#gorlmess

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Gormles Ch. 14 - DAD OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO…

A well-meaning friend gave me a book series that is hilariously bad. The first book was Souless and my riffs were entitled brainless. This second book is entitled Changless and these riff are then gormless.

I mean to say I have entitled them gormless! Not that my riffs are dumb, and the effort I spend on them stupid since I’m the only one who enjoys them. HAHA!

The story is SUPPOSED TO be about how a badass lady wearing a rad-looking carriage dress hits baddies with her umbrella and bangs her hot werewolf husband.  In reality it’s mostly poor attempts at being witty, flirty, and superior.

For the last book check out the brainless tag.

If you want the TL;DR version but want to read these new riffs anyway?

This story is set in supernatural Victorian steampunk England.  Alexia is our NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS protag.  She is a soulless, which means she’s able to negate the abilities of vampires and werewolves by touching them. She’s recently married a big oaf, named Lord Connel Maccon.  He’s the manchild in charge of the supernatural police with a zillion dollars and he’s totes super hot too ok.  Their relationship is mostly arguments about how Maccon can’t tell her fucking anything.  Alexia has also recently become head of ~Soulless affairs~ in Queen Victoria’s government.  She has a dumb friend named Ivy, a gay vampire friend named Akeldama, a family who’s evil because they do the same shit as her but while being blonde, and most importantly Alexia is better than everyone cause…cause.

Last time on Gormless:

Alexia solved the problems!  So it’s time for our obligatory fade to black sex scene and cliff-hanger.

Chapter 14 – DAD OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO…

So this is our last chapter and boy does it TAKE A TURN! WOOF!

So the chapter opens up with the Maccons, I guess doing it, in the hallway right after the above conversation.  And I do not like the language used.

“There was really nothing else to do when Conall was in one of these moods but to enjoy it.”

“Alexia sacrificed herself on the altar of wifely duty, enjoying every minute of it, of course, …”

My inner feminist killjoy hates the rape culture language used as well as the term WIFELY DUTY. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she enjoyed it and they make it clear in the text. I’m just irritated that they have to throw ravishment language all over it.  Why can’t it be phrased as expressly consensual since it is?  I know ravishment is a popular fetish…but it’s also everywhere and doesn’t apply here? WHATEVER!

The married pair go up to the Aethographor and message Akeldama, and Akeldama confirms that the Westminster Hive’s aethograhor broke.  Real essential this information.

It is explained that Ivy and Tunstell eloped in a letter they left behind.  In a letter that’s supposed to be funny but it’s just cringy and embarrassing.

In the middle of dinner Maccon decides to change his granddaughter into a werewolf. Apparently this works by chewing through her neck and drooling into the gaping hole.

Hot

Despite this very tame display Alexia faints.

When she wakes up LeFoux and Maccon are there.  Sidheag was successfully changed into a werewolf hooray!

LeFoux explains that a lot of the symptoms Alexia is experiencing indicate that she is pregnant. Apparently SO FAR IN HISTORY a werewolf has yet to make someone preggorz.  

So Maccon assumes that she must have had an affair and wowzers, he has the granddaddy of all freakouts.

He swears a blue streak and accuses her of sleeping with other men in awful and cruel terms, he screams, and carries on and it’s described with this kind of language.

“He was quietly, white-faced, shivering angry.  And it was terribly, terribly frightening.”

“…But Alexia had never been actually afraid of him before. She was afraid of him now.”

“It was as though he’d placed the distance between them, not because he didn’t want to come at her and tear her apart, but because he really thought he might.”

LeFoux stands in a protective stance in front of Alexia at this time and is the only one who believes her when she claims she did not cheat on him.  Maccon runs out of there all dramatic style. Sidheag, in polite terms admittedly, tells her to get her slut butt out of there cause she has to support the pack.  Despite how Alexia convinced Maccon to make her a werewolf, stopped a violent person from tearing the pack to shreds, and got their werewolfism back. But okay sis, GO OFF!

Alexia leaves with LeFoux and her sister, and just stares longingly out the window hoping to see Maccon running toward them apologizing.

DAMN STORY!

DAMN!

I had a lot of mean shit to say about this story but that’s genuinely a good cliffhanger.  The whole pregnancy scare conflict doesn’t seem uncommon for het romance fiction but I think it can be used to good effect. This maybe a more ME specific thing, but I am a protective kind of person.  And this flares up hottest if a man is being shitty and unfair to a woman. So this I felt more viscerally.

Now this is objectively an awful fucking move on Maccon’s part. Like without a doubt he’s a garbage man, and he doesn’t get any kudos for NOT PHYSICALLY HURTING HER EVEN THOUGH THE TEXT PRETTY CLEARLY SAYS HE WANTED TO.

I think it’s kinda ridiculous that he NOT FOR A BRIEF FUCKING SECOND thought that either:

A.)    She may not actually be pregnant.  They’re just taking LeFoux’s word when she says she thinks the fainting and the trouble eating might mean pregnancy.

or

B.)    We just very clearly and very recently demonstrated that nobody knows jackshit about Soulless people and perhaps it is possible that a Soulless can bear a supernatural person’s child.

C.)    Since he’s without supernatural powers when they touch…and for pregnancy producing sex they had, they touched…soooooooo?

D.)   That if it was someone else that caused the pregnancy, MAYBE, it happened without her consent?  Real supportive there!  I mean at the beginning of this book his bff Channing seemed pretty primed to rape her. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?

Like he didn’t consider any of these options for a half fucking second.  And instead just drops his pregnant wife like a sack of shit, to presumably raise a child on her own with only the help of the family that Maccon knows treats Alexia shitty.  Violently tore apart your great granddaughter and abandoned your unborn child on the same day.  IT’S NOT EVERY DAY WHERE YOU’RE BOTH THE SHITTEST DAD AND SHITTEST GREAT GRANDDAD!

Trying to have any sympathy for Maccon here is really undercut by the fact that Alexia bragged about being flirted with by a woman, just last chapter, and his inept jealous rage was played for laughs.  If we’re really trying to drive home the HURT Maccon must by the betrayal of cheating…maybe don’t poke fun of the possibility 10 pages ago?

Unlike a lot of similarly styled stories, I suppose it makes a modicum of sense that he fears she may have cheated though.  She’s literally spite-flirted before when she was mad at Maccon.  I.E with MacDougall last book.  She flirted with LeFoux throughout this book, not out of spite, but maybe out of ignorance cause she didn’t know two women could like kiss or whatever GOD.  She also was asking leading sexual questions regarding that pretty bag of dicks, Channing.

So at least she hadn’t shown 0 behaviors beforehand and he’s utterly convinced she’d drop him like a hot potato as soon as a another pretty face roamed into frame.

But I will say I am just not looking forward to how easily he’s going to be forgiven next book.  

Say something nice Faps:

Legit good cliffhanger. Color me pleasantly surprised.

Run away with LeFoux and raise your kids together.

Just kidding LeFoux is way too good for you.