Stroke of Midnight chapter 8

MISTRAL HELD ME ON MY KNEES, MY HEAD IMMOBILE IN HIS GRIP, as his other hand undid the front of his pants.

It's been a while since I mentioned it, but I don't like reading about oral sex and I especially don't like LKH's depictions of oral sex. Given how questionable her consent is it hits way way way way WAY too close to home.

Most of my lovers wouldn’t let me go down on them because that wouldn’t get me pregnant.

You know, I'm beginning to think that part of this theme is that whole "I DON'T want to get you pregnant" thing a lot of guys do, and LKH trying to be cutesy and feminist by inverting the trope. Which misses the point entirely because it's not the getting pregnant that's the issue. It's that the girl gets pressured or outright forced into something she doesn't want to do because what she does want to do is not allowable.

Either that, or she's trying to tell her romantic partner something. I know I try to stay away from her real life, but seriously, that kind of speculation is the only thing that makes Laurel not creepy. Let me repeat that: Speculating that half of this shit is either a reflection of her real life or an attempt to punish people who have dissapointed her is the only thing, to me, that makes Laurel K. Hamilton into a not-creepy person. Petty vengeance is great. I like petty vengeance. Laurel actually believing the subtext of her writing?

I’d offered it as a part of foreplay, but most had refused even that for fear that I would bring them, and a chance would be wasted. I was left begging for the touch of them in my mouth.

Is a penis first come, first served? Does it not have reload capabilities? Is there some kind of fairy law against waiting a little while and then going at it again?

His body spilled out of his pants.

I am now imagining Mistral's massive beer gut and love handles, complete with hair, a cheesy smell and a red, swollen navel. You're welcome.

His body emerged from the radiance in edges, an outline of solid lines melting out of the brightness. His hair had burst its leather ribbon, and fell around him like a fall of white light. It was as if the rest of his body thrummed with light and power, except the part I held in my mouth. Maybe I couldn’t have held him inside me if it all glowed like something carved of power.

Yeah. I'm reorganizing a contract for my job--mostly so that the people signing said contract have a list of rules governing things like behavior and booze use, so that when they break said rules we can break the contract and don't have to deal with stupid shit anymore--and I'm in the process of red-lining the first paragraph. In short: HOW. THE FUCK. DOES A HUMAN. WITH AN ENGLISH DEGREE. WRITE. LIKE. THAT.  It fell like a fall. No. Really.

Also: Merry is apparently an electrical generator, and Mistral just wrapped his johnson in tinfoil to better facilitate the flow.

He dragged me to my feet by hair that had bled to red light,

Why is the addition of day-glow fairies supposed to make lines like this sexy? Being injured without prior consent--I did not see Mistral and Merry having a hard limits conversation before they (sigh) "Rode the Storm"--is not fun. And I'm real, real sorry but the mouth is not an orgasmic zone, so Merry hasn't actually been on the reciving end of anything that remotely resembles a pleasurable experience. She's given a guy a bj, and is now being slung around by her hair.

And then Mistral fucks her legs. He throws her against the wall and fucks her legs. And the only other place I've ever heard of this manouver, kids? Is in a book about serial killers. I really doubt that's the comparison that LKH wanted to make, but I am now really squicked.

“Don’t help me,” he said in a voice that was almost lost to a growl of thunder. “If you help, I won’t last, and I want to last. I want this,” and he squeezed his fingers tight enough to make me cry out, “to last.”

Yeah. Is it really that sexy to screw someone who lies there like a slab of beef? Anyone? Bueller?

For all Merry's continued and continual attempts to assert herself, she is continually a receptical when it comes to sex. It's an attitude very familiar, once again, in conservative Christian circles. Maybe the woman isn't trying to be the biggest, baddest dog in the yard, but her primary role, like Merry's primary role, is that of care-giver and carrier. A good Christian woman carries her men through the bad times, offers comfort, makes sure the crusts are cut off. Merry carries her men through an abusive hostile world. And of course, the sex is not about the woman, but about the man. It's very difficult for me to believe that a woman, any woman, would degrade her own viewpoint like this. Merry only exists to do something for men. Her attempts to assert herself and prove otherwise die a hasty death the first time she asks for oral and gets told no. If these relationships are good and wonderful and equal and these men love her, why can't she get them to compromise on the oral sex thing? Why can't she say "Alright, no penetration until after I've given every single one of you a blow job"? If the guys are THAT WORRIED about losing their shot at the throne, well, everybody shot a blank, so everybody's on the same standing.

I'm beginning to think that the controlling mindset (Ie lots of religious groups, the more extreme abusers) like to maintain a myth of no-options. They like to enforce the idea that the only options you get are the ones in their script. And that's what we've got here: The guys tell the woman no, so her only choice is to either bring in someone who will say yes, or go without. There's no compromise. There's no bending. Nobody scratches each other's back unless they've got a gun to their heads.

I was trapped under the force and power of his body, blinded, deafened, by the explosion of his magic . My body became light, became magic, became pleasure. I forgot that there was skin to hold me, bones to move me. I simply was the pleasure.

Am I the only person who remembers the "One of these things" game from Sesame Street? That first sentence doesn't belong here.

 I said a little prayer. “Goddess, can we slow down the magical revelations until after we solve the murders, or at least until we get presentable for the police?”

And OF COURSE the answer is no. Because the most promising plot in four stinking books can just go die now, thank you.

So we take a break for some MAGICAL MATCHMAKING between a female faerie named Biddy (...you didn't even try, did you Laurel?) and surprise surprise, Nicca. The herd has just been thinned by one. They make doll eyes at each other and snuggle, and there's a literal phantom baby in their future. Because all matches are dictated by fertility and heterosexual sex.

Of course Nicca is one of the guards, so he can't just get off that easy. Andais might make him stay in Merry's bed, which would damn the magic and dissapoint Biddy, who has only seen him for a few seconds.

So Merry decides to have both Nicca and Biddy in her bed, and to let Andais watch. In the space of about as many paragraphs.

Because everything revolves around Merry's va-jay-jay.

And that's where I'm going to end it. Updates on Elsie will be later.