The Darkest Kiss, part two...

Chapter One...

ANYA, GODDESS OF ANARCHY, daughter of Lawlessness, and dealer of disorder,

Pillywiggin: "Tell, not show!"

All of the dancers were human females, beautiful and nearly naked, chosen specifically by the Lords of the Underworld to provide the night's entertainment. Both vertical and horizontal...

The Anthropologist: "If they're sitting down, it's not really vertical or horizontal... it's a sort of Z shape."

Wisps of smoke cast a dream-fog around them, and pinpricks of starlight rained from the swirling strobe...

The Anthropologist: "It's a Vampire From Twilight mooning everyone!"

From the corner of her eye, she caught a scintillating glimpse of a taut immortal ass...

The Anthropologist: "No ass should ever scintillate!"

Cathed: "Maybe that's why you'd want one... they're walking mirrorballs!"

The Lords of the Underworld were delectable immortal warriors who were possessed by the demon spirits that had once resided inside Pandora's box. 

Pillywiggin: "We know."

And now, with a few rounds of hard liquor and even harder sex, they were saying goodbye to Budapest, the city they'd called home for hundreds of years.

Cathed: "Budapest?! It's living in Stockton!"

Anya wanted in on the action. With one warrior in particular.

There are some debates over which one it is she sees.

Cathed: "Darkest and Most Seductive one, obviously."

The Anthropologist: "No, it can't be. She says 'each more dangerously seductive than the last' and this isn't the last book in the series..."

"Part," she whispered, fighting her intrinsic compulsion to shout "Fire" instead and watch as the humans raced away in a panic, screaming hysterically...

Pillywiggin: "What? Ah... I see. She's trying to get them to move."

Let the good times roll.

Pillywiggin: "Is that all she can come up with? How about shouting 'Smallpox'?"

The Chronicler: "What's holding her back from shouting 'Fire'?"

An erratic pulse of rock music that matched the erratic beat of her heart blasted from the speakers, making it impossible for anyone to hear her.

The Balance: "Medical complication..."

Cathed: "But she is a goddess of anarchy."

Pillywiggin: "I don't wanna pump blood! Shut up! Stop stressing on me! I want to hear my own music."

Heated breath caught in her lungs, and she shivered.

Pillywiggin: "Why is she shivering if she has something warm near her? Or is she that anarchic?"

Lucien. Deliciously scarred...

Pillywiggin: "Delicious... So he's scarred with licorrice?"

Azrael: "Or with the Cadbury's signature."

The Anthropologist: "It's like TT's fake blood. The people making the phys-reps ended up coming up with a concoction that tastes of chocolate..."

...irresistibly stoic and possessed by the spirit of Death.

The Anthropologist: "Back me up on this, Cathed. Didn't the stoics have a thing about celibacy? It doesn't seem to end well."

Cathed: "I really don't think stoic is that attractive."

Pillywiggin: "He has a face like the London Underground map!"

Right now he sat at a table in back, expression blank...

Cathed: "Wow. Hot."

"—she was right. I checked the satellite photos on Torin's computer. Those temples are rising from the sea."

Pillywiggin: "Get back in the sea where you belong!"

"One is in Greece and one is in Rome, and if they continue to rise at such a swift rate, they'll be high enough to explore sometime tomorrow."

Pillywiggin: "What? Out of the River Tiber? I didn't think there's that much space in it..."

The Balance: "It says the sea in the book..."

Pillywiggin: "But Rome doesn't have a sea."

Cathed, the classicist, affirms this. As does Wikipedia.

No one else would—or could—see them. She had made sure of that with a sweet little thing called chaos, her strongest source of power, hiding the temples with storms to keep humans away, while at the same time feeding the Lords enough information to draw them the hell out of Buda...

Cathed: "Buddah?!"

The Balance: "Budapest in short."

The Anthropologist: "I was thinking about trying to drag hell out of Buddah..."

Pillywiggin: "It's why he's so fat. He's got hell inside him."

"Perhaps the new gods are responsible. Most days I am sure they hate us and long to destroy us, simply for being half-demon."

The Balance: "I think that's a very good reason to hate them."

Lucien's expression remained blank. 

The Anthropologist: "Is he still being irresistibly stoic?  Man with hammer... does not matter..."

"If we're lucky, we'll find that damned box while we're there."

Azrael: "Damn that box! It killed my family!"

Anya ran her tongue over her teeth. Damned box, aka dimOuniak, aka Pandora's box.

Pillywiggin: "How many times have they explained the same box?!"

Cathed: "We get it."

The Anthropologist: "It's a book written for people with short time memory loss."

Boring? Ha! Anya had never met anyone who excited her more.

Cathed: "She is really, really excited by boring people."

The Anthropologist: "Has anyone read that book I wrote about accounting?"

Cathed swoons.

Azrael: "Is that some sort of dullness fetish?"

The Balance: "So the goddess of anarchy has a dullness fetish."

The Anthropologist: "That makes a certain amount of sense. Like that neat freak bureaucrat who wants to screw Fry..."

Cringe when they saw his scars, sure. But none of them wanted anything to do with him—and that saved their lives.

The Anthropologist: "Maybe they're allergic to liquorice."

"Notice me," Anya commanded softly. A moment passed. He didn't obey. Several humans glanced in her direction, heeding her demand, but Lucien's gaze latched on to the empty flask in front of him and remained, becoming a wee bit wistful. Much to her consternation, immortals were immune to her commands. [...]

"Bastards," she muttered. Any restrictions they could place on her, they did. "Anything to screw with lowly Anarchy."

Azrael: "She's the goddess of anarchy! You'd think her spells would summon a pineapple or something in front of him... That would totally attract his attention."

There are various theories about what boring and prosaic thoughts about the flasks is flashing through his mind:

Cathed: "Hmmm... maybe I spent too much on this at the flea market. Maybe I shouldn't have impulse-bought it... oh, but it wasn't really on impulse, but maybe it would be cheaper from a second hand shop...etcetcetc..."

Anya hadn’t been favored during her days on Mount Olympus.

The goddesses had never liked her because they assumed she was a replica of her "whore of a mother" and would jump their husbands.

Cathed: "Eris isn't a whore! She never got invited to any of the orgies!"

(At this point, we're under the impression that Anya's mother is a goddess of discord and we've assumed that she's a canonical goddess - thus Eris.)

The guys had wanted her, though. Well, until she'd killed their precious Captain of the Guard and they'd deemed her too feral [...]

The little shit had tried to rape her. If he had left her alone, she would have left him alone. But noooo.

The Balance: "It has four Os. And it's in italics."

Pillywiggin looks pained.

Cathed: "Noooo!"

Pillywiggin: "How many Os?"

Cathed: "Four."

The Anthropologist: "And in a strange font. A font of pain."

She didn't regret cutting the black heart out of his chest, didn't regret placing said heart on a pike in front of Aphrodite's temple. Not even a tiny bit.

(The Chronicler is wondering if this is meant to be a sacrifice to Aphrodite or otherwise...)

Choice. The word rang inside her mind, bringing her back to the present. What the hell would it take to convince Lucien to choose her?

Cathed: "She likes freedom of choice but she likes mindraping mortals?"

Pillywiggin: "Well, she is anarchy. She doesn't have to make sense."

She stomped her foot.

The Chronicler: "That's just pathetic."

For weeks she'd cloaked herself in invisibility, following Lucien, watching, studying...

The Chronicler: "And you're surprised he doesn't notice you?! You're invisible!"

Cathed (droning on): "Oh, maybe I should have checked on Ebay first..."

The Anthropologist: "Ebay might be a bit too exciting for this man... In fact, the internet is too interesting for this man."

Cathed: "Maybe I should check the stock market, just to see how it's doing."

The Balance: "No, the stock markets are fluctuating a bit too much. It would be too exciting."

And yes, lusting. He'd had no idea she lurked nearby, even as she willed him to do all sorts of naughty things: strip, pleasure himself…smile.

Cathed: "That would be spoiling the stoic façade... he could still strip stoically, though"

The Chronicler: "He's like St Benedict incarnate!"

Pillywiggin: "That man really hated laughing."

There is some speculation about high level stoics and their possible ability to be able to have sex without their expression changing. There is miming and giggling.

But she’d wanted to see his beautifully flawed face light in humor just as much as she’d wanted to see his naked body glisten with arousal.

Azrael: "He might be cheating and recently had botox."

Had he granted even that benign request, though? No!

Cathed: "And meanwhile, he's just sitting there counting the coasters..."

A part of her wished she'd never seen him, that she hadn't allowed Cronus, the new king of the gods, to intrigue her with stories about the Lords a few months ago. Maybe I'm the idiot...

The Anthropologist: "Why does it have to be a zero sum game? Maybe they're both idiots!"

Cronus had just escaped Tartarus, a prison for immortals and a place she knew intimately. He'd imprisoned Zeus and his cohorts there, as well as Anya's parents. When Anya returned for them, Cronus had been waiting for her. He had demanded Anya's greatest treasure. She'd declined—duh—so he'd tried to scare her. Give me what I want or I'll send the Lords of the Underworld after you. They are demon-possessed, as blood-hungry as starving animals, and they will not hesitate to peel the lovely flesh from your bones. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

Cathed: "So he threatened her... wait... the author actually wrote 'blah, blah, blah... oh'."

She'd ended up seeking out the warriors on her own. She'd thought to defeat them and laugh in Cronus’s face, a sort of look-what-I-did-to-your-big-scary-demons kind of thing.

Pillywiggin (rolling her eyes): "Fascinating."

One glance at Lucien, though, and she’d become instantly obsessed.

The Chronicler notes that that can't possibly be healthy.

She'd forgotten her reasons for being there...

The Chronicler: "That happens a lot with heroines..."

It was just that contradictions tantalized her, and Lucien had so very many. He was scarred but not broken, kind but unbending. 

Azrael: "Kindness and bendiness are not synonymous."

The Chronicler: "Neither is scarred and broken, for that mater."

He was a calm, by-the-book immortal, not blood-hungry as Cronus had claimed.

Pillywiggin: "Flangey, but dull."

He was possessed by an evil spirit, yet he never deviated from his own personal code of honor. He dealt with death every day, every night, yet he fought to live. 

The Anthropologist: "If you're immortal, you don't have to work very hard to stay alive."

As if that wasn't enough to prick her interest, his flowery fragrance filled her with decadent, wicked thoughts every time she neared him...

Azrael: "Wait, flowery fragrance?"

The Anthropologist: "Must be really inconvenient to find flowery fragrances irresistible. What if she gets sprayed with perfume in department store... an impromptu orgy?"

Azrael: "She must really freak out people in when walking in parks."

Why? Any other man who smelled like roses would have made her laugh. With Lucien, her mouth watered for a taste of him...

Cathed: "He's so hot in his grey socks."

(The Chronicler: "At least the author is acknowledging roses is a stupid scent for a man... but it's still stupid.")

her skin prickled with white-hot awareness...

The Balance: "Heat. Skin comment. And Medical Complication!"

Pillywiggin: "Three in one combo!"

Gods, he was sexy. He had the freakiest eyes she’d ever seen. 

Cathed: "Freaky good or freaky bad?"

Pillywiggin: "Like a Cyclops?"
The Anthropologist: "Freaky is not a good word either."

One was blue, the other brown, and both swirled with the essence of man and demon...

Cathed: "I've seen creepier eyes."

Pillywiggin: "Like David Bowie, but less interesting."

The Anthropologist: "except he has a fruit pastel stuck to his face."

And his scars… All she could think of, dream about, crave, was licking them.

The Anthropologist: "It's because it's made of liquorice."

Cathed: "Why can't you just talk to him?"

Possessed by Promiscuity, Paris was blessed with pale, almost glittery skin....

Cathed: "It's a sparkly TWILIGHT VAMPIRE!"

...electric-blue eyes, and a face the angels probably sang hallelujahs over, but he wasn't Lucien and he did nothing for her.

Cathed: "Angels sing praise of demonic faces?"

The Chronicler: "She's mixing mythologies. Or simply copy-and-pasting an oft-used descriptor."

She might deal in petty disorder, but she never uttered a threat she didn't plan to see through. To do so smacked of weakness, and Anya had vowed long ago never to show a single hint of weakness...

The Anthropologist: "But drooling and shivering in the middle of the dance floor doesn't count..."

Azrael: "That's not weakness. It's drug abuse."

Paris's laughter intensified and managed to snag Lucien's attention. Lucien's gaze lifted, first landing on Paris...

The Balance: "Lucien's gay."

then locking on Anya. Her knees almost buckled. Oh, sweet heaven. Paris was forgotten as she fought to breathe

Pillywiggin: "Too many gaze!"

Azrael: "He's been deliberately not looking at her to kill her under an avalanche of his gaze."

Did she imagine the fire that suddenly sparked in Lucien's mismatched eyes? Did she imagine the way his nostrils flared in awareness?

The Anthropologist: "You're just pretending he's noticing you. You're just deluding yourself over his cold."

... Licking her lips, never removing her gaze from him, she eased into a sensual bump and grind and made her way toward his table...

Azrael: "Wait. She's bumping and grinding whilst walking?"

The Anthropologist: "She's walking quite slowly then, since at any given time, about 40% of her is moving in the opposite direction."

Azrael: "She could be bumping and grinding the furniture."

Up close, he was six-feet-six of muscle and danger. 

Azrael: "He's made of steak, tied together with police tape."

Pure temptation.

Pillywiggin: "Steak is very tempting."

The Balance: "And she's an anarchist, so she can't help but cross police tape."

There was a brief diversion in which the interesting quote is...

Pillywiggin: "I can't think of anything more dull than a clairvoyance conference."

"We meet at last, Flowers."

Cathed: "She really is the goddess of anarchy. She's going for the gay accountant."

She ground her left hipbone against the hard juncture between his legs, turning erotically and presenting him with a view of her back

The Anthropologist: "Juncture is not an erotic word."

Azrael: "Neither his hipbone."

Her ice-blue corset was held together by nothing more than thin ribbons...

The Anthropologist: "That implies it's not very tightly cinched. Which would render the corset pointless."

...and she knew her skirt hung so low on her waist that it failed to cover the bands of her thong. Oopsie.

Cathed: "And there I was thinking she's written her number in binary."

Azrael: "Appeal to the sodomite!"

Men, mortal or otherwise, usually melted when they caught a glimpse of something they shouldn't.

The Balance: "...like Cthulhu."

The Anthropologist: "It's not really a glimpse. She's just been showing off her thong all night because she's not capable of dressing herself."

...body as she raised her hands over her head then leisurely ran them through the thick mass of her snow-white hair...

The Anthropologist: "Mass is also not a sexy word."

Her nipples hardened.

Pillywiggin: "Pebbling!"

The Anthropologist: "Is she masturbating on the dance floor? Not that people would be shocked with all the fucking, but...."

"Why did you summon me, woman?" His voice was low, yet as disciplined as the warrior himself.

Pillywiggin: "Boring, then."

The Darkest Kiss, part three...

(Painting by Hans Baldung Grien, "Death and the Maiden", a painting to bear in mind.)

Listening to him speak was more arousing than being touched by another man, and her stomach clenched...

The Anthropologist: "It's only reinforcing the idea that she's a loser. She spent ages staring at him, willing him to notice her and now, despite her literally humping him, he's not really responding."

"I wanted to dance with you," she said over her shoulder. Bump, bump, slllooow grind. "Is that a crime?"

He didn't hesitate with his answer. "Yes." 

"Good. I've always enjoyed breaking the law."

The Anthropologist: "You have an interesting legal system in Budapest. Is this a holdover of the Soviet days?"

A confused pause. Then, "How much did Paris pay you to do this?" 

"I get paid? Oh, goodie!"

The Chronicler comes to the conclusion that this woman's narrative voice is exceptionally annoying.

Stepping back, grinning, she brushed her ass against him, arching and swinging as sensually as she was able. Hello, erection.

The Anthropologist: "She's making progress then."

The heat of him nearly liquefied her bones.

Pillywiggin: "Lava heat!"

"What's the currency? Orgasms?"

The Anthropologist: "What is the exchange rate between the dollar and the orgasm?"

Speculation results.

In her dreams, he always grabbed her and meshed the hard length of his cock into her at this point. 

The Anthropologist: "That makes her even lamer."

In reality, he jumped backward as if she were a bomb about to detonate, creating more hated distance between them.

The Anthropologist: "If the response to I want to sleep with you, is leaping behind tables, then you're doing something wrong."

Pillywiggin: "Or recoiling like he's a stoic."

A sense of loss immediately blanketed her. 

The Chronicler: "Again, the increasing pathetic desperation."

"No touching," he said. He'd probably done his best to sound calm, but he had sounded on edge. Strained.

The Anthropologist: "He's saying this from behind the table, bear in mind."

Her eyes narrowed. All around, people watched their interaction and his rejection of her.

The Anthropologist: "All around, everyone noticed what a loser she is."

They were still pursued by Hunters, humans who foolishly believed they could create a utopia of peace and harmony by ridding the world of the Lords and the demons they carried inside them.

The Chronicler notes that this is a really bad time to be trying to pick guy up in bar.

Ignore them. You're running out of time, chica.

Pillywiggin: "Are you up with the slang?"

The Anthropologist: "I'm up with the Spanish... In fact, I'm subando with the Spanish."

Azrael: "No, that's too foreign."

She ran a fingertip over the top band of her thong, not stopping until she drew the hot focus of his gaze to the glittery angel wings in the center.

The Anthropologist: "ARGH! No! That just makes you seem like a chav!"

Pillywiggin: "Hasn't that been apparent already?"

The Anthropologist: "But that's really tacky!"

"I was just about to walk away," he choked out.

The Anthropologist: "She sounds like the evil slut character... which means we can stop drinking for the I am not a Slut complex.... It's sociologically interesting, but AAAHHHH!"

Azrael: "Do you say that in seminars a lot?"

At his words, her nails elongated into little claws.

The Anthropologist: "Eewww... It sounds uncomfortable. And weird."

She'd shown herself to him, even knowing that the gods would be able to pinpoint her exact location—something it was best to avoid since they planned to snuff her out like a mangy animal. She would not leave this club without a reward.

The Chronicler: "Wait. She's risking almost certain death to shag him?"

Pillywiggin: "It's probably expected from shagging death itself..."

The Chronicler: "And on the sidenote, isn't she very against rape and very for choice of one's sexual partners a moment ago?"

Determination intensifying, she swung around with another roll of her hips, the length of her pale hair caressing his chest. As she nibbled on her bottom lip, she plumped her breasts.

The Anthropologist: "What? Plumping her breasts?"

The Chronicler: "I think she's consciously making them swell."

Azrael: "Isn't that what you do to scatter cushions... it's probably reminding he need to do some housekeeping..."

"But I don't want you to leave," she said with a practiced pout.

The Anthropologist cringed.

"What's wrong, sweetness?" Merciless, she moved forward. "Afraid of a little girl?"

The Chronicler: "Eww!"

Pillywiggin: "A little crazy girl."

The Anthropologist: "A little crazy girl wearing an angel thong!"

His lips thinned, but he didn't reply. Thankfully, he didn't move farther away, either.

Pillywiggin: "Because the walls are in the way."

Azrael: "Also because it wouldn't be stoic."

He was utterly magnificent. Rainbow-colored strobe lights rained down his face and body,

The Chronicler: "Rainbow coloured lights really shouldn't be a selling point... it's like sparkle vampires all over again."

... a body so finely sculpted it could have been chiseled from stone. He wore a black tee and stone-washed jeans, and both hugged rope after rope of hand-over-your-panties muscle. Mine.

Pillywiggin: "Where is the hand-over-your-panties muscle?"

The Anthropologist: "I'm pulling up a human anatomy diagram now..."

Azrael: "Wikipedia won't be able to help you now."

Pillywiggin: "I don't even understand what that could mean."

The Chronicler: "Why is this woman's idea of an in-charge woman comfortable with her sexuality a childish, stalker slut?"

The Anthropologist: "Because Come to Me."

"I'm not touching you, sweetcakes." But I want to…I plan to…I will.

The Anthropologist: "She's a rapist."

"I'll dance with you," another warrior said, cutting her off. Paris again. "No." Anya didn't switch her attention. She wanted Lucien and only Lucien. No one else would do.

Pillywiggin: "Why?"

She recognized the deep timbre of his voice. Sabin, keeper of Doubt.

Cathed: "I have doubt... I think..."

Azrael: "No, it's more like: I have doubt... No, you don't. It's all mine!"

Bait, stupid girls that they were, were all about self-sacrifice; their job was to seduce a Lord to distraction so Hunters could sneak in and slay him. And really, what kind of moron wanted to kill the Lords rather than make out with them a little?

Pillywiggin: "Who would want to... gyah?!"

Cathed remarks that there hasn't been a I am Not a Slut moment yet.

The Anthropologist: "She only wants to sleep with one man. But is really bad at it."

Oh, yes. The plague. One of the Lords was possessed by the demon of Disease. If he touched any mortal skin-to-skin, he infected that person with a terrible sickness that spread and killed with amazing swiftness

Pillywiggin: "They're backplotting at every conceivable moment."

Unfortunately, there were many, many more Hunters out there. Seriously, they were like flies. Swat one away, and two more soon took its place. Even now, they were out there somewhere, waiting for a chance to strike. The Lords had to remain cautious.

The Anthropologist: "Why are they being cautious if they have ridiculous flange powers and are immune to throat cut?"

"Besides, there's no way they could have figured out a way to bypass our security," Reyes added...

The Anthropologist: "Given all of you are having sex all over the party, you probably aren't really paying much attention to security."

"And maybe the big guy and I can go the next few minutes without an interruption. In private." They might have gotten the hint, but they didn't leave.

Pillywiggin: "'Cause our mate doesn't want to shag you!"

Of course, he didn't. But his nostrils did that delicious flare as his eyes followed every movement of her palms

Pillywiggin: "That's missing quite badly. You aimed for hands and got nostrils."

"Pretty please, with a cherry on top of me."

The Anthropologist: "If it turns out she's a virgin, it'd be so hilarious..."

His eyes flickered with fiery provocation. Not her imagination, she realized. Hope flooded her.

The Balance: "Barrack Obama..."

Pillywiggin is in pain.

The Balance: "Maybe she looks like Sarah Palin, but with white hair!"

The Anthropologist: "NOO!"

(The Chronicler regrets that this meme hasn't died yet.)

"Do you not find me desirable, Flowers?"

Cathed and Pillywiggin: "Why does she keep calling him that?"

A muscle ticked below his eye. "That is not my name."

Cathed: "Lucien 'Death' Flowers."

The Anthropologist: "To be fair, 'Death Flowers' is probably quite a scary name to an Aztec."

Alrightie, then. She turned and bent down to the floor. Her skirt rode up her thighs and gave him another, better, glimpse of her blue thong and the wings stretching from the center.

The Anthropologist: "It's not a glimpse. It's right there. It's been there all evening. We're getting bored of it now!"

There is discussion of exactly what's going on there.

As she pushed to a stand, mimicking the motions of sex as she did so, she slowly circled, offering a lingering full-body shot.

The Chronicler: "This woman is not subtle."

Pillywiggin: "Nor anatomically plausible."

"You smell like strawberries and cream." As he spoke, he looked like a predator about to pounce.

The Anthropologist: "You smell like dairy products."

Azrael: "Technically, she smells like a dairy product and a fruit."

"Bet I taste like it, too," she said, batting her lashes despite the fact that he'd made the fragrance seem like a horrendous affront.

The Anthropologist: "So, that's ketosis plus some sort of milky discharge."

There is some discussion about whether or not it's some sort of yeast infection.

He growled low in his throat and took a menacing step toward her. He raised his hand to—grab her? Hit her? Whoa, what was that about?

Azrael (raising a fist): "I hate strawberry and cream!"

...before stopping himself and fisting his fingers. Before remarking on her scent, he'd been distant but maybe-kinda-sorta interested. Now he only seemed interested in throttling her.

Azrael: "He was probably at some point sexually abused by a tea lady at Wimbledon."

Anya ceased moving, staring up at him in openmouthed astonishment. Because she smelled like fruit, he wanted to hurt her? 

The Anthropologist: "Make her stop talking like she's a teenager... more how she imagines teenager thinks."

That was—that was supremely…disappointing.

Pillywiggin: "That's some interesting abuse of punctuation."

Azrael: "It's chaotic enough to be within her purview."

Men liked women who threw themselves at them. Right? She'd observed mortals for too many years to count, and that had always seemed to be the case. Key word, chica—mortals. Lucien wasn't, and had never been, mortal.

The Chronicler: "See! She's learning the I am not a Slut complex..."

Why doesn't he want me?  In all the days she'd watched him, he hadn't favored a single woman.

Pillywiggin: "He's a personification! Not a sexual being!"

He didn't prefer men. His gaze didn't linger on males with hunger or any hint of softer emotion. 

Pillywiggin: "O rly?"

Was he in love with a specific woman, then, and no other would do? If so, the bitch was going down!

Pillywiggin: "'Cause that's endear you."

The Chronicler wonders about the world view where every unattached man is expected to want to and consent to have sex with anything that offers itself.

Thoughts of using "Smother her with your expanding breasts" as Emic Seaweed (the band which the Anthropologist, the Balance and Pillywiggin have formed)'s second album title surface.

Smoke continued to billow through the building, hazy, dreamlike.

Loinfire Club: "It's on fire?"

Lucien hadn't moved an inch; it was as if his entire body were rooted in place. She should give up, walk away, cut her losses before Cronus found her...

The Anthropologist: "Do it! Do it! Do it now!"

Only the weak give up. True. Determined, she raised her chin. 

The Loinfire Club groans.

With only a thought, she changed the song blasting through the speakers. The beat instantly slowed, softened...

Cathed: "What is this? A school disco? This is the slow song time?"

Pillywiggin: "Surely the goddess of anarchy can only set songs on shuffle?"

"You're going to dance with me," she purred. "That's the only way to get rid of me." Just to taunt him further, she stood on her tiptoes and gently bit his earlobe.

The Anthropologist: "Just flash him. That's the only thing in your slut repertoire that you haven't done."

There was a rumble in his throat as his arms finally wrapped around her. At first she thought he meant to push her away...

Azrael: "Hasn't he already threatened to punch her?"

Then he jerked her deeper into the curve of his body, flattening her breasts against his torso and forcing her legs to straddle his left thigh...

The Anthropologist: "That must look really awkward. Try to imagine it...."

Slowly, decadently, he swayed her side to side, their bodies staying meshed together, her core rubbing just above his knee.

Pillywiggin: "Is she not in great discomfort?"

Gods in heaven, this was better than she'd imagined...

Pillywiggin: "Did she just swear by herself?"

The Anthropologist (referring to the hero of Cupid's Melody): "At least it's not By the Stones!"

He was big. Everywhere. His shoulders were so wide they dwarfed her; his upper body so muscled it enveloped her...

The Balance: "Eeeccclllurrrp!"

Azrael: "She's now gyrating in his torso."

Pillywiggin: "Gelatinous cube!"

Even if he wanted her the way she wanted him, she couldn't have him. Not fully. In that respect, she was as cursed as he. But she could still enjoy the moment.

Pillywiggin: "Why not?"

His nose nuzzled her jawline.

The Anthropologist: "He's also really, really flexible. As well as being huge."

Pillywiggin: "He is a gelatinous cube."

The Balance: "He's a muscle elemental."

"Just because," she said, inhaling his heady rose perfume

The Anthropologist: "Why does he smell girlier than she does?"

Azrael: "Because he's just better than she is."

Her nipples were still hard, so hard, and rubbing against her corset, enhancing her desire...

The Loinfire Club speculates about whether or not her corset is a proper boned one or not. There is some consensus that it's something else that is probably uncomfortable in real life.

"Do you find it amusing to tease the ugliest man here?"

"Ugliest?" When he appealed to her as no one else ever had? "But I'm nowhere near Paris, sugarpop."

Pillywiggin: "That might be a good thing to say to him, except for the sugarpop part."

The Anthropologist: "If she's an immortal goddess in Hungary, why does she talk like a waitress from Texas?"

The Balance: "Because it's only the demon-trapped-inside-them guys that are from Hungary. She could well be from Texas."

"I know what I am," he growled with the faintest trace of bitterness. "Ugly is being kind."

There is debate over what the hero looks like, since it is becoming abundantly clear that he looks nothing like the man on the cover since he is unscarred.

The Anthropologist: "He looks like he was eating gummi bears at one point and forgot they're stuck to his face."

"If you know what you are, sweetness, then you know you're sexy and deliciously menacing." [...]

He glared down at her. "Menacing? Does that mean you want me to hurt you?"

Pillywiggin (in reference to a line of Edward's in Twilight): "Can I crush your skull?"

His nostrils flared again...

Pillywiggin: "His nostril flares are like everyone else's gazes."

The Anthropologist: "A little light that goes off like a distress signal. He's signalling to his friends across the room..."

Closer…closer…Yes, contact. Oh, great gods! She glided her hands over his chest, luxuriating in the feel of his nipples as they reached for her...

Cathed: "His nipples are reaching for her?!"

The Anthropologist: "I'm sure I've read a Lovecraft..."

...savoring the ropes of strength that greeted her.

The Balance: "But they're strength-roped nipples!"

However he'd gotten the scars could not have been pleasant. He'd suffered. A lot. The knowledge suddenly angered her as much as it entranced her. Who had hurt him and why? A jealous lover?

The Chronicler feels this paragraph speaks for itself as to how dense, obsessive and annoying this goddess of anarchy is.

Looked like someone had taken a blade and carved Lucien up like a melon, then tried to put him back together with the pieces out of order.

Pillywiggin: "Melon..."

The Anthropologist: "He's a melon elemental! Or a melemental!"

Did he have similar scars on the rest of his body? Her knees weakened as a new tide of arousal flooded her. She'd watched him for weeks, but she hadn't gotten a single peek at his delectable form. 

Pillywiggin: "Because he doesn't habitually strip for anything..."

Somehow, he'd always managed to bathe and change after she left.

Pillywiggin: "Oh. She's just bad at it."

The Anthropologist: "Can you say 'restraining order'?"

Had he sensed her and kept himself hidden?

The Anthropologist: "When is Chronos going to reappear and kill them all?"

"If I didn't know better, I would think you were Bait, as my men do," he said tightly.

The Chronicler: "If she was, she wouldn't tell you."

If she assured him she wasn't Bait, she would seem to be admitting that she knew what Bait was. 

Pillywiggin: "Why can't she say what she is?"

"Do you want me to be?" she said in her most seductive tone. "'Cause I'll be anything you want, lover."

Azrael: "Silly."

The Loinfire Club finds out, at this point, that Azrael ate four bowls of salmon chowder and are horrified.

Pillywiggin: "I ate two and I'm feeling full!"

Azrael: "I have my specialities and in them I excel."

Now, there was a loaded question. She wanted all of his masculinity focused on her. She wanted hours to strip and explore him. She wanted him to strip and explore her. She wanted him to smile at her. She wanted his tongue in her mouth.

Pillywiggin: "The author really hasn't heard of show not tell."

The Anthropologist: "These are not mutually exclusive option! If I can do them at all the same time..."

Azrael: "I can totally revolutionise and streamline my sex life!"

At this point, only the last seemed achievable. And only by playing unfairly. Good thing Devious was her middle name...

Pillywiggin: "Anarchy and deviousness are two different things."

Cathed: "Tickle him!"

Lots of plans are formulated. Mostly to do with cutting his tongue off.

"I'll take a kiss," she said, gazing at his soft, pink mouth.

The Anthropologist: "I'm not sure you want to give me that mental image.... it makes him sound like some sort of FTM transsexual..."

"I need a moment alone with her."

The Anthropologist: "I want a moment alone with her. In this roomful of dancing people, with lesbian sex in the background."

There is talk of the scenes of the Matrix Reloaded with the lesbians making out.

Yes! Except his friends stayed put. Jerks...

The Balance: "She is Sarah Palin. She calls them jerks."

She arched her back, pressing the core of her into his erection. Mmm, erection.

Pillywiggin: "My favourite breakfast."

The Anthropologist: "Really can't imagine how he's bending down to "

His words should have offended her, but she was too caught up in the tide of pleasure that simple embrace elicited to care...

Pillywiggin: "Simple embrace where you're semi-masturbating against his knee."

The Balance is holding his hand in a benediction gesture.

Azrael: "You look like a Greek Orthodox icon."

The Anthropologist: "You're looking like a Teacherite icon."

"Kiss her, Lucien, before I do. Bait or not," Paris called with a laugh. Good-natured as the laugh was, it was still edged with steel.

The Anthropologist: "That doesn't make any sense."

Lucien continued to resist. She could feel his heart beating against his ribs...

The Balance: "...And that is the gospel of the Lord."

Azrael: "Thanks be to the Lord!... Dammit!"

Pillywiggin: "Your years as an altar boy have not been wasted, Balance."

Anya jerked his head down to hers and smashed her lips against his. His mouth instantly opened, and their tongues met in a deep, wet thrust. There was an intense rush of heat through her as the addictive flavor of roses and mint bombarded her.

Azrael (with a bowl of chowder): "Seriously, I'm eating here."

She pressed deeper, needing more of him. All of him. Plumes of fire infused her entire body. She rubbed against his cock, unable to stop herself. He fisted her hair, taking complete control of her mouth.

Pillywiggin: "This woman isn't aware of the other meaning of fisting, is she?"

The Chronicler wonders at the ultra-alpha nature of his kisses despite the fact that Anya is technically the one seducing him.

She'd entered the gates of heaven without taking a single step.

The Anthropologist wants desperately to skim.

His tongue thrust back inside her mouth, their teeth banging together...

The Anthropologist laughs.

Passion and arousal were a hot blaze between them, a raging inferno. Truly, she was on fire...

The Loinfire Club busies itself with the multitude of "fiery" drinks.

"More," he said roughly, palming her breast.

Pillywiggin (in a squeek): "Breasts!"

With one hand, she gripped the hem of his shirt and lifted. With the other, she caressed the ropes of his stomach. Scars. She felt scars and shivered, the jagged tissue wonderfully hot

Pillywiggin: "Liquorice!"

She almost came, his reaction like fuel to an already blazing fire. She did moan.

The Chronicler would be rolling her eyes if she could.

Her eyelids cracked open, and she nearly gasped when she realized they were indeed outside, leaning against the club's exterior in a shadowed corner. He must have flashed them there, the naughty boy. He was the only Lord capable of transporting himself from one location to another with only a thought. A skill she possessed, as well. She only wished he'd flashed them to a bedroom.

Pillywiggin: "This is not the time for exposition."

He raised his darkly haloed head, blue and brown irises intense, before pinning her with another scorching kiss. On and on it continued, until she was willingly, blissfully drowning in him. Branded to her very soul, where she was no longer Anya but Lucien's woman. Lucien's slave.

The Chronicler: "So much for being in control."

No, there would be no flashing, she realized with disappointment...

Cathed: "No flashing for me..."

She wasn't wearing a bra, so the hardened pink tips of her nipples were visible, two little beacons in the night.

There is much laughter and some confusion over what is happening with her breasts since they were previously encased in her corset (made clear with chaffage) but now they're beaconing...

The Balance: "Maybe it was an underbust and her nipples were drooping."

The Chronicler: "She could mean a corset-style top?"

Pillywiggin (pointing at the Anthropologist's glass of smoothie): "Look at that swollen purple shaft of drink!"

Poor, tortured Reyes, keeper of Pain. He liked to cut himself. Once, she'd even seen him jump from the top of the warriors' fortress and luxuriate in the feel of his broken bones.

The Loinfire Club giggles.

"You don't really want him," Reyes said. "We all know that. So tell us what you do want before we force you to tell us."

The Chronicler: "Unpleasant thing to say about your friend."

Lucien stepped in front of her, blocking her from the men. Was he…protecting her? How utterly sweet. Unnecessary, but sweet. Some of her anger evaporated. She wanted to hug him. 

"Leave her alone," Lucien said. "She doesn't matter. She's unimportant."

[...]

A red haze winked over her vision. This must be how my mother always felt. Nearly all the men Dysnomia had taken to bed had hurled insults at the woman when their pleasure had been sated. Easy, they'd said. Not good for anything else.

Cathed (muttered): "Dysnomia?"

(The Chronicler: "Really minor goddess. Daughter of Eris. Not sure why she's seen as an uber-slut here, though. Odd that the author re-imagines her as being hated for being a slut instead of an actual spirit of lawlessness and opposition to civil order.")

Anya knew her mother well, knew Dysnomia had been slave to her lawless nature, as well as simply looking for love. Mated gods, single gods, it hadn't mattered. If they had desired her, she had given herself to them.

Pillywiggin: "Don't backstory in the middle of the scene."

Cathed: "More importantly, don't backstory in the middle of a sex scene."

Pillywiggin: "He thrust in her and that reminded her of the time when she was seven..."

Of all the things she'd expected and yearned for him to say, unimportant hadn't been close. She's mine, maybe. I need her, perhaps. Don't touch my property, definitely.

(The Chronicler: "She'd rather he claim she's his property than be unimportant? From her point of view, she's just some random chick who's humped his leg recently. If she's more meaningful to him, it'd just be weird.")

Azrael (referring to the Balance's style of reading): "I'm sure romance novels delivered at that speed is akin to assault.... I'm going have a lie down."

The Balance is going faster.

Pillywiggin: "He's speaking in tongues! The Holy Spirit is Among Us!"

"You have been following me. I recognized your scent." Strawberries and cream, he'd said earlier, accusation in his voice. Her eyes widened. Pleasure and mortification blended, spearing her all the way to the bone. All along, he'd known she was watching him.

Pillywiggin: "She sucks."

"Why did I get the third degree if you knew who I was? And why, if you knew I was following you, didn't you ask me to show myself?"

The Anthropologist: "Because I wanted an excuse to not take fucking showers."

"Well, no." Much as it would have saved her pride, she suddenly realized she didn't want him thinking she gave her kisses away so easily. "Not yet."

The Chronicler: "You were humping him a moment ago... She's learning to not be a slut..."

She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, her frustration renewed.

The Anthropologist: "Do many people do that when they're frustrated?"

Revulsion? He should be grateful! Hadn't she liberated him from the curse that had forced him to stab his BFF every night?

The Balance: "They use BFF!!"

Pillywiggin: "God! Kill me.... I need a lie down."

Azrael: "You can have the rug. I think I've recovered."

The Anthropologist: "We're lying down on the floor in shifts now, are we?"

The Balance: "About the BFF..."

Yes, damn it. She had. But his look was one she knew well, and one that never failed to raise her hackles. [...]

Because of her mother's amorous past and the widespread expectation that she, with her free-spirited ways, would follow suit, every Greek god in Olympus had projected that same sort of revulsion at her at one time or another. At first, Anya had been hurt by their smug disdain. And for several hundred years, she'd tried the good-girl thing: dressing like a freaking nun, speaking only when spoken to, keeping her gaze downcast. Somehow she'd even squelched her desperate need for disaster. All to earn the respect of beings who would never see her as anything more than a whore.

The Anthropologist: "Is this leading up to an I am not a Slut?"

The Chronicler: "Almost certainly."

One fateful day, when she'd come home from stupid goddess training...

Pillywiggin: "What?"

The Chronicler: "It's training to become a stupid goddess."

Pillywiggin: "1 + 1 = cock!"

...crying because she'd smiled at Ares and that bitch Artemis had called her ta ma de...

Cathed: "The canonical goddesses and gods are being mean to her!"

(The Chronicler wonders what that means. All that google can come up with is the Mandarin – literally meaning 'of his/her mother', a sort of equivalent of 'dammit!' – and that's just weird, since these are classical deities and it's not a direct insult. Unless there's some Roman or Greek equivalent that's eluding google...)

Dysnomia had pulled her aside. Whatever you do, however you act, they are going to judge you harshly, the goddess had said. But we all must be true to our own nature. Acting as anyone other than yourself merely brings you pain and makes you appear ashamed of who and what you are. 

The Chronicler: "She'll soon discover her true self isn't a slut..."

Others will feed off that shame, and soon it will be all that you are. You are a wonderful being, Anya. Be proud of who you are. I am. 

The Chronicler: "Exactly why is she proud of Anya living a lie and against her anarchic instincts?"

From then on, Anya had dressed as sexily as she pleased, talked whenever and however she wanted and refused to look at her feet for any reason other than admiring her strappy stilettos. No longer had she denied her need for disorder. 

Pillywiggin: "Strappy stilettos aren't very disorderly."

The Chronicler: "Surely dressing comfortably and happily would be more anarchic? Instead of conforming to other people's ideas of sexy and attractive? Why is this author fudging the ideas of anarchy/disorderliness with sexiness?"

"You are the daughter of Dysnomia," Reyes continued. "You are the minor goddess of Anarchy."

Pillywiggin: "She probably knows this already."

The Balance: "But we might have forgotten."

She would never be ashamed again.

The Chronicler: "Except for just now."

"There's nothing minor about me." Minor meant unimportant, and she was just as important as the other, "higher" beings, damn it.

The Chronicler: "No, minor usually means 'not having many worshippers' and 'not being quite as powerful,' both of which can be quantitively measured."

But because no one knew who her father was—well, she did, now—she had been relegated as such.

The Chronicler: "You've never read any classical mythology, right? And it's no surprise that her father's Chronos, so stop hiding it."

The Chronicler: "Wait. Just a minute. She's of the Olympian pantheon. The ones who have sex in every conceivable form..."

Pillywiggin: "And some unconceivable...."

Cathed: "Golden shower of light!"

The Anthropologist: "But she wears a thong with angel wings on it."

The Chronicler: "That is really slutty."

Irritation flickered in his dark eyes, but he continued calmly. "As I told you, since your appearance weeks ago I have been researching you, learning everything I can. Long ago, you were imprisoned for murdering an innocent man. Then, a hundred years or so after your confinement, the gods finally agreed on the proper punishment for you. Before they could carry out the verdict, however, you did something no other immortal had ever managed to do. You escaped."

The Balance: "He's backstorying again..."

She didn't try to deny it. "Your research is correct." For the most part.

Pillywiggin: "I'm glad I keep my own wiki entry up to date."

"Guards were placed in every corner to fortify security, as the gods feared the strength of the prison depended on the strength of its keeper. Over time the walls did begin to crumble and crack, which eventually led to the escape of the Titans." 

Gonna blame that on her, was he? Her eyes narrowed. 

"The thing about legends," she said flatly, "is that the truth is often distorted to explain the things that mortals cannot understand."

The Balance: "But they're immortals... so they should be able to understand it."

"You hid here, among humans," Reyes said, ignoring her. Again. "But you weren't content to live in peace even then."

Pillywiggin: "Personification of a concept!"

"You started wars, stole weapons and even ships."

Cathed (gasping): "Even ships!"

Pillywiggin: "She's a shipper!"

There is much gasping.

The Anthropologist: "Maybe it's like being a cattle rustler in a Western?"

"...You caused major fires and others disasters, which in turn led to mass panic and rioting among the humans, and hundreds of people being imprisoned."

Pillywiggin: "Anarchy. Was in the job description."

Warmth suffused her face. Yes, she'd done those things.

The Anthropologist: "Why is she ashamed?"

The Balance: "Maybe it's a good sort of warmth. Like a warm and fuzzy feeling.... oh, no..."

...she'd first come to earth, she hadn't known how to control her rebellious nature. Gods had been able to protect themselves from it, humans hadn't. Besides that, she'd been almost…feral from her years in prison. 

The Anthropologist: "What tells me that she's going spend rest of book angsting about that, isn't she?"

A simple comment from her—you aren't going to let your brother talk to you like that, are you?—and bloody feuds erupted...

The Chronicler: "That's not how feuds work. It's about not letting other people talk to your brother like that. Feuds don't tend to happen within families; they happen between families."

An appearance at court—perhaps laughing at the rulers and their policies—and loyal knights attempted to assassinate their king.

The Chronicler: "So she's single-handedly responsible for all feuds, assassinations and disorder everywhere? And what exactly is her opinion of Iceland's political structure with its systematised feuding?"

Eventually she'd learned that if she fed her need for disorder with little things—petty theft, white lies and the occasional street fight—huge disasters could be averted...

Pillywiggin: "But it's her nature!"

The Chronicler: "So none of the civil wars right now are her fault? By this logic the world should be more orderly now and...well..."

There is some defending of the concept – though not the execution. The Loinfire Club is quite fond of a shit-stirring goddess, however Anya is really getting on our collective nerves.

"I did my homework on you, too," she said softly. "Did you not once destroy cities and kill innocents?" Now Reyes blushed.

The Chronicler: "Honestly!"

Cronus, who had taken over the heavenly throne mere months ago, bringing new rules, new desires and new punishments, was about to arrive... As a bright blue light appeared in front of her, chasing away the darkness and humming with unimaginable power, she flashed away. With a sense of regret she had no business feeling, she left Lucien behind—taking the taste and memory of their kiss with her.

Pillywiggin: "Thank GOD the chapter's over!"

Pillywiggin: "I have brain indigestion... The Loinfire Club has pain."

The Chronicler: "On the bright side, not much to write up."

Pillywiggin: "Only because it's so horribly hard to get through... There's just so much wrong..."

The Anthropologist: "But no incestuous overtones on p. 2!"

The Loinfire Club doesn't read.... Twilight

Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer

When 17 year old Isabella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father she expects that her new life will be as dull as the town. But in spite of her awkward manner and low expectations, she finds that her new classmates are drawn to this pale, dark-haired new girl in town. But not, it seems, the Cullen family. These five adopted brothers and sisters obviously prefer their own company and will make no exception for Bella. Bella is convinced that Edward Cullen in particular hates her, but she feels a strange attraction to him, although his hostility makes her feel almost physically ill. He seems determined to push her away ? until, that is, he saves her life from an out of control car. Bella will soon discover that there is a very good reason for Edward's coldness. He, and his family, are vampires ? and he knows how dangerous it is for others to get too close. 

The Chronicler feels she really needs to get some more horrible books to bash, or perhaps better books to gush over. Mediocrity is really quite difficult comment on and even more difficult to read. After a while the mind numbs to the dull prose and what nuggets of interest are only interesting in comparison.

Mrs Giggles wrote that Stephanie Meyer created "the most potent kind of pornography for teenage girls in Twilight - the Mary Sue epic love story." And, preamble aside, the Chronicler maintains that this assessment is the most succinct, witty and accurate assessment of Twilight possible and that anything she can add is really just flogging a dead pony. Elizabeth Hand dissects all four books with great wit and brevity... But the rambling habit never stopped me. Neither will the fact that Twilight has already received numerous awards (The 

Anthropologist remarked that she never heard anyone scream "Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year" with that much horror).

Incidentally, the cover of Twilight is really pretty. Proverbs and pronouncements aside, it was in fact the reason why The Chronicler owns a copy of the book. That and there is something compelling about the blurb:

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him — and I didn't know how potent that part might be — that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Of course, when you think about it harder there are holes to pick at and the promise of unconditional love is all well and good in concept, in quotes, but it is often makes for a perplexing – if not alienating – read. Dark, twisted obsession makes for a fascinating read, but the trap of romanticising it so often ensnares the author and the reader is presented a picture of dubious relationship practices as an ideal rather than a compelling perversion.

Isabella "Bella" Swan moves into Forks, which we are assured to be the most damp and overcast little town in all of America, and meets Edward Cullen, the sparkliest, most beautiful vampire ever. In the last quarter or so of the book, something resembling a plot kicks in and some vampire by the name of James decides he wants to hunt Bella for sport, but that is really inconsequential to the True Love that exists between Bella and Edward.

The opening chapters are interminable and shows again all the weaknesses of a first person narrative.* Meyer has an eye for incidental detail and one is torn from seeing it as clutter and seeing it as building a believable – if dull – character. Bella calls her father "Charlie" and her mother "Reneé". The Anthropologist theorises latent and repressed resentment or that they're "hip" parents who insist on being called their first names. However, Bella calls them "Mom" and "Dad" in speech and emails thus the "voice" of her narrative seems somehow... off.

Bella's description of her new truck makes me wonder if she's aware that the indomitable Toyota Pickup is foreign:

Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged — the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.

But much of Twilight shows a great blind spot in general knowledge, such as when Edward tells Bella that his favourite blood is that of a mountain lion and "Grizzly [Bear] is Emmett's favourite." He adds:

We have to be careful not to impact the environment with injudicious hunting. We try to focus on areas with an overpopulation of predators.

The Balance, ever the voice of reason and conservation biology, notes that this would mean nowhere. Whilst neither the grizzly bear nor the mountain lion is currently listed under "threatened" by the World Conservation Union, both populations are somewhat precarious. "Near threatened" is hardly a green light for vampires to start wrestling down mountain lions and draining them of blood.

But maybe the world of Twilight is completely different from our own when it comes to this and has a real problem with predator overpopulation...

The Anthropologist notes that Meyer seems to recycle common vampire tropes by substituting in less famous names in hopes that this obvious filing off of the serial numbers would give the impression of an original idea. Instead of Navajo skin-walker werewolves, she has them as Quileute. Instead of Michelangelo and Raphael Sanzio being inspired by Vampires to paint, it's Francesco Solimena, also of the Italian Renaissance. The new names doesn't make it feel more fresh or original.

Meyer struggles with creating the obliviously beautiful heroine – the ugly girl who is simple a pretty girl with glasses:

I should be tan, sporty, blond — a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps — all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.

Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete. 

"Ivory-skinned" is in no way a derogatory descriptor. Neither is a soft slenderness. In fact, all one can get from the passage is that she is conventionally attractive. She tells us both her height (5' 4") and weight (110lbs), conveniently allowing us to work out her Body Mass Index, which we, of course, proceeded to do. (The Anthropologist was rather gleeful about this since she'd never been given the information to do this to a romance novel heroine before.)

It rather difficult to actually give Bella's claims of being an unpopular outcast any credence. She soon has a plethora of male admirers and multiple female friends (most of whom are nice but mildly jealous of her).

On the other hand, it is perhaps quite easy to see why she hadn't many friends back in Phoenix as she goes through her first day making unsympathetic snap judgements on the people who are nice to her:

When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

It's not even that I don't like snarky people, but Bella's brand of sarcasm comes across as unpleasant, borderline misanthropic and not particularly incisive (or funny, for that matter). She is also utterly oblivious to the possibility that she may be doing something wrong in her inability to communicate and sympathise with her peers.

(Incidentally, we never do discover whether or not "Chess Club Eric" is actually member of any chess club – or if there is a chess club at this school – he is given this label by Bella and it is used forevermore.)

Meyer claims that Bella's sudden surge in popularity in Forks high school is based in part on her own ugly-duckling-now-swan university experience. Of course, there is quite a big difference between switching from one high school to another and from high school to university. Usually, the case of "stock surge," as Meyer put it, is caused by there simply being more people at college and exposure to a greater number of people. The Anthropologist also quips that Meyer's anecdote is probably coloured by the fact that she attended Brigham Young University, where the beauty is measured by willingness to become a happy housewife. (The Anthropologist would like to add that she was being very snarky at this point and doesn't mean it literally.)

Probable or not, it's immensely hard to sympathise with the self-proclaimed unattractive girl who finds herself being asked by three (not including the hero) boys to the "girls' choice spring dance." Which is really reason enough to reject them since they blatantly fail to grasp simple concepts (and will no doubt have trouble with concepts like "consent" later on in the evening.) Bella takes her new friends and admirers very much for granted. She doesn't even seem to care much about them and they start blurring together into this faceless, chattering mass, which really doesn't recommend the character to me.

The same applies to most of Twilight, there is a great distance between the showing and the telling. As readers, we're told repeatedly that Bella is clumsy to the point of endangering herself, yet we little evidence of this in her actions. I understand the need for comic hyperbole, but the "joke" of Bella's clumsiness needs to be reinforced with some actual correlation with reality. I don't know, she could get hit by a volleyball more. Or walk into a lamppost whilst reading. We're told Bella is bookish, yet she is rarely shown reading and it seems never to surface in her conversation – surely any seventeen-year-old who has wild imagination and a bookish way can come up with something more creative than "Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker" in an entire month. For that matter, "Bruce Wayne" is a stupid explanation for Edward's supernatural abilities since Batman has none; he's just really, really rich. 

I had decided to read Wuthering Heights — the novel we were currently studying in English — yet again for the fun of it...

I know I've odd opinions about the Brontës, but who reads Wuthering Heights "for the fun of it"? It's an immensely emotionally draining book. (Unless, of course, you find it alienating, messy and dull, which is another popular opinion.) It's really quite dark and unlike, say, Jane Eyre, it's quite difficult to overlook the dark bits – the murderous hero, the unapologetically selfish heroine... But perhaps this attitude to the events of Wuthering Heights will explain her later reaction to Edward's vampirism.

 

But yes, the vampires of Twilight, the main attraction... they are quite possible the least subtle ones this side of serious literature. They are aloof, never talk to any of the students and sit by themselves in their little huddle in the cafeteria:

[They] were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel.

(At this point, the Chronicler hastens to add that she clearly doesn't mean any of the medieval masters...)

Not only that, but they all have:

dark shadows under those eyes —purplish, bruiselike shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose.

...which you'd think would crimp their perfect, perfect beauty. It's explicitly describes as being more like an injury rather than overly enthusiastic eye-shadow application. But clearly Bella (or Meyer) is of the opinion that abuse victims are hot.

The deathly pale complexion, unearthly beauty (despite adopted) and uniformly bruised eyes aside, they also don't eat. They all sit there with their food in front them, looking at nothing in particular ("away from each other, away from the other students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell") and not eating. They then proceed to throw away their uneaten food. And this happens, we could but assume, every day. Wasting the food aside, it seems inane that no one has noticed this. Especially since I'm sure anorexia is quite a problem in high schools (one that is looked out for) and the girls look like "Sports Illustrated" models, which implies underweight to me.

I hope you're getting a full image here, dear reader: inhumanly beautiful, deathly pale clique with uniformly bruised eyes sit together, not looking at anything, not eating, every lunch time at the cafeteria. I wouldn't suspect vampires, but cult would be high on the suspicions list.

Bella and Edward stare at each other, a lot. Edward stares at her with a "hostile, furious" expression on his face. And she shies away from his gaze, but stare at him when he's not looking. This game of stares goes on for far, far too long. The blurb makes no secret of Bella and Edward's eventual relationship so it really begs the question why it can't cut to the chase, especially when the misunderstandings and double-meaning really gets on my nerves. 

Edward heavy-handedly hints at how very dangerous he is and the reader is in on the fact that he's a vampire, but Bella isn't and... suffice to say, the Belief Turnstile is badly handled. It's a very, very long time before Bella finds out that Edward's a vampire and the whole sequence lacks suspense (since the reader already knows he's a vampire and is impatient for the revelation) and momentum, let alone actual believability. Bella hears about vampires from Jacob Black, a family friend and then ends up googling it. She then ponders if Edward could be. Later, he confirms this... it's just dull. And never does she actually feel threatened by him.

Of course, it's never clear what Bella's worldview was, pre-vampires. She swallows the website wholesale and moves on to speculate whether the Cullens were vampires. She doesn't need to, well, fit them into an emerging picture of the world she lives in. If someone were to prove to me that vampires exist, then the next question is whether or not other folkloric creatures exist and which versions of the folklores are most accurate. Then is the question where they fit in the universe: Is there a heaven and a hell? Do we have souls or not? Etc, etc...

Bella's just incredibly uncurious. She asks Edward about popular culture vampires, but neglects to ask him about the three pages of Wikipedia reading she did.

I felt a spasm of fear at his words, and the abrupt memory of his violent black glare that first day… but the overwhelming sense of safety I felt in his presence stifled it.

Their relationship is described with self-contradicting hyperbole and never does the reader glimpse the "heart" of the relationship, how the two characters actually function together as a couple. Bella falls in love with him without really interacting with him in any meaningful way beyond stares (and they're not even meaningful stares, the sort the allegedly pierce the heart and make one feel truly understood) and a few words of cryptic conversation. We never find out the contents of her Edward-filled dreams, since she doesn't really know enough of his personality to extrapolate what interacting with him would be like (unlike he, who was probably busy listening in on every conversation she has via mind-reading). Besides his statuesque beauty – literally, actually, since vampire skin resembles marble in its texture and hardness – he seems to have little to recommend him.

The most remarkable conversation is this one, early in their relationship:

I couldn't remember the last time I'd talked so much. More often than not, I felt selfconscious, certain I must be boring him. But the absolute absorption of his face, and his never-ending stream of questions, compelled me to continue. Mostly his questions were easy, only a very few triggering my easy blushes. But when I did flush, it brought on a whole new round of questions. 

He asks her questions like "What music is in your CD player right now?" and what her favourite gemstone/flower/colour/book/movie is. It 's even likened in the book to psychoanalysis. It's baffling, since most hold these topics to be conversation starters, where there is an exchange of opinion and discussion as opposed to a one-sided interrogation. One could read this as how a vampire (due to being dead) is utterly unable to really experience real preference and opinion, thus is leeching of her vivid and exciting life experience, but it's not really the way it's presented to one. Plus, Edward does actually have opinions and is functionally the same as a normal human.

The Anthropologist posits that it's because the teenage female desires a teenage boy who inundate them all the questions like those on facebook and myspace, desiring to know all those pointless preferences like a "which angel are you?" quiz, because that is their standard of meaningful correspondence.

 

Meyer uses Edward's bloodlust as an odd metaphor for sexual desire – Edward's sexual desire is equated to his desire to drink (and kill) Bella – which gives the whole book an odd allegorical side, which Meyer explicitly point to. But it's a tightly-controlled-yet-overpowering desire which Bella can never understand, neither does she feel anything akin to it – really quite repulsive, outdated sexual politics, in my opinion, but it's found in trace quantities in at least half the romance novels on the market, so I'll not harp on that too much. Elizabeth Hand finds in Meyer "unrequited female erotic yearning", but it's hardly the case. There's nothing even vaguely erotic about Bella's yearning. She's a good girl. Her admiration of Edward, though isn't physical – or so she insists. It's what's behind the face, she tells her friend, she's fascinated by the idea of a redeeming monster.

But Bella (unlike Jane Eyre, for example) isn't the agent of his redemption, she's remarkably passive throughout the story. Edward is already well on the road to redemption (set on by Dr. Cullen) when he meets her. Pillywiggin goes as far as calling her the "meatbag" Edward wheels about the place and refuses to let talk. Edward notes that he feels the most "human" when around her, but it's never really explained what that means.

(Actually, Dr. Cullen's backstory is really odd. It takes him, literally, months to develop the philosophy to drink animal blood instead of human. Seriously. How thick is this founding father of vampire "vegetarianism"? In addition, after a few centuries of self-control, he manages to resist bloodlust so much he can work in a hospital.)

Still, telling her that she must stay absolutely still when he kisses her, or else, he'll accidentally kill her, seems a bit much.

There really was no excuse for my behaviour. Obviously I knew better by now. And yet I couldn't seem to stop from reacting exactly as I had the first time. Instead of keeping safely motionless, my arms reached up to twine tightly around his neck, and I was suddenly welded to his stone figure

Edward's declarations of his immense skull-crushing strength is weird:

"If I was too hasty… if for one second I wasn't paying enough attention, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don't realize how incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I'm with you."

With that kind of strength... well, surely he'd be accidentally putting holes into walls, breaking doorbells, stamping through floors... telephones must be a nightmare as he accidentally punches them apart with his fingers. But of course, this sort of strength only applies when with Bella (or alternatively, Bella is just made of tofu).

Speaking of kisses, the book also boasts of what Pillywiggen has branded the most unsexy kiss she's ever read:

He seemed unaware of his watching family as he pulled my face to his, lifting my feet off the floor. For the shortest second, his lips were icy and hard against mine. Then it was over. He set me down, still holding my face, his glorious eyes burning into mine.

Bella is rather frail, she faints at blood (especially inconvenient when dating a vampire) and later faints at Edward's kisses. She has a special scent that only Edward can smell (no, I don't know why, or how he knows this) though she is still immensely attractive:

"If you didn't smell so appallingly luscious, he might not have bothered." [...]

"I thought… I didn't smell the same to the others… as I do to you," I said hesitantly.

"You don't. But that doesn't mean that you aren't still a temptation to every one of them. If you had appealed to the tracker — or any of them — the same way you appeal to me, it would have meant a fight right there."

After Bella is told that she is to inform her father that she's going out with Edward (so that he has an incentive to bring her back), she promptly decides to not do so, since if Edward succumbs to bloodlust and kills her, she doesn't want to get him into trouble.

It's probably common knowledge by now and barely worth mocking, but Meyer's vampires literally sparkle:

His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare.

The Anthropologist has much snark concerning how this conforms to teenage female aesthetics, but it's really getting too easy...

 

There is something compelling about the lion-in-love-with-the-lamb trope, and Meyer does milk it for all its worth, but she doesn't let the story darken or deepen. Edward really isn't a very objectionable vampire. Vampires being harmed by holy water and daylight reinforces as metaphysical acknowledgement of their inhuman, inherently diabolical nature. By getting rid most of the traditional vampiric trappings, Meyer's vampires just aren't very monstrous. Or scary. 

There is nothing that isn't immediately forgiven by Bella. She isn't repulsed by the fact he doesn't drink blood, or that he has killed numerous people (admittedly serial killers, rapists and muggers) in the past in order to drink their blood. Her acceptance of him, this unconditional love, doesn't seem tested by his revelations. She takes it all in her stride. Monstrous, Byronic heroes work only if the heroine, the author, the reader, the rest of the cast, all acknowledge that he's actually monstrous.

It's telling, perhaps, in the phrasing of how Meyer says that Edward is based on Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester, because both "see themselves as 'monsters.'" It's the self-perception as monstrous, but Meyer, however sees Edward as a gentlemen, full of "olde-worlde charm." Of course, the Chronicler often finds that the world seems to reading a different book than her. Rochester is monstrous, in many ways. He was ready to commit bigamy (no small sin in Victorian England), he's got his wife locked up in his attic, madness aside, he's not really giving her any decent care or treatment. He also had mistresses (also no small sin in Victorian England). Jane is drawn to him, but she cannot forgive him and cannot marry him, so she runs away from temptation. But the point is, Rochester is a man weighed down by his past inhabiting a world that acknowledges his sinfulness. He's genuinely haunted by that past. Edward Cullen, on the other hand, flits about his teenage classroom. His decade of murdering murderers is brought up only once and never again, not even by Bella (seriously, that more than half her age spent drinking blood). Bella's absolute faith in Edward to control himself, to not kill her simply adds her mind-numbing naiveté and solidifies Edward as "just misunderstood."

Perhaps it's because he's so very well-controlled that Edward comes across as an automaton. Meyer speaks of "sacrifice" and she relates it to her college experience at Brigham Young University... It's as though she's not really aware that when most people write about "sacrifices" made for love, they don't mean "no sex before marriage" or "no alcohol at college." They usually mean things grander, more epic, shall we say. That Edward's sexual/bloodlust struggle is rather too dull to be placed at the fore of the book... well, we know he's not going to succumb. Bella's hardly going to die by his hand.... So where's the tension?  Bella doesn't have graphic fantasies of him gnawing her neck off and doesn't really actively tempt him beyond just existing.

Meyer also notes in the same interview that "Edward goes to great lengths so nothing bad happens to Bella, she is cared for so much. A lot of the book's appeal is the thought of being loved to that extent [...] There has been some antagonism from men about Edward. They are jealous because they don't want to try that hard."

Of course men don't want to try that hard. And no man should. It's creepy. Edward seems to do nothing else but stalk her (and hunt for food). He spends all his sleepless nights sneaking into Bella's room and watching her sleep, seemingly immune to boredom. (Pillywiggin theorises that Bella's a one-woman radio station in her range of sleep-talking, but I doubt that's what Meyer has in mind.) He stalks her, literally following her about and finding out where is by reading the thoughts of those around her. And this is all before they actually get together and declare their love and all that.

Yes, Edward can hear the thoughts of everyone around him (except for Bella) and has no qualms eavesdropping on her conversations with other friends and acquaintances. Bella simply cannot talk to anyone about him, cannot confide in anyone without him finding out. It's creepily invasive.  Worse, Bella doesn't have a problem with this. She doesn't feel as though her privacy was invaded, neither does she discourage him doing so beyond a jokey reprimand and she also doesn't feel that perhaps her friends wouldn't want creepy century-old vampire crawling all over their thoughts, making her come across as thoughtless and sociopathic. 

At the end of the day, Edward looks seventeen, but why is he condemning himself to year after year of high school education? This is never elucidated in the book, but as Mrs Giggles points out, "I can only shudder as I imagine how vapid Edward must be to enjoy being a permanent teenage kid." But he doesn't act like a seventeen-year-old. Hand describes him as "an obsessively controlling adult male," more father than boyfriend, and she's not far off the mark.

"You are my life. You're the only thing it would hurt me to lose."

I know, you're seventeen and you've no idea what to do with the rest of your life yet. But to anchor your entire existence on someone else is creepy and unhealthy. Has she not thought of her parents, her friends, her studies. Has no other hobbies that would be inconvenienced due to her vampirism? Perhaps it's because Meyer's so very de-fanged her vampires there's really not much choice. Being a vampire is just better. Eternal youth, supernatural strength, agility, perception and beauty.... There simply aren't any downsides. White Wolf's vampires, for example, have no creativity and all that they feel and create is merely a reflection of their alive years. Admittedly it's ridiculously angsty, but at least, it's a tangible downside. "I want to be a great artist, but I also love you, dear vampire" is a reasonable (if angsty) plot.

In conclusion, it's bad. And boring. Bella is infantile, passive and spineless. Edward is annoying, holier-than-thou and inhuman. As a bonus it also contains ideas about sex and relationships that I'd rather teenage girls didn't make into the stuff of their daydreams.

 

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* A first person narrator is limited to narrating what he or she sees. It is through this character's eyes that the reader perceives the world – a great asset when the character is interesting and has an idiosyncratic world view, but also an immense weakness when the author imperfectly hides behind this persona and starts puppeting characters about or worse, when unintentional voyeurism, sadism or masochism is created through lingering descriptions of things.

A dubious metaphor proved possible!

Hurray! The Chronicler's dictatorship of this blog is finally broken! Now her in-depth academical analysis and recounting of deranged ramblings can be sullied by a cheap visual gag.

We at the Loinfire Club have long mocked all references to the pebbling of nipples. None of us were quite sure how such a process might occur, what it might look like or why it isn't treated at the bizarre medical condition it must surely be.

But now, during my recent dirt-snuffling adventures, I have come across (ba-boom-cccch!) some genuine pebbled nipples, in the form of these two ladies.


For anyone who cares, they're both neolithic statue-menhirs on Guernsey; on the left is the St Martin's example and the Castel example on the right.

But anyway, I refuse to believe any romance-novel damsel to have breasts as pebbly as these two.


Pillywiggin