BULLET, CHAPTER 48
Jul. 18th, 2013 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratMAGIC RATS: Last night I took Sid out of his cage. When I went to return him, Sam was in his cage instead! But her cage door was closed! I had no idea how she did that, until I found out that she and Blatz had chewed a hole in the plastic part of their cage. I patched it up, but I thought I had a magic Houdini rat there for about an hour!
FAN THEORY 1: So remember how I said either JC is not a sourdre de sang or else he's keeping his bloodline powers damn well hidden from Anita, given we've seen neither hide nor hair of them? Subtle_shades said she had a crack theory that his bloodline power was stealing the powers of other vampires and I was like WAIT THAT'S NOT CRACKY AT ALL, THAT MAKES SENSE! We know Anita got the ardeur by being the Human Servant of JC, right? (Not something that usually happens with Human Servants, or ever before her because she's special, but most due to her being a necromancer is the in-universe theory as to how/why, I believe) And we learned in this book that she's basically like Rogue of the X-Men to vampires, permanently stealing any vamp power used against her, hence why she can call beasts like Padma, eat fear and anger like the Moroven and the Dragon, and do the life-draining thing like Obsidian Butterfly. Maybe that's not her power. Maybe stealing powers is JC's bloodline ability, and the reason she has it is the same reason she has the ardeur, through a tie to him. Makes sense, right? It's my headcanon too now! Might even show SvS if I can manage to cram another thing into that hydra-like fic.
FAN THEORY 2: Commenter writtenelision and I were talking last night (she's one of the fabulous roleplay buddies from back in the day before I was ever a-sporking-rat!) about just how much things SUCK for therians under vampires.
And being a vampire...not something that happens accidentally in this universe, but therianthropy? Just get scratched and bam, suddenly you're thrown into this world where you're at the bottom of a horrible hierarchy not only of your own species but bloodsuckers to boot.
And just think! If a vampire who can call a certain animal has a Therian Servant of that animal type, they can make said servant infect dozens of people, resulting in a lot of very new (meaning very weak) wereanimals of said animal, who will be easy for the vampire to control for their own purposes. I don't think there are any canon examples of this, but I bet you it has happened before. Therians actually have even MORE reason to hate vampires than baseline humans do, honestly!
Speaking of therian exploitation by vampires, both Maximillian Bellici (Master of Las Vegas and Samuel (Master of Cape Cod) have taken a wife of their species of animals to call (tiger, mermaid) who they also made their Therian Servant (well, Bibi is, not sure about Thea) which thus has DUBIOUS CONSENT ALL OVER IT since that entails taking a portion of their free will, and they have used that woman's position of power among her people (Chang, siren) to TAKE THAT PEOPLE OVER. Does this read as suspcious as hell to anyone else, even though nothing bad is even suggested as going on from Anita's POV? Shit, dude, even Ruthven at least used his own power to take over the English swans instead of binding a swan queen to him or something.
We know that a vamp can make someone their Servant by force. And the completed process robs them of a portion of their free will, as I mentioned. And do you think Bibi would just hand her people over to a vamp? COME ON. I can't believe I didn't see this before, it makes even more sense than my "Bibi sacrificed herself by becoming wife and Servant of Max to save her people during some calamity in the past" theory (and could coincide with it)
BULLET, CHAPTER 48
This is the last chapter of Bullet, in which Anita sums everything up. Topaz went back to his master, though he's not referred to as Topaz but as "the Harlequin's gold tiger" because his own name doesn't matter, just who owns him. "Jake and Jade stayed with us. Jake joined us in the gym like all the good guards" you have bad guards? "Jade joined us in the gym, too, but she's not a guard. She can fight, and she's fearsomely good, but the centuries of abuse have left her with a victim's mentality, and that doesn't make a good guard. Maybe I can introduce her to Richard's therapist?"
1) Is it just me or does this wording make it sound like Anita's main concern over Jade's mental health is that it prevents her from being an effective guard?
2) I appreciate that LKH recognizes the mental impact that abuse, especially long-term abuse, has, and that people can be a fearsome fighters and still suffer trauma. However, rather than letting this happen organically and on-screen, she just TELLS us about it in a few epilogue sentences. Not good character development.
3) If it turns out she's specifically good at Asian martial arts, I'm going to be pissed. (Not that no Asian character can ever be good at Asian martial arts, just that Jade is already nothing BUT a stereotype--a lesbian due to abuse, a submissive yet sexualized China Doll--so adding one more just makes her worse)
4) Look, I don't mean to sound like I think Jade's case is unfixable but SHE WENT THROUGH CENTURIES OF ABUSE IN A VERY NON-HUMAN CULTURE THAT THIS SHRINK LIKELY HAS NO CONTEXT FOR UNLESS SHE HERSELF IS AN OLD VAMPIRE. Packing everyone off to offscreen therapy does and cannot realistically fix everything! Least of all to such a simple and complete degree as Anita seems to think! There probably is a growing field for cases like Jade (people who have gone through things relating specifically to their lives as preternaturals) but that must be a specialized as fuck field. Maybe Richard's shrink is one, but this is never mentioned.
"Cynric, who wants to be called Cyn, pronounced Sin, stayed in St. Louis." I just can't even with this one. "He's the only blue tiger we have and we need him close to us." Which LKH came up with in order to justify there being a teenager in your harem. "I'm still note sure how I feel about it, but unless I want to divide the female blue tiger from her master, who she also loves, Cyn is the only one we have to bind to us." I hope that female blue is his mother and she comes to kick your ass. "He's hitting the gym" Is this going to be like how she fucked the perma-fifteen vampire Byron but that's not weird because oh he works out so much his muscles make him look eighteen? "and we're looking at enrolling him in his last year of high school." So he's not just a teenager, he's a HIGH-SCHOOLER, not like a 19 year old or something, oh god. "When I realized he was a junior I was totally creeped" AS YOU SHOULD BE "but he's legal" Him being LEGAL to have sex with doesn't make it morally okay for you to do so.
Like, just starting with the non-supernatural stuff, him being a teenager means his brain is not fully developed yet. That's a scientific fact. That's WHY there's an age of consent law, and why it's set where it is. That's why teenagers often seem so irrational and illogical and do stupid shit all the time. That's why, in combination with many other factors such as the meds I was on at the time, my lifelong depression was at its peak in my teens. Now of course, you don't just hit your 18th birthday and bam, your brain instantly transitions to fully adult. In fact, if I have things straight, development actually continues into your twenties. Anita, being in her late twenties at this point I believe, is (or least should be) a full adult. Cynric is not. If he and kids his age chose to have sex, that would be one thing. But someone Anita's age having sex with him is an unequal balance. Could it work and be non-exploitative? Maybe. Could he have a relationship with her that was not her taking advantage of him? Maybe. I really don't know enough about this kind of thing to say so either way. Though I would suggest thinking about it with the genders reversed for a moment.
But all those "maybes" go out the window anyway when you factor in all the supernatural stuff and it becomes very clear that she totally IS taking advantage of him. How so? Oh, let me count the ways...
1) She was his first sexual experience and it was via supernatural rape by the MOAD. They should both be kept away from each other except perhaps for meeting for the purpose of therapy, mutual healing, forgiveness, recognition of the other as having been a fellow victim and not the true aggressor, etc. Forming a relationship? Hell no. Maybe if they were older, but he is a kid and this was his first time and there are just so many reasons why that is a big NO.
2) She is his Queen. That's been made pretty clear that she supernaturally rules him, body and mind, via her stupid tiger powers. That alone makes his consent questionable; is he agreeing because he wants to, or because he feels he has to? And again, this just gets worse when you factor in his impressionable age...
3)...and the fact that he has no clan. Stupid as it is, color is clearly important as hell to these weretigers and they feel extreme loneliness without others of their color around. Combine that with his youth and this being his first time and her not only being another tiger of his color (the only one he's ever met, in fact) but his queen, and, yeah, it's hard to say his consent isn't at the least questionable and/or this situation at least a little skeevy.
4) It's essential for Anita to have a blue tiger or else. So this teenage boy is faced with the fact that if he chooses NOT to have sex with and become the animal to call (aka slave) of this woman, that might mean the end of his species at the hands of the MOAD. Even if all the rest of the points I made didn't stand, I think that alone means this isn't a situation where his consent is not being coerced/influenced.
5) He's living under her roof. I've personally known of more than one instance where a girl living somewhere only got to stay if she gave up sex to the homeowner. Of course, with Anita's track record, not fucking her might not only get Cynric kicked out, but killed.
Also, let us all take a moment to appreciate the fact that LKH set up a situation where Anita *has* to have a teenage boy to bone and own or else the bad guy will wipe out all the weretigers. She wanted it that much that she went that far to justify it in-universe. That is some grade-A creepy there, folks.
"I'm still working on my issues with it all." The issues being, of course, that she has issues and needs to be okay with this, not THIS IS REALLY HONKING WRONG!
"They found the Master of Atlanta by using the cadaver dogs like I'd suggested." Yes, yes, Anita's wisdom saves the day, whoopee. "They fried him with an exterminator team" And of course we don't get to see it. No, that would have been too COOL AND EXCITING AND POSSIBLY PLOT RELEVANT! "The few vampires that survived his death are in need of a new Master of the City. Jean-Claude and I are debating on who to send." Why the hell do you two get to decide that? "Meng Die wants it to be her." Ahhh, and so we find a way to get another woman off the screen. "She's friendlier to me since we helped her up her power level. What she actually said was, "When you dance with the devil, it might as well be a devil who can give you your own corner of hell to rule." Uh, yeah, I'm sure that sounded real cool in your head, LKH.
"Richard has continued to be okay." You mean totally subservient to your every depraved whim? "I learned that the three men who tried to kill him were dead. I'd assumed the guards that we sent to rescue him had killed them, but they'd only helped dispose of the bodies." Yeeeah, do the police you work with know about that, Miss Federal Marshal? "Richard as his wolf had hunted them through the woods and killed them." AND WE MISSED THIS? ARE YOU SHITTING ME? I can understand us not getting to see the Atlanta thing, disappointing as it is, but Anita can see telepathically through Richard's eyes, dammit, we could have watched the whole hunt, complete with the creepy feelings of total helplessness that one would have SEEING THROUGH THE EYES OF THE KILLER AND BEING ABLE TO DO NOTHING. "Jean-Claude and I held him one night while he cried about that." Oh for fuck's sake again with this?! "He didn't cry about killing them so much as about how much he enjoyed killing them. In our ways, all three of us worry that we will be the monster." You and JC are already monsters. So is Richard if he actually hunted them down versus killing in self-defense. He just still has the humanity to know what he is and feel bad about it. JC probably knows what he is, but I doubt he feels bad. You have no idea and feel zip.
"It turned out that the effects of the ardeur and some of the odd pairings wore off. We offered every woman not on birth control a morning-after pill." Sorry about the mass rape we forced on you, here, have a free contraceptive, now everything is alright! "I was thankful once again that I was on the pill. Condoms for me were an extra protection--not my only one." I really do not think the pill is a good match for Anita. You have to take it every day, and my brand recommends at around the same time. Not only can missing more than a day put you at risk for pregnancy, it'll fuck up your period cycle, at least it does for me. But anyway, look at Anita's lifestyle. She is regularly up all night, blacked out and/or possessed for over 24 hours at a time, taken hostage, etc. Something like a patch, injecting, Nuva-Ring, etc would be a much better fit for her. "JJ is back in New York, but she's also back to being love only with Jason." OKAY, I AM ACTUALLY REALLY SURPRISED BY THIS, WAS NOT EXPECTING IT. "Bianca, the swanmane" whom we never see onscreen and have no reason to care about "is a little unhappy about that, but it's not the ardeur that makes her miss JJ. She just liked JJ, and who could blame her?"
How does Anita know this? Has she talked to Bianca? Has she ever even met her? Who the fuck IS she? LKH, we have to actually meet and know these people to really be interested at all in their love triangles. It's nice you're not leaving it hanging, but it's still incomplete.
"Jake helped us hunt Padma, Master of Beasts. It wasn't that hard to break the Mother's hold on him. Jake thinks it worked so well because my power is similiar to his. I'm not so sure. It was too easy, as the old saying goes."
WHAT? AND THIS HAPPENS OFFSCREEN? Okay, as cool as the thing in Atlanta was, Anita can't be everywhere, and I understand that, and it would have been dumb for her to go to Atlanta, much like her going to Vegas in Skin Trade was. But if we're told that action like that is happening elsewhere, we need equal action going on where the POV character is too. AND THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECT! I don't even care if it was easy, at least it would be something that HAPPENED! The only fight in this whole damn book was when Haven got shot! That's fucking it! No, I do not count writhing around on a bed and driving them off psychically by touching your boyfriends to be fighting, nor do I count assaulting people weaker than you for no reason beyond they dared to be a female to be fighting. Seriously though, just think, we could easily have taken out the Valentina chapter, the gym chapters, all those other really irrelevant lengthy parts (and no, I don't mean the harem's penises...though those too) and put in tracking down and exorcising Padma.
"The Dragon and the Traveller are sending people of their line to St. Louis" Oooh, I'm curious about the oh-so-rare Traveller vamps "so if the Mother does try to take them over we can have a leg up on breaking them free." I don't understand why having vampires of their lines would help with that? They can't find Morte D'Amour, but he took over another one of his line in Europe like he did with Clayton and nearly seventy people were killed before the army stopped them. BADASS! ROTTING VAMPIRES VERSUS THE ARMY! "Countries where vampires are still illegal don't have legal vampire executioners. They usually call in what amounts to the National Guard." I'd sure as hell rather be reading about them for damn sure.
"Some tigers of every color stayed with us. We have enough blood donors that most of our vampires can feed on shapeshifters. We're the only vampire kiss in the country that can boast such rich food for all our bloodsuckers." Which means that Bibiana must not allow Max's vampires to munch on her kitties. I like this implication.
They are still staying underground as much as they can until they can find the Lover of Death, and she's rearranged her schedule so that she has three afternoons a week free of clients. That's like half the week, wtf? She uses these afternoons to train with the guards, and Nathaniel has coffee ready for her when she comes home from work. One afternoon when she comes in and Matthew is in the kitchen eating a PB&J. THE FUCK IS THAT KID DOING HERE?! Anita makes sure he can't see her gun under her jacket, while Matthew "puckered up for a kiss and I gave him one. He got lipstick and I got grape jelly." This coming just a few pages after the mention of Cynric makes it so disturbing. She starts to kiss Nathaniel, then remembers Matthew's "All the big boys kiss you, 'Nita" and stops, but then Nathaniel, puzzled, kisses her instead and she kisses him back and talks about how good the smell of his skin makes her feel.
They sit down at the table with Matthew and Nathaniel explains Monica is going to be gone overnight so Matthew is staying. WHY THE FUCK COULD SHE NOT HIRE AN OVERNIGHT BABYSITTER? THIS IS NOT A SAFE PLACE AT THE BEST OF TIMES, BUT IN THE LAST FEW NIGHTS THERE HAS BEEN A MURDER, A PSYCHIC INVASION OF EVIL VAMPIRES, AND THREE FORCED ORGIES. Seriously, we know from Valentina and Bartolome that the ardeur can overtake child vampires, it can most likely take human children too! Good god, if he had been staying over just a few nights prior...seriously, I feel like something is very wrong that Monica is letting him stay here. By which I mean Monica is obviously a smart woman and, even if she DIDN'T know about all that, I doubt she'd let him stay here if she had any other choice. Something is fishy and I don't like it.
And then all the guards "spilled into the kitchen" because it's shift change and they're all "armed to the teeth and not hiding it" so Anita takes off her jacket. Matthew behaves "like it was all normal" and the guards greet him casually as well, suggesting they know him too and it's not unusual for him to be here. I am so worried for this child. Lisandro ruffles his hair, and there is mention that he "had two little ones of his own." YEAH, AND 'SOMETHING ABOUT A WIFE' TOO, ANITA, REMEMBER?
Matthew asks Dev/Meph (referred to as Devil, ugh) if he can come watch them practice. Dev says sure and then "leaned over and kissed me hi. So did Nicky. All the big boys kiss 'Nita." THE SMUG IN THAT LAST LINE. THE SMUG. They start to go to the gym "surrounded by muscular and dangerous men" and Matthew grabs her hand and Nathaniels', and asks what they're reading tonight. When Goodnight Moon is offered, he disdains it as a book for little kid, so Nathaniel offers Peter Pan and Matthew approves. Anita reminds us how Peter Pan is the first book that "Micah, Nathaniel, and I ever read to each other." I can see why---the females besides the heroine are all depicted as jealous hostile hussies (Tinkerbell and the mermaids), and if I recall right (it's been a while since I've read it) part of the point of Peter's eternal innocence was that he was basically a little sociopath who didn't comprehend the death or loss of others, and also was kind of sexist to boot? Not to mention that the whole "always a young boy" deal is just CREEPY in relation to Nathaniel.
Anita thinks that she isn't 100% comfy with everything Matthew sees and learns here, but his mother is so it's okay. Yeah, I don't buy that, as I said. No, what bothers Anita is that having Matthew around has made Nathaniel start hinting that "maybe we could have a rug rat of our own." NO. That is supposed to be one word, btw. ALSO, NO! "Me, a mom? So not happening." NO, IT'S NOT. Also ugh you are not a Valley Girl ugh ugh. "But if he keeps hinting about kids, he may talk me into that puppy he's been wanting." ALSO NO. NONE OF YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF AN ANIMAL. AND THE ONES THAT CAN ARE NOT NICE PEOPLE. "I can see us with a puppy, but a baby? Not only no, but hell no." The only reason I actually believe this won't go the same way as her promise not to sleep with Nathaniel is that Anita would be the one stuck getting fat and inconvenienced for nine months...though then again, LKH may bullshit a way around that.
"I'm a U.S. Marsha, a legal vampire executioner, and I raise the dead for a living." Pretty much none of which entered into this novel at all besides the phone call and tape from Atlanta. "None of those jobs would work with a baby" yes good, some sense "and not even the thought of having Nathaniel's lavendar eyes staring up at me from some curly-haired moppet is going to change that. Besides, brown beats light-colored eyes genetically. I'd be more likely be staring into a pair of my own dark brown, and I can see that every time I look in a mirror." Um, Anita, you know people have babies for something other than them being pretty, right? "I'm not fond enough of my own eyes to want to see them in someone else's face."
...and that is the last line of the book. What. The. Fuck? Was that supposed to be, some kind of tragic self-esteem thing? Dramatic? It just sounds STUPID. She points out a perfectly good reason she shouldn't have a baby, but then follows it up by a totally bizarre shallow kind-of-disturbing reason. I mean, I'm all for women not having babies for any reason they don't want to, including so-called 'shallow' ones like ruining one's figure and such, because dammit that is HER body...but in this case, it's not about her body, it's about that of the baby and how it potentially wouldn't come out pretty enough to her liking. That's pretty creepy and makes me wonder just how she'd treat a kid based on its looks alone.
Remember that fan-made baby I have that resulted from her one time with Rafael? That poor kid has brown eyes. LOOKS LIKE HE'S GONNA HAVE EVEN MORE ISSUES THAT I THOUGHT.
FAN THEORY 1: So remember how I said either JC is not a sourdre de sang or else he's keeping his bloodline powers damn well hidden from Anita, given we've seen neither hide nor hair of them? Subtle_shades said she had a crack theory that his bloodline power was stealing the powers of other vampires and I was like WAIT THAT'S NOT CRACKY AT ALL, THAT MAKES SENSE! We know Anita got the ardeur by being the Human Servant of JC, right? (Not something that usually happens with Human Servants, or ever before her because she's special, but most due to her being a necromancer is the in-universe theory as to how/why, I believe) And we learned in this book that she's basically like Rogue of the X-Men to vampires, permanently stealing any vamp power used against her, hence why she can call beasts like Padma, eat fear and anger like the Moroven and the Dragon, and do the life-draining thing like Obsidian Butterfly. Maybe that's not her power. Maybe stealing powers is JC's bloodline ability, and the reason she has it is the same reason she has the ardeur, through a tie to him. Makes sense, right? It's my headcanon too now! Might even show SvS if I can manage to cram another thing into that hydra-like fic.
FAN THEORY 2: Commenter writtenelision and I were talking last night (she's one of the fabulous roleplay buddies from back in the day before I was ever a-sporking-rat!) about just how much things SUCK for therians under vampires.
And being a vampire...not something that happens accidentally in this universe, but therianthropy? Just get scratched and bam, suddenly you're thrown into this world where you're at the bottom of a horrible hierarchy not only of your own species but bloodsuckers to boot.
And just think! If a vampire who can call a certain animal has a Therian Servant of that animal type, they can make said servant infect dozens of people, resulting in a lot of very new (meaning very weak) wereanimals of said animal, who will be easy for the vampire to control for their own purposes. I don't think there are any canon examples of this, but I bet you it has happened before. Therians actually have even MORE reason to hate vampires than baseline humans do, honestly!
Speaking of therian exploitation by vampires, both Maximillian Bellici (Master of Las Vegas and Samuel (Master of Cape Cod) have taken a wife of their species of animals to call (tiger, mermaid) who they also made their Therian Servant (well, Bibi is, not sure about Thea) which thus has DUBIOUS CONSENT ALL OVER IT since that entails taking a portion of their free will, and they have used that woman's position of power among her people (Chang, siren) to TAKE THAT PEOPLE OVER. Does this read as suspcious as hell to anyone else, even though nothing bad is even suggested as going on from Anita's POV? Shit, dude, even Ruthven at least used his own power to take over the English swans instead of binding a swan queen to him or something.
We know that a vamp can make someone their Servant by force. And the completed process robs them of a portion of their free will, as I mentioned. And do you think Bibi would just hand her people over to a vamp? COME ON. I can't believe I didn't see this before, it makes even more sense than my "Bibi sacrificed herself by becoming wife and Servant of Max to save her people during some calamity in the past" theory (and could coincide with it)
BULLET, CHAPTER 48
This is the last chapter of Bullet, in which Anita sums everything up. Topaz went back to his master, though he's not referred to as Topaz but as "the Harlequin's gold tiger" because his own name doesn't matter, just who owns him. "Jake and Jade stayed with us. Jake joined us in the gym like all the good guards" you have bad guards? "Jade joined us in the gym, too, but she's not a guard. She can fight, and she's fearsomely good, but the centuries of abuse have left her with a victim's mentality, and that doesn't make a good guard. Maybe I can introduce her to Richard's therapist?"
1) Is it just me or does this wording make it sound like Anita's main concern over Jade's mental health is that it prevents her from being an effective guard?
2) I appreciate that LKH recognizes the mental impact that abuse, especially long-term abuse, has, and that people can be a fearsome fighters and still suffer trauma. However, rather than letting this happen organically and on-screen, she just TELLS us about it in a few epilogue sentences. Not good character development.
3) If it turns out she's specifically good at Asian martial arts, I'm going to be pissed. (Not that no Asian character can ever be good at Asian martial arts, just that Jade is already nothing BUT a stereotype--a lesbian due to abuse, a submissive yet sexualized China Doll--so adding one more just makes her worse)
4) Look, I don't mean to sound like I think Jade's case is unfixable but SHE WENT THROUGH CENTURIES OF ABUSE IN A VERY NON-HUMAN CULTURE THAT THIS SHRINK LIKELY HAS NO CONTEXT FOR UNLESS SHE HERSELF IS AN OLD VAMPIRE. Packing everyone off to offscreen therapy does and cannot realistically fix everything! Least of all to such a simple and complete degree as Anita seems to think! There probably is a growing field for cases like Jade (people who have gone through things relating specifically to their lives as preternaturals) but that must be a specialized as fuck field. Maybe Richard's shrink is one, but this is never mentioned.
"Cynric, who wants to be called Cyn, pronounced Sin, stayed in St. Louis." I just can't even with this one. "He's the only blue tiger we have and we need him close to us." Which LKH came up with in order to justify there being a teenager in your harem. "I'm still note sure how I feel about it, but unless I want to divide the female blue tiger from her master, who she also loves, Cyn is the only one we have to bind to us." I hope that female blue is his mother and she comes to kick your ass. "He's hitting the gym" Is this going to be like how she fucked the perma-fifteen vampire Byron but that's not weird because oh he works out so much his muscles make him look eighteen? "and we're looking at enrolling him in his last year of high school." So he's not just a teenager, he's a HIGH-SCHOOLER, not like a 19 year old or something, oh god. "When I realized he was a junior I was totally creeped" AS YOU SHOULD BE "but he's legal" Him being LEGAL to have sex with doesn't make it morally okay for you to do so.
Like, just starting with the non-supernatural stuff, him being a teenager means his brain is not fully developed yet. That's a scientific fact. That's WHY there's an age of consent law, and why it's set where it is. That's why teenagers often seem so irrational and illogical and do stupid shit all the time. That's why, in combination with many other factors such as the meds I was on at the time, my lifelong depression was at its peak in my teens. Now of course, you don't just hit your 18th birthday and bam, your brain instantly transitions to fully adult. In fact, if I have things straight, development actually continues into your twenties. Anita, being in her late twenties at this point I believe, is (or least should be) a full adult. Cynric is not. If he and kids his age chose to have sex, that would be one thing. But someone Anita's age having sex with him is an unequal balance. Could it work and be non-exploitative? Maybe. Could he have a relationship with her that was not her taking advantage of him? Maybe. I really don't know enough about this kind of thing to say so either way. Though I would suggest thinking about it with the genders reversed for a moment.
But all those "maybes" go out the window anyway when you factor in all the supernatural stuff and it becomes very clear that she totally IS taking advantage of him. How so? Oh, let me count the ways...
1) She was his first sexual experience and it was via supernatural rape by the MOAD. They should both be kept away from each other except perhaps for meeting for the purpose of therapy, mutual healing, forgiveness, recognition of the other as having been a fellow victim and not the true aggressor, etc. Forming a relationship? Hell no. Maybe if they were older, but he is a kid and this was his first time and there are just so many reasons why that is a big NO.
2) She is his Queen. That's been made pretty clear that she supernaturally rules him, body and mind, via her stupid tiger powers. That alone makes his consent questionable; is he agreeing because he wants to, or because he feels he has to? And again, this just gets worse when you factor in his impressionable age...
3)...and the fact that he has no clan. Stupid as it is, color is clearly important as hell to these weretigers and they feel extreme loneliness without others of their color around. Combine that with his youth and this being his first time and her not only being another tiger of his color (the only one he's ever met, in fact) but his queen, and, yeah, it's hard to say his consent isn't at the least questionable and/or this situation at least a little skeevy.
4) It's essential for Anita to have a blue tiger or else. So this teenage boy is faced with the fact that if he chooses NOT to have sex with and become the animal to call (aka slave) of this woman, that might mean the end of his species at the hands of the MOAD. Even if all the rest of the points I made didn't stand, I think that alone means this isn't a situation where his consent is not being coerced/influenced.
5) He's living under her roof. I've personally known of more than one instance where a girl living somewhere only got to stay if she gave up sex to the homeowner. Of course, with Anita's track record, not fucking her might not only get Cynric kicked out, but killed.
Also, let us all take a moment to appreciate the fact that LKH set up a situation where Anita *has* to have a teenage boy to bone and own or else the bad guy will wipe out all the weretigers. She wanted it that much that she went that far to justify it in-universe. That is some grade-A creepy there, folks.
"I'm still working on my issues with it all." The issues being, of course, that she has issues and needs to be okay with this, not THIS IS REALLY HONKING WRONG!
"They found the Master of Atlanta by using the cadaver dogs like I'd suggested." Yes, yes, Anita's wisdom saves the day, whoopee. "They fried him with an exterminator team" And of course we don't get to see it. No, that would have been too COOL AND EXCITING AND POSSIBLY PLOT RELEVANT! "The few vampires that survived his death are in need of a new Master of the City. Jean-Claude and I are debating on who to send." Why the hell do you two get to decide that? "Meng Die wants it to be her." Ahhh, and so we find a way to get another woman off the screen. "She's friendlier to me since we helped her up her power level. What she actually said was, "When you dance with the devil, it might as well be a devil who can give you your own corner of hell to rule." Uh, yeah, I'm sure that sounded real cool in your head, LKH.
"Richard has continued to be okay." You mean totally subservient to your every depraved whim? "I learned that the three men who tried to kill him were dead. I'd assumed the guards that we sent to rescue him had killed them, but they'd only helped dispose of the bodies." Yeeeah, do the police you work with know about that, Miss Federal Marshal? "Richard as his wolf had hunted them through the woods and killed them." AND WE MISSED THIS? ARE YOU SHITTING ME? I can understand us not getting to see the Atlanta thing, disappointing as it is, but Anita can see telepathically through Richard's eyes, dammit, we could have watched the whole hunt, complete with the creepy feelings of total helplessness that one would have SEEING THROUGH THE EYES OF THE KILLER AND BEING ABLE TO DO NOTHING. "Jean-Claude and I held him one night while he cried about that." Oh for fuck's sake again with this?! "He didn't cry about killing them so much as about how much he enjoyed killing them. In our ways, all three of us worry that we will be the monster." You and JC are already monsters. So is Richard if he actually hunted them down versus killing in self-defense. He just still has the humanity to know what he is and feel bad about it. JC probably knows what he is, but I doubt he feels bad. You have no idea and feel zip.
"It turned out that the effects of the ardeur and some of the odd pairings wore off. We offered every woman not on birth control a morning-after pill." Sorry about the mass rape we forced on you, here, have a free contraceptive, now everything is alright! "I was thankful once again that I was on the pill. Condoms for me were an extra protection--not my only one." I really do not think the pill is a good match for Anita. You have to take it every day, and my brand recommends at around the same time. Not only can missing more than a day put you at risk for pregnancy, it'll fuck up your period cycle, at least it does for me. But anyway, look at Anita's lifestyle. She is regularly up all night, blacked out and/or possessed for over 24 hours at a time, taken hostage, etc. Something like a patch, injecting, Nuva-Ring, etc would be a much better fit for her. "JJ is back in New York, but she's also back to being love only with Jason." OKAY, I AM ACTUALLY REALLY SURPRISED BY THIS, WAS NOT EXPECTING IT. "Bianca, the swanmane" whom we never see onscreen and have no reason to care about "is a little unhappy about that, but it's not the ardeur that makes her miss JJ. She just liked JJ, and who could blame her?"
How does Anita know this? Has she talked to Bianca? Has she ever even met her? Who the fuck IS she? LKH, we have to actually meet and know these people to really be interested at all in their love triangles. It's nice you're not leaving it hanging, but it's still incomplete.
"Jake helped us hunt Padma, Master of Beasts. It wasn't that hard to break the Mother's hold on him. Jake thinks it worked so well because my power is similiar to his. I'm not so sure. It was too easy, as the old saying goes."
WHAT? AND THIS HAPPENS OFFSCREEN? Okay, as cool as the thing in Atlanta was, Anita can't be everywhere, and I understand that, and it would have been dumb for her to go to Atlanta, much like her going to Vegas in Skin Trade was. But if we're told that action like that is happening elsewhere, we need equal action going on where the POV character is too. AND THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECT! I don't even care if it was easy, at least it would be something that HAPPENED! The only fight in this whole damn book was when Haven got shot! That's fucking it! No, I do not count writhing around on a bed and driving them off psychically by touching your boyfriends to be fighting, nor do I count assaulting people weaker than you for no reason beyond they dared to be a female to be fighting. Seriously though, just think, we could easily have taken out the Valentina chapter, the gym chapters, all those other really irrelevant lengthy parts (and no, I don't mean the harem's penises...though those too) and put in tracking down and exorcising Padma.
"The Dragon and the Traveller are sending people of their line to St. Louis" Oooh, I'm curious about the oh-so-rare Traveller vamps "so if the Mother does try to take them over we can have a leg up on breaking them free." I don't understand why having vampires of their lines would help with that? They can't find Morte D'Amour, but he took over another one of his line in Europe like he did with Clayton and nearly seventy people were killed before the army stopped them. BADASS! ROTTING VAMPIRES VERSUS THE ARMY! "Countries where vampires are still illegal don't have legal vampire executioners. They usually call in what amounts to the National Guard." I'd sure as hell rather be reading about them for damn sure.
"Some tigers of every color stayed with us. We have enough blood donors that most of our vampires can feed on shapeshifters. We're the only vampire kiss in the country that can boast such rich food for all our bloodsuckers." Which means that Bibiana must not allow Max's vampires to munch on her kitties. I like this implication.
They are still staying underground as much as they can until they can find the Lover of Death, and she's rearranged her schedule so that she has three afternoons a week free of clients. That's like half the week, wtf? She uses these afternoons to train with the guards, and Nathaniel has coffee ready for her when she comes home from work. One afternoon when she comes in and Matthew is in the kitchen eating a PB&J. THE FUCK IS THAT KID DOING HERE?! Anita makes sure he can't see her gun under her jacket, while Matthew "puckered up for a kiss and I gave him one. He got lipstick and I got grape jelly." This coming just a few pages after the mention of Cynric makes it so disturbing. She starts to kiss Nathaniel, then remembers Matthew's "All the big boys kiss you, 'Nita" and stops, but then Nathaniel, puzzled, kisses her instead and she kisses him back and talks about how good the smell of his skin makes her feel.
They sit down at the table with Matthew and Nathaniel explains Monica is going to be gone overnight so Matthew is staying. WHY THE FUCK COULD SHE NOT HIRE AN OVERNIGHT BABYSITTER? THIS IS NOT A SAFE PLACE AT THE BEST OF TIMES, BUT IN THE LAST FEW NIGHTS THERE HAS BEEN A MURDER, A PSYCHIC INVASION OF EVIL VAMPIRES, AND THREE FORCED ORGIES. Seriously, we know from Valentina and Bartolome that the ardeur can overtake child vampires, it can most likely take human children too! Good god, if he had been staying over just a few nights prior...seriously, I feel like something is very wrong that Monica is letting him stay here. By which I mean Monica is obviously a smart woman and, even if she DIDN'T know about all that, I doubt she'd let him stay here if she had any other choice. Something is fishy and I don't like it.
And then all the guards "spilled into the kitchen" because it's shift change and they're all "armed to the teeth and not hiding it" so Anita takes off her jacket. Matthew behaves "like it was all normal" and the guards greet him casually as well, suggesting they know him too and it's not unusual for him to be here. I am so worried for this child. Lisandro ruffles his hair, and there is mention that he "had two little ones of his own." YEAH, AND 'SOMETHING ABOUT A WIFE' TOO, ANITA, REMEMBER?
Matthew asks Dev/Meph (referred to as Devil, ugh) if he can come watch them practice. Dev says sure and then "leaned over and kissed me hi. So did Nicky. All the big boys kiss 'Nita." THE SMUG IN THAT LAST LINE. THE SMUG. They start to go to the gym "surrounded by muscular and dangerous men" and Matthew grabs her hand and Nathaniels', and asks what they're reading tonight. When Goodnight Moon is offered, he disdains it as a book for little kid, so Nathaniel offers Peter Pan and Matthew approves. Anita reminds us how Peter Pan is the first book that "Micah, Nathaniel, and I ever read to each other." I can see why---the females besides the heroine are all depicted as jealous hostile hussies (Tinkerbell and the mermaids), and if I recall right (it's been a while since I've read it) part of the point of Peter's eternal innocence was that he was basically a little sociopath who didn't comprehend the death or loss of others, and also was kind of sexist to boot? Not to mention that the whole "always a young boy" deal is just CREEPY in relation to Nathaniel.
Anita thinks that she isn't 100% comfy with everything Matthew sees and learns here, but his mother is so it's okay. Yeah, I don't buy that, as I said. No, what bothers Anita is that having Matthew around has made Nathaniel start hinting that "maybe we could have a rug rat of our own." NO. That is supposed to be one word, btw. ALSO, NO! "Me, a mom? So not happening." NO, IT'S NOT. Also ugh you are not a Valley Girl ugh ugh. "But if he keeps hinting about kids, he may talk me into that puppy he's been wanting." ALSO NO. NONE OF YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF AN ANIMAL. AND THE ONES THAT CAN ARE NOT NICE PEOPLE. "I can see us with a puppy, but a baby? Not only no, but hell no." The only reason I actually believe this won't go the same way as her promise not to sleep with Nathaniel is that Anita would be the one stuck getting fat and inconvenienced for nine months...though then again, LKH may bullshit a way around that.
"I'm a U.S. Marsha, a legal vampire executioner, and I raise the dead for a living." Pretty much none of which entered into this novel at all besides the phone call and tape from Atlanta. "None of those jobs would work with a baby" yes good, some sense "and not even the thought of having Nathaniel's lavendar eyes staring up at me from some curly-haired moppet is going to change that. Besides, brown beats light-colored eyes genetically. I'd be more likely be staring into a pair of my own dark brown, and I can see that every time I look in a mirror." Um, Anita, you know people have babies for something other than them being pretty, right? "I'm not fond enough of my own eyes to want to see them in someone else's face."
...and that is the last line of the book. What. The. Fuck? Was that supposed to be, some kind of tragic self-esteem thing? Dramatic? It just sounds STUPID. She points out a perfectly good reason she shouldn't have a baby, but then follows it up by a totally bizarre shallow kind-of-disturbing reason. I mean, I'm all for women not having babies for any reason they don't want to, including so-called 'shallow' ones like ruining one's figure and such, because dammit that is HER body...but in this case, it's not about her body, it's about that of the baby and how it potentially wouldn't come out pretty enough to her liking. That's pretty creepy and makes me wonder just how she'd treat a kid based on its looks alone.
Remember that fan-made baby I have that resulted from her one time with Rafael? That poor kid has brown eyes. LOOKS LIKE HE'S GONNA HAVE EVEN MORE ISSUES THAT I THOUGHT.
