The Cutprice Guignol

Look, I know I’m late to the anime game. My only knowledge of the genre came, for a long time, entirely from the hilarious and incisive parody series Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged which I’m in the midst of rewatching and killing myself over. Then I stole all of the Death Note manga from my brother (Sorry Dan) and found myself pretty entranced by the ridiculous high-concept sci-fi/fantasy battle between good and righteous evil. I sought out the anime, and it was those fantastically well-executed episodes that brought me to see what the anime genre had to offer. As someone who’s been obsessed with TV for so long, and Western TV specifically, it’s kind of refreshing to come to a genre where you have to idea what the tropes are or what you’re expectations will be. I’m sure many hardcore anime fans will dismiss my mainstream picks, and if they do, please go write your own damn list. No, seriously, do, because I want to read it and find more awesome anime to watch. So, without further ado, let’s talk about the three best anime I’ve seen so far, and why you should watch them whether or not you’re an anime fan already.

1. Neon Genesis Evangelion

Phew, where to begin with this one? I’ve touched on the topic of this show before, in a post about madness of TV, and I think that still pretty much sums up why I find this show so interesting: it’s just an all-out exploration of mental health disasters, told through the lens of giant robots fighting aliens. Set in a post-apocolyptic Tokyo where mysterious beings known as “Angels” launched periodic attacks on the city, the story revolves around fourteen-year-old Shinji, who’s brought in to defence organisation NERV to pilot one of their prototype weapons, a giant robot known as an Eva. What starts out as a beautifully animated if slightly off-beat sci-fi epic soon descends into outrageously perceptive journeys through each character’s psyche and how it’s been impacted by the horror of the situation they’re facing. I love it particularly for the excellent female characters, but also for it’s utter insistence to make the audience shift in their seat at least four times an episode, with rapid-fire changes of tone and suddenly stark animation.

The story behind the show’s creation-which included a massive cut in budget that forced the animators to use mostly still frames and prototype sketches in the last few episodes-gives a lot to it’s distinctive animation design, but be warned: you will need a cup of tea and a lie down after the opening credits alone.

What happened at 0:55? Did someone fall on a button or something?

2. Attack on Titan

I’ve watched this anime three times through in the last two months, as well as foisting it on my friends and assorted family. This could have been created for me: an alternate-history sci-fi (Yes!) surrounding the last dregs of humanity walled off from the world in a giant enclosure meant to protect them from attacks by the man-eating Titans. While things have been quiet for a while, when the Titans launch another attack on the city, the population must fight back, and the story follows three teenagers as they train up to take on the Titans and regain some of the autonomy they lost. The visual style, of the medieval-style city matched with super-futuristic weaponry, is genuinely mind-blowing, and marks out the action sequences as some of the most exhilarating and breathless moments I’ve ever seen in any medium. It’s dense with plot, intrigue, and layered characters, and also the only character from a cartoon I’ve ever had a crush on:

And you know how much I love genuinely scary villains? Well, the Titans are some of the most utterly creepy, unstoppably scary bad guys I’ve seen anywhere. Sometimes, you can keep your nuanced ghost stories and intricrate psychological thrillers- all I need to scare me is a giant, unstoppable creature with an inexplicable lust for human flesh. Look, here comes one now!

3. Psycho-Pass

Maybe I’ve not made it clear that I love sci-fi, but I LOVE sci-fi. My first introduction to it was a book of short stories by Philip K. Dick, and this anime is a love letter to his take on the genre- dark, gritty, thoughtful, and not afraid of being a little tongue-in-cheek. In a dystopian future, justice is not based on whether you’ve committed any crimes, but how high your propensity is to commit them. If you’re psychological state is deemed dangerous, you’re in trouble. Some of these people deemed psychologically unstable become Enforcers, recruited to police teams to help think like the unstable people they’re trying to catch. The story follows new recruit Inspector Akane, and her dealings with the suffocating system, as a mysterious villain starts influencing normal citizens to commit horrific acts of violence.

I can’t stress this enough: this guy is one of my favourite villains in recent history. So fiendish! So pretentious! So evil!

They say most good stories should be summed up a few words, but this one leisures in adding layers and layers to it’s universe. A neo-noir police procedural, it takes some cues from the superb Hannibal, with brooding Enforcer Kogami tussling mentally with arch-nemesis, the master criminal Nakashima. It’s one of those shows that delights in pushing boundaries, testing just how far they can go with their big themes- the price of safety, the meaning of justice, and the danger of an isolationist system- without letting their nuanced ensemble get lost in the mix. I love the sharp, slightly cynical sense of absurdity Psycho-Pass displays, because it reminds me of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, with all it’s sugar-coated horribleness (if you haven’t seen that movie, by the way, stop reading this, and watch it now). It paints in broad strokes, but it manages to conjure up some impressive character arcs despite the fact that most of it’s brutalized women somehow end up with their boobs out (whoops).

So, that’s my list- what’s your’s? What anime should I watch next?

I’m going to go ahead and stick a trigger warning here for discussion of domestic abuse.

You know Sean Penn, right? That guy who beat the ever-living shit out of his wife, was charged with domestic assualt, and then got an Oscar? Maybe Roman Polanski is more familiar to you, as the guy who took a plea bargain back in 1977 that laid out his unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old child? We gave him an Oscar, too, and a Palme D’or, even after he fled the USA to avoid be imprisoned for his crimes. Ozzy Osbourne was happy chatting to an interviewer about the time he was arrested for trying to murder his wife, Sharon, but he’s still just that wacky rocker guy to most. Charlie Sheen, sitcom star and internet meme, was charged with third-degree assault on his then-wife, Brooke Mueller, but we remember him for his Emmy-winning turn in Two and a Half Men. Chris Brown continues to see his songs chart, even as the harrowing pictures of his one-time girlfriend Rihanna crop up online, depicting her black and blue face after he assaulted her. This are my cut-offs. These are the things that I will not support someone after hearing. You might have different standards, but it’s always good to remind ourselves that the people the media idolizes for us aren’t always worth idolizing.

I’m talking about the misogyny and general nasty undercurrent in our media that allows us and encourages us to embrace these men to our screens. We, as a culture, have found a way to forget the violence many of our treasured cultural icons have committed against people, especially women. We hold our desire to be entertained above the right of the people they abused not to see their attackers idolized. And it’s not about justice, it’s about the fact that, time and time again, we’re happy to ignore the flagrant ways celebrities abuse their power, to hire them, to watch them, to promote them, even to go as far as holding them up as humanitarian icons. I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel a little gross. Either our cultural memory is that short, or we’re simply willing to hold the notion that Sean Penn once left Madonna tied to a chair after roughing her up for hours on end so that he could go out and buy more booze and that we still want to see his movies in our heads at the same time. I’m not sure which is worse: the fact that we might just have collectively forgotten, or that we remember and it just doesn’t register high enough on our “things that matter” list to stop us wanting to see his mannered, average performances.

And look, I’m not saying that it’s pleasant, having to think about what and who you’re supporting when you just want to watch half an hour of television or a couple of hours in the cinema. But that’s the problem- it’s easier for the media to stamp down on these issues, to try and blot them from our cultural memory, than it is to question why it’s okay to hand a self-confessed sex offender who never saw a day of prison one of the highest cinematic trophies in the world. We prefer to remember Sean Connery as James Bond, not as that guy who said that hitting a woman was fine if she was “being a bitch”, because it’s easier not to muddy the waters of our one-dimensional vision of him with the fact that he’s a piece of shit.

And I know it’s a shitty, awful, saddening, infuriating thing to think about, but we have to consider who we’re supporting when we choose what to see and who to spend our money on. I think it’s up to you to decide who you want to support, because we all have different cut-offs for what constitutes unforgivable behaviour, but also to try and wade through the media’s effort to negate the bad things that their highest-grossing celebrities have done. We’re taught to consume our media mindlessly, but only by questioning what and who we lend our time and money to will we weed out those who are abusing the power we’re giving them, and encouraging us to forget their unpleasant histories.

You can’t work in the media these days without being tripped up by people making, protesting against, or apologising for offensive jokes. Whether it’s Frankie Boyle joking about how lucky the late Jade Goody’s husband was now that she had passed, to Jimmy Carr saying that he blamed Reeva Steenkamp for her own shooting, to Rickey Gervais suggesting that an overweight woman walking down the street eating chips should be sterilised. It’s comedy’s business to make the unthinkable thinkable and to tackle subjects that we might feel uncomfortable about tackling in our day-to-day lives. And I get that. I don’t think comedians and other entertainers should be forced to stop making jokes that offend people, because then all we’re left with is the kind of half-hearted comedic mush that doesn’t offend anyone, but doesn’t entertain anyone either.

But what really irks me about offensive humour is how protective people are about it. Let’s take, for example, the big shitstorm that surrounded comedian Daniel Tosh a couple of years back. After a woman in the audience protested his take on rape jokes always being hilarious, he replied with ” “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now? Like, right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…”. He apologised, but the incident turned out to be the comedy’s Helen of Troy, the comment that launched a thousand thinkpieces. There were people defending his right to make rape jokes, there were people arguing that the gang-rape of a random woman was not fair game to joke about, but there were also a lot of people screaming into the void on social media and other platforms: “Get over yourself. Get a sense of humour. Loosen up. Stop being so uptight/feminist/sensitive.” These comments were coming from comedy fans and comedians alike, and those are the people I want to address.

Look, I love comedy. Who doesn’t? I watch a lot of it on television, and I watch a lot of stand-up .I think a big part of the problem that comes with making offensive jokes is that people forget the point of near-the-knuckle humour. And therein lies the rub: often, when I don’t find an offensive joke funny, it’s because I just don’t think it’s funny. It’s not because I’m too busy rushing for the smelling salts to eke out a grin, it’s because simply having someone yell an inane statement about a touchy topic in my face doesn’t make me laugh. People who defend these kind of comments seem to forget that it’s the comedian’s job to make me laugh, not my job to find them funny.

Take the best rape joke in the world, told by Louis CK: “I’m not condoning rape, obviously. You should never rape anyone. Unless you have a reason, like if you want to fuck somebody and they won’t let you.” This is a joke that actually has some thought behind it; by presenting the unbelievably stupid and simplistic reasoning behind the act of rape, he’s making the rapist look like an idiot. He’s doing more than pointing at someone and shouting “HAHA YOU SHOULD BE RAPED!” (interestingly, CK tweeted his support to Daniel Tosh during the furore, so make of that what you will). That’s what makes it funny. I’m not saying that everyone in the world should fall in line with my sense of humour, just that writing off our ability to laugh because we don’t think the very concept of gang-rape (or whatever “edgy” topic the comedian has taken on in this  week’s controversy) is hilarious.

Because a lot of people seem to think that the offensive topic itself is what makes the humour intelligent. I’ve written before about Family Guy and it’s complete failure to say anything new about controversial topics, even as it visibly pats itself on the back for addressing them. Identifying a touchy topic and immediately adopting the stance that is least socially acceptable for it’s target audience is pretty shallow humour, as it rarely says anything about the topic at hand.

Really, what I’m saying is this: if you’re keen to go down the offensive humour route, try and actually say something. Because when comedians blurt out something akin to the comment Daniel Tosh made, they’re often not being half as edgy as they think they are. You can find them all over your screens: Family Guy having a character throw up for thirty seconds straight after he realizes that he’s been in contact with a transgender woman, or Trevor Noah tweeting about how fat women are grateful for the weekend because then people will get drunk enough to find them attractive, or Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner laughing about how Black Widow is a slut. These kinds of jokes, and hundreds like them, the kind that skewer people who society has done a really good job of skewering already, aren’t so much pushing boundaries as they are falling in with the party line. Now, I’m not saying that means they shouldn’t be allowed to exist, or that no-one should find them funny, but rather the people who crack these kind of jokes shouldn’t be held up as pantheons of forward-thinking, ground-breaking comedy, when they’re doing nothing that dares undermine the status quo.

And that’s where the problem with offensive comedy lies, at least for me. It provides a safety blanket for comedians and entertainers who are too belleigerent or arrogant or whatever else to accept that maybe, just maybe, their audience does get the joke, but it’s just not that funny.

So, with Comic-Con taking place over this weekend, I’ll be putting up a few trailer reviews for the teasers that tantalise me the most. Let’s kick things off with a look at Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, whose latest trailer was released today. You can read my impressively underwhelmed reaction to the last trailer here.

0:01: This is three minutes forty seconds long? What will there be left to show in the cinema?

0:15: “Oh, so I’m heading out to a protest about how I’m an abomination? BETTER WEAR THE FULL SUPERMAN OUTFIT, DON’T WANT ME SLIPPING BY UNNOTICED”.

0:21: That cape is not suitable court attire. I should know. Don’t ask how.

0:26: BRUCEFLECFK!

0:31: He looks pretty cool, but I will defend Christian Bale’s louche charm as Bruce Wayne to the death. He might not have been the best Batman, but he was the best iteration of his alter-ego.

0:40: Running dramatically into dust! Hugging children! This really is a Ben Alfeck Batman, isn’t it?

1:00: He just doesn’t look right. I’m willing to be disproven about this when I’m strongarmed into watching this movie, but he looks like an aloof dad that I would have had a crush on in high school.

1:10: I love it when a trailer tries to stylistically interesting and just renders every shot too dark to watch. I LOVE IT.

1:16: YUS LARRY FISHBURNE! If you haven’t been watching him in Hannibal, you should have been watching him in Hannibal. Unf, his voice is what salted caramel desserts would sound like if they could talk.

1:17: I don’t like the fact that I’d consider paying to see this movie just to look at Henry Cavill for a couple of hours either, but here we are.

1:29: Every time Superman appears onscreen in full garb, my mind wanders away to wondering when someone’s going to adapt Red Sun as an awesome TV miniseries. I would never stop watching that.

1:36: I think whenever Henry Cavill leaves the house, he’s surrounding by people trying to touch him, just like in this shot.

1:50: Fuck tho, Jesse Eisenberg looks amazing. He’s absolutely one of my favourite actors around at the moment, and I can’t wait to see him play a bad guy. Note: Go watch The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg(s), because you like to use words like “dynamic” and “stylised” to describe movies the same way I do.

2:02: That’s a Joker reference, and I will be purchasing out an entire cinema just to fully appreciate that moment on the big screen.

2:13: It would be hilarious if someone recut this with the Adam West Batman in place of Batfleck. I’m not saying you should spend all of tomorrow doing it when you should be working; I’m just saying.

2:33: GUNS! SCREAMING CHILDREN! COFFINS! FIRE! DID ZACK SNYDER MENTION HE’S AVAILABLE FOR WORK?

2:37: If you squint, you can make out the moment everyone remembered that Wonder Woman was in this movie. Wonder Woman in a Xena cosplay, that is.

2:44: No-one will admit that the outfits look hilariously silly against the serious backdrop, but we all know somewhere in our hearts that it’s true.

2:51: Jesse Eisenberg has young Heath Ledger hair, and you do not want to remind me of The Dark Knight, Snyder. You’re on a knife edge.

3:02: All of that was good because Jesse Eisenberg, and my distraction over wondering if metal-plated underwear would rust.

3:08: Jesse Eisenberg looks SO GOOD, but then I did see Man of Steel. Fool me once, DC. Fool me once.

3:25: OMG THE LOGO IS SUPERMAN’S S INSIDE THE BAT SYMBOL IT’S A METAPHOR YOU GUYS BATMAN EATS HIM INB4

This is a picture of me, ready to brace the heat and cold summer showers that have been inflicted on my city for the last week. It’s also one of the first full-body pictures of myself I’ve associated with in the last year and a half, because I don’t want people to see my body.

There’s a lot of reasons that that statement makes me angry. After all, it doesn’t matter what I look like: my friends will still drink with me and laugh at my godawful puns; my family will not disown me (probably), and the people who employ me will not want to hire me any less based on what I look like. I’m a feminist, and know that the idea that people should be ashamed of the way they look is a cruel, pointless, horrible thing. As a pop culture addict, I understand that the general size and shape of women in the media differs from my own, and that’s where many of my preconceptions about what I should look like come from. I can rationalise these thoughts, but they don’t mean a thing when I catch myself at a bad angle in the mirror and run off to do a bunch of sit-ups because my stomach looks disgusting. Things came to a head last week when I replaced my Evan-Rachel-Wood-in-lingerie screensaver to something that wouldn’t make me loathe myself, because I felt so shitty looking at her slender legs and perfect body. And when my weight problems interfere with my ability to letch over beautiful women who I may or may not be in love with, we’ve got a problem.

It’s doubly ironic, too, because right now I am healthier than I have been in ages- I quit smoking, I exercise every day, and I attempt to eat what my insane appetite will deem a reasonable diet. Two years ago, I was a lot slimmer, because I was eating small amounts of crap in between partying so hard I woke up on the floor or the ladies’ bathroom more than once. I might have been a train-wreck healthwise, but I could fit into a UK size 8 and that was all that I cared about. Then, at the start of last year, I started putting on weight, and went up to a size 12and ever since then I’ve been grappling with the stupidly time-consuming act of hating the way I look.

I think the most irritating part is holding the feminist side of my brain and the body-concious side of my brain in tandem with one another. Because the feminist side of my brain tells me that it doesn’t matter what people look like, that it’s not my buisness to judge them or treat them any differently because of their weight- things I know to be true. And then there’s the other side, which tells me stuff like “well, at least you’re not as big as her” or “she’s just too skinny” so I momentarily don’t feel quite as shit about my own size. But that makes me feel even worse, because I don’t want to be the kind of person who can only be happy with their body if they’re comparing it favourably to someone else’s. That’s gross, and it’s a side of myself I try to shut off whenever I can. I want to celebrate other women, not throw myself back into competition with them, but that’s how body-shaming makes us relate to one another; as targets to be beaten, not actual human beings.

But then, I’m often unsurprised that I’m as self-concious as I am about my weight gain, considering the way we treat people who don’t fit the perscribed beauty mould. Take Colleen McCullogh, neurophysicist, best-selling author, and Yale medical researcher, who’s obituary opened with a jibe about her weight: “Plain of feature and certainly overweight…”. Christ, if a woman as accomplished as her can be reduced down to her size despite all her achievements, what the hell can I be remembered for? “Freakishly small of mouth and thundery of thigh…”. I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you the pervasiveness of the ideal body type across all media, because we’re all bombarded from it at all angles: in magazines, on television, in movies, online…all I’m saying is that if a bunch of us were asked to describe the perfect body, it’s striking how similar our answers would sound.

And that’s the worst thing about having body image problems: it’s so fucking dull. Everyone has issues with their body, no matter what they might be, because we’re constantly told that you need to look a certain way to be successful and loved and admired. And as long as I continue telling myself that it’s bullshit- that I can look however I want, and I will not stop being the person I am right now-maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to re-instate that Even Rachel Wood screensaver.

I’m genuinely curious to hear: how do you feel about your body? It’s a question we don’t hear an honest answer too all that much, for fear of coming across as arrogant or  insecure, but here’s your chance. Tweet me, comment on this article, and let me know about your relationship to the way you look.

Every generation, a film comes along that defines the way we think about movies. Scorcese’s brutal and brilliant Goodfellas, packed with rich, dense tracking shocks and the tarnished glamour of the mobster life; Lord of the Rings, the sweeping fantasy epics that redefined the way we look at genre films. And then there’s Troll 2, a layered, witty, understated masterpiece that bubbles over with imagery and thematic elements to rival any Linklater, Anderson, or Iniratu outing.

Troll 2 follows the harrowing story of the young Joshua, who holidays with his family to the mysterious town of Nilbog (which is, as the film slowly reveals through barely perceptible nods and hints, goblin spelt backwards).  Things start going very wrong for the family, the very depiction of all-American wholesomeness, led by a staggering, screen-dominating performance by George Hardy as the powerful patriarch of the Wilts tribe. Watching his nuanced take on the character, it’s hard to believe that he’s a dentist by trade, and not an actor who could stand up to the likes of Pacino and Norton with ease and style.  The direction, too, is flawless: through repeated use of a single, striking shot of lightning balanced with the use of a repeated musical theme, the film implants immovable images in the viewer’s mind that refuse to be shaken.

The film, for all it may seem nothing but a practice in finger-chewing suspense, is actually a perceptive diatribe on puberty and burgeoning sexuality, which, as the film depicts, are inevitabilities of growing up that will eventually murder and eat your entire family. The chilling Creedence Leonore Gielgud plays as a juxtaposition between the mother and the whore; at once nurturing her goblin offspring (created through the use of ground-breaking prosthetics that Spielberg would later quote as influence for his mildly entertaining creature feature, Triceratops Park) and acting as an object of sexual desire for the film’s boisterous and hilarious group of teenage boys. The most erotically charged scene in the movie comes when she arrives at their caravan with a corn-on-the-cob, only to fill the tiny space with mountains of popcorn as she seduces one of it’s unlucky occupants, juxtaposes the thing that once bought such childhood joy-popcorn- with the horror, fear, and death that lead from pursuing sexual desire. The scene drips with unconsummated sexual tension, pulsing with latency and potency. This isn’t the kind of sexy you’ll see in most mainstream movies; it’s real and raw, and allegedly unsimulated.

Joshua, the young boy at the film’s epicentre, plays out similar themes of the apposition of puberty and childhood. Regular visits from his grandfather (played by a disappointing Richard Attenborough) are held up against scenes where he is forced to rebel against the incoming goblin force through any means possible, including one disturbing sequence where he urinates on the family’s dinner to stop them eating poisoned food (you wouldn’t know it from watching the scene, but instead of freeze-framing the actors, the director chose to shoot the scene with them in absolute stillness). Joshua, and to a lesser extent his sister Holly (who mercifully escapes any of the flash-of-flesh sexualising that many young actresses at the time were bestowed with) are innocents against a corrupted town, forced to battle their loved ones to keep the goblin threat at bay. Alas, it’s all for nought, but their fight makes compelling viewing.

Overall, Troll 2 is a deeply considered piece of work, with universal themes that appeal to everyone: age is represented in the stunningly choreographed shot of a fly crawling across a young man’s face as he screams in terror, while Joshua follows his bouncy red ball around to keep him safe. Profound, moving, and not afraid to go to the darkest places in the human psyche, Troll 2 remains one of the most important movies of the last half-century.

Rating: Ten Goblins out of a possible Ten

Yep, a big thank you/fuck you to the person who bought me a copy of this to recap, because you’ve very likely ruined my entire life and, at the very least, put me behind on the schedule I intended to keep today. But here we go anyway; a condensed, chapter-by-chapter breakdown of Grey, the next book in the Fifty Shades franchise, as told from the point of view of Christian Grey. I’m going to powering through these all day, so check back for updates if I haven’t got to your favourite bit yet. I don’t think I can put this off any longer.

May 11, 2011/Chapter 1 (yes, the titles of chapters in Grey are just dates, but I’m sticking in a link to my Fifty Shades of Grey recaps too so you can see how this went down from the other point of view).

Oh my God, this writing is so bad. I’d forgotten. It’s like being with old friends. Christian meets Ana, and literally the first thing he thinks about her is that she would look good after a caning. Then he sees her “gaping” at him (but with what hole?) and thinks “Yeah, yeah, baby, it’s only a face”. Wow, you really are an unbelievably arrogant cuntbag, mate. Later in the chapter, he thinks about how he’s glad that she’s not immune to his charms. I must have had my innoculation, because all I want to do is vault the table and punch him through the face.

Since you’ve seen a lot of this before, I’m not going to bother recounting stuff you’ve already read, but suffice to say that Christian says “baby” six times in his internal monologue this chapter. When Ana asks if he’s gay, he thinks that he’d like to tie her up, spank her and fuck her, and we’re back with my old pals weird homophobia and rape. “How very dare you think I’m gay, when I only want to rape you!”

May 14 2011/Chapter 2

WE HAVE STALKING, REPEAT, WE HAVE STALKING! The chapter opens with several pages of Ana’s personal information that Grey acquired from a private detective, including her social security number and her bank account details. I like that EL has got the illegal stuff out the way early so we can focus on all the sexy, sexy romance.

Christian stalks her to her work, and wonders if Ana is gay- an idea he quickly brushes off, because it’s ridiculous to think that a woman who is attractive to men would be gay, amirite?

Christian wonders if he should have mentioned Ana to his therapist, Dr Flynn, but brushes that off when he considers the fact that he might have tried to stop Christian stalking Ana (and “stalker” is a word used to describe what Christian is doing, in the text). He’s glad that Ana is dressed in tight clothes, not the “shapeless shit” she was wearing when she met him. Yeah, God forbid she be comfortable during a work-related venture, you utter cunt.

He thinks about how hot Ana is, etc, then asks her what she likes; when she says British books, he immediatley thinks she means the “hearts and flowers” shit like Bronte. Can I remind you what other book falls into that category Christian? THIS ONE. Another man says hello to Ana, and “his eyes are all over her”, which makes Christian really mad.

Ana calls to arrange the photoshoot, and Christian gloats some more over how turned on she is, and I’m going to kill myself Or read chapter three.

May 15, 2011/Chapter 3

Christian goes to the photoshoot, where he meets Kate for the first time; he can tell by her handshake that she’s never faced a day of hardship in her life, unlike Ana, who has only been living off her rich friend all the way through college.

They do the photoshoot, and it’s pretty much the exact same as it is in the original novel, ie, shockingly boring. Ana and Christian go for coffee, and Christian asks if Jose is her boyfriend; she tells him he’s just a friend, but Christian thinks “oh, sweetheart, he wants to be more than a friend.” Because what the man wants, he gets, right ladies? It’s irrelevant that Ana isn’t interested in him if Jose wants to be with her.

Christian wonders if Ana is simply tolerating him to make sure that he doesn’t pull out of Kate’s interview, which is odd, because everything to do with the interview was over the minute they finished the photoshoot. This is a funny chapter, because Grey is basically thinking everything I thought he was- about how she’s right to be intimidated by him and stuff- except it’s written slightly worse than the original. Vis; on her eyes: “the colour of the ocean at Cabo, the bluest of the blue seas”. Wow. Just wow.

Christian asks her about her childhood, so he can mention the stuff his private investigator dug up without looking like a stalker. Man of your dreams, ladies. Man. Of. Your. Dreams.

They have their almost-kiss, Christian thinks about how she smells like his grandfather’s apple orchard (seriously), she storms off.

May 19, 2011/Chapter 4

Christian wakes up from a nightmare about his childhood, and stalks around his apartment, angry that he turned Ana down. He decides to send her some books-which he picks out from his own library so, um, kudos on the effort-then manages to patronise three female characters in the space of a page- first, by describing his receptionist greeting him as “a cheesy tune on repeat,” another drone as “fucking irritating” for “mooning” over him, and finally, indulgently calling another one of his female employees a “good girl” for remembering to put milk in his coffee. Christian, are you not the boss? Could you not fire these people if you don’t like them? Ah, but then where would the woman-hate in this book come from?

Christian talks some buisness with someone else, and it’s boring and reads like page-filler. Then he picks out a quote from the books he’s chosen to give Ana- Tess of the D’urbyvilles-inwardly scolds another female employee for looking at him flirtatiously, and the chapter is over. Merciful God!

Chapter 5

So, Christian and his brother Elliot decide to go to Portland to do some off-roading, then watch a football game, because Christian needs an excuse to stalk Ana and Elliot has got some girl blowing up his phone after he slept with her, lest we forget that all women in this book are infinitely worse than Anastasia Rose Steele.

Christian gets a call from Ana, wherein he deduces that she’s drunk and uses illegal means to track her phone and find out where she is so he can pick her up. Man, this is JUST as creepy and horrifying as I had hoped it would be! He arrives at the bar just in time to find Ana pushing Jose away, then throwing up all over everything; he genuinely inspects her vomit and notes that she hasn’t eaten much today, thus beginning our favourite “Eat/I’m not hungry” banter from the original novel.

Christian wonders if he should get a referral to rehab from his mother because Ana might have an alcohol problem and isn’t, I don’t know, a college student celebrating the fact she’s just graduated? Christian snootily thinks about what a shit friend Kate is, but not before he informs his brother that he’ll be taking a passed-out Ana back to his apartment, which she hasn’t agreed to. What a great guy! He thinks about how he should take her home, but he doesn’t want his car to smell of vomit, so that’s reason enough to take her back to his, undress her, and ogle her naked body. Apparently her eyelashes fan out over her pale cheeks, which is odd, because that sounds like it would be literally fucking impossible.

Christian emails his bodyguard, Taylor, to get clothes for Ana, and then his brother, who tells him that he hopes Christian gets laid. Which, considering that Elliot had seen Ana passed out drunk, means that he’s encouraging him to rape her…? Yeah, both the Grey brothers seem like fucking catches, good luck with them, ladies.

May 21, 2011/Chapter 6

Christian goes to bed, not before spending a creepy amount of time inspecting the sleeping Ana. Then he wakes up next to her, and we get this:

“..to wake up next to an alluring young woman is a new and stimulating experience. My cock agrees.”

So, I’m going to assume from this point on that Christian’s inner goddess takes the form of his penis. We all on the same page here? Christian notices that Ana’s t-shirt has ridden up, and leaves before “I do something I’ll regret.” Rape her? Rape her while she’s sleeping? Is that what he’s saying right there? Jesus fucking Christ, EL, don’t dump all this on me in the first few chapters.

Ana wakes up, and Christian wonders if she’s woken up in a stranger’s bed before, unsure as to whether or not they had sex because she was passed out and unable to consent. I’m glad he recognises that the situation he’s put her in is a fucking horrible one, but it doesn’t take long for him to congratulate himself on his gentlemanliness and move on.

The conversation is the same as in the first book, ie, Christian says he would have spanked Ana if she’d done what she’d done on his watch, but we get this fun little aside this time round:

“An image of her shackled to my bench, peeled gingeroot in her ass so she can’t clench her buttocks, comes to mind.”

So, yeah, sorry if you read that while you were eating something.

Christian wonders if he should just ask if he likes her, but dismisses that immediately- that would be way too much like good sense. It’s fun to note that whenever Christian drifts off into imagining what he would like to do to Ana, her consent is nowhere near the equation, so EL got that bang-on right. Oh, and she’s also captured the internalized mysoginy, plus the weird habit her characters have of giving random female characters who are percieved to be too flirtatious or slutty dumb nicknames; here it’s Miss Dark Eyes. Funny how Christian and Ana have essentially the precise same internal voice, except Christian just says “fuck” a lot more. FUNNY.

Ana and Christian smooch in the lift, then he drives her back to her apartment. Hope she throws up all over your car, creepy little shit. Christian picks up Elliot, who’s been fucking Kate, and thinks about how he needs Ana’s consent before he touches her- let’s see how this plays out, shall we?

The chapter cuts to Christian picking Ana up from work and whisking her away in his sex-copter, which is really a chance for EL to prove that she is the queen of excruciating page-filler as Christian performs pre-flight checks like the sexy dom he is. They arrive at his apartment, and Jesus Christ is this a waste of pages as they rehash the precise same conversation they had in the original book. Nothing is added to it by his internal monologue, and if I actually paid money for this, I would be beyond furious at the lack of new content. I know this is a re-telling, but a re-telling is there to add a new layer to the story, no?

Chapter 7 (not actually a new chapter in Grey, but this is where Chapter 7 came in the original book)

He shows her the playroom, and again, it’s the same fucking shit I covered back in Fifty Shades of Grey. Is this book all some kind of cruel joke? When EL claimed that the manuscript had been stolen, did she just mistake a copy of Fifty Shades for her new novel because they are literally the same book?

Ana tells Christian she’s a virgin, and we get a better look at his outright rage, his monologue snarling “What the fuck do I want with a virgin?”, when the real question should be “what the fuck does anyone want with Christian Grey?” Christian gets over his rage, and decides to “break her in”, so they go to bed.

Chapter 8

So, they have sex for the first time, Christian finds Ana’s “fumbling inexperience” a turn-on, because virgins are the only kind of women worth having sex with. When Ana tells him she doesn’t masturbate, he thinks “I’m going to make you come like a freight train, baby,” which, well:

The sex is as bland as ever, though slightly better now that we don’t have to read about him “ripping” through her virginity.  HOLD UP! Christian thinks that he “starts to move, really move”, and it’s genuinely like EL just switched out some pronouns here and there and published the same book. This is brilliant, doubling the lifespan of every erotic novel ever written with next to no effort! He “comes violently” and they have sex again. He keeps going on about how wet she is, and that would be because you broke her hymen and she’s bleeding quite a lot, if we remember from the first book, so don’t get too self-congratulatory there, mate.

May 22 2011/Chapter 9

Christian thinks about how much he will enjoy training Ana, and his cock “twitches in agreement”, so let’s go with that being his Inner Goddess. There’s a weird bit of editing as Christian flashes back to his time with one of his previous subs, who, spoiler alert, is going to try and kill herself in front of his housekeeper:

“Can I speak freely? Sir,” Leila asks.” Surely that question mark should be after the “sir”, no?

Christian catches Ana dancing around bottomless in the kitchen, and he tugs on her pigtails and tells her that they won’t protect her, same as in the first book, but now we get this fun little extra:

“Not from me. Not now that I’ve had you.”

Because once you’ve fucked a girl, she doesn’t really get a say in whether or not you get to do it again, amirite? Christian continues to get aroused every time he fucking considers the concept of Ana, and then they go for a bath together so she can suck his dick. And then we get the reason that snowballing wasn’t on the list of hard limits:

“I taste my ejaculate in her mouth. Grasping her head, I deepen the kiss.”

He goes down on her, and they fuck again, and it’s just as creepy as in the book because he doesn’t outrightly ask for consent even after she’s said how sore she is. And I know fans are going to hold up that bit where he says he wants consent as proof that he doesn’t do anything wrong, to which I reply “OMG, just read the book!” as they have done to me for generations. Then his mother arrives.

Chapter 10

We don’t learn anything new from the encounter with his mother, except that he doesn’t go to church. Ana gets a call from Jose, and she radiates anxiety “as she should be” over Christian’s reaction. Damn, this is where we get into some serious abuse territory, so let’s see what EL comes up with to try and justify it this time round! Christian wonders if Ana was using him to break her in before she goes off with Jose, so there’s your excuse for frightening Ana with his moodiness right there. He gives her the contract.

He gets annoyed at her asking to speak to Kate about sex, then they head off back to Ana’s together, but not before the romance hero of your dreams ignores the fact that Ana isn’t hungry and forces her out to lunch. They discuss all the stuff they did in the original chapter of Fifty Shades, and then Christian goes home and thinks about how much he’d like to fuck Ana. We even get to re-read the email he sends her, in case we’d forgotten.

May 23, 2011/Chapter 11/12

Christian wakes up and emails Elena, the woman who statutorily raped him when he was a young teenager, so at least EL gets a chance to misrepresent that relationship as healthy, too! There’s some interminably boring crap as Christian does some conference calls and spreadhseet work, and then we get back to the good stuff.

They email the same emails back and forth, then Christian recieves the email from Ana that reads “Okay, I’ve seen enough, it was nice knowing you.” Christian is infuriated at her lack of gratitude, and decides that “she needs to look [him] in the eye and say no”. Because it’s totally cool to force a woman you’ve had sex with a few times to give you closure after she has politely turned you down. As he arrives at her house, he wonders if it’s reckless or presumptuous to be there,  to which the answer is yes, Christ yes, so many times yes. Kate lets him in, and he goes to Ana’s room. He demands to know what she meant by the email, and Ana throws herself at him for some fucking reason.

In this chapter in the original book, Ana says “no” as she kicks Christian away, and he carries on. We know because of her internal monologue that she’s talking about her smelly feet, but Christian has no way of knowing that. Unless, of course, the author intervenes- “I know that it’s because she’s been running and doesn’t want me to remove her shoes.” How do you know that, Christian? Pray tell, because I’m sure it’s a defense lots of rapists could do with knowing. He ties her wrists to the bed (without her consent), blindfolds her (without her consent), and spits wine in her mouth (without her consent). Do I have to make a point about actions being louder than words, or have I made myself fucking clear?

In his head, Christian thinks “This is not a no”, which, you know, defense for rapists once again. I’m not saying that this is a rape scene, just that Christian Grey happens to have the internal monologue of someone who IS a rapist, what with all the “she’s not saying no, so I’ll carry on” stuff. They finish, Christian says he wants to go, then gets annoyed at Ana for wanting him to leave.

May 24 2011/Chapter 13

Christian goes back home, and then he- oh, you have GOT to be shitting me. Yep, we get another bunch of pages dedicated to reporducing the fucking contract in full. Because that wasn’t a thunderingly boring piece of shit the first time round, was it now? Why the christ does Christian need to look over it again? He fucking WROTE it! This is bullshit, and the publishing industry needs to take a long, hard look at itself.

He reads Ana comments on it, then they email back and forth-again, crap that we’ve already read, crap that is not expanded on at all by Christian’s inner monologue-and Christian thinks how funny and charming Ana is, which is funny in itself because Ana is about as funny as fucking Legionnaire’s Disease.

Christian goes to some buisness meetings that do nothing to expand on his character or the plot, he and Ana email back and forth some more, and he gets annoyed at her refusal to submit to him. Because that’s exactly the kind of thing you want to think about your submissive, isn’t it? That she doesn’t like the idea of being a submissive? Christian Grey is the best  and most responsible dominant ever, y’all.

May 25 2011

Ana and Christian meet for dinner, and to discuss the contract. Christian keeps thinking about how Ana needs to trust him, apparently bypassing the idea of actually doing things that might lead her to believe he was trustworthy. It goes as well as the first time we read it, except EL James is trying to justify everything Christian does- including obliquely threatening to rape her in the bar- because he’s so damaged and broken and boo hoo fucking hoo.

“For a moment I wonder if we should have held this meeting in my office, but I dismiss the ideas as ridiculous”. Note that this is how this scene went down in the movie; a little venom for those who dared mess with your masterpiece, EL?

His inner monologue reveals that he chose this room to see if she could be quiet while he fucked her, which bothers me because she came here to discuss a contract, not to screw some idiot fuckwad. Ana tells him he uses sex as a weapon, and he agrees in a way that implies he doesn’t know that’s a bad thing. Streaming right by the abuse, Ana’s fear and his lack of interest does not make it go away, to be clear. Ana wants to leave, but Christian is desperate to seal the deal, so he ignores what she wants and tells her that he could seduce her right now if he wanted. She leaves, they email some more, it’s dull etc.

May 26 2011/Chapter 14

Christian gets huffy that he hasn’t heard any response from Ana, and goes to her graudation where he bumps into Kate. He listens to her speech, and describes her as “smart and popular and confident”, then wonders why she’d be friends with Ana. Me too. Me. Too.

Then there are pages and pages on the speech that EL deemed not important enough for the original book, but had to fill out in this one because there is nothing to say about the lingering fart of a character that is Christian Grey. Afterwards, he yanks her into a locker room, locks the door, and gets irrationally angry at her when she tells him that Jose services her car. Ana goes to meet with her stepdad, where Christian gets furious again because Kate’s brother is greeting Ana. This chapter is mostly just Christian being really angry that men who aren’t him have dared have contact with his woman, and that’s gross as fuck. Then we get this:

“Ana, baby,” I whisper, holding out my hand, and, like the good woman she is, she steps into my embrace”

Like the good woman she is?! Why does this sound so godamn awful? Maybe because, in Christian’s eyes, a good woman is one who knows that daring to have male friends makes her a dirty whore? Christian insists on referring to Ana’s stepdad as “Steele”, as if he couldn’t be more of a sub-Bond villain cock. Ana’s stepdad warns Christian that it’s up to Ana whether or not she wants a new car, something that Christian will ignore and then curse Ana out for later in the chapter.

Christian does some more buisness bullshit, then talks to his mother about the meal his family is having to celebrate his sister Mia’s arrival home. His mother wants him to bring Ana. So Christian of course emails Ana some more boring fucking emails and heads over to her house.

Chapter 15

Christian hopes that giving Ana some champagne will loosen her up, which falls neatly into the “while he has not outrightly raped her, it’s strange how much of Grey’s monologue could be that of a rapists” category. They argue about the books, and he steamrollers her even after she offers to donate money made from auctioning them to charity. He thinks “you could burn them for all I care”. I hope she fucking does.

They discuss the contract some more after Christian says he’s going to spank her if she rolls her eyes again (without her consent). Then we get another treat of a line that fits perfectly into the above category:

“Steady Grey, you just want her tipsy, not drunk.”

Yeah, I just want her moderately impaired when it comes to making these decisions about sexual boundaries. Because I’m a gentleman! There’s also this, after Christian snaps at Ana and scares her:

“ignore her reaction, Grey. Get on with it.”

Which is EXACTLY the kind of mindset I’d want my sexual partners in, especially when they’re going to be pushing my boundaries in a potentially damaging way.Christian takes her outside to show her the car he’s bought for her, after getting rid of her old one, and thinks “You wanted more, this is the price,” which isn’t really fair as this was never made clear to Ana as part of their deal. This chapter is a clusterfuck, I’m telling you.

She begs him not to be angry, and he thinks “don’t blow it, just because she doesn’t know how to behave.” And maybe, just maybe, if the woman you’re throwing into the deep end of submission doesn’t understand how she’s expected to behave, you should take some time out to explain it to her in more detail instead of getting her drunk to get her to agree to everything?

They fuck, yadda yadda, Christian threatens her some more with stuff she hasn’t agreed to, then he spanks her, which, according to his internal monologue, he’s wanted to do since she asked him if he was gay. Have a little homophobia with your abuse, why don’t you?

Chapter 16

“She gasps and tries to rise, but I hold her down.” Do I really have to explain why it’s utterly horrible that Christian ignores the fact that she tries to get up and away from the spanking, and instead just pins her down so she has no choice but to finish it?

He finishes spanking her, and notes that Ana is subdued and seems upset but leaves anyway because aftercare is really just besides the point as long as he’s had his fun, right? I honestly thought that the books might just show that Christian was oblivious to how upset Ana was, but no, he knows full well and just doesn’t care.

Christian and Ana email back and forth and Ana expresses that she’s upset, so Christian comes back. Kate tries to keep him out of the flat, but he ignores her because he, as a man, knows what’s better for Ana. He sees that she’s been crying, and basically gets annoyed at her for making him come all this way only for her to continue to defy him. Then they fall asleep together.

Chapter 17

Christian goes home, does more buisness pish, then reads an email Ana sends him regarding their encounter. Twice during reading, he blames her for not using her safeword, and not himself for not being able to read her signals-LIKE TRYING TO GET UP AND WALK AWAY- because he is the best dom ever. They email back and forth some more while Christian gives patronising nicknames to women who dare be around him, because dammit if EL James   Ana Steele isn’t the only woman for him!

Christian gets angry when Ana doesn’t call him, and we have to sit through his attending a dull fundraising dinner. Then he finds out she was with Jose, more irrational anger, etc,

May 28 2011

Christian goes to pick up Mia, and it has literally just struck me that we’ve seen so much more of Christian’s life outside of Ana than we saw of Ana’s outside of Christian- because nothing a woman can do is as important or interesting as what a man can, right, ladies?

We get to see a Grey family dinner, where Elliot is a massive wanker and Mia is the only other female in the book of Ana’s age that EL can talk nicely abut, because she isn’t a threat to Christian’s sexual interest. His family strongarm him into inviting Ana to dinner (read: politely enquire as to her plans), and Christian huffs off.

May 29 2011/Chapter 18

Ana comes over to Christian’s, where she’s about to get neutered because he doesn’t like to use condoms. She arrives, she looks great, Christian’s erection practically leaps free of his body, etc. She says she’s hungry but not for food, and Christian thinks that she “might as well be addressing my groin.” I wish she had. Because that would have been hilarious.

Ana goes on the pill, Christian stresses about the fact that he’s falling for her, etc, which you would think would be a good thing because Ana has consistently expressed her desire for a more intimate relationship. But then where would the conflict come from, I ask you? Where would the conflict come from?

They go to the playroom again, and again, it strikes me that Christian’s inner monologue is a thousand times as explicit as Ana’s was, because it’s fine for a man to know about sexuality but if a woman does it’s gross, right? As evidenced by the fact that Christian AND Ana have consistently been judgemental at the thought of other women-like Kate, or any of the tertiary female characters who are attracted to Christian. Cool. Cool. Great. Cool.

They fuck, it’s precisely the same as the first time I read it. Then Christian notices that Ana looks tired, so he decides to show her what being a submissive really means by…fucking her? Real ground-breaking, buddy. Ana goes to sleep, then she wakes up and they have to get ready to go for dinner at his parents. They dance together, where we get a brief flashback of Christian dancing with his molestor, so EL gets the chance to present their relationship as something healthy and brilliant once again.

Chapter 19 (to be clear, I’m only going to be recapping this book for as long as it matches up with the Fifty Shades of Grey recaps I already have-up to Chapter 22- but I’ll be doing the rest of it in tandem with my FSOG recaps, so do come back for those if you want to see how it turns out)

They get to the house of Christian’s parents, and Christian huffs and puffs over the fact his family seem to like Ana and are welcoming to her. When Elliot mentions that he’s going to Barbados with Kate and her family, Christian thinks “Kavanagh must be good in the sack- she certainly looks smug enough”, because any woman expressing their sexuality who isn’t Ana Steele is a disgusting, dirty, manipulative whore, in case you’d forgotten.

Christian continues to think horrible things about Kate-that she only has an internship because her father bought it for her, that she’s intrusive and he doesn’t know how Elliot puts up with her- apparently not realizing that Ana has been scrounging off both Kate and him- intentionally or not-for years now. Kate brings up Jose, and Christian goes nuclear, furious to think that the guy who tried to rape her (not that he thinks of it like that, because then the blame would be on Jose, not Ana) actually saw her again, and deciding that “She deserves to be punished” because she’d “already agreed” to be his. Gross. Gross. Gross. Gross. Because this is not in the context of the BDSM relationship they’ve barely established the boundaries of; this is in the context of an abuser demanding control over the woman he’s abusing.

Christian tries to finger Ana at the table, and, when she closes her legs, he thinks “that’s it”, and finds an excuse to take her away from everyone so he can whale on her. Christian picks her up, spanks her (without her consent), and carries her to the boathouse, where Ana pleads with Christian not to hit her. His reaction? “But…I gape at her, paralyzed…that’s why we’re here”. Remember all that stuff Christian thought about needing consent to do stuff to Ana? Here he is, directly contravening that rule. She is saying “don’t do this thing to me” and his response is “we’re going to because I want to”. They fuck, and he tells her that she’s still getting a spanking for making him angry. One of the things he’s angry about, which isn’t covered in the original, is her not wearing panties, which is odd because he put her up to not wearing them.

So I’m sorry to say that things outside my control mean this is the end of my live blog, but do feel free to check out the rest of my Fifty-Shades related stuff in the blog directory up there, and stop by for the next few weeks when I’ll be finishing my recapping of both this book and Fifty Shades of Grey. Thanks for tuning in!

So, I’m in Berlin with a sprained ankle, the family, and a lot of red wine inside me, and I wasn’t planning on any blogging this week. Then this happened:

And I let out a long sigh and knew I had to write something about it. The book, which surely should have been titled One Shade of Grey, is nothing more than proof that James has no new ideas and is stuck hanging on to the one piece of plagiarism she did years ago to make money (lest we forget, Fifty Shades is plagiarized from Twilight, and this is plagiarized from the idea for never-published Midnight Sun, which was told from Edward’s point of view). So let’s talk about why you shouldn’t buy it.

The most important point is that, as a consumer, this book is going to be a pile of shite. We’ve already had chapters told in Christian’s POV in the novels, and all they’ve shown is that he’s an angry, cynical guy who seems to hate everyone. Which is fine in a Chuck Palanhuik novel, because Chuck isn’t trying to convince you that Tyler Durden is a sexy, romantic, loving hero any woman would be happy to share their life with. Sure, Ana is that too, but Christian doesn’t spend forty percent of the novel bemoaning his hair or being abused, so it’s hard to find something to not hate about him. The writing is dire as it is, and that’s when it’s taking cues from the base-level average Twilight series. It’s going to be shitty, because there’s no way you can make Christian and his actions likeable or acceptable. How will they make the bit where he gives his wife lovebites as a non-consensual punishment for sunbathing topless sound cute? Without Ana’s rationalisations, how will they turn the scene where he ignores her “no” and threatens to gag her after she thinks he has turned him down sexy? It’s going to be a catastrophe.

Secondly, it offers another chance for EL James to offer her damaging abuse apologia, with the story told from the point of view of “He Was Abused As A Kid So He Couldn’t Help It” Christian Grey. In the series that stands now, we have Ana desperately rationalising his abusive actions-which include stalking, sexual coercion, intimidation, manipulation, invasion of privacy, and atrocious BDSM conduct that lands him in the abuser category. Now, we will have a book where an abuser justifies his actions as romantic, while the author cheers him on in the background, as she has down with the rest of her bullshit magnum opus. If you wanted more mainstream validation for abuse, here it is. The only thing I hope for is that EL James misjudges this so badly that she winds up revealing Christian Grey the truly repulsive pig he is, the abuser so many fans were happy to ignore. Also, that every copy of it catches fire.

It’s time, you bunch of masochists, to jump back in to the twisted world of Fifty Shades of Grey. After the last couple of weeks’ horrifying dallies into non-consent as romance, I’m pleased to tell you that things take a turn for the better in Chapter Twenty. And by better I mean worse. And by worse I mean that you’ll need a bottle of wine and a loved one nearby.

Christian carries Ana into the boathouse, and, after spending a paragraph describing her surroundings down to the “nautical New England theme” (seriously), she thinks that she doesn’t have time to examine the boathouse because of the look Christian is giving her. He’s blazing with anger, lust, etc, etc, you’ve read this before, and Ana gets the first line of dialogue of the chapter:

“”Please don’t hit me,” I whisper, pleading”

Quick heads up for everyone everywhere: if your romantic partner has to plead with you not to hit them, you’re an abuser. Ana reiterates that she doesn’t want to be spanked, and then kisses Christian (honest to God, I nearly typed Edward). He pushes her off, confused, because:

“”You said no.”

“What?” No to what?

“At the dinner table, with your legs.””

So, to be clear, Christian angry at Ana because she didn’t want to be fingered at dinner with his family. Because Ana doesn’t get bodily autonomy, whether it’s to do with her contraception or not wanting to perform a certain sex act, and Christian is justified in getting angry with her for denying him his right to her body (which is not an agreed-upon term in their relationship). But oh wait, there’s more!

“I’m mad because you never mentioned Georgia to me. I’m mad because you went drinking with the guy who tried to seduce you when you were drunk and who left you when you were ill with an almost complete stranger. What kind of friend does that? And I’m mad and aroused because you closed your legs on me.”

Slow down, Christian. So, you’re mad that Ana chose to spend time with a man who sexually assaulted- not seduced- her, then left her with a complete stranger? Does it not cross your mind that, what with you being that complete stranger, TAKING A DRUNK, VULNERABLE WOMAN HOME FROM A BAR ISN’T AN OKAY THING TO DO?

Ana gets super turned on by this, for some fucking reason, and they have sex; Christian tells her that if she comes he’ll spank her, even after she explicitly said two pages ago that she didn’t want to be hit. She doesn’t come, Christian’s sister bursts in, EL James uses the phrase “just-fucked” twice in a three-line paragraph, etc.

Christian and Ana go to say goodbye to everyone, and Ana admonishes Kate for winding up Christian; she replies that she’s just trying to show Ana how bad he can get. Yes, winding a clearly violently angry man up to see what he’ll do; a truly fucking innovative version of domestic abuse intervention.

They leave and get in the car, where they talk about her trip to Georgia some more. Christian asks to come with her, and she replies “I was hoping for a break from al this…intensity to try and think this through”, so, make plain note, she wants time away from Christian to think about their relationship. That is a thing that is said right here.

Christian asks Ana why she needs time to think, and she considers the fact that she thinks she’s in love with Christian, whearas he sees her as a toy to be “beaten” when she does something wrong. BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU SHOULD FEEL ABOUT YOUR PARTNER.

Ana says that she wants to make love to Christian, and he gets huffy and tells her to get ready for bed. But, because EL James can’t have these fuckers solve their problems with anything but a distractictingly awful sex scene, they fuck anyway. He tells her he’s going to spank her, but for their pleasure, not for punishment, which makes the fact that she doesn’t like being hit irrelevant, really. Seriously, did EL James leave years in between writing each chapter and forget what the fuck her stupid screw-dolls said in the last twenty pages? URGH.

He sticks Ban Wa balls up her poon, spanks her, and then fucks her (again, for less than half a page)

Within eight lines, Ana has brought the conversation back to his dislike of being touched, and he ends the chapter on this soothing refrain:

“The woman who bought me into this world was a crack whore, Ana.”

Just…wow, EL James. I bow before a master of the craft.