Trout Nation Posts

I was going to schedule this for Monday, but since I’ll have an Apolonia recap that will be done by then and since it’s been a long time since I was able to have fun with Twilight or whatever this movie is, I thought what the hell, I’ll just post it when I’m done.

Continuing the mockery of this cultural phenomenon that has swept in like some sort of alien invasion where only some human bodies got snatched and the rest of us were unaffected and had to pretend to be Nicole Kidman pretending to have been body snatched, I present to you:

DAKOTA JOHNSON’S FACIAL EXPRESSIONS ARE SHOWING US HOW MUCH THIS MOVIE IS PROBABLY GOING TO SUCK.

In this Vanity Fair interview in mid-2014, Johnson is filming her role as Anastasia Rose Steele-(spoilers)-Grey. The fist thing I noticed about this interview is how awkward she seems talking to journalists. She reminds me of another young actress, who played a similarly awkward role, in film based off of a bestselling novel that was almost exactly like this one except it had vampires in it.

The second thing I noticed was how much Johnson resembled a woman predicting her own imminent death. I don’t want to guess at Johnson’s state of mind, but her face, at least, seems to know that this movie is not going to be heralded as a critical achievement.

For example, this happened as she answered a question about working with her co-star and director:

Now, of course, we know that the production was an absolute fucking war zone as Sam Taylor-Johnson and E.L. James fought each other over apparently everything. Of course, the production wants you very much to believe that everything was super fine. Producer Michael De Luca told Vanity Fair:

Was there a time you thought Taylor-Johnson, or James, was going to walk off the set? I ask De Luca. “No, because it wasn’t something that could ever be allowed to happen,” he says. “Our mantra through the whole movie was ‘When debates come up, we’re going to work it out, because this thing is going to shoot, and it’s going to wrap, and it’s going to get released.’ None of us are going anywhere, so we might as well lock arms and have a good time.”

But in the same article, director Sam Taylor-Johnson said:

“I kept trying to remind myself that they hired me for a reason. Some people said to me, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t quit.’ I was like, ‘Why would you think I’d quit?’ I never quit anything. Not without a fight.” She admits, of James, “We battled all the way through. She’d say the same. There were tough times and revelatory times. There were sparring contests. It was definitely not an easy process, but that doesn’t mean to say that it didn’t come out the right way.”

If there was such can-do, teamwork spirit behind the scenes, why would people ask if the director wanted to quit?

Then there’s the co-star component. Lots of people have commented on how uneasy Dornan and Johnson seem around each other. But I’ll just present this:

 

On the left we have the cover of Entertainment Weekly just after casting was announced, in November 2013. On the right we have the cover of Glamour magazine’s upcoming March issue (scanned by DakotaJohnsonDaily.com, who also have the transcript of the article), over a year and the filming of an entire movie together later. They have more chemistry in the first picture than the the last, in which Johnson and Dornan seem reluctant to touch each other.

So, what happened when Johnson, working on this totally not fraught and probably not disastrous movie, was asked if she would be sad when filming was over?

The only time she seems genuinely at ease is when she’s talking about how boring Ana is:

Now, is all of this irrefutable proof that the movie is going to suck? Not at all. We won’t know until it’s out. But I think it should probably make fans nervous to see interviews like this one, from last July, in which you can’t tell if the stars are joking about their lack of chemistry, or grimly acknowledging it to each other while thinking, look at us, trapped in our mutual hell as they all laugh from the other side. Well. We’ll see who has the last laugh…

Or something possibly less threatening.

So, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company Fifty Shades of Grey Bear is a thing. And apparently I’m in the wrong fucking business, if people are willing to pay ninety bucks for a teddy bear.

Anyway, I thought their description needed work, so I fixed it for them (you may need to click the image to read the text at full size).

 

Thank you to everyone who alerted me to the existence of this abomination.

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

Remember 2014? It was a shitty year for a lot of things, but one big positive came out of it: we got a break in the 50 Shades of Grey mania. The title was barely on the radar for all of 2014. News about the film trickled out the way it does for any highly anticipated book-to-movie adaptation, and the trailer came out, but between those brief flashes, blessed radio silence. There were no thinkpieces on women’s sexuality and how positive the books were for it. Nobody made jokes about spankings on morning news shows. Everything was generally calm, and 50 Shades of Grey barely flitted through the consciousness of anyone trying to avoid it.

Brace yourselves. Bullshit is coming.

The 50 Shades of Grey movie is on its way to ruin your Valentine’s Day like a bad breakup on February 13th. The movie premiers on that most romantic of the commercially-driven gift-giving holidays, which makes sense because it is undisputedly the greatest love story of all time. Who doesn’t swoon when they imagine being trapped into a relationship that stresses them out, chained to a person they’re terrified of but unable to leave because that person has enough money to track them down no matter where they may flee?

Dreamy. Sigh.

In addition to all the magazine and gossip page articles we’re going to be subjected to–”Dakota and Jamie! Such Sexy! Much Hot!”–we’re also going to get shat upon by the commercial machine that is movie tie-in merchandising.

There’s already been a dustup about Target’s rather iffy placement of sexy 50 Shades merchandise, and one big giant crybaby started a change.org petition back in December to urge the superstore to stop selling copies of the novel, lest men who feel oppressed by the impossibly high sexual standards set forth in the book become, I shit you not, violent when they can’t satisfy a woman (but don’t, you know, stop selling the book because it promotes violence toward women in a more blatant and totally obvious sense. Do it to protect the male fee-fees). But the first actual movie tie-in product to come to my attention ahead of the landslide of cheap plastic shit that will no doubt flood shelves anew this February is OPI’s underwhelming nail color collection.

OPI is a brand known for splashy gimmick collections based on movies and celebrities. They’re basically the MAC of the nail polish world in that regard. If you’ve got a movie coming out and your target demographic is females ages 18 – 50, OPI is going to be a part of your merchandising. As you would expect, the 50 Shades of Grey line has four gray polishes, a red that they didn’t even bother to name Red Room of Pain, and some kind of multi-dimensional creme/gray frost. If you go to the OPI site, you’ll find the collection, with names like, “Shine For Me,” and “Embrace the Gray,” but strangely no, “It Takes Two to Charlie Tango” which I personally thought was a shoe-in considering the fucking awful puns OPI’s marketing department comes up with already.

Since the polish names don’t match, I took the liberty of fixing them:

 

If OPI’s dilution of their own brand with endless repeats of the same colors repackaged every time Gwen Stefani wants to sneeze out a collection hadn’t already driven me far, far from their products already, I would stop buying them. If you’re looking to vote with your wallet out of the mean satisfaction you’ll get (because let’s be honest, there are more idiots in this world than not, and they’d snap up an actual, human turd if someone put it in a box that had Jamie Dornan on it, so boycotting won’t do a damn thing), then I suggest you do the same.

In the meantime, if you find a 50 Shades of Grey movie tie-in product (not the book-related tie-ins that are already out there, like the godawful swill they’re selling as wine or the laughably shoddy sex toys they’re slinging), let me know. I’d like to make fun of it.

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

Hey there Troutlanders. OMG THAT IS WHAT WE SHOULD CALL OURSELVES IF WE ARE IN TROUT NATION BUT ALSO WE LOVE OUTLANDER.

Ahem. Speaking of Outlander, I received this awesome box just before Christmas:

I won it through a twitter contest and I’m fucking stoked about it, but I don’t think there’s been a State of The Trout post where I could share it. There is a kilt in the box. I’m going to see Mr. Jen in a kilt. ROWR.

Chapter eleven of The Afflicted is up. You can read it here.

Speaking of favorite fandoms: This is my very new tattoo, moments after the artist (Katrina Kateri, Old Anchor Tattoos, Portage, MI) finished it:

D-Rock took that picture. She said, “Dude, you look so tough now.” I think the puppy on my stripey sweater agrees. Doctor Who tattoos make you look hard as fuck.

Want another free read? My New Adult novella, Choosing You, is free on Amazon until January 17th. This story was originally included in the If Ever I Would Leave You anthology from last year.

My next book release, you ask? I’ll have a contemporary romance novella, Bad Boy, Good Man, in the Bad Boy Next Door digital box set. More details to come.

More writing in general? As part of a blogging thing, expect to see occasional posts inspired by songs and photographs. The Wednesday Bloggers came up with the idea. I’ll basically be writing fanfic of my own stuff, so you’ll be getting micro-stories about characters that are already out there.

I was quoted in the NYT! In an absolute first for me, I was quoted in a major national publication. The article is about Meghan Trainor, and the author references my objections to the cultural appropriation in the video.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print!

 

I haven’t Wednesday blogged in a long time, because I’m lazy. But also, because I have all sorts of other stuff I like to do on the blog (like update links pages…which never, ever happens. Not ever), a lot of which I’d like to do on the weekly. When I found out this week that  the topic is “your anti-bucket list” I was like, “Bitch, what is an anti-bucket list?” And Bronwyn Green was like, “It’s a list of things you don’t want to do before you die.” I immediately thought of about five thousand really grim things, like “experience surgical awareness,” “get cancer,” or “have one of my kids die.” And then Bronwyn was like, “Cool your jets, it doesn’t have to be like that.” And I thought of some much better ones that aren’t, you know. Common fears.

So here is my anti-bucket list:

Meet Anthony Stewart Head. So many well-intentioned Trout Nation citizens have tried to convince me to go to a con and meet him, because it would be funny and make a good blog post. They’ve tried to entice me with details like, “He smells so good,” and “He’ll totally hug you,” and “He’s really nice, honest.” I’m sure he’s super duper nice, and while my knees go positively weak at the thought of knowing what he smells like… dudes. Come on. I’ve written four books of graphic sex with a main character who looks and sounds nearly exactly like him in my head. There is no way I could be comfortable being in the same building as this person, let alone actually speaking to and having a picture taken with him.

Have to use pepper spray on anyone. I mean, I don’t carry pepper spray, but I’m really afraid that sometime, somehow, I’m going to have to pepper spray someone. I can see this going down one of two ways:

1. I am in a horribly scary, life threatening situation in which the use of force is necessary to prevent injury and/or death to my person.

2. I am not in a scary, life threatening situation in which the use of force is necessary to prevent injury and/or death to my person, and I have just maced somebody on accident.

Neither of these scenarios appeal to me, so I’m just gonna make like Bartleby in this situation and prefer the fuck not to.

Go into space. I realize that I’m already in space, flying around on a little hunk of rock in an infinite, mysterious void. I don’t want to leave this little hunk of rock, because fuck that. Space is scary as hell. If The Doctor showed up in fifteen minutes and was like, “You wanna?” I would be like, “yeah!” But he’s the only person I would trust to take me into space. And I don’t care how brave Katrina was, I’m not blowing myself out an airlock for him. Space is out there. But back to my original point: space is freaky and I don’t like knowing it’s out there, so I’m not going to go there.

Swim next to a whale. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Do you not see how big that thing is? Why would you? Why?

Age gracefully. Because that’s just bullshit. It’s bullshit to expect women to not take advantage of the miracles medical science has provided us, while at the same time torturing us in a culture that prizes our beauty and youth above all. And then we deride women when they try to fulfill that cultural expectation through surgical means. That’s bullshit. I speculate that by the time I am seventy, I will look something like this:

You know why? Because with all the tattoos I’ve put on my body, and all the holes I’ve punched in it (though I don’t wear my piercings anymore), I cannot be morally above becoming a bitchy trampoline in my golden years.

Have any kind of dangerous, life changing adventure. You know what? If a bunch of dwarves start showing up at your house? You don’t have to let them in. You can sit in your safe, cozy hole, smoke your pipe leaf, and put your hairy little feet up. Which is exactly what I would do. Fuck you Bilbo. This ain’t amateur hour.

Tell me what you’d put on your anti-bucket list, and check out the lists from these Wednesday bloggers:

Bronwyn Green • Jessica Jarman • Kris Norris • Gwendolyn Cease • Kellie St. James