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Month: October 2012

A new season of The Walking Dead, a new season Talking Dead, aka, how television ruins everything.

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If you are unaware of the existence of a little zombie show on television here in the states known as The Walking Dead, then this post might still be of interest to you.

However, if you are aware of the show and don’t want spoilers, I’m sorry, this isn’t the post for you. Because I want to say some stuff that will directly reference plot points in the series. So, only read this if you’re caught up, or just don’t give a shit about spoilers or the show.
Are we cool here? Awesome.
Season Three of The Walking Dead just premiered this past weekend. If you follow me on twitter, you know that I have a love/hate relationship with the show. Basically, I love the concept, and I love the zombies, but I hate every single character and plot point the series comes up with. With the exception of the first season. Do you want to know who I blame?
This nerdlinger, right here.
Okay, not Chris Hardwick, personally. But definitely the show he hosts, Talking Dead.

Here’s the way I saw things going down: an awesome new zombie tv show starts up. Because it’s based on a comic book, it has an already established fan base, and damn good writing. Everyone who watches it gets hooked on it, and eagerly anticipates season two. Then season two rolls around, and suddenly… it’s just not as good as it was. The characters are all making foolish decisions. The production team, high off good ratings and better coke, decide, “Fuck all this source material bull shit. We’re going to True Blood this motherfucker into the ground,” presumably because the producer and his accountant know they can make more money on a flop than a hit. Or maybe they just think they know better than the source material, because they start making odd choices. Where the group once abandoned a fellow survivor handcuffed to a roof and another on the side of the road to die from zombie-itis, our ragtag group of misfits suddenly can’t stand to shed the blood of a barn full of zombies, or abandon a half-hearted search for a missing child that everyone knows is dead. Fans were noticing a lot of inconsistencies in the plot and the canon of the show, like, “How come these fuckers keep running into town like they just need to pop into Walgreens, instead of emptying all these stores and hoarding the supplies for themselves?” and “Why, if the walkers are attracted by sound, are they driving a Harley and a Ford Festiva with the squealingest brakes in Georgia? Are there no brake pads in the apocalypse?” 
Luckily, there was another show on right after the episodes aired, in which your host, Chris Hardwick, formerly of MTV’s Singled Out (respect), would interview celebrity fans of the show, actors who worked on the show, and the episode’s writers themselves, asking all the same questions you just shouted at your screen.
I could never quite put my finger on why I hated Talking Dead so much, until Sunday night’s premiere. I was lamenting to an online acquaintance that the sudden jump in time from the end of season two to the beginning of season three was frustrating to me. At the end of season two, the camera pans up from the survivors huddled around a camp fire, to the ominous shape of a prison facility in the near distance. The cliffhanger proved effective in two ways: it wet the viewers’ appetite for the next season in showing us what new challenge the survivors would face, and yet it left them achingly close to safety, but utterly unprotected. They were mere miles from the prison… and yet six months went by without them noticing it? There were no signs? Nothing that said, “Prison Area – Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers” or “Next 3 Miles Cleaned By Prisoners” or anything like that? What about Herschel and his daughters Maggie and… other, who lived in the area their whole lives? They didn’t know the prison was there?
Then my internet acquaintance said, “Oh, they explained that on Talking Dead. They were just constantly cut off from the prison by all the zombies running around.” And I became furiously angry, not because that’s a lame excuse that no one is buying (it was like, a few miles, tops. Six months, are you fucking serious?), but because the show should stand on its own.

I should not have to watch another show so that the writers and creators can explain away the problems with the first show. But that’s what Talking Dead is for. On the surface, it looks like a half hour of sharing funny behind the scenes stories and for fans to discuss how awesome the last episode was. But it seems like the bulk of it is just Chris Hardwick asking stuff like, “How come it took so long to find the prison?” and “What were those flashes of zombies representing when Shane was dead on the ground?” All that stuff should be obvious from the episode! If it’s not, then it’s not working.
The first season of the show was amazing. It was tight and suspenseful and I almost never wanted Lori to get eaten by walkers. The second season took a nosedive, and suddenly Carl was never in the house and Andrea was taking risky shots when other survivors were downrange. It was like the writers no longer cared about making the show make sense, because they had a safety net. I can just imagine the writers’ room during those second season creative meetings. “This doesn’t make any sense!” “It’s okay, they’re going to have that thing on after it, that gives us aaaaaall of filming and post production and until the air date to think up an explanation.”
I’m really frustrated because it was such a good show, and the premiere on Sunday night seemed like it heralded a new and wonderful change in story. And then all too soon, the plot holes showed up, and were immediately explained away in the show’s looming footnote.
Look, when I’m reading a book, if there’s a plot hole, the author doesn’t get to call me up and explain what they intended (and I think we all know why I am, personally, very glad about this). If I’m watching a movie and there’s some ineffective exposition, the director and screen writer don’t stop by and explain the nuances to you. The work has to stand on its own. Can you imagine how much more furious you would have been if, after the series finale of The Sopranos, another show came on to explain how the director purposely left the last scene vague because he felt it was an homage to Fellini, so fuck you for wanting closure? Or if, after Sex and The City, they made a movie to tell you what happened to the characters after the end of the series?
Or worse, two? And one of them was substantially worse than the other? What kind of nightmare world would that be?

A lot of people have been asking me for writing advice, since NaNoWriMo is coming up. That’s a separate post altogether, but allow me to drop some writing truth right here: you are never going to be able to explain to everyone, out loud, exactly how your fictional universe works, or what you intended in a scene. You don’t get a Talking Dead to patiently explain to exasperated viewers why you’re really a genius in spite of what they just experienced. So, let your work stand on its own two feet. If it can’t, you’re not finished. Revise. Add. Clarify. Fix your shit before you put it in front of an audience, because the second a reader is soured on you, they’re usually gone forever. Have an honest critique partner tell you what’s wrong with your storyline (“I’m noticing that Carl is getting lost a lot… maybe you should search the document for ‘has anybody seen Carl?’ and eliminate some of those.”). What I’m saying is, basically, don’t be The Walking Dead, and your NaNo should turn out fine.

As Yet Untitled YouTube Show episode 2: “Jen and D-Rock answer reader questions”

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Yeah, we’re labeling it episode 2, even though the first one was more of a promo thing. That’s how we roll. This week, we’re taking reader questions and talking about jobs, halloween costumes, pet peeves, pets, and how we would defeat the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who:

New episodes every Friday. Because we’re classy ladies, that’s why.

50 Shades Darker chapter 15 recap or “50 Shades Derper”

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Yes, I’ve changed the blog. I’ve received a lot of complaints about this. Please be patient while I figure something else out. I rather like this format, but if it’s going to mess with everyone, I’ll have to find a new one, and that might take me a minute or a day or a week.

My tweep @Zionastar wanted to share this with you all:

Also, check out the really disturbing stuff Barbie is getting up to these days:

Tweep @Bindibo0 shared this picture, which certainly heralds the coming apocalypse:

If you can’t see it clearly, that’s a window decal that says “Laters, Baby.” First, I was like, “It’s awesome that someone put words from a book on their car,” and then I was all, “But people put ‘Not all who wander are lost’ bumperstickers on all the time, so fuck your book nerd pride, this is a crisis.” I guess I should be grateful that the etsy seller who made the decal didn’t put a possessive apostrophe in it, so thank god for small miracles (“LAAAANAAAAAAA! I said, thank god for small miracles.”). Other things that are good about this sticker: it’s on a Hyundai, so I think it’s safe to say that no sadistic billionaire has gotten to this poor woman yet.

Wasn’t that fun? Well, don’t get used to it. The fun stops here, because now we have to read the actual book, and let me tell you, things were left a mess in the last chapter. Ana ran off to the bathroom to cry and get som space from Christian. Wanna guess how that worked out?

“Hey,” Christian’s says gently as he pulls me into his arms, “please don’t cry, Ana, please,” he begs. He’s on the bathroom floor, and I am in his lap.

So… how is that “needing space” thing working out for you? And by the way, I didn’t mistype there. That’s how the actual first sentence reads on the page.

Christian holds Ana while she cries, then carries her to bed, where he continues to give her the space and time to think that she needs. Just kidding, he turns into the plant from Little Shop of Horrors.

Christian is wrapped around me like a vine. He grumbles in his sleep as I slip out of his arms, but he doesn’t wake.

Ana goes for juice and headache pills, then goes to the window, where she thinks about how she has a lot of stuff to think about. That’s another of my least favorite aspects of this book. She never just thinks about anything. First, she has to think about how she needs to think about it. But she does eventually get around to thinking about what she thinks she needs to think about:

Marriage. It’s almost unbelievable and completely unexpected.

Unless you’ve read the Twilight series, in which case you were able to set your watch by his proposal.

I look like his mother. This wounds me deeply, and the air leaves my lungs in a rush. We all look like his mom.

How the hell do I move on from the disclosure of that little secret? No wonder he didn’t want to tell me. But certainly he can’t remember much of his mother. I wonder once more if I should talk to Dr. Flynn. Would Christian let me? Perhaps he could fill in the gaps.

That’s a great idea. I think it’s really a marker of a solid, trusting relationship if you have to get answers for your partner’s behavior from a medical professional instead of just talking directly to said partner. That’s why nearly every romantic comedy features a scene of Katherine Heigl talking to Gerard Butler’s therapist.

The Ugly Truth is that this movie sucks 100 balls.

And what’s the BFD about her looking like Chrisitan’s mom? I look a lot like my husband’s mom. And his sister. And him. And nobody thinks that’s creepy.

Okay, now I see it. Forget I said anything.

The peaceful tranquility is shattered by a visceral, primeval cry that makes every single hair on my body stand to attention. Christian! Holy fuck – what’s happened? I am on my feet, running back to the bedroom before the echoes of that horrible sound have died away, my heart thumping with fear.

 What happened is, Christian woke up when you left the room, then waited a little while, until it seemed just the right time to scream and draw you back into his manipulations. Because it’s dramatic, and men like Christian invent drama to keep women tied to them.

Even assuming Christian is really having a night terror, I love the timing of it. Ana is thinking, “Gosh, could I actually live here and be married to him? What’s it going to be like?” and then suddenly she hears the Doom scream and it doesn’t strike her as a bad sign.

I flip one of the light switches, and Christian’s bedside light comes to life.

According to Pixar, that can totally happen.

The amount of needless explanation for everyday actions and common phrases is starting to wear me down. Seriously, E.L., we all know what happens when you flip a light switch. Why not just say, “I switch on Christian’s bedside lamp?” We don’t need some florid metaphor about what happens to a lamp when you turn it on, just like we didn’t need context clues to know what “overflowing” meant in the last chapter. I get describing things like the sound of a car engine (“He turned the key and the engine roared to life,” for example) or the way light looks in a room (for instance, saying light flooded a room or that a lamp glows with soft golden light), but seriously? You’re going to walk us poetically through the steps of turning on a lamp when you’ve got this night terror situation already hooking the reader?

He’s tossing and turning, writhing in agony. No! He cries out again, and the eerie, devastating sound lances through me anew.

Shit – a nightmare!

Really? Are you sure he’s not building a boat? Learning to read Greek? Crafting hand-dipped candles? NO SHIT HE’S HAVING A NIGHTMARE.

Also, I would like to just have you guys imagine that the cry he’s making is the velociraptor impression D-Rock made in the video I posted yesterday. Because it makes this whole thing so much funnier.

Ana shakes Christian awake, and he’s not needy, like, at all:

“You left, you left, you must have left,” he mumbles – his wide-eyed star become accusatory – and he looks so lost, it wrenches at my heart. Poor Fifty.

“I’m here.” I sit down on the bed beside him. “I’m here,” I murmur softly in an effort to reassure him. I reach out to place my palm on the side of his face, trying to soothe him.

If she wasn’t creeped about about looking like his mom before, she definitely will be now, let me tell you. Especially if this whole “Mommy, I had a bad dream” thing plays out more than once.

 “You’re here. Oh, thank God.” He reaches for me, and grabbing me tightly, he pulls me down on the bed beside him.

How did he know she was gone in the first place, if he was asleep? Hey, caught you in your lie, Mr. Grey. Of course, I’m probably interpreting this entirely differently than the author intended. I’m sure that this scene is intended to show the reader how attuned to Ana that Chedward is, that even when he’s sleeping, he knows where she is. Which would make me seriously reconsider that whole marriage proposal thing. I mean, is he just marrying her because she helps him sleep better? Get one of those Sleep Number beds from the tv and a body pillow and suck it up, Chedward.

Christian starts getting gropey, and of course Ana is completely into the sexxors, until she remembers that he’s boning her because she looks like his mom:

He wants me, but his words from earlier choose this moment to come back and haunt me, what he said about his mother. And it’s like a bucket of cold water on my libido. Fuck. I can’t do this. Not now.

So, they stop having sex, because Ana asks to stop.

“Christian… Stop. I can’t do this,” I whisper urgently against his mouth, my hands pushing on his upper arms.

“What? What’s wrong?” he murmurs and starts kissing my neck, running the tip of his tongue lightly down my throat. Oh…

What’s wrong is literally everything in this book. But at the moment, what’s wrong is that Ana is telling you to stop, she doesn’t want to have sex, but you’re going to keep pushing her:

“No, please. I can’t do this, not now. I need some time, please.”

“Oh, Ana, don’t overthink this,” he whispers as he nips my earlobe.

Yeah, don’t overthink it, Ana. Don’t be put off by the fact that in a single day you have had a gun pointed at you because of me, that I provided pretty intimate care for my ex-girlfriend in your apartment and then got jealous because while I was doing that you were with an old friend, that I asked you to marry me because I’m afraid you might go spend the night at your apartment for once, that we’ve been together a couple weeks and I want you to move in, and that I can’t give you space for five fucking minutes to use the bathroom alone, and now I’m telling you that you really want to have sex when you don’t. Just give in, baby, and you can maybe retreat into your head for five minutes while I’m pounding you. Just don’t, you know, go far, because I can’t live without you.

“Ah!” I gasp, feeling it in my groin, and my body bows, betraying me. This is is so confusing.

Not really. It’s called coerced consent, and it’s a very common form of rape.

But of course, it’s the most scorching hot, sexy rape you’ve ever read, and Ana loves every minute of it, because that’s the kind of book this is.

I’m not saying I don’t like to read the occasional dub-con story. I like an old school historical rapemance as much as the next person. Hell, I’ve written dub-con. I don’t really have a problem with people enjoying rape-fantasy, because the mind, as a sex organ, is all kinds of interesting and many times will arouse us with things we fear. See also, the time I fantasized about a gang bang with the The Gentlemen from Buffy. But I don’t enjoy this particular dub-con, because there is no element of fantasy to it. E.L. James has (unintentionally, I firmly believe) written a shockingly realistic account of an abusive relationship. Getting hot to this isn’t the same thing as reading, say, a Catherine Coulter wedding night rape scene, where you know the hero is going to feel super bad about his actions later, even though his medieval culture and upbringing tells him that it was totally cool of him to force himself on the heroine. Getting hot to this is like jilling off to The Accused, because Christian Grey is never going to stop manipulating Ana, and he’s not going to think he was wrong for forcing himself on her here. He won’t even consider it forcing himself on her, and neither will Ana. And that, friends, is my problem with this kind of rape-fantasy. When you don’t realize it’s rape, when the author is justifying why it’s not rape, or why the rape is okay, it’s not a rape-fantasy. It’s just a plain old rape scene.

In this particular scene, though, at least we’re spared, “Oh, Ana, what you do to me,” or whatever the fuck it is that Chedward is always saying while they bone. In this scene, that’s all turned on its head:

Oh, what I can do to him!

See, completely different.

“Don’t give me a chance to think, Christian. I want you, too.” 

This is the consent she gives. “Okay, we’ll do this, but only if you don’t let me remember why I didn’t want to.” Swoon.

So, they have sex, Chedward says she’s going to “unman” him again (so maybe it is a Catherine Coulter scene after all), and this time, Ana gets to be on top:

I grab his hands and start to move, reveling in the fullness of my possession, reveling in his reaction, watching him unravel beneath me. I feel like a goddess. I lean down and kiss his chin, running my teeth along his stubbled jaw. He tastes delicious. He clasps my hips and steadies my rhythm, slow and easy.

That’s all like, 100% copy-pasted from all the other sex scenes. Jesus, I know that sex in a monogamous relationship can get stale, but that got repetitive really quickly. And I’ve got a whole ‘nother book to go. I’ll be truly shocked if the sex scenes in book three don’t just read like, “He starts to move, really move, I unravel, my inner goddess does something, teeth, stubble, blazing eyes, yadda yadda are you done masturbating yet?”

Ana can’t orgasm because, surprise, she’s not entirely into the sex, owing to all the mental torture he’s put her through so far that day. So, you know what happens next. Christian just finishes, tells her thanks for the sex, and promises he’ll make it up to her with some oral next time, when she’s more in the mood.

Sorry, I mixed up my copies there for a second, I was reading BIZARRO Shades Darker. What actually happens is this:

“Come on baby, I need this. Give it to me.”

Look, I’m no sex expert… sexpert… exsexpatriot… but I’m almost completely sure that pressuring someone into orgasm doesn’t work. Unless they really get off on stress.

Or unless it’s in this shitty, shitty book:

And I explode, my body a slave to his, and wrap myself around him, clinging to him like a vine as he cries out my name, and climaxes with me, then collapses, his full weight pressing me into the mattress.

Oh yeah, before I have to correct it in the comments, they did switch positions, so he was on top at the end. That’s not a mistake.

Hey, Ana, remember how you were like, “Oh, Leila is so pathetic, I’m glad I’m not like pathetic, stupid, awful, pathetic Leila,” about a chapter ago? You just had sex with Christian Grey because he wanted you to, and you had an orgasm because he told you to. That’s the equivalent of falling on the ground in supplication the way Leila did. It might be a little worse. But of course, we’re not supposed to see it that way. Leila is a crazy whore, and Ana is strong, bright, and interesting, so she’s choosing to react this way.

And enough with the vines already. This isn’t fucking Tarzan.

After their “lovemaking” (and yes, that’s actually how Ana refers to it, please don’t hang yourself), Ana asks him about his nightmare. The nightmare was about his mother’s pimp putting cigarettes out on him.

“It’s the pain I remember. That’s what gives me nightmares. That, and the fact that she did nothing to stop him.”

Interesting aside, did you know you can’t actually remember pain? But that the memory of pain can be more damaging than the actual pain you experience? Google it, there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. I’m not saying this to point out anything wrong with the book, I just think it’s a really bizarre thing.

Oh no. This is unbearable. I tighten my grip around him, my legs and arms holding him to me, and I try not to let my despair choke me. How could anyone treat a child like that? He raises his head and pins me with his intense gray gaze.

“You’re not like her. Don’t ever think that. Please.”

Christian goes on to talk about his mom being dead, and him being hungry, and I was kind of hoping he’d say he ate parts of his mom’s dead body, but instead he talks about the pimp beating him. But it’s not the pimp that Christian hates. I’m finding it kind of strange that his hatred of his mom causes him to seek out women who look like her so he can beat them. It seems like he should be into finding women who look like his mom and then letting other people beat them while he does nothing to stop it. He cut out the middle man, and I’m all for efficiency, but a lot of his anger toward his mom doesn’t wash, especially considering he’s been going through therapy. It seems like any therapist worth anything would have told Christian that he and his mother were both victims of the same abuser, the pimp, that his mother was not only an addict but a woman being controlled by a violent man, and that while in a perfect world she should have been able to protect him, she just couldn’t in those terrible circumstances.

“She didn’t love me. I didn’t love me. The only touch I knew was… harsh. It stemmed from there. Flynn explains it better than I can.”

Wait, his therapist is telling him that his mother didn’t love him? I’m confused here, because it seems like the good memories he does have, like of a mom baking him a birthday cake, wouldn’t have happened if his mom didn’t love him, at least a little bit. A therapist probably would have touched on that. And also, that whole, “your mom was a victim of your abuser, too,” thing.

“You  are so precious to me, Ana. I was serious about marrying you. We can get to know each other then. I can look after you. You can look after me. We can have kids if you want. I will lay my world at your feet, Anastasia. I want you, body and soul, forever. Please think about it.”

Yeah, you guys should definitely bring a child into this. You both have your shit entirely together, so what could possibly go wrong?

Ana tells Christian she’ll think about, and then she says she wants to talk to Dr. Flynn. Christian says:

“Anything for you, baby. Anything. When would you like to see him?”

So, anything for you except the right to refuse sex, the right to not orgasm, the right to have space, the right to not be pressured into things, but anything. Anything, baby.

This guy. This fucking guy.

And just to prove that Ana is totally not some pathetic, mind-controlled sexbot like Leila is?

He curls his arms around me, his front to my back, and nuzzles my neck. “I love you, Ana Steele, and I want you by my side, always,” he murmurs as he kisses my neck. “Now go to sleep.”

I close my eyes.

See? Not mind controlled at all.

In the morning, she wakes up in a situation oddly similar to something we’ve already read. Twice.

I feel cloudy, disconnected from my leaden limbs, and Christian is wrapped around me like ivy.

I guess Ana and Christian have a relationship not unlike that of Dr. Pinder-Schloss and the man eating plant in The Addams Family.

We’re getting the way-back machine for this one, folks.

Ana is late for work, and flustered, so I’m going to assume that she just didn’t have time to make any damn sense in this paragraph:

I check my clothes – black slacks, black shirt – all a bit Mrs. R, but I don’t have a second to change my mind. I hastily don black bra and panties, conscious that he’s watching my every move. It’s… unnerving. The panties and bra will do.

Please, if you can explain to me what the hell she’s saying in that paragraph, share it with the class. I get that she thinks her clothes are like Mrs. Robinson’s. I don’t get why she’s putting on her bra and panties when it sounds like she’s already dressed. Or maybe she’s not going to get dressed at all, maybe that’s why she says “The panties and bra will do,” because she’s not going to wear anything else. In fact, for the rest of the scene, she just puts on a watch and a pair of shoes, and then says it will “do” again. Is Ana getting dressed today?

One thing is certain, and that is that Christian will not be getting dressed today. In fact, he wants Ana to skip work to have sex with him, but that’s a no go, so he tells her to have Taylor drive her. The danger with Leila is over, but Christian is afraid Ana won’t be able to find a parking spot and punch the clock on time, so she should just have his manservant ferry her there or something. I’m telling you this so that you are aware that the brand new car that he absolutely had to buy Ana still has not been driven one fucking time yet. Ana hasn’t missed that point, either, but she agrees with Christian:

But he’s right, of course – it will be quicker with Taylor.

Bull fucking shit it will be. Every time I’ve thought of Taylor while I was in the shower, he had staying power. Also, all of my fantasies start out with him murdering Christian Grey in cold blood, and he comes to me still dripping with gore. We consumate our love on the back of a motorcycle, running from the cops.

Sorry, what?

Ana wonders if something is wrong, because Christian doesn’t usually stay in bed all day, but he informs her that he’s going to, because he can.

I shake my head at him. “Laters, baby.” I blow him a kiss, and I am out the door.

OMG, GUYS, THIS TIME ANA WAS THE ONE WHO SAID “LATERS, BABY!”

The fact that there isn’t an instance of irony in the lyric is what makes the song itself ironic.

Because Ana is late, Taylor drives the way he drives in my sex dreams about him, which 1) breaks the rule about keeping Ana safe, and 2) terrifies Ana. So, good job, Taylor!

I remember Christian telling me he drove tanks; maybe he drives for NASCAR, too.

You see a lot of tanks in NASCAR, Ana? She’s talking about Taylor driving tanks, by the way, not Christian, not that you would be able to tell thanks to that wonk pronoun referral. Whatever, I’m just happy she didn’t say, “maybe he drives for Formula One, too.”

Ana gets to work fifteen minutes late. Which, you know, shit happens, but isn’t this her third week? It really doesn’t matter, because she’s not going to be in this job for long. I’m not saying that because I’ve read the whole book, I’m saying that because if I had an employee who pulled all the shit she’s going to pull on this day, I would fire them. Immediately. Let’s start by keeping a running tally, and we’ll add to it every time she does something that should get her reprimanded by her boss. The clock starts with:

  1. Fifteen minutes late to work.
When Ana gets to her desk, Jack is in no mood:

“What time do you call this?” he snaps.

 “I’m sorry, I overslept.” I flush crimson.

 “Don’t let it happen again. Fix me some coffee, and then I need you to do some letters. Jump to it,” he shouts, making me flinch.

 Why is he so mad? What’s his problem? What have I done?

You were fifteen minutes late to work. In a lot of jobs, being on-time is the same thing as being fifteen minutes late. And you’ve only worked there for two weeks. Plus, your boss knows that your boyfriend is the most powerful man in the city, so maybe he thinks you’re late because you don’t give a shit and you don’t really need your job. It’s unfair, but I would be giving  you the side eye, if I were him.

 Maybe I should have ditched. I could be… well, doing something hot with Christian, or having breakfast with him, or just talking – that would be novel.

Yeah, because you guys never talk. It’s not like you spent the entire last chapter crying and talking and talking and crying. Seriously, I wrote a book once where my editor sent it back with a tersely worded, “NO CRYING” post it on the first page (in ye olden days when physical manuscripts were mailed back and forth), and it didn’t have nearly as much crying and talking as just the previous chapter of this book.

Jack gives Ana a handwritten letter he wants typed up. Because this book is set in the 1960’s, when people didn’t have computers and iPads and shit. Sorry, but if Jack wanted Ana to take a letter, he would probably just dictate it to her, or type one up himself and ask her to polish it. But whatever, Ana doesn’t do it, anyway:

It is with some relief that I finally sit down at my desk. I take a sip of tea as I wait for my computer to boot up. I check my emails.

  1. Fifteen minutes late to work.
  2. Checks personal emails instead of working.

And it’s not like she just “checks” her emails. She emails back and forth with Christian for a while, with no mention of anything happening between sending and receipt of emails. For example, the first email she sends has a time stamp of 09:27, and the reply she receives comes at 09:32. Then she responds again at 09:35, and gets an answer back at 09:40. So, for like ten minutes, all she’s doing is email chatting. Keep this in mind for later, when Ana can’t figure out why her boss is furious with her.

As for the content of the emails, Christian sends an email to her work account that says:

Please use your BlackBerry.

So, Ana responds, via her work account, of course:

My boss is mad.

I blame you for keeping me up late with your… shenanigans.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

So, keeping in mind that he’s already told her to use her BlackBerry, and we know the account is monitored (because apparently SIP, even though it’s a small company that was about to go under before Christian purchased it, has enough payroll to throw around to have staff members able to monitor literally every email on the company server), Christian’s response is, in part:

But I like keeping you up late 😉

Please use your BlackBerry.

Oh, and marry me, please.

Every email is signed with an automatic signature listing his full name and job title, but he’ll go ahead and talk about sex and marriage on an email account he knows is monitored.

Ana emails back that she wants to talk to his shrink (despite him continually reminding her that she has an email account she can use that isn’t monitored, although I’m not sure why he doesn’t just stop emailing her at that address), and he gets mad:

Anastasia, if you’re going to start discussing Dr. Flynn, then USE YOUR BLACKBERRY.

 This is not a request.

 Christian Grey,

Now Pissed CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.

You know what’s funny about this whole thing? Ana never once mentioned the shrink by name. Pretty much all the info leaks Christian is worried about are coming straight from him. And again, if he was going to use the good doctor’s name, why didn’t he just send that email to the BlackBerry on his own?

Oh shit. Now he’s mad at me, too. Well, he can stew for all I care. I take my BlackBerry out of my purse and eye it with skepticism. As I do, it starts ringing. Can’t he leave me alone?

Dude, you’re the one who was emailing back and forth with him, it’s not like he was just pelting you with emails you were trying to ignore. Also, lol at Ana eyeing the BlackBerry with skepticism. She’s used it before. Also, I don’t know if this is true for everyone (because I have an Android phone now), but when I had a BlackBerry, it wasn’t like I had a special, BlackBerry-only email account that I could only access from the BlackBerry. I just had a personal email account linked to my device. Why doesn’t she just go into that email account on her computer?

It’s not Christian, but Jose who is calling her. Since we haven’t seen Jose for a while, I want to remind you that Jose has an accent mark in his name that I haven’t figured out how to reproduce in Blogger’s compose mode. So, don’t get up in arms about Jose’s missing accent mark and blame E.L. for it.

“Jose! How are you?” Oh, it’s good to hear his voice.

“I’m fine, Ana. Look, are you still seeing that Grey guy?”

“Er – yes… Why?” Where is he going with this?

I’m wondering that, myself, because didn’t he just see them last Thursday? I would be a little offended if my friends saw me out with my boyfriend on Thursday, and then two weeks later be like, “Are you still with that guy?”

On the other hand, it’s kind of nice that he checks, because, as he points out, Christian did buy all those photos of Ana. I’m not sure I would want to sell my friend’s ex a bunch of huge, wall-sized photos of them.

“Well, he’s bought all your photos, and I thought I could deliver them up to Seattle. The exhibition closes Thursday, so I could bring them up Friday evening and drop them off, you know. And maybe we could catch a drink or something. Actually, I was hoping for a place to crash, too.”

“Jose, that’s cool. Yeah, I’m sure we could work something out. Let me talk to Christian and call you back, okay?”

Yeah, I see this going really well, Ana. Just tell Christian that you want Jose, the guy he hates and fears most in this world because Jose has a penis and dared to dream of using it near you, wants to come and get drunk and spend the night. This is going to go down flawlessly.

Ana and Jose hang up, and Ana thinks:

Holy cow. I haven’t seen or heard from Jose since his show. I didn’t even ask him how it went or if he sold any more pictures. Some friend I am. 

No shit. That’s what I’ve been saying. Within seconds of hanging up the phone, Ana remembers what reality she’s currently operating in:

So, I could spend the evening with Jose on Friday. How will Christian like that? I become aware that I am biting my lip till it hurst. Oh, that man has double standards. He can – I shudder at the thought – bathe his batshit ex-lover, but I will probably get a truckload of grief for wanting to have a drink with Jose. How am I going to handle this?

While Ana sits there and mulls over her personal problems, there’s the small matter of a letter she’s supposed to be typing up:

“Ana!” Jack pulls me abruptly out of my reverie. Is he still mad? “Where’s that letter?”

 “Er – coming.” Shit. What is eating him?

Let’s take a look:

  1. Fifteen minutes late to work.
  2. Checks personal emails instead of working.
  3. Takes a personal call instead of working.
Seriously, it’s been like a half hour. I was a secretary, okay? It doesn’t take that damn long to just type up a letter. So, Ana gets to work, and brings the letter to Jack:

“I don’t know what you’re doing out there, but I pay you to work,” he barks.

“I’m aware of that, Jack,” I mutter apologetically. I feel a slow flush creep up my skin.

“This is full of mistakes,” he snaps. “Do it again.”

Fuck. He’s beginning to sound like someone I know, but rudeness from Christian I can tolerate. Jack is beginning to piss me off.

He’s beginning to piss you off? Are you fucking kidding me? You got to work fifteen minutes late, didn’t bother to start working until like, an hour past start time, and then you only started working because your boss got harsh with you, and he is starting to piss you off? Bitch, there are a lot of people in this country who need jobs. Maybe act like you want yours.

Holy fuck. He’s being unbearable. I sit back down at my desk, hastily redo his letter, which had two mistakes in it, and check it thoroughly before printing. Now it’s perfect.

Hey, Whiney McShutup, maybe you should have checked it thoroughly for errors the first time. Since, you know, that’s your job and all.

Ana takes the letter back to Jack, and gets offended when he repeats his earlier instructions to her:

“Photocopy it, file the original, and mail out to all authors. Understand?”

“Yes.” I am not an idiot. “Jack, is there something wrong?” 

  1.  Fifteen minutes late to work.
  2. Checks personal emails instead of working.
  3. Takes a personal call instead of working.
  4. Half-asses a simple typing job.
No, I don’t see what the problem could possibly be. Ana, being a much better psychiatrist than Dr. Flynn, has an idea:

Perhaps he, too, suffers from a personality disorder. Sheesh, I’m surrounded by them.

You’re the common denominator here, Ana, so maybe don’t sling diagnoses around like confetti, unless you want to end up hitting yourself with some.

We get a half paragraph about Ana’s struggles with the copier, and I’m so over reading about that. Sorry, Ana, I have done my time working in the Xerox mines, I will not come along with you on this journey. When she gets back to her desk, she takes another personal call, bringing the tally to five:

  1. Fifteen minutes late to work.
  2. Checks personal emails instead of working.
  3. Takes a personal call instead of working.
  4. Half-asses a simple typing job.
  5. Takes another personal call.
Five, ah ah ah. Five reasons Jen would fire Ana!

It’s Ethan. He needs to pick up Ana’s keys again, and he wants to know if she wants to grab a coffee. She tells him she doesn’t have time:

“Not today. I was late getting in, and my boss is like an angry bear with a sore head and  poison ivy up his ass.”

She also calls him “‘Nasty and ugly,'” which sounds terribly clever, until she looks up and sees Jack watching her from his office. I hope he can’t lip read. No, fuck that, I hope he can. I hope his major in college was in Deaf education and he is a fucking master lip reading teacher. Ethan shows up for the keys, and since half a page has gone by without any mention of Christian, Ethan brings him up, mentioning that Ana has “‘got it bad,'” and Ana thinks:

That’s not the half of it, and in that moment I realize, I have it more than bad. I have it for life.

I bet that’s a similar moment to coming to grips with having a disease.

When Ana gets back to her desk, Jack is pissed, because once again she wasn’t, you know. Working.

“Where have you been?” Jack is suddenly looming over me.

“I had some business to attend to in Reception.” He is really getting on my nerves. 

So, the moral of this story is don’t hire Anastasia Rose Steele if you expect her to actually do her job:

  1. Fifteen minutes late to work.
  2. Checks personal email instead of working.
  3. Takes a personal call instead of working.
  4. Half-asses a simple typing job.
  5. Takes another personal call.
  6. Friend stops by the office.

Jack sends Ana to get his lunch, so she’s immediately right back on her BlackBerry, and what does she find, but yet another email from Christian, reminding her (and the reader) of shit that has already been drummed through our heads over and over again:

Please use discretion… your work e-mails are monitored.

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS?

Yes. Shouty capitals as you say. USE YOUR BLACKBERRY.

Dr. Flynn can see us tomorrow evening.

“Hey, use discretion when emailing, especially about my personal life, but let me name my therapist again in yet another email.” And thus did the blind lead the stupid through the valley of reader frustration, because at this point I suspect even fans of the series were saying, “Ugh, again with this email thing?”

Christian also sent her another email, because literally two hours went by since she had last emailed him, and he was worried. She has a job, Christian. Surely someone who built a multi-billion dollar empire by the age of twenty-seven is familiar with the concept of being busy at work?

Or not, because when Ana calls him, his assistant puts her right through, as per Christian’s orders. Christian tells Ana:

“You’re normally so quick at responding to my emails. After what I told you yesterday, I was worried,” he says quietly, and then he’s talking to someone in his office.

So, no emails about personal stuff, but he’ll talk about it in front of his employees. No big. And let me stress once more, Ana is at work, at her job, which is not, despite what we’ve been shown in the narrative, just sitting on her ass and sending flirty emails. After an unbearable round of “no, you hang up,” (don’t ask if I’m serious, because I can really only wish I was joking about that part), Christian says:

“You’re biting your lip.”

Shit, he’s right. How does he know?

From what we already know about Mr. Grey, he’s probably just standing outside the deli Ana is getting Jack’s lunch from, creepily watching her. And speaking of Jack, when Ana gets back, he is still in no mood, so she decides to confront him:

“You seem kind of out of sorts today. Have I done something to offend you?”

He blinks at me momentarily. “I don’t think I’m in the mood to list your misdemeanors right now. I’m busy.” He continues to stare at his computer screen, effectively dismissing me.

Whoa… what have I done?

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

 How I wish I could make this happen with just the power of my mind.

Ana goes to Starbucks for lunch. Some might say this is because she’s anorexic, but remember how many calories are in Starbucks’s overpriced crap. This is probably the highest calorie count she’s ever had for lunch. Remember, though, that she told Ethan she wouldn’t have time to grab a cup of coffee with him, and then she goes to Starbucks? That’s cold, Ana. I hope Ethan walks by and sees you there, sipping your latte.
In Ana’s defense, it would be really hard to sit there with Ethan and think of nothing but Christian, which is what she really wants to do on her lunch hour. Oh, shit, no it wouldn’t be. She went to the bar with Ethan the night before and all she did was think about Christian, so his company is clearly not a hindrance to Ana’s obsession.

My mind drifts. Christian the sadist. Christian the submissive. Christian the untouchable. Christian’s Oedipal impulses. Christian bathing Leila. I groan and close my eyes while that last image haunts me.

Can I really marry this man? He’s so much to take in. He’s complex and difficult, but deep down I know I don’t want to leave him despite all his issues. I could never leave him. I love him. It would be like cutting off my right arm.

Let us all now remember the timeline of this book, and the fact that she and Christian have been dating for like a month, a week of which they were broken up.

I ask you, dear reader, why do we have to suffer through this introspective bullshit? We all know she’s going to marry him, anyway, so why punish us with all this, “Will I? Won’t I?” crap? It’s like Xander and Anya in season 6 of Buffy.

 How I wish D’Hoffryn would show up and deal with Ana.

 Looking back on my life before Christian, it’s as if everything was in black and white, like Jose’s pictures. Now my whole world is in rich, bright, saturated color. I am soaring in a beam of dazzling light, Christian’s dazzling light I am still Icarus, flying too close to his sun. I snort to myself. Flying with Christian – who can resist a man who can fly?

You obviously can’t resist a metaphor, that’s pretty fucking clear. Notice how she manages to make a dig at her friend’s art while congratulating herself on her new, better friend. And way to define your entire life by one person. What if his glider crashes? Everything goes back to black and white and darkness and being… Daedalus? I guess, would be the opposite of Icarus? I’m so confused by all these metaphors. But the point is, we have reached the moment in the “romance” where the best our hero and heroine can hope for is to die together. That’s the best possible outcome here, for them to be consumed in a fireball.

Oh, and lest I forget:

It’s DAZZLE TIME.

I have to share with you, that when I tried to put the dazzle .gif there, I accidentally posted the Bristol Stool Chart instead, and for a second I thought, “Would anyone notice the difference, if I just left that there?” And I laughed and laughed, heartily, alone, in my office. Just me and my office plant. Think about that the next time you need a good cry.
Ana is still thinking about Christian, and whether she should “leave him” or stay with him:

And it strikes me like a thunderbolt – that’s what he needs from me, what he’s entitled to – unconditional love. He never received it from the crack whore – it’s what he needs.

First of all, no one is entitled to unconditional love, unless you belong to one of those religions where God loves you unconditionally no matter what you do. But we’re working with physical reality here, and in our physical reality, without any metaphysical nonsense muddying our waters, no one is entitled to unconditional love. No one is actually entitled to anything, for that matter. Entitlement is an artificial construct. Second, how does Ana know if Chedward’s mom gave him unconditional love or not? She was a victim in an abusive situation. She didn’t act the way she probably should have, but no one can prove that she didn’t love her son. To look at the situation and say, “Gosh, she was on drugs and a hooker, so she had no capacity for love,” is incredibly insulting. I guess I can understand a twenty-two year old thinking like that, but this book was written about a twenty-two year old, not by a twenty-two year old. A grown ass woman with children should fucking know better than to assume other mothers don’t love their children enough because of the way they respond to shitty, emotionally destructive circumstances. And third, Ana is calling Christian’s mom “the crack whore” now? I get it, it’s how they were introduced, but come the fuck on. You never met the woman, so get off your high horse. You were a prostitute, too, once, Ana. You sold the right to whip your hiney to a guy, and he didn’t pay you cash for it, but you got a lot of expensive gifts in return. And you filed paperwork on it. Judge not, lest I judge the fuck out of you.

I’ve seen the weighty evidence of his goodness – his charity work, his business ethics, his generosity – and yet he doesn’t see it in himself.

Let’s talk about his business ethics, a second. His business ethics include buying any company his girlfriend works for, meaning he has a little spy already planted in the office. His charity work includes not wanting Ana to donate money to his father’s charity, because he wants to win a private battle with her. And his generosity seems to lie in buying a lot of toys for the women he’s fucking. Oh, and giving away your things to his ex-girlfriend:

I wonder which clothes he gave her. I hope it wasn’t the plum dress. I liked that.

And that was Kate’s dress, wasn’t it?

I want to be all things to this man, his Alpha and his Omega and everything in between, because he is all things to me.

I hope Flynn will have the answers, and maybe then I can say yes. Christian and I can find our own slice of heaven close to the sun.

Yes. You should get as close to the sun as possible. Christian should invest all his money in space technology and you guys should make the sun your honeymoon destination.

Of course, while Ana is dreaming of her place in the sun in bright, dazzling, saturated color, she’s on her lunch break, which was supposed to be forty-five minutes:

I gaze out at bustling, lunchtime Seattle. Mrs. Christian Grey – who would have thought? I glance at my watch. Shit! I leap up from my seat and dash to the door – a whole hour of just sitting – where did the time go? Jack is going to go ballistic.

So…

  1. Fifteen minutes late to work.
  2. Checks personal email instead of working.
  3. Takes a personal call instead of working.
  4. Half-asses a simple typing job.
  5. Takes another personal call.
  6. Friend stops by the office.
  7. Late from lunch.

When Ana gets back, she lies to Jack and says that she was in the basement photocopying. Photocopying what? He’s your boss, if he didn’t tell you to photocopy something, you wouldn’t have been down there. But Jack lets it slide, and tells Ana to print out his itinerary for New York. I’m thinking he had better do that himself, if he wants it done. Ana mentally calls him a bastard, because HOW VERY DARE her boss ask her to do her job! She’s been so busy all day, not doing a damn thing.

Receptionist Claire calls up Ana to tell her that she has a call from Mia:

Mia? I hope she doesn’t want to hang at the mall.

 Because Mia is rich, right? That’s why you’re being such a bitch? I just want to be clear on why you wouldn’t like one of the most likable characters in the Twilight series. I would love for Alice to call me while I was working.

“Ana, hi. How are you?” Her excitement is stifling.

Ugh, don’t you hate it when people call you and they’re all, “How are you?” and express a genuine interest in you?

Mia tells Ana that she’s organizing a birthday party for Christian, and Ana realizes that she doesn’t know when Christian’s birthday is. I think that if there was a checklist called “ways to tell if you know someone well enough to marry them,” “Do you know his or her birthday?” would be fairly up there on the list. That’s basic information that comes out randomly pretty early on in knowing someone.

Ana emails Christian – VIA HER COMPANY EMAIL – about his birthday, and says that the thought of him pouting “does things” to her, to which he responds that she should use her BlackBerry to check email. AGAIN. And Ana thinks:

Why is he so touchy about e-mails?

Everyone else read that chapter where she used the company email and he had to have some kind of cyber bodyguard retrieve it and delete it, right? I didn’t pass out on the toilet, smack my head, and dream all of that up, did I?

So, she emails him on her BlackBerry and they flirt for about two more pages, then we section break to quittin’ time. Everyone has gone home, Ana is just hanging around until Jack leaves for the airport, and that’s when he approaches her like Richard O’Brien in Ever After. In fact, just imagine him as this for the next… rest of the book:

“At last, I have you on your own,” he says, and he slowly licks his lower lip.

And then he ties her to the railroad tracks. Or something. No, actually, he just corners her in the office kitchen and finishs the chapter with an ominous:

“Now… are you going to be a good girl and listen very carefully to what I say?”

Which is supposed to be a cliffhanger, I guess, but we all know that unless he’s about to talk about Christian Grey, she ain’t gonna hear a fucking word.

Two Announcements, Gentle Reader

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So, announcement #1: a few days ago, I made a video to answer some questions that came from a YouTube friend. My cousin D-Rock and I had such a good time, we decided to turn it into a thing. Like a weekly show. Now, I can’t promise that this show is going to be good. Or focused. Or not-grainy looking. Because of the houseplant in my office, it might look like some episodes were shot in a jungle setting. But we’ll be there, talking about stuff, every week.

Our first episode is what happened when we tried to film a promo, asking for viewers (and blog readers, too!) to send in questions and topics for us. We’ll give you credit when we film it. So, feel free to leave a comment at the video page, or on my YouTube channel, or just in the comments here, and ask us a question or suggest a topic and we’ll talk about it. Here, I’ll just let the two idiots in the video attempt to explain it:

SECOND BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!

Today is the release of the final novella in my Abigail Barnette baseball trilogy. TRIPLE PLAY is going to be out TODAY, folks! Can I just tell you how relieved I am that the Detroit Tigers made it into the post season? Because if the Grand Rapids Bengals are having such a bang-up season in fiction and the Tigers didn’t even make the post, I was going to feel like I cursed them. Anyway, read on for the cover, blurb, and a link to buy (the book will be “on sale” later this afternoon).

It’s been an incredible year for the Grand Rapids Bengals, and for Eva Colchado, sports writer for the local paper, the season is about to get a lot more interesting.  She’s about to break a major story exposing a gambling scandal that involves the team—while getting involved with two players, herself.

When Taylor Coburn made a silly bet with the cute reporter, he had no idea that she would follow through on it. Now, poised to win the league championship, he and fellow player Jeron Curtis have a lot more at stake: a hot, no-strings-attached three way with Eva.

When Eva’s story breaks in the midst of the Bengals’ biggest triumph, all three of them have to choose between their loyalty and the feelings raging between them—all during the baseball season’s tumultuous final weeks.
Now, I wanted to share a totally hot excerpt with you, I really did. But I think sometimes, less is way, way more. So, I’m going to give you a one-sentence excerpt, and let your imagination run wild with it:

“There were two naked ball players passed out in her living room.”

So, there you have it. I’m off to start the next recap, which will hopefully be posted tomorrow or Friday, and to celebrate my release day! My good friends Stella and Audra Price are also celebrating a release day, so skip on over to Resplendence Press and check out their The Things A Djinn Can Do, if you would be so kind!

Fifty Shades Darker chapter 14 recap or “Yes, but what about the Volturi?”

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Shameless self promotion time! As you may remember, I was asked to contribute an essay to 50 Writers on 50 Shades of Grey, a compendium of literary criticism of the 50 Shades series collected by Lori Perkins and published by Smart Pop Books. Shameless Amazon.com Link. The good news is that you could win a copy for absolutely free! Smart Pop Books is doing an amazing launch for this title, and they’re calling it Fifty Days of Fifty Shades. Fifty days, pff. I’ve been doing this for like six months.

I bring up this book not just because I have an essay in it, but because there is an entire section of it about BDSM. I’m excited to see what the BDSM experts contacted for this book have to say about the BDSM in 50 Shades, especially after this particular chapter of 50 Shades Darker. Because sweet punch drunk Jesus, what the hell did I just read?

While the last recap was my absolute favorite chapter, and I laughed at its absurdity until my sides ached, shit got decidedly unfunny in chapter fourteen. If this gets too preachy, well, sorry. But it’s difficult to find something funny to say in the face of so much “kink is bad/love your man to wellness” propaganda.

We last left Ana and Christian in his apartment, where he’s just assumed his World of GOR submission pose:

Christian on his knees at my feet, holding me with his steady gray gaze, is the most chilling and sobering sight I have ever seen – more so than Leila and her gun.

So, right away, things aren’t off to a great start. She would rather be confronted with a crazy woman with a gun than see Christian as a submissive.

I inhale sharply with shock. No. No, this is wrong, so wrong and so disturbing.

What’s so wrong about it? In the first book, Ana willingly submitted in this exact way. Now, Christian is doing it and it’s wrong and disturbing. Is this because Ana is uncomfortable with the usually dominant Christian in sub mode, or is it the idea of a man being submissive that bothers her? Let’s keep reading and find out:

Tears begin to ooze down my cheeks, and suddenly it is too much to see him in the same prostrate position as the pathetic creature that was Leila. the image of a powerful man who’s really still a little boy, who was horrifically abused and neglected, who feels unworthy of love from his perfect family and his much-less-than-perfect girlfriend… my lost boy… it’s heartbreaking.

So, it is the fact that he’s a submissive man that’s bothering her? Oh, that’s… progressive of you, Ana. Look at the wording used there. Leila, the submissive woman, is a pathetic creature. Christian is a powerful man, and to see him in the same position as a woman is heartbreaking and evidence of past emotional trauma.

A lot of people have pointed out, rightly so, that this series paints BDSM as some kind of obstacle to be overcome, that it’s therapy for people who have fucked up pasts and that no “normal” or “healthy” person would want to participate. Defenders of this series have said, “No, it’s just that Christian is fucked up and into BDSM, she never says everyone is fucked up if they do it.

Except for right here, where Ana basically says that everyone who participates in BDSM is fucked up:

The thought of me dominating anyone is appalling. The thought of dominating Christian is nauseating. It would make me like her – the woman who did this to him.

If Ana dominated someone, it would make her as nasty and bad as Mrs. Robinson. Domination is nauseating and appalling, probably because in Ana’s world, a world in which Tess of The D’Urbervilles is a great romance, a woman being superior to a man is entirely unacceptable. If Ana dominates someone, she’s no better than the evil people who do it.

So, what is such a forward thinking woman like Ana to do, when faced with a submissive man? Of course, she has to submit right back:

As my thoughts clear, I can see only one way. Not taking my eyes off his, I sink to my knees in front of him.

Then she thinks:

Like this, we are equals. We’re on a level. This is the only way I’m going to retrieve him.

This is the only way. Christian is clearly suffering from some kind of psychotic break, if he’s gone full fugue-state sex slave mode, but rather than call Dr. Flynn, you know, that guy with the medical degree whose job it is to help Christian Grey with his mental state, Ana is going to break him out with the power of love.

Oh Jesus. Christian going catatonic sub… is the equivalent of Edward’s suicide by sparkle.

Just taking my painted-on abs out for a walk.

Let’s look this over, shall we? In New Moon, when Edward decides he’s too much of a danger to Bella and he’s going to end it all, he does so by threatening to sparkle in public. No, I’m not making that up. If you haven’t read the book, I can see why you would maybe not believe me that death by sparkles is a plot point, but you’re going to just have to take my word on this. Anyway, Bella goes all the way to Italy to try and stop him by convincing him that he doesn’t have to sparkle himself to death (if he sparkles publicly, the Volturi, an ancient vampire council headed by Tony Blair, will execute him), but Edward is in some kind of dream-state of confusion when he sees her, convinced that he’s already dead, because he thought she was dead, blah blah watered down Romeo and Juliet type situation. It takes Bella like a whole page to convince Edward he’s not dead.
Now, let’s compare. Christian is regressing here, into a sub. No one is going to kill him, but the Christian Ana knows and loves (the dickhead Christian) is gone, and she’s trying to desperately to bring him back. While in New Moon, Bella is trying to push Edward back into the darkness to save him, in 50 Shades Darker, Ana is trying to pull Christian into the light.
Good thing she does it by talking about literally nothing but herself and her feelings:

“Christian, you don’t have to do this,” I plead. “I’m not going to run. I’ve told you and told you and told you, I won’t run. All that’s happened… it’s overwhelming. I just need some time to think… some time to myself. Why do you always assume the worst?” My heart clenches again because I know; it’s because he’s so doubting, so full of self-loathing.

Ana remembers how Mrs. Robinson knew this side of Christian, and she decides the best course of action is to… talk about herself and her feelings some more:

“I was going to suggest going back to my apartment this evening. You never give me any time… time to just think things through,” I sob, and a ghost of a frown crosses his face. “Just time to think. We barely know each other, and all this baggage that comes with you… I need… I need time to think it through. And now that Leila is… well, whatever she is… she’s off the streets and not a threat… I thought… I thought…” My voice trails off and I stare at him. He regards me intently and I think he’s listening.

Full disclosure, I just got edits back on the last manuscript I turned in. I used fifty-five ellipses in a 24k novella. I blame this book. I have only ever seen more ellipses used in one novel, and that was an erotic retelling of another popular monster story in which I was pretty sure the heroine was having an asthma attack every time she orgasmed. But I digress from my real point, which is that Ana is the shittiest possible person to have with you in a mental crisis situation. Rather than going to get help, she’s going to handle things on her own, and when she does, she’s going to use the opportunity provided by your catatonia to unload all her insecurities on you. Oh, and she’s going to express her jealousy about the way you handled the extremely tense situation you diffused earlier in the day. Because her feelings? They’re more important than whatever you’re going through right now:

“Seeing you with Leila…” I close my eyes as the painful memory of his interaction with his ex-sub gnaws at me anew. “It was such a shock. I had a glimpse into how your life has been… and… ” I gaze down at my knotted fingers, tears still trickling down my cheeks. “This is about me not being good enough for you. It was an insight into your life, and I am so scared you’ll get bored with me, and you’ll go… and I’ll end up like Leila… a shadow. Because I love you, Christian, and if you leave me, it will be like a world without light. I’ll be in darkness. I don’t want to run. I’m just so frightened you’ll leave me…”

So… that’s healthy. And so very Twilight. In New Moon, Edward says this to Bella:

“Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars – points of light and reason. …And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything.”

So, the darkness/light theme from the Twilight series is heavily, heavily borrowed for 50 Shades. I just thought I would point that out, in case you forgot you were doing a read-a-long for a plagiarized book. Also, while looking for that particular quote, I found another interesting point. Remember how Ana is always saying people over thirty are old? Thirty was the age that Edward wanted Bella to wait for before being turned into a vampire, and Bella found that impossibly old. So, there’s yet another cribbed Bella trait to add to our plagiarism tally.

But back to 50 Shades Darker:

I realize as I say these words to him – in the hope that he’s listening – what my real problem is. I just don’t get why he likes me. I have never understood why he likes me.

You, and about a million other readers out there. For fuck’s sake, at least Bella was somewhat likable, even if only in hindsight when compared to Ana.

Because Christian’s break down is all about Ana, as literally everything in this book seems to be, she goes on some more about herself. Keep in mind, he still hasn’t spoken, and still seems to be entirely mentally broken down when she starts piling this on him:

“I don’t understand why you find me attractive,” I murmur. “You’re, well, you’re you… and I’m… I shrug and gaze up at him. “I just don’t see it. You’re beautiful and sexy and successful and good and kind and caring – all those things – and I’m not. […]”

In fairness to E.L. James, she couldn’t just say, “You’re a vampire and I’m not,” because that would be plagiarism, and plagiarism is wrong.

Ana continues to list the reasons Chedward should not find her attractive, and she goes through all of this emotional angst and darkness, until she’s tired of it, because somehow, despite all her efforts to talk about herself until Christian either snaps out of it or just dies from boredom like Brenda at the end of Six Feet Under, he doesn’t have a miraculous recovery from his sub state.

Oh, he is so exasperating. Talk to me, damn it!

“Are you going to kneel here all night? Because I’ll do it, too,” I snap at him.

Ugh, sooooo exasperating. I mean, she’s tried literally everything. She’s talked about how she feels. She’s blamed him for making her feel that way. She’s even cried about how ugly she thinks she is. Why is none of this working? I guess we’ll just have to put poor Chedward down.

I could reach across and touch him, but this would be a gross abuse of the position he’s put me in. I don’t want that, but I don’t know what he wants, or what he’s trying to say to me. I just don’t understand.

She’s so afraid that she’s going to accidentally dominate him, she won’t touch him, so she just sits there until her knees hurt, at which point he finally snaps out of things:

“I was so scared,” he whispers.

Were you in the bad place, Chedward? Seriously, this is the most overwrought and ridiculous thing I can even imagine. I cannot wait for the movie, for this scene specifically, because holy god, I am going to be laughing my ass off. Let’s look at what really just happened here, okay? Ana asked Christian for some space to think about things, so he drops to the floor all dramatic like a toddler who doesn’t want to put his coat on, and Ana figures the only cure is to talk about herself for like, twenty minutes straight, until his tantrum is done.

Because you know what, reader? I’m sorry, I don’t care how deeply you are “in the life,” if your response to a high stress situation is to go full on sex robot, to the point that no one can snap you out of it, then you have real problems and you need to get them tended to. And not by your girlfriend who thinks she can solve any problem by making it all about her. By a real person, like a Dr. Flynn. I’m torn between horror that this is what passes for gripping plot these days, and horror because I’ve known people who actually behave like this, going into some dramatic silent state that forces everyone around to worry about them until they feel they’ve gotten the requisite amount of attention. You know what? Christian wasn’t catatonic. He was waiting. He was waiting for Ana to beat herself down about how not pretty, not worthy she is, and he was waiting for her to become worried enough that she won’t think of leaving now. Not even to go home to her apartment for the night. He’s faking emotional fragility to manipulate her, and she’s too naive to see it. Instead, she’s blaming it on the fact that he used to be a sub in a D/s relationship.

Ana is predictably grateful that Chedward is talking again, so she listens to him tell her all about his problems, at least, for a little bit:

“When I saw Ethan outside, I knew someone had let you into your apartment. Both Taylor and I leapt out of the car. We knew, and to see her there like that with you – and armed. I think I died a thousand deaths, Ana. Someone threatening you… all my worst fears realized. I was so angry, with her, with you, with Taylor, with myself.”

That’s some misplaced anger, then, Chedward. You can’t be angry at Ana. She did nothing but go upstairs to her apartment. You can’t be mad at Taylor, because he was driving you around, as per your orders. You didn’t even send him inside with Ana to be extra superdeedooper sure she’d be safe. And while I suppose it’s okay to be a little angry with the woman holding the gun, this entire situation happened because of you, because while you pay so much attention to little details like legally covering your ass, you can’t even manage to put a fucking lock on your filing cabinet full of personal information about every woman you’ve ever fucked. Or, you know, treat them like people.

He shakes his head revealing his agony.

Whaaaaaat? How does that reveal agony? Yesterday, my husband asked me if I wanted a glass of wine, and I shook my head because my mouth was too full of delicious, delicious schnitzel to answer him, and he dropped the bottle and rushed to my side, begging to know why I was so agonized. Or not, actually, because shaking your head doesn’t mean you’re agonized. Give us some other physical representation of this alleged agony.

“Seeing her in that state, knowing that I might have something to do with her mental breakdown…” He closes his eyes once more. “She was always so mischievous and lively.”

I call bullshit. He doesn’t want anyone mischievous and lively, he wants them naive and easily exploited. He made a big deal about not wanting to get involved with Ana because of her virginity, but what was it that made her attractive to him in the first place? Her grace and poise? Not likely, since she exhibited neither. He can’t prey on women who are self-assured and confident, so either Leila was never mischievous and lively, or she was mischievous and lively in exactly the same way that Ana is strong and smart. I guess these things are in the psychopathic eye of the beholder.

Christian says that if Leila had hurt Ana, it would have been all his fault. I think he certainly would have a hefty share of the blame, what with his not calling the cops and stuff. I’m not saying the police could prevent a crazy person from stalking Ana, but they could have helped find her. And yes, as a commenter pointed out, some times the police are heavy handed with the mentally ill and calling the police becomes tantamount to a death sentence, but I’m guessing that in Seattle, if you’re a billionaire, you can buy the appropriate police response.

I realize this is getting a bit long winded, but there’s no help for it. The book is just really this full of plot holes and inconsistencies.

Ana tells Christian that it’s not his fault Leila is the way she is, but that’s only because Ana is currently in an abusive relationship, so she can’t recognize the fallout of Christian’s previous, probably also abusive, relationship.

Then it dawns on me that everything he did was to keep me safe, and perhaps Leila, too, because he also cares for her.

Don’t settle into this calm and rational thinking, because the next sentence is:

But how much does he care for her? The question lingers in my head, unwelcome. He says he loves me, but then he was so harsh, throwing me out of my own apartment.

Let me get this straight. Even though Chedward goes (allegedly) catatonic with the thought of her leaving, even though the situation she’s describing involves a highly unstable person in mental crisis who had a gun drawn on Ana, Ana still believes that Christian’s reaction – removing her from the situation – is a sign that he doesn’t love her and he really loves Leila more?

Oh, I get it now. There is no fucking plot to be had here. The entire “plot” of this series has already wrapped up. We know, without a fucking doubt, that Ana and Christian are going to end up together. And really, they deserve each other. But that’s the end of the story. See, at least in Twilight there were new dangers and things popping up all the time, so that by the time Bella and Edward were really, truly together forever at the end of New Moon, there were outside forces trying to rip them apart. E.L. seems to really want to set up the same kind of “outside forces are ripping them apart” tension for Chedward and Ana, but it’s not working because she is unwilling to let her characters participate in any plot that isn’t staring soulfully into each other’s eyes, crying, and later fucking. Because this isn’t a book. It’s an author’s mental masturbation.

Christian returns to normal pretty quickly, once Ana assures him she’s not going to leave. Oh my gosh, it’s almost like… like he was faking that whole thing to get her to do what he wanted.

I choke and my tears start anew. “I thought I’d broken you.”

“Broken? Me? Oh no, Ana. Just the opposite.”

“I was faking the whole time, to manipulate you,” he said, and Jen was like, “Aha! I knew it!” No, just kidding. He says she’s his lifeline, and then he lets her touch him:

With his eyes wide and full of fear, he gently tugs my hand and places it on his chest over his heart – in the forbidden zone.

Pictured: the scarecrows that keep the other apes from going near Chedward’s chest.

I gasp. Oh, my Fifty! He’s letting me touch him. And it’s like all the air in my lungs has vaporized – gone.

Oh my sweet baby Jesus. Really? The oxygen you’re breathing can’t vaporize. Vapor only refers to the gas state of a substance that can exist in a solid or liquid state at around the same temperature (think boiling water and steam). Unless Ana’s lungs are running at a brisk 90 degrees Kelvin and she normally breathes liquid oxygen, this metaphor is stupid. And it’s stupid anyway, because who refers to gas as vaporizing? Especially when in prose, we tend to use the words “vapor,” “ether,” “gas,” and “air,” about interchangeably.

Ana decides to heal him through more touch, which gives us the opportunity to read the most awkwardly worded passage ever. At least, since the last one we read. As always, emphasis mine:

Gently I start to undo the buttons on his shirt. It’s tricky with one hand. I flex my fingers beneath his hand and he lets go, allowing me to use both hands to undo his shirt. My eyes don’t leave his as I pull his shirt wide open, revealing his chest.

 Since all I’m seeing right now in my mind is a shirt with hands all over it, or a shirt made out of hands, or a shirt with human hands sewn to it, and then I just snap back to Buffalo Bill –

‘Sup, girl?
‘Sup, double-B?
– let’s fix this, okay?

Gently I start to undo the buttons on his shirt. It’s tricky with one hand. I flex my fingers beneath his and he lets go. My eyes don’t leave his as I pull the fabric wide open, revealing his chest.

You know what’s really depressing? E.L. James was so in-demand from her first small-press publishing run, she most likely had total freedom to just blithely ignore edit suggestions when Vintage put this book out. Now, she’s outsold Harry Potter, so guess what kind of freedom she’s going to have to say, “No thank you, publisher, I don’t think I’ll be doing these edits after all.” Soooo much freedom. Here’s an insider secret: you know why there were so damn many unnecessary semi-colons in the Harry Potter series? Because they knew that people would buy the books whether or not they were edited for grammar. In fact, it probably saved them money not to spend time fixing the semi-colons. When you get to a certain level in publishing, everyone tells you that what you’re doing is golden, keep doing it, because it’s making them money, and the bigger the profit margin, the better. It’s going to be the same thing with E.L. James’s next book, and the real downside is that she is nowhere near as skilled a writer as J.K. Rowling. So we’re in for the most epic shitfest to ever debut at #1 on the NYT list. Winter is coming, is what I’m saying.

Ana keeps touching Christian and asking permission to do so with her eyes:

“Yes,” he breathes – again with the weird ability to answer my unspoken questions.

Because he’s a vampire.

There is a lot of back and forth mentally about whether or not touching him like this is good for him, blah blah blah:

His eyes are screwed up so tightly. This must be agony. It’s truly tormenting to watch.

It’s not a picnic to read, either. And it just keeps going on, for a total of two long, overwrought, adjective-filled pages where his eyes blaze and she gazes and there are painful kisses and one emotional “No!” so, you know, drink ’em if you’ve got ’em, and then Christian reveals the big secret, the really biggety big one that we’ve been waiting for from this “beautiful, fucked up man” since the very first time we saw the Red Room:

“I’m a sadist, Ana. I like to whip little brown-haired girls like you because you all like the crack whore – my birth mother. I’m sure you can guess why.”

Oh my god. Was ever there a “big reveal” so thoroughly ridiculous? Honestly, when I read that, I laughed, first a loud, surprised bark, as though I had become a beagle or other kind of small-game hunting dog. Then it was just a long, gasping, red-faced, wheezing nightmare of side-hurty laughter I could not control. Really? That’s the big “secret”? That he likes to beat women who all look the same? I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING.

Except for where I totally saw that coming. And you did, too, probably.

I really love the way he tacked, “I’m sure you can guess why,” on the end. Like, of course! Who doesn’t refer to their mother as a whore and seek out women who look like her to beat them, am I right? Of course, Ana understands what it’s about.

So, he’s admitted to being a sadist, and Ana decides now she really can’t give him what he needs, drama, drama, silly drama, drama, drama, goose, until Christian tells her how he’s a changed man:

“Ana, believe me. After I punished you and you left me, my worldview changed. I wasn’t joking when I said I would avoid ever feeling like that again.” He gazes at me with pained entreaty. “When you said you loved me, it was a revelation. No one’s ever said it to me before, and it was as if I’d laid something to rest – or maybe you’d laid it to rest, I don’t know. Dr. Flynn and I are still in deep discussion about it.”

So, there you have it, ladies. If your man beats on you, you just have to love him harder, and he’ll change! This isn’t a destructive, frustrating, infuriating message at all! Keep reading these books and telling everyone how you realize how problematic they are, but you’re going to recommend them to all your friends, anyway, because after all, it’s just fantasy!

Someone asked recently why I “hate” on the readers who liked this series. I don’t “hate” them. I’m just pissed off at them for making excuses for this blatant anti-female, anti-sex propaganda that tells women that kink is only for fucked up people, and if their guy is physically and emotionally abusive, they’re just not loving him hard enough. And you know, I don’t feel like I need to be particularly nice to women who want to further that message in our culture, just like I wouldn’t be nice to Paul Ryan if he emailed me asking why I just can’t be more civil about his policies regarding abortion. Because I can’t, because if you’re civil and nice about this shit, people take it as tacit agreement with whatever fucked up thing they’re trying to say.

Hope flares briefly in my heart. Perhaps we’ll be okay. I want us to be okay. Don’t I?

Oh good, now all the conflict will be internal again! I was so bored of the heart-stopping external conflict.

Christian and Ana argue a bit about whether or not he can be happy in a relationship with her, and does she meet his needs and all the boring shit we’ve been over a thousand times before.

“You’re still here. I thought you would be out of the door by now,” he whispers.

“Why? Because I might think you’re a sicko for whipping and fucking women who look like your mother? Whatever would give you that impression?” I hiss, lashing out.

That’s a pun.

Here’s the thing about Ana. She says she wants to know this shit, that nothing he can do is going to push her away, but the second Christian confides in her, she mocks him cruelly. That’s not really helpful, Ana, if he truly doubts himself as much as you think he does.

And unbidden, I recall the photograph in his childhood bedroom, and in that moment realize why the woman in it looked so familiar. She looked like him. She must have been his biological mother.

His easy dismissal of her comes to mind: No one of consequence… She’s responsible for all this… and I look like her… Fuck!

Um… how is his mother responsible for all of this, exactly? The only thing she ever did was die in front of him. Granted, overdosing while home alone with your kid isn’t exactly the most responsible parenting, but she was a drug addict. She was a sick person. And it’s not like there hasn’t been ample opportunity and resources for Christian to work through this. Did his parents not get him therapy as a child, what with his whole not talking and having been left in a room with a corpse for four days? Maybe some of the blame lies there, instead of the poor, dead addict.

Ana asks if they can talk about this all in the morning, because she’s really tired from her long day of self-obsession, and Christian is surprised that she isn’t leaving him. I’m thinking he probably already knew the outcome, because he was emotionally manipulating her.

Can I leave him? I left him once before, and it nearly broke me… and him.

I figured out where the “leaving/left” thing came from. Edward talks about how he left Bella in New Moon. But you know what? That was actual leaving. He packed his shit up and left town. He went to a different continent. That’s “leaving,” and what you did, Ana? That was breaking up.

Ana asks Christian what she can do to make him believe that she won’t leave him, and he’s like:

“Marry me,” he whispers.

BAM. YOU JUST GOT TWILIGHTED RIGHT IN THE DICKHOLE, READER.

Ana starts laughing hysterically, which makes it the very first time in the entire series that she and I are doing the same thing for the same reason at the same time. And then she starts crying, and I’m like, “Exactly, Ana, we must be reading the same book.”

He’s leaning over me. His mouth is twisted with wry amusement, but his eyes are a burning gray, maybe wounded.

His eyes are always burning, or blazing. I’m beginning to think he smokes as much pot as I do.

Here, man. I got your back.

Ana finally points out that, hey, they’ve known each other for a few days, maybe getting married isn’t the best idea, especially considering the proposal came on the end of a massive emotional breakdown:

I shake my head at him. “Whatever happened to delayed gratification?”

“I got over it, and I’m now a firm advocate of instant gratification. Carpe diem, Ana,” he whispers.

Carpe that diem, Ana, and move really quickly to a step in a relationship that you’re already not sure  you still want to be in, because that’s what love is!

Ana asks him for time to think about it, and he’s all, “‘So, that’s not a no?'” and I’m all,

and then they argue, boringly, about their feelings and how she needs time to process things and I can’t believe people are actually reading this book for pleasure and not as a form of acceptable torture under the Geneva Conventions. Then Ana mentions that she hasn’t eaten in a while and she’s hungry, so FUCK IT LET’S DO ALL THE FIGHTS ALL OVER AGAIN IN AN ENDLESS LOOP THAT SPIRALS DOWNWARD INTO THE VERY EYE OF MADNESS ITSELF.

Since Mrs. Jones is off, Christian decides he’ll just make Ana mac and cheese, even though when he offers just cheese she says “‘Not at this hour,'” but I guess the macaroni makes it different somehow.

Who would have thought? Christian Grey likes nursery food.

You know us Americans, E.L., we do so pine for whatever reminds us of the nursery that we totally had because we’re all secretly British.

Speaking of Britishisms, after Ana expresses disbelief that he knows how to use a microwave, Chedward says:

“If it’s in a packet, I can usually do something with it. […]”

You know us Americans, E.L., always referring to our food as being in packets.

Christian asks Ana if she’s still down to go to New York over the weekend, because he still doesn’t get that she wanted to go to New York as a part of her job, to advance her career, because he never had to work for anything in his fucking life and just has had everything handed to him. Christian also mentions that Taylor was upset and looking for her:

“I didn’t know where you were. You left your purse, your phone. I couldn’t even track you. Where did you go?” he asks. His voice is soft, but there’s an ominous undercurrent to his words.

So, here he is, admitting that he makes it a habit of tracking her via cellphone. Ah, the romance. I can hardly bear it.

Christian is all jealous and possessive about her being out with Ethan, so she asks him what he did with Leila. Because, like I said before, there’s no plot here, so we just have to rehash pointless fights over and over again to give the illusion that this book is well-written and going somewhere.

“We talked, and I gave her a bath.” His voice is hoarse, and he continues quickly when I make no response. “And I dressed her in some of your clothes. I hope you don’t mind. But she was filthy.”

“What was I doing in your apartment with my ex-girlfriend who wanted to murder you? You know, the usual. I gave her a bath in your bathtub, used your shampoos and toiletries, then I figured, gosh, you know, she looks so much like you, she could wear your clothes, too. I hope this doesn’t set off some jealous response in you.”

That cool, intellectual part of my brain knows that he just did that because she was dirty, but it’s too hard. My fragile, jealous self can’t bear it.

Suddenly, I want to cry – not succumb to ladylike tears that trickle decorously down my cheeks, but howling-at-the-moon crying.

Don’t you have a werewolf friend-zoned somewhere? He could help you out with that.

This is just too much to absorb. I’m like an overflowing tank of gasoline – full, beyond capacity. There is no room for any more.

Thanks for cluing us into what “overflowing” means. I really needed the added context to grasp that.

“Don’t. It doesn’t mean anything. It was like caring for a child, a broken, shattered child.”

What the hell would he know about caring for a child? This was a woman he had a very full-on, deviant sexual relationship

Then Ana runs to the bathroom crying, and I guess the moral of this chapter is, don’t let Christian Grey babysit your kids.

What I Don’t Understand About Harry Potter/Why Forrest Gump Ruined My Life

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A lot of people really like Harry Potter. I mean, in case you didn’t know. It’s pretty indie and underground, but basically the story is about a kid who has a shitty life until he finds out he’s a wizard, and then he has a shitty life but there’s magic and also a haunted boarding school with a borderline abusive, definitely neglectful staff.

It’s not that I hate Harry Potter, or I think I could do better myself or something. I very much enjoy Harry Potter. I just occasionally start picking at the things I love, like a scab, until the whole thing dissolves in my hands in a mess of blood and Neosporin. The more I think about it, the more the entire story is super depressing, and very confusing to me. Here are just a sampling of things I don’t understand:

1. What the fuck is up with that school? In his first year at Hogwarts, Harry almost dies about eleventy-bajillion times. The reader is asked to believe that Hogwarts is this awe-inspiring place of childhood dreams and happiness, but think about what happens to these poor kids. You’re what, nine, eleven, whichever, and you get plucked from your family and sent to live in a spooky old castle where ghosts wander about freely and some of your teachers may or may not be terrorists actively working to murder you and your fellow students. There is a dorm you can be assigned to that will statistically up your chances of becoming an ally of evil forces, and the entire place is booby trapped to the point that if you accidentally end up in the wrong place (with a little help from your friend the staircases, who change their architecture just to fuck up your day), you could get ripped apart by a giant three-headed dog. This is not safe. This is not where you’d want to be as a child. And these kids are frequently working with highly volatile substances, like vegetables that can kill you with the sound of their voice, spells that can make you vomit slugs, and even more teachers who might be terrorists. If I were a wizard, I would homeschool my kids, because I can guarantee that living at Hogwarts would have totally traumatized me.

2. If they have time travel, why don’t they use it to go back and kill Voldemort when he was a baby? The time travel in Harry Potter confuses and enrages me. Okay, the wizards have time travel. They have created a means by which they can go back and right the wrongs of the past. They use it so kids can double major. The rules of Harry Potter time travel are kind of wishy-washy, aren’t they? You’re not supposed to see yourself in the past… unless you know you’re going to see yourself? Or something? It was okay to go back in time and save Buckbeak’s life, but not to turn back time to save Cedric Diggory when he died? Some fans assert that traveling into the past to change events would be futile, as whatever a person is dealing with in the present is the consequence of circumstances that already happened, meaning that any attempt to change the past has already failed the moment you set out to do so, and everything is fixed along an already decided pattern in time. For example, Harry could travel back to cast his Patronus and save himself and Sirius from the Dementors because he had already done so… does this make anyone else’s head go all hurty? The Time-Turner also doesn’t seem to be able to send anyone into the future, so if it can’t change the past and you can’t get a peek at the future, the only thing it’s good for is explaining to the present version of yourself how very clever you’re about to be a few days ago. But if wizards are able to manipulate the space/time continuum, why don’t they just… go back and kill Voldemort when he was a baby?

3. Adults are putting way too much pressure on these kids. I remember reading the last Harry Potter book, where the Aurors show up and they’re like, “Hey kids, we’re probably going to die on this dangerous mission, put on these Harry Potter disguises so the bad guys don’t know who to kill. Thanks.” Okay, you know what? Fuck you, Aurors. You guys are employed by the Ministry of Magic. You are adults who have chosen to live a high-risk life in a dangerous career. Ron and Hermione? They’re teenagers. They’re not getting paid to take these chances. They’re being emotionally manipulated into it. “Do this, or your friend will die.” Yeah, that’s a choice someone should ethically put to someone whose frontal lobe is still developing. And if it’s so damned important for Voldemort to not get a hold of Harry Potter, why not put him in a secure location and keep him there? Like, off the top of my head, The Room of Requirement at Hogwarts, or inside one of those TARDIS-like trunk things The 10th Doctor Barty Crouch was using to hide Mad-Eye Moody in? Clearly, wizards are able to manipulate dimensions to make things bigger on the inside, so why not make Harry Potter a nice little house inside a shoe box and then put that shoebox where Voldemort can’t find it? Or just keep feeding him polyjuice potion to make him look like someone who isn’t, you know. Cursed from birth. Don’t make the poor bastard fight for his life for the entire seven books.

Yes, I realize that if they did literally any of this stuff, the books would not have a plot or a setting and basically not exist, and no, I’m not the greatest monster of our age, I don’t want Harry Potter to not exist. But I have a lot of free time, and thinking is is the curse of the Time Lords.

Now, months ago I mentioned that some day, I might tell the story of when Forrest Gump ruined my life. I can’t believe how many of you are interested in hearing that story. I also can’t believe it wasn’t pretty self explanatory:

My name is Jenny. On average, I still hear someone pronounce it “JEH-nay” about twice a month. In my nightmares. My constant, constant nightmares. That freaking movie ruined my name. I was a freshman in a new high school. I had braces and no breasts and very few friends. I mean, that shit all got sorted out later, but I had to endure a fair amount of “I… was… run-ning” for a while there. Also, she was pretty rapey. And if you read the book, the whole reason she’s into Forrest is because he’s hung like a science experiment. Not fair, dude. Not fair at all.

Satan’s Littlest Pet Shop

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Every time I try to tell someone about the big spider I saw in my house, I hear something along the lines of, “Oh, I know, I had one the size of a dime in my kitchen!” And I listen politely, because in the past, before I lived in the house American Horror Story was surely based off of, I would have freaked out at a dime-sized spider, myself. Heck, I would have freaked out at a spider the size of the ball in a ballpoint pen, because that is how much I used to dislike spiders.

I used to be terrified of spiders. As it turns out, living in your worst nightmare actually dulls your fears quite a bit. When we moved into our current residence, a 1917 brick farmhouse on the edge of our village (and yes, it’s really a village, and yes, I often am gripped with the desire to call out, “Bonjour! Good day! How is your family?” while I’m walking my kids to school because of this fact), I thought, “Aha, good brick house, Michigan basement, nice barn with eaves for the spiders to play in. I bet we won’t see a single one in the house.”
Then, one day, when I had a rare afternoon to myself to make the house look lovely, I lit some candles, made myself a pot of tea, and settled onto my comfy couch to watch North and South and lust over Richard Armitage. Unfortunately, this little fellow had something of the same idea:
Keep in mind, that’s not a doll-house sized spoon. It’s not even an average American household teaspoon. It’s of the larger “tablespoon” variety. Remember that scene in The Princess Bride, where Humperdink puts The Machine on full power and Wesley screams so loud and so long the entire kingdom hears it? And Inigo Montoya is like, “That is the sound of ultimate suffering?” That is pretty much the exact sound I made as I leapt from the couch and barricaded myself in my office.
I figured this spider was so freakishly huge, it had to be a one-time deal. I live in the United States, and while I have no hard numbers on the subject, jingoistic American pride gives me a hunch that we lead in spider poison technology. We bombed the house for good measure, and that was the end of it.
No, it wasn’t. Who the fuck am I kidding? A few days after the bombing, I had this encounter:
Again, not a Barbie cigarette lighter. Do they even make those? I hope not. That would be just awful, if they did. I would be writing some letters. No, that’s my lighter, which I keep in the bathroom because I occasionally like to smoke in the shower, and the click-style lighters are the only ones who will light with water flying everywhere.
I’m a complicated and enigmatic figure, okay?
The terror didn’t stop there:
Now, just in case you think that this is the same spider, and it’s a pet of mine, and I pose him for these photos, I can assure you that you’re a fucking lunatic. Who in their right mind would keep one of these in their house willingly? Look at the size of it! Even my KISS lighter is scared. And it has the power of rock on its side.
At least they weren’t all absolutely huge. This guy was small enough to ride on a quarter:
Oh, shit, wait. That’s not a quarter. For those of you unfamiliar with American currency, that is a fifty cent piece. That’s 30.6 mm in diameter. No, that spider is still way too big to live in my house.
Soon, spider photography became a sick obsession for me. I don’t know why I feel compelled to document every freakish Chernobyl accident victim spider in my house, but I started almost looking forward to the next spider sighting. I tried to keep a prop on me at all times, so I could document their relative size, but sometimes they got into tricky spots. Like the edge of this very beaten up wooden cupboard in my kitchen:
That’s the fearless hand of my three-year-old daughter. We thought it would be funny to name her Wednesday Addams. I’m convinced that the ancient power of names and associations are what resulted in a preschooler who finds these arachnid invaders “adorable.” She has been known to “play” with them, letting them run over her hands and petting them until they bite her or escape. Many people who have seen these pictures have insisted they are brown recluse spiders, but we believe they are either Wolf or Nursery spiders, as their bites have never proven venomous.
But even if they’re not poisonous, they are still creepy. And busy. Every morning when I go into the bathroom, it’s like I’m busting through the nightmare tape at the finish line of an eight-legged marathon from hell. Have you ever actually tasted spider web? I have. Because I have accidentally gotten that large a quantity of spiderweb in my fucking mouth. I no longer stagger, yawning, into my bathroom.
Now, for a while I had reached this place of zen about spiders. I would occasionally high-five them when I found them, and I’d point finger guns at them and say, in a “I’m just kidding around, pal,” kind of way, “Okay, don’t crawl on me, or I’ll fucking kill you!” But I meant it. And I’m pretty sure they knew it, because they upped their game considerably. Doing things like hanging suspended just above the light switches in darkened bathrooms:
“Go ahead, flip on the lights over the vanity. I dare you,” he seems to be saying. “You were gonna pluck your eyebrows, but I have a feeling you’re starting to dig the natural look.”
Then this morning I saw something that rekindled my mortal dread of spiders. I went into the laundry room, where I saw this:
That is the spider’s size in relation to a full grown cat. Sure, it’s a big spider. That’s pretty gross. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part was what I didn’t capture on my cell phone’s grainy 1970’s porno quality camera. The worst part was that spider? 
Was eating cat food.

50 Shades Darker chapter 13 recap, or “My preciousssssss.”

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Let’s just take a moment to celebrate the fact that my book, which was horrifically overdue, is now finished. That’s twenty-two books I have written since 2002, when I started writing. Some books are really easy to write. Some are struggles like unto pushing a boulder up a mountain, and then up another, bigger mountain that is inexplicably perched atop that first mountain. This book was the latter, but it is finished now.

The good news is, I get to pass the savings on to you! I am going to endeavor to get back to two recaps a week, and I have a lot of other fun blog topics coming up, which may include:

  • Why male bashing is anti-feminist
  • Why Pinterest is going to destroy Western civilization
  • Famous people I suspect of being aliens
  • Why I don’t give a shit about other people’s bad moods
  • Stuff I don’t understand about Harry Potter
… and many more.
Actually, no more. That’s all I had written on my legal pad. Well, except for the blog post I was going to write about how Bill Nye the Science Guy is actually the real-life Time Lord Doctor Who is based off of, but I don’t think I need to write about that, since everyone already knows that is the case.
Okay, and I might talk about The Ponds, but I’m not emotionally healthy enough to do so right now. I need time.
One more thing I want to address before I get into the recap: someone left a comment wondering why I don’t have the Gilbert Gotfried 50 Shades of Grey reading video on my recaps. It basically just comes down to the fact that everyone has posted it everywhere, and there are so many “celebrities read 50 Shades of Grey aloud” videos popping up and going viral that by the time I post it here, you’ve already seen it a hundred and fifty times on twitter or facebook or whatever. It’s nothing against those parodies, it’s just that they’re coming in and going out so fast, I don’t think I’ll be showing you anything you didn’t see already.
With that in mind, on to the recap of the second book, the first of which I already recapped with many of the same jokes. Because I am nothing if not fresh and innovative.
Okay. I’m sure you can feel my tingles of joy from… wherever you are. But I have to tell you, this is my absolute favorite chapter. Would it be better if Leila shot Ana and Christian and they both died, inches apart from each other, reaching out to each other but never making the connection, like Deb and Frank on Dexter and OH GOD THE PAIN FROM THAT MEMORY.
I’m building it up too much, but I just hope you can hear my derisive snickers and out-and-out gales of full force laughter as I navigate this “tense” and “thrilling” chapter.
So, as you know, Ana has gone home to her apartment and found Leila there, with a gun:

She’s here, gazing at me with an unnerving blank expression, holding a gun. My subconscious swoons into a dead faint, and I don’t think even smelling salts will bring her back.

That’s right. Even with a gun pointed at her, Ana has to think up something for her imaginary friends to do.

I blink repeatedly at Leila as my mind goes into overdrive. How did she get in? Where’s Ethan? Holy shit! Where is Ethan?

Note that she thinks about Ethan only after she checks up on her internal imaginary friend.

Leila’s expression remains blank, and her appearance is as scruffy and ill-kempt as ever. She’s still wearing that grubby trench coat, and she looks desperately in need of a shower. Her hair is greasy and lank, plastered against her head, and her eyes are a dull brown, cloudy, and vaguely confused.

If her eyes are “cloudy,” does she have cataracts? And of course Ana would think Leila needs a shower. Remember how often Ana showers. If you’re not bathing three times a day minimum, of course you’re going to look dirty to her.

Ana decides to try to talk to Leila, and when she does, Leila responds:

“She speaks,” she whispers, and her voice is soft and hoarse at the same time, an eerie sound.

She spoke the first time Ana met her. In fact, they had a conversation, so I don’t see why this should surprise Leila, even if she is crazy. Judging by the way the character of Leila is written, I would go so far as to say to that E.L. James has never interacted with a truly unhinged person, and she based this entire character off Nancy in the last twenty minutes of The Craft.

You can tell someone is crazy when they make this face. It’s science.

Ana asks Leila if she’s there alone, because she wants to make sure Ethan isn’t there. But she isn’t getting any straight answers out of Nancy Leila:

“Alone,” she whispers. “Alone.” And the depth of sadness in that one word is heart wrenching. What does she mean? I am alone? She’s alone? She’s alone because she’s harmed Ethan?

It doesn’t take a lot to figure this one out, Detective Ana. You already know that she’s recently left her husband and her boyfriend just died. Or maybe it was the other way around. I can’t keep all these subplots straight. Anyway, she left someone, someone died, and she’s still obsessed with Christian. It isn’t all about you, Anastasia Rose Steele.

“What are you doing here? Can I help you?” My words are a calm, gentle interrogation despite the suffocating fear in my throat. Her brow furrows as if she’s completely befuddled by my questions. But she makes no violent move against me. Her hand is still relaxed around her gun. I take a different tack, trying to ignore my tightening scalp.

Okay, she’s not doing anything violent… except she has a gun and she’s broken into your house. This is where we finally see Ana’s bravery, by the way. We hear about how brave and strong she is, and she finally has the chance to prove it to us, and does, by not just screaming and shitting at the sight of a crazy person with a gun.

“Would you like some tea?” Why am I asking her if she wants tea? It’s Ray’s answer to any emotional situation, resurfacing inappropriately. Jeez, he’d have a fit if he saw me right this minute. His army training would have kicked in, and he’d have disarmed her by now.

Wait, is she “Jeez”ing the fact that her father wouldn’t want her to be in a room with a crazy person holding a gun? Guh, dads. They’re so unreasonable. And we’ve talked about Britishisms in this book before. As an American person, let me just say that it strikes me as comically, stereotypically British to offer an armed intrude a cup of tea.

She’s not actually pointing that gun at me. Perhaps I can move. She shakes her head and tilts it from side to side as if stretching her neck.

Because she’s a velociraptor.
Velociraptors hate it when you steal their boyfriends.

I take a deep precious lungful of air, trying to calm my panicked breathing, and move toward the kitchen island. She frowns as if she can’t quite understand what I am doing and shifts a little so she is still facing me. I reach the kettle and with a shaking hand fill it from the faucet. As I move, my breathing eases. Yes, if she wanted me dead, surely she would have shot me by now.

Or not. She might use the gun to get you into a car, where she will drive you to a secondary location and torture you for hours. Not that I’ve daydreamed about this scenario over the past five or so months that I’ve been recapping these books or anything.

She watches me with an absent, bemused curiosity.

How does that work, exactly? Absent implies a lack of concern in the moment. Curiosity kind of requires you to be in the moment, and if you’re bemused, you would be even more focused, because you’re actively trying to puzzle out what’s going on. At least we got to the second page of this chapter before we got our first sentence tragedy.

Ana tries again to ask Leila if Ethan is in the apartment, but she can’t get anything out of her that isn’t crazy:

She inclines her head the other way, and with her right hand – the hand not holding the revolver – she grabs a strand of her long greasy hair and starts twirling and fiddling with it, pulling and twisting.

While Ana watches Leila act out every scene Angelina Jolie had in Girl, Interrupted, she thinks again how alike they look. Ana and Leila, that is, not Leila and Angelina Jolie. There, I committed a sentence travesty of my own.

“Alone. All alone,” she murmurs. I find this comforting. Maybe Ethan isn’t here.

There really is nothing more comforting than the ramblings of a crazy person.

That’s why these cds are always sold out at Target.

Ana asks Leila if she wants tea or coffee:

“Not thirsty,” she answers softly, and she takes a cautious step toward me. My feeling of empowerment evaporates. Fuck! I start panting with fear again, feeling it surge thick and rough through my veins. In spite of this, and feeling beyond brave, I turn and fetch a couple of cups from the cupboard.

I’m just going to assume that Ana is having an asthma attack. So far, she’s held her breath, she’s gasped for air, now she’s panting… someone get this woman an inhaler. 

“What do you have that I don’t?” she asks, her voice assuming the singsong intonation of a child.

I totally get why he’s into her now.

Miss me?
Ana asks Leila what she means, because while Ana is so exceptionally bright that her gynecologist can see her intelligence shining out of her hooch, she’s not bright enough to interpret such a trite and overused “other woman” statement like “What do you have that I don’t?” which I feel is fairly self-explanatory.

“Master – Mr. Grey – he lets you call him by his given name.”

“I’m not his submissive, Leila. Er… Master understands that I am unable, inadequate to fulfill that role.”

She tilts her head to the other side. It’s wholly unnerving and unnatural as a gesture.

Now, it isn’t enough that Leila is over-the-top, movies crazy. For added realism, she speaks in the stilted manner of a robot or Gollum from Lord of The Rings:

“In-ad-e-quate.” She tests the word, sounding it out, seeing how it feels on her tongue. “But Master is happy. I have seen him. He laughs and smiles. These reactions are rare… very rare for him.”

We hates the stupid perfect Anases. Anuses. Whatever. We hates her.

“You look like me.” Leila changes tack, surprising me, her eyes seeming truly to focus on me for the first time. “Master likes obedient ones who look like you and me. The others, all the same… all the same… and yet you sleep in his bed. I saw you.”

Clever girl.
For all the “changing tack” that’s going on in this chapter, it should have taken place on the fucking sailboat.
Ana realizes that she didn’t imagine Leila standing at the end of the bed (duh) but she asks Leila if she saw her in Christian’s bed, just to confirm it, because like I said before, she’s Sherlock fucking Holmes.

“I never slept in Master’s bed,” she murmurs. She’s like a fallen ethereal wraith. Half a person. She looks so slight, and in spite of the fact that she’s holding a gun, I suddenly feel overwhelmed with sympathy for her.

Note that Ana only feels sympathy for her when she realizes that Leila is half a person because she’s not with Christian anymore. Because ladies, if you haven’t experienced Christian Grey, if you’re not worthy of his shining, golden love, you’re basically half a person. Which makes Ana the only fully realized woman in the past and future of the human race. So… that’s good news.

“Why does master like us like this? It makes me think something… something… Master is dark… Master is a dark man, but I love him.”

No, no he’s not. I bristle internally. He’s not dark. He’s a good man, and he’s not in the dark. He’s joined me in the light. And now she’s here, trying to drag him back with some warped idea that she loves him.

The air was heavy with vampire allegory, dear reader.  How can Ana possibly say that Christian isn’t a dark person, when she’s spent most of this book and all of the last book thinking about how dark and tortured he is? In the last fucking chapter she was thinking about how dark he is. What has changed?

Oh, that’s right. She’s brought him into the light with the shining goodness of her pure, not-BDSM sexuality. Because BDSM is dark and horrible, and she’s going to heal and rescue him with the power of the missionary position. Or something.

Ana asks Leila to give her the gun, and that doesn’t go down well:

“This is mine. It’s all I have left.” She gently caresses the gun. “So she can join her love.”

Shit! Which love – Christian? It’s like she’s punched me in the stomach. I know he will be here momentarily to find out what’s keeping me. Does she mean to shoot him? The thought is so horrific, I feel my throat swell and ache as a huge knot forms there, almost choking me, matching the fear that’s balled tightly in my stomach.

Oh, so she is having an asthma attack. Glad she cleared that up for us. But seriously? “Which love – Christian?” Who the fuck else, Ana? Who else would she be talking about, if she’s stalking Christian?

Now, this is a nit-pick of total personal opinion, so if you don’t agree, don’t worry about it. But I find it kind of stupid that only when Ana considers that Leila might want to shoot Christian that it’s a “horrific” situation. Not when she thought about Leila shooting Ethan, or shooting her. It’s only “horrific” if the most important person in the world, Christian Philipe Louis Arthur Trevalyan Grey, Esq. is going to be shot. Fuck you, Ana. Anyone getting shot is horrific. ANYONE.

Christian busts through the door, with Taylor behind him. Taylor isn’t a very good bodyguard, is he? I mean, I hate to criticize him (because he is all that is good and pure in this world), but what kind of bodyguard lets the person they’re supposed to be protecting burst through a door ahead of them? Isn’t that like, Body Guarding 101?

Kevin Costner would never let that type of fuckery go down. Not on his watch.

My world teeters precariously in the hands of this poor, fucked-up woman. Will she shoot? Both of us? Just Christian? The thought is crippling.

You know what else is crippling sometimes? Being shot. Like, actually crippling, not just emotionally.

But after an eternity, as time hangs suspended around us, her head dips slightly and she gazes up at him through her long lashes, her expression contrite.

Wow, they really do look alike, huh? Right down to the impossibly weird facial expressions.

This is how I imagine “looking up at him through my lashes” every time it’s in this fucking book.

Christian holds up his hand, signaling to Taylor to stay where he is. Taylor’s blanched face betrays his fury. I have never seen him like this, but he stands stock-still as Christian and Leila stare at each other. 


Because Taylor protects what’s his, Ana, and he’s in love with you! Okay, but in the reality of this actual storyline… why does Christian have a bodyguard? He talks about how badass Taylor is, how safe he can keep them, but every time some danger comes up, Christian charges in like the fucking cavalry and tells Taylor to stand back. If Christian is such a bad ass, why does he need a security team?

The answer is, of course, that he doesn’t need a security team, because the author is so convinced of the perfection of her main characters that she can’t pass up any opportunity to display to the readers just how perfect they are, even if doing so would inject a little tiny bit of much needed realism to her work.

This is where everything goes all hilariously shitty. I actually cackled and rubbed my hands together before I typed the next excerpt:

I realize I am holding my breath. What will she do? What will he do? But they just continue to stare at each other. Christian’s expression is raw, full of some unnamed emotion. It could be pity, fear, affection… or is it love? No, please, not love!

Yup. This is going to be the part of the book where Ana is so insecure, she honestly starts to get jealous of the crazy woman with the gun. The woman who is so mentally unstable, she can’t wash herself. Ana starts to become unhinged about the possibility that Christian actually wants Leila instead:

 No! Suddenly I feel I’m the interloper, intruding on them as they stand gazing at each other. I’m an outsider – a voyeur, spying on a forbidden, intimate scene behind closed curtains.

Christian’s intense gaze burns brighter, and his bearing changes subtly. He looks taller, more angular somehow, colder, and more distant. I recognize this stance. I’ve seen him like this before – in his playroom.

So, of course, this is going to bring up all of Ana’s insecurities on the subject of BDSM:

Finally he mouths a word at her. I can’t make out what it is, but the effect on Leila is immediate. She drops to the floor on her knees, her head bowed, and the gun falls and skitters uselessly across the wooden floor.

This is how E.L. James apparently sees people who are into BDSM. Brainwashed automatons who are mentally ill and dangerously unstable. Ana isn’t that way, because she’s not a true submissive. Are you guys picking up those subtle clues? I’m pointing them out because I don’t want you to miss the jist of the entire series, which is that BDSM is fucked up and only for people who are fucked up.

Christian walks calmly over to where the gun has fallen and bends gracefully to pick it up. He regards it with ill-disguised disgust, and then slips it into his jacket pocket.

Oh, and guns. Guns are also bad.

Christian tells Ana to go with Taylor. Ethan is safe downstairs. But Ana doesn’t want to go, because her boyfriend might cheat on her with her home invader:

I don’t want to leave him – leave him wit her. He moves to stand beside Leila as she kneels at his feet. He’s hovering over her, protectively. She’s so still, it’s unnatural. I can’t take my eyes off the two of them – together…

I’m beginning to get a sense of why Christian doesn’t want to go to the police about Leila. Whatever he did to her to make her like this has to be a crime. Brainwashing another person is a crime, right? I mean, if you’re not doing it as a form of advertisement or religion?

Ana still isn’t leaving, but luckily Christian is there to say what we’re all thinking:

“For the love of God, Anastasia, will you do as you’re told for once in your life and go!” Christian’s eyes lock with mine as he glowers at me, his voice a cold shard of ice. The anger beneath the quiet, deliberate delivery of his words is palpable.

Angry at me? No way. Please – no! I feel like he’s slapped me hard. Why does he want to stay with her?

Get over yourself, Anastasia Rose Steele. As I’ve mentioned before, not everything is about you. Christian is trying to get you safely away from the woman who broke into your apartment with a drawn firearm. How pathetically insecure do you have to be to think you need to protect your claim on this guy from her?

I glance down at Leila and notice a very small smile cross her lips, but otherwise she remains truly impassive. A complete submissive. Fuck! My heart chills.

 This is what he needs. This is what he likes. No! I want to wail.

Oh, that insecure. Thanks for clearing that up for us.

I am immobilized by the horrific spectacle before me. It confirms my worst fears and plays on all my insecurities: Christian and Leila together – the Dom and his sub.

“Taylor,” Christian urges, and Taylor leans down and scoops me into his arms. The last thing I see as we leave is Christian gently stroking Leila’s head as he murmurs something softly to her.

No!

Add “No!” to the drinking game. But it must have the exclamation point. Check out the recurrence of “horrific.” Before, it was “horrific” to think of Christian getting shot, now it’s “horrific” to see him in proximity to one of his ex-girlfriends. That word is losing a lot of meaning for me right now. I used to say that the overall message of this book and it’s popularity were “horrific,” but clearly I need to find a stronger word. “Catastrophic,” maybe, or some combination of tragic and hilarious. Traglarious. Tragilaristrophic.

Here’s the beginning of a new fic, for all you Ana/Taylor shippers:

As Taylor carries me down the stairs, I lie limply in his arms trying to grasp what’s happened in the last ten minutes -or was it longer? Shorter? The concept of time has deserted me.

Also, the concepts of common sense and trust in her romantic partner, but we’re not here to judge.

Oh, shit, yes we are! That is exactly why we’re here, so:

Christian and Leila, Leila and Christian… together? What is he doing with her now?

Fucking her probably, are you happy?

Ana explains to Ethan what’s happening, but only after he has to ask her three times what’s going on. When Ana explains it, Ethan asks:

“Has anyone called the cops?”

You know, like any rational person might wonder. But Ana tells him, “‘No, it’s not like that.'” What is it not like? It’s “not like” there’s an armed intruder in your home? Because it seems like it’s exactly like that.

Still, Ethan accepts that lame explanation and says:

“Hey, Ana, let’s go get a drink.”

Ana asks Taylor if the apartment had been searched, and Taylor confirms that it was. Which raises this question: what is the legality of entering that apartment, which doesn’t technically belong to Ana? Remember, it’s Kate’s apartment that her parents bought her, Ana is just her roommate. Half of the stuff in that apartment wasn’t Ana’s to give permission to search, even if Christian had bothered to ask permission, which he didn’t. So, Christian Grey basically gave his security team orders to commit B&E? Trespassing, at the very least. There’s no way he called Kate in Barbados to ask permission for his guys to come onto her property, and the reason I know this is because Christian Grey treats all women as though they have no personal agency. He probably just assumed that it was okay to send his guys to Kate’s apartment, to go through her things, and if she gets mad he’ll ask his brother, her boyfriend (and therefore lord and master) to make everything okay.
This guy. This fucking guy.
Taylor mentions that Leila has an “‘uncanny ability to evade'” their attempts at finding her. You know who probably wouldn’t have that problem? The police. Because they have more resources than just some guy named Welch.
Ethan and Ana go to the bar across the street, where Ana realizes she can’t really talk to Ethan about the situation:

I can’t talk about this – I have signed an NDA. And for the first time, I really resent that fact, plus that Christian’s said nothing about rescinding it.

No, you felt a fair amount of resentment about it before, when he told you that you couldn’t share details about your sex life with your best friend. This isn’t even the first time in this book that you’ve resented the NDA.

Ana gives him the Reader’s Digest condensed version of what was going on, including the gun, and Ethan wants to know what Christian is doing with the crazy gun lady:

This is the crux of my problem. What the fuck are they doing? Talking, I hope. Just talking. Yet all I can see in my mind’s eye is his hand, tenderly stroking her hair.

This is not the crux of your problem. The crux of your problem is that you’re too emotionally immature to be in a romantic relationship with anyone, let alone a broken billionaire who is emotionally abusive and exhibits clear symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder. Leila is just a little satellite problem orbiting the vast galaxy of problems you have.

She’s disturbed and Christian cares about her; that’s all this is,  I rationalize. But in the back of my mind, my subconscious is shaking her head sadly.

All that proves is that your subconscious is a fucking idiot, too, Ana.

Ana spends some more time mentally torturing herself about how Leila can fulfill Christian’s needs more than she can, and what Mrs. Robinson said about missing the playroom, etc.

My mind, my heart, my soul are still in that apartment with my Fifty Shades and the woman who used to be his submissive. A woman who thinks she still loves him. A woman who looks like me.

Which I guess would be a problem if you were dating a facial recognition software package, but you’re dating a human being, so I’m one hundred per-fucking-cent certain that he’s going to know she’s not you, or that he can’t replace you with her. If he’s really made all this progress that you keep bragging about, then he’s not apt to be fucking around with some other woman just because she looks like you. Also, maybe you need to work on your trust issues.

Ana sees Dr. Flynn go into the apartment building. Someone who is current on the state of mandated reporting, let me know here… doesn’t Dr. Flynn have to call the police? Isn’t it required of him, by law, to report if someone is having a breakdown and has gone through all the steps necessary (like acquiring a firearm and tracking down a target) to commit a murder? For what it’s worth, in the text it says Dr. Flynn gets out of “a large cruiser,” but it’s never specified that it’s a police cruiser or that any law enforcement officers are there. Just Dr. Flynn and a woman in blue scrubs.

After some more of Ana feeling sorry for herself, Ethan walks her back to the Escala – because Christian left them with no ride. When she gets there, Christian is pissed off because she didn’t follow his orders and come right back to the apartment:

He’s angry with me? He’s the one that just spent God knows how long with his loony ex-girlfriend, and he’s angry with me?

First of all, you know how long he spent with her, you were watching the apartment building the whole time, and second, fuck you, Ana. It’s not like he went on a date with another woman, he was with someone he clearly fucked up, and he was trying to make the situation right. Just because he went about it in a stupid, self-important way doesn’t really minimize the fact that he’s trying to help. Sorry that his attention was diverted from you for a few fucking minutes.

“Have you been drinking?” he asks, appalled.

“Always,” Jen says, rolling her eyes. Christian lifts his hand to spank her, and she slams the book closed, because she is having none of that nonsense.

Ana is bit drunk, by-the-by, and she decides to let all her insecurities out right then and there:

“I went for a drink or three with Ethan while you attended to your ex,” I hiss at him. “I didn’t know how long you were going to be… with her.”

Meanwhile, at the Escala…
Christian tells Ana that Leila is in a psychiatric hospital, but he might as well have said she’s in a secluded, romantic cabin chilling a bottle of white wine, and he just came home to pack his overnight bag and then, oh yeah, it’s going to be ON, because that’s how Ana interprets that statement.

I shake my head. “I’m no good for you.”

She goes on to say that she can’t be everything he needs, and she knows that now that she saw him with Leila. Then he says what I’ve been saying for most of this fucking chapter:

“Why do you do this to me? This is not about you, Ana. It’s about her. ” He takes a sharp breath, running his hand through his hair again. “Right now she’s a very sick girl.”

This is not enough for Ana, and Christian goes into full-on panic mode, absolutely sure she’s breaking up with him. Then he falls on the ground and goes into submissive mode, and the chapter of hilarious, overwrought, stupid, stupid needless drama ends.