Sun…er, Monday Funday: 50 Shades of Christian POV, and Conclusion

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So, here goes it. I read the “Meet Fifty Shades” part in the back of Fifty Shades Freed.

My first observation is something I’ve been thinking the whole time I’ve been trying to read FSoG, but was now just confirmed for me: Christian Grey does not seem to do a lot of actual work for someone who a) owns his own internationally successful company, and b) has been described, both by himself and others, as being an extremely busy business man. When we’re seeing the meeting scene from Ana’s POV, I was under the impression that Christian was meeting with some other business contact of his. Nope, it’s his effing personal trainer. Although, Christian does mention that he’s just worked all weekend, and good thing too, because he’s about to be busy obsessively stalking a girl 24-7 for the immediate future.

After the trainer leaves, Christian waxes poetic about how bored he is and wonders why he agreed to do the WSU interview. I’m sorry, Christian, you’re a big boy–if you didn’t want to do the interview, don’t goddamn do it. You even had the perfect excuse since you’re oh-so-terribly-busy-with-work. Also, your logistics lady Ros probably hasn’t shown up yet since you’re, I don’t know, supposed to be taking another meeting with Kate at this point. Or something.

But alas, it’s not Kate, but our dear ingénue Anastasia. And Christian hates the unexpected. What the what?! Now it’s not like he knows Kate personally, couldn’t even pick her out of a lineup. Yes, I get Ana is not who you were anticipating, but going into this blindly anyway, what the difference from one college senior to another, since he’s never met either?

Who the fuck am I kidding? This is Christian Grey. He’s probably already done a background check on Kate before the meeting.

But I digress.

So then Ana launches herself bodily into his office, Christian helps her up, and is all whoa. Then we get some frilly description about how Christian has nearly as much of a moment seeing Ana, as she did him. Maybe we’ll spare some romance points for that, since that’s kind of SOP for these things.

Christian manages to ruin it before the paragraph is even done though, with this shudder-inducing line: “I want to dispel that unguarded, admiring look from those big blue eyes” (558). Then he follows that up with, “Let’s have some fun,” two lines later. Ick.

Christian somehow is able to shake off his haze at beholding the sheer beauty that is Ana Steele, regaining command of himself and the situation (although I missed the part where he was not in command of the situation). He talks some more about how purdy Ana is, and Ana attempts to explain that she is not Kate.

Ana is then absolutely befuddled about how a digital recorder works (step one: place recorder on table, step two: press record), and Christian makes another reference to Ana in a BDSM context: “…it occurs to me that I could refine her motor skills with the aid of a riding crop” (560). I’m actually going to give Christian a pass for his BDSM references, since for him, making these comments are basically his version of “man, I really want to bone this girl.” I’m still going to point them out when they happen though.

Back to the “action.” They start to get into the question and answer part, you know, like this is an interview or something. And I can understand why Christian might have initially thought that Ana was a colleague of Kate’s on the paper, since that would have been the logical thing for Kate to have done. But the further they get into this thing, I can’t for the life of me understand why Christian continues to think she’s a journalist. Christian even toots his own horn on the same page about how he’s such a great reader of people: “…I can judge a person, better than most” (561).

Except that you fucking can’t, Christian. You can’t tell that Ana isn’t a real journalist, just like you won’t be able to tell that she is totally not into this whole BDSM thing.

Then Ana supposes that Christian might be successful because he’s lucky. And that just flips his bitch switch. He spits a quote at her (I’m too lazy to get up to get FSoG to see what the quote was), and Ana frosts that cupcake of a diss by calling him a control freak.

Now who’s the superior people reader, Christian? (I must point out that Ana’s problem is not that she isn’t picking up what Christian is putting down, it’s that she does…and goes along with everything anyway.)

And I find it extremely hard to believe that Christian’s company doesn’t have a board of some sort, especially since it’s supposed to be a huge company, with a workforce of “more than forty thousand people” (562). Google employs 55,419 people as of their first quarter this year (thank, Wikipedia!), and you can bet your sweet bippy they have a board (here’s a link I found: https://investor.google.com/corporate/board-of-directors.html).

So we’ll suspend our disbelief a little more here, and go with the fact that Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. doesn’t have a board. At least we can place the blame for that ridiculous fucking name squarely on person’s shoulders (see what I did there?).

I’m also imagining a fourth book where we learn that Christian’s one-man-run company has folded because he’s been busy gallivanting with Ana for three books.

We’re then treated to another fantasy image of Christian’s, wherein Ana is imagined in “assorted positions in [his] playroom[…]: shackled on the cross, spread-eagled on the four-poster, splayed over the whipping bench” (562). Then he wonders where all these dirty thoughts are coming from. Really?!?

Ana then asks Christian what he likes to do for fun. Christian once again emphasizes his lack of free time due to his compan…ies? I’m really not sure, since part of his diatribe talks about how he pretty much flips failing companies or acquires them outright into his company. Does he run other companies too? Or does he just collect them like Pokémon cards and put them in his Enterprises Holdings, Inc.? And that’s officially way too much brain power spent on that.

He tells her about his stereotypically rich-guy hobbies, but not before he gives us this gem among his mental list of extracurriculars: “testing the limits of little brown-haired girls like her, and bringing them to heel” (563). I’m torn because it sort of toes the line of what I said about these kinds of comments being Christian’s form of locker room talk, but it’s also kind of a creepy thing to say.

And while we’re on the topic of locker room talk, Christian refers to Ana as “an alluring little piece” (563). So there’s that.

Christian admits to being a very private person, and that he doesn’t often give interviews. Everybody’s such a damn contradiction in this thing. Ana asks the question on everyone’s mind, ‘why this interview?,’ and Christian tells her that Kate wouldn’t stop bugging his PR people. Which is…sort of, but not really plausible, I guess?

Then the conversation abruptly switches to farming technologies, and Christian talks about world hunger, but in a World Hunger sense, not a “I used to be hungry” sense. So at least he’s keeping with his private person M.O.

Dick sucking is thought about, with all the subtlety of a neon sign, and then Christian surprises himself when he thinks about being able to take care of Ana (a phrase here meaning, “to protect a girl from the evils of clothing from Walmart and Old Navy”). Ana brings him back to the conversation by asking him how he thinks being adopted has shaped him as a person, which I have to admit is actually a pretty good question compared to the other formulaic ones asked so far. Christian, however, does not think so, asking “what the fuck does this have to do with the price of oil?” which I have to wonder if that’s Christian-speak for something like the “price of tea in China” idiom, since they weren’t talking about oil (565). He tells Ana that his adoption is a matter of public record, which I’m pretty sure isn’t how adoption works at all (a brief Google search seems to agree with me here). Even if it was public record, it would probably only include the fact that, yes, Christian Grey was adopted. That doesn’t answer her question. But that’s the point here, so let’s move on.

Ana asks about his family, he answers, and then she asks it. THE GAY QUESTION. I have to call a couple people out here. Ok, actually a lot of people. First, Ana, for asking the question if it was actually a pre-written one. You could have chosen to omit it. Second, Kate, for writing it. Private, perpetually single man does not have to equal gay. In this particular case it most likely equals sociopath, actually. Christian’s family are guilty of the same thing as Kate. I also have to give a bonus call out to EL James for not being able to write decent dialogue. Christian and Ana were having an actual off-script conversation, which is evidenced by Ana’s statement that Christian has had to sacrifice a family life for his work. It seems like she was distracted enough from her list of questions to make that statement, and then she followed it up by asking him if he’s gay. Even if Ana was following her script with the family life question, James still gets no points for her questions after shutting Ana down about Christian’s adoption affecting his life.

Christian is upset by the gay question. Which is understandable. Maybe he’s a progressive person who was upset by the question for the same reasons I was, such as mentioned above and the fact that why should it matter if he was gay? I get that he’s upset. But then he goes and says this:

“I have to fight the urge to drag her out of her seat, bend her across my knee, and spank the living shit out of her, then fuck her over my desk with her hands tied tightly behind her back” (565).

First off, HOLY RUNON SENTENCE, BATMAN. Second, and most importantly, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?!?!?!?! How is that a rational response? How can any woman–no, any person period–read that and still think that Christian Grey is a romantic hero? You can’t even justify that with the favorite response of fans, the “but, but, it’s BDSM!” The basic tenant of BDSM is Safe, Sane, and Consensual. And that improperly punctuated sentence is most certainly neither safe nor sane. It’s not safe because it would be punishment because he actually wants to hurt Ana for offending him. It would basically be the same if she asked him this out on a date and he hauled off and hit her. Or if a man asked him and Christian hit him. And it’s not sane because fucking look at that sentence. Think about if he followed through on his thoughts. What kind of story would this be if right after she asks him if he’s gay, he stood up and grabbed her, then beat her and raped her. Because that’s what that would be. Rape. So we’ve crossed out consensual, both with the actual sex and the beating, since we mostly definitely do not know if a severe spanking is something Ana would even be interested in.

That sentence is something that you can unread or unknow. Now that I’ve read that sentence, it’s the context by which I’m going to be framing every action of Christian’s from this point forward. How did the throngs of Christian-shippers not read that and then immediately reevaluate everything they’d just read in the previous three books? And I’m just a person who’s read half of the first book. I don’t even know what other questionable things Christian has said or done in the 2.5 books I haven’t read.

Luckily, Christian does not follow through on this need to punish Ana for her question (which, I might add, is not her own), and Christian finally calls Ana out as not really being a journalist. Ana explains how she ended up there, and Christian’s receptionist/assistant person Andrea, interrupts to tell Christian his next meeting is in two minutes. Christian, winning example of busy busy businessman, tells her to cancel the meeting. Then he decides to turn the interview on Ana, where he admits that he enjoys intimidating her. Yes, you can pretty that up in a BDSM context all you’d like, but this meeting is not a BDSM scenario, and Christian is a douche.

They talk about Ana’s non-plans for after graduation (points for a realistic college graduate character trait), Christian’s company’s internship program (he did hear the part where she is an English Lit major, right?), and Ana picks up on the awkwardness of this whole situation and starts to gather her things to leave. They talk about the safety of driving, because this “used to be” Twilight fanfiction, and Christian expresses his irritation at the fact that he can’t forbid Ana to do something (drive home). Christian is then “floored” at Ana’s use of the word sir because god forbid she be polite after a (mostly) professional interview. He uses what I’d consider to be a most un-Christian word (ain’t) and helps her out the door. I’m still trying to figure out how Christian, a person who’s been very wealthy since he was a small child, would be able to identify that a coat is from Walmart. James then attempts to redeem the situation by having Christian be excited that Ana is affected by him.

Then it’s ruining when she confirmed what we’d already suspected Christian did: he orders a background check on Ana.

Now, I’m no expert on this, but this seems highly illegal. It’s probably not the first time Christian’s done something like this, and it’s certainly not the last time he’ll do something sketchy regarding Ana (see: tracing her cellphone), so we’ll set it aside for now.

Christian has pored over this information hundreds of times. Are there pages that weren’t put in this section of the book? I hope so, because I thought poring over something was usually reserved for dense information. Most of the background check is Renee, I mean, Carla’s string of husbands. I’m also mad at Ana for never having participated in an election. She should have at the very least voted in the 2008 presidential election. This is, of course, just extrapolation, but where I live your party affiliation is printed on your voter registration card, so I’m assuming if she voted at some point, she’d have something to be found by this creepy invasion of privacy.

For being such a private person, Christian sure as hell has no problem invading others’.

Also, someone forgot to include the zip code for Clayton’s Hardware Store. They included Ana’s Wells Fargo of choice’s zip code. Now I’m just nitpicking.

The camera pans out to reveal that Christian has upped his creepy game to stalking, as he now sits outside of Ana’s place of work. I’m fully imagining him in a trench coat and fedora, with fast food wrappers in the passenger seat–full stakeout mode.

And then, because why not at hypocrite to Christian’s list of attributes, HE WONDERS IF SHE’S GAY. Since, you know, she’s had no boyfriends. Screw you, man. Screw you.

At least he admits he’s a stalker. So there’s that.

He proceeds to tease Ana by asking her to help him purchase a Dexter Starter Kit, which I’ve already covered. I’m still wondering if serious Doms would actually use cable ties and masking tape (I wouldn’t think it would be practical to have to replenish their supplies so often, not to mention comfort). I also think that James might have confused masking tape for duct tape. Masking tape seems like it would kind of be shitty as a gag, since it’s pretty easy to remove and you could probably just lick it enough and it would fall off. Or at the very least, you’d probably sweat it off. Duct tape might have been too overtly “kidnapper” though.

They get to the rope section and Christian explains that he chose the natural filament rope because “it’s coarser and chafes more if you struggle against” and how it’s his “rope of choice” (575). Now I’m seriously creeped out. We’ve also crossed Safe off the list again, because a quick Google search got me a couple of websites that pretty much say that synthetic is the way to go, since you know, it doesn’t hurt the person. One site also stressed the importance of looser wrapping to AVOID CHAFING.

Ana impresses Christian with her rope bundling skills, and Christian assumes that Ana is a Bronte and Austen fan. Which is true, but all she said was “The classics. British literature, mostly” (575). Why couldn’t she be a huge Charles Dickens nerd?

They discuss taking Christian’s photo for the article, and then Ana rings Christian up (he also selects some coveralls, for maximum Dexter-osity). The total is $43, which Christian points out as a small amount to him, and you bet your ass I’m gonna over-analyze that. Ok, so Clayton’s is a mom and pop hardware store, but that seemed king of expensive to me. So I went to Home Depot’s website, and came to a $25-$30 conclusion ($30 because I picked the most expensive coveralls I could find). And for that money, Christian would get 35 additional feet of his extra-abusive rope.

So he pays for his overpriced crime kit and leaves. “That’s all…for now,” James writes at the end. And she’s delivering on her threat with “Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian,” the most convoluted title for something since “Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.”

Grey-Day is slotted for June 18th. My greatest hope is that whoever stole a copy a) stole it for real and that isn’t just a publicity stunt and; b) leaks it so “Grey” can go the way of “Midnight Sun,” the Twilight from Edward’s POV. Also, I’m feeling kind of psychic since I expressed my desire for the book to be stolen in my post from last week.

Now that my rant about “Meet Fifty Shades” has been written, I’m thinking that this might be my last post on the subject for a while. At least until I finish FSoG. Since I haven’t picked it up since what I talked about reading in the post from 5.31.15, I’m out of shit to say that isn’t “here’s the books I read this week” (the count of those, by the way is up to 36). And I think that it’s OK that I’m out of shit to say about this thing. I think that’s kind of the point. I’ve also come to my own personal conclusion about these books, and that was also kind of the point of this.

These books are the Kardashians of books. A lot of people are obsessed with them and the rest of us really aren’t sure why.

I watched an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians once. It went much like this did: I got bored and gave up halfway through. But, much like the Kardashians, FSoG has permeated the social consciousness, and unfortunately it’ll be around at least until they finish with the movies. So we’re stuck with it. But hopefully, like the McRib, we’ll only have to hear about it when it rears its ugly head annually.

So this has been an interesting experience to say the least, and who knows? I might actually finish these fuckers. I might read “Grey” or see the movies. I’ll write about it if it happens. I’ll most definitely check in if I hit 50 books read before finishing FSoG.

But for now, I’ve got a million other things I’d rather do than worry about reading a book series that will hopefully be a fruit fly in the spectrum of books. I’ve already dedicated too many words to this crap. 7890 words to be exact.

That’s just too damn many. So for now, I’m done with this. It’s been…fun? It had its definite fun moments. I also accomplished what I set out to, so there’s that. And since the last point was to chronicle all the books you could be reading instead of this (which is, of course, nearly any other book), I’ll try to keep up the sidebar list.

Thanks for reading!

-CK

Sunday Funday: 50 Shades of “Another One?! Really?!”

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A Few Words on “Grey”:

My workday on Monday very nearly began with my coworker enthusiastically announcing two things: the first was the introduction of Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair, the second was the fact that there was a new book in the FSoG universe looming on the horizon. So I’d call Monday a draw.

Now I have to be clear on something first: I’m not so naïve as to not understand why “Grey” is going to be a thing very soon. I get that money is a motivator for pretty nearly everything, and most publishers would be pretty silly to pass on a sure thing. And “Grey” is most definitely a sure thing.

But a sure thing most definitely does not equal a good thing.

And the amazing part of that last statement? I think that the general consensus actually agrees with me. After my coworker made her announcement, I immediately went to message my friend (the one who convinced me to do this whole thing) and saw that she’d already tagged me in an Entertainment Weekly post about the book announcement. And then I did what you’re never supposed to do on the internet, especially about shit you don’t like but other people do: I started to read the comments. And let me tell you, most people are not thrilled. At all.

Comments ranged from “Who the fuck cares?” to “Oh yay, we can finally read a manipulating abuser’s point of view.” Some drew comparisons to Stephanie Meyer’s ill-fated Edward-POV piece, Midnight Sun, and how that got leaked and ultimately never saw the light of day. To which I ask: how do we get that fate lined up for “Grey”? Is there someone we can ask to get on that? Man, I wish there was.

Anywho, from what I understand, there is a section at the back of Fifty Shades Freed called Meet Fifty Shades, in which there is some teaser (a word I use loosely here) Christian-POV of his first meeting with Ana. So since I ran out of time to do so this week (you know me and deadlines with this crap), my project for the coming week is to read Meet Fifty Shades and write about it in the context of the impending release of “Grey.”

On the flip side, I’m up to 32 books completed, with this weeks books being Damaged In-Law by Colleen Masters (not what I was expecting from the description and title, but not awful) and The Sunday Arrangement and Raise the Stakes by Lucy Smith (The Sunday Arrangement was very good for the most part, and I was anxious to read the sequel Raise the Stakes, but it kind of fell short in an almost contrived, soap opera-y way). Coming up for the week I might pick of one of my Barnes and Noble recent acquisitions.

I also managed to read 3 whole chapters of FSoG. I’d probably have written about that, had “Grey” not become a thing. Most notably in those 3 chapters was that Ana and Christian discussed the contract in depth. And by that I mean he got her good and liquored up for one of the most important conversations of their “relationship” (which he himself admitted to doing, since it would lower her inhibitions), then they had sex, then he dropped the “I had a fucked up childhood” bomb, and finally he announced that Ana would be seeing his gynecologist about birth control. You know, normal relationship things. Romantic things even.

So, until next time!
-CK

Sunday Funday: 50 Shades of ADD

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First things first. Immediately after last week’s post, I thought to myself, “Hey, I could read some FSoG right now!” And then I proceeded to continue to catch up on @midnight and started retooling the navigation bar at the top of this blog. For anyone still interested in my fanfiction (which I will finish someday, I promise), all finished chapters for Allegro, Backbeat, and Stiletto can be found by navigating the bar at the top, under ‘Fanfiction.’ Drawn has been removed, as it probably should have been years ago (it’s still probably up at ff.net for anyone who might care).

This week’s theme seems to be “paying attention.” In that I am not able to at all. I did actually manage to pick up FSoG a couple times this week, with the intention of at least finishing the next chapter. I accomplished a whopping total of eleven pages. I just couldn’t stay focused.

It was a pretty prolific week otherwise though. I finished The Ex by Abigail Barnett and, be still my fangirl heart, learned that there will be at least another book in that series. It’s called The Baby and it’s supposed to be out sometime in November.

I also read Life After Taylah by Bella Jewel, Choosing You by Jenny Trout, and Drawn That Way by Bronwyn Green. All three were very quick reads, and all about 3-4 stars in my opinion. Choosing You was probably my favorite of the trio, and received 4 stars due its short length. Life After Taylah was not bad, and I really liked the other books by Bella Jewel that are on the list, but Life After Taylah had me doing a lot of facepalming at the actions of the characters, and I hate that.

Next up on the agenda is looking like Damaged In-Law by Colleen Masters (another of her books, Faster Harder, occupies the #2 spot on The List). I also took an impromptu trip to Barnes and Noble this week, so I’ll be reading some honest-to-goodness real life books in the near future too.

Updated Links in the Sidebar, of course.

I’m going to cut this post here, since I got off my bum and grabbed FSoG to count how many pages I’d read this week, I’m going to try to finish this damn chapter. It’s Chapter Fourteen for anyone who’s curious, in which Ana graduates from college and Christian displays some Stage 5 Clinger-type behavior. So I’m apparently halfway through with this fucker. And it’s only been a month (not counting the initial stage…if we’re counting that, it’s almost been half the year…)

-CK

Sunday Funday: 50 Shades of Standstill, cont.

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Good God, am I having a hard time finding motivation to read this damn book. Even when I come home from work thinking I might read some of it, my brain quickly shifts to some other random activity and I end up doing that instead. And as I started writing the draft of this post, I noticed that this will be the fourth post, so I’ve been working on this renewed effort to attempt to read this thing for almost a month now. And I still haven’t picked up the thing since the beginning of May. Since I have no insight to bring you on FSoG, I’ll just leave you with an update on what I have been reading.

I finished book three of The Boss series, The Bride, on Thursday. Then I moved right into book four, The Ex, on Friday. They’re still amazing, and you should still go read them. I’m going to be sad when I finish The Ex, because then the series will be over. Updated links in the sidebar.

Since tomorrow is Memorial Day, and I am off work, I think I can try to dedicate an hour or so to reading FSoG. And hopefully a couple more hours during the rest of the week. I’m also off on Thursday, so we’ll see. But for now, I will leave you with this picture that popped up on my Facebook newsfeed the other day.

Even without the trailer, it could at least be an episode of Law and Order: SVU. I actually think they did a "ripped from the headlines" one related to it...
Even without the trailer, it could easily be an episode of Law and Order: SVU. I actually think they did a “ripped from the headlines” one related to it…

-CK

Sunday Funday: 50 Shades of Standstill

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Happy Sunday! Short post today, mostly because I am absolutely dreadful at sticking to this reading plan I laid out for myself…in that I still haven’t picked up the book again. No, that’s not entirely true. I did pick the book up. I picked it up and carried it from where it was on the floor in my room and put it on the kitchen counter. Where it still sits. I moved it with the intention of reading it on Wednesday or Thursday and then that never happened. I’m sure I got distracted by…something. I can’t honestly remember, but it was probably another book. Or Pyramid Solitaire Saga. It’s also been a busy weekend as my dad’s been recovering from a procedure.

On the topic of other books, though, I did finish #23, The Ruby Circle by Richelle Mead, and #24, The Girlfriend by Abigail Barnette. The Ruby Circle is the sixth and final installment of the Bloodlines series, which is the spinoff of the Vampire Academy series. It’s a YA series, and I’m not sure if there’s a bad rap associated with reading YA when you’re not a YA, but if there is, it’s sorely misplaced, since there is a lot of awesome fiction out there that just happens to be YA. Anyway, the series had a pretty nice ending, all the loose ends tied and all that jazz. I think I liked the Vampire Academy series better though, if I had to choose. I’m also very disappointed that movie adaptation of the first book in that series did not fare well enough to warrant sequels.

But I digress.

The second book of the week was The Girlfriend by Abigail Barnette, which is the sequel to The Boss. It’s just as awesome as The Boss, which again, everyone should be reading right now. I finished The Girlfriend either last night or this morning…I think it was this morning…and purchased the third book in the series, The Bride, which I’ve been reading on and off all day today (I’m about 35% into at time of writing).

The Bride is also a special book in this literary adventure in extreme avoidance. It’s special because it’s the 25th book I’ve read since starting FSoG. When I started reading other books instead (because, let’s face it, people) of FSoG, I humorously thought to myself that I could read 50 books instead of 50 Shades. Now it seems to be a real possibility.

However, I refuse to let a book beat me. Especially this damn book. So this week I will double down with renewed effort and try to make some more progress.

Links to #23 and #24 have been added to the sidebar. I also went ahead and added #25 even though I’m not finished. Call me proactive.

Until next Sunday,

-CK

Sunday Funday: 50 Shades of Why Am I Reading This Shit?

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Where to begin…

…well, my “brilliant” plan to stick to the rules went out the window on Wednesday. There are several factors that contributed to this, the primary one being that this book is awful and does not hold my interest. It is a chore to read. I would much rather go back to my junior year of high school and give A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich an enthusiastic re-read. I’d rather read the dictionary–at least there I’d learn some new things. The second factor is that on Wednesday night, I happened to be trying to select something new to read, as I finished the Til Death box set on Tuesday night after a mind-numbing fifty minutes dealing with FSoG (more on that later). My thoughts immediately wandered to a book that I could not remember the title or author of, but I did know that the Shades of Abuse blogger had mentioned on her blog as “FSoG as it could have been” or something like that. I’ll not be able to provide a direct quote, because when I got the Shades of Abuse website, I learned that it had been shut down in February. Here’s a link for anyone interested in knowing the details, but it basically boils down to a whole lot of unfortunate bullshit that is preventing an incredibly insightful person from expressing her views about a piece of fiction, by trying to get her in trouble in a very nonfictional capacity.

Wow. Just wow. I mean, I’ve gotten very defensive/emotional/irrational/angry about fictional things before (this blog series is an example, obviously), but never to any point where I thought that threatening someone was even conceivable. So that whole shebang put a big damper on my Wednesday night. On the Shades of Abuse site, however, Alexis left the links up in the sidebar, which brings me to how I ended up spending most of my night: Jenny Trout’s blog.

Jenny Reads 50 Shades. Get thee over there, with haste.

It’s damn hilarious. You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll feel like you don’t even need to read to book. Which is how I was feeling Wednesday night (and, since I haven’t touched the book since Tuesday, I guess the jury’s still out on that). Even if I do continue reading the books (which I most likely will, since I’m a masochist that way), reading Jenny’s blog did make me realize something. I’m not going to write any sort of long-form review of these books. Quite frankly, it’s already been done to death, and done better than I could even dream of. Plus Jenny’s blog shares a lot of the same insights and feelings as my brain while reading FSoG, but much more awesome, so I would encourage you to check her blog out.

So maybe I’ll keep my thoughts to SparkNotes-esque blurbs about what I read each week, under 100 words. This week’s would be:

Too many stupid emails exchanged, including “the joke” kiss off email from Ana. Christian barges into her apartment and they have sex. Really creepy, kind of rapey. More stupid emails. Contract “discussion.” Still creepy, now with more blatant threatening. Conclusion: Christian will never understand the concept of boundaries. And I’m fairly certain that Ana is that kid (every major had a few) that was always the worst in every class you had with them, but still somehow miraculously managed to graduate.

Everything else aside, that might be my one of my biggest suspensions of disbelief in this book. I’m not buying that she’s an English/English Lit whiz (even though the book doesn’t make her out to be one), because it seems like she spent a dissertation amount of time with one book, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, but somehow managed to miss the implications/meaning of it entirely. I am also concerned about the accreditation of book-WSU, since apparently it’s a school where everyone takes the same final exam, regardless of major. Ana shouldn’t even know that she finished her exam before Kate, unless her exam was chronologically before Kate’s that day, because normal people don’t discuss time taken on what should be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXAMS. –end rant–

I actually look quite a bit of notes when I read on Monday and Tuesday, since I am apparently incapable of reading this book and not having some kind of comment every 20 seconds or so. But since my comments aren’t new or different, I’m going to only slightly let them bleed into what I post during this experience.

What I do want to talk about however, is two of the books I read this week.

The first one is the Til Death box set by Bella Jewel. I’ll try not to get too book reporty here, in case you want to read the books, but I want to talk a little bit about it, since it shares some similarities with FSoG as far as characterization goes. The male lead is the most similar to Christian that I’ve come across so far in the books I’ve read since starting FSoG (and possibly ever). His name is Marcus and he is an asshole of epic proportions for most of the books.

Everyone in the book knows he is aloof, brooding, and manipulative. He describes himself as incapable of love. Sound familiar?

The major difference between Marcus and Christian is that Marcus knows what he did to the female lead, Katia, was wrong. Even while he was doing it. Yes, this makes him an asshole, but it is also what made him redeemable. And he does redeem himself at the end of the second book. He was able to figure out what was wrong, what the core problem was, fix it, and then ultimately there was a HEA.

Christian on the other hand…if he knows how much he is manipulating Ana (and I’m sure he does), he either doesn’t think it’s wrong or just doesn’t care. Both outcomes are pretty terrifying. If I was to go beyond the text on the page (something I really, really am trying not to do here), I would go so far as to say that he gets off on the controlling and manipulation far beyond the scope of BDSM and the terms of his contract. He does actually admit to enjoying it at one point. I honestly don’t think I’m making too big of a leap here. It seems like he enjoys keeping women off balance and making them uncomfortable. And now he’s found the perfect prey in Ana, and she’s buying what he’s selling hook, line, and sinker.

So there’s all that.

And then there’s the second book I read, the “FSoG that could have been” I mentioned at the jump. It’s called The Boss, it’s by Jenny Trout writing as Abigail Barnette, and it’s AMAZING. It’s a really good storyline, and it’s kind of awesome in its style in that it’s almost a subtle satire of everything that is wrong with FSoG. There are quite a few lines that if you read them without having any prior knowledge of FSoG, you really wouldn’t think anything of them. But with that prior knowledge, you can kind of smile to yourself as wrongs are righted. I’m not going to go into it more than that, because you should really just scoot over to whatever platform you read e-books on and snatch it up. It’s free!

That seems to be about all I’ve got for this week. Moving forward, this is most likely going to be a blog series with posts about the other books I’m reading and how they might relate to FSoG, with other article-type entries thrown in. I have a couple ideas of things I’d like to play around with.

Let’s see what the next week will hold.

-CK

Current Place in FSoG: page 231 (I forgot to mention, but I was on page 175 before the

Current Pleasure Read (and it’s a real live, physical book this time): The Ruby Circle: A Bloodlines Novel (Richelle Mead)

I’ve also started a list of the books in the sidebar, with links included to Amazon (’cause that’s pretty much my sole source of books, both physical and digital).

Also, Happy Mothers Day!

We interupt your regularly scheduled blog…

chiisaikitty1 Comment

…ah, who am I kidding? There’s nothing remotely “regularly scheduled” about this blog. But that is about to change. It’s not fanfic-related, but it is writing/reading-related, so I hope I don’t lose too many of you lovely folks who are subscribed to this blog.

Anyway, hello there, Internet! Long time no blog. I’ve pulled myself out of self-inflicted seclusion to talk about something, and that something is Fifty Shades. *cue dramatic music*

I know, I know. I’m last in a long line of people joining this conga line. I’m waaaaay late on putting my two cents in on Fifty Shades of Grey. I’d compare myself to a reverse-hipster or something, but that would basically be saying that I liked something after it became a thing. And I certainly do not like Fifty Shades. In fact, that’s kind of become the thesis of sorts of this journey.

I’m not 100% certain when I decided to start reading Fifty Shades of Grey, but I know it was before the movie came out and after the preview/trailer insanity started, so let’s call it mid- to late-January when this idea hatched in my brain: I’d seen/read/heard the hype, the articles, the Facebook comment threads, but I also like to think of myself as a “put your money where your mouth is” kind of person, with a social sciences background, so I came to the logical (maybe) conclusion that I’d read the books, see the movie(s), and write about…something?

Hell, I’d read the Twilight series. I suffered through the final few Sookie Stackhouse books. Surely nothing could be worse than that?

This. This is worse than that.

As of this entry, on May 3rd, 2015, I am still reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Not rereading, reading for the first time. Not even a close, analytical reading—which I fully intended to do and then code for different happenings—because I decided about 10 pages in that I had neither the patience nor remaining sanity to deal with that. Just a standard, casual reading. I joked with a friend that I think I am physically incapable of reading it.

On the other hand, I’m certainly not incapable of reading in general. I’m not in a slump. Since I have physical, paperback copies of the books (more on that in a bit), I’m sure as shit not taking them out in public, where some poor bystander might mistake me for a fan, I will and have been reading it at home. I also read on my lunch breaks at work, so I started reading other books at the same time (which I have NEVER done before, I’ve always been a monogamous reader), both in print and on my phone and then my Kindle when I got in February (I’m just behind the game on everything, it seems).

I’ve since finished seventeen books and have already started a new one. I know this because I started keeping a list on my Kindle when I noticed that I was getting nowhere with FSoG and blowing through everything else. I thought it might be a funny aside to whatever larger…whatever I decided to write. But then I ran into a slight problem, I haven’t picked up FSoG in at least a month (probably longer).

Since I’m also not a quitter, especially of books (see aforementioned Twilight and Sookie Stackhouse books), I’m going to have to tackle this from a different angle: How many books can I get through while I force myself to read this trilogy? The social commentary with be secondary, since just getting through it is the primary goal. Because I know one thing’s for certain, I most definitely won’t have a hard time coming up with something to say about the content.

So first, backstory, including my initial foray. Then I’ll lay out the particulars of how I’ve elected to torture myself.

—

As I mentioned above, I decided to put my two cents in around the time when everyone started losing their shit over the movie release. I’d dabbled in reading articles about the…er, negative aspects of the content, and listening to what my writing friends had to stay on the topic. My initial outlook was something along the lines of “hmm, that kind of sucks that their getting the BDSM thing wrong and people are looking to this book as an instruction manual of sorts.” And full disclosure, I am not—nor do I claim to be—even remotely any kind of expert on the world of BDSM. I will be deferring to people more knowledgeable than me for that. But I have read quite a bit of fiction in that genre, so I thought it was kind of a bummer that this book was getting so much attention, when it allegedly had so much wrong with it, when other seemingly much better books went under the radar. At the same time, I knew it originally was Twilight fanfiction (which, admittedly, I think I tried reading at one point, but gave up…that should have been my first clue probably), that people were purporting didn’t change much between fanfic version and published version. It miffed me a bit, both as a writer myself and friend to people who were doing wonderfully inventive things with fanfiction at the time, that someone could change names, replace ‘vampire’ for ‘BDSM enthusiast’ and score a huge publishing/movie deal.

Ok, it miffed me a whole lot.

But that was the last I thought of the subject then. In college I was in writing classes full of similarly-minded people, some likening FSoG to the antichrist of fiction writing. I didn’t have to think anything of it.

Then I clicked a link for the website Fifty Shades of Abuse. And I immediately wished I’d continued thinking about it, and thinking about it more deeply, especially while I was still in school and could have really done something with it from a sociological standpoint.

I attempted to discuss some of the points I was reading on the Shades of Abuse website with some coworkers and was immediately shot down and dismissed as being wrong and not knowing what I was talking about. That was probably the point where I decided I needed to read it for myself and form opinions that were well and truly my own.

I starting asking around to see if anyone I knew had copies I could borrow, because I definitely wasn’t paying money for them. Eventually I got my hands on a set from one of my mom’s coworkers.

And so it began.

It started out well enough, I was playing games on my phone on lunch at work and coming home and reading a bit of FSoG. Then the secondary book reading started. I was trying to do it in equal ratios—since I was reading an hour during lunch, I would try to at least read that much of FSoG. It never typically worked out that way, since I’m sure just by sheer volume I’d have at least completed the first book. Then the secondary books just kept adding up.

Then I realized I was no longer reading FSoG at all.

Upon consulting with my friend who’s been my primary supporter in the whole endeavor, we decided that I needed to finish these books, and I needed to set rules for myself in order to do so.

The Rules

  1. For every hour of pleasure reading during lunch at work, I will read an hour of FSoG.
  2. After the hour of FSoG, I can either decide to keep reading, or go back to the other book, or go do something else entirely.
  3. I will take notes of my progress throughout the week, and make posts on Sundays.
  4. For each Shades book I finish, I will reward myself somehow.

I will also be writing a little bit about the books I read. I have been, and will be, genre hopping with these books, because I have very diversified interests. I’m also counting the books that I’ve read when I haven’t been reading FSoG.

Will anyone care about this? Probably not. There are tons of similar opinions out there, in every medium imaginable, and lists upon lists of other books to read instead of FSoG. But at least I’ll have spoken my piece.

For anyone who’s reading this, thanks for sticking with me. Let’s do this thing.

-CK

A Word on Stiletto

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I know this isn’t reaching the majority of the people who read my fan fiction stories over on FF.net, but I know that there are a fair number of you over here that do, so I thought this would be a good way to pass a long a bit of information re: Stiletto. Plus FF.net generally frowns on posting Author’s Notes as chapters, and I didn’t want to make those waves.

Tonight, I had a chat with a new reader of Stiletto over on FF.net, and some interesting points were brought to my attention about the way the story was going, and the strength of the characterization and the plot. All of this has led to me to the realization of possibly wanting to rewrite the story before I’m finishing it. I guess it would also be while I’m finishing it, technically speaking. I think that my hang up about really finishing it stems from the fact that I’m not entirely pleased about how it’s turned out. I decided how the story was going to go entirely too late into it, and I believe that is what has made the characters seem inconsistent and has made the plot kind of all over the place, and then sort of come into something towards the end of the story altogether.

I’m posting about this on here for a couple of reasons. One, I want to gauge a reaction from my audience about how this will look for you guys. I know that I have been out of the fanfiction game for an inexcusably long time, but I hope that I still have some semblance of a readership out there. And two, I like to at least post here to show the people who read this blog that while I haven’t been posting as regularly as I once did, I haven’t given up hope on these stories that I’ve started and that I have every intention of completing them and even posting more once the currently posted stories are complete and the in-progress stories are entirely complete as well.

If I do move forward with this retelling of Stiletto (it’s a very likely outcome), I will most likely leave the original version of the story either here on WordPress or on FF.net, so I would be interested in some feedback on that aspect as well. Ideally, the entire retelling would be posted all at once, from start to finish, so as not to confuse people or be redundant over a bunch of weeks of posting.

I believe that a retelling is a good idea because I think that it is the solution I’ve been searching for in order to finish the story in a way that is satisfying to me as a writer and actually completes the story. Stiletto is the first story I wrote fully in the fandom, and it’s the longest, so I’d like to see what happens if I rewrite the story completely in my style as it is now, rather than a beginning that was written in 2009, a most recent chapter that was written in 2010, and an ending that was written partially in 2011 and mostly in 2012 (or even beyond, considering the standstill I’ve been at). I would much rather sign even an internet pseudonym to something that has a strong plot and cohesive characterization over something that I feel is weak and all over the map.

Thanks to all those who’ve stuck with me and are sticking with me. I’m not giving up on this.

-S

I Have Not Disappeared Completely!!

chiisaikitty3 Comments

I’ve simply been swamped with my junior year of college!

Now, I’m not thinking that there’s going to be a ton of people still on board with my fanfiction writing, since it has been between one and almost two years (holy crap, I know) since my stories have been updated, but I just wanted to put out a post to say that since this year of college is wrapping up this week, that my goal is to write as much as I can on my fanfiction stories over the summer. Namely, I want to finish Stiletto and Drawn (even  though like, no one reads it) and I really would like to finish Backbeat and Allegro, but I don’t really see that happening realistically. Allegro should be mostly finished by the end of the summer though, I hope. I also hope to finish my two other shorter stories that I have been working on for quite some time, but I am not going to post those at all until they are completely finished. That being said, these stories hopefully won’t be the last that you hear from me by way of fanfiction, but I definitely am going to complete a story before I start posting it on the next wave of stories. That way, there will be more timely updates and there won’t be another two year gap of no story (I am just appalled by this myself actually…I wouldn’t even stick with me, personally). So to those who have just started and will continue to read my stories even though I haven’t updated them in for-freaking-ever, thank you so much. Your support means a lot. I swear, I have stuff started for each of these stories, it’s just been a matter of finding time to plant my butt in a chair and write. And that time is this summer! Thanks again!

And for anyone who might care, a shameless plug of some other things I’m hoping to accomplish this summer:

  • creating dresses for my other blog: DIY Fashionista
  • revamping my jewelry and accessories business, Cupcake Cameo, to include papercrafts (cards, etc.) and home stuffs
  • and working on baby clothes for friends who are expecting, and also working on launching another Etsy store, Babycakes by Cupcake Cameo

Thanks again!

-Sydney

It’s been a long time coming…

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I know, I know, it’s taken me virtually forever to update any of my stories, but I’m back with Backbeat.

Chapter 7- Crushcrushcrush

The photos inside are of Emily Haines, the lead singer of Metric (among other things), who is my Sookie for this; and a photo of the old Amway Arena, which is what I based the concert setting on, since I haven’t been to the new arena yet.

Special thanks to afalcone10 for pre-reading and putting up with my craziness on a regular basis. She’s really the shizz.