Author: JennyTrout

Well hey there, everybody! I left on a rather abrupt note, and I apologize for that. I also apologize for how disjointed and rambling all of this is going to sound, but it feels important to me and it does concern this blog and some changes that are coming up, so try to follow me here.

I have taken some stock in things. Some people were upset at the way I handled my conflict with another author. I’m at a weird intersection on this one. A part of me is like, “Oh no, I disappointed people,” and another part of me is so super glad that I disappointed people, because it made me take stock and recognize a role that I’ve been typecasting myself in. The Angry Young Man.

I started this blog back in 2007 or 2008, I think. That’s a long time ago. I didn’t start writing about Fifty Shades of Grey until 2011, but that’s when I think of this blog really beginning. Before those recaps, I was a total nobody. Worse than a nobody. I was a has-been. I was a failure. So, when I got mad about Fifty Shades of Grey and people got mad with me, I felt like, yes, I’m a voice, I’m giving people a good feeling of not being alone, we all hate this together, fuck the establishment! I felt like the scrappy underdog.

The thing is, at the end of the story, the scrappy underdog usually wins, and then it’s over. My books got moderately successful again, I felt like a somebody again, but I never took off the Angry Young Man persona. I didn’t even feel like it was necessary to take it off, even though every new success made it get a little tighter. But I had this new voice, and people listened to what I was saying, so when I saw people doing stupid shit and everyone just letting them get away with it, I was like, well, I can say something about that and people will know it’s happening!

That was my primary motivator. I saw a thing, I felt things about the thing, and I said things, because I was afraid that no one else could see the thing. And this was all because of three things that really were happening/had happened, that nobody could see. Those three things were my name, my bad experience with publishers, and my toxic friendship baggage.

Now I’ve tossed out the toxic baggage. I’ve already shared how I feel about publishing and my name. And you know what? Those were the things that were important to talk about. Those were the things I was afraid no one could see. And I put myself out there and got personal and said all the things I thought people weren’t seeing. I made those things seen.

Now, I don’t have that need anymore. Now that I don’t have that gnawing fear that some cosmic injustice might pass without other people seeing it, I don’t feel that need. I know I have a voice and that if something shitty happens to me again, this time, I can say something. And because of that, the thought of squeezing into this Angry Young Man costume is exhausting.

I’ve been blogging about Fifty Shades of Grey for five years now. Five years, three and a half books and a movie. Five years of getting thirty emails for every single news story about Fifty Shades of Grey that happened. Then she announced that second retelling from Christian’s POV and I was like…I don’t know. I don’t know if I have the strength. I’m going to be doing this forever. Someone once said that about me and E.L. James, that we were like Batman and The Joker, we’d be doing this forever. But I don’t want to do it forever. First, I was just yelling into the void in the hopes that people would hear me and see what a shit book it was. Then, I was doing it to entertain you (and because you guys bailed out my friends financially). After that, it was, unfortunately, my brand. It became my coworker who I really, really hated, but I liked my job so I had to keep associating with this coworker. Plus, I feel this really weird gratitude toward Fifty Shades, like I owe it to the franchise to keep my hatred of it at the forefront of my mind, because of all the good things I got from mocking it. Or something.

But I’m done with that. I know I’m going to lose some readers, but I hope you all understand that I’m just tired of hating. And the suit really is getting too small. Plus, with all of this nonsense about rape culture being at the forefront of the stupid presidential election, I just need a brain break from men who think they can assault women without consequence and women gleefully proclaiming that they’d be just fine with being assaulted. So much of that attitude is tied up in Fifty Shades of Grey and its reception, and I need a break. So, I’m not going to be doing the recaps anymore, and if I do any reporting on the franchise, it’s going to be very sparse.

The same with the Don’t Do This Ever posts. There’s a reason I haven’t been doing as many of those, and that’s simply because most of the time now, more important voices are covering things. It no longer feels like all of these things will go unseen, which was my driving fear in the first place. It’s pretty freeing once you realize that you don’t have to be personally involved in every bullshit thing that goes down online. That doesn’t mean I’m steering this tugboat toward Sunshine Sisterhood harbor. I’m not going to start espousing “Be Kind” in an attempt to keep people from talking about important issues. But I’m not going to don the Angry Young Man persona and go out there and get ’em anymore.

Now, the Buffy recaps? True Blood Tuesday? I’ll keep doing those because I love doing them. They bring joy and positivity into my world, and that’s what I’m trying to do more of. Not in a dopey-eyed, Sunshine Sisterhood of Keeping It Kind way. Making those posts about the toxic friendship did take something off of me. It did free me. And I’ve spent my week off not just from the blog, but from everything. I didn’t write if I didn’t feel like it. I focused on myself, on how I feel about stuff, and how I feel now that all of this giant, toxic, festering weight has been lifted. And I decided that overall, I want to be a more positive person. I want to focus on the good. I’m tired of being so cynical that I’m miserable all the time, especially when it’s at such odds with who I am as a person.

Again, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to start telling everyone to Be Nice and sweep things under the rug. I’ll still have stuff to say when saying stuff is warranted. Hopefully, I’ll still be interesting. If I’m not, well, then I guess I wasn’t interesting to start with, if I could only be interesting when talking about other people. And this won’t affect the publication of Say Goodbye To Hollywood. Although a lot of people are excited for it because of the satire aspect, at heart it’s a romance, and I’m not going to sacrifice what I think is a pretty cool love story.

I’m not quite sure why this feels like a goodbye letter. It’s not. I’ll still be here. Hell, I’ll have a True Blood Tuesday post tomorrow, and a Domestic Violence Awareness Month post on Wednesday. Maybe it’s because so much of this blog has been dedicated to Fifty Shades of Grey and drama, that it feels like I’m closing a door. But I know that I’m not, because I know that I have so much more wonderful strangeness in me that I can share without it being tied up with other people’s work and other people’s problems.

And while all of this seems sudden, it’s a change that’s been coming for a while. I’ve just been resisting it and trying to deny how tired I felt about it all lately. Seeing Billy Joel again in August really got the ball rolling. He opened with “Prelude/ Angry Young Man” and the words “I believe I’ve passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage” hit me hard. I really have passed the age of getting riled up about shit that ultimately won’t matter, especially when “life [goes] on no matter who was wrong or right.” And especially when the shit that does matter needs so much more energy.

So, if you’re leaving, I’ll miss you, and thank you for the support. If you’re staying, I can’t promise everything is going to be the same. Shit is going to get weird, but hopefully in a good, mutually beneficial way. And if you’re just interested in seeing me get fired up about stuff, there’s always Twitter. I’ll never not be mad on Twitter, and I’ll never not be RTing other people being mad.

Anyway, hope you all understand. Onward and upward.

“Don’t Do This, Ever” posts and “Grey” recaps suspended indefinitely. Regular blog schedule will resume the week of October 17th. See you then.

Did you come here looking for super gossipy posts about someone who done me wrong? Well, they’ve been removed. I know what a lot of you might be thinking: “But Jenny, I had a problem like that with someone else, too! Those posts really helped me!” I know that a lot of you are thinking that, because a lot of you said that. And here’s what I’m going to tell you:

Write about it.

I’m not kidding. Write about what happened. Write about what those people did to you. Write about how unfair it is and pour all of your pain, all of that burning, poisoning grudge into it. Do it, then let it blow away. You don’t have to do it publicly. Do it privately. Burn the notebook. Delete the file. Because it feels so, so good. Just hear me out, and you might want to give it a try (and thank you to Em, who gave me this idea in the comments).

When I hit publish on that final post this morning, my fingertips tingled. It’s cliche, but I really did feel a huge weight lift. Grudges and unfairness do seem to have mass. Due to the events I talked about in those posts, my entire writing career has been tainted by that anger and hurt. And tonight, I get to let that go. And from here on out, I don’t have to think about any of that. I was walking around subconsciously trying to prove to myself that I was better than she had made me feel. And now, that need isn’t there. I remember what it means to actually write because I love it, and not because a toxic person has unwillingly duped me into a mental competition. It isn’t a matter of forgiving someone you can’t forgive. It’s just refusing to let them be a part of your story. Removing them from the narrative (in the theme of the post titles).

The mushroom post on Monday was oddly prophetic. Maybe I stumbled onto that forest for a reason. It’s a metaphor. All of that past, all of those horrible things? They’re just the dirt I had to struggle up through, and those posts were the downpour that cleared the way. And the way I feel about writing, and myself, and my friends, that’s the mushroom.

This has been a weird week. And it’s only Wednesday.

Bring it on, Thursday. I’m ready to look forward.

This week’s episode was really enjoyable. Get the MP3 here and hit play when the HBO logo/sound end.

This weekend, I went on a retreat with some writer friends to a campground in Grand Haven, Michigan. While looking for a place to smoke a joint in some peace and god damn quiet (because it was a campground and they were having some sort of Halloween family weekend or something and there were kids just everywhere), I wandered off into the woods. It was just regular old woods, just like around any camp ground, meaning it was full of trash and junk that people had rudely disposed of out there (including a rubber glove, which I don’t even want to think about). But there did seem to be a trail, and as I ventured down it, I saw something that wasn’t trash:

Mushrooms! Bright orange mushrooms, like I’d never seen before. Obviously, more investigation was needed.

(The rest of this post is image heavy, so I’m putting it behind a cut)

E.L. James announced via Instagram that she’s hard at work on a sequel to Grey, entitled Fifty Shades Darker From Christian’s Point Of View. One hopes that is a working title and not catchy marketing that’s already been set in stone. If you read the excerpt, it’s clear that James didn’t care for the reviews of Grey which almost universally denounced the man of her dreams as a psychopath. It looks like she’s decided to give his characterization a complete 180 that we never saw evidence of in the original series. It’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out, in terms of all of his internal “remorse” and “panic” not doing a goddamn thing to change the abusive behavior he’ll continue to exhibit throughout the series.

In other Fifty Shades Darker news, the trailer for the next movie premiered, and quickly passed Star Wars: The Force Awakens as most watched trailer on the internet. Or something. I don’t quite remember. I do want to point out, however, that the trailer for The Force Awakens was way easier to masturbate to.

Let’s time travel back to Thursday, May 26th, 2011, or the day that will apparently never fucking end.

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone burned her hand very badly on a Pop Tart and is busting through the lidocaine spray so furiously that she might actually develop an addiction. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

1. Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
2. Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
3. Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
4. Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
5. Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
6. The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
7. All the monsters look like wieners.
8. If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
9. Angel is a dick.
10. Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
11. Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
12. Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
13. Science and technology are not to be trusted.
14. Mental illness is stigmatized.
15. Only Willow can use a computer.
16. Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.
17. Cheap laughs and desperate grabs at plot plausibility are made through Xenophobia.
18. Oz is the Anti-Xander
19. Spike is capable of love despite his lack of soul
20. Don’t freaking tell me the vampires don’t need to breathe because they’re constantly out of frickin’ breath.
21. The foreshadowing on this show is freaking amazing.
22. Smoking is evil.
23. Despite praise for its positive portrayal of non-straight sexualities, some of this shit is homophobic as fuck.
24. How do these kids know all these outdated references, anyway?
25. Technology is used inconsistently as per its convenience in the script.
26. Sunnydale residents are no longer shocked by supernatural attacks.
27. Casual rape dismissal/victim blaming a-go-go
28. Snyder believes Buffy is a demon or other evil entity.
29. The Scoobies kind of help turn Jonathan into a bad guy.
30. This show caters to the straight female gaze like whoa.
31. Sunnydale General is the worst hospital in the world.
32. Faith is hyper-sexualized needlessly.
33. Slut shame!
34. The Watchers have no fucking clue what they’re doing.
35. Vampire bites, even very brief ones, are 99.8% fatal.

Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments.  Even though I might forget that you mentioned it.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it.

I explain why I forgot True Blood Tuesday this week in the audio. Which you can download here. Just do that, then start it playing when the HBO logo and sound fade out.

On our way to Chicago for the Billy Joel concert, Bronwyn Green and I bemoaned the fact that we’d been to so many concerts, but couldn’t remember them all. We decided to sit down and tally them up. We did not endeavor to put them in any sort of order, though. Here is my list of artists I’ve seen live. At least, what I can remember:

Lee Greenwood Technically my first concert. Battle Creek Airshow, sometime in the ’80s. Went with my mom.

Hootie And The Blowfish What I tell people my first concert was. 1994. Went with my mom.

Rusted Root The first time I learned what pot smelled like.

Joan Osborne She opened for Rusted Root, the night after she lost every Grammy category she was nominated in to Alanis Morissette. It came up.

Alanis Morissette Twice, once for Jagged Little Pill, second time because she toured with Tori Amos.

Tori Amos Five times, including a show Bronwyn Green was at, before I knew her. She mentioned this in front of my Baba, who said, “Oh, my granddaughter was at that show! I think you two would like each other.” Met Tori twice. One of those times, I puked on the sidewalk.

R.E.M. Twice on their tour for Monster.

Radiohead When they opened for R.E.M.

Patti Smith Twice with R.E.M., including her first performance in like, twenty years or something.

Oasis

Bush

No Doubt Not as good live, I can tell you that for free. Saw them with Bush.

The Goo Goo Dolls Not as good live. Saw them with Bush.

The Verve Pipe About a billion times. They’re a local band.

Green Day In front of the stage in the pit. Billy Joe said, “If that girl with the pink hair falls down again, somebody help her up!

Dave Matthews Band I remember nothing about this concert. Not because of weed, but because I was on sedatives because I’d been in a…we’ll say it was a plane-landing accident the day before. Probably should not have tried to go to anything for a while.

Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers Front row center. Lots of eye contact with Steve Martin, which was very weird.

The Black Crowes Birthday present from D-Rock. Second row, amazeballs.

Tony Bennett Really recently, too. And he’s still got it, baby!

Mandy Patinkin Twice, and got to meet him once. He gave me a kiss on the cheek.

Rufus Wainright With Tori Amos

The Cranberries Just as good live.

Barenaked Ladies Someone puked on my coat.

Sarah Brightman She flew on wires. There were glitter canons.

Flight Of The Conchords Worth the ticket price, definitely.

Korn (I worked concessions at a Family Values show. Counting this because I couldn’t escape the music)

Incubus (see above)

Orgy (see above)

Rammstein (see above, but they’re the one band I was excited about. I was excited about Ice Cube, but he left the tour literally the date before this one)

Limp Bizkit (see above)

Ani DiFranco

Richard Marx Actually awesome concert. He’s really funny, you should go see him if you have a chance.

The Living End

Indika

Gavin Degraw With Billy Joel

And of course, Billy Joel, twice.

You can check out Bronwyn Green’s list here. And share in the comments the musical artists that you’ve seen. I very much want to be envious of you all.