PROLOGUE: Police Interview a Witness to Betsy’s Attempts at Ruling. She doesn’t seem especially good at it…shocker!

The second book begins with a man giving a police report to Detective Nick. Apparently he’s in the Fourth Precinct of Minneapolis, if anyone familiar with the city cares (or even those that don’t, I suppose). It’s a recording of Nick and the witness/victim of whatever, a taxi driver we’ll never see again named Robert Harris. He is said to be a 52 year old Caucasian male who passed a breathalyzer, drug tests are pending (he’s sober).

He is very casual in speech and I think is supposed to convey down-homey grandpappy goodness, despite the fact 52 isn’t that old. He rambles on and on about irrelevant shit, because oh he’s just so charming in a clearly uneducated way. He calls the two officers that first aided him, “Nice enough fellows, for a coupla flatfeet,” and ends -ing words in an apostrophe instead. His 19 year old daughter is “at the U,” he has hemorrhoids, boy howdy are dem college books real expensive-like, he was mindin’ his own business on his lunch break, course it weren’t exactly lunchtime being 10 o’clock but he was working the night shift, that he was “sittin’ at Lake and 4th. A lot of the cabbies don’t like that neighborhood, you know, because of all the Negroes (lovely). No offense, I mean, not that you look it–”

“Mr. Harris, I’m not African American, but even if I were, I’m sure I would devoutly wish we could stay on course,” y’know, shit like that. Oh god he goes on to say:

“But you never know these days, am I right? Goddamned P.C. Nazis. A man can’t speak his mind anymore. I got a friend, Danny Pohl, and he’s just as black as the ace of spades, and he calls himself a–well, I’m not going to tell you what he says, but he uses it all the time. And if he don’t care, why should we?”

I’ve mentioned this latter paragraph, this particular tangent, because this is only the first of MANY times MJD brings up the N-word. Out of nowhere she will have her white characters argue about why they “should be able to say it,” oftentimes with Jessica shutting them down. FREQUENTLY. I mean, enough times it’s very memorable that she just WILL NOT let this go, as if she’s somehow personally slighted that she has ONE FUCKING WORD her lily-white ass can’t say.

Usually it is Marc that randomly starts a chapter whining that “it’s only a word!” and trying to get Jessica to GIVE THEM PERMISSION to SAY IT. Which, even if she did grant that, it’s not like she speaks for all black people–hell, she’s been specifically said to not even be descended from slaves, and even Jessica is like “fuck no,” but it doesn’t matter. This keeps coming up throughout the series, until finally MJD just SAYS IT. I will point that one out when I come to it, but I’m not even gonna quote the damn thing–I feel weird enough quoting that other word this “I’m not racist I have a black friend” dude said. Just…I want you all to know, THIS is like, the ONE issue she uses her platform towards. That she, a middle-aged Midwestern all-Caucasian blonde, and her Midwestern all-Caucasian blonde friends, should be allowed to say the “N”-word. That it is basically OFFENSIVE to deny whites the “privilege,” like she’s soooo put out that her abject whiteness denies her this ONE word because of all those damn “PC Nazis” who believe it’s racist to use a term that is specifically meant to be dehumanizing and racist towards another race. A race in which, in fact, her ancestors likely also dehumanized and abused…but oh no, poor MaryJanice, denied one whole word “even though it’s okay if they use it!”

Yeah. Sometimes racial or social groups will take back a term meant to cause them harm. It’s also why (on a lesser scale) women call themselves sluts or bitches or whatever the fuck–because taking a word meant to dehumanize you and making it your own takes power from the term. But if someone outside the group uses it? Fuuuuck no. That is not okay. And one person cannot give you permission to use that word as if it were your own. That is a word (the “N” one) that will more than likely always carry the weight of centuries of horror and abuse, and it’s just too damn bad for you, MJD.

Oh, except like I said…she argues this without saying the word for like…9, 10 books…and then all the sudden it’s just there. She actually uses it, and thinks she has a right because “it’s just a word!”

 

 

So yeah. That’s a bit early for a tangent–barely into the opening police interview–but it’s goddamned important to point out, even though I will probably go on a similar tangent later…ESPECIALLY when she just casually tosses it around, which perhaps means she finally met a black person and they said she could, or maybe she just decided “eh, fuck it, if I use it then the stigma and long history of unabashed, crippling, disgusting racism just DISAPPEARS!” Either way, fuck her fuck her fuck her for this shit.

Dumbass Cabbie Dude keeps going on and on to Dumbass Cop Dude about dumbass bullshit, like what kind of fucking sandwich he was eating or verifying his dumbass daughter does, in fact, matriculate at the University of Minnesota (Duluth campus) which was real hard to figure out when they live in fucking Minnesota and he said “the U”… I’m sure every state has their own “the U,” and I’m sure it’s entirely obvious which one they’d likely be referring to based upon geographical location. For example, we have the University of Oregon AND Oregon State University, and I STILL didn’t think, “derr,oh the U?? He must mean the U of O derpa derpa.” and yeah I know there’s another U of O, so any of you panicking Oklahomans (hell, Ohioans probably have one too!), I was referring to my state, which is Oregon, but I will also acknowledge that Oklahoma is, in fact, a state. WHEW! DAMN PC NAZIS, MAKIN’ MEH GO ON TANGENTS BOY HOWDEH!!! HOW DARE ANYUN’ TELL MEH TA’ BE POLITE?!?!

All right, I’m done with that…for now.

After describing his literal Wonder Bread sandwich, which sounds just plain as all hell (ham and Swiss with mustard, if you must know–yeah, he does not mention mayonnaise sooo…?) he FINALLY gets to the GODDAMNED POINT, wherein his taxi is just suddenly on its side. FINALLY! He was covered in garbage from what is apparently a dirty-ass taxi and wondering how to get the mustard off his shirt, because apparently this event was both incredible and also very dull I guess, and says the worst part was he heard a scream, and it was hard to determine whether it was a male or a female as they were shriekin’ and cryin’ and babblin’ and it was the worst noise (he’s) heard in (his) life. Even throws in a derpa-derp ‘and my daughter sure is tone deaf but that don’t stop her none guffaw guffaw guffaw’ joke we probably all knew was coming.

He claims he was a medic in “the war,” the Vietnam war as his birthdate must be around 1952 (oh he says as much–the Vietnam thing–I guess I wasted my time doing simple math. OH WELL!) and though he hung it up after (he) got back stateside he was compelled to try to help. Why, the screaming was even worse then when his wife gave birth to their daughter! BITCHES BE SCREAMIN’. AMIRITE?!?

So he’s heading towards the alley, wondering whether someone just backed over their own kid in the darkened streets, when all the sudden a bus pulls up, almost hitting his cab. A bus containing only the glass-eyed driver staring at the gal like she was chocolate ice cream.

“Can you describe her?”

“Well, she was tall, real tall–’bout my height, and I’m just shy of six feet. She had light blonde hair with them streaky–what d’you call ‘ems? Highlights! She had kind of reddish highlights, and the biggest, prettiest green eyes you’d ever seen. Her eyes were the color of them old-fashioned glass bottles (gosh, that is a great way to describe something we are supposed to think is the “prettiest”! Seriously! In no way, shape, or form am I trying to be sarcastic even though I am 100% being sarcastic–I can’t lie to you, dear reader) those real dark green ones. And she was real pale, like she worked in an office all the time. Me, my left arm gets brown as a berry (what? So, like…a rotten one?) in the summertime, on account of how it’s always hangin’ out my cab window , but my right arm stays real white (oh THANK GOD we know this information!!) Anyway, I don’t really remember what she was wearing–I was mostly looking at her face. And…and…”

“Are you all right?”

“It’s just this part’s hard. I mean, this girl was maybe five or six years older than my daughter (YEAH RIGHT BETSY), but I–well, let’s say I wanted her the way a man wants his wife on a Saturday night, if you know what I mean. And I’d never been one to horndog after kids young enough to be my kid, and never mind that my wife’s been dead for six years. So it was kind of embarrassing, too, that even though those awful screams were still sorta echoing in the air, here’s me all the sudden thinking with my dick.”

Well, good thing you admitted that, Good Samaritan!! It sure is crucial to this police report whether or not someone is attractive to the point men twice her age wanna fuck her!!!! Jesus, if it’s embarrassing just don’t fucking mention it, you goddamned dumbfuck moron. Sheesh!

Nick tries to give him an out, starting to say sometimes under stress a person–but he is immediately cut off with, “Wasn’t stress. I just wanted her, is all,” so maybe he really does think this is somehow important information? I dunno. He goes on to describe how that woman just marched on past him towards the alley, not so much even a glance his way, and he surmises she probably gets ogled “twenty times a day” by “old coots” like him. He followed her back there, happy to note that the dark and spooky alley actually does have nonsensical streetlights which apparently don’t appear until you’re directly under them, from the sounds of it.

“And just like that, before we could even get there, the screams stop. It was like someone had shut off a radio, that’s how sudden it was. So the gal, she starts to run. Which was funny to see, because she was wearing these teetery high heels. Purple, with bows on the backs. She had teeny feet, and these pretty little shoes. It was kind of funny to see that.” It’s also funny that a dude who couldn’t be bothered to even notice what color shirt she was wearing can remember purple, teetery heels with bows on back.

Also, SUPER OBVIOUS SPOILER ALERT–of course this is Betsy. I just wanted to again point out MJD made it absolutely clear vampires don’t change, to the point hair will go back the way it was the next night (a la The Vampire Chronicles), and she also made it very very clear that Betsy did not have red lowlights, as she directly thought about getting some, claiming they were in, then out, then in again, which I’m fairly certain isn’t even even true, but then again I was 18 in 2004, and she was already 35 years old writing a 30 year old Mary Sue, and of course I didn’t fuckin’ care what was trendy for 30 year olds then.

Shit, I’m 32 now, and I still don’t give a shit. Whatever, point is she obviously got these lowlights (NOT highlights, but I will forgive a 52 year old man for not knowing the difference I guess) BETWEEN books, and they stay forevermore. She can’t even make a mani/pedi last because she didn’t do it pre-death, and she made a point that she was thankful she had her blonde highlights redone, and now she was able to add perma-lowlights, no problem.

I mean, I definitely wouldn’t care if she decided vampires can change their appearance, but she has to maintain continuity so really it is one or the other–an author may choose, but cannot randomly decide to change said choice. It just looks unprofessional and ignorant of your own serieses world.

ONE MORE THING it is oft mentioned that Betsy has “teeny tiny feet.” Hell, she describes Jessica as having “Michael Jordan feet” even after she randomly decides Jessica has been super short this whole time! This is absurd. I’ve never known a six foot woman to have teeny tiny china doll feet–and yes, I have known women that tall–shit, my Merry Gentry reviewing counterpart is like one inch shy of six feet, and while hers are nowhere near massive, they’re still sized for her body. A six foot woman with size six feet would look very fucking stupid–like a reverse clown. Your feet tend to match your body’s needs. Shit,I’m 5’7 and I’m somewhere between 8-9.5, depending on brands, and that is fucking normal. My feet don’t look massive, they don’t look ridiculously, comically small (well, duh, but you know who I’m pointing at there), they match my body and the fact I am taller than the average woman, and thus do not have the feet of a faerie princess. Fuck. I just hate that inclusion–she could simply not mention either way what size her damn feet appear to be even with her dumb designer shoe obsession, and it would be just fine. Instead, she makes them sound WAAAAY to small for Betsy’s six foot frame, which just makes me assume MJD is embarrassed about the size of her feet. Which is also stupid. But she went too far in the opposite direction and made Betsy sound like a fucking freak, someone who you’d look at more than once, but not because she’s soooo gorgeous (if you’re into blondes, blondes, everywhere I suppose). Shit, it reminds me more of foot-binding than something to admire, and I don’t know if you’ve seen/read about foot-binding, but it is horrific, and nothing to admire. I don’t wish to offend anyone with that within their cultural heritage, and quite honestly if you are I implore you to realize you should actually be offended by such institutionalized “beauty” causing such wanton destruction to one’s body, even hobbling or completely destroying the ability to walk. As for anyone who maybe hasn’t heard of this yet, HERE, judge for yourself!:

 

Okay, moving on yet again…Robert Harris, Taxi Driver Extraordinaire continues, “Well, she could sure move in them shoes, and that was a fact. She musta been a real track star or something. And I was right behind her (which actually makes her running stride look less impressive, so…good job, MJD!). And we get to the alley, and right away I seen(SP) it was a dead end, and I didn’t want to go too far in. It’s funny, I never think about the Nam (THE NAM) no more, but that night it was like I’d just gotten back home. Man, I was noticing everything (except her clothes, apparently). I was really wired.”

All right. I really ought to calm down on writing out the recap, otherwise I’m never going to get through this shit in a timely manner…although, I will still throw down a quote or two or twenty-six. Guess which one I go with!

Betsy screamed at him “real loud but firm, you know, like a teacher” to “Let him go!” Mr. Harris finally notices two men standing ten feet away in the alley, oblivious to how he could have been oblivious to them before. The tiny one was clearly the stronger of the two, as he had “a guy bigger than me (the nearly 6 foot dude, and while 6 feet is technically above average…c’mon) holding him up off the ground! He was slamming the big guy into the brick wall real hard, and the big guy’s head was sort of lolling all over the place, and he was out cold.” And I can’t believe how hard it is to not actually quote this shit, so yeah bare with me I may not be quite as done doing it as I hoped to be.

Detective Nick asks whether he saw a weapon or anything, and he responds with, “Nothin’ like that. He was just…bad, I guess. He was about a head shorter than me and he had kind of gray (another side note: that is one of those words I have trouble accurately transcribing, as my fingers automatically type ‘grey’…oh well) skin. And one of those little black mustaches, real thin. Me, I think a man should grow a real soup strainer or nothing at all.” Well, I’m so happy I know what this completely unimportant character thinks about moustaches. ‘A real soup strainer,’ was he actively trying to make it sound gross and unhygienic as possible?

Eh, probably. Look at the source.

He says that the dude ‘looked like a punk,’ but still was somehow very creepy. Something about him made Harris’s skin crawl, although he couldn’t tell what it was. He includes that he watched his wife slowly die of stomach cancer for eight excruciating months, after which he believed nothing could ever scare him again. But no, this guy scared him.

Nicky asks him if he needs a break, but of course such a jabberjaw needs no such thing. He says the small creepola “got real close, and he says, ‘This is none of yours, false queen.’” And that he sounded “real old-fashioned, like I dunno, the way people talked maybe a hundred years ago,” as if 1904 was sooo much different. Or…was it? I honestly don’t know, snark notwithstanding, but I’m pretty sure he should’ve said two hundred or more…eh, whatever, that’s just me being a jerk. Also, Shorty Spice’s voice alone made him get goosebumps. He wanted to run, yet found he couldn’t move.

“But the gal didn’t seem to care. She straightens right up and says, ‘Oh, blow me. Get lost, before I lose my temper.’”

“‘Blow me’”? (That is exactly how it is written)

“Sorry, but that’s what she said. I remember it real well, because it was a shocker. I mean, I’m a big guy, and I was scared. She was just a kid, and she didn’t sound scared at all.” Ah, men. More specifically, men who automatically think fear is womanly, and women must always feel fear around strange, domineering men. I’ve got a friend who’s pretty damn thin, no real muscle mass to speak of, and yet she would have handed any one of these people their ass in an ultimate verbal smackdown.

Seriously–it doesn’t matter whether you’re male or female. All of us feel fear from time to time, and women can be just as domineering and badass as men. Yeah, yeah, #NotAllMen, shove it up your ass. If it’s not about you, it is not about you, and therefore your interjections and offense-taking are just distracting the real argument. NotAllMen, NotAllWomen, NotAllMimes, NotAllClownsAreSerialKillers–HAHAHAHAHA yeah right, clowns, nice try!!

Point is, we are not all #NotAll one thing or another, and pushing yourself into something just to say ‘well I’M not this way’ doesn’t make anyone think aww, he’s special; or even aww, he must REALLY mean that, I mean he made a hashtag and everything! It just makes you kind of a nuisance, distracting an otherwise (hopefully) constructive conversation–and I only picked that particular tag because it was somewhat relevant to my rantings, and it’s the most popular contrarian hashtag I could honestly think of. Don’t read more into it than it is.

Nick asks what happened next, and again I have to quote anyway, “Well, the little mean guy, he looked like he was gonna fall over. I was shocked, but he was…well, he was really shocked (way to use language as an emphasis, guy!) Like no one had ever talked to him that way in his whole life, I dunno, maybe no one had. And he says, ‘My meals are none of your business, false queen,’ That’s what he kept calling her–“false queen.” Never did hear her name.”

“False queen.”

“Yeah. And she says, ‘Sit and spin, jerk off.’ Seriously! (has this guy NEVER met a mouthy, confident, gives-no-fucks woman before? The fuck?)Then she says, ‘You know as well as me that you don’t have to scare ‘em or hurt ‘em to feed, so cut the shit.’” He goes on to wonder if she said ‘shit’ or ‘crap,’ like that really matters.

“And then?”

“And then he grabbed her! And his lips peeled back from his teeth, like a dog getting ready to bite. Just like that, our neighbor’s dog Rascal went rabid last summer, and before I shot the poor dog, he looked just as crazed and out of control as this guy.” Robert Harris clearly cannot keep one single thought in his mind or in his mouth at a time. He meanders off quite possibly as much as I do!

“And before I could help her–I was scared, but I didn’t want her to get messed up, I mean, I woulda done something–she whips out this cross and jams it onto his forehead! Just like in the movies! And man oh man, I thought the big guy was a screamer. This guy, he yowled like his lungs had caught fire, and all this smoke starts pourin’ off his forehead, and oh, Lord, the smell. You wouldn’t believe how bad it smelled. Like pork on fire, only the pork had been spoiled first. God, I’d like to puke just thinkin’ about it.

And then he let go of her and kind of staggered backward, and she steps up just cool as a cucumber and says, ‘You’ll pick this gentleman up and you’ll take him to the hospital. And you’ll pay for the bill if he doesn’t have insurance. And if I catch you feeding like this ever again, I’ll shove this cross right down your throat. Got it, or should I get out the hand puppets?’

And he sort of cringes away from her and nods. She was so stern and beautiful, he couldn’t look at her. Shit, I could hardly look at her! And then he picked up the big guy, who was still conked out, and ran out of the alley with him. Then the gal turns to me and kind of sighs, like she’s real tired. Then she says, ‘Did you ever get stuck in a job you really hate?’ And I allowed as to how that had happened to me once in a while. Boy oh boy, she was somethin’ gorgeous.”

She asked him if he was all right, and he says that he is. She tells him not to be scared, to which he replies as long as she’s there he won’t be, which gains him a big smile. They walked out of the alley, where she finally sees his cab lying on its side.

“And she looks all disgusted and says, ‘Jeez, what an infant.’ I guess she meant the guy who ran away (NO SHIT) And she walks over–this is the part you’re interested in (really? The ONLY part?!)–and kneels down, and slips two fingers underneath my cab, and lifts it back up until it’s on it’s wheels again.”

“She lifted your cab upright?”

“Yup.”

“With one hand.”

“With two fingers. I know how it sounds. It’s okay. The other cops didn’t believe me, either.”

Then he describes how she looks at him with her pretty green eyes, except they were more hazel than green now. He wonders if she has colored contacts which fell out. Yeah sure. Because you’re way more likely to see someone’s true eye color far away, rather than when you’re directly in front of them. And why would both her ‘contacts’ fall out at the same time?! That just sounds stupid. SURPRISE!! SOMEONE MJD WRITES IS FUCKIN’ STUPID!!!

He says that she apologized to him about the cab getting knocked aside, and tells him that she thinks it will still run. Then she immediately gets back onto the bus (“which was still waiting for her by the way, which could be the weirdest thing that happened that night”) and takes off without bothering to make sure she is correct, while the bus drives over a mailbox and through a red light, because Betsy is a very fucking hazardous passenger. Shit, she knows this, and actually had some success in telling a can driver to watch the damn road instead of looking at her in the last novel, but apparently she forgot to give this bus driver such an instruction.

And, a bus?! WHY a BUS?!?! She can barely, half-heartedly lift her hand and a taxi will u-turn and take her wherever she wants, fare-free, but she stopped a bus instead.

And also…HOW did she even KNOW any of this was/would be happening? According to good ol’ boy Robert Harris, she came up, like…IMMEDIATELY. Which is odd, because Betsy has no senses that would do as much–the only real ‘extra’ she has from the average 21st century vampire lore is the ability to read at least one dude’s mind. That’s it. She has no extrasensory senses towards her subjects–I mean, she very well could if MJD deemed it so; as vampire queen it makes well enough sense if she does…but she does not. Except this once, I guess? Maybe. Or maybe she was in the right place right time…in a bus. Or was for some reason tracking this particular vamp…which is not something she does. Sooo. Your guess is as good as mine!

Anyway, he goes on about how glad he was that she was nice (and how much he wanted/was scared of her), “…Because what if she was like that little guy in the alley? The vampire?”

“You believe the man was a vampire?”

“Shit, who else would scream and be burned by a cross? What I’d like to know is what she was.”

“You believe in vampires, do you?”

And our dear soon-departed friend the cab driver makes a very refreshing assertion (after s’more rambling)…one thing that I tend to find very tiresome are when authors/filmmakers make a vampire (or otherwise fantastical) lore in a world where their reality is unknown, but their mythology is the very same as ours is…and yet, it always takes FOREVER for people to get there. Yeah, it seems pretty unlikely that vampires are real, but if some super pale so-and-so who drank blood, had obvious super-strength and I was preternaturally attracted to, to a ridiculous degree…I believe I would at least think ‘wtf is that a vampire??’ even if I didn’t outwardly say ‘oh my god, dude, I totally met a vampire!!!!’

Anyway, yeah. If the lore is there, people should be able to fuckin’ figure out that the dude who can no longer speak save a few groans here and there, as well as actively decaying before your very eyes (while also trying to EAT you), I bet you’d think ‘wtf is that a zombie?!’ even if it was hard to believe. If a tiny butterfly-sized and -winged person flew up to you and threw glitter in your face and had purple skin and green hair, you’d think ‘omg, is that a faerie!?’ even though it sounds ridiculous right now. If your best buddy one day fell on all fours and started sprouting intense all-over-body hair and sharp as fuck teeth, you’d think said buddy just MIIIIGHT be a werewolf. And yet, in most of these books, the silly peripheral humans are just, like…durrrr must be something in his diet har har! Or whatever the fuck dumbass, clearly wrong excuse they make.

But here, we skip on over that shit with Bobby-boy, who tells Detective Nick:

“You’ve been a good listener, son, and I appreciate it, but I want you to pay attention to just one more thing. I was in a war when I was just a teenager. And I found out that the guy who don’t believe his eyes is the guy who goes home in a body bag. So, yeah. I believe in vampires.

Now, I mean.”

And the interview ends.

I didn’t mean for this to be this long. I mean, my review of the frickin’ prologue is longer than the prologue itself! Longer than a hell of a lot of chapters, even! And it’s not even technically a Betsy-based prologue…I mean, yeah, we know it’s Betsy, but neither of the on-page characters do.

But I stand by it, and by how often I ended up quoting the cab driver. I try to directly quote things I feel would be entertainingly ridiculous–and my brother was-or-is reading these (hi, Charlie!) and gave me the feedback that rather than quoting too much (which I believed I was doing), I should actually quote more, as the real fun of what I’m writing comes by reading what weird-ass bullshit MJD thought was fit to publish, and then my direct responses to it. Sooo…unless the majority tells me otherwise, I no longer give a fuck if I’m quoting too much! Well, that or if it’s some kind of copyright thing…I’m not sure how all that works, and whether or not the fact I’m obviously quoting and referring to this specific book by this specific author…whatever, that’s just paranoia rearing its ugly head.

So while my intention was to combine at least the first chapter with the prologue, if not more, the reality is this is quite long enough! So my dears, you will just have to wait one more day in order to gather my thoughts on Chapter One…the Prologue ended up taking up a lot more of my time than you’d think!

And yeah, it’s stupid and weird reading all about this older man’s uncomfortable lust with a woman he THINKS is 25. Hell, her real age isn’t really all that better, but there is definitely a difference between 25 and 30 anyhow.

I’m of the opinion that most people’s lusts grows alongside their own age, but of course there are always deviants to any idea (or reality). Hell, there are plenty of grown-ass adults–especially men, it seems, who are just as, if not MORE, über-attracted to young(er) women. I very much hate to generalize or place one group in any kind of “all ____ are ____” bullshit, and I do not mean ALL men anyway…and I am very much aware that woman can be too…it just SEEMS like it’s been more of a masculine trait that is more and more being taken over by the odd woman or two–and they always seem to be blonde teachers who are just attractive enough for people to call a rape/molestation victim a “lucky guy…I sure wish she was MY junior high PE teacher!!!” or whatever. Honestly, our society can be so fucked sometimes…just because the victim is a boy doesn’t mean he can’t be traumatized…I hate to do the whole “what if ____ was a ____” thing, but really. What if the victim was a 13 year old girl and the perpetrator was a 26 or 26 or whatever year old man…a hot one! Nah, we mostly realize that’s pretty sick–EVEN the ones on the younger side!–when it’s girl/man, yet we put so much goddamned pressure on boys to be hypersexual that most can’t and don’t even consider them victims if their teacher, someone they were supposed to trust, someone who has and uses power to mold their young minds, but definitely not the way you’d hope…it’s somehow societally “okay” or “well, better than” or “LUCKY DAWG LOLOLLOLLOLLOLOLLOL” to the point if that 13 year old boy is upset and traumatized, there’s a good chance he will just be told to “man up” and that he’s “soooo lucky” because his rapist “is hot!!”

Okay, I really did go way off into the ether on that one. My bad! Also, whether you agree or disagree, you’re unlikely to change my mind on any of that. Children/teenagers should not be sex objects to adults. Yes, EVEN IF said teenager dresses provocatively or expresses some kind of crush–the ADULT should be responsible enough to turn them down gently, OR to realize they’re probably not dressing that way FOR THEM, and if they ARE they’re likely acting out due to some other trauma…or hell, maybe they do just like sex, but a fucking adult should never say “well, s/he’s already banged some dudes her/his own age, might as well tap that shit!” or whatever-the-fuck. There’s even a lesser-known word for adults who are attracted to teens, akin to how adults attracted to children are pedophiles…an adult who lusts after a teen is called an ephebophile. You’re 30 but attracted to someone post-puberty, but still not an adult? Yeah, you’re an ephebophile, and it’s pretty gross!

My god, I need to knock it off. Betsy doesn’t really have much to do with this (well, she DOES get attracted to an 18 year old…17?…one of those, but she doesn’t do anything with him at least), and I’ve yet again topped myself in writing my longest review yet…at least in terms of pages. I checked my word count and I have written more words, so…yay? Meh. Whatever, I’m not having a contest with myself.

COMING UP: We finally get to Chapter One! Betsy wants unemployment benefits, but the bureaucrats hate that term and cannot STFU about it! FUN! EXCITEMENT! BUREAUCRACYYYY!!!