KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 18
Jan. 17th, 2014 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_rat- Ratsputin got a bath yesterday! His buck grease buildup was just getting too gross.
- Boo might meet his match with this kid!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM1s4ia2p2A
Dad says what would happen is that it would pop up and Boo would attack and just launch himself at it and all that would be left is torn up metal
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 18
Anita and Hill are "slick with sweat" when they get behind the house, which I find odd given how Anita was just talking about how in shape they are. I guess nerves but she never mentioned those. Some guys named Sutton and Hermes are there waiting for them, and even though Anita can't see them she can smell the oil on Sutton's gun and somehow this tells her that "he'd brought the Barrett .50-caliber, good for stopping charging rhinos, stray elephants, and any kind of preternatural that bullets can harm." I realize she has therian senses and they can sniff better than bloodhounds and all, but I refuse to believe she can smell the fucking brand. She tells us that it's not something she would use in a tightly-packed neighborhood because if it misses the bullet just keeps going until it hits something, and this baby's bullets take out the entire goddamn torso. "To bring the big gun here said something about Sutton's arrogance about how own abilities" I'd say it's more a sign of fear, if anything? I guess she means arrogant in that he thinks he can hit the target for sure...also that's really funny coming from Miss Walking Armory. Also, despite the fact she said she couldn't see them, just smell them, she tells is that he's got the Barrett on a tripod and is kneeling by it on a shooting platform. Dude, can you see them or not, make up your fucking mind please. Because it sure sounds like you can.
She then notes that Hermes has on some kind of joint liniment she can smell, probably around his knee given that the scent is lower, and she wonders if she would have noticed this and the oil smell if Hill hadn't told her these two would be waiting and she's not sure. STAY FOCUSED, YOU TWIT. Seriously, she has had since NiC to get used to being a fucking panwere and having all the super-senses that go with that, if she is still this distracted in this kind of situation she needs to quit. And then she talks more about how fucking dark it is and they're hiding in bushes and small trees and how the vampire won't see them but "it wasn't his eyes we had to worry about." Anita talks about how Hill is close enough she can hear his heartbeat and pulse, and she tries to hear Sutton's and Hermes too. Again, STAY FOCUSED! "I could feel the vampire like heat in the dark. I just knew he was there" yes, good, now try to get a pinpoint please. And she tells us that supernaturals have "other, better senses than normals." NO FUCKING SHIT, REALLY? HADN'T HEARD THAT BEFORE OR ANYTHING!
Someone named Lincoln whispers in her ear that the kids and dogs are coming out. Who the fuck is Lincoln? I think maybe that was a cop from earlier but I can't totally remember? And it takes me a minute to realize she must mean she has in an ear-piece and he's talking to her through that, because she doesn't mention it so it just seems like there's this random guy suddenly there with them. Sutton asks if Bores sent the dog out or if the kids insisted on taking it. He is told that Bores sent it, which makes sense since the kids really are not in a position to be insisting on anything right now. Sutton, Hermes, and Hill all swear, Anita asks what's wrong, Hill says that "he either sent the dog and kids out so they won't see him kill Mom" yes, lord knows how traumatized the DOG would be right? "or didn't want the dog to bite him." Why not just kill the dog then? It's been stated it's a small dog, he's a vampire, it would hardly take much effort if he were worried about that, and something tells me that LKH doesn't understand that someone who could, say, kill another human being might balk at killing animals so I doubt that's the case here. This is just odd. Sutton says this is not good, Hermes asks Anita to spot Bores for them, and "I didn't argue." It always baffles me when she says that she or someone else doesn't argue in situations where there is no reason at all for there to be arguing. I guess it just shows how it's always at the back of her mind to do just that anyway.
Anita talks a lot about her metaphysical shields and I just can't even read it it's so dull, and it takes up half a page, and finally she fucking reaches out her necromancy towards Bores and talks about how she used to not be able to aim her necromancy at specific vampires but now she can but strange vampires are harder and she reaches out her hand towards the house as she does and spends way, way too many words saying that doing this physical action helps her focus on doing the psychic action. Seriously, we get the concept of that, LKH, it is not hard. Anita then says that since she's never met Bores, she just has to assume that the vampire she feels in the house is him and not some random other vampire that would be there for some reason, and how if it is someone else then she could get in trouble because it's her warrant of execution even if she doesn't pull the trigger. Uh, considering it's a fucking hostage situation either way, I don't think she'd get in trouble for that, given how stupidly lax all laws around preternatural marshals seem to be? And then she brags about how "the snipers loved working with me, because it was always a clean, no-muss, no-fuss kill" and they get to "fire, kill, and not lose an hour off the job, or a minute talking to Internal Affairs" Uh huh.
"I couldn't really see the vampire." We know, it's dark and the blinds are drawn. "I could feel him" Yes, you just spent damn well enough time talking about it "not like touching something with your fingers, but more as if you could touch something with your thoughts" Yes, you made that clear when you did the bit about how the physical action helps you mentally focus "as if thoughts were fingers, hands that could wrap around the vampire" SHUT UP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHUT UP. This description is not bad in itself at all, it's actually much more clear and succinct than the one she just did, BUT IT IS NOW OBNOXIOUSLY REDUNDANT. And all so that she can tell them he's pacing, after which she monologues for another internal paragraph about how nothing she can see with her physical eyes matters because she's sensing, not seeing, WE GET IT. Sutton asks how fast, she says fast, and is shocked when she sees she's moving her hand to indicate his pace, zomg so weird she didn't mean too! People never gesticulate unconsciously! It's clearly because she has these preternatural powers! Spooooky! Sutton asks Hermes to spot the woman, and Hermes uses binoculars (how do they see through blinds...infrared, maybe?) to see that she's sitting with her back to the cabinets. Sutton says good and Anita talks to us about how his voice has gone deeper and quieter and how this shows he's gone into the mindset of being about to make the shot. Which he is also physically getting ready to do. Telling us his voice went like that as he is physically getting ready to do this would have damn well shown all that well enough, thank you.
She then spends more than half of the next page talking about how big the gun is and what a big hole that kind of bullet makes and btw remember how it will take half your fucking chest out? It takes half your fucking chest out! That is basically all I managed to read because god she is boring, talking about how he has to hit the target OF FUCKING COURSE HE HAS TO HIT THE TARGET THAT IS THE GODDAMN POINT, ESPECIALLY IN A HOSTAGE SITUATION oh my god she is a professional tension-ruiner. Lincoln comes back over the earpieces to tell them that the vampire has a handgun. Hermes swears, Sutton says "Blake" and Anita tries to reach out with her necromancy again, telling us how the gun changed the situation because now the vampire doesn't have to get close to the woman to hurt her. She tells them he is slowing and turning. She tells us how her voice is lower and careful and how an older or more powerful vamp might have felt her power but this one is either too weak or too emotional to sense anything. Sutton asks which way he is turning and Anita points because "I could never have explained how I knew which way the vampire was looking, but I was sure of it" He asked which way, he didn't ask how you knew which way.
Hermes says that's towards the woman, Sutton asks if he was aiming, Anita says she can't tell but that he's being very still now, Sutton asks for her to "sight it for me" again and Anita tells us she is doing...something to do with solid landmarks that she can't sense and it's hard...and I don't understand what the hell she's talking about until she replies that he is at the edge of the window, five feet to her right. Oh, okay, she's trying to say where he is in relation to the house, and that's hard because she can just sense him, not stuff around him. SEE, LKH, THAT WAS NOT SO HARD TO EXPLAIN! Sutton says he is aiming. Anita freaks out ("Fuck!") because the house is white and Sutton will need marks to know exactly where the target is, so she points to a discolored spot (I thought it was super-dark out here?) and says Bores' head is in line with that. Sutton says he can't see that spot because his color vision at night is not as good as Anita's. Yeah, I guess it makes sense that panwere abilities would come with better night vision, as most animals need that, especially predators. Hermes says the woman has her arms thrown up and asks Anita what the vampire is doing. Yeah, those binoculars must be infrared, since it was mentioned earlier that Bores isn't showing up on infrared well because he hasn't fed tonight.
Anita says she thinks he's moved closer to her, Hill is like you think and she's like IT'S NOT LIKE SEEING EYES DAMMIT and she reaches out to the vampire a little further and I am not even reading the paragraph-long description of what reaching is like and when she does reach him she realizes HE IS REALLY FUCKING ANGRY. Sutton asks her to give him something he can actually use to make the shot, and Anita can't think of any landmarks to point out and since she can't eat the anger because she isn't close enough to touch Bores, she calls the vampire instead and continues a dumb metaphor from the paragraph about reaching: namely that if you stand on a ledge and reach too far, you fall. Except I don't see how she is falling in this, since she seems to succeeding, as he is "he was too young, too weak--my necromancy could call really old shit--and he turned and looked at me, because I willed him to see me" even through the walls. Anita says she can't hold him like this forever, Hill tells her to laser-sight him for Sutton and Anita realizes that, oh, she has a laser sight on her AR! WELL SHIT WOMAN, YOU COULD HAVE JUST USED THAT INSTEAD A SECOND AGO BECAUSE NOW THE VAMPIRE KNOWS YOU'RE THERE! Hill asks if she can keep her concentration on holding the vampire and still be able to use the gun, she says we'll find out. DUDE, THIS IS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW FOR SURE BEFORE GOING INTO THE FIELD!
AND THEN...OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I CAN'T MAKE THIS UP....
"But sighting for Sutton wasn't as simple as me aiming at the vampire with my gun while I was standing. That wouldn't help the prone officer aim; I needed to be in his physical space to aim right for him."
But...but he doesn't need you to aim his gun for him...he just needs you to show him where to aim it...
"Hill said it. "You're small enough, and he's big enough; just lie across him and sight your gun down his barrel."
WHAT
"It was the best idea we had, so I put my body on top of the big officer where he lay on the ground."
I TOLD YOU I COULDN'T HAVE MADE THIS UP
The vampire uses his rage to try to fight Anita's control, I don't understand why she doesn't just eat said rage, and by the way Anita is tiny: "Sutton was so much bigger than me that most of my body was just on his upper body when I lay down" and she can't get the angle she needs so she's moving around and Sutton says he can't hold the shot with her on him like this and the vampire is fighting more and Anita concentrates harder on him and he quiets down and then "I had a smart idea." Oh god. "Tell the woman to try to leave the room while I hold the vampire. Maybe we don't have to shoot to save her."
...holy shit, that *is* smart. What's more, it remembers that this is actually about saving the hostage, not killing the vampire, and sacrifices the chance to use a big ol' gun. Holy shit. Anita, who ARE you?
"Hill didn't argue" WHY WOULD HE "just spoke into his mike." Hermes then says the woman is up and moving, and Anita feels the vampire's rage flare, and Anita is like NO STOP MOVING HER cuz it's pissing him off so much that he'll break free of her hold and get the woman before she can get out. Dude, isn't this the chick who ate the Mother of All Darkness? I could buy this scenario in the early books, but it's just dumb at this point. You can't take Anita and her necromancy to God-tier power level and then suddenly she can't fucking cope with basic baby vamps. Obnoxious as her Mary-Sueism is, the inconsistency is more obnoxious. I understand that having her just bowl over Bores like she should be able to doesn't make for much of a story, but the solution there is to have some event strip her of her God-tier powers, not to just have them go away and reappear as is convenient with no in-universe explanation, or to give her AN ACTUAL CHALLENGE FOR ONCE.
She sits on Sutton's waist but is "too short to reach what I needed with my gun, so finally I ended up half-kneeling, half-sitting on Sutton's lower back and leaning over his shoulder." Which you just know is probably spilling her mounds of creamy goodness all over him, vest or no. NO VEST CAN CONTAIN THE MEGABOOBS!! He asks her to put less weight on his shoulders, she talks for a paragraph about balancing and "his sniper mojo" is mentioned. The vampire is almost free, Anita fights to hold him, she hits her AR against the Barrett, Sutton says not to do that, Anita calls the vampire and "threw my power into him like a spear. I felt it stagger him but I also knew that I'd have to let him go to do the other part." She hits him one more time with the necromancy and "it staggered him" yes you said that and then she aims her AR laser where the vampire's head is through the wall, and their bodies go still together and they hold their breaths together and the vampire gets free of her and Sutton fires and the recoil sends teeny little her tumbling off him. There is now "a surprisingly small hole" in the house and the woman inside is screaming.
Hill asks if they got him, Sutton asks Anita, Anita can feel that the vampire is "Dead, down, done." The cops give the all clear, the officers enter the house, "and the only confirmation they had that the vampire was dead was me and my psychic abilities" BRAG BRAG BRAG. And of course she notes how *some* meanie cops don't trust her but *these* guys do...you know, I have a feeling that the reason these other cops don't trust her is because it's well-known how involved she is with the MotC, aka a vampire mob boss, given that I doubt they have any reason to doubt her psychic abilities the way she makes it sound like they do. And then she brags more about how much they trust her because they're going in with only her say-so that the rogue vamp is dead yadda yadda SHOW DON'T TELL. And you did just show. So you didn't need to tell. It was really irritating of you to tell, actually.
She hears the SWAT team going through the house and calling "clear" through the earpieces as they go. Hill gets up and starts going towards the house and so does Anita because "when your team moves, you know; when they put their guns to their shoulders and start into a house, you go with them." And when they do the smallest of things, YOU WAX ABOUT IT PRETENTIOUSLY! Sutton and Hermes follow, and they're all watching for threats, but then it comes over the earpiece that the house is secure, hostage is safe, and suspect is down. "There were no other bad guys in the house. The pregnant ex-wife" as opposed to calling her by her name or just 'the woman' or anything that doesn't define her based on her previous relationship to Keith Bores "was being taken out to the waiting ambulance. The vampire was dead. It was a good night." Yeah, and it could have been good to read about.
But it wasn't.
- Boo might meet his match with this kid!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM1s4ia2p2A
Dad says what would happen is that it would pop up and Boo would attack and just launch himself at it and all that would be left is torn up metal
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 18
Anita and Hill are "slick with sweat" when they get behind the house, which I find odd given how Anita was just talking about how in shape they are. I guess nerves but she never mentioned those. Some guys named Sutton and Hermes are there waiting for them, and even though Anita can't see them she can smell the oil on Sutton's gun and somehow this tells her that "he'd brought the Barrett .50-caliber, good for stopping charging rhinos, stray elephants, and any kind of preternatural that bullets can harm." I realize she has therian senses and they can sniff better than bloodhounds and all, but I refuse to believe she can smell the fucking brand. She tells us that it's not something she would use in a tightly-packed neighborhood because if it misses the bullet just keeps going until it hits something, and this baby's bullets take out the entire goddamn torso. "To bring the big gun here said something about Sutton's arrogance about how own abilities" I'd say it's more a sign of fear, if anything? I guess she means arrogant in that he thinks he can hit the target for sure...also that's really funny coming from Miss Walking Armory. Also, despite the fact she said she couldn't see them, just smell them, she tells is that he's got the Barrett on a tripod and is kneeling by it on a shooting platform. Dude, can you see them or not, make up your fucking mind please. Because it sure sounds like you can.
She then notes that Hermes has on some kind of joint liniment she can smell, probably around his knee given that the scent is lower, and she wonders if she would have noticed this and the oil smell if Hill hadn't told her these two would be waiting and she's not sure. STAY FOCUSED, YOU TWIT. Seriously, she has had since NiC to get used to being a fucking panwere and having all the super-senses that go with that, if she is still this distracted in this kind of situation she needs to quit. And then she talks more about how fucking dark it is and they're hiding in bushes and small trees and how the vampire won't see them but "it wasn't his eyes we had to worry about." Anita talks about how Hill is close enough she can hear his heartbeat and pulse, and she tries to hear Sutton's and Hermes too. Again, STAY FOCUSED! "I could feel the vampire like heat in the dark. I just knew he was there" yes, good, now try to get a pinpoint please. And she tells us that supernaturals have "other, better senses than normals." NO FUCKING SHIT, REALLY? HADN'T HEARD THAT BEFORE OR ANYTHING!
Someone named Lincoln whispers in her ear that the kids and dogs are coming out. Who the fuck is Lincoln? I think maybe that was a cop from earlier but I can't totally remember? And it takes me a minute to realize she must mean she has in an ear-piece and he's talking to her through that, because she doesn't mention it so it just seems like there's this random guy suddenly there with them. Sutton asks if Bores sent the dog out or if the kids insisted on taking it. He is told that Bores sent it, which makes sense since the kids really are not in a position to be insisting on anything right now. Sutton, Hermes, and Hill all swear, Anita asks what's wrong, Hill says that "he either sent the dog and kids out so they won't see him kill Mom" yes, lord knows how traumatized the DOG would be right? "or didn't want the dog to bite him." Why not just kill the dog then? It's been stated it's a small dog, he's a vampire, it would hardly take much effort if he were worried about that, and something tells me that LKH doesn't understand that someone who could, say, kill another human being might balk at killing animals so I doubt that's the case here. This is just odd. Sutton says this is not good, Hermes asks Anita to spot Bores for them, and "I didn't argue." It always baffles me when she says that she or someone else doesn't argue in situations where there is no reason at all for there to be arguing. I guess it just shows how it's always at the back of her mind to do just that anyway.
Anita talks a lot about her metaphysical shields and I just can't even read it it's so dull, and it takes up half a page, and finally she fucking reaches out her necromancy towards Bores and talks about how she used to not be able to aim her necromancy at specific vampires but now she can but strange vampires are harder and she reaches out her hand towards the house as she does and spends way, way too many words saying that doing this physical action helps her focus on doing the psychic action. Seriously, we get the concept of that, LKH, it is not hard. Anita then says that since she's never met Bores, she just has to assume that the vampire she feels in the house is him and not some random other vampire that would be there for some reason, and how if it is someone else then she could get in trouble because it's her warrant of execution even if she doesn't pull the trigger. Uh, considering it's a fucking hostage situation either way, I don't think she'd get in trouble for that, given how stupidly lax all laws around preternatural marshals seem to be? And then she brags about how "the snipers loved working with me, because it was always a clean, no-muss, no-fuss kill" and they get to "fire, kill, and not lose an hour off the job, or a minute talking to Internal Affairs" Uh huh.
"I couldn't really see the vampire." We know, it's dark and the blinds are drawn. "I could feel him" Yes, you just spent damn well enough time talking about it "not like touching something with your fingers, but more as if you could touch something with your thoughts" Yes, you made that clear when you did the bit about how the physical action helps you mentally focus "as if thoughts were fingers, hands that could wrap around the vampire" SHUT UP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHUT UP. This description is not bad in itself at all, it's actually much more clear and succinct than the one she just did, BUT IT IS NOW OBNOXIOUSLY REDUNDANT. And all so that she can tell them he's pacing, after which she monologues for another internal paragraph about how nothing she can see with her physical eyes matters because she's sensing, not seeing, WE GET IT. Sutton asks how fast, she says fast, and is shocked when she sees she's moving her hand to indicate his pace, zomg so weird she didn't mean too! People never gesticulate unconsciously! It's clearly because she has these preternatural powers! Spooooky! Sutton asks Hermes to spot the woman, and Hermes uses binoculars (how do they see through blinds...infrared, maybe?) to see that she's sitting with her back to the cabinets. Sutton says good and Anita talks to us about how his voice has gone deeper and quieter and how this shows he's gone into the mindset of being about to make the shot. Which he is also physically getting ready to do. Telling us his voice went like that as he is physically getting ready to do this would have damn well shown all that well enough, thank you.
She then spends more than half of the next page talking about how big the gun is and what a big hole that kind of bullet makes and btw remember how it will take half your fucking chest out? It takes half your fucking chest out! That is basically all I managed to read because god she is boring, talking about how he has to hit the target OF FUCKING COURSE HE HAS TO HIT THE TARGET THAT IS THE GODDAMN POINT, ESPECIALLY IN A HOSTAGE SITUATION oh my god she is a professional tension-ruiner. Lincoln comes back over the earpieces to tell them that the vampire has a handgun. Hermes swears, Sutton says "Blake" and Anita tries to reach out with her necromancy again, telling us how the gun changed the situation because now the vampire doesn't have to get close to the woman to hurt her. She tells them he is slowing and turning. She tells us how her voice is lower and careful and how an older or more powerful vamp might have felt her power but this one is either too weak or too emotional to sense anything. Sutton asks which way he is turning and Anita points because "I could never have explained how I knew which way the vampire was looking, but I was sure of it" He asked which way, he didn't ask how you knew which way.
Hermes says that's towards the woman, Sutton asks if he was aiming, Anita says she can't tell but that he's being very still now, Sutton asks for her to "sight it for me" again and Anita tells us she is doing...something to do with solid landmarks that she can't sense and it's hard...and I don't understand what the hell she's talking about until she replies that he is at the edge of the window, five feet to her right. Oh, okay, she's trying to say where he is in relation to the house, and that's hard because she can just sense him, not stuff around him. SEE, LKH, THAT WAS NOT SO HARD TO EXPLAIN! Sutton says he is aiming. Anita freaks out ("Fuck!") because the house is white and Sutton will need marks to know exactly where the target is, so she points to a discolored spot (I thought it was super-dark out here?) and says Bores' head is in line with that. Sutton says he can't see that spot because his color vision at night is not as good as Anita's. Yeah, I guess it makes sense that panwere abilities would come with better night vision, as most animals need that, especially predators. Hermes says the woman has her arms thrown up and asks Anita what the vampire is doing. Yeah, those binoculars must be infrared, since it was mentioned earlier that Bores isn't showing up on infrared well because he hasn't fed tonight.
Anita says she thinks he's moved closer to her, Hill is like you think and she's like IT'S NOT LIKE SEEING EYES DAMMIT and she reaches out to the vampire a little further and I am not even reading the paragraph-long description of what reaching is like and when she does reach him she realizes HE IS REALLY FUCKING ANGRY. Sutton asks her to give him something he can actually use to make the shot, and Anita can't think of any landmarks to point out and since she can't eat the anger because she isn't close enough to touch Bores, she calls the vampire instead and continues a dumb metaphor from the paragraph about reaching: namely that if you stand on a ledge and reach too far, you fall. Except I don't see how she is falling in this, since she seems to succeeding, as he is "he was too young, too weak--my necromancy could call really old shit--and he turned and looked at me, because I willed him to see me" even through the walls. Anita says she can't hold him like this forever, Hill tells her to laser-sight him for Sutton and Anita realizes that, oh, she has a laser sight on her AR! WELL SHIT WOMAN, YOU COULD HAVE JUST USED THAT INSTEAD A SECOND AGO BECAUSE NOW THE VAMPIRE KNOWS YOU'RE THERE! Hill asks if she can keep her concentration on holding the vampire and still be able to use the gun, she says we'll find out. DUDE, THIS IS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD KNOW FOR SURE BEFORE GOING INTO THE FIELD!
AND THEN...OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I CAN'T MAKE THIS UP....
"But sighting for Sutton wasn't as simple as me aiming at the vampire with my gun while I was standing. That wouldn't help the prone officer aim; I needed to be in his physical space to aim right for him."
But...but he doesn't need you to aim his gun for him...he just needs you to show him where to aim it...
"Hill said it. "You're small enough, and he's big enough; just lie across him and sight your gun down his barrel."
WHAT
"It was the best idea we had, so I put my body on top of the big officer where he lay on the ground."
I TOLD YOU I COULDN'T HAVE MADE THIS UP
The vampire uses his rage to try to fight Anita's control, I don't understand why she doesn't just eat said rage, and by the way Anita is tiny: "Sutton was so much bigger than me that most of my body was just on his upper body when I lay down" and she can't get the angle she needs so she's moving around and Sutton says he can't hold the shot with her on him like this and the vampire is fighting more and Anita concentrates harder on him and he quiets down and then "I had a smart idea." Oh god. "Tell the woman to try to leave the room while I hold the vampire. Maybe we don't have to shoot to save her."
...holy shit, that *is* smart. What's more, it remembers that this is actually about saving the hostage, not killing the vampire, and sacrifices the chance to use a big ol' gun. Holy shit. Anita, who ARE you?
"Hill didn't argue" WHY WOULD HE "just spoke into his mike." Hermes then says the woman is up and moving, and Anita feels the vampire's rage flare, and Anita is like NO STOP MOVING HER cuz it's pissing him off so much that he'll break free of her hold and get the woman before she can get out. Dude, isn't this the chick who ate the Mother of All Darkness? I could buy this scenario in the early books, but it's just dumb at this point. You can't take Anita and her necromancy to God-tier power level and then suddenly she can't fucking cope with basic baby vamps. Obnoxious as her Mary-Sueism is, the inconsistency is more obnoxious. I understand that having her just bowl over Bores like she should be able to doesn't make for much of a story, but the solution there is to have some event strip her of her God-tier powers, not to just have them go away and reappear as is convenient with no in-universe explanation, or to give her AN ACTUAL CHALLENGE FOR ONCE.
She sits on Sutton's waist but is "too short to reach what I needed with my gun, so finally I ended up half-kneeling, half-sitting on Sutton's lower back and leaning over his shoulder." Which you just know is probably spilling her mounds of creamy goodness all over him, vest or no. NO VEST CAN CONTAIN THE MEGABOOBS!! He asks her to put less weight on his shoulders, she talks for a paragraph about balancing and "his sniper mojo" is mentioned. The vampire is almost free, Anita fights to hold him, she hits her AR against the Barrett, Sutton says not to do that, Anita calls the vampire and "threw my power into him like a spear. I felt it stagger him but I also knew that I'd have to let him go to do the other part." She hits him one more time with the necromancy and "it staggered him" yes you said that and then she aims her AR laser where the vampire's head is through the wall, and their bodies go still together and they hold their breaths together and the vampire gets free of her and Sutton fires and the recoil sends teeny little her tumbling off him. There is now "a surprisingly small hole" in the house and the woman inside is screaming.
Hill asks if they got him, Sutton asks Anita, Anita can feel that the vampire is "Dead, down, done." The cops give the all clear, the officers enter the house, "and the only confirmation they had that the vampire was dead was me and my psychic abilities" BRAG BRAG BRAG. And of course she notes how *some* meanie cops don't trust her but *these* guys do...you know, I have a feeling that the reason these other cops don't trust her is because it's well-known how involved she is with the MotC, aka a vampire mob boss, given that I doubt they have any reason to doubt her psychic abilities the way she makes it sound like they do. And then she brags more about how much they trust her because they're going in with only her say-so that the rogue vamp is dead yadda yadda SHOW DON'T TELL. And you did just show. So you didn't need to tell. It was really irritating of you to tell, actually.
She hears the SWAT team going through the house and calling "clear" through the earpieces as they go. Hill gets up and starts going towards the house and so does Anita because "when your team moves, you know; when they put their guns to their shoulders and start into a house, you go with them." And when they do the smallest of things, YOU WAX ABOUT IT PRETENTIOUSLY! Sutton and Hermes follow, and they're all watching for threats, but then it comes over the earpiece that the house is secure, hostage is safe, and suspect is down. "There were no other bad guys in the house. The pregnant ex-wife" as opposed to calling her by her name or just 'the woman' or anything that doesn't define her based on her previous relationship to Keith Bores "was being taken out to the waiting ambulance. The vampire was dead. It was a good night." Yeah, and it could have been good to read about.
But it wasn't.
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no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 05:20 pm (UTC)No, they lose several, because she's too busy waxing moronic.
Seriously, I'm pretty sure anyone with a precision job like that would hate being around her. Doesn't matter if it's sniping or certain types of welding, having her around when you've got to concentrate would be a terror since she's so gung-ho about being the best at everything and bragging about it. Not to mention that her laying on that guy while wearing a full kit would in fact throw off his shot unless he's got an oak plank where his spine is and she's about as still as one.
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Date: 2014-01-17 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 08:44 pm (UTC)Aw hell no. What is he, 8 feet tall? I am so tired of LKH shoving her stupid size kink into everything. And in her case, it is a STUPID kink.
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Date: 2014-01-17 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-18 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-18 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 09:59 pm (UTC)Maybe she has a gun-of-the-month calendar.
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Date: 2014-01-17 11:14 pm (UTC)And they're pretty, since they're based on France's Hécate II.no subject
Date: 2014-01-17 10:44 pm (UTC)....I think my brain's gone numb.
The redudancy. Dear GOD the redudancy. How can LKH consider all her drafts 90% gold?! I just....I want to edit this. Ruthlessly. So bad, OMG. Hell, in one of my fics, I have an instance of redudancy in the second chapter (a minor one!) and I'm planning on editing it out because it bugs me. I mean, in certain parts of a text, you MIGHT re-state a certain fact if it's been...like a 100 or more pages to refresh the reader's memory, but you give it a light, passing mention at best. You don't rehash it in detail, because you can assume that all your readers don't have dementia or Alzheimer's! As I'm honing my writing craft, her mistakes and pit falls are becoming so much more glaring.
Jesus, I swear she just writes stream of consciousness. It's just...droning. We do not all have the attention span of a hummingbird! Writing action scenes can be a challenge for a lot of people, myself included, but hell, even I could do better! I just have such an urge to cut this chapter and streamline it and make it into something readable. I can only imagine what LKH's editors must endure...wait. Does she still have editors? That's a serious question.
Now excuse me, my inner editor is huddling into a ball and weeping.
Sidenote: I read through guardian_song's sporking of Shutdown late last night. I felt like I needed a stiff drink afterwards. And I don't even drink. Christ, poor Ellen. Anita and Micah sure helped "shut down" Richard's potential shot at happiness, didn't they? >:/
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Date: 2014-01-17 10:58 pm (UTC)I think she does, and yes, it is. It's really awful to read. Just...painful. Even if the stories and characters were really good, this 'style' (or lack thereof) would make me really hate it just from a technical standpoint.
UGH SHUTDOWN IS SO TOXIC LIKE REALLY MEAN I DON'T EVER WANT TO READ OR SPORK IT MYSELF IT'S THAT NASTY
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Date: 2014-01-18 02:12 am (UTC)I've been undergoing a pretty major depressive episode (which I'm coming out of, so can mention it now), and my husband and I pinpointed its onset to when I read "Shutdown." There are a lot of reasons this could be coincidence, and there are lots of other reasons for it as well, but it sure as hell didn't help.
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Date: 2014-01-18 04:01 am (UTC)...Mostly because I had to laugh because nobody in their right mind should take fashion advice from someone like current!Anita, especially concerning what to wear to work. I'm all for people wearing what they want to wear, but there's a fine line between reasonable and wearing stilettos when you're chasing something that could tear a far better equipped person in two with it's eyes shut.
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Date: 2014-01-18 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-18 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-18 09:03 pm (UTC)Though I find it amusing that people are unanimously chorusing 'DON'T READ IT'. Considering that this is a snark community devoted to mocking her NORMAL stuff, for a story to hit even this group's nausea thresholds really says something about that story...
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Date: 2014-01-18 03:50 am (UTC)Shutdown is the 'pure' carp that comes out of LKH's mind...scary aint it
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Date: 2014-01-18 04:45 am (UTC)It is. It really, really is.
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Date: 2014-01-18 07:48 am (UTC)Yes. I know there was some speculation wondering just what LKH unfiltered would be like and well...looks like we got our answer. And it made me feel icky by mere association.
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Date: 2014-01-18 09:06 pm (UTC)I think that was the most shocking part of the story for me. She's SO BAD normally. How could her unfiltered stuff be worse?
Good freaking grief. There really WOULD be no plot to these books if the publisher didn't have a say. It would literally be all about Anita bitching about ~judgmental prudes~ and tormenting innocent women who crossed her path.
I honestly wonder what's wrong with the woman's head. Something just isn't right here.
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Date: 2014-01-19 04:24 am (UTC)BTW, I have nothing against strange, but I do have something against someone who as downright bigoted as LaLa is. Be as nutty as you want to be (as long as you aren't hurting anyone), but don't insist that the way you behave is the only correct way to behave.
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Date: 2014-01-18 07:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-19 05:49 am (UTC)If I had to work around her, I would do this all the time.