by Ardeur- 14 Writers on the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Series (mobi)
Not for Anita, not at first.
Growing up Catholic with a “Midwestern, middle-class value system” (Narcissus in Chains) did not give Anita much comfort with intimacy. She is not at ease with the naked body, partly because it tends to inspire the ardeur beyond her control, and partly because of her upbringing. She constantly questions the ethics of her sexual activities. In an interview with Christopher DeRose, Laurell K. Hamilton talked about the creation of the main character for her Merry Gentry series this way: “I wanted someone with an easier attitude about sex. Someone I wouldn’t have to argue with all the time the way I do with Anita.”
And argue Anita does.
Marianne, her mentor, argues with Anita for four pages in Blue Moon before Anita is willing to take the first, simple step toward greater intimacy with her wereleopards—and Marianne asks only that Anita brush Nathaniel’s hair. Even this simple gesture raises in Anita a world of worry about her responsibilities to Nathaniel, his submissive sexuality, and her more dominant nature. She fears the consequences of this affectionate act and what it will mean for their relationship.
When Nathaniel almost dies at the end of Blue Moon, she is forced into taking a second step towards intimacy in order to save his life. The desire and duty to heal him pushes past her fears and issues with touching his bare skin. She kisses him, her bare breasts against his naked chest.
In fact, much of her sexual growth occurs when she has no choice but to step past her limitations in order to save or protect Nathaniel. These two steps—brushing Nathaniel’s hair and touching Nathaniel’s naked skin with her own—are the turning points in her relationship with the pard. By Narcissus in Chains, Anita becomes more comfortable with the touching and nakedness of the wereleopards, but she cannot enjoy it simply because she enjoys the comfort and warmth of their bodies pressed close to hers at night. She must qualify it, find excuses for it:
I wake up pressed between Micah and Nathaniel. You can’t feed the ardeur off of the same person every day, not even a lycanthrope. That’s why they used to say that succubi and incubuses killed their victims. You can literally love someone to death. So, I feed on Micah and Nathaniel. Micah as my Nimir-Raj, and Nathaniel as my pomme de sang. No, I’m not having intercourse with Nathaniel. Both of them seem peaceful with the arrangement, though I’m still a little weirded out by it. I’m still hoping the ardeur is temporary. (Narcissus in Chains)
Anita protects everyone around her, but she never seems to notice the one who most protects her: Nathaniel. Protecting her is something he does without consideration for himself; he is so submissive that he would be happy to die for her. In Narcissus in Chains, he offers her the touch that brings her back from Belle’s power: “Then Nathaniel was there, and the world was solid again.” When Anita almost dies trying to bring Damian, her vampire servant and part of her triumvirate, back from the dead to undo the damage caused by her time away wrestling her moral demons in Obsidian Butterfly, it is Nathaniel who offers himself as food for Damian, no matter the risk to his own life. When their triumvirate’s power is not fed, it is Nathaniel whose energy is drained to keep Damian’s heart beating. When Ulysses is about to kill her, it is Nathaniel who fires the gun that kills Ulysses and saves Anita’s life. When Belle Morte attacks her in Cerulean Sins, Nathaniel is the one to wrap himself around her and warm her back to normal. Nathaniel is always there for Anita when she needs him.
While the other men in Anita’s life may clash, strut their dominance, and test the order of power, Nathaniel rarely complicates her life. He is content to play wife to her and to Micah, to putter in the kitchen and make sure that she eats. He is content to be the submissive one amongst all the dominant and more demanding men in Anita’s life; he does not add more posturing to her already complicated love life. She can count on him to always be there when she asks, to always obey her when she needs him, and to always give her support, even if it means giving up his life. The strength he gives her with his submissiveness is given quietly, patiently, and without demand.
It is this quiet and patient approach that ultimately domesticates Anita. Without her realizing it, Nathaniel makes a home for her and Micah. She looks up and there he is, happily puttering in her—his— kitchen. Unlike with Richard, she is not freaked out by this; Nathaniel has earned it. Up until that point, she’d always assumed that when the ardeur went away, she would no longer need Nathaniel. She often wondered about getting him an apartment and setting him up with a life of his own.
All the while, he was building a home around her.
Even Jean-Claude acknowledges that it is Nathaniel who can make these little headways into her unease with intimacy and domestication. Of all her men, Nathaniel is the first one to go on an anniversary date and celebrate a special day with her. Jean-Claude sees this and hopes that Nathaniel will make Anita more amenable to anniversaries and expressions of love.
Nathaniel may be the most submissive of all her men, but he is also the most important factor in her domestication. In protecting him, she learns to touch. In being protected by him, she learns to trust him, to be part of a family, and to take and make time for intimacy. His quiet and patient ways domesticate her before she notices, which is possibly the only way she could be domesticated.
The Black Wrought-Iron Fence
I’m happy behind my black wrought-iron fence. The one with the pointy spikes on top. White never really was my color.
—Danse Macabre
By Skin Trade, Anita is still a monster, still a sociopath, still not whitepicket fence material. The difference is, she accepts who she is. She’s learned that forgoing the white-picket fence does not mean forgoing the joys and comforts of domestication. Where there is a house with no neighbors to protect innocents from the dangers and monsters in her life, there is also a home with two men she loves. Where there is a succubus needing to feed, there is also true love.
For Anita, finding peace and happiness is not achieved by getting rid of or taming the monster inside her, but by accepting it and allowing herself to love as a monster. She is and always will be a wild cat, a predator, a zombie queen. But in opening herself up to that world, she finds a different kind of domestication: one perfect for her.
“Sandwiched between Micah and Nathaniel was the safest, best place I’d ever known” (Danse Macabre).
Natasha Fondren is a writer who enjoys a different kind of domestication, too: she lives on the road in a little camper, moving from place to place as her restless spirit calls. Every night, she sleeps in a “puppy pile” with four cats and a husband. Her adventures can be read at natashafondren.com.
This essay sees in the ardeur some of what I saw in it eventually, but at first I, like Anita, was pretty horrified. We’re both control freaks and the ardeuris about losing control. It is the antithesis of all that hard-won refusal and discipline that Anita prided in herself. But without the anita would still be trapped in herself, in her denials. Without it she’d still be able to hide from herself.
But Devon Ellington also maintains that Anita gives the monsters more help than she gives her human friends. I know that Larry Kirkland vanished from the books when he married and had a child because he’s not a shooter. Anita and I are pretty frightened that we’ll get him killed. I think that would be too much guilt for Anita to bear. Dolph Storr’s about face from calm perfect policeman to near hysterical rage about his son, Darrin, marrying and wanting to become a vampire is still as puzzling to Anita as it is to me. I know he will get past it, but though Anita and Dolph are friends, they are work friends. The same is true of Anita and Zerbrowski. Anita never did, and isn’t likely to do, anything with either man; thatis just them and being just friends. It’s not the same way she was friends with ronnie sims.
Ronnie’s issues have smashed into Anita’s own, and hurt the friendship, but it was Lilth Saintcrow’s essay that hit it, I think. Ronnie didn’t see Anita as a rival for men because Anita didn’t chase them. She was content to let Ronnie hit that. Anita being s
exually prolific has thrown Ronnie and made her uncertain how to react. I didn’t realize that Ronnie was one of those women who see other women as rivals. When Anita was safe they could be friends, but Anita is no longer “safe.” For books neither has been comfortable with their reversed roles. Anita is working on it, and I know Ronnie is, too. I honestly don’t know if they will mend their friendship, but the number of men Anita’s committed to must take up a lot of her time. Sex with that many men would be okay, but trying to date this many people, does Anita really have time for any other friendships? I didn’t do this on purpose, but I’m pretty sure if I was trying to date, or live with, this many men and still worked the hours Anita and I work that I’d be pretty short on time to go out shopping with the girls, too.
—Laurell
Ardeur’s Purpose
by Devon Ellington
Series books provide particular challenges, because the writer has to take the reader on an ever-expanding journey. The stakes have to rise, book by book, and the characters need to grow and deepen as the readers do. Well-done series enable authors to develop their characters over a long period of time, allowing them to grow, change, backslide, empower, frustrate.
All too often, this doesn’t happen. Many publishers believe that readers want a level of comfort, want to know what they’re getting, which underestimates the readers’ hunger for challenges met by fascinating characters in astonishing ways. So authors pack their characters’ development all into one book, or even three books, and then keep them on fixed paths, simply tossing a challenge du jour their way that doesn’t really change them, and that keeps the readers in their own comfort zone.
This is particularly true when it comes to series that feature a romantic relationship. Convention—and many publishing guidelines—insist that, once the protagonist and the “hero” meet, every other serious suitor falls away, and once they kiss or have sex, the woman must be monogamous. And so often a series, especially one with a female protagonist, will fall flat after a few books, because the character progressed from A to B and maybe even reached C, but then found “true love”—after which point any challenge becomes a threat to the primary relationship, instead of taking advantage of the challenges presented by the myriad facets of a strong woman’s daily life. This isn’t the way it works in reality, and it doesn’t make for rewarding reading. Treating relationships like living, growing organisms (and not just falling into clichés about temptations and fidelity) means the challenges and conflict must always be growing.
Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series is exceptional in its commitment to pushing its main character to continue evolving. The fact that Hamilton is able to not only sustain Anita’s personal development for so many books, but also keep pushing her boundaries, is unusual. The fact that she does is through sex—through the ardeur—is even more unique. Anita is one of the first (and, even now, one of the few) popular human (at least at the start of the series) female characters to maintain multiple relationships and not only not be punished for it, but grow and improve because of it.
Guilty Pleasures ends with the words: “I know who and what I am. I am the Executioner, and I don’t date vampires. I kill them.” Yet by the fifteenth book, The Harlequin, Anita’s become someone who’ll say: “I’ll compromise; I’ll bend” to make someone she loves happy, in spite of her fear that, in bending, she just might break. It’s a huge change for her, almost unfathomable—and the ardeur, rather than being just an excuse for sexier books, is the reason for the change.
The Ardeur‘s Challenge
When Anita develops the ardeur in Narcissus in Chains, she has only recently resolved the series’ previous primary conflict: the choice between Richard and Jean-Claude. This isn’t just a matter of deciding which one to have a relationship with, but a decision about what Anita wants for her life. Does she want to strive for normalcy and try to ignore the fact that she is different, the way Richard does? Or does she choose to accept what she is—a powerful necromancer, and a part of the supernatural community? Though she remains tied to Richard through their triumvirate, and at the beginning of Narcissus in Chains has made the decision to work on her relationships with both men, it is Jean-Claude with whom she throws in her lot, having taken an important, if uneasy, step toward self-acceptance.
This is where the typical series would consider its work done. But this is where Hamilton uses the ardeur to raise the stakes instead.
Despite rejecting Richard’s way of reacting to his supernatural situation, Anita has not yet found her own. She accepts her abilities, but she is still not comfortable using them unless she is backed against a wall in a life-or-death situation. We see this at the end of nearly every book, where desperation leads Anita to discover yet another facet of her powers. She ignores her own nature as often and completely as possible.
Learning to accept her abilities isn’t Anita’s only personal challenge. Due to her size, her looks, and the world being the way it is, she has had to be twice as good to get half the respect from the men with whom she’s forced to work. Her intelligence and her strength have allowed her to prove herself, both to herself and others, but to retain the respect she has earned, she cannot show any weakness, and so she has issues with intimacy and control.
Anita lost her mother at an early age and wound up with a stepmother, Judith, who wanted Anita to be more like her other daughter, more in keeping with a traditional definition of femininity—which meant conforming, something Anita was unwilling and in some ways unable to do. Anita was also torn between grandmothers—her mother’s mother, who helped hone her natural animation powers, and her father’s mother, who believed her powers were evil. Her choice of profession, of accepting her paranormal abilities and using them as a viable skill in the workplace, meant she was, in a way, cast out from her family. Her own church also cast her out for her abilities. And the boy she was engaged to in college rejected her as well. She spent most of her adult life avoiding situations in which she could be hurt. As a result—and likely as a result of her Catholic upbringing as well—she is against casual sex. She is uncomfortable with romantic relationships, especially the idea of relying on someone else emotionally.
Because of all this, the ardeur is tailor-made to challenge Anita by pushing her out of her comfort zone. She is forced to have casual sex to survive, but even more, the ardeur takes away her self-control and forces her into long-term intimate arrangements—all of which forces her to deal with the very issues she’s successfully avoided in her adult life so far. Learning to deal with a consuming kill-or-bekilled lust is just as much of an emotional challenge for her as a physical one.
Anita’s Growth
Anita claims to hate the ardeur. It robs her of her self-control and, if ignored long enough, her choices. She tries to limit its violation of her sense of morality by choosing men she can care about (Micah, Jason, Nathaniel, Asher, etc.) but still ends up using and hurting people (Requiem, London, Wicked, and Truth, and even, at times, Nathaniel and Jason), which upsets and frustrates her.
But she also likes the ardeur. She just doesn’t want to admit it. While she wants more control over it, she’s not willing to give it up. She enjoys the sex. And when the ardeur flows, she can let go of the self-control that is her rule in her day-to-day dealings.
Anita drives away (or shoots) anyone who might dominate her in life, but then submits to rough trade and even group sex in front of an audience, as with Auggie in Danse Macabre. She tries to make lust transformative by connecting it with love, yet there’s the side of her that likes it rough and enjoys the pain. But since it’s ardeur, well, as Jason points out, she doesn’t have to take responsibility. “I thought you were growing, changing, but what you just said blames it all on the ardeur. You didn’t do any of it. Not your fault. If you fuck everything that moves while under the sway of the ardeur, you’re still blameless,” Jason says in Incubus Dreams, and again, in Blood Noir: “The ardeur is like the perfect excuse to never have to say you’re so
rry.” Even Richard points it out: “You never plan it, Anita. It’s weirdly never your fault.” She wants all those urges she “shouldn’t” want to be ardeur. But those urges aren’t Belle Morte; they’re Anita’s good-girl Catholic side exploding from years of repression.
One of the most infuriating aspects of Anita’s character is that, when faced with an option that will lessen the effect of the ardeur, sometimes something as simple as eating regular meals, she deliberately ignores it. She could make the choice to train her powers as diligently as she used to train her body, running with Ronnie. But she doesn’t.
She’s got to be the hero, and yet she refuses, over and over and over again, to take the basic steps to give herself the strength to do what’s necessary. She has the ability to tap into her own power at will, but she refuses to do so until those she loves are in danger. Entities attracted by her powers and potential want her to use it, and want to use her for their own ends. She’s constantly fighting others’ attempts to turn her into an object of power instead of an individual wielding her own power. She wants control of herself and her life, yet time and time again she’s passive about the simplest tasks, such as eating a hamburger, letting others push her into life-or-death situations and avoiding the responsibilities that come with power.
What finally pushes Anita to start to take responsibility for her powers, however, is the effect it has on other people. Protecting others—physically, if not emotionally—has always been a key part of Anita’s character. Once her triumvirate forms with Damian and Nathaniel, their continued existences depend on her ability to control and feed the ardeur and other hungers. It’s no longer an option to indulge in her self-destructive tendencies to ignore her own well-being, because now it’s not just her own life at stake. She still gets to be the breadwinner—but in more than just financial terms. She supplies the sheer life force that Nathaniel and Damian require for survival. If she ignores or abdicates her responsibilities to them, she will have death on her hands without the safety of a warrant—it will be due to her own selfishness. If she refuses to take responsibility, her extended family will die. It’s no longer just about her, her needs, her wants.
