Yesterday my mom was in a used book store and overheard a woman asking about Fifty Shades of Grey, because all her friends were talking about it so she wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The store didn’t have any copies (they go quickly), and evidently my mom talked to her about the book for a bit, suggesting that she go to this blog instead to get an overview of what it’s about. Basically, if you are that person and you are reading this, HELLO! ISN’T THIS WEIRD?
Chapter Three
After breaking up at the end of Fifty Shades of Grey, Ana and Christian Grey get back together two chapters into the sequel. This raises a horrifying question: how the hell are there another just under two books to this story? This chapter raises some possibilities (three, in fact!), all of which leave me very worried the worst is yet to come.
Potential For More Plot #1: Christian Grey’s Ex Fucks Things Up!
Remember when Christian mentioned that he’s fucked seven zillion women? Of course you do; he brings it up every other page. Wonder if this could cause problems for Ana now that Ana has literally no other problems already by chapter two?
I turn expectantly, and an ashen young woman approaches me cautiously. She looks like a ghost—so pale and strangely blank.
“Miss Anastasia Steele?” she repeats, and her features stay static even though she’s speaking.
Probably.
“Can I help you?” I ask. How does she know my name?
“No … I just wanted to look at you.”
The whole page is reasonably creepy and unsettling. The woman looks exactly like Ana, but sad. She’s wearing an oversized coat that makes her look sad. It’s also implied that she’s been cutting herself, which I feel kind of bad making fun of. She asks “What do you have that I don’t?” and leaves.
Overall, it’s a surprisingly decent glimpse at what’s almost certain to be an important plot point. Much better that the last time we were teased with this “one of Christian’s exes causes trouble” plot points in the last book, when Christian said the name of one ex once and never brought it up again, presumably because otherwise what would the next several hundred pages of sequels be about?
Except I’m willing to bet that all this can do is cause more drama between Ana and Christian where they fight about why Christian is the way he is and then they probably have sex, and we’ve already read five hundred pages of this. So… we shall see?
Potential For More Plot #2: Anastasia Steele’s Boss Fucks Things Up!
Remember how Ana’s new boss is a creep?
“Good morning, Ana. You look … radiant.” His remark flusters me. How inappropriate!
On the plus side, Ana’s finally sort of catching on that her boss is not being the most professional man in the world, and his invitation to get drinks after work on Friday is because it’s a thing the whole office does every week and she’s in the club now, so she gets a less creepy invitation to the bar which, in a stunning lack of creativity even by E L James standards, is named Fifties.
On the down side, this is Fifty Shades of Grey, so whenever something gets better, it immediately gets way more godawful.
“You’re a very bright girl, Ana. You’ll go far.”
I blush. “Thank you,” I mutter, because I don’t know what else to say.”
“Do you live far?”
“The Pike Market district.”
“Not far from me.” Smiling, he moves even closer and leans against the bar, effectively trapping me
Now, every couple posts I feel the need to clarify this, this plot isn’t inherently bad. There’s nothing of objectively poor quality about a plot where a woman’s boss makes unwarranted sexual advances on her. What is of objectively poor quality is how this plot is handled in this particular book. For example!
- Ana still isn’t concerned that her new boss is super interested in jumping her bones. Worse, during the course of this chapter, she goes from confused why he acts weird (“For some unknown reason, which I don’t want to examine too closely[…]”) to explicitly indifferent to his attraction (“Well, he can want all he likes”).
- Christian immediately shows up and puts his arm around her, kisses her, acting very possessive in general. Somehow this doesn’t feel like it solves problem at all, and not just because Christian and Jack start some verbal sparring but because Ana doesn’t want to actually solve her problems when she can just go bang a dude instead.
Speaking of Christian Grey’s verbal sparring with Jack, get a goddamn load of this:
“I’m the boyfriend,” Christian says with a small, cool smile that doesn’t reach his eyes as he shakes Jack’s hand. I glance up at Jack who is mentally assessing the fine specimen of manhood in front of him.
I emphasized my favorite bit in bold because hahahahaha what the fuck?
“I’m the boss,” Jack replies arrogantly. “Ana did mention an ex-boyfriend.”
OH SNAP.
“Well, no longer ex.” Christian replies calmly. “Come on, baby, time to go.”
And, yeah, once again, instead of actually solving her problems, Ana just lets Christian Grey take her away from whatever she was doing. Seriously. Christian’s already been at a social gathering with Ana and made her leave after about two pages twice so far in this novel, and we’re on chapter three. Perhaps more horrifyingly, the reason why was because at both of those social gatherings was a guy who was interested in Ana. E L James has rather impressively created a terrifying world where a nondescript female literally can’t go anywhere without every man she knows on a first name basis trying to get her into bed.
No, seriously, that’s terrifying. Stop and think about this.
Potential For More Plot #3: Christian Gray and Anastasia Steel Fuck
Wait a second, this is the same plot. Guess I gotta just give you the highlights of some more sex scenes. Again.
Seduction!
“I think we’ll eat later,” he says. “Put the chicken in the fridge.”
This is not a sentence I had ever expected to hear from Christian Grey, and only he can make it sound hot, really hot.
Foreplay!
“Now what?” he says softly.
“Make love to me.”
“How?”
Jeez.
Cunnilingus!
He doesn’t stop, his tongue circling my clitoris, driving me insane, on and on, round and round. Ahhh … it’s only been … how long…? Oh..
Fellatio!
I push him deeper into my mouth, pressing my lips together as tightly as I can, sheathing my teeth, and sucking hard.
“Fuck,” he hisses.
Oh, that’s a good, inspiring, sexy sound
Christian Grey’s penis!
Wow.
Voice-activated orgasm!
“Come on, baby,” he gasps. “Give it to me.”
His words are my undoing, and I explode
Okay, I haven’t talked about this yet, but is it starting to bother anybody else that Christian can make a woman finish by simply telling her to? Because, um, I don’t think this is a thing.
“E L James has rather impressively created a terrifying world where a nondescript female literally can’t go anywhere without every man she knows on a first name basis trying to get her into bed.”
Actually, to be honest that’s one of the less outrageous ideas in this book. And possibly not that far from the truth. It’s just that with face crunchingly poor dialogue not being a barrier to anything in this book, the trying to get into her bed is a lot more obvious.
I thought a lot about this before I wrote this post and made that joke/criticism. Your comment is more or less the idea I was trying to convey. While it is an unfortunate reality that women have to be particularly careful about unwanted sexual attention, the way it’s depicted and written in this book is ridiculous. Save for her dad, step-dad, and boyfriend’s brother (who is in a relationship), literally *every single male character with a name* wants not-so-subtly to get in Ana’s pants. Ana is sexually assaulted by a male best friend, constantly asked out rather aggressively by a male co-worker, and her new boss has exhibited predatory behavior since her first interview. While all of this can and does happen in the real world, Fifty Shades takes it to an excessive and goofy place. Ultimately what this does isn’t really present the issue in a realistic way, but instead turns it into a complete farce of the issue, which almost becomes more terrifying.
I was about to make a joke that maybe words make English majors orgasm (haha voice-activated orgasms), but then I realized we would probably be aware of this phenomenon.
“The Fine Specimen of Manhood.” That would be a really good title for the 50 Shades sequel E.L. James will eventually write from the perspective of Christian Grey’s penis.
“Okay, I haven’t talked about this yet, but is it starting to bother anybody else that Christian can make a woman finish by simply telling her to?”
Yes. A thousand times, yes. I can’t believe he is still doing this in the next book and she’s still able to come on command. How depressing. Bad enough that he has the stamina of… no one ever, but this technique is just bloody lazy, especially for Christian the-human-jackhammer Grey. Surely there’s something actually *sexy* he could say that could be her undoing??
“Voice-activated orgasm!”
THIS! This is genius! And for what it’s worse, maybe we’re both doing sex wrong.
And in closing, I just want to thank all of you for this delightful rendition of Fifty Shades. I was THIS CLOSE to getting something done at work.
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Ok, firstly…the pic of the dinosaurs makes me think, “Argh! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” “Mine is an evil laugh!” I couldn’t help it, because I’m catching up on Gotham and I saw Inara as Dr Thompkins, and you had a Captain Hammer gif in the last post, so the combo of the three tonight just finally took over.
Secondly, voice-activated orgasms is actually a thing in BDSM. Doms will/do “train” their subs to do this through orgasm denial, where they make the sub wait to climax, sometimes stopping all stimulation in order to keep the sub from being able to climax. This is known as “Edging,” which is what it sounds like: taking the sub to the edge of climax, but then backing off. When the Dom is satisfied that the sub can’t do it anymore, they give the command to come, usually repeated over and over as climax is achieved. Over time (how long depends on the sub and the Dom involved, of course), this gets the sub to a point that hearing their Dom tell them to come triggers an almost Pavlovian response. (It’s a little scary that I know this stuff.) I have yet to meet a sub who can just come on command on a second’s notice, but I have sub friends who tell me that they honestly can’t climax anymore without their Doms’ permission,
Now, given the fact that Grey and Ana started out with some pretty hard-limit stuff and are only now getting around to slowly working up to that kind of thing, this is something that he SHOULD be training her to do now, to get her used to it, since, evidently, this never happened in the 1st book. This is just more evidence of ELJ’s lazy “research” into her source material. I’m guessing she searched BDSM, got a list of BDSM terms and some short definitions, and slapped it on her Twilight fic because that was going to make the Bella/Edward “romance” finally get hot somehow. If she had taken the time to talk to ANYONE who lives the lifestyle or is friends with those who do, she might have been able to put together some decent sex scenes around this non-existent plot. But, alas, that was not to be. Double crap.
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