Review of Watcher by Roh Morgon Book 1 of The Chosen

 

Watcher is a typical vampire paranormal romance book.  As I have said on several occasions, paranormal romance is not a genre that I am fond of, so please keep that in mind when reading this review. Watcher is the first person account of Sunny Martin, and unfortunately the voice that this novel is written in makes it difficult to enjoy for the first few hundred pages.  The novel itself feels tedious, even as we learn that Sunny became one of the Chosen against her will, and still watches over her human daughter and granddaughter.  Nicholas, her lover, expounds upon his feelings about her metamorphosis by writing in his journal:

Her story of her Change, of her rape into our way of life, enraged me to the point that I cold scarcely maintain my composure.  I did not want to frighten her with the monster that I can become, and that fear helped me stay in control. (pg89)

I completely understand why Morgon made this analogy, but that does not make it anymore acceptable.  Nothing is like rape but rape, and using this term to describe supernatural events that would never be possible in the real world, diminishes the harm done to rape victims.

The story shifts back and forth between Sunny -- who desperately wants to maintain her human side and independence, and Nicholas, a Chosen (read: vampire) of over 500 years -- who wants nothing more than to bond with her and make her his mate.  Sunny is originally drawn in because Nicholas is the very first of her kind that she has met, since being abandoned by her maker. Over the course of two months, they meet and fall in love.  I have a problem with the time length.  At best, two months equals a pretty heavy infatuation and even lust, but it most certainly does not equal love.  We are never even really given a reason for the basis of their enthrallment, which while irritating -- is extremely typical for paranormal romance.

Ableism and Adelaide in American Horror Story

Every week, American Horror Story manages to grab our attention, with it’s gripping story of a family living in a house that is colloquially known as the murder house. We have been introduced to a plethora of interesting characters, who each have a unique story and history, that is intimately connected with the house. One of the most interesting is the character of Adelaide, played by Jamie Brewer.  

In the pilot episode, we are first introduced to Adelaide as she stands outside of the murder house, delivering the dire warning of “you’re all going to die in there,” as two young twins enter the home with baseball bats.  As it turns out, Adelaide is quite correct.  Adelaide enters the house at will and is able to see and recognize the ghosts for who and what they are at any given time.

Adelaide stands out not only because she is one of the few disabled characters on television, but because she is actually disabled herself. Quite often, when disabled characters appear on television, they are played by able bodied people. The only other disabled actor that I can think of playing a disabled character is RJ Mite, who plays Walt Jr, on AMC’s Breaking Bad. It is seen as convenient for an abled bodied person to play disabled in order to effect the miracle cure.  We have seen this time and time again, when a blind person suddenly gains sight, or a paralyzed person is suddenly able to walk.  A recent example of this phenomenon happened on Glee, in the episode Dream On, where the disabled character Artie, not only walks, but appears in a dance number.

At first, it was wonderfully refreshing to see the character of Adelaide, but whatever joy we experienced quickly became lost in the rampant disableism that has been constantly aimed at her.  It first began when her mother, Constance, played by Jessica Lange, referred to her as the Mongoloid, and makes it clear that she sees Adelaide as her burden to bear, in a conversation with Vivien, played by Connie Britton -- who owns the murder house. To be clear, American Horror Story goes to great lengths to ensure that it is understood that Constance is an evil person; however, this does not remove the ableism from her statements. Simply being an evil and unpleasant person, does not mean the words the character says instantly lack impact, or are understood to be cruel, unacceptable, prejudiced or otherwise wrong. For her actions to be truly thought of as wrong, it is necessary for Ben and Vivien to actively make it clear that her language is unacceptable, rather than positioning themselves to appear uncomfortable in Constance's presence.  In fact, Constance’s general unpleasantness makes it hard to differentiate distaste for her ableism, from simple distaste for her as a person.

Abuse as True Love in Paranormal Romance

There are a lot of tropes in paranormal romance that consistently raise their ugly heads - many of which we explain in our Lexicon

Many of these destructive tropes are often “justified” by being “explained by the woo-woo”. In other words, the fact that it is magic or some kind of preternatural creature doing these things makes it okay, not problematic or otherwise acceptable. So a possessive or stalking boyfriend is explained by being a werewolf or a vampire - therefore a creature with territorial instincts. This has the additional problematic element of justifying or excusing the problematic behaviour - and these explanations are very reminiscent of the old excuses: “he can’t help it” and “it’s just his way” and “I could smell your desire” sounds very much like “you want it really.”

Regardless of the excuse provided by being a possessive supernatural being, or an aggressive, violent or out of control creature - we’re still looking at relationships that look very abusive and in some cases are outright abusive and they don’t become harmless just because the abuser turns furry or has fangs. It is particularly problematic because these books are largely written by women and the books themselves are quite often targeted at a young female audience.

Stalking as Love trope.

In the Twilight Saga S. Meyer has her vampire Edward watch Bella as she sleeps. Think about that for a moment. A man enters a woman’s room without her permission and watches her. In the real world we call that a peeping tom and that normally leads to a quick trip to the local jail and yet repeatedly this is constructed as romantic. Even Edward’s faults however are far outstripped by Adam Hauptman of the Mercedes Thompson series. Because Adam is a werewolf as is supposedly naturally protective (Read: creepy stalker dude), he installs cameras into Mercy’s garage without her permission. Of course this is only because he is worried about an unsavoury element wanting a damn oil, lube and filter but what it really comes down to is ensuring that he has the ability to monitor every single moment of her day. Patricia Briggs, the author of this series, could have redeemed this by having Mercy demand that the surveillance be removed but of course if that is what the alpha werewolf wants, that’s what the alpha werewolf gets.

Unwanted Touches and “No means I want you More”.

This is one of the more prevalent and problematic tropes we see repeated over and over. The idea that a woman is always reluctant when it comes to romance, relationships and sex - so she has to be won over, her resistance worn down and, basically, she needs to be nagged or coerced into sex.

In Twilight Jacob forces a kiss on Bella because he believes that this will force her to admit her feeling of love for him. At that point she had repeatedly explained that her feelings did not expand beyond friendship but why honour a woman’s feelings about her own body when the woo justifies forcing oneself upon her. If that were not enough, Bella’s father then goes on to congratulate Jacob for assaulting his daughter. I suppose as long as you get daddy’s permission everything is a okay. Woman have, after all, been transferred from father to husband for generations.

In Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling series we have this repeated multiple times in at least 8 of her books. The Psy women (Faith, Sascha, Ashaya) are all very reluctant  to engage emotionally or even be touched. Repeatedly their Changeling lovers touch them when told not to, make romantic and sexual advances despite being told repeatedly that it’s unwelcome. This is often “explained by the woo-woo” by their emotionally damaged culture but, ultimately, they are women saying “no” who are repeatedly ignored. And this is exacerbated by the Changeling and human women (Talin and Indigo) who, again, say no but are pursued no matter how often they say they are not interested in a relationship

JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series takes this to the next level. In Lover Eternal Rhage has just met Mary when he pushes her against a wall and presses his body against her. She asks to be let go and he keeps pushing against her in a scene that, frankly, looked like sexual harassment.