Dead Ice Chapter 4 Part 2
“Maybe, but if you’re powerful enough your zombies can be pretty human-looking and they don’t smell if they’re not rotting, which they wouldn’t with souls intact. You’d have a perfectly obedient sex slave that didn’t need to eat, or sleep, or do anything but obey its master.”
Oh, like the wives of Donald Trump.
“I don’t think that was Dominga’s idea. I believe she meant to do what I do for clients sometimes: You put them inside the circle and bind the zombie to them so it’ll do what they say, and I go on to my next client. We’ll make an appointment for them to bring the zombie back and I’ll lay it to rest then, but I can’t babysit every zombie I raise in a night.”
“It depends on the age of the zombie. The longer it’s been dead, the more energy it takes to raise it from the grave. If it’s a really old one then maybe only that zombie gets raised in a night,"
So even if there's just one zombie that night, Anita won't bother to stick around and "babysit" because hey, she only gets paid ridiculous amounts of money to raise the zombie. She can't be expected to actually WORK.
"but if it’s the newly dead, five or six in a night, maybe more if the travel time works out, but that’s rare.”
Nice try, LKH. In Kiss The Dead,Anita confirmed that she basically had no time to raise zombies for her ACTUAL PAYING JOB. Now she's insisting, "Oh, I'm so busy that I can't bother to stick around and make sure nothing happens to the zombie."
“I don’t raise zombies without a good reason, and it’s not cheap."
"Sometimes these people try to claim they have a good reason, but I know better. They only want to fuck the zombie!"
"... what?"
"After all, you can only care about someone if you are fucking them, and so if you cared about the person you want raised, you must plan to fuck the zombie."
"What if I wanted my grandmother raised?"
"You want to fuck your zombie grannie!"
I'm not actually kidding, you know. The torturous first scene of Flirtconfirmed that Anita will come up with ridiculous, convoluted demands to avoid actually having to work for a client. And if someone grieving wants to see their loved one one more time, she concludes immediately - with no evidence - that they just want to fuck the zombie, and refuses on those grounds. She literally cannot imagine any personal reason besides fucking the zombie.
"Sometimes I’ll travel and do multiple zombies in a distant area, because I’m going to be in town, but most out-of-town trips are just one client who’s willing to pay for me to come to them.”
SINCE WHEN? I only remember her doing this ONCE, and it was only because Larry Kirkland had a family emergency and couldn't go.
"It wasn’t how I was taught. You stayed at the graveside and put the zombie back after the questions had been asked, or the last good-byes said. Even now it’s rare for me to let anyone take a zombie off-site.”
YOU SAID THE EXACT OPPOSITE LESS THAN A PAGE AGO!
Before Anita said that she just made an appointment to put it back, and wandered off because SHE SO BIZZY and can't be bothered to keep an eye on the zombie. Now she's claiming she hardly ever "lets" anyone take a zombie off-site. WHERE DID THE EDITOR GO?!
“One, some clients won’t bring them back. Remember, it looks like their loved one, and I’m powerful enough that my zombies look and act alive, or enough so that if you want to believe Mom or Dad is back for good, you could. Well, for a while.”
“The Catholic Church claims that all animators are trampling on Jesus’ territory by raising the dead.”
Funny, I seem to remember Jesus raising DEAD PEOPLE BACK TO LIFE, not zombies.As opposed to raising dead bodies as soulless puppets who will eventually rot away. That doesn't sound like something Jesus ever did.
Oh wait, I just flipped through my Bible, and it comes up right here in John 11: 43-44:Then Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in graveclothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth. And then Lazarus said, "Brains."
LKH babbled about this last chapter. I don't know why it's coming out all over again... except that the editor had passed out in a drunken stupor under his/her desk by now.
And I do not know why the fuck Manning brought this up out of nowhere. There was no lead-in to this topic; she just starts blurting out the Catholic stance on zombie-raising, after discussing Anita's sooper-alive-looking zombies and the whole visit to Dominga's house. I know LKH sucks at transitions in conversations, but DAMN. This was clunky even for her.It might have made sense if this part of the conversation had come right after discussing the Wiccans and how they aren't okay with blood magic. But by having at least TWO DIFFERENT TOPICS between them, she makes it seem like Manning is pulling topics randomly from her butt.
And why the fuck does the FBI care what the Catholic stance on animators is? As long as the Church doesn't approve firebombings of animators' houses, it doesn't really concern them.
“Yeah, that’s what got us all excommunicated unless we agreed to stop doing it. What the Church doesn’t understand is that for some of us it’s a psychic gift, which means if we don’t use it on purpose it comes out in other ways.”
Because it's not like such a power would be well-known before the Catholic Church was even founded, and it's not like they had TWO THOUSAND YEARS to determine their position.
It's almost like that power came into existence when Anita did. Because history is for well-written books.
Zerbrowski gave me wide eyes;
So I put them in my pocket.
Anita tells her charming story about her dead dog following her home, which makes me wonder why cremation isn't more common in this universe. If you DON'T want something raised as a zombie, why not burn it to ash?
“Would you need a human sacrifice to do this?” Manning asked.
"Why? Do you have someone who won't be missed?"
"Uh..."
Then they get into a debate about the animals used for sacrifices, and what a "big" sacrifice means.
“Most of us use chickens as the blood sacrifice for a normal zombie raising, but if it’s an older body we move up to goats, sometimes sheep, but mostly goats. After that you get into cows.”
“So it’s literally physically larger, not smarter?” Manning said.
That was a good question, maybe a great question. “You know, I’ve never thought about it like that. Traditionally, I was taught that bigger sacrifice meant literally bigger, so theoretically an elephant could raise more, but we jump from cow to human sacrifice, and people are smaller than most full-grown cattle.” I thought about it. “I guess there’s just not a reasonable way to kill something bigger than a cow, or maybe horse, though I don’t know anyone in this country who uses horses for sacrifice. I know some people use doves or pigeons instead of chickens, but the jump to human is considered the biggest sacrifice possible.”
Then they go off on a weird tangent where Anita proves she knows way way way more about pigs than the FBI, so there.
“I’ve never known anyone who used a pig; maybe a baby pig, but not a grown one.”
“Why?” Manning asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know, but I was raised in farm country, and pigs will eat people; cows and chickens, even goats, won’t.”
... WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?! This has nothing to do with the question, which was about size/intelligence being the determining factor. Anita even ADMITS she doesn't know the reason why not, and then goes off on a spiel about something irrelevent!
Or is Anita trying to imply that if you brought a pig to a graveyard, it would start eating people?
“No, it’s not,” I said, “and if you’re hurt enough that you can’t get back out of the pigpen some breeds will fucking eat you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“My dad is a veterinarian. He used to take me on his rounds sometimes; trust me, some pigs will eat you.”
Anita also poohpoohs the idea of using a chimp or a dolphin, because she apparently can't grasp the idea of sedation or graves close to the ocean. I think this is meant to make us marvel at her knowledge of "boilogy," but it just makes it sound like LKH isn't very imaginative. She's only shown chickens and goats, dammit, so that's the norm!
I thought about it, and finally said, “Maybe, but an adult male chimpanzee can tear a normal human being’s arm out of its socket, and I can’t even wrap my head around trying to get a dolphin alive to a grave site just to slit its throat to raise a zombie.”
“So looking for missing persons being used as human sacrifices won’t help us find these creeps?” Manning asked.
... her transitions in conversations suck. People get irrelevant answers from random comments.
Or did LKH just jam more filler conversations in the middle of OTHER conversations again?
“Dominga’s plan was to give the zombies in as fresh a condition as possible to her buyers as perpetual sex slaves,"
"Perpetual"? Does that mean the necromancer has to hang around the client for the rest of his/her life to control the zombie?!
And why do I suspect that there would be a lot of politicians and televangelists seeking non-rotting zombie wives?
"but she didn’t see the possibility of porn online."
Probably because that book came out in 1994. Back then, people still thought computers were magic and VR was indistinguishable from reality.
And now I'm just imagining Dominga ranting about "damnniños today and their stupid iPhones and Xboxes and Internets and Webs! Why can't they do wholesome outdoor activities, like enslaving the dead for the sex trade?"
“Technically it’s not illegal in most states, because the necrophilia laws have been modified so that if the corpse is moving and capable of giving consent it’s consensual sex, not necrophilia, and that’s a misdemeanor anyway,” Manning said.
.... so a vampire shoplifting a few times is a capital offense, but HAVING SEX WITH A ZOMBIE is a "misdemeanor"?
Oh, and by the way, there is no federal legislation on necrophilia. Necrophilia is only a misdemeanor in SOME states, and I frankly hate that I had to google that. However, there are a lot of states where it's a fucking felony... and frankly, except for the depraved practices of politicians, I can't see why it's anything less.
And how can a zombie even give consent? We have established that THEY HAVE NO SOULS, and when an animator raises them, they have to obey that animator. WHERE IS THE "GIVING CONSENT PART"? WHY ARE MY EYES BLEEDING?!
“I know some states had to change their laws once vampires were considered legal citizens, because the way the law was written, sex with them was still an arrestable offense,” I said.
Except that vampires can give consent, and they still have some living characteristics, and they don't require an outside party to continue moving around and having flesh and stuff. Also, they have souls.
“It was my senior year of college when it changed. I guess I hadn’t thought what I’d missed,” I said.
Isn't it just so convenient how the legalization of vampires, the excommunication of animators and vampire hunters being legitimized all happened at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME, just in time for it to affect Anita?
Then Zerbrowski teases Anita about being younger than he is, and Anita gets pissed off because he is apparently making a reference to her high-school-attending barely-legal boytoy Cynric. Yes, he knows that Anita is banging a teenager, and thinks she needs to not worry about it so much because... a thirtysomething person banging a teenager is totally normal.
He offered her a fist bump and after a bemused moment, she took it.
Why do people keep fist-bumping in this series? Is this something LKH thinks is cool?
Then we have a totally random discussion about age, which exists just so Brent can announce that Anita looks super-youthful. You know, like LKH thinks she does. Then Anita starts thinking about how being a blatant Sue JC's human servant means she's not aging at all, and pretends to feel sad about the idea of Zerbrowski getting old while she remains a perky-titted sex goddess forevermore. No, I don't believe she really cares.
On the heels of that thought was another one, that if he were a vampire he wouldn’t age. I’d never looked at one of my friends and thought that before. I wasn’t sure how I felt about thinking it now. It wasn’t a good feeling, whatever it was.
I nodded. “Sure, just thinking too hard.”
... I... easy joke is too easy.
“Because you only overthink your personal life; crime busting makes you kind of peaceful.”
"You're only peaceful when you're brutally gunning down screaming civilians!"
“This case isn’t going to make me feel peaceful, Zerbrowski.”
“I’m sorry, you’re right. This one’s going to hurt.”
“What do you mean by that?” Manning asked.
He looked at her, and his brown eyes showed that there was a shrewd thinker behind all the messy clothes and teasing. “Some cases leave a mark on your soul even after you solve it.”
And of course, the FBI is here because nobody in the world is as good at all this as Anita, and every consultant/employee for the FBI has failed them utterly and Anita is their only hope. And when I say "every," I mean it. They claim all the witches/psychics have failed, their voodoo priest has failed, Larry has failed... and their computer experts have failed.
Now I could buy that the supernatural angle might be beyond most people, and they might need Anita's input on how that is done. But needing Anita to track INTERNET PORN? I'm sorry, but they shouldn't need her involved beyond the information about souled zombies.
Wow, I wonder if the zombie porn is conveniently being made in St. Louis, so Anita can stumble across it without much actual effort. That would surprise me muchly.
“What do your computer techs say?” Zerbrowski asked.
She nodded again. “They say that whoever is doing the tech for these creeps is really, really good.”
Okay, I'm not an expert in what the FBI can do, and what their tech experts can do. But I am pretty sure they can trace some schmucks in St. Louis doing zombie porn.
Brent added, “They are still working on tracing to a location, but the ability to hide the computer trail is always just a little ahead of our ability to trace it, until we catch up.”
... so they're always ahead of you, until you catch up. So... shouldn't you have them?
“And then the bad techies figure out a new way to pull ahead of the good guys,” I said.
LKH... technology is not a car race. You don't "pull ahead."
And again, these are some zero-budget porn hockers in St. Louis, whose only special advantage is that they can create "souled" zombies. Am I really supposed to buy that they have better technology and "techies" than the FBI?
The answer is no, by the way.
LKH doesn't seem to quite grasp that the FBI is quite a bit bigger than a small portion of a single city's homicide squad.
Manning then natters about how she doesn't "speak enough computer" to understand the whole technical side of the issue, which tells me that LKH couldn't find a calendar about the subject.
“I just recently learned how to change the ring tones on my smart phone, so I hear you on the whole mysterious-computer thing,” I said.
Yes, Anita. Please advertise that you are too stupid to handle ringtones, despite computers being ridiculously user-friendly.
It's even stupider when you consider that Manning is talking about intricate, elaborate attempts to track people via the Web. Anita... is talking about changing her ringtone. Which is almost the easiest thing you can do on a phone. Holy fuck, children can do that! I can only imagine how inept Anita is with an actual computer!
She gave me a weak smile. “Thank you for that, but there’s usually an age line about such things. You’re young to be on the wrong side of it.”
That's because she's written by a fiftysomething woman who is frightened by unfamiliar things and finds Mac computers hard to use.And I hate to break it to you, LKH, but age is no longer an excuse to be computer-illiterate.
And then we have comedy. Or rather, a limp unfunny attempt at comedy.
In other words, we have Zerbrowski talking about how much he loves his smart phone because... he can use it for the purpose it's intended. I guess this is LKH's feeble way of telling us that middle-aged people like her are totally hip, yo!
“And you’re over the age line, of course.” Manning looked from one to the other of us. “The two of you balance each other somehow like good partners do.”
They're. Not. Partners.
I don't know why LKH is suddenly trying to convince us that they are proper partners in policework. Maybe it's because so many people said she WASN'T a cop, so she's trying to show us that Anita so totally is, so there! But the fact is, this does not work on any level.
And no, this whole "partner" thing doesn't add anything to the story. I think it's just another futile attempt to convince us that Anita is totally the same as a cop, except she's better than them at everything WITHOUT all that stupid training.
We looked at each other, then both shrugged almost in unison and said, “We try.”
She narrowed her eyes at us. Brent laughed.
Ever hear your own sense of humor shrivel up and die? I just did.
If civilians could have seen us laughing and smiling with that horror still frozen on the computer behind us, they’d have thought we were cold-blooded, or worse.
That's because you are.
Then Anita pontificates from her anus about how if you don't laugh, the nightmares will make you go crazy or kill yourself, and she's one of the ”career cops, in it for the long haul, and that meant we whistled in the dark, sang on the way to our execution, joked at the door to hell." Except, you know, that she isn't. LKH can say it as often as she likes, but Anita is not a cop - and she doesn't hesitate to remind people that she's not a cop when the rules get in her way.
Anita keeps nattering about how she's totally going to stop them, and I think this is meant to be a rousing speech where she shows how caring and moral she is. But you know what? She spends a lot more time talking about killing the bad guys than she does talking about freeing the zombie. Her priorities are pretty clear.
The people who’d raised the zombie and were abusing her hadn’t done anything to earn a warrant of execution, not legally,
THEY HAVEN'T EARNED IT BECAUSE THEY ARE HUMAN. I know LKH fantasizes about basically being the Punisher with tits, but you are not legally allowed to hunt down and murder people as a matter of course! Even in her fictional universe, warrants of execution apply to VAMPIRES ONLY.
so I couldn’t just go in there with guns blazing like normal when I was chasing monsters.
Wanna bet she's slaughtered hundreds of innocent people because she's too dumb to check the address?
They hadn’t killed anyone, hell, I wasn’t even sure what laws they’d broken,
Ah yes, the expert on all matters preternatural, who knows more about being an animator than anyone else, and is an insufferable know-it-all about everything.
but morally-they needed to suffer.
Which is what led her to brutally murder Dominga and Gaynor.
Was that judgmental of me? Hell yes, but sometimes you just gotta go with that part of yourself that says, This is morally wrong and I will stop you.
Unless someone decides to go with that part of themselves... and try to stop Anita. Then they are evil zealots who are just jealous.
Judge not, lest ye be judged, but in this case I was pretty sure God would be on my side.
No, I'm pretty sure He's not. Because in real life, it's not always good versus bad. Sometimes it's bad versus bad. And taking down a bad guy doesn't make you less evil.
And considering Anita is also a murderer who has brainwashed people into being her rapey slaves with her sex-fu powers... no, I don't think she's coming across as superior just because she hasn't (yet) fucked a zombie. Because that is definitely going to happen. Just wait.
Oh, like the wives of Donald Trump.
“I don’t think that was Dominga’s idea. I believe she meant to do what I do for clients sometimes: You put them inside the circle and bind the zombie to them so it’ll do what they say, and I go on to my next client. We’ll make an appointment for them to bring the zombie back and I’ll lay it to rest then, but I can’t babysit every zombie I raise in a night.”
- Wait... what?
- A few books ago she refused to raise a zombie merely because the grieving widower didn't jump through every impossible hoop she didn't mention was required.
- Now she'll let anyone who hires her walk off with a fucking zombie unsupervised? On faith?
- And what the hell does she mean "every zombie I raise in a night"? The last time she voluntarily raised zombies was in Cerulean Sins! More than half the series ago!
- And she sure as hell stuck around THEN.
- And if her majesty is too busy getting porked in the car to do her job, then maybe Animators Inc. should hire some armed professionals to supervise both the zombie and the client.
“It depends on the age of the zombie. The longer it’s been dead, the more energy it takes to raise it from the grave. If it’s a really old one then maybe only that zombie gets raised in a night,"
So even if there's just one zombie that night, Anita won't bother to stick around and "babysit" because hey, she only gets paid ridiculous amounts of money to raise the zombie. She can't be expected to actually WORK.
"but if it’s the newly dead, five or six in a night, maybe more if the travel time works out, but that’s rare.”
Nice try, LKH. In Kiss The Dead,Anita confirmed that she basically had no time to raise zombies for her ACTUAL PAYING JOB. Now she's insisting, "Oh, I'm so busy that I can't bother to stick around and make sure nothing happens to the zombie."
“I don’t raise zombies without a good reason, and it’s not cheap."
"Sometimes these people try to claim they have a good reason, but I know better. They only want to fuck the zombie!"
"... what?"
"After all, you can only care about someone if you are fucking them, and so if you cared about the person you want raised, you must plan to fuck the zombie."
"What if I wanted my grandmother raised?"
"You want to fuck your zombie grannie!"
I'm not actually kidding, you know. The torturous first scene of Flirtconfirmed that Anita will come up with ridiculous, convoluted demands to avoid actually having to work for a client. And if someone grieving wants to see their loved one one more time, she concludes immediately - with no evidence - that they just want to fuck the zombie, and refuses on those grounds. She literally cannot imagine any personal reason besides fucking the zombie.
"Sometimes I’ll travel and do multiple zombies in a distant area, because I’m going to be in town, but most out-of-town trips are just one client who’s willing to pay for me to come to them.”
SINCE WHEN? I only remember her doing this ONCE, and it was only because Larry Kirkland had a family emergency and couldn't go.
"It wasn’t how I was taught. You stayed at the graveside and put the zombie back after the questions had been asked, or the last good-byes said. Even now it’s rare for me to let anyone take a zombie off-site.”
YOU SAID THE EXACT OPPOSITE LESS THAN A PAGE AGO!
Before Anita said that she just made an appointment to put it back, and wandered off because SHE SO BIZZY and can't be bothered to keep an eye on the zombie. Now she's claiming she hardly ever "lets" anyone take a zombie off-site. WHERE DID THE EDITOR GO?!
“One, some clients won’t bring them back. Remember, it looks like their loved one, and I’m powerful enough that my zombies look and act alive, or enough so that if you want to believe Mom or Dad is back for good, you could. Well, for a while.”
- "I'm so powerful my zombies are practically lifelike, which means in a few more books I'll add a hot non-rotting zombie to my harem."
- See, this is why I expressed disbelief that Anita would just wander off and make an appointment to put the zombie back. You have no reason to think they'll return it.
- HOW DID SHE FUCK UP HER OWN CONTINUITY WITHIN A PAGE?
- And this comment makes me wonder. Regular zombies don't have the soul of the deceased, right? That's what sets Dominga's zombies apart: you can see emotions in their eyes that indicate someone is home.
- So exactly how can a regular, soulless zombie "act" alive?
- I can buy "look alive," but "acting" alive would require... emotions.
“The Catholic Church claims that all animators are trampling on Jesus’ territory by raising the dead.”
Funny, I seem to remember Jesus raising DEAD PEOPLE BACK TO LIFE, not zombies.As opposed to raising dead bodies as soulless puppets who will eventually rot away. That doesn't sound like something Jesus ever did.
Oh wait, I just flipped through my Bible, and it comes up right here in John 11: 43-44:Then Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in graveclothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth. And then Lazarus said, "Brains."
LKH babbled about this last chapter. I don't know why it's coming out all over again... except that the editor had passed out in a drunken stupor under his/her desk by now.
And I do not know why the fuck Manning brought this up out of nowhere. There was no lead-in to this topic; she just starts blurting out the Catholic stance on zombie-raising, after discussing Anita's sooper-alive-looking zombies and the whole visit to Dominga's house. I know LKH sucks at transitions in conversations, but DAMN. This was clunky even for her.It might have made sense if this part of the conversation had come right after discussing the Wiccans and how they aren't okay with blood magic. But by having at least TWO DIFFERENT TOPICS between them, she makes it seem like Manning is pulling topics randomly from her butt.
And why the fuck does the FBI care what the Catholic stance on animators is? As long as the Church doesn't approve firebombings of animators' houses, it doesn't really concern them.
“Yeah, that’s what got us all excommunicated unless we agreed to stop doing it. What the Church doesn’t understand is that for some of us it’s a psychic gift, which means if we don’t use it on purpose it comes out in other ways.”
Because it's not like such a power would be well-known before the Catholic Church was even founded, and it's not like they had TWO THOUSAND YEARS to determine their position.
It's almost like that power came into existence when Anita did. Because history is for well-written books.
Zerbrowski gave me wide eyes;
So I put them in my pocket.
Anita tells her charming story about her dead dog following her home, which makes me wonder why cremation isn't more common in this universe. If you DON'T want something raised as a zombie, why not burn it to ash?
“Would you need a human sacrifice to do this?” Manning asked.
"Why? Do you have someone who won't be missed?"
"Uh..."
Then they get into a debate about the animals used for sacrifices, and what a "big" sacrifice means.
“Most of us use chickens as the blood sacrifice for a normal zombie raising, but if it’s an older body we move up to goats, sometimes sheep, but mostly goats. After that you get into cows.”
“So it’s literally physically larger, not smarter?” Manning said.
That was a good question, maybe a great question. “You know, I’ve never thought about it like that. Traditionally, I was taught that bigger sacrifice meant literally bigger, so theoretically an elephant could raise more, but we jump from cow to human sacrifice, and people are smaller than most full-grown cattle.” I thought about it. “I guess there’s just not a reasonable way to kill something bigger than a cow, or maybe horse, though I don’t know anyone in this country who uses horses for sacrifice. I know some people use doves or pigeons instead of chickens, but the jump to human is considered the biggest sacrifice possible.”
- LKH is literally pointing out the massive plot holes in her world-building.
- Normally I would applaud an author realizing there is a flaw in their books rather than doing what LKH usually does, which is skim over it. But she's not actually fixing anything. She's just notifying us to the fact that her magical system is undefined and poorly-written.
- And really, Anita has been an animator for her whole life, a professional for almost a decade, and allegedly a sooper-expert on all things related to zombies... and she has NO IDEA how it works?!
- And wait,... even though the "big sacrifice = bigger size" thing is totally inconsistent, Anita NEVER questioned it until Manning pointed this out?
- It's almost like she's a fucking idiot!
- I don't know if LKH is aware of this, but an elephant would count as a "big" sacrifice either way. Not only are they huge, but they are one of the smartest animals on the planet. Smarter than many humans, really.
- And what about apes? Haven't they ever been sacrificed, especially since the US is not the only country in the world besides France?
- And my ass they wouldn't sacrifice a horse. Does she really think they would send them to the glue factory instead of using them for a zombie-raising?
Then they go off on a weird tangent where Anita proves she knows way way way more about pigs than the FBI, so there.
“I’ve never known anyone who used a pig; maybe a baby pig, but not a grown one.”
“Why?” Manning asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know, but I was raised in farm country, and pigs will eat people; cows and chickens, even goats, won’t.”
... WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING?! This has nothing to do with the question, which was about size/intelligence being the determining factor. Anita even ADMITS she doesn't know the reason why not, and then goes off on a spiel about something irrelevent!
Or is Anita trying to imply that if you brought a pig to a graveyard, it would start eating people?
“No, it’s not,” I said, “and if you’re hurt enough that you can’t get back out of the pigpen some breeds will fucking eat you.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“My dad is a veterinarian. He used to take me on his rounds sometimes; trust me, some pigs will eat you.”
- Funny, I don't remember the parts of the James Herriot books where he almost got eaten by pigs. Trampled, crushed, sadistically toyed with, yes. But not eaten.
- Yes, pigs can eat people, because they're omnivores. Like humans.
- But no, this is not a habitual or common thing unless you starve them.
- Like with other kinds of livestock like cows, horses and even sheep (a ram can fuck you up!), they generally attack people because they're pissed off and want to hurt them. And yes, that applies to wild boars as well.
- And it's VERY unlikely that just going on veterinary rounds would expose Anita to Killer Kannibal Hogs From Hell.
- I get the feeling LKH is just scared of farm animals, period.
- She definitely doesn't know much about them. We'll revisit this topic later.
- Do vets do a lot of game hunting? Because Anita previously boasted about being her dad's real "son" because they went hunting, and it seems kind of schizoid to have a job helping animals, and a hobby murdering them.
- Or... maybe that's where Anita inherited her tendencies from.
Anita also poohpoohs the idea of using a chimp or a dolphin, because she apparently can't grasp the idea of sedation or graves close to the ocean. I think this is meant to make us marvel at her knowledge of "boilogy," but it just makes it sound like LKH isn't very imaginative. She's only shown chickens and goats, dammit, so that's the norm!
I thought about it, and finally said, “Maybe, but an adult male chimpanzee can tear a normal human being’s arm out of its socket, and I can’t even wrap my head around trying to get a dolphin alive to a grave site just to slit its throat to raise a zombie.”
“So looking for missing persons being used as human sacrifices won’t help us find these creeps?” Manning asked.
... her transitions in conversations suck. People get irrelevant answers from random comments.
Or did LKH just jam more filler conversations in the middle of OTHER conversations again?
“Dominga’s plan was to give the zombies in as fresh a condition as possible to her buyers as perpetual sex slaves,"
"Perpetual"? Does that mean the necromancer has to hang around the client for the rest of his/her life to control the zombie?!
And why do I suspect that there would be a lot of politicians and televangelists seeking non-rotting zombie wives?
"but she didn’t see the possibility of porn online."
Probably because that book came out in 1994. Back then, people still thought computers were magic and VR was indistinguishable from reality.
And now I'm just imagining Dominga ranting about "damnniños today and their stupid iPhones and Xboxes and Internets and Webs! Why can't they do wholesome outdoor activities, like enslaving the dead for the sex trade?"
“Technically it’s not illegal in most states, because the necrophilia laws have been modified so that if the corpse is moving and capable of giving consent it’s consensual sex, not necrophilia, and that’s a misdemeanor anyway,” Manning said.
.... so a vampire shoplifting a few times is a capital offense, but HAVING SEX WITH A ZOMBIE is a "misdemeanor"?
Oh, and by the way, there is no federal legislation on necrophilia. Necrophilia is only a misdemeanor in SOME states, and I frankly hate that I had to google that. However, there are a lot of states where it's a fucking felony... and frankly, except for the depraved practices of politicians, I can't see why it's anything less.
And how can a zombie even give consent? We have established that THEY HAVE NO SOULS, and when an animator raises them, they have to obey that animator. WHERE IS THE "GIVING CONSENT PART"? WHY ARE MY EYES BLEEDING?!
“I know some states had to change their laws once vampires were considered legal citizens, because the way the law was written, sex with them was still an arrestable offense,” I said.
Except that vampires can give consent, and they still have some living characteristics, and they don't require an outside party to continue moving around and having flesh and stuff. Also, they have souls.
“It was my senior year of college when it changed. I guess I hadn’t thought what I’d missed,” I said.
Isn't it just so convenient how the legalization of vampires, the excommunication of animators and vampire hunters being legitimized all happened at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME, just in time for it to affect Anita?
Then Zerbrowski teases Anita about being younger than he is, and Anita gets pissed off because he is apparently making a reference to her high-school-attending barely-legal boytoy Cynric. Yes, he knows that Anita is banging a teenager, and thinks she needs to not worry about it so much because... a thirtysomething person banging a teenager is totally normal.
He offered her a fist bump and after a bemused moment, she took it.
Why do people keep fist-bumping in this series? Is this something LKH thinks is cool?
Then we have a totally random discussion about age, which exists just so Brent can announce that Anita looks super-youthful. You know, like LKH thinks she does. Then Anita starts thinking about how being a blatant Sue JC's human servant means she's not aging at all, and pretends to feel sad about the idea of Zerbrowski getting old while she remains a perky-titted sex goddess forevermore. No, I don't believe she really cares.
On the heels of that thought was another one, that if he were a vampire he wouldn’t age. I’d never looked at one of my friends and thought that before. I wasn’t sure how I felt about thinking it now. It wasn’t a good feeling, whatever it was.
- Will this lead to anything? NO.
- It never seems to dawn on Anita that maybe Zerbrowski is okay with growing old with his wife, and embracing natural mortality. Because this a character who is now aging backwards due to the author's issues.
- And you remember how several books ago, Anita considered it murder to turn a person into a vampire? Now she's casually thinking about it because VAMPIYZ KEWL HOOMINS STOOPID.
- Keep in mind that turning anyone into a vampire allows Anita to have power over them.
- It's weird how she doesn't consider this option for any members of her family... just for this guy whom she's known on-and-off for some years, and suddenly is claiming he's her partner. Since last Tuesday.
- I think this is an effort to make it seem that Anita cares about people she's not banging or enslaving. But since her first impulse is to turn him into a creature she can control, it feels very hollow.
I nodded. “Sure, just thinking too hard.”
... I... easy joke is too easy.
“Because you only overthink your personal life; crime busting makes you kind of peaceful.”
"You're only peaceful when you're brutally gunning down screaming civilians!"
“This case isn’t going to make me feel peaceful, Zerbrowski.”
“I’m sorry, you’re right. This one’s going to hurt.”
“What do you mean by that?” Manning asked.
He looked at her, and his brown eyes showed that there was a shrewd thinker behind all the messy clothes and teasing. “Some cases leave a mark on your soul even after you solve it.”
- Again... FBI. Realistically, she would have seen stuff that would make him faint.
- Where does LKH get the idea that random homicide cops are sooooooo much more experienced and knowledgeable than fucking secret agents?
- And why, why, WHY does this woman have to explain everything? Anyone with the brains of a goldfish could figure out "This one's going to hurt," but of course, LKH has to tell us what that means.
- Gotta love what LKH thinks of a "shrewd thinker" as. In her world, it's not someone of deep or incisive thought. It's a guy who says the same faux-deep fortune-cookie lines as everyone else, and shows no awareness of what anyone else is thinking.
And of course, the FBI is here because nobody in the world is as good at all this as Anita, and every consultant/employee for the FBI has failed them utterly and Anita is their only hope. And when I say "every," I mean it. They claim all the witches/psychics have failed, their voodoo priest has failed, Larry has failed... and their computer experts have failed.
Now I could buy that the supernatural angle might be beyond most people, and they might need Anita's input on how that is done. But needing Anita to track INTERNET PORN? I'm sorry, but they shouldn't need her involved beyond the information about souled zombies.
Wow, I wonder if the zombie porn is conveniently being made in St. Louis, so Anita can stumble across it without much actual effort. That would surprise me muchly.
“What do your computer techs say?” Zerbrowski asked.
She nodded again. “They say that whoever is doing the tech for these creeps is really, really good.”
Okay, I'm not an expert in what the FBI can do, and what their tech experts can do. But I am pretty sure they can trace some schmucks in St. Louis doing zombie porn.
Brent added, “They are still working on tracing to a location, but the ability to hide the computer trail is always just a little ahead of our ability to trace it, until we catch up.”
... so they're always ahead of you, until you catch up. So... shouldn't you have them?
“And then the bad techies figure out a new way to pull ahead of the good guys,” I said.
LKH... technology is not a car race. You don't "pull ahead."
And again, these are some zero-budget porn hockers in St. Louis, whose only special advantage is that they can create "souled" zombies. Am I really supposed to buy that they have better technology and "techies" than the FBI?
The answer is no, by the way.
LKH doesn't seem to quite grasp that the FBI is quite a bit bigger than a small portion of a single city's homicide squad.
Manning then natters about how she doesn't "speak enough computer" to understand the whole technical side of the issue, which tells me that LKH couldn't find a calendar about the subject.
“I just recently learned how to change the ring tones on my smart phone, so I hear you on the whole mysterious-computer thing,” I said.
Yes, Anita. Please advertise that you are too stupid to handle ringtones, despite computers being ridiculously user-friendly.
It's even stupider when you consider that Manning is talking about intricate, elaborate attempts to track people via the Web. Anita... is talking about changing her ringtone. Which is almost the easiest thing you can do on a phone. Holy fuck, children can do that! I can only imagine how inept Anita is with an actual computer!
Click to viewShe gave me a weak smile. “Thank you for that, but there’s usually an age line about such things. You’re young to be on the wrong side of it.”
That's because she's written by a fiftysomething woman who is frightened by unfamiliar things and finds Mac computers hard to use.And I hate to break it to you, LKH, but age is no longer an excuse to be computer-illiterate.
And then we have comedy. Or rather, a limp unfunny attempt at comedy.
In other words, we have Zerbrowski talking about how much he loves his smart phone because... he can use it for the purpose it's intended. I guess this is LKH's feeble way of telling us that middle-aged people like her are totally hip, yo!
“And you’re over the age line, of course.” Manning looked from one to the other of us. “The two of you balance each other somehow like good partners do.”
They're. Not. Partners.
I don't know why LKH is suddenly trying to convince us that they are proper partners in policework. Maybe it's because so many people said she WASN'T a cop, so she's trying to show us that Anita so totally is, so there! But the fact is, this does not work on any level.
- Anita is not a cop. She was previously called in as a consultant on vampire/were crimes, but that doesn't make you a cop. And you definitely don't get assigned actual cops as "partners."
- And even if LKH asspulls the whole "she's a Marshal for reels!" thing again, it doesn't mean anything. The Marshal service is not the same as a city's police force, dammit. You can't just (undeservedly) become a part-time marshal and get to count as a member of your local police force. Nor can you become a Marshal, and just decide, "Hey, I want to work as a regular cop too! Give me a partner! I want one!"
And no, this whole "partner" thing doesn't add anything to the story. I think it's just another futile attempt to convince us that Anita is totally the same as a cop, except she's better than them at everything WITHOUT all that stupid training.
We looked at each other, then both shrugged almost in unison and said, “We try.”
She narrowed her eyes at us. Brent laughed.
Ever hear your own sense of humor shrivel up and die? I just did.
If civilians could have seen us laughing and smiling with that horror still frozen on the computer behind us, they’d have thought we were cold-blooded, or worse.
That's because you are.
Then Anita pontificates from her anus about how if you don't laugh, the nightmares will make you go crazy or kill yourself, and she's one of the ”career cops, in it for the long haul, and that meant we whistled in the dark, sang on the way to our execution, joked at the door to hell." Except, you know, that she isn't. LKH can say it as often as she likes, but Anita is not a cop - and she doesn't hesitate to remind people that she's not a cop when the rules get in her way.
Anita keeps nattering about how she's totally going to stop them, and I think this is meant to be a rousing speech where she shows how caring and moral she is. But you know what? She spends a lot more time talking about killing the bad guys than she does talking about freeing the zombie. Her priorities are pretty clear.
The people who’d raised the zombie and were abusing her hadn’t done anything to earn a warrant of execution, not legally,
THEY HAVEN'T EARNED IT BECAUSE THEY ARE HUMAN. I know LKH fantasizes about basically being the Punisher with tits, but you are not legally allowed to hunt down and murder people as a matter of course! Even in her fictional universe, warrants of execution apply to VAMPIRES ONLY.
so I couldn’t just go in there with guns blazing like normal when I was chasing monsters.
Wanna bet she's slaughtered hundreds of innocent people because she's too dumb to check the address?
They hadn’t killed anyone, hell, I wasn’t even sure what laws they’d broken,
Ah yes, the expert on all matters preternatural, who knows more about being an animator than anyone else, and is an insufferable know-it-all about everything.
but morally-they needed to suffer.
Which is what led her to brutally murder Dominga and Gaynor.
Was that judgmental of me? Hell yes, but sometimes you just gotta go with that part of yourself that says, This is morally wrong and I will stop you.
Unless someone decides to go with that part of themselves... and try to stop Anita. Then they are evil zealots who are just jealous.
Judge not, lest ye be judged, but in this case I was pretty sure God would be on my side.
No, I'm pretty sure He's not. Because in real life, it's not always good versus bad. Sometimes it's bad versus bad. And taking down a bad guy doesn't make you less evil.
And considering Anita is also a murderer who has brainwashed people into being her rapey slaves with her sex-fu powers... no, I don't think she's coming across as superior just because she hasn't (yet) fucked a zombie. Because that is definitely going to happen. Just wait.