BULLET, CHAPTER FORTY SIX
Jul. 11th, 2013 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratIf you're on Lashouts, you know last night LKH answered questions on Reddit
http://lkh-lashouts.livejournal.com/591342.html#comments
Unsurprisingly she didn't answer some of the best questions (namely WHY DOES THIS SERIES SUCK SO BAD) but here are some of my favorites.
I am AMAZED at how obtuse she is.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb04s90?context=3
Although I guess the fact that vampires get to name their therian servants (because omg how else could a BLACK person have an IRISH name?) is interesting...interesting in that it furthers how therians are basically treated as pets and livestock and Anita participates in that rather than ever calling it out.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with Gary, really! Total coincidence!
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb04vv0?context=3
Were these "hardboileds" regularly raping and enslaving women like Anita does to men? Or wanting to hold a serial killer and make it better but being perfectly fine with shooting the woman she knew only was a murderer because THAT SAME SERIAL KILLER had been mentally controlling her? Like seriously you more than overcompensated there. Way more.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb04lu7?context=3
It's nice to hear her admit that Anita isn't totally comfortable being a woman, but as for the rest...eesh. And Cynric's age is honestly the fucking least of the issues around him in itself.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb04jlj?context=3
AW YEAH OLIVER FOR THE WIN!
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb03zw3?context=3
Must not hope, must not hope...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb03pex?context=3
On the "why do you hate cops" issue (personally, I believe her issue isn't a conscious problem with them, but that she's so fangirl over them that she's jealous and therefore wants to outdo them in her fantasy world)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb0359x?context=3
SURE YOU'D MAKE HER A BLONDE. SURE.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb02xz6?context=3
Okay, this one just PISSED ME RIGHT THE FUCK OFF. It's regarding her and her hubby being poly: Its been interesting watching everyone argue about gay marriage, when I know that my husband and I will never be able to marry anyone we're dating. It's just not going to happen in my lifetime, if ever.
IT HAD ME SEEING RED
and you will be too, after....
BULLET, CHAPTER FORTY SIX
"I threw that energy into the other tigers" starting with Cynric since he was nearest to the now already-owned white tigers but "my blue tiger knew he was already ours" and so her power goes in search of "harder prey". So other tigers really aren't other tigers to her tigers, they're prey. It clearly has no species-recognition. Which begs the question of why her tigers still want to mate with these other tigers. Since Domino is half white tiger and she now owns the whites already, "half of him was already prepared to bend to my--our--will." I could not write better villain dialogue for her if I tried. "I had a moment to wonder whether this was how it felt to be a multiple personality, to lose yourself in the pronouns" I...have no words for this here. Anyway, Domino's black tiger "filled" him and so he climbs over the white tigers who are laying around Anita now and touches her, and when he touches her her black tiger scents suddenly that something else is here, "something that was hers, that was ours was here." OTHER PEOPLE YOU HAVE NEVER EVEN MET DO NOT BELONG TO YOU BECAUSE THEY SHARE A COLOR WITH YOUR STUPID CATS, EVEN IF YOU ARE A TIGER QUEEN. Like, seriously, being a fucking tiger queen doesn't mean ruling ALL the tigers of your color, right? That's why Bibi is just Chang of all the white tigers in America (or even just in Vegas?), but not the world, right? I don't think that was ever stated in canon though, so maybe I'm wrong in thinking it was at least implied?
Anita's power finds survivor weretigers, and you'd think she'd leave them alone at least, but nope "the power eased through like a warm wind, and they were tiger and they were tasty but the black tiger was seeking something else, like calling to like." Again, why the fuck do her inner tigers clearly want to EAT other tigers? Maybe it's a reflection of Anita's own psyche, that since she's an abusive sexual predator who sees other people as prey, that's how her tigers see their own species too.
"We found her pressed against the far wall." This already sounds like it's going to go bad places. "She wasn't very tall, dainty like me" and has the same "straight, shining black hair" as Meng Die's but even longer, "sweeping past her waist to caress the swell of her ass." Um. Okay. "She was even wearing one of those short Oriental-style dresses" Do you mean a cheongsam? I'm guess you mean a Chinese dress at least since the character turns out to be Chinese but honestly she really could mean anything East Asian here, and that is a WIDE range. It's like she said a "European-style" dress, basically, only replace the word "European" with some term that went out in the 80s and had very Imperialist roots. "Her eyes looked brown and human from here" but Anita's power "knew better" and she tells her tiger mentally about contact lenses which makes "we wanted to see her closes. We want to see her eyes." YOU. ARE. CREEPY.
Anita tries to "sweep through her" but it doesn't work and the lady stays where she is instead of coming to her like a called pet. She concentrates harder but "we could not make her come to us." Well, she clearly doesn't want to, so STOP IT! So Anita has Victor put her down, because apparently he was still holding her, and walks towards the woman. The other tigers part for her; I guess I can't expect tigers to have any species loyalty and defend this poor woman any more than they did Julia, since, as I've raved about several times, they're not group animals. This is "leaving the woman alone against the wall." Again, you can tell just by this sentence it's gonna get rapey. Anita talks about how her lips are painted red and "parted, her breathing faster" because of how much she'd fought Anita's call. The fact she succeeded, says Anita, shows that "she was more powerful than any tiger I'd tried yet." Meaning of course Anita will have to smack her down like Julia.
"I walked toward her, the black tiger's energy riding on the strength of the white, and blue, so that each color grew and fed off the power of the others. The black tiger was like a dark image blurring and growing more solid around me, as I, Anita, were somehow already inside it. My human hand reached out, encased in a huge, black, phantom paw." I, ANITA! The woman tells her "Don't", Anita says you're a black tiger, she says yes, Anita says she's been pretending to be a survivor of an attack here...how the fuck would that work? Look, remember Paula Chu in Skin Trade? She smelled that Anita had all the colors in her. So did Meph and Pride. Anita pretty instantly senses the tigers of Victor, Julia, any tiger she meets, including what color they are. So how the fuck could a black tiger be in a room full of other tigers AND NONE OF THEM KNOW WHAT SHE IS?! Stupidest espionage plan EVER!
Anita tells her to "Take my hand" and the woman, who had been leaning on her hands behind her to stop from doing just this, takes them out and says she wants to, and Anita says to do it then. ANITA, SHE WANTS TO BECAUSE YOU JUST TRIED TO CALL HER TO DO SO. THAT'S WHAT SHE WAS FIGHTING. But the poor thing can't fight anymore, I guess, because they hold hands and Anita's black tiger "found her beast. It was as if I'd tried to pick up a stray kitten and found out I had a full-grown tiger on my hands." No, it's nothing like that. You knew she was a tiger from the start, and you knew she was the most powerful you'd ever met, so it should be no surprise that her power "came crashing like a tidal wave trying to drown me" and even if it is, the tiger metaphor is a bad one to use for reasons I just said.
Anita, shockingly, is on her knees from all this power, which she says makes Bibiana's seem like nothing, but then notices that her power "felt more like a vampire, and the moment I thought it, I knew. She belonged to someone. Someone old, and that someone was pushing power through her and into me." Oh. So she's NOT powerful at all, actually. It's a vampire. Of course. NO POWERFUL FEMALES EXCEPT ANITA ALLOWED, EVEN IN A MATRIARCHAL SPECIES! Have we actually ever even seen one powerful female weretiger? One who, unlike Bibiana in Skin Trade, is not shown to be weaker than the males and/or needs to be saved by Anita or someone else despite their supposed power? Anita calls her a cheat, she mocks Anita back by asking if she can't tame her like the others. Anita reaches out to Domino with her black tiger, he comes to her her "full of energy." The woman calls Domino brother and tells him not to help Anita, Domino says that she's not his sister and kneels behind Anita. Like I said, no species loyalty. At least that's accurate. If only when it benefits Anita.
Domino kneels behind Anita and touches her shoulders, and power goes into Anita and then jumps into the woman. Hey, we all know this is Yiyu / Black Jade, right? I'm going to call her Yiyu even though Anita doesn't know her name yet. It's easier. Anyway, Yiyu "cried out and fell to her knees in front of me, and I used our joined hands to spill her in against me." You are a fucking creep. "Her face was inches from mine, my hand in the back of all that silky hair. Her face was a mixture of fear and need." I'm sure that's what rapists fantasize about. Much like when she made Domino her mindwiped slave, Anita monologues in her head about how loooonely Yiyu has been because she's never had any other tigers of her color around, which, may I remind you, really makes fuck-all sense. And of course Anita and Domino "smelled like home" to her and "we were what she had been mourning for more than a thousand years." So your treatment of her is thus totally okay and she's going to be fine with it, I'm sure. "That was the true strength of the ardeur, that it could see into your mind, your heart, your soul, to the thing you wanted most" I would buy that if it was only desire sexually, but since she seems to mean across the board, then no, that makes no sense.
Anita tries to kiss her and she whispers "Master, help me" and "my lips touched hers before I realized she wasn't talking to me." THAT IS SO UNINTENTIONALLY FACEPALM-INDUCING. From wherever he is, "her vampire master shoved his power into me, not like I was a necromancer or another vampire, but as if I were just another black tiger to call, because that was his beast. Not just tiger, but this tiger." Wow, how much would that suck, to only be able to call one specific color morph of a species and then that color morph be all but extinct except for like two and a half people? Anita's tiger snarls at him, he laughs and the laughter tries to come out of--er, "spill out" of Yiyu's mouth but Anita kisses her to shut her up. Er, I mean, "I kissed her because she was soft and fragile in my arms. I kissed her because Domino was solid at my back, his strong arms folding over us both" So therefore it's not too gay because a dude is getting in on it "so that he gave me not just the strength of his black tiger, but of his white" This 'mixed-heritage-gives-him-two-beasts' thing will never stop being stupid or illogical to me. Anyway, the addition of white tiger power makes the vampire stumble and "my two tigers spilled into her mouth" and go through her to him...however that works. Seriously, her mouth? What?
Anita sees his face for a moment and knows that wherever he is out there, he's close by, that he'd sent Yiyu in like a "Trojan horse" the stupidest most obvious Trojan horse "he hadn't believed any of us could be a danger to the tie that bound them." Anita sees that "his skin was both dark and pale" suggesting that "he'd begun life as someone very dark, but vampires grow pale with age." Oh, so like Anne Rice's vampires, who do indeed get whiter and whiter as they age, as well as harder, so that they're almost transformed into living marble when they're ancient enough. Also, pale and dark? Does she know 'light brown' is a thing? Oh, and not only is he a dark-skinned guy, he has black eyes, tightly curled hair, and full lips...shit, I think she's describing a black dude here. At the very least he's definitely PoC, and has anyone else noticed how PoC vampires are ALWAYS bad? Oddly there are good PoC therians (Rafael, Vivian, Jamil, etc.) but every PoC vampire 9and there haven't been many) I can remember--Kissa, Yasmeen, Padma, Alejandro, Red Woman's Husband, Itzpapalotl, possibly the also 'dark yet pale' Vittorio--has been an enemy. The closest thing we have to a 'good' non-white vampire is Meng Die, who was introduced as a violently jealous sadist who tried to kill one of the harem (Requiem) and was only with JC & Co because they're on top and therefore she benefits from being on their side. Please, if anyone can think of an exception to this, do let me know, I'd love to be wrong about it.
Yiyu runs her arms over Anita and Domino making "small eager noises" as she smooches with Anita and they keep kissing (there is mention of lipstick smearing everywhere) as "I pressed her to the floor; she wrapped her legs around my waist" which shows up her dress, and, surprise, she's not wearing anything under it. She starts grinding against Anita and "normally that would have freaked me out, but Jean-Claude was there, and so were Richard, Nathaniel, Damian, and Micah, and they liked girls just fine." WHAT? How does 'well, my boyfriends like girls' make a difference here? Is it just basically all a performance for them, I guess? A way to look sexy to them because LKH, despite probably writing this for 'the haters' who point out her homophobia and treatment of lesbians, couldn't bear to actually write about women who like women for the sake of women, not for men?
Anita claims that "I was in more control than I'd ever been of the ardeur." This will not, I'm sure, prevent her from being 'forced' by it to fuck more harem members in the future. "It was a weapon at last." That's not new. It was explicitly referred to as a weapon by her in Skin Trade, and, I believe, in Flirt, and she used it as such, or at least attempted to in some absurd way *coughVittoriocough* Then the vampire "drove his power into her so hard and sharp that it tore her mouth from mine" and Yiyu starts spasming and Anita thinks that her master plans to kill her rather than lose her (REMINDS ME OF SOMEONE) "but she was his animal to call; the death of one might mean the death of both" and then his power hits Anita's black tiger and she realizes "he wasn't trying to kill her, he was trying to tame her, and me" She's already his animal to call, isn't that what 'tame' has been used to mean so far in this book? Somehow Anita knows that "he'd used pain and sheer force to tame her once before, long ago. I offered something so much better than violence." Yeah, you're the magical equivalent of the rapist who drugs her victims so they can't consent and have no will against you rather than using violence to overpower them...well, most of the time. You certainly got violent with poor Julia.
"I ground my hips against hers, pinned her to the floor underneath me, thrust my beast into her not to harm but to pleasure." And here I thought that her guns were Freudian! Seriously do I even need to make a "beast = penis" joke? And would it even be a joke at this point? "Even then I think I would have kept control, but I wasn't used to other women." I know she means sexually but I took it to mean used to them, like, even existing in her general area. "I didn't understand that some of them were easier to bring than I was." Anita is NOT hard to 'bring' at all from what I can make of the sex scenes in these series. "One moment I was riding the edge of sex" European sex or American? "using it to push back the threat that the vampire had used on her for centuries" God I can't believe this shit is serious "and the next her orgasm caught me" and since Anita is "tied to her" right now she orgasms too and "the pleasure spread" to Domino who "pressed me harder against the most intimate part of her". I'm just picturing Domino pretty much SHOVING Anita on to Yiyu, who isn't so much bucking with orgasm in my head as she's struggling trying to get the hell away from this fuckery. Even the freaking vampire has an orgasm too from this, "one hand holding desperately to the bedspread, as he tried not to feel what she was feeling. It wasn't just the pleasure; he was feeling her pleasure, a woman's pleasure." So does that...bother him, or is it more powerful, or does he like it too much to resist, or...? This isn't really clear, but when "he tried to draw his power to hurt her again, but as pain had hurt her concentration, pleasure seemed to hurt his." So just like Vittorio and Anita orgasming his control off the weretigers, got it.
Anita looks at Yiyu, whose "eyes were unfocused, body limp under mine" and Jade whispers "Please". For some reason the response to this is for Domino to kneel behind Anita, slide her thong to one side, and Anita "knew before he pressed his weight against my body that he'd be nude, or nude enough." The vampire, whom Anita now knows is in a distant hotel room, screams no and Yiyu whispers yes. I feel so terrible for Yiyu; she's just going from one abuser to another, which, though I know LKH didn't intend, is pretty accurate for a victim of domestic abuse. They're often just picked up by another predator who can sense their trauma, and have been psychologically conditioned to respond to predation by their previous abusers, from what I know, and we learn that Yiyu has been abused by her soon-to-be-previous Master for a thousand years. Honestly, she's the only one since Nathaniel to actually make SENSE when it comes to taking Anita's crap when you don't factor in the mind-control.
"Domino angled himself against my body" and Anita lifts her hips to help him but then feels sorrow from Yiyu and triumph from the vampire. Anita thinks "Fuck that" and apparently means it literally because she lifts up Yiyu's hips and Yiyu smiles wraps her legs around Anita's waist "pressing herself against me" while Domino starts fucking Anita from behind, and doesn't even have to take her undies off to do it because she's wearing a thong so he just moves the thin strip of fabric aside. Again, can't be too gay now, gotta have a guy involved AND have both ladies keep their clothes on! And Anita's panties gotta stay on too! So no touching Yiyu's icky vajayjay! Basically Domino fucks her cunt, Yiyu grinds on her from the front (presumably hitting her clit I guess, though there's no mention of it, not even coded) and Anita grinds between them and thinks about how she is "wet, tight but wet". She can feel herself getting close to coming ("that warm weight building inside my body") and the vampire tries one last time to take back Yiyu. He gathers his power, Anita notes neither she nor her tiger like him because he caused pain to Yiyu, she feels his power come one last time, Yiyu looks afraid "like she felt the blow coming". Anita tries to use her black tiger against him but then "Domino made that one last stroke" and Anita comes...good, does that mean she'll lose due to distraction in a delicious echo of what happened with Vittorio?
No, it means that Yiyu comes too and "we all screamed our orgasm at once in one long spill of pleasure. I shoved all that pleasure at the vampire, and I felt the connection between her and him break." THIS IS SO STUPID. Although admittedly it does have a precedent in that this is the same way she freed Sebastian in Skin Trade from Vittorio, but that doesn't make it less stupid. And, unlike Sebastian, it does something additional too: "She was suddenly mine, so much mine." So she's still owned by another person, but it's okay as long as they treat her better, right? That's the message I'm getting here. You know back in the antebellum days, there were a lot of people who said of course you shouldn't mistreat your slaves but didn't think there was anything wrong with slavery itself? Just putting that out there. She spends a full third of the page talking about how HAPPY Yiyu feels and how PLEASURED her body is and how she WANTS Anita to read her mind and know everything about her.
Through Yiyu's mind, she learns that her Master (who for some reason never gets a name, just generic abusive probably-black guy) was one of the Harlequin, would kill her before he let her go, and had been sent to spy on Anita & Co "because the Harlequin had broken with the Vampire Council. They were running from the Mother of All Darkness". Okay, we already KNEW all this. And that last part makes no sense, because if her Master is one of the Harlequin working against MOAD & The Council, then he's on the same side as Anita & Co so what the hell even...? Anyway, she also learns that Yiyu is not the only spy, that there's another Harlequin tiger, a golden one, posing as a survivor, and "his master was kinder than hers. They'd been sent to see if Jean-Claude could really stand against the Darkness, and if I could really be Master of Tigers." Oh, okay, that makes sense then. "She let me see his face in her mind. She betrayed him to me, because he and his master had done nothing to help her in all those long centuries. They'd respected the bond between servant and master, even knowing that her master had abused her for over a thousand years."
So basically the same as everyone who stands around letting Anita rape, abuse, and lobotomize people. Wait, no, that's not fair--pretty much no one stands a chance of stopping Anita, whereas this pair were presumably of equal or similar power to Yiyu's master.
Anita calls them bastards, Yiyu agrees. Anita telepathically sends this info to JC, and he's a little afraid to mess with the Harlequin but he still "directed Wicked and Truth to the huddled survivors." Why can't you just call them orange tigers? "He knew which man they wanted, because she had given me the face, and I'd given it to him." But how do Wicked and Truth know it? "I also knew her name. Yiyu. It meant Jade, Black Jade." I like how she says it like Bond, James Bond. Also, as far as I can tell just from Google, Yiyu could indeed mean Black Jade. However, for all I know, combining those particular characters for black and jade could be unlucky, or translate to something else (like how combining butter and fly makes butterfly, not flying butter) and thus would never be used for a name but I don't know. Anyone with any knowledge of Mandarin, Cantonese, or whatever characters this would be in is welcome to give their input.
Also Anita has just sexually assaulted two women in as many chapters. Way to fight those accusations of homophobia in literally the worst way you possibly could there, LKH.
http://lkh-lashouts.livejournal.com/591342.html#comments
Unsurprisingly she didn't answer some of the best questions (namely WHY DOES THIS SERIES SUCK SO BAD) but here are some of my favorites.
I am AMAZED at how obtuse she is.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb04s90?context=3
Although I guess the fact that vampires get to name their therian servants (because omg how else could a BLACK person have an IRISH name?) is interesting...interesting in that it furthers how therians are basically treated as pets and livestock and Anita participates in that rather than ever calling it out.
Yeah, it has nothing to do with Gary, really! Total coincidence!
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb04vv0?context=3
Were these "hardboileds" regularly raping and enslaving women like Anita does to men? Or wanting to hold a serial killer and make it better but being perfectly fine with shooting the woman she knew only was a murderer because THAT SAME SERIAL KILLER had been mentally controlling her? Like seriously you more than overcompensated there. Way more.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb04lu7?context=3
It's nice to hear her admit that Anita isn't totally comfortable being a woman, but as for the rest...eesh. And Cynric's age is honestly the fucking least of the issues around him in itself.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb04jlj?context=3
AW YEAH OLIVER FOR THE WIN!
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb03zw3?context=3
Must not hope, must not hope...
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb03pex?context=3
On the "why do you hate cops" issue (personally, I believe her issue isn't a conscious problem with them, but that she's so fangirl over them that she's jealous and therefore wants to outdo them in her fantasy world)
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb0359x?context=3
SURE YOU'D MAKE HER A BLONDE. SURE.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1i0joz/im_author_laurell_k_hamilton_ama/cb02xz6?context=3
Okay, this one just PISSED ME RIGHT THE FUCK OFF. It's regarding her and her hubby being poly: Its been interesting watching everyone argue about gay marriage, when I know that my husband and I will never be able to marry anyone we're dating. It's just not going to happen in my lifetime, if ever.
IT HAD ME SEEING RED
and you will be too, after....
BULLET, CHAPTER FORTY SIX
"I threw that energy into the other tigers" starting with Cynric since he was nearest to the now already-owned white tigers but "my blue tiger knew he was already ours" and so her power goes in search of "harder prey". So other tigers really aren't other tigers to her tigers, they're prey. It clearly has no species-recognition. Which begs the question of why her tigers still want to mate with these other tigers. Since Domino is half white tiger and she now owns the whites already, "half of him was already prepared to bend to my--our--will." I could not write better villain dialogue for her if I tried. "I had a moment to wonder whether this was how it felt to be a multiple personality, to lose yourself in the pronouns" I...have no words for this here. Anyway, Domino's black tiger "filled" him and so he climbs over the white tigers who are laying around Anita now and touches her, and when he touches her her black tiger scents suddenly that something else is here, "something that was hers, that was ours was here." OTHER PEOPLE YOU HAVE NEVER EVEN MET DO NOT BELONG TO YOU BECAUSE THEY SHARE A COLOR WITH YOUR STUPID CATS, EVEN IF YOU ARE A TIGER QUEEN. Like, seriously, being a fucking tiger queen doesn't mean ruling ALL the tigers of your color, right? That's why Bibi is just Chang of all the white tigers in America (or even just in Vegas?), but not the world, right? I don't think that was ever stated in canon though, so maybe I'm wrong in thinking it was at least implied?
Anita's power finds survivor weretigers, and you'd think she'd leave them alone at least, but nope "the power eased through like a warm wind, and they were tiger and they were tasty but the black tiger was seeking something else, like calling to like." Again, why the fuck do her inner tigers clearly want to EAT other tigers? Maybe it's a reflection of Anita's own psyche, that since she's an abusive sexual predator who sees other people as prey, that's how her tigers see their own species too.
"We found her pressed against the far wall." This already sounds like it's going to go bad places. "She wasn't very tall, dainty like me" and has the same "straight, shining black hair" as Meng Die's but even longer, "sweeping past her waist to caress the swell of her ass." Um. Okay. "She was even wearing one of those short Oriental-style dresses" Do you mean a cheongsam? I'm guess you mean a Chinese dress at least since the character turns out to be Chinese but honestly she really could mean anything East Asian here, and that is a WIDE range. It's like she said a "European-style" dress, basically, only replace the word "European" with some term that went out in the 80s and had very Imperialist roots. "Her eyes looked brown and human from here" but Anita's power "knew better" and she tells her tiger mentally about contact lenses which makes "we wanted to see her closes. We want to see her eyes." YOU. ARE. CREEPY.
Anita tries to "sweep through her" but it doesn't work and the lady stays where she is instead of coming to her like a called pet. She concentrates harder but "we could not make her come to us." Well, she clearly doesn't want to, so STOP IT! So Anita has Victor put her down, because apparently he was still holding her, and walks towards the woman. The other tigers part for her; I guess I can't expect tigers to have any species loyalty and defend this poor woman any more than they did Julia, since, as I've raved about several times, they're not group animals. This is "leaving the woman alone against the wall." Again, you can tell just by this sentence it's gonna get rapey. Anita talks about how her lips are painted red and "parted, her breathing faster" because of how much she'd fought Anita's call. The fact she succeeded, says Anita, shows that "she was more powerful than any tiger I'd tried yet." Meaning of course Anita will have to smack her down like Julia.
"I walked toward her, the black tiger's energy riding on the strength of the white, and blue, so that each color grew and fed off the power of the others. The black tiger was like a dark image blurring and growing more solid around me, as I, Anita, were somehow already inside it. My human hand reached out, encased in a huge, black, phantom paw." I, ANITA! The woman tells her "Don't", Anita says you're a black tiger, she says yes, Anita says she's been pretending to be a survivor of an attack here...how the fuck would that work? Look, remember Paula Chu in Skin Trade? She smelled that Anita had all the colors in her. So did Meph and Pride. Anita pretty instantly senses the tigers of Victor, Julia, any tiger she meets, including what color they are. So how the fuck could a black tiger be in a room full of other tigers AND NONE OF THEM KNOW WHAT SHE IS?! Stupidest espionage plan EVER!
Anita tells her to "Take my hand" and the woman, who had been leaning on her hands behind her to stop from doing just this, takes them out and says she wants to, and Anita says to do it then. ANITA, SHE WANTS TO BECAUSE YOU JUST TRIED TO CALL HER TO DO SO. THAT'S WHAT SHE WAS FIGHTING. But the poor thing can't fight anymore, I guess, because they hold hands and Anita's black tiger "found her beast. It was as if I'd tried to pick up a stray kitten and found out I had a full-grown tiger on my hands." No, it's nothing like that. You knew she was a tiger from the start, and you knew she was the most powerful you'd ever met, so it should be no surprise that her power "came crashing like a tidal wave trying to drown me" and even if it is, the tiger metaphor is a bad one to use for reasons I just said.
Anita, shockingly, is on her knees from all this power, which she says makes Bibiana's seem like nothing, but then notices that her power "felt more like a vampire, and the moment I thought it, I knew. She belonged to someone. Someone old, and that someone was pushing power through her and into me." Oh. So she's NOT powerful at all, actually. It's a vampire. Of course. NO POWERFUL FEMALES EXCEPT ANITA ALLOWED, EVEN IN A MATRIARCHAL SPECIES! Have we actually ever even seen one powerful female weretiger? One who, unlike Bibiana in Skin Trade, is not shown to be weaker than the males and/or needs to be saved by Anita or someone else despite their supposed power? Anita calls her a cheat, she mocks Anita back by asking if she can't tame her like the others. Anita reaches out to Domino with her black tiger, he comes to her her "full of energy." The woman calls Domino brother and tells him not to help Anita, Domino says that she's not his sister and kneels behind Anita. Like I said, no species loyalty. At least that's accurate. If only when it benefits Anita.
Domino kneels behind Anita and touches her shoulders, and power goes into Anita and then jumps into the woman. Hey, we all know this is Yiyu / Black Jade, right? I'm going to call her Yiyu even though Anita doesn't know her name yet. It's easier. Anyway, Yiyu "cried out and fell to her knees in front of me, and I used our joined hands to spill her in against me." You are a fucking creep. "Her face was inches from mine, my hand in the back of all that silky hair. Her face was a mixture of fear and need." I'm sure that's what rapists fantasize about. Much like when she made Domino her mindwiped slave, Anita monologues in her head about how loooonely Yiyu has been because she's never had any other tigers of her color around, which, may I remind you, really makes fuck-all sense. And of course Anita and Domino "smelled like home" to her and "we were what she had been mourning for more than a thousand years." So your treatment of her is thus totally okay and she's going to be fine with it, I'm sure. "That was the true strength of the ardeur, that it could see into your mind, your heart, your soul, to the thing you wanted most" I would buy that if it was only desire sexually, but since she seems to mean across the board, then no, that makes no sense.
Anita tries to kiss her and she whispers "Master, help me" and "my lips touched hers before I realized she wasn't talking to me." THAT IS SO UNINTENTIONALLY FACEPALM-INDUCING. From wherever he is, "her vampire master shoved his power into me, not like I was a necromancer or another vampire, but as if I were just another black tiger to call, because that was his beast. Not just tiger, but this tiger." Wow, how much would that suck, to only be able to call one specific color morph of a species and then that color morph be all but extinct except for like two and a half people? Anita's tiger snarls at him, he laughs and the laughter tries to come out of--er, "spill out" of Yiyu's mouth but Anita kisses her to shut her up. Er, I mean, "I kissed her because she was soft and fragile in my arms. I kissed her because Domino was solid at my back, his strong arms folding over us both" So therefore it's not too gay because a dude is getting in on it "so that he gave me not just the strength of his black tiger, but of his white" This 'mixed-heritage-gives-him-two-beasts' thing will never stop being stupid or illogical to me. Anyway, the addition of white tiger power makes the vampire stumble and "my two tigers spilled into her mouth" and go through her to him...however that works. Seriously, her mouth? What?
Anita sees his face for a moment and knows that wherever he is out there, he's close by, that he'd sent Yiyu in like a "Trojan horse" the stupidest most obvious Trojan horse "he hadn't believed any of us could be a danger to the tie that bound them." Anita sees that "his skin was both dark and pale" suggesting that "he'd begun life as someone very dark, but vampires grow pale with age." Oh, so like Anne Rice's vampires, who do indeed get whiter and whiter as they age, as well as harder, so that they're almost transformed into living marble when they're ancient enough. Also, pale and dark? Does she know 'light brown' is a thing? Oh, and not only is he a dark-skinned guy, he has black eyes, tightly curled hair, and full lips...shit, I think she's describing a black dude here. At the very least he's definitely PoC, and has anyone else noticed how PoC vampires are ALWAYS bad? Oddly there are good PoC therians (Rafael, Vivian, Jamil, etc.) but every PoC vampire 9and there haven't been many) I can remember--Kissa, Yasmeen, Padma, Alejandro, Red Woman's Husband, Itzpapalotl, possibly the also 'dark yet pale' Vittorio--has been an enemy. The closest thing we have to a 'good' non-white vampire is Meng Die, who was introduced as a violently jealous sadist who tried to kill one of the harem (Requiem) and was only with JC & Co because they're on top and therefore she benefits from being on their side. Please, if anyone can think of an exception to this, do let me know, I'd love to be wrong about it.
Yiyu runs her arms over Anita and Domino making "small eager noises" as she smooches with Anita and they keep kissing (there is mention of lipstick smearing everywhere) as "I pressed her to the floor; she wrapped her legs around my waist" which shows up her dress, and, surprise, she's not wearing anything under it. She starts grinding against Anita and "normally that would have freaked me out, but Jean-Claude was there, and so were Richard, Nathaniel, Damian, and Micah, and they liked girls just fine." WHAT? How does 'well, my boyfriends like girls' make a difference here? Is it just basically all a performance for them, I guess? A way to look sexy to them because LKH, despite probably writing this for 'the haters' who point out her homophobia and treatment of lesbians, couldn't bear to actually write about women who like women for the sake of women, not for men?
Anita claims that "I was in more control than I'd ever been of the ardeur." This will not, I'm sure, prevent her from being 'forced' by it to fuck more harem members in the future. "It was a weapon at last." That's not new. It was explicitly referred to as a weapon by her in Skin Trade, and, I believe, in Flirt, and she used it as such, or at least attempted to in some absurd way *coughVittoriocough* Then the vampire "drove his power into her so hard and sharp that it tore her mouth from mine" and Yiyu starts spasming and Anita thinks that her master plans to kill her rather than lose her (REMINDS ME OF SOMEONE) "but she was his animal to call; the death of one might mean the death of both" and then his power hits Anita's black tiger and she realizes "he wasn't trying to kill her, he was trying to tame her, and me" She's already his animal to call, isn't that what 'tame' has been used to mean so far in this book? Somehow Anita knows that "he'd used pain and sheer force to tame her once before, long ago. I offered something so much better than violence." Yeah, you're the magical equivalent of the rapist who drugs her victims so they can't consent and have no will against you rather than using violence to overpower them...well, most of the time. You certainly got violent with poor Julia.
"I ground my hips against hers, pinned her to the floor underneath me, thrust my beast into her not to harm but to pleasure." And here I thought that her guns were Freudian! Seriously do I even need to make a "beast = penis" joke? And would it even be a joke at this point? "Even then I think I would have kept control, but I wasn't used to other women." I know she means sexually but I took it to mean used to them, like, even existing in her general area. "I didn't understand that some of them were easier to bring than I was." Anita is NOT hard to 'bring' at all from what I can make of the sex scenes in these series. "One moment I was riding the edge of sex" European sex or American? "using it to push back the threat that the vampire had used on her for centuries" God I can't believe this shit is serious "and the next her orgasm caught me" and since Anita is "tied to her" right now she orgasms too and "the pleasure spread" to Domino who "pressed me harder against the most intimate part of her". I'm just picturing Domino pretty much SHOVING Anita on to Yiyu, who isn't so much bucking with orgasm in my head as she's struggling trying to get the hell away from this fuckery. Even the freaking vampire has an orgasm too from this, "one hand holding desperately to the bedspread, as he tried not to feel what she was feeling. It wasn't just the pleasure; he was feeling her pleasure, a woman's pleasure." So does that...bother him, or is it more powerful, or does he like it too much to resist, or...? This isn't really clear, but when "he tried to draw his power to hurt her again, but as pain had hurt her concentration, pleasure seemed to hurt his." So just like Vittorio and Anita orgasming his control off the weretigers, got it.
Anita looks at Yiyu, whose "eyes were unfocused, body limp under mine" and Jade whispers "Please". For some reason the response to this is for Domino to kneel behind Anita, slide her thong to one side, and Anita "knew before he pressed his weight against my body that he'd be nude, or nude enough." The vampire, whom Anita now knows is in a distant hotel room, screams no and Yiyu whispers yes. I feel so terrible for Yiyu; she's just going from one abuser to another, which, though I know LKH didn't intend, is pretty accurate for a victim of domestic abuse. They're often just picked up by another predator who can sense their trauma, and have been psychologically conditioned to respond to predation by their previous abusers, from what I know, and we learn that Yiyu has been abused by her soon-to-be-previous Master for a thousand years. Honestly, she's the only one since Nathaniel to actually make SENSE when it comes to taking Anita's crap when you don't factor in the mind-control.
"Domino angled himself against my body" and Anita lifts her hips to help him but then feels sorrow from Yiyu and triumph from the vampire. Anita thinks "Fuck that" and apparently means it literally because she lifts up Yiyu's hips and Yiyu smiles wraps her legs around Anita's waist "pressing herself against me" while Domino starts fucking Anita from behind, and doesn't even have to take her undies off to do it because she's wearing a thong so he just moves the thin strip of fabric aside. Again, can't be too gay now, gotta have a guy involved AND have both ladies keep their clothes on! And Anita's panties gotta stay on too! So no touching Yiyu's icky vajayjay! Basically Domino fucks her cunt, Yiyu grinds on her from the front (presumably hitting her clit I guess, though there's no mention of it, not even coded) and Anita grinds between them and thinks about how she is "wet, tight but wet". She can feel herself getting close to coming ("that warm weight building inside my body") and the vampire tries one last time to take back Yiyu. He gathers his power, Anita notes neither she nor her tiger like him because he caused pain to Yiyu, she feels his power come one last time, Yiyu looks afraid "like she felt the blow coming". Anita tries to use her black tiger against him but then "Domino made that one last stroke" and Anita comes...good, does that mean she'll lose due to distraction in a delicious echo of what happened with Vittorio?
No, it means that Yiyu comes too and "we all screamed our orgasm at once in one long spill of pleasure. I shoved all that pleasure at the vampire, and I felt the connection between her and him break." THIS IS SO STUPID. Although admittedly it does have a precedent in that this is the same way she freed Sebastian in Skin Trade from Vittorio, but that doesn't make it less stupid. And, unlike Sebastian, it does something additional too: "She was suddenly mine, so much mine." So she's still owned by another person, but it's okay as long as they treat her better, right? That's the message I'm getting here. You know back in the antebellum days, there were a lot of people who said of course you shouldn't mistreat your slaves but didn't think there was anything wrong with slavery itself? Just putting that out there. She spends a full third of the page talking about how HAPPY Yiyu feels and how PLEASURED her body is and how she WANTS Anita to read her mind and know everything about her.
Through Yiyu's mind, she learns that her Master (who for some reason never gets a name, just generic abusive probably-black guy) was one of the Harlequin, would kill her before he let her go, and had been sent to spy on Anita & Co "because the Harlequin had broken with the Vampire Council. They were running from the Mother of All Darkness". Okay, we already KNEW all this. And that last part makes no sense, because if her Master is one of the Harlequin working against MOAD & The Council, then he's on the same side as Anita & Co so what the hell even...? Anyway, she also learns that Yiyu is not the only spy, that there's another Harlequin tiger, a golden one, posing as a survivor, and "his master was kinder than hers. They'd been sent to see if Jean-Claude could really stand against the Darkness, and if I could really be Master of Tigers." Oh, okay, that makes sense then. "She let me see his face in her mind. She betrayed him to me, because he and his master had done nothing to help her in all those long centuries. They'd respected the bond between servant and master, even knowing that her master had abused her for over a thousand years."
So basically the same as everyone who stands around letting Anita rape, abuse, and lobotomize people. Wait, no, that's not fair--pretty much no one stands a chance of stopping Anita, whereas this pair were presumably of equal or similar power to Yiyu's master.
Anita calls them bastards, Yiyu agrees. Anita telepathically sends this info to JC, and he's a little afraid to mess with the Harlequin but he still "directed Wicked and Truth to the huddled survivors." Why can't you just call them orange tigers? "He knew which man they wanted, because she had given me the face, and I'd given it to him." But how do Wicked and Truth know it? "I also knew her name. Yiyu. It meant Jade, Black Jade." I like how she says it like Bond, James Bond. Also, as far as I can tell just from Google, Yiyu could indeed mean Black Jade. However, for all I know, combining those particular characters for black and jade could be unlucky, or translate to something else (like how combining butter and fly makes butterfly, not flying butter) and thus would never be used for a name but I don't know. Anyone with any knowledge of Mandarin, Cantonese, or whatever characters this would be in is welcome to give their input.
Also Anita has just sexually assaulted two women in as many chapters. Way to fight those accusations of homophobia in literally the worst way you possibly could there, LKH.
