Seduced by Moonlight--Chapter 17

Well, lots of awful, nasty, depressing shit went down this week, none of which I am allowed to talk about. But the good news is that, for now, it is OVER, and I won't have to deal with any of it again until sometime in July...if ever.

So. How's our terrible book?

In the morning the golden goddess of hollywood was crying at our kitchen table. It might have been baby hormones, but then again, it might not.

And it goes on to wonder if Maeve isn't crying to manipulate Merry with her goddess powers. Her husband of twenty years died less than a month ago. The mortal being she defied an immortal, power-mad king to have a baby with. A baby she concieved specifically to have something of that mortal with her after he died (Which ain't the best reason to have a baby, but it's better than "I'm saving my own ass" AKA Merry's motivation). I mean for fuck's sake, remember when you were seven and you lost a tooth? And no matter what you did you could not stop exploring that absense? Maeve's got that. Only with a person, and a lot of pain because she won't ever get that person back.

Look, why are tears such a challenge to Merry? Maeve is crying because Maeve's husband died. It's not an attempt to manipulate her. It's only something that has nothing to do with Merry at all. Why can't we allow another woman to have deep, world-shattering greif?

Merry bitches that Maeve doesn't get blotchy when crying. Or, more specifically, that Maeve doesn't have the decency to get splotchy. It's a personal affront, her not getting red faced from the tears.

Maeve then gives Merry the most deadly insult one Fae can give to another: She doesn't compliment Merry on her clothing properly.

Yep. Clothing insults. We're in High School.

We then get a full description of Merry's clothes, including this abomination:

A green silk-and-spandex T-shirt

I mean, they exist but WHY. WHY DO THAT TO SILK. WHAT DID SILK EVER DO TO YOU.

AND WHAT IS WITH THE SILK T-SHIRTS. WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT A T-SHIRT CUT THAT WE HAVE TO IMMORTALIZE IT.

Galen had had to search Los Angeles over to find an honest-to-goddess tea cozy to keep our tea warm.

Oh that is so much bullshit. First of all, you can buy one off the goddamn internet, which exists in this universe. Second, there are tea rooms all over fucking Los Angeles. And you can get them there. So no. I don't buy that having a tea cozy is all that uber freaking special.

 A sound very close to a sob broke from her lips. “I had sex with that . . . that false sidhe.”

On the one hand, Maeve's choices are Maeve's choices, Merry's choices are Merrys. On the other hand, rape by deception is a thing. I know, because it's part of what happened to me. Using a lie, or concealing a fact, to obtain sexual consent that would otherwise be withheld is rape. In my opinion there aren't any exceptions. Someone who would hurt you if you are honest with them is not someone you should be having sex with. Damage is still done and other considerations--ie in this case Maeve is a gigantic racist--do not negate the violation. Anti-social or bad behavior/thoughts on the part of the victim does not justify the crime committed against them.

So either Maeve made a bad call and regrets it, or Sage didn't explain that he wasn't really Sidhe and Maeve was raped last night.

I set my tea down and went to her. I couldn’t stand to hear that broken sound. I’d heard it often enough over the last few weeks since her husband had died, but lately, less.

Oh wow, she's been having baby hormones for weeks, then. You insensitive twit HER HUSBAND HAS JUST DIED.

I touched her shoulder, and she cried harder. “Did Sage hurt you?” I asked, and thought it was stupid even as I said it.

Not being hurt doesn't make rape not be rape. The question here is "Did Sage let you know he wasn't Sidhe before you had sex?" That's a very important question. On one side we have some pretty ugly regret, but there's something even uglier on the other side.

This will never be properly addressed. Instead, we move on to Maeve's seduction of Sage.

“You seduced him. It was wonderful. And now you’re having morning-after regrets?” I said. “Silly, isn’t it.” “The fey don’t regret sex, Maeve.”

This is coming off more and more as "things like that don't happen in our family." Obviously the Fae do regret sex because MAEVE IS REGRETTING IT.

Frost comes in and calls Maeve on her racism--acceptable, but there's still a really big question here that needs to be answered before you can go "Oh, this is racist behavior". When you don't understand exactly what happened to you, it's a lot easier to fall back on -ist ish patterns of thought. This neither excuses the -ism or the act against the person with the -ism. It's a pattern of behavior that further clouds the issue: Maeve's consent in this act is iffy at best.

In fact, if you want to delve in deeper, Sage's judgement is compromised by his greif over his wings, and Maeve's is further compromised by her greif over her husband. Neither person is in a place where either could make a sane judgement call re: sex. So instead of acknowledging that everything about this is fucked up we're just going to make it into an issue of racism between imaginary creatures because that's much easier than addressing the violation of questionable consent.

And then it's time to show how Merry is a perfect paragon of egalitarinism and harbors no racism in her shining fairy heart and how Maeve is evil mcevilness because she doesn't see how Merry can love non-Sidhe Sidhe even though they are totally Sidhe when they have sex.

Then they argue over the Seelie/Unseelie courts and Merry is all "Come to the dark side, we have SEX" and Maeve is unsure. Frost lords the fact that he's The Jack Frost over Maeve, and points out people remember him when they don't remember Conchenn.

Powers are swapped between Maeve and Frost. I have no idea.

I watched them , and understood why my human ancestors had thought they were gods. Now they’d probably be mistaken for angels, or big men from Mars.

No. No they would not be mistaken for angels. I'm sorry, but biblical angels are bad ass and OH MY FUCKING GOD type scary. I have seen/read exactly two depections of angels that fit the biblical accounts and they are the WTF death scary angel thing from Hellboy 2 and Progo from The Wind in the Door. Lovecraft's accounts are closer to biblical angels. One of them is described as a wheel within a wheel covered in eyes. To badly quote Mercedes Lackley, they introduce themselves with "Fear Not" for a good reason. Your first reaction is where the fuck is the shotgun and will it even work on this thing.

The physicality of the kiss was chaste, but his power thrust into her like a spear of silver light.

Then it's not chaste.

So Frost again offers to accept Maeve into the Unseelie court. Maeve wants to go back to the Seelie, and they won't take her back if she's sullied her genes with lower fae. Somehow this segues into how Merry has to face and probably kill Taranis.

Mistral is mentioned. He becomes a lover in a later book. Nice to introduce him now. He's Andais's new boy toy.

“See, Taranis even lets his court adopt the words of a faith that tormented and tortured our followers,” Frost said. “He has allowed his court to become an ape of the humans.”

Get fucked Laurel. Please. Yes, the Catholic church did incredibly shitty things to Ireland, but the faith itself is a body of beliefs that absolutely does not condone that kind of shit. I've recently come to the realization that Jesus was a pretty progressive radical who would look around at the churches today and go "You mean I have to fix it again?". What's being expressed here is not the fault of Christianity. It's the behavior of the group in power expressed against the group out of power. The same people who hung Christ on the Cross are the people who manned the Inquisition a thousand years later. They just step in, delete whatever they don't like, and continue on with the status quo. Blaming any one trait for this behavior simply allows it to perpetuate over and over and over and over again.

Also: I'm pretty certain that Christianity did, indeed, borrow the concept of Hell from Roman paganism. So yeah, you get to keep that one, Frost.

And now we finally get to know why Merry and company are living in Maeve's house:

They're her bodyguards.

Just...wow. Just wow.

Maeve runs out of the room crying because Frost won't accept her "No, thank you" to his invitation. Frost turns the conversation to the goblin ball mentioned at the beginning of this novel, and the Seelie court ball mentioned near the ass end of the last one.

The chapter ends with everyone acknowledging that this is all very dangerous and Merry shouldn't go. But that she will, anyway.