lkh_lashouts | A light bulb joke, and LKH's rape fantasties

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A light bulb joke, and LKH's rape fantasties

As some of you have seen,

kippurbird has been flogging Danse Macabre something fierce. The flog is now on Chapter 33. While the whole thing made me laugh, there was a little joke that made me want to post it here, with Kippur's permission:

How does Anita Blake change a light bulb?

She holds it up and the world revolves around her.

This, I think, sums up everything about the Anita Blake books. As well as Hamilton's life, really. Or what she thinks of as her life. As Kippur said, the self-centeredness of both Anita and Laurell are starting to really grate.
The scene with London being forced to have sex with Anita actually scared me, especially considering London's obvious reluctance and outright fear. From what I got out of it, Anita essentially raped London, and didn't even care how it had affected him. I'd told Kippur that I'd once had a friend who had been a rape victim more than once, and one of her rapists had been an ex-boyfriend with a cocaine addiction. When my friend read that scene, she started having severe flashbacks to both the rape and watching the boyfriend's addiction, because she saw Anita's ardeur as a metaphor for a date rape drug as addictive as cocaine.
It's so frustrating -- and frightening -- to think that LKH writes this crap probably knowing full well that it could compare to such serious trauma.

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Never mind the fact that no one has sex for fun in her book. They have to have sex, because they're told to, and never because they want to. If someone said to me "You have sexing-up powers and now we must test them on this guy, and you have NO ARGUMENTS!" I'll kick them in the balls and go out to have sex with my boyfriend because I want to. Fuck guy I've never met before, I want boyfriend!

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Laurell really, really needs to consult Doctor Ruth. Seriously.

Merry's major whinge was the bois wouldn't let her go down on them, because she couldn't get preggers that way.

Every sperm is sacred!

Unfortunately, I don't think LKH realizes that the sex in both her series is quite often basically rape, and if it isn't rape it's only because the reader might distinguish between someone who is only consenting because they have no choice and someone who outright says no.

I think she realizes it, but she doesn't quite "get it." Hence the whole "testing of understanding" ad nauseum where Anita finds out that she's actually MAKING guys fall in love with her and the endless discussions of "Did they want to do this or am I using some kind of mind power to make them love me?"

Clearly in the case of London, she making them...but all these guys seem so happy and blissful afterwards and changing life-long issues for the better...such as Nathanial starting to finally grow up and Micah finally gaining the peace and stability in his enviroment that he's been working for all his life within his person (yes, I know, not really, I'm working on the idea that LKH was going towards and failing miserably to convey in writing, so bear with me here).

So...now we have the questions: Is it rape if you like it? Is it wrong to force someone to feel something so life-changingly positive like love and acceptance, the one thing that everyone hopes to find?

That seems to be a very central theme that she is playing with, seeing just how far she can blur the lines of non-consent and rough consent, and starting out no, and becoming "Yes, yes, OH GOD YES!"

If this theme was played out by anyone OTHER than LKH, I would find this an incredibly wonderfully creepy and clever plot idea. Except that it IS LKH, and I know she isn't doing this because she's clever. She's just a bad porn writer who's sloppy drivel just spilled (sorry) over it.

Is it rape if you like it?

Personally, I'd say "yes, it damn well is." I mean, I'd probably enjoy a shot of morphine, too, but I'd still be furious if someone forced on one me without asking first.

"Forced one on me," even. ^_^;

Mm, yeah. A guy friend of mine says that he was chatting with a girl he just met outside a nightclub, and she grabbed him, pushed him to the ground, and had sex with him. Without asking. He enjoyed it very much, but he never gave consent, so he considers it rape. In fact, his exact words were, "Oh, hell yeah, I loved it, it was awesome! But I never gave consent. That's the key issue."

Wow. That sounds like something out of Something Positive.

My condolances to your friend, rape is bad enough without the victim being confused with pleasure.

It does, doesn't it? Makes me think of how Kim have sex with Davan and he never actually said it was okay for her to do that, and PeeGee and Aubrey prepared to slaughter Kim.

I think you've pointed out exactly what's wrong with LKH's understanding of the gray area between consent/rape. I sincerely doubt she would understand that. How could he gush about how wonderful it was, but still think of it as a rape? She doesn't understand the difference between sex and bodily/mental autonomy. It's not mutually exclusive. This woman did not ask your friend what he wanted, she just started manhandling him. Apperantly she was quite good at it and it probably fufilled a fantasy of his. But there is a major part of him seperate from the act that is unwaveringly NOT COOL with not being asked first. I don't blame him, either.

I think LKH's misunderstanding of that concept really showed up not only at the Micah shower scene in NiC with the not-rape rape, but also in CS. After Anita kicks Musette's ass, she and JC are discussing protecting everyone, and how Asher had enjoyed having sex with Musette in the past, and if Musette had sex with him that night without his consent, he'd still likely enjoy it. Then Belle Morte would not consider that harmful or rape. In what proved to be later irony, Anita muses that Belle Morte really doesn't understand the difference between love, sex, and rape. In later books, Anita does EXACTLY what she accuses Belle Morte of doing.

I think it'd be quite fun if Belle Morte was the reason Anita needs to "eat" so damned much and was making it impossible for her to control the ardeur like JC can. It'd be an awesome stamp of how truely horrific the "ardeur" is as a power and justify it being there as more than just a cheap "let's fuck!" excuse (though it still needed to be closed MANY books ago). It would also be a fun "gotcha last!" to show that yes, Belle Morte really DOES understand the difference between love, sex, rape, and blured it all like the terrifying master vamp of the high council that controls the world of vampires that she is. If she could be subtle enough to "puppet" Anita like that, and I may return to reading these awful books.

Alas, I hold no hope of this, except in fanfic. Nothing trumps Sueness as a the be all and end all of powers.

Apperantly she was quite good at it and it probably fufilled a fantasy of his.

That's actually what he said. He's not traumatized or anything, but he often uses his experience as a warning to other friends: Just because you like it, it doesn't mean you have to consent. If you don't consent, it's force.
It's a slippery slope, not only for LKH but for a lot of people. I had to come to terms with it when I was 18, when a guy friend led me into an empty campus building and proceeded to fondle me without my consent. I never said yes, I never said I wanted it, but I never said no, either. I didn't say anything. It took me years to realize that I could have and should have said no and pushed him away. I didn't realize that it wasn't right for him to touch me like that without asking.

What frightened me most about London's rape by Anita was that London clearly did not want it, was crying throughout it... and then suddenly it was okay. Oh, look, he's happy now, so it's okay.
Even if you've never been sexually assaulted, you'd have to find something wrong with that.

I think the assault on London was more like a pusher forcibly readdicting a recovering addict. What he feared was the addiction.

What she did to Richard in NiC was more clearly a rape than anything else in the series including the Micah shower-scene, since she could feel his fear through the mind-link and enjoyed forcing herself on the one man who wouldn't allow him to control her, the way a bully of a man would enjoy raping a woman he couldn't control.

He told her before hand that he wouldn't feed the ardeur, when it started he screamed, pushed her hands away and tried to leave the room. He clearly felt violated, and Anita even blamed the victim by saying he never said no.

Afterwards, because he had enough remaining self-esteem to leave her, he's called self-loathing, and the fans agree with her, and blame him for hurting her? When an abused person leaves their abuser, it's not considered to be hurting the abuser by sane people, and no one would blame him, or side with her if the genders were reversed.

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tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com - 2008-06-01 00:41 (UTC) - Expand

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longtail.livejournal.com - 2008-05-27 22:39 (UTC) - Expand

I don't know rather or not that is supposed to be sracasm. =/

He was dead serious.
(Then again, he had a past career as an amateur porn star and manager of a sex shop, and he had lovers in the hundreds with all sorts of kinky fetishes, soo, it's possible he'd enjoy anything...)

It's interesting, because if you think about it, Anita initially rejected sex, but through the ardeur has been forced to confront it. Being essentially forced to confront *their* sexuality via Anita's ardeur/rape has made all these other characters grow up and become better people. It's not Anita who's growing, it's them.

I suspect, from what I've read here, that LKH discovered she liked certain Darkity Dark things sexually, and ~~Richard~~ her ex wasn't up for it, hence the breakup, and in some ways Anita/Merry forcing sex on all these different men, who subsequently become better/more powerful/generally all round more desirable versions of themselves, is like LKH playing out a fantasy that, if hubby just did what she wanted, he would be better.

I think the break-up had a least as much to do with Gary's refusal to let her control him.

She said that she spent 16 years begging him to grow his hair when he cut it after college, and praised jon for growing his out "as soon as I requested it".

She was constantly trying to shove Gary into the "submissive 50's housewife" role which she rejected for herself, but which jon is happy to play, and really the theme of the Anitaverse is that sanity is the happy acceptance of slavery to Anita. Nate and Micah have always happily accepted her as their master, and since LKH thinks Anita is a good master unlike Raina or Belle, they're supposedly healthy and well-adjusted. JC and Asher have pretty much come to accept their degradation. The only characters who struggle to hold onto any personal independence or autonomy are Richard and the Lion King, and that's what gets them destroyed, rather than their supposed rejection of their animal natures.

Hmm. As much as LKH is an annoying and insane loon, it's probably an issue many women have today. You want your own autonomy and sometimes that can end up being at the expense of your partner's. Clearly she wants a man who does what he's told, and has worked out in her mind that if she's a "Dominant" then it's not bullying or abuse, it's OK. Never mind that in a D/s relationship the person in charge is really supposedly the sub.

Then look at what she's done to Dolph. I would buy that he's a little left of sanity because his son wants to become the kind of monster Dolph has to investigate. Years of seeing the kind of things Dolph has I could see that. Then I could really see him taking out his rage on Anita not because of blind bigotry, but because she has become just another monster with a human face.

By making Dolph react in an out of control manner, she also doesn't have to deal with the fact that if he, or the entire department were behaving realistically, she would have had her badge stripped from her because of her incredible conflicts of interest. She's screwing just about every member of the power structure she's supposed to be policing/punishing.

Just as by making Ronnie "jealous", she doesn't have to deal with her perfectly valid observation that Nate and Micah are houseboys, and that JC turned her into his power-whore.

If you look at Dolph, Ronnie and Richard from the "Anita" perspective they're wrong and awful.

If you look at the characters in context from their respective perspectives Anita is out of control and being used by the "magic." Ronnie is being the best friend she can be to someone who is in trouble. Ronnie may have her own commitment issues and Anita wants to see that so she won't have to look at herself. Richard is a monster that he doesn't want to be. He hates what he is. Yes, he doesn't like Anita being comfortable with monsters because to him they are evil, not just not human, evil. She now regularly "feeds" off people. Most of the time forcefully. In a way I think he feels responsible.

"In a way I think he feels responsible."

I wouldn't be surprised if he did, since all three of them made the decision to marry the marks. As a direct result, the woman he once loved became a purely sociopathic all-devouring succubus who has sex with anyone she finds desirable, and uses her powers to make them have sex with her (and be addicted) even if they don't want to.

Not entirely rational, but it would be an understandable feeling.

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pastygothchick.livejournal.com - 2008-05-28 00:27 (UTC) - Expand

"Ronnie is being the best friend she can be to someone who is in trouble. Ronnie may have her own commitment issues and Anita wants to see that so she won't have to look at herself. Richard is a monster that he doesn't want to be. He hates what he is. Yes, he doesn't like Anita being comfortable with monsters because to him they are evil, not just not human, evil."

I think Ronnie, Richard and Dolph are the only ones who see what Anita has become, but I think the commitment issues, self-loathing, and irrationality are purely character-assassination by the author in defense of her avatar, just like Richard and Ronnie's "triple-digits".

What Richard hated about being a monster in the early books (and for the most part even the later ones), was the tyranny and abuse of supernatural society. Anita once paid lip-service to the same belief, but only until she was at the top of the heap. She can't abide the thought that she is the evil she once claimed to fight, so Richard is retconned along with Ronnie and Dolph.