Why does Anita hunt vampires?

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Why does Anita hunt vampires? Because I don't think we're ever given a reason why. She just does.

She seems very devoted to it,and she also talks about what a tax it is on her soul to have to execute those that are awake, strapped to a gurney, and begging for their lives. So this is a difficult job for not just in that it's a very high-risk and dangerous one, but also very emotionally hard. So why does she keep doing it? What is her motivation? Unlike, say, Buffy or Blade, it's not like she can't get out. They both have special physiologies (better strength, better speed, faster healing etc.) that enable them to better at fighting the vampires in a world where very few people even know these creatures exist and are preying on them, let alone are equipped to deal with them. That's not the case with Anita. Her original animator powers gave her a bit of an edge in terms of evading the mental powers of vampires, but physically she was nothing special, and EVERYONE knows about vampires, there are loads of other executioners out there, etc.

So what made her want to become a vampire slayer?

I've heard it be suggested that maybe she became one just because she felt that having that edge as an animator meant she was morally obligated to use it to protect the populace. I'm not sure I buy it though. Firstly, Anita is so damn selfish. It's not believable to me at all that she loves her harem, so I can't believe the idea she'd care enough about people she's never met to put her life on the line for them. And even if I could buy that she started for that reason, what about why she continued even when she claims it was so tough on her to kill like she did? I don't believe it was actually tough on her at all, personally, but let's just say that what LKH is trying to portray is in fact the truth, that Anita really is a hero, that this really does tear her up, etc. What prompts her to keep doing it?

I think she just wants a license to kill. In the early books, there are times where she seems to almost hate vampires, see them as all dangerous monsters, etc. In the later books, she alternates between 'they're monsters!' and 'they're people!' depending on who she's talking to; basically, whatever position the other person has, Anita takes the opposite one and is portrayed as being right every time in comparison to the other person and LKH doesn't seem to realize she's flip-flopping all the time at all. But no reason as to why she would feel hostile to vampires as she does is ever given. I draw two conclusions from this:

1) Anita just likes to argue with people, make them feel bad for their beliefs, and feel superior

and

2) Anita doesn't actually believe in either position, because she doesn't care enough to take a side. She's just a power-obsessed murderous sociopath who wants to pretend she's a hero, so she takes a position that will allow her to kill people and be 'right' for it.

While I was reading Skin Trade, she said over and over that she was a government-sanctioned assassin, that vampires could be killed legally for very minor things, that she was a serial killer in her own way, and so on. And LKH tried to make her sound brooding and grimdark, but she came off as both whiny and insincere. She sounded more like she was relishing talking about this stuff so much I could just imaging LKH's inner glee as she wrote this over HOW COOL IT IS and HOW COOL ANITA IS and she just can't stop it from bleeding into Anita's words and tone instead of actually trying to look at it from the POV of someone who really was like that, really did those things, really was jaded and wounded, etc.

So, what say you? Does Anita have a reason for being an executioner that you can recall? Do you think she does it because of her animator edge, a desire to kill without reproach, both, neither, something else? Why did she start? Why does she continue? And do you think SHE even believes what LKH has her spout just to spite people?

Comments

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

I think that the core of it is that Anita likes being able to kill with no real consequences to her, she likes getting attention for it and doesn't really care what kind of attention it is as long as she gets to feel superior to everyone else. She is the opposite of an assassin in attitude (that requires some knowledge of stealth and not being noticed).

It isn't just what she says, but what she does. She barges into places and demands respect without ever bothering to earn it first. She never seriously considers finding other employment. She doesn't bother to take care of herself because she has the harem to do it for her.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I agree 100%. I do wonder, though, since I'm sure this isn't how LKH sees it, what reason, if any, LKH has in mind for her motive? Surely she must have thought of one? Since that's kind of important.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

On the Anita as an Excecutioner thought. WHY oh WHY do they always have to hunt the vamps at night? Why do they need to capture them THEN kill them. And if you have to capture before killing. Why not find out where they are sleeping during the day, secure them then go on with the warrent at sundown.

I can understand staking vamps during the day when they are asleep would be a pretty dull action scene. But what has struck me in the last few books is that every single confromtation with 'rogue' vampires has been well STUPID. Rushing into known vamp lairs at night...when they know you are coming, ill prepared with ill trained teams of people. When there isn't a huge time crunch, when things can be better planned. All this is usually to show how much 'better' Anita is to all cops in existance.

Maybe thats why she keeps going out of town, because after the first debacle most law enforcement agencies would LEARN and adapt, keeping one PD making the same mistakes over and over would eventually tax even a troo's suspension of disbelief.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I can understand staking vamps during the day when they are asleep would be a pretty dull action scene.

Yup. Which is why as an author she should have figured out good reasons for why they would have to do otherwise at the times they did. But she's not, so...no explanation, everyone is just stupid.

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

I can understand staking vamps during the day when they are asleep would be a pretty dull action scene.

Wasn't there a scene in one of the books where they did that? I think Anita was tagging along with Edward and they were injecting the sleeping vampires with silver but then a strong vampire woke up or something.

[zombiexbunny.livejournal.com]

It was the first book. They went to kill Aubrey, Valentine, Nickolos (sp). They killed the first 2, but Nickolos was gone when they opened her coffin.

[luscious-words.livejournal.com]

I stopped reading the series long ago, but I simply could not resist commenting to this paragraph - While I was reading Skin Trade, she said over and over that she was a government-sanctioned assassin, that vampires could be killed legally for very minor things, that she was a serial killer in her own way, and so on. And LKH tried to make her sound brooding and grimdark, but she came off as both whiny and insincere. She sounded more like she was relishing talking about this stuff so much I could just imaging LKH's inner glee as she wrote this over HOW COOL IT IS and HOW COOL ANITA IS and she just can't stop it from bleeding into Anita's words and tone instead of actually trying to look at it from the POV of someone who really was like that, really did those things, really was jaded and wounded, etc.

I've thought that Anita has sounded insincere and overwhelmingly whiny since she got hit with the amour. No, make that before then when she'd talk about her turmoil over loving two men. I can only imagine that it is worse now that she has a harem and is executing vampires. I definitely would be throwing the books across the room if it's worse than it used to be.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

It is. Much, much worse.

[luscious-words.livejournal.com]

My stomach churns at the thought. I...I really cannot find words to express my thoughts because I remember how tedious I found Anita's proclivity to whining. I guess LKH thought she was writing Anita to be contemplative, but I don't find her contemplative. Whiny, self-serving, self-centered, and self-righteous are terms that spring to mind.

Side note is that I just realized I wrote "amour" when I meant "ardeur" - yes, it's been that long since I read LKH anything. I think the last one was 2005 after I had the dubious pleasure *coffs* of seeing LKH and Jon once again at the RT Booklover's Con. (She made other signing appearances here in Cincinnati, which left me underwhelmed by her.)

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

If you wanna see for yourself just how bad it's gotten, I'm currently sporking/summarizing Skin Trade chapter-by-chapter!
http://a-sporking-rat.livejournal.com/

[luscious-words.livejournal.com]

Because I have this thing called morbid curiosity, I checked it out - I first horrified by the fact that you're up to chapter sixty-something. Then I realized I was going to hate myself for looking, so I made the agreement with myself to go back to it later. :)

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

I'll have to see if it was covered in the prequel comic (which I actually own). I can't remember the specifics of that off hand, but it dealt a bit more with vampire hunting.

But I think it has more to do with Manny. Manny found her and trained her to do this. So she does it for her substitute father figure who was sooo cool.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

It's not. She's already an executioner and already knows Edward. The events cover that one time she met Valentine and got branded by human servants. She's meant to be a n00b, but...LKH has admitted that she can't un-know something so it's full of inconsistencies.

And the Vampire Victim comic is Anita getting to lecture a cop about how vampires have rights now and a vampire is like "hey thanks for sticking up for me!" and Anita getting all "shut it, fangface, you're still a monster!" and then there's a Scooby moment at the very end because it turned out a human was responsible for the murder.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

A nice LOGICAL way to deal with this is to simply state. "It pays well." Seriously added Vampire Hunter to her resume as a Animator would help her 'Job Prospects' so to speak.

Or a toss in an early books about "When I first got out of collage, the jobs for a woman who can raise the dead were scarce...Manny told me to try to be certified as a Vampire Executioner, with my animator skills I was less vulerable to the mind tricks, and because of the danger, pays well."

There...nice simple and neat. But oh...not nearly as 'cool' sounding thou.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Yup. 'For the money' just isn't as awesome and might actually make Anita sound GREEDY and she can't have any flaws that actually count for real as flaws versus stuff that makes her cool and dark and tragic!

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Or less greedy...and more "Well what ELSE am i going to do with this Paranormal Studies Degree? Flip burgers at McDonalds?" Make being an Executioner far less 'glamourous' I mean come on....the hours stink, you'll be sleeping most of the day...spend large parts of the night in dusty basements, holes, caves ect looking for vampires. Going though all the paperwork and such to get warrents. Dealing with the paperwork AFTER killing the vamps. Heaven help them all if something goes wrong and you are hurt/bit on the job.

What kind of Workmans Comp is there for a Vampire Hunter anyway? The COBRA/Insurance would be a complete and utter NIGHTMARE for any HR person.

So they are either paid crap...since whomever hires them has got to go though hades to get them properly covered. Or they are 'independent contractors' and paid well...but no protections or benifits at all.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Going though all the paperwork and such to get warrents. Dealing with the paperwork AFTER killing the vamps.

Actually, in Skin Trade, when a regular police officer mentions having to answer to his supervisor, Anita monologues to us about how super-cool feds like herself don't have to "answer to their hierarchy much" because the U.S. Marshals Service didn't like how they were "grafted on". Because not liking someone means not requiring them to answer for anything they do, apparently? And then we get a page on how "our warrants of execution were the only paperwork" because back when they had to fill out reports "the details were so grim, so disturbing" that it was decided that the stuff the preternatural branch does shouldn't be "immortalized on paper." Yup, so darkity-dark grim-dark that not even the feds, who work with all the horrible things that humans do to each other, can handle it, so she gets out of all the boring parts of the job. I'm serious.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

Clearly, LKH has never run into someone like me. When I'm uneasy with a task/workmate/situation, I document EVERYTHING.

If I was in charge of people like Anita, Edward, and Olaf, I'd be documenting EVERYTHING. And I'd make THEM document EVERYTHING, right down to how they feel when they first wake up in the morning. And I'd want to know all about the eighty unaccounted for minutes in Anita's report during which twelve people 'disappeared'/turned up dead/were raped.

I'd have many, many questions. And if I disliked the answers, being fired would be the very least of her/their worries.

Also, LKH has probably never read a true trial transcript. If they're willing to let the public read the specifics of Defendant X's case, a man who was accused of torturing his victims and then beheading them with his own shoes laces when they got boring or the police were too close (true case, by the way), then the staking of a slavering vamp isn't going to be very hush-hush.

If a career field has no paperwork, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the people who work in that field don't get paper warrants of execution, either. Those people also don't get to be acknowledged as the Tuffest in the Land. In fact, if they're VERY good, I imagine no one ever even knows that they were there.

[lady-fellshot.livejournal.com]

If I was in charge of people like Anita, Edward, and Olaf, I'd be documenting EVERYTHING. And I'd make THEM document EVERYTHING, right down to how they feel when they first wake up in the morning. And I'd want to know all about the eighty unaccounted for minutes in Anita's report during which twelve people 'disappeared'/turned up dead/were raped.

They are indeed answerable to someone in the US Marshalls hierarchy. Everyone in law enforcement is answerable to some one. Everyone else needs to document their time spent in the field and there's no real reason why sanctioned vampire hunters shouldn't have reports to file like everyone else.

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

You'd also think that they'd want to document strategies that work and don't work to develop better protocols.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

And they'd want to swap less stupid techniques than 'chase vampire into the darkness without even stopping for the appropriate night-vision goggles.' (Which is ALWAYS Anita's preferred technique. Honestly, by the law of averages, she should've been maimed by now. Possibly the 'unreasonably' tall people she goes hunting with take the hit for her?)

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps not stopping to 'feed the ardeur' so the sun conveniently goes down before they show up to stake a vamp. Perhaps if that had been in a report somewhere we wouldn't have to read it happening so many times. um hum. That would work, strategies and what not, reports, patterns of abuse...what?

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

All very true! But, since LKH has yet to notice the fact that police people take in poorly when Policeman X turns up as a serial killer (and do not, in fact, politely look away from the facts), these lovely, logical points are crushed under "It's too haaard! And Anita doesn't waaant to!"

And this, I suspect, explains a lot of the AB-verse's 'rules.'

(But, as a side note, I'd love mountains of paperwork for vampire hunters.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

But, since LKH has yet to notice the fact that police people take in poorly when Policeman X turns up as a serial killer (and do not, in fact, politely look away from the facts), these lovely, logical points are crushed under "It's too haaard! And Anita doesn't waaant to!"

Preeetty much, alas

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

It's terrible but, looking back at that snippet of what I wrote, I'm tempted to make AB-style That's What She Said jokes. ^_^

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

Think of all the moody dark whinging she could do over having to file a year's backlog of reports and paperwork. I might actually read that book.

OH and incidentally when has Anita ever met anything 'hard' that she DIDN'T want to do. :-P

[magdalen77.livejournal.com]

Obviously LaLa has never worked for the government. There is paperwork for everything. And yeah, no one gets the authority to do something drastic as a death warrant without beaucoup back up paperwork and justification. Even if it didn't make any damn sense for getting a death warrant to be so easy for Anita and other executioners, there's such a thing as civil servants being very conscious of the important of CYOA.

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

AND especially since we are pretending as if vampires are citizens and stuff, the complete lack of any burden of proof or paper trail in this world makes me irritated.

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

We are all very familiar with Anita's brand of 'love' so if she is doing it for her 'love' of mankind then I am happy I don't live in her St. Louis!

At this point it all reads as Anita power tripping her way through life being the biggest, sexiest, specialist snow flake of them all, for ever and ever, amen.

As to why she started I can't even fathom it. I wish it were something that gave her credibility for all the brooding, like instead of her stepmom being TOO BLOND and not liking Anita because Anita isn't BLOND enough, she could have been a vampire that glamoured Anita's father and killed him or some such, then teen age Anita the necromancer goes crizazy and kills the step mom and finds that she's filled with rage for 'monsters' OR ANYTHING at all...anything really. Even a hand wave of a reason. Instead we've got nothing. Just a fully formed Anita 'the-vampire-hunter-for-no-reason' Blake.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I know, it bugs me so much!