This weekend, Matt and I attended a Halloween party and went as part of a How I Met Your Mother group-costume. Take that already awesome idea and add gender-bending, and you get me dressed as Barney and Matt dressed as Lily. This was specifically taken for the blog:
Chapter 14
Man, with that break last week, I feel so refreshed and ready to get back into Fifty Shades Darker. It can’t possibly be as bad as I recall. Surely, my mind is exaggerating. Maybe Christian being submissive for Ana will be totally riveting!
Tears begin to ooze down my cheeks, and suddenly it is too much to see him in the same prostrate position as the pathetic creature that was Leila. The image of a powerful man who’s really still a little boy, who was horrifically abused and neglected, who feels unworthy of love from his perfect family and his much-less than perfect girlfriend . . . my lost boy . . . it’s heartbreaking.
Nah. Still the same old overwrought, weird writing–tears oozing? Seriously? Ug–and abuse of ellipses. Oh, Fifty, it sure is great to have you back.
To try to bring Christian back to his senses, Ana gets down on her knees because, “Like this, we are equals. We’re on a level.” Don’t get on my level, just get on a level, any level.
As Ana tries to talk Christian back to being his non-submissive self, she realizes that she just doesn’t get why he likes her. God damn it. Not again. Over-identifying with Ana needs to stop. I just totally get where she’s coming from.
Unsurprisingly, our characters begin to discuss thing which just happened. Oh, really, Christian? You were scared when you thought Ana was in imminent danger? That is such a complex and shocking feeling to have. Please, oh please, tell me more.
Oh, wow, did you guys realize that Ana and Christian are in love? This is all such new information! Please, Ana and Christian, keep talking about this in the same exact way you always talk about it.
To prove how much he loves her, Christian lets Ana touch him in his forbidden zones.
Let’s play a game called “How Well do You Know Ariel?”
Always watching Law and Order: SVU. But yes, I also happen to be eating soup and chocolate. Yeah, you know you want my life.
Information is finally revealed! Christian tells Ana the secret he thinks will make her run away:
He takes a deep breath and swallows. “I’m a sadist, Ana. I like to whip little brown-haired girls like you because you all look like the crack whore —my birth mother. I’m sure you can guess why.” He says it in a rush as if he’s had the sentence in his head for days and days and is desperate to be rid of it.
So even after all of Christian’s insistence that Ana is just what he needs, she starts in again about how she can’t give him what he needs. I think really Ana just deep down knows how creepy and wrong this relationship is and is trying to get out of it.
Wait, I actually might have a point, and Ana might even be aware of it. After Christian tells Ana he’s working through this stuff in therapy, this is her reaction:
Oh. Hope flares briefly in my heart. Perhaps we’ll be okay. I want us to be okay. Don’t I?
She totally doesn’t!
Then Christian is like, “You should see what I can do with a cane or a cat.” A…cat? What?
Anyway, Ana actually displays reason in this scene. Christian insists that he hasn’t felt the compulsion since Ana left him and came back. Could this be because he sees her as his mother, and because she loves him…ew, I don’t want to go down this line of thought. Ana is like, “Dude, this is ridiculous, I can’t possibly cure all your shit with the power of love.” Seriously, even Ana is starting to be skeptical about how magical Christian thinks her vagina is.
Should I leave? I gaze at him, this crazy man that I love, yes love
OH REALLY YOU LOVE HIM? WHY DON’T YOU TELL US ANOTHER FIFTY (SHADES) MILLION TIMES?
But seriously, please leave him.
Christian says the only way he’ll believe she’s not going to leave is if…she marries him. Red flag of doom up in here. Abusive relationship CLASSIC. Also, marriage does not ensure someone is going to stay with you. Have you met divorce?
Ana says, “I’ve known you about three minutes.” Oh for crying out loud. Stop telling me you love him soooo much but that you don’t even know him. It makes no sense anymore!
But then something happens that changes the way I feel about this book forever. They talk about macaroni and cheese and their love of it. I too love macaroni and cheese. This is a really beautiful moment over here at Bad Books, Good Times.
Then they start talking about what happened after Ana left the apartment. Apparently Christian gave Leila a bath. I’m as weirded out as Ana. She gets really angry and goes to bed. This relationship is such a roller coaster, such an idiotic, boring roller coaster.
But at least this chapter’s over!
You know what the really sad thing is? There was actually some interesting character development going on here but James has to ruin it with bad writing. Giving Leila a bath???? What????
And the constant repetition of how much Ana looooooooves him. We get it. WE GET IT.
And finally, the ever-present reminders that this is a horribly, horribly abusive relationship but James truly doesn’t see that.
Seriously, if this book was about being trapped in an abusive relationship and how to get out of it maybe a chapter like this could work to show Ana’s mindset. But that’s not what the book is about and it’s just unhealthy and creepy.
two things about the picture of us:
1) Kaitlyn pointed out to me that if we really wanted to capture the dynamic between Barney and Lily, you should have been staring at my boobs
2) clearly visible in the background of this picture is the picture of me of the play I did in drag that was in the school paper, which I cut out and put on my wall. It’s a picture of me in drag in a picture of me in drag.
The cat in question is a cat of nine tails. A sexy, sexy flagellating device.
–He takes a deep breath and swallows. “I’m a sadist, Ana. I like to whip little brown-haired girls like you because you all look like the crack whore —my birth mother. I’m sure you can guess why.” He says it in a rush as if he’s had the sentence in his head for days and days and is desperate to be rid of it.–
No. No no no no no no no no no NO! THIS IS NOT BDSM, THIS IS ABUSE! For FUCK’S sake!
“Sadist
noun
1. Psychiatry. a person who has the condition of sadism, in which one receives sexual gratification from causing pain and degradation to another. [BDSM]
2.a person who enjoys being cruel.[not not NOT BDSM]”
People who go into BDSM and go into in order to cause pain do it because they derive sexual pleasure from the act. Masochists, the people who allow the sadists to cause them pain, do so because they derive sexual pleasure through pain, degradation, etc., that is self-imposed or imposed by others. One does not get into BDSM simply because he likes to beat women who look like his mother because his mother did not protect him!
Doms/Masters stress control over themselves and empathy with/emotional availability for their subs. You are not in control if you are beating the girl because she reminds you of Mom and you want Mom to suffer. You are not emotionally available or in any kind of empathy with your sub if you are beating the girl because you want to hurt your mom. This would not be allowed in the community, and believe me, they can sniff these people out. Subs would be repeatedly warned away from this kind of guy, and no sub would ever put herself in his hands if she even suspected he is beating her over his Mommy issues.
For God’s sake, Ana, get the fuck out. You don’t have it in you to do this because you are not a masochist (although you are definitely emotionally masochistic, but that is NOT the same thing), and he is not a true Sadist, he’s just and out-and-out woman-beater.