Narcissus in Chains Chapter Forty Nine

Welp, here we go.

Anita natters on about J.C.'s curtains. They are "...like a huge fairytale tent." 

Now that is some low effort bullshit right there. What does that even mean? Fairies from what mythology? Irish, Vietamese? What? And what sort of things are fairies supposed to like? I can grasp that she probably means gauzy and floaty, but for god's sake. She fritters away every opportunity to breathe life in to her world, which is particularly sad considering it's a fucking fantasy world. 

She makes up for it a little bit by taking a stab at it after all. There's some white carnations--oh I'm sorry, a spill of white carnations--and an antique desk. Woo. So amazingly tantalizing.

"The fireplace looked real, but I knew it wasn't because it had been added later, but it was everything a fireplace should have been, except it was painted white."

What the fuck.

1). Pretty sure you can often add functional fireplaces after the fact. Even if you can't vent to the outside seeing as how this is the basement, it could easily be a gas fireplace.

2). Everything a fireplace should have been? Does it also have curves in all the right places?

3). Fireplaces can't be painted and still be fireplaces apparently, even though I had a white fireplace in my house as a child.

4). Why the fuck do I care about the fireplace?

J.C. turns up in an all white and silver outfit that matches the room. This place is fucking tacky. J.C. is tacky. He's wearing thigh high boots because of course he is. J.C. and Anita have ardeur feels at each other. J.C. can't fully shield against Anita because even in this she must be special. Micah is teh hawts and "it tightened things low in my body."

Your intestines then? Maybe your kidneys? You should have that looked at.

I think LKH has used spill approximately eleventy billion times in the span of like five pages.

Anita, J.C. and Micah fall to the ground as the ardeur takes hold of them. For some reason Anita is now terrified of J.C. and none of them want to feed the ardeur with each other even though they're all according to LKH consensual lovers. What the fuck is the problem with feeding the ardeur with J.C.? Or even Micah? Anita begs Asher for help  but he can't do anything because it will cause him to be taken in by the ardeur too. Why did LKH even include this stupid take on sex magic if she's not going to use it?

Oh it's because Anita doesn't let J.C. feed on her because she is a hypocritical rapist. I notice how Richard's boundaries being violated were all Richard's fault in Anita's mind even though he had the exact same limit, how she gave him the speech rapists like to give about how the rape is the victim's fault. Also really, what is with that restriction in the first place? She and J.C. are lovers. She's his human servant. Why won't she let him feed off of her, anyway? That's not how you properly portray someone with autonomy. Setting up random hard limits makes no sense. People usually have a reason for the things they do, or in this case the things they won't do. But Anita doesn't have reasons, because she's not a character. She is a cut out, an author avatar. It's like those scenes from Whose Line Is It Anyway where the actors have to take control of each other's bodies, making their arms flop out or their mouths move as the sketch demands.

Micah offers himself as sexual food for J.C. which is actually pretty hot.

Micah's eyes are "pale, pale green"  because repeating things makes them more powerful.

I'm confused because one minute J.C. and Micah are close enough to kiss, the next he's on top of Anita. Anita says "no, don't" but Micah touches her anyway. So does J.C. They all fall in to ardeur mania. Everyone's a rapist!