KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 30
Feb. 20th, 2014 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratThe job interview I mentioned before got canceled due to weather and is being re-scheduled, but I had another one yesterday and I think it went alright!
Sid and Ratsputin both have the same problem going on right now with their, er, private parts, and I'm getting pretty worried about it.
Capone, a wonderful and sweet dog that we've had at the shelter since October, got adopted! I'm so happy!
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 30
Anita is in the Circus infirmary area getting her mouth checked out by Dr. Lillian. She tells us what Dr. Lillian looks like, but only in one sentence because she's not a hot guy, she's an old wererat lady with, ick, short hair! She also tells us that "Lillian had a thriving medical practice in the human world, but that was because they didn't know she was a wererat" and reminds us about how "Humans didn't want to be treated by someone they were afraid could give them lycanthropy of any flavor, but rats had a double problem of not being "romantic" like werewolves, or wereleopards, et cetera...If you were going to be a shapeshifter, everyone wanted to be a big sexy predator, not a scavenger." Hey, remember back in The Lunatic Cafe where shapeshifters were established as different from lycanthropes/therianthropes? Neither do Anita and LKH! Also, I grant you that the average person will probably think like that about rats, but if someone were truly serious about becoming a therian for whatever reason, I feel like they would have done enough research to know that a rat is actually a really good pick. Rats have very hand-like front paws with jointed fingers like humans do; they can grip and manipulate things. None of the other shifter types have that going on for them in animal form, you'd have to just hope you eventually got powerful enough to eventually have a hybrid form with hands. But even the weakest wererat could probably use a knife, climb a fence, open a door, etc., just in their basic animal form. They might even be able to do things like use a cell phone or fire a gun, depending on the size of their fingers. Rats also have some color vision, albeit less than humans do; how many therian types are as colorblind as their respective animals, I wonder?
Oh, and rats are not just scavengers. Rats actually are predators. In the wild, they'll eat mice, frogs, birds...they'll even use their tails as lures to catch fish! And when you consider that this small-scale prey is just because rats are small, well...remember how wererats in the Anitaverse are about the size of German Shepherds?
Sorry guys, but you know I had to rat-stan. Anyway, Lillian says what Anita did earlier: That if she were human, she'd need stitches. She takes off her gloves and tosses them into a trash can with bio-hazard stickers on it, and Anita thinks about how even though you can't catch vamprisim from being exposed to blood on gloves or bandages or other hospital waste, it's still considered a contagious disease, and wonders if the same is true of therianthropy. She asks Dr. Lillian if there's ever been a case of someone catching therianthropy ("lycanthropy") from hospital waste, Lilian says no but she prefers to do the hospital protocol anyway. Good on you, Dr. Lillian. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! Then JC comes in and Anita spends HALF A PAGE talking about his clothes, and because I had to suffer that, SO DO YOU!
"He still looked perfect in his black leather pants and matching jacket" I'm kind of shocked he's in a leather jacket. That seems too modern tough-guy for his look. Maybe it's like a leather suit jacket or something? "only the white shirt in the middle of all that leather was his typical lacy shirt. It was like an echo of his original century" Okay, Jean-Claude is over 600, right? So his original century would be the 1300s or before. Let's have a look at what French people were wearing during that time, shall we?
http://otiliaolsten.edublogs.org/2011/09/19/within-the-1300s-it-became-the-fashion/
http://www.altiusdirectory.com/Lifestyle/thirteenth-century-fashion.html
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?word=Men%20--%20Clothing%20%26%20dress%20--%20England%20--%201300-1399&s=3¬word=&f=2
Granted, some of these links are for specifically English clothes, but I'm not seeing anything about ruffles and lace or anything else JC has ever worn. I think I much prefer to believe that JC, while pragmatic and Machiavellian in most regards, really just genuinely fell in love with 80s Goth/New Romantic and Anne Rice stuff, and by luck, Anita happens to dig that so he doesn't have to change it, and she's just that ignorant of history to think that he's actually wearing ~historical~ clothing, so he lets her since that seems to up her fancy for it.
"I had enough memories of that time through him" through her mental bond to JC, remember? Which blows me theory out of the water...except I also think JC can fake memories but that's another tangent "to know that the shirt was modern material and sewn tight to the body" SEWN ON HIS BODY?! "rather than loose and billowy." You couldn't just tell that by LOOKING? "It looked antique in style, but it wasn't." Well, yes, if he were still wearing stuff really from 600 years ago it would be falling apart...and now I have the tragic mental image of some poor vampire desperately trying to do just that. "It was like a lot of his clothes, touches of olden days" Maybe, but NOT the particular 'olden days' that you and LKH think they are, more like 20-30 years old "but they were all actually sexy club wear, or at least sexy everyday wear" Fun fact, when I was a teenager, I genuinely thought that this shit must be what real sexy sophisticated stylish men wore and what most women/girls would find attractive, so I had one of my character, who was supposed to be an extremely fashionable lady-killer type, dress like this. If he were an actual person instead of an imaginary character, he'd be PISSED at me, I'm sure. "I'd never seen Jean-Claude in anything that wasn't theatrical and/or sexy." YEAH, WE'VE NOTICED THAT. AND LAUGH ABOUT IT A LOT.
Adding further proof that all this description takes place in real-time with Anita just STARING at the person in question, Dr. Lillian says her name sharply and "I startled and turned away from Jean-Claude and looked at her." I guess Dr. Lillian hasn't been around Anita during her other regular zone-outs of this nature, because she concludes that Anita is "a little shocky" and that "I think it's a combination of the police work earlier, then the fight, being injured, and worried about Cynric, and...I'm sorry about Asher. I know he means a great deal to both of you." Wait, how does Dr. Lillian know about the Cynric thing? And...I guess this could give Anita shock, but I dunno, she faces police work and fights a lot it seems, and doesn't usually go into 'shock' afterward...and also this doesn't seem like shock to me. I was bitten badly by a rat once (Sid was not my rat then, though my sister eventually gave him to me later, and I must say in his defense, I had just been petting a cat, which it turns out regularly harassed him, and was reaching into his cage...poor thing totally thought the cat was coming for him!) and I did go into brief shock, at least according to my dad. I got extremely dizzy, so much so that I could no longer hold my balance and fell to the floor before he could catch me, where I had to lie there awhile before getting up. I didn't do any staring at anyone's shirts thinking about how sexy they were. Still, my dad is not a doctor so his termnilogy may not be correct, so I decided to do a quick Wiki on what "shock" even is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_stress_reaction
"The symptoms show great variation but typically include an initial state of "daze", with some constriction of the field of consciousness and narrowing of attention, inability to comprehend stimuli, and disorientation." Okay that actually sounds JUST like Anita....but that's how she is most of the time. I also didn't really find anything describing what I went through with a rat bite, so maybe "shock" is some kind of slang for that reaction, which my dad says he's seen before from people with sharp sudden injuries like that. But Dr. Lillian is, y'know, a doctor, so I don't think she'd use the slang term like that?
JC thanks Dr.Lillian, and adds that he knows she doesn't care for Asher. Wow, you could have just left it at thanks, dude, have you been taking tact lessons from Anita? Also, what's the betting that now we find out everyone at the Circus hated Asher, just when LKH wants us to? Lillian just replies that she tries not to question who her friends fall in love with...gee, if everyone at the Circus subscribes to that tactic, it explains a lot about why no one seems to care about abuse from all sides in Anita's relationships that are taking place. JC says he's happy that Lillian thinks of him as a friend. I'd like to point out that, as someone under the rule of his empire, it's unlikely that she's safe saying anything else. JC clearly knows this too, because "his voice was lovely to listen to, but unemotional, as if he could have used the same tone to say almost anything." Of course, Anita does not arrive at the same conclusion that I have, she thinks that "it wasn't necessarily that he wasn't happy about Lillian thinking of him as a friend, but more that it was the voice he used when he was being very careful not to show any emotion." And she can't just leave it at that, she has to go on about how it's his version of "cop face" and that while hers is "brittle and cynical" his is instead "beautiful, almost seductive" and that "you had to know him like I did to realize it was empty and meaningless" See, I was right? "as the smile I could pull out of the air for customers at Animators, Inc." Is that before or after you harass them and ask for no reason if they're going to have sex with the zombies?
Lillian smiles back but "studied his face, as if trying to see behind the mask. She was harder to fool than most people." AKA she knows JC is full of shit. Lillian tells him to "Take Anita to that big bathtub of yours, and help her clean up. Enjoy the fact that she's bleeding, before the wounds heal." So...she just basically said "get off on eating her blood, fangface" and neither Anita nor JC seem to think there's anything wrong with this and at this point I just find that more HILARIOUS than anything else. Also, ooooh, how many people here know about that big bathtub that he has, I wonder? JC just asks how many stitches Anita would need if she was human, and Anita notices that Lillian avoids looking JC in the eyes while she talks to him. Anita says that's "standard practice with vampires not to meet their eyes, unless you had natural resistant to vamp gaze like I did." This comes from being an animator, and is thus probably increased by being a necromancer. "Being a wererat didn't keep you from being bespelled by a vampire, it just made you a little harder to "magic" than a standard human." Even if wererat isn't their animal to call? Damn, good to know. Anita finds it "interesting" that Lillian consider JC a friend but still won't meet his gaze. Well, I'd say that's either reflexive when dealing with vamps...or she knows that you can't trust JC worth a goddamn shit. Anita then adds that "everything felt a little distant and unimportant" and concludes that Lillian is right about her being a little in-shock. Yeah, again, nothing in her narration has changed.
Dr. Lillian replies that it would have taken ten to fifteen stitches, and asks that this not make him even angerier with Asher. JC asks what she cares, she says "Because you've been fair, and just, and haven't overreacted. I like that about you. It's part of what makes you such a very good leader." JC says she's just flattering him to get what she wants. I agree fully, because that's a total load. Lillian smiles and "it was a glimpse of a younger Lillian before sixty got so close" and "I realized she was blushing, just a little. Jean-Claude did have that effect on most women." Well, duh, he's a sex vampire. That's his deal. It's not because he's hot, it's his power. He could probably make ME blush and I don't even like guys at all, let alone his type. I bet you Lillian would never be into his sort normally. Lillian makes a joke about her feminine wiles, then adds that "I want you to keep being patient and fair, and the leader we need." Oh poor Lillian. I feel like, between Nikolaos and JC, you've been under the heel of so many vampire dictators that going with the flow and just trying to get by is second nature to you now. Rats are nothing if not adapters and survivors, after all. JC says that there's no harm done since Anita will heel but his voice "was still that pleasant, empty charm. I couldn't blame Lillian for wondering what he was really feeling."
JC takes her hand and helps her down from the table and Anita tells us that even though she doesn't need it she's "learned to be gracious about the men in my life wanting to be gentlemen. It was rare enough these days that it needed encouragement" OH FER CRYING OUT LOUD, HE HELPED YOU OFF AN EXAMINING TABLE, AND AFTER A DOCTOR SAID YOU WERE SLIGHTLY IN-SHOCK AT THAT, THAT'S BASIC DECENCY, HE'S NOT FIGHTING A GODDAMN DUEL IN YOUR HONOR! I bet you LKH just FAWNS over guys for utterly basic politeness or just not being total asses, as if they're these shining beacons of lost chivalry...while sneering at any woman who accepts it from them (weak!) OR doesn't accept it from them (un-gracious!). Anita asks how Sin is, JC says he's fine and that Micah and Nathaniel will take turns staying with him to make sure he doesn't have a concussion. Can therians get a concussion? Without just healing it ASAP, I mean. Anita says that's good and squeezes his hand "as if touching him helped the world be more solid" and "he led me out. I let him lead. I was ready to follow someone, and Jean-Claude wasn't a bad choice for it." This sentence just seems...so unnecessary. I mean, a lot of this book already should have been trimmed down, but these words in particular are just BOTHERING me in how superfluous they are, I don't know what it is.
Claudia and Nicky join them. The latter has a small bandage near his eye and a bruise forming around it. Anita asks how Ares is, Nicky says he has a concussion, broken arm, broken leg. Guess that answers my question about therians and concussions, then. Anita stops walking, and says to Nicky that "Ares is a special forces sniper, and you did all that in just a few minutes?" Of course, Anita, your boys are always best of the best whether it's stripping, fighting, sports, whatever! Also, pardon me if I'm wrong, but why should a *sniper* be expected to be particularly deadly when it comes to bare-handed tussling? Nicky says that it's because Ares is special forces that he knew he had to end the fight fast and hard or it'd be him in the hospital instead. Anita says she gets that, she's just surprised because Ares does better than him in the sparring practices, and Nicky says "That's practice, Anita. We're not allowed to hurt each other for real in the ring here, and the army doesn't like you disabling each other in practice either." Um, what does the army have to do with it? I guess because Ares came from the army, Nicky is saying he's used to their rules and still tries to follow them in sparring, maybe? But then that still doesn't explain why Nicky would care?
Anita asks what his point is, and he says that he's a werelion while Ares is a werehyena and hyenas in the wild don't fight each other the way lions do and that "it's expected that males in a pride will challenge the leaders, and they have to be put in their place, or killed." Um, maybe male hyenas don't fight in the wild, but the females sure as hell will, though it is true that dominance ranks in spotted hyena societies are not correlated with size or aggression, but with ally networks and they, like primate societies, acquire rank through coalition more than battling...which just shows how smart and cool they are, so there. Anyway, the bit about being killed makes Anita think of something, an she says that "I thought Payne and Jesse were away on assignment like the wererats send their mercenaries away to earn money for the group, but that's not it, is it?" Before we go any further, I'd just like to point out that Anita is a law enforcement agent who knows fully that mercenary and other illegal activities are taking place, including in a group (lions) that she supposedly actively rules as Regina, and does absolutely nothing about it.
Nicky asks what answer she wants, she says the truth, he says "No, you don't. Because you'll get all self-righteous about it" Ha! He knows her well! "and then you'll feel guilty because you made me the Rex of the St. Louis lions, and so you'll blame yourself" Whatever it is, she damn well should. Nicky should never have been Rex. He doesn't have a mind of his own, literally, he has to obey someone else, who not only is not a lion, but is the Human Servant of a vampire *and* the queen of a bunch of other groups, and thus is *not* going to have the sole interest of the lions at heart. I feel like the only reason the Pride hasn't revolted is because they don't want to have to fight the wolves, leopards, etc. "and me, but you'll take it out on me, and I don't want that." Wow, Nicky sure knows what to expect from her too. Poor guy. Anita concludes that he killed Payne and Jesse, and he says yes, to keep them from killing him. Ahhh, this makes me think that Payne and Jesse share my opinion about Nicky being THE WORST CHOICE FOR LEADER EVER. Also I doubt it is coincidence that LKH decided they should be killed off when they just happened to be the main enforcers under Haven; I think she decided she wanted to wipe out everyone ever associated with him because of whatever his real-world counterpart did to piss her off, and that meant these two. Maybe Augustine will be next!
According to Nicky, Kelly and some of the other werelions were on his side and helped him do it, and "if the majority of the dominants in the pride had sided with Payne and Jesse, then I'd be dead, but they sided with me." WHICH FUCKING BAFFLES ME. Of course, Haven was a huge douche who we find out (only after he was designated a bad guy and killed by Anita, of course) ran his pride in a really horrible way that was abusive to the women and to the submissive males, so maybe they all wanted to get their own back at him through Payne and Jesse and it had nothing to do with liking Nicky. "They thought I was a better leader, and had stronger ties to you and Jean-Claude, so the lions would be better protected." Ah, now I see it. Nicky being the puppet of Anita and JC may not be the best thing for the lions, for the reasons I already said, but it at least means that Anita and JC see the lions as their property through Nicky and thus what happened to Joseph and his family won't happen to the rest of the them. And considering that there's, according to the Wiki, only 25 werelions in the St. Louis Pride, versus over 600 werewolves (absurd as that is) that Anita is Lupa and Bolverk over, and that Richard, Therian Servant of JC, is Ulfric over, and thus which could be turned against the lions and destroy them by sheer number. As for as Nicky being a "good" leader...yeah, that's just what they tell him and Anita. Actually, they're taking advantage of the fact that he can't make his own decisions anymore and Anita doesn't give enough of a fuck to make decisions for him as Regina (as evident by the fact that she had no idea about Payne and Jesse being killed) in order to just rule things their way while paying lip service to their puppet king and absent queen.
And speaking of Anita being an absent queen and not giving a fuck...remember how she found out in Bullet how Haven had, as mentioned, been running the Pride so horribly? And how this is meant to demonize him, but for readers (or at least us) it just says that Anita is the worst Regina ever for just letting a violent mob enforcer take over her Pride and trusting he'll run it just fine and she never has to so much as look in on how things are going, let alone take an active leadership role herself or even just TALK to some of the goddamn lions she's supposed to be queen of? THIS IS THAT ALL OVER AGAIN. TWO MEN DIED BECAUSE OF IT THIS TIME. What's more, you can't tell me that Payne and Jesse don't have any family, friends, etc. who won't notice they went missing. Between them, Marcus, Raina, Haven, etc., you'd think even the St. Louis police would notice how therianthropes in particular sure seem to vanish a lot, start looking into it, and uncover the horrible illegal abusive way the groups are run and DO something about it.
Anita "thought about Jesse and Payne dead. It should have meant more to me but it didn't." And then she thinks about how what really hurts is her mouth. Perhaps this is indeed meant to show us that she's in shock, but, as I said, this is honestly how she always is, so she just looks like a callous sociopathic fuck like usual. Then she asks if the Pride would have killed Nicky instead of them if she'd been sleeping with them. Nicky says it's not about sleeping with her, it's about him being her Bride and thus being more important to her. Anita asks "What happens if someone I'm tied to metaphysically turns out to be a bad guy?" ANITA, YOU ARE THE BAD GUY! Nicky says that everyone trusts that she'll take care of that "like you did with the old Rex before me." Yeah, they're probably hoping she takes herself out in the process! Also, Haven gets killed, Asher gets sent away, Requiem left because he couldn't bear not being loved solely by Anita...notice that all of these men are men who were NOT metaphysically bound with her. They were men who could at least literally live without her, and who had choice in the relationship. No wonder they had to go! Still of course none ever didn't want her, they all wanted her too much all to themselves, because NO ONE CAN'T WANT ANITA, EVER. Case in point, Richard, ugh.
Anyway, of course mentioning this makes Anita infodump about how she had to kill Haven because he couldn't share her with the other men and had tried to kill the men she loved as a result. "It had been a fight that had gotten out of hand, sort of like this one." And, of course, she learned nothing from that and will learn nothing from this either. But she does make some pretense at it by tugging and squeezing JC's hand like a small child and saying she doesn't want another Haven incident, he says no one does, she says that Asher could have really hurt Sin and that it takes a lot to knock a weretiger silly with one blow. I like the indication here that Asher is a physical badass even by vampire standards under the all long hair and foofery. Nicky says that "Devil wouldn't have been knocked for a loop" and Anita asks what he means (uh, that Devil wouldn't have been knocked for a loop?) and Nicky explains that "Devil is a lot stronger, he's got more muscle around his neck, so the blow wouldn't have hurt him as much, and he's a more powerful wereanimal. That helps protect you too."
So now it looks like we're gonna talk about tough each of the weretigers is in comparison. Hey, Anita, remember those rebel vampires and their accusations about JC and how you were gonna check in on those and question JC as soon as you could? Yeah, clearly not, because what Anita asks if how strong Sin is compared to the rest, and Claudia says that "He's clan tiger, so that's a step up in metaphysics" What metaphysics? The wereanimals in general don't really seem to have any psychic/magical abilities like the vampires except for the odd stuff like munin, and the only thing the tigers have going is the elemental junk but most don't have that, and Cyn, last I checked, does not "but I'd say he's one of the least powerful of your tigers. The only one weaker is Jade, and I think her problem is she's afraid of the power." Well, duh, she can't dare be at all tough and competent like Anita! They dress this up as a psychological issue resulting from her abuse, and in another series I could buy it, but this AB, where we all know No Women Ever can be any good; if they are, they are relegated to very much offscreen roles and only appear to prop up Anita, as seen with Claudia and Kelly. They are never, ever allowed the spotlight. Not that anyone is with Anita around in general, but even more so for women; god forbid the one in the harem have any skills at all, people might actually start thinking she was 'the guy' instead of Anita! Cuz there's always a girl and a guy, right? *sarcasm*
Anita thinks about Yiyu and how "she was tinier than me, fit under my arm like I did with most of my men. She was all pale skin, and long black hair, with those big brown eyes that uptilted in her face. She always made me think of words like delicate, dainty, and not a lot of women made me think that." For the record, the only other Asian woman to appear in the series is Meng Die, and she's described that exact same way---dainty and delicate like a "China Doll" (no, seriously, that term is used) with long black hair. And, like Yiyu, mad fighting skills! Anita says that "She was her master's punching bag for centuries; it made her think like a victim." There is something very, very icky about this sentence that I just can't put my finger on. Nicky says that "She's got these wicked skills" why does our badass hitman sociopath talk like a teenage boy discussing video games? "when she practices by herself, but when we try to put her in the sparring ring, she freezes." Why is she even being made to train as a guard at all? Does she want to? Anita repeats that "He made her his victim" and Nicky counters that "But she's got these ninja skills, and I'm not making a racist remark on that; all the Harlequins are beyond special-forces good at some things. They're like movie ninjas, almost magical." IT'S NOT RACIST IF I *SAY* IT'S NOT RACIST, AND ANYWAY IT'S *TRUE*! Yeah, that totally gets you off the hook to say anything you want, go nuts *sarcasm* I am also just amused by how "special forces" is the measuring stick they use. I mean, I know it's nothing to sneeze at, but it just shows LKH's military obsession so blatantly.
Claudia explains that "Her master trained her up like the rest of the Harlequin, but he abused her so badly that she had the skills but never got to use them. As if he crippled her at the same time he trained her." Okay, my first instinct is to ask why someone would train the person they were abusing to be able to fight...but actually, I can see it, namely because from the point of view of the abusers they might not even think they're 'abusing' their victim at all and thus don't see why the victim would turn against them, or they trust enough in their mental hold over their victim to figure they want. For a real-life example, one of the few female school shooters, the one that the Boomtown Rats did their "I Don't Like Mondays" song about, was sexually abused by her father and yet he gave her a rifle. And also it'd be kinda hypocritical for me to criticize the idea anyway, since I use that with Lucille; she was physically, psychologically, and sexually abused by her father, but he also taught her how to fight, because he didn't want to see her hurt by anyone else (since she belonged to HIM, and only HE was to be allowed to do that) and he sincerely believed that people would try to, since, like Anita, he thought that everyone else was like him and either covering up what they secretly did like he was or just too scared to do it themselves for fear of getting caught. But because he'd also broken her down mentally to accept his abuse as necessary and right, he didn't ever think she'd see him hurting her as reason to fight back like he trained her to do with anyone else, and he was right. So yeah, this is actually believable to me. And yes, I may just have deliberately used it to infodump about my own OC, muahahah!
Someone (not clear who) says they think Claudia's comment is accurate, Claudia asks why the Harlequin would waste all that training. Well, my theory would be that she was able to fight just fine under the orders of her master, it's just under her own steam she psychologically can't. JC just says he wishes they all wouldn't use that word so casually, Anita reminds JC (or, more likely, the audience) that the Harlequin "work for us now" and not the MOAD. JC adds that "And you were right to have me change the law about mentioning their name. It was excessive for that be a death sentence." YUP, EXPOSITION ALERT! And more coming! JC says how they are "the greatest warriors, assassins, and spies that have ever been known" despite everyone in the room knowing this AND the fact that all they've ever actually been on screen is fuck-ups. Anita adds that "they should never have been forced to hunt someone down and kill them just for saying the Harlequin." Oh, so now they were FORCED! They weren't really bad, the MOAD made them! Despite the fact that she was completely unconscious for 1,000 years or more and they were an independent operation! But now that they're with our so-called Good Guys, they have to actually have been poor abused woobies who DIDN'T WANT TO BE BAD but are also still uber super duper warrior spies of cool coolness.
JC talks about how MOAD ruled the Vampire Council for thousands of years, was the first vampire, created their culture and most of their laws, and was "beyond queen and empress to us. She was our dark goddess." Meaning that it's ok that the Harlequin went after anyone who said their name even after MOAD was asleep because she said so. Anita says that "We killed the Mother of All Darkness; that means we get to change her crazy-pants laws too." Well, that's fair enough. Nicky adds "The queen is dead, long live the king" and then "shrugs as much as all that muscle would let him" HE HAS SO MUCH MUSCLE HE HAS TROUBLE SHRUGGING DEAR GOD WHAT KIND OF STEROIDS IS HE ON and explains that "It's what all the vampires and older wereanimals are saying. You killed her, so you get the spoils by wereanimal society rules, but you're Jean-Claude's human servant, so he gets credit for it by vampire law." omfg. JC has replaced MOAD. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW OPPOSED I AM TO THIS IDEA!
Anita says that the vampires consider her to be just an extension of JC's power "like a bomb or a gun" and JC is like you know I don't think of you like that (LOL SURE YA DON'T!) and Anita hugs him and talks a lot to us about how his heart beats more than most vampires' do but it still doesn't have to and doesn't all the time and when it does it's slower than humans and she hugs him tighter because she misses it since it isn't going right now and mentions the hilarious line "I preferred furry to vampires." PFFHAHAHA! LKH really needs to learn what the f-word means on the Internet. "I loved Jean-Claude and a few other vampires, but I bedded a lot more wereanimals than vampires; there was a reason for that." Except...I can't remember the last time she bedded anyone, vampire or wereanimal, by choice, except for the Nathaniel/Micah scene earlier. JC apparently senses her concern over his lack of heartbeat, because he tells her that "I fed on a human tonight at the club, not one of our wereanimals, and I have not been near enough to you for your presence to warm me" and Anita says they'll fix that soon. ANITA. THE REBEL VAMPS. THE QUESTIONS. Nope, the ruffles on his shirt are more important. She spends a small paragraph talking about how they aren't as soft as they look but she doesn't care and how he doesn't wear his "signature shirts" as often these days because she doesn't like how stiff the cloth is but tonight she doesn't care because she just wants him close...and, clearly, not to question him.
He whispers back to her that, yes, they can fix that, and Anita says she'll need to clean up first because she's all sweaty from the crime scene. Shit, I bet you next chapter is all about her shower. She draws back from him for fear of getting blood on him, he asks what's wrong, she tells him that, he pulls her back and says he'd rather hold her than worry about his clothes and he doesn't care if he has to throw the shirt away. She jokes about how it must be true love for him if he doesn't care about his clothes, he laughs and Anita talks a lot about how somehow from this she sees what it means to be a vampire and have to hide your emotions for fear they'd be used against you by the more powerful. She smiles at him, holds him close, mentions her weapons, "and loved him." And then she yammers a ton about how much she loves him and makes a really shitty metaphor about being "ass-deep in alligators" and how it's better together because "the alligators would be chewing our asses either way, but with each other it was more fun, and we were more likely to be able to make a matching set of alligator luggage out of our enemies rather than end up as their dinner" and she gazes at him as he laughs "and just loved him. The day had sucked, but Jean-Claude made it suck a lot less, and that was what love was supposed to do. It was supposed to make things better, not worse, which made me wonder if Asher truly loved anyone." Wow. Classy. Cuddle with your man and think about how much you love him and USE IT AS A CHANCE TO GET A POTSHOT IN AT ASHER. Also, you know, sometimes love sucks. Sometimes love does make things worse. Love can be a very difficult, very painful thing.
I don't think LKH really knows much about love.
Sid and Ratsputin both have the same problem going on right now with their, er, private parts, and I'm getting pretty worried about it.
Capone, a wonderful and sweet dog that we've had at the shelter since October, got adopted! I'm so happy!
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 30
Anita is in the Circus infirmary area getting her mouth checked out by Dr. Lillian. She tells us what Dr. Lillian looks like, but only in one sentence because she's not a hot guy, she's an old wererat lady with, ick, short hair! She also tells us that "Lillian had a thriving medical practice in the human world, but that was because they didn't know she was a wererat" and reminds us about how "Humans didn't want to be treated by someone they were afraid could give them lycanthropy of any flavor, but rats had a double problem of not being "romantic" like werewolves, or wereleopards, et cetera...If you were going to be a shapeshifter, everyone wanted to be a big sexy predator, not a scavenger." Hey, remember back in The Lunatic Cafe where shapeshifters were established as different from lycanthropes/therianthropes? Neither do Anita and LKH! Also, I grant you that the average person will probably think like that about rats, but if someone were truly serious about becoming a therian for whatever reason, I feel like they would have done enough research to know that a rat is actually a really good pick. Rats have very hand-like front paws with jointed fingers like humans do; they can grip and manipulate things. None of the other shifter types have that going on for them in animal form, you'd have to just hope you eventually got powerful enough to eventually have a hybrid form with hands. But even the weakest wererat could probably use a knife, climb a fence, open a door, etc., just in their basic animal form. They might even be able to do things like use a cell phone or fire a gun, depending on the size of their fingers. Rats also have some color vision, albeit less than humans do; how many therian types are as colorblind as their respective animals, I wonder?
Oh, and rats are not just scavengers. Rats actually are predators. In the wild, they'll eat mice, frogs, birds...they'll even use their tails as lures to catch fish! And when you consider that this small-scale prey is just because rats are small, well...remember how wererats in the Anitaverse are about the size of German Shepherds?
Sorry guys, but you know I had to rat-stan. Anyway, Lillian says what Anita did earlier: That if she were human, she'd need stitches. She takes off her gloves and tosses them into a trash can with bio-hazard stickers on it, and Anita thinks about how even though you can't catch vamprisim from being exposed to blood on gloves or bandages or other hospital waste, it's still considered a contagious disease, and wonders if the same is true of therianthropy. She asks Dr. Lillian if there's ever been a case of someone catching therianthropy ("lycanthropy") from hospital waste, Lilian says no but she prefers to do the hospital protocol anyway. Good on you, Dr. Lillian. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! Then JC comes in and Anita spends HALF A PAGE talking about his clothes, and because I had to suffer that, SO DO YOU!
"He still looked perfect in his black leather pants and matching jacket" I'm kind of shocked he's in a leather jacket. That seems too modern tough-guy for his look. Maybe it's like a leather suit jacket or something? "only the white shirt in the middle of all that leather was his typical lacy shirt. It was like an echo of his original century" Okay, Jean-Claude is over 600, right? So his original century would be the 1300s or before. Let's have a look at what French people were wearing during that time, shall we?
http://otiliaolsten.edublogs.org/2011/09/19/within-the-1300s-it-became-the-fashion/
http://www.altiusdirectory.com/Lifestyle/thirteenth-century-fashion.html
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?word=Men%20--%20Clothing%20%26%20dress%20--%20England%20--%201300-1399&s=3¬word=&f=2
Granted, some of these links are for specifically English clothes, but I'm not seeing anything about ruffles and lace or anything else JC has ever worn. I think I much prefer to believe that JC, while pragmatic and Machiavellian in most regards, really just genuinely fell in love with 80s Goth/New Romantic and Anne Rice stuff, and by luck, Anita happens to dig that so he doesn't have to change it, and she's just that ignorant of history to think that he's actually wearing ~historical~ clothing, so he lets her since that seems to up her fancy for it.
"I had enough memories of that time through him" through her mental bond to JC, remember? Which blows me theory out of the water...except I also think JC can fake memories but that's another tangent "to know that the shirt was modern material and sewn tight to the body" SEWN ON HIS BODY?! "rather than loose and billowy." You couldn't just tell that by LOOKING? "It looked antique in style, but it wasn't." Well, yes, if he were still wearing stuff really from 600 years ago it would be falling apart...and now I have the tragic mental image of some poor vampire desperately trying to do just that. "It was like a lot of his clothes, touches of olden days" Maybe, but NOT the particular 'olden days' that you and LKH think they are, more like 20-30 years old "but they were all actually sexy club wear, or at least sexy everyday wear" Fun fact, when I was a teenager, I genuinely thought that this shit must be what real sexy sophisticated stylish men wore and what most women/girls would find attractive, so I had one of my character, who was supposed to be an extremely fashionable lady-killer type, dress like this. If he were an actual person instead of an imaginary character, he'd be PISSED at me, I'm sure. "I'd never seen Jean-Claude in anything that wasn't theatrical and/or sexy." YEAH, WE'VE NOTICED THAT. AND LAUGH ABOUT IT A LOT.
Adding further proof that all this description takes place in real-time with Anita just STARING at the person in question, Dr. Lillian says her name sharply and "I startled and turned away from Jean-Claude and looked at her." I guess Dr. Lillian hasn't been around Anita during her other regular zone-outs of this nature, because she concludes that Anita is "a little shocky" and that "I think it's a combination of the police work earlier, then the fight, being injured, and worried about Cynric, and...I'm sorry about Asher. I know he means a great deal to both of you." Wait, how does Dr. Lillian know about the Cynric thing? And...I guess this could give Anita shock, but I dunno, she faces police work and fights a lot it seems, and doesn't usually go into 'shock' afterward...and also this doesn't seem like shock to me. I was bitten badly by a rat once (Sid was not my rat then, though my sister eventually gave him to me later, and I must say in his defense, I had just been petting a cat, which it turns out regularly harassed him, and was reaching into his cage...poor thing totally thought the cat was coming for him!) and I did go into brief shock, at least according to my dad. I got extremely dizzy, so much so that I could no longer hold my balance and fell to the floor before he could catch me, where I had to lie there awhile before getting up. I didn't do any staring at anyone's shirts thinking about how sexy they were. Still, my dad is not a doctor so his termnilogy may not be correct, so I decided to do a quick Wiki on what "shock" even is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_stress_reaction
"The symptoms show great variation but typically include an initial state of "daze", with some constriction of the field of consciousness and narrowing of attention, inability to comprehend stimuli, and disorientation." Okay that actually sounds JUST like Anita....but that's how she is most of the time. I also didn't really find anything describing what I went through with a rat bite, so maybe "shock" is some kind of slang for that reaction, which my dad says he's seen before from people with sharp sudden injuries like that. But Dr. Lillian is, y'know, a doctor, so I don't think she'd use the slang term like that?
JC thanks Dr.Lillian, and adds that he knows she doesn't care for Asher. Wow, you could have just left it at thanks, dude, have you been taking tact lessons from Anita? Also, what's the betting that now we find out everyone at the Circus hated Asher, just when LKH wants us to? Lillian just replies that she tries not to question who her friends fall in love with...gee, if everyone at the Circus subscribes to that tactic, it explains a lot about why no one seems to care about abuse from all sides in Anita's relationships that are taking place. JC says he's happy that Lillian thinks of him as a friend. I'd like to point out that, as someone under the rule of his empire, it's unlikely that she's safe saying anything else. JC clearly knows this too, because "his voice was lovely to listen to, but unemotional, as if he could have used the same tone to say almost anything." Of course, Anita does not arrive at the same conclusion that I have, she thinks that "it wasn't necessarily that he wasn't happy about Lillian thinking of him as a friend, but more that it was the voice he used when he was being very careful not to show any emotion." And she can't just leave it at that, she has to go on about how it's his version of "cop face" and that while hers is "brittle and cynical" his is instead "beautiful, almost seductive" and that "you had to know him like I did to realize it was empty and meaningless" See, I was right? "as the smile I could pull out of the air for customers at Animators, Inc." Is that before or after you harass them and ask for no reason if they're going to have sex with the zombies?
Lillian smiles back but "studied his face, as if trying to see behind the mask. She was harder to fool than most people." AKA she knows JC is full of shit. Lillian tells him to "Take Anita to that big bathtub of yours, and help her clean up. Enjoy the fact that she's bleeding, before the wounds heal." So...she just basically said "get off on eating her blood, fangface" and neither Anita nor JC seem to think there's anything wrong with this and at this point I just find that more HILARIOUS than anything else. Also, ooooh, how many people here know about that big bathtub that he has, I wonder? JC just asks how many stitches Anita would need if she was human, and Anita notices that Lillian avoids looking JC in the eyes while she talks to him. Anita says that's "standard practice with vampires not to meet their eyes, unless you had natural resistant to vamp gaze like I did." This comes from being an animator, and is thus probably increased by being a necromancer. "Being a wererat didn't keep you from being bespelled by a vampire, it just made you a little harder to "magic" than a standard human." Even if wererat isn't their animal to call? Damn, good to know. Anita finds it "interesting" that Lillian consider JC a friend but still won't meet his gaze. Well, I'd say that's either reflexive when dealing with vamps...or she knows that you can't trust JC worth a goddamn shit. Anita then adds that "everything felt a little distant and unimportant" and concludes that Lillian is right about her being a little in-shock. Yeah, again, nothing in her narration has changed.
Dr. Lillian replies that it would have taken ten to fifteen stitches, and asks that this not make him even angerier with Asher. JC asks what she cares, she says "Because you've been fair, and just, and haven't overreacted. I like that about you. It's part of what makes you such a very good leader." JC says she's just flattering him to get what she wants. I agree fully, because that's a total load. Lillian smiles and "it was a glimpse of a younger Lillian before sixty got so close" and "I realized she was blushing, just a little. Jean-Claude did have that effect on most women." Well, duh, he's a sex vampire. That's his deal. It's not because he's hot, it's his power. He could probably make ME blush and I don't even like guys at all, let alone his type. I bet you Lillian would never be into his sort normally. Lillian makes a joke about her feminine wiles, then adds that "I want you to keep being patient and fair, and the leader we need." Oh poor Lillian. I feel like, between Nikolaos and JC, you've been under the heel of so many vampire dictators that going with the flow and just trying to get by is second nature to you now. Rats are nothing if not adapters and survivors, after all. JC says that there's no harm done since Anita will heel but his voice "was still that pleasant, empty charm. I couldn't blame Lillian for wondering what he was really feeling."
JC takes her hand and helps her down from the table and Anita tells us that even though she doesn't need it she's "learned to be gracious about the men in my life wanting to be gentlemen. It was rare enough these days that it needed encouragement" OH FER CRYING OUT LOUD, HE HELPED YOU OFF AN EXAMINING TABLE, AND AFTER A DOCTOR SAID YOU WERE SLIGHTLY IN-SHOCK AT THAT, THAT'S BASIC DECENCY, HE'S NOT FIGHTING A GODDAMN DUEL IN YOUR HONOR! I bet you LKH just FAWNS over guys for utterly basic politeness or just not being total asses, as if they're these shining beacons of lost chivalry...while sneering at any woman who accepts it from them (weak!) OR doesn't accept it from them (un-gracious!). Anita asks how Sin is, JC says he's fine and that Micah and Nathaniel will take turns staying with him to make sure he doesn't have a concussion. Can therians get a concussion? Without just healing it ASAP, I mean. Anita says that's good and squeezes his hand "as if touching him helped the world be more solid" and "he led me out. I let him lead. I was ready to follow someone, and Jean-Claude wasn't a bad choice for it." This sentence just seems...so unnecessary. I mean, a lot of this book already should have been trimmed down, but these words in particular are just BOTHERING me in how superfluous they are, I don't know what it is.
Claudia and Nicky join them. The latter has a small bandage near his eye and a bruise forming around it. Anita asks how Ares is, Nicky says he has a concussion, broken arm, broken leg. Guess that answers my question about therians and concussions, then. Anita stops walking, and says to Nicky that "Ares is a special forces sniper, and you did all that in just a few minutes?" Of course, Anita, your boys are always best of the best whether it's stripping, fighting, sports, whatever! Also, pardon me if I'm wrong, but why should a *sniper* be expected to be particularly deadly when it comes to bare-handed tussling? Nicky says that it's because Ares is special forces that he knew he had to end the fight fast and hard or it'd be him in the hospital instead. Anita says she gets that, she's just surprised because Ares does better than him in the sparring practices, and Nicky says "That's practice, Anita. We're not allowed to hurt each other for real in the ring here, and the army doesn't like you disabling each other in practice either." Um, what does the army have to do with it? I guess because Ares came from the army, Nicky is saying he's used to their rules and still tries to follow them in sparring, maybe? But then that still doesn't explain why Nicky would care?
Anita asks what his point is, and he says that he's a werelion while Ares is a werehyena and hyenas in the wild don't fight each other the way lions do and that "it's expected that males in a pride will challenge the leaders, and they have to be put in their place, or killed." Um, maybe male hyenas don't fight in the wild, but the females sure as hell will, though it is true that dominance ranks in spotted hyena societies are not correlated with size or aggression, but with ally networks and they, like primate societies, acquire rank through coalition more than battling...which just shows how smart and cool they are, so there. Anyway, the bit about being killed makes Anita think of something, an she says that "I thought Payne and Jesse were away on assignment like the wererats send their mercenaries away to earn money for the group, but that's not it, is it?" Before we go any further, I'd just like to point out that Anita is a law enforcement agent who knows fully that mercenary and other illegal activities are taking place, including in a group (lions) that she supposedly actively rules as Regina, and does absolutely nothing about it.
Nicky asks what answer she wants, she says the truth, he says "No, you don't. Because you'll get all self-righteous about it" Ha! He knows her well! "and then you'll feel guilty because you made me the Rex of the St. Louis lions, and so you'll blame yourself" Whatever it is, she damn well should. Nicky should never have been Rex. He doesn't have a mind of his own, literally, he has to obey someone else, who not only is not a lion, but is the Human Servant of a vampire *and* the queen of a bunch of other groups, and thus is *not* going to have the sole interest of the lions at heart. I feel like the only reason the Pride hasn't revolted is because they don't want to have to fight the wolves, leopards, etc. "and me, but you'll take it out on me, and I don't want that." Wow, Nicky sure knows what to expect from her too. Poor guy. Anita concludes that he killed Payne and Jesse, and he says yes, to keep them from killing him. Ahhh, this makes me think that Payne and Jesse share my opinion about Nicky being THE WORST CHOICE FOR LEADER EVER. Also I doubt it is coincidence that LKH decided they should be killed off when they just happened to be the main enforcers under Haven; I think she decided she wanted to wipe out everyone ever associated with him because of whatever his real-world counterpart did to piss her off, and that meant these two. Maybe Augustine will be next!
According to Nicky, Kelly and some of the other werelions were on his side and helped him do it, and "if the majority of the dominants in the pride had sided with Payne and Jesse, then I'd be dead, but they sided with me." WHICH FUCKING BAFFLES ME. Of course, Haven was a huge douche who we find out (only after he was designated a bad guy and killed by Anita, of course) ran his pride in a really horrible way that was abusive to the women and to the submissive males, so maybe they all wanted to get their own back at him through Payne and Jesse and it had nothing to do with liking Nicky. "They thought I was a better leader, and had stronger ties to you and Jean-Claude, so the lions would be better protected." Ah, now I see it. Nicky being the puppet of Anita and JC may not be the best thing for the lions, for the reasons I already said, but it at least means that Anita and JC see the lions as their property through Nicky and thus what happened to Joseph and his family won't happen to the rest of the them. And considering that there's, according to the Wiki, only 25 werelions in the St. Louis Pride, versus over 600 werewolves (absurd as that is) that Anita is Lupa and Bolverk over, and that Richard, Therian Servant of JC, is Ulfric over, and thus which could be turned against the lions and destroy them by sheer number. As for as Nicky being a "good" leader...yeah, that's just what they tell him and Anita. Actually, they're taking advantage of the fact that he can't make his own decisions anymore and Anita doesn't give enough of a fuck to make decisions for him as Regina (as evident by the fact that she had no idea about Payne and Jesse being killed) in order to just rule things their way while paying lip service to their puppet king and absent queen.
And speaking of Anita being an absent queen and not giving a fuck...remember how she found out in Bullet how Haven had, as mentioned, been running the Pride so horribly? And how this is meant to demonize him, but for readers (or at least us) it just says that Anita is the worst Regina ever for just letting a violent mob enforcer take over her Pride and trusting he'll run it just fine and she never has to so much as look in on how things are going, let alone take an active leadership role herself or even just TALK to some of the goddamn lions she's supposed to be queen of? THIS IS THAT ALL OVER AGAIN. TWO MEN DIED BECAUSE OF IT THIS TIME. What's more, you can't tell me that Payne and Jesse don't have any family, friends, etc. who won't notice they went missing. Between them, Marcus, Raina, Haven, etc., you'd think even the St. Louis police would notice how therianthropes in particular sure seem to vanish a lot, start looking into it, and uncover the horrible illegal abusive way the groups are run and DO something about it.
Anita "thought about Jesse and Payne dead. It should have meant more to me but it didn't." And then she thinks about how what really hurts is her mouth. Perhaps this is indeed meant to show us that she's in shock, but, as I said, this is honestly how she always is, so she just looks like a callous sociopathic fuck like usual. Then she asks if the Pride would have killed Nicky instead of them if she'd been sleeping with them. Nicky says it's not about sleeping with her, it's about him being her Bride and thus being more important to her. Anita asks "What happens if someone I'm tied to metaphysically turns out to be a bad guy?" ANITA, YOU ARE THE BAD GUY! Nicky says that everyone trusts that she'll take care of that "like you did with the old Rex before me." Yeah, they're probably hoping she takes herself out in the process! Also, Haven gets killed, Asher gets sent away, Requiem left because he couldn't bear not being loved solely by Anita...notice that all of these men are men who were NOT metaphysically bound with her. They were men who could at least literally live without her, and who had choice in the relationship. No wonder they had to go! Still of course none ever didn't want her, they all wanted her too much all to themselves, because NO ONE CAN'T WANT ANITA, EVER. Case in point, Richard, ugh.
Anyway, of course mentioning this makes Anita infodump about how she had to kill Haven because he couldn't share her with the other men and had tried to kill the men she loved as a result. "It had been a fight that had gotten out of hand, sort of like this one." And, of course, she learned nothing from that and will learn nothing from this either. But she does make some pretense at it by tugging and squeezing JC's hand like a small child and saying she doesn't want another Haven incident, he says no one does, she says that Asher could have really hurt Sin and that it takes a lot to knock a weretiger silly with one blow. I like the indication here that Asher is a physical badass even by vampire standards under the all long hair and foofery. Nicky says that "Devil wouldn't have been knocked for a loop" and Anita asks what he means (uh, that Devil wouldn't have been knocked for a loop?) and Nicky explains that "Devil is a lot stronger, he's got more muscle around his neck, so the blow wouldn't have hurt him as much, and he's a more powerful wereanimal. That helps protect you too."
So now it looks like we're gonna talk about tough each of the weretigers is in comparison. Hey, Anita, remember those rebel vampires and their accusations about JC and how you were gonna check in on those and question JC as soon as you could? Yeah, clearly not, because what Anita asks if how strong Sin is compared to the rest, and Claudia says that "He's clan tiger, so that's a step up in metaphysics" What metaphysics? The wereanimals in general don't really seem to have any psychic/magical abilities like the vampires except for the odd stuff like munin, and the only thing the tigers have going is the elemental junk but most don't have that, and Cyn, last I checked, does not "but I'd say he's one of the least powerful of your tigers. The only one weaker is Jade, and I think her problem is she's afraid of the power." Well, duh, she can't dare be at all tough and competent like Anita! They dress this up as a psychological issue resulting from her abuse, and in another series I could buy it, but this AB, where we all know No Women Ever can be any good; if they are, they are relegated to very much offscreen roles and only appear to prop up Anita, as seen with Claudia and Kelly. They are never, ever allowed the spotlight. Not that anyone is with Anita around in general, but even more so for women; god forbid the one in the harem have any skills at all, people might actually start thinking she was 'the guy' instead of Anita! Cuz there's always a girl and a guy, right? *sarcasm*
Anita thinks about Yiyu and how "she was tinier than me, fit under my arm like I did with most of my men. She was all pale skin, and long black hair, with those big brown eyes that uptilted in her face. She always made me think of words like delicate, dainty, and not a lot of women made me think that." For the record, the only other Asian woman to appear in the series is Meng Die, and she's described that exact same way---dainty and delicate like a "China Doll" (no, seriously, that term is used) with long black hair. And, like Yiyu, mad fighting skills! Anita says that "She was her master's punching bag for centuries; it made her think like a victim." There is something very, very icky about this sentence that I just can't put my finger on. Nicky says that "She's got these wicked skills" why does our badass hitman sociopath talk like a teenage boy discussing video games? "when she practices by herself, but when we try to put her in the sparring ring, she freezes." Why is she even being made to train as a guard at all? Does she want to? Anita repeats that "He made her his victim" and Nicky counters that "But she's got these ninja skills, and I'm not making a racist remark on that; all the Harlequins are beyond special-forces good at some things. They're like movie ninjas, almost magical." IT'S NOT RACIST IF I *SAY* IT'S NOT RACIST, AND ANYWAY IT'S *TRUE*! Yeah, that totally gets you off the hook to say anything you want, go nuts *sarcasm* I am also just amused by how "special forces" is the measuring stick they use. I mean, I know it's nothing to sneeze at, but it just shows LKH's military obsession so blatantly.
Claudia explains that "Her master trained her up like the rest of the Harlequin, but he abused her so badly that she had the skills but never got to use them. As if he crippled her at the same time he trained her." Okay, my first instinct is to ask why someone would train the person they were abusing to be able to fight...but actually, I can see it, namely because from the point of view of the abusers they might not even think they're 'abusing' their victim at all and thus don't see why the victim would turn against them, or they trust enough in their mental hold over their victim to figure they want. For a real-life example, one of the few female school shooters, the one that the Boomtown Rats did their "I Don't Like Mondays" song about, was sexually abused by her father and yet he gave her a rifle. And also it'd be kinda hypocritical for me to criticize the idea anyway, since I use that with Lucille; she was physically, psychologically, and sexually abused by her father, but he also taught her how to fight, because he didn't want to see her hurt by anyone else (since she belonged to HIM, and only HE was to be allowed to do that) and he sincerely believed that people would try to, since, like Anita, he thought that everyone else was like him and either covering up what they secretly did like he was or just too scared to do it themselves for fear of getting caught. But because he'd also broken her down mentally to accept his abuse as necessary and right, he didn't ever think she'd see him hurting her as reason to fight back like he trained her to do with anyone else, and he was right. So yeah, this is actually believable to me. And yes, I may just have deliberately used it to infodump about my own OC, muahahah!
Someone (not clear who) says they think Claudia's comment is accurate, Claudia asks why the Harlequin would waste all that training. Well, my theory would be that she was able to fight just fine under the orders of her master, it's just under her own steam she psychologically can't. JC just says he wishes they all wouldn't use that word so casually, Anita reminds JC (or, more likely, the audience) that the Harlequin "work for us now" and not the MOAD. JC adds that "And you were right to have me change the law about mentioning their name. It was excessive for that be a death sentence." YUP, EXPOSITION ALERT! And more coming! JC says how they are "the greatest warriors, assassins, and spies that have ever been known" despite everyone in the room knowing this AND the fact that all they've ever actually been on screen is fuck-ups. Anita adds that "they should never have been forced to hunt someone down and kill them just for saying the Harlequin." Oh, so now they were FORCED! They weren't really bad, the MOAD made them! Despite the fact that she was completely unconscious for 1,000 years or more and they were an independent operation! But now that they're with our so-called Good Guys, they have to actually have been poor abused woobies who DIDN'T WANT TO BE BAD but are also still uber super duper warrior spies of cool coolness.
JC talks about how MOAD ruled the Vampire Council for thousands of years, was the first vampire, created their culture and most of their laws, and was "beyond queen and empress to us. She was our dark goddess." Meaning that it's ok that the Harlequin went after anyone who said their name even after MOAD was asleep because she said so. Anita says that "We killed the Mother of All Darkness; that means we get to change her crazy-pants laws too." Well, that's fair enough. Nicky adds "The queen is dead, long live the king" and then "shrugs as much as all that muscle would let him" HE HAS SO MUCH MUSCLE HE HAS TROUBLE SHRUGGING DEAR GOD WHAT KIND OF STEROIDS IS HE ON and explains that "It's what all the vampires and older wereanimals are saying. You killed her, so you get the spoils by wereanimal society rules, but you're Jean-Claude's human servant, so he gets credit for it by vampire law." omfg. JC has replaced MOAD. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW OPPOSED I AM TO THIS IDEA!
Anita says that the vampires consider her to be just an extension of JC's power "like a bomb or a gun" and JC is like you know I don't think of you like that (LOL SURE YA DON'T!) and Anita hugs him and talks a lot to us about how his heart beats more than most vampires' do but it still doesn't have to and doesn't all the time and when it does it's slower than humans and she hugs him tighter because she misses it since it isn't going right now and mentions the hilarious line "I preferred furry to vampires." PFFHAHAHA! LKH really needs to learn what the f-word means on the Internet. "I loved Jean-Claude and a few other vampires, but I bedded a lot more wereanimals than vampires; there was a reason for that." Except...I can't remember the last time she bedded anyone, vampire or wereanimal, by choice, except for the Nathaniel/Micah scene earlier. JC apparently senses her concern over his lack of heartbeat, because he tells her that "I fed on a human tonight at the club, not one of our wereanimals, and I have not been near enough to you for your presence to warm me" and Anita says they'll fix that soon. ANITA. THE REBEL VAMPS. THE QUESTIONS. Nope, the ruffles on his shirt are more important. She spends a small paragraph talking about how they aren't as soft as they look but she doesn't care and how he doesn't wear his "signature shirts" as often these days because she doesn't like how stiff the cloth is but tonight she doesn't care because she just wants him close...and, clearly, not to question him.
He whispers back to her that, yes, they can fix that, and Anita says she'll need to clean up first because she's all sweaty from the crime scene. Shit, I bet you next chapter is all about her shower. She draws back from him for fear of getting blood on him, he asks what's wrong, she tells him that, he pulls her back and says he'd rather hold her than worry about his clothes and he doesn't care if he has to throw the shirt away. She jokes about how it must be true love for him if he doesn't care about his clothes, he laughs and Anita talks a lot about how somehow from this she sees what it means to be a vampire and have to hide your emotions for fear they'd be used against you by the more powerful. She smiles at him, holds him close, mentions her weapons, "and loved him." And then she yammers a ton about how much she loves him and makes a really shitty metaphor about being "ass-deep in alligators" and how it's better together because "the alligators would be chewing our asses either way, but with each other it was more fun, and we were more likely to be able to make a matching set of alligator luggage out of our enemies rather than end up as their dinner" and she gazes at him as he laughs "and just loved him. The day had sucked, but Jean-Claude made it suck a lot less, and that was what love was supposed to do. It was supposed to make things better, not worse, which made me wonder if Asher truly loved anyone." Wow. Classy. Cuddle with your man and think about how much you love him and USE IT AS A CHANCE TO GET A POTSHOT IN AT ASHER. Also, you know, sometimes love sucks. Sometimes love does make things worse. Love can be a very difficult, very painful thing.
I don't think LKH really knows much about love.
