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Month: March 2013

50 Shades Freed recap chapter 9, or “Fuck this. Just fuck all of it.”

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No links this week, let’s just get into this depressing train wreck, shall we?

If you’d been missing descriptions of how insufferably close these two idiots sleep, well, you’re in luck:

When I wake before the alarm the following morning, Christian is wrapped around me like ivy, his head on my chest, his arm around my waist, and his leg between mine.

So, if you had “ivy” in the “repetitive descriptions” pool, congratulations, you have to take a shot.

Oh, Fifty. He is so needy on some level.

Excuse me, on some level? Have you even met this person, Ana? This is the guy who, a few short months ago, wanted to control what you ate and wore.

Christian gets up for his shower, and they flirt, and it’s just as obnoxious as every other time they flirt. Of course they call each other Mr. and Mrs. Grey, and it’s just as clever this time as the forty-three-thousand, two-hundred and fifteen times they’ve done it before. Then they have to have sex instead of him going to the shower, because this is an erotic novel:

I squeal, and he crawls up my body, trailing little kisses on my knee, my thigh… my… oh… Christian!

Shock me, shock me, shock me with that deviant behavior, guys.
There’s a section break, and we’re at breakfast:

“Good morning, Mrs. Grey,” Mrs. Jones greets me. I flush, embarrassed, remembering her tryst with Taylor the night before.

Tryst? Is that the word we’re going with here? It seems kind of strong for a kiss in a room with an open door, but whatever. Let’s roll.

I sit on the barstool beside my husband, who just looks radiant: freshly showered, his hair damp, wearing a crisp white shirt and that silver-gray tie. My favorite tie. I have fond memories of that tie.

So do I, Ana.

whoops, wrong tie.

Okay, so this isn’t the tie she was talking about. But she gives us another wonderful mental image in that excerpt. His damp hair is wearing a crisp white shirt and a tie.
Christian orders Ana to eat, she argues with him… is this book starting to give anyone else that uneasy feeling of staring into a mirror with a mirror directly behind you, so the reflection stretches into infinity, beckoning you into the cold world of the mirror ghosts, who will feed on your soul for all eternity?
No? Just me, then?

Christian tells Ana he has a business trip in New York later in the week, and he wants her to go with him. Hey, remember that time Ana had a business trip in New York, and Christian sabotaged it, because he was afraid she would cheat on him? Just reminding you about that.
Ana tells him she can’t get the time off, and he basically pats her on the head, because of course she’ll abandon her job to come with him. His job is the real job, after all. She’s just pretending to work. Ain’t that cute? She argues with him, pointing out that she can’t really run a company if she’s never there, and she just took a freaking three week vacation, so now is not the time to traipse off. He’s not patronizing or anything:

I stop, because Christian is grinning at me. “What?” I snap.

“Nothing. Just you,” he says.

This dude can eat a whole bag of extra salty unwashed dicks.

Ana asks Christian if he’s going to fly Charlie Tango to New York. Yes, Ana. He’s going to fly a fucking helicopter cross country. I know next to nothing about air traffic vehicles, and even I thought, “What are you, some kind of dumb ass?” when I read that question. Christian explains that the helicopter doesn’t have that kind of range, and besides, it won’t be fixed for another two weeks.

Hang on. The helicopter accident happened… at least three months ago, right? It’s hard to keep the crazy stupid timeline straight. At one point, I thought they’d said the helicopter was a loss. Even if they didn’t, that’s a long ass time to be working on repairing something. Why not just buy a new one, at that point? Did he lose his virginity in this helicopter or something? Is that why it has to be this specific one?

My smile is partly from relief, but also the knowledge that the demise of Charlie Tango has occupied a great deal of Christian’s thoughts and time over the last few weeks.

Except we’re only going to bring it up just now, near page two hundred. That’s how much it’s worried him.

Ana reminds him that the last time he flew his helicopter, they all thought he was dead. To reassure her, Christian says:

“Five people have been fired because of that, Ana. It won’t happen again.”

I love that E.L. James seems to think that a good business strategy for success is to fire everyone, all the time. Christian is always talking about people he’s going to fire, or how their jobs are on the line if this or that doesn’t happen. And in this case, it’s especially laughable because 1) the accident with Charlie Tango was due to sabotage and 2) as the pilot, it was his fault, for not doing a pre-flight check. He doesn’t do pre-flight checks, we’ve already seen that in the first book. Someone does those pre-flight checks before he arrives, then he hops in and flies. For all we know, the proper checks were done, but someone got in between that check and his arrival time. But sure, fire everyone for your mistake, because that’s how business works.

Oh shit, that really is how business works.

Whatever, I still hate this fucking guy.

Ana brings up the subject of the gun in his desk. Brace yourself for the bull shittery that results:

“It’s Leila’s,” he says finally.

“It’s fully loaded.”

“How do you know?” His frown deepens.

“I checked it yesterday.”

He scowls at me. “I don’t want you messing with guns. I hope you put the safety back on.”

I blink at him, momentarily stupefied. “Christian, there’s no safety on that revolver. Don’t you know anything about guns?”

His eyes widen. “Um… no.”

He probably knows about as much as E.L., but here, this is at least plausible. While there are some revolvers available commercially that have safety mechanisms, it’s a largely redundant feature on a firearm that has to be cocked or, in the case of a double action revolver, requires a significant amount of force to squeeze the trigger.

But look at this jackass. He has a gun. In his desk. Fully loaded. He doesn’t know how to use it. He didn’t even know if there was a safety or not. But Ana should not have been messing with guns, because her tiny, vulnerable female brain is clearly unable to comprehend the danger of them.

He has Leila’s gun. I am stunned by this news and briefly wonder what’s happened to her. Is she still in – where is it? East somewhere. New Hampshire? I can’t remember.

Um, that would be a pretty fucking important detail to me, if someone had broken into my house and tried to kill me. I wouldn’t obsess every second over them, but having an idea if they were still, you know, incarcerated or whatever, would be nice.

Then Taylor comes in, and Ana gets squirrelly about the fact Taylor saw her in stockings and a men’s shirt the night before. Because Taylor doesn’t have a Tumblr account. No, seriously about 98.4% of all pictures on Tumblr are women wearing black stockings and men’s dress shirts. It’s not a big deal.

“I am just going to brush my teeth,” I mutter. Christian always brushes his teeth before breakfast. I don’t understand why.

I don’t understand why that was the hook to end on before a section break, but who the fuck cares because at this point, 50 Shades the series is as unsalvageable as Charlie Tango should have been.

 “You should ask Taylor to teach you how to shoot,” I say as we travel down in the elevator.

“You should ask Taylor to teach you how to shoot you.” There, fixed it for you, E.L. No need to thank me.

“Ana, I despise guns. My mom has patched up too many victims of gun crime, and my dad is vehemently antigun. I grew up with their ethos. I support at least two gun control initiatives here in Washington.”

Without knowing anything about guns? SMART. You should definitely be involved in the lawmaking process regarding them. But more importantly, I’m glad your “vehemently antigun” parents instilled in you a sense of moral outrage over that and not, you know, ABUSING WOMEN.

“Oh. Does Taylor carry a gun?”

Christian’s mouth thins.

“Sometimes.”

“You don’t approve?” I ask, as Christian ushers me out of the elevator on the ground floor.

“No,” he says, tight-lipped. “Let’s just say that Taylor and I hold very different views with regard to gun control.” I’m with Taylor on this.

I love it. “Guns? Me? Oh, no, no, no. I’m very antigun. Unless it comes to my bodyguard. I act like it’s out of my hands that he carries, but let’s be honest, I fire people for shit they can’t control all the time. What I’m saying here is, ‘No one can be protected by guns… except me. Because I’m important.'”

In the last recap, I had someone leave a comment that they can’t follow my blog anymore because of my stance on guns. Which I find hilarious because a) I’ve made public my support for stricter gun laws (you know, that whole “well regulated” part of the 2nd Amendment), and b) I’m pretty moderate on the issue, which means that while I’m used to people getting pissed at me, I can never tell why they’re pissed at me on this one. For all I know, that person stopped reading the blog because I didn’t include an animated .gif of myself shooting two pistols into the sky, Yosemite Sam style. But no matter where you stand on the issue, I think we all have to agree that it’s fucking useless to hire a team of bodyguards to protect you from someone who is trying to kill you and then ask them to do it without using guns. On top of that, it’s hypocritical in the extreme to back anti-gun measures, but pay someone to protect you with guns.

I don’t know why I’m so shocked at Chedward’s open hypocrisy here. I think I occasionally black out and forget what book I’m recapping, because nothing important has been consistent in these books, anyway.

Ana asks him one more time to learn how to shoot, and he tells her:

“No. End of discussion, Anastasia.”

So… let me get this straight. Chedward isn’t going to learn anything about the fully loaded gun he has in his desk drawer?

LET’S TAKE THIS SCOTTY STYLE, ALL MY FELLOW OLDERSTERS!
 Keep a gun in your desk, Chedward! DOOOO IT.

Ana asks Christian where Leila is, because maybe she was the person driving the Dodge, and he tells Ana that Leila is with her parents in Connecticut:

“Yes, I checked. She’s enrolled in an art school in Hamden. She started this week.”

So, obviously, Ana’s first thought should be, “WTF WHY IS SHE AT AN ART SCHOOL SHE TRIED TO MURDER ME LIKE A FEW MONTHS AGO, DUDE.”

Nope. Not our Ana. Not our “bright” “intelligent” “brilliant” Ana:

“You’ve spoken to her,” I whisper, all the blood draining from my face.

No, Ana, the reason all the blood should be draining from your face is that the woman who was so mentally broken just a few months ago that she came to your apartment with a gun is now just flitting around free as a bird because your husband didn’t want to call the police on his ex-girlfriend.

Christian continues, “I’m keeping tabs on her, checking that she stays on her side of the continent. She’s better, Ana. Flynn has referred her to a shrink in New Haven, and all the reports are very positive. She’s always been interested in art, so…” He stops, his face still searching mine. And in that moment I suspect that he is paying for her art classes. Do I want to know? Should I ask him? I mean, it’s not as if he can’t afford it, but why does he feel the obligation?

Perhaps it’s because he knows, somewhere deep down, that his continual emotional abuse is what ultimately broke her? Because that’s why I think he should pay for anything she might need. But we all know it’s so she won’t tell anyone about the kinky BDSM sex games he’s so super ashamed of (but photographs for posterity).

But let’s examine this “better” claim. First of all, is it possible for someone to get over a total psychotic break in a few months? Second, who decided Leila was “better”? The colleague of Dr. Flynn? Dr. Flynn the guy who was treating Christian and who suggested that Ana had the power to cure him with her love? Oh, well, as long as it’s that guy, I guess everyone is fine and no one should expect to get shot by a crazy ex any time soon. And also, wouldn’t this entire situation be a lot easier if Leila were, I don’t know, in jail? Or at least in a facility that had some kind of security? Because isn’t that what usually happens when you break and enter with the intent to commit murder?

There I go again, expecting that this book isn’t set in some badly constructed fantasy world of author intrusion and blind ignorance.

Then there are six pages of emails in which Christian and Ana pointlessly flirt and rehash everything that has happened in the last few chapters. I will spare you the utterly boring, useless, and not at all plot-furthering correspondence that I’m 100% certain was put in just to pad out word count. Which is totally unnecessary, because the book is way too fucking long as it is.

Section break, and it’s Thursday:

I cannot help my despondent mood as Sawyer drives me to the office on Thursday. Christian’s threatened business trip to New York has happened, and though he’s been gone only a few hours, I miss him already.

Despondent: low spirits from loss of hope or courage. Ana has lost hope because Christian has been gone a few hours. That’s not how she’s supposed to feel. That’s how I am supposed to feel, because I’m reading about it.

So then there’s about a page’s worth of emails again, in which we learn that Ana is going out:

I intend to have a few cocktails with Kate – that should help me sleep.

Awesome, glad you found another way to use your friendship to your advantage, even if she’s not paying your rent anymore.

Put on your bullshit waders, guys, it’s about to get deep. Ana gets a call from Christian when his plane lands, and the first thing he wants to know is what she’s doing with Kate:

Oh no. “We’re just going out for a quiet drink.”

Christian says nothing.

“Sawyer and the new woman – Prescott – are coming to watch over us,” I offer, trying to placate him.

“I thought Kate was coming to the apartment.”

“She is after a quick drink.” Please let me go out!

He’s not even in the same state, and he has this control over her. Healthy marriage!

Christian remains resolutely silent, and I know he’s not happy. “I’ve seen her only a few times since you and I met. Please. She’s my best friend.”

Name something you shouldn’t be arguing about with your husband.

Survey says…

Remember those domestic violence and how-to-spot-an-abuser handouts I was using for the first book? Wasn’t there something in there about, oh, gosh, I don’t know… isolating a woman from her friends and family?  Keep in mind, Ana was LIVING WITH KATE and hasn’t seen her much since she and Christian met. This is a person who LIVED IN THE SAME APARTMENT WITH HER. That’s how much of Ana’s time Christian needs to control.

“Ana, I don’t want to keep you from your friends.

Bullfuckingshit yes you do, turdbag.

But I thought she was coming back to the apartment.”

“Okay,” I acquiesce. “We’ll stay in.”

“Only while this lunatic is out there. Please.”

Which lunatic, Chedward? You? Seriously, have you guys noticed how conveniently “lunatics” pop up in their lives, causing these dramatic and unavoidable threats that mean Ana absolutely must stay at home or under Christian’s surveillance all the time? First it was Leila, now it’s Jack Hyde and the mystery woman driving the Dodge. I’m going to guess that this will become a regular thing. “Honey, don’t forget, I have Kate’s bachelorette party to go to.” “Oh, um, you can’t, because, uh, um, huh… uh… Bic… Mcpen… lamp…erson, yeah, that’s right! Bic McPenlamperson! My old nemesis Bic McPenlamperson is out to destroy us. So you can’t go.”

“Good,” he breathes, his relief evident. I feel guilty for worrying him.

Christian tells her they’re still on the tarmac at JFK, and he called her because she told him to call the second they landed, which results in this exchange:

“Well, Mr. Grey, I’m glad one of us is punctilious.”

He laughs. “Mrs. Grey, your gift for hyperbole knows no bounds.[…]”

That wasn’t hyperbole, though. Punctilious means you do things to the letter, your behavior is exact and precise… which is what he was doing. She wasn’t exaggerating at all when she said he was being punctilious. Either E.L. doesn’t know what one of those words means, or she doesn’t know what both of those words mean. I’ll leave it up to your merciful consciences to decide which is more likely.

They do about half a page of “No, you hang up,” and then right when I’m about to go hang myself, they switch to the email.

After a section break, Kate shows up at Ana’s place of business. There is hugging and eye rolling, and Ana tells Kate:

“Christian wants us to go back to the apartment.”

If I were Kate, the next thing I would be saying is, “Christian can go fuck himself,” but Kate tries a gentler tactic and suggests they go out for just one little bitty drink.

We’re followed by Miss Belinda Prescott, who’s new to the security team – a tall African American with a no-nonsense attitude. I’ve yet to warm up to her maybe because she’s too cool and professional.

Keep in mind how Taylor, Sawyer, and the rest of them act all the time. Ana has warmed up to them just fine, but they are, after all, white men.

When Ana gives Sawyer the name of the bar they want to go to, this happens:

“Mr. Grey requested you go back to the apartment,” Prescott pipes up.

“Mr. Grey isn’t here,” I snap. “The Zig Zag, please.”

“Ma’am,” Sawyer replies witha sideways glance at Prescott, who wisely holds her tongue.

Yes, woman of color, wisely hold your tongue when a white lady is speaking. Everyone, just take a second to imagine how this scene would have gone down if it were Taylor, a white man, and not Prescott, a black woman. Think of how many times we’ve seen this go down already and it never happens like this. Ana has routinely ignored Christian’s wishes and told the security team to do so, as well, but she’s always done it with a little bit of worry that she’ll get them in trouble. And she’s never, to my memory, been so strident about it. But it’s okay in this case because Prescott a) is a woman and b) is a black woman. Which is probably also why she’s allowed to be on the security team; if she were a white woman, she would be a threat, as we’ve already seen time and again.

In the car, Kate and Ana discuss the extra security that’s been put on the whole Grey family, and Ana begins to realize that she doesn’t have all the information, because Christian hasn’t told her a lot of stuff. But they can’t discuss it in the car because, I shit you not, Ana is worried that it will get back to Christian that she knows things she’s not supposed to:

I glance up to see Sawyer eyeing me in the rearview mirror. The red light turns to green and he surges forward, focusing on the road ahead. I hold my finger up to my lips and Kate nods.

How are people reading this shit and finding it romantic? “Careful, best friend, better not say too much in front of my husband’s spies.” THAT IS NOT OKAY.

Ugh, I seriously have a rage headache.

After a section break, Ana and Kate are already into their second drink of the evening, and they’re talking about Gia Matteo, the architect. They call her a bitch, a social climber, rag on her for having a “fling” with Elliot (hey Kate? Takes more than one person to fling), and then they literally raise their glasses to the fact that Ana told Gia off.

A toast! To internalized misogyny!

Then there’s another break, and they’re on their third drink. Now they’re talking about how Carrick wanted Christian to get a prenup, and then there’s some foreshadowing about kids and pregnancy, and then Ana goes to the bathroom and Prescott follows her:

Prescott accompanies me. She says nothing. She doesn’t have to. Disapproval radiates off her like a lethal isotope.

Oh good, Prescott isn’t just a black woman, she’s an angry black woman, and her anger is making our white heroine uncomfortable.

“I haven’t been out on my own since I got married,” I mutter wordlessly at the closed stall door.

How the fuck did you mutter a full sentence wordlessly? As in, without words? You said the words, we can see them, they’re between the fucking quotation marks. And seriously, how did that sentence get into a final, printed book?

I make a face, knowing that she’s standing on the other side of the door, waiting while I pee.

You know what, Ana? This woman is probably going to lose her job because your husband is a fucking idiot and since he can’t fire you, he’ll probably fire everyone on the security team because they didn’t taser you, bind your wrists with zip ties, slap a bag over your head and stuff you in the trunk of the car for your own safety. She has a right to be mad at you and him both, because you’re both stupid and now she’s going to have to start sending out her CV again. Also, this is probably not her dream job, guarding you while you pee. So shut the fuck up.

Seriously, I’m so peeved about this, because it’s so blatant. When Ana is followed by the white male bodyguards, she’s annoyed, but she’s not openly hostile to them. She’s almost apologetic toward them, because she gets that they’re just doing their job. But a black female? Oh, good thing you’re here, because Ana is about to unload all of her frustration at her abusive husband onto you.

After another break, it’s 10:15, one drink has turned into four, and Kate is telling Ana that marriage obviously agrees with her because she seems so much more confident. Ana thinks:

Could I be any happier? In spite of all his baggage, his nature, his Fiftyness, I have met and married the man of my dreams.

First of all, your dreams are stupid and they suck dung-dipped donkey balls. Second, look at what you’re saying here. You’re saying that he’s the man of your dreams in spite of literally everything that makes up the sum total of his personality. It’s like saying, “I love Cadbury eggs, but it’s the chocolate and fondant I’m not into.” It makes no fucking sense, just like it makes no fucking sense to not love Cadbury eggs because they’re delicious and no, I will not make an exception for your diabetes, you better love those fuckers from afar, all unrequited and shit. But seriously, how does her rationale make any sense? In spite of the man he is, he is the man of my dreams. This is setting the bar pretty fucking low in terms of romantic hero standards. “As long as I can ignore who he really is, he is my Prince Charming.” Good job, Ana.

They leave the bar, and Ana can’t resist another dig at Prescott, because after all, she’s a woman and she’s there:

“I’m sure Miss Good-Two-Shoes Prescott has told Christian I’m not at home. He’ll be mad,” I mutter to Kate. And maybe he’ll think of some delicious way to punish me… hopefully.

I am not shirtless, my paleness just blends into my linen shirt. Also, I am having some kind of rage aneurism.

Okay, back in the car, Ana was afraid Sawyer was going to inform on her, but now that we have a woman to hate, it’s obviously going to be the woman who does it. Because women are gossipy bitches, am I right, ladies? The fact that it’s not Prescott’s fault that Christian is a controlling bag of severed penises and torn off scrote isn’t even a part of Ana’s thinking. Prescott is going to get her “in trouble,” and Christian deserves none of the blame because he might do something sexy in retribution. Which is stupid, anyway, because BDSM is supposed to be sexy fun times, not an excuse to beat up your wife because she made you angry. That’s not kink, it’s abuse.
After they drop Kate off at her apartment – and Ana talks herself out of being homesick for her old life by insisting she loves Christian more – Ana finds five calls, a text, and an email from Christian on her Blackberry. Beyonce, can you handle this?
Boy the way you blowin’ up my phone won’t make me leave no faster
put my coat on faster
leave my girls no faster
I should have left my phone at home ’cause this is a disaster
callin’ like a collector
sorry I cannot answer.

Thanks, Beybey.
Christian’s email says the following:

Sawyer tells me that you are drinking cocktails in a bar when you said you wouldn’t.

Do you have any idea how mad I am at the moment?

You’re probably as mad about it as I am happy that it was SAWYER and not PRESCOTT who tattled. FUCK YOU ANA.

My heart sinks. Oh shit! I really am in trouble. My subconscious glares at me, then shrugs, wearing her you-made-your-bed-you-lie-in-it face. What did I expect?

You expected to go out with your friend for drinks like an adult woman with personal autonomy?

Then they get to the apartment and shit is all smashed up and Jack Hyde is there, beaten unconscious by one of the body guards. But I don’t really give a shit and I’m guessing you don’t, either. End of chapter.

The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch s01e03: “Witch”

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In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will eat all the salt and vinegar potato chips without sharing. 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.
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.


Episode three opens with Giles putting his angry face on:
He’s in full on rant mode, pacing around the library like a caged tiger. Rowr. But anyway, he says:

This is madness. What can you have been thinking? You are the slayer. Lives depend upon you. I make allowances for your youth, but I expect a certain amount of responsibility and instead of which you enslave yourself to this, this cult?

And then it cuts to a shot of Buffy, and she’s dressed like this:

She asks Giles if the problem is with the color, and he gets all flustered because she’s his slayer, damnit, and she’s supposed to do whatever he says. He forbids her from forsaking her “sacred birthright” to become a cheerleader, and Buffy asks how he’s planning on stopping her. Yeah, how are you going to stop her, Giles? She’s like, the strongest human on the planet. In the first episode she ripped a door in half. 
Buffy tells Giles that she’ll still be the slayer, she just needs to do something normal and safe. And then the scene shifts to a dark room full of hanging herbs, where a shadowy figure is dropping a necklace into what appears to be a cauldron full of boiling slime from You Can’t Do That On Television. Oh, and they have a Barbie dressed as a Sunnydale cheerleader, that’s probably a good sign.
I’ll get that witch a Barbie. Witches love Barbies.

Then we cut to the gym, where girls are walking on their hands and doing these amazing flips and shit:
Whaaaat? The cheerleaders at my school couldn’t do that! I feel cheated. I was in high school in 1996, I never saw anyone do that shit at a pep rally. The cheerleader wannabes are pretty fierce. Maybe they could be the slayer, and Buffy could just do normal kid stuff.
Buffy, Willow, and Xander walk into the tryouts, where Buffy tells them how Giles reacted to her yearning to be aggressively cheerful at bleachers full of people. She mentions that they haven’t seen any vampires in a week, then suggests that Giles should get a girlfriend (if he wasn’t so old).
I volunteer as tribute!

Xander makes some really gross teen boy comments about the girls who are there trying out. Look, I get it. He’s a teen boy. Shit happens. But I feel super bad for all of the girls, who are there to participate in a sport, and they have to try to give their best performance while the guys ogle them. He even says it in earshot of one girl, as well, marveling, “Ooh, stretchy” as he stands not two feet away from the target of his sleazery:
She can fucking hear you, Xander.

Xander gives Buffy a gift “for luck.” What’s the gift?
Just a token of your obligation.

If you can’t read the text, the bracelet is engraved with “Yours Always.” Xander uses Buffy’s try-out as an excuse to give her a gift that is really all about himself. While Buffy should be focusing on herself and her audition, she’s now forced to focus on Xander’s feelings and desires disguised as support. See also, #5.
Cordelia comes over and points out Amber Grove, who seems to be doing okay on the being limber front, and who Cordelia is openly threatened by. Willow says she thinks Amber turned down being a Laker Girl. So, you know right now that this is a girl with a serious reputation for being a cheerleader. Amber is the first name called, but the camera cuts to this student, who is looking around the room like goddamned velociraptor:
It can’t be just me, right? Everyone else can see it, too?

This is Amy. Amy knows Willow, and from their brief conversation we learn that Amy has lost a lot of weight, and she hates trying out for cheerleading. The gang and Amy watch Amber Grove’s tryout, and as Amy talks about the insane amount of training she’s done to prepare for this try-out, Buffy starts to look super worried:
But like… wait a minute. Buffy, aren’t you the slayer? Don’t you do acrobatic flips and shit all the time? Why would this be any different? Because it’s set to music? Couldn’t you just pretend there were vampires all around you while you were doing the routines?
On second thought, that might lead to a lot of cheerleader heads flying around, when Buffy accidentally punches them off with her super strength she seems to be barely in control of. And besides, these girls have enough problems. As they watch, poor Amber Grove’s hands catch on fire. Let me reiterate that: her HANDS catch on FUCKING FIRE.
Everyone notices Amber’s hands are on fire like, a lot a bit before she does, which is kind of weird. Weirder still, no one but Buffy makes any attempt to do anything. She puts out Amber, and the credits roll.
The scoobies are meeting in the library, where Giles talks about how human combustion is just one of the many perks of living on the Hellmouth. Buffy wants to investigate the shenanigans behind, you know, one of her classmates bursting into flame, and Willow eagerly volunteers to illegally hack into the school’s database. Buffy points out that neither of them have to be involved, and Willow says they’re like “slayerettes,” a behind-the-scenes support staff for the slayer. They’re going to solve the mystery of why someone got all on fire for no apparent reason.
At home, Buffy tells her mom about the try-outs, and how they were rescheduled because of the accident. Joyce barely listens, because she’s trying to crowbar open a crate in the middle of their kitchen. She’s just gotten a shipment of African art for the gallery, and this takes total precedence over her daughter trying to have a conversation with her. Buffy asks Joyce what she was trying out for, and Joyce admits that she has no idea:
And judging from her expression, Joyce just does not give a fuck, either.

Here’s the thing: I know what it’s like to be busy and be a mom at the same time. I get that it’s easy to forget stuff going on in your kids’ lives. But your daughter just got kicked out of her old school for burning it down. If she’s wanting to talk to you about her life at her new school, maybe pay attention? You might be able to avoid future arson.
But Joyce is all, nah, fuck that, and instead tosses the crowbar on the top of the crate and mutters that Buffy could help her out. So, basically, “I don’t give a shit that you’re trying to make an emotional connection with me, but you better be willing to crowbar open a box if I need you to.” Good job, Joyce. #3.
Despite being visibly hurt by her mother’s disinterest, Buffy does, indeed, help with the crate:
That’s right. With her mother standing, oh, ONE FUCKING CRATE’S WIDTH AWAY FROM HER, Buffy uses her super strength and opens the top of the box one handed, like she’s flipping the pages of a fucking book and JOYCE DOES NOT NOTICE. #3.

When Buffy tells her mom she was trying out for cheerleading, this happens:

Joyce: “Oh good. I’m glad you’re taking that up again. It’ll keep you out of trouble.”

Buffy: “I’m not in trouble.”

Joyce: “No, not yet.” 

Wow. #3 much? Joyce does go on to say that what she meant was that Buffy quit cheerleading right before she started getting in trouble, so it’s good she’s going back to it, but still. That’s fucked up, Joyce. Then Buffy mentions that Amy trains with her mom hardcore on the whole cheerleading thing, and it’s a direct hint to Joyce that Buffy wants her mother to be more involved in her life. But Joyce dismisses it, saying that it doesn’t sound like Amy’s mom has much to do, then she leaves the room. This scene was super painful to watch, because throughout the whole thing, Buffy is trying to make a connection with her mom, while her mom continually and actively rejects her. I know I’ve said it a lot, but #3 guys. Seriously, #3.

The next day at the rescheduled try-outs, Amy knocks Cordelia on her ass during a group performance. And Cordelia is adorably outraged. Seriously, I have no reason to post this photo except for OMG, cuteness!

Charisma Carpenter is my everything, guys.

After try-outs, Buffy finds Amy in front of the trophy case, looking longingly at her mother’s photo and trophy. She talks about how popular and fit her mother was. The way Amy talks about her mom is kind of creepy. She tells Buffy all about how hard her mother has worked and how she did it all “without ever gaining a pound.” Amy expresses frustration the she can’t get her body to move right, and she choked in the audition. 
Hey, wait a second…
Buffy is like, changed out of her try-out clothes. And Amy is still wearing her cheerleading outfit from like… yesterday? Is she wearing that thing every day? And no one is mentioning it? Awwwwwkward.
Amy heads to class and Willow catches up with Buffy. She recalls how Amy’s mother would freak out if she gained any weight, and would padlock the refrigerator, and Amy would go to Willow’s house to eat. That’s fucking horrifying! Did people know this was going on? That some crazy bitch was padlocking the refrigerator and feeding her kid only broth? That’s fucking insane! Why didn’t anyone do anything about that? Is there no DHS in Sunnydale? WTF? I’m marking this down as #8, because seriously, if some kid came over to my house and was all, “I’m here to eat because my mom padlocked the refrigerator and we can only eat broth so she doesn’t gain weight,” I would call the police. It’s literally the only thing anyone should do in that case. Get your shit together, Sunnydale.
Willow didn’t find anything in Amber Grove’s permanent record that might point to… whatever someone’s school transcripts might point to in the way of spontaneous combustion. I don’t know what they thought they were going to find in record kept by a school that will spend three whole seasons denying the existence of the paranormal until their graduation speaker turns into a giant snake and starts eating people, but obviously they weren’t going to open that bastard up and find “TOTALLY A MONSTER, GUYS,” written anywhere in there.
In the locker room, Amy is changing out of her cheerleading uniform (good, because I was slightly worried for here there for a second), while some creepy music plays. She looks around like something might jump out and attack her, and the music crescendos as she turns and is startled by Cordelia. Cordy backs Amy into the lockers and says:

Cordelia: “I have a dream. It’s me on the cheerleading squad, adored by every varsity male as far as the eye can see. We have to achieve our dreams, Amy, otherwise we… wither and die.”

Amy: “Look, I’m sorry ab – “

Cordelia: “Shh. If your supreme klutziness out there today takes me out of the running, you’re going to be so very beyond sorry. Have a nice day.” 

Look, I’m not saying I made that girl’s hands catch on fire… but I’m going to act like I made that girl’s hands catch on fire.

So, we’ve established that Cordelia is not fucking around where this cheerleading stuff is concerned.
Outside the school, Willow is trying to talk to Xander about the thing with Amber, but Xander just wants to know if Buffy was wearing the bracelet he gave her. He says that if she was, it basically means they’re going out. Okay, nice guy. #5 I’m basically going to have to teach my daughter that any gift from a man is a trap, because this is exactly the kid of attitude we tolerate from men of all ages. “I gave you this thing. That means I am putting a downpayment on sex. Even though you do not want this thing from me, you must accept it, or be deemed rude and a bitch by society. By accepting it, even against your will, you are signing the sex contract. Hope that’s cool by you.”
At least Willow busts him out on his assumption that Buffy will just start dating him due to jewelry giving. She tells him he won’t know if Buffy is into him until he asks her out, and he absolutely crushes Willow by saying that she’s like his guy friend who knows girl stuff. Willow has been firmly friendzoned.
Buffy and Amy are waiting at the back of a huge group of girls who are all trying to get a look at the cheerleader try-out lists. As a ploy to win Buffy’s affections, Xander muscles his way through the crowd to get a look at the list. Cordelia tells Amy she’s lucky – not because Amy made the team, but because Cordelia made the team, and I guess that means she doesn’t have to murder Amy now? Xander comes back and congratulates Buffy on not only being named to the team, but for making first alternate as well. When he tells Amy that she’s third alternate, Amy runs off. Buffy excuses herself, and Willow explains to Xander that alternates didn’t actually make the team. They’re the backups for when one of the other cheerleaders inevitably catches on fire or gets eaten by a monster because it’s Sunnydale.
Look at Willow, she’s two seconds from saying, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Xander.”
I do kind of feel bad for Xander here. Okay, he didn’t know what “alternate” meant on a sports team. But really, until he goes undercover on the swim team in season 2, we don’t ever see Xander being sporty. He probably genuinely didn’t now, and now he feels like an idiot for breaking bad news to Buffy and Amy in an insensitive manner.
Buffy catches up to Amy, who is way more upset over this whole “alternate” thing than Buffy is. She invites her to come to her house to pig out on brownies, but Amy just goes on and on about how her mother would have done so much better. Then we cut to a charming little brick house that is the scene of the weird witchy shit we saw before. 
Can you buy tiny Sunnydale cheerleading uniforms for Barbie? Or is this person sewing them by hand? That seems like a lot of work just for some bullshit spell nonsense to get on a cheerleading team.

The witchy poo person binds the Barbie doll’s face and asks “the laughing god” to do something to Cordelia. Wait, there’s a laughing god? He sounds awesome. What religion is that, because it might be enough to make me rethink atheism entirely.
The next morning, Buffy is making breakfast when her mom is all, “Check out my old yearbook.” Joyce thinks that since Buffy didn’t make the squad, she could be on the yearbook committee. You know. Like Joyce did. Buffy completely rejects the idea and tells her mom that she wants to do her own thing. To which Joyce says:

“Your own thing, whatever it is, got you kicked out of school and we had to move here to find a decent school that would take you.”

And then Buffy’s face looks like this:

Look, Joyce. I get it. You’re a newly single mom, trying to raise a daughter who, to you, is just a troublemaker who’s going to backslide at any minute. But you know how to fix that? Don’t treat her like a troublemaker who’s going to backslide at any minute. Literally everything Joyce is doing is wrong. She can’t encourage Buffy without giving her a verbal smack down. She constantly reminds her of her past failing. Yes, it was a major failing, but they moved to Sunnydale for a fresh start. Joyce isn’t willing to let her daughter have that fresh start, though. Only Joyce gets the fresh start. Buffy has to be constantly reminded of that time she fucked up, while being encouraged to make the most of her clean slate. She can’t possibly have any idea if she’s coming or going, here. She’s a kid, for christ’s sake. Be supportive, Joyce. Listen to her. Be interested in what she’s interested in, so you can monitor her progress at this new school. She’s begging you to be a part of her life, but you’re not interested until you can be a part of her life in the way that reminds you of your life at her age. That’s not healthy. It’s not healthy for Amy’s mom to be doing that, and it’s not healthy for you to be doing it, either. #3

Okay, Joyce does admit to herself that it wasn’t her finest parenting moment, so there’s that.
At school the next day, Cordelia walks past Xander and Willow in a freaky daze, but Xander finds a way to turn it around to be about him and how awful it is that Buffy doesn’t see him as a romantic interest. He doesn’t really notice that Cordelia is obviously under a spell or about to have a seizure or something. Willow likens Xander’s role in Buffy’s life to that of a chewed up pen, and Xander tells her he gets it, she doesn’t “have to drive it through my head like a railroad spike.” I’m going to believe that this is an intentional foreshadowing to a character in season 2. I’ll try to remember this when we get there.
Xander is geared up to ask Buffy out, but Buffy is more concerned with the fact that Cordelia is acting really loopy. She cuts him off and leaves to go after Cordelia, which Xander takes as a rejection. Of course. Because the slayer, the chosen one, who is supposed to notice stuff like people acting like they’re under Barbie spells, should have just set that duty aside to listen to Xander when he wanted to ask her out. It’s not a rejection, ass. It’s her job, and she even told you she was worried about Cordelia and she was going to follow her. #5.

Cordelia staggers drunkenly into driver’s ed and tells her instructor that she doesn’t want to drive. She looks like she’s totally intoxicated at the moment she takes the wheel, at her instructor’s insistence. Wow. This guy teaches everyone in Sunnydale how to drive? That must be why whenever there’s a tiny bit of supernatural anything, everyone drives their fucking cars off the road. Anyway, Cordelia nearly kills everyone in the car, then gets out and staggers into the path of a UPS guy, who is probably drunk himself because he has tons of time to stop and he doesn’t even slow down. Buffy pushes Cordelia out of the way, and she says she can’t see anything. Not only has Cordelia suddenly gone over all blind, she’s real, real creepy looking, too:
Ha! This is my favorite screencap ever. She looks totally casual about her eyes being all white. I assure you, she was actually freaking out. Charisma Carpenter is just so wonderful, even her frowns look like smiles.

Back at ye old library, Giles tells the gang that it’s definitely witchcraft. They talk out the problem and realize that the link is cheerleading… and they think Amy might be the witch, since she wanted it so much more than the other girls. Giles advises them to be careful, because if Amy is a witch, she can do some nasty shit. He doesn’t put it like that, obviously. This was a prime time show.
Buffy figures out that the first thing you’re going to do if you’re a teenager bent on becoming a witch is look for stuff about witchcraft in the school library. Okay, maybe it was because I went to a Catholic school, but we didn’t have a real big occult section in our school library. Did any of you public school people have an occult section in your library? Any of you who went to boarding school (that wasn’t Hogwarts)? Xander thinks it’s stupid to look up who checked out the witchcraft books, and Willow discovered that it was Xander who’d checked them out in the first place. He’s not the witch, though, he just checked them out to masturbate to the engravings. Ah, teenagers.
Giles tells the kids how to do a spell to turn a witch’s skin blue. They need mercury, nitric acid, and eye of newt. Good thing Sunnydale can’t afford separate biology and chemistry classes, so that the gang is conveniently able to get the chemicals they need, as well as eyes from the dissection frogs. Really? They couldn’t just break into the science lab after school? It’s somehow more believable that half the class would be dissecting frogs while the other half would be doing some crazy ass experiment with hydrochloric acid on the same day? That just seems like a recipe for melted frog.
They need Amy’s hair, too, so Buffy gets some from the hairbrush in Amy’s bag. She achieves this by asking Amy a stupid question to draw her attention, then drops something so she can get into Amy’s bag and steals hair from her brush all while using the most clearly guilty expression in an episode of a television show that isn’t Scooby-Doo:

They could have used this as Sarah Michelle Gellar’s audition for Scooby Doo, actually.

Buffy takes the hair back to Willow, who is brewing up the potion. That’s right, Buffy fans, this is the very first time we see Willow do magic of any kind. And it’s adorable:
See, there she is in the back there, doing magic! Awwww! Except for the part where she later becomes addicted to magic and people die… I guess this is more like watching someone snort their first rail of coke then. Never mind, I rescind my awwww.

Buffy is incredibly unsubtle when she tips the potion onto Amy’s bare arm. Wait, wasn’t there mercury in that? Not awesome, guys, you can’t just go throwing mercury on people. But the test comes up positive for witchness, and it’s pretty clear that Amy knows that Buffy knows. There’s no time for a confrontation, though, because enter No-Mouth McGee:
What the hell?! That’s horrifying! Why would they show us that? I guess it’s cool that she’s already got mime gloves, because she’s going to need them now that she can’t talk because her mouth is fucking gone like she’s in The Twilight Zone: The Movie. I guess we can deduce from the fact that this happened to her that she’s a cheerleader being targeted by Amy the witch. Otherwise, that is one fucking terrible airborne disease.
Because Amy was freaked out by the sight of the girl with no mouth, the group decides that she probably is the witch, but she just doesn’t know what her powers are doing. They make a plan to go talk to Amy’s mother. Then we see Amy walking home from school, and this is what her front gate looks like:
Amy and Willow have hung out before. If Willow had remembered, “Hey, Amy’s house has a creepy fucking devil face on the gate, we should look into that,” they wouldn’t have had to do all this other work. Good job, Willow.
Amy comes in the door, and her demeanor changes from looking around like a velociraptor to actually being a velociraptor. She calls her mom out of hiding, chastises her for watching television all day, then drops her bag and orders her mom to write her history report. She knows Buffy stole her hair. She’s also gotten something of Buffy’s:
Yup, it’s the bracelet Xander gave Buffy. Amy says she’ll be upstairs, which is, as we know, where all the witchy stuff and Barbies are.
Cut to Buffy waking up and smashing her alarm clock to pieces on accident. She’s super peppy in her cute little uniform. Her mother tries to apologize for that whole incident the day before when she continually reminded her daughter that she’s a fuck up, but Buffy is totally cool with it. She tells her mom that there’s “something about being a vampire slayer that the older generation – ” and Joyce asks her if she’s feeling well. Probably because she just started talking about slaying vampires.
Despite the fact that she’s acting like she just took a whole bottle of diet pills – and not today’s diet pills, I’m talking 1960’s, Mad Men style diet pills -, she heads to school, where we see her at cheerleading practice. She’s manic, even for a cheerleader.
Okay, so I know some of you like it when I point out little details that could help you in writing. Here’s a visual example of something:
Look at Buffy, second from the left. Look at her shoes. Even though you might not notice it on a conscious level the first, second, or seventieth time you watch the episode, you probably noticed it unconsciously. The subtle detail of her shoes being the only different shoes? It’s reinforcing to the viewer that Buffy is an odd person, she’s never quite going to fit in no matter how hard she tries, and it’s a cue that’s given on a level we might never connect, unless we knew to look for it. But you get the sense of it with little things like this.
Also, it makes it super easy to tell that it’s Buffy stepping on the foot of the girl next to her in just a second.
You know when you show up at a party or something, and one of your friends is already like, waaaaay too wasted, and you’re like… huh. This is the face you make:
Willow and Xander know something is up with Buffy, and they agree they should take her out of the situation before someone gets hurt. Except it’s too late, because while giving an assist on a cartwheel or a hand spring or some move I don’t know the name of because I wasn’t athletic like you, mom! Wait, what was I saying? Right, Buffy’s super strength causes her to hurl the head cheerleader into a wall. She gets cut from the team instantly, and when the head cheerleader barks, “Who’s our next alternate?” Amy is standing creepily right there, looking like this:
Them thar’s crazy eyes.

Seriously, does no one find it suspicious that the second Buffy starts acting crazy and gets cut from the team, Amy is standing there looking all velociraptorish like she do, just conveniently ready to assume her spot?
Buffy is totally suspicious, but no one is going to listen to her because she’s goofy like she just got bounced from a party at Stevie Nicks’s house in 1978. She tries to tell everyone that Amy is a witch, but Xander and Willow shuffle her out of there, pronto.
In the hallway, Buffy is all the hell over Xander, telling him she loves him and he’s her Xander.
Here is one place where the show does not display pseudo feminism, at all, and it’s one of my favorite aspects of the series. Look at Willow’s face. She’s so into Xander, and this entire episode she’s had to listen to Xander go on and on about how much he wants to date Buffy. Now here’s Buffy, all over Xander in the hallway, and Willow still wants to help her friend despite the fact that she is romantic competition. ISN’T THAT FUCKING AMAZING? THAT NEVER HAPPENS! THAT’S INSANE!
Also, about two seconds later, Buffy explains why she loves Xander. It’s because he’s not like a guy, he’s one of her girlfriends. Welcome to the friendzone, asshole, you can keep Willow company in there.
Buffy collapses in the hall, and they take her to Giles, who is very helpful in making sure Buffy HEY WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE, GILES, WHERE SHOULD OUR EYES BE?!
You know the drill.

Giles explains that the other girls who have been affected by Amy’s spells were just incapacitated, but the spell she put on Buffy is fatal. If Buffy dies, she can’t tell anyone that Amy is a witch and interfere in her plans. Giles tells them they have a couple of hours before Buffy dies. Their options are to either try and get Amy’s spell book and undo all the spells she’s done, or cut her head off. Buffy rejects the latter, believing that it’s not Amy’s fault she became a witch. She’s just struggling with a contentious home life. But you know… I know a lot of people who have come from bad homes and never tried to kill anyone with magic, Buffy. You don’t have to be a martyr here.
Buffy and Giles head to maison d’witchcraft, where we see Amy’s mom eating brownies on the couch. She’s acting really strange, but Giles doesn’t notice, because he is in a STATE, y’all. He gets in Amy’s mom’s face and tells her that because of the pressure she put on her daughter to be a cheerleader, Amy is now meddling with dark forces, etc. He is PISSED, guys. This is the first time we’ve seen him really super angry over a threat to his slayer. In the first two episodes, he was sort of calmly detached, while being worried from afar. This is the first time we’ve seen him this angry at the idea of Buffy dying. His fear of Buffy’s inevitable demise (because as a watcher, he realizes that the role of a slayer is to fight until she dies and a new slayer is called) is a major part of his character development as the show progresses, and while it’s not proof of #2 in this episode, this scene lays the groundwork for the transition from “watcher” to “friend who cares about her” that will later develop into “OMG GIFFY OTP FOREVER!”
While Giles rages at Amy’s mom, Buffy notices this:
And she’s all:
The brownies, and Amy’s mom saying that she doesn’t care about cheerleading, makes Buffy understand. It’s Amy in her mother’s body. Cheerleading obsessed Catherine Madison switched bodies with her daughter in order to relive her glory days. This is a pretty cool scene, and leads into another writing tip: while Buffy does figure out the body switch plot device in this scene, she doesn’t do it until the audience has been given a reasonable amount of clues to arrive at that conclusion before the characters on the screen do. It’s a perfect example of showing, instead of telling. The brownies (remember how her mother was so scared of gaining weight? Why would she be eating brownies?), her odd behavior, the fact that she’s afraid of “Amy,” she refers to “dad” leaving them… most of the audience should understand before Buffy says, “Amy?” and that’s way more powerful than just having a character say, “Hey, this is what’s going on.” This scene also has one of the spookiest lines of the season:

“She said I was wasting my youth. So she took it.”

Amy tells Buffy and Giles that her mother targeted her for abuse after her father left them, and that she wanted to leave with him, but her mother wouldn’t let her contact him.

Giles breaks into Amy’s mom’s witch room and gets her book, then they head for the school, where a basketball game is already in progress. Giles carries Buffy into the science lab and sweeps all the junk off a table to lay her on it, and then he puts his jacket under her head for a pillow because he’s considerate like that. He tells Amy-in-her-mom’s-body that they only have a few minutes. So… why bother with putting your jacket under Buffy’s head? PRIORITIES, RUPERT.

It doesn’t take long for Giles’s spell to start working. While Buffy lays dying, Amy’s-mom-in-Amy’s-body flashes between seeing the crowd at the basketball game and seeing the stuff for the spell. Amy-in-her-mom’s-body says that the spell is working. When Amy’s-mom-in-Amy’s-body runs off the court, Willow  confronts her and tells her she can help with all of Amy’s witch stuff. She’s really trying to distract her while Xander sneaks up on her, and that doesn’t go too well.

By “not well,” I mean Xander gets force choked.

Amy’s-mom-in-Amy’s-body punches out Willow and heads for the science lab, where Giles has nearly completed the spell. By the by, did I mention that for part of the spell, he has to submerge his hands in boiling liquid and keep them there? Because that’s what he does. He submerges both of his hands in boiling liquid and holds them in there as part of the spell, despite being in visible pain. Because #2 guys. Because #2.
AMIAB grabs a fire axe from the “in case of emergency” thing on the wall (seems a bit unsafe to have one of those in a high school hallway, doesn’t?) and breaks the door down. She heads straight for Buffy, aiming to, I don’t know, it seems like she’s going to cut her the fuck in half, when the spell finally works. Buffy is no longer dying, and Amy is back in her own body, looking kind of surprised to find an axe in her hands. Buffy is super happy to see Amy back to normal, until Amy’s mom tackles her, then knocks out Giles by throwing a lab table at him. She gets the axe from Amy and threatens to put her somewhere she can never cause trouble again. Uh, lady? What episode were you watching? Because Amy didn’t cause this trouble, you did.
Buffy and Amy’s mom fight each other, and Amy’s mom gets the drop on Buffy long enough to fire up a pretty impressive spell. Just as she shoots her magic load, Buffy knocks down a light fixture or some other reflective surface thing, beaming the spell back at Amy’s mom, who turns pink and disappears.
Oh, so THAT’S who’s making that crazy screeching noise during the theme song.
Giles regains consciousness after the real danger has passed. This will happen many times throughout the series, and becomes a bit of a running joke. However, it serves an important purpose. In a theory on storytelling called “The Hero’s Journey,” the idea is that a mentor can’t really stick around forever, otherwise the student will never fully grow into his or her heroic powers on their own. That’s why Obi-Wan, Dumbledore, and Gandalf all have to die, so that Luke, Harry, and Frodo can go forward as a leader instead of a learner. However, in a long-running series where you want to keep that character around, you have to find other ways of incapacitating the mentor. When I wrote my Blood Ties series, the mentor role was fulfilled by Nathan, which is why the poor bastard was always possessed or getting kidnapped and flayed alive or whatever. For Giles, it’s almost always going to be a concussion. Them’s the breaks.
Buffy tells Giles he was “a god” for saving her, and he gets all embarrassed, but not for long because Xander rushes in and grabs Amy, screaming, “I got her!” They’re explaining the situation to him when enter Willow, in full murder mode, wielding a bat. I assume she’s planning to use said bat to beat Amy’s fucking head in. Good job, Willow!
The scene cuts to Buffy in her room. Her mother comes in and admits she has no idea how to parent a teenager, so good self-awareness, Joyce. Buffy asks her mom if she would ever want to be sixteen again, a notion Joyce completely rejects, as any rational adult hopefully would. This scene is so pivotal to making this episode acceptable from a feminist standpoint. If we’re going to have the cliche of a woman so hungry to relieve her youth that she’ll do anything to get it, we need to also have a woman saying that being young again doesn’t interest her in the slightest. This tells us that it’s not ALL woman who want to be cheerleaders again, just that one really deranged one.
At school, Amy and Buffy are walking together, talking about Amy’s new life with her father. Cordelia butts in to taunt them about not being on the squad anymore, and Amy makes a crack about missing “the intellectual thrill of spelling out words with my arms.” Okay, was that really necessary? I get that Amy didn’t want to be a cheerleader, but it’s not okay to insinuate that all cheerleaders are dumb just because you’re not into the sport yourself. As Cordelia walks away, Amy apologizes to Buffy. She forgot she actually wanted to be a cheerleader in the first place. Way to own your mistake, girl!
Buffy and Amy pause in front of the trophy and picture of Amy’s mom in the trophy case. Amy says  there’s been no sign of her mother, and says she doubts she’ll ever come back, given her plan to make Amy disappear forever with her last spell. As Buffy and Amy walk away, discussing Amy’s plans to get fat now that she has control over her own body again, the camera slowly pans to the face of the cheerleading trophy, which has strangely human eyes. We hear Amy’s mother whimpering as the screen goes black.
Overall, this episode is really tight. There aren’t any overtly anti-feminist themes running through it (although that’s one of my main issues with the series, that the anti-feminist themes pop up in places you wouldn’t expect), it has a genuinely scary villain and the actresses that play Amy/Amy’s mom are incredibly good at maintaining character continuity despite being two separate people trying to act as the two same characters. And it establishes an ongoing and deepening relationship between the four characters that comprise the main cast, as we see Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles work together to protect each other and fight evil. Definitely a good example of pacing and plot twists, too.

Let me tell you about some bull shit, dear readers!

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Last night, my friend Holly was in town. We don’t often get to see each other, so we decided to go out and have a girl’s night together. The first stop we tried to make was at a seedy little dive bar in a neighboring town. Except, now it’s not a seedy little dive bar anymore, it’s a family restaurant. No place to party. So, Holly said, “Let’s go to the bar at the bowling alley.”

Let me tell you a little about my friend Holly. She is beautiful, in the Hollywood sense of the word. She is slim, blonde, she dresses clothes that showcase her figure and she has a sort of unconscious sexuality about her that makes her seem innocent and provocative at the same time. This isn’t a persona she’s created for herself, it’s just how she’s always been, for as long as I can remember. So, we walk into this bar, and immediately, the catcalls began. The men sitting at the bar turned around to openly stare at her, to say things like, “Oh, baby,” and “Look at this one! Hey! Hey! Check her out!”

Were they drunk? Yes. Does that make it okay? No.

We had one drink and decided to leave, because D-Rock was waiting for us up at the bar at the end of my road. We headed back there. This place is familiar territory, it’s comfortable, it feels safe. Also, you can drink and then just walk back to my house instead of driving. Pretty awesome. We went in, had a few drinks with D-Rock and her husband, then D-Rock said she would run him home and return to hang out.

Not two full minutes after they left, a man came over to our table. He was clearly intoxicated; not a huge problem, we were in a bar, after all. He wanted help with the digital jukebox, so I showed him how it worked. I started to suspect that he was maybe high on something other than beer or weed. He would lean in close, fix me with a really intense stare, and get agitated if I tried to return to my conversation with Holly.

When D-Rock came back (only a few minutes later, because our town is about two miles deep), she made a fairly innocuous comment about wanting him to leave us alone. I believe it was something along the lines of, “Hey, man, we’re just trying to catch up with our friend here, we’d like to be left alone.” When he kept hanging around, she tried a stronger tactic, complaining loudly about creeps being drawn to us. But he still didn’t leave. He pulled up a chair. Any time we tried to speak to each other, he would jump in and try to bring the conversation back to himself.

Then he hugged me. This was the tipping point for D-Rock, and for me. I never, at any point, insinuated that I would want to make any physical contact with this man. And he put his arms around me, despite my resistance. When I pushed away, he said, “Don’t act like I’m going to molest you or something!”

Uh, guy? I didn’t say anything about you molesting me. But clearly, it’s at the forefront of your mind.

D-Rock got into a verbal altercation with the creep, while I went up to the bar to pretend to pay. I told the bartender, who is a really nice guy, “I’m standing here, pretending to pay, because I think those two are going to get into a fight.”

Holly bought our drinks (because she’s amazing like that) and let the bartender know that the only reason we were leaving was to avoid that man, and his harassment was hurting their business. Then we noticed that the guy was no where around. Where was he?

He’d gone into the parking lot. Because we had said we were going to leave, he’d gone into the parking lot to wait for us.

Because she was super pissed off, D-Rock went ahead of us, probably intending to kill the guy with her car keys. Her two pit bulls were in her car. The man tried to approach her as she got in. She warned him to stop coming at her. He kept coming. She threatened to let her dogs out. He kept coming. She took off down the road to my house. At that point, she really didn’t have a choice to wait for us.

The bartender walked us out, and the guy was no where to be seen. We quickly got into Holly’s car and headed down the road. I do not condone drunk driving, but our original plan was to walk home. It was clear, based on this guy’s actions, that it would have been unsafe in the extreme to try and walk the tenth of a mile down the road, in the dark, with that guy still roaming around out there. We had to choose between breaking the law or… whatever this guy had planned when he’d gone out to wait for us in the parking lot.

It makes me angry that a man I didn’t know thought that me helping him with the jukebox was a contract of some sort. It makes me angry that he ruined our night, when all we wanted to do was have a good time. And it makes me angry that he perceived our desire to not include him, a stranger, in our evening, as rudeness that deserved open hostility.

You know how sometimes when you have a bad feeling about a person, and you don’t want to engage them because you don’t want to seem like you’re being rude? Fuck that. I’m sick of being treated as though being a woman and being in public means I’m an amusement for other people. We came into this bar to have a good time and drink and hang out. There were men doing the exact same thing, at the exact same bar, at the exact same time. But no one was acting like they were on display, or “open for business” so to speak.

Confession: I hate leaving my house. I hate it. I have hated it since an incident in New Orleans this past summer, when I was followed by a man who pretended to be a harmless drunk in the elevator, until he got me alone. I try to dress as androgynously as possible to avoid attention. But that seems to make it worse. It’s like my lack of confidence or my desire to hide myself makes a beacon for skeevy guys. Or maybe it’s because I am a bigger girl, and they’re trying to separate the weakest or the least resistant from the heard? I haven’t quite puzzled this part out.

All I know is, women are constantly having their personal space and sense of safety violated in public places, and it’s supposed to be flattering. Street harassment, guys who won’t take a hint and leave our table, all of this shit is supposed to be desired by us? Fuck that. I was considering not typing up this post, because I thought for sure someone would be like, “Well, it is a bar, that stuff happens there, no big deal,” but then I remembered that the people who read my blog on the reg have proven over and over that they’re insanely cool and smart, so you all probably understand what I’m driving at.

I’m just tired of feeling like if we go out in public, for any reason, we’re opening ourselves up to this behavior, and that if we want to avoid it, we should just stay inside. Because I’ve been staying inside. I’ve been staying inside for a while, unless I go out with my husband, because being with a man is literally the only thing that keeps this from happening. If you’re owned, if you’re clearly another man’s property, they keep their distance. But if you’re out on your own, or in a group? Open season, and you should be thankful for the attention.

As I was saying, I’ve tried the whole staying inside thing. And it sucks and it’s isolating and I hate being afraid to leave because I’m frightened that a man is going to make me feel ashamed of myself. That’s what I hate the most about it. The shame. The doubt I have deep down, that tells me, “Maybe all those other people are right. Maybe I shouldn’t be at a bar. Maybe I shouldn’t be in this elevator unsupervised. Maybe I am ‘asking for it.’ Maybe I’m a slut, or a tease. Maybe I should be ashamed of myself.” Even though I know, intelligently, that it’s wrong for women to have to deal with this, I still can’t apply that intelligent thought to myself. I would have no problem standing up for someone else, but when it’s me, there’s that doubt. Even as I type this, I’m terrified someone will think I’m bragging, and think I’m slutty, although I would never have those thoughts about another woman saying the same things. It’s not a lack of trust in you, the reader, but a lack of trust in myself, because I live in a culture that assigns shady motives to any woman who rejects male sexual attention.

At this point, I just don’t know what to do. I want to be able to have a drink with my friends without having this happen. That’s all I want.

EDIT TO CLARIFY TWO POINTS: A few of you have expressed concern over the fact that we drove after drinking, and that we should have called a cab. I do not condone or excuse drunk driving, but I want to explain why we did not call a cab: there aren’t any. We live in an extremely isolated rural community, out of the service area for the nearest cab companies. Our choices were to either chance the drive or walk home in the dark, and start that walk in full view of the creeper. If it had been any other situation, even if there had just been a skeevy guy hitting on us, driving would not have been an option. We chose to drive because it was, at the time, the safest option. The guy had gone into the parking lot as soon as we’d said we were going to leave. We didn’t view that as a coincidence, but that he was planning something. We weighed the odds of us getting into a drunk driving accident against the odds that this man would assault us. But a taxi was never an option, because they just don’t exist out here (I have, however, seen horses hitched up outside this bar, and I’m beginning to think that might be a good investment).

The second point I’d like to clear up is that the bartender is in no way culpable for what happened. He could not kick the guy out, because by the time we complained about him, the dude had already left the building. There was nothing to kick him out of at that point. The bartender walked us out and kept and eye out for the guy once he was aware of the situation, so I think he did just about as much as he could reasonably do for us. I don’t blame the bartender in any way.

50 Shades Freed recap Chapter 8 or “Guys, you’re going to need a cigarette, for real.”

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I’ll be closing the poll up today, but it looks like the results are pretty much in. Only two people strenuously objected to monetizing the blog, and so to those two people I say: sorry to disappoint you, but I understand completely that you must stick to your convictions. I’ll be adding an option for donations via Google wallet in the next few days, as well as a Flattr button, because while some of you have expressed a desire to donate without having to sign up for some other service, I like the idea of Flattr. Those of you who use Flattr can feel free to use it, otherwise, the other option will be there.

I will also be opening Troutmart, a Zazzle.com shop for all your snarky mug and t-shirt needs. More to come, because that shit is confusing and I’ve got some deadlines.

Annelia sent me these links, which are… phew. These are doozies, and will no doubt be enormously triggering to some of you, so… you know, warning, there are real images of domestic violence in progress in these links, and images of children witnessing domestic violence. The first is Photographer as Witness: A Portrait of Domestic Violence, and the other is I Am Unbeatable: Donna Ferrato’s Commitment to Abused Women.

*Subtly moves from DV links directly into recap*

So, if you don’t remember from last time, Ana was gearing up for this huge confrontation with the bitch architect who was going to steal her husband. Ana’s husband, not the architect’s – oh, never mind, you know what I was saying. But yeah, Ana got all tarted up to have some kind of vamp-off with this woman who… well, I’m getting ahead of myself. What are Gia Matteo’s defining characteristics, beyond the cardinal sin of being female?

Gia Matteo is a good-looking woman – a tall, good-looking woman.

So, that’s two strikes.

She wears her short, salon-blonde, perfectly layered and coiffed hair like a sophisticated crown.

I can’t decide if the blonde hair is a ball or a strike, since it’s “salon-blonde” and not “naturally blonde.” The latter indicates a genetic predilection towards evil man-stealing, while the former is merely the mark of a wannabe man-stealer, right? I can never keep my girl hate straight.

But it doesn’t matter, because she strikes out like the 2003 Tigers with her next sin:

Her clothes look expensive.

This is a really interesting theme that has run through all three books. Ana seems to have a very jaundiced view of people with money. She snarks Kate’s wealth and the generosity of her parents. One of her chief objections to dating Christian Grey was that he had too much money, and his wealth made her uncomfortable. She’s often saying how she doesn’t know if she’ll ever get used to having money. She passes all sorts of wacky judgement on other characters for having money, but most of them are helping her out financially. I wonder if Ana is just unable to face the reality that she hasn’t pulled herself up by her bootstraps, but has relied on the generosity of others.

You didn’t build that, Ana.
I’m sorry, was I just talking about Ana as though she were a fully realized character, much like a real human being? I must have blacked out.
More about Ms. Matteo:

She is well groomed – one of those women who grew up with money and breeding, though her breeding seems to be lacking this evening; her pale blue blouse is undone too far. Like mine. I flush.

Still not real clear on if Ana is trying to out-sexy Gia, or if she’s trying to have sex with her.

They do the standard greeting thing where Ana overanalyzes everything the other person does, a dig about the fact Gia is wearing mascara (unlike Ana who clumped that shit on in the last chapter) and then Christian puts his arm around Ana.

See… he’s mine. Annoying – infuriating, even – but mine. I grin. Right now, I really love you, Christian Grey.

Because she’s “winning” the “competition” (which I’m pretty sure Gia has no clue she’s participating in),  Ana can forgive everything Christian has done to make her mad. To further express her happiness and possession of another human being, Ana squeezes Christian’s butt.

How uncomfortable would that make you, if you were Gia? If I were Gia, it would make me very uncomfortable. I would wonder if they were going to offer to make me their third. And I definitely would not want to fuck them, thanks.

[…] I’m gripped by the uncanny feeling that Christian and I are putting on a show, playing a game together – but this time we’re on the same side pitted against Ms. Matteo. Does he know that she’s attracted to him and is being too obvious about it? It gives me a small rush of pleasure when I realize maybe he’s trying to reassure me. Or maybe he’s just sending a message loud and clear to this woman that he’s taken.

Mine. Yeah, bitch – mine. My inner goddess is wearing her gladiatrix outfit, and she’s taking no prisoners.

Is it just me, or is this excerpt making Ana sounding just as awful as Christian? The only value she places on him here is as an object. I suppose it would be easy to blame Christian in this one; he is, after all, the only romantic interest she’s ever had, and he is “guiding” her through how to be in a relationship. But we’ve seen Ana act selfishly about the people in her life before she was married to Christian. Is this a learned behavior? Or is Ana just as fucking terrible as Christian? Discuss.

So, they start to talk out the plans for the house, and Gia casually touches Christian. So, okay, she may be crossing the line or making a play. Or, she might just be naturally touchy. Some people are. She just touches his arm, but since we know Christian doesn’t like to be touched, he gets all stiff and formal.

She makes him uncomfortable. Why didn’t I see that before? That’s why I don’t like her.

Yeah, that’s why you don’t like her.

They talk about the plans for the house, which I am so fucking not interested in, so I’m skipping all of that part. I don’t think you guys care if they have a glass wall or an alfresco dining room, either. Christian actually lets Ana drive the plans, though, which is nice:

“Like the bright blue shutters in the South of France,” I murmur to Christian, who is watching me intently. He takes a sip of wine and shrugs, very noncommittal. Hmm. He doesn’t like that idea but he doesn’t overrule me, shoot me down, or make me feel stupid. God, this man is a mass of contradictions. His words from yesterday come to mind: “I want this house to be the way you want. Whatever you want. It’s yours.” He wants me to be happy – happy in everything I do.

Unless you would be happy doing something he doesn’t want you to do. In that case, fuck you.

Notice the subtle misogyny in the fact that Christian considers the house Ana’s domain. He trusts her to decorate, but not run her own career or life. The house, though, that’s all her.

The entire exchange with Gia alternates between “Blah blah blah, boring house plan, blah blah blah stay away from my man, bitch.” Ana decides she’s going to have words with Gia:

When I turn to Christian, he’s still looking at me – not at her at all. Yes! I am going to have words with Ms. Matteo.

If he had been expressing sexual interest in Gia, would Ana refrain from having these words? Gosh, when will an opportunity pop up, where you can be alone with her?

There’s a discreet cough from the entrance to the great room. We three turn as one to find Taylor standing there.

“Taylor?” Christian asks.

“I need to confer with you on an urgent matter, Mr. Grey.”

Of course you do. Because like three paragraphs before, Ana was just thinking how she was going to “have words” with the architect. Christian is conveniently called away by the author, and Ana gets to have her confrontation.

“So… the master suite?” Gia asks nervously.

I gaze up at her,  pausing for a moment to ensure that Christian and Taylor are out of earshot. Then, calling on all my inner strength and the fact that I’ve been seriously piqued for the last five hours, I let her have it.

“You’re right to be nervous, Gia, because right now your work on this project hangs in the balance. But I’m sure we’ll be fine as long as you keep your hands off my husband.”

Wait, what? Hangs in what balance? I thought that was an expression you generally only used if you were mentioning two other things. So that there was a balance to hang in. I suppose “my husband” and “your work” would be those two things, but it seems weird to mention the two opposing things after the fact.

But there I go again, expecting waaaaay too much of the use of colloquial English in the best selling series of all time.

Ana warns Gia that she’s about to get her ass fired, and Gia is like, “But it isn’t him I want. It’s you.” And then they grab each other and hate fuck right on top of the plans.

Okay, that’s not what happens. But wouldn’t be awesome if that’s what happened?

What actually happens is that they have a stare-off. There’s some adverb or adjective that could be applied to the manner in which Ana conducts herself at this time, but fucked if I can remember which one it is…

But I hold my ground, gazing impassively into her widening brown eyes.

Don’t back down. Don’t back down! I’ve learned this maddening impassive expression from Christian, who does impassive like no one else. 

Fuck, I wish I could remember what adverb or adjective that could be used at a time like this, to describe an emotionless glare. I feel like it’s right on the tip of my tongue, too. I’m sure if I heard it, or some variation of it, several times in close succession, I might understand exactly how Ana is staring at Gia.

What is it with three letter names in this series? Ana, Gia, Mia. Ana Gia Mia. That sounds like an Italian car. “The Fiat Anagiamia’s production was halted, because too many of the plant workers were committing suicide.”

“Let me be clear. My husband is not interested in you.”

“Of course,” she murmurs, the blood draining from her face.

“As I said, I just wanted to be clear.”

And to totally not sound desperately in need of proving something to yourself.

Now that I have the upper hand, I feel myself relax for the first time since my meeting with Christian this afternoon. I can do this. My inner goddess is celebrating her inner bitch.

Worst matryoshka ever.

Christian comes back from his super urgent flimsy authorial excuse (Hyde hasn’t been to his apartment in weeks, hardly time sensitive information), and Gia leaves. Christian knows something is up because Gia acts like he’s Quasimodo and will barely look at him. Ana admits to having said something about that bitch keeping your slut hands off my man, ho! and Christian is… ugh. This fucking guy.

His eyes grow wide in alarm. “You’re not jealous, are you?” he asks, horrified.

It’s horrific that Ana is jealous? I guess I can see where he’s coming from. I mean, he has to be jealous. Ana is a woman, and therefore she’ll just relentlessly fuck every male in her path if she doesn’t have a man to be jealous at her whenever those rival males are in proximity. But Ana being jealous is just… well, that’s silly.

“Ana, she’s a sexual predator. Not my type at all. […]”

Hey, he’d be a good Taylor, too.

 I choose to believe the wording of the sentence was meant to imply that Gia isn’t Christian’s type of sexual predator. Because Christian certainly burns a fucking torch for Mrs. Robinson, didn’t he? And she wasn’t exactly not a sexual predator. She looked at a severely emotionally disturbed teenager and thought, “Ah, I can fuck that. He’s just broken enough to go for it.”

I thought Ana would jump directly on a chance to slam Elena, but Christian is still kind of stuck on this “how can you be jealous of me” thing and he’s not getting unstuck any time soon.

“How can you think otherwise? Have I ever given you any indication that I could be remotely interested in anyone else?” His eye blaze as he stares into mine.

Okay, here’s the thing, Chedward. Jealousy has nothing to do with the other person, and everything to do with the person experiencing the jealousy. You, Chedward, have no self-worth, hence your incessant and ridiculous posturing. Pro-tip? Ana has no self-worth, either. What little she might have had has been systematically destroyed by your “love,” so she’s constantly doubting she’s good enough to keep you from straying. You’re both in the same boat. Despite any evidence to the contrary, you believe she’s going to fuck around on you, so you treat her even worse, which in turn causes you to doubt she could ever love you, and, fuck it, you know what? This is hard to explain, let me provide a handy diagram:

THIS IS ANA AND CHEDWARD’S RELATIONSHIP.

“Oh, Christian” – my bottom lip trembles – “I’m trying to adapt to this new life that I had never imagined for myself. Everything is being handed to me on a plate – the job, you, my beautiful husband who I never… I never knew I’d love this way, this hard, this fast, this… indelibly.” I take a deep, steadying breath as his mouth drops open.

“But you’re like a freight train, and I don’t want to get railroaded because the girl you fell in love with will be crushed.

Let’s give E.L. a hand here, for not mixing a metaphor for the very first time in all three books. This calls for some kind of celebration.

And what’ll be left? All that would be left is a vacuous social X-ray, flitting from charity function to charity function.” I pause once more, struggling to find the words to convey how I feel. “And now you want me to be a company CEO, which has never even been on my radar. I’m bouncing between all these ideas, struggling. You want me at home. You want me to run a company. It’s so confusion.” I stop, tears threatening, and I force back a sob.

So, when I started recaping the first book, people would get furious with me. They would be like, “It’s a series! You have to read the whole thing to see how the characters develop! You must not understand how a series works!”

NO I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW A SERIES WORKS COULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN IT TO ME, 50 SHADES FAN?
That would make me so furious because the thing was, it really, really, really does not matter that Ana delivers this big speech in book three. Not one little bit. And it has very little to do with what comes before the big speech, and everything to do with what comes after it. Because she delivers this big, heartfelt speech, and NOTHING CHANGES.

Saying all of this stuff to Christian doesn’t make Ana a strong woman, because she never makes it clear through her interactions with him that she actually expects him to change his behavior. If she is given the option to either do what he wants her to or force him to respect her boundaries, she will always pick shouting at him, then ultimately caving to his desires.

“I just want to give you the world, Ana, everything and anything you want. And save you from it, too. Keep you safe. But I also want everyone to know you’re mine. I panicked today when I got your e-mail. Why didn’t you tell me about your name?”

I flush. He has a point.

See? Immediately it becomes about him again. He wants to give her everything she wants – but what he really wants is to give her everything he wants for her, and to force her to want it, too. But instead of saying, “Hey, jackass, do you hear yourself?” she rushes to tell him how much she loves him – by quoting King Lear – and tries to reassure him that he’s the only one for her. She does, however, ask him if he would consider taking her name, if having the same last name means so much to him:

“Would you change your name to Christian Steele so everyone would know that you belong to me?”

Christian’s eyes fly open, and he gazes at me as if I’ve just said the world is flat. He frowns. “Belong to you?” he murmurs, testing the words.

He then agrees that he would, if it meant a lot to her. Spoiler alert? He doesn’t. And even if he did, it wouldn’t make up for aaaaaaall the other shit he’s done to her. The fact that he can’t even comprehend “belonging” to her the way he feels she “belongs” to him is a big, neon sign that he really does consider other people possessions instead of, you know. People.

“Does it mean that much to you?”

“Yes.” He is unequivocal.

“Okay.” I will do this for him. Give him the reassurance he still needs.

Boom. Right there. This is not a book about how a woman becomes empowered. This is a book about how a woman tricks herself into believing that she is empowered.

But hey, at least she’s going to get a reward:

“Mrs. Grey, do you know what this means to me?”

“I do now.”

He leans down and kisses me, his fingers moving into my hair, holding me in place.

“It means seven shades of Sunday,” he murmurs against my lips, and he runs his nose along mine.

See, this book isn’t anti-feminist at all! Stupid Jen, not understanding how the fact that he’s willing to pay lip service to her concerns by saying he would do something he ultimately doesn’t do and then rewards her by letting her have sex with him means this is the paragon of female enlightenment.

But just in case you think she’s earned this reward too easily…

“I need you to cut my hair. Apparently, it’s overlong, and my wife doesn’t like it.”

When Ana is all, hey asshole, I’m not a stylist, he says:

“Okay, good point well made. I’ll get Franco to do it.”

No! Franco works for the bitch troll!

So, since Chedward has subtly threatened to go see Mrs. Robinson if Ana doesn’t comply with his wishes, Ana thinks:

Maybe I could give him a trim. After all, I cut Ray’s hair for years, and he never complained.

I like how she says “after all,” like that’s totally a given that someone has been giving their dad his haircuts for years. Like, “everyone does this, right?”

So, Ana is going to sexily wash Chedward’s hair, but they just can’t keep their hands off each other. Their desire is painstakingly detailed by the author, who has a masterful grasp of the English language:

Sculptured, chiseled, whatever, it is a beautiful mouth and he knows exactly what to do with it.

Clearly, those words were chosen with the utmost care. “Sculptured, chiseled, whatever.” I’m going to start writing all my books that way. “He was gorgeous, or something, and I totally felt, I don’t know. Like I might want to fuck him. Or whatever.”

Christian doesn’t want to have sex with her, though, he really wants his hair cut:

“I want this,” he continues. And his eyes are round and raw for some inexplicable reason. It’s disarming.

“Why?” I whisper.

He stares at me for a beat, and his eyes grow wider. “Because it’ll make me feel cherished.”

Now, I hate to point out that yet again, Ana is doing something that she doesn’t want to do because it’s something Chedward wants. Or that there is a lot of needless drama surrounding a fucking haircut here. But what I really, really hate to call to anybody’s attention is that a haircut makes him feel “cherished.” Remember what Mrs. Robinson does?

Yeaaaaaah.

Right there, that could have been a more interesting conflict than the name thing, the architect, any of it. But guess what E.L. does with it?

That’s right. She ignores it and takes a self-indulgent trip to sexy haircut town.

Ana washes Christian’s hair, at one point getting water in his eyes.

“Hey, I know I’m an arse, but don’t drown me.”

Do it.

And then there’s more sexy hair washing I’m skipping because it’s sooooooooo goddamned long and pointless.

Who would have thought after our argument this afternoon he could be this relaxed? Without sex?

I like how Ana is already viewing sex as marriage maintenance.

I’m skipping the sex scenes from now on. They’re all exactly the fucking same. In this one, Ana has no idea what titty fucking is, but they don’t do it, they just talk about it, and it’s all the fucking same lines about fucking hard etc. until Chedward tells her to orgasm and she does, on command, and then of course she cries because it’s the most beautiful, emotional sex ever in the history of anything.

Ana ends up wearing Christian’s shirt, a garter belt and stockings, and then she scampers off to get the scissors so she can finish Christian’s haircut.

Guys, this haircut is fifteen fucking trade-sized pages long. You probably could go get a haircut, start reading about this haircut, and then still not be finished with it by the time your hair was done.

So, Ana goes to get the scissors, as I was saying, and…

Okay, do you have your cigarettes handy?

As I enter the main corridor, I notice the door to Taylor’s office is open. Mrs. Jones is standing just beyond the door. I stop, rooted to the spot.

Taylor is running his fingers down her face and smiling sweetly at her. Then he leans down and kisses her.

Okay, it’s not a cigarette, it’s a one hitter, but you get the picture.

That line is honestly the only part of any of these books that has given me any pleasure. But then, Ana has to destroy everything. Because Ana is a ruiner. Ana totally Brittas this whole thing.

Wow! I’m reeling. I always thought Mrs. Jones was older than Taylor. Oh, I have to get my head around this.

Not, “Wow, how weird, my domestic servants have hooked up, Bates and Anna style.” No, she needs to get her head around the fact that a man would want to fuck an older woman. And yet, she’s super jealous that her husband might fuck Mrs. Robinson. CAN ANYONE IN THESE FUCKING BOOKS HAVE ANY LEVEL OF LOGICAL CONSISTENCY? AT ALL?

But then Ana opens a drawer in Christian’s office and finds a gun.

I open the top drawer and am immediately distracted when I find a gun. Christian has a gun!

You know how they say people who own a gun for home defense are more likely to be killed by their own gun than they are to kill an intruder? That claim is kind of bullshit, but whatever, I wish it was real now that I know Chedward owns a gun.

A revolver. Holy fuck! I had no idea Christian owned a gun. I take it out, slip the release, and check the cylinder. It’s fully loaded, but light… too light. It must be carbon fiber.

I’m not sure there are full carbon fiber revolvers you can just buy. If there are, someone leave a link in the comments, because I’m actually interested to know if there are. You can certainly get a carbon fiber grip for a handgun, probably for a revolver, but it seems like if you made a revolver completely out of carbon fiber it would be super expensive to produce and it would probably have a fucking crazy kick that would possibly affect your accuracy on repeat shots. I can’t imagine what the customer base would be for a totally carbon fiber revolver. They make sniper rifles with carbon fiber barrels, but it seems like it would just be super impractical for a mass produced revolver.

What does Christian want with a gun?

Wanna know how I know the author isn’t American?

I put the gun back and find the scissors.

I vote you use the gun to cut his hair, Ana.

Ana runs into Taylor in the hallway, and she’s embarrassed because she’s half undressed. So, of course the first thing Ana does is tell Chedward that his bodyguard has seen her dressed provocatively, because she likes to make everyone’s lives so super easy:

“I just ran into Taylor.”

“Oh.” Christian frowns. “Dressed like that?”

Oh shit! “That’s not Taylor’s fault.”

Christian’s frown deepens. “No. But still.”

“I’m dressed.”

“Barely.”

Demand for circumspection coming from the man who has his cleaning lady wash his buttplugs.

Ana asks Christian if he knew Mrs. Jones and Taylor were knocking the boots:

“Ana, they’re adults. They live under the same roof. Both unattached. Both attractive.”

Right, because everyone knows that two attractive people who are single MUST FUCK.

“Well, if you put it like that… I just thought Gail was older than Taylor.”

“She is, but not by much.” He gazes at me, perplexed. “Some men like older women – ” He stops abruptly and his eyes widen.

 I scowl at him. “I know that,” I snap.

I hope this book ends with an explosion in which everyone except Taylor and Mrs. Jones are killed.

“I was thinking we could convert the rooms over the garages for them at the new place,” Christian continues. “Make it a home. Then maybe Taylor’s daughter could stay with him more often.” He watches me carefully in the mirror.

“Why doesn’t she stay here?”

“Taylor’s never asked me.”

“Perhaps you should offer. But we’d have to behave ourselves.”

Christian’s brow furrows. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

You hadn’t thought that maybe Taylor didn’t want to bring his daughter, whom he has the occasional weekend custody of, to the apartment where his boss makes women kneel naked on the floor, waiting to serve him sexually, exclusively on the weekends? Why wouldn’t he want to bring his child into that environment?

Christian tells Ana that he pays for Taylor’s daughter’s schooling:

“Seemed the least I could do. Also, it means he won’t quit.”

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? This is how Christian Grey gets loyalty from his employees?! He puts the happiness of their children at stake?! Christian Grey cannot get through life without controlling every aspect of every other person around him. And people let him? This isn’t about being left alone with his mother’s body. Christian Grey is a dangerous person who doesn’t understand personal boundaries or individual autonomy.

There is a reason Ana’s subconscious is constantly reading Dickens. Because Christian Grey is Ebenezer Scrooge. This isn’t Twilight fanfic, it’s A Christmas Carol fanfic. The prompt was clearly, “What if Scrooge was a young dude, and he had some dummy telling him it’s totally okay to ignore his conscience at every turn?” And Snowqueen’s Ice Dragon grabbed that prompt in her utterly incapable hands and made this.

This guy. This fucking guy.

I hate this guy.

So much.

Flames.

On the sides of my face.

Ana tells him basically that of course he doesn’t have to do stuff like that to keep people close to him, because Taylor really likes him and blah blah blah because Christian Grey is somehow the man everyone wants a piece of despite the fact that he’s truly horrible. Sometimes, when I’m really down in depression and telling myself I’m a piece of shit and no one loves me, I stop and think, “No. No, you’re not Christian Grey. If he deserves love, then so do you.”

Ana cuts his hair, and of course it’s perfect because she does everything perfectly, all the time, nonstop perfection because she’s a fucking Mary Sue, and then there’s a section break and she goes to bed.

“What?” he says as he climbs into bed beside me wearing only his pajama pants.

Does he usually wear a three fucking piece suit to bed?

Ana tells him she doesn’t want to run SIP, and he argues with her about whether or not she wants to run SIP, because he obviously knows better than she does what she wants.

“You see,” he continues, “running a successful company is all about embracing the talent of the individuals you have at your disposal. If that’s where your talents and your interests lie, then you structure the company to enable that. Don’t dismiss it out of hand, Anastasia. […]”

Oh please, tell us more about how to successfully run a business, Mr. If-You-Fuck-Me-I’ll-Buy-You-A-Company.

Then Ana asks him something about tying him up during sex, and he wouldn’t be down with that, and then they’re going to have sex again:

And soon we’re lost… lost in each other again.

I wish you were lost at sea. I wish you were lost in a haunted castle with a murderer on the loose. But the good news is, the chapter is over, so we don’t have to see them get lost in each other.