Question to group re: Narcissus In Chains

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

Greetings, all. I've been a LOOOOOOOOOONG time lurker but this is my first post in a while, and I got a question.



I've got a blog where I flog books, and I FINALLY got around to NIC--it is the book that broke me on the Anita Blake series, HARD--and I'm at what I THOUGHT was the infamous Micah-shower-rape scene, but when I was re-reading some of the posts around here, I started getting this funky feeling, because that's not how I remember the book running.

I'm using the e-book edition because it's what I have access to and it makes flogging a lot easier. Here's the sequence of events I have:

Chapter nine: Anita wakes up after the weresnake battle in the knife room with a bunch of other naked people. She seduces Micah into letting her feed on him, as in drink blood, to slake Jean Claude's hunger. There are mentions of Micah being "trapped" between their bodies, so unless this became a threesome no actual sexing occured in chapter 9. Also, may I add that this entire scene MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER and creeps me out to no end.

Chapter 10: Anita is crying in the shower.

Chapter 11: Anita and Micah do have sex, and she tells him no, please don't, no birth control, ect. ect.

However, the first comment on this post here implies that the sex/rape scene happens before Anita is crying in the shower:

the sex scene with Micah is different in the hardcover version. In that version, Anita tells Micah 'no' two or three times, and begs him not to do anything, because she's not on birth control, and he says something to the effect of "I know you want me, i can smell it" and had sex with her anyway...then in the following chapter, Anita sat in the shower crying, because logically 'no-means-no=she was raped'. They edited it later for the paperback to make it more consensual.

In the edition I read, the chapter preceeding the shower scene, Jean Claude pressured Anita into seducing Micah...I think. In the chapter following Anita and Micah having actual sex, 12, Nathaniel is taking Anita home. No shower. I have no way to get my hands on a hardcopy version of the book, and I blocked my memories of reading it the first time. so am I just reading it wrong? Or did something get changed?

Comments

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

I did read the original version.

Anita was raped in the shower. She was crying in the shower and Micah came in and raped her. Or at least that is what I recall. There was soap involved in lubing her, I think.

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

Alright, then I guess I just read it wrong, or something.

Though given how Jean Claude uses her to feed in chapter nine, and Anita's showering afterwards, I'd say that she got raped twice in a row. Which might be kind of why I remember this being arranged differently.

I am so glad I stopped reading in chapter 10 the first time. My god, this book is terrible.

[collectively.livejournal.com]

Okay, I read this probably 10+ years ago when it first came out, and I don't remember the shower scene clearly - but I most *definitely* remember there being a shower scene. I can't speak to what or how much may have been edited, but there has to have been something, because I very clearly remembering Anita being in the shower.

[zombiexbunny.livejournal.com]

If someone doesn't get to this by then, I will check my hardback when I get home tonight after work.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Here's the changed parts per Lashouts- they are in the shower at this time.

Hardcover:

I found I did have a voice and said, "Micah, stop, please stop."
Micah licked the back of my neck, and I shuddered, pressed against the wet wall.
"Please, Micah, I'm not on birth control." A clear thought at last.
He bit softly at the back of my neck. "I had myself fixed two years ago. You're safe with me, Anita."
"Please, Micah, please don't."
right after that is when Micah rapes her, so she never actually gave consent


Paperback:

I found I did have a voice and said, "Micah, Please," but I was no longer sure what I was aksing.
Micah licked the back of my neck, and I shuddered, pressed against the wet wall.
"Please, Micah, I'm not on birth control." A clear thought at last.
He bit softly at the back of my nect. "I had myself fixed 2 years ago. You're safe with me, Anita."
'Please Micah, please don't. If we have sex I'll feed on you. Feed on you like some kind of vampire."
"Then feed, if thats what you need, what you want."
He bit harder, just this side of drawing blood, and my body went passive, calm.

I do believe that somewhere in the Shower Scene, Anita DOES ask JC for help with the 'problem' with Micah, rather than sending help, he makes her grope him (Micah) and then cuts off from her.

[cheeky-duckie.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's incredibly uncomfortable.

[slybrarian.livejournal.com]

How does being "fixed" even work with a werewhatever? Also, that word in relation to a male part-time animal brings up entirely different connotations than it does with a normal guy...

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I believe it was with silver staples. And yes, I hated the use of that term too for the same reasons.

[the-mome-wrath.livejournal.com]

I thought even silver jewelry burned werecreatures? I remember Gabriel saying something about it in one of the early books when Anita comments on his piercings. I'd imagine that silver staples would hurt like crazy all the time.

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

Wow, I definitely read the soft-back the first time. And I thought THAT was awful! *shudders*

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

May I have a link to your flog blog? :3

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

I think the flogging of NIC starts here: http://creativedoubledipper.blogspot.com/2012/12/narcissus-in-chains-overview-and.html

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much!

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I...uh, cuss a lot. And I'm also having a lot of trouble making the chapters in question funny. Mostly because I remembered them as being a lot less...disgusting.

[queenmeow.livejournal.com]

I read your flog and enjoy it so far. What was LKH thinking? Does this woman have some sort of rape fetish? Her mary sue is raped by the gary stu of her now husband. I always thought this meant something since she uses her personal life for everything else in the series. It's so twisted and sad.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Rape gets used over and over after NiC as a way for Anita to have sex without wanting it, and it's never treated as rape, as bad, as traumatizing, etc. It's basically a way for Anita to have all the sex LKH wants her to and never be considered a "slut" for it like all those OTHER women who have sex by CHOICE, ewww! Because a woman just plain enjoying sex and choosing to have a lot is bad, being raped repeatedly by the men you love and becoming a rapist yourself isn't.

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

*nods*

It's that whole, not wanting to be responsible for yourself and your behavior thing. I think that's also why hypnosis-crime is still a trope even though Hollywood hypnosis isn't really a thing.

That said...NIC is really REALLY disturbing when I try to think about WHY LKH would have written that scene that way.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

I think that I read in an article somewhere that this was basically the reason why some women have “rape fantasies.” It’s a way of having your cake and eating it too. The female character is having sex (although maybe I shouldn’t describe it that way, since many object to using that phrase when describing the experience of a rape victim), but instead of actively pursuing it or flirting her way to get it, it’s forced on her. If she did actively pursue it, she’d be a “bad girl,” but since she doesn’t, she’s a “good girl.”

In a way, it’s kind of like the standard Reluctant Hero reaction to fame and wealth. The hero can’t appear to be too happy about gaining riches, otherwise he’d look greedy. He can’t appear to be too proud of himself for being the Chosen One, otherwise he’d look conceited. He has to be reluctant, so that he looks humble. In Anita’s case, she has to appear reluctant to have sex, otherwise she’d look lecherous (not that she isn’t).

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

I...um...am doing my best to avoid commenting on her personal life.

But hypothetically...:D

IF someone were to write something like what I just read, and they had a fetish, it would not be a rape fantasy with themselves as the rapee. All other concerns aside, LKH NAILED the emotional and physical responses to that situation. Everything prior to her actually orgasming is how a victim feels in that kind of situation. And I do not see anybody fantasizing about going through that. You do not get over that emotional trauma in an hour. Or in a couple of days, months, years, whatever.

And our brains are REALLY good at inserting parts of our personal lives into our creative work. I write a lot, and I go back and re-read old things and I'll be like "...I did not mean to write about that. I REALLY did not mean to write about that. Where did that even come from?" King wrote about himself and his addictions in Misery without meaning to, Terry Brooks did the same thing with Magic Kingdom for Sale/SOLD! and I think LKH has been doing that for a very, very, very long time. And I just don't want to touch it 'cause I'll probably find something nasty.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Everything prior to her actually orgasming is how a victim feels in that kind of situation. And I do not see anybody fantasizing about going through that. You do not get over that emotional trauma in an hour. Or in a couple of days, months, years, whatever.

I think that's why Anita never reacts that way again in any of the times after this that she is raped. Yes, she is raped again. And rapes other people. And sometimes they're raping each other at the same time because someone else is controlling them/their bodies or their beasts are (she turns out to be a non-shifting panwere with a zoo of inner beasts) or the ardeur is. And no one seems to ever be traumatized and it rarely even gets called rape.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

And I swear I just put this on your blog but it's not showing up (I'm RF) so I'll repeat it here...

...It is really weird, now that you mention it, that she can write a rape scene and its aftermath exactly right, in a really realistic way, not a fantasy way, and then say it wasn't rape, and rewrite it so it's not...but then fail so that it still is. And then not only that but go on to write all the non-realistic/non-traumatizing rape scenes since. And it's even creepier to me that she denies the realistic one was rape more than it creeps me out how she presents the subsequent unrealistic ones as not-rape too. I never even thought about that before, but now I've got the heebie-jeebies.

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

I think the spam filter is overly enthusiastic. Which it shouldn't be. :\ I fixed the comment.

That's why I think this is less "Oh she got it right!" and more she let things slip that she wasn't supposed to. Like I said, she IS a talented writer. She just doesn't understand, IMHO, how the process actually works well enough to write it as she wants it to be perceived (as opposed to how SHE perceives it) the first time around. And she doesn't really edit at all, so there IS no second time around.

It's also possible that she's so deep in denial the Pharaohs are sending supplies upriver. Denial about what, I don't know and I don't want to know.

And fixing the scene correctly the first time around would have required a true admission that she was wrong. Which she won't ever do. The fix seems to me as less "oh, dear, I wrote a rape scene" and more "Oh, f*ck, I've been caught!"

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

The fix seems to me as less "oh, dear, I wrote a rape scene" and more "Oh, f*ck, I've been caught!"

Yeah, now that I've reread it via your blog, it comes off a lot like that to me too. Ick.

[plastraa.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't think she thought she wrote a rape scene at all. Just a 'strong men being all manly and overcoming a woman's resistance, when the man KNOWS she wants it, is smexy' AND then got blow back from her publishers when they go blow back from the book buying public, and hurried to make it (only slightly) less rapey. (I'm sure she still thought all the complainers were prudes, since the following books have been filled with non-consensual sex in mass quantity.) :-\

And yes I also don't want to draw parallels between her writing and her real life, in that direction there be monsters!

[christwriter.livejournal.com]

The problem with not intending to write a rape scene is...she got the emotional reactions during and after a rape right. Exactly right. Creepily, dangerously right. As in I don't know if I could pull off something that uncomfortably correct. So either LKH did research on rape, or she subconsciously intended it to be a rape scene and didn't let her conscious brain know it.

Later on I think it was non-con fantasy, but this one scene...IDK what she was on, what she was doing, what she was thinking, but she wrote a freaking psychologically perfect rape scene.

[ladyniko.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. I didn't realize she edited it from edition to edition. How sickening that is to see how she made it "all right" for Anita to be raped and to continue on with the multiple non-con scenes in further books.