a-sporking-rat (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
a_sporking_rat) wrote2013-06-03 02:43 pm
a_sporking_rat) wrote2013-06-03 02:43 pm
Entry tags:
BULLET, CHAPTERS 36 & 37
Okay, I don't know about you, but I need a *lot* of cuteness for this one.
http://tinypawpets.tumblr.com/day/2013/06/03/
http://many-splendored-rat.tumblr.com/post/52060687655/batmanandrobin67-yes-im-a-rat-yes-i-play
http://many-splendored-rat.tumblr.com/post/51994416873
http://many-splendored-rat.tumblr.com/post/52008581702
http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/dik-dik/
http://www.anothermag.com/current/view/1387/Audrey_Hepburn_and_her_Fawn
http://morethanprinceofcats.tumblr.com/post/51980218398
I want a pet baby deer/dik dik :C
BULLET, CHAPTERS 36 & 37
You know what happens in these chapters? Nothing. Really, nothing. Like literally zero happens to advance the plot or subplots or to develop the characters in any way or worldbuild or just...anything. Out of all the similar chapters and scenes so far in this book, this one baffles me the most as to why the hell it exists.
"One of the larger caverns had been turned into a gym, complete with an indoor track" and there is even a locker area where Anita changes. She of course does not say she changes into "work-out clothes" though. No, she describes each item of clothing, right down to the color of the sports bra...which, by the way, is all she's wearing to cover her chest. Now, I too prefer to go without a shirt and just wear my sports bra when I work out, but that's because the shirt doesn't help with the sweatiness. In the case of Anita, however, I think LKH wasn't so much thinking about that as the fact that she ends up being joined by a bunch of guys soon enough.
Nicky and Fredo also get their workout clothing described, with Nicky's T-shirt "straining to hold all his muscles into one tight packet." If your clothing is like a sausage skin and wasn't designed to be that way (like lycra or spandex) then I don't think it's gonna be comfy to work out in, no matter how sexy it supposedly looks. She mentions that they've put all their guns in their lockers, not because I reckon working out while wearing a holster would chafe like hell but because "if anyone tried to take me here with all the guards, my money was on us, armed or unarmed." All the guards? But it's just you and Nicky and Nathaniel and Fredo and--oh wait, here they come! "The guards spilled out of the hallway" WHY DO YOU LOVE THAT WORD SO MUCH "full of that energy that big athletic men have. Some women mistake it for aggression, but it's not."
Some women. Can anyone else just hear the same sneering tone in her voice that I can? And you know what, Anita, women actually have good reason to be cautious around guys that are especially strong and large. You talk all the damn time about how haaaard it is being a petite woman, shouldn't you know that? Oh wait, shit never happens to you because you're not a "victim" like us weakling Other Women. Also, most women are actually pretty good at reading when a guy just has "boisterous male energy" versus when he is actually being aggressive and threatening. We develop this sense because, again, we have to as a matter of protecting ourselves. Because not all of us are these super-powered he-women who can be tiny yet have super-strength and be perfect at martial arts and carry small armories everywhere.
Lisandro is among them and Anita isn't sure what to say to him after "we'd broken his prohibition on sex" by which you mean you were mutually raped by the ardeur "so I would ignore it if he'd let me." Gregory and Stephen are there and she describes their cornflower-blue eyes and their "long blond curls in ponytails" and their beautiful "girl-delicate" faces and how she knows from photos they look like their mom and how "she'd died when they were little, like mine." IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT ANITA SOMEHOW. IT ALWAYS GOES BACK TO HER. She can't even describe what these guys look like without bringing in how BAW MY MOTHER DIED WHEN I WAS LITTLE DID YOU KNOW THAT? Seriously, she's known these guys for years, and that's the first thing that pops into her head?
Gregory pouts about missing the orgy, Anita tells him not to start, he opens his mouth to do just that, Nathaniel tells him "No, really, not today" and "Gregory gave in, which wasn't his usual." I can't remember if Gregory has shown any personality before now, or if this is just another telling-instead-of-showing thing.
We get some needless description of the guards. There's someone named Clay, an ex-cop werehyena named Socrates "with skin the color of coffee with a touch of cream" and hair that looks "almost long compared to Ares' and Bram's military buzz" and rats that are, naturally, all Hispanic, since every rat who isn't Bobby Lee or a woman seems to be. There's the five-foot-eight Emmanuel, who has blue-grey eyes and skin that is "almost a gold color, so that he had the same kind of exotic vibe going that Vivian, Stephen's fiancee, had." Lest we forget somehow who the fuck Vivian is despite the fact she showed up earlier and her relationship with Stephen was discussed. Come to think of it, is anything gonna happen with that plot? "The fact that Stephen was still here and hadn't gone home wasn't a good sign for them." Maybe, unlike you, Vivian is okay with Stephen having a life and going to the gym instead of being tethered to her like a satellite, Anita.
Back to the rats, there's Dino, "as dark as Emmanuel was light" and "big, almost as wide as he was tall" and he's six feet tall so that's indeed pretty big. He runs like a "lumbering elephant" and once he punched a brand new punching bag and made it explode despite it being designed to withstand supernatural strength. Cool. I bet he makes such an adorable huge ratty! And then there's...God. Which is short for Godofredo, and since he's Fredo's nephew makes Anita understandably think that maybe they have the same name, but apparently whenever someone asks Fredo that they get a "flat look" that makes them "drop the subject." They're related? But rat isn't one of the inheritable strains. Maybe one infected the other, and that's why the defensive look, they don't want it brought up? Or they got infected in the same attack? In any case, God is a really strange, really awkward nickname. Why not Godo? It's just a one letter difference but it sounds a lot better. Oh, and so we know Fredo is "slender, not that tall, and honed down to lanky muscle" his nephew is taller, broader, and packs big bulky muscle.
You know what? No one is going to remember these descriptions. You know why? These characters aren't memorable or important. There's no reason for us to keep this in our heads. They don't matter to the story, so they don't matter to the reader. It's all just wasted, wasted words and pointless padding. The only bit that comes out of this worth anything is Anita at last noticing how all their guards are rats and hyenas save for Bram the leopard. "Did we depend too much on the rats and the hyenas? Yes. Should we change it? Probably." But then she decides that's a problem for another day.
I've already said that I think the rats and swans should rise up against Anita & Co for how she raped them en masse through their leaders. Now I think the hyenas definitely should too. Like the rats and swans, they have reason--they're treated as grunts, to guard the 'more important' people, none of whom includes a representative of their people--and with their numbers plus the numbers of the rats and the fact that all three groups already have an 'in' into the power base and basically seem to run the whole damn thing (computers, weapons, etc.) it'd be too easy. I am choosing to believe that they already have this planned. Donovan and Rafael, disgusted with Anita and what she's done to their people, approached Narcissus and said he wanted in on it. Narcissus agreed because of how Anita killed his lover Chimera, hogs Asher to herself but treats him like shit, and gives no benefits to his people that I know of but exploits them for her own. His offer to Asher wasn't actually just to move out, it was to take over. And Asher is STILL GOING TO DO IT! Because he gave his word, after all, that he wouldn't move away if he got that orgy...and it was easy to give that word since it wasn't ever the plan at all, he was just using that to get laid one last time before bringing down JC and his pet necromancer and their whole rotten web of rape and control.
I don't think it's being egotistical of me to say that this idea alone is better than this entire novel. Hell, it's not even much a compliment to myself.
We get the interesting info that exercising can help control your beast because it wears out the energy (no, it's not any more clear than that), God teases Fredo by calling him an old man, Fredo taunts him back, and Anita educates us on how "guy liking" involves "a lot of cussing and good-natured jibes". Wow Anita, you sure are hip to mysteries never before discovered by any of womankind till you. She stretches, and everyone around her gets up when she does and she wonders "if they did it consciously or if there was some metaphysical reason for it" and does not seem to realize how freaky either option is.
Ares asks doubtfully if she's running with them, she says she's using that track at the same time (so, yes) and he tells her she can't keep up while giving her "that guy smile, the one I'd gotten most of my life because I was small and usually the only girl." Oh god, not this again. What's really ironic is because I could actually see this happening in this setting. In a gym where everyone else is a large, trained-in-some-way, supernaturally strong man, some are probably going to think a small-looking woman won't be able to keep pace with them. But at this point, Anita has bemoaned I AM A GIRL so much that I have no patience for it even in this scenario where it's actually plausible. Plus it's literally there just so she can prove him wrong and show them all up. Spoiler time: Anita outdoes everyone else at everything in this gym scene. No, there is no other point to it than that. Anyone surprised?
She points out she's not human, he says that most of them have a longer stride than she does, she says she's not trying to race. This will be proved as a lie, by the way. She gets angry, of course and "it hit that place where the beast lived" and she has to take deep breaths. Ares says he didn't mean anything by it and apologizes. Ares, you know what, I don't even think it was about her being a girl. I think you knew that this little asshole was going to take your very existence as a guy in the gym as a personal challenge and you were trying to tell her not to bother making the point of how she's Not Like Other Wimpy Girls by beating you when she should be conserving her strength for battle with the MOAD and her cohorts and those hit men. But Anita's anger issues and her control over her inner zoo are just so bad that she flared up before you were able to get all that out. That's what I think.
The next three pages is all about Anita running with Nathaniel, Gregory, and Stephen and how they kick everyone else's asses at it. And she definitely did it on purpose, since she commanded them to "Kick it!" and "we ran faster than I'd ever tried to before". So basically she went out of her way to do this after assuring Ares she didn't want to race. When Ares tells her it's "not bad" she then proceeds to tease Ares about it by telling the other guards in front of him how "Ares is just mad that he's fast out of the gate but doesn't have the stamina to keep up" and of course all the men "made appreciative noises at the comment" because Anita is so hilarious and awesome and Ares starts to get mad but then he laughs and says he deserved it because of course he did, Anita is never wrong!
God this chapter is irritating.
Anita wants to hit the punching bag now. Ares is surprised that she's going to do this after a run like that, and Anita teases him again about a lack of stamina. Ares says that if she can do it, so can he. Lisandro asks if Ares has ever seen Anita work the heavy bag, Ares says no, Lisandro asks if he's going to try to keep up with Anita, Ares says yes, Lisandro says they're going to take bets. Anita says that the fact it's Lisandro who says this and not any of the other guys proves that "Ares had been snotty with more than just me. It wasn't just me being a girl and small, it was him." Only one person has been snotty so far and it wasn't Ares.
Anita asks how they'll score it, Lisandro says since stamina is the issue then the loser is the one who quits first. Ares says Lisandro has never seen him hitting the bag, and Lisandro says he's seen Anita though. Ares has not yet gotten the message that Anita is the best in the universe at everything ever, says that Anita being able to run doesn't mean that she can hit. "If you think you can outlast our negra gatita, put your money where your mouth is." Ares asks what the Spanish means, Anita says black kitten, Ares asks if she's okay with the wererats calling her that, she says "They're wererats, Ares" and he gives her a puzzled look and she adds "They're not calling me their little black rat. Think it through." and the chapter ends as she goes to gloves and wrist tape.
Damn straight they're not calling you a rat, Anita. You are not worthy at all to be a rat. You are being called a cat because cats are the PREDATORS of rats, and you preyed on all the wererats through Rafael like the rapist you are. They are calling you this because it SOUNDS like a cool nickname to you, but it's actually the only way they can get away with expressing what they really think of you. That's how I see it.
Also, I have no clue why the chapter ended there, considering that the next chapter is just three and a half pages. It's their little contest. If you were wondering, it's all about Anita winning it, with three paragraphs about why he hits the bag wrong and she does it right. Anita overkills even more with the bag then she did with running, going with her hands and legs so bad that "the world started graying out, my vision going in white starbursts" and once she realizes she's won "I let myself slide down" and tries to stop herself from passing out. Nathaniel asks her if she's okay, and she says fine instead of asking for water like she's just told us that she needs. Nathaniel also assures her that "No one would think less of you" if he helps her up, and she protests that "I would."
Anita, you have problems. So she stays on the floor while Fredo tells her that obviously she can't practice knife-fighting with him today now. Yeah, and you've also worn yourself out to nearly unconsciousness for no real reason other than wanting to be a show-off, and this is a time when, may I remind you, she has the most powerful vampires on the planet after her ass PLUS hit men! And she's supposed to be having sex with weretigers to help solve that stuff! She can't fight or screw like this! Goddamn it, why is she so STUPID? And why does this scene exist? Why did LKH write this?
All for this, that's why:
Lisandro: See, negra gatita.
Ares: I get it. Cats eat rats, and you're calling her a cat. (HOW DOES IT TAKE ANYONE THAT LONG TO GET THAT)
Lisandro: We're calling her our cat.
Meanwhile our black cat crawls to the wall and leans against it "while I waited for my vision to clear and fought not to throw up. People with nifty nicknames like negra gatita didn't puke from exhaustion and dehydration, or we tried not to."
That last sentence is something that actually might have endeared me to her, but the fact that she not only put herself in that position just to show up everyone and it's not being treated as stupid and egotistical on her part, and she did it at the worst possible time, just makes me hope she DIES from this. I have zero sympathy for someone like this (and that's excluding everything else terrible about her) and a main character we're supposed to like and root for should really only ever be this kind of person in the beginning of a story where they're obviously in the wrong according to the narrative and develop into an entirely different person in the end...forgive me for doubting that's the case here.
http://tinypawpets.tumblr.com/day/2013/06/03/
http://many-splendored-rat.tumblr.com/post/52060687655/batmanandrobin67-yes-im-a-rat-yes-i-play
http://many-splendored-rat.tumblr.com/post/51994416873
http://many-splendored-rat.tumblr.com/post/52008581702
http://www.zooborns.com/zooborns/dik-dik/
http://www.anothermag.com/current/view/1387/Audrey_Hepburn_and_her_Fawn
http://morethanprinceofcats.tumblr.com/post/51980218398
I want a pet baby deer/dik dik :C
BULLET, CHAPTERS 36 & 37
You know what happens in these chapters? Nothing. Really, nothing. Like literally zero happens to advance the plot or subplots or to develop the characters in any way or worldbuild or just...anything. Out of all the similar chapters and scenes so far in this book, this one baffles me the most as to why the hell it exists.
"One of the larger caverns had been turned into a gym, complete with an indoor track" and there is even a locker area where Anita changes. She of course does not say she changes into "work-out clothes" though. No, she describes each item of clothing, right down to the color of the sports bra...which, by the way, is all she's wearing to cover her chest. Now, I too prefer to go without a shirt and just wear my sports bra when I work out, but that's because the shirt doesn't help with the sweatiness. In the case of Anita, however, I think LKH wasn't so much thinking about that as the fact that she ends up being joined by a bunch of guys soon enough.
Nicky and Fredo also get their workout clothing described, with Nicky's T-shirt "straining to hold all his muscles into one tight packet." If your clothing is like a sausage skin and wasn't designed to be that way (like lycra or spandex) then I don't think it's gonna be comfy to work out in, no matter how sexy it supposedly looks. She mentions that they've put all their guns in their lockers, not because I reckon working out while wearing a holster would chafe like hell but because "if anyone tried to take me here with all the guards, my money was on us, armed or unarmed." All the guards? But it's just you and Nicky and Nathaniel and Fredo and--oh wait, here they come! "The guards spilled out of the hallway" WHY DO YOU LOVE THAT WORD SO MUCH "full of that energy that big athletic men have. Some women mistake it for aggression, but it's not."
Some women. Can anyone else just hear the same sneering tone in her voice that I can? And you know what, Anita, women actually have good reason to be cautious around guys that are especially strong and large. You talk all the damn time about how haaaard it is being a petite woman, shouldn't you know that? Oh wait, shit never happens to you because you're not a "victim" like us weakling Other Women. Also, most women are actually pretty good at reading when a guy just has "boisterous male energy" versus when he is actually being aggressive and threatening. We develop this sense because, again, we have to as a matter of protecting ourselves. Because not all of us are these super-powered he-women who can be tiny yet have super-strength and be perfect at martial arts and carry small armories everywhere.
Lisandro is among them and Anita isn't sure what to say to him after "we'd broken his prohibition on sex" by which you mean you were mutually raped by the ardeur "so I would ignore it if he'd let me." Gregory and Stephen are there and she describes their cornflower-blue eyes and their "long blond curls in ponytails" and their beautiful "girl-delicate" faces and how she knows from photos they look like their mom and how "she'd died when they were little, like mine." IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT ANITA SOMEHOW. IT ALWAYS GOES BACK TO HER. She can't even describe what these guys look like without bringing in how BAW MY MOTHER DIED WHEN I WAS LITTLE DID YOU KNOW THAT? Seriously, she's known these guys for years, and that's the first thing that pops into her head?
Gregory pouts about missing the orgy, Anita tells him not to start, he opens his mouth to do just that, Nathaniel tells him "No, really, not today" and "Gregory gave in, which wasn't his usual." I can't remember if Gregory has shown any personality before now, or if this is just another telling-instead-of-showing thing.
We get some needless description of the guards. There's someone named Clay, an ex-cop werehyena named Socrates "with skin the color of coffee with a touch of cream" and hair that looks "almost long compared to Ares' and Bram's military buzz" and rats that are, naturally, all Hispanic, since every rat who isn't Bobby Lee or a woman seems to be. There's the five-foot-eight Emmanuel, who has blue-grey eyes and skin that is "almost a gold color, so that he had the same kind of exotic vibe going that Vivian, Stephen's fiancee, had." Lest we forget somehow who the fuck Vivian is despite the fact she showed up earlier and her relationship with Stephen was discussed. Come to think of it, is anything gonna happen with that plot? "The fact that Stephen was still here and hadn't gone home wasn't a good sign for them." Maybe, unlike you, Vivian is okay with Stephen having a life and going to the gym instead of being tethered to her like a satellite, Anita.
Back to the rats, there's Dino, "as dark as Emmanuel was light" and "big, almost as wide as he was tall" and he's six feet tall so that's indeed pretty big. He runs like a "lumbering elephant" and once he punched a brand new punching bag and made it explode despite it being designed to withstand supernatural strength. Cool. I bet he makes such an adorable huge ratty! And then there's...God. Which is short for Godofredo, and since he's Fredo's nephew makes Anita understandably think that maybe they have the same name, but apparently whenever someone asks Fredo that they get a "flat look" that makes them "drop the subject." They're related? But rat isn't one of the inheritable strains. Maybe one infected the other, and that's why the defensive look, they don't want it brought up? Or they got infected in the same attack? In any case, God is a really strange, really awkward nickname. Why not Godo? It's just a one letter difference but it sounds a lot better. Oh, and so we know Fredo is "slender, not that tall, and honed down to lanky muscle" his nephew is taller, broader, and packs big bulky muscle.
You know what? No one is going to remember these descriptions. You know why? These characters aren't memorable or important. There's no reason for us to keep this in our heads. They don't matter to the story, so they don't matter to the reader. It's all just wasted, wasted words and pointless padding. The only bit that comes out of this worth anything is Anita at last noticing how all their guards are rats and hyenas save for Bram the leopard. "Did we depend too much on the rats and the hyenas? Yes. Should we change it? Probably." But then she decides that's a problem for another day.
I've already said that I think the rats and swans should rise up against Anita & Co for how she raped them en masse through their leaders. Now I think the hyenas definitely should too. Like the rats and swans, they have reason--they're treated as grunts, to guard the 'more important' people, none of whom includes a representative of their people--and with their numbers plus the numbers of the rats and the fact that all three groups already have an 'in' into the power base and basically seem to run the whole damn thing (computers, weapons, etc.) it'd be too easy. I am choosing to believe that they already have this planned. Donovan and Rafael, disgusted with Anita and what she's done to their people, approached Narcissus and said he wanted in on it. Narcissus agreed because of how Anita killed his lover Chimera, hogs Asher to herself but treats him like shit, and gives no benefits to his people that I know of but exploits them for her own. His offer to Asher wasn't actually just to move out, it was to take over. And Asher is STILL GOING TO DO IT! Because he gave his word, after all, that he wouldn't move away if he got that orgy...and it was easy to give that word since it wasn't ever the plan at all, he was just using that to get laid one last time before bringing down JC and his pet necromancer and their whole rotten web of rape and control.
I don't think it's being egotistical of me to say that this idea alone is better than this entire novel. Hell, it's not even much a compliment to myself.
We get the interesting info that exercising can help control your beast because it wears out the energy (no, it's not any more clear than that), God teases Fredo by calling him an old man, Fredo taunts him back, and Anita educates us on how "guy liking" involves "a lot of cussing and good-natured jibes". Wow Anita, you sure are hip to mysteries never before discovered by any of womankind till you. She stretches, and everyone around her gets up when she does and she wonders "if they did it consciously or if there was some metaphysical reason for it" and does not seem to realize how freaky either option is.
Ares asks doubtfully if she's running with them, she says she's using that track at the same time (so, yes) and he tells her she can't keep up while giving her "that guy smile, the one I'd gotten most of my life because I was small and usually the only girl." Oh god, not this again. What's really ironic is because I could actually see this happening in this setting. In a gym where everyone else is a large, trained-in-some-way, supernaturally strong man, some are probably going to think a small-looking woman won't be able to keep pace with them. But at this point, Anita has bemoaned I AM A GIRL so much that I have no patience for it even in this scenario where it's actually plausible. Plus it's literally there just so she can prove him wrong and show them all up. Spoiler time: Anita outdoes everyone else at everything in this gym scene. No, there is no other point to it than that. Anyone surprised?
She points out she's not human, he says that most of them have a longer stride than she does, she says she's not trying to race. This will be proved as a lie, by the way. She gets angry, of course and "it hit that place where the beast lived" and she has to take deep breaths. Ares says he didn't mean anything by it and apologizes. Ares, you know what, I don't even think it was about her being a girl. I think you knew that this little asshole was going to take your very existence as a guy in the gym as a personal challenge and you were trying to tell her not to bother making the point of how she's Not Like Other Wimpy Girls by beating you when she should be conserving her strength for battle with the MOAD and her cohorts and those hit men. But Anita's anger issues and her control over her inner zoo are just so bad that she flared up before you were able to get all that out. That's what I think.
The next three pages is all about Anita running with Nathaniel, Gregory, and Stephen and how they kick everyone else's asses at it. And she definitely did it on purpose, since she commanded them to "Kick it!" and "we ran faster than I'd ever tried to before". So basically she went out of her way to do this after assuring Ares she didn't want to race. When Ares tells her it's "not bad" she then proceeds to tease Ares about it by telling the other guards in front of him how "Ares is just mad that he's fast out of the gate but doesn't have the stamina to keep up" and of course all the men "made appreciative noises at the comment" because Anita is so hilarious and awesome and Ares starts to get mad but then he laughs and says he deserved it because of course he did, Anita is never wrong!
God this chapter is irritating.
Anita wants to hit the punching bag now. Ares is surprised that she's going to do this after a run like that, and Anita teases him again about a lack of stamina. Ares says that if she can do it, so can he. Lisandro asks if Ares has ever seen Anita work the heavy bag, Ares says no, Lisandro asks if he's going to try to keep up with Anita, Ares says yes, Lisandro says they're going to take bets. Anita says that the fact it's Lisandro who says this and not any of the other guys proves that "Ares had been snotty with more than just me. It wasn't just me being a girl and small, it was him." Only one person has been snotty so far and it wasn't Ares.
Anita asks how they'll score it, Lisandro says since stamina is the issue then the loser is the one who quits first. Ares says Lisandro has never seen him hitting the bag, and Lisandro says he's seen Anita though. Ares has not yet gotten the message that Anita is the best in the universe at everything ever, says that Anita being able to run doesn't mean that she can hit. "If you think you can outlast our negra gatita, put your money where your mouth is." Ares asks what the Spanish means, Anita says black kitten, Ares asks if she's okay with the wererats calling her that, she says "They're wererats, Ares" and he gives her a puzzled look and she adds "They're not calling me their little black rat. Think it through." and the chapter ends as she goes to gloves and wrist tape.
Damn straight they're not calling you a rat, Anita. You are not worthy at all to be a rat. You are being called a cat because cats are the PREDATORS of rats, and you preyed on all the wererats through Rafael like the rapist you are. They are calling you this because it SOUNDS like a cool nickname to you, but it's actually the only way they can get away with expressing what they really think of you. That's how I see it.
Also, I have no clue why the chapter ended there, considering that the next chapter is just three and a half pages. It's their little contest. If you were wondering, it's all about Anita winning it, with three paragraphs about why he hits the bag wrong and she does it right. Anita overkills even more with the bag then she did with running, going with her hands and legs so bad that "the world started graying out, my vision going in white starbursts" and once she realizes she's won "I let myself slide down" and tries to stop herself from passing out. Nathaniel asks her if she's okay, and she says fine instead of asking for water like she's just told us that she needs. Nathaniel also assures her that "No one would think less of you" if he helps her up, and she protests that "I would."
Anita, you have problems. So she stays on the floor while Fredo tells her that obviously she can't practice knife-fighting with him today now. Yeah, and you've also worn yourself out to nearly unconsciousness for no real reason other than wanting to be a show-off, and this is a time when, may I remind you, she has the most powerful vampires on the planet after her ass PLUS hit men! And she's supposed to be having sex with weretigers to help solve that stuff! She can't fight or screw like this! Goddamn it, why is she so STUPID? And why does this scene exist? Why did LKH write this?
All for this, that's why:
Lisandro: See, negra gatita.
Ares: I get it. Cats eat rats, and you're calling her a cat. (HOW DOES IT TAKE ANYONE THAT LONG TO GET THAT)
Lisandro: We're calling her our cat.
Meanwhile our black cat crawls to the wall and leans against it "while I waited for my vision to clear and fought not to throw up. People with nifty nicknames like negra gatita didn't puke from exhaustion and dehydration, or we tried not to."
That last sentence is something that actually might have endeared me to her, but the fact that she not only put herself in that position just to show up everyone and it's not being treated as stupid and egotistical on her part, and she did it at the worst possible time, just makes me hope she DIES from this. I have zero sympathy for someone like this (and that's excluding everything else terrible about her) and a main character we're supposed to like and root for should really only ever be this kind of person in the beginning of a story where they're obviously in the wrong according to the narrative and develop into an entirely different person in the end...forgive me for doubting that's the case here.
no subject
Yup. Even with all the other horrible stuff going on morality-wise, these chapters actually pissed me off the most just in terms of bad writing because they were SO BANAL AND USELESS UGH.
I'm also thinking that LKH seems to think that black skin comes in only two tones; Wesley Snipes black and coffee-cream black, I rarely see her describe brown skin tones in other shades.
You know, you're right, she doesn't!
I don't understand this, and it kinda makes me uncomfortable
It should. Because in addition to the reasons you list, there are also a lot of ways in which negative perceptions of rats and negative perceptions of Hispanic people line up. Firstly, notice the wererats are very much a gang-like group, outright stated to be criminals, something associated with Hispanic men, especially young Hispanic men in particular. Rats are prolific breeders; Hispanic people are frequently accused of having "too many" children. Rats are associated with dirty and impoverished areas and homes, as are racial minorities including Hispanic people. Rats are considered thieving scavengers that take food from human homes, Hispanic people are often seen by bigots as welfare parasites. Rats are seen as invaders to the home, Hispanic people as invaders to the USA.
Whether LKH did this on purpose or not, it winds up very uncomfy indeed. Especially when, as you point out, we don't see Hispanic members of other weregroups, and wererats, in addition to spreading through bite, are supposed to be the most common strain/easiest to catch. So there should be the greatest variety of people in the Rodere. Weirder still, Hispanics only make up 3.5% of the St. Louis population. So why is the most common wereanimal made up almost entirely of Hispanic men? And just also happens to be the 'icky' animal *and* the group associated most with crime?
no subject
::sigh::
I didn't even notice that at first, but now that you point it out, it just makes the whole thing so much worse. I'm just cannot fathom how LKH can be oblivious to the horribly destructive and negative messages she writes in these books.
That's it, I'm done. Either LKH is really a lot more racist than she'd like to admit (homophobic and misogynist too), or she is the dumbest person on the planet. You cannot write this shit and not see this; unless you are stupid or you really, truly believe something like that.
Makes me glad that I sold the few LKH books I had to the used bookstore downtown. Never giving another penny to that monstrous woman.
no subject
Therianthropy is repeatedly likened to AIDS/HIV in this series.
You do the math.
no subject
I don't think I could restrain myself if I ever met LKH in real life.
no subject
My headcanon is that he didn't even rape JC at all either. We only 'know' he did it because JC convieniantly shared/leaked the memory of it to Anita and Richard right at the moment when they were storming Narci's place and JC wanted to get out of having sex with him to make up for it. JC and Narci are both into srs bsns BDSM, Narci is both top and bottom...I think JC actually just deliberately shared a memory of an actually-totally-consensual scene they did together, with the intent purpose of Anita and Richrad reading it as rape and reacting like they did. I hate to play the 'lying rape victim seeking sympathy/manipulation' thing but IT'S JEAN CLAUDE MAN, HE WOULD SO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT!
no subject
I could totally see them using the were-hyenas as a ploy. A group of only hot men that Anita will never suspect of trying to play her, because they are all men. She'll be too distracted by the sexiness. Then they become Asher's animal to call, which helps with their cover.
I always thought that Narci was a cool character when he/she was introduced, but seeing how LKH basically threw that character under the bus just pissed me off. I don't understand why LKH continuously ignores the more interesting aspects and characters of her books. She wrote a trans were-hyena who has to be the most 'female' in order to be in charge; that's something that's cool, progressive and fits in with hyena biology. Why aren't there more books about Narci and the were-hyenas? Hyenas are pretty awesome creatures (totally thinking of the Emperor Mage now).
no subject