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snarpI am not really in Anne Bishop's target audience. I think that I usually have a pretty good idea what she's trying to achieve with a scene, but the effect on me is often quite different:
What Anne Bishop Wants: Our hero Daemon has undergone such hideous abuse at the hands of evil women that he has no choice but to lash out violently! Be shocked and repulsed by the cruelty of this depraved society!
My Reaction: Okay, but I don't really understand why it means he has to cover things with ice.
What Anne Bishop Wants: Our other hero, Saetan SaDiablo, the High Lord of Hell (yes, Satan is one of our heroes), takes a bloody revenge on a child molester! Haha! Take that, child molester! JUSTICE!
My Reaction: I cannot devise an appropriate adjective for that scene where he pretends he's a child molester himself, to trick the guy into coming into his bedroom.
What Anne Bishop Wants: Thrill at the forbidden romance of the several-thousand-year-old serial killer sex-slave wizard and the sexually-abused pre-pubescent girl! He dresses up for her.
My Reaction: Please don't do that.
What Anne Bishop Wants: RAPES
My Reaction: You don't need to capitalize that.
What Anne Bishop Wants: CASTRATIONS
My Reaction: Is this part of some kind of system of weights and measures?
What Anne Bishop Wants: UNICORNS
My Reaction: ...I will accept these unicorns.
I think I'm just not very good at Anne Bishop.
I bring this up because I'm reading a Dark Jewels anthology called Dreams Made Flesh, and suffered possibly my most intense moment of Bishopian cognitive dissonance yet. It contains a novella/novelette called The Prince of Ebon Rih, about Lucivar, who is former sex-slave flying wizard guy who kills people. (He's not the one who's in love with the little girl; that's his brother, distinguishable because he can't fly.)
In the Black Jewels series, wizard women can lose their power if they lose their virginity to someone who treats them badly, and will definitely do so if they're raped.* Lucivar, who is several thousand years old, is asked by his father, Saetan, to be the first partner of a teenaged girl named Karla. Karla is his younger sister's best friend, and Saetan feels that her first experience should be with someone she trusts, to protect her from the very real threat that a political enemy (Satan has political enemies, yes) will rape her to weaken their family. This is an idea which infuriates and terrifies Karla, who is immensely sarcastic, combative, and proud.
Lucivar and Karla are both thus extremely uncomfortable about this. They sit there and talk for a while, and Lucivar recounts the story of another time he did this, when he was much younger. His story ends with the girl betraying him. This scene appears in forty or fifty romance novels every year, and it goes like this: Karla softens towards him, they move forward with mutual trust, and it's a healing experience for both of them.
Not here! Karla storms out of the room and yells, "Saetan! Some **** was mean to Lucivar! You have to help me kill her!"
His father rushes over and she repeats the story to him. "Who was mean to my son?! She's dead! Lucivar, who was it?!"
Lucivar goes like, "Uh -"
Karla says, "We can't let the **** get away with this! We've got to defend your son's honor!"
Saetan: "Right!"
Lucivar: "I thought I was supposed to be redeeming my painful past experiences by gently educating the innocent young girl in the joys of lovemaking. I thought this was that kind of scene. Why is it instead a scene where the innocent young girl - who apparently has something of a potty mouth - bands together with my dad to murder people in defense of my honor? - I don't even know what kind of scene that is, I don't think there's even a TV Tropes entry."
It's like Fumi Yoshinaga or Terry Pratchett suddenly took over. So I was sitting there laughing at this image, when it occurred to me that this scene was not actually intended to be funny. At all. It was totally serious. Anne Bishop thought that this scenario was absolutely the most touching thing in the world - the girl jumped out of the guy's bed and ran to get his Dad, to help her kill somebody for him! Can you imagine the person who would not be moved by this? Anne Bishop can't.
Anne Bishop must be the most awesome person in the world.
Though Lucivar is, indeed, deeply touched by their devotion to him, he does get his Dad out of there eventually, and he and Karla do get down to business. But they're a little too keyed up now to do the gentle-introduction thing, so Lucivar picks her up and flies them around really fast naked, then dives straight for the ground. As they're falling, he kind of sticks it in real fast.
To reiterate: Anne Bishop is awesome.
(I have no idea how this would have worked. Wouldn't he have needed at least one free hand?)
We also learn in this story that Lucivar goes into heat sometimes, which I don't recall having been mentioned in the first three novels in which he was a viewpoint character. (Am I just forgetting this? I know there was a lot of stuff in there - Christmastime in Hell and everything - but I really feel like I ought to remember it if the protagonists of a book go into heat.)
* Though I leave the gender of the deflower-er indeterminate here, I don't think it's been established how lesbian sex would play into all this.
What Anne Bishop Wants: Our hero Daemon has undergone such hideous abuse at the hands of evil women that he has no choice but to lash out violently! Be shocked and repulsed by the cruelty of this depraved society!
My Reaction: Okay, but I don't really understand why it means he has to cover things with ice.
What Anne Bishop Wants: Our other hero, Saetan SaDiablo, the High Lord of Hell (yes, Satan is one of our heroes), takes a bloody revenge on a child molester! Haha! Take that, child molester! JUSTICE!
My Reaction: I cannot devise an appropriate adjective for that scene where he pretends he's a child molester himself, to trick the guy into coming into his bedroom.
What Anne Bishop Wants: Thrill at the forbidden romance of the several-thousand-year-old serial killer sex-slave wizard and the sexually-abused pre-pubescent girl! He dresses up for her.
My Reaction: Please don't do that.
What Anne Bishop Wants: RAPES
My Reaction: You don't need to capitalize that.
What Anne Bishop Wants: CASTRATIONS
My Reaction: Is this part of some kind of system of weights and measures?
What Anne Bishop Wants: UNICORNS
My Reaction: ...I will accept these unicorns.
I think I'm just not very good at Anne Bishop.
I bring this up because I'm reading a Dark Jewels anthology called Dreams Made Flesh, and suffered possibly my most intense moment of Bishopian cognitive dissonance yet. It contains a novella/novelette called The Prince of Ebon Rih, about Lucivar, who is former sex-slave flying wizard guy who kills people. (He's not the one who's in love with the little girl; that's his brother, distinguishable because he can't fly.)
In the Black Jewels series, wizard women can lose their power if they lose their virginity to someone who treats them badly, and will definitely do so if they're raped.* Lucivar, who is several thousand years old, is asked by his father, Saetan, to be the first partner of a teenaged girl named Karla. Karla is his younger sister's best friend, and Saetan feels that her first experience should be with someone she trusts, to protect her from the very real threat that a political enemy (Satan has political enemies, yes) will rape her to weaken their family. This is an idea which infuriates and terrifies Karla, who is immensely sarcastic, combative, and proud.
Lucivar and Karla are both thus extremely uncomfortable about this. They sit there and talk for a while, and Lucivar recounts the story of another time he did this, when he was much younger. His story ends with the girl betraying him. This scene appears in forty or fifty romance novels every year, and it goes like this: Karla softens towards him, they move forward with mutual trust, and it's a healing experience for both of them.
Not here! Karla storms out of the room and yells, "Saetan! Some **** was mean to Lucivar! You have to help me kill her!"
His father rushes over and she repeats the story to him. "Who was mean to my son?! She's dead! Lucivar, who was it?!"
Lucivar goes like, "Uh -"
Karla says, "We can't let the **** get away with this! We've got to defend your son's honor!"
Saetan: "Right!"
Lucivar: "I thought I was supposed to be redeeming my painful past experiences by gently educating the innocent young girl in the joys of lovemaking. I thought this was that kind of scene. Why is it instead a scene where the innocent young girl - who apparently has something of a potty mouth - bands together with my dad to murder people in defense of my honor? - I don't even know what kind of scene that is, I don't think there's even a TV Tropes entry."
It's like Fumi Yoshinaga or Terry Pratchett suddenly took over. So I was sitting there laughing at this image, when it occurred to me that this scene was not actually intended to be funny. At all. It was totally serious. Anne Bishop thought that this scenario was absolutely the most touching thing in the world - the girl jumped out of the guy's bed and ran to get his Dad, to help her kill somebody for him! Can you imagine the person who would not be moved by this? Anne Bishop can't.
Anne Bishop must be the most awesome person in the world.
Though Lucivar is, indeed, deeply touched by their devotion to him, he does get his Dad out of there eventually, and he and Karla do get down to business. But they're a little too keyed up now to do the gentle-introduction thing, so Lucivar picks her up and flies them around really fast naked, then dives straight for the ground. As they're falling, he kind of sticks it in real fast.
To reiterate: Anne Bishop is awesome.
(I have no idea how this would have worked. Wouldn't he have needed at least one free hand?)
We also learn in this story that Lucivar goes into heat sometimes, which I don't recall having been mentioned in the first three novels in which he was a viewpoint character. (Am I just forgetting this? I know there was a lot of stuff in there - Christmastime in Hell and everything - but I really feel like I ought to remember it if the protagonists of a book go into heat.)
* Though I leave the gender of the deflower-er indeterminate here, I don't think it's been established how lesbian sex would play into all this.
