Narcissus in Chains chapter 30

First up: Business. PLANET BOB is out!

It is on Amazon right now! Go get your copy! Go!

Also, I'm starting to put a few of my titles back on Smashwords. I haven't put Planet Bob up yet, but that's mostly because I'll have to revise the formatting a little (read as: change EVERY LINK in the book so that it doesn't go to Amazon. That is my least favorite part of building books. Formatting? Easy. Editing? Favorite part of the process. Drafting? Chore but it gives me something to work with. Front matter, back matter and Table of Contents? DO. NOT. WANT.)

And for the record? I have no intention of offering Planet Bob for free. Ever. It'll be sad if it fails (I'll be sad if it fails) but that'll be the way things are.

Okay. Back to fun.

Wait. We're still doing this book. It won't be fun.

So when we last left things, Anita was going to summon the ghost of a woman who tortured her pard so that Anita, using the ghost, could heal Gregory. Who was one of the people tortured.

This is probably the worst idea I've ever read about. Ever.

Rania comes when called and immediately tries to molest Gregory through Anita. Anita is able to resist her, and this is treated as a wonderful victory, and not as one of the most fucked-up things I've ever tried to summarize. Anita reminds Rania what the rules are, though these rules are never explained (at least, I hope they're never explained, because the two sentences I just read CANNOT be the rules)  and they get down to kissing Gregory.

Who is still deaf, who has no idea that it is Anita and not Rania in control of this situation. He is scared. Understandably so.

Anita tries to heal Gregory. Rania insists on having "her reward", which is apparently to lick Gregory like he's a human lollypop. And then Rania has Anita remember back when Rania literally ate Gregory. Anita then freaks out and has to be comforted by the nearest man. Empowering.

That, boys and girls, is the third worst part of this scene.

The second worst part is...well, let's look at it from Gregory's perspective. He's already been brutalized and traumatized past what any human being should ever have to endure, and the ghost of literally the worst person he's ever met--Rania--has just spent the last several minutes pawing him, and he's had to endure it in the thin hope that maybe, just maybe, he'd get to hear again.

The worst part of this scene is...the healing never happens. We have a disgusting petting scene that makes me feel dirty in every single possible way, and nothing happens because of it. Not sex, not character development, not healing. Nothing but Anita having a screaming fit, because of course, it's all about her. In short, boys and girls, everything involving Rania is this:

Anita gets carried off to yet another bathroom so she can be coddled for a few minutes, and that's the end of the chapter.

I had a "friend" like this once. I'm not going to give too many details because I don't want them finding this entry and knowing it's about them, but I watched this happen. Everything was about them. EVERYTHING. They identified as a magic user, they could be kind of flaky sometimes, but I didn't have a problem with that, I'm a flake most of the time myself. But they had a relationship with another person, and so everything in their life revolved around The Relationship. Every conversation with them, every action, everything eventually turned into this death spiral about how The Relationship was the best thing ever and they hated that they were losing it, and why oh why couldn't the other person see how right everything was. And if anything bad happened, somehow it would be drawn back up into their own problems and how The Relationship was the only thing that ever fixed anything.

One evening I became drunk. Not extremely intoxicated, just nicely buzzed, and we began to talk about The Relationship. As we're talking I start crying, and I realize that it's the one year anniversary of the Black Truck incident, AKA when I was sexually assaulted. And once that memory chain gets tripped, I can't shut it down. It takes me a few minutes to explain why I just had a sobbing fit. They do, to their credit, tell me it's okay and assure me that I'm not being an idiot for crying.

Then they tell me how horrible thier own trauma is (admittedly worse than mine by a factor of ten thousand) and how The Relationship is the only thing that has ever made their trauma okay. My crying fit got to be about me for about ten minutes. And then it went right back to them.

That's what I get out of this passage. A horrible thing has happened to Gregory. And because nobody else can be allowed the spotlight, Anita must experiance trauma ten thousand times worse than what Gregory is enduring. Only it's not ten thousand times worse because it's something Anita brings on herself by being an idiot. Summoning the female version of Jeffery Dahmer is not now and never will be the smart thing to do. EVER. She gets to have her screaming fit, though, and gets to be comforted by the big strong males, while the weak feminine males are allowed to bleed and be deaf on the back porch.

This is offensive, kids, make no doubt about it, but it's also highschool age shit. I think we're regressing. By the end of the book Anita and company will be making faces at each other and talking like Furbies. It'll be the attack of the werefurbies. They'll be chanting "HUNGRY! AH-AH-AH! AH-AH-AH!"

...If only.

TOMORROW: Anita gets rescued by a male. Like we didn't see that one coming.