Triumphant Return

Oh hello there internets. I apologize for abandoning you and assure you it was, in fact, temporary. As I mentioned in August, I didn't have much time to blog whilst writing my dissertation. I finished that, ten days before it was actually due no less, in order that I would not have to work on it/worry about it while I was back in America for my brother's wedding - having to wear a dress and and sandals gave me more than enough to worry about on that front. We got back a month ago, so by all rights, I should have resumed blogging, but there is no way for me to describe to you the amount of not wanting to be anywhere NEAR my laptop post-dissertation and so I stuck it in a corner, disappeared from Facebook and Twitter and failed to blog for the entirety of October despite not actually being too busy for any of those things all month long.

But now it's November! And November is NaBloPoMo, and I love the challenge of NaBloPoMo, so today and then for 29 more days in a row there will be something here to read. I don't promise there will be anything GOOD to read, but I will endeavor to do my best.

For those who are interested, the final title of my dissertation was The Mainstreaming of BDSM?: Examining mainstream acceptance of BDSM culture through Fifty Shades of Grey and Secretary and it will be a surprise to precisely NO ONE that what I concluded is E.L. James is a first class asshole who understands BDSM about as well as an eel understands tap dancing. Of course I explained it it much greater detail and in the "clear, precise academic language" I was specifically instructed to use, meaning I tried not to be be funny and liberally sprinkled it with words like "engendered"and "heteronormative", which StereoNinja thought was hilarious. As far as I know it hasn't been marked yet.

Ok, then. Let the NaBloPoMoing begin!

There, I Fixed It: The 50 Shades Trailer

Look, my review of the Fifty Shades movie trailer was a bit lacking, I know that. It didn't have any of my usual vitriol or creative swearing and it did not, I think, express my feelings about the trailer or the existence of a movie at all as clearly as it should have. I just couldn't find the right words to illustrate my total non-excitement about this film.

But then I had an epiphany. While watching it for the dozenth time trying to think of something clever to say about it, I realized: I don't have to say anything! I can show you how I feel! By re-shooting the entire trailer (nearly) shot for shot. Directed by StereoNinja, my new improved trailer stars ME! as Christian Grey doing my best impression of of a wealthy, sullen asshat, and someone wholly more appropriate playing the role of the dull and vacuous Anastasia Steele than any actress they did or could have cast in the movie. If you look closely (and fast) you can even catch a glimpse of some Inner Goddess tokens from the party game some of us played together last year posing as pasties in the scenes where Christian is shirtless because I am a woman and have boobs.

If you haven't watched the original trailer yet, or haven't watched it in a few weeks and need a refresher, you're going to want to do that first. Or I guess you can two screen it and watch them both at the same time. However you want to do it, really -  I'm not omniscient. Either way, I hope you'll enjoy watching it as much as I, StereoNinja and the rest of the cast (presumably) enjoyed filming it for you.

So anyway, with no further preamble, here it is - the new Fifty Shades of Grey movie trailer, which I have fixed:

50 Shades En Fuego

THIS IS IT YOU GUYS. I am finally done reading these books and I swear to Christ if she writes a fourth one so help me I will burn the publishing house to the ground, pour gasoline on the ashes and BURN THEM AGAIN.

Because E.L. James is an artless, bungling, inept tool, she couldn't simply write one epilogue that concisely wraps up the book and provides the audience with closure (such as a month later, Christian dies in a fiery helicopter crash and Ana immolates herself because she can NEVER LOVE AGAIN and the rest of us can all live happily ever after). Instead she wrote three of them because even after she's finished writing a book she can't control her incurable explosive word dysentery.

The first epilogue is the kind of epilogue one expects at the end of a book, except that it is completely stupid and makes me want to punch a baby koala. It is just over two and a half years since the end of the book. Ana and Christian's mistake is two years old and Ana is pregnant with another fucking terrible idea baby. The first paragraph is Ana laying in the grass enjoying the afternoon sun. Since she's doing something for herself for once instead of catering to her abusive husband and presumably spoiled and obnoxious son, this happiness is obviously wrong: "I should feel guilty for feeling this joy..." OR you could just have a nice time for once without constantly looking for a reason to be upset about something you melodramatic assface.

For no reason at all except James hasn't written a boring sex scene in this chapter yet, Ana has a flashback to the last night she and Christian spent at his penthouse of sex before they moved to their new house. Since BDSM is ok now that he's been saved from wanting to do it and become a good person, this sex consists of a very light non-painful flogging, a blowjob (where she miraculously remembered not to rake her teeth across his dick), and then some good old vanilla penis in vagina missionary sex because that's the proper way for people in love to screw (also because Christian seems to think that if he fucks her too hard he'll poke his baby in the eye with his enormous cock). The next scene is inexplicably after some sex in the present since she's pregnant with their second child, unless it is supposed to be after the last sex at their old house which they moved out of two years ago, which now that I think about makes total sense since we've already established that James can neither tell time nor bother to review her own work. Anywang, it's after some sex at some point in the past, and while Christian is feeling the baby kick, Ana says "I think she likes sex already." YOUR FETUS DOES NOT LIKE SEX ANA. IT'S A FUCKING FETUS SERIOUSLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

After the flashback (in an epilogue. She wrote a flashback scene in an epilogue), Ana wakes up in the grass to find Christian and their son looking for her. They have a nauseating conversation about how Ana should quit working because she's a mom now and her job should be to not have any life at all outside of her children. You know, like his mom, A FUCKING PRACTICING PHYSICIAN. Speaking of his mom, Ana wants to name their daughter Ella after his birth mom, and this is NOT FUCKING COOL. I mean, she made him say he loved his mom, she made him go to her grave, what the fuck does she want from him GOD STOP ASKING ME FOR TOTALLY NORMAL THINGS ANA. She immediately backs down from this stance, begging his forgiveness and praying to fuck in her internal monologue that she hasn't made him angry. For suggesting a reasonable name for their child. THIS RELATIONSHIP IS SO ROMANTIC YOU GUYS WHY CAN'T YOU SEE HOW LIVING IN CONSTANT FEAR OF YOUR HUSBAND IS EVERY GIRL'S DREAM COME TRUE? And then their kid drops his fucking popsicle in the grass and it is a tragedy that goes on for two pages.

TIME FOR ANOTHER FLASHBACK (in an epilogue. Maybe next time just actually finish writing the fucking book). Ana is in labor with their son. She has been in labor for fifteen hours, which apparently in E.L. Jamesland is a fucking extraordinary amount of time to be in labor (with your first child even). But now the baby is in distress and the doctor says it would be best if she had an emergency C-section. Now, I've never had a baby, but from everyone I've ever talked to who was told their baby was in distress and emergency surgery would have to be performed on their wife, I've been made to understand it's really fucking scary. Christian's reaction to being told this exact same thing is to scream at her doctor "About fucking time!" I wrote in my notes "CUT MY WIFE OPEN ALREADY YOU LAZY CUNT". For her part, Ana stays true to her epicly stupid character and wonders in italics why Christian would be worried that she's about to get cut open and a baby ripped out of her uterus. I am not kidding you, she cannot fathom why this might be worrying.

Flashback over, but now we have to relive the scene we just fucking read again while she tells Christian about the flashback she was having. Christian is adamant - this time they will have a planned cesarean. Because that would be safer? Because it's best in their situation? Because they've discussed it and agreed that it's what they both want? Of course not, don't be ridiculous. It's because he is NOT going through that again. You should have major surgery again because last time you had a baby it gave me bad feelings and I don't want to have another big sad.

The epilogue ends with Christian assembling his kid's train set for his second birthday tomorrow and anxiously wondering if he'll like it, and then the only other part of the epilogue that is an actual thing that belongs in an epilogue is that she makes quick mention of the fact that Kate and Elliot have a two month old baby and apparently her dad is still alive since he's coming to the kid's birthday party.

The end.

PSYCHE. Just kidding, the fecal festival is only just beginning! The other two epilogues are in a special section entitled Shades of Christian and they are both written from Christian's perspective. Allegedly. But we'll get to that. The first one is called "Fifty's First Christmas". It is not his actual first Christmas, it's his first Christmas since the Greys adopted him, so supposedly written from the perspective of a four year old. However, I'm pretty sure based on its content that E.L. James hasn't so much as seen a photo of a four year old. The reason I think this is that no one who has ever been in the same room with a four year old would imagine his thought processes the way James imagines Christian's. Here is the internal monologue of a normal four year old: "What's that? I'm hungry! CANDYCANDYCANDYCANDY OOOO LOOK A TRUCK VROOM VROOM! I want cookies and a puppy! MOMMY LOOK I FOUND A STICK. A worm! Smush it! I need the potty WHERE IS MY TEDDY BEAR. Fart noises with my mouth HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" Not Christian however. Christian, who by the way doesn't speak at all because he's been so traumatized by his life so far, spends an extraordinary amount of time thinking about how to pronounce the word "ornament" after his mother tells him that's what the shiny balls are that they're putting on the tree. He sounds it out in his head. A child that does not speak and that has just been presented with a large array of small shiny objects sounds out the word "ornaments" inside his head trying to get it right. FIVE FUCKING TIMES. This is the thing a small child in a room full of things that are completely new to him is most concerned about.

James also endlessly covers material we already know. Four year old Christian doesn't like to be touched exactly the way grown up Christian doesn't like to be touched? WHO KNEW? He's excited to eat dinner because he's so used to being hungry? YOU DON'T SAY. He is fascinated by the piano and helicopters and he has nightmares about his birth mother when he goes to sleep? YOU GUYS I HAVE SO MUCH INSIGHT INTO HIS CHARACTER NOW THIS EPILOGUE IS SUCH A REVELATION.

And then there is this paragraph:

I have seen pictures of Santa. But Santa never brought me presents before. I was bad. Santa doesn't bring presents to boys who are bad. Now I am good. My new mommy says I am good, very good. New Mommy doesn't know. I must never tell New Mommy...but I am bad. I don't want New Mommy to know that.

So here we have a four year old who has interpreted his mother's neglect as something he did, and who has made a deliberate and structured decision to hide his deep psychological scars from his mother. Four year olds have neither the logical capacity nor the emotional sophistication to make decisions with this sort of depth and internal reflection. The kind of secret a four year old is likely to keep is that he broke something, and he will be fucking terrible at it because small children have absolutely no concept of nuance. So not only does this second epilogue add absolutely nothing to our understanding of Christian, but it is in no way fucking believable as the perspective of a four year old. There is no point to this chapter other than to paint an abusive entitled asshole as a sympathetic character, as though tragedy in your childhood excuses you from acting like a fucked up syphilitic monkey dick as an adult. Fact: NO IT DOESN'T.

Ok. So. The final epilogue. This piece is called "Meet Fifty Shades" and it is...I don't know a word to describe the magnitude of my loathing for this chapter. BUT FIRST OF ALL: Allow me to now clear up a few errors I made as far as the timeline of this relationship in these fucking books. Because this chapter recounts the very beginning of Ana and Christian's relationship by retelling their first meeting and the first time he stalks her at work from Christian's perspective AND IT IS AWFUL. But that is not my first point. My first point is that the very first thing on the very first page of this is the date on the day of the interview when Ana first meets Christian. This date was not explicit in the original book - I made some educated guesses based on events going on in Ana's life such as finals and graduation.

Christian and Ana met for the very first time on May 9, 2011. Now, in the last few official pages of this book, Ana sends an email to Christian (from the next fucking room, instead of texting like every single other 22 year old in 2011 would have done because James is an out of touch middle aged asshat who I would say is way past her prime except that would imply that she'd ever had a prime) to tell him it's TIME FOR SEX, and that e-mail is dated September 21, 2011. That is 19 weeks - roughly four and a half months. I did a little flipping back through the book and found another email from Ana to Christian from while they were living on the yacht during their honeymoon dated August 17. This is at least two weeks into their honeymoon, as she has already said they spent a week in London and a week in Paris, so the very latest they could have gotten married was August 3rd, a whopping three months from when they first met. In three months she KNEW there would NEVER BE ANYONE ELSE FOR HER. This ALSO means that all of the completely insane bullshit that went on in this book took place in the space of ONE FUCKING MONTH. You guys JACK BAUER does not have this action packed of a fucking life. I'm too tired of James' total inability to understand how time works to do any more of the math, but I suspect that if I had enough interest in working it all out, there would not be enough hours in one month to actually cover all of the things that supposedly happen in this one.

Ok, so setting aside the fact that James doesn't own a calendar or even a clock for that matter, this is still not the worst part of the entire experience. This chapter was fucking horrible THE FIRST TIME I read it, in no way shape or form was I prepared to have to read the entire goddamn thing AGAIN. So this time around, we start out in Christian's office pre-interview. He is staring out the window thinking about his existential boredom: "...the familiar ennui seeps into my consciousness." This is supposed to be an ACTUAL THOUGHT a person had about himself. He segueways this thought into James' characteristic blatant foreshadowing: he is SO BORED of everything, what he needs is some sort of distraction in his life. Where oh where will he ever find any such thing? Maybe if we keep reading we'll all find out together! He suddenly remembers he has an interview with some annoying college student, and is disproportionately angry about it (which he takes out on his assistant whose fault it is most definitely not because the entire point of being the boss is that you get to be a dick to everyone for no reason other than to amuse yourself). He hates interviews, and I genuinely love this bit, because do you want to know why he hates interviews? I assure you that you do. Christian loathes (his word) interviews because he hates having to answer, AND I QUOTE, "inane questions from inane, ill-informed, vacuous idiots." In that case I have some VERY distressing news, Mr. Grey.

As we already know, because we ALREADY READ THIS, Ana comes tripping through the door. Christian claims he is fascinated by her immediately, but I can't for the life of me understand why he thinks this since he alternates comments about how fascinated he is with comments about how he doesn't like ONE SINGLE FUCKING THING ABOUT THIS GIRL. She has no dress sense at all (her clothes look like they're from Walmart, or even (gasp of horror) Old Navy!). She is inhumanly clumsy. She brought a digital recorder to the interview like some sort of fucking cave man. She hasn't done one single shred of research on him before this interview (I know, right? I'm totally with you on that one, C-man.). She has "not one iota of originality". Her attitude is pissing him off. She doesn't even seem to know her own questions. I agree, entirely, with this part of Christian's assessment of Ana. What's harder for me to fathom is how ANY of those observations make her seem interesting. She's so dumb and doesn't even know the question she's about to ask him, but when she looks at a painting and makes the completely empty, meaningless and idiotic statement  "The ordinary raised to the extraordinary.", Christian's reaction is to decide she is obviously, like, wicked smart. This doesn't make any sense. In fact, the only thing that I can even imagine would have caused him to give her one instant of his attention is the fact that she's really pretty. Like, fucking stunningly beautiful. To me, and to anyone who has met other human beings, this makes complete sense: Hey look, a fucking gorgeous woman! I totally want to fuck the shit out of that! Right? That's a totally reasonable reaction to expect. But shitballs if Christian isn't entirely flummoxed by his visceral sexual reaction to an attractive person with nothing else to offer in the way of being interesting. He DOES NOT UNDERSTAND why he keeps thinking sexual thoughts about her. Every time I look at this hot piece of ass, I get a tingly feeling in my penis! WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING TO ME???? This is a 28 year old man whose main fucking hobby is having rough sex with women who all look nearly exactly like this one. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE HIM BE THINKING THOUGHTS LIKE THIS? Is James just fucking insane? I mean forget about having ever met an actual grown ass man in her entire life, hasn't she ever seen one single sitcom, movie, or advertisement for literally anything ever? MOST DUDES DIG SEX, JAMES, PARTICULARLY WITH PEOPLE THEY ARE SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO AND THERE IS NO REASON FOR CHRISTIAN TO BE *SURPRISED* BY HIS OWN MOTHERFUCKING BONER.

I'm not going to recount the entire plot for you again since this is not our collective first rodeo. However, I would like to say, to E.L. James directly: Hey, I know you are writing the exact same scene a second time, but maybe you could do it without using the EXACT VERBATIM THOUGHTS the other character in the scene had the first time around. Specifically, maybe you could have Christian NOT think the thought "Unable to keep the amusement out of my voice as I recall her less-than-elegant entrance into my office..." when in the first book you had Ana thinking "Obviously, he's referring to my earlier less-than-elegant entry into his office." because that's THE EXACT SAME THING YOU ALREADY WROTE WORD FOR FUCKING WORD. And this happens throughout the whole entire chapter. On the inside, Christian sounds like a naive, vapid, dipshit, space-cadet, shallow preteen girl. All James did was do a find and replace in Word and change "Ana" to "Christian" and then republish the exact same fucking scene. I mean, come on, you're not even trying anymore.

So anyway, here's the part that we haven't read before (although in fairness to our own intelligence and James' face-palmingly transparent writing style, we do already know about it). Ana leaves the interview, and Christian immediately gets on the phone and tells his private investigator he needs a background check. The next page contains the results of said background check. And as we already wearily know what to expect, it is not real on so many levels. The report contains her date of birth, address, phone number, social security number, GPA, SAT scores (2150 by the way. NOT FUCKING LIKELY as she isn't sure what is or isn't an element or that helicopters can fly at night or basic geography), place of employment, family background, and bank account details, including the balance of her account. Now maybe James doesn't know this because it would involve some fucking research, but in America, your bank account number is not something you just bandy about. There aren't really direct payments between personal accounts and you don't give anyone your account number so they can send you money that way. Similarly, banks do not just give out account numbers or balances to people at random, or in most circumstances, to anyone without a subpoena or a court order. I double checked this because  unlike James I prefer not to talk out of my ass. Direct from information provided by several private investigating firms, digging up people's bank balances without cause and under false pretenses is very fucking illegal. So Christian's guy that knows how to get any kind of information you could possibly ask about is quite probably a dangerous criminal, and really, probably someone Christian wouldn't actually want to have too much association with anyway since if he can get that kind of information about Ana and Jack Hyde and anyone else Christian wants to stalk, he can certainly discover all kinds of shit about Christian's life. There is also a section on Ana's religious affiliation (not found), sexual orientation (unknown) and relationship status (none indicated). This is stuff that would be hard to figure out without following someone around, or at least it was before Facebook, but since I think we can safely assume Ana is not on any sort of social media given that she doesn't have an email address or apparently even internet access at all before Christian buys her a laptop, I don't understand how he got any of that information either.

There is one thing in the report that explains a bit of why Ana didn't bother to get to know her abuser husband before she married him after three months: her mother's relationship history consists mostly of marrying men for a few months, divorcing them, and marrying the next one a few weeks later, so the idea of spending more than ten fucking minutes with someone before you marry them is pretty foreign to her.

So then Christian goes to the hardware store to stalk her, which he knows he is doing, but decides not to tell his psychiatrist because, you know, he might try to stop Christian from acting like a terrifying psychopath. He proves himself to be the horribly irresponsible Dom I've believed him to be all along with his internal thoughts about his shitty BDSM shopping list: "You'd be amazed what I can do with a few cable ties, Miss Steele." OO OO ME PICK ME! Is it permanent nerve damage? DING DING DING I WIN. He continues playing his insane "Haha I'm asking you for things to do with sex that you don't know have anything to do with sex" game in an attempt to get her to be interested in him, despite the fact that he KNOWS she's interested in him because she keeps blushing and can't look at him and he keeps mentioning it over and over again. He wonders if he should just ask her on a date like a fucking normal person but decides against it because then James wouldn't have been able to write three entire books based on an entirely implausible premise. He also continues to be impressed with things that are not impressive. For example, she knows how to tie a slipknot you guys! SHE WORKS IN A GODDAMN HARDWARE STORE. Are you so fucking stupid that you don't realize that someone whose job is to be able to coil rope should actually be able to coil rope, or is this just misogyny dressed up as a compliment? A GIRL CAN TIE KNOTS?? I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THEY HAD ENOUGH FINGERS FOR THAT. Then Ana's coworker walks in. Remember Paul, you guys? The perfectly nice all American boy next door who Ana rejected for not being a wealthy entitled cock "literary hero"? Yeah Christian proves that he is a REAL DOM by being immediately threatened by someone he can clearly see Ana is not interested in: "Who the hell is this prick? (How dare she know another person on the entire earth who owns a penis? I WILL CUT SOMEONE.)...Get your motherfucking paws off her. (LOL 'paws'? Note to self - don't buy Ana a male kitten, Christian will rip its head off and punt it.)...Yeah that's me, you prick. (You better fucking know who I am! Also the only insult I know is 'prick')". He finally leaves the store without ever mentioning to her that he hearts her SO BIG and sulks that he'll just have to wait....AGAIN... and see if she wants to meet him for a photoshoot. I CAN'T HAVE AN ANSWER TO A QUESTION I DIDN'T ACTUALLY ASK RIGHT THIS SECOND? LIFE IS SO FUCKING UNFAIR.

And then...that's it. It just ends like that, except for an italicized note directly from E.L. James her motherfucking self: "That's all...for now." I was all set to complain about yet another epic anticlimax when she slipped that "for now" in there and ruined it. What do you mean "for now"? Does that mean you're going to write another thing at some point? Because don't. Do not. EVER. Write another thing. Don't make a list, don't sign a birthday card, and for the love of god don't even think about sex with a pen in your hand ever again.

In summary, this book is exactly as bad as the other two books except that it's worse, and what we all need to do now is to KILL IT WITH FIRE. You bring the books and the matches; I'll bring the rage and the marshmallows. We should at least get some toasted marshmallows out of this fucking horseshit.

_______________

So StereoNinja and I started working on our Super Secret Project over the weekend. It's going really well so far and I can't wait for you to see it.

Fifty Shades Trailer Review

The Fifty Shades movie trailer came out on Thursday, and while I did record myself reviewing it, the only funny thing that came out of it was when I gave it "one thumb...up your butt". StereoNinja and I have come up with a better idea for a video than that, but it's going to take some real effort so it might be a while, however it will be worth it. Having said that, I do still want to do a review of the trailer.

First of all, let me start off by saying to the gentlemen of the audience, I am so so sorry you are going to have to sit through this on Valentine's Day next year. Although you'll probably get mega-laid afterwards so maybe it won't be so bad. On the other hand, you were probably getting laid for Valentine's Day anyway so it's still pretty bogus.

WORST PARTS (other than the fact that there even is a Fifty Shades movie at all): The entire first half of the trailer is all clips taken from the scene where they first meet. This seems like a lot to me, but then again it is the set up to the entire piece of shit story. But the part where she's telling him there's nothing to say about herself and then says "I mean, look at me" and the camera holds on her face for forever...oh my god I laughed SO HARD. NO SERIOUSLY, WATCH CLOSELY WHILE I TRY TO LOOK PATHETIC. Is it working yet? IS IT? BECAUSE I AM VERY PLAIN AND I CAN PROVE IT. Also at the end of the interview when she gets in the elevator, the music dramatically swells like something important is going to happen...and then it just resolves into a photoshoot of Christian.

The part of the movie that everyone is waiting for is the kinky sex parts, obvs. So it's a colossal letdown that those scenes are flashed at us so fast you can barely tell what's happening in them (it's not a lot) and the entire sequence takes up less than 4 seconds. The images are all very artistic and tame and it's hard to tell if it's because it's a trailer or if it's because that's all there is ever going to be.

BEST PARTS: I am sort of disappointed in myself over how much I am in LOVE with Beyonce's new version of "Crazy in Love" (I threw a medium sized hissy fit when I discovered I couldn't buy it on iTunes yet), but not as disappointed as I am in Beyonce for attaching herself to this shitty project. Also the cinematography doesn't suck, so that's a nice surprise. That's all I've got under "good things" though, which is to be expected - you can't build an enchanted castle out of a pile of stale turds.

So the actual movie next year...obviously I will have to sit through it and review it for you, but do you think we should try to have a group viewing in or near London or something? The meet up for the Fifty Shades party game was awesome, it would be great to do something like that again. Thoughts?

50 Shades Illogical

I read and review Fifty Shades Freed so you don't have to.

I don't even know where to begin. Maybe with the question I kept thinking over and over during this last section: I'M SORRY, WHAT?????

E.L. James spends the last two numbered chapters of her book trying to wrap everything up in a neat little package. SPOILER ALERT: SHE FAILS. Instead what happens is she creates more questions than she answers, and the few things she does answer have explanations that make NO SENSE. I mean, AT ALL. Seriously, even working from within the horrifying stereotypes she's set out for her characters and "why they are like this" the ultimate, core "reasons" why various people are so fucked up do not follow any known pattern of logic that has been discovered by either philosophy or science. It's like she just vomits words onto a page, has a look, and decides she's satisfied with that effort because she can see some bits of corn in there and she remembers there was corn in the salad she had for lunch a week ago Tuesday.

Chapter 24 begins in Ana's hospital room during breakfast. Side note: despite both being pregnant and constantly mentioning how much she feels like she's starving, Ana is still basically being force fed by Christian right to the end. I guess this is supposed to illustrate Christian's adorable bizarre hang ups about food and eating left over from when his mom was a crack whore and forgot to feed him, but all I can see is a 21 year old girl in deep denial about her dangerous and all consuming eating disorder. Anycrap, they are discussing the baby and Ana casually mentions that, hey, you know, you keep talking about this little boy we're going to be having but do you realize it's possible we could be having a girl? Which, hey good job Ana! The science totally supports your opinion for once! Christian is massively alarmed by this statement. I'm not sure if this literally just did not occur to him, like maybe thinks he ought to be able to control his sperm and make it so only the male ones can swim through sheer force of will because I AM THE MASTER OF MY HOUSE or something, or if having a girl is somehow the end of the world in his mind for any number of misogynist reasons. Personally, I am also alarmed because while no child of his is likely to be allowed their own personhood or encouraged to develop autonomy or even so much as their own opinion regardless of gender, I can totally see this guy insisting a daughter be denied an education so she never learns anything scary or meets another actual person, and only being allowed outside with a surgical mask over her face Michael Jackson style because someone might look at her. They have a conversation about how she needs to tell her parents she's pregnant, and then immediately following that scene speaks to both her father and her mother and never mentions it.

Ana's been given permission to go home and does. After a shower scene that includes no sex much to Ana's disappointment despite her being in a massive amount of pain, she casually mentions that she doesn't understand why Elizabeth was helping Jack. "I do," says Christian. And this is where E.L. James completely looses whatever tenuous grasp she'd had on how cause and effect actually works. Because, you see, it turns out that up until Ana kicked him in the balls, Jack Hyde habitually raped ALL of his assistants. Not just raped them, but beat and raped them because "he likes it rough". BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. He also videotaped his assaults on all these women. But not to have some kind of fucked up souvenir rapist trophy to relive his experiences like a serial killer does. No no no, the videos are for blackmail. Elizabeth was helping Jack try to kill people because she was being blackmailed with a video of...her own rape? Whuuuuuuut. I cannot, CANNOT wrap my head around this explanation. At no point are we given the impression that the sex Jack was having with his assistants was in any way consensual. He didn't seduce them and now they are embarrassed about it, he AT BEST coerced them through having power over their careers, and more likely ATTACKED them the same way he attacked Ana. Those videos aren't blackmail, they are EVIDENCE. That not one of these women thought "Hey I can go to the police and tell them my rapist made a video of my rape" is completely ludicrous in and of itself, but that their reaction INSTEAD was "Oh shit! There's evidence of my rapist raping me that would totally put him in jail where he can't attack me again, I guess my only choice is to help him MURDER PEOPLE" MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO DONKEY FUCKING SENSE. No. Just, no. I...no.

No.

Oh also in this scene, Christian decides to equate serial rape with a side of beatings with his own desire for consensual BDSM sex acts with happy and consenting women and concludes that he is pretty much the exact same amount of evil as Jack. ALSO NO. Also FUCK YOU.

Anyway, Ana reluctantly eats some soup, complains about not having sex, and takes a nap. When she wakes up, Christian has had a visit from his investigator dude and he is all shaken up because THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING. Except it doesn't. Doesn't explain anything; doesn't make any sense. Ok, so remember how Christian was born in Detroit and Jack Hyde is from Detroit? As I predicted, it turns out they have a past. In between the time that Christian's crack addicted mom died and the Greys adopted him, he was fostered for a couple of months by some nice family that likes helping children. Christian has no memory of this and is convinced it is because it was so traumatic that he blocked it out, despite remembering tons of stuff from when his mother was alive that actually was traumatic. Personally I think he doesn't remember it because it was something that happened for a very short period of time when he was 4 years old, the same way I have no specific memory of the first time I saw Cinderella. The nice family that was fostering him was also fostering some other kids at the same time. GUESS WHO ONE OF THEM WAS YOU GUYS. As proof, Christian shows Ana a photo. In it are the nice family and their foster kids, including a terrified little grey eyed boy, and another slightly older boy who is scowling at the camera with unbridled hatred. The scared one is Christian, the angry one is Jack Hyde. Because you can TOTALLY TELL from a photograph taken 25 years ago exactly what kind of people those kids will be today. But here's the thing: even if that was true, this photo does not fit with the follow up explanation. Because the reason Jack Hyde hates and wants to destroy Christian is because the Greys adopted him and not Jack. There's so much about that that doesn't make sense here. For one thing, the Greys were ALREADY in the process of adopting Christian. He was only in foster care because adopting a kid takes a lot of paperwork as the state of Michigan isn't in the business of just giving kids away to whoever. It's not like adopting a dog from the pound where a family just picks a dog and the dog in the next cage had just as much of a chance and if dogs were sentient it might totally resent the dog that got adopted. This adoption was ALREADY HAPPENING before they ended up in the same foster home. Also, this level of resentment is just not reasonable. Are we supposed to believe that a kid harbors so much resentment that someone got adopted "instead" of him that he spends the next 25 YEARS OF HIS LIFE trying to find that kid and kill him? WHO DOES THAT? Maybe that's not what happened, because Christian says Hyde didn't start stalking his family until a few weeks after Ana started working there. So he coincidentally employs the girlfriend of a former foster brother, realizes who Christian is AND THEN goes into a murderous rage over it 25 years after the fact? Neither of these scenarios make sense. And as for the photo, if the thing that triggered his hatred was Christian's adoption, and in the photo Christian is not yet adopted, what exactly is he so angry about? This explanation for Jack's behavior is about as clear as an elephant's turd and has roughly the same chance of passing the smell test.

After this revelation, Ana decides Christian needs to ask his parents about his time in foster care that he can't remember because for some reason she thinks this will completely change his life. So they call his parents and ask them to come over. They do, knowing what they are planning to talk about, but inexplicably bring Mia with them, who just as inexplicably calls everyone else to come over because Christian's parents coming over to help him through a major existential crisis is the perfect time to throw a fucking party at a house you don't live in. Champagne is in order because Ana is either Batman or Batman's dumb-enough-to-wander-into-a-dark-alley-looking-super-rich parents, and Ana has an angry internal monologue about how mean Christian is for not letting her get all crunk just because she's pregnant. No seriously. It's so mean of him to only let me have just a little champagne, I should get to endanger my baby if that's what I feel like pout pout. CHOKE ON MY METAPHORICAL NUTS, ANA. After everyone finally leaves and more "explanations" that don't make sense happen, Ana and Christian get ready for bed. Ana wants sex because that's the whole point of their entire relationship but Christian says no, he wants to tell her a bedtime story instead. He wants to tell her the story of: How the Evil Elena Seduced Me when I was 16 and it Ruined My Life. Because for NO REASON AT ALL this seems like a great time for that. Ready you guys? Once upon a time....END OF CHAPTER. ARE YOU SERIOUSLY STILL DOING THIS JAMES?

Chapter 25 begins with "I can barely breathe." (You're recovering from getting repeatedly kicked in the ribs, stop being surprised.) "Do I want to hear this?" Well, let's see. You've been saying you wanted to hear this since the first time he told you he was sub to an older woman TWO BOOKS ago, and have hounded him for the exact details he's about to finally tell you for months on a practically daily basis so, I don't know, PROBABLY? I, on the other hand, most decidedly DO NOT want to hear this because I already know it is going to be a steaming pile of stereotyped pathological bullshit nonsense psychobabble demonization just like everything else in these fucking books and I hate you with every scrap of hate I have available plus some hate others have loaned me temporarily so I could have the requisite amount of hate for it, which is a value that exceeds my own personal capacity to hate. Oh, by the way, Christian's eyes are "full of disquieting memories". He has pensieves for eyes I guess. She should have just stuck her face in his eyes months ago. The crap fest unfolds thusly: One day, teenage Christian was doing yard work at Mrs. Lincoln's house because reasons. "Out of nowhere" she brings him some lemonade (he says this happens "out of nowhere" immediately after saying he was doing backbreaking work shoveling rubble. If my best friend's son is doing convict level labor in my backyard, bringing him some lemonade is not "out of nowhere" it's "not being a dick"). Then she 1. slaps him across the face, 2. kisses him, 3. slaps him again, 4. walks off without comment or explanation. I have never been a 16 year old boy; I have no idea if slapping one across the face repeatedly is a good pick up line for seducing one. But it probably wouldn't be my opening volley. He goes on with the stuff about not liking being touched and he couldn't kiss the girls at school because they wanted to touch him, but Elena kissed him without otherwise touching him so it was ok. Ana assumes she "must have known" about the not wanting to be touched thing because Christian's mother had told her and concludes that she was using this knowledge to trick him into fucking her somehow. It makes no sense. Christian goes on. This sort of thing started happening more often. And here's where James completely jumps the shark, because Christian says this whole experience was really really helpful for his psychologically damaged teenage self and it fixed everything. Actual quote: "It was exactly what I needed." Another actual  quote: "And even when it was over, my world stayed in focus because of her." Wow. A woman who cared about you came into your life, found a way to reach you, helped you get through a lifetime of emotional trauma and allowed you to gain the piece of mind you had so desperately been longing for? THAT MUST HAVE BEEN FUCKING TERRIBLE FOR YOU. I am not kidding you guys. He credits this woman with fixing EVERYTHING wrong, which, somehow, was wrong and sick and bad and something he is now ashamed of. ANOTHER actual quote which follows the first two: "It was only recently that I saw our relationship for what it was." By this he means terrible and abusive. WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT? It was so helpful Ana! It solved all of my problems! WHAT A BITCH, AMIRITE? James, please explain to me, in clear language that follows a logical progression, how a relationship that turned a raging, self-destructive teenage borderline alcoholic into a calm, controlled, self-sufficient, successful individual is the worst thing that ever happened to him. BECAUSE THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL YOU INCOMPREHENSIBLE TWAT WAFFLE. Oh wait, nevermind. Here it is! Because in the middle of this conversation this sentence happens: "If you grow up with a wholly negative self-image, thinking you're some kind of reject, an unlovable savage, you think you deserve to be beaten (emphasis mine)." Oh, I see. So a relationship that restored a troubled youth to a reasonable degree of sanity was bad specifically because said relationship was BDSM based. This oh so helpful relationship was in fact not helpful at all because BDSM makes you a sick freak who doesn't deserve to be loved. Got it. Just one thing though:

FUCK THIS SO HARD.

No, seriously. Coat a giraffe in coarse sand and then shove its entire head and neck up your stupid shitty vagina. Yes, I said vagina, because "down there" is not what you call that when you're a fucking adult. Vagina. VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA.

After I put out the smoldering book that I accidentally set fire to when flames shot out of my eyes, the shit show continued. Christian now finally believes that Ana loves him, reason being she put herself in incredible danger for the sake of his family. You watch too many movies, Christian. In real life you can believe someone loves you based on their every day loving gestures without them having to put their self in mortal danger on your behalf. Christian also mentions that while he's happy about the baby, he's not sure yet if he will want further children. Ana freaks out in her head: "No...Not an only child. Not like me." This is the first time in this entire saga that Ana has made any sort of comment about having been unhappy about being an only child. When did this become a problem? You are supposed to be clearing all this shit up, James, not creating new pointless plot twists you'll forget about in ten seconds and never resolve. When Christian went to see Elena after the "how could you be so stupid getting pregnant" episode, Elena made a pass at him. Weird since they haven't had a sexual relationship in seven years, but he turned her down because he loves his wife, surprising both of them apparently. "It's been over since I laid eyes on you," he tells Ana. "I finally realized it that night and so did she." So, you didn't realize it was over until JUST NOW? You married someone else without being sure your other relationship was over? Classy! Then my favorite nonsensical plot point comes up again, that Christian feels that only a terrible garbage person would love their own mother if said mother was a prostitute with a drug problem. Toddlers should be excellent judges of character and should not condescend to love their parents if those parents have flaws or weaknesses. I don't understand this at all. I understand having issues related to his mother having failed him and then dying, but I do not understand how this translates into HE is a monster if he loved her anyway. Ana magnanimously decides she can now let this "Elena is a threat to everything" imaginary bullshit go (bet she can't!) and the horrifying conversation finally ends and they go to sleep.

The next morning, Ana wakes up alone. She is starving for sex. She is sure she hasn't gone this long without sex since ever. She is wrong about this: it's been roughly a week since she had sex. After the time he hit her with the belt and they broke up thus dramatically ending the first book, she didn't have sex for, I don't know, a month? It's September now in the book. She's only known this person for about, what, six, seven months? You have a remarkably shitty memory Ana, you should maybe sign up to lumosity.com or something. She wonders how someone as into sex as Christian is can have so much self control. She has spent three entire books telling us about how her husband has iron-fisted control over absolutely every single thing on the earth, this should not be a Scooby-Doo mystery for her. Is it because of THAT WOMAN? She's not sure. "We haven't spoken of the Bitch Troll once since his confession." I'm no expert Ana, but I think that's probably because that happened EIGHT HOURS AGO and you've been asleep since IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT CONVERSATION HAPPENED. After all this time, James can still surprise me with her astonishing inability to be internally consistent WITHIN THE SAME SENTENCE. She finds Christian in the kitchen and eats voluntarily for the first time in her entire life. Christian decides to take the day off work and they go over to see how work is progressing on their "green" but completely environmentally unfriendly house. On the way, she muses yet again on how laid back Christian has been since "the talk" (her quotes). For fear of repeating myself, Christian has only been awake for about two hours since that talk ended. James is writing these scenes as if months have gone by. She is the fucking worst at telling time. There is another example of this almost immediately. Construction is going well, and Christian's brother thinks they can be in the house by Christmas. Ana is excited; she can totally see her new baby boy looking up at the giant Christmas tree in wonder! I'm not sure why she can see this since she's five weeks pregnant and Christmas is three months from now. You are not going to have a baby at Christmas time, you are not even going to be halfway through your pregnancy. Please explain how you managed to get past the 2nd grade without being able to count to nine. After the house tour, they go outside for a picnic, during which Christian learns that it was Elena's ex-husband who posted Jack Hyde's bail, so immediately has his company destroyed, as you do. I don't know what this has to do with anything. There is no need for this plot point and she doesn't do anything to explain how this happened or why. How does he know Jack Hyde? Why is he only helping to kill Christian now when he caught him with Elena eight years ago and is long divorced from her? Why are we just now finding out that he used to beat the living shit out of her? Why does Christian own the majority shares of his company? What the fuck does Christian mean by "consolidate the shares into GEH"? (Investment expert hat on again: You can't just take shares you own of one company and decide they are now shares of a completely different company. That's not a thing. I can't even imagine what kind of business transaction James is trying to illustrate with this sentence.) I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS. Ana is scared? impressed? at Christian's impulse for vengeance and ability to take down another man's entire life with one phone call, so it's TIME FOR SEX, which happens on the lawn presumably in full view of the entire construction crew. It is boring, but leads to a conversation about something Christian had said the night before about missing BDSM sex. Suddenly she has no problem with it! Now that she's "saved" him from wanting it and stuffed him into prison of shame and guilt over it, it will totally be fun! Right? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

The last scene in the book proper is them going back into the sex room to do kinky sex things because since kinky sex is super bad for him they should totally start having it again. Or something. I don't know. I'm so used to her chapters ending in "dramatic" cliffhangers that when she actually finishes one like a normal human being I am totally confused. Also, I've been hammered over the head for THREE FUCKING BOOKS about how BDSM means you are both a broken damaged victim and a horrible rapist monster at the same time and it is something you must be rescued from and can ONLY be rescued from by the love of a selfless and determined woman. Why is this even happening? YOU JUST SAID THIS WAS BAD. The actual sex scene isn't in there, it's just suggestive talk up to the door of the room followed by another syrupy and moronic declaration of love for her abusive dipshit husband. AAAAAND SCENE.

THAT'S the ending? You've left so much unexplained. The eight million questions I have about this thing with Elena's ex-husband. Since when is Ana upset at being an only child? What's happening with Jack Hyde? Will Ana have to testify? Why won't you tell your parents you're pregnant? Why is BDSM suddenly ok now? How does Christian know everything and have more access to people's secret information than the fucking NSA? Is he Biff Tannen? What happened to all the shit about Ana not wanting to run a company and Christian insisting on buying it for her? Why can't you understand the passage of time? Why does anyone think Ana is smart or good at anything? Why does being a billionaire make abuse romantic? WHAT JUST HAPPENED YOU GUYS?

There's actually three more chapters, but they are all epilogues of sorts and I will address them all in another post. I will also, at StereoNinja's suggestion, be doing a video review of the new Fifty Shades movie trailer that's supposed to come out roughly now, so there's that to look forward to.

50 Shades Absurd

After a long absence, the penultimate review of Fifty Shades Freed, read by me so you don't have to.

Here's what this book is doing to me: in the three chapters that I read for this review, a husband threatens to rape his wife but the only part I got upset about was that E.L. James has no fucking idea how banking works. I'm a monster.

When we last saw our heroine asshole, she was (dramatically at the end of a chapter) staring at a completely benign and innocuous but for its originator text message on a phone belonging to her husband that she "accidentally" turned on. Chapter 21 begins with her reacting with the kind of despair normally reserved for finding out your house burned to the ground with your whole family inside. She curls up in a fetal position and sobs while rocking back and forth. James actually writes "I rock to and fro" as if that's something people say. Her husband freaked out about a pregnancy neither of them wanted which was caused by her own awe-inspiring irresponsibility, and ran to a woman who was a very important and influential figure in his life for practically his entire life, and everything is ruined now forever. There is only one thing to do and that thing is to attempt to deliberately upset herself even further by going through ALL of Christian's text messages and emails. She is relieved to find nothing else from "the Bitch Troll" (actually capitalized! Like a fun title!) and apropos of nothing, none from Leila either. What she does find is an email terrible plot device from someone who can't write a fucking story from an investigator about the comings and goings of one Jack Hyde, attempted rapist and failed murderer extraordinaire. There is absolutely no point to this email being where it is. She reads it and immediately goes back to speculating on WHAT IT ALL MEANS and how horrible everything is now that her panicked husband did a shitty but completely understandable thing and goes to sleep in another room because LOLZ HE'LL WAKE UP AND BE SO SCARED I'M NOT RIGHT WHERE HE LEFT ME SRSLY I AM SO MATURE HAHAHAHAHAHA.

She's right though. When she emerges the next day, she finds that the entire staff has been combing the desert looking for her, though no one thought it would be a good idea to check the sex room. You know, the one with a bed in it that would be a totally likely place for someone who didn't appear on the security footage as leaving the house to likely be sleeping in. She ignores Christian's repeated attempts to have a mature and rational conversation about the pregnancy while she gets dressed for work. With extra sexy dressing activities because, you know, that's the kind of thing you take great pains to do when you're so angry at your husband you're thinking of leaving him. In the middle of this, she tells him about the text message she found and accuses him of "spinelessly" running off to fuck Elena, confirms his greatest fear by telling him she DOES choose the baby over him, and then goes mega pot/kettle on his ass by claiming that he, HE!, is the one behaving like a "petulant adolescent". Christian's attempt to solve this problem is by being all "You bring up an interesting point, let's fuck about it and see what happens" and Ana for once turns him down. No problem, says Christian, I'll just rape you then. Of course he didn't literally say "How 'bout I rape you instead?" The ACTUAL FOR REAL exchange, and it is clear from Ana's inner monologue that the reader is supposed to be SUPER FUCKING TURNED ON by it, is this:

"Don't even think about it, Grey."
"You're my wife."
"...if you touch me I will scream the place down."
"You'd scream?"
"Bloody murder."
"No one would hear you."

You guys. "You're my wife"? That hasn't been a legal excuse for rape in decades, and hasn't been a legitimate one since, um, EVER. But no matter, "No one would hear you." NO ONE WOULD HEAR YOU. Because when I want to rape my wife, Imma fucking rape the shit out of my wife, man! Ain't no stopping THIS rape train! LET'S DO THIS. I'm not saying I had even one shred of respect for E.L. James as either a writer or a woman before this, but I felt like maybe I should get some respect for her just so I could lose it again because she wrote, in a book, that people were meant to read, that rape. Is. Sexy. I hate everything.

Anyway, he nobly backs down and decides not to rape her after all. She goes to work and comes home and goes to bed before Christian and he's already gone when she wakes up the next day. She doesn't hear from him until she gets a terse email at work telling her he's flying to Portland for work. It's while she's over reacting to this that she takes a call she thinks is from Mia. But it's not Mia. It turns out to be Jack Hyde. Calling from Mia's phone. How odd! Gee, now that I think about it, Jack calling her from Mia's phone seems kind of ominous. Should we go to the next paragraph? Of course not! There is no next paragraph! It's merely the end of the chapter!

Ugh.

Anyway, Chapter 22. Jack has kidnapped Mia and if Ana doesn't bring him $5 million in the next two hours he's gonna kill Mia and maybe rape her first for good measure. And of course, she shouldn't call the cops or her security guards or anything because he'll totally know. Which is kind of a pointless instruction because these people NEVER call the police, so why would she start now? But whatever. The scary man wants the arbitrary value of $5 million, she's gonna give him $5 million. She leaves work and goes back to the house to get the checkbooks (plural) and conveniently discovers that Mr. Guns Are Bad still has an unlocked and fully loaded pistol just sitting there in the desk drawer. Mrs. Guns Are Great If You Know How To Use Them Safely does the safe thing and shoves it down the back of her pants, presumably with the safety off. I hope she shoots her own ass off. She then sneaks out of the house to go to the bank with security hot on her heels but as always one step behind.

Okay. So I used to work at the investment arm of a bank. And before that I worked in investments for years and had to deal with banks. And before THAT I've had a checking account since I was a teenager and have been to an actual bank. Let's just say I'm familiar with how going to the bank works. E.L. James clearly is not. Here's what happens. Ana gets to "the bank". I have no idea if this is a branch bank or the main bank building for this particular bank because she never says, but let's give her the benefit of the doubt that this is the main bank. She walks in and asks to withdraw $5 million. The manager, correctly, tells her that you generally need to give notice to withdraw that much money, but incorrectly follows up with, "Fortunately, however, we hold the cash reserve for the entire Pacific Northwest". No. No you absolutely do not. Because that isn't how fractional reserve banking works. Even if you are the main branch of this particular bank which for some reason keeps their entire cash reserve in one building, you do not hold the cash reserves for every commercial bank in the pacific northwest because you are not the central bank and that is not how banking works and it doesn't work that way because to do so would be colossally, unfathomably stupid. But James is just warming up. He next asks her for ID and she gives him her driver's license which still says "Anastasia Steele" on it. Her name on the account, of course, is "Anastasia Grey". But this also is not a problem because, hey here's my Amex card with my new name on it! And the bank manager is like, "Oh, cool that totally works. You said $5 million right?" THIS IS ALSO NOT HOW A BANK WORKS. If I walked into a bank with the wrong name on my ID and tried to withdraw even 500 dollars from my account they would not give it to me. You are asking them to hand over $5 million.And a piece of plastic that has a name stamped on it, but no picture of your fucking face is not a legitimate, legally acceptable form of "ID". IT'S JUST A CREDIT CARD. If the store you're shopping at is doing what they should be doing, they will be asking you for an actual ID when you try to buy something with that card, and if your name doesn't match they will not let you buy the thing. And that is a store. This is a bank. The bank is not going to hand you $5 million on the strength of your name being on a credit card, especially if you've already established that the name on the card is different from the one on your ID. But not this bank, this bank is all "Totes!" The bank manager tells her she'll have to write a check to cash and given all the other more egregious problems here, I should probably skip over the part where withdrawing $5 million from a checking account requires more paperwork than that and said paperwork would include a withdrawal slip or similar which would negate the need to write out a check, but I'm not going to because also, it is not normal to keep $5 million in a checking account in the first place. There are better and safer account types to keep that kind of money in while still remaining relatively liquid and therefore writing a check to cash in this situation is not a likely story. OH BUT IT GETS EVEN BETTER. The bank manager has at least enough sense to call Christian and ask him what the fuck is going on. I'm going to let slide the "you can't authorize transactions of that magnitude over the phone" because the bank manager called him and not the other way around, but, eh, probably this wouldn't happen at a real bank either. It turns out I was right about not keeping $5 million in a checking account because Christian authorizes him to liquidate $5 million worth of assets to cover Ana's withdrawal request. No mention of what particular assets he wants to liquidate. I'm curious because different types of securities have different levels of liquidity. Without getting too shop talky, the time between placing an order to have your assets liquidated and the amount of time it takes to process that request, sell the securities, and hand you the cash can take as much as three days depending on what you want to sell. Even if it's a more liquid security than that, the lag time from order to cash in hand on $5 million worth of transactions is going to be longer than the approximately five minutes this transaction seemed to take. Sorry but THAT IS NOT HOW A BANK WORKS. AND HAVE I MENTIONED THAT ALL OF THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON WHILE SHE HAD A LOADED GUN SHOVED DOWN THE BACK OF HER FUCKING PANTS? IN A GODDAMN BANK? Anyway, while all this shady bullshit at the First National Bank of Ludicrously Unlikely Transactions is going on, the bank manager hands the phone to Ana to talk to Christian who is understandably confused and wants to know what's going on. This would have been the perfect opportunity to mention that Jack Hyde has his sister and maybe he should use his magical problem solving skills to find her and helicopter her the hell out of there or something, but Jack said not to tell him, so instead she decides the best thing to do is upset him by telling him she needs the money because she's leaving him. Not "I'll tell you later" or "It's a surprise" or even "Just trust me on this ok?" No. The only answer she can think of to give him is "Fuck off, asshole, I'm taking your money and your baby and I hate your fucking guts." Afterwards Jack calls her back with instructions to take the money outside to his waiting van, get in it, and throw away her cell before she gets in. The bank has two courier guys carry the money out for her in several bags, saving me the trouble of complaining about how a girl that hasn't eaten in months and weighs about the same as a broomstick carried 110 pounds worth of cash all by herself and also the volume of that much cash totes fit in one sack, but I do suspect that this was for story telling purposes and not necessarily because James realized lack of strength would prevent the first thing and physics the second.

Ana dutifully throws a cell phone in the trash and gets in the van which is being driven by Elizabeth from work, because, apparently, Jack has some "dirt" on her. They drive to Jack's remote location and when they get there, Jack starts beating the crap out of her. He pushes her to the ground where she hits her head hard enough to pass out...but not before she can pull out her gun and shoot him in his kneecap! Hooray! And also not before...yes...you know it....Christian comes running up out of nowhere LIKE A MIRACULOUS PHANTOM to dramatically hold her while she loses consciousness! Wait, wasn't he in Portland? How did he get there in the, like, 15 minutes since he was just on the phone with her? It DOESN'T MATTER, you guys. ROMANCE.

I really thought the banking thing was going to be the low point of this writing. I was immediately wrong. Chapter 23 features literally THE WORST and most contrived plot device I have ever read in a published volume. Ana is in the hospital. She is in the hospital because she has a skull fracture, "a major contusion to the head", and I imagine probably a concussion because generally you do not hit your head heard enough to be (mostly) unconscious for DAYS and NOT have a concussion. But how does one advance a plot when the first person narrator is unconscious for two entire days? Well, you do that by having her just barely wake up for a few seconds at a time JUST IN TIME to hear bits of conversations people are bizarrely having in the room with her that all coincidentally happen to advance the plot. And of course if she's unconscious for two whole days, you do this EIGHT TIMES. IN A ROW. And NOT ONLY do you advance the plot through convenient windows of consciousness EIGHT TIMES IN A ROW, but you also close EVERY ONE of those vignettes with a vomit inducing overly dramatic return to unconsciousness :

1."...unconsciousness claims me once more, stealing me away from the pain."
2."The fog closes in."
3."I fight the fog...fight...But I spiral down once more into oblivion. No..."
4."The fog surrounds me once more and I'm dragged down...down. No!"
5."The world dips and blurs and I'm gone."
6."Oh...the darkness closes in. No-"
7."Sweet oblivion beckons."
8."I try. I try. I want to see him. But my body disobeys me, and I fall asleep once more."

I can't even process this. Just, why? WHY would you write this this way? You couldn't have just had people TELL HER ALL THESE THINGS WHEN SHE WOKE UP? And the seemingly random italics...how did you decided which words out of these mini shit parades should be in italics? When I do it, it's for emphasis. When you do it...I don't know, I just can't tell. By the way, in my head I do all these noes in Luke Skywalker's voice when he finds out Darth Vader is his father. It's the only way I can go on.

Anycunt, what we find out in this awful, AWFUL, expositional stunt is that Christian really does want the baby, Mia is recovering from being roofied but is otherwise fine, Elizabeth is telling the police everything, everyone thinks Ana is practically the goddamn Batman, and Christian's mom thinks he should say sorry to Ana when she wakes up for being a total piece of shit. The fact that this plot device was not necessary to advance the story is proved when Christian tells her even more things when she finally does wake up, like that Jack and Elizabeth have been arrested and how they figured out where she was (the cell phone she threw out was the bank manager's; she had cleverly hidden hers inside the bags of money so the people who she hadn't told she was in trouble could track it if they figured it out on their own which of course they did.) Since Christian has decided he wants the baby (that neither one of them wanted three days ago) all the stuff about Elena is forgiven without ever really being explained, and the rest of the chapter is just gross things James thinks are romantic, like Christian not letting her pee without him standing there and forcing food on her that directly contradicted her doctor's orders, you know, typical abusive dick moves, swoon swoon. The chapter ends with more typical Christian self-flagellation about how he'll be a terrible father because he's a total piece of shit (though in his defense, he's right) and a nauseating conversation about whether they should name their child "Junior" or "Blip". Personally I would name it "Get adopted by mature responsible people who are way more suitable to be parents than we are" but god forbid anything logical or healthy happen in this entire fucking trilogy.

-----

So anyway, sorry I made you wait seven or eight months for that. There's really only one more left of the actual book, and then I understand there are something like three different epilogues to the story which will probably get covered as a bonus post. Those should come with much shorter breaks in between as I am now using "getting to blog" as an incentive to write my actual dissertation. On that front, I am not going to lie, I am finding it massively difficult to write about the BDSM/romance aspects of the books without making snide comments about how everything else about these people is also stupid. Because seriously, everything in these is so fucking stupid.

MAJOR NEWS!

GUESS WHAT EVERYBODY. I am about to post the long awaited second (or maybe third) to last Fifty Shades Freed review. I know you probably think I forgot about it or gave up, but I didn't, I just had a combination depression/school is hard and takes up a lot of time/everything in my whole life changed at the same time and I freaked out/ wait, where did all my money go so fast? thing going on, and I could barely face blogging AT ALL, let alone writing exceptionally long blog posts about something that I genuinely hate reading and/or thinking about. But I finally got around to writing the review for the chapters I read last November and it's going up in about five minutes, with all the typos and grammatical errors still in it that I will fix after it's posted because for some reason I can see my errors better on the blog itself than I can in compose mode. I don't know, it's a thing. So, yeah. Posting that now. Thought I should warn you. Tell your friends that have given up on me to please come back.

Fifty Shades Of Dissertation Research

So here's what I've decided on the dissertation front: I'm going to compare Fifty Shades of Grey with the movie Secretary in their portrayals of BDSM and in the responses each got from the public in an effort to determine whether mainstream portrayals of BDSM relationships are creating a more relaxed attitude toward it or just reinforcing negative stereotypes that already exist. I also thought you'd like to know that you all got a big mention in my dissertation proposal as my justification for undertaking this particular research project so thank you SO MUCH for being awesome.

Now that the dissertation proposal is done and I don't have another thing due until July, I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging including writing the last two or three Fifty Shades Freed reviews so I can get that off my docket and light the book on fire. I started writing one many months ago, but it's been so long I might have to actually go re-read those three chapters which is a special form of torture and TOTALLY not fair, but all I can remember about them is being upset with myself for having gotten more angry that E.L. James doesn't understand how a bank works than I did about a man explicitly threatening to rape his wife. Apparently E.L. James has turned me into some sort of horrible rape culture reinforcing monster, you know, like UKIP*.


*Dear Americans, hi. If this reference doesn't make sense to you, it is because our country's major news outlets are crap at covering international news unless it's too sensational to ignore. UKIP is a political party in the UK based on racism and reactionary conservative values, such as that it should totally not be illegal for a man to rape his wife and Romanians are like a plague of locusts and are going to come to the UK and eat all our food or something. I'm not sure exactly, they don't really make any sense and when they open their mouths a pile of bigoted diarrhea sprays out so I try not to stand too close to any of them. Anyway, that's what I was referencing. Straddling two cultures is hard y'all.

Just Where The Hell I Have Been

I turned in both of my papers yesterday. It was much easier for me this time than it was the last time I had two papers due on the same day, less because I had done it before than because I cared about them differently than last time. I say "differently" because last term I had the weird experience of having one class that I thought was brilliant - I had strong opinions which were typically diametrically opposed to everyone else in the class and a massive crush on my teacher, and the other class that I spent every single moment of wishing "class" was something you could stab in the face. So when it was paper time, I was riled up and excited to write a paper on the UK's extreme pornography ban and why it is a load of complete and utter bullshit, and the other paper...well, I just gave no fuck whatsoever about that paper, so I just filled it with buzzwords like "discourse" and "paradigm" and my person favorite "lived experience" and turned it in. I had done the exact same thing on the annotated bibliography I'd had to write for the class earlier in the term and received a merit for it so I figured, you know, fuck it.

I now need to begin work on my dissertation, a task that would be much easier if I had ANY IDEA AT ALL what to write it on. My first instinct was, of course, Fifty Shades seeing as I am apparently one of the world's leading experts on how bad it sucks. But "Fifty Shades of Grey: No Seriously, What the Fuck?" is not an appropriate or even reasonably narrow topic and also the main piece of advice on picking a dissertation topic seems to be "pick something you like because you're going to eat, sleep and breathe that fucking subject for the next six months" and I think we've pretty well established that Fifty Shades of Grey is decidedly NOT something I like. I like being semi-internet famous for creative swearing and pushed to the top of reddit lists, but that is not likely to factor into dissertation research so much. So anyway, about three weeks from now I need to turn in a dissertation proposal roughly the length of a module essay on something to do with "gender" or "sexuality" and I have precisely ZERO thoughts on what that topic should be. SO I;ve got that going for me.

Now, since it's been so long, let me switch topics on you entirely and go back to complaining about my adopted country. Which I LOVE by the way - I know I complain about how homesick I am and how everything is too "not-America", but I do genuinely love it here (the sheep across the river had some lambs and I can hear them from my bedroom and the lambs run around all cute and small and then randomly jump up in the air for NO REASON and it is fantastic; in related nature news, the two gay ducks (we think they are gay because they are both boys and are never, ever more than about three feet from one another so they are obviously a couple) that hang out in our marina have taken to coming right up to the kitchen door begging from bread and one of them will eat it right out of your hand). Having said that, I would now like to complain bitterly about Easter and daytime television.

As Easter approached, I asked StereoNinja why the stores had put out all of the Easter basket stuff yet and was greeted with a blank stare followed by "what is an Easter basket?" Because Easter baskets are NOT A THING. You know what you get here? A chocolate egg. One. THAT IS IT. And unlike a chocolate bunny, that egg is hollow, my friends. It probably has less total chocolate volume than a regular candy bar. In Chicago I made StereoNinja buy real Easter baskets with real Easter basket stuff for his children because I found the situation so unacceptable. But wait, there's more! Even worse than that atrocity is the fact the coloring Easter eggs is ALSO NOT A THING. I just...I don't even...WHY DON'T YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO HAVE ANY FUN, ENGLAND? So I bought the Paas color cups when we were in Chicago so as to show StereoNinja & Spawn (TM) what they were missing. And then immediately ran into another problem: all the eggs are brown. Finding a white chicken egg in this country is harder than finding a burrito. I eventually figured out that Whole Foods in Kensington was selling them, but not until AFTER they had already sold out. StereoNinja went and got some white duck eggs from somewhere, which I discovered don't really work as they are quite translucent and not nearly as permeable. Plus then you have a house full of duck eggs which I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with. So apart from the fantastic ham I made, Easter was a kind of a disaster.

Now then: being a full time graduate student and not having a job means that I spend a lot of time at home during the day with the television on in the background for some noise so I don't go crazy and I have to say, there is NOTHING ON TELEVISION DURING THE DAY. Seriously, nothing worth watching unless you count Top Gear reruns I've seen a thousand times. Mainly all there seems to be are episodes of Charmed and an Australian soap opera call Neighbours. Everyone else at home in the day must be bored too, because what I really wanted to complain about is the sheer volume of commercials for a. online casinos and b. predatory loan companies. It is pretty much ALL they advertise during the day, one right after another. I can't help feeling like these things are related, and that they are preying on the weak as I would assume a significant percentage of the daytime television audience is made up of people who are out of work. Frankly, I think that's pretty shitty and I'm not sure why that's being allowed but watching BDSM torture porn on the internet in your own home is is not.

Coming up: Things I did in Chicago, as soon as I can remember what those things are.

A Question Deserves An Answer

Anonymous said... 

Where for art thou Amberance? 

10:49 PM 

Very good question, anonymous. It's been a rough couple of months. Moving to a new country, even one that you love, is emotionally more difficult than it is possible to prepare for. Christmas, which is normally my FAVORITE THING IN THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD, was mostly a nightmare, and my birthday, which is Sunday and which I would normally have been reminding you all about on a daily basis for the last six weeks is only being observed at all this year to appease StereoNinja, who has made it very clear that my strategy of hiding in the bedroom ignoring him (and everyone else) while failing to engage in any of my beloved hobbies (blogging, my birthday, gratuitous nudity) is no longer acceptable. Having now spoken to a number of people who have already done this, I've had to severely lower my expectations for the foreseeable future, as the collective wisdom of those who have gone before me is that I will continue to burst into tears at completely random intervals due to vicious and overwhelming homesickness for at least 18 months. I don't even want to talk about how miserable I was on New Years, though at least I managed to leave Devon the day before it disappeared into the sea.

I have two papers due in a week, so as I said in November, let me get those written and turned in, and then check back here as I plan to reward myself by writing the next Fifty Shades review and/or going to Prague (oh yeah, I've decided I want to spend a weekend in Prague though I have absolutely no idea what is actually in Prague or why I want to go there - my main motivation seems to be the ability to say "When I was in Prague over the weekend..." - so advice on what I should actually DO in Prague would be lovely). I've been ready to write it for a while actually, but have been putting it off because I felt that I was upset about the wrong things and was trying to adjust my rage to match my logic. It hasn't worked, so I'm just going to write it the way I'm feeling it and then pack my bags for my journey to Hades since I am a terrible person.

Where I am at this very minute is sitting in my living room looking out at the sea. While all you guys in the U.S. have been at the travelling Antarctica Experience exhibition this week (the first time I saw someone write "Chiberia" made me laugh much harder than was probably warranted), the U.K. has been dealing with its own disastrous weather since roughly Christmas, mostly in the form of massive rainstorms combined with extremely high tides and a recent habit of building homes on floodplains. In typical British fashion, this was described on the news in the most hilariously understated way possible as "unusual weather". Living on an island in the Thames as I do, it is impossible not to notice. The field directly across the river from us which is typically filled with sheep first became a lake (which I named Lake Titicacao because tits! and chocolate! and I'm a massive child!) and then a few days ago even that was swallowed up and now the whole thing is just part of the river. Our marina is entirely flooded, the water covering not only the gangway that goes around the outside of the marina but also the first two steps leading up to our garden It is an inch from covering the third, which would leave only two more stairs before we go from living on riverfront property to living in the actual river. There are two roads leading into the island, but only one road that leads away from it, and that road is also flooded, meaning I actually drove my car through the Thames twice this morning. I was lucky I made it through - on my way back, there were two cars stranded on the road who had tried to drive through the river but were too low profile to get through and were now stranded in non-working cars waiting for rescue. If the river doesn't crest today I may be stranded here all weekend. Every once in a while, a helicopter flies over and I imagine them looking down at us and saying "Yep, still flooded." I think I should write a really rude message for them or draw some tits so their day will be more interesting.

Anyway, give me a week to finish my papers and I will write you guys a scathing review about how E.L. James has apparently never been to a bank and being threatened with rape is super romantic. 

P.S. I have enjoyed answering this question. Feel free to send me more questions you would like answers to and I'll answer them in a future blog post. It will be like a conversation!

Sorry, Dudes.

Hey. So I know I failed at the last 4 days of NaBloPoMo, which I'm sorry about, but the school stuff has come up again, and the Christmas stuff, and the depression fatigue/dullness. I have read the next batch of chapters, two of which I live tweeted (I have updated that post with a transcript in case you missed it). I'll get something up soon. It felt good blogging again, I don't want to slip back into not doing it again.

Tonight!

I'm reading 50 Shades today. I'm one chapter into the three I was planning to read tonight and I'm already getting very pissed off about it. I'm going to take a break for a few hours and do real life stuff, but at 8:00 pm GMT I'm going to live tweet the other two chapters I'm reading today over on my Twitter account. A brief recount of what I just read so you don't feel behind: Ana and Christian fight for the entire chapter and then a bombshell happens. Since it's impossible to actually spoil this story, the bombshell is that Jack Hyde calls her. Can't wait to see what that insanity is all about. So, 8:00 pm GMT (3:00 pm EST, 2:00 Central, noon Pacific if you don't feel like doing that math, America. Europe, you're on your own.) on Twitter. Hope to see you there!

P.S. I realize I should have announced this like two days ago so people would have had time to plan, but I've just thought of it and I won't have time to do it later this week with school and Thanksgiving. And I'll add the tweets to this post later on, so no one will miss anything, really.

Update:

Here's the results of the live tweet, including page numbers so I could remember what I was talking about.

Got my rum. Got the book. Here we go #50live

445: This is an insane amount of hatred. Hyde could have just gotten a new job by now

445: Can't they just find him based on the cell signal?

446: Well, he has her phone, that's a good clue. Also it's this book so of course he has her. Asshat.

446: FACT: terror tastes like metal.

446: Your plan to free Mia starts with go home and change clothes? What is wrong with you?

447: You have to keep CHRISTIAN safe? Are you high? Also, where was Mia's security. You're slipping Christian.

448: You can't complain about Christian's unsafe gun storage and then put it in the waistband of your pants dumbshit.

448: Yeah call him from inside the house. That's not suspicious.

449: "I have to collect five million dollars." Kidnap Monopoly!

450: He's not following you because I'm sure Christian has a tracker on your car.

450: DON'T DESCRIBE THE BANK WE KNOW WHAT A BANK LOOKS LIKE

451: NO. One bank doesn't hold the cash reserve for that entire part of the country. That's not how banks work. Jesus fuck

451: Oh your name doesn't match your account on official ID? No problem! - No bank, ever in recorded history

451: Your husband is not the authority here IT'S A FUCKING BANK

451: I'm going to stab something. This is not how banking works. I WORKED FOR A BANK

452: He's a rapist and he hates you. She'd already be raped by now.

452: Oh Jesus Christ. Plus you lie to him ALL THE FUCKING TIME

453: JUST FUCKING TELL HIM YOU DUMB FUCKING TWAT

454: Why would you tell the police? You never tell the police about anything.

455: It is absurd, he's going to rape the crap out of you, not be like "kthxbye!"

456: Because he's following you, how can you possibly be this stupid?

457: In what universe would that even work?

459: Unprovoked. Are you fucking serious? Only an idiot would have gotten in that car. Or done any of this really.

460: "Darkness.....peace." I FUCKING HATE YOU SO HARD

460: Exactly how I thought it would end. Your attempt at unpredictability has failed again, James.

Ok, Chapter 23. Just had a short break to vent to StereoNinja and down my rum and coke.

461: He wants the baby. THAT'S what you're thinking about? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

461: Seriously, why can't I move and where is Mia should be your first two thoughts if you are a normal person. Oh wait...

462: If he roofied her and DIDN'T rape her I will buy a hat and eat it.

462: No, she was incredibly STUPID. It's different. Also Christian will heart guns now, I can already tell.

463: More paperwork! Can't have that! NO ONE TALKS LIKE THIS

463: This is a horrible story telling device, James. Just pure shit.

463: Oh my god this conversation is not happening.

463: No, the ones you love are the ones you should be trying NOT to hurt you jackass.

464: I beg to differ, I am truly LIVID at this author.

464: NO YOU DON'T HAVE TO PEE YOU WOULD HAVE A CATHETER HAS THIS WOMAN EVEN SEEN A HOSPITAL

466: Oh you DO have one. Then it's in wrong because YOU SHOULDN'T NEED TO PEE WITH A CATHETER.

466: Good idea Christian, tell the nurse how to do her job and to rush while she's at it. I fucking hate you.

469: "She wasn't harmed." I don't believe you.

470: No Ana, that's what he ALWAYS thinks. Jesus how do you no know this?

471: Why does it matter that the doctor is African-American? It's like you've only seen 3 black people in your whole life

474: Tracking device on the Saab. I WIN ONE TO NOTHING

475: No Ana, a hospital that knows you are pregnant prescribed you pain meds that would hurt the baby. Idiot.

480: You'll be a terrible father Christian. TERRIBLE

481: YOU ARE NOT NAMING THAT KID BLIP FUCK OFF

That's it tonight. I'm going to go wash the terrible off me now.

Exactly What Are People Doing With These Books?

Apparently if you want some cocaine, you should just go get a library book, and if you want herpes, you should specifically check out Fifty Shades of Grey.

Incidentally, I take issue with this article classifying that book as erotica.

50 Shades Asinine

I read and review Fifty Shades Freed so you don't have to.

Here it comes, people. And it's a long one, so get your tea and snacks together now. God I hate this.

Chapter 17, as is now James' custom, starts off with the resolution to the cliffhanger she leaves at the end of the last chapter because she doesn't know how to write drama properly and has to manufacture it. Jose's dad has called Ana to tell her that they were in a bad car accident near Portland on their way back from a fishing trip. Ana panics, as I would, then calls someone at work to let them know she has a family emergency, tells her assistant the same thing, runs across the parking lot to get to Sawyer waiting by the car and tells him what's going on, and then gets in the car to be driven to the hospital, which is when she calls Christian. Christian's assistant answers the phone. Hearing in Ana's voice that she is terribly upset, she asks Ana if she would like her to track Christian down to speak with him, and then if she would like to leave a message for him. Ana says no to both of these things, because when your father is in an accident and you don't know how serious it is, it is very important that you give that information in detail to everyone you know except for your own husband. When he calls her back to find out what her problem is he tells her he will come to Portland...as soon as he's finished with this meeting he has with some guys from Taiwan which he'd told her nothing about and which is somehow SO important that family emergencies will have to wait.

When she gets to the hospital, she is told by the ER receptionist that Ray has been taken to surgery, so she goes there and asks after him. The nurse at the desk calls her Miss Steele (since she's just said she's Raymond Steele's daughter) and Ana actually pauses in her panic to wonder about whether she should correct her, as she is MRS. CHRISTIAN GREY now after all. In the waiting room she finds Jose and his dad. Jose's dad has one arm and one leg in a cast and bruises on his face from the accident. Jose, who was also on the fishing trip, does not appear to be injured. They fill Ana in: they were on the way back when they were hit by a drunk driver. Ray took the brunt of the impact and had to be airlifted to the hospital, where he has been in surgery for several hours apparently. James peppers this entire scene with things we've been primed to know that Christian would not put up with if he were there - Jose holds Ana while she cries; he puts his jacket around her shoulders when she says she's cold; he holds her hand to calm her panic.

When Christian finally shows up, he sees Jose holding Ana's hand and "his face darkens momentarily". She jumps up and runs to him and I honestly can't tell if it's because she's relieved that he's there or to mitigate the damage of having been seen holding hands with someone at a time that she desperately needed comfort and her husband was too busy working to be there. When the surgeon comes in, he also calls Ana Miss Steele, and is sharply corrected by Christian. Yes, I know her father just had emergency surgery, but THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT. The doctor tells her Ray is in critical condition. He's had serious internal organ damage, which they have repaired, had a heart attack on the table from blood loss but survived, and most worryingly, suffered some severe head trauma and his brain is swelling. They've induced a coma while they monitor the brain swelling. It sounds remarkably serious and as though his life is still in grave danger, which will become important later when Christian does a bunch of inexplicably stupid things. But we'll get to that.

While they wait for their chance to go see Ray in ICU, Christian fills Ana in on his very important business meeting that made him so late in comforting his wife that she wound up wearing another guy's jacket (yes, he's clearly upset about it but smart enough not to say anything right now; yes, Ana pauses in worrying that her father might die to be nervous that Christian's little fee-fees might be hurt because a boy other than him was nice to her. I hate these people). Turns out he's bought a shipyard in Taiwan for some ships that he's building for some reason. Two and a half books into the story and I still can't tell you what it is the main character's company actually does. Ana goes to see Ray for a bit, and then Christian decides they need to go and rest for a while before they come back.

They are staying in the exact same suite they stayed in the first time Christian kidnapped her. Taylor has gone out and bought her a crap ton of new clothes. I think that Christian having several hours to tell his staff that they'd be going to Portland would be plenty of time for them to pack some of her clothes to take with him, but of course if he'd done that we wouldn't get reminded that he's so rich he can just buy new clothes for every trip when he gets there.

When they go back to the hospital, Jose is just leaving from visiting Ana's dad. He gives Ana a comforting hug goodbye, and Ana CONGRATULATES Christian on not killing him for it. Christian tells Ana he has a surprise for her, and when they walk into the ICU she finds out what it is - Christian has had his mother flown up from Seattle to look after Ray. His mother in turn has gotten her friend and colleague to lead the team of doctors overseeing Ray - we are made to understand she is one of the leading doctors "in her field". Given that the main issue facing Ray's recovery/survival is head trauma, I assume that's what she's an expert in.

The next day (Chapter 18) is Ana's 22nd birthday. She and Christian wake up in their hotel and he gives her a charm bracelet. They get ready to go to the hospital and go downstairs for Ana to discover Christian has also bought her an Audi R8. She asks if she can drive it to the hospital and when Christian says yes, she promptly does a dangerous U-turn in the middle of the busy street and then speeds off like a maniac. Hey dipshit, aren't you on your way to see your comatose father in the hospital because someone driving recklessly  nearly killed him yesterday? Ana goes in to visit with her father (who is recovering at a fucking miraculous rate by the way) while Christian calls his father to tell him to "throw the book" at the drunk driver who hit Ray's car. I know his dad is a lawyer, but the last time I checked, he wasn't the District Attorney for Portland. He's in no position to throw the book at this guy or probably be involved in the case at all given that he practices law in a different state.

It finally occurs to Ana that she should maybe call her mom and tell her that her stepfather may be dying, but her mother doesn't answer the phone. Ana immediately decides her mother has forgotten her birthday, though nowhere in any of the books does she make her mother out to be the sort of person who would do that. The mystery is solved (for me, not Ana) when Christian takes a foreshadowy phone call from his assistant asking if the hotel "has all the details". Gee I wonder if Christian flew everyone Ana knows to Portland for her birthday?

After a bunch of fucking around all day while Ray's unprecedented recovery continues (his brain swelling is all gone and totally back to normal!), Christian tells Ana it's time to go to dinner and when they get there, SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS EVERYONE ANA KNOWS IS THERE. WOW I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING. Did he send his private plane to pick everyone up from around the country? YOU BET YOUR ASS HE DID. They have an entirely forgettable dinner party and the next day everyone but Christian and Ana go home.

Ray is awakened from his coma at the beginning of Chapter 19 (actually it's the very last sentence of Chapter 18 because OMFG DRAMA!). On hearing this news, Christian immediately begins preparations to have him transferred to Seattle. This is where the major head trauma/massive internal injuries become important. To me, not to anyone in the book. You see, Christian has WORK to do because he is VERY IMPORTANT, and he simply can't stay in Portland and do his work, and he certainly can't leave his wife there unsupervised because WHO KNOWS what she might get up to if he's not watching her every minute. Therefore, the only solution is to pick up a man who had major emergency surgery and a heart attack two days before, and who is still in intensive care, and move him to a different hospital. In fact, this is WHAT'S BEST for Ray - if he's at the hospital in Seattle, Christian's mother can look after him. The fact that the head doctor on his case, the one who is a specialist in traumatic brain injuries, which is his main problem, will NOT be at that hospital in Seattle and that Christian's mother is NOT a specialist in this field does not even cross his mind.

Back at the hotel, it is TIME FOR SEX. Ana is scandalized when Christian ties her legs apart and then tells her she has to touch herself. Keep in mind, up until now, Ana has never ever masturbated in her whole life. In fact, I'm pretty sure there were some passages in earlier books where Christian was just fine with that, because it meant that every orgasm she had ever had in her entire life was because of him. YOU ARE SUCH A MASSIVE STUD CHRISTIAN, YOU FUCKING OWN THAT PUSSY.

I had temporarily forgotten that Jack Hyde was in custody for his breaking and entering Christian's home. Luckily, Detective Clark, lead investigator on the case, has not forgotten at all. In fact, he is so conscientious and diligent about his investigation that he comes all the way to Portland to re-interview Ana. And he is very clear that he only wants Ana in the interview as well, but Christian is NOT having that: "Anything you wish to say to my wife you can say in front of me," he declares, which confuses me because that decision is really hers, is it not? Oh wait of course not, Ana has no agency in this or anything else. Christian is the sole decider of all. I'd forgotten. My bad. Anycock, the reason Detective Clark came all the way to Portland wanting to talk to Ana alone is that it seems Jack Hyde is alleging that it was actually Ana who had sexually harassed him, and when he wouldn't bang her, she got him fired. I write in my notes "this is why you go to the POLICE you fucktards" because, as you'll recall, when Hyde tried to rape her, all they did was fire him and allow him to roam free. If they'd told the police at the time it had happened, she'd already be on record with her side of the story AND he wouldn't have been free to skulk around Seattle trying to murder them. Also, I'm not really sure why Hyde thinks that some story about sexual harassment by Ana is going to justify his breaking into her house to try to kill her and her husband. That's kind of a massive escalation. Probably the place to start would have been a wrongful termination lawsuit. But what do I know? I'm just some nitwit who goes straight to the police when crimes are committed against my person. Ana calmly explains what actually happened, and the detective appears to believe her...for now. Christian asks after the other investigation from the first time Hyde tried to kill Christian by sabotaging his helicopter, but is told they haven't found any evidence. There is also some mysterious mention of a note that has not been mentioned in the book before. It's something foreshadowy again I imagine, and I assume some threatening or blackmail "anonymous" note from Hyde indicating his desire to kill or financially ruin Christian and Ana, no doubt spelled out in letters painfully cut from a newspaper and glued to another sheet of paper, that Christian didn't tell his wife about because he actually believes that ignorance = safety. Whatever, I'm sure we'll find out soon enough when they have a massive screaming match about it that ends in sex.

Back in Seattle the next day, Ana checks Ray into his new room at the hospital. She ignores a phone call from a number she doesn't know purely to set up the last scene in the chapter, which is that on her way out of the hospital, Ana is accosted by her gynecologist. How in the world this woman knew Ana was even at the hospital is not explained. Dr. Greene, who was the person phoning Ana earlier, wants to know why she has missed her last four, that's FOUR, appointments to come in and get her birth control shot. She's WAY overdue for one, so she goes back inside with Dr. Greene to get that taken care of. Before she gives the injection though, Dr. Greene wants to make sure that Ana is not already pregnant, so she sends her off to pee in a cup, and when Ana comes back, sure as shit she is all kinds of knocked up. This is the point in the review where I am about to lose my shit. I'll try not to come off as too much of a soulless asshole, but I make no guarantees.

Chapter 20. The conversation with Dr. Greene continues. Ana freaks the fuck out and can't figure out how this could possibly have happened. Keep in mind, the reason she is taking birth control shots is because she couldn't remember to take the pill with any kind of regularity. They switched her to this because she wouldn't have to remember anything - all she had to do was show up for her appointments when prompted to do so. But somehow, she can't even remember to do something she gets telephone reminders about. Immediately the first thing she does is cast around for someone else to blame for her ineptitude at life. "I thought this was a reliable form of birth control," she says to her doctor accusingly. Her doctor responds that, much like other forms of birth control, it is very effective IF YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING TAKE IT. This is definitely a person who is mature and responsible enough to be a parent. They have to do a transvaginal ultrasound in order to find the baby since it's so fresh and Ana sees a little blip on the screen which will lead her to call the baby through the ENTIRE CHAPTER "my little blip!" Jesus fuck, it's like if a 9 year old was pregnant. Ana is absolutely fucking panicking, mainly because she thinks Christian is going to completely lose his shit when he finds out. I wasn't so sure. I was picturing two possible scenarios for when she told him: either he would be absolutely fucking ecstatic about it because he's secretly always wanted to be a daddy, or he was going to be upset, but only because he thinks he is a worthless monster person who doesn't deserve happiness or a child.

Ana leaves the doctor's office and is driven to work. On the way she obsesses about all the reasons she doesn't want to have a baby right now. What about her job? What about Christian? And the part where I became enraged: "I should be happy. I know I should be happy. But I'm not." Why Ana? Why *should* you be happy? You're pregnant with a baby you don't want at 22 years old, you're looking at the end of your career because we all know there is no chance in hell that Christian is going to let you be anything but a stay at home mom, and speaking of Christian, you are totally convinced that he is going to hate you for this. Exactly why *should* you be happy? Is it because you your author believes that every woman ever wants a baby, that that is the destiny and should be the express goal of every single person born with a vagina, that you are not a "real" woman until you've squeezed a human being out of your twat? Here's a thought: fuck you. It is NOT a requirement for you to be happy about a child that neither you nor your husband want or are prepared for. As a matter of fact, and here is where I'm worried I'm going to get hate mail, I actually fail to see how there's any problem here at all. You don't want the baby, Christian doesn't want the baby, neither of you appear to have any religious affiliation or moral objection, why aren't you just having an abortion? Problem solved! In fact, you can just go have an abortion and never even tell Christian at all! Normally I don't advocate for dishonesty of that magnitude, but since the entirety of your relationship seems to be based on constantly lying to each other, why not just get it taken care of and move on with your life? And I get that for a lot of people it's not as easy of a decision as that, and maybe I'm a heartless monster, but you can have other children, down the road and when you ready, and if you stop this now and wait for that, maybe you'll fuck your kid up a lot less than you will if you have this one.

When Ana gets to work, her first order of business is to continue looking for someone else to blame for her irresponsibility. She calls her assistant into her office to ask if she's ever moved any of Ana's gynecology appointments. Indeed she has, due to Ana being in other meetings or running late, and generally at Ana's express request. "I don't always check my calendar," Ana explains, as if Hannah should fucking know that she can't handle even the most basic tasks of a person with a job (you don't always check your calendar? How many other meetings are you missing you colossal moron?) "You see that woman?" she asks her little blip as her assistant leaves the room. "She may be the reason why you're here." Yes, it's not because you can't ever be on time for anything, look at a calendar, answer your phone, or listen to your voicemail. Nothing is ever your fault, is it Ana? You're going to be a fucking amazing mother.

Unlike Ana, I'm a big enough person to admit when I'm wrong. And I was incredibly wrong about how I thought Christian was going to react to the big news. Ana was spot on. In fact short of immediately getting up from the table and kicking her in the stomach several times before pushing her down a flight of stairs, he really couldn't have reacted any worse. "How could you be so stupid?" he wants to know, and my favorite line, "We've known each other five fucking minutes!" Oh so NOW that's a problem for you? Because you didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with that when you fucking got married after three months. "Did you do this on purpose?" he asks, and when she starts crying over that remark, continues with "Don't start with the waterworks now." and "This is why I like control. So shit like this doesn't come along and fuck everything up." He screams a bunch more fuck yous at her and storms out of the house. Yep, great husband you have there, Ana. And already gunning for father of the year I see. What a fucking prick.

Christian is gone for hours, and when he comes back he is fall down drunk. Ana tries putting him to bed which he is a huge pain in the ass about and then he says easily the most immature thing to come out of these books yet, "You'll choose him over me." Jesus fuck, you kid isn't even born and you're already jealous of it and preparing yourself to competitively destroy it. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YOU GUYS PLEASE DON'T HAVE THIS BABY. Christian finally passes out and Ana goes to clean up his clothes that are strewn all over the floor. In so doing, she knocks his phone out of his pocket and "accidentally" unlocks it, and it must be the end of a chapter now, because when she looks at it she sees a text message:

"It was good to see you. I understand now. Don't fret. You'll make a wonderful father."

You guys know who it's from? Who he's been with all night? The first person he ran to? Why, that would be Elena Fucking Robinson, his former domme and ruiner of his ability to have "normal" sex! FUCKIN' A Y'ALL, SHIT IS ABOUT TO GO DOWN.