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

[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.