The Cutprice Guignol

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.

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July 5, 2015

Fifty Shades of Grey Recaps: Chapter 23

I’m writing this on the day of a catastrophic hangover, born from my fucking terrible decision to drink vodka last night. And as I was hunched over the toilet for several hours this afternoon, hurling up the half-digested contents of my guts, I realized that I hadn’t been near some other half-digested content in quite a while.

Let’s be real: Matthew Morrison is a super-talented actor in a god-awful role. Back to Broadway for you, my sweet.

Yes, after Grey came out (I recapped most of the book here), I was honestly so disheartened on the subject of Fifty Shades that I couldn’t be fucked going near it for a while. I’ve also been working on huge, staggering piles of my own erotica (and if you want me to write erotica for you, fucking do it, because I’m great) and was terrified that some of EL James’ anti-talent might rub off on me. Then the amazing #askELJames tag happened on Twitter- they were all great, but one that simply asked, with no question mark, “have u ever had sex” still makes me chuckle. And I realized it’s my sworn duty to keep taking the piss out of this woman and her work for as long as I live/can be bothered with it. So we’re back, and we’re picking straight back off as Ana realizes that Christian stalked her across the country after she specifically asked for space. Because that’s a really, really good way to not make me want to carve things out of my skin.

So, Ana just got a text from Christian asking her how much she’s planning on drinking, and Ana has figured out that he’s not just in the area, but in the same fucking bar as her and her mum. I find this quite funny, because my mum was up from Italy this week (just a stopover till she moves to Myammar because- say it with me- my parents are on a gap year), and if my boyfriend had tried to lurk enigmatically around bars that we were in she’d have told him to go fuck himself and set me up with that nice boy from her work she’s always talking about (there’s always a nice boy at her work).

Ana thinks that she’s “neglected to mention Christian’s stalker tendencies” to her mother, and it’s hard not to remember all those times fans of the book have been like “OMG he never stalks her!!!111one!!” when it LITERALLY SAYS SO IN THE TEXT YOU IMBECILES. So this is how far we’ve made it into the chapter without EL James proving herself or her fans wrong:

Covering up most of my hungover visage.

Christian comes over, and Ana notes how angry she is, before she gives up on that because that might make from some interesting characterisation. Christian knows Ana’s mum’s name, because he’s a fucking creep who stalks her (as we discovered in the illuminating second chapter of Grey which is, lest we forget, just pages of the PI report he got on Ana and every aspect of her life). Ana’s mum gawks at him, and Ana scolds her to “get a grip”, which is kind of pot-kettle-black when you consider the fact that Ana literally squirts every time she considers his existence.

Ana asks what he’s doing there, and apparently he’s thrown off-guard. She thinks about how thrilled she is to see him, but how angry she is that he hung out with Mrs Robinson- oh, so just so we’re clear, it’s nothing to do with his invalidating your personal agency or refusing to give you the space you needed, just the fact that he hung out with a woman who you will always see as your romantic rival first, and his molestor second. Glad we got that cleared up.

Ana thinks she sounds like “a Sophomore on amphetamines”, which is basically just EL going “LOOK! LOOK! THEY’RE AMERICAN, SEEE?”. Also, I may or may not have come into contact with uni students on uppers at some point in my life, and I can confirm that they are not nearly as calm as Ana is in the scene. Maybe. Not that I would know.

Hold on to your hats: I might get angrier as this chapter goes on. We’re 714 words in and halfway down the second page, and my blood is already bubbling at this:

“Crap-is he mad? Maybe the Mrs Robinson comments? Maybe the fact that I am on my third, soon to be fourth, Cosmo?”

Fuck that shit. I’m out.

Have YOU been watching Attack on Titan? I need more people to talk about it with. You’ll love it. Go on.

ANA. YOU are the one who should be mad. Christian has, once again, ignored your desire for personal space, stalked you (as well as your mother!), and now you’re worried that you might have upset him after he spent all that time and effort making sure you felt suffocated? Here’s a handy way Christian could not have been angry about you drinking: if he hadn’t flown hundreds of miles to watch you drink them from afar like a pre-credits sequence on Law & Order. Or, he could just not think that he has any right to question how much alcohol you put in your body! Christian comments on the coincidence of them both ending up in the same place (!), and Ana sees a “flicker of a smile”, and thinks that they “may be able to save the evening after all”.

For real, I’m almost choked up with rage.

Ana’s mother goes out for a slash (not what it says in the text, but I have to make my own fun), and Christian asks Ana if she’s angry about Mrs Robinson. Ana explains that she sees her as a child molestor, at which point Christian says it “wasn’t like that.” Even though he was technically a child at the time, and she took advantage of him to mould him into a subservient sex slave after he’d spent years traumatised by his mother’s death.

Christian offers to leave, and Ana begs him to stay, saying how delighted she is that he was there. Which is odd because three pages ago she was angry that he was here. Ah, consistency, who needs it? I’m surprised these character names don’t start swapping out for “Bella” and “Edward” at random points through the book, the line-editing is so dire on this bitch. Ana worries about getting Christian angry at her, because he’s such a good manipulator that he’s convinced her that, despite his choice to follow her across the country against her will, she’s the one who should be working to make him feel at home.

Ana’s mum practically jizzes over Christian, and refers to the “UST” in the room- Unresolved Sexual Tension, apparently, which is not a phrase I think I’ve heard before outside my brief dalliances with the fanfiction community (accidentally writing Sam and Dean from Supernatural into gay threesome erotica notwithstanding). She tells her that they’re obviously nutso about each other, and that Ana should go off and work things out with him. I mean, props on finding a subtle way to get rid of Ana, mate, but surely a discreet valium in her cocktail would have done the trick? Her mother tells her that Christian is the key to her happiness, which I think is some of the worst advice I’ve ever heard any parent give any child ever- “yeah, don’t bother trying to be happy by yourself when there’s a rich stalker waiting upstairs to pull out your tampon and emotionally manipulate you!”

I didn’t really get the whole obsession with Sam and Dean till I started watching Supernatural, but now I totally get it and want to just look at them for years.

Oh yes, did I forget to mention? For the squeamish amongst you, look away now, because we’re about to get hardcore period-bloody up in this joint. I think this is an interesting scene, because as a feminist and a woman, I know that there’s nothing really wrong with period sex and, in fact, it makes a lot of sense to fuck when you’re menstruating- the lubrication is already there, it eases cramps, and if you’re not weeping with period hormones you’re so horny it feels like your clitoris is trying to slap you round the face. But I also don’t really have sex on my period, because I’ve been socialised to think periods are gross and nasty and bad, and that I should just head out to the woods for a few days till the whole thing just plays itself out (I tend to mope around the house feeling sorry for myself and bitching to anyone who’ll listen for the first day, then sucking it up and getting on with it while my ovaries try to bungee-jump out of my vagina. That’s what it feels like, anyway). So having a mainstream, best-selling erotica with a period sex scene in it is actually a big deal, as I’ve heard many people point out. But it’s also worth remembering that this sex scene takes place in the context of a emotionally fraught, pretty drunk Ana who’s been stalked two thousand miles after asking her smothering not-quite-boyfriend for space. So it’s not feminist, at all, because it backs up the idea that a man has dominion over a woman, no matter what, and she should be doing anything to please him. Including fucking him whenever he wants it, even if he has put a great deal of emotional and mental strain on her in the last few pages and even if she goes up to the room with the intention of talking to him about their issues, a subject that he will swiftly steamroller over. Because his needs take precedence over hers. Boom. Feminist’d.

Ana goes to his room, and he’s on the phone doing more Generic Buisness Chat (TM). He comes off the phone and starts trying to fuck her, and she thinks about how they’re meant to be talking. Then he approaches her with a “sexy, predatory” look, because those are two words that are used in conjunction all. The. Time.

Misfits is the bomb. We’re all agreed that we’d fuck Robert Sheehan, marry Iwan Rheon, and kill that twatty one from the fourth series, right?

“I haven’t set eyes on you for three days, and I’ve flown a long way to see you,” explains Christian, because that does not make it sound like he thinks Ana owes him sex after he put so much effort into stalking her. Ana says they need to talk, and he’s like yeah, sure, let’s fuck tho. He undresses her in front of the mirror, and here it’s revealed that Ana isn’t wearing a bra, and I’m sick with jealousy because there’s been a major heatwave in Scotland this week and I do not have the option of letting my 36-E cups fly free. Fucking underwire in this heat should be a federal offence. Ana thinks about how she’s the marionette, and he’s the puppeteer, because those are thoughts you want to have during sex, right? Who doesn’t want to picture this when your boyfriend’s got his hand on your hoo-ha?

I was once watching this episode (Doctor Who’s The God Complex, duh) with a friend when her boyfriend walked in during this scene, took one look at the screen, and turned around and left without a word. Note: one of the best DW episodes ever.

Shall we indulge ourselves with a little look at how this goes down, and you can compare this against your inner monologue the last time you got laid (or just thought about that bisexual orgy scene from Sense8. Unf.)?

“He reaches gently between my legs and pulls on the blue string-what?!-and gently takes out my tampon and tosses it in the nearby toilet. Holy fuck. Sweet mother of all…Jeez. And then he’s inside me…ah!”

It’s written in law for me to want to fuck Justin Timberlake, Straight up ten years in jail. if I don’t

Sweet. Mother. Of. All. Jeez. Everyone else sit the fuck down, for EL truly is a master of her craft. Also, I love how Christian’s always been so “I’m so careful about birth control, so I’m going to force it on my potentially unwilling partner instead of wearing a condom”, but he’s sticking it in her unsheathed a matter of days after she started her pill. Which is…probably pretty risky, all things considered. When I went back on the pill, I was told not to have unprotected sex for a week (and I was like “A WEEK?! How am I going to enjoy my no-condoms-allowed, no-holds-barred fuckfest this weekend?!” because my life is rocking). I’d say I’d hope he gets her pregnant so they both learn a lesson, but he does knock her up in two books time, so…

Here’s how long the actual penetration lasts:

Honestly, I saw this, and was full-on “BITCH PLEASE, I WROTE EIGHT THOUSAND WORDS OF SEX SCENE TODAY”

Because what I want in my erotica is two paragraphs of poorly-defined sex, followed by Ana nagging on Christian about Mrs Robinson again. She notices he’s got scars on his chest, and asks if she gave them to him- he says no. Then she speculates about what his life would have been like if Mrs R had never introduced him to BDSM, and it’s clear that her bigger crime is not molesting an underage child, but ruining Christian for Ana. Oh, and Ana, sweetie, if he’d never have been into BDSM, this would be just a regular old abusive relationship, as opposed to one the author can get defensive about.

Ana and Christian talk about Mrs Robinson some more, and Christian says how great their relationship was for him, because damn it all if EL isn’t going to make apologies for more than one kind of abuse, right, folks? Christian asks her what she thinks of their arrangement, and Ana replies that she couldn’t do it for a long period of time, because it would be like becoming someone she wasn’t. Christian comments on what a bad submissive she is, and it’s like EL just put this stuff in there to taunt me. He KNOWS she’s a bad submissive and that she doesn’t enjoy his brand of domination- which goes far outside the bedroom- but hey, let’s plow on with this abusive clusterfuck of a relationship anyway! Christian asks her if she liked being spanked, and she said she did, which is a hilariously brazen fucking lie. Then Christian explains that if she can obey his rules, then they can find a way forward, seemingly forgetting that he just mentioned how much she didn’t like obeying his rules. What is this book? Is it a joke? Is it some kind of fucking horrible joke? Honestly, I’ve felt the red mist rising a few times in this chapter, because it’s so blatantly obvious that EL James doesn’t give a shit about character consistency or an interesting plot when she can write shitty, backward sex scenes with nasty undertones for the wool-brained defenders of this book to jill off to.

This gif is specifically for my boyfriend. You’re welcome, sweetie.

Ana asks how she’s supposed to balance these rules when he claims to like her defying him, and he ignores her and fucks her again. He lasts a page this time, which is frankly impressive. My favourite line (as they’re still in the bathroom when this sex scene happens) is the water “sloshing everywhere, mirroring what’s happening inside me.” Just her bladder making audible splish-splash sounds as he pounds her.

They talk about Christian’s number of partners, and he discusses how he’s paid for sex, and Ana goes to sleep, thinking that she’s never been so happy before. AND WE’RE OUT.

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July 2, 2015

Troll 2: A Thematic Analysis

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

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June 28, 2015

A Timeline of TV Crushes

Yes, that’s right, read it and weep- I managed another post without resorting to Fifty Shades of Grey, and that’s the way it’s going to be. I want to turn the focus back on TV and pop culture in general for a bit before I finish Grey, because the last thing I want is to become That Angry Chick who Blogs About EL James. Because I am better than that, god-damn.

Today, I want to delve into my television history. Yeah, that’s narcissistic as hell, but you knew that about me already. I’m going to have a look at how my viewing tastes changed since my televisual gestation up till now, as signposted by the people on TV I had the biggest crushes on at the time.

Phase One: British Comedies

A man flared of nostril and fine of posture, the crush the characterised this decade was Chris Barrie, better known as Rimmer from Red Dward, better known as this swoonsome heap of manhood:

No, seriously, not joking. On a side note, my boyfriend is quite offended by the fact that all my crushes aren’t particularly good-looking (to anyone else), and what that might insinuate about him.

Back when I first starting really taking notice of TV as an actual thing that I might want to spend four years blogging about, it was British comedy that pulled me in. Fawlty Towers, Father Ted, Black Books, The Office, Extras, Dad’s Amry, Rising Damp…if it was there, and it had a British accent, you could be sure I would plow through it in an obsessive weekend. Chris Barrie as Rimmer in Red Dwarf appealed not only to the deliberate contratian in me, but the sarcastic, rude, and unbearably snobby part. I hate to say it, but to this day he makes me much happier than he probably should.

Phase Two: Sitcoms

I think it was my dad who bought me my first Friends DVD, which had the first eight episodes of season three on it, eight episodes that caused me to fall, hard and fast, in love with Courtney Cox.

. I can still quote those damn episodes line-for-line till this day, after I spent months hunched over my shitty desktop computer, playing those discs until there was essentially nothing left. That led to the early-morning Channel Four episodes of Frasier, then the late-night reruns of How I Met Your Mother- hell, I’m ashamed to say Two and a Half Men often graced my viewing schedule, because I didn’t know any better please don’t hit me. My father and I shared a strong appreciation of The Big Bang Theory, mainly because of the resemblance in personalities between my brother and Sheldon. A love for Courtney Cox, once born, never dies.

Phase Three: Dramedy

It all started with Glee. Godamn fucking shitting stupid mother-titting Glee. And, fortunately, that led in to better things- things including Fresh Meat, and an unswervable affection for Zawe Ashton as Vod.

Sprinkle some dramedy with a sci-fi twist- hello, Being Human- and throw some Skins in there, and you’ve summed up what I was watching when I arrived fresh-faced in my university halls, not yet realizing I’d taken a joint degree by mistake. Ah, simpler days.

Phase Four: British Cookery Programmes

Look, fine, Paul Hollywood. It was a dark time in my life.

Phase Five: Serious Television

If I said anything other than Michael Rooker as Merle Dixon, I’d be lying through my teeth and we all know it.

I hit my big Serious Television phase a couple of years ago, and it carried me through everything-Breaking Bad when I was moving into my very first flat, The Walking Dead when I had to live on my best friend’s floor for a week, American Horror Story (you just want to keep up with Jessica Lange!) when I started smoking, Vikings when I quit. Hannibal also successfully ruined any good moments by being so utterly bloody horrible and compelling.

Phase Six: Clever Trash

You know the stuff I’m talking about. It’s rubbish. It’s fun. You hate it, but you love it. You roll your eyes at every plot development, but nod along with it because fuck it, you’re not here to actually engage your brain. Orphan Black. (the excellent) Wayward Pines. Sense 8. Misfits. Utopia. The stuff that threatens seriousness, but always peels back into stupid, entertaining crap. As Tatania Maslanay from Orphan Black is the queen of my heart across the board, Iwan Rheon defines this stage, judging by how often I find myself looking at pictures of his strange, handsome, strangely handsome face. Look, here comes one now:

So what were your big, TV-defining crushes? Do you share any of mine? Can you out-weird my choices? I dare you.

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June 22, 2015

Underrated Sitcoms to Waste Your Summer With

The sitcom is a very specific breed of TV show; there’s a balance between the witty and mawkish, as groups of friends and/or family go through continually contrived ups and downs. But it’s the televisual equivalent of someone handing you a steaming mug of tea and telling you not worry because they’ve already got dinner in the oven. They’re easy, they’re familiar, and occasionally they offer a gateway to a very specific kind of TV-watching comfort. So today I’m taking a break from Fifty Shades of Grey, and taking a look at the most underrated sitcoms of the last ten years. Prepare to have your summer wasted.

1. Happy Endings

This was a show I caught ten minutes of once, then avoided like the plague until a distant crush on Zachary Knighton pulled me back in. And I realized why I didn’t like it the first time round; Happy Endings has a spiky, difficult, sour edge. It doesn’t welcome you in; it subverts all the sitcom tropes you expected it to abide by, and has it’s own rhythm and chemistry the likes of which I haven’t seen before or since. Centred around six friends living in Chicago, it sounds like you’ve seen it all before, but relentlessly sharp humour, manic, try-anything energy, and a fantastic leading cast (Adam Pally as Max is the queen of my heart) make this a cancellation to weep over.

2. Suburgatory

I rolled my eyes so hard when I heard the premise for this my eyes almost vanished into my skull. Teenage girl gets moved to the suburbs by uptight single dad? Kill me. But this is probably my favourites on this list. The chemistry between leads Jeremy Sisto and Jane Levy is comfortable and warm, thrown completely at odds against the sharp-edged, synthetic world of Chatswin. It’s packed with fabulous supporting characters- where to start? Perhaps with Ana Gatseyer and Chris Parnell as the day-glo sinister Shays? Maybe Alan Tudyk’s repressed, unstable dentist? Cheryl Hines warm-hearted walking hair extension? Or, as we should all agree, Charly Chaikin’s terrifying Dalia, a automaton Barbie doll who’s some mix of human and horrifying? Amongst all the batshit crazy stuff, there’s a powerful emotional core at play here, with a perfectly plotted arc revolving around parenthood that packs some genuinely surprising emotional punch. Fuck it, here’s Ana Gatseyer singing Barracuda:

3. Viscious

Did you really, truly think you were getting through this without a British sitcom? You poor fool. Anyway, Viscious is my guilty pleasure- Derek Jacobi and Ian McKellen as an elderly bickering gay couple, with the voice of my dreams Frances de la Tour as their long-time friend and neighbour, Violet. Throw in my new TV chrush Iwan Rheon- have you seen his weird handsome face? Have you?- and you’ve got the recipe for an unchallenging but occasionally hilarious show. Yeah, it’s old-fashioned, but in that nice warm, fuzzy way British sitcoms from the seventies are- with canned laughter, racy jokes, and real effort put in to developing the leading pair. Best served with wine.

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June 18, 2015

Live- Blogging: Grey Chapter-by-Chapter

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!

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June 16, 2015

Announcing Our “Grey” Protest Campaign!

50 Shades is Domestic Abuse

No copyright intended.

Unless you’ve been living in blissful ignorance, by now you’re probably well aware that the release of EL James’ “Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as told by Christian” is just nine days away.

Here at Fifty Shades Is Abuse HQ, we are deeply troubled by the prospect of this book.

The original Fifty Shades trilogy romanticises hugely abusive behaviour, such as stalking, manipulation, coercion, unwanted control, lack of BDSM aftercare and threats of non-consensual assault. This is horrendous enough on its own, but the books also take the worrying (and hugely dangerous) route of excusing this behaviour and attempting to explain it away in a sympathetic manner. Christian Grey’s bad childhood is blamed for his controlling, threatening ways. His molester, “Mrs Robinson,” is “blamed” for his sexual preferences (which is offensive to the many people who enjoy BDSM as part of healthy, consensual relationships and who were…

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June 16, 2015

Fifty Shades of Grey Recaps: Chapter Twenty-Two

Well, we’re back, for another installment of Fifty Shades of Grey wherein the recapper has to continually remind herself that a new book in this series will be out in a mere two days time. This also means that the recapper will be absolutely mashed off her tits and listening to The Magnetic Fields all the way through writing this, if she’s got any choice in the matter.

And she does.

(this recapper would also like you to know that she’ll be creating a list of great eroticas that aren’t Fifty Shades of Grey on June 18th, to commiserate the release of the next Fifty Shades book, so swing by for that if you’d like some suggestions for some real literary sexiness)

So the chapter swings into action with Ana emailing Christian to tell him that she got a nice massage thanks to him upgrading her to first class against her will. Christian demands to know who’s been massaging her, and she tells him that it was a “pleasant young man” so he’ll be jealous. Christ on a fucking tricycle, do these two ever just communicate like normal people? The answer is, of course, no, as Ana ignores the flight attendant’s request that she shut off her laptop and reads another email from Christian, wherein he threatens to throw her, bound and gagged, in the cargo hold next time she makes such a remark. Ana has some internal monologue;

“Holy crap. That’s the problem with Christian’s humor- I can never be sure if he’s joking or if he’s seriously angry.”

I don’t know who he is, but this man is a very attractive one, and I am treating myself this evening.

Yeah, so, imagine your close friend comes to you and says “hey, so, I have this new partner who’s super rich and powerful to the point that people probably won’t question a whole lot of what he does, and he threatened me with physical violence and coercion and I can’t tell if he’s kidding or not.” Most people would implore them to leave that relationship immediately for their own safety; EL James wrote a fucking romance novel about it.

Ana goes to sleep, after emailing Christian to tell him that she doesn’t know if he’s joking or not, and apologising for making him mad because he upgraded her ticket to first class and that’s her fault, of course (fuck everything). He replies, with “two-palms twitching CEO” at the bottom of his email. Aside from the whole, y’know, non-consensual beating part, just imagine someone who’s palms twitched uncontrollably at random intervals. Again, EL James chose to write a romance novel about the guy with the spastic fucking hands.

Ana sends Christian a stupidly long email (seriously, most of this chapter is just email exchanges between the two of them, because the thought of opening my Gmail on an internal flight makes me want to spend an hour with my Happy Drawer), and let’s take a look at some choice sentences, and see how they match up with that super-fun abusive relationship red flag system we had a look at a few chapters back:

“You know how much I dislike you spending money on me. Yes, you’re very rich, but it still makes me very uncomfortable, like you’re paying me for sex.”

Does your partner see you as property or a sex object, rather than a person?

“I did enjoy the massage from Jean-Paul…he was very gay…but as usual you overreact”

Does your partner act excessively jealous and possessive?

“You can’t write things like that to me- bound and gagged in a crate. (Were you serious or was that a joke?). That scares me…you scare me.”

Does your partner hurt you, or threaten to hurt or kill you?

“I’m curious, but I’m also scared you’ll hurt me- physically and emotionally.”

Do you feel afraid of your partner much of the time?

“You were right when you said I didn’t have a submissive bone in my body”

Do you feel that you can’t do anything right for your partner?

This. This shit. I can’t.

But you’re right, EL James, there’s NOTHING in this book that might imply to the casual onlooker that this is an abusive relationship. Ana consoles herself when he doesn’t reply, thinking that it’s five in the morning in Seattle so he’s probably asleep. She hopes that he’s not playing “mournful laments” on his piano, and I shout “OF COURSE HE’S NOT, BECAUSE HE ONLY DOES THAT WHEN HE NEEDS YOU TO KNOW HOW BEAUTIFULLY DAMAGED HE IS YOU FUCKING IMBECILE”. Incidentally, some of the wine appears to have evaporated in the heat, because there’s no way I could have had that much already.

Ana meets her mum and her stepdad Bob at the airport, and the women both head to the beach, where Ana’s mum-who has yet to materialise a name- is wearing a giant hat. I like this woman. I like her a lot. Ana talks to her mum about Christian, because God forbid this book have anything in it but pointless ramblings about the only man to earn the title of “irritating” before “abusive”;. Ana’s mum just tells her to take everything he said literally, and Ana conveniently forgets that bit where he said he was going to bind and gag her and instead focuses on stuff like “you’ve bewitched me” and “I don’t want to lose you.” Because yeah, those are phrases which really leave you puzzling over whether or not a guy likes you.

Ana’s mum gets weepy thinking about Ana’s dead father, but Ana is too busy thinking about how Christian’s moods have NOTHING on her dead father, and the fact that her mother is obviously feeling emotional about that subject mean that they should forget about it and never reference it in the whole length of the trilogy again. Because filling out a character’s background is dumb. This writing makes me want to do a Bernard Black on this book. I’m not sure quite what that means, but I’m sure it would look a little like this.

Ana finally gets a response from Christian. Let’s take this piece by piece, shall we?

“Yes, I’m rich. Get used to it…isn’t that what boyfriends do? As your Dom, I would expect you to accept whatever I spend on you with no argument.”

But Christian, as you’ve made clear, it’s literally impossible to be her Dom AND her boyfriend-

-so which relationship are you going to use to emotionally twist her arm with this time? Will it be as her boyfriend, because she’s never had a romantic relationship before and clearly has strong feelings for you that she doesn’t know how to work through? Or will it be as her Dom, because she’s naive about what that kind of relationship would entail and therefore easy to manipulate? Oh, desicions, desicions.

He then goes on to say that she has all the power, and that he can’t touch her if she says no, ignoring those times that she’s said no and he’s carried on. He says that he’s in awe of her, etc, etc, and that he needs to earn her trust, and he should do that by FOR SURE not giving her the space she requested and flying cross-country to ~~stalk her~~ see her. OOPS SPOILERS!

Ana’s mum wakes her up (still no name), and finds Ana hugging the laptop like a little bitch (note: this is not how the text describes it). Ana gets ready to go for dinner, and her and Christian email interminably back and forth about how she’s rolling her eyes, and her behind is safe for now (haha remember when she was left weeping and distraught the last time Christian spanked her? HAHA). Christian asks if she wants him to zip her dress, and she replies that she would rather he unzipped it. He responds with an all caps “SO WOULD I”, which made me laugh out loud, because I had the image of his erection taking control of the keyboard and insisting on excited all-caps.

Ana signs off “Laters, baby”, and Christian emails her back with the subject line “plagiarism”, and I’m like, damn, risky move EL, considering you plagiarised every ounce of this book from Stephanie Meyer. Remember that? You should remember that, EL, doubly so now that you’re ripping off every singular ounce of her career to date.

Christian says that he’s off for dinner with an old friend, who Ana assumes to be Mrs Robison, ie, his molestor, a word that EL finally uses in the text. Ana goes into a jealous rage, and this chapter is NEVER OVER.

Ana and her mother go out for cocktails, and Ana’s mother-again-delivers some meaningless generalisations about men wanting action and not understanding that women just want someone to listen to them, silly bitches, and then OMG CHRISTIAN IS IN THE BAR WITH THEM!

Hold on to your tampons, folks, because next chapter is the infamous period sex scene.

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June 10, 2015

A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: Primeval

I know that it must seem like nothing really lives up to my standards any more. Fifty Shades is goddamn awful. Age of Ultron was a disappointment. Doctor Who wasn’t as good as it should have been. Bitch. Moan. Whine. Blergh.

So occasionally it’s rather pleasant to revel in something I really enjoy, even if it is a rather unpopular opinion (judging by the massive, collective sigh that happens whenever I bring it up). And that’s Primeval; a desperate ITV flail at gaining some of Doctor Who’s Saturday night teatime audience. Running from 2007-2011, I remember many evenings locked up in my bedroom with the crackly portable TV watching one of the most supremely underrated British TV shows of the last ten years.

So, what’s the story? Nick Cutter (played by a rugged and witty Douglas Henshall), a professor of We-Only-Made-Him-A-Professor-Because-Indiana-Jones-Was-ology-

-is called in to help when anomalies start appearing all over the city of London. And what’s coming out of those anomalies?

Yeah, that’s right, dinosaurs. Mother-fucking dinosaurs (and occasionally other things from other time frames, but I don’t care about that). The series was created by Tim Haines, the man behind the incredible Walking With… series, and his knowledge and love for these creatures is clear- whether it’s in the careful creature design, or the dinosaur-related jargon everyone spews every thirty seconds, this satisfies the dino-geek in me who I thought was gone by the time I reached double digits.

But of course, the enigmatic Henshall has a team-and WHAT a team. There’s Stephen, AKA James Murray, AKA the good-looking one with both guns (firearms) and guns (biceps)-

-hey, let me have my ogle. Then there’s Connor, AKA Andrew Lee-Potts, AKA the geeky one who knows loads about dinasours who’s still pretty hot-

Here we’ve got Abby, the biologist, AKA, Yes, that IS Hannah Spearitt from S Club 7-

And to finish out, you’ve got government official Claudia Brown, played by Lucy Brown who always looks like she’s about to say something really raunchy-

And that’s the main team. Henshall leads them every week against a different dinosaur foe caught up in a new modern setting-whether they’re destroying schools or smashing their way into a screaming child’s bedroom (because Primeval never skimped on the “terrifying the kids” factor, much to my delight), it’s this lot who have to turn up and do something a bit clever to stop them, in simple three-act plots that generally get tied up by the end of the episode. The writing is top-tier tight, building on character relationships and using the monsters as a wraparound device to fill out some themes about science and discovery. Think Buffy tone, with a healthy dose of Scooby-Doo, sprinkled with a liberal helping of Jurassic Park (which it explicitly, brilliantly references a couple of times).

Still nursing my wounds from a disappointing series of Doctor Who, Primeval is a deliciously perfect example of freak-of-the-week storytelling, with just a hint of a running plot concerning Nick Cutter’s wife, who may or may not have vanished into one of the anomalies years ago. The action sequences are a little dated, but hold up with a moderate-to-strong suspension of disbelief, and the cast has an easy, comfortable chemistry right from the off- bouncing off each other with quips and piss-takes, even as they’re stalking raptors round shopping centres.

Call me a traitor, but sometimes fiendish plotting and endless character monologues just don’t do it for me. I’m one of those people who’s perfectly happy to be able to dip into a series whenever I fancy, and be completely caught up on what I need to see with a “previously-on” montage. The most important thing for me is that Primeval never lost sight of who it’s audience was- for one, freshly-teenage girls crushing hard on a sarcastic, guest-starring Ben Miller-

-and families. It’s time slot and it’s subject matter dictated it’s broad audience, and it stuck to that- throwing in the odd saucy joke or movie reference for the parents, but focusing on bringing exciting, scary, funny plots to life for everyone to enjoy. I’ll admit that a healthy dose of nostalgia was useful when I came back to the show (which is on Netflix in it’s entirety), but Primeval is the kind of thing you can dive into at any age and find something to enjoy, if you keep your standards to “entertainment”, and not deep philosophical musing. Go watch it. Go watch it now.

Who am I kidding, if you weren’t sold by the dinasour gif, there’s no convincing you.

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June 8, 2015

Fifty Shades of Grey Recaps: Chapter Twenty-One

So, I’m back from Berlin, and I most certainly haven’t been writing a ton of erotica that accidentally features character names from The Walking Dead, and, if I did, it wasn’t because I have a massive TWD poster of Daryl and Rick opposite my writing chair.

Nope. Not doing that AT ALL.

I also wrote this in response to the announcement of ANOTHER fucking Fifty Shades book, so go read that if you want my take on it. I’ll recap it if someone buys me a copy, otherwise I’ll avoid it for the rest of time.

But enough with these petty amusements- it’s time to barrel forward with Fifty Shades of Grey. We’re on chapter twenty-one now, with only five chapters after this one remaining, and I’m starting to cast my mind over what I want to recap next. Right now I’m leaning towards doing Sex and the City, series one, from a modern feminist perspective (because that shit is a disgrace, and I still kind of love it), or taking apart the Harry Potter book series, which I read literally dozens of times when I was a kid. if you’ve got any ideas, please tweet/email/comment at me and let me know. Books, TV shows, a series of handsomely shot interpretive dance numbers; I’m game for it all (in my darkest hours, I’ve considered going on a massive mission to find the best porn parody on the internet, so adult entertainment is not out of the question).

This chapter opens with a massive paragraph which is just Ana waking up, and I already want to kill myself. Ana thinks about how she’s living the dream, but that it’s awful because he wants a special arrangement that he doesn’t want Right, so, I’ve decided that, to try and make this recap moderately bearable, I’m going to insert a picture of Christopher Ecclestone looking stern every time there’s an example of problematic content in this chapter. I don’t want to have to sully him with this series, but his face- the face of my adolescent sexual awakening-might just get me through this alive. Let’s start off with one to sum up my ego, shall we?

Yes, that should do it. Ana nips out to the kitchen to find Christian, who isn’t in bed, and instead finds his housekeeper who introduces herself and offers Ana tea. Ana immediately curses her out as a blonde bitch in her head in case the reader got confused and thought Christian might fall in love with the housekeeper if Ana didn’t immediately hate on her like the perfect little product of internalized misogyny she is.

It’s a handy shorthand for “fuck off, EL”!

Ana finds Christian in his office, where he’s having a really fucking long conversation with someone on the phone about Generic Buisness Things, the sort of things I might say if I were transported to a high-powered office for a day in some sort of great and terrible mishap. Once he’s done, they discuss her trip to Gerogia, then Ana demands to be fucked over his desk. I’d like you to read the description of Ana’s orgasm here:

“I cry out a wordless, passionate plea as I touch the sun and burn, falling around him, falling down, back to a breathless, bright summit on earth.”

You know what else might work here? “I came really fucking hard, and it was fucking excellent.” That would also be pretty good. I believe I’ve said it before in these recaps, but if you can think anything other than “FUCK” as you’re about to come, you’re doing it wrong. Or he is. Once again, Christian lasts just under a page.

Ana gets upset when she realizes that Christian has had sex on his desk before, when she should really be upset about the face that he told her that he liked her sore because it acted as a reminder that he was the only one allowed in her vagina, not before grabbing her face and saying “YOU. ARE. MINE.” Because swoon, ladies, amiritie?

See, I was thinking about this earlier today. I was wondering about what the perception of Fifty Shades would have been if the roles had been reversed- obviously, it would still be a book about abuse, but my guess is that we’d be a lot more willing to actually see the horrific abuse at hand, because we’re so used to seeing romantic male leads act this way, especially in New Adult fiction. The stalking, the intimidation, the obsessive establishment of ownership instead of actual love, all held up as the epitome of romance- it’s a total trope, a usually unquestioned one at that, and that makes genuinely turns my stomach.

They talk some more, and Ana goes for a shower, upset because Christian seemed weird and off with her. I mean, I assumed that was what she liked about him, but as a woman myself I know we can never make our minds up about anything and also Ana’s just probably on her period, the mouthy bitch. Ana goes to get some breakfast, and Christian offers to let her take his private jet when she says that she wants to get a commercial flight. She actually stands her ground for once, and she goes to get ready for a job interview. As Christian asks if she’ll miss him, she thinks “He’s got right under my skin…literally”, which, you know:

This is a Chrissy Ecc episode, so it counts. Also, this is the second time I’ve got Slitheen banter in these recaps! Raxacoricofallapa-LARIOUS!

We join Ana on her second interview of the day, because anything she does that doesn’t revolve around Christian is pointless, and a woman described as having black, pre-Raphelite hair appears. Which is funny because when you think of pre-Raphelite hair, black isn’t really the colour that springs to mind. Let’s see what happens if I take four seconds out of this recap to google it:

Research is FUN!

Ana remembers how Christian demands that Ana take her Blackberry with her when she visits her mother, and considers how “…that’s just the way he is. He likes control over everything, including me.” Which is exactly what Ana has been protesting this entire book- whether it’s sexual control, emotional control, or physical control, she’s bucked against it. But here she is, again, dismissing it, because EL James didn’t bother to get a beta reader for her shitty, shiity fanfiction. Oh dear why is this knife at my wrists-

A more self-aware Ana. It’s so stinking unfair, by the way, that my Doctor only got one season. Grumble, grumble.

Ana goes into the inteview, and notes internally a young man with “small, silver, hooped earrings”, and that’s a good enough excuse for me to squeeze in this, because that’s clearly the description of a pirate:

Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island is my Dad’s hero, and you should know that.

That man is Jack Hyde, who, spoiler alert, becomes a moustache-twirling villain later in the series, which I will not be recapping unless someone has a copy of Fifty Shades Shiter and Fifty Shades Fucked that they’d be happy to lend to me and let me scrawl all over. Because I ruined my copy of FSOG:

There’s a whole page in chapter one with “PRICK” written across it.

The interview is boring, and Ana goes home to find Kate unpacking. Kate cocks her head, and Ana gets annoyed that everything is reminding her of her “favourite Fifty Shades”, and everybody take a shot because the title of the book is in the text. What Lord of the Rings was really missing was Aragorn turning to metaphorical camera every five pages and going “YOU TRULY ARE…THE LORD OF THE RING(S)”. And that’s why no-one remembers Tolkein now. Ana scolds Kate for winding Christian up with her comments about Jose at dinner, and Kate rebuffs with this bit of ironclad logic:

“He’s a real control freak. I don’t know how you stand it. I was trying to make him jealous-give him a little help with his commitment issues.”

Yeah, Kate, what you should do to the control freak boyfriend who obviously intimidates your best friend is WIND HIM UP. Then he can give her a fucking black eye or a broken nose and you’ll have proof, because emotional abuse is just made up, right?????!??!111one

Ana starts to cry, and Kate asks her what’s wrong, and Ana says that she just has such strong feelings for Christian. Kate says that it’s clear that he fancies her too, and those crazy kids should just go for it already. Kate is obviously as bored of this fake conflict as I am.

Christian and Ana email back and forth, and it’s totally, horrifically, painfully, insultingly boring. I mean, I know all the fans of this book who defend it were just skipping from sex scene to regurgitated sex scene- and I know this because whenever you bring up the abuse with them, they say it wasn’t there- but could EL not even try and make a hint of effort with this filler passages? Christ almighty, it’s like listening to the Telegraph bitch and moan about the Jeremy Clarkson being fired for punching someone in the face.

Ana gets to the airport, and Christian has upgraded her ticket to first class after she specifically told him not to interfere. WHAT A TOP NOTCH HUMAN BEING!

/sarcasm

I promise I’ll continue the theme of gifs of men who awakened my sexuality with Chris Barrie next week.

So gorgeous. Where did my bra go?

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