by Ardeur- 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series (mobi)
I didn’t start out by trying to be the spokesperson for nonstandard sex, but the more people were upset by it, the more I thought, Why? Why is it such a hot button for people? I finally realized that one of the reasons people get so upset about the sex in my books is that it is nonstandard a lot of the time, and they’re not upset because they didn’t like reading the sex scenes, they’re upset because they did like it. They’re upset because this is maybe the first time they’ve ever read a BDSM scene and liked it, or read a group sex scene and liked it, or thought it would be nice to have that third adult in the house to help with all those daily chores.
The message of my writing is some version of this: that whatever it is, as long as you harm no one, not even yourself, you’re okay. Whatever you want, whatever moves you, whatever makes your blood pump and your heart race is all good. There are no limits, so long as you harm none. Some have found that a very comforting message; others feel threatened by it. I meant it to be accepting and welcoming; the fear was not intended. But it’s not fear of the unknown. I believe the negative reactions are so strong because what scaresthem is themselves and their reaction to what I write. I have no qualms about showing reality. Through my patina of monsters and magic, I get to jerk the covers back and show what’s real and what’s possible, whether that sheet being jerked back is in the bedroom or the morgue. I show the reader what is there, unflinching through the good, the bad, the complicated, and the scary. All the while I whisper, “It’s okay. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid … of yourself.”
—Laurell
Showing the Scars
by Jacob Clifton
Every mystery story contains within it a secret that, when it is revealed, solves the equation of the story and puts the world right again. All the toys go back in their boxes until next time: Jessica Fletcher goes home to her Metamucil and six dozen cats; Phillip Marlowe goes out looking for a good-time girl and a bottle of rye; Sherlock and Watson have some tea. In its Modernist mode, the mystery story is set in a Rousseauist milieu, in which the world is naturally good, and the detective must assume the role of antibody: identifying the disrupting element and bringing it to justice, thus rebooting the world to its essential well-meaning roots.
Mystery, in its noir form, adds an existential twist, blurring this sense of good and evil and presenting a Hobbesian view of the world (“all against all”) in which the detective is less antibody than victim of the Fates. Subsequent evolutions of the genre apply this uncertainty to the character of the hero himself: The Shield‘s Vic Mackey is drawn into offenses against morality and legality Sherlock would find horrifying, and the protagonist of postmodern mysteries like Memento or Phillip Dick’s novels finds that in fact he himself is the criminal. In the new noir shape of mystery, from Twin Peaks to The X-Files, we find the presumptive antibody, the detective, implicated in the mysteries of the world rather than their modernist conqueror. The metaphor has transformed itself, from the personal drama of protagonist/reader as observer/problem-solver, returning the world to a state of grace, to an uncertain and open-ended exploration of self in dynamic relation to an ever-changing and often-confusing world. I would argue that this is a natural progression, in terms of our culture’s view of itself and continually deepening attempts to interpret the confusion of the outside world by exploring the internal self.
The horror genre, which has found itself combined with every mode of mystery since before dear Edgar Allen, has followed a parallel path. The overpowering mojo of Bram Stoker’s Dracula requires the protagonists to defend the sanctity of our natural world against its seductive, invading power; the Wolfman views his unfortunate condition as a curse; mummies and zombies don’t even have voices or personalities, just irrepressible urges for destruction and terrifying, unnaturally animated movement.
Similar to the evolution17 of the mystery genre, the horror movement of the late ‘70s turned a corner by letting us into the monster’s head, and thus demonstrating the subjectivity of even the most horrific creature’s existence. From poor Carrie White to the hapless American Werewolf In Paris, monsters were the new heroes—as long as we remembered, like the beekeeper or operator of a wolf sanctuary, that even the loveliest and most beloved of beasts can still bite. Hard.
There is another connection between the worlds of mystery and horror (and the latter’s big sister, speculative fiction) essential to our discussion, which is the idea of internal rules. Every story (apart from the most self-consciously postmodern) has its background and logical rules, which must be followed in order for the mystery’s conclusion to satisfy. No story suffers more from the deus ex machina than a mystery: imagine a story in which, after hundreds of pages, a heretofore unknown personage presents himself as the culprit, shocking detective and reader alike! Similarly, in order to retain any meaning, works of science fiction or horror must be made entirely of their rules: they are the skeleton on which the entire story is built. A story about werewolves—and all the implicit themes that it brings to the table—cannot be resolved by alien abduction.
So we could say that, first, the development of genre fiction— mystery, science fiction, horror—shows a through-line of self-dissection: every writer wants to discover new territory, and report back to us what she finds, which means investigating the story’s genre as much as its internal mystery. When dealing with such basic archetypes as the Vampire and the Shapeshifter, locating that new mythical territory means letting the genre question itself. If the first and most basic story construction is the classic man vs. nature plot with which we’re all familiar, then all that follows that construction must involve somehow the systematic breaking down of that human/nature dividing line.
Secondly, it is important to remember that every story, if it’s to generate revenue through publication, must be enjoyable and identifiable to the reader. We write the stories we want to read; the trick of success lies in those same stories also being those that others want to read. Fiction is a journey not only for the heroine and author, but for the reader herself. The challenge here is in adhering to genre rules without being constricted by them. It’s a fine line, and one which any successful piece of genre writing must walk.
I contend that Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series is a postmodern work exploring these two particular lines of genesis—fulfilling the demands of both its genre and, commercially, satisfaction for the reader—and embracing them so wholeheartedly that the end product cannot help but be transgressive. By operating from her own fictional rules, and extrapolating them in line with her vision for the series and characters, Hamilton has created a complete world for readers to inhabit. She has also created a character whose changes, while sympathetically and lushly described, become more challenging and alien with every book. In fact, I would say Hamilton has created a subjective experience for an entirely new horror archetype: the Succubus. At this point in the series, it’s fair to say that this sums up the series and Anita’s development: from heroic “antibody,” to antihero, to powerful monster in her own right.
Hamilton set out to create a wholly female counterbalance to the classic noir universe: a world in which, generally, the male hero is responsible for his own ethical decision-making; in which sex is a reward and sometime threat to his overall goals; in which neither author nor reader judges the detective for his behavior, language, or difficult and often violent choices. Extrapolating from these basic rules, we have Anita Blake in her original, Vampire Hunter form: a woman with identifiable neuroses, a personal creed of justice, a filthy mouth, and a willingness to negotiate with darkness. So far, so good, even as the final words in Anita’s first adventure seem, to a modern audience, nothing less than a dare: “I know who and what I am. I am The Executioner, and I don’t date vampires. I kill them.”
But blustery hero rhetoric aside, Anita’s femininity is a defining aspect of the character: she’s not simply, in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s immortal phrase, a “man with breasts.” Her concerns are deeply female; her relationsh
ip to her monsters is emotional and romantic in a way that would make Phillip Marlowe weep. Her worldview is violent, powerful, and incapable of accepting gender imbalances that many of us might accept without question. Without being blind to the assumptions of others, Anita’s public persona is built on an overriding strength: she is a workaholic competitor among competitors, not an overcompensating female in a world of males. This stance alone should provide notice that we are in a somewhat underutilized fictional space, in which the usual rules do not apply.
The millennium has provided us with an interesting new horror (and horror-romance) trope along these lines: stories about women of various character, beset by romantic and social entanglements with the twinned forces of seductive death (the Vampire) and terrifying life force (the Werewolf). Charlaine Harris’s brilliant Southern Vampire series heroine, Sookie Stackhouse, bounces between suitors from both sides, as does Bella Swan in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. (Even the prodigiously brilliant Amelia Atwater-Rhodes split the difference, writing primarily about a vampire-witch war in one series— the Nyeusigrube stories—while developing a world of shapeshifters for her Kiesha’ra books.) Whatever the reasons for this fascinating new archetypal love triangle, Hamilton’s greatest and most ambitious creation is a third, specifically and eternally female member of the trinity: the Succubus heroine.
Wherein lies the rub. While the Werewolf archetype developed originally out of superstitions about women, and women’s blood and menstrual cycle particularly, and some of the earliest vampire stories (Carmilla, even Dracula) included great mythic content about these same fearful concepts, I would argue that both these archetypes—in the context of the new, heroine-centered literature described above— are relegated to symbols of male power, against which the female protagonist must define herself. Each of these bestselling series has found its own way of resolving this tension—eventually through the reevaluation or transformation of its heroine into a supernatural creature of her own—but the Anita Blake method is by far the most profound.
The Succubus is one horror archetype that is wholly and inescapably feminine, drawing on the deepest fears and nightmares of men and women alike. Though authors like Anne Rice have mined the myth of the Incubus (Rice in her Mayfair/Taltos stories), this archetype belongs to an altogether different order, more like the Vampire than a complement to it. The original succubus, Lilith of JudeoChristian myth, consorted with demons at the beginning of time, and it so transformed her that she became a roving murderer of children, drawing upon the breath and life force of men as they slept.
In killing children, Lilith reverses primordial expectations of woman as nurturer; in raping men, she reversed perhaps the most basic principle of all. She is transgressive in every sense, and thus terrifying. Lilith serves a mythic role by representing men’s own fears about their sexual prowess and control, as defined wholly against women’s, in the same way that the werewolf metaphor so beautifully embodies loss of sexual and physical control in men—but without giving men a say in it! Lilith treats her victims as victims, objects, feeding on them to generate life within herself which she does not return to the world as offspring, and in this way refutes every ancient stricture placed on women.
In one story, Lilith was originally cast out of the Garden of Eden for presuming to take the dominant position in coitus with her husband, Adam, and everything that followed for her arises from this first transgression. (Compare the story of Eve, who made equal mistakes and assumptions, and earned the world’s punishment just as efficiently. One almost wishes they’d made friends and taken the Thelma & Louise route—which I would say is where the mythic roots of that story actually begin!)
By developing the Succubus as a horror archetype through the development and transformation of her central character, Hamilton brings a burgeoning sense of dread and discovery that revitalizes Lilith’s mythic power, making Anita’s archetype every bit as intriguing and powerful an archetype as those of the vampires and shapeshifters that people her dark world. What’s radical is the way in which Hamilton applies the very scientific attention to detail and authorial sympathy that makes her vampires and shapeshifters so compelling to her new monster. By giving that rigorous thought and detailed follow-through to an archetype based on destructive sexual hunger— putting her central character through these paces—Hamilton treads on the exposed nerve that the archetype itself embodies.
Anita’s adventures are catalogued, from start to finish, through the eyes of a biologist, focused on the social and sexual constructs of humans who, under certain circumstances, physically become wolves or other carnivores. Apply that same dedication and deliberate description to the actions and experiences of a succubus, and you have the latter Anita books. Where the descriptive phrases regarding vampire activities must contain certain nouns, adjectives and verbs—hungers, bites, hypnotism, bleeding, slavery and mastery, etc.—and the words of werewolves are words of rage, hunger—that curious blend of violence and sensuality implicit in the phrase “Killing Dance”—it so follows that the semiotic web surrounding the archetype of the Succubus is going to include every possible word for sexual interaction.
Tedious or titillating—and the author seems to feel, with the reader, that they are both equally— these sexually descriptive passages are every bit as world-building and contributory as Hamilton’s descriptions of a shapeshifter’s physical transformation, or the precise hue of Nathaniel’s eyes. They represent a direct translation of Anita’s experience as she enters the world of monsters on her own terms, as a new kind of fearsome creature.
While this is, of course, terribly offensive for some readers and “negative fans,” one is tempted to contrast the sexuality of Anita’s later responsibilities with the lovingly detailed operations, protocols, and equipment generated in her incredibly violent work as “The Executioner”—or in the work of fan-favorite hired killer Edward, whose relationship with death and death-dealing is as graphic and sensual as Anita’s relationships with her harem of men.
Sex is a huge part of Anita’s world well before the ardeur enters the story. Anita herself seems mystified by the focus on sexual exploration among the vamps and hangers-on, even as Jean-Claude’s attraction grows stronger and stronger. The ardeur is present in Jean-Claude’s own vampiric bloodline, descending from the seductive Belle Morte, described as a unique ability on the same neutral level as that of the “rotting” vampires. If anything, this early parallel clarifies Hamilton’s intent once Anita’s own ardeur powers arrive. From the beginning, sex is notable among the monsters of Blake’s world as a form of commerce, signaling political alliance, servitude, and personal currency as often as—or more than— it is displayed in more human terms of intimacy and affection. This too—treating sexuality logically and unemotionally— is in line with Hamilton’s scientific predilections for understanding her creations, and in this schema, morality and gender roles are relegated to only minor roles. The sexual economy of Anita’s world refuses to be distinguished from politics, industry, or the rest: they are all equal parts of the sociological machine.
Anita’s political power grows, Godfather-like, with each novel, whether acquired sexually or otherwise. The accumulation of personal power in an uncertain world is a preoccupation of both the Anita Blake and Merry Gentry tales, and I believe it represents a feminist move toward overcoming the powerful hierarchies implicit in our society. It would be disingenuous at this point to avoid mentioning that sales of both series rise as the sexual escapades increase in volume and variety, but the point remains that the narrative worlds of Anita and Merry view sex and use of sexuality as means to an end, in addition to being an end in itself.
However, I would also mention a common symptom of all serial drama, whether on television or in comics or here in books, which is that the stakes must always be raised. Greater threats must be met with greater power, and ardeur aside I think Anita’s impressive and non-stop accumulation of powers, roles, allies, and resources are a direct resu
lt of this commercial need. Anita’s acquisition of each pard, pack, pride, power, triumvirate, mark, lover, and territory—they really do pile up quickly!—is necessary to meet the next awful thing, which is itself created to fulfill the reader’s greater need for danger. Anita lives in such a dangerous world that to go without even one of her weapons—eventually, a collection that includes sex as literal power—would be deadly.
Which brings us back, again, to the rules of genre. Why is it that the ardeur is even necessary? Why can’t Hamilton get rid of at least a few of the men in Anita’s sexual compound? Why should the very plot of a novel depend on the workings of the ardeur, such as that plot-based necessity which explains the presence of Nathaniel and Micah, brought along on an Edward/Anita adventure and left for the most part in a hotel room, present only to feed Anita’s need? Isn’t it all, well, a bit cumbersome? I’m not being facetious when I point out that it is cumbersome having to sleep in a coffin, too. Turning into a half-crazed monster at the full moon is a real hassle. And poor overendowed Micah, traumatized by the high school cheerleaders he’s wounded in the past, well… .
Sex is a huge part of our world, and our lives, as well. It’s often a hassle, it often substitutes itself for other virtues and activities, it is also used to wound, it is also used to accrue power. The difference is that we know better than to talk about it. Similarly, the violence implied by vampirism and lycanthropy, when connected to sexuality, leads directly and swiftly to some scary places. I think that the vampire-werewolf love triangle in current women’s fiction speaks directly to a larger sexual trauma in our culture.
The vampire suitor is portrayed as courtly, protective, and simultaneously controlling and sinister: the very image of masculinity portrayed in the clichéd ‘90s Dartmouth feminisms in which women were taught, confusingly, both to demand sexual protection and to seek sexual freedom. For example, Jean-Claude’s ambiguous power relationship with Anita is no less—in fact, a great deal more—frightening for feeling so familiar. To submit to Jean-Claude’s vampiric influence, to the marks and mesmerism and mastery and the rest, would be no doubt satisfying—and masochistic—but would also subsume Anita’s own personality and, at least in the earlier books, chosen identity.