A light bulb joke, and LKH's rape fantasties

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Rape is about power and control. It is not about sexual desire. It is still rape if your victim has an orgasm.

I wonder if part of the "magic" of her ardeur is making it so the "victim" is ok with it. So, not only are you raped, but you don't know it and you like it. That's even worse than just being raped. In ways that's the level that incest from childhood gets or even child molestation.

Kind of strange that a character who would kill a vampire illegally in public for going a little over with the charm to maybe get a free meal is fine with this. Score one for Nietzsche.

[kerame.livejournal.com]

I wonder if part of the "magic" of her ardeur is making it so the "victim" is ok with it. So, not only are you raped, but you don't know it and you like it.

That's why she gets so furious with those who reject the ardeur, calling them "self-loathing" or "prigs". In otherwords, they're just frigid prudes who should learn to lie back and enjoy it.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Basically every man she finds sexually attractive should simply lie back and think of Jean-Claude's power base.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Kind of strange that a character who would kill a vampire illegally in public for going a little over with the charm to maybe get a free meal is fine with this.

That's what I don't like about it. Anita at the start wasn't necessarily a very likeable character, but she had strong ethics and morals, and also she had plots in which to engage. Now she's just a goddess of shag control.

[easol.livejournal.com]

And she doesn't so much have a conscience and morals so much as moments of random "ooh, is that bad? Worry! Angst!" that the author throws in so she won't seem 100% sociopathic. Usually these moments are contradicted not long afterwards...

[easol.livejournal.com]

"I wonder if part of the "magic" of her ardeur is making it so the "victim" is ok with it. So, not only are you raped, but you don't know it and you like it. That's even worse than just being raped."

It's mind-rape as well as bodily rape, and you'd expect it to have even more traumatic repercussions, especially since the mind would presumably fight it. And worse, lack of knowledge can't help the person recover from it, or prevent the rapist from doing it again.

I can't help but bring up the Dresden Files, where such rapes occur frequently for the White Court -- it's pretty clear that not only the bodies but the minds of the people are basically controlled. The Hunger is a LOT like Hamilton's ardeur... except that it's portrayed as a malign, destructive force.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Or what Molly does to her friends with the heroin addiction. Harry explains that that kind of mind magic rips their psyche apart. The boy she cast the spell on might never recover and even before they figured out what was happening the characters were in pretty bad shape. When Harry confronted her, Molly angrily declared she'd done nothing wrong.

Let's put Anita in front of Warden Dresden.

[easol.livejournal.com]

"like Molly, are forced to see that they are removing the person's free will, which to Butcher it seems, is the most important aspect for his characters."

Exactly. I remember thinking of the AB series when I read about Harry forcing Molly to face the fact that she had done something really bad, and corrupted a part of herself as well.

Not coddling her feelings and telling her that well, she didn't know it was TEH BADNESS then it isn't really wrong, and anyone who says differently is just an evil hater.

"I wonder if Hamilton realizes how bad she's making her avatar."

Worse than the WC vampires, really -- they openly acknowledge that their thralls are being damaged by this practice. It doesn't matter much to them, but at least they're realists about it.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

When Murphy says something to Harry about the way he handled it and he points out he has to be harsh. The background Molly came from and the fact that she thought this was ok. Meant harsh. When Molly finally got it I did a cry of joy because I love the character.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Strange that he got published because of a chance meeting with her and either her publisher or editor.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Pushing someone's mind to do something it doesn't want to would realistically have some appalling psychological consequences, since the mind would be fighting and yet unable to overcome the supernatural weirdness. The "drilled holes in his psyche" thing in DF leads to everything from night terrors to outright insanity.

"Let's put Anita in front of Warden Dresden."

Better yet, the whole stick-up-their-ass-no-excuses-ever Council, with Morgan and his big sword.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I HAVE to start reading the Dresden books.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Though I thought it shows writing talent to be on a porn set in Blood Rites and it doesn't get smutty. The one kiss with Lara in White Night that he describes is far more sexual than pages and pages of pron.

To paraphrase an old saying about dying and comedy...

[dinpik.livejournal.com]

"Titillating is easy, characterization is hard!"

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Plus, he acknowledges consequences.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

If you want a taste of the series

http://www.jim-butcher.com/books/dresden/

It has sample chapters and a few short stories.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Oooh, yay!

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Yes you do. (Although it didn't really addictively pick up for me until book 4, "Summer Knight," I could still recognize the writing as GOOD writing in books 1-3. Whatever that means. I'm jet lagged. ^___^ Hope I make sense.) But yeah, Butcher seems to know people, and their workings.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Suggesting Harry a person who doesn't like watching an evil person (who turned people into sex slaves because he could)be executed means that whatever judgment would come from a person known for sympathy.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Ah, true. Although I suspect he'd be a bit less forgiving of Anita than of Molly or that nameless dark wizard boy that was executed.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Well Dresdenverse magic has rules. Should I even mentally start the list?