Danse Macabre--chapter seven

Long, LONG day at work today. I spent this evening doing theoretically low stress fun AKA building new versions of mob grinders in minecraft. Yes. I have a book overdue and I goofed the fuck off. Every time I started trying to write I thought about a (theoretical) room full of Nth graders and fabric paint on tables that ABSOLUTELY CANNOT BE STAINED and I realised it was either work on the nether mob farm or curl up and whimper in a corner. I figured out how to slaughter ghasts while AFK and how to build a high density item sorter without resorting to inverters (because when the fucking redstone torches burned out it destroyed the item filters.) Of course NOW I have no reason not to park the game on a menu and write.

Also: I love Joey, I love her story, but I don't like writing her story. The last third had SO MANY things to tie in it's like WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF CHILDREN. WHY.

So, yes. I am not THAT much better than LKH in her priorities. And now you know...

Chapter seven made me realize that DM and Merry Gentry were written co-currently. It also made me realize that if anything justified what Anita and Co. were doing--if there were a plot that went ANYWHERE--this scene would be tolerable.

As it is...

SHE KISSED ME, and this time I didn’t fight her. I let my body melt into hers, let her feed at my mouth. There is a moment in a kiss, especially an open-mouth kiss, where the caress of lips and tongue spills over some line, and beyond that line, you kiss back. I kissed her, kissed her as she was meant to be kissed, full and complete, tasting her.

Yeah. TOTALLY NOT HOMOSEXUAL EROTICA GUYS. SHE'S JUST OVERWHELMED BY BEING KISSED BY ANOTHER GIRL.

 We take a long break to look at how all the men are reacting to watching two women make out. Because that's the total point of this scene.

What's sad is, I'm probably right.

Speaking of which, everybody disgusted by the sex scenes involving Cynric in later books should realize that this chapter has Anita making out with seventeen year old Thomas. The only thing that stops them is Thomas freaking out over Anita's hidden gun.

He’d actually missed the big knife down my spine, because he hadn’t come to the midline of my body until low on my back. But it was a big weapon to miss. Baby, he was a baby. And I’d have said that if he’d been twenty-seven instead of seventeen.

Yeah. I was poking around in the Amazon Customer Discussion forum for Affliction and somebody pointed out that Anita is twenty seven currently. Meaning however old she is in this book, she's not twenty-seven. I think she's got her head so far up her own ass her eyes need a wet-wipe.

Anita tells Thomas to go sit down. Thea, Anita and Micah then bicker for a few minutes over who needs to be acknowledged next: Auggie's people or Thea's other sons. Anita decides to let Thea wait until JC shows up again, and heads over to Auggie's side of the room

 Thea's reaction is...uh, not very gracious.

“So Augustine’s whore is higher in rank than my sons?” Thea sounded genuinely angry.

Nice, Thea. Real nice. Not to be one-upped in class, however, Anita tells Samuel to make his wife behave. He does.

 Anita tells Thea she doesn't like being forced, so her children probably won't get another chance at her bed. Thea says that Anita wouldn't want her sons anyway, forced magic was her only excuse. Anita moves over to Auggie's side of the room, wondering frantically if Thea knows about the pregnancy scare now.

Auggie's girlfriend gets the classic LKH treatment. A couple bits stand out.

• Her hair was long, and teased too high on the top, as if she’d never quite left the eighties, but it was brunette. It might even have been her natural color.

Oh FUCK YOU. There's so much wrong with this I'm not even going to dignify it with taking it apart.

 The spaghetti straps of her dress and the thin material should not have been able to support her breasts. Breasts that large do not stay perky without more help than the dress could give. Her breasts sat under the dress in a way that real breasts just don’t.

 You know, that whole "Exactly the way (insert here) doesn't" worked for Douglas Adams because Douglas Adams was trying to be funny, and most of his humor involved forcing your brain to make hairpin turns that left you with whiplash. LKH is writing porn. If you get whiplash doing porn, you're doing something wrong.

Auggie's girlfriend's name is Bunny. BUNNY.

Well, I'm going to make a bet now and say that Auggie is the villian for this piece. Don't tell me if I'm wrong or not. I want to be surprised.

Bunny asks how she can be a whore when Thea is pimping her sons out and Anita has a harem. Probably because two of the three women AND the writer are dedicated misogynists, and they want somebody special to shit on today.

Naturally, Auggie dumps her on the spot. On the one hand, she just made an ass out of him AND her in a highly charged political situation...on the other hand, Thea insulted her and she hadn't said one word onscreen beforehand.

Auggie apologizes profusely to Anita for the insult.

Meanwhile, a tooth-and-nail disfiguring battle is being played for laughs.

Fredo pushed himself from the wall, all boneless ease like some dark, well-armed cat. Clay just took Bunny’s other arm, and helped Benny start carrying her toward the door. She used the spike heels effectively, probably drawing blood through Clay’s pants. He never slowed, and neither did Benny, though his face was bleeding from nail marks. Fredo got both her ankles, and they carried her out.

SHE STABS HIM WITH HER HEELS AND CLAWS HIS FACE TO RIBBONS AND IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY AND LOOK AT THE AWFUL GIRLY GIRL HA HA HA.

And of course the reason for all this is that Anita is a natural beauty and everyone is jealous of her pretty mcprettyness. GAG ME.

Nate, of course, has his lips firmly planted on Anita's nethers.

“You outvamped the sirens, Anita.”

Auggie tells Anita that her animal to call isn't just leopards. His lions felt her call, and he wants to trade a lion for Bunny's replacement. He wants a london vampire for a pet. IDK, Auggie, the one you got is probably a winner...and I do just love how Bunny is presented as a hellcat to justify Auggie jumping girlfriends like that. SO classy.

Auggie's lions introduce themselves as Haven and Pierce. Anita rejects them out of hand because they're both "too dominant."

Anita wonders where JC is, and gets a vision of both him and Asher holding Meng Die down in a restraint. I guess the badly written female disease is catching tonight.

Anita then makes out with the two cats. Pierce, she dismisses instantly because he doesn't actually want to be here. Haven gets the full treatment.

Joseph, the local were-lion leader tries to stop it, and Haven freaks out. Joseph then tries to get Haven under control, and Auggie steps in because apparently this is stepping on his mojo, or something. He dominates Joseph because he can, I guess. Anita squares off with Auggie and reminds him that vampires call her the executioner, and if he keeps messing with her people she will kill his ass.  She starts using her necromancy against him, and he goes along with it until he gets close enough to pin her down, and then he starts making out with her because all roads end at Anita's va-jay-jay.

End of chapter.