Curious about this for awhile...

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

It's been said in many places by different people that LKH's portrayal of the BDSM lifestyle is off. I know a bit more than just the basics - ah, the joys of reading - and can sort of inherently pick up that something isn't right with her depiction, but I can't really articulate it. I was just curious to hear from those who participate in the lifestyle, what they personally find offensive, frustrating, or just headdesk-worthy about LKH's portrayal. Perhaps they can help make it clearer to me why it feels amiss.

Comments

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

I didn't want her to force Nathaniel to be more independent. But I do admit that I wanted her to protect Nathaniel's chance to figure himself out. And then she never explored what happens when someone becomes a non-dominant were, if that meant they never really had a dominant personality to start with, or if thqat related to power somehow from the transformation etc.

[sharkbytes.livejournal.com]

that's quite a good point, and exactly what I mean. Nathaniel's young, and LKH could have developed his character even more so had she let him figure out his own sexual identity, rather than impose Anita's/her own. It would have had major implications with his role in the pard and in the lycanthrope community at large. That whole "he just wants to belong to someone" thing was an interesting start, but belonging to someone when you don't know who you are first isn't such a great idea.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I was so upset about that! I mean, I can understand that him having no off-switch can be dangerous given how much damage he can withstand, but other than trying to help him figure out where his boundaries are (or at least, finding someone who would understand the boundaries of what is okay for the guy and not slice him to fatal ribbons), it felt like she was trying to "fix" him and making more "normal" -- which is when I start to tug on my hair and beat my head against the desk because it was clear from the onset that he wasn't a normal kid, and these were his preferences.

Plus, all she's succeeded in doing is making him huffy, whiney, and clingy. The whole, "I want Anita to be my girlfriend!" thing creeps me the hell out.

[witchwillow.livejournal.com]

Someone else, many someone elses, have mentioned how vanilla Anita really is. And I find myself thinking if LKH didn't go into Nathaniel's story already thinking there was something wrong with being submissive.

I mean, she certainly doesn't seem to give submissive characters in the books any sort of anything. They're canon fodder. The more I think about it, the more I feel that there was never a plan to explore what it meant to be dominant or not and that she'd already decided that submissive weres were weak people. And therefore Nathaniel was weak.

Whereas any survivor of abusive or an attack, etc, and any good shrink would say that makes a person incredibly strong. They're just unlikely to be one to one confrontational about some things. But an inability to confront or come across as visibly aggressive doesn't make a person weak.

I identified a lot with Nathaniel in the beginning because he did just want someone he could count on and belong to and who would be reliable and stable in his life. As someone with a not too good childhood, I could understand that. It didn't make me think of him as weak. It made me think of him as slightly bruised and slightly damaged and needing a safe place to grow.

Which was why I was initially excited at the thought that Anita would take him out of the hierarchical were society and give him a chance to figure out who he was without it being relevant to whom he might piss off and get challenged by.

I thought she was going to give him a chance to figure out who Nathaniel the Human was, before he got all swept up in Nathaniel the Were.

Instead I've heard, cause I haven't read it, that all she did was try to twist Nathaniel into who she thought he should be - the same way the pard was trying to manipulate and form him.

And now that I'm thinking hard on it, I think Anita's failure to look out for Nathaniel is what had me tossing NiC away right at the beginning and vowing to never read another book by her again.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

You...probably chose a really great time to throw away the books, because it kinda gets creepier from NiC on out. Specially in ID, where Nathaniel is way more aggressive and fed up with Anita treating him with kid-gloves and has decided that he wants her as his girlfriend proper instead of just food for her ardeur.

While I can say, "yay!" for a character putting their foot down for not wanting to be munched upon so wantonly and then set aside without a second thought, I have to take away the minor happy points for the creepy, "I want Anita as my girlfriend!" thing. I never agreed with LKH's portrayal of relationships in the first place -- specially the whole, "I have a boyfriend! I'm a real girl now!" and all the wangst that went with it, I nearly hit the roof when she introduced the concept of "American sex" vs "European sex" -- to then have Nathaniel turn around and demand that Anita finally have proper intercourse with him just...grated so damned hard against everything that he'd initially set up to be.

And then to have Anita agree to it just...no freaking words

I probably would have been more interested if LKH had taken the route that you suggested, with helping Nathaniel figure himself out and grow as an actual person – it would have shown way more respect to both the character and the readers, but...well, we all know how much she respects her readership.

And never mind the rest of the pard that she has responsibility for, man. They're totally ignored, despite many of them being in the same boat as Nathaniel.

[arclights.livejournal.com]

Whatever happened to the rest of the pard, anyway? Cherry? Zane?

...I kind of liked them. =/

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I have the theory that Gabriel is totally not dead and was off earning a living somewhere and didn't know about Anita's taking over the pard until he was told about Raina being dead. So now he's back and plotting revenge on our heroine, and the rest of the pard is just, "OMFG YAYE! A REAL LEOPARD!" and have now crashed at his place and are enjoying porny games and such.

It's only a matter of time before he turns up, yoinks back Nathaniel and pwns Micah's ass, then makes them both watch as he hotly kills Anita.

[arclights.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a fantastic theory, and definitely far less mind-breaking and well-planned than the truth, whatever it is. ^_~

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

when she introduced the concept of "American sex" vs "European sex"

I must know. I really must. What the hell does this mean? Was this a feature in the books, or just her whole blog drama thing?

[dwg.livejournal.com]

No, it's in the actual books -- I think it first cropped up in Cerulean Sins, when Anita was having a heart-to-heart with JC and/or Asher about her definition of sex = intercourse, while theirs is a little bit more liberal (because they're gay French and therefore made of sex?) and what they're comfortable with doing isn't the same as what she's comfortable with doing, blah, blah, bitchcakes.

It may have been briefly in Narcissus, but I'm blotting that out of my memory.

I know it made a brief comeback in ID, much to my disappointment.

I probably wouldn't be so irksome about it if she hadn't labelled it as "American" vs "European" sex, because of the generalisation of it all. Sex is subjective, I wouldn't have minded if she'd written Anita saying "this is my definition of sex,"

[saucyirishlass.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it first made an appearance in NiC, after their little orgy where Belle Morte tried to possess Anita or something. Anita wasn't counting it as sex, and neither was Nathaniel, and Jean-Claude said that it was the American way of looking at it, that no intercourse = no sex.

[spoiled-saint.livejournal.com]

Well, admittedly, we're talking about a country where oral sex wasn't seen as actual sex by the president himself. There is something in the "American" generalization.

And how about that little episode where there was a wide movement for abstaining from sex until marriage in young adults - mostly as a way to safeguard against STD - and then the average number of cases of STD didn't move an inch... because the "young adults" didn't see oral sex and anal sex as breaking chastity.

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

How COULD you go and use logic and valid examples to remind me of the foibles of my countrymen... er, persons!

[spoiled-saint.livejournal.com]

;-) lol