Initial thoughts: "Grey" is not very good.

Right so I haven't read all of this but I've read quite a bit and of course it goes pretty quickly since, you know--it's the same thing again. I do feel qualified to comment. I mean, as qualified as ever.

Grey is a retelling of all the events of Fifty Shades of Grey told from Christian's perspective rather than Ana's.

It's also an opportunity for EL to get a bit of a do-over. Many moments feel as though the writer is taking the reader aside to defend her choices: Yeah I know I went kinda overboard with Christian shaming Ana about her eating habits. But don't you see? He's deeply concerned about feeding the world and not wasting food and so on. So it's not weird, really. 

And yet, EL seems to have included every last bit of dialogue. Even the absolute worst bits are here. She could've easily trimmed some--a different narrator could've very well chosen to end the occasional scene early, for instance. But I'm pretty sure CG never does. Every scrap of CG/Ana dialogue seems to be here, so EL didn't give herself that much of a mulligan. It's an extremely repetitive experience for anyone who read the original.

And yet, Grey assumes (fairly!) that we've read the the original book. I can't imagine that there's an audience for Grey beyond a) true believers and b) grumpy critics, so it's safe to assume that anyone reading will know all about Ana and sex contracts and so on. This doesn't stop EL from being generally redundant and disrespectful of her readers' time but it does mean that certain key topics are not so much introduced but assumed. 

Vanilla sex? 

Can I do this?

This is in CG's head as he leads Ana into his bedroom for their first sexual encounter. But see, he's been thinking about having sex with her for literally the entire book, so the uninitiated would think it a little strange that he's now doubting himself. CG's specific desires are not something the book is kind of withholding from us as a mystery; the book presumes we already know and don't need to be reminded.

Same with his squeamishness about being touched. Would be even more confusing for a reader encountering this book before reading Fifty Shades. CG's entire inner monologue, pretty much, is about touching Ana. We're expected to know that he doesn't want her touching him back.

So in a lot of ways, this is simply EL's version of stretching The Hobbit into three new movies. She'll make a bunch of money and capitalize on the fact that there are lots of people who enjoy this world so much that they'll return for more time in it, even if the entertainment value drops off considerably.

EL's stated purpose, though, is to help us understand Christian, as though we hadn't already had enough of him. Because he's very complicated, you see. Yes very complicated.

But even that explanation feels pretty thin to me. CG is not Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. He dominates [Editor's note: Ha!] nearly every page of the original book once you get past the first couple of chapters. When Ana isn't talking to CG, she's emailing him. They're basically inseparable once their relationship begins. So the idea that we don't really get CG, despite reading so much of his dialogue, so many of his emails, and hearing his bedroom commands feels implausible. I guess there were probably people demanding this POV switch for whatever extra it might reveal, but to me, this is equivalent to saying, "You know, I totally get Ernie. But what's Bert's deal?"

Plus, there's never any subtext to discern in EL's dialogue. The double entendres are so blunt that they're not even entendres, really. And characters always say exactly the thing that they mean to say without ever implying anything or accidentally revealing more than they wish. Hence there's just not much beyond CG's actual words. Seeing more of this thoughts pretty much just confirms that, yeah, he's kind of a monster. Just like he always seemed like a monster on the outside, turns out, yeah. Monstery on the inside too. [Editor's note: There's probably an analogy here you could do, right? Like a monster who's actually super nice? Maybe a Muppet or something? And how CG isn't like that? I dunno figure it out.]

So there's basically no upside to being in CG's head instead of Ana's. And so you might well ask: Is there a downside?

Yes! It turns out that yes, indeed, there is a downside!

Lest it be unclear: I can't stand Ana. She's a miserable character. She's not clever. She's got nothing to say. She's passive and lets life happen to her while scarcely doing so much as expressing an opinion. She's just awful. 

And yet!

She's just so much better than Christian. I mean Ana is the worst. Just the absolute worst ever. Oh but when she's standing next to Christian? He's so much more terrible that he makes her look like she's a classic literary heroine. Compared to CG, Ana is like, I dunno. Somebody from a Virginia Woolf novel or something. Introspective! Complicated! Insightful!

And again: she's not actually any of these things. Really she's the worst. But I bet I'm not the only one who's reading this dumb book and saying, ugh this could use more Ana!

Because the truth is that shifting over to CG's POV almost cuts Ana out entirely. She's around of course and saying words and so on. But what the reader will pick up on pretty quickly is that, first go-round, EL did a better job of capturing CG's character through his dialogue and body language in comparison to the way she established Ana. We really need a bit of that Ana inner monologue to find Ana very interesting.

Part of the reason for this is simply that CG is so flat and uninteresting. His only notes are angry, authoritarian, and condescending. The only thing we get new from his POV is basically quantity. He seems more like himself, which is to say: he seems even worse than I'd assumed. CG isn't complicated. EL tries to make him seem complicated by putting some tragedy in his backstory but that's not the same as creating a compelling character. That's just tagging everything he does with an asterisk.*

*Remember! CG was abused when he was very small so don't judge him too harshly. 

But without Ana's narration, Ana slips into the background. Maybe [Editor's note: probably!] she was never really more than a sex object in the first place, but through CG's eyes? She really, really is nothing more than a sex object. She contributes a bit of dialogue. Most it opaque. And beyond that, all we get of her is pretty much CG telling us how fun she'd probably be to spank or whatever.

And was we get less of Ana, she becomes less compelling. And as she becomes less compelling to the reader, CG seems more and more like a terrifying sexual predator, since his obsession with her makes less and less sense. So it's pretty gross all around.

I'm undecided about how to approach this book. I mean other than these notes. Doing a chapter-by-chapter exegesis seems a little much considering that we've already covered all the plot points, such as they are. And all the dialogue. So no single chapter needs more than a handful of points to differentiate this one from the other one. I might also just do a few topical posts. Like, "EL still uses the same clichés" or "Christian Grey seems like a real predator, huh?" or "Yeah this whole section is the same as the other book."

I dunno. What do you think? What would you like to hear about this thing? Or are you reading it too, and just want to vent a little?

Because it's pretty bad, is the thing.

Grey

Ok so here's what we know is happening:

EL James took a break from swimming around in her big ol' pool of money in order to rewrite the first book, Fifty Shades: Fellowship of the Shade from Christian's perspective.

It's available for preorder already. Somebody should buy me a copy and then I'll read it and say mean things about it. I haven't paid for any of these yet; this is the only kind of piracy I support. Hey what if there were like, hipster pirates who had a sailing ship and cruised around and boarded ships and stole their rum or whatever? Like real old-school pirates. Real artisanal pirates? I guess I would probably get behind that, right? But other than that kind of piracy that I made up, and people not paying for Fifty Shades: The Original Trilogy, I don't support piracy.

Basically what I'm saying is this: I have undergone no shortage of pain and suffering and time-wasting for the several of you who read this blog. And the suffering has only increased as we have plunged deeper and deeper into this. Right? So I'm not saying that you owe me exactly. But what I am saying is that I would like to keep not spending money on this series. [Editor's note: you watched the movie, dude. So don't play like you haven't already broken this.]

What I'm saying is, everyone who reads this should donate a dollar, and then that would be eight dollars, and then that would pay for the book and I'd be ready to go.

But seriously: I'll read it because I'm morbidly curious.

It's not going to be good, of course. It's going to be bad. And considering how much of the series is emails and conversations, this book is going to be a lot like book one. Like, a lot like it. These two characters are basically never apart from the moment they meet, so this is unlikely to offer us anything we didn't already know.

BUT!

The the one thing that might kind of actually work better sort of (note all the qualifiers!) is the fact that the later parts of the series introduce these pseudo thriller elements. During the first book, CG is, on occasion, taking calls and stuff about his ex, Leila, to whom he was such a bad boyfriend that he literally infected her with mental illness! True story! I mean, actual thing in the novel, which is patently untrue. You know what I mean. And there's a buncha stuff going on with his other ex whose name I can't be bothered to look up at the moment.

It's kinda like how in The Hobbit Gandalf goes off and does some stuff and he's like BRB and you don't really know what he's doing because you quit watching the movies because they were to boring.

So even though Ana and CG basically do absolutely everything together, CG gets to do a little more stuff, probably because he's a boy? Probably why. So this new book won't work? But I can imagine a scenario in which it's a marginal improvement.

ALSO:
To my knowledge, this is the first actual book written by EL James. The previous "books" are just collected episodes, which is in part why they are so terrible. So who knows! Maybe the fact that EL sat and wrote this one without posting each chapter on the internets and letting her readers weigh in, and without concern for readers who might join partway through--maybe that helped her do a better job! So maybe this will be better! Fingers crossed!

And even if it's worse, it'll be better than reading the third book, like I've been doing, I think. Because Book 3 is bad enough that Book 1 could be a bit worse and still be better. So I think the math works and I think we should go for it.

Side note:

It's funny to me that EL is doing the thing that Stephanie Meyer set out to do and then stopped. Very full circle. Meyer started writing a book from the vampire's perspective. I didn't read it obvs but I guess he was like, telling a journalist all about his life or something? Whatever. Doesn't matter, because she didn't finish it after somebody leaked a chunk of it. But anyway. Even this follow-up idea is yet another Stephanie Meyer knock-off. And also, of course, a fanfic staple. I do think that my version of The Sun Also Rises from the perspective of a bull is pretty cool tho. And short, obvs so you can get through it in like, twenty minutes.

But anyway. That is happening.

If you wanna be my sponsor or whatever? Contact me via the secret Complaint Phone. Or like leave a comment.

Special Movie Edition: We Watched It

tldnr
Meh. Not that bad.


OK so here’s the deal: 

The movie isn’t that bad. If, some crazy how, this blog hasn’t, on its own, provided you with a detailed-enough account of this mess, and you're like, "Ugh I still want to learn more tho," please please please just watch the movie and don't read the book. Please don't. Please.

Of course, this introduces a bit of a conundrum: is it possible that all my enjoyment of the movie is directly related to the misery that the book has caused me? Probably! So it's very possible that someone who hasn't dissected the book(s) in the pointless way I have would totally hate the movie and be like, "Ugh why'd you make me watch this, Alden?" And I'd like to respond to that in two ways:

1. I didn't make you.
2. At least you didn't read the book. 

Here's the main thing the movie has going for it:

50 Shad3s: Chapter 3 part 1

tldnr
Ana sees that Christian gave her a bunch of hickies and she's mad for like one minute. 

Hey so this is important:

The film version of this trainwreck is coming, and soon. I plan to watch the movie version of this somewhere, somehow. Do you want to watch with me? I mean, it's not going to be good. It's going to be bad. But it'll only take like, two hours. And let's be real: I can't even get through like, half a chapter of this dumpster fire in two hours. So surely you could put up with a two-hour movie. I know you could. Your moral support would mean a lot to me. So, I dunno. Leave a comment! Or something. If you want to participate in the official Complainist viewing party. I'll be drunk.

So. Another chapter of this. So.

I'm going to tell you now: the plot does not start yet. I hope you aren't expecting the plot to start yet? Because it does not start yet. No, it does not start yet at all. It's another one of those chapters that follow a false cliffhanger but the false cliffhanger is resolved immediately but only sort of. Which is to say that the false cliffhanger is always a symptom of what a super shitty dude Christian is. So the immediate problem might be addressed, but the larger problem--Christian is shitty--goes unresolved. He's still shitty. And he'll always be shitty. And the only way to "resolve" his shittiness would be for Ana to, I dunno. Seek asylum somewhere? It's tough getting involved with super rich people because they're difficult to escape.

But yeah. Let's read another chapter! Probably they'll make up real fast and eat some food and drink some food and have sex and then get in another fight about how shitty Christian is and then the chapter will end and you'll be like, "Wait did Alden accidentally write about Chapter 2 a second time instead of writing about Chapter 3?" and you'll never know. None of us will ever know.

Where were we?

50 Shad3s: Chapter 2 part 2

So.

I realized the other day that I say "So" instead of "um." It's not much better. Just a pointless syllable that gives me an extra little moment before I have to proceed. It's hard to dive into these things; you'll forgive me just a little bit of procrastination before I leap in. So.

Here's what's bothering me the most: so there was never any plot in this thing, in the standard sense. Just a general, unpleasant tension between Ana and CG punctuated by either big dumb fights or sex. Just two character bumbling back and forth between these two poles, both basically uninteresting.

And that's where we still are, only they're married now. In real life, of course, the wedding isn't where the story ends. But this is a book, and that's where the book is supposed to end, because it's a big deal or whatever. So now that we've raced through the wedding, into territory unknown, where will we stop? I don't know where we will stop. I have no idea where this will stop or why it even started. Why did it even start? Oh well.

So.

Onwards and upwards.

Where were we?

50 Shad3s: Chapter 2 part 1

tldnr
CG is mad about Ana taking her top off but a jet ski cheers him up a little. 

So. Chapter 2.

I'm having a harder time sticking with this. I think it's weakened me, in general. Like, I think I used to be kind of smart or whatever. But I think I'm less smart now than when I started. I think that this is actually making me a worse person? Reading this book? Thinking about this book? I've become that piece of cheese that you find in the back of the fridge, and you open it up, and you're like, "Huh. Well. This looks like cheese. And it's something in the blue family; it was always moldy. But was it this moldy? Is this safe to eat?"

I was always moldy. But was I always this moldy? I don't know. You tell me.

So where were we?


Our story thus far:

Ana Steele is married to billionaire / kink-enthusiast / child-abuse survivor Christian Grey. He is domineering and they are usually upset with each other except for when they're having sex. 

1. Ana takes her top off on a beach while reminiscing about the wedding and Christian gets mad.

Not off to a very good start! Hey. Onwards, I guess. 

50 Shad3s: Chapter One

TLDNR
Ana and Christian are on a beach honeymoon and maybe people see Ana's boobs.

Having a difficult time getting back into this, pretty much because it's so, so terrible. You get to the end of the chapter, and these people are just doing the same stuff that they always do. Having their little fights which hint that Ana is straight-up going to get murdered if she strays from Christian's rules. Doing rich-people stuff that somehow feels false, like it was thought up explicitly for the sake of sounding rich to readers who are not actually rich.

Oh and you know that thing on TV shows where they have somebody get married because I guess that's good for ratings or whatever and people like watching weddings? EL decided she was having none of that! The young couple's entire engagement and wedding is dispatched with boring efficiency. Great, I guess! Gets us through this first chapter, and onto the rest of the book! Whatever that's about. I have no idea, yet, what this book is about. Probably the same as the other books.

But holy shit this is a dumpster fire.

Ok. Am I prone to hyperbole? Sure. But omigod this is so brutally bad. Here's what Chapter 1 is like: Chapter 1 is like fanfic by a 50 Shades superfan. It's fanfic of fanfic and it's just bullshit. It's so bad that it's gone past good and back to bad again.

I feel bad for having potentially overused the phrase "dumpster fire" in my recent life so I might need to retract that. Instead I'm going to call this chapter a shitcano, which I definitely haven't overused because it's a dumb nonsense word that I just mashed up right now. (Editor's note: gets about 3.5k hits on google so you're not that original, Eagle.)

Here's the thing: there just isn't any book in this book. There's no story. There are none of the conventional things you need to like, make you read a book.

Since there's no story in this story, you don't really need to be offered a plot refresher but hey. I'll do it anyway because I'm a very generous person.

Ana Steele is engaged to billionaire / kink-enthusiast / child-abuse survivor Christian Grey. He is domineering and they are usually upset with each other except for when they're having sex. 

. . . only now we'll have to update this straight away because [gasp] they're already married! We learn it immediately so don't worry. No spoilies. After the jump!

50 Shad3s: Prologue

Sung:

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
Here's another 50 Shades book
And it's pretty dumb

Oh geez. 

So, here we are. Counting down to the end of the year. Counting down to Valentine's Day and the release of the 50 Shades movie [!]. And now, counting down to the end of our ongoing investigation. 

That's right! There's one book left, and we're going to read it! I mean, you aren't. At least, I hope you aren't. But I am. And I'm going to tell you all about it and you'll be, well, not impressed exactly but you'll be amused, maybe? Or maybe you'll just respect my perseverance. "Well," you'll say, "He sure did do that thing he said he was going to do!" That's right. I am a man of my stupid word.

We're starting this again. I didn't write anything this fall although I did play a lot of music and I think I'm not bragging when I say I went from "total incompetence" to what we might call "regular incompetence" and so I feel pretty good about my sabbatical. But it must end and I hope to write quite a bit more in 2015 than I did in 2014. I'm choosing not to put any of my specific goals into print because sometimes, the more you talk about doing something, the more people you tell you're going to do something, the less of it you end up actually doing. So let's just agree that I have schemes and leave it at that. (Editor's note: Alden actually did write quite a bit in 2014, even if he basically took off the last quarter of the year for reasons of laziness and of being tired of a certain book series.)

The only thing that did kind of stall out was my planned James Bond project. I liked doing it well enough but kept getting interrupted whenever I felt ready to work on a new entry. I have a copy of From Russia With Love sitting right on my desk so what I'd like to do is allow myself to stagger these final 50 Shad3s essays out a little. Take the occasional week off in order to mix in JB or something else. 

One last bit of bizness and then we'll get to the Prologu3 you've been waiting so many months for! 

50 Shades Shadier: In Conclusion

So, here we are.

First note: I updated my table of contents page, so you might find that an easier way to navigate through these essays if, somehow, you have not read them all. (Editor's note: that's a joke. We know you haven't read them all. We're not judging you. You made a wise choice.)

One time I read a pretty cool trilogy of books, set in the gray north. They were extremely popular a few years ago. The protagonist is an orphan who's been abused sexually and has a cold demeanor and finds it difficult to make relationships with others. She does eventually develop a rapport with a journalist because of course I'm talking about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and not 50 Shades. 

I bring up those other novels because I want to compare the way they work--or fail to work--as trilogies. In both trilogies, the first novel works as a standalone read. I mean. "Works" is a word I'm using in relative terms here--I just mean that in both cases, when you're done with the first book, you feel like you've read something that is complete by itself. And then, in both trilogies, the second and third books run together so much that the division between the two almost feels arbitrary. It feels a little bit less like three books, but rather one short book and one very long book that's been hacked in half for the convenience of its publisher.

But Lisbeth Salander's continued adventures feel logical. She is, herself, a mysterious figure from the beginning of series, and while the first novel in the trilogy is about an unrelated villain, the second and third books are, in part, devoted to making Salander herself less of a mystery. That is how almost all rewarding plots work: there is a relationship between the external conflict and an internal conflict. The narrator must "defeat" herself in order to defeat some external adversary. And in the most compelling stories, like Star Wars or The Girl Who Played with Fire, the villain is secretly the protagonist's dad.

50 Shades is not the most compelling. It's the least compelling. And so the adversaries that Ana Steele faces have absolutely nothing to do with any inner conflict. Her rogues gallery is as follows:

• Leila, Christian's mentally-ill ex lover.
• Elena, Christian's most jealous ex lover.
• Jack, an asshole from Ana's workplace who's jealous of Christian. 

The pattern is clear, yes? All the villains in this series are Christian's villains. With the exception of Jack, who's just some asshole, the external conflicts are driven by Christian's past mistakes. It's also worth noting, though, that Jack's little coda at the end of book 2 suggests that, even though he tried to blackmail Ana into sexual favors, he considers his real beef to be with Christian. So even this villain is repeating a classic chauvinist move--he doesn't give any credit to Ana. In his mind, he leaps over her and considers her boyf his real enemy. (Although, to his credit, he's not wrong to feel that Christian is the one who really matters, since the book asserts the exact same point at every opportunity.)

There's a compelling story in there somewhere!  Here's my pitch: Christian Grey loses everything in a combination business-disaster / sex scandal, and now he has to find his way in a world he doesn't understand, all while being hounded by women whom he wronged on his way to the top.

That almost sounds like something, right? Almost! But our little story idea points to the main structural failing of 50 Shades: the story doesn't really belong to its narrator. Ana is only the "hero" because she happens to be the character narrating everything for us. Nearly every other character in the entire novel has more agency, more drive, more motivation. Ana gets basically one independent action per novel. In the first book, she tells Christian to go ahead and spank her, so that she can better understand his desires. In the second book, she physically repulses an attack from Jack Hyde.

Besides these two sequences, everything is driven by Christian, not by Ana. Ana is at the center of this book but it's just not really her book. It's Christian's story, as narrated by Ana.

I've read some excitement on the internets about the fact that the forthcoming movie version of this mess is a big-budget movie aimed squarely at women that's directed by a woman and based on a novel by a woman. I won't disagree that that's admirable, particularly at a time when Hollywood seems concerned only with paying boys to make movies for boys starring lots of boys with women thrown in on occasion but only if they have butts that look nice in tight costumes.

But we can do better than this, right? I mean, can't we? Can't we do better than a man's fantasy, narrated by a woman, and then marketed as a woman's fantasy? This is really bumming me out.

But hey! At least I'm done with it for a while! Sort of.

50 Shades things I plan to work on in the near-term:

• Some statistics on a few of my least-favorite of EL's clichés. How many times Ana says "crap," for instance. Or blushes. Or flushes. Or whatever else she does.
• Remember that sex contract? We should catch up on it! There was a sex contract in the first book. It was the main thing about the first book. Here's hint: they've done almost none of the stuff on the sex contract. But you deserve a more complete update.
• Fact: the first book is 150,000 words. I bet a diligent person could cut it down to 50,000 without losing anything that doesn't deserve to be lost. I am nothing if not diligent. 
• I was thinking about writing some alternate-universe fanfic about these characters. Maybe one where one of them is vampire? I dunno. I'm kicking around a lot of ideas.

In other words: don't worry too much. We have a little more to go. 

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 22

This is it, friends! The end of the line.

Well. The end of one line. So you do have to get off the train here, but there are other trains you can transfer onto but those are different lines. Sorry. Just didn't want my metaphor to sound too dramatic because if you're reading this you probably don't enjoy things that are too dramatic. Again: this is sort of like when you watched The Two Towers and you were like, "Oh man. I can't wait a whole nother year to watch The Return of the King! I really need to watch that third movie to make sure that this trilogy rights itself after the second entry's slight decline in quality!"

(Editor's note: we're talking about the fall-off in blog quality, which we may be able to correct for Book 3. We're assuming that Book 3 itself is even worse.)

Anyway. Before we get to the last chapter--one of the really great things about writing this blog is that everyone I know considers me basically a clearinghouse for everything 50 Shades-related. Cool, right? V. cool. But anyway this is a pretty interesting read courtesy of someone on reddit. The highlighted comment was sent my way and while it doesn't contain any surprises, it did tell me a lot I didn't know about the particulars of Twilight fanfic and how EL used fanfic boards to build up popularity for her terrible book. The commenter also argues, quite persuasively, that EL will never write anything again. I assumed the same, but more because why should she even bother now that she has all the money in the world. The commenter's point is that EL is a product of a fanfic culture in which lots of writers are working through similar ideas simultaneously. Meaning there's nothing to indicate that EL even could sit by herself and write a book without a fanfic community to help generate all the ideas with her.

Glad I'm so clever and original! I never rely on anyone for anything! Oh except for how I rely on the existence of these books as a launching pad for my cheap jokes. But otherwise I'm practically my own island I swear.


Anyway where were we?

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 21 part 2

tldnr
Ana and Christian eat lunch and then go to Christian's house for his party and learn that Kate is mad at them. 

We're so very close to the end! I mean the end of the first 2/3! That's almost the end of the end tho, right? Getting there!

I'm going to have to figure out something else to do for a while now, because I can't jump into the next book yet. I just can't. So I'm open to suggestions. Optimal scenario: I do a couple of different, ongoing things at the same time. I bet I could start in on the third book more promptly if I weren't only writing about it. Like if I had some kind of palate cleanser, too. That's fair, right? I deserve that. I welcome your suggestions.

Also, what should I do about the first book? Now that the movie is a real thing, There's going to be a lot more discussion RE: all things 50 Shades. Last spring I registered for a one-day seminar about how to find a literary agent and get your book published. I paid money and everything. But then I forgot when it was and didn't receive any follow-up and so I guess I missed it. And that is the true story of how I didn't find out how to get an agent and publish a book. Should I just self-publish an ebook? I mean I might as well, right? What's the worst that could happen--I make zero dollars on it? Get this: I already make zero dollars.

Follow-up question: is anyone interested or should I say "willing" to look at any of the ebook version of my essays on the first book? I did try my best to chop it into something more book-like, but I'm sure there are still plenty of repetitive parts and mistakes. It's also 120,000 words. I know right? I'm the guy who wrote 120,000 words about 50 Shades. Oh and a bunch more about this other book, too. That's how I introduce myself at parties. I mean at party. I don't get invited to many.

But wait where were we?

Our story thus far:

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 21 part 1

tldnr:
Sex.

Here's a thing that's nice for me, even in the midst of reading this terrible book: It looks to me as though, somehow, there are people even now finding this blog and starting to read this mess from the very beginning. Thanks! Extremely satisfying to see that even this week, some of the most-clicked essays at The Complainist are the first couple chapters of the first book. Thanks! It's almost enough to keep me going straight into the third book with no break! But not enough. I really, really need a break. But I can at least get to the end of these last couple chapters. I know I can probably!

Our story thus far:

Finally! The trailer you've been waiting for!

I watched it, so you don't have to. Watch it if you want to.

Everything looks awfully accurate, which is too bad, but makes sense. The producers took a look at the numbers and saw that a hundred billion people read the book, so they concluded that there was no logical reason to try to make a movie that would speak to anyone besides committed fans. So they made a movie for committed fans.

I do predict that this movie is going to be better than the book, even though the trailer is pretty bland. Why? Well, I'll tell you. The first thing is that we'll be missing one of the book's biggest drawbacks: unbearably dum narration. Not having to be in Ana's head for two hours will make the movie goddamn delightful in comparison to the book. Oh that leads me to the second good thing about the movie: it's probably two hours long, and it took me a lot longer to read the book. So points for the book!

The only thing present in the trailer that's not part of the book is the shot of CG jogging. The book is so, so talky, and so static, so it makes sense to me that the director was desperate to find some moments where people actually move around besides when they're doing sex. The only time anyone ever moves around in the books is during sex, and you can't put all that much sex into an all-audiences trailer. That's also, I expect, the reason the helicopter and the glider are in the trailer. Both suggest people going somewhere and doing a thing, even though careful readers will note that these are both completely pointless elements. I guess they actually go somewhere in the helicopter but the glider? The chapter featuring the glider is the most pointless in the entire book. It's like a rich-people version of playing miniature golf. Twenty pages of CG and Ana playing putt-putt would've made every bit as much sense.

But yeah- the book is made up exclusively of conversations and sex. The trailer is mostly conversations, with some attempt to make things seem dramatic, but I think the trailer makes plain the book's biggest problem: nothing actually happens.

The trailer does have one huge thing going for it, of course, and that's the next-level great new version of Beyonce's "Crazy in Love." Right? I mean, can I buy that single yet? Like, it's legit so good that you can almost enjoy the trailer if you just don't watch it and listen to it instead and try not to listen to any of the voice of people talking. It's so good that if, somehow? The movie just had Beyonce sounding like that playing the whole time? Or whatever. Just that song on loop for two hours? ALL THE OSCARS.

But in real life that's a four-minute song and they probably won't even use all four minutes of it in the actual film. Hence, no matter what you think of this trailer, you must must agree that the actual movie will be garbage in comparison, because it will have lots of non-Beyonce parts, and the non-Beyonce parts are just going to make you angry.

Am I overstating this? Perhaps! I'm probably drunk (Editor's note: he probably is, sure, but not in a legal sense.) and more important, this terrible book just makes me desperate to enjoy things. The book itself makes me miserable, and the trailer itself is just kinda bland, so anything that's actually good is going to look so good in comparison.



I think, though, that the song itself kind of points out some of the problems with the book, which are likely going to translate into problems with the film.

CG says something like "I exercise restraint in all things," which isn't really true. He's not restrained so much as calculating and cold. So I feel like the trailer is kind of trying to suggest a romance where a couple of characters are "crazy in love" OH SHIT LIKE THAT SONG CALLED THAT! but that isn't really what happens. I guess Ana kinda gets swept up in things kinda? But not really. It's more like "sociopath in love" and that's why the only way to make this movie truly accurately would really be to cast Benedict Cumberbatch and for the director to say, "Hey just pretend you're still playing Sherlock and just do whatever he would do if he were rich and liked to spank people."

But really, you know that part in the trailer where they kiss in an elevator or whatever? That's right after CG says the famous line, "Fuck the paperwork." As in, he kisses her without first having her fill out certain bits of paperwork. That's how crazy in love he is: he kisses a lady who wants to kiss him without having her sign any forms first. This is not a story about two people getting swept away in an intense romance. It's the story of a guy who's a real asshole slowly bullying a woman into doing whatever he wants. The director is wise, though, and is trying to play up the parts that suggest "swept away" and downplaying the whole "sociopath" angle just a little bit.

OMG I CANT WAIT TO SEE IT jk.

I should start a kickstarter. "Send me to see 50 Shades so I can blog about it!" I could probably raise twelve bucks, right? Some of you would throw in a quarter, right? I'm sure you would! Sure you would!

Maybe I should just buy the Beyonce single and pretend I'm watching the movie. That'd be cheaper! And also way better.

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 20

Yes, you're right:

I'm having a hard time finishing this. Each chapter is getting just a little more difficult because each chapter is getting just a little more worse and more painful. If, somehow, I were reading this for not particular reason other than, I don't know, to punish myself or something, I would quit here. There's no book left. There's no story left. So I'd just say, "Look, book. I get you. I've read enough." And then I would put it down and never pick it up again. Ooh or maybe I'd leave it in the bathroom as a sort of conversation starter, for anyone who steps into my bathroom. And when people asked me if I'd finished it, I would say "yes" and not even feel guilty about the fact that there were a couple of chapters at the end that I'd skipped. Because I've finished it. Let's be real. And if you've been reading along? You've finished it too, in your way.

Let's get through this last little bit, though. We are completists, not just complainists. And so we shall continue.


The primary crimes of this book, I would say, are twofold:

1. Total lack of shape. Or, rather, it has a shape but the shape isn't compelling. It has three "acts" kinda, but not in the conventional sense. I just mean it has three bits that are smooshed together into a single book. We get 1) the part at the beginning where Leila is a big problem, then 2) the middle part where Jack is a big problem and 3) this pre-wedding part at the end that's pretty terrible and features a helicopter crash because I don't know I guess because something had to happen and that's what EL decided to have happen?

2. Everything that happens in this book already happened in the previous book. It's exactly like a big Hollywood sequel where the actors are just kind of hitting the same marks as they did in the previous movie, but with more budget. Likewise, many of the false conflicts in 2 are just sort of "bigger" versions of shit from 1. Examples:

• 1: CG pesters Ana to sign sex contract. 2: CG pesters Ana to marry him.
• 1: Ana says no, but José persists. 2: Ana is nearly assaulted by Jack.
• 1: CG buys Ana a car. 2: CG buys Ana a different car. 
• 1: Ana is prescribed contraceptives. 2: Ana is prescribed different contraceptives. 

These are just the ones that are easy to remember and pop into my mind quickly. I am confident there are more. What's worse is that often, the characters say something along the lines of, "Oh just like last time" as they are repeating themselves. They know that they're just doing the same shit, which means the author knows she's just writing the same shit, and yet she persists in doing it to us anyway. Ugh. 

I'm not sure if it's just the cumulative effect of the two books that's weighing me down further, but I'm pretty sure, now that we're so close to the end, that book 2 is a lot worse than book 1. Book 1 is similarly shapeless and contrived and dum, but at least it follows a certain kind of arc. There is some sense of momentum as we approach the end and the 'final' conflict between Ana and CG. This is not much praise; what I'm basically saying is that book 1 is better than book 2 because book 1 at least kinda sorta kinda feels like an actual book, at least in comparison to its sequel, which is just a bunch of different bullshit happening for no reason. 

I guess I should repeat a version of a warning that I've warned earlier: don't read these books. And if you should happen to read the first book somehow, DO NO read the second book because it's bullshit and I hate it and you will too. I mean, unless you're into that kind of thing, and if you are, you probably aren't reading this blog anyway and so I'm not talking to you anyway so ugh leave me alone already geez.

But I am talking to you so let's get caught up with our backstory, shall we?

Our story thus far:

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 19

tldnr
Everything is fine and they're going to get married.

I apologize for the lateness and everything.

I went on vacation and I'm all jetlagged kind of sort of, or at least lately I can't stay up until 2 like I usually do so this didn't quite get posted Tuesday morning like I planned. TRAGIC! I am sure that totally ruined your day. But at least you get to read it Wednesday instead! It can fix your Wednesday after I ruined your Tuesday so it all kind of evens out, right? Kinda? Maybe?

Whatever. This is a short chapter so let's get right to it!

Our story thus far:

Fifty Shades Shadier: Chapter 18 part 2

I rushed through the last one because of the World Cup and I'm rushing through this next one because I'm going on vacation and I'll be in an entirely different country by the time this is posted. But really, the really-real reason I keep rushing through these is that this book is terrible and increasingly difficult to deal with. It almost managed a little bit of plot earlier--some of the bits with Leila and Elena introduced some legitimate tension into the first third or so. But those situations have all been seemingly dealt with handily, so we're just left to wait for Ana to decide if she'll  marry Christian. EL does introduce some new bullshit at the very end of this chapter, but I'm sure that's going to disappoint.

Our story thus far:

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 18 part 1

tldnr
Ana and Christian look at a mansion and then start eating dinner.

Look I know nobody is reading this anymore. I'm not even reading it anymore. Nobody is, except for maybe my friend Selena who sends me quote-texts that I am always extremely happy to receive because that is basically the highest possible compliment. Oh and also? I mean I'm not going to say I'm drunk because that wouldn't be entirely true but it wouldn't be entirely false either. Because I just watched the US lose to Germany by a single goal and that game started at 9 and what? Am I going to not drink during it? No. I'm not going to not drink during it. Are you following me? I barely am.

What's a bummer tho is that by the time you read this, the US may well have played Belgium and you're going to be like, "This guy is behind the times! I thought this blog was up to the minute!" And it isn't.

Whatever. I'm going to delete all this later probably anyway. (Editor's note: delete all this later anyway.)

Our story thus far:

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 17 part 2

tldnr
Ana gets promoted to Hyde's job. She and Christian meet with Christian's psychiatrist, and then they drive somewhere. 

Guys! I get it! We're all watching the World Cup of soccer, not reading about this book, which is the World Cup of terrible books. I respect that. So please, you know. After the thing is finished and Costa Rica has won it all (Editor's note: we like underdogs!) come back and catch up on Ana and her adventures or whatever. I wrote this? But I didn't like, edit it? So there you go! This is old-skool blogging! No proofreading! So who knows what I said this week! I don't! I'm like EL. I just write it! I don't pay any attention to it!

But at least I got through this terrible chapter! Lucky me! And lucky you! Wait no. None of us are lucky. We're just whatever. Anyway here's this terrible book!

Where were we?

Our story thus far:

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 17 part 1

How can anyone do anything at all during the World Cup? I obviously don't know, since I haven't done anything at all. Instead I'll just have to leave you with some bits from the beginning of Chapter 17 that I was working on before the World Cup started. Maybe when this is all done I'll be productive again but I'm just being optimistic. I cannot say for certain.

Somebody sent me a super-nice email about this blog which provided me with a considerable amount of momentum. However, even that is starting to wear off, and now I'm just hoping to be able to post something before I fall asleep. #Discipline.

Wait so where were we?

Our story thus far:

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 16

TLDNR
Ana narrowly escapes being sexually assaulted by her boss and Christian thinks it's all her fault. 

Chapter 15 ended with a cliffhanger, or as near a thing to a cliffhanger as we’re likely to ever see in this series: Ana, alone in the break room at work, is confronted by her skeezy boss who gives every indication that he intends to rape her.  Dramatic stuff!

Only, not really. The central conflict, to the extent that there is a central conflict in this book, is the conflict between Ana’s boring life and her new life with Christian. Although Christian is the new secret owner of Seattle Independent Publishing and thus, Ana’s boss’s boss’s boss or whatever, when Ana got the job at SIP, she did so on her own merit. So however things play out at SIP is unlikely to have much bearing on that central conflict between life with Christian and life without Christian. And because Jack Hyde, Ana’s boss, is separate from the central conflict, I doubt many readers actually read Chapter 15 and then worried that Ana was actually going to be assaulted. EL is a terrible writer, yes. But if Ana were to be raped by her boss in Chapter 16, the entire story would be overwhelmed, right? I mean, how could we be convinced to give a shit about CG’s birthday party or José’s plan to deliver photos in the aftermath of a traumatic assault carried suffered by the narrator? 

Right so EL’s bad, but she’s not that bad. She’s not going to introduce something so big that it derails the boring back-and-forth she’s got going between Ana and CG, so when I start reading Chapter 16, I’m not thinking, “Holy shit! Is this actually going to happen?” Instead, I’m wondering how, exactly, EL is going to keep the thing from happening that seems like it’s about to happen. 

Here’s how, after the jump: