question

[coffeehouse.livejournal.com]

If Anita can call the dead, and heal the dead (remember when she used her own blood and the corpse came out of the ground looking totally alive? And if vampires are dead, and she can call them during the day (like she did with Damien to help her out of a jam) then why doesn't she heal Asher?
I read all the books in a three week span last year and noticed *a whole LOT* of continuity errors that bug me...

Comments

[rantingmule.livejournal.com]

The reason she doesn't heal Asher is because his scars are a perpetual source of WANGST. If Asher was unscarred, he'd be a lot happier, and a lot less of a total twit. He'd also, yanno...be able to snag a sex partner OTHER than Anita the ONE CROTCH, or Narcissus.

In other words, he (Asher) is not allowed to develop and grow because he might no longer DESPERATELY NEED Anita, and because everything must be All About Anita, he is trapped as he is.

It's rather depressing, actually.

[pandorasblog]

Actually, this seems logical enough to me, and consistant with the limitations of the vampire healing process in other series. My guess is that she can't heal Asher because the process of his body being damaged and healing itself is over and done with. He has scars that don't change of his body's own accord.

When she raises a zombie, she's raising a body in the midst of decomposition. It's an active process that her blood can intervene in to mend the corpse's structure and appearance. But Asher's wounds have healed. He doesn't look as he did before he was tortured, but his body has mended itself to the greatest extent possible, so there's no longer an active process for her to get involved with.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hallow_/]

But in that same style of thinking, why can't they just surgically remove Ashers scarring and let it heal back to normal?

[pandorasblog]

That's been nagging at me - at the end of a recent book, wasn't there something about how he'd finally agreed to at least see a surgeon? Maybe even something about him having made some improvement? I've only read up to ID, and haven't been able to keep continuity straight in my head since it all blurred into an endless orgy.

Surgery would indeed make sense: if you could cut away the scarring, plus a border of healthy (albeit dead, vampiric) tissue... it really should heal.

[moonbeamdancer.livejournal.com]

Yes, in one of the books, (forget which too) Asher was going to or making plans to, see a doctor about fixing the scars.

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

I swear in ID Asher says that only the forskin was damaged and they* cut it off. So since that obviously worked, then to me it makes sense that Asher can get rid of his scars.

*I'm assuming modern doctors since this is after the book where Anita says that Asher is going to be a plastic surgeon after realizing modern medicine might do something that his wonderful body cannot.

[ladymina.livejournal.com]

uhm for that one, they just cut the foreskin off, not healed it,
if they cut the whole side of his body off, even a vamp might not heal it ;-)

[delphinapterus.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I think if they did it in small sections it would be survivable.

[dragonfanguk.livejournal.com]

I think you just put more time and effore into that theory than LKH did with the entire series...

[pandorasblog]

Heh. And when you think that I only put two minutes in... XD

[dragonfanguk.livejournal.com]

My point exactly.

[ginavive.livejournal.com]

Giving the benifit of doubt, I'd say that because they were inflicted with Holy water, there is some sort of mystical mumbojumbo that she doesn't have the power to override the power of the holy water's damage.

However, he was also supposed to be seeing a plastic surgeon, so, WTF!

[pandorasblog]

The way these books are going, soon Anita's urine will classify as holy water. And thank you; we were just wondering about that above! Nice to see someone else remembers that bit about the surgeon...

[freyalorelei.livejournal.com]

The way these books are going, soon Anita's urine will classify as holy water.

Ew. Also, scarily consistent.

[bleedtoblue.livejournal.com]

YAABI's Yet Another Anita Blake Inconsistency.

You could drive Edward/Ted's Hummer through the plot holes and mistakes.
A vampire would be a prime candidate for plastic surgery because they heal and regenerate....but think of the whining and angst that would disappear and also Anita's chance to 'heal' poor Asher's bruised psyche with her magic, er, you know what.

[d3athw1sh.livejournal.com]

I remember from Cerulean Sins that Asher consulted a surgeon, that is why he can have "teh sex" with Anita now. Because if I remember correctly, Jean-Claude was worried that the holy water had caused so much damage that Asher would no longer be able to "perform" properly but when Anita, Asher, and Jean-Claude were together and Anita undressed him, Jean-Claude made a comment about it and Asher said that the surgeon said it was only the foreskin, or something, and it was easily fixed. Then there were joyous tears (seriously, I think there were).

I have no idea how I remember any of this...

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Yeah. There were joyous tears that Asher is now circumsized.

WTF?

Like, no, really? What the fuck?

"HE CAN HAVE TEH SEX! YAYZ!" *tear*

[ditaykan.livejournal.com]

Yeah- wouldn't the foreskin just grow back, all nice and new? Is it even possible to circumcise a vampire or lycanthrope?

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Dude, that's when I point out Micah and the stupidity over him supposedly being "fixed" and having a vasectomy.

I mean, if Cherry can regrow her leg, and Gregory can regrow his penis, then a vasectomy has got to be the easiest repair job EVER. And that's even if the sutures are silver, too.

Logic go boom.

[ditaykan.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Even strictly human males sometimes heal and wind up fertile again. A lycanthrope? Dude, would even getting the tubes tied work? My uncle got one and he has to watch it because my aunt CANNOT get pregnant again.

[pandorasblog]

Could Micah have got his vasectomy before becoming a lycanthrope? Because then I think the transformation would treat the surgery as an old scar, something it couldn't fix...

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I thought about that - I thought about why JC doesn't just cut off his cross-shaped burn and grow new skin. Surely the same could work for Asher's scars. Vampire regeneration = teh orsum, after all said and done. It's set up in Guilty Pleasures that a bullet to the head won't kill a regular vampire, so...sooper dooper supermodel sex vampires should be able to re-prettify themselves.

But by the same token, I hope she doesn't heal Asher. I like that he's got scars (I hate his wangst, though) because he's the one guy of the lot that's A) got some individuality and B) is interesting. Sure, he's half an affeminate pretty-boy, but the other half is what makes him interesting.

I will never forgive LKH for prettifying Damian and fixing his broken nose and what-not. I liked that he wasn't perfect. Then again, given how much his characterisation has been so utterly neglected and trampled over, I shouldn't be surprised that potentially one of the more interesting people has been reduced to a cardboard cut-out.

After ID, I am convinced that Damian is not a character at all.

[rantingmule.livejournal.com]

Damian is a SOCK PUPPET.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

And it's tragic! HE COULD BE SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

...

Much could be said about a lot of things in the series right now. And it frustrates the hell out of me, because I can see all this potential, but it's just left to rot.

Oh well. Fanfic is my saviour.

[rantingmule.livejournal.com]

Damian WAS cool when he first showed up and wasn't mooning over the One Crotch. :P Sadly now he's just a lifeless sock puppet. Or rather, dildo. :P

[pandorasblog]

Knowing Jean-Claude, he's decided that since crosses are such a big fashion item now, he'll keep his burn mark to be all stylish. After all, it's the only way he can wear a cross... ;)

[ladymina.livejournal.com]

the only logic in that part is that Anita was only able to heal fresh wounds with that skill , I mean she only healed a really fresh cut and the also real fresh sword to the heart (and she even used her own blood to accelerate or kick start the vamp healing)
So no way to heal an old and blessed wound I think
but that logic hasn't been destroyed, yet