The Love of a Good Woman (or not)

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

I love this community; it’s such an outlet for frustration with yaabis and hypocrisy. We’re all aware that homosexuality is clearly an uncomfortable subject for LKH, and for Anita, her proxy. This is evidenced throughout the text of many different books. What I’m not sure has been properly explored, however, besides the unpleasant themes of sexual exploitation, rape, and other forms of sexual violence, is the hypocrisy of sexual expression in Anita’s own worldview. There is a jarring contrast between what she says she believes in, or what she’s uncomfortable with, and what she actually does.

 

 

First, let us take Anita’s discomfort with pure homosexuality. It is clear that there are no entirely gay characters, whatever LKH actually writes. For example, the British vampire stripper Byron was said to be gay when he first turned up, professing he wanted to sleep with Jean-Claude but had been turned down; and then he slept with Anita. I believe this is another incidence of casual rape in LKH’s novels. She gives no feasible explanation for Byron actually consenting to sleep with Anita – what matters is that she needs to feed off him, he’s available, and Jean-Claude does not stick up for his right not to consent. Afterwards, it is lamely suggested that he doesn’t mind terribly and that it was somehow a fantastic experience for him. In "Cerulean Sins", it is said that Belle-Morte and Musette do not believe that it is rape if the rapist has previously had consensual sex with their victim before, or if the victim has had an orgasm. This is very similar to a fundamentalist worldview in some Muslim countries that if a woman had an orgasm while she was being raped, she consented, and that it was adultery or extramarital sex. I think this seems to be LKH’s abhorrent viewpoint: Byron physically enjoyed himself, so he must have liked it.

 

Asher isn’t allowed to be just gay either. It is expressed in a contradicting manner in the text that he sought out Julianna because Jean-Claude wouldn’t love him just for himself, which would suggest he is gay and was compromising for his bisexual partner ("Danse Macabre") but in the same book, and in "Cerulean Sins", it is made to look more like bisexuality. Anita cannot simply be a compromise for Asher like Julianna was, LKH makes it so that he desires her for herself as well – in "Burnt Offerings", rather than having an actual fight with Jean-Claude or thrashing out their mutual issues and grief, Anita is injected to magically kiss it better and somehow that dissipates his anger towards Jean-Claude. In turn, Jean-Claude stays by Anita’s side the whole time. With the history between them, it would have been expected for Jean-Claude to actually leave Anita briefly to try and sort things out with Asher alone. In the rest of the books, they sleep chastely next to each other when they die for the day, but otherwise they are never alone, and Jean-Claude is clearly too afraid of Anita to just have sex with him when she’s absent. (Either that, or he cannot get it up without a woman being there. Either way, there is no gay sex happening in an Anita Blake novel without Anita being present.)

 

Anita clearly has a jealousy problem, but is intolerant of other people’s possessiveness in a monogamous society. It’s one of the issues that is never truly addressed. She admits to it, but not like it is a fault to be rectified – it is just a fact, the status quo, a law to be abided by. The same thing happened in "Cerulean Sins" after she was scared shitless by Asher rolling her and got all uppity about vampire powers. Despite being confronted by the knowledge that she was two-faced, she was a liar and a hypocrite, she was cutting Asher and Jean-Claude off from each other and from the pleasures that could only be experienced by them because of their vampire heritage – was she moved? No, she sat stubbornly where she was and went into a black and white denial of these unpleasant home-truths. It was wrong, she said, for Asher to have used vampire powers on her even though she asked him to and he should have read her mind and known that. (How, it is not explained.)

 

Anita’s homophobia doesn’t prevent her, however, from participating in a threesome with Jean-Claude and Augustine (I refuse to say Auggie, as it is not an appropriate derivative of the name and detracts from the character; if she wanted him to seem like a Master of the City rather than some cartoonish fop with a silly name, she shouldn’t have done that or used it so consistently.) She watches him and Jean-Claude kiss and even have sex, and admits that it "flat out does it" for her with her usual stilted phrase, yet this seeming change in viewpoint mysteriously never gets around to letting Asher and Jean-Claude have hot gay sex, with or without her. There was also that threesome with Jean-Claude and Richard that had definite weird homoerotic undertones, but Richard reverted to type (Anita type) immediately afterwards.

 

Anita is also freaked out by lesbianism, or sex between women, yet she has lesbian smooches with Thea in "Danse Macabre" and metaphysical sex with Belle-Morte. When Sylvie is the only wolf in the room who could help swallow her beast, she conveniently forgets that she is gay and wanders off, when before in "The Lunatic Café" I think it was, Sylvie hinted she found Anita attractive. In "Danse Macabre", I also found an intriguing passage (page 188 in my copy):

 

"In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other’s dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy category for me. You don’t undress in front of people who see you as a sex object."

 

This is a strikingly masculine belief – guys are always mocking each other about being gay, and pick on men that are, because they are afraid of being sex objects to other men. Every gay man must want to have sex with them; every gay man in the changing room is a predator who is surreptitiously sizing up their equipment and their asses. It might explain a little of Anita’s conflict. On the one hand, she has a flash of the same red-blooded women who read yaoi because two sexy guys getting it on is really exciting for them. Anita is attracted to homoerotic undertones between pretty men, but on the other hand she is repulsed by it as she does think kind of like a man – that it’s wrong and dirty, and in the same way that some straight men believe lesbians can be cured by experiencing their penis, Anita believes that no man would ever be gay if they had been with the right woman (or her).

 

Anita would be an incredible poster-child for the ex-gay movement. "Sign up and bonk Anita, and those pesky feelings will just go right away!" (warning: the church takes no responsibility for death or injury caused by proximity to the doom-crotch).

 

But if being seen as a sex object freaks her out so much (and clearly it does, she threw a fit when Graham wanted to get into her pants and when guards started wearing red shirts despite her agreement with the policy) why does she continue to have public sex with multiple partners? Why did she participate with Augustine in a threesome in the middle of the room where the Masters had been meeting? Why did she have sex in the car with Graham in it – and getting a taste of her addictive sex mojo – if his presence bothered her, or if public sex bothered her?

 

Another hypocrisy – how does Anita choose her sex partners? Clearly she didn’t have sex with Graham as she didn’t find him attractive, but she didn’t want to bed Requiem even though she did find him hot?

Comments

[lilacwire.livejournal.com]

That's a big thing I have problems with - that her partners are picked by a magical need that is outside of her control, and it not only influences her, but seems to change basic facts about the partners as well (like gay men wanting sex with her). It's insulting and convenient and takes away any interesting quandaries that might arise with something that's more morally ambiguous. If one person would just "freak out" over this whole thing, it would have interesting connotations for Anita's whole universe.

I, for one, thought she was so much more interesting when she wouldn't have sex, or when it was a Big Deal.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Why does she need to even describe all this sex? If she just cut it down to, "Jason and I went to bed, to chase away the bad memories" and replaced the mammoth sex scenes with plot, no one would be bothered by the amount of bonking Anita does to feed the ardeur.

It's the immense sex scenes, and the angsting about it, that causes us to hate it. It takes up page space for no reason. If Anita treated it like it was business, spent two lines disappearing into another room for emergency sexxors, and came back and got on with actual plot - would anyone mind?

[entheogeneric.livejournal.com]

one point, i thought that whole thing with augustine was rape?


otherwise, interesting points.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

No. Augustine provoked Anita enough to raise the ardeur because he was kind of addicted to it after a spate in Belle-Morte's court yonks ago, so he caused it to rise and then agreed to be fed on and have sex with JC again and screw Anita at the same time (he also wanted to get into JC's pants again for some reason).

Richard said that they raped him, but according to Anita, JC and LKH, that's not what happened. In some form he did consent to the threesome, but it's a grey area because of the ardeur, his possible addiction to it, etc.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

I concur. I gotta say that this stance went from "mildly annoying" to "really infuriatingly insulting" over the course of her books. It's just bizarre to me that she consistently wants these men who are described in ways that are extremely effeminate compared to what is generally considered to be the cultural standard, who all live together and strip together and who have been naked together and sexual with each other before... and yet she's got this almost histrionic reaction to any implication of "other than straight" sexuality in any of them. Heaven forfend that after hundreds of years of undead living, these guys have all finally dealt with their own internalized homophobia to whatever extent that was relevant to their basic orientations.

I don't know why Asher and Jean Claude both didn't just tell her "Listen, INFANT, we have lived and loved for ten times your little lifespan and you don't know what you're talking about so either you can it with the ultimatums or hit the bricks." I know I'd sure be "Get good with it or get gone."
As I recall too, wasn't the only person who was actually allowed to be gay the were-hyena's Oba? And didn't he turn out to actually be a hermaphrodite in the end? As I recall he dies along with a whole bunch of other gay weres, because the punishment for being 100% gay in this series does tend to be a messy end. *sigh*
You notice how many of the actually evil characters are gay either by direct revelation or by mannerism? Nice. *glare*

One thing that does keep me reading though, I have to admit, is the train-wreck aspects of watching the author struggle with the issues that her characters are going through and the very, very obvious biases which she has. It's clear that she keeps drifting towards admitting that she finds gay men attractive and gay sex hot, but then she kind of freaks out and drags all the men back over to her by their collars, insisting that they remain faithful to only her and only women. And yet, Nathaniel the former male prostitute...who feeds Asher...who has lavender eyes and hair down to his ankles...HMMM. Alrighty then. Jean Claude (he of the flounces and leather and lace ensembles) is allowed to be -grudgingly- bisexual, but even then his attraction to Asher makes it sound more like he was humoring Asher's desire for him because he loved Asher than the fact that he genuinely kinda likes man sex himself.
The Augustine encounter (so with you on that one) really does throw a pretty huge spotlight on Laurel K's issues.
The whole thing makes me want to sit Laurel K. down and go "OK dear, what gay man broke your heart? Well that was a long time ago and you need to build a bridge and get over it sister. You have more issues than a National Geographic lending library and it's starting to affect your work.."

Anita needs a pair of big girl panties (so she can pull them up and deal with her issues) worse than any character I've ever read before.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Narcissus survived evidently, as Asher was frequenting his club in later books which squicked Anita because nobody had told her. LKH was never terribly clear what happened - it was said that Chimera had cut his limbs off and was keeping him in a box, but afterwards in her end of book "wrap-up" he was apparently preggers with Chimera's baby despite hermaphrodites being biologically sterile. No idea what happened to the supposed baby, I think he miscarried it. Point is, he would never have conceived in the first place.

It was noted in "Micah" that Asher had the hots for Nathaniel and had somehow never acted upon it. Anita asked Nate if he were afraid to be left alone with Asher - but he said not. So either they were bonking and he was too diplomatic to tell her, or he just wasn't threatened by the attraction in the way that Anita is.

[yashakizu.livejournal.com]

I just came across this community today and am so glad to see others writing the same critiques that I've done in my personal journal.

This comment pretty much sums up how I feel about the Anita books: "really infuriatingly insulting." As a bisexual, I just want Jean-Claude and Asher to somehow kill off Anita and sever the ties of the Triumvirate so that JC and (yes, ick) even Richard will survive without a person who obviously has no problem with random sexual encounters but wants to control other people's sexual partners and sexuality. If Hamilton is going to write vampires perhaps she can imagine that they don't think/view the world in 21st century human terms--especially with regards to varying sexualities?

[pandaemonaeum.livejournal.com]

Another hypocrisy – how does Anita choose her sex partners? Clearly she didn’t have sex with Graham as she didn’t find him attractive, but she didn’t want to bed Requiem even though she did find him hot?

I think this is the only part of your post with which I have issues. Not wanting to go to bed with someone, even if they're 'hot' really isn't hypocracy. It's a choice. There could be a number of reasons for it (which no doubt LKH fudges and muddles).

The rest of it is all stuff which bothers me. I know people who are polyamorous or 'swingers' and are open about it. They have none of the discomfort LKH writes into Anita. Yes, even the Catholics :) You can't even blame her it entirely on religious upbringing - I can assure you that one half of my family was strict Catholic, the other half strict Protestant, and between them there was nothing that they didn't consider sinful. I don't have any particular homophobia or anything.

My opinion is that LKH suffered for several books from a massive case of indecision. When she finally made the decision, she also had started writing faery porn and decided she quite liked it, so fit Anita into that same pornographic mould, so to speak. The old fans couldn't see Anita doing that, it wasn't true to the character, hence the ardeur. It's a terrible excuse. I could forgive LKH descending into porn if there was any indication that the characters actually enjoyed it. They have sex the way that anorexics eat - because they have to, with no enjoyment whatsoever.

I should probably point out that the reason people aren't having a problem with all the males forced into sex in the books is because of exactly the attitude to Byron you highlight - people think that if a man ejaculates, he enjoyed the sexual act which led to it, which isn't strictly true. It's usually not discussed that women can experience arousal during rape, or that they will 'willingly' offer up lesser sex acts to avoid rape (the whole first scene with Micah nearly made me ill, because that was almost a textbook observation of this exact behaviour, and I thought LKH was doing something truly edgy). But men can be, and are, raped, and not just by other men. It's almost as if sexual abuse of men by women is taboo - like "women would never do such a thing", to quote Queen Victoria.

If LKH had just written Anita becoming sexually dysfunctional following her rape by Micah, that would be edgy. But all of this 'ardeur' crap is just so much bollocks. It's like reading those awful romances where the heroine is blackmailed into 'unspeakable acts'. If I wanted to read that, there is a whole genre I would spend my cash on. If LKH wanted to write that, it's easy enough to get it published as such, rather than this pretence at paranormal detective stories she's continuing.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Oops, I didn't want to give the impression that not wanting to sleep with someone hot was a hypocrisy. I'm struggling to put into words how to explain it - Anita flashes between being picky and taking anyone in the vicinity. After she bonked Requiem and Byron just because they were there and apparently willing, and London even though he wasn't until she addicted him, it's odd to see her suddenly get choosy about who to sleep with. It seems to me that she picks certain sex partners (JC, Richard, Micah) because she likes them and wants to, some (Asher, Nathaniel) because they are a compromise or she has been badgered into doing it and some (Requiem, Byron, Rafael, London etc) because they were just there.

There's also an element of some of her sex partners (e.g. London, Byron, Requiem) being picked for emergency sex or otherwise because up until that point they didn't see her as a sex object. Graham, who has looked at her that way all along, is. It's immensely confusing.

LKH claims to be a Wiccan. The Pagan community is a large percentage GLBT, and polyamory etc are well enough known to be discussed happily on Pagan hubs like Witchvox. Wicca preaches tolerance & acceptance of all lifestyles. As a Pagan myself, LKH's squicking baffles me. Why even write about it?

I LOATHE the idea that a man cannot be raped. It is even enshrined in law; that it's only rape if penetration of a woman occurs. Even if the man has an erection, he can refuse to consent, he can be raped. He can't control having an erection or not. His body might say yes, but if his mind says no, that is rape, and the mind (and voice) saying no is what law distinguishes as nonconsensual.

[pastygothchick.livejournal.com]

I should probably point out that the reason people aren't having a problem with all the males forced into sex in the books is because of exactly the attitude to Byron you highlight - people think that if a man ejaculates, he enjoyed the sexual act which led to it, which isn't strictly true. It's usually not discussed that women can experience arousal during rape, or that they will 'willingly' offer up lesser sex acts to avoid rape (the whole first scene with Micah nearly made me ill, because that was almost a textbook observation of this exact behaviour, and I thought LKH was doing something truly edgy). But men can be, and are, raped, and not just by other men. It's almost as if sexual abuse of men by women is taboo - like "women would never do such a thing", to quote Queen Victoria.

LKH does seem to know that men can be raped (Stephen in The Killing Dance and Peter in Obsidian Butterfly), but she doesn't seem to believe that applies to Anita. It's actually common for sexual perpetrators to believe that acts of rape are consensual sex. There was a study done by Ms. magazine published in a book entitled I Never Called It Rape they gave questionnaires to men and women in college campuses. The first question was "Have you ever raped someone?". A large percentage of the men who answered "no" to that question and then answered subsequent questions about their sexual history answered "yes" to questions that defined the legal definition of rape. When the women were asked "Have you ever been raped?", a large percentage of those who answered "no" also answered "yes" to questions that fit the legal definition of rape when asked about their sexual histories. (I will have to dig out the book for any exact percentage.)

My personal beef is the way she treats survivors of sexual abuse. Her portrayal of Peter specifically. If Peter were given proper therapy and support from his family, it would be unlikely that his psyche would twist as badly as it has. Reasons for this would be his age at the time of the attack, he obviously didn't want it to occur and it was called exactly what it was by other people. Many survivors face trauma after the incident because of the psychological confusion that occurs because of the incident. "Was it rape?" "Did I ask for it?" Then the confusion leads to the survivor remaining quiet and not talking about it. With Peter it was clear what happened. Edward states that he was taken to therapy. The fact that Peter would have sexual issues is accurate, I just don't believe that Peter's issues would go where LKH decided they did.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

[i]"In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other’s dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy category for me. You don’t undress in front of people who see you as a sex object."[/i]

Wow, that's really insulting and amazingly egotistical. Look, sweetheart, if you were her friend, she probably wouldn't view you as a "sex object" even if she was attracted to you, and while this may blow your mind, she might not have actually been attracted to you at all. Being a lesbian doesn't make me want to jump the bones of every female I see, and I can tell you that out of ALL of the LOADS of straight female friends, I've only ever crushed on ONE. Any time anyone says anything like this, my response is always "Don't flatter yourself." But then, this is Anita, how cna she not flatter herself?

[yashakizu.livejournal.com]

Internalized misogyny/homophobia much? I see a lot of that in Anita, and by proxy, LKH.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

I hate it when straight male friends start acting like just because I'm gay, I'm gonna want to jump them at the first possible opportunity. All the joking "Hey now, I don't swing that way.." and "don't follow me into the bathroom.." sorts of "fending me off" jokes. Ugh. AS IF, sunshine.
And actually, that's what I've started to tell them. *laugh* Amazing how insulted they look when they find out that, no, I'm actually not attracted to you.

Anita definitely strikes me as the type to demand "Why not?" if you told her that, though.

[othellia.livejournal.com]

Another hypocrisy – how does Anita choose her sex partners?

Simple. She enters a room and picks out the guys wearing red shirts.

[lilacwire.livejournal.com]

Insert Star Trek joke here.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

Must make going to gay days at Disneyland interesting.

[mystoflare.livejournal.com]

I thought she chose them based on how pretty they are and how gigantic their penis is. *just unmanned Micah in a ficlet* >D

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

She's just trying to be modest. Let us play along.

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend.

So, are we talking about three different people here, or being oddly thorough in describing just one?

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

This is Anita being sure that everyone knows this was JUST a friend who was female, not a girlfriend in the "lesbian!!!" manner. Either that, or Anita was unable to form coherent sentences at that point. There's no need to write a character's inability to speak properly, though, you could just say, "she stuttered," rather than going "I-I-I-I w-w-w-w-ant..."

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I agree with almost everything you've said, except one thing: "Augie" or "Auggie" is a perfectly correct nickname for Augustine. I don't know what else it would be a nickname for, in fact.

[yashakizu.livejournal.com]

I'm not the OP, but what bothers me about "Auggie" is why would you shorten such a beautiful name, such as Augustine, into Auggie? ;) Perhaps I'm just sensitive since Americans seem to automatically think shortening my long name down is okay to do when I tell them I go by "long name" and don't shorten it or go by a nickname. ><

[denelian.livejournal.com]

also.. an aside/nitpick
Sylvie HAS A GIRLFRIEND. this girlfriend, whose name escaped me at the moment, has appeared in MORE THAN ONE NOVEL, has a fleshed-out character, has a profession - se is a psychologist - and even FUCKING COUNSELS ANITA

argh!!!!!!!!!!

[morriganscrow.livejournal.com]

Gwen.

[shimmerfox.livejournal.com]

"it is said that Belle-Morte and Musette do not believe that it is rape if the rapist has previously had consensual sex with their victim before" - Am I the only one disturbed with Anita thinking anything out of those two is useful or moral? From more story consistency issues then anything else.

[mystoflare.livejournal.com]

When I read that, I wondered if it might not be Anita trying to justify her own present behavior by pointing to Big Bads and saying "Look, they do it and get away with it! But I love you all, so it's not rape! And they're Big Strong Badass Women, too, so why can't I do the same? Of course it's not rape, because I LUUUUV all of you penii men!"
Granted, that's a totally shitty way of trying to justify what still basically equates to rape, but given Anita's thrown herself and the poor sobbing plot to the Cooch Monster...

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

I love this post b/c it is so very achingly true. Homosexual characters get the shaft (or don't depending on what they really want). And is it just me or ar there only two lesbians ever mentioned? If so, it's understandable that they're dating each other. After all, if they're out looking for Ms Right they might 'contaminate' the rest of the dating pool. (Not that the female members of the dating pool ever seem to hit the double digits.)

And men get raped left, right, and center but no one bats an eyelash. (I skipped most of whatever-book-London-is-in but I did catch that scene. I felt an overwhelming urge to follow London into the bathroom to tell him all those things you're supposed to tell a rape victim - it's not your fault, let's call the police, you didn't bring it on yourself even with the addiction, etc. Then build an ark for the poor abused but occasionally excellent characters and sail away with them. We'd leave Anita on the mainland to try to hold the world-ending flood back with the force of her 'personality.')

Even more than Anita's inability to see/hear/experience a "NO!" I find JC's inability to defend either himself or anyone else even more troubling. B/c with his background of catamite and party favor and whipping boy, combined with the pressing NEED of the ardeur, he'd have to be all kinds of deliciously screwed up. (The incubus thing could have rocked if it weren't a magical STD. I'd love that concept in a more competent writer's hands.) And if he were even remotely healthy mentally/spiritually/emotionally the sanctity of "NO!" would be of paramount importance to him. But he can't say 'no' to Anita - not in their unequal relationship and not on behalf of her victims. Hell, he can't even say no to visitors. (And I'll leave untouched what I REALLY want to say about that and character development and character continuity. Seriously.) (I'll also shut up about what he should have been looking for in a Human Servant. Sheer power isn't everything.)

I love Asher (and his rage!) but the JC/Asher/Julianna relationship concerns me. To summarize my wild theories Asher did one of four things - picked Julianna as a game piece ONLY to keep JC since Asher was gay and JC was bi w/ strong leanings towards women, took Julianna b/c JC loved her and she was his strongest rival for JC thus securing an eternal link with JC, picked Julianna since they would all be mature enough for Asher/Julianna to be friends while Asher/JC and Julianna/JC were lovers, or Asher and JC are bi but with their strongest leanings in opposite directions so he went out to find a woman that they would both love and be attracted to who would be strong and mature enough to fulfill both of their needs as well as to communicate what she in turn needed from each of them(this last would be the hardest). Honestly, only options three and four could possibly end happily - or in centuries long mourning and misery. (Although JC with performance problems w/o a girl has interesting shades of angst and humor in it. I'd love it if it was done correctly - especially if he really did love Asher.)

(And JC must be all flavors of fantastic in bed, his looks completely aside. I mean, everyone has had his cookies several times and they all want to possess the bakery. And centuries don't seem to dull the urge to keep the baker.)

I can't comment on Richard since I have many, many delightfully screwed up theories on Richard/Anita. To summarize I'm thinking he's a Phillip replacement and she's very carefully blind.

That thing with the college lesbian was just hurtful and unnecessary. I've been on the straight side of that equation and there's no need to get all weird and paranoid. (And I'm all about hugs and sharing beds in hotel rooms and whatever.) She should just be gracefully flattered if some poor lesbian shows an interest in her. (After all, in that universe lesbians are like unicorns!)

At the end of the day, it says something unpleasant about you when you're comparing possible sexual partners with Star Trek red shirts. Really, really unpleasant.

So yeah. I mostly agree with your thoughts.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Ah, can I friend you? You've definitely picked up on a lot of what bothered me about these books :D Relationships ought to be interesting between characters, but this screwed up, they tend to disturb.

Asher stated in "Danse Macabre" the following explanation:

"I sought a woman for my human servant when I realized that Jean-Claude would never be content with just men, with just me."

So it must be a combination of the first and the fourth explanation that you offered. The relationship apparently only lasted about twenty years or so before Julianna's death. Asher must have cared for her, as he mourned her death to the point of hating JC over it, and they both left Belle-Morte to protect Julianna from being pimped out by Belle-Morte to her favourites who would have abused her (note that one of Belle-Morte's favourites, like Anita's, was noteworthy only because of his monstrous soda-can penis.)

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

It's all about being edgy and selling books. Hurting people by portraying gays as confused, messed-up sex fiends who just haven't met the right girl yet doesn't matter one bit as long as the dollars keep rolling in. Just like it doesn't matter that Anita rapes men, because after all, men can't really be raped, can they? Oh, or that LKH tells us that everyone in the BDSM community are just a bunch of sadistic perverts who wear leather and rape each other all day. According to LKH, all of these people are sexual deviants who do what they do because they were abused as children and just need the right woman to *ahem* "straighten" them out. As a bisexual woman who was raped, I find this theme to be horribly inaccurate as well as just plain nasty. I'd call GLAAD if I didn't think that LKH would just enjoy the exposure and ignore what's behind it. Apparently, any attention is positive attention to Team Laurell.*cough*Penny Arcade*cough cough*

I wonder if LKH is the only one writing the books these days. According to her site, Jon has quite a bit of input nowadays. The author of the newer books is "Ma Petite Enterprises", not Laurell K. Hamilton. The blatant homophobia and misogynistic undertones would make a lot more sense if a man (with little life experience, and no, I certainly don't think that all men think this way.) were helping to write the books. Maybe I just have trouble believing that a woman could be that ridiculously close-minded, especially about rape. I've got to keep reminding myself of the upbringing that LKH had, and that old habits seem to die hard, if at all.

What I do know is that,in the books, as long as it's Anita's kink, it's ok. Everything is dirty and wrong. Gays are gross, but public sex is just dandy. Lesbians are icky, but orgies are A-OK. Sure, Anita bitches and moans about it all (over and over and over), but she doesn't do anything to stop it, either. Jean-Claude has the Ardeur, and he isn't bonking one half of the free world. Anita doesn't control the Ardeur because she doesn't want to. Plain and simple.

I agree with you about Anita's jealously issues. She certainly does have a problem, doesn't she? A long time ago, these books ceased to be a story with a real plot and became the writer's fantasy vehicle. If you look up the definition of "Mary Sue-ism", you will see the Anita Blake series listed there as a reference. Anita has multiple sex partners but refuses to allow any of her many and vast lovers to do the same. The fact that all of the men are just fine with this is completely ridiculous. In the books, it was chalked up to, get this, magic. Wow, that's a plot device for you! Way to puzzle it out, Ms. Hamilton! When he was three, my brother blamed "magic" for the destruction of my barbie collection. The fact that a grown woman uses it over and over as a plot device in her books is very telling. What it really is, is the author's fantasy world where everything that her avatar does or says is right and just. Of course, all of the supporting characters would go along with this because it's a fantasy. It's not writing. It's pretend time. Of course, many people would love to have a similar set-up. That doesn't make it a plausible storyline.

I used to read and enjoy the AB series, but once "Narcissus in Chains" came out, I lost all respect for the books and for their author. I wonder if LKH understands how many of us feel about the way she portrays alternative lifestyles (god, I hate that label but I can't think of anything else to call it), but I doubt she cares. Like I said, it's all about the money. She has her little band of merry enablers, and her big paycheck. That's all that seems to matter. It makes me sad, to be honest.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree. The author insert, the Mary Sue, the wish fulfilment vehicle - all have been aspects of Anita from the beginning. Most characters have a drop of their author, otherwise they wouldn't be written properly, but to go that far is pretty bad.

The progression of relationships in the series aren't even written well. There was a note in the early books that she and Richard had been dating for "months" when JC decided to blackmail her into dating him - but where were the dates, the actual writing of tender scenes? It just seemed false. Anita was so incapable of being in a relationship with its compromises that when Richard surprised her at her flat with dinner, she was bitching about her space. How could they have a future if she didn't take nice surprises well, and they can't survive their arguments?