So for today’s 50shades of theft post, I’m going to be talking about Chapters 11 & 12, otherwise known as the most boring shit to go to print ever. And yeah, there was a sex scene in there, but it wasn’t spicy enough to justify making me have to read through a bullshit contract and maneuver my way through the email flirt chat thing. The next post should follow pretty quickly, maybe even tonight. It’s Bug’s breakdown of why Ana should be running for the hills. So let’s do this thing, people!

Answers to the previous NAME THAT NARRATOR!!! (Jacob vs. José)

Quote 1:
“Is it the money, then?” –Jacob, Twilight

Quote 2:
“Is it the money?” – José, Fifty Shades of Grey

So, Bug knew when I had started reading Chapter 11, because these are the texts she got:

“Fucking shit. Are you kiddin me? I have to read the contract??
Ugh this is awful, boring, stupid, and contradictory.”

And then I got to the “safe words” part of the contract where yellow means caution and red means stop, and I had this to say:
“Lol, safe word fail:
One two three, red light!
One two three, green light!”

But you know what? The more I think about it, the more it disgusts me. His safe word choices immediately brought to mind a childhood game, red light / green light. And one thing that has been discussed between me and Bug, and also on Jenny Trout’s blog (link at the end) is the infantilizing of Ana. Such as Christian constantly reminding her about how young she is (um, 22 to his 27 is not that much younger), the pigtails (moron), the thumb sucking bit that comes later…

This is disgusting. And even more disgusting: this book is inspired by/ripped off from a young adult novel. A novel about teenagers. AM I THE ONLY ONE BOTHERED BY THIS??? There are apparently shit tons of erotic Twilight fanfic out there. Seriously, I dare someone to Google “Twilight erotic fanfic” because frankly, I’m scared to. But this means people are reading this YOUNG ADULT novel about TEENAGERS and saying, “Hey, do you know what this story needs? Whips and bindings and tons of kinky sex!”

I mean, Bella is 17 at the beginning of those books. And I know that in some states, 17 is already legal. But in this book, she is not portrayed as a self-sufficient, independent, grown woman trapped by her birthday and just waiting to break free. She is portrayed as childlike, innocent, naïve, and uncertain. She’s the generic “every girl.”

So for people’s minds to take that and find “inspiration” for the kinky freaky deaky… I don’t know. Every chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey that I read makes me lose a little more faith in humanity.

Anyways, whatever.

So Ana sees more of those signs that she and Christian are incompatible because of drastically different expectations: “…oh please! I scoff angrily. Serve and obey in all things. All Things! I shake my head in disbelief.”

But then, of course, she talks herself down from her almost awareness: “Actually, doesn’t the marriage ceremony use those words… obey?” Yes, Ana, the marriage vows have been known to use the word obey. But actually, that’s kind of been phasing out for the last couple of, oh I don’t know, decades. And marriage vows also throw around some silly words like trust, honor, cherish, love… I somehow don’t think Christian has any of that in mind.

And OH SHIT GUYS, A RED FLAG!!! Christian wants Ana to come over every weekend. “Every weekend? That’s too much. I’ll never see Kate or whatever friends I may make at my new job.” That’s kind of the idea, Ana. He doesn’t want you to have a social life outside of him.

So she decides that, “No, no I can’t do this. I put my head in my hands. This is no way to have a relationship.” Wait, sorry, no. She thinks that, but what she actually does is keep walking head first towards disaster.

And, oh snap! We get the internet research thing! In 50shades, Ana has to go online and look up BDSM info, because apparently even though Christian says he’s going to “teach” her, he wants her to look it all up herself, because fuck logic.

But in Twilight Bella was digging around online doing vampire research while Edward is away sun-dodging. So completely different. Right? This is another one of those “if it didn’t happen every damned chapter, it might be a coincidence” things. But it does happen, over and over and over and…

And then, lo and behold, I discovered why this book is so damned fucked up: “Always start with Wikipedia.” BAHAHAHAHAHAHA That is Christian’s expert advice to Ana when she asks him what she should be looking for on the internet. That explains a lot.

After some research and some “oh mys” or “holy craps” or whatever, she goes jogging and listens to Snow Patrol, and fuck, this book is trying to ruin so much music for me. I haven’t been able to listen to Kings of Leon for days now, Springsteen and Pink Floyd are making me cringe, and apparently even Fleetwood Mac gets a spin.

There’s this email crap where they repeat the damned headers and timestamps to up the final word count, apparently, and she sends him a, “nevermind, nice knowing you” sort of email as a joke. And the mother fucker shows up at her bedroom door within the hour.

“Well, I thought I should come and remind you how nice it was knowing me.” DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!

But instead of being freaked out, she lets him tie her to the bed and have sex with her, because, again, fuck logic. I hate this book…

I bet you thought I was going to get through two whole chapters without any evidence of direct plagiarism… NOPE.

Kate is so kind to inform Ana as well as us, the valued readers (snark) that, “Apparently Bob {you remember Bob, right? Ana’s step-dad, the ‘not Phil’} has sustained some injury {demonstrating a slide; wait sorry, wrong book again}, so your mom and he can’t make graduation.”

What makes this worse is that in Twilight, at least Renee offers some sort of reason of how Phil was hurt, why she has to miss her only daughter’s graduation ceremony. It’s like ELJ couldn’t be bothered to come up with something on her own, but it would just be too obvious (as if it wasn’t already) if Bob had gotten hurt doing baseball-type-stuff.

NAME THAT NARRATOR!!! Two-parter! since the guest post by Bug won’t be featuring one.

(Okay, I had to edit lines a little bit, because the “oh my” and shit grammar would have totally given it away.)

The scene: the girl is cold, the girl is not wearing a jacket, the guy sees that the girl is cold and not wearing a jacket, but the guy has to ask anyways. Derp.

Part 1, the guys

Quote 1:
“‘Don’t you have a jacket?’ His voice is disapproving.”

Quote 2:
“‘It’s cooler now, don’t you have a jacket?’
He shakes his head in irritation…”

Part 2, the girls, after putting on jacket

Quote 1:
“I inhale… the delicious scent.”

Quote 2:
“…it smells …delicious.”

Parting comments:

OMG THIS EMAIL SHTICK!! Please someone make it stop!
If you have a person’s cell number, don’t email them a one sentence piece of a larger conversation. If you can’t call, fucking text each other!!!

 

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Closing Notes:

Follow us on twitter @aka_kody @BexlyP

If you want to follow the train wreck that is 50shades to its illogical conclusion without melting your eyeballs, follow the blog of @Jenny_Trout.

If you see abuse in 50shades, or want to understand what domestic violence survivors are talking about, @EmmaTofi, @katjevanloon, and @Sageling are putting together a blogring with links to stories, articles, and other posts of interest.

You can also follow @50shadesabuse on twitter.

If you want just a regular, real world example of BDSM (not the misrepresentation of it as seen in 50shades), check out the blog of @itsjustahobby. *Not safe for work*