Dead Ice Chapter 2

“SORRY, AGENTS, BUT that’s not new. It’s sick, but it’s not new.” 
I hate it when I agree with characters I hate. Realistically, it wouldn't be new. At all. Because Rule 34.
“Did we pick the wrong animator?” Manning asked her partner.
“Maybe,” he said.
... I don't understand this reaction. If she had freaked out or not said anything, I could understand them thinking she wasn't up to it. But saying it's not a new thing, meaning she has experience in this field?
Anita then exposits that people have been asking her for years to help them make sex tapes with zombies, including dead celebrities. This sounds really, really creepy, admittedly.... though it means Animators Inc. has absolutely no way of filtering these people out. So they waste their own time and money on necrophiliacs.
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Also, please remember Anita's approach (as seen in Flirt)to anyone who wants a zombie raised for personal reasons: she refuses them because she assumes they just want to fuck the zombie. That is literally the only reason she thinks anyone would want to raise a zombie for personal reasons. Not to say goodbye. Not to hug them for a minute. Not to impart some final message they couldn't give them before a sudden death. Not to have a single tender moment where they reaffirm love for each other, whatever kind of love it was.
Nope. Fucking the zombie is the ONLY reason she can think of. So it's entirely possible that those people wanted their loved ones raised for some other reason, but Anita's tiny brain turned that into "They want to fuck the zombie!" Because in Anita's world, the only people you really give a damn about are the people you fuck. No wonder she doesn't want kids... aside from the ones she collects from Vegas.
Personally, I can imagine creating the greatest rock supergroup in history, populated by zombies. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Kristen Pfaff. I'd call it the 27 Club, it would be awesome, and their only album would make me rich.
“That’s sick, as in seek-a-therapist sick,” Manning said.
Because clearly the FBI wouldn't have heard of sicker things. That makes sense.
“Agreed, and I honestly think they don’t really believe it’s going to be a zombie. Somewhere in their minds they think she’ll rise from the grave and they’ll be able to prove they’re worthy and live happily ever after.”
"In other words, what I'm going to do to Phillip in another few books. Even death can't free you from my iron vagina!"
And because clearly FBI special agents would only be there if they had a serious purpose and wanted to get right to the meat of the case.... we spend awhile talking about THESE topics:
Anita's proposal and "girly" approach.
Whether the word "boff" is still used. Way to point out your age, Hamilton.
Zerbrowski's age.
Whether hair turns white from fear. Hamilton claims it doesn't, meaning she probably got the info from one of those doctors/scientists who respond to phenomena they can't explain with "That doesn't happen because I can't explain it."
Zerbrowski's hair color.
Zerbrowski being "charming." He's not.
The Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad, or "Team," since people want to call it "RIPIT." Which it doesn't mean anyway, because the initials add up to "RPIT."
It's like these people have FORGOTTEN they showed up with a zombie porn video, which they are playing RIGHT NOW. The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure before editing, this was twice as long with half the substance.
Zerbrowski grinned at me, and then at the agents. “Just trying to lighten the mood. That’s part of my charm.”
“It is actually,” I said, smiling back at him. 
Charm? I thought it was a heavy clunker of a failed joke that nobody got. Oh wait, that's what it was.
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“The sergeant is here because he’s your partner when you work with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Squad. Everybody calls it the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team, but officially it’s not,” Manning said. 
HOLY FUCKBALLS. They're doing it again.
Hamilton is writing people as telling Anita about her own job/life.
That is the worst exposition in the WORLD, short of having the non-narrating characters actually address the reader. And even that could be theoretically funny.
WHO CARES ABOUT THEIR FUCKING NICKNAME?
You know what, LKH? I know you love your cute little acronym, but Regional Preternatural Investigation Team DOES NOT add up to "RIPIT." It makes RPIT.
You moron.
“Are we letting ourselves get sidetracked on purpose?” Brent asked.
YES. The last chapter ended with the promise of zombie porn and a serious case. Instead we're listening to LKH's verbal diarrhea.
"One of the reasons that we’re talking to you is that you have more official complaints turned in to the police than any other animator about illegal or morally questionable zombie-raising requests."
That I can totally not believe.
First, I'm pretty sure any business would have a means of filtering out any undesirables. Families of murder victims, necrophiles, people who want to use zombies for crimes, whatever. They probably would at least have some kind of form you'd have to fill out.
Hell, they'd probably want to make enquiries and do background checks before you could even get into the office.
I'm also pretty sure that in any profession like zombie-raising, you would be REQUIRED to send in this sort of thing to the cops if it were to happen.
This is LKH's clumsy way of telling us that Anita is SO SOOPER MORAL AND WONDERFUL AND GOOD! Not like those stupid other animators, who would totally break the law in a public place with a paper trail leading right to them!
And no, we've NEVER seen or heard about Anita reporting this kind of activity to the cops. At best, she just says she won't do it and huffs off.
Remember: the ONLY reason Anita can imagine raising a dead loved one is to have sex with him/her.
So we can assume most of those official complaints were things like, "This grieving widower and father of four wants his dead wife raised for an hour. CLEARLY HE WANTS TO FUCK HER ZOMBIE!"
"Once you had a badge of your own and were officially an officer, too, the complaints went down. I’m assuming that people didn’t want to bring their illegal activities to a U.S. Marshal.”
No, that happened around the same time Anita became a psychopathic goddess of the Vampire Mob. So it makes sense that she wouldn't give a damn about morality.
“You’d be surprised how many people think that just because I raise the dead I have to be evil, with a capital E,"
No, I think she's evil for everything else she does, like child molestation, murder, rape...
“Disturbance of a corpse was a misdemeanor for years,” Manning said.
A MISDEMEANOR?
Not according to this DC college of law, who state that unlawfully EXCAVATING a corpse is a class D felony. So is Any person who knowingly appropriates for profit, uses for profit, sells, purchases or transports for sale or profit any human remains without the right of possession to those remains.And that's without the whole necrophilia thing. So while not THE worst kind of felony... obviously.... it sure as hell wouldn't be a misdemeanor.
And that makes even LESS sense in LKH's world, where ANIMATORS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A THING. Therefore, zombies have always been a thing. Therefore, they should have STRICTER laws about disturbing a corpse, let alone using one for your own ends, not more lenient ones than our world!
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“That’s one of the reasons that there are tapes of this shit out there, because even if they were caught it was a slap on the wrist."
... no, the reason it exist is so sick, sick people can beat off to it.
Is LKH aware that actual porn of real live people is legal?
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8FyVaZ9k_dM/VG7jNrHkzEI/AAAAAAAAFeQ/HGG3dc7rmBs/s400/Of%2Bthe%2Bporno%2Bvariety.gif
The money they could make from the tape, because it was a tape back when it started, was worth the risk even if they were caught,” I said. 
...
glances back at first chapter
...
Anita called it a "video." That's generally reserved for tapes. Not DVDs or files.
And someone who used the phrase "portable computer" instead of "laptop" in the previous chapter needs to stop trying to sound up-to-date technologically.
I shrugged. “I don’t make the laws, just help enforce them.” 
No no, it's that you don't FOLLOW laws.
“You have done your best to enforce the laws as written, and suggested changes in the laws based on your experience, which is one of the reasons we picked you to bring into our little problem,” Manning said. 
Yes, nobody in the world enforces laws or affects policy. Only Anita. Because she's the only moral person in the world despite all the rape, murder, megalomania, involvement in the criminal underground...
And I'm sorry, but LKH is trying soooooo hard to convince us that Anita's on the side of law and order, when in fact she has stated in the past that she's only on her own side and will lie under oath and get people killed for her own sake.
And no matter how hard LKH tries to say that the FBI - not to mention other federal agencies - wouldn't care about Anita's connections to vampires and weres... they would. These are essentially triads of superhumanly strong, telepathic, superpowered creatures who could take over the world if they weren't all so fucking stupid. And Anita is not only involved in them, she is fucking the leaders of all of them AND has power over all of them.
If Anita was fucking a Mob boss, would you expect the FBI to trust her? No. No one would.
Yet she's effectively RUNNING the Mob, AND expecting to be a trusted US Marshal. And LKH thinks that we'll buy that.
There is not enough money in the world to buy a delusion that bloated.
No, actual federal agencies would probably have snipers watching her at all times in case she needed to be taken out.
And no, I don't buy that they don't know about Anita's ties to all sorts of unsavory, extralegal organizations. They would know. Anyone with eyes would know.
And of course, Anita has decided that they're just being wimpy little wussypusses, compared to her big bad self.
“We all know it’s out there, Agent, so what’s the big secret? All the other zombie porn has been either people in good makeup, with no real zombies involved, or one of the zombies that’s been raised for fieldwork in California or in other countries. The zombies in those films are little better than actual corpses.”
So she thinks all zombie porn... doesn't involve zombies.
Even though she knows people can and do get zombies raised for sex... she assumes that the porn is all fake, and the FBI is just being wimpy.
Remember when Anita gave a damn about zombie rights and zombies not being used as slaves? I barely do.Now she just doesn't give a damn.
Wait... the zombies that have been raised for fieldwork... are little better than corpses.
ZOMBIES ARE CORPSES, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
what I really wanted to say was either You’re being all wimpy for FBI, or something more sarcastic.
"You're like, being so wimpy with your zombie porn stuff that is so totally not real. Like, this imaginary guy code thing I have in my head totally means you don't get to be disturbed by anything no matter how depraved it is. I'm so bad and awesome."
"You're talking out loud, you know."
I’d been a little grumpy lately, even for me, so I was trying to monitor myself and only aim the grumpiness at bad guys.
Yes, I'm sure they'll be terrified of her pouting.
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Oooo, watch out, bad guys.
Then Brent turns on the video and... I'm not gonna lie to you, it's genuinely disturbing. This is probably the best scene LKH has written in many, many years just because it's actually very effective. She's come up with some creepy things like a severed head in the mail, but handles them in such a haphazard way that it's more boring than creepy. And despite acting like she has the darkest, most depraved, sick imagination in the world... she hasn't been turning out anything that disturbing. At all. So this actually stands out as a very, very good scene.
In fact, if they had cut out all the nattering at the start of this chapter and just tacked the zombie-porn-watching scene onto the end of the last chapter... this would be almost flawless.
LKH can't quite resist having the zombie being raped be an attractive blonde woman whose breasts are LIKE SO TOTALLY FAKE, but aside from that is a genuinely freaky scene. Basically the zombie crawls out of her grave, and then we cut to her in a bedroom being fondled and then raped by a man in a mask.
Cleavage showed at the plunging neckline of the white dress, which meant the breasts had probably been implants; real breast tissue wasn’t going to be that perky without a woman fluffing them back in place,
LKH, that depends entirely on the breasts in question, and the dress, and the possible undergarments, and whether human tissue is changed in consistency by postmortem measures. And why the hell would a person be buried in a slutty dress?
But uh-oh. Anita spots that the zombie is experiencing... TERROR. Which means it has a SOUL!
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in the bedroom with its flowered bedspread and tile floor. That was part of the wrong; no one put tile in their bedroom.
I imagine JC probably does, considering the sea of bodily fluids in the Circus. Anita alone could float a boat.
I missed the heart-covered shorts when he stripped them off, because then I had to concentrate on his body,
This sounds kind of hilarious when you consider what LKH often uses "body" as a euphemism for.
He ended by taking his dick out of her body and doing the obligatory porn movie end to show that he’d actually gone. 
The word is "COME." Not "GONE." "Gone just makes me think he peed on her.
Also, is this meant to indicate that Anita has seen porn? Because earlier books made it pretty clear she didn't watch porn (Nathaniel got butthurt that she hadn't watched HIS porn, because who DOESN'T want to masturbate to a video of a sexually-abused prostitute child-man who can't say no?), and her life since then HAS been a porno. So I'm not sure why LKH is acting like Anita knows all about this kind of thing... you know, aside from Anita needing to be an expert on everything.
When the video finally ends, Brent mentions that it gets more polished as time goes on, with fewer novelty boxers, better camerawork, and a better set. There also has been a new masked guy in the videos in addition to BoxerMan.
“How many films are there?” I asked. 
Just the one. DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW PORN WORKS?!
I didn’t tell her she didn’t have to watch them again; I let her handle her own shit. To do anything else would have been a breach of the “guy code” that all police work revolved around. The sex of the police officer didn’t change the code.
Pretending that gender doesn't matter doesn't make your "guy code" thing any less revoltingly misogynistic, LKH. If it weren't misogynistic, you'd call it the "cop code." By calling it the "guy code," you're making it obvious that you think men are tough and strong and capable, and women are not. And the only way women can be tough and strong and capable is to live up to the "guy code."
FUCK. OFF.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-XCX2xBOiDvk/VZeifpFgNyI/AAAAAAAAKmc/bCFuw4atGXU/s400/sod%2Bthe%2Bfuck%2Boff%2Byou%2Bcunting%2Btwat.gif
pretty, pretty princess talk was looking a whole lot better.
"Wait... no, I'd rather watch zombies get raped than do anything girly."
Category:Dead Ice
Category:Laurell K. Hamilton
Category:Anita Blake
Category:Urban Fantasy
Category:Vampires
Category:Werewolves
Category:Shapeshifters