Cerulean Sins--chapter 42

So the whole apology thing turns into costume porn. Yeah, there's a banquet tonight involving Musette (you remember that part, right?) and Asher and JC are all dressed up and spiffy for it, and this is more important than anything else.

The descriptions go on for pages.

Hunger Games was also a lot of costume porn. Even the chariot ride costumes only got a couple paragraphs each. Jean Claude's Opera Coat and *sporfle*  crotch high leather boots (seriously. Buy the man a leather onsie and get it over with) (ALSO: YOU CANNOT MOVE IN SKINTIGHT LEATHER BOOTS.) should not outweigh Katniss Everdeen's second chariot costume. Those were instruments of carefully regulated psychological manipulation. These things are just silly.

Anita's reaction is, "yippy-skippy, I get to play with both."

Because that's how you react when you're moving into a meal with life-or-death implications.You think about sex. That's not even the ardeur talking, though I'm not entirely convinced it's Anita. Anita does not say yippy skippy.

The worst part for me, of course, is I keep on imagining all the clothes as the cheap costumes in late night porn/a low grade B movie. You know. They obviously rented them from the costume shop, they have to get them back before nine because they'll lose their deposit...that kind of costume.

So Asher finally apologizes for draining her dry, because he didn't know he'd make her that sick, and Anita is all like "It's okay" and nobody brings up that Musette is what made them all sick. Anita would not be all bouncy right now if it was the blood loss and not the psychic vampirism. You don't get over losing a good chunk of your vital fluids in 24 hours.

Anita finally admits that she'll sleep with Asher because he's something Jean Claude won't compromise on, Asher turns into an angry drama queen because of the implication, and yes. I'm using the word "queen" deliberately. I keep waiting for the snaps and the "oh, Honey, those jeans and that shirt totally clash" because Asher is less realistically gay--as in a human being that likes men, not girls, and happens to have a penis himself--and more MTV gay. It's not there when he's being nice to Anita, but when he's rejecting her he turns into a character from Thanks for Everything Wong Fu, Julie Numar.

And then Asher and Jean Claude have a moment, and Anita is quick to say this:

I wanted to say kiss and make up, but I knew they wouldn’t. I don’t know what issues they had about each other, but they seemed unable to do things like that without their Julianna. She’d been the bridge between them. The thing that allowed them to love each other. Without her, they stood on the brink of the abyss and gazed at each other, separated by a chasm that neither knew how to cross.

This is "YEAH THEY ARE IN LOVE BUT THEY ARE TOTALLY NOT GAY YOU GUYS" because, you know, actual homosexuals that aren't emasculated jokes are just icky. Also, it's hard to say "They need a woman to have sex" when you've been blatantly clear if JC sleeps with Asher you dump JC and you've become critical to his power base.

Anita then casually mentions the MOAD. As in "Oh, and I got psychically attacked by a bigger big bad than Belle Morte, it's a big deal, so let's stop discussing our sex life and go get me dressed for the party."