Offside: Post 22

Chapter 27: Less a Character and More a Plot Device of Doom

Please note that posts may be a bit slapdash and a bit irregular through the month of March. My sincere apologies!

Betty, at least in this chapter, isn’t so much a character as a figure of plot convenience. When the triplets’ grandfather sees her, she immediately rushes into his embrace and it’s very sweet—Betty hasn’t been home in years, after all. But after that moment, Betty is less human being and more Walking Collection of Plot Pushing and Over-the-Top Hardened Sexuality.

Well, that’s a longer title than I was going for, so we’ll stick with calling her Betty.

The first thing she does is stick her fingers into the family’s desert (apple cobbler) and then suck her fingers as she looks at Gerald and Logan. Billie breaks into panic-mode, but decides that Betty couldn’t know what she (Billie) had done with Logan in the past and that Logan wouldn’t bring it up at the dinner table.

Betty turns her attention to Gerald, first, skipping all the smalltalk and going straight to “You manage to get into Bobbi’s pants yet?” (445). You know, just in case you weren’t sure we were dealing with a caricature yet.

A caricature who uses drugs, apparently, although the text doesn’t specify what kind. Billie’s assessment of her sister is that she’s “using”, while Bobbi snaps that whenever Betty is around, all the pills disappear, even non-prescription ones. Billie is embarrassed that Logan is witnessing all of this and suggests that he might want to leave, but this only draws Betty’s attention to him, which, as you can guess, is not going to go well. The relationships in the room click for Betty.

“Wow. You finally snagged him. Congrats” (448).

Logan is confused by this declaration and demands an explanation, even while Billie tries to get her to not say more. As you might have guessed, since Betty is pretty much here in order to cause maximum damage as we head into the end of this novel, she announces that Billie has been in love with Logan since forever ago and goes on for a while about how Billie mooned over him. When Logan tries to curb her rant by asking if she has a point beyond bringing up their past, Betty drops the bombshell we’ve all been waiting for.

“The only past we have is you wanting me and, well, me rejecting you” (452).

Only it’s worse than that for Betty, although this chapter doesn’t explain why, specifically. Billie can see that Betty is angry, and in fact the recently-returned triplet continues.

“Don’t you want to know who you slept with at the Christmas party? Because it sure as hell wasn’t me, even though,” her voice shook a bit. “Even though several guys were more than happy to ask for the chance you got” (452).

So, Betty is angry about the Christmas party rape-by-deception. I don’t currently have plans to read the other two books in this trilogy where I’d probably find out the actual reasoning, but it reads to me that perhaps Betty hadn’t actually slept with anyone (not just not with Logan) and is upset about her reputation. (Earlier, when she’s going on about Billie mooning over Logan and Logan not knowing that she was alive, Betty says that she (Betty) was the triplet who was “easy and loose” (450). So she already had that reputation before the Christmas party, deserved or not, thus I’m not sure that that’s what she’s upset about, or if she had actually wanted Logan and is annoyed that Billie slept with him at all, let alone as Betty, or what.

Appropriately, Logan’s pretty horrified and turns on Billie at this point. He demands that she say it out loud (at first she only nods) and he points out how badly he’d felt that he’d slept with Betty and how he’d admitted it to her just the other night.

“You pretended to be your sister so we could have sex? How fucking screwed up is that? Who does that kind of shit?” (453).

I’m glad the text is calling Billie on this, even if it doesn’t go as far as I would want it to (and call a spade a spade—or a sexual assault a sexual assault.) I’m less pleased, however, with where Logan goes next.

“Who else have you screwed? … Don’t expect me to believe you didn’t pull that kind of crap with other guys” (455).

Billie did something very, very wrong. But slut shaming her isn’t going to help, Logan. I suppose I won’t get too up in arms over this, though, since he’s very angry and since he’s very much a product of the culture we’ve seen in this book (and which we see every day, of course.)

He storms out after declaring that they’re through. That seems fair to me.

Betty, however, is just settling in and informs the family that she’s home because her lover stole all her money, she lost her modeling contract because she was using drugs, and her agent has let her go. So I guess Betty has some reasons to be rather angry at the world, even if she is a plot device at the moment rather than a proper character.

Offside: Post 17

Chapter 22: Sisterly Love

This chapter begins with the dreaded words “Billie, can we talk?” (362) but the text doesn’t reveal who’s requesting that for another full page. I tend to equate that phrase with relationship issues and assumed it was Logan asking, but no, it was Bobbi.

But first we’re treated to a description of Billie doing laundry (specifically attempting to get the blood out of her “protective chest gear—gear that had pretty much failed the week before” (362). I wouldn’t say it so much failed as didn’t do a job it was never meant to do in the first place. Weaponized hockey, after all, is beyond the usual specifications of ordinary hockey gear.

However, Bobbi wants to clear the air with her sister and they are back to being loving and sweet in record time. Seriously, it takes maybe five lines and a hug.

The next order of business is to cover the tragedy that is their father’s decline into dementia. This takes roughly 2 minutes as Bobbi points out that Billie needs to get herself prepared for the fact that their father is going to need to move to an assisted care facility of some kind.

Then, with whiplash speed, Bobbi changes the subject to ask what’s going on between Billie and Logan. This seems like something of an inappropriate conversational change to me. Billie at first denies that anything is happening between them, but Bobbi says she’s aware that Billie has been sneaking out every night and since she asked Shane (who denied involvement) she assumes it must be Logan. This convenient logic is enough for Billie to admit the situation but she fears that if her sister found out, then others might know.

If anyone found out she was sleeping with Logan, her already shady reputation would be mud. It would be worse than mud. It would be heading into the crud that was beneath the mud kind of territory (370).

This I don’t get. The whole town already thinks she’s sleeping with the whole team. Why would it matter if it turned out that really is dating one person? I suppose it could be seen that she’s only sleeping with the team captain so that she can be on the team, but a) the text does not bring that up and b) it’s been shown multiple times that she’s the best player on the team, so it’s not like she’s gotten a spot on the roster that she doesn’t deserve (other than, according to many, her lack of penis making her undeserving.)

Then Bobbi really makes for sisterly affection by telling Billie that Logan is out of her league. She quickly back pedals and says she only meant that Logan dates around and “he’s thirty and nowhere near close to settling down” (373) whereas Billie isn’t a player.

I was under the impression that one reason to date people is to find out if you’re compatible with them and want to spend more time with them (maybe even “settle down”), so Billie’s response that “Maybe he hasn’t met the right girl yet” (373) doesn’t seem that farfetched to me. (Granted, the fact that Logan flips out because Sabrina folded his towels and said lesbian “love”, is a better reason to think that Logan’s not ready to settle down yet. But Bobbi’s evidence is just that he’s dated a lot of women, each of them for only about six months.)

Bobbi then drops what she thinks is a bombshell—she knows (thanks to Shane, from years ago), that Logan slept with Betty. When Billie isn’t surprised, Bobbi is horrified.

“So you’re perfectly fine sleeping with a guy who’s already slept with your sister? Your identical sister to be exact? Don’t you find that creepy?” (374).

So I suppose that this is why we’re meant to agree with Logan that he has an obstacle to overcome in telling Billie about his tryst with Betty. And I guess I can kind of see it? But it seems to me that personality is so much more important than looks and (should) make up so much more than mere appearance of what a person thinks of someone else. So it never would have occurred to me that this should be creepy.

“Doesn’t it make you wonder if he’s thinking of Betty when he’s with you?” (377).

Dude, he could be thinking of a Kardashian or something when he’s with Billie. All right, I guess I kind of get this… but again, not entirely, given my point above.

So I wonder, if Logan really had slept with Betty all those years ago, does that mean that his relationship with Billie could never be real? All those speshul snowflake firsts wouldn’t mean anything because he’d slept with Billie’s identical sister first? I don’t get it.

Billie does, however, surprisingly, come clean to Bobbi about the fact that actually she was the one that Logan slept with, but that he thought it was Betty. I will not go into my opinion on that again. Unsurprisingly, Bobbi is not horrified, she’s only confused as to why Billie would have done such a thing and whether Billie thinks she’s in love with Logan now. They agree that she’ll have to tell him.

But the big concern, for both sisters, remains not that Billie broke Logan’s trust as a teen, nor that she sexually assaulted him since he did not give consent to sleep with her, but that he might still be in love with Betty.

Betty must be quite the femme fatale. It almost makes me want to read Betty’s book, but not really.

Play the Man: Post 8

Chapter Four: Food Fight!

Despite having Nick remind him, Ryan didn’t call Jenna when they landed in Edmonton. I seriously don’t think that the author could make me like this character less at this point without having him kick puppies. It’s not that I think this one phone call is super important, but other than his skill at playing hockey and being attractive, I’ve yet to see a redeeming feature from this guy. I WANT TO HIT HIM WITH A GOALIE STICK. He tries to tell Jenna he didn’t call because it was too late, and she pointed out that she said to call regardless so she’d been awake. Then he tries to blame Nick, saying that he wasn’t reminded. At least Jenna doesn’t accept that for a legitimate excuse.

Excuse me a moment while I take a deep breath. … Okay, I’ll continue.

Nick himself is also having a bad trip so far. He’s mad at himself for not having a great game. Ryan ribs him about his dinner choices, even though Ryan could see that Nick’s day isn’t going well but chooses to ignore it. This is the team captain, everyone.

The team is having dinner together and Ryan points out that Nick isn’t dressed in a suit. (NHL players have to wear a suit before and after games, as I mentioned in Body Check when talking about the magic pants.) However, someone has “messed with [Brian’s] sh*t”, ruining his suit. Apparently he only brought one. I kind of feel like players on a road trip would have more than one suit with them, but I can’t substantiate this. Who wants to wear the same suit to and from several games in a row? And they can certainly afford them.  Regardless, I’ll assume that Brian and Nick only brought one suit each for whatever reason and Nick has agreed to let Brian wear his suit so that he (Brian) wouldn’t get in more trouble.

The text is hitting the unpleasant parts of Ryan and Jenna’s relationship pretty damn hard, but it’s doing a better job of making Nick into an interesting character. Yes, he’s very focused on the game and on being the best player possible, but the text actually investigates what this would mean in reaction to other players’ actions.

Back in post three I complained about using a rape accusation for backstory, particularly since it made Brian into a victim. Nick is angry at Brian, however, which I think is a legitimate and at least somewhat nuanced reaction. He doesn’t believe that Brian is guilty, but he’s angry that Brian was in a situation where that could have happened and that he was having a summer of debauchery, and that these things affect the entire Blackhawks organization. (And that’s a fair point. One of the reasons I dislike the Blackhawks so much is because of the behavior of a few of their current players. I still don’t think this is the best choice of secondary character backstory and I dislike the easily-dismissed accuser. That said, this is more nuanced than previously.)

Nick leaves dinner with the team once Ryan gets involved in a foodfight. Seriously? This is the team captain?