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]

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.

[kerame.livejournal.com]

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.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

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.

[easol.livejournal.com]

"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.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Or the fact that she ran from him to JC and it was the vampire she got this from.

"a purely sociopathic all-devouring succubus" i think this phrase pretty much sums Anita up

[kerame.livejournal.com]

"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.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Also I think a cheap shot at the former fans.

[kerame.livejournal.com]

And at her ex-husband, ex-friend, and ex-brother-in-law.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Really, is Hamilton even writing for creativity's sake any more?!

[kerame.livejournal.com]

I don't think she ever was.

It's always been about living out her fantasies through her short, busty, pale, semi-orphaned and semi-abandoned avatars.

It's just that being surrounded with nothing but financially dependent sycophants has allowed her narcissism to grow completely out of bounds as her real and fantasy life merged.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

I had to leave a therapy group once because one member took money from another agreed to pay it back and didn't. The stealing wouldn't have been so bad if the therapist and every other member of the group tried to turn it around and make it ok. The fact that I wanted the member to admit what she did was steal (just admit it and call it what it was) turned me into an object of scorn because somehow that was enjoying another's downfall. I believe that to admit something is the first step to dealing with the behavior.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

Sorry I hit a button with only half my thought down.

The group began putting all sorts of motives into what I was doing. I think so they didn't have to deal with not only the other member's behavior, but their own. I was talking and convenient. Of course, they may have been right and I can't see that. The thing is I doubted myself and still do.

Only people who can't face being wrong can't face the idea they are wrong.