tldnr:
Spanking, then sex.
Warnings:
Again--refer above.
Anecdote:
I have this problem where I troll the "Writing Gigs" section of craigslist and respond eagerly to the oddest requests. This has been more fruitful than you might assume! For instance, last year I was contracted to ghostwrite a single chapter of a novel. My employer never did get around to letting me know the last names of any of the book's characters, but he was pleased with my efforts, and paid promptly. More recently, I volunteered to "beta read" a draft of an "erotic mystery." I read and gave quite a few notes because I'm very good at that kind of thing. (I'm friendly about it, too. If 50 Shades were the work of some earnest, anonymous scribe pleading for help on craigslist, I'd be infinitely more generous. But! This thing has made EL James more money than can be found within the borders of certain small countries. The world has already been generous to her, so I don't have to be.)
Anyway, I mentioned on Facebook that this craigslist author got me a gift card for fifty bucks. Quite nice, considering that I volunteered without any offer of payment. The best part is that a handful of my friends conflated the gift card with this blog, and thought, even if only momentarily, that EL was the author mailing me gifts. This, of course, is not the case! However, I would like to state now, as publicly as I can, that I am willing to be bought, and I am not expensive. So, you'll know what happens if, a few weeks from now, I start a post by writing, "Hey you know, I never thought I'd say this, but this thing is kind of growing on me a little!"
In the meantime, I am kind of stuck. I just don't understand how this book gets read by anybody other than people who despise it because seriously. Chapter 16 is a nonsense chapter, totally lacking in plot or intrigue.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
50 Shades of the Complainist: Chapter 15.2
tldnr:
Ana and Christian have sex.
Warnings:
See above.
Remember when the last Harry Potter got split into two movies, and then I only saw the first one? Or maybe neither? Because I can't remember? And then Twilight did the same thing? And now The Hobbit is three movies? Wouldn't it be terrible if I started doing that? I mean, I'm already writing chapter "summaries" that are, at times, longer than the actual chapters as originally written. So what if I stretched it out even more and turned this same dumb chapter about nothing into several weeks of mean-spirited jokes and repetitive screeds?
I'm sorry about 15.1. I said a bunch of things that I've already said a bunch of times. In my defense, the chapter was basically a bunch of stuff that's already happened in the book. It's hard to not sound repetitive when you're riffing on something that is itself so repetitive.
So here we are. Let's make this one a quickie, ok? (Editor's note: Yeah, that's a dumb sex joke. Think of it as a transition, because we're about to talk about some dumb sex.)
Ana and Christian have sex.
Warnings:
See above.
Remember when the last Harry Potter got split into two movies, and then I only saw the first one? Or maybe neither? Because I can't remember? And then Twilight did the same thing? And now The Hobbit is three movies? Wouldn't it be terrible if I started doing that? I mean, I'm already writing chapter "summaries" that are, at times, longer than the actual chapters as originally written. So what if I stretched it out even more and turned this same dumb chapter about nothing into several weeks of mean-spirited jokes and repetitive screeds?
I'm sorry about 15.1. I said a bunch of things that I've already said a bunch of times. In my defense, the chapter was basically a bunch of stuff that's already happened in the book. It's hard to not sound repetitive when you're riffing on something that is itself so repetitive.
So here we are. Let's make this one a quickie, ok? (Editor's note: Yeah, that's a dumb sex joke. Think of it as a transition, because we're about to talk about some dumb sex.)
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
50 Shades of the Complainist: Chapter 15.1
tldnr:
Ana and Christian discuss "soft limits."
Warnings: They talk about sex stuff for a long time and then have sex, only they're going to do that next week because I'm lazy.
I post these on tumblr, too, only I'm bad at remember to post them, and so I'm way behind over there. Recently I was pasting my Chapter 8 essay over at aldeneagle.tumblr and I kind of got worried that this book is wearing me down to the point that I may have already peaked. Like, I had all these funny pictures and stuff? And that essay was super long? What I'm saying is that I'm trying, but I'm a little concerned that the book is winning. And I'm losing. Seriously. I looked back at that thing, right? And I posted it in June, and now it's August, and part of me was like, "Wow. Those were the days. I was so young. So full of life."
But now you see me? Just a withered husk, which is too bad. As I am a mere shadow of my former self, I didn't even manage to complete this week's assignment. Shocking, right? Instead, I just leave you with a half-assed, short essay that doesn't even cover the whole chapter. I'm making you wait to read about the boring sex that Ana and CG are going to have. I hope to do 15.2 before next week but who knows! Hard to say just what will happen in these complicated times.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
50 Shades of the Complainist: Chapter 14
tldnr
Ana and Kate graduate from college and Ana agrees to sign Christian's sex contract.
Warnings: I dunno. More of the same. There's some riding crop sex at the beginning, but it turns out (SPOILER ALER) it was all just a dream. So clever!
Chapter 14 is the sort of chapter that I enjoy writing about because it's the kind of chapter where a bunch of characters run around doing a bunch of different things and because they're doing these different things out in the world instead of in Christian Grey's sex-room, EL James' frequent misconceptions about how the world operates are at their most frequent and most jarring. As awkward as the sex-scenes can be, as terrifying as the central romance is, the mundane absurdities are what keep me going.
Ana declaring that she's never had an email address, for instance. Ana expressing amazement about the idea of shaving one's armpits. Ana being absolutely shocked by the idea of oysters. These precious, stupid memories are what make reading this book possible, which means that, in essence, I'm getting weighed down by the sex parts and, in comparison, tolerating the useless filler parts thrown in, I assume, to give the reader some breathing room in between sex parts. Meaning, the only parts that entertain me are the parts that more engaged readers are likely skipping and not even thinking about. Oh well!
But let's dive right in! Time for a sex dream!
Ana and Kate graduate from college and Ana agrees to sign Christian's sex contract.
Warnings: I dunno. More of the same. There's some riding crop sex at the beginning, but it turns out (SPOILER ALER) it was all just a dream. So clever!
Chapter 14 is the sort of chapter that I enjoy writing about because it's the kind of chapter where a bunch of characters run around doing a bunch of different things and because they're doing these different things out in the world instead of in Christian Grey's sex-room, EL James' frequent misconceptions about how the world operates are at their most frequent and most jarring. As awkward as the sex-scenes can be, as terrifying as the central romance is, the mundane absurdities are what keep me going.
Ana declaring that she's never had an email address, for instance. Ana expressing amazement about the idea of shaving one's armpits. Ana being absolutely shocked by the idea of oysters. These precious, stupid memories are what make reading this book possible, which means that, in essence, I'm getting weighed down by the sex parts and, in comparison, tolerating the useless filler parts thrown in, I assume, to give the reader some breathing room in between sex parts. Meaning, the only parts that entertain me are the parts that more engaged readers are likely skipping and not even thinking about. Oh well!
But let's dive right in! Time for a sex dream!
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
50 Shades of the Complainist: Chapter 13
tldnr
Ana and Christian negotiate their contract over dinner and it seems like things are going to get kind of hot but then they don't.
Let me start this week by mentioning that I'm in a better mood this week than last week and feel better able to further investigate Fifty Shades of Grey as a social phenomenon. Why? Because of the hundreds of clicks Chapter 12 received! Just kidding. It remains under fifty, and also, our little blog has been discovered by some manner of spam-robot, and so I fear that I'm getting an increased volume of "traffic" that isn't really traffic at all. Ah, well! These are the problems we face in the digital age! (These, and all the regular, real-world problems we haven't solved yet.)
Maybe I just liked this chapter more because no one gets tied up or has wine spat into her mouth? Who can even speculate! SPOILER ALERT: no one gets tied up or has any wine spit into her mouth in this chapter, so you'll want to stop here if you're just in it for the wine-spitting.
I do want to return to last week's chapter for a moment, though, and add a couple of caveats to some of my criticism. It's a terrible chapter--this is not a retraction or anything that bold.
I do want to make it clear that I understand the drive to take sex, add danger, and stir. My problem is that when this book pairs them together, the ratio of danger to sex is askew, and everything ends up being pretty gross and terrifying.
The "stuck in a rut" marriage between oldsters or middle-agesters is a pretty common cliché, but like most clichés, there's something obviously true at its core. (Editor's note: clichés are not to be confused with stereotypes, which are things made up by bigots.) Overfamiliarity can inspire boredom. Obviously. And, several chapters ago, when those crazy kids first took a long enough break from blushing and muttering and murmuring dryly to have sex, we talked about how there's only so much a reader can really get out of a straightforward sex scene.
But by making things dangerous the sexy writer (Not talking to you, EL.) creates tension. What we expect to happen might not happen at all, once danger is involved, so we better keep reading to find out! We all know this. This goes back forever. This goes back as far as Zeus turning into a rape-swan or Dracula biting ladies all sexy-like. Somebody has probably already written a book about how every "erotic thriller" is basically just Dracula repackaged, so I won't do so myself. But the thing about danger in a novel is that danger is a thing introduced by a villain, and a villain is someone to be thwarted and defeated.
So I'm not saying that I wish Ana and Christian could just meet and cute and and have 500 pages of undangerous sex because that would be terrible. Rather, I'm saying that in Dracula, Dracula is a sexy villain, and the point is that he's hard to fight because he's so sexy, but he's still a villain. Christian Grey is, in basically every regard, Dracula. I keep reading this book wanting to see Ana improve herself so that she can get away from Christian. But instead, the story is about Ana learning to reduce her own independence so that she can submit to Christian. Fifty Shades is like a weird version of Dracula in which Mina does her best to make sure that Dracula feels at home once he moves to London. (Editor's note: we're claiming that idea, so you owe us if you use it, Hollywood!)
Extra note: I think it's important to separate EL's "literary" BDSM from the sorts of relationships people might have in the real world. Because in this book, CG's interest in kink is perfectly analogous to a vampire's need to bite people and drink their blood. And of course these things are not analogous in real life. But think about it: CG was essentially "infected" with kink at an early age, and now he desires nothing but to pass this "infection" on to Ana. And, it's incurable. Once a sex-vampire, always a sex-vampire!
Hm. I didn't plan on writing nearly so much about vampires to start this section, but then, this is a book about vampires, as we all know, so I guess I ought not be that surprised.
And now! Back to Mina and the Count!
Ana and Christian negotiate their contract over dinner and it seems like things are going to get kind of hot but then they don't.
Let me start this week by mentioning that I'm in a better mood this week than last week and feel better able to further investigate Fifty Shades of Grey as a social phenomenon. Why? Because of the hundreds of clicks Chapter 12 received! Just kidding. It remains under fifty, and also, our little blog has been discovered by some manner of spam-robot, and so I fear that I'm getting an increased volume of "traffic" that isn't really traffic at all. Ah, well! These are the problems we face in the digital age! (These, and all the regular, real-world problems we haven't solved yet.)
Maybe I just liked this chapter more because no one gets tied up or has wine spat into her mouth? Who can even speculate! SPOILER ALERT: no one gets tied up or has any wine spit into her mouth in this chapter, so you'll want to stop here if you're just in it for the wine-spitting.
I do want to return to last week's chapter for a moment, though, and add a couple of caveats to some of my criticism. It's a terrible chapter--this is not a retraction or anything that bold.
I do want to make it clear that I understand the drive to take sex, add danger, and stir. My problem is that when this book pairs them together, the ratio of danger to sex is askew, and everything ends up being pretty gross and terrifying.
The "stuck in a rut" marriage between oldsters or middle-agesters is a pretty common cliché, but like most clichés, there's something obviously true at its core. (Editor's note: clichés are not to be confused with stereotypes, which are things made up by bigots.) Overfamiliarity can inspire boredom. Obviously. And, several chapters ago, when those crazy kids first took a long enough break from blushing and muttering and murmuring dryly to have sex, we talked about how there's only so much a reader can really get out of a straightforward sex scene.
But by making things dangerous the sexy writer (Not talking to you, EL.) creates tension. What we expect to happen might not happen at all, once danger is involved, so we better keep reading to find out! We all know this. This goes back forever. This goes back as far as Zeus turning into a rape-swan or Dracula biting ladies all sexy-like. Somebody has probably already written a book about how every "erotic thriller" is basically just Dracula repackaged, so I won't do so myself. But the thing about danger in a novel is that danger is a thing introduced by a villain, and a villain is someone to be thwarted and defeated.
So I'm not saying that I wish Ana and Christian could just meet and cute and and have 500 pages of undangerous sex because that would be terrible. Rather, I'm saying that in Dracula, Dracula is a sexy villain, and the point is that he's hard to fight because he's so sexy, but he's still a villain. Christian Grey is, in basically every regard, Dracula. I keep reading this book wanting to see Ana improve herself so that she can get away from Christian. But instead, the story is about Ana learning to reduce her own independence so that she can submit to Christian. Fifty Shades is like a weird version of Dracula in which Mina does her best to make sure that Dracula feels at home once he moves to London. (Editor's note: we're claiming that idea, so you owe us if you use it, Hollywood!)
Extra note: I think it's important to separate EL's "literary" BDSM from the sorts of relationships people might have in the real world. Because in this book, CG's interest in kink is perfectly analogous to a vampire's need to bite people and drink their blood. And of course these things are not analogous in real life. But think about it: CG was essentially "infected" with kink at an early age, and now he desires nothing but to pass this "infection" on to Ana. And, it's incurable. Once a sex-vampire, always a sex-vampire!
Hm. I didn't plan on writing nearly so much about vampires to start this section, but then, this is a book about vampires, as we all know, so I guess I ought not be that surprised.
And now! Back to Mina and the Count!
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
50 Shades of the Complainist: Chapter 12
tldnr;
Ana sends Christian an email saying she doesn't want to see him anymore so he comes to her apartment and forces himself on her.
Warning: this is another sex chapter, and Ana's consent seems coerced at best.
This is getting more difficult to do, and I'm getting more and more confused about this book's popularity. In Chapter 11, nothing at all happened. In Chapter 12, Ana and Christian are just going to have sex again and then exchange a few emails and there's nothing really to distinguish this sex from their previous sex or these emails from their previous emails. If anything, the sex and emails are worse in this chapter than previous sex and emails, because Chapter 12 forces the reader to reach the rather chilling conclusion that CG simply will not take "no" for an answer. (Editor's note: most readers will have already realized this; any holdouts will now realize it.) Someone should write an essay about how CG is a metaphor for US foreign policy, because he's always negotiating and bringing in paperwork and making things seem terribly official but then ultimately he just does whatever he wants anyway and makes you wonder why you had to jump through all those hoops. (Editor's theory: maybe at some point, we will learn that CG's real fetish is for meaningless paperwork?)
I'm too angry at the previous chapter for being so pointless and too depressed about how borderline terrifying this sex chapter is to introduce this week's remarks with any grand theories or fun writing advice, so I suppose I have no choice but to jump right on in.
Ana sends Christian an email saying she doesn't want to see him anymore so he comes to her apartment and forces himself on her.
Warning: this is another sex chapter, and Ana's consent seems coerced at best.
This is getting more difficult to do, and I'm getting more and more confused about this book's popularity. In Chapter 11, nothing at all happened. In Chapter 12, Ana and Christian are just going to have sex again and then exchange a few emails and there's nothing really to distinguish this sex from their previous sex or these emails from their previous emails. If anything, the sex and emails are worse in this chapter than previous sex and emails, because Chapter 12 forces the reader to reach the rather chilling conclusion that CG simply will not take "no" for an answer. (Editor's note: most readers will have already realized this; any holdouts will now realize it.) Someone should write an essay about how CG is a metaphor for US foreign policy, because he's always negotiating and bringing in paperwork and making things seem terribly official but then ultimately he just does whatever he wants anyway and makes you wonder why you had to jump through all those hoops. (Editor's theory: maybe at some point, we will learn that CG's real fetish is for meaningless paperwork?)
I'm too angry at the previous chapter for being so pointless and too depressed about how borderline terrifying this sex chapter is to introduce this week's remarks with any grand theories or fun writing advice, so I suppose I have no choice but to jump right on in.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
50 Shades of the Complainist: Chapter 11
tldnr
Ana reads some stuff and sends some emails.
Warnings: I have lost all passion for life. Also, the usual warnings.
Most of this was written before the sort of vacation that all sensible people try to avoid. Wanted to get it finished in time to post while I was away, but failed! Now I will try again. Expect regular Tuesday schedule to return next week. Also, this post is pure text! That's what happens when I hate a chapter particularly much: I press on, and don't include any internet memes or whatever. Oh well.
Last chapter we learned a bit about Christian Grey's background, at least sex-wise: when he was a teenager, an older woman seduced him and he was her submissive and obviously that's why he enjoys dominating women now because that's how it works, right? We don't need to rehash that bit too much. Just seems that EL wants to have her cake and eat it, too--on the one hand she wants CG to be edgy and enticing, but she also establishes that his sexuality a result of an inequitable relationship when he was younger. Hence she sets up the most obvious (Editor's note: and least interesting!) arc for the trilogy: at least as far as the bedroom (or sex dungeon) is concerned, CG and Ana Steele are going to meet somewhere in the middle. Which is to say, by the end, I presume CG will still be bossing Ana around because gender roles, but they'll be married and stuff and the kinkiest thing they're likely to do is to have the occasional episode of tied-up-with-a-necktie sex. See? CG will be "cured"! Isn't that so exciting? Terribly.
But before that digression, I wanted to compare how EL offers us some background for CG but none for Ana. Granted, he still doesn't quite make sense--he's a billionaire at 27, but lives like a man twice his age. And how did he make his money? Don't know. "Business." (When I rewrite this book I'll call it alternate-universe fan fiction--What if 50 Shades were set in an alternate universe where the standard conventions of narrative applied?! And then I'll make him a tech billionaire because obviously I will.) And is he from the northwest? Probably, because his mom and bro live close, but who knows. Don't really know anything about him other than the fact that he likes people tied up when he has sex with them, probably because he got tied up in his own first sexual encounters. (EL's psychology speaking here, not mine.)
So what do we know about Ana?
Ana reads some stuff and sends some emails.
Warnings: I have lost all passion for life. Also, the usual warnings.
Most of this was written before the sort of vacation that all sensible people try to avoid. Wanted to get it finished in time to post while I was away, but failed! Now I will try again. Expect regular Tuesday schedule to return next week. Also, this post is pure text! That's what happens when I hate a chapter particularly much: I press on, and don't include any internet memes or whatever. Oh well.
Last chapter we learned a bit about Christian Grey's background, at least sex-wise: when he was a teenager, an older woman seduced him and he was her submissive and obviously that's why he enjoys dominating women now because that's how it works, right? We don't need to rehash that bit too much. Just seems that EL wants to have her cake and eat it, too--on the one hand she wants CG to be edgy and enticing, but she also establishes that his sexuality a result of an inequitable relationship when he was younger. Hence she sets up the most obvious (Editor's note: and least interesting!) arc for the trilogy: at least as far as the bedroom (or sex dungeon) is concerned, CG and Ana Steele are going to meet somewhere in the middle. Which is to say, by the end, I presume CG will still be bossing Ana around because gender roles, but they'll be married and stuff and the kinkiest thing they're likely to do is to have the occasional episode of tied-up-with-a-necktie sex. See? CG will be "cured"! Isn't that so exciting? Terribly.
But before that digression, I wanted to compare how EL offers us some background for CG but none for Ana. Granted, he still doesn't quite make sense--he's a billionaire at 27, but lives like a man twice his age. And how did he make his money? Don't know. "Business." (When I rewrite this book I'll call it alternate-universe fan fiction--What if 50 Shades were set in an alternate universe where the standard conventions of narrative applied?! And then I'll make him a tech billionaire because obviously I will.) And is he from the northwest? Probably, because his mom and bro live close, but who knows. Don't really know anything about him other than the fact that he likes people tied up when he has sex with them, probably because he got tied up in his own first sexual encounters. (EL's psychology speaking here, not mine.)
So what do we know about Ana?
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