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Blogflog - Dead Ice: Nathaniel

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

Dead Ice: Nathaniel

We’ve only got two blogs to go until Dead Ice hits the shelves on June 9th here in the United States, but in UK today was your day to get Dead Ice; no spoilers! But since we’re running out of time for the blogs on our side of the pond, it’s got to be Nathaniel Graison, the other third of Anita’s live-in threesome.

Question: Is Nathaniel based on a real person?

Answer: No, but he’s one of the few inspired by a true life event.

Secrets to Share: I tackled researching BDSM, bondage and submission the same way I did guns, police work, or vaudun/voodoo: with respect and thoroughness. This was before I realized that BDSM was a part of my own lifestyle, so it was all brand new to me. I learned about dominants and submissives, it would be years before I learned about tops, bottoms, and I was still being told switches, people who can be both dom and sub, didn’t exist. I learned that healthy kink is all about safe, sane, and consensual. But I learned about a man who had vanished from the community after losing his dominant to a breakup. This individual was someone who didn’t play safe, or sane, but kept the consent; but what he would consent for was beyond what most dominants wanted to do with anyone because he wouldn’t safeword before he was hurt. A dom trusts his submissive to either call safeword before they are truly hurt in a scene, or to tell them upfront, “Sometimes I get caught up in the scene and I won’t safeword in time, so please help me keep an eye on me and call it for me if you think its needed.” Or words to that effect. The man who was missing wouldn’t do either, so most people didn’t want to play with him, let alone have a relationship with him. In a world where how much pain you can take could be a mark of pride and attractive to people, this man worried people. They’d actually encouraged him to get therapy because bondage isn’t a replacement for it. You should do bondage because it’s part of your sexuality, not because it’s part of your pathology.

The missing man was named Nathaniel, or that was his name in the kink community because most people use a nickname. Now, don’t get excited, I have no idea what this man actually looked like, I never met him, never talked to him, never had him described to me – honest. But the idea that someone was so lost that they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, protect themselves during scene play to the point where they would allow people to do irreparable damage or worse, really disturbed me. It disturbed the dominant who was my guide to the world, he was afraid that this Nathaniel had found someone who didn’t stop in time either from lack of knowledge, or desire for darker things than are acceptable in the community. BDSM is not a replacement for good therapy, if that’s what you need, go get healthy, and then once you’re better if BDSM is still something that interests you, come back with a better outlook and a healthier mindset. For some people bondage is a sign they need help, for others it’s just a part of their life. That this Nathaniel might have gone off with a stranger, which you’re not supposed to do, either you get people to recommend people or vouch for them, and let himself be . . . lost for good . . . It bothered a lot, just the concept that a person could be so . . . out of the confusion and dark fascination with the entire concept of someone doing that came my fictional Nathaniel. I kept the name and the dilemma, but my Nathaniel’s background history, physical appearance, personality, is all made up. I have no idea how it matched up with that long ago and long lost, person who planted the seed that would become my fictional Nathaniel. I didn’t need to know, because my imagination had taken that seed and run with it. In fiction I saved Nathaniel, and he got therapy and helped save himself. I was able to write a happier ending for my fictional character than seems to have happened to the story that inspired that first seed.

Question: Is Nathaniel based on your husband Jonathon?

Answer: See above, and no.

Secrets to Share: This is probably one of the most persistent rumors, that my husband is either Micah or Nathaniel or they are based on him, but neither is true. Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I do not base characters on the real people in my life.

Question: Is Nathaniel your sexual fantasy? Is Micah, Jean-Claude . . . etc . . . your sexual fantasy? Are the men in your books your sexual fantasies?

Answer: No, sorry, but though I find the men in my books interesting, and hot, because it’s hard to write a good sex scene if I, as a writer, aren’t attracted to the characters, but other than that, no. The closest to being my fantasy is Nathaniel, but not because of the great sex and his beauty. He is my fantasy husband/wife because he enjoys domestic duties like cooking, cleaning, and organizing a household. All of which I am terrible at, and Jonathon isn’t much better except for the cooking part. That he’s a domestic goddess is a wish fulfillment for me, because it’s something I’ve been wanting/needing in my life but couldn’t find romantically for a very long time. That Nathaniel is beautiful and in great shape is due in large part to his job as a stripper, he has to look good on stage. I now know the time and energy that you need to put in to look as good as he does, and it’s almost another full time job. If he wasn’t having to look that good for his job, then he probably would look a tiny bit less fierce, but he would still be beautiful. Of course, Anita works out too, both to stay healthy and to be able to run away or after the bad guys and fight if she has to, it’s a matter of life and death for her, which is a great incentive to hit the gym. She works out more than I do, because my job is to sit here and write. Sedentary jobs are so bad for the body. Both for health and my doctor’s urging I keep trying to add back in more exercise, but I actually hit a time a few years back where the amount of exercise was impacting how many hours I could write in a negative way. It was weird to realize how much time it takes to look a certain way. I’m not sure it’s possible for most people to dedicate that kind of time to it. One of the reasons Anita never does “normal” daily things is between her jobs, her relationships, and hitting the gym there really isn’t any time to do anything else. Staying in fierce shape is almost another job, and the way you have to watch your nutrition . . . it is a level of discipline and time management that boggles the mind, or it boggles mine.

Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:

“When Gabriel first introduced me to Jean-Claude I thought I was there to sleep with him, instead I was there to audition for going onstage at Guilty Pleasures. I thought I knew how to take my clothes off onstage, but Jean-Claude showed me the difference between shaking the moneymaker to the music and getting naked onstage, as opposed to a true striptease. I can still hear him: ‘One is an art, and the other is cheap and tawdry, and nothing cheap dances on my stage.’ God, Jean-Claude was so elegant in everything he did. I’d never seen anyone like him.”

“He is pretty unique,” I said.

Nathaniel laughed. “He was always a perfect gentleman with all the dancers. He said he couldn’t be a good manager if he played favorites, so first he taught me how to be elegantly sexy onstage and then he taught me which fork to use, and not to tuck my napkin into my shirt collar.”

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" I tackled researching [...] with respect and thoroughness. "

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HA

HAHAHA.

Wait, you're serious? You think you've done that?

The thing is, to me it sounds like most of the advice she gives here is good. It's just that none of it makes it into her books.
-BDSM doesn't mean you're damaged - Name one character into BDSM who isn't
-BDSM isn't a replacement for therapy - ahem, Richard
-Be careful about who you play with - Really?
-Use your safewords - Asphyxiation with Nicky
-The submissive is in charge - Really? Ahahahahahaha
-Honesty and communication are vital - AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA coughcoughchoke

It looks like she very carefully did research, so that she could be sure that she wrote the exact opposite into her books.

Yeah, I know that I can't speak to the intricacies of a lifestyle I'm not in, but just going off what she was saying here I'd think "oh, ok. Sounds about right." But... I've read her books (though not all of them) and enough of lashouts that I know none of this good stuff made it in there! Especially "BDSM isn't a replacement for therapy" isn't that what EVERYONE in the books uses it as?

It's akin to the shower scene with Micah in NiC. What she thinks she wrote isn't what makes it onto the page and without a good editor to go "Wait a minute..." the more troublesome aspects remain.

It looks like she very carefully did research, so that she could be sure that she wrote the exact opposite into her books.

Yep. Just like how she carefully has people have these incredibly long and dull conversations about what they're going to do before sex, only to have them do something completely different during sex.

Though considering she said she researched it like she did these other things that she also gets utterly wrong, well... otoh, someone who didn't research would occasionally stumble on the correct thing by accident. LKH always gets everything wrong, and wrong in ways that aren't just incorrect but the absolute opposite of the truth. I don't know how anyone could fail as badly as she does without consciously trying to.

I can imagine it would go something like "well character X is into BDSM, and they were raped repeatedly for 900 years so of course they are damaged, but they are NOT into BDSM because they are damaged, it is just their taste, and also, they have been working on their issues and sex with Anita is a really healing experience for them, but it's not being used as a replacement for therapy, it's completely something else and unrelated."

Surely she has the money to hire someone to come in to clean once a week. She doesn't need to be screwing someone for them to clean her house.

Both for health and my doctor’s urging I keep trying to add back in more exercise, but I actually hit a time a few years back where the amount of exercise was impacting how many hours I could write in a negative way.

Wait what? How many hours a day does she try to write, 14? Or was she trying to work out for a long time every day, exhausting herself? She doesn't seem to have any concept of balancing different things in life, or that just because something is good, it doesn't remain good if you let it take over entirely. (See also: sex.)

What gets me about her whole "I'm bad at domestic stuff" is that none of said "domestic stuff" is really all that hard, when you get down to it. You don't have to be a trained chef to follow a recipe, or all that brilliant to follow the washing directions on a piece of clothing or work a vacuum. It feels like she's making excuses to not do stuff.

Yeah, which she really doesn't need. If she doesn't like doing these things, well, join the club. Everyone grouses about housework sometimes. And she has the money to opt out of doing most of it (I'm not sure about laundry), so why doesn't she just do that? There's nothing virtuous about forcing herself to do it if she doesn't have to.

(I actually can't do housework any longer, including cooking which I loved, so I'm holding myself back from screaming about how lucky she is that these are her complaints. I always hated housework, but it's a lot worse to not be able to do it.)

If you're trying to maintain a really high level of fitness- like Olympic athlete- then yes, you would put in hours a day. For the rest of us, a couple of gym sessions and some cardio each week keep things under control. I wonder if she's trying to achieve Anita-levels of workout.

The snippet hints at something really cool. JC caring about his workers, some old fashioned manners and values, even JC as a mentor to Nathaniel, and as much of a protector as the circumstances allowed him to be. JC seeing a boy who reminded him of himself, and helping him like he wished he'd been helped.

It sure would have been nice to see some of this in the gajillion books we've had before now.

Add to the fact this whole mentor thing is a complete recon. Like the whole King of Weres with Micah...just something she's adding in after the fact to make JC look better and Nate more interesting.

There had been no evidence that either Gabriel or JC was willing to offer that kind of guidance and protection to Nate before Anita came along and LKH did this example of telling rather than showing in Dead Ice

It just makes me sad because this could have been a really good relationship. A platonic relationship, a mentorship, a healthy relationship between males, a relationship that both predates and doesn't involve Anita. It would have fleshed out the world and the characters so much, and given everyone involved so much depth. All she needed to put in was that little bit that's up there. Nothing elaborate, just a mention when Nathaniel's cooking that JC made sure he knew about what wine to use with what meal, or a comment when he's talking about stripping that JC taught him that what he could do was a skill, and he helped him to value himself. Telling Anita when he's talking to her about how Raina tortured him that JC tried to protect him. It would have been so easy!

I'm choosing to believe that this was actually going on, but it didn't directly involve Anita, so she never noticed it. And Nathaniel and JC were both afraid to bring it up in case she thought they were having sex.

The books take a very "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there will it still make a sound"...NOTHING happens without Anita. I mean I guess she's called an animator for a reason. I think of them all as wind up dolls whose spring have worn down, until she arrives.

On the other hand, though, this was supposed to be our teaser about Nathanial, but it's really Nathanial talking about JC. In other words, it's only tangentially about Nathanial. Though I suppose it's better than "Micah walks into a room."

Please stop referring to him seriously as a domestic goddess, it's not cute and makes you sound like you think housekeeping is inherently woman's work--oh wait, he's the "wife", isn't he? Nevermind.

It's funny to me how the best reason she can come up with for why Nathaniel is not an insert of Jon is that Jon can't/doesn't clean, and then immediately follows up with how his doing so is "wish fulfillment". Well, so is Anita being this super tiny beautiful petite doll goddess with giant perfect perky titties that never get in the way, and she's still clearly LKH's self-insert. Self-inserts usually come with wish fulfillment, that's generally why they're annoying to read about to anyone that isn't the author. I'm sure Nathaniel is different in LOADS of ways from Jon, but what matters is that Anita and LKH both are constantly harping on how happy she is now with him and Micah than with Richard...and how much LKH mentions that she's so much happier with Jon than Gary. And how it gets rubbed in Richard's face in a regular basis as he's dragged through the mud in what reads like a VERY personal way. It's really hard NOT to at least consider a connection.

I'm willing to grant that she may not have DELIBERATELY decided to base him on Jon, long auburn hair aside (but if she didn't get that from him, she got it from Anne Rice's Armand, who has a really similar deal going on as Nate from what I know in terms of appearance and situation, just with more depth) or that she genuinely BELIEVES that she didn't, as she has a major lack of self-awareness and comes off as someone equally eager to believe her own bullshit.

I remember that Nathaniel has oh-so-pretty purple eyes, and it's such a chore for him to put 'blue' onto his drivers licence, and Micah has 'kitty-cat' green eyes that she has to warn people about in case they try to shoot him, and random strangers compliment him on his bright green eyes. Does anyone else actually notice people's eyes like that? Occasionally, I'll think 'wow those are really blue', but I honestly couldn't tell you what colour my housemate's eyes are, and I've lived with him for two years.

Also, Nathaniel reminds me of a really badly-written fanfic Duo Maxwell, from Gundam Wing. The trademark hair in a braid, the blue-purple eyes, the street kid backstory. It's like she was offended that he managed to kick ass, and so she wrote him as a woobie. But I doubt she's ever watched Gundam, so I'll have to chalk it up to coincidence. It just makes it hard for me to read him when I can't get the image of Duo Maxwell out of my head, and then I think about how much I would rather be watching anime.

Does anyone else actually notice people's eyes like that?

Yeah, I do.

I was partnered up with someone at work today and we were doing sales. Every now and again she'd compliment people on their eyes.

Does anyone else actually notice people's eyes like that?

If they're unusual, sure. My boss has bright green eyes that I've (obviously) noticed. The rest of my coworkers? Uh... But most people don't have particularly noticeable eye colors, falling into that medium-range of could be blue or hazel or green something, probably...? Well, they definitely have eyes. Yeah, two of them!

I find that story really disgusting. Whoever that person was, he deserved better than to have some wannabe darkity dark writer mine his issues for her id-fic. This is like going to AA meetings in order to get "fuel" for your writing; you're breaking confidence when you tell stories that aren't yours outside of the environment you first heard them in. She's using a story that was told to her in an attempt to warn a newcomer to the community about boundaries and the need to set your own limits for smut. And she didn't even change the fucking name.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with smut. I write it myself. But this is just so massively, enragingly disrespectful.

That's the same reason I refuse to read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series; the writer allegedly based the protagonist Lisbeth, a rape survivor, on an acquaintance of the same name whose rape he witnessed. It might not be true, but the very idea leaves a similarly bad taste in my mouth.

That's another example I was thinking of, yeah, and I have a similar reaction to that series; after hearing that story, I just don't want to read it. There's something to be said for exploring your own traumas via fiction, and I'm in favour of that in general, but when you start using other people's trauma you're crossing a line imo.

I think it's fine to use trauma you haven't experienced (otherwise no one would write anything but autobiography), but not a copy-pasting of them and definitely not using the same name. So say, you can write about someone who went through a house fire, and research what various people's reactions to going through that were to get ideas for your character's reactions, but not just steal someone else's experience whole cloth.

Oh, yeah, I don't mean you should only ever write what you've personally experienced, just that when it comes to using a real life experience whole cloth, using your own is fine if that's what you want to do, but using someone else's is iffy. Does that make more sense?

Yep :). I figured it's what you probably meant, but having seen some people go to incredible extremes with this stuff, I guess I had an unnecessary counter-argument saved up that came out here, heh.

Using the same name is beyond grotesque. But I'm not all that appalled about that in LKH's case because I have a feeling she's lying.

I don't think he knew the woman - from what I understand, he witnessed the gang rape of a woman when he was a very small child, and writing the first book was a therapeutic exercise in trying to cope with what he had saw. But I could be misremembering.

I feel the same way. Awhile back I was writing a story about a guy who committed suicide and had been trying to get his girlfriend to die with him (it was about the aftermath of the suicide from his brother's POV). As I was writing it, the boyfriend of a person I knew of committed suicide and he'd been trying to get his girlfriend to go with him. My character and this man, by SHEER coincidence, had the same name and uncommon (well, for an adult) nickname.

I was so spooked I stopped writing that story and never touched it again. Even though it was a complete coincidence, after it happened it felt so disrespectful. I could always go back and change the name and some details, but I'm still freaked out and bothered by it.

That's the difference between someone like you and someone like LKH. Something happens that's a coincidence and you decide it feels disrespectful to continue, so you don't; she deliberately uses real-life trauma that is nothing to do with her for character drama, because everything has to be about her or benefit her somehow. Even the possible abuse of someone who probably needed help; it's all about what she can get out of it, to the point where she uses the same name and doesn't see a thing wrong with that, or with the fact that "her Nathaniel" is in just as abusive a relationship as before he took up with Anita; it's just not physically harming him as much anymore.

While I will agree that using the name is creepy, I don't think she used the story whole cloth, just the idea of a personality that wouldn't say no.

I'll also add that if you've ever watched the commentaries for MadMen, many of them mention using things that happened to real people for plots or actions. Sometimes it's just the writers, but sometimes it's people they know or people who've written into the show. And Downton Abby? Have you ever seen the first season of that? There's a "seduction" plot where a man ends up in bed with Mary having sex and dies in the middle of the act, and to protect her reputation, they have to carry the dead body back to the room he was staying in. The writer has said specifically that that really happened to some young woman around 1900.

So I don't see anything wrong or different with LKH using a real story as the basis of a character.

Well I think what people were saying is that it's more sort of squicky if for example I know someone in my life and name is Bob and Bob is an alcoholic with anger issues and I put a character in my story with the name 'Rob' who is an 'alcoholic with anger issues' rather than, "I did this specific research and this weird thing happened, but I am going to add a fictionalized account of it to my work," because it's not as if you personally know anyone or have a chance to use this information to affect anyone in the real world since anyone it would affect is long gone. Basically, making weird carbon copies (that is to say more like exact replicas with really minor changes) of real life people and inserting them into your works is dubious, especially at a personal level when they have some sort of traumatic event and doubly so when said traumatic event then becomes about the main character instead of about the character it happened to. I think doing research and making it about the character it happens to and maybe changing more than just their favorite color is yards away from what LKH is doing (aka none of that).

That creeped me out too. Whoever he was had some pretty bad problems, and she's romanticizing them and using his scene name to boot. Ethically that feels really, really shady.

"I tackled researching BDSM, bondage and submission the same way I did guns, police work, or vaudun/voodoo: with respect and thoroughness."

Extended facepalm photo extendedfacepalm.gif

I now know the time and energy that you need to put in to look as good as he does, and it’s almost another full time job.

I'm interested to know how LKH "now" knows this. Is it due to her own workout schedule?

Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I do not base characters on the real people in my life.

I tackled researching BDSM, bondage and submission the same way I did guns, police work, or vaudun/voodoo: with respect and thoroughness.

No, sorry, but though I find the men in my books interesting, and hot, because it’s hard to write a good sex scene if I, as a writer, aren’t attracted to the characters, but other than that, no.

Haha that gif makes me think of this

I wonder how she can expect people to believe this stuff.

She doesn't think people actually read her books?

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Blogflog - Dead Ice: Nathaniel

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