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

[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).