Blogflog - Dead Ice: Richard

[blogfloggery.livejournal.com]

Link: Dead Ice: Richard
Disclaimer: This blog entry is verbatim, as originally posted on LKH's blog. Copyright belongs to Ma Petite Enterprises.

Here’s the second in the blog series leading up to the June 9, 2015 release of Dead Ice. Since we started with Jean-Claude, it had to be Richard next.



Richard by Brett Booth

Question: Is the character of Richard Zeeman based on your ex-husband?

Answer: No.

Secrets to Share: This was a rumor that I never saw coming, because it was just so not reality. My ex-husband’s sister thought it was the funniest thing ever that people thought her big brother was the basis for Richard. I think that Richard’s skin tone might be the same as my ex, but there the resemblance ends. Personality wise, Richard is actually closer to me when I was just out of college with my BS in Biology. But he, like all my characters that truly come to life on the page, has grown and changed in ways I never saw coming and certainly didn’t plan. He’s become his own man, for better or worse.

Question: Are Richard and Anita ever going to marry?

Answer: Highly doubtful, I’d just say no, but I’ve been wrong so much about my own character’s personal lives that I’m hedging my bet.

Secrets to Share: In fact, I think one of the reasons Anita and Richard didn’t end up together was that I created him to be the perfect husband for her, or thought I did. The more I tried to push the two of them together, the more they fought it, but my original plan was for them to marry and live happily ever after. So much for me being the omnipotent Deity of my fictional universe. When Richard was created I could never have dreamed where Anita’s life would go, or my own for that matter. Fiction doesn’t mirror fact, but we’ve both done our own version of going from the conservative “good girl” to the much happier people we are today. As for you small, but vocal minority that are still urging me to kill off Jean-Claude and Micah, so that Anita can ride off into the sunset with Richard – no. Not only no, but absolutely, positively, not happening. Move on, nothing to see here.

Question: Will Richard ever find another person to be his one and only love?

Answer: I don’t know for certain, he’s surprised me too much over the years for me to say yes, or no.

Secrets to Share: I hope he does, and I have a few potential women in mind, for him it will have to a woman if it’s a new character. I think if any man could float his boat enough to have a full-fledged relationship with them then Jean-Claude would be that man. Richard is having a bondage and submission relationship with Asher but no sex. It meets a lot of bondage needs for both of them, but I don’t think either of them would want to actually date each other. What works great in the dungeon doesn’t always work outside of it. I still have hopes that Richard, Jean-Claude, and Anita might be a fully functioning menage a trois, but I think too much has happened for it to be what it might once have been, more’s the pity. I keep hoping that special female werewolf will come along for him but he keeps wanting to date women that have no preternatural ties which doesn’t really work for the Ulfric, wolf king, of St. Louis. He also keeps dating women who like pretty standard vanilla sex and that really isn’t what Richard likes. I’ve even written a short story, “Shutdown,” where he tries to have his vanilla cake but keep his bondage cupcakes. I’ve had talks with people I was dating about polyamory and bondage, and I know people that seem to be successfully married to vanilla and, with full knowledge and permission of their spouse, they get their bondage needs met elsewhere; but it is not an easy talk to have and it takes a very special person to be okay with it. I’m not sure Richard is ever going to find someone that special, but I hope so, because I’d really like him to be happy and content with his life and himself.

Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:

Richard drew Jean-Claude in tighter against him and moved his other hand so that it was free, leaving room to wonder what he’d do if Asher tried to touch Jean-Claude. It was the kind of thing you do when someone is touching your girlfriend too much in a bar, and Richard gave him the challenging look that went with it. It was a way of saying, Mine, stop touching it, without saying anything.

Comments

[darkestgrace.livejournal.com]

So, Anita is her obvious self-insert, and Richard was written to be her perfect husband, but the relationship fell apart as her real-life marriage did, and she can't see where people could get the idea that Richard was based on her ex? How blind is this woman?

How would Jean Claude satisfy him? I haven't read the books in a while, but I can't remember them ever really getting on. The kind of grew to tolerate each other, but that was it. I got the impression that it was more of a business relationship, where they occasionally had sex.

She hopes that Richard will find someone special? She can write that someone in! Has she forgotten that she controls this universe? And why can't he date someone who's human? Have him start dating a co-worker who works out that he's a werewolf, and approaches him to let him know that she doesn't care. Have him meet someone when he's out hiking. He could date a sibling of a new werewolf, when he's helping them adjust and letting them know how to cope. So many ways to write this. If she can't, that probably means that she doesn't actually want him to move on.

Richard is in a BDSM relationship with Asher? When did this happen? I thought Asher left.

And another skeevy quote. Why is JC the damsel in distress? Is JC now incapable of saying 'please back off, Asher'? If he isn't saying that, then Richard doesn't really have the right to decide that Asher isn't allowed to touch. Also 'it'? Stop touching it? People aren't possessions and they aren't toys.

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

In Affliction JC and Anita discuss Asher.  Some carp about Asher messing up and needing to be brought back to St Louis.  Most likely as a good widdle master vamp who now knows his place in the Harem.

After all nobody can ever leave Anita for good.

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

I think the issue is that she doesn't want to let Richard just go off and do his own thing. He needs to be part of the Sooper Smexy poylamorous zoo where everyone fucks everyone else that Anita has going on. Which doesn't really lend itself to him having a serious relationship with anyone outside of that, let alone a relationship without Anita involved. God forbid he try monogamy and the much maligned non-BDSM sex. Like, I don't care- if that's what he's into, then do you, Richard. But it's such a change from the Richard she introduced into the series and had Anita dating for several books.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

oh I know, "IT"? Really?

The whole notion that she can't create characters, actually create them, and drive the basic push of the story, is so tedious. I do know of other authors who go for this muse thing but not to the extent LKH does.

[darkestgrace.livejournal.com]

I could understand if she was saying that writing romance for Richard just wasn't flowing organically, or it didn't fit in with the plot, or even that it wasn't a priority. I understand that sometimes the characters don't cooperate, and trying to put a romance somewhere that it doesn't fit normally turns out badly. She could even just say that she already had enough characters to manage and doesn't want to have to add to the cast. But she sounds like she genuinely believes that the only reason Richard doesn't have a girlfriend is that the right werewolf hasn't wandered into St Louis.

[elialshadowpine.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest a bat but that would be insulting to bats, and inaccurate to boot. :P

I haven't read the last several books, but where I last read, Jean Claude and Richard had something like a hostile, do not cross this line boundary thing. With what had been built up character-wise over the first 12 books or so, I honestly cannot imagine a way in which it could be written for them to be sexually involved without a LOT of character development. I do not trust LKH to have done the necessary development.

I am completely baffled by the "I hope someone comes along for him" type statement. Lady, it's your own world setting and characters. You can create another one. Really. You can color outside the lines (of your own making), too. I can think of so many potential romantic partner types for Richard, and I don't even like the character.

[cryptaknight.livejournal.com]

for him it will have to a woman if it’s a new character.

WTF is she even trying to say here?

This Richard/JC stuff just seems really preposterous to me.

[bronzed.livejournal.com]

She really seems to have an astonishing lack of awareness when it comes to the fact that as the author she could so easily make Richards perfect woman appear - a cousin of a were in his group visiting from city X who had poly parents but doesnt feel its right for her. But she doesnt mind if he has his arrangement with Anita as it could give her, the new gal in town, an instant group of trusted friends. There that was easy.

I just believe she wants Richard miserable so she can play pretend my ex is miserable and my life is so much more awesome than his will ever be! whether its the truth outside her head or not.

Edit: appeat is not a word, lol typo fixed

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

I agree.  My dream version of Shutdown would be if Richard's fiance WAS a professional domme who is relieved he's also big into kink.  She'd show him the scene and then some.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

That whole paragraph about Richard's love life and his "one true love" reads like she's talking about a real life person and it's CREEPY AS ALL HELL.

[jessica collett (from livejournal.com)]

What the fuck is up with his legs in that picture? What the hell?

Q1: 'But he, like all my characters that truly come to life on the page, has grown and changed in ways I never saw coming and certainly didn’t plan'. Yeah, like all your characters he's become an unbearable asshat.

Q2: 'Highly doubtful, I’d just say no, but I’ve been wrong so much about my own character’s personal lives that I’m hedging my bet'. Okay, Richard is FICTIONAL, you need to understand that, and isn't Anita getting married to JC? Ain't no way JC is letting her go, not after all the effort he went to to bend her to his will.

Q3: Yeah, you just keep putting him with vanilla women so Anita can lord it over them and get back at all those 'haters'.

[apep727.livejournal.com]

And now for Dead Ice Blogs 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Question: Is the character of Richard Zeeman based on your ex-husband?

No, Laurell, the question was "is Richard a stand-in for your ex-husband?", the answer to which is almost certainly "yes". And if not, then certain things line up very conveniently.

But he, like all my characters that truly come to life on the page, has grown and changed in ways I never saw coming and certainly didn’t plan.

Like being turned into your personal punching bag for several books. Which was totally not planned. Not at all.

The more I tried to push the two of them together, the more they fought it

If by "them" you mean "Anita". From what I remember reading, Richard practically bent over backwards to make Anita happy, and then when things got too real (which Richard warned her about, btw), Anita ran straight to JC.

Fiction doesn’t mirror fact

And thank all the gods for that, especially if it's you're fiction.

As for you small, but vocal minority that are still urging me to kill off Jean-Claude and Micah, so that Anita can ride off into the sunset with Richard – no. Not only no, but absolutely, positively, not happening.

Wait, there are actually trufans who want that? After all the times LaLa has proudly proclaimed that after the first book she promised Anita that she would never, ever hurt anyone Anita cares about? How deluded are these people?

Question: Will Richard ever find another person to be his one and only love?

No. The answer is no. He had a chance to be with Laurel Anita, the Best and Most Perfect Woman Ever, and he blew it. Even now, he can only be her occasional lover.

I hope he does, and I have a few potential women in mind, for him it will have to a woman if it’s a new character.

Yeah, I doubt that. I'm pretty sure the only way for Richard to be happy would be to get far, far away from Anita and her little freak show. And that's not going to happen, because I don't think LKH is quite over her divorce, despite what she says.

He also keeps dating women who like pretty standard vanilla sex and that really isn’t what Richard likes.

Because everything, everything comes back to sex. And there's no experimentation, no discussion, no negotiation - if one partner isn't into what the other is, the relationship can't possibly work.

I’ve even written a short story, “Shutdown,” where he tries to have his vanilla cake but keep his bondage cupcakes.

I actually read "Shutdown", and that isn't what happens at all. IIRC, Anita, Micah, and Richard do everything they can to make that poor woman as uncomfortable as possible, then proceed to blame her and act like it's all her fault, and that she was just a horrible evil prude the whole time.

I’m not sure Richard is ever going to find someone that special, but I hope so, because I’d really like him to be happy and content with his life and himself.

No you don't. You clearly don't, otherwise he would be.

re: the Sneak Peek:

Because "love" is really all about possession, really. And your partner isn't really a person - they're just an object, and should be treated as such.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

"Vanilla cake and bondage cupcakes" is one of the most irritating, twee, obnoxious phrases I've ever read in my life.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

I work in a bakery and man, "bondage cupcakes" sounds like something one of our more eccentric (and I mean that in the nicest way possible) customers would order.

I mean, we've been asked to do porno cakes before.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

WORD.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

she's saying there's a fundamental incompatibility between someone who wants BDSM and someone who doesn't that's impossible to resolve

Exactly, and that bothers me because you know whose relationship involves someone who's into BDSM and therefore also has a partner who's into that? Mine. I'm in a triad with another woman and a man, and my girlfriend is into BDSM whereas I'm not, so she and our boyfriend do that stuff. It's not any harder than any other relationship if you actually, y'know, communicate.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Communicating is not something anyone in LKH's books do.

I also get this weird vibe, especially having read "Shutdown", that she thinks BDSM and marriage are completely incompatible. And that there's the type of women guys marry, who are vanilla Donna Reeds, and the type they have hot kinky sex with, who are... Anita. It's incredibly sexist and retrograde.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about that weird vibe. Obviously marriage isn't an option for my relationship, but I know plenty of married couples who are into BDSM on various levels. It's like she's buying into the most restrictive "monogamy means pure, chaste, boring sex" hype out there (which is unfortunately prevalent in poly communities; the number of "we're more ~evolved~ than monogamous people" bullshit artists I've had to smack down in my time is truly staggering). Poly and kink overlap a fair bit, but there's no reason monogamously married people can't be kinky too.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

there's no reason monogamously married people can't be kinky too

Yep, as I know personally :-)

There's unfortunately some "vanilla people are boring repressed prudes" stuff in kink communities too. I realize it's pushback against the crap we hear about ourselves regularly, but it's still simply not true. LKH has heaping helpings of both poly and kink superiority complexes, which is particularly grating from her because she hasn't got the first clue what she's talking about regarding either of them. Regarding kink, the practices she preaches are actively anti-consent and unsafe.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

Yeah, reading the stuff she thinks about kink is particularly infuriating. I don't have a lot of practical experience for a few reasons, but I know a lot of the theory and a lot of my good friends are into safe kink, so a lot of the stuff she writes is just mind-boggling and sort of makes me hope she's just talking herself up and not actually doing anything IRL.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

If she does breath play the way she writes it, someone could die. I don't think she does, because I think she's blowing smoke about everything, but I am afraid that someone who doesn't know anything about kink will decide to play that way and end up dead.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

For all the talking LKH's characters do, there is very little communication.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

That's because actual communication requires listening (although I bet she thinks that she's illustrating active listening with all the "let me test my understanding" BS.

I'm excited about snarking the book as a break from my thesis.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Oooh I can't wait to see your snark.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is it didn't even take all that much work for my particular relationship XD My boyfriend had been interested in my girlfriend before he started dating me, but she was seeing someone else at the time and not interested in seeing anyone outside of that. Then a while after that relationship broke up and he realised he was still interested, he asked me if I'd be okay with it. She and I were actually housemates so I knew I got on well enough with her to spend that sort of intensive time together, so all it basically changed was that we went on a lot more actual three-way dates than just "D and K and P hanging out together" not-dates and that they started having sex. I don't sleep with anyone because of a host of reasons, but they're mental and physical rather than not being attracted to them. ...and that is my life story >_>

Mind you, we're a bit of an unconventional relationship even by poly standards, but it's really not that difficult to lay out what everyone is looking for out of a relationship and work out what's compatible with what.

[rebootfromstart.livejournal.com]

It's a bit weird but it works for us. Eight years running :D

Wow, I haven't seen that, but as someone who's in therapy for emotional volatility, that is terrible. If you don't have any coping mechanisms for dealing with emotional extremes, then you're never going to learn how to deal with them, especially if the only response from the people around you is "wow, poor you". I mean, yes, sympathy is nice, but sometimes the people around me remind me that my emotional responses are fucked and that I need to stop and look at what I'm feeling before I say something I'll later regret, and that's a good thing. Nothing but sympathy doesn't encourage recovery.

...honestly, I think one of the reasons I get so angry with what gets written is because of how much of it cuts so close to home to me personally. I could be Anita (well, without the sex of doom). I have a particular mental illness that, when untreated, can lead to the sort of idealisation and devaluation of relationships that I see in the books - her sweeties are the best! Everyone else is awful! If someone (Asher) does something wrong they're suddenly THE WORST EVER! Haters JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND ME. Always needing proof that the people I care about really love me. Emotional swings that lead to raging at the dinner table to the point where Nathaniel and Micah have to massage her into calmness. The entire world revolving around ME and WHAT I FEEL. The more I read, the more it rings true, and it's upsetting. I'm not Anita, obviously, and I like to think I'm nothing like her because I acknowledge my condition and I'm in actual therapy for it, but seeing that sort of mentality written as though it's just a ~quirk~ and not something that's hell to live with, both for the sufferer and their loved ones, pisses me off.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

Richard left the books around the same time Edward did. There is only Podchard now. And even this replicant will never be allowed to be happy, because LKH is not over her divorce.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

I think that Richard’s skin tone might be the same as my ex,

She can't remember what the biological father of her child to whom she was married for quite a long time and with whom she apparently has a cordial relationship LOOKS LIKE?

[shadwing.livejournal.com]

Or every bit as scary...she can't remember what RICHARD the character she kinda created looks like

[darkestgrace.livejournal.com]

Why is whether they share the same skin tone even relevant? It's like saying 'they can't possibly be the same person - my husband has blue eyes and Richard has brown!' It's a bizarre detail to mention.

[lliira (from livejournal.com)]

She said in that Reddit she did that none of her characters were based on real people because, while their personalities were based on real people, their looks weren't.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

True, I thought she was obsessed with the minutiae of her characters' looks but hasn't she messed with heights and eye colour before?

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

" Fiction doesn’t mirror fact, but we’ve both done our own version of going from the conservative “good girl” to the much happier people we are today. "

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I know I haven't read the most recent books, but Richard? Happy? Richard has NEVER been happy.

Also, Anita's "perfect husband" is first spotted hanging out naked in another man's bed.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Also, Anita's "perfect husband" is first spotted hanging out naked in another man's bed.

This is a fact that LKH seems really determined to forget.

[momentsplinter.livejournal.com]

oh god it's SO WEIRD hearing about where these books have gone since I bailed on the series. Everyone is sleeping with everyone at this point and I'm just sitting here wondering how and why it happened, lol. It doesn't make seeeeeeense.

(That or having sexless S&M relationships with each other. Seriously though, Asher and Richard doing S&M? How? Why? What is the point of this?????)