50 Sobs Harder

H-Town and amberance read Fifty Shades Darker so you don't have to.

H-Town: I read Chapters 3 and 4 last night
and hated myself

me: I kept yelling out loud at it.

H-Town: When I put it down last night I told A-Town "This is one of the stupidest books I have ever read."
She asked me to share some examples of why it sucked
And I held up the entire book

In Chapter 3, Ana goes to work and is shocked, SHOCKED, when her boss asks her to do actual work. She has email conversations with Christian that read like junior high notes passed in class both before and after actually doing it. In the latter series she e-mails from her work account how bored she is and Christian points out that her work email is monitored, though not before sending a bunch of sexual innuendos to that same address. Ana, of course, had NO IDEA that companies monitor corporate email accounts.

H-Town:Chapter 3
the Shit Show continues
I love that when she gets in to work and her boss has work for her to do, she gives him a "horrified expression"
OH MY GOD, WORK!
AT WORK? THIS IS CRAZY

me: HOLY SHIT IS THAT WHAT THEY MEANT BY "WORK HERE"?

H-Town: Life is so hard, Ana.
And yes, you giant fucking idiot, work monitors your email.
and your internet usage
so I'm sure all her visits to IAmVeryDumb.com are noted

me: well at least we know she won't get in trouble for watching porn

H-Town: THERE'S PORN ON THE INTERNET?
says Ana.

me: That too, but I feel like her first question would be "What's porn?"

H-Town: Is it like corn?

me: if it has anything to do with food I'm not interested

After work she is invited out for drinks by Creepy Boss, and is relieved to find out other people are going too. She tells them she'll catch up with them because she needs to make herself pretty for when she meets up with Christian later. Jack asks her what she wants to drink to which she responds "a beer" as if that narrows it down AT ALL. Bartenders must fucking hate this girl. She emails Christian to tell him where they will be, which is a bar across the street called, no lie, Fifty's. I hate everything.

On her way to the bar she is waylaid by a pale and monumentally sad girl who looks a startling amount like Ana. The girl has a bandage on her wrist that everyone in the entire universe except for Ana can tell is from a recent suicide attempt. She knows Ana's name and tells her she "just wanted to look at" her before creepily disappearing into the night. Ana tells exactly no one about it. OK SURE.

H-Town: Post-crapper, we get some random Ghost Woman on the street

me: oh she's going to be a thing, I can FEEL it

H-Town: Look, if something that weird happens to me, everybody in the bar's going to hear about it
"Dude, you guys, some crazy ghost chick cornered me outside just now!"

me: Her stalker is going to have to protect her from her other stalker

H-Town: at some point they're all going to look up and find them all stalking each other at the same time
they'll all be in the bushes outside each other's houses

At the bar, Creepy Boss corners Ana and gets way too close to her while asking her uncomfortably inappropriate questions. She can't handle this or tell him to back the fuck up because all women can't stand up for themselves and need a man to take care of them. Luckily, the far more terrifying Christian has arrived to save the day like he's fucking Mighty Mouse.

me: oh by the way
"he looks edible"
i wrote next to it "He's made out of ice cream!"

H-Town: not that she would eat him
he could be made out of yogurt and she wouldn't eat him
since that's all she eats every five days

me: oh see i think the opposite. if all food was made out of Christian she'd be a giant fat ass
she worships him, it'd be like communion for her

H-Town: wait
Christian
communion

me: DUDE

H-Town: FULL CIRCLE

me: good, can we stop reading now?

H-Town: the line about her boss mentally assessing the fine specimen of a man in front of him
my notes: KILL

me: similarly, all the women are checking him out and she's like "DON'T LOOK AT HIM"
protip:if you want NO ONE to EVER look at your man, try dating a troll!

H-Town: I hope she pees around him to properly mark her territory.

Christian and Ana leave the bar and are picked up by Taylor, who begins driving them to Ana's place. Ana is embarrassed because he can hear them talking, even though the only thing that has been said at this point is "Hi". Meanwhile, Christian is giving her a "scorching, panty-combusting look." Jesus fuck.

me: I got so excited when she wrote "panty combusting" because I couldn't wait to make fun of it with you

H-Town: YES I wrote that down too

me: MY PANTIES EXPLODED
I HAVE SHRAPNEL
DOWN THERE

H-Town: maybe her panties are combusting because something dark is pooling
DOWN THERE

me: right? Does she excrete gasoline?

H-Town: Hi, I'm Ana Steele. When I'm having a particularly hot day, I make sure to wear my Depends flame-retardant underwear - both because I'm around a panty-combusting kind of guy, and because I'm a bit "retardant" myself. HA HA.
goes to hell

Christian has become enraged - again - by the behavior of Creepy Boss. I'm conflicted about it because he's right, but for all the wrong stalky, possessive reasons. He begins repeatedly threatening to have him removed from his position if he so much as looks at her wrong. Ana thinks he can't possibly do that. OH BUT HE CAN, ANA. HE CAN.

H-Town: and then we find out he BOUGHT HER COMPANY

me: OH MY GOD
My note was "FUCK THIS SO HARD"
"oh well, I was wanting to get into publishing anyway" (seriously, this is how he justifies this to her)
"I'm sure Kindle is just a phase"

H-Town: Well, he is into Blackberry

Ana is legit mad that he went out and bought her company, behind her back no less. But only until he smiles at her. Because if he's smiling at her, everything is right in her world so, hey, no harm, no foul, right? RIGHT? I loathe her. They get to her apartment planning to have dinner together but there is no food of any kind in the entire house. Like, at all. For fuck's sake, even I have pasta in the house and I eat candy bars for breakfast.

H-Town: and Ana goes "Am I a grown-up? Sort of?"
No, you are dumb.
You should be a grown-up, but you have the mental capacity of a tape measure.

me: so many things in this scene, I couldn't even get a handle on it
like "OH EM GEE we haven't screwed in almost forever!" (This is Christian. "I haven't fucked you in a while - a long while.")
a week
it has been EXACTLY one week

H-Town: SEX DROUGHT
She was in bodywash withdrawal

me: YOU BETTER GET BANGING BEFORE SOMEBODY DIES

H-Town: And of course she has no food in her apartment
"What's a fr-frij? a Fridge?"

me: I thought that was just for all the alcohol I'm constantly drinking

H-Town: I keep my computer in there.

me: and a vile of my emo, emo tears

H-Town: I also keep my snowqueen's icedragon in the freezer

They go out shopping because they need more wine and, you know, FOOD. Then they try to make dinner, but it's hopeless because they haven't fucked in A WEEK you guys. HOW COULD ANYONE BE THINKING OF FOOD AT A TIME LIKE THIS? Christian gives up and tells her to put the chicken in the fridge, which Ana thinks it the absolute sexiest thing anyone has ever said, so they go to her room for some boring sex that I would have called anti-climatic if EL James had any idea how to build tension in a scene.

H-Town: "Put the chicken in the fridge."
that's so seductive

me: my chicken/fridge note was "OOOOO THE SEXY TALK"

H-Town: PUT THE CHICKEN IN THE FRIDGE
panties explode

me: like the Fourth of July
my only note from the actual sex was "still can't say vagina"

H-Town: INTERCOURSE
aaaand scene

After a mind genital numbingly boring sex scene, they go back to that whole dinner thing they abandoned earlier. They also go back to their argument about him buying the company she works for. He tells her that he will, in fact, buy ANY company she tries to work for, no matter what it is. He calls this "protecting her".  I call it "ultra stalking" though that doesn't seem nearly strong enough.

me: Chapter 4 -Stupidity Strikes Back
immediately, first words of the chapter "As sanity returns..."
NOPE
TRY AGAIN

H-Town: Still dumb!

me: "so if I work somewhere else, you'll just buy that company too."
"TOTES"

H-Town: "Also, I bought the Totes Company."

me: I was thinking work for the government, he can't buy that
but he probably can

H-Town: Maybe he'll play a game where every word she says for the next five minutes, he'll go buy the related company.
I farted! BOOM, just bought Gas-X

me: I'm tired! I just bought Sealy, Tempurpedic AND Sleep number

H-Town: I took a dump! Great, I'll buy whomever published this book!
ICEBURN

me: icedragon burn

She gives up arguing with him because this is not really something she needs to be concerned about at all, and offers him some ice cream for dessert. Ice cream is SO FUCKING SEXY though, they decide to go to her room and fuck it instead of eating it.

H-Town: During the sexy food time I wrote "This is the anti-horny."

me: I liked "Oh it's cold"
IT'S ICE CREAM
I also wrote "STOP WASTING ICE CREAM"

H-Town: So they do it again and she calls herself "the sorcerer's apprentice"
and I want to die. Again.

me: was she trying to entice the Harry Potter market with that shit? If so, I want some quidditch sex, like, RIGHT NOW

H-Town: hahaha
would you like...a BROOM STICK?

me: I'll bludger your quaffle
where's the snitch?
DOWN THERE

H-Town: anyway, after more boring, LITERAL vanilla sex, she finally brings up crazy ghost chick.
HA HA I FORGOT.

me: of course it's Leila.

H-Town: I wonder if she's....got him on his knees...Leila
lamest joke ever

me: because you did it wrong. it should have been
i wonder if she's...(puts on sunglasses)..got him on his knees
YEAAAHHHHHH

It's the same girl that put BritBrit on his iPod. So you can tell just from that she's CLEARLY going to be unstable. Christian knows exactly who it is as soon as she mentions it. Turns out Leila was "the situation" he had to rush home from Georgia about. It seems she saw a photo of Christian and Ana in the paper, LEFT HER HUSBAND over it, came to Christian's home and slit her wrist in front of his housekeeper. By the time he got back to town, she had checked herself out of the hospital and disappeared. She now seems to be stalking Ana. I've got twenty bucks right here that says by the end of this series she will have threatened Ana's life with a knife or a gun.

The next day, after a sex scene James mercifully implies but skips describing, they have a weird conversation about her working out with his trainer (oddly "Claude" the body building, foreign, ex-Olympic contender somehow isn't a threat, but Creepy Boss and Jose that she's never been interested in for one second are his mortal enemies), and she mentions that she needs to deposit the $24,000 check he gave her when Taylor sold her Beetle so she can buy a car. This is when he tells her that Taylor stopped by last night and dropped off her Audi. Ana loses her shit and tries to give him the check back. When he won't take it, she rips it triumphantly into tiny pieces. Once again, she had underestimated how completely fucking insane he is. His next move is to immediately get on the phone to someone at his office and demand that they deposit $24,000 directly into her bank account.

me: ok, so my favorite part is coming up
favorite = largest amount of rage

H-Town: where she tears up $24,000?
or the "I know your account #" (actual quote from Christian when she discovers this fact: "I know everything about you." HE IS TOM CRUISE CRAZY. RUN, ANA, RUN.)


me: ALL of it

H-Town: then RAGE MAKE OUT
I just tore up $24k! LET'S BANG

me: I really, REALLY wanted her to shout at him "I'M NOT YOUR WHORE"
and then he'd be like "OH YEAH?"
and then fuck her while sticking dollar bills in her ass

H-Town: HAHAHAHAHA
and then after all they they just go get a haircut
crazy stalk money thing, rage kiss, haircut time!

me: I laughed out loud that he owns a chain of salons. so hard
It makes NO SENSE
the publishing I can MAYBE see because his company deals in some vague media things, but WHY THE FUCK would he own a salon?
I'll tell you why
Because everywhere he takes Ana, he owns it, no matter what
want a beer? owns the bar
need an oil change? owns the Audi dealership
need a new stove? owns Sears
I wrote in my notes "He owns everything in Seattle. He's like Biff in Back to the Future 2"

H-Town: now there's a reference

me: and then I started yelling to the bartender "I OWN the police!"
because that's the one line I remember from that whole movie
which, he probably does own the police
that's how he finds shit out so easily

H-Town: hahaha

me: she needs to pull a Katie Holmes is what she needs to do
get a prepaid phone, a lawyer in another state, and wait for him to go to Iceland
which he's probably going to buy any minute now
"I've always wanted to get into the volcano market"
"Snow is big right now. Ima buy all of it"

H-Town: "I hear ice is melting. I wanna get the last of it...AND MELT IT ON YOUR HOO-HA."

me: and she'll be surprised that it's cold

H-Town: Ice is cold? WHAT?
panties explode

The salon Christian inexplicably owns is mega high end, natch. Everyone that works there is gorgeous, especially the stunningly beautiful woman who appears to be running the place. Shit's about to get real for Ms. Anastasia Steele, you guys.

me: so the big bombshell. did you see it coming? did she do enough foreshadowing, or did you need some more?

H-Town: remind me

me: there's a woman at the salon
an OLDER woman
and she's beautiful
and Christian OBVIOUSLY KNOWS HER
WHO COULD IT BE?
I have been waiting for this moment.
all my notes said was "OH SHIT Y'ALL"

H-Town: it is ON

me: I WILL CUT A BITCH
shit's about to go DOWN
or not
she'll probably just be polite and then break up with him for no reason and cry for five days while starving herself to death

H-Town: and listening to the iPad

Yep, it's his ex-Domme, the evil child molester, smiling warmly at her like a total bitch. Here James spins the wheel of similes and decides that the realization hits Ana "like a wrecking ball". Fuck me, I wish it had literally been a wrecking ball. I would pay money to see that moron get hit with a wrecking ball.