Anita Blake for dummies

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

It is immensely sad that I remember most of the characters of the Anita Blake books and the heinous plotlines, so here is a happy breakdown (though a long one, be warned) of the protagonist mangling and unnecessary secondary characters that give the Anita Blake series its charm.

Admittedly I liked the first Anita Blake books and read them avidly when I first ran across them, though even then it was evident that the “heroine” was deeply self-absorbed. I was quite innocent about Mary Sues however, and those traits passed me by. As the series went on, though, and Anita starting acquiring a harem of men who she was forced to shag constantly, it got too unbelievable and staid for me. The relentless repetition of old plotlines that ought to have been resolved in place of character development got dreary fast. Richard would throw a hissy fit over AB sleeping with the vampire, they’d fall in love all over again because he always made her horny and she was just so perfect for him, they’d have sex in which she marvelled over the size of his penis, and twenty pages later after a long sex scene they would fall out again over something trivial.

 

Richard is evidently a mirror of the author’s ex-husband, which explained why he had to keep coming back to AB, even though it was obvious six books ago that they should have gone their separate ways. In the beginning, Richard was in bed with another shapeshifter quite naked and feeding the Master of the City with his blood when he and AB met; but later he metamorphosed into an incredibly paranoid homophobic jerk who spent most of his time accusing AB of shagging everyone in sight (which she mostly was, and when she wasn’t, it was clearly a fair guess) and comparing the size of his own penis to another ridiculously well-hung lover of hers. The avatar of her ex-husband theory is only confirmed by the fact that Richard became a shoddy character after LKH and her ex-husband parted ways.

 

Other characters underwent equally unwelcome character changes, and new characters were introduced, almost in multiplicity, who contributed nothing to the plot except as willing partners for AB’s increasingly “necessary” bed romps and merry experiments for her weird and pointless new vampire powers. Jean-Claude went from being the manipulative SOB who trapped her with his vampire marks into servitude to being a pussy-whipped enabler who could never say no to her, gave her an excellent excuse to shag herself stupid, and made no attempt to control her as she became megalomaniacal. Rafael, the rat-king, started out as an enigmatic ally and ended up more bed-fodder, though there was a glint of calculation in his decision to, metaphorically, “throw himself to the wolves” and become Anita’s lover. Asher would have had promise – at the start, he caused grief for the usually inimitable Jean-Claude by stirring up painful past memories, and a skilled author would have developed the friction this caused between JC and AB, and the process of grieving and recovery between Jean-Claude and Asher, as clearly they were meant to have loved each other deeply. However, LKH barely touched upon Julianna, centring the developing relationships caused by Asher’s arrival firmly around her heroine.

 

Damian and Nathaniel were unnecessary characters from the start. There was no need to even create them, as all they serve to do is enable AB’s unreasonable behaviour and provide her with a sappy slave who occasionally creates problems she has to solve (and considering that AB doesn’t obey her own master, there is no reason for Damian to assume he needs to live in her basement when he could just live at the Circus and entertain an inordinate amount of girlfriends there) and a weak homemaker for AB to take advantage of. Nathaniel didn’t complete Anita as a character; instead, he added the disturbing dimension of abuser to her character, along with the murdering, conscienceless sociopath. The clinical term for attraction to teenagers is ephebophilia. There isn’t really much difference between them in age, but the fact that Nathaniel is a character who has been raped, tortured, and oppressed into a kind of Stockholm Syndrome and enjoyment of immense suffering – and that Anita has sex with this person and takes him on as a “wife” rather than urging him to make a break with his bloody past and get some decent therapy sharpish – is horrifying. All she does is encourage a cycle of abuse.

 

Most of the vampires are one-dimensional characters. They are either fuck-buddies or transparent villains. The single female vampires are all sluts and antagonists – jealous of Anita, seeking to replace her in Jean-Claude’s bed or just generally to annoy her. I can only think of one female vampire who doesn’t conform to this pattern, and that’s Willie’s girlfriend Hannah, but she isn’t a significant character anyway. Almost all the women in the books are rivals for power or sex. There’s the female werewolf who was looking to seduce Richard and become lupa when Anita’s “right” to be his lupa was challenged (as she was sleeping with a rival wereanimal king, was potentially going to become one of them, and had broken up with Richard anyway). There’s Yasmin, who tried to grope Anita. There’s the female cohort of Serafina who was trying to seduce JC and was being bitchy to Anita. There’s the detective that fought with Anita for no good reason over “credit” for catching an Interpol-wanted criminal.

 

The male vampires – Wicked, Truth, Requiem, London, Byron – usually have silly names and all are gagging to sleep with Anita. Their characters are easily summed up in two or three words. Wicked and Truth are “bloodthirsty warriors.” Requiem is “broody poet.” London is “broody moping ass.” Byron is, “horrendously portrayed Brit”. Despite what LKH might have imbibed from American movies, as an Englishwoman no one goes around saying “ducky” or “love”. You might hear “love” from some beefy middle-aged bartender to his female patrons, but not much else, and not as a pattern of speech. If it’s meant to show he’s British, it looks silly. You’d say “ducky” as a pet-name for a toddler, but not in everyday speech, again. Wicked and Truth are hired muscle from when Anita saved their asses; Requiem, for some strange reason, is gaga for Anita and recites soppy and inappropriate poetry at her, and is oddly homophobic in a group of vampires led by a bisexual master and his pretty much gay second. London is largely irrelevant; he only appears to feed Anita’s sexual appetites and to protest he’s being raped at the same time, which he is, but it makes no impression on Anita so it’s unimportant. Byron is a token “stripper friend” for Anita’s traumatised teenage house-husband, and is apparently gay, though even he isn’t homosexual enough to resist Anita’s mysterious allure.

 

And then there are the wereanimals, split again into “hired muscle” and “part time fuck buddies”. Some, like the persistent Graham, are in the first category but want to be in the second (why Anita hasn’t fired him despite being peeved by this is beyond me). Jason is another token stripper who likes sex as much as Anita, not that she’s willing to admit it, and will cheerfully shag anyone he’s asked to, putting it down to “taking one for the team” in LKH’s antiquated high-school slanguage. Gregory and Stephen are more guys who’ve been sexually abused, but the storyline that was meant to involve them (funnily enough, they’re also strippers) and their abusive father petered out mysteriously and they haven’t been mentioned in a while. Micah is quite an abomination of a character. Yet another enabler, he is two things to Anita, and apparently all she needs: her yesman, and her abnormally giant cervix-crushing penis. He even waxed lyrical about how he was rejected by girls before Anita because his johnson was too big for any ordinary woman to handle. He can be summed up in one more point: horribly abused. In fact, there should be an abbreviation to designate this – Horribly Abused Character, HAC. Micah, Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, Gregory, Stephen, Richard, London, Requiem, Byron, London and even Jason are all HAC characters. Doesn’t anyone have a happy childhood in these books?

 

A lot of characters seem to hate Anita for no reason she can identify, but which is patently obvious to the readership, care they to look. Malcolm, head of the dubious vampire church (why would vampires, who are allergic to crosses, holy water, holy religious symbols and other trappings of faith, start a church? Why not a temple or a cult that revolves around worshipping vampires as immortal deities? It would make more sense, but despite being supposedly a Pagan, LKH is clearly too influenced by Christian ideas to contemplate it) hates Anita because she’s a whore. If you define “whore” as “promiscuous woman” then that’s correct. The cops at every crime scene she used to turn up to, despite her being meant to be famous, hated her and blew her off as some civilian sticking her nose in – why would they do that if she was famous? Surely they’d welcome her, the same way they would welcome an expert witness, or at least respect an FBI profiler? But no, everyone hates her at the crime scenes, and in response she puffs up like a pissed off adder and strides gung-ho over other people’s sensibilities, making out she knows everything and stamping on jurisdiction. Her old friend Dolph the cop hates her because she’s “coffin bait” – sleeping with a vampire. And she is, why would she try and deny it? Vampires may be legal in her world, but he doesn’t have to like it, especially when he sees the corpses they’ve carved up and discarded, of someone’s father, mother, son, brother, sister, or daughter.

 

How can Anita Blake be saved? Firstly, I think the author needs to do some brutal darling-murdering in order to slim down the cast and make it possible for readers to keep up without wondering, “Who is this latest sex buddy that Anita is merrily bonking?” Richard needs to chuck Anita and leave the country to recover his wits; a lot of Jean-Claude’s vampires, who are pretty wimpy and have no useful skills, should be stuck in a small room a la Claudia and burnt to death by the sun. Being able to seduce someone isn’t a useful power when you’re up against vampires as supposedly powerful as the Council. Micah and Nathaniel need to meet brutal ends, which would galvanize Anita to actually go out and do some butchering vampire slayer style. Buffy was a bit of a slave to her hormones, but she still fought the demons and the vampires in almost every episode, and though she was sometimes misguided, she pulled her shit together in the end. Anita could learn from that. Anita needs to grow up relationship-wise and note that if she’s not going to be monogamous, Jean-Claude doesn’t need to either, and that his centuries-old relationship with Asher trumps a handful of grumpy years with her. Edward needs to ditch the family – it isn’t logical for a hired killer to have people who make him vulnerable anyway, unless the author is prepared to have them brutally murdered for character conflict either.

 

Comments

[manekikoneko.livejournal.com]

Very nice. Sums up what's been/gone wrong with the characters really well, I think.

[vlredreign.livejournal.com]

ITA.

Very astute breakdown of the mess that is ABVH. I quit reading them after Danse Macabre. I couldnt take it anymore. I still read the Merry books, because I knew what I was in for, and strangely, they're better. Well, considering the author, better than AB, in any case.

However, someone should tell both Anita and Merry that starting to have sex, then stopping for a ten page discussion of some inane plot point is neither erotic nor informative. It's effin annoying. At least Merry's Skittles still have one ball each.

Funny thing, I never liked Richard, even in the beginning. My thing is vampires, and so of course I wanted Anita with Jean Claude. The fact that LKH ruined Richard beyond repair didn't help. Jason...I still like him, mostly because he's possibly the most self-actualized person in St Louis. He's a slut and doesn't care. He likes sex, which, at his age, is perfectly natural. He used to be funny, though. I agree that a mass pruning of characters is the only thing that can save this series, but the author is so in love with them all that that ain't happening any time soon.

Merry's Skittles!

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Yes, Merry's little bunch of boyfriends have at least a reason to be sleeping with her, and we could hope they're only bonking her for the chance to be king and not out of some sappy twoo love for her. Unfortunately, LKH rarely allows her readers the comfort of delusion.

I've read up to The Harlequin, which was dire, as it made much of these supposedly badass scary vampire police and it didn't turn out to be them after all. Just a couple of pretenders and one deserter. I'll probably read Blood Noir anyway just to see what a train wreck it is, and because it's kind of like crisps compared to a meal in comparison to real literature - tastes fun, but there's no nutrition in it. That might even be too charitable a comparison.

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Given LKH's propensity to draw characters from real life, I think the only way we are going to see extensive pruning of characters from her novels is if there is a concommitant pruning of people from her real life. I really don't see it happening. If the negative reviews and the paradigm shift in her fanbase hasn't clued her in, nothing ever will :/

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

It's a horrid thought, but is bonking all LKH does in her spare time, if that's what she uses to replace the myriad gestures and arguments and feelings of real human relationships? Or is she a robot?

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

I don't think I want to know, and I wouldn't want to comment without knowing ;)

I think some of the things she would have to face up to in the books would be too painful for her to write about. I know there are authors who explore their pain, but I really don't think LKH is one of them.

I think she wrote all the HACs after a weekend reading all of the shelf of 'miserature' at her local library :)

[denelian.livejournal.com]

i agree with everything except the edward bits.

let me try to explain. edward is the only character in the AB books that actually scares me. so when we went off to meet his family, and the LENGTHS we saw him go to to protect his family - what you say applies to ANY person who can have family targeted - mob boss, president of the US, CEOs of massive corps. it was very nice to edward still have some humanity, something redemable (beyond his ability to pile up corpses) and actually made him MORE scarey, what with what we KNOW he will do to protect them. if something actually happened to them again, or was even threatened to happen...

also - i adore Jeac Claude/Asher, and agree with everything you say about them. i don't read romance novels (and the AB books are why, i get tired of nothing but sex. sigh) but i am a romantic, and the JC/Asher thing has the potential to be something really really REALLY, ya know?

sigh.

Yes, I think you're right!

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Well, it's probably just personal preference on my part. We all read these books because there was a spark of something in it that we liked, from an interesting plot point to a character that had real potential, in the hands of someone better. I was most interested in the background and the worldbuilding of both the Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series - and it annoys me that she hasn't developed it more. I dislike her choice of protagonists as well, and the narrative style she adopted. I think these series would have been so much more interesting with two or three first person narratives intertwined - it would allow us to go deeper into the Triumvirate and their separate lives and backstories for a start.

And books devoted to single characters, not just novels in which Anita bonks that character. Edward's story, I think, would work much better if he had a book or two all to himself to be totally fleshed out. As it is, it looks like Anita endangers his family by being there - but what about the rest of the time? Can't we read about him teaching Peter to protect himself? Or Donna?

I know what you mean, though. There was an episode of Criminal Minds where a man in the witness protection program, who used to be a hitman, took up his weapons again and went after the people who had kidnapped his daughter. That was moving as well as disturbing.

Yeah - JC and Asher. I don't read romance novels either, but I'm a sucker for meaningful relationships written amongst characters. Not brute descriptions of sex down to which fluids spattered where, but the tender, intimate gestures between a couple that say so much. Where is this in Anita Blake? All she does is boink, almost clinically. She may witter on about love - but where is it actually portrayed?

I think AB thinks love is obedience to the doom crotch.

Re: Yes, I think you're right!

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

I agree with Denelian. I liked seeing Edward's secret life. I admit I was worried when I first heard we would. I was afraid that they'd defang Edward if they focused on him. (When Hawk, from the Robert Parker's Spenser novels got his own short-lived tv show, that was exactly what happened. The real Hawk wasn't palatable as star of a network tv show, so he got bowdlerized.)

But--surprisingly--I thought LKH did a good job with Edward in the New Mexico novel. I thought, in fact, that maybe she'd gotten over the recent decline in quality and was back on track. Alas, it was the last hurrah of the original Anita series before it descneded irretreivably into crapitude.

Re: Yes, I think you're right!

[denelian.livejournal.com]

"I think AB thinks love is obedience to the doom crotch."

oh, gods, that sums up my thoughts so well!

i would KILL for a book just about edward! and, i like your idea of intertwining narritives... can i steal it if i ever write that book i keep saying i will write?

Re: Yes, I think you're right!

[deadsong.livejournal.com]

"I think AB thinks love is obedience to the doom crotch."

Frighteningly, this reminds me of someone I used to game with. She's poly, with two husbands; most poly people I know are quite well-adjusted and work well with their relationship dynamic of equality while still respecting others' monogamy. This woman, though...she was this font of smug self-righteousness who thought everyone who didn't like her had to be jealous of her because of her gaming skills and her two men. Her men existed only to feed her smugness, reassure her of her superiority, remind her that she's right in every conflict she gets into with no personal accountability for anything she might have said or done, shower her with love and praise, and answer her...ahem...needs without showing each other too much affection that might exclude her. She insisted that this was equal love, and even went on about how so many people just can't handle seeing true and honest love between more than two people, and so of course everyone was intimidated by her (in her eyes).

She extended it to friendships, as well; she and I were semi-friends, where basically I just put up with the things about her that annoyed me because I enjoyed certain aspects of gaming with her. All of my friends hated her, though, as did many people we were just vaguely acquainted with (and, through hearsay, people we'd never even heard of); after a gaming session in which she and one of her boy-toys managed to piss off everyone involved and it came out just how obnoxious most felt she was, she insisted that that wasn't the case at all. All my friends were just jealous haters who couldn't stand that I enjoyed gaming with her, and their opinions were immediately labeled invalid because she just decided they didn't count as proof that yes, her behavior does grate on people.

It's...a little boggling to have one little statement make me realize that I knew a real-life Anita Blake. It's even more boggling to realize just how deeply things ran with her, as I never stopped to write all this out until now or I might have noticed the similarities a bit sooner. I wonder, now, if she reads LKH (we never discussed things like that) or even admires her.

[ever-obsessed.livejournal.com]

You pretty much got it, I think.

And I've given up hope of it ever being salvaged.

Which stings because, as a Richard fan (I always was a werewolf nerd), this tiny fangirl inside me has delusions of him telling her where to shove her crotch and finding himself a lupa who is actually, you know, a lycanthrope. The 180 she did on him one, makes no sense and two, is just bad because it's so clear where the foundations of it got started. That same tiny inner fangirl will get one of these damn books from the library if anyone ever told me there was an actual scene between JC/Asher because, wow, there is a huge amount of potential there for any writer who actually wanted to explore such a story and that kind of potential hooks me no matter how bad the actual material is because, again, so much potential.

Actual, you know, emotion, character history, growth...

I hate thinking about what may have been, :|

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Well, there are drops of JC/Asher scenes, mostly when he first arrived and there was some angsting and exposition about their shared past. It was much better when Asher was antagonistic. How lame to have him cured of his rage and grief by having Anita give him a kiss *bleeurrgh*

LKH is an excellent manual for how not to write character history, intimate relationships, or character development. And if I see a JC/Asher scene that has the Doomcrotch sitting on the sidelines and keeping her goddamn mouth shut, I'll let you know ;)

[mystoflare.livejournal.com]

After I realized what kind of hints there were from the beginning of the series, before the sexathon starts, is it any wonder I couldn't stomach just trying to finish Guilty Pleasures? I'm pointing this out to my fellow UF-lashers when someone brings up Anita Blake, or needs to be educated about it.

I always did wonder what the *point* of assorted characters like Byron, London, Wicked Truth and such were. It's like LKH makes a half-assed attempt to writing semi-realistic characters (Byron), but then decides "Screw it" and has them panting like horny dogs to shag her heroine. Seriously, she throws characterization out the window because she can't stand the idea that someone isn't attracted to the bitchy-strong-powerful aura of her skanky wangsting character?
Sorry, Anita, Byron can't be gay if he wants to actually shag you. Gay means they only do they own gender. Unless she's trying to say that Byron's really a woman inside, which would only work with non-western gender-physical sex thought patterns (Native American, anyone? Gotta love the idea of two-spirits). And if Byron was really a woman inside, that'd make Anita a spiritual lesbian, and we know how LKH hates Teh Ghey...

Is it sad that posts like medicineseller9's make way more sense to me than anything in LKH's necromancer/faerie princess cesspool?

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

No, it's just that LKH is generally incomprehensible, and that as an aspiring writer I have ample practice in making myself understood :)

She's trying hard to pull off the hinting trick practised by talented writers, where they foreshadow events to come and the resolutions of problems, but she's not good at it. You know - the hero is on a boat headed for a waterfall and can't get out. A writer who can "hint" would have told the reader in passing a while back that there was a rope on the boat that he could use to lasso a branch and save his neck. LKH would write him coincidentally finding the rope, deus ex machina.

I'd argue LKH doesn't HAVE characterisation. What she HAS is characters defined by their sexual identity. A character is either male or female; either gay, straight, or bisexual; either sexually abused or not sexually abused; either a stripper or not a stripper; either a prostitute, not a prostitute, or not a prostitute now; will shag Anita or won't shag Anita.

She mixes these options up with an assortment of hair and eye colours, and voila! She has a character. Only it's not. It's a one-dimensional foil for the "heroine" playing one of the assigned roles of fuck-buddy, friend, bodyguard/cannon-fodder, or enemy. Actual characters, of course, have feelings and relationships and ambitions and fears (not just ones borrowed from the author). They run the gamut of emotions from sad to joyous to angry to betrayed to tranquil, according to situation.

Anita is permanently angry. She doesn't experience anything else.

Two-spirit - not necessarily, if you take sociological theory that gender identity is much more fluid than people think, you get characters like Oshima from "Kafka on the Shore" - biologically female but thinks of himself as male and likes guys. Female, gay, but not a lesbian :)

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

You win. Sorry it's not a long or well thought out comment on my part, but, well, I'm not in the proper mindset right now. So...WIN! Yes you do.

[everstar3.livejournal.com]

I think one of the things that frustrates me the most about the AB books is that she can't... she's got very odd ideas about what rules she can and can't rewrite. Like, the only reason I can think of for Richard being around still is that he's in the triumvirate with Anita and Jean-Claude, and when she wrote them into the triumvirate, that was a forever thing. Then things went south in real life with LKH's ex but she was stuck with Richard. (At least, I think that's how the timeline went? Also I find it funny that vampires are even stricter than the Catholic church when it comes to divorce.) Now, consider the rules of the triumvirate and the rules of Anita's necromancy. One remains absolutely inviolate even as it becomes clearer and clearer that these three people have no business being bound together for two days, let alone eternity, and the other mushrooms wildly as demanded by the plot or the author's whim. Why won't she put Richard -- and us -- out of our misery and write the poor guy out? I just don't understand. Sigh.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

There isn't any real reason why Richard can't make himself scarce for a long time to think about his issues; it would weaken the Triumvirate, sure, but Anita and JC probably need to work on their cooperation, seeing as she runs rings about him. Anita could suddenly "bond" to a new wereanimal, say Jason, and take JC's tie with her as she seems to run the show - and voila, the Triumvirate writes out Richard. Anita keeps doing unprecedented deus ex machina. Why shouldn't she do it now?

[naeko.livejournal.com]

I agree, though these points make me go, "eh?" possibly just because my memory isn't that great.

In the beginning, Richard was in bed with another shapeshifter quite naked and feeding the Master of the City with his blood when he and AB met.

I have a miniscule memory file of Richard explaining to Anita that he wasn't actually naked for sexual reasons and he never fed any vampire as a morning snack or whatever. I want to say that he had been "placed" at JC's when Anita first saw him nekkid in bed as some sort of power play deal, perhaps by Marcus.

I honestly have not read a single word of the series since I read CS and returned it out of anger, so I could be totally wrong.

The cops at every crime scene she used to turn up to, despite her being meant to be famous, hated her and blew her off as some civilian sticking her nose in – why would they do that if she was famous?

I don't remember her being famous, either. I know she would talk- to herself, lol- about how she's great and she's more powerful than most other necromancers, but I don't remember her ever mentioning being "famous" until she was dating JC and she was worried about her dad seeing her on TV showing up to some big opening of one of JC's clubs.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

No, everyone had apparently heard of Anita Blake, vampire hunter - or they damn well ought to have done, seeing as she was the only Animator that worked with the police. She's introduced herself as "Anita Blake" and people have known who she is straight away. So what is it about the assholery? Is it because they are jealous haters? :D

I don't know what he was doing in that bed with the shapeshifter, totally naked, if it was innocent. What was he doing, putting on a booty show for JC and Yasmin? Setting the scene for Anita when she walked in? And remember the shapeshifter woman was UNDER THE COVERS when Anita came in. She saw her get out. It doesn't read like she was having a nap.

I don't buy the Marcus theory, either. JC was supporting Richard's claim to the succession as Ulfric. Why would he make Richard get naked, humiliate his potential ally, because someone he was plotting to depose told him to?

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

why would vampires, who are allergic to crosses, holy water, holy religious symbols and other trappings of faith, start a church? Why not a temple or a cult that revolves around worshipping vampires as immortal deities?

My plot bunnies love you.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

I wish my plot bunnies would love me. Instead, they are a bunch of whiners who gnaw on my grey cells.

I don't know why LKH hasn't grasped that vampires wouldn't start a church. She also said in "The Harlequin" that the cross only glows if a person is afraid of a vampire. What? Then why does Anita's cross glow at JC? She's not scared of him, he's pussy-whipped.

[mystoflare.livejournal.com]

Vampires are only allergic to those things if they're assumedly Christian/Catholic/faith of a similar branch, right? Unless LKH thinks the Whole Damn World is Catholic/Christian/Evil Misogynistic Oppression...
So if a vampire were atheist or something, what's to stop them aside from silver or a stake through the heart?
Something to think about. Yay for having atheist vampires! *skitters off to write*
My plot bunnies love the both of you :D

[easol.livejournal.com]

Or even just a different belief system based on the fact that they're, y'know, vampires. A friend of mine wrote in her vampires as believing in the same God, but everything else was different because they considered themselves a separate species altogether.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Though there is an exception with that Werelion who probably met a bitter end when he refused to have sex with Anita.