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50 Shades Darker recap Chapter 18 or “50 Shades Greatest Hits”

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Hey. There is this nifty book out, called 50 Writers on 50 Shades of Grey. You should probably buy it, I hear there is this really sexy author/blogger who wrote an essay in there.

In other news, a lot of people have sent me links to this horrifying trend. I’m going to go on the record here and say that if I see a child wearing this, I’m going to assume that their mother only conceived as a result of wanting to play out the “Christian and Ana have a baby” fantasy (spoiler alert) and I will immediately call CPS. If those aren’t bad enough for you, check out this offering from Oh Sew Glam Boutique. If an Etsy forums moderator doesn’t wander into the comments to “wrap this up,” I’ll be fucking shocked.

What kind of pathetic weirdo would you have to be to advertise that you’re in an unhappy marriage via your child’s clothing?
If that weren’t enough A woman is divorcing her husband for basically not pretending to be Christian Grey. I joyously anticipate all the divorces we’ll soon be hearing about, where men leave their wives for putting stupid shirts on their babies. But yeah, marriage equality is totally to blame for the death of “traditional families.” Not blatant, steaming piles of selfish immaturity.
Speaking of immaturity – the good kind – Patrick Stewart narrates a shirtless guy tying up a raw chicken. It’s actually easier to wank to this than to wank to 50 Shades.

And finally, Tweep @Skole_Bone made this for me. Which is touching, because I actually used to live very near the liquor store that the original picture was taken at. I had some good times with products purchased there.
Which leads me to this: If you aren’t following me on twitter, you’re wasting your life and not using your internet time productively. I tweet all day long. I follow back. I am a tweet monster. And I will talk to pretty much anyone. The other day, I tweeted a picture of a candy bar that looked like a dick. If you weren’t following me, you missed that. Repent, and be healed.
When last we left these idiots, they were driving somewhere as a surprise:

Christian continues to drive past single-story, well-kept clapboard houses where kids play basketball in their yards or cycle and run around in the street. It all looks affluent and wholesome with the houses nestling among the trees.

Here is another area where E.L. James needed to research American culture a little bit. “Clapboard” does not signify “affluent” in the US. It makes us think of farms and New England whaling shanties or something. Neither would children playing in the street make an American immediately think, “Wow, that’s a nice neighborhood.” And we don’t play basketball in our yards. We play basketball in our driveways.

A few minutes later, Christian turns sharply left, and we’re soon confronted by two ornate white metal gates set in a six-foot-high sandstone wall.

That sounds like it fits into the described neighborhood… not at all.

We head up a tree-lined lane just wide enough for two cars. On one side the trees ring a densely wooded area, and on the other there’s a vast area of grassland where a once-cultivated field has been left fallow. Grass and wildflowers have reclaimed it, creating a rural idyll – a meadow, where the late evening breeze softly ripples through the grass and the evening sun gilds the wildflowers. It’s lovely, utterly tranquil, and suddenly I imagine myself lying in the grass and gazing up at a clear blue summer sky. The thought is tantalizing yet makes me feel homesick for some strange reason. How odd.

Oh, for Christ’s sake, we all know why it makes you feel homesick. You’re obviously about to go visit the house you’ll end up living in when you marry Christian Grey, because you’re going to say yes to his proposal no matter how long you hem and haw to draw out a longer word count. She feels homesick because she’s found her TRUE HOME and her TRUE LOVE and she’s going to be happy forever and ever lying in the grass, getting ticks all over herself. And I can say this about Ana, because she’s a fictional character, but I really, truly hope she gets Lyme disease.

But let’s focus on the description of the property. Trees “ring a  densely wooded area.” How is she differentiating the trees doing the ringing from the trees that are just, you know, densely wooded? And while her description of the fallow field being reclaimed by wildflowers is truly lovely imagery, how could Ana possibly know that it was “once-cultivated” if she’s never been there before?

The lane curves around and opens into a sweeping driveway in front of an impressive Mediterranean-style house of soft pink sandstone. It’s palatial.

So are psychiatry offices, in Ana’s estimation. So either Dr. Flynn’s office is really huge, or this house is really small.

Ana still doesn’t get what the trip is for. She must be so easy to take the vet. Christian asks her to keep an open mind, and she tells him that she’s had to have an open mind since the day she met him. Then he says, “‘Fair point well made, Miss Steele.'” and you can all take a drink, because I’m adding that to the drinking game, too.

The dark wood doors open, and a woman with dark brown hair, a sincere smile, and a sharp lilac suit stands waiting. I’m grateful I changed into my new navy shift dress to impress Dr. Flynn. Okay, I’m not wearing killer heels like her – but still, I’m not in jeans.

Nothing exudes confidence and maturity more than a woman who can’t stand not being the prettiest girl in the fucking room.

Christian shakes the woman’s hand – and he knows her name, so Ana is obviously going to hate her:

She smiles at me and holds out her hand, which I shake. Her isn’t-he-dreamily-gorgeous-wish-he-were-mine flush does not go unnoticed.

I maintain that this book is only so popular because it indulges the female fantasy of girl-on-girl competition. There is a certain, dumb subset of women who think that having a man other women want is the most important achievement one can attain. They’re driving the success of these books. And if you meet one of them, you’ll probably notice she’s as vapid and self-important as Anastasia Rose Steele. And she probably bought her baby one of those fucking stupid shirts.

“Olga Kelly,” she announces breezily.

“Ana Steele,” I mutter back at her. Who is this woman? She stands aside, welcoming us into the house.  It’s a shock when I step in. The place is empty – completely empty. We find ourselves in a large entrance hall. The walls are a faded primrose yellow with scuff marks where pictures must once have hung. All that reamins are the old-fashioned crystal light fixtures. The floors are dull hardwood. There are closed doors to either side of us, but Christian gives me no time to assimilate what’s happening.

How is she still not getting this?

They walk through the house, which is huge, so that Christian can show her the view:

The panoramic, uninterrupted vista is breathtaking – staggering even: twilight over the Sound. 

Pretty ballsy move to use that word, James. Well played.

In the distance lies Bainbridge Island, and farther still on this crystal-clear evening, the setting sun sinks slowly, glowing blood and flame orange, beyond Olympic National Park. Vermillion hues bleed into the cerulean sky, with opals and aquamarines, and meld with the darker purples of the scant wispy clouds and the land beyond the Sound.

I may have already used this in a recap, but I do not care.

Ana asks if he brought her there just to look at the view, because she has no critical thinking skills whatsoever, and then he utters what has to be the most unintentionally creepy piece of dialogue ever spoken by a fictional character, ever:

“How would you like to look at it for the rest of your life?” he breathes.

That sounds like some shit the Ice Truck Killer said to Deb before he tried to Dexter her.

What? I whip my face back to his, startled blue eyes to pensive gray.

POV skew. She can’t see her own eyes.

Christian tells Ana he’s planning to buy the house, demolish it, and build a new one there for them to live in. Ana thinks the place must be worth five or ten million dollars… way to pinpoint that estimate there, Ana. She asks him why he wants to demolish it and he says:

“I’d like to make a more sustainable home, using the latest ecological techniques. Elliot could build it.” 

Because that’s really the core of the environmental movement, isn’t it? Demolish existing things, wasting those resources, and then waste newer resources building something shinier. That’s why environmentalists are always so thrilled when one strip mall goes out of business and they put a new one up right behind it. Those signs and chants they’re doing are signs and chants of overwhelming support.

Ana finally gets that Olga Kelly (who has a full name despite that being totally unnecessary) is a realtor and not a predatory man-snatcher, and asks to look around the house.

The house is enormous: twelve-thousand square feet on six acres of land. As well as the main living room, there’s the eat-in – no, banquet-in – kitchen with family room attached – family! – a music room, a library, a study and, much to my amazement, an indoor pool and exercise suite with sauna and steam room attached. Downstairs in the basement there’s a cinema – jeez – and game room. Hmm… what sort of games could we play in here?

You could play a game I like to call “spot the run-on sentence with too goddamn many em dashes and hyphens in it.” Bring this paragraph to the table and you will clean up.

In case you were wondering how Ana is acclimating to the whole “being stupid rich” thing, I think she’s doing just fine:

It’s a little shabby now, but nothing that some TLC couldn’t cure.

Twelve thousand square feet, indoor pool, movie theatre, incredible view, shabby.

Even though the place is clearly a broken down shack on its last legs, Ana is so in love with its charms that she asks Christian if they could make the existing house “sustainable.” I think the fact that some dipshit billionaire hasn’t knocked it down already is proof that it’s still useful.

Miss Kelly leads us into the master suite, where full-height windows open onto a balcony, and the view is still spectacular. I could sit in bed and gaze out all day, watching the sailing boats and the changing weather.

There are five additional bedrooms on this floor. Kids!

I don’t think Ana has ever actually heard of children before. If she had, she would know that having kids is totally incompatible with sitting in bed all day, gazing at the weather.

We also find out that Ana hates horses, so she can’t possibly be a Mary Sue, right? Because Mary Sues love animals. So omg, stop being so mean about this fanfic E.L. James wrote. She had to write it for school, okay? And she doesn’t even care what you think, anyway.

That last part is probably true.

In the car, Christian and Ana talk about the house, and Christian says he’s going to buy it. Ana mentions putting Escala on the market, and he balks at that, saying that he can afford to keep them both. That should be your alarm bell, Ana. If your boyfriend doesn’t want to sell his apartment after moving in with you, he’s either not seriously committed or he wants a place to bang other chicks. “I’m working late, Anastasia,” he’ll tell her. “I’ll just sleep at Escala tonight. Good thing we never sold it.” And then it’s off to the playroom with the next unstable sub who’ll try to murder you. Enjoy your happy marriage.

“Anastasia, you’re going to have to learn to be rich, too, if you say yes,” he says softly.

She just called a “palatial” mansion with ocean views “shabby.” I think she’ll be fine.

Christian drives them to The Mile High Club at Columbia Tower. There is actually a real club, without a silly name, in the Columbia Tower. If you visit their website, they promise there will be a dramatic remodel in the future. Probably to make everything white sandstone and gray with ties and masks and handcuffs laying around because this book series is what is driving literally every marketing decision you will see in every singled industry on the planet for the next few years. This series is our culture now. Try to sleep tonight, knowing that. Sweet dreams.

They drink Cristal and then Christian tells Ana to go take off her panties, but on her way to the bathroom she accidentally walks into Architectural Digest:

The restrooms are the height of modern design – all dark wood, black granite, and pools of light from strategically placed halogens.

As opposed to the kind of halogens you just sort of slap up without any forethought?

I am excited already. Why does he affect me so? I slightly resent how easily I fall under his spell. I know now that we won’t be spending the evening talking through all our issues and recent events… but how can I resist him?

“I know that he’s manipulating me with sex to avoid talking about our relationship troubles, of which we have many, but tee hee, I’m not wearing panties.” No, nothing problematic at all in that statement. On the other hand, who the fuck wants to read more about them working out their issues? Not me, that’s for damn sure and certain.

My inner goddess is draped in a pink feather boa and diamonds, strutting her stuff in fuck-me shoes.

For the reminder of this recap, the part of Ana’s Inner Goddess will be played by octogenarian stripper Tempest Storm.

 Ana gets back to the table to find that Christian has ordered for her. He says he hopes she doesn’t mind, but he’s never worried about that before, has he? She probably knows by now that if she marries you, she’ll never choose her own food again. He ordered oysters for their first course, which reminds her of the Heathman hotel. Remember, the night they talked about the sex contract for the first time, and he threatened to rape her a bunch? Ah, romance.

“I think you liked oysters last time you tried them.” His voice is low, seductive.

“And if you don’t,” he continues with a shrug, “It doesn’t matter. You’ll do whatever I want because I’m rich and used to controlling women.”

“Only time I’ve tried them.” I’m all breathy, my voice exposing me.

Uh… what? Her voice exposes her? Does the updraft from speaking blow her skirt up? I’m not getting what that means.

He takes an oyster from the dish and lifts his other hand from his thigh. I flinch in anticipation, but he reach for a slice of lemon.

That’s a pretty telling verb there. She “flinches” in anticipation because he moves his hand?

He feeds her oysters and won’t touch her, and it gets her all hot and bothered:

My inner goddess is on her knees, naked except for her panties – begging.

 Wait, you’re not wearing panties, but your Inner Goddess is? How does that work? I know she usually has props and shit that are unavailable to you, but this just confuses the hell out of me. Is she wearing the panties you took off? And if so, is she more conservative than you are? I don’t even know what’s happening anymore.

The main course comes, and it’s sea bass and asparagus, and Ana freaks the fuck out over the fact that it’s sea bass. Like, has she never even heard of rich people before? Everyone knows rich people love sea bass.

Christian still won’t touch her, and he points out that at the Heathman, they had cod:

“Happy days,” he says, smirking. “This time I hope to get to fuck you.” He moves his hand to pick up his knife.

I love how if you take literally any line out of this scene, it sounds like a serial killer mystery and not a romance. I mean, obviously these books are not really romances, but for the sake of argument, you get it. I also love how he thinks of that night at the Heathman, when he threatened to rape her, when he told her basically that if he wanted to have sex with her, it was going to happen whether she wanted it or not, he thinks of it as being “‘Happy days.'”

The truth is that Arthur is a good boy, and he never threatened to rape anybody.
Ana asks Christian about the NDA, and he tells her to rip it up, because he’s going to give her the benefit of the doubt. How very romantic and trusting of him. He also tells Ana he’s not going to touch her until they get home. Then Ana eats her asparagus, and while I could excerpt the scene here, it’s easier to just post a link to the dinner scene from Flashdance. It’s like that, except with asparagus instead of lobster, and no footsie playing, because Ana knows a woman’s place.
Hey, you know what would have gotten Prince Humperdink mad hot in Flashdance? If Jennifer Beals had an eating disorder!

“Eat,” he orders. “I am not taking you home until you’ve finished your meal, and then we can really celebrate.” His expression is so heated, so raw, so commanding. I am melting.

“I’m not hungry. Not for food.”

AGAIN? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

“You really don’t eat enough. You’ve lost weight since I’ve known you.” His tone is gentle.

I don’t want to think about my weight; truth is, I like being this slim.

Remember when I said I thought it was just an unfortunate coincidence that Ana was Ana and Mia was Mia? I take that directly the fuck back. I feel skeevy for suggesting this, because I’m a big fan of not assuming that an author thinks/feels/acts a certain way based on what they write. Because trust me, I write about sex all day long, but I am the furthest thing from sexy most of the time. But I can’t help but wonder if this really isn’t a manifestation of an eating disorder the author is struggling with. Because she’s not a skilled enough writer to work “Ana has an eating disorder” into the plot this well. She’s just not. She’s clearly just hammering out clumsy sex and relationship-with-a-rich-guy fantasies here, and all this other shit, like the picture perfect abusive relationship and the eating disorder, those seem to be falling into place by accident. And it gives me a bad feeling in my tummy region.

He quizzes me about Ethan. As it turns out, Christian does business with Kate and Ethan’s father. Hmm… it’s a small world.

Almost unrealistically small, one might say.

They finish their meal and leave, and from the way the sexual tension is described throughout the scene, one can only assume they put on hip waders to get through the sheer volume of vaginal secretions flooding the place. Ana asks, “‘What now?'” and Christian answers:

“Now? We leave. I believe you have certain expectations, Miss Steele. Which I intend to fulfill to the best of my ability.”

Whoa!

“The best… of your a… bil… ity?” I stutter.

That isn’t a stutter. At least, that’s not how you write a stutter. A stutter isn’t just a bunch of pauses.

On the way out he murmurs something about the car to the maitre d’, but I’m not listening; my inner goddess is incandescent with anticipation.

I hope she is literally on fire.

Now, I hope you don’t feel cheated if I don’t excerpt this next part, which goes on for like two pages. He fingers her in the elevator when it’s full of people. Oh, and she thinks, “Oh, Christian, what you do to me,” which makes me think that the retelling of this series from Christian’s POV isn’t really going to be all that different from the original series. Then they go outside and Christian licks his fingers and tells her that she tastes “‘Mighty fine,'” because this chapter wasn’t actually written, but cobbled together from other lines in other chapters by a sophisticated software algorithm. Want proof? He calls her “Miss Steele” three times on a single page.

Ana is super hot and bothered, and she suggests they have sex in the car:

“I’ve never had sex in a car,” I mumble. Christian halts and places those same fingers under my chin, tipping my head back and glaring down at me.

“I’m very pleased to hear that. I have to say I’d be very surprised, not to say mad, if you had.”

I flush, blinking up at him. Of course; I’ve only had sex with him. I frown.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?” His tone is unexpectedly harsh.

“Christian, it was just an expression.”

“The famous expression, ‘I’ve never had sex in a car.’ Yes, it just trips off the tongue.”

You know how people used to think that if you had sex with a woman, she would just mindlessly run around fucking everything in sight if you didn’t prevent that from happening? Like, we’re all robots on the verge of malfunction, and if you broke the factory seal, it’s up to you to stop us from fucking everything to death? I’m so glad to see that attitude making a comeback.

Ana distracts him from her alleged infidelities by asking him to take her home and fuck her. He mentions that he didn’t want to fuck her in a restroom, which is hilarious, because he totally does in the first book. Remember, the hotel room? Where he pulls her tampon out and flushes it before they have sex? But he won’t have sex with her in a public restroom, because he has class.

They get back to Escala, where Ana is still amped up for the lovin’:

With wanton anticipation, I glance at him, trying to contain my palpitating heart.

I feel like she’s just pulling words out of a hat at this point. How often can “wanton” be used in a book that isn’t a historical romance, I ask you?

It’s like he’s addressing me below the waist… my inner goddess performs four arabesques and a pas de basque.

Then in the elevator, this happens:

He grabs the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling gently so my head tips back.

“What can I do to make you say yes?” he ask fervently, throwing me off balance once more.

That’s right. This whole, amazing night? It was just Christian trying to buy Ana’s acceptance of his proposal. And he for real does not understand why she won’t just marry him already.

Then they have sex on the table in the foyer.

Later, they’re in bed, and they have to have the requisite romance novel “Our sex is better than the sex everyone else is having, neener neener,” conversation:

“Is sex like this for everyone? I’m surprised anyone ever goes out,” I murmur, feeling suddenly shy.

He grins. “I can’t speak for everyone, but it’s pretty damned special with you, Anastasia.” He bends and kisses me.

“That’s because you’re pretty damned special, Mr. Grey,” I agree, smiling and caressing his face.

There. Everybody is special. Everybody gets a trophy, just for participating.

 He nuzzles my hair, and I drift into sleep, safe in his arms, dreaming of sunsets and French doors and wide staircases… and a small copper-haired boy running through a meadow, laughing and giggling as I chase him.

She’s going to get pregnant. Spoiler alert, in case you haven’t read Breaking Dawn, but AnaBella is going to get pregnant.

Christian leaves early the next morning for a breakfast meeting, and Ana gets an idea for another birthday present for him while he’s in the shower. Because billionaires need the most birthday presents or something.

In the walk-in closet, I put on a dark red fitted dress with a square neckline, cut quite low. Yes, this will do for work.

Nothing says professional like, “Check it, yo, my tits are hanging out.”

Now for Christian’s present. I start rummaging through his drawers, looking for his ties. In the bottom drawer I find those faded, ripped jeans, the ones he wears in the playroom – the ones he looks so hot in. I stroke them gently, using my whole hand. Oh my, the material is so soft.

Beneath them, I find a large, black, flat cardboard box. It piques my interest immediately. What’s in here? I stare at it, feeling like I’m trespassing again.

Remember when she compared her life to the story of Bluebeard before? I’m loling so hard right now.

Instead of severed heads, she finds pictures Christian took of his exes in the Red Room. And she actually takes it pretty okay, rationalizing that they were taken before they were together. Still, it bothers her that he kept them, and I have to be honest, that would bug the fuck out of me, too. She asks Mrs. Robinson for the keys to the playroom, but never lets us in on what she’s planning to do in there. So, I guess that’s another subplot to add to the total. The mystery of what Ana is giving Christian for his birthday.

At work, Ana wonders if she should tell Christian she found the photos, and then she decides not to. Which is a wise choice, I think. They email back and forth, until she says the wrong thing and he gets mad and stops responding to her. So, basically, every email exchange they’ve ever had. At around four, Ana realizes that Christian still hasn’t emailed her back, and since he never goes a full hour without pestering her via some form of modern communication, she’s getting a little worried.

My phone rings unexpectedly and my heart jumps. Christian! But no – it’s Kate, my best friend, finally!

This is the only time she will ever be happy to hear from Kate. They talk a little and Ana invites Kate to go out for drinks with her and Jose. Oh yeah, I forgot that was happening.

Wow. Kate is home. How am I going to tell her all that has happened? I should write it down so I don’t forget anything.

What if she doesn’t care that much, Ana? What if she’s just as bored by your relationship as I am? What happens then?

Jose arrives in reception, and Claire just has to comment on him:

“You should see the guy asking for you in Reception. How come you know all these hot guys, Ana?”

Because she’s a Mary Sue, and they get to keep all the hotties. Every last one of them.

Jose and Ana go out for drinks, where he asks her about her relationship. Because it’s super realistic that all her friends only care about her relationship, and not her job or the rest of her life or anything.

“He’s not too old for you?”

What? He’s twenty-seven. She’s twenty-one or twenty-two, right? That’s not an age gap. What is up with the weird ideas about age in this book?

Kate and Ethan arrive:

I turn and there’s Kate with Ethan. She looks gorgeous: bleached strawberry-blonde hair, golden tan, and beaming white smile, and so shapely in her white camisole and tight white jeans. All eyes are on Kate. I leap up from my seat to give her a hug. Oh, how I’ve missed this woman.

If she were in Seattle, you wouldn’t have seen her, anyway. You’ve been spending every single non-work moment with Chedward.

Since we just heard how great Kate looks, we must now hear how skinny Ana looks, because otherwise Kate just keeps on being the prettiest, and what kind of world is that to live in, I ask you?

“You’ve lost weight. A lot of weight. And you look different. Grown-up. What’s ben going on?” she says, all mother hen. “I like your dress. Suits you.”

“A lot’s happened since you went away. I’ll tell you later, when we’re on our own.” I am not ready for the Katherine Kavanagh Inquisition just yet. She regards me suspiciously.

For like, a second, Ana liked Kate, and now it’s back to, “OMG THE KATHERINE KAVANAGH INQUISITION WHEN WILL I GET A MOMENT’S PEACE OR PRIVACY?” Which is hilarious, because wasn’t Ana going to write a detailed list of shit she wanted to tell her?

Then Ana goes to the bathroom, and when she comes back, this happens:

“Ana.” Elliot’s voice is clipped and quiet, and my scalp prickles ominously.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Christian. He’s not back from Portland.”

 “What? What do you mean?”

“His helicopter has gone missing.”

Charlie Tango?” I whisper as all the breath leaves my body. “No!”

 This is me right now, dear reader. This is me. 

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To thoroughly enjoy the following tale of horror, you’re going to have to ignore the fact that my house was a disaster when I took these pictures. You will see dust. You will see clutter. But you’ll also see the very face of evil in this world. So, you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and then you’ll have –

OH MY FUCKING GOD WHAT IS THIS?

My grandmother will routinely find stuff at yard sales or Goodwill and then bring it home and gift my children with these finds. Which I’m usually cool with. But I came home from my conference last weekend to find these soulless hell beasts staring at me from my dining room table. Which had a bunch of dishes on it because, you know, I was at conference and I’m the only person in the house capable of putting dishes in the fucking sink. That was the least of my troubles when I saw this, though. I thought my husband was pulling a cruel prank on me.
I got myself some dinner, then came out of the kitchen to find them doing this:

Just about the only thing creepier than a resin sculpture of innocent-looking children with vacant, vaguely hopeful expressions is the same thing, but staring at the wall like this is the end of the goddamned Blair Witch Project. Since I am easily startled, this got quite a reaction out of me.
And yes, this time, it was my husband playing a creepy, awful trick on me.
Later, as I sat in my office, reflecting over the good times I’d had that weekend, my daughter – who is completely enamored of this horrible sculpture, comes in and says, “My children want paper. My children want to color.” I’m like, “Your children?” and then I look out my office door and, through the smudges on the glass, I see this:

They were staring right in at me. I swear, I heard some spectral voice going, “La la la la la-la,” or something, it was that spooky.
Daughter now carries these around everywhere and refers to them as “her children,” in what has to be the most unsettling little girl from a horror movie voice ever.
I live with these things now, guys. They are a part of my life now.
If you never hear from me again, it’s because they have dragged me with them into the jaws of the abyss.

Beautiful Bastard, 50 Shades, and the difference between fanfic and retellings, inspiration and plagiarism

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As you may have already learned, another book with its beginnings as a Twilight fanfic has been picked up by a major publisher. The Hollywood Reporter writes:

The Office, which reimagined the Edward Cullen-Bella Swan relationship as a steamy love/hate romance between a boss and his assistant, was one of the pioneers of the Twilight fanfic genre, generating more than two million downloads, before being taken offline by the author in 2009.
Beautiful Bastard, a reworked version of The Office written byChristina Hobbs and Lauren Billings under the pen nameChristina Lauren, is scheduled for publication on Feb. 12, 2013. A sequel, Beautiful Stranger, will be released on May 28, 2013.
Simon & Schuster’s Gallery imprint bought the rights to the story in a pre-emptive situation for what insiders describe as a “substantial” advance.

As you might have guessed, a lot of people are pissed as hell. I was one of them. After all, this is what, the second, third time a publisher has thrown a huge amount of money at a ficcer for rights to publish what the author doesn’t really own? Angry tweets, many of them my own, flooded my twitter stream. As the conversations went on, I noticed that there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding what fanfic is, why it’s wrong to publish it, and also what makes Beautiful Bastard different from 50 Shades. And it was during this conversation that I reverted to a neutral stance on the topic of Beautiful Bastard and the circumstances surrounding its publishing.

The way I look at it, 50 Shades of Grey is plagiarism. Not because it started out as fanfic, but because it’s so maddeningly close to its source material without acknowledging it. If you’ve been reading my recaps, you know that major plot points, scenes, and characters from Twilight are just barely disguised by E.L. James, right down the cars the characters drive. Yes, she removed the vampire element of the story and replaced it with wealth and child abuse. Yes, she ramped up the obsessive characteristics of Edward and the neediness of Bella. At the end of the day, though, 50 Shades is still Twilight, and while its publisher and its author seem comfortable with their delusion that 50 Shades and its fanfic origin, Master of The Universe are totally different properties, Dear Author has thoroughly debunked that claim.

This is apparently not the case with The Office, a former Twilight fanfic that served as the proving ground for Beautiful Bastard. Insiders not involved with the book’s publication have vouched for it, and cited massive revisions. Not the company that purchased it, not the authors themselves, but other industry professionals who have more to lose if they’re seen championing a book that might be plagiarized. Right now, that’s enough for me to put a hold on condemning it.

Let me be clear, though, that we’re talking about what I would consider the ethical side of plagiarism, and not copyright law. I’m not talking about what is “legal” but what is “right.” Those are two different concepts.

If you’re writing a story and you’re like, “Man, I love Harry Potter so much, I’m going to write my own wizard stories,” but you’re not directly copying Harry Potter, then you’re talking about inspiration. Like how M*A*S*H inspired China Beach. If you’re writing a story and you’re like, “Man, I love Harry Potter so much, I’m going to write a story where he’s not a wizard, he’s just a kid going to school, and he’s going to meet his two best friends, a poor kid and a smart girl, and they’re going to have adventures running from a serial killer named Valdemark,” then I’m sorry, you’re straight up thieving. You’re not taking inspiration from someone else and making the story your own. And that’s what 50 Shades of Grey is. We’re talking about a woman who has taken the entire story of the Twilight series and rewritten it so instead of running from vampires, Bella is running from sexual predators. Instead of struggling to balance his humanity and his dark urge to kill, Edward is struggling to balance his humanity and his dark urge to engage in sexual deviance. It’s the same story. It’s a rip-off.

But isn’t 50 Shades of Grey just a re-imagining, or a homage, to Twilight? What’s wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing is wrong with re-imaginings or homages. I wrote re-imagined fairy tales as Abigail Barnette. I wrote American Vampire, which is a love letter to Stephen King, from the name of the monster to the small town setting, to the unlikeable narrator. I love Pride and Prejudice sequels, and new Sherlock Holmes stories. But when I wrote American Vampire, I made up the story myself. I made up the characters myself. I made all of that stuff up by myself, and I added little touches here and there to let readers know that I was referencing King’s work. When someone writes a Pride and Prejudice sequel, they use the backstory and the characters and the setting of Austen’s work, but they write their own story. When Clueless premiered, everyone know it was Emma, and the creator acknowledged that. All E.L. James did with 50 Shades of Grey is rewrite Twilight, without vampires, and then claim it wasn’t at all like Twilight. She and her publisher both claimed that 50 Shades wasn’t even similar to the original fanfic it came from, which is a clear and outright lie. The similarities between the two are staggering, and a reader would become suspicious even if they didn’t know it was a Twilight fanfic to begin with.

Here’s another important point to consider: when someone writes a Jane Austen sequel or re-imagines a fairy tale, they aren’t impacting a living writer, who is still making money from and exerting ownership over their intellectual property. Jane Austen is never going to write a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t give a shit at this point if someone else does. No one is dependent upon the success of her novels to feed their family, and no one even exists who has a claim of ownership over them, anyway. Her novels belong to the world now. Not so much with Twilight.

If I were to write a book called Pride and Prejudice in The West and just set the original novel’s plot in a steampunk western setting, it would be awesome. So long as I acknowledged the source material and the original author, no big deal. But if I wrote that same book, but I changed Mr. Darcy to Mr. Marcy and Elizabeth Bennett to Anastasia Rose Steele, then claimed the story was entirely my own, brand new creation entirely separate from the Pride and Prejudice fanfic I’d written a year earlier, but I didn’t change anything, then I’m a rip-off artist.

People in the know, who have read the fic The Office, that Beautiful Bastard started out as, have asserted that story is not similar to Twilight and would need only very minor changes to make it an original piece of fiction. The authors claim they’ve changed 80%. Maybe the characters will retain some similarities to the characters in Twilight, in the same way that Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’s Diary is clearly inspired by Jane Austen’s Darcy. As long as the rest of the plot is different from Twilight, then I don’t see much of a problem with Bella and Edward being the inspiration for those characters.

When Beautiful Bastard releases, I’ll have no problem buying a copy. I want to see how much of it is similar to the original fanfic. I want to see how much of it is similar to Twilight. From what I’ve heard through the grapevine, not much will be. And if it turns out that everyone is wrong, and the book is just as big a Twilight rip-off as 50 Shades of Grey is, then I’ll be wrong. And it won’t be the first time, and we’ll all survive.

Does it bother me that pull to publish is becoming a real thing? Absolutely. Fanfic was one of the last secret nerd refuges unchallenged by the mainstream, and now it’s becoming the mainstream. That makes me incredibly sad. And it makes me incredibly sad when I received a landslide of despairing tweets and emails yesterday from aspiring authors who feel like giving up on their original creations because New York publishing is only interested in fanfic. If you are one of those authors, I say unto you: Don’t stop. Don’t give up. Because readers are going to get tired of this trend, like readers get tired of every trend. Remember 2008? When you were so tired of sexy vampires? It’s going to be like that.

Someone also asked me yesterday if I would consider selling my fanfic, should the opportunity arise. This is a tricky question, because the overwhelming majority of my fanfic is written in the Les Miserables fandom. If I were approached by a publisher saying, “We really like what you did with Inspector Javert here, can we publish this,” I would say, “No. But you can publish something else I’ll write about Javert.” Because I don’t see anything ethically wrong with using an iconic character from a non-copyrighted work to build my own stories around, so long as I’m acknowledging that I didn’t come up with the character myself. In fact, I’m currently working on a project that involves not only Shakespearean characters (which he stole shamelessly and without attribution, himself), but also figures from Norse mythology. I’m not going to try and convince anyone I’ve made those characters up on my own. I’m not going to write Romeo and Juliet as a fanfic, then change their names to Chedward and Annabella and say, “This is my own vision, entirely, because I changed their names.” That would go against my personal moral code. But if someone came to me and said, “I really like your Predator fanfic, we want you to change the names owned by the Predator franchise and thinly disguise the world building so we can sell it and put your name on it without legal repercussions,” then the answer is no. Not for all the money in Duckburg.

I think, more than anything, what I found so incredibly offensive about this article is the part where they said:

Twilight fanfic is  considered the most creative and prolific area of fanfic, with popular stories recasting the relationship in new settings and often dropping the vampire element completely.

Considered “the most creative and prolific area of fanfic?” REALLY? By who? People who have never heard of Star Trek? Pfffffffffffffffffff. Whatever.

So, I’m officially putting away my pitchfork and dousing my torch on the subject of Beautiful Bastard, until it releases and we all get a look at it. I apologize to everyone involved on the project for my knee-jerk reaction yesterday.

Vote.

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Four years ago, I wrapped my three day old daughter up like a little burrito and carried her with me to the polls, so I could cast my ballot. Today, four years later, I took her again:

If you are an American citizen and you are eligible and registered to vote, I strongly urge you to get out there and do it. I don’t see why you wouldn’t, but the American people are as mercurial as Christian Grey’s moods when it comes to voting. Get out there and exercise your right to vote!

50 Shades Darker recap Chapter Seventeen or “The one about the car”

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In 50 Shades news:

A couple weeks ago, this bullshit happened.

And J.K. Rowling sounds like a total asshole these days.  Hey, Jo? No one thought you were writing erotica. We’re not fucking stupid. I don’t know what I find more offensive, the fact that she believes real, grown up literature can only include sex if the participants don’t enjoy it, or that she goes on and on about how adults shouldn’t censor children’s access to literature, then tells an anecdote about trying to warn an audience about how very grown up and not for children her literature is. But since she takes some jabs at 50 Shades of Grey, I thought it was pertinent. Reader has since told me that they were an eyewitness at the event in question, and Jo was no where near as assholey as that story made her look.

Now, the recap.

I want to state for the record that these chapters are too goddamned long. Twenty-eight trade-sized pages with fairly small spacing and font is too, too much. Especially when each chapter could easily be broken into three separate chapters. I’ve yet to read a chapter in this book that couldn’t be divided up somehow. For those of you studying up for NaNoWriMo, here’s a tip: readers tend to like shorter chapters. They make the book seem like it’s moving faster.*

*All my tips apply only to genre fiction. Because that’s my area of expertise. I’m not going to write the great American novel.

Once again, we start a chapter with Ana waking up. Look, I understand the lure of the go to sleep chapter ending/wake up chapter beginning. I do it. A lot of writers do it. It’s an easy trap to fall into. But why so damn many? Christian and Ana wake up together and start getting sexy:

My hips begin to sway to the rhythm of the dance his fingers have begun. He kisses me chastely on the lips and the moves down my neck, nipping slowly, kissing, and sucking as he goes.

Word usage ding! The “dance his fingers have begun” is below the waist, if you catch my drift. So… how is it possible to “chastely” kiss someone while you’re manually pleasuring them? Since chaste implies a definite lack of sexual connotation? And your boyfriend’s fingers on your hooey usually implies a definite sexual connotation?

Christian sticks a finger in her, and then woos her with the highest flattery ever paid a woman, fictional or otherwise:

“Oh, Ana,” he murmurs reverentially against my throat. “You’re always ready.”

Leaving aside the cultural connotations this has, i.e. insinuation that she is a whore, because women are expected to never enjoy, only endure, sexuality, it’s still a weird thing to say. “My, but your vagina is constantly moist,” is an observation Chedward can’t exactly make from a scientific standpoint, as his only interaction with the aforementioned vagina is during sexual contact, when of course it’s going to be somewhat receptive.

Christian gets out a condom and mentions again how much hates using them, and in doing so informs us that Saturday is the last day he’ll have to use them. You know a book is exciting when one of the major subplots is the method of birth control the protagonists prefer.

There is a section break, and Ana and Christian are having breakfast. Christian suggests that he take Ana shopping for more clothes:

I hate shopping. But with Christian, maybe it won’t be so bad.

I love this line of reasoning, because it requires Ana to ignore literally every other experience she’s had with Christian thus far in order to think what she’s thinking. This man is like King Midas, but if instead of gold, everything he touches turns to crying. He tried to take her for a haircut and wound up introducing her to his molester. He tried to take her out for a fancy fundraiser, and when they got back her car had been vandalized. There is nothing you can do with Chedward that won’t turn into tragedy. I bet they’ll go shopping, and he’ll somehow wind up in the fetal position on the dressing room floor.

Ana wonders aloud what will happen at work, what with Jack being unrealistically fired the night before:

“I hope they take a woman on as my new boss.”

“Why?”

“Well, you’re less likely to object to me going away with her,” I tease him.

No, because all men are thrilled at the idea of their girlfriend cheating on them with another woman. I mean, after all, lesbian sex isn’t real sex. How could it be, if it doesn’t involve a penis? So it wouldn’t be cheating, and most importantly, it would fulfill a male sexual fantasy (which is the only point of lesbian sex in the first place). I’m so glad we come from such an enlightened time, so that we recognize the absolute truth of this.

Okay, maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe Ana just meant that Christian wouldn’t object to her going away with a woman because women are weak and one of them could never force Ana into sex. At least not physically. And since Ana is straight, she wouldn’t be tempted the way she probably was a little bit with Jack, who she would have been helpless to fuck the moment the landing gear went up on that plane to New York.

Okay, maybe I’m still overreacting. Maybe it’s just extremely clumsy foreshadowing of the tremendously unbelievable turn this chapter takes in a few pages.

Presumably because buying a car and not driving it is dumb and Chedward realizes that, he’s generously allowing Ana to drive her new… what the fuck kind of car was it? A Saab? A Fiat? A Porsche? The fact that I can’t remember the cars in this book is a cause for concern, because I love cars. And I swear to God, if these books ruin cars for me the way they’ve ruined sex for me, there will be vengeance. Or at least a lot of petty swearing and kicking things.

I clap my hands, start the car, and the engine purs to life. Putting the gearshift into drive, I ease my foot off the brake and the Saab moves smoothly forward. Taylor starts up the Audi behind us and once the garage barrier lifts, follows us out of Escala onto the street.

We’ve learned two things from this paragraph. 1) That it’s a Saab, I was right the first time, and 2) how to drive a fucking car. Seriously, is that level of detail required? Why not just, “With Taylor following us, we pull out of the parking garage?” Is she being paid by the word, like Dickens? These are actions people perform all the time, they don’t think about them step by step. Imagine your morning. If you drove a car, did you start the car, the engine purred to life, putting the gearshift into drive did you ease your foot off the brake and move smoothly forward? Or did you start the car and drive away? Did you brush your teeth, or, with sleep stiffened fingers did you roll the toothpaste tube, squeezing a last precious dollop of breath-saving gel onto the pre-wetted bristles of your tooth brush? Then with slow, aching caution, did you lift the brush to your mouth and painstakingly cleanse each tooth in turn? No. You fucking brushed your teeth, and you likely thought, “I’m brushing my teeth.”

It’s not that detail in prose is bad. Detail in prose is necessary. But somehow, E.L. James has gotten it all backward. She has no trouble describing the most mundane actions in detail, especially actions that come automatically to most people, and which most readers would rather gloss over in favor of moving the plot forward or getting to some dialogue or inner conflict. I would trade all those words about driving out of the parking lot for a single physical description of a character (who isn’t Christian Grey) that isn’t just, “She was [age] with [color] hair.”

Meanwhile, back in the Saab:

“Can we have the radio on?” I ask as we wait at the first stop sign.

“I want you to concentrate,” he says sharply.

Because he is my mother, riding in the car with me in the summer of 1996? Seriously, didn’t Ana have a car that she drove all by herself before? The fact that Christian doesn’t trust her as a driver really makes the whole “I want to buy you a car,” thing a lot creepier, doesn’t it? He sold the car she owned outright, and bought her this one. She already feels like she has to ask for permission to drive it, so in effect, Ana has no car. She’s now hobbled, at the mercy of whether or not Christian wants her to drive anywhere or not.

Christian turns on the radio, and the song that’s on is “King of Pain” by The Police, so Ana makes a joke about it being his theme song. Which would make total sense if Sting was singing about being the king of physical pain, but he was singing about emotional pain. And Christian can’t be the king of emotional pain, because I am. Because I am reading this book, I am a butterfly in a spiderweb. I am the dead salmon frozen in a waterfall. And the little black spot on the sun is this book.

I didn’t know how to wrap this up, so have a Feyd Rautha.

Ana thinks about how she should call Ethan today, because she won’t have much to do at work. Ana, you didn’t do much at work yesterday, either.

Anxiety blooms in my stomach. What will happen when I get to the office? Will everyone know about Jack? Will everyone know of Christian’s involvement? Will I still have a job? Sheesh, if I have no job, what will I do?

You’ll be just like every other recent college graduate with a BA in English?

Marry the gazillionaire, Ana! My subconscious has her snarky face on. I ignore her – rapacious bitch.

I like how her subconscious always says what we’re all thinking. But in this case, it doesn’t make sense. It’s actually out of character for her subconscious to be “rapacious” (there’s that word-a-day calendar rearing its ugly head again), because it’s her subconscious who continually rejects the notion of Christian buying Ana anything. Wasn’t it the subconscious who repeatedly called Ana a “ho” in the first book?

Christian scolds Ana for her distracted driving, and then Ana says all sorts of Freudian stuff I don’t even want to touch:

Oh, for heaven’s sake –  and suddenly I’m catapulted back in time to when Ray was teaching me to drive. I don’t need another father. A husband maybe, a kinky husband. Hmm.

Christian assures Ana that everything is going to be fine at work, but stops just short of saying, “Because you’re fucking the guy who owns the company,” because he wants her to think she has some control over her own life still. Some fillies shy from the bridle, you dig? Still, Ana knows what’s up:

“Please don’t interfere – I want to do this on my own. Christian, please. It’s important to me,” I say as gently as I can.

Unfortunately, all Christian probably hears is, “Please… interfere… Christian, please. It’s important to me.”

They start to get into a little argument, which Ana heads off by telling him that last night was “Heaven.” I’m assuming she means the impossible spreader bar tricks and not the violent confrontation with her boss.

They get to Ana’s work, where Christian will leave the car with Ana and have Taylor drive him the rest of the way. For a guy who supposedly cares about the environment and sustainability and shit, he plays pretty fast and loose with the fossil fuel. Why didn’t Ana just drop Christian off at work, then drive to her job? Or, if it’s out of the way, why didn’t Ana just drive to work by herself?

Oh, because if he’d done that, he wouldn’t be able to add extra anxiety to her day. He mentions that they’ll be going to see Dr. Flynn together that evening, and then decides that since Ana’s focus has shifted somewhat from him to her job worries, he needs to make himself the center of her universe again, by having an insecure moment in the fucking parking lot:

“What are you worried about?” I ask, my voice soft and soothing.

“That you’ll go.”

“Christian, how many times do I have to tell you – I’m not going anywhere. You’ve already told me the worst. I’m not leaving you.”

“Then why haven’t you answered me?”

“Hey, girl. I know you have a lot on your mind with your boss attacking you and then getting fired, and today isn’t really the time for this, but I just wanted to let you know that the fact you haven’t agreed to marry me after we’ve been dating for a month is something I’m holding against you, bitterly. Have a great day, here’s your lunch.”

“Hey, girl. I would never do that to you. So I can never reasonably be cast in this movie.”

I sigh. “I want to know that I’m enough for you, Christian. That’s all.”

“And you won’t take my word for it?” he says, exasperated, releasing me.

Just like you won’t take her word that she won’t leave you. Instead, you follow her to and from work, restrict her access to transportation, insist on buying her clothes and keeping her on an electronic leash, balk if she interacts with other men even on a professional level, and emotionally manipulate her when there isn’t fucking time, like when she’s trying to get to work. So, her inability to accept your proposal seems kind of small in comparison.

Ana goes on about how he might some day want someone more like the other subs, and Christian tells her he knows plenty of women like that, but he wants her. Then Ana starts actively arguing for Christian to give those other women a chance. But they decide that it’s better to wait and talk about this with Dr. Flynn.

Ana gets to her desk and finds a note, saying to go to Elizabeth’s office. Now, for those who don’t remember, Elizabeth was the woman who didn’t want to hire Ana, due to lack of experience. This is about to be an important detail.

My heart leaps into my mouth. Oh, this is it. I’m going to get fired.

First of all, you’re not going to get fired, because you’re a Mary Sue, and nothing bad ever happens to a Mary Sue, unless it’s romantically tragic. Being fired less than a month into a job isn’t romantically tragic, so you’ve got a better chance of birthing a vampire baby via teeth caesarean than you do getting fired. That’s something that would befall a non-special, non-Mary Sue character, like awful Kate.

Ana goes to Elizabeth’s office, where Elizabeth tells her the “sad” news of Jack’s departure. And then, like a Japanese commuter train, the plot implausibility shows up right on time:

“His rather hasty departure has left a vacancy, and we’d like you to fill it for now, until we find a replacement.”

What? I feel the blood rush from my head. Me?

 “But I’ve only been here for a week or so.”

“Yes, Anastasia, I understand, but Jack was always a champion of your abilities. He had high hopes for you.”

But Elizabeth, Jack doesn’t work there anymore. And you didn’t want to hire Ana in the first place. So why the change of heart? Oh, right, so the reader will know how special and bright Ana is, that she can breeze into a publishing company as a secretary and be made an editor within a week.

“Please, I know this is sudden, but you’ve already made contact with Jack’s key authors. Your chapter notes haven’t gone unnoticed by the other editors. You have a shrewd mind, Anastasia. We all think you can do it.”

So, the entire company thinks Ana is smart, and they’re all rooting for her to be promoted?

“Okay.” This is unreal.

No shit. In fact, “Okay, this is unreal,” is exactly what I said when I was reading the chapter for the first time. Let’s look at the rationale behind promoting Ana:

  1. She made good chapter notes. I’m sure she did, on those four manuscripts she read. But you know what? That’s not basis enough to move her from secretary to editor after a fucking week on the job.
  2. She’s made contact with Jack’s authors. First, no she didn’t, she mailed out a letter Jack wrote. Second, publishing houses don’t care about whether or not an editor has spoke to an author before. When I was writing for Harlequin, my editor changed three times, and two of those were before my first book even came out. I was picked up by one editor, then she left and I went to a new editor, who I spoke to a grand total of twice before she left. I got another editor, and after she left, I went to the next one. When her assistant was made an editor (after more than a week on the job, I’ll tell you that for nothing), she “gave” me to him, because he’d worked on my books as her assistant. But never once, in all of that, did anyone say to me, “You’re getting this editor because you’ve already talked to them and your comfort is our number one concern.” With the exception of the last switch, I had never met any of the new editors before they called and said, “Hey there, I’m your new editor.”
What I find so infuriating about this is that it’s totally unbelievable to the point of being comical, all because E.L. needed to find something to do with Ana. I’m not saying that assistants never get promoted to editor, because that does happen, all the time. And I’m not saying that assistants turned editor never end up working with authors previously edited by their former boss. I know that happens. It happened with the case of my last Harlequin editor. But it doesn’t happen after just a week on the job.
Full disclosure time once again: I worked (briefly) as an editor for a small publishing house. When I left, even after giving notice, they didn’t replace me with a new editor right off the bat. They just divided up my workload between all the remaining editors. This is what should be happening at SIP. Or, they could promote someone who hasn’t been there for a fucking week. Either way, Ana should remain in her old job, albeit as an assistant to someone else or just a general office assistant. Or if they really wanted to promote her, maybe she could apply her brilliant insights to the slush pile. Just a thought.
Call me crazy, but doesn’t it seem like the only way this would happen is if you were fucking the guy who owns the company?
Ana not only gets Jack’s job, but she gets his office, too, and a hearty handshake from Elizabeth, who then has some kind of PTSD episode:

“I’m glad he’s gone,” she whispers, and a haunted look crosses her face. Holy shit. What did he do to her?

Wait, I thought Elizabeth was his boss, or at least someone with equal power to his in the company, if he had to fight with her to hire Ana. He sexually victimized Elizabeth, and nothing was done about it? Even if she didn’t report it, there had to be other people he was treating like this. Did they never report it, either? I find that unlikely, especially since Christian knew that Jack was a predator from the very beginning. It seems like “Jack is pretty rapey” was an open secret in the company. People knew this guy was a sexual predator, and they continued to let him have power over young women? Run from this workplace, Ana. Run. It is a toxic environment.

Ana calls Christian to tell him that she got Jack’s old job. He insists he had nothing to do with it, but Ana doesn’t quite believe him, for some reason:

“Hmm. Are you sure you had nothing to do with this?”

He is silent for a minute, and then he says in a low menacing voice, “Do you doubt me? It angers me that you do.”

Now, you and I both know that what Christian is doing is deflecting her from the actual question. He knows he had something to do with her promotion, you and I both know he did, but if he distracts Ana, he doesn’t have to outright lie to her. Predictably, Ana falls for this:

I swallow. Boy, he gets mad so easily. “I’m sorry,” I breathe, chastened.

She apologizes to him for asking if he was the reason she got a totally unbelievable promotion, after  he has openly, proudly admitted that he will never stop fucking with her career. Because that is what happens in these books.

Christian is still angry when he reminds her to use her BlackBerry, but he tells her she can call him if she needs anything.

Oh, he’s so mercurial… his mood swings are like a metronome set at presto.

That’s a weird mixed metaphor. Mercurial is, in itself, a metaphor, meaning caused by or containing the element Mercury, or having to do with the planet or mythological God. What that has to do with piano lessons, I will never know.

Ana goes to her new office and starts getting ahead of herself right off the bat:

I have the five manuscripts he was championing, plus two more, which should really be considered for publication.

You’ve been graduated from college a whole two weeks or something, and you know from publishable.

Ana is so busy thinking about how easy the job is, she forgets all about her lunch date with Mia. On top of that, Ethan shows up at her office again. Of course, he’s there to check on Ana, to make sure Christian isn’t mistreating her, because Ana emits a pheromone that makes all men want to help her. Ethan wants to take Ana to lunch (because if you are a man between the ages of 20 and 50 and you exist in this book, wanting to fuck Ana is mandatory), but she has other plans:

“I’m supposed to be having lunch with Christian and Elliot’s sister – but I can’t get ahold of her, and this meeting’s just been sprung on me. Please will you take her for lunch? Please?”

“Aw, Ana! I don’t want to babysit some brat.”

“Please, Ethan.” I give him the biggest-bluest-longest-eyelashed look that I can manage. He rolls his eyes and I know I’ve got him.

“You’ll cook me something?” he mutters.

That’s kind of a weird leap. Aren’t you about to go have lunch?

So, Mia shows up looking super hot, and of course Ethan immediately falls for her:

“The brat?” he whispers, gaping at her.

“Yes, the brat the needs babysitting,” I whisper back. “Hi, Mia.” I give her a quick hug as she stares rather blatantly at Ethan.

Ethan can “gape” at Mia, but if Mia likes the looks of Ethan, it’s “blatant” and carries a negative connotation. Because women who are not Ana are whores, is the theme of this book. If you hadn’t already picked up on that.

So, Jasper and Alice head off to lunch and their happily ever after, which Ana will probably criticize, and Ana wonders about the consequences of pairing them up:

I wonder what Christian’s attitude is about his sister dating. The thought makes me uneasy. She’s my age, so he can’t object, can he?

No, he can’t object. His father is still living, so technically it’s his father’s place to object to Mia dating anyone, as he still owns Mia as a piece of property until he dies and passes her keeping along to his heir. Really, if Mia manages to land a suitable husband before then, someone with an income of a thousand or more pounds per year, then there’s really nothing for Christian to complain about. Ethan is an attractive young man from a wealthy family, and although she would be “marrying down” from a societal standpoint, Mia’s scandalous behavior is such that she couldn’t really have hoped to snare a bachelor from her own circle.

I’m sorry, I slipped in the shower, hit my head, and woke up thinking we were in the 19th century. Where was I?

Christian has sent Ana some flowers, and they email back and forth about stupid bullshit no one cares about until it’s time for Ana to go home. She stops to buy him a birthday present real quick at the tourist shop near her office, but we don’t get to know what it is, yet. I guess this is another subplot: what did Ana get Christian for his birthday? The sub, subplot is, “How very little does Jen care?”

You will need this, dear reader.

Many times in this book, I have found occurrences in which the tension and drama is disproportionate to the action in the scene, to the point that one might select the word “over-wrought” to describe it. Just as a for example, when Ana and Christian leave to go to Dr. Flynn’s office, this exchange happens:

“Here.” I pull the small black gift box from my purse. “This is for you for your birthday. I wanted to give it to you now – but only if you promise not to open it until Saturday, okay?”

He blinks at me in surprise and swallows. “Okay,” he murmurs cautiously.

Taking a deep breath, I hand it to him, ignoring his bemused expression.

What’s in the box? A human head? The Ebola virus? Why are we being so damn dramatic about a gift you picked up last minute when you were leaving work? What’s he going to do if he doesn’t like it?

I have a feeling this guy knows what’s going to happen.

They arrive at Dr. Flynn’s office, which is apparently “palatial” by Ana’s standards for psychiatric facilities, but her red flags go up when they meet the receptionist.

She greets Christian warmly, a little too warmly for my taste – she’s old enough to be his mother – and he knows her name.

Look, it’s not like Ana is a jealous person. She just doesn’t want Chedward to speak in a familiar way with people he sees often, if the person in question is a female. That’s not jealousy, not at all.

Have you been wondering what Dr. Flynn’s office looks like? You’re in luck, because Ana is going to give you the most confusing descriptions ever:

The room is understated: pale green with two dark green couches facing two leather winged chairs, and it has the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s club.

This is after she mentions that the office is “palatial,” so one must assume that it is palatial, yet understated, but with very expensive furniture and in front of the main stage there’s an off duty cop shoving a twenty between a stripper’s bare tits. Because that’s what “gentlemen’s club” means in America, E.L. James. It means exotic dancing. Sometimes bottomless.

Oh no, by all means, keep your port and fox hunting. We’ll be over here with our way more awesome version of that.
So, politely ignoring all the lucite heels and the overwhelming scent of Candies perfume, Chedward makes the introductions:

“John.” Christian shakes his hand. “You remember Anastasia?”

“How could I forget? Anastasia, welcome.”

“Ana, please,” I mumble as he shakes my hand firmly. I do love his English accent.

We do love those. She did her research there. Our accents are pretty stupid sounding. A British accent makes everyone sound hotter, no matter which British accent it is.

 Trust me, I would not find this guy nearly as attractive as I do if he had a So. Cal. accent.

I’m going to post a huge excerpt here now, just bear with me a moment. At the end, there will be a trivia question:

“Ana,” he says kindly, ushering us toward the couches.

Christian gesture to one of them for me. I sit, trying to look relaxed, resting my hand on the armrest, and he sprawls on the other couch beside me so that we’re at right angles to each other. A small table with a simple lamp is between us. I note with interest a box of tissues beside the lamp.

This isn’t what I expected. I had in my mind’s eye a stark white room with a black leather chaise longue.

Looking relaxed and in control, Dr. Flynn takes a seat in one of the winged chairs and picks up a leather notepad. Christian crosses his legs, his ankle resting on his knee, and stretches one arm along the back of the couch. Reaching across with his other hand, he finds my hand on the armrest and gives it a reassuring squeeze.

So, now we know exactly what Dr. Flynn’s office looks like, exactly where everyone is sitting. You can vividly picture this, right? Now, keeping in mind that this is the last quarter of the second book, without using age or hair color, describe Anastasia Rose Steele.

No, no. I’ll wait.

And that’s the heart of one of the many problems with the writing. We get huge, blocky paragraphs of every last tiny detail about a room we’ll probably never see again. We have to know exactly where everyone is, what all their physical gestures are. But when it comes to the main character, by nearly the end of the second book, the only description you can give me is probably, “Naive, skinny English major who loves Christian Grey.” There is no depth to her character. Now, tell me what you know about Christian Grey. You know heaps more. That’s because Ana is a self-insert. Much in the way Bella Swan was an avatar for any girl who read Twilight, Ana is a skin the reader can slip into so that they can experience the alleged romance between Ana and Christian. This isn’t just bad writing, it’s another way you can tell this book is plagiarized, if you still harbored any doubts.

Dr. Flynn tells Ana that the sessions are completely confidential, to which Ana replies that it’s no big, she signed an NDA anyway:

“A nondisclosure agreement?” Dr. Flynn’s brow furrows, and he glances quizzically at Christian.

Christian shrugs.

“You start all relationships with women with an NDA?” Dr. Flynn asks him.

“The contractual ones, I do.”

 Dr. Flynn’s lip twitches. “You’ve had other types of relationships with women?” he asks, and he looks amused.

“No,” Christian answers after a beat, and he looks amused, too.

Doesn’t this seem like something that the good doctor would have already known, since Christian has been seeing him for years? Let’s take it on good faith that this isn’t just a clumsy, poorly planned scene on the author’s part, because it’s more interesting if Christian really has been withholding from his therapist. What that says to me is that he either doesn’t trust Dr. Flynn enough to share this information with him (and therapy is probably not going to do a whole lot of good, if that’s the case, because what else is he withholding?), or he’s trying to manipulate Dr. Flynn the way he manipulates everyone (and therapy will definitely not do a whole lot of good, if that’s the case, because he’s not being honest with himself, either).

Dr. Flynn suggests Ana and Christian talk about the NDA, since they’re not entering into “‘that kind of contractual relationship’,” and Christian replies that he hopes they’ll be entering into a different type of contract. As in, marriage. Which sounds so romantic when you talk about it the same way you talk about your sex contracts with the other women you were recently banging. Ana brings up Christian’s “‘recent revelations'” and Christian gets way pouty, because apparently he doesn’t want any real therapy, he just wants to appear to sad and dysfunctional to some guy who has a lot of money. So… in this case, Dr. Flynn is to Christian as Christian is to Ana? This is getting heavy, yo. Ana is picking up on the tension in the room in a big way:

Holy shit. This is mortifying. I gaze down at my fingers.

You’re going to therapy with your boyfriend that you’ve been dating a whole five or so weeks. How did you expect this to go down?

Dr. Flynn asks Ana if she’d be more comfortable talking to him with Christian out of the room, and she says yes, which makes Christian angry. He leaves in a huff, and Dr. Flynn proves himself to be… not the best therapist:

“Dr. Flynn, I’ve never been in a relationship before, and Christian is… well, he’s Christian. And over the last week or so, a great deal has happened. I haven’t had a chance to think things through.”

“What do you need to think through?”

I glance up at him, and his head is cocked to one side as he gazes at me with compassion, I think.

“Well… Christian tells me that he’s happy to give up… er – ” I stumble and pause. This is so much more difficult to discuss than I’d imagined.

Dr. Flynn sighs. “Ana, in the very limited time that you’ve known him, you’ve made more progress with my patient than I have in the last two years. You have had a profound effect on him, you must see that.”

Okay, but Dr. Flynn, that’s not what Ana is asking about. She’s never been in a relationship before, and she’s overwhelmed. She’s wanting to be Christian’s girlfriend, not his therapist. Did you actually go to medical school? I mean, like, did you actually specialize in psychiatry?

Dr. Flynn goes on to explain what Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is. I’ll just assume E.L. plagiarized his explanation from a text book or something, because that’s how it reads. He tells Ana that Christian’s goal is to have a loving relationship with her. Ana is looking for reassurance that he’s not really a sadist, and Dr. Flynn explains that everything Christian wants to do, he wants to be consensual, so she doesn’t need to worry that she’s not enough for him. Or something. It’s as boring as you might imagine listening to someone else getting therapy would be. Ana points out Christian’s earlier comparison of BDSM to alcoholism, and this time the book manages to offend alcoholics as well as happy, well-adjusted perverts everywhere:

“But he thinks of himself as a recovering alcoholic.”

“Christian will always think the worst of himself. As I said, it’s part of his self-abhorrence. […]”

I cut Dr. Flynn’s dialogue short there, because he goes on to talk about Christian’s emotional health, etc. What I really wanted to concentrate on is the fact that after Ana says Christian thinks of himself as a recovering alcoholic, Dr. Flynn says that he always thinks the worst of himself. As in, being an alcoholic is apparently the worst thing Christian could be, in the universe this book exists in. Which I personally find hilarious, as I struggle with alcoholism myself and yet I don’t drink NEARLY AS MUCH AS THE CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK. If the worst thing Christian can be is an alcoholic, that means being a lying, manipulative asshole who wails on women with a belt is better than being an alcoholic. So… fuck that.

Rather than providing Ana with answers or anything, Dr. Flynn keeps talking about the progress Christian has made, and how they all have to support them, because Dr. Flynn apparently thinks it’s ethical to use another person to cure yourself of your mental illnesses and destroy their mental well-being in the process.

Christian comes back to collect Ana, and they head for the car, at which point Jose calls, and Ana drops the bombshell that she basically lives with Christian now. Hey, here’s another warning sign that your friend might be in an abusive relationship:

“This thing with Grey, it’s serious?”

I turn away from the car and pace to the other side of the sidewalk.

“Yes.”

“How serious?”

I roll my eyes and pause. Why does Christian have to listening?

“Serious.”

“Is he with you now? That why you’re speaking in monosyllables?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. So are you allowed out tomorrow?”

“Of course I am.” I hope. I automatically cross my fingers.

If you’re on the phone with your boyfriend and he’s doing the monosyllabic thing, he’s cheating on you. If you’re on the phone with just a friend, and she’s doing it because her boyfriend is near by, she’s in a bad, bad relationship. And what the fuck is up with crossing her fingers, hoping she’s allowed “out”? The further down this rabbit hole we go, the worse it gets.

Ana tells Christian that Jose will pick her up from work, and they’ll go have a drink together, and Christian is totally on board, which, for some reason, makes Ana want him to not be on board? Or something?

I was expecting a fight, and his easy acquiescence throws me off balance.

“See, I can be reasonable,” he smirks.

My mouth twists. We’ll see about that.

What, are you going to try and out-reasonable him? Or make him be unreasonable so you can have the fight you were apparently looking forward to? Holy shit, these two should not be together.

“Can I drive?”

Christian blinks at me, surprised by my request.

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Why, exactly?”

“Because I don’t like to be driven.”

YOU HAVE A CHAUFFER, YOU GIANT COCK CHEESE!

Ana, of course, points this out a moment after I hurled the book across the goddamned room. Christian tells her that he trusts Taylor, so that’s why Taylor can drive him… despite the fact that Christian has only ever ridden in the car with Ana one time. You know what this is? Macho bullshit about not wanting a woman to drive you somewhere. I hate Christian Grey, and I hope he gets ripped apart by bears.

He lets Ana drive, but he keeps up his bullshit paranoid mom teaching her kid to drive routine until Ana pulls over and they have a huge argument on the side of the road about who is going to drive and OMG WHY DO WE HAVE TO READ THIS?

I thought reading was about fantasy. I thought it was about escapism. Erotic romance, in particular, which this is supposed to be. At no point have I ever been reading a book and thought to myself, “Gosh, this would be so much better if there could be an argument like the ones my husband and I have, the kind where we pull the car over and scream at each other on the side of the road.” No one wants to read that bullshit.

Christian takes over driving, and he sings along to Van Morrison:

Whoa. I’ve never heard him sing, not even in the shower, ever. I frown. He has a lovely voice – of course. Hmm… has he heard me sing?

He wouldn’t be asking you to marry him if he had! My subconscious has her arms crossed and is wearing Burberry check.

Yeah, and I hate her about as much as I hate you, Ana. “Oh, look, I’m not a Mary Sue, tee hee, I have this one superficial flaw, which probably will turn out to be me just being too critical of myself and I’m really Charlotte flipping Church when I warble in the shower.”

Christian talks about all the therapy he’s done “‘over the years'” and I find it suspect that he’s only twenty-seven and believes he could have tried every single type of therapy long enough to reap any kind of benefit from any of them. They go over a two page recap of everything we just read in Dr. Flynn’s office, and then Christian reveals that he’s not driving them home, he’s taking her somewhere that’s a “surprise.” That’s the hook the chapter ends on, and I have never had such a bleak outlook on the progress made by the human race as I do right now.

Roadhouse Episode 5, and busy-ness update

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This week, D-Rock and I did the best show we’ve ever done. And then… I accidentally erased it. So this is the show we did right after that (and a bottle of wine).

The day of the conference has ARRIVED, y’all! I’m so excited for it to be over to resume my normal life. I’m actually looking forward to getting back to Ana and Christian and all the mean things I want to say about them. But let’s take a look at my to-do list and see how much I’ve gotten done:

  1. I’ll be volunteering at my daughter’s preschool on two days. By the third day volunteering, I had the routine down and it was pretty painless. Or, I had Stockholm syndrome, but either way.
  2. One of those is her birthday. This necessitates cupcakes at school and a cake at home. Instead of cupcakes (I hate frosting things), daughter decided on Unicorn Poop Cookies, and while the birthday cake I made her wasn’t my best work, it was edible and it’s over now.
  3. I’ll need to take her to get her school picture retaken, as well. Happening as I type this.
  4. Still on the conference committee.
  5. Still the president.
  6. Still need to give a speech.
  7. Need to go over my presentation, write where necessary.
  8. Bring snack to my son’s scout meeting.Maybe not an Angry Birds snack next time, as it resulted in flinging food, but hey. It worked.
All I have to do now is get my presentation finished and my speech completely written, but I’ll do that in the hotel room tonight. Because I’m a professional.
The shittier part of this story is that my stressful week is exhibiting physical manifestations. I have a sty on my eye, the worst acne I’ve had since high school, and a canker sore swelling up my lip like I got punched. I fully expect to wake tomorrow with a hump on my back and an old school wooden leg. But it’s a writing conference, not a beauty pageant, and it’s nearly over. This entire ordeal is nearly over.
Then, I’ll spend Sunday in bed. All of Sunday. I hope I get a bed sore.
See you on Monday, when I will post a new recap and a photo of my bedsore.

The Saddest Thing In The World, and a status update

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The Detroit Tigers got swept by the Giants in the World Series. I don’t know if I can accurately convey what it feels like to be a Detroit baseball fan right now, so just go drop something big and heavy on your foot. And then directly onto your barely beating broken heart. Then you’ll have a way to empathize with the walking wounded in Michigan this morning.

To add to the sadness, this morning a story broke about the ice buckets holding the Giants’ victory champagne. In the confusion of screaming and happiness that Tigers fans and stadium staff are frankly not used to, the “hooray, the Tigers won!” party favors got accidentally passed out to the Giants. I warn you, what you are about to see will make you sob great heaping bucketfuls of tears. I mean, I assume. Everyone else feels like they just got kicked in the vag, right?

See the whole story at Yahoo!, including the part where the Giants just didn’t give a shit, because hey. World Series champions.

As for my to-do list, things are getting more manageable!

  1. I’ll be shilling wreaths for another school fundraiser. I’ve just straight given up on this one. I don’t even know where the order forms are it doesn’t matter, pick up is on a day when I couldn’t fill the orders, anyway! GET OUT OF WREATH JAIL FREE!
  2. Pumpkins must be carved. Carved. Like a boss. I’ll post pictures eventually.
  3. I’ll be volunteering at my daughter’s preschool on two days.
  4. One of those is her birthday. This necessitates cupcakes at school and a cake at home.
  5. I’ll need to take her to get her school picture retaken, as well.
  6. 100 bags and 100 folders need to be filled with various authors’ promo for the Ready, Set, Write! conference. As I type this, help is arriving at my doorstep to get the bags filled.
  7. Still on the conference committee.
  8. Still the president.
  9. Still need to give a speech.
  10. Need to go over my presentation, write where necessary.
  11. Bring snack to my son’s scout meeting.
Things are shaping up. Now I need to go briefly sob in the corner and set my sights on April.

Roadhouse and Status Update

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D-Rock and I were going to shoot a short apology video for promising new episodes of Roadhouse every Friday, only to go on hiatus after, you know, three episodes. But then we remembered that we had a World Series to watch, and since they are long and chock full of commercials, we could just film and edit the show during the games. Brilliant! So, here is the latest installment of Roadhouse.

Word of caution! We’re talking about The Walking Dead and we are not spoiler free. If you’re not caught up on The Walking Dead and you don’t want to be spoilered, just skip ahead to 10:40 to see the best of our reactions as we watched the Tigers lose game one.


Another thing: I tried to fix the audio on this one, so the music isn’t super blasting. I’m afraid I might lose some of the audio formatting when it converts to .mp4, but I think we’ve overcome that. But let me stress, any formatting was done during a commercial break.

Just a quick update on my hell weeks, for those keep score at home:

  1. I have parent teacher conferences to attend for both my kids. Nailed it. This one is all wrapped up.
  2. I’ll be baking for the school bake sale. It was a full day of baking madness, but I produced twenty-four cupcakes, twenty chocolate covered oreos, and three loaves of french bread. The bake sale brought in $1200.00!
  3. I’ll be shilling wreaths for another school fundraiser. 
  4. Both kids need homemade Halloween costumes that I haven’t started. I started them. In fact, I finished my daughter’s. My son’s is more complicated, but that will be done this weekend.
  5. Pumpkins must be carved.
  6. I’ll be volunteering at my daughter’s preschool on three separate days. Not completely finished, but I did get one day out of the way!
  7. One of those days is her birthday. This necessitates cupcakes at school and a cake at home.
  8. Oh, and making a birthday present. Score! She changed her mind at the last minute, and rather than having to make her something, I just had to buy a Barbie doll!
  9. I’ll need to take her to get her school picture retaken, as well.
  10. 100 bags and 100 folders need to be filled with various authors’ promo for the Ready, Set, Write! Conference.
  11. Did I mention I’m on the conference committee for that?
  12. Or that I’m the president of the NFPO that hosts it?
  13. And I have to give a speech at it?
  14. And in the cruelest twist of fate, give a workshop there about time management? My time management program is completely outlined.
So, my new to-do list looks a little more manageable:
  1. I’ll be shilling wreaths for another school fundraiser.
  2. Pumpkins must be carved.
  3. I’ll be volunteering at my daughter’s preschool on two days.
  4. One of those is her birthday. This necessitates cupcakes at school and a cake at home.
  5. I’ll need to take her to get her school picture retaken, as well.
  6. 100 bags and 100 folders need to be filled with various authors’ promo for the Ready, Set, Write! conference.
  7. Still on the conference committee.
  8. Still the president.
  9. Still need to give a speech.
  10. Need to go over my presentation, write where necessary.
  11. Bring snack to my son’s scout meeting.
So, that’s more doable, right? I also have to write three chapters for a publisher to have a look at during this time, but the proposal and synopsis are so good, I was dying to write it, anyway.
There you have it. I’ll check back in next week to let you know if I finished everything, or if I’m just running around on fire. And hopefully I’ll be able to share pictures of the kids’ costumes, if they’re not giving a white power salute, like last year.

[witty title I’m too flabbergasted to come up with]

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You may recall that in August, while attending the amazing Authors After Dark conference in New Orleans, I attended the Bookie awards ceremony and won a couple of awards:

And promptly photographed them in the shower.

I was nominated for a bunch of stuff. I kind of wish I had kept track of what I had been nominated for. But I heard my name like five times, and two of those were when I was winning. I won GLBT Novel of the year for Striped (my gay weretiger light BDSM three-way that is available here) and Steampunk Short Story of the year for Sex, Lies and Inventions (which features a middle-aged inventor hero who may or may not be the byproduct of Steampunk sex fantasies about James May and which is also available here).
Winning those Bookies was a really great feeling, but I was fairly confident I wouldn’t be hearing my name at any award ceremonies in the future. Not because I’m down on myself or my work, but because I recognize that not everyone can will all the awards. So imagine my surprise when I wound up with five nominations again this year, in the categories of:
  • Author website of the year
  • Contemporary novel of the year (for Double Header)
  • E-Book only novel of the year (for Long Relief)
  • Werewolf novel of the year (for Bride of The Wolf)
  • Best Hero (for Philipe, the hero of Beast)
Voting opens November 1st. These are a “readers choice” kind of thing, so I’ll be providing a link when the time comes, so that if you like my books and you want to vote, you can. And so you can vote for other authors you like, too. I mean, I’m not a monster. Usually.
But go me!