...right up until she reads the results, and I had to reread the paragraph three times to find where it says the test is positive. Because it's not the test that's important, kids. It's how Anita feels about it.
As for her reaction...yeah. All I can see is this:
So after panicking for a few minutes and thinking about how lucky the men are because they don't know that the world's ended (seriously. She says this) Claudia comes in and notices the positive pregnancy test. She has to help carry Anita out of the bathroom.
Richard is happy that Anita might be pregnant. Anita takes this as a deathly offensive reaction. Anita, you've already stated that you'll be keeping the baby (for the pregnancy anyway) so let him be happy. The only question right now is who will raise the kid (which won't happen because she isn't actually pregnant).
Micah wistfully wishes he could have his own kid, but he got fixed, so...and Richard finally sticks his foot in it.
“Why did you have yourself fixed?” Richard asked. “You’re not thirty yet, why would you do that to yourself?”Well fuck you too, dick. And of course this is just so we can segue into "My life is more fucked up than yours."
Micah wrapped his arms around me, held me close. “My old alpha, Chimera, liked pregnant shapeshifters. If one of the women came up pregnant by someone else, someone she cared for, Chimera would take her until she lost the baby. He got off on taking her from her lover, from fucking her while she was pregnant with someone else’s child, and from her losing it.”
Congradulations, that's the most fucked up thing I've ever heard off.
Richard then boo-hoos that he's left out, but he can't deal with a poly relationship, and it's time for us to start fighting again. He points out that everything with Jean Claude is about sex. That's fair. Micah jumps to Jean Claude's defense. And then all of a sudden Anita and Richard are making out, and everybody comes over for a snuggle. They dog-pile onto Richard for a few minutes and he comes up looking like he just got a hit off a really great bong. But he won't be sleeping with Anita because he doesn't like group sex. He heads off to bed with Clay and the chapter ends.
Lovely, another Chimera appearance. Every book we get to hear another story about him so Anita can muse about how she's so not sorry for killing him and how Chimera is a waaaaaaayyyyyyyy worse monster than her.
ReplyDelete"Hey Anita, do you remember Chimera?"
"Yes, I do, he was a terrible monster and one of the few people I don't regret killing." angst about how she's turning into a 'cold blooded killer.'
"Well here's another story about how awful he was. Chimera used to kick puppies, and then he would eat kittens, and then he would wipe his muddy shoes on my white carpet."
"That's terrible! I so don't regret killing him, thanks for making me feel better in advance for whatever horrible thing I plan on doing later in this book."
"You're welcome. And later, God will check on you to make sure you still feel good about yourself and your actions. Because in a book series that claims to be 'grey' about morality, we need to constantly hammer it home to the readers that the heroine the most morally right pristine white virginal sparkly unicorn-maiden in existence."
Right?
DeleteThe God thing still kills me. I've got an admittedly idiosyncratic personal theology, but the one thing I run into over and over and over again is just how few shits the Christian God actually gives for how good you feel. Yes, God likes happy people. He likes giving people things that make you happy. He really likes it when you do things that make you happy. But He's not going to give you something that's bad for you just to make you momentarily happy, and there is NO WAY IN FUCK that God would approve of Anita Blake's lifestyle. It's not the poly, it's not the magic, it's not the career choices. It's the massive number of unhealthy behaviors on every side of the line, including hers, and how absolutely nothing comes out of it. She's not helping people, she's not healing anything. All she does is kill, eat sex, and take showers. To me, one of the defining traits of evil is a closed, self consuming system--nothing comes out, nothing can really reach in to adjust something going wrong, and it eats itself to survive. If you look at the truly evil things in the world--cults, dictatorships, you name it--you'll find a closed system that is effectively eating itself to survive. Anita Blake's lifestyle is exactly that. You can't escape her once you're involved, she's not open to negative feedback from any higher power, human or otherwise, and it requires this constant stream of fresh meat to keep things running. The ENITRE PLOT of this book so far is about getting that fresh meat in. Cut off Anita's supply of new victims and she'd collapse like a paper doll.
Saying that something else is worse than Anita is like saying the Nazis are worse than Jim Jones. Evil doesn't work on a sliding scale. It's still fucking evil.
Seriously. To add to the fuckery, I don't get why Anita constantly doubts her monster status when she has God sending her angels and giving her a thumbs up. I know LKH writes this because she thinks it makes her books 'deep and edgy' by having the MC musing about how dark and edgy she is. But what we have is a series where everyone goes out of their way to prove how good and pure the MC is, hell even the villains will comment on how wonderful Anita is. So when she sits there and does her dumb little Inner Monologues of Darkness, it comes off as whining. Look, Anita is whining again, let's gather around and praise her until she stops and demands more sex.
DeleteGod has spoken and called her good...so why is she doubting herself? Why...unless she doubts God and His ability to judge what is right and wrong...or she thinks that she is somehow powerful enough to pull a fast one on the Almighty.
"morally right pristine white virginal sparkly unicorn-maiden in existence."
DeleteTHANK YOU. That just made my day. And it so completely describes her mentality.