses all the abbreviations and can text like the thing was part of her body when she was born or something ;)
And I have to just use one finger to type on my phone even if it has a touch screen keyboard thing. ;)
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Date: 2013-05-09 12:02 am (UTC)In light of a previous poster's comments, my guess here is that Graham might be willing to have sexy times near JC (if not with JC because, although a rare beast, purely hetero characters do occasionally exist within these books) but Anita nipped that in the bud with her unspoken "JC doesn't get to feed the lust unless I'm involved or doing the sexing" thing. Which is too bad because Graham would get his awesome orgasms and JC would get snacks without having to get messy himself.
Anita asks Nicky if Graham knows everything that happens last night, Nicky nods, Anita tells Graham to guard this door and if anything happens to Nathaniel she'll kill him.
a.) I'm not sure why Graham should actively care that two spineless, unmemorable members of the harem and the one man with his balls still attached in St. Louis died. From his perspective, they're probably even less than acquaintances. I mean, has he even met any of those three lions?
b.) I'm not even convinced that Anita genuinely cares.
c.) And I fail to see how Graham's lack of sympathy for the dead would somehow translate into him being bad at his job. Guarding shit and giving a damn about others are two mutually exclusive skill sets.
d.) While I agree that people should have a choice in their sexual partners, Graham is the only character in this entire series that I can remember giving informed and unequivocal consent to being magically roofied and taken advantage of while he was still in full possession of all of his faculties, not being coerced, and not under anyone's control. He's LITERALLY the only man, woman, or child who has ever consented to the whole Anita shebang and she is not only completely uninterested in him, she's scornful of his interest too.
e.) The Anita & Graham interaction is reverse slut-shaming.
f.) Yeah, Anita wants willing, consent, adult partners who are equals in the relationship, sane, and capable of making their own, informed decisions. Really. Ignore my laughter.
Maybe she wants someone she knows she can trust, which is understandable, but do note that she didn't do the same for Claudia.
Claudia may have saved Anita's life multiple times and protected her from Haven, among others, but she sexed Micah up (or at least slept with him naked! And non-sexually!) so she's dead to Anita now.
She feels sorrow from Jason and wonders why.
JJ probably took a good, hard look around and decided that she did not need this kind of crap, drama, and crime in her life and dumped Jason. No matter how handsome he is and how much she likes him, he comes with too much baggage, especially for something that's supposed to be casual. Additionally, she's served her purpose in the plot (To highlight how Anita has the prettiest, bestest, most specialest dancers in the whole, wide world without Anita having to do it herself. That way Anita could concentrate on being smug and sexist.) and has to go now.
Additionally, Jason didn't even have the bad taste to join a triumverate with Anita and yet she has access to his thoughts and feelings. I know that Anita doesn't even acknowledge that the word "violation" exists but yeah. That's what that is. Poor... everyone.
Except Anita. Of course.
...which is an odd conclusion to make based on Damian, since Damian is a daywalker to begin with.
Logic is NOT Anita's friend. see the entirety of this series.
She doesn't feel Richard at the Circus at all,
...So, potentially, Anita could know where Richard is at every moment of every day? And, by extension, she would have the same information regarding anyone else that she was "connected" to?
...
...
I pity them all so, so much.
"He was still too trusting, and too tied to trying to be "normal"."
This is why Richard deserves to get with Joyce Summers. Sure, her one kid is a gleeful and remorseless serial killer and the other is a potentially toxic ball of glowing green energy capable of destroying all of the worlds simultaneously when the stars are aligned just right, but Joyce herself is pretty damn normal, despite her problems with obliviousness and alcohol.
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Date: 2013-05-09 01:18 am (UTC)so she's dead to Anita now.
Hence why this is the last book she's appeared in to date. I expect this conflates with Darla leaving (maybe LKH thinks Darla made eyes at Jon?)
Jason is her Wolf to Call, so i expect that's why she gets to read his mind/feelings.
I pity them all so, so much.
SRSLY WHAT A CREEPY THOUGHT UGH
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Date: 2013-05-09 12:03 am (UTC)That sounds ominous, especially given this series' relentless interest in non-con sex. Also, I'm surprised that LKH remembers Stephen or his earliest appearance.
But...how can he be food for VAMPIRES during the DAY?
The ILLOGIC! IT BURNS!
And what he's wearing and how he's wearing his hair
This is SUPER IMPORTANT, especially in light of the "plot" threads.
"he wasn't on my food list" because he is "cute enough but just not that kind of friend." I like how the fact he's with Vivian isn't mentioned at all as a reason for him not being on her sex schedule.
We've seen how she respects monogamy and personal choice and people who reject her advances Additionally, he sounds exactly like her type. I'm surprised that she hasn't put him on her schedule, especially since he has an identical twin who is also in her power. Maybe Richard won't let her? He used to be quite protective of Stephen.
Graham doesn't know how to spell 'assassins', so Stephen, whom we are reminded has cornflower-blue eyes, does it.
Clearly, LKH doesn't know much about texting. Also, she has yet to discover the thesaurus, either, because "paid contract killers" or just "paid killers" would work just as well as "assassins".
Because Anita not liking him means Graham is dumb and useless, I guess
Also, he had an IDEA, a SMART one. Anita doesn't even have those. He must be punished muchly.
"he might be creepily overattached to me"
MIGHT? MIGHT BE?
has "clients to see in the afternoon" at her job
What? She still goes to that? And they LET her? (Or maybe she refuses to accept that Bert's finally fired her. At this point, Anita HAS to cost the firm cost more than she brings in to it. And it seems unlikely that ANYONE would want to work with her.)
She keeps feeling "a small screaming part of me" saying that "Richard is in danger"
So now she's psychic? Seriously?
"he was right. I should have told our men first."
Leaving aside her "our men" comment, shouldn't they be telling RAFAEL not BOBBY LEE? Since they're HIS minions.
Richard, it turns out, is on a date and his bodyguards don't follow him on dates.
Richard is ALWAYS swiftly and immediately punished for dating Women Who Are Not Anita, Those Perfidious Bitches. He gets accused by one girlfriend. Another is more interested in being Lupa than in him. A third works for Chimura. And this one is going to get him shot. Plus assorted other badness.
Anita decides to "worry about it [the date] later"
And Anita is always, ALWAYS jealous of these new girls, even if she never sets eyes on them and isn't dating or even speaking to Richard at the time. I'd be worried about that if I was the guy Richard is based on or his new significant other.
Shang-Da says to just use her telepathic link to contact Richard
Guh! That would make dates awk-ward! Really, really awkward! Also! The violation! Again! This falls under that rape-thing again.
harrumphs that JC doesn't shut her out
...that she knows of. JC is very adept at manipulating people, events, circumstances, Anita. Plus, he's manipulated the bond between them and used it to hide things from Anita before.
Richard says "I can't hide forever."
This seems unreasonable but, in context, he has a point. Anita rarely ever leaves JC's underground lair. Hardly anyone who lives there has been allowed to visit the outside world since Anita took up sex, including JC, Asher, Nathaniel, Micah, Jason, or Nick. And when Anita does venture out, she brings the bulk of it with her. He's quite right to avoid the sucking vortex that is Anita and Co. His only mistake is not immediately hanging a U-turn and checking into a cheap, pay-by-the-day and names-are-for-losers hotel. also, since Anita's difficulties and emergencies were of her own damn creation, I have no sympathy for her irritation at Richard.
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Date: 2013-05-09 01:19 am (UTC)It's mentioned on one of the Wikis that she has sexed up his twin in an "emergency" before. You just wait, Stephen, you just wait...
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Date: 2013-05-09 12:48 am (UTC)Yes, how pitiful is it that Richard tries to hold onto his humanity and tries to behave like a civilized person instead of a raping and murdering machine. He should be just like Anita: an entitled and psychopathic rapist who sneers at the rest of humanity while trying to keep an iron grip on therians.
/"he wasn't on my food list"/
THEY’RE PEOPLE, NOT FOOD. You’re not a cannibal, so stop pretending to be Hannibal Lecter.
/I like how the fact he's with Vivian isn't mentioned at all as a reason for him not being on her sex schedule./
Since when did that matter to Anita? Joseph was married, yet did she care?
/Anita "started to dismiss him" because "I didn't think of him as a fighter" just as "someone who helped me do my hair and makeup for Jean-Claude's fancy events"/
Are you serious? Anita, just come clean and admit that you think that he’s little more than a Sassy Gay Friend and be done with it.
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Date: 2013-05-09 01:20 am (UTC)YES, THIS BUGS ME SOOO MUCH
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Date: 2013-05-09 09:46 am (UTC)Ah, so the fact that Graham can't read her mind and thus cater specifically to her every whim strikes him off the fuck-list, does it?
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Date: 2013-05-09 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-09 01:21 pm (UTC)Of course not! You know who cares about monogamy? Evil intolerant mainstream people! LIKE ANITA'S STEPMOTHER!
Too bad that being a therian can't also 'mean something' for Nathaniel and every other werecreature that acts like a baby kitten supposedly because of, not in spite of, their beasts.
Not to mention that it apparently meant exactly squat for that girly werelion earlier...
Also, having read... probably far more than is good for me... about LKH and her works lately, I am starting to arrive at the theory that much of the madness could be averted if the part of her brain that is responsible for going "squee, cute!" could be disconnected from the part of her brain that is responsible for going "hubba hubba, hot!" Those two parts are not supposed to have anything to do with each other, and the fact that in her they seem to work hand in hand is responsible for all sorts of squicktastic things in her writing.
it shocks me she does not tell the reader that Skoll and Hati mean primary and secondary enforcers.
The funny thing is, that's one thing I actually didn't know and could have used exposition for...
Good for him, I'd hate to have ANITA of all people rooting around in my head and able to shoot thoughts in there.
Yeah. I can see how having an instant telepathic connection to your closest allies would be a good thing, but when one of those people is Anita, who doesn't so much have bondary issues as explicitly and completely hate the whole idea of boundaries and consider any attempt from anyone to keep some emotional distance to her an act of passive-aggressive sabotage of her life... well, suffice to say, I can see why Richard would go, "practicality be damned - I just can't live like that!"
... also, I suddenly got a vision of Anita as a cult leader, a L Ron Hubbard or Ayn Rand, thundering at her congregation that they just don't understand - they need to completely submit to the Deity/the Triumvirate/the Ardeur/her and rid themselves of the repressive habits of sinful mundane society, or else they will never find redemption! "You are backsliding, Richard! The truth has been revealed to you, and yet you fight against it! Have you no concern at all for your immortal soul?"
no subject
Date: 2013-05-09 02:48 pm (UTC)Anita as a cult leader
Sounds about right
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Date: 2013-05-11 11:03 pm (UTC)The sheer amount of infodumping would probably render spectators unconscious, however. "No! Now it's MY turn to beat an elementary point into the ground for three pages straight!"
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Date: 2013-05-10 11:30 pm (UTC)2. Nah, it said in one of the previous chapters that Jason had JJ in one of the rooms so she wasn't part of the orgy. So I'm pretty sure she's fine. Jason is probably just sad it happened while she was there and he doesn't get to see her often, and now JJ witnessed the shit he has to go through.
3. Uh... people? Phones have like... auto-correct and a mild form of spell-check. I'm pretty sure it knows how to spell assassins. It would attempt to spell it based on how well you typed it in. And considering some people text in chatspeak, even if you butchered it, I'm pretty sure Richard could guess what the word is.
4. OH SHANG-DA I LOVE YOU SO MUCH <3
5. I like how after a dramatic shot scene, we're all just like "great... more orgy-healing sex... wonderful."
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Date: 2013-05-11 12:00 am (UTC)5. Oh no, it's actually worse than that. I know you love Shang-Da, so...brace yourself D8
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Date: 2013-05-11 09:22 pm (UTC)5. What?! NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo *fades out and clutches at Shang-Da*