KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTERS 10 & 11

[a_sporking_rat]

-I held Sid and Ratsputin up to the face of my baby niece and at first she smiled but then I made them say "You look delicious!" and she started crying

- Sam's lump grew, then shrank again! I really don't know what's up but aside from it making her head partially balding, she's still perfectly healthy and perky and active as far as I can tell.

- With consistent draining and cleaning, Sid's lump barely has stuff in it anymore!

- Sam got up on the table next to my sister's beer. My sister sat up to grab the beer because she was afraid Sam would knock it over. This scared Sam, causing her to knock it over. Sam was so scared by the sound it made that she jumped and scurried back over to me and cowered behind my back while my sister mopped up the beer.

- I held up Sam and Blatz for my sister to pet goodnight, but then she leaned forward to kiss them and that scared Sam so she jumped back and Blatz put out a paw like she was gonna stop my sister and ended up kinda slapping her...my sister says "She slapped me because I scared Sam!"


KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTERS 10 & 11

"Rule one of trying to break someone down: Isolate them. Zerbrowski separated the vampires, and divided officers up to guard them." SWAT is on the scene now and Anita takes almost the entire first page of this chapter talking about how "normally I had mixed feelings about having SWAT with me" (yeah, I remember your bizarre assuming of responsibility for their well-being in Skin Trade as if they were lost kittens you were charged with) but she's glad for "the manpower, and the skill level" this time because she "needed some of the vampires alive enough to talk." I realize vamps are second-class citizens and all, but when someone is in custody, they're actually supposed to get a certain level of protection. You can't torture suspects to make them talk, and you certainly can't *plan* on killing most of them like she seems to be. Anita makes it sound less like they're being held by police, more like the mafia. And she yammers about how only the SWAT all have what it takes ("nerves of steel, and the markmanship to go with it") to shoot only to wound a monster and not kill them even when a monster is coming right at 'em...um, given how difficult it's been made clear vampires are to kill even with shots through the chest/head that would be lethal to a human, shooting to kill probably would end up only wounding them anyway.

"Zerbrowski had the dead vampires divided up into five rooms, which was how many live, uninjured vampires we had to question." I had to read this a few times before I understood that she meant there are five vamps and one each to a room. Anita goes to her Jeep to get the rest of her gear on "to scare the hell out of them" while Zerbrowski watches the vamps in order to guess who is most likely to break fist. "I was the threat, the monster in the closet." YES, YOU'RE SO SCARY MONSTERS ARE SCARED OF YOU GOOD LORD I GET IT. Anita tells us in the smuggest way possible about all the bodies that are still lying around as she walks to her Jeep and how they don't cover them with white sheets like in the movies, and haven't even had time to bag the bodies but have spread a few body bags over "the ones that looked like children" whom Anita says look "junior high age, high school at best." Hey, you know who else is in high school? Cynric. And Anita just basically said that those count as children in her book (describing them both as looking like children and looking like high schoolers) so she damn well knows and understands that HE IS A CHILD rather than thinking, as some people do, that having hit your growth spurt or gotten your period or turned 18 magically makes you an adult. Seriously, how creepy is it that she can look at people, say they look like children, and then go home to a lover that is their same apparent age? I don't care that she angsts about it either, that doesn't exonerate her, especially since, as I've harped on already, her angst could be very easily solved on account of THERE'S NOTHING MAKING HER HAVE SEX WITH HIM.

And stuff about the adult bodies staring sightlessly and how the other cops avert their eyes from the corpses but "I looked at the dead, because they were dead vampires and I hadn't shot them all myself. I hadn't made certain that every last body was safely dead." So Anita firstly proclaims herself smarter/harder than other cops because only she thinks to suspect the bodies might not be dead and to bear looking at them, then secondly insults them by implying on she herself alone is capable of making a trustworthy evaluation of whether they are dead and of killing them fully, and, finally, may I add that these vampires were not doing anything, the police just opened fire on them because they saw one vampire panicking because ANITA PROVOKED ANOTHER OFFICER INTO PUTTING A GUN TO HER HEAD? God, I am still not over that, ugh. But she's talking about these dead vampires in a tone that suggests they were super-dangerous and had to be put down with extreme prejudice, rather than slaughtered like ducks in a row for no reason. We also learn that vampire death is so tricky to detect that only brain scans are close enough to really tell when the undead are dead, and "even that tech was in its infancy for vampire use."

"I stopped beside a man that looked like the perfect grandfather, as if some Hollywood casting agent had picked him to look sad and pitiful dead on the uneven bricks. Maybe I'd feel sympathy for him later" You damn well should, considering not only how he was killed but the fact that YOU were the cause! Also, is it just me or does she sound almost mad about the way he looks, like she thinks he's doing it on purpose to try to make her feel bad and she's not having it? "but right that second I was more worried that I couldn't see much damage on the body. The bullet wound on him looked too low for a heart shot, and his head seemed completely intact. What I was seeing so shouldn't have killed a vampire." Remember what I just said above about how even lethal shots probably will only wound rather than kill anyway, SWAT and the police likely don't even need to try to just wound? Case in point right here.

Urlrich comes over and observes that it doesn't bother Anita to look at the bodies, Anita says nope, and he makes a "masculine chuckle" that she claims is a sign of approval because "men never expected me to be able to keep up with them, especially older men. I looked younger than I was; I was female, and petite." FUCKING HATE THE WORD 'PETITE' NOW THANK YOU LKH. "It was a triple threat to either mens' egos or their expectations." There are many, many men (and women) who still have attitudes like this in the world, it is true. So I wouldn't mind it if this were just something that cropped up occasionally. Heck, I'd enjoy it, since it would help show that, contrary to what we like to think, gender discrimination in the workplace has a long way to go before it's over. But with Anita it happens every book, multiple times, with every cop, both male and female. This isn't just a world with vampires and werebeasts and fae, it's a world where ideas about gender in society on the whole got stuck somewhere between the Victorian era and the 1950s. And I'm just so tired of it, because it accomplishes absolutely shit-fuck in saying anything actually relevant, useful, realistic, or up-to-date about the modern forms of sexism that actually do exist and cause real problems for people in our world, and instead just serves to bulk up Anita's Mary Sueism more with how she impresses everyone and is One of the Guys and no one has ever seen anything like her before and so on. Usually at the expense of other women too.

Urlrich says he heard that Anita is going to cut up the corpses in front of the other vampires, and Anita nods.

DUDE

WHAT

WHAT THE SHIT

WHAT THE SHIT

OH MY GOD

WHAT

NO

HOW IS THAT LEGAL

THAT IS NOT LEGAL

THAT CAN'T BE LEGAL

NOT EVEN FOR VAMPIRES

WHAT THE HELL

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS

WHY WOULD YOU EVEN THINK OF THIS

OH MY GOD WHAT THE FRESH HELL

And instead of cuffing her or blocking her from going back inside or asking what the fresh hell is wrong with her, he says he'll help her carry her equipment inside. JESUS CHRIST ON A CRACKER WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS ENTIRE POLICE DEPARTMENT?! Anita says that there is a "shine in his eyes" and that he is "angry" but the kind that would make her say "you're beautiful when you're angry" if he'd been a woman. Yes, she really says that. Firstly, that phrase is generally used by men to condescend to women and invalidate their anger and their right to that anger, like aw aren't you so cute being all mad and having your little tantrum you silly thing it's just so endearing run along now. Secondly...this sounds weird, I wonder if she made him this oddly specific type of attractive angry using her Dragon-line powers? She asks if his partner is going to heal, he nods and now his anger looks like hatred. "He had a hard-on for, or against, vampires." BONERS BONERS BONERS. That is LKH's thought process. Anita believes it is a "long-standing hatred" but "it was against the guy code to question it that bluntly." One day I will have to rifle through my dad's stuff and see if I can find this manual so I can be as enlightened as Anita about men and their mysterious ways, which each and every one of them all have. "I could do that with officers I knew well--they have me room to poke at things, to be the girl--but with new officers I had to be one of the guys." So...you can ask more personal questions to people you know better, but not to those you don't, is what you just said here. That is not a guy thing. That is a very basic rule of social interaction with everybody thing. "Guys didn't ask about emotions unless they had to" and since she doesn't have to she decides to let it go. Hey y'all, let's play a game, how about you tell me in the comments about all the men you know who are just fine with talking about emotions whenever? Because honestly the only man I know like that is my dad.

Then Urlrich randomly says "I like to watch their faces." Anita asks if he means the vampires. He says yes, she says she doesn't, he asks why not, she says because they're looking at her with fear and loathing and "it's not cozy being the monster." Insert my rant about how she needs to either use 'monster' to mean supernatural creatures or 'monster' to mean someone/thing monstrous and evil and scary because using it as both is not only confusing but has a ton of Unfortunate Implications and severely undercuts her claims of seeing them as people and suggests instead she sees them as less...which is disturbing when one considers her exclusive preference for relationships with them, especially combined with her narcissism and superiority complex (by which I mean, maybe she only has relationships with them BECAUSE she feels superior to them and enjoys that). Urlrich tells her they're the monsters (oh god, how many times does this conversation have to happen?) and Anita says that "You try being chained up in a room, and watch me tear out a heart and decapitate a body in front of you" aren't there laws against desecrating a corpse at the very least? "while you know that legally I could do the same thing to you, and probably will; would you think I was a monster?"

I think she's a monster just for even entertaining the idea, let alone agreeing to it, but Urlrich says he'd think she was just doing her job. Anita then informs him that she is not even legally required to kill the vampire before she starts cutting out the heart or beheading it, that she can do it while they're alive and aware. Holy shit, this is way too shocking. I can fucking believe in vampires being executed for shoplifting, but I cannot believe in this kind of heinous torture being allowed as part of the execution. This is the kind of shit that gets hushed up like Guantanamo Bay, not put on the books! Urlrich asks her if she has ever done this, and she says yes. She tells us that it had been years ago and because she was "young and stupid and thought vampires were monsters and didn't realize that I had the right to wait until the vampires died at dawn to take them out" and that "killing them while they were "alive" had been the beginning of my realizing that maybe there was more than one side to the whole monster question." She says she also did it once as a way of getting info out of vampires, which she admits was "legal torture" but says she didn't do it a second time and how "some things you can do and live with yourself, but that doesn't mean they don't leave a stain on your soul."

I have two problems with this. The smaller one is simply that I don't believe that she could have been ignorant about being allowed to wait until vampires are 'asleep' to kill them. That's bullshit for so many reasons. Ditto for not being able to believe it is lawful to torture people like that. The big one is that she did this at all, ever. Vampires have been shown in this series to have the ability to feel pain. If I had to guess, I'd say it's the same capacity as a human has, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they actually felt pain with a *greater* intensity than humans because of their enhanced sensory abilities. And Anita would have known this, she would have already gotten her degree in Preternatural Biology by this point in her history. She knows better than most people just how much this would hurt a vampire, how much needless suffering would be caused by killing them in this manner. The fact she claimed see them as "monsters" then does not excuse her. In fact, it doesn't even really provide an adequate explanation as to why she'd do it. It explains why she would be okay with executing them, but not why she would go out of her way to make it as painful for them as possible. When was the last time you watched a movie or read a book and the hero purposefully decided to kill the villain in a way that would cause them excess pain when there was another way of killing them that was readily available, easier for the hero (it would be way easier to kill a 'sleeping' vampire), and, as with these vampires, the villain wasn't even someone who had done the hero personal wrong, just someone they didn't even know who it was their *job* to kill? Even if they were some morally-grey anti-hero type like Wolverine and the bad guy actually was some inhuman monster like the Xenomorphs? I've never ever seen this anywhere else, and that's because not only is this not something heroes do, it's just not something ANYONE does unless they're honestly evil sadists.

And Anita claims to feel a "stain on her soul", sure, even as she's excusing herself by claiming she didn't know any better, but I don't believe her. Because she's done shit like this in the series too, well after her supposed enlightenment. In The Harlequin (same book, I must note, in which she raped the wererats and swanmanes en masse through fucking their leaders), she threatens a captive female vamp baddie who fits Olaf's tastes by saying that if she doesn't tell them what they want to know, they will give her alive to Olaf. She tells them what they want to know. Anita hands her over to Olaf anyway, who kills her by ripping her heart out while she's still alive. Anita may not have done the deed herself that time, but the principle is still the same, and she feels absolutely fucking zero remorse over it. In fact, only Richard doesn't think that was justified, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you how he's treated for it.

Anita, who has still not gotten to her Jeep and gotten her stuff, continues to said Jeep for said stuff and thinks about how she is going to stake one of the already-dead vamps, specifically one that doesn't have an obvious hole in the heart or head, suggesting to me she's going to try and sell it to the other vampires that this vamp is still alive. She says she doesn't use stakes much but "legally I had to carry so many with me in my kit." and plans to use them as "place markers until I had time to remove the hearts from the bodies." What, is she gonna forget where the heart is? Oh, it's so just in case the vamps aren't really dead that'll hold them till she gets back or sunlight gets them...I would like to remind you all again about how and why they were shot. These are not people who deserve to die. They do not even legally deserve to die, considering there is no proof that they did fucking squat. And even if we go with the "vampires get a death sentence just for *watching* other vamps kill someone" thing, being left to get torched in the sunlight and a legal execution are two different things. It may have the same outcome, but it's Anita's job as a law enforcement officer to *prevent* them frying, same as it is the responsibility of a cop to defend a man on death row from being shanked by his cell mate.

And, oh, look, this is in fact acknowledged as the case! Anita tells us that leaving them for the sun is "illegal now, ruled cruel and unusual, equated to burning a human alive." As well it should be, since, as I mentioned, vampires have the same nerve endings and pain capacity as humans do as far as we know. "I couldn't argue with the cruelty part, but this was a lot of bodies to destroy before sunrise. I was going to need help." So don't tell that to other officers or anything, just let dawn torch 'em all!

I am going to puke. Few times does she seriously make me sick like this, but this chapter has done it. The next one isn't any better either. It begins with her saying that the "help" is going to be Larry Kirkland, not the sunrise, so at least there's that, but it's all downhill from there. Of course, before anything can be done or said, she has to tell us his size, eye color, freckles, hair color/length/texture and why he wears it that way, and that he has a two year old daughter, what her name is, that she has his hair texture but her mother's hair color and how she wears it and how even though Larry "still looked like a grown-up Howdy Doody" (which would be an adequate description just on its own if it were likely that her general audience would have any idea who the fuck Howdy Doody is) he has lines around his mouth from frowning, which she says she warned him about. Wow, what a fucking tragedy. They're beside the bodies, and Anita tells him she staked the ones that didn't have enough damage for her to be sure they were dead, and his job is to stake the rest "and then join us upstairs". He asks join them for what and sounds suspicious, which Anita says shows he's learned on the job. Yeah, learned that you're a raging murderous psychopath, Anita.

Anita "told him what I was going to do" and that he can work in one room with one suspect while she does it with someone else so it cuts the time in half and ups their chances of getting some info before dawn. "His face set in familiar stubborn lines" This is the beginning of painting Larry as a pouty child just being a jerk for daring to disagree with her utterly repugnant plan. Okay, Zerbrowksi thought of it, but still. She also mentions how she got some frown lines but has been turning them into smile lines over the last few years...I guess she's trying to say she's been happier but it just sounds like she doesn't realize LINES ARE LINES. Although I'm frankly shocked to hear Miss Perfect has any. She smiles right then, in fact, then sighs and shakes her head. I see this mentally as the most condescending gesture possible. He asks what she's smiling about, she says "You, me, nothing, everything." yeah, she's being a massive smug douche already. He asks what that even means, and Anita says he looks tired from "just the situation." The situation of you being not only a horrible depraved human being but also patronizing and smug about it to him to boot?

Anita says it means she can read his face and body language and that "All we're doing is our job, Larry." Okay, I held off on Godwin's Law when Urlrich said it because the Holocaust was a real thing, a terrible thing, and this is just fiction but...you know who else was just doing their job, Anita? NAZIS. Seriously, I didn't wanna pull that out, it feels disrespectful to me to make Holocaust comparisons most of the time (namely because they get whipped around inappropriately so much, and also because it's still inaccurate since vampires are not at all analogous to Jews, Romani, etc.) but there's no getting around it when she's using that phrase to justify such a heinous and disgusting act against fellow sentient beings with the same capacity for fear and pain as baseline humans. Larry responds that his job is to take the head and heart of dead vampires so they won't rise, to execute vampires that are legally sanctioned for death, but "it's not my job to help the police terrify suspects" and compares it to electrocuting a dead body in front of a condemned human prisoner, that even though it's dead "they'd still smell the meat cooking. It's barbaric, Anita. I won't be Zerbrowski's monster in the closet."

FUCK YES LARRY! FUCK YES!

"I sighed. We'd had similar philosophical disagreements before" PHILOSOPHICAL DISAGREEMENTS?! "not about this particular issue since I'd never done an interrogation like this one either" No, just that time you did it to a LIVING vampire to get info out of them. And then comes back at Larry with "So it's okay for me to be the monster, but not you?" THAT IS NOT WHAT HE SAID! Larry, however, continues to be awesome and says that if it makes her feel like a monster, then she must know it's wrong, so don't do it. "He looked so serious, so convinced he was right. He always did." yeah, we're very clearly not supposed to see Larry as in the right here at all. ANITAVERSE IS BIZARROVERSE! Anita says that if neither of them does it, who will? He says that no one should do it, that it's a horrible thing that shouldn't be done, and "it really shouldn't have people with badges doing it. We're the good guys and good guys don't do things like this." That last bit about good guys made me roll my eyes a bit even as I cheered on the rest, because it's still such a little-kid way of looking at the world (my seven year old nephew, for instance, has yet to grasp that there's not always "good guys" and "bad guys" in a story, or that you're not stuck being one forever--he thinks Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was evil, for instance, because he initially misled Lucy, regardless of him breaking down midway through) and I'm tired of everyone in these books acting as if the good guy/bad guy divide is seriously something as real and concrete like they do the guy/girl divide...but he's still right in a meta way. Because that's NOT what good guys do. Even the really "bad" good guys like I mentioned earlier. It's a big fat crosses-the-line-twice Moral Event Horizon type thing, and I wonder if LKH *knows* that (or at least knows most people will see it like that even if she doesn't) and it's coming out through Larry, even as he's chastised and sneered at by the text for it?

Anita says they need to locate the vamps that are still out there before they kill again. Larry says then they'll interrogate these suspects the way they would anyone else. Anita argues that regular interrogation takes too much time and that by nightfall the vamps will be hungry again and since they already "know they're dead meat" they'll have nothing to lose and that will make them dangerous. Funny how she never considers that them knowing they're marked men might, oh, say, make them lie low and not attract attention to themselves, especially since the cops still don't know what they look like? Oh wait, that's too logical for her to ever conceive of. Larry says there has to be a way to do this that "doesn't make us the bad guys" and again the use of the 'bad guys' term makes me cringe but he's still in the right, and, hey, I think there is---Anita doesn't have necromancy for nothing! JUST PSYCHICALLY MAKE THE VAMPS TELL YOU, ANITA! Wait, no, that would be hugely violating, I can't believe I just said that, THIS IS WHAT THIS SITUATION IS DOING TO ME!

Anita seems to lack a very basic but crucial understanding of what laws in America are for, or, rather, meant to be for. Laws are meant to protect everyone. That includes the people who break them. That includes murderers, rapists, child molesters, the scum of the earth, the lowest of the low, the worst of the worse. Under the law, they are still human beings. This means that cops cannot do what they please to them like this. Does it happen? Yes. I'm sure there has been many an instance where prison guards stood quietly by and let a child rapist be shanked by his fellow inmates. I'm sure there are countless cases where an officer has cruelly treated a prisoner either because of his crimes or just because they could. But that is not what it is supposed to be. The law is supposed to be above that, and the law enforcement officers are supposed to be above that. That is one of the many reasons that I could not be one myself. But Anita seems to think it can just be dropped or shoved aside the moment it's inconvenient to her, the moment it's not getting results fast enough. Now, I've been a fan of Law & order: SVU for a long time, and there have been moments when the police officers on that show acted outside the law as well. But most of the time the stakes were high enough that it was arguably more just and it was what we as the viewers were rooting for. LKH, due to her inability to write convincing tension or threats, has failed to sell this as a situation in which it seems right for Anita to break the law. Instead, it seems more like she's trying to justify getting to do this, rather than being forced by circumstance. And that's part of what is so sickening here.

Anita continues to be smug, shaking her head and fighting off the beginnings of anger "like a warm flush of memory back everything seemed to make me angry, and I didn't have the control I did now." Remember how in every book she claims to have ~better control~ and every book that ends up being bunk? Anita tells him that if she weren't here he would "have to do the bad stuff yourself, Larry" and he responds that he still wouldn't do it even if she weren't here. "He sounded so sure of himself, so sure he was right." SOUNDS LIKE YOU, ANITA, EXCEPT THAT HE ACTUALLY *IS* RIGHT! Anita counts to ten and makes herself breathe slowly, I guess to prove to us readers how good she is at managing her anger...you know most people master these techniques as children, right? She asks "How many times did my willingness to be the bad guy save civilian lives?" He doesn't know and she can see "the beginnings of his own temper" ohhh, Anita keeps her cool and Larry heats up, showing us whose side we're meant to be on. SUBTLE. Anita says twice, he says more times than that, she asks how many times then "my shooting or hurting someone saved lives?" Is this a response to haters noting how quick Anita is to use violence and how she seems to relish in it, I wonder? Larry says twenty, maybe thirty times where she "went over the line" but still saved lines.

...can anyone think of when this would be? I don't doubt there are instances where this was the case, but can anyone name twenty to thirty *onscreen* instances? Or at least enough onscreen instances for it to be a regular enough thing that the rest of it happening offscreen is believable? Not just her going over the line, I mean, but going over the line to save lives AND that Larry would know about.

Anita then asks how many lives she saved by "being a monster" and he says he never called her that. Insert my usual rant here about using that word to mean morally repugnant. Anita then rephrases the question by replacing "monster" with "bad guy" and he says dozens, maybe hundreds. Again, citation please? Specifically of instances that Larry would even *know* about. Anita asks if he would have just let hundreds of innocent people die then "if I hadn't been here to do your dirty work for you?" Why is she acting like he orders her to do it, or as if they're ordered to do it together and then only she actually does it? They haven't been working together in fucking ages; they certainly weren't in Skin Trade or since. He says that he won't torture someone and he won't kill if he doesn't have to, Anita asks even if those morals cost hundreds of lives, and I am getting really uncomfortable with this whole thing because it makes me wonder if LKH is trying to push some equivalent parallel in real life. Larry remains epic and says that morals are not just for when it's easy and aren't even morals if you just throw them aside when it's convenient. Anita asks if he's calling her immoral. He should have said FUCK YES I AM but he says that "we have a different standard, that's all. We both believe we're right." She can believe she's right and still be immoral, dude. That's kinda been the whole series for awhile now. But since Larry doesn't know just how far she's gone and the shit she's been doing as Monster Queen, I guess he is being really fair.

But then Anita says "I don't believe I'm right. I've done things that give me nightmares. I'll probably dream about this tonight, too." Larry says this shows she knows it's wrong and that this is her conscience "yelling at you." She says she knows that. He asks how she can do it then. Anita says because she'd rather have nightmares than look a family in the eyes and tell them their loved one is dead "because we didn't get those vampires in time." Again, I don't believe her guarantee that those vamps are gonna rampage or whatever. Her argument doesn't really work unless it's for sure that this threat is definite and immediate. Larry says he'd rather make a condolence call than do something "this wrong, this..." and he trails off and Anita says "Say it" and he says "Evil." WELL I'M GLAD SOMEONE CALLED A SPADE A SPADE HERE! Anita continues with her woe-is-me sin-eater routine "Good that we have me here, then, so I can be evil, because I'd rather cut up the bodies, terrify the prisoners, than have to see one more grieving family, or explain to anyone why these bloodsuckers killed again, because we were too good, too righteous to get the information we needed."

Anita, you are on one hell of a slippery slope here. And yeah, I'm pretty sure this LKH talking back at people who have the nerve to note Anita has become a downright murderer.

Larry says they'll never agree on this. Anita agrees with that. He says "You go be Zerbrowski's bogeyman, and I'll stake the bodies down here." Anita says she's not the bogeyman because he's not real and she is. As if "the bogeyman" hasn't repeatedly and regularly been used without this series to mean someone that a group is scared of; Anita, for instance, is usually likened to being the bogeyman for vampires since the first book, and Vittorio was described as being the bogeyman for djinn. Larry tells her to just go and "let's stop this" but because she's the kind of person who has to have the last word on even the most absurd and minute of things, she says not yet and repeats that she's the monster and not the bogeyman. He says it's the same thing, and he's right, the word "monster" has also been used in the same way in these novels (Anita being the monster to the monsters, etc.) and she repeats that it's not because the bogeyman isn't real but monsters are and "so I'm the cop's pet monster." Wow, wait, but the monsters that are real are vampires and therians, so she seriously just equated being a vamp/therian with being what she is and doing what she does. How can she not see how very disgustingly bigoted that is towards them?

Larry says that "You're no one's pet, Anita; if anyone makes you a monster, it's you." OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, I WANT A LARRY FAN CLUB NOW, HOLY SHIT! And Anita decides she has nothing to say and walks away because "when a friendship breaks this badly it doesn't turn to hatred; it turns to pain."

The amount of fucks I give about Anita's ~pain~ over this is infinity inverted.

Comments

[guardians-song.livejournal.com]

""it was against the guy code to question it that bluntly." One day I will have to rifle through my dad's stuff and see if I can find this manual so I can be as enlightened as Anita about men and their mysterious ways, which each and every one of them all have. "I could do that with officers I knew well--they have me room to poke at things, to be the girl--but with new officers I had to be one of the guys." So...you can ask more personal questions to people you know better, but not to those you don't, is what you just said here. That is not a guy thing. That is a very basic rule of social interaction with everybody thing. "Guys didn't ask about emotions unless they had to" and since she doesn't have to she decides to let it go. Hey y'all, let's play a game, how about you tell me in the comments about all the men you know who are just fine with talking about emotions whenever? Because honestly the only man I know like that is my dad."
Duuuuude. If she was truly so concerned about not asking about emotions, she could just ask Urlich about the evils of vampires. Even guys who are ~stoic about their emotions~ are usually more than willing to proselytize endlessly about a topic on which they're passionate.
...As are humans in general. Are we sure Anita isn't a bizarrely condescending alien biologist?

"it's just not something ANYONE does unless they're honestly evil sadists."
Aaaaaah, but Anita views it as dark and edgy to do such things. I honestly don't think she views it any differently than kinky sex. (Well, now that she's more 'liberated', I suppose not. Perhaps the strangulation-sex.) Hey, it's transgressing Other People's rules upon you, right? Right? That's all the same! Why are you backing away from her like that?

"JUST PSYCHICALLY MAKE THE VAMPS TELL YOU, ANITA! Wait, no, that would be hugely violating, I can't believe I just said that, THIS IS WHAT THIS SITUATION IS DOING TO ME!"
No, you're right. Anita would have absolutely no inhibitions about using them if she didn't have her Cop Hat on at the moment. It's pretty much the lesser of two evils at this point. Considering that vampires frequently roll humans, it wouldn't be too much out of the realm of what's apparently one of the more BENIGN sides of vampire society.

Anita is just getting off on being a cop allowed to abuse her authority because she CAN. If she ever was allowed in a war zone, she'd set up an Abu Gharib situation in no time flat. That's not even a Godwin's Law-style comparison, that is exactly what she'd do. And she'd take pride in it.

Writing out your fantasies is one thing, but LKH should at least have characters pointing out (while being treated seriously by the narrative) that Anita is a COMPLETE MONSTER. Instead, Anita needs constant hug-rallies on how she's so unappreciated and noble.

Now, the ardeur is SUPPOSED to deform personalities to make them conform to what Anita wants and needs. If that would be pointed out every once in a while, the lack of Anita-criticism would actually make sense, and could be played for horror. And you'd think Anita would get off on it, since mind-rape and enslavement are some of her kinks. But no, apparently she has to pretend that they wanted it, honest guv'nor.

Bleh.

"Anita, you are on one hell of a slippery slope here. And yeah, I'm pretty sure this LKH talking back at people who have the nerve to note Anita has become a downright murderer."
"On"? She's hit the bottom and is tunneling lower! :P

"OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, I WANT A LARRY FAN CLUB NOW, HOLY SHIT!'
SO DO I :D

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Are we sure Anita isn't a bizarrely condescending alien biologist?
I don't know about biologist, but she definitely comes off as alien. And I'm saying this as someone who is not neurotypical and can often have some real problems understanding other people.

If she ever was allowed in a war zone, she'd set up an Abu Gharib situation in no time flat. That's not even a Godwin's Law-style comparison, that is exactly what she'd do. And she'd take pride in it.
Oh, I have no doubt this is 100% the case.

could be played for horror
It really could be, which I feel is being missed out tremendously, alas

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Also, is it just me or does she sound almost mad about the way he looks, like she thinks he's doing it on purpose to try to make her feel bad and she's not having it?

She's sounded like that since she described the first one of these vampires, I think.

Hey y'all, let's play a game, how about you tell me in the comments about all the men you know who are just fine with talking about emotions whenever?

I don't know any human being who is okay with talking about their emotions whenever. I've known plenty of men who were fine with discussing their emotions, and some women who weren't. Actually, I've known more men who were happy to discuss their emotions than women, now that I think of it. Women are socialized to keep quiet, get along, put themselves last, do what makes other people happy, etc., none of which is conducive to talking about one's emotions.

But in this case, thinking about quizzing someone else on his personal emotions is completely out of place. Anita should be the one being quizzed about her emotions -- by a psychiatrist she was sent to for evaluation. Though actually she should be arrested. Well, she should have been arrested a long time ago.

She also mentions how she got some frown lines but has been turning them into smile lines over the last few years

Isn't Anita about 30? How does she have lines around her mouth in the first place? Even more, how has she had lines for enough years to be turning them into anything? This is more evidence that LKH writes Anita as herself, period. And btw, a 30-year old woman with visible lines around her mouth -- frown lines no less! -- is probably not going to have every man she meets falling at her feet about how she's the most beautiful woman who has ever existed. I will be honestly surprised if we aren't subjected to Anita going through menopause in a few years, at the age of 32.

Re: the good guy/bad guy thing -- LKH is one of many people who does not realize that you don't get to be a "good guy" simply because you're in opposition to "bad guys". The easiest example is that Stalin wasn't good simply because he opposed Hitler. But leaders consistently use the "they're bad guys!" excuse for unjust wars and/or unjust things during wars. (America's done it plenty, including during WWII.) On a smaller scale, it's the excuse of victim-blamers of every stripe. Somehow, you deserved it, so it's justified that horrible things happen to you, and if people do horrible things to you, they're not bad.

He says that he won't torture someone and he won't kill if he doesn't have to, Anita asks even if those morals cost hundreds of lives

Beyond the morality of this, Anita is an idiot. And LKH is an idiot if she thinks this makes Anita anything but an idiot. Torture does not work. LKH did all her research by watching 24, apparently. Plenty of our leaders are also idiots in the same way, but that doesn't excuse LKH's own willful ignorance. Not to mention that she revels in it. Oh, Anita just ~has~ to torture people, she has no ~choice~ because she's so ~badass~. Yeah, so badass she started a massacre of unarmed civilians because they dared to look like middle-class suburbanites.

"Good that we have me here, then, so I can be evil, because I'd rather cut up the bodies, terrify the prisoners, than have to see one more grieving family, or explain to anyone why these bloodsuckers killed again, because we were too good, too righteous to get the information we needed."

Those vampires have families too. How would Anita feel if someone carved up Jean-Claude in front of her in order to get information out of her? Then they'd be the monster because they were doing something horrible to someone she supposedly cares about. But she doesn't want to fuck these vampires, so I guess they're just "bloodsuckers" and you can do anything you want to them and it doesn't matter. She's like a soldier who will do absolutely anything to the enemy and think he's good for it, but who has a mistress who belongs to the same people as his enemy, and she's his special pet and no one better hurt her because she's his.

The amount of fucks I give about Anita's ~pain~ over this is infinity inverted.

Hah!

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Women are socialized to keep quiet, get along, put themselves last, do what makes other people happy, etc., none of which is conducive to talking about one's emotions.
Yup. We hear "women are emotional" all the time...so every time a woman shows emotions (or emotions someone doesn't like, at least) that card gets played against us, and we learn to keep 'em shut up more so as not to be seen as a "crazy emotional woman". It's the same thing with the "women talk more than men" thing--there was some study I read that monitored conversations and even though women were actually talking less than men, they were viewed as talking more. So likewise, we tend to talk less to avoid being seen as the "chatty woman" stereotype. It's some really interesting (and saddening) self-policing stuff.

How does she have lines around her mouth in the first place?
She also notes in this same chapter that she looks younger than she actually is...so she looks LESS than thirty, yet has lines? Kind of like how she's very curvy and has lots of hard lean muscle but is still delicate and doll-like and thin, I guess.

Those vampires have families too
That's an excellent point, especially since it's noted that most of these vampires have only been dead around 20 years or less. Their original human families are most likely alive and well and in contact with them. And your mistress example is spot on too.

[watersheerie.livejournal.com]

Anita asks if he would have just let hundreds of innocent people die then "if I hadn't been here to do your dirty work for you?"

Wait a minute...so Anita bitches out Larry for not being 'monstrous' enough and understanding that sometimes the good guys have to do dirty jobs...yet she complains about being the one who has to be the monster and do the dirty work. I get the feeling that LKH is trying to paint Anita as being pragmatic and practical, hence the conversation with Larry. It isn't about good and evil, it's about doing what's necessary. Yet when it comes to doing what's necessary, Anita still bitches and moans and whines and drags her feet, while finding excuses and yes-men to validate all her choices and actions as being morally superior anyway.

I feel like LKH is giving us a pure and morally 'white' character and trying to pass her off as grey while having most of her actions and thoughts a solid black. Notice how she bitches now about doing the dirty job that is necessary (killing), but finds it too hard to break up with her underage boyfriend. Also, all of Anita's monster darkity-darkness comes off as teenage Hot Topic angst. It is really hard for me to take her seriously.

"I don't believe I'm right. I've done things that give me nightmares. I'll probably dream about this tonight, too."

CRAWLING IN MY SKIN, THESE WOUNDS THEY WILL NOT HEAL

"so I'm the cop's pet monster."

FEAR IS HOW I FALL, CONFUSING WHAT IS REAL

"when a friendship breaks this badly it doesn't turn to hatred; it turns to pain."

THERE'S SOMETHING INSIDE ME THAT PULLS BENEATH THE SURFACE. CONSUMING, CONFUSING.

"some things you can do and live with yourself, but that doesn't mean they don't leave a stain on your soul."

THIS LACK OF SELF-CONTROL I FEAR IS NEVER-ENDING. CONTROLLING, I CAN'T SEEM.

"You try being chained up in a room, and watch me tear out a heart and decapitate a body in front of you"

TO FIND MYSELF AGAIN, MY WALLS ARE CLOSING IN

"Good that we have me here, then, so I can be evil, because I'd rather cut up the bodies, terrify the prisoners, than have to see one more grieving family, or explain to anyone why these bloodsuckers killed again, because we were too good, too righteous to get the information we needed."

I'VE FELT THIS WAY BEFORE, SO INSECURE

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I feel like LKH is giving us a pure and morally 'white' character and trying to pass her off as grey while having most of her actions and thoughts a solid black

Yeah, that sounds about right.

And HAHAHAHA

[queenmeow.livejournal.com]

This chapter group shows how nuts anita is. She's gone criminally insane. She's so mad she is a true believer in her own bull. Also, maybe the real anita is a plain jane, only those infected with her see her as beautiful. Like how some people are better looking the more you see or know them, but in an evil, ugly way.

[a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com]

Total strangers supposedly find her super hot but I'm more than willing to bet that's just her own egotistical perception.

[queenmeow.livejournal.com]

I think that's the ablah working on a very insecure woman's insecurities about being plain. Even in the past she cared more about looks than anything more substantial. Being so shallow, it was eazy for the ablah to take her over. If she had independent thought she might notice it's strange for every person she meets to say the same sort of thing to her.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Nice digging job! While I'm willing to believe that *some* laws are different in a world with known vampires, including/especially the treatment of corpses, but I bet that they would NOT be so different as to make what Anita is going to do legal by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm sorry, this just makes me furious.
Hey, no need to apologize, this bullshit should make anyone angry, both from a moral standpoint and from the standpoint of it being really shitty writing, and you've got extra reason because, as you said, you're giving a not-dissimilar scenario the thought, attention, and research it deserves, meanwhile this steaming pile of cat-vomit is published, has a fan base, etc. It's ridiculous! Especially since the necessity of this act is REALLY not sold at all. Firstly, they haven't tried any other means of interrogation yet so this can't be called a "last resort" or the like, it's the first. Secondly, the goal she's trying to accomplish is to find out the name and location of two vampires. That's all. That's it. These vampires don't have a hostage, they've made no threats, nothing, Anita just personally *thinks* that they'll go on a killing spree because they already have warrants of execution out on them therefore they have nothing less to lose and no reason NOT to go on a killing spree. Pretty shitty logic there. So yeah, not only is the act heinous and illegal, it's in-universe totally unwarranted despite how Anita *and* LKH are trying to sell it.

[tarawyn.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly concerned that Anita figuring someone who had a death sentence would immediately go off on a killing spree. If it were me, I'd either be getting myself to a country that doesn't cooperate with these laws / agreements, or, failing that, setting my affairs in order and trying to enjoy myself. If I were in that position, I'd be trying to track down their families to see if they were getting in contact with them, or checking out the local vampire-friendly bars, or keeping watch on transportation.

I'd also, y'know, offer leniency for the vampires if they could just, please, get me some information, because the law can't possibly be as black-and-white fucked up as Anita claims it is.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mention it except you said you're worried about this for you own similar situation with similarly American serial killer hunting characters...

It's not going to be the Eighth Amendment. The Eighth has to do with not setting unreasonable bails. (Excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment are mentioned but that has to do with legislation and post-conviction. I know that in the AB-verse people are routinely tried in absentia and sentenced to death (for superficial reasons as often as anything else) but trial in absentia isn't a thing in the real U.S. - and shouldn't be a thing in a fake U.S.)

Depending on what you're writing about, the fourth, fifth, sixth, and fourteenth amendments would all be in play (and in the AB verse, violated) in a situation like this.

[cygnusrex.livejournal.com]

Let's see.

Paedophile? Check. I know it was legal in the states she was in but I'm Canadian dammit, that shit's illegal here.
Sadist? Check.
Feeds off people's emotions/the results of those emotions? Check.
Is a complete monster? Check.

Y'know, she's starting to sound a lot like Mason Verger.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

FEED HER FACE TO DOGS

FEED THE REST TO PIGS

I AM OKAY WITH THIS

SRSLY AT THIS POINT I REALLY WANT THAT TO HAPPEN

[cygnusrex.livejournal.com]

And doing it would probably save more people than she claims to. I mean hell, I'm thinking of counting up how many collateral kills she makes each book. Which I'd actually do, unlike my plans to grab all the necro lore/spork dem comics.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Yup. Going on Anita's own logic, this is completely just.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

IIRC Larry hasn't shown up in the books since he got married. He was mentioned in Micah, where the whole premise was that Tammy went into labour early and thus Larry couldn't go out of town for a case so Anita had to fill in for him instead. But I'm pretty sure that's the last we saw of him and he hasn't been mentioned since. (Keep in mind, I've skipped books from Danse Macabre - Hit List and have been relying on other people's flogs. But I'm pretty sure if he turned up, he'd be mentioned somewhere in there and I guess Anita's too busy hanging with Edward and Olaf and the "cool" executioners to remember Larry. He's only her goddamned protoge.)

But given that it's been half a dozen or so books since he's actually shown up, and two years of in-universe time, that...that doesn't seem like enough time even with their history for him to have worked with Anita to witness all these events as well as for her to have all those zany adventures where he wasn't present. So basic math fail? This probably ranks right up there with Ronnie's claim for her sexual partners to be in the triple digits in the short amount of time between her relationship with Louis falling apart and the epic fight with Anita.

Just...reading over Anita's arguments to justify her actions to Larry looks a lot like tv drama's way of showing dirty cops and lawyers. If we don't do this terrible thing, even worse things will happen. What if it's your family they come after next. We're trying to stop the bad things! It's just this once. It's for the greater good. It's just a favour. But she's still the one with all the power because as she likes to tell us, she's got all this experience and is such a badass that everyone looks to her as a special expert. She's the one that's basically coercing Larry into doing something he clearly has moral and ethical objections toward. And we're supposed to cheer her on because she's doing everything for the "right" reasons and is therefore "good?" IT makes my skin crawl.

(Also, shit, you'd think that in a world where vampires have been known forever that better methods of staking would have been developed -- if the point is to destroy the heart, surely there'd be stakes that would shred a torso when driven into the rib cage. If the heart is supposed to be removed, then you could have thin stakes that essentially skewer the organ and help staple the vampire to the ground so you can break out the bone saw and rib-spreaders. While we're at it, how about better decapitation techniques. Why is this not a first order of action as decapitiation is a pretty good catch-all for stopping things that may want to eat your face. How about specialised Executioner ammunition that's designed to put bigger holes in creatures -- Anita used to use Glazer Safety Rounds for that purpose, but since this is an AU surely some smart cookie would come up with an incendiary round that may use silver or magnesium to burn very hot, very fast and destroy the head/torso. /LOGIC.)

HEY HEY IT'S 2014 WHERE I'M AT -- HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU AND ALL THE RATTIES!

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

looks a lot like tv drama's way of showing dirty cops and lawyers.
Yup, and I think that was what she was trying to go for. But it fails not only because of the reasons you describe, but also because she fails to sell the necessity and desperation needed for this situation. Firstly, they haven't tried any other means of interrogation yet so this can't be called a "last resort" or the like, it's the first. Secondly, the goal she's trying to accomplish is to find out the name and location of two vampires. That's all. That's it. These vampires don't have a hostage, they've made no threats, nothing, Anita just personally *thinks* that they'll go on a killing spree because they already have warrants of execution out on them therefore they have nothing less to lose and no reason NOT to go on a killing spree. Pretty shitty logic there. So yeah, not only is the act heinous and illegal, it's in-universe totally unwarranted despite how Anita *and* LKH are trying to sell it.

AW THANK YOU! It's only 5:30 PM of the day before here but by the time they wake up to get the message, it'll be 2014 for sure, ahahah!

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/how creepy is it that she can look at people, say they look like children, and then go home to a lover that is their same apparent age?/

Not just people, DEAD people. She kills children and then goes to sleep with one. If that’s not twisted, I don’t know what is.

/"men never expected me to be able to keep up with them/

Would you give it a rest, Ms. Hamilton? You know what would do a better job of showing how awesome your heroine is? If all of the men that she worked with respected her and admired her because of how good she is at her job.

/Urlrich says he heard that Anita is going to cut up the corpses in front of the other vampires, and Anita nods/

Okay, I know that a lot of people get upset when vampires are used for analogues to real life because vampires are bloodsucking monsters and thus their situation is naturally different from that of minorities or just humans in general. But dear Lord. If any American soldier was caught doing that to an enemy soldier and word got out? They would be slammed so hard with human rights violations. I know that people have compared LKH’s ideas about torture and murder to “24,” but does this scenario ever happen on “24?” Does Jack Bauer actually mutilate the corpses of the suspect’s friends in front of them while he’s interrogating them?

I’m sorry, ANITA is the one who understands monsters here? ANITA is the one who’s upset by society’s discrimination towards them? Yeah, Anita, the vampires are afraid of you – because you’re a sadistic psycho!

/that phrase is generally used by men to condescend to women/

Which fits Anita to a tee, since she condescends to anyone who dares to object to her bloodthirsty ways.

/"Guys didn't ask about emotions unless they had to"/

Which is why there are no male psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, or therapists.

/"it's not cozy being the monster."/

Oh, but you like bragging about how the vampires are all afraid of you. You can’t have it both ways.

/"He looked so serious, so convinced he was right./

BECAUSE HE *IS*, YOU DERANGED PSYCHOPATH!

/Anita argues that regular interrogation takes too much time/

Ah, yes, the old “ticking bomb” scenario. Always handy for torture-apologists. But, of course, they miss the "practical" point entirely: TORTURE DOESN’T WORK. Does LKH think that all of the people who “confessed” to be witches during the Salem Witch Trials were really witches?

/Now, I've been a fan of Law & order: SVU/

So have I and that show has gone back and forth on this issue often. But it has sometimes acknowledged that police going to extremes is wrong and has had a few episodes about the consequences. For example, what would LKH think of the episode where a man, who was wrongfully accused and arrested for rape by Olivia Benson, convicted, and raped by his cellmates, wound up killing several people connected to Olivia’s previous cases in order to get back at her? Where the whole point of the episode is that the police are not always right and that sometimes they do go too far?

/Anita says because she'd rather have nightmares than look a family in the eyes and tell them their loved one is dead/

Oh, really? How about the vampires’ families? Can you look them in the eyes and tell them that THEIR loved one is dead or has been tortured?

/because we were too good, too righteous to get the information we needed."/

Information through TORTURE. You’re not even considering alternate ways to interrogate them. No, you just leap for the most despicable one and then get on your high horse and whine about how you can’t do anything else, just like you whined about not being able to stop banging Cynric. You’re not being hardcore or tough or morally ambiguous, you’re being a CHILD. “WAAAAAH, it’s not my fault, I had to do it, they made me, don’t blame me, you’re a meanie-head, it’s not my fault!”

/"when a friendship breaks this badly it doesn't turn to hatred; it turns to pain."/

Yes, because disagreeing over something that should be simple (TORTURE IS BAD) is a “friendship breaking.” No, Anita, when you’re seriously contemplating torturing other people and cutting up bodies in front of them, I really don’t care about your "pain." Especially not when it’s nothing more than self-pity that Larry is arguing with you.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Okay, I know that a lot of people get upset when vampires are used for analogues to real life...
And usually I'm one of those people but I COMPLETELY agree with you.

Which fits Anita to a tee, since she condescends to anyone who dares to object to her bloodthirsty ways.
Hahaha, yup!

Oh, but you like bragging about how the vampires are all afraid of you. You can’t have it both ways.
Nonsense, Anita always gets it both ways!

Which is why there are no male psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, or therapists.
Shit, one of my psychiatrists is a dude, how can this be!

ou’re not even considering alternate ways to interrogate them. No, you just leap for the most despicable one
Yup, and that's one the reasons this scenario doesn't work like LKH wants it to. In addition to the stakes not being as high as Anita is acting, there's also the fact no other methods have even been tried.

[shippingfan3.livejournal.com]

For example, what would LKH think of the episode where a man, who was wrongfully accused and arrested for rape by Olivia Benson, convicted, and raped by his cellmates, wound up killing several people connected to Olivia’s previous cases in order to get back at her?Where the whole point of the episode is that the police are not always right and that sometimes they do go too far?

Yeah, or the episode "Unstable" that deals with Victor Tate, the guy whom Stabler had arrested for rape as a young cop, found out was innocent, tried to get him out, but then couldn't because Stabler had fucked up? Yeah, she'd have a fit if she saw that.

[ariskari.livejournal.com]

Oh lord...where's a 'nope' gif when you need one?

Out of all the morally bankrupt things Anita has attempted to justify, this has pretty much pushed it over the line for me. I've got all the books up to Kiss the Dead on my kindle, and while I've only read the first eleven (I think) I'm going to get rid of them. I just do not want to read any more of a series where the heroine becomes something this vile and we're still supposed to see her as a good person.

I've read books with appalling main characters before. One of my favourite characters in a series is actually an Inquisitor at a royal court and does some pretty terrible things, including letting an innocent man be horrifically executed because its more convenient for him and the work he's trying to do. But its made very clear in the narration and the other characters' attitudes that this is not a good thing and said character is a fucking terrible person! How can LKH write that argument between Anita and Larry and still think Anita is in the right?

I just...how can people read this thing and still think its good and that Anita is an awesome person?

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I just...how can people read this thing and still think its good and that Anita is an awesome person?
Yeah, I can see how ONE person can be so blind and deluded (LKH), especially since Anita is her ow fantasy, but the fact there are so many fans STILL out there is nothing short of freaky to me.

[watersheerie.livejournal.com]

I think it's a lack of reading comprehension and understanding that just because says that a character is good, doesn't mean that the character actually acts good. It's telling versus showing again. Just look at Twilight. Everyone kept talking about how smart and mature and selfless Bella was, yet her actions and thoughts showed otherwise. It's the same here, everyone (including the writer) keeps telling us that Anita is actually a good person and everything she does is good, yet her actions and thoughts show us a different story.

The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people in this world who are able to read a book, but are unable to actually understand it. It's similar to how some people will never grasp mathematics the way others do. You get some people who can perform the formulas and understand how they work and why they work, then you get others (like me) who can just memorize the formulas and functions and hope for the best. Math is pretty much an alien language to me, I get the gist of it but that's about it. It's the same with reading for some people. They read a book and can get the gist of it, but understanding it is another story (no pun intended). I think this is also why the fans don't understand why we dislike the books and simply perceive us as jealous haters. They simply cannot see what we see and so all they see are a bunch of people complaining about nothing.

This isn't to say that the fans are stupid. A lack of reading comprehension doesn't automatically equal stupidity, just the same as how a lack of math understanding doesn't mean you're a moron. This is just a theory of why the fans can read the same books and still think of Anita as a hero. Now, why LKH can write Anita like this when she supposedly has a degree in English...I'm still speculating about that. It's mind-boggling at times.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

....I never ever thought of it this way but you are COMPLETELY right. I'm likewise one of those people who cannot understand math at all, but I sure as heck understand what I'm reading; meanwhile math just *clicks* for my dad and he's baffled as to why it doesn't for me. When you use that metaphor it makes a lot of sense! Thank you!