Fifty Shades Shadier: Chapter 5 part 2

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Ana and Christian go to Christian's house. Ana draws on Christian with lipstick. 

When last we saw our heroes, CG had just finished carrying Ana around downtown Seattle while simultaneously spanking her. That was pretty gross. Then EL displayed some woeful unfamiliarity with American gun culture. See, EL thinks that you get a concealed weapons permit, and then you get a gun. If you're dangerous and unstable, you probably just get the gun, right? Probably. But anyway. I guess we can't assume yet that Leila has a gun. She's maybe the most polite, Washington-style gun owner ever, and is going to get a bunch of permits first and then maybe get a gun later. But hey. A gun has entered our story. So probably somebody is going to get shot. I know I've got a particular "somebody" in mind I'm hoping for, but I will not tell you his name because I am superstitious like that.

But where were we, exactly?

Our story thus far:

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 5 part 1

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Ana storms out of the hair salon because she's jealous of Christian's ex-lover, Elena. Christian carries Ana around for a while like he's a goddamn Viking and she's the spoils of war because he's worried that a different ex-lover, Leila, might be armed and dangerous. 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must inform you 50 Shades Shadier is both easier to read than its predecessor and more frustrating. It's easier to read because the occasional thing actually happens. Ana and Christian worrying about CG's ex-lover Leila is more plot that we got in the entirety of the first book, and we're only a handful of chapters in. And, eventually, Jack Hyde over at Ana's publishing company is going to turn into a plot point as well. He hasn't yet. He's sort of a proto plot point. Great! When you're writing a book it's a good idea to have some kind of plot.

But CG is continuing to make Ana miserable most of the time. He's terrible to her and infantilizes her at every opportunity. So Shadier is a book that presents us with a central conflict (Ana vs. Christian) but displays no curiosity about it. EL seems to think that we ought to become invested in the side story and forget about the main conflict. Or maybe she doesn't even realize that there is still a central conflict. I'm not sure how that could be possible! Once again, Chapter 5 sees CG utterly ignoring clear requests from Ana because he knows better or whatever. Ugh. It's a bit like the government taking every opportunity to say "The terrorists are out to get you! So don't worry that the bank is booting you out of your house! Worry about the terrorists!"

Here's another thing about Leila. Leila, who was once in a Dom/sub relationship with Christian, is a pretty good representation of how EL wants to have it both ways when it comes to BDSM. On the one hand, EL wants to write (bland) sex scenes involving improvised restraints and a few modest signifiers of kink. Fine. Whatever. Enjoy! She wants the trappings of the lifestyle, but she makes sure to let us know that everybody who actually enjoys the stuff is diseased. CG only likes to tie people up because he was abused as a child. And Leila--we don't know exactly what she's into? But we know that she suffered some kind of mental break and now is insane. 

So basically, Ana is magic. Via the power of her (relative) virginity she is able to handle CG's sexy-times, even though the power of his sexiness would surely ruin a "regular" lady! Only she can endure! Because she isn't really that into it anyway. Am I making sense? Leila is just going to serve as another bit of "proof" that Ana is special and that anybody who likes kinky stuff must be a dangerous maniac. 

And that's why this book is also kind of worse than the previous one. Shocking!

Our story thus far:

Fifty Shades Shadier: Chapter 4 part 2

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Ana and Christian fight about money, eat breakfast, and then go to a hair salon where the woman who introduced him to BDSM works.

This weekend I'm attending a seminar about how to write a proposal for a non-fiction book and I'm feeling increasingly silly about it. The instructor asked for a one-sentence explanation of the book everybody wants to write and I haven't done it yet because this is the book I want to write. I already wrote it, really. It's long as hell! The current draft of my readers' guide for 50 Shades is like 120,000 words! That's not as long as the actual book, but it's book-length. Maybe I could've intrigued some publisher if I'd done this a couple years ago but really I think it's just too late, right? And I'm taking a day off from work for this! Whatever. Maybe it'll teach me how to write some different book. I can write my memoir. That's what you all want to read, right? Kinda? Great.

Two posts this week. It only seems fair to publish the end of Chapter 4 now because there really isn't much of it left. Mainly just CG and Ana having awkward conversations, followed by one little bit at the end dropped in to set up the next chapter. Yawn. Oh well! Here you go anyway!

Fifty Shades Shadier: Chapter 4 part 1

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Ana and Christian eat some food and have more sex and then talk about Leila, one of Christian's ex-lovers, who may be stalking Ana. 

Stray thought:

I'm watching this tv show called The Following about this English professor who leads a murder cult. Anyway the murder professor is played by James Purefoy who's a British actor and the more of the show I watch, the more convinced I am that Purefoy would be a perfect Christian Grey. Yes, I know CG is supposed to be 27 or whatever, but everything Purefoy does in The Following fits CG super well. I think they should hold off on the movie and just put Purefoy in instead of whatever young guy they signed up.

This even looks like a scene from our book, right? I mean, minus the hoodie. Christian Grey doesn't ever wear a hoodie I don't think. Yes, I do think it's creepy that I'm watching this show about a murder professor and thinking, "Hey you know what? This is really making me think of Fifty Shades." Oh well!

Back to our heroes!

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 3 part 3

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Ana and Christian have sex again.

Sometimes when I'm reading a particularly good book, I feel like I have to hurry through it, as though its characters might proceed without me while the cover is shut. With Shadier I feel the opposite. I return to, disappointed to find Ana and Christian precisely where I left them. If only something would've happened to them while I wasn't reading! But no. Nothing. Still boring. Still up to nothing.

Let's catch ourselves back up to speed, shall we?

Our story thus far:

Ana is a naive college student who dated a billionaire for a couple weeks but broke things off with him because he spanked her too hard.

1. Ana starts her new job at a publishing company and agrees to let Christian give her a ride to José’s art show. It turns out they both miss each other or whatever.
2. Ana and Christian eat steaks at a restaurant. They rekindle their “romance” and Christian says that they won’t have to have rules anymore and he won’t punish Ana. They drive back to Seattle and Christian gives Ana back the expensive gifts that she'd returned to him when they broke up, along with a new iPad.
3. Ana goes to work. She is confronted by one of Christian's ex lovers on her way out for drinks with her coworkers. Christian picks up Ana from the bar, and then they venture to a grocery store so that they can cook dinner at Ana's house. 

Isn't that depressing? I feel like I wrote a lot last week, but what happened? "Christian picks up Ana from the bar, and then they venture to a grocery store so that they can cook dinner at Ana's house." That's it? That's it! That's it. And what's worse: I didn't really even get us out of the grocery store. So I guess let's go back to the grocery store! Fun!

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 3 part 2

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Christian picks up Ana at the bar near her workplace and then they go to her condo and then they buy groceries.

As you will understand, thanks to the lateness of this post. I'm not sure that I can manage this twice a week schedule. I like the idea of covering a chapter a week, if only because that gets us to the end faster, but if I'm to maintain this level of rigor, I might have to slow down. The chapters in Shadier are longer than those of 50 Shades and also, you haven't really been talking up this blog with your friends in publishing, and as a result, I still have some day jobs that I must attend. Hence the lack of a Friday post last week. (Editor's note: also the Tuesday post was completed with more haste than we usually prefer, too.) 

Nothing to do but struggle on, though! Well, that or quit, which would be sensible. But we have never been accused of being sensible! So, we carry on. We will have, I expect, one post again this week, but may find ourselves able to return to a faster schedule as time goes on. I should mention, though, that the presence or absence of Friday posts does little to affect my overall tally of clicks for the week. In case you are wondering, my average is something like fifty, though I do have exceptional days which can vary widely in either direction. Also, I should definitely mention that mostly what I get are "false positives" from spam robots. If anyone is smarter than I am and knows how to remove these spam robots from my blogger statistics, I would appreciate the advice. I hate logging in, seeing that I got a bunch of new reads, and then seeing that they were, in fact, all spam robots. Boo.

Our story thus far:

Ana is a naive college student who dated a billionaire for a couple weeks but broke things off with him because he spanked her too hard.

1. Ana starts her new job at a publishing company and agrees to let Christian give her a ride to José’s art show. It turns out they both miss each other or whatever.
2. Ana and Christian eat steaks at a restaurant. They rekindle their “romance” and Christian says that they won’t have to have rules anymore and he won’t punish Ana. They drive back to Seattle and Christian gives Ana back the expensive gifts that she'd returned to him when they broke up, along with a new iPad.
3. Ana goes to work. She is confronted by one of Christian's ex lovers on her way out for drinks with her coworkers.

Let's see how Ana is doing at the bar, shall we?

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 3, part 1

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Ana is confronted by one of Christian's former lovers.

Just so you know, I'm aware that a lot of these posts seem nit-picky. I know that you may read some of my complaints and say, "What's the big deal? EL James doesn't understand iTunes? Fine. Who cares?"

And yeah. Does it matter that EL doesn't understand that the songs on Ana's new iPad are available to her for use on her other devices? No. No writer is going to get every little detail right in a 1,500-page trilogy. And even if a writer were to get everything right about these little technical points, that's the sort of thing that won't matter in a few years anyway. So, for instance, Ana's excitement about the iPad already seems a little silly now that the things are everywhere. The fact that EL doesn't seem to understand how iPads work is obnoxious, but it takes more than a little thing like that to ruin a scene.

The problem with this book isn't that EL gets the occasional detail wrong. The thing about this book is that EL gets absolutely everything wrong. Ana is confused about every detail of modern life, and then most of the details about modern life that are offered to her are at least slightly askew. And as the mistakes pile on, smaller little issues start to take on added significance. A mistake that we might've overlooked if it were an isolated incident starts to seem huge.

So, yeah. It's completely insignificant that EL James doesn't get how iPads work, but when you've been suffering through all these similar screw-ups for hundreds of pages, you find yourself yelling at your book over the most insignificant bullshit.

Plus, EL James is a billionaire because of these terrible books. If this thing were just another story on a fanfic message board, I wouldn't complain in the slightest. But somehow, EL James is the most widely-read author of the 21st century, but can't even be bothered to figure out how an iPad works, and I'm pretty upset about it.

But back to our story, such as it is.

Our story thus far:

Ana is a naive college student who dated a billionaire for a couple weeks but broke things off with him because he spanked her too hard.

1. Ana starts her new job at a publishing company and agrees to let Christian give her a ride to José’s art show. It turns out they both miss each other or whatever.
2. Ana and Christian eat steaks at a restaurant. They rekindle their “romance” and Christian says that they won’t have to have rules anymore and he won’t punish Ana. They drive back to Seattle and Christian gives Ana back the expensive gifts that she'd returned to him when they broke up, along with a new iPad.

So, Chapter 3.