What’s the deal with Fifty Shades of Grey? It sounds awful:
HERE’S AN alarming thought. There are more copies of Fifty Shades in circulation than there are people in the whole of Argentina.
[….]Strip away all the talk of mummy porn and female empowerment and the whips, chains and nipple clamps, and what you’re left with is the story of a damaged bully who manipulates, sexually tortures and spends his way into the life of an inexperienced young woman. The books’ singularly charmless hero instructs her what to wear and what, when and how much to eat – as he goes about eroding the boundaries of what she considers acceptable physical force.
Yes, that’s right. It’s the classic narrative of domestic violence, with a few more wifi-enabled Apple devices thrown in. If Christian Grey was your mate’s new boyfriend, you know you’d have staged an intervention the first time he used GPS to track her cellphone across the country.
ooparts
I think that, deep down, a lot of people just want to be dominated. Why do you think Republicans keep getting elected?
Sly
My mind immediately turns to Sylvia Plath, but I suspect that’s an oversimplification.
Robin G.
It’s disgusting. It’s absolutely disgusting. It’s poorly written, it’s racist, it supports rape, and it’s not even sexy (unless you get off on lines like “Suck me, baby”). EL James (or SnowQueen IceDragon, as she was known back when she wrote this — did I mention it’s a Twilight fanfic that changed the names of the main characters?) also has the benefit of being a wretched person. It also features this line:
People, that is an actual line from the #1 New York Times Bestseller.
I can’t.
Tom Levenson
@Robin G.: I would say you’ve just given me reason #578 why I see my choice of profession as an exercise in deep masochism.
Let me say for the record that in none of my books, those published or those yet to come, could I have conceived of such a line. And that none of my books to date have even sniffed the NYT bestseller list.
Which is why I ask, shortly after noon where I sit, is it too soon to start drinking?
Tom Levenson
@Robin G.:
Shorter. Let me moan, “Oh God…Oh God!”
But not in a good way.
FedSec
The worst part is it does such a disservice to the BDSM lifestlye. No respecting submissive would accept a Dominant/Master like this Grey person. The book was written by someone who has never experienced it, much less lived it.
Suffern ACE
I have no idea. But then when I was a kid I remember lots of people reading flowers in the attic and the thorn birds. Hardly Lassie Come Home purity best sellers.
Louise
@Tom Levenson: Save me a seat next to you.
butler
The “Read it and Weep” podcast skewered it a while back. I think their general consensus is that its “Twilight” with a lot more graphic sex. Which makes sense, since it apparently started out as a Twilight slash fiction.
Also according to one of the people on on the podcast the actual BDSM community hates this book because it throws all the rules about consent and such out the window and makes them look terrible.
SatanicPanic
Who knows, people are creepy. I don’t get why people read those Twilight books either. Being repressed does that to you I guess.
Violet
@ooparts: Republicans also want someone to be In Charge. They are uncomfortable with other types of organization. This book fits right into that–Christian Grey is In Charge.
Yes, I realize that looks just like Charles in Charge. It’s just as ridiculous, but it’s still true.
spiffy
My friends and I were reading passages to one another and howling with laughter as to how poorly it was written.
I know the old saying goes that as long as someone is reading something it’s a good thing, but in this case, it doesn’t apply. This is utter trash and it saddens me that there are so many women who find this “sexy.”
As Robin G. said, this was a Twilight fan-fiction that got lots of positive response from Twilight fans so she decided to self-publish it and it was so big Random House took over publishing rights. Of course she had to change the names to avoid being sued by Stephenie Meyer.
I thought the Twilight books were utter s#@t, but the Fifty Shades trilogy makes the Twilight books seem like Shakespeare.
You have time to waste on the Internet? Go to Amazon and read the bad reviews for these books. They are hilarious.
joes527
@Tom Levenson: Yeah well, you will never have Gilbert Gottfried do any of your audiobooks either.
Robin G.
@Tom Levenson: As an aspiring author myself (and a proud writer of fanfic, which is a craft in and of itself, who thinks that Pulled-To-Publish fic is one of the most cynical and exploitive things that can possibly be done in literature), I drink about this on a regular basis.
Another “sexy” line, which takes place after
BellaAna sendsEdwardChristian an email telling him to go to hell, and he sneaks into her apartment to wait for her:“No,” I protest, trying to kick him off.
He stops.
“If you struggle, I’ll tie your feet, too. If you make a noise, Anastasia, I will gag you. Keep Quiet. Katherine is probably outside listening right now.”
After this, he has sex with her. But it’s all okay, because she has an orgasm.
#1. New. York. Times. Bestseller.
Steve
@ooparts: My friends from the BDSM community tell me that Republican men are invariably the subs.
R-Jud
@Robin G.: Agree 100% with your rant.
A fellow unpublished novelist friend of mine and I made a pact over drinks a few weeks ago to writing fanfic based on Fifty Shades of Domestic Violence and getting that published.
But unfortunately, that’s already happening.
Andrea
I’m unlurking for a moment to say the following: this book is a wretched waste. Not only is the relationship dynamic appalling, the writing is absolutely HORRENDOUS and the plot totally unbelievable. And this is coming from someone who loves a good trashy romance. I’ve read, literally, hundreds of them. Good, bad, ridiculous, bodice rippers, paranormal, vampire sex, Christian inter-racial love triangle erotica – you name it, I’ve read it, so it’s not like I’m a literary snob or anything.
I hated this book with the fire of a thousand suns.
It’s the worst book I can ever remember reading.
It’s shamelessly, unabashedly bad.
I am worse for having attempted to read it (I couldn’t finish it) because every mention of it makes me mad that it even exists, let alone is popular to this extent.
Now I’m going back to lurking.
Robin G.
@spiffy:
If you make Stephenie Meyer look like a competent writer, you need to drink bleach and end it all.
I’m still not exactly sure why SM didn’t sue. Fanfic has never been seriously challenged in court, but if ever there was a time to lay down legal precedent, this is it. My assumption is that she didn’t realize how big it would get, and then it was too late. If someone has pulled it with Harry Potter JKR would have come down like the fist of an angry God.
Suffern ACE
If the public wanted to read a well written mystery about corporate power, it could have wrapped it’s arm around Stone’s Fall. But it opted for brutal sexy time with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo instead. I see a pattern here.
4tehlulz
@Violet: Since Scott Baio is a wingnut, that put horrific images of him as Christian Grey in my head.
Ben Franklin
@Robin G.:
You expect more from popular Media? I can’t find any males reading the thing. People read what appeals to them. No different from TeeVee
Linnaeus
I can’t find it now, but I recall seeing a photo of a sign that employees of some bookstore put up next to the copies of Fifty Shades that were on the shelf. The sign said something like, “Do not buy this book. You can find much better smut on the internet.”
Robin G.
@R-Jud: It’s like the Inception of modern literature. I’m hoping that book becomes a major success, but SQID is already talking about putting a stop to it.
Violet
I think some of the purchases are just to see what the fuss is all about. I would bet a lot of people never get past the first couple of pages. Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” was also a worldwide best seller. What percentage of people who bought it actually read the whole thing?
Tom Levenson
@Robin G.: The bile, it rises.
Truly sad stuff.
True confession, though: my first book was about climate science. It had a truly unhelpful title, Ice Time …. which was a reference to a passage about reading history in ice cores, but conveyed nothign helpful about a book that was trying to get people to grasp why we actually do have the knowledge to think about things like AGW. (This in 1989.)
But what really pissed me off was that no one would even think of letting me call it Sex and The Weather.
I could have been a contender.
Robin G.
@Ben Franklin: No, I don’t expect better. But it doesn’t make the flaunting of cynical money grabs any less depressing.
Spiffy McBang
@Robin G.: Maybe the one smart thing Stephanie Meyer ever did was realize that her books are shit and anything that draws tangential attention to them can only help in the long run.
…I’m in an optimistic mood.
SmallAxe
@Steve:
met a dominitrix here in DC a while back and she said just that. Both sides of the aisle represented in her dungeon but scales heavily on the right side she said.
My avid romance novel reading lady says this is horrible writing as well and doesn’t compare to the great romance novels. She gave the series a 6 on a 10 scale and agrees it’s Twilight with lame BDSM.
Butch
It went almost immediately for me into the same category as “The Girl with the…” series, which I started several times and never did manage to finish.
Spiffy McBang
@Violet: I know my roommate read Twilight and at least some of 50 Shades just so she could know what the people at work were going on about. She reads very quickly, and has an apparently unending degree of masochism when it comes to terrible writing, so she pulled it off. But she’s at least smart enough to download an e-book rather than spend money on this crap. And people say piracy is a bad thing.
RSA
From the very first page of 50 Shades:
Seriously? I mean, you don’t need to read any further.
MikeJ
@Tom Levenson:
The original meaning of “the sun is over the yardarm” meant that it was past 11am, and time for the forenoon grog.
You’re running late.
Robin G.
@Spiffy McBang: LOL. That’s definitely a glass half full approach :) Nah, SM doesn’t think her books are shit. For all her faults, she’s actually always been very tolerant of the fandom (I think it’s a submissive Mormon female thing), and my guess is she just decided to let this go. I’m still surprised that Brown Little and/or Summit didn’t give it a shot, though. We’ll see what happens with the movie.
different-church-lady
@joes527: Nor Charlton Heston.
MariedeGournay
I find it interesting that this book unveils the violence at the center of the Bella/Edward romance. It’s like some one did Dracula fan fiction about ‘sexy’ gang rape. (Poor Lucy)
spiffy
@Violet:
This is purely anecdotal, but I have friends who work at our local library and they say people are putting all three on hold – but, once they finish the first book, 75% of people are cancelling their holds on Books #2 and #3 because book one was so bad.
4tehlulz
@Robin G.: Movie? Is Cinemax making it?
WereBear
@spiffy: Just be careful and don’t be logged in when you look it up.
I made the mistake of browsing to it to see what the fuss was about and now Amazon offers me… let’s just say books not to my taste.
It’s is apparently a hideous parody of erotic literature, but I have concluded that:
People would rather have a rotten life they don’t have to take any responsibility for; instead of a great life they would have to make decisions to achieve.
Spiffy McBang
@spiffy: I don’t care if that’s anecdotal, I’m remembering that to tell anyone anytime this book comes up in conversation.
Cassidy
My wife read the first one to see what all the fuss was about. So joking around one evening as I came to bed, she was reading in bed, I asked if there was anything “good” in there. She said no, we have more fun on our own and the writing is crap. She then went to sleep.
pseudonymous in nc
@Robin G.:
I knew that it came out of slash fiction to some degree — and I was trying to explain the genre to someone who’d never heard of it — but didn’t know it was Twilight slash. Dear me.
There’s always been a market for crap books that feature teh seks. Combine that with the one-hit wonder culture that the internet promotes, and you get the mainstreaming of slash fiction.
Marc
. Things that people like in sex and their sexual fantasies aren’t always pretty and morally admirable. Isn’t there an entire genre of romance novel bodice-rippers, written by and for women, with very similar themes (dashing rogue kidnaps woman, etc.)?
And popular novels are frequently poorly written – I doubt that you’d see substantially better prose in beach books, for example. I suppose that people should only have uplifting and life-affirming fantasies, but I’m not overly bothered that they don’t.
SatanicPanic
@4tehlulz: Scott Baio? Is there some cosmic law that lame 80’s TV actors have to become wingnuts?
Robin G.
By the way, for anyone interested in educating themselves, I recommend the following link.
Too Much Wank To Name: This is the history of how SQID decided to go from fanfic to published, wherein the person who put together her website finally became so disgusted with her (SQID’s) behavior that she published their chat logs to show what a rotten person she is. (The person who published this paid for her trouble with threatening calls at her place of work. SQID fans are rabid.)
Master of the Universe versus Fifty Shades: This is a post by someone who ran a comparison of the original fic (MotU) versus the published story (50SoG). It’s 89% the same.
Sleepy Sheep Reads Fifty Shades of Grey: There’s a lot of people out there who are live-blogging their reads, but this one is my favorite. Not only is it extremely funny, detailed, and hits on the serious points, she uses Metal Gear Solid GIFs to illustrate.
MattF
And pretty soon, we’ll get imitators and mixed genres; BDSM/Christian Rapture, whatever. Can’t wait. Well, no, actually I can wait– indefinitely if possible.
Cassidy
@Butch: Those are really good. They are hard to start and you have to slog through the beginning, but once they get going, they finish well.
JPL
@Robin G.: Try reading a line like that out loud. During my teen years, I purchased a magazine that had stories with similar prose and my mother made me read it aloud.
Robin G.
@pseudonymous in nc: Slash-fic is actually male/male fic. This was smutfic. But, yes. It was a literal name-swap.
Linda
@Robin G.:
The comforting part is that not everybody thinks this is Literature, or even readable. My sis and sis in law thinks it sucks. As a librarian colleague pointed out, it’s a newer, more overtly sexual version of virtuous woman reforms bad man through true love. But as Talbot Mundy pointed out, “Good women don’t reform bad men. They only irritate them.”
The Moar You Know
Think about what this book says about us as a society. The Romans would have been thrilled that we’re following their societal model – in every way – so closely.
I’m talking about the pre-fall and slaughter Romans, of course.
Steve
By the way, for those of you who have actually read some of this Twilight stuff and have a clue about who Edward and Bella are or whatever, aren’t you kinda part of the problem here?
Laura
I honestly think it’s mostly middle-aged women who aren’t tech savvy enough to realize there’s better (and worse) free smut on the internet. I like to tell myself that half the people bought them simply for hate reads, but that also makes me mad because it’s AVAILABLE FOR FREE ALL OVER THE INTERNET.
And also people are just really really really stupid.
Robin G.
@4tehlulz: No, Universal Studios bought the rights for over $7 mil. I have no idea how they’ll do it, considering the book has no actual plot. People should just go watch Secretary.
spiffy
@WereBear:
I make sure I’m not logged in when I do that. Like you said, I don’t want to be inundated with crap like that. That’s all I need is to people start thinking I like the trilogy.
@Spiffy McBang:
It’s amazing the number of times my friends have said someone returned the book and said “This is garbage. How did this end up on the bestseller list.”
Like someone said above, it’s the media saturation of it. People feel like if they don’t read it they’ll be left out. It’s being marketed as sexy BDSM but in reality it’s junk.
@Robin G:
The movie will be Razzie-award worthy! How the heck are they going to film that dialogue?
trollhattan
Huh, from that description is sounds like a long-lost Ayn Rand book. Are any moochers tortured?
pseudonymous in nc
I had a funny conversation with a friend who writes crime fiction about how excruciating she found writing sex scenes. Even as a genre writer, she is mightily offended at the awfulness of Fifty Shades’ writing.
NancyDarling
To the women on the blog, just for curiosity’s sake and for the edification of men on the blog—but only if they need it—what is the most erotic scene in a book that you have read?
My vote goes to that scene in “The God of Small Things” where the doomed couple make love after a swim in the river. Arundhati Roy faced obscenity charges in India because of the book.
I think it was one of the most erotic passages I had ever read from a feminine point of view. After I made that statement when discussing the book with my two adult children, my son immediately went out and bought the book which I think speaks well of him.
ShadeTail
Boy, that Irish Times article linked up top is a load of shit. Take away the very understandable disgust at the novel, and all you’re left with is lots and lots of whining about the long-debunked notion that porn is responsible for making men objectify women. It’s actually rather ironic, considering that the author of “Fifty Shades of Grey” is a woman.
Cassidy
@Marc: No one here has said anything about people’s fantasies. We’re talking about horrendous writing. By extension, people who do have dom and sub fanatsies but are too ashamed to look up p0rn like the rest of us are reading this book thinking that it’s giving them a glance into what they might want.
Jay in Oregon
@FedSec:
It’s much worse than that; a responsible Dom would NEVER, EVER accept a submissive who has never had sex.
To paraphrase one amateur reviewer of 50 Shades of Grey who has been in the D/s scene, you can’t expect a Dom to respect your limits when you don’t even know what your limits are.
I mean, in the first book Grey explains quite clearly what a safeword is and why they are important. Then he gives her a beating with a belt that was almost too much for her to endure… that she could have ended at any time by using the safeword he explained to her well before they ever started.
Yutsano
@The Moar You Know: So when do we get our Huns invading us?
Robin G.
@Steve: Some of us have read Twilight (and yes, in detail) in the interest of figuring out the societal implications in such a popular series. As much as 50SoG disgusts me, Twilight is still worse. Its messages are aimed at pre-teens.
MattF
@Yutsano: Or, y’know, actual Christians. Scary.
Darkrose
@Robin G.: Smeyers gains nothing by suing. The author did a good enough job of filing the serial numbers off that she’d have to work to prove there was anything seriously hinky. Random House would want to protect their investment, and Meyers would look like a bully.
Peter
It’s bad Twilight fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off. I mean that’s literally what it is.
They (both 50 Shades and Twilight) become a lot easier to understand when you just think of them as porn for women. Just as porn aimed at men has no literary merit, but is popular because it indulges unhealthy sexual fantasy, so does…well, I’m sure you can figure it out. That these particular expressions of unhealthy sexual fantasy have been singular knockouts, as opposed to the overwhelming but diluted power of the porn market (where everything sells, but few single works sell especially well) is just that it’s a more concentrated market, nothing more.
Does it say something bad about our culture that so many women’s unhealthy sexual fantasy is to be controlled by an abusive partner? Probably. But these books didn’t appear in a vacuum. They sprang out of a culture that we all contributed to. So, uh. Go us?
FlipYrWhig
@Marc:
The original blockbuster novel, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, is about a serving girl who is harassed by the new lord of the manor, then imprisoned in his second house, where he does things like leap out of the wardrobe on top of her. Eventually she reforms him and they get married. Originally published 1740.
Laura
@Ben Franklin: and FYI, tons of gay men and sad husbands who don’t know how to please their wives are reading it too.
It’s just a mess all around. These are the only books I would ever advocate burning.
PurpleGirl
@Robin G.: I learned long ago that the NY Times bestsellers list was not an indication of quality or value. A measure of sales, yes but quality, no.
pseudonymous in nc
@Robin G.:
Well, that shows what I know about fanfic. The person I was explaining it to (badly) had been to DragonCon and wanted to know about furries, specifically people in full-body My Little Pony outfits. Which is another thing entirely.
Brachiator
Yawn. Yeah, it had its beginning in Twilight fan fiction. And it is poorly written. But it is fantasy, and not much different from the average romance novel, albeit with more sex.
This reminds me of some of the scared rabbit criticism of films with sex as a topic. The movies must always be serious, and the sex unerotic. So, a bit about the recent film Shame, from Salon.
This is as dopey as a critic claiming that a comedy was excellent because it had no laughs.
On the other hand, a lot of ladies had good old fashioned sexytime fun with the male stripper movie Magic Mike, which may be on video. A male reviewer at Screenrant admitted he at first would not go see the movie because watching naked dudes is too gay. But he went anyway and had fun because it was a good movie,and was saved from the ghey by a shot involving female breastesses.
So, it’s too easy to clutch the pearls and retire to the fainting couch over “50 Shades.” I can’t wait for the faux shitstorm over the inevitable film version of the work.
And I’m still waiting for the film critic, or blog poster, to admit that a book or movie got them all hot and bothered.
WereBear
@Steve: I’ve never read Twilight, but I’ve read several deconstructions of the series that are hilarious and insightful and much more fun than reading the book could ever be.
Ever since Bram Stoker, there will be Vampire Porn. But really, have these folks never heard of Story of O? Or Anne Rice? These are well-written and rather more authentic.
But perhaps that is the point.
Robin G.
@Darkrose: I’m actually not positive she filed the serial numbers off well enough. There’s a number of lines that are lifted almost in their entirety, and several scenes that can be clearly linked. The real issue, however, is that this story would not have become popular were it not for the original purchases by rabid fans through the vanity publishing house that put it forward; essentially, it would be a very easy case to make that Fifty Shades of Grey would never, ever have been published had it not piggy-backed off the Twilight publicity. I have no idea whether the lawsuit would have succeeded, because again, there’s no legal precedent, but I’m surprised they didn’t at least try.
Cassidy
@Peter: You keep using the term unhealthy and I want to say bullshit. Unhealthy fanatsies include minors, non-consent, etc. Two consenting adults acting out fantasies is not unhealthy.
Laura
@ShadeTail: Do you mind sharing when that’s been debunked please?
Comrade Dread
If you have to ask, that could explain why you’re not a bestselling writer. :)
Robin G.
@Brachiator: As a general rule, most previous bodice-rippers were at least spelled correctly, featured basic continuity, and did not have missing words.
Laura
@ShadeTail: Do you mind sharing when that’s been debunked please?
Robin G.
@Cassidy:
This book features non-consent.
kindness
Jesus…..50 Shades tittilates those who never read Dan Savage. The idea of bondage & domination, s & m and other topics your mother would never discuss with you don’t stop her from reading about it in an erotic novel.
I read a little. My spouse was in the hospital for a few days this summer and I downloaded it to her ipad so she could read it. She giggled at the thought but read it she did not. I did some. Tame really. But then again, I know people who actually practice the scene so I wasn’t all that impressed.
Peter
@Cassidy: Fine then, fantasies that become unhealthy the second they aren’t fantasies. Is that better?
Cassidy
@Robin G.: Well, yeah, but go back and read the comment I responded to. You missed the context.
Robin G.
@Brachiator:
Secretary.
spiffy
There is a parody book that has already been written:
50 Shames of Earl Grey
http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shames-Earl-Grey-Parody/dp/0306821990
Applejinx
Dammit, I have to admit it gets on my nerves a little.
Seeing as MY Twilight erotic BDSM fanfic gets reactions like
I think it is a hell of an indictment on Fifty Shades Of Grey fic-culture that they can do no better than they are doing with their Twilight BDSM fanfiction, even though MY Twilight BDSM fanfiction is from My Little Pony.
Somebody ought to be mighty embarrassed and the weird thing is, it ain’t me…
rumpole
@Robin G.: Someone did. And she did.http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/09/09/j-k-rowling-wins-harry-potter-encyclopedia-lawsuit/
Robin G.
@pseudonymous in nc: The MLP fandom absolutely scares the shit out of me. I did a search for fanart once and will never recover.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Most of the people I know who read Twilight were moms, including my wife. This is just the next set of books in the series for them.
Considering what a lot of romance novels, including best sellers are like, this really isn’t that far out there.
Steve
@Robin G.:
I nearly thought you were trying to put one over on me, but then I remembered how I read Playboy for the articles…
Robin G.
@Cassidy: Oops. Fair enough.
Butch
@Cassidy: I struggled my way through the first, made a stab at the second, and finally ended up donating all three volumes to the local library, with most of 2 and all of 3 unread…..
different-church-lady
@Laura:
And really, when you get right down to it, isn’t that the problem with e-books? Can’t even get 15 minutes of decent heat from them.
Cassidy
@Peter: No. It isn’t. I don’t know what your personal line of perversion is and I don’t care. But if two consenting adults are aroused in participating in any number of sexual acts and then plan to elevate said fantasies to reality, that’s not unhealthy. That’s two people exploring and enjoying. Is it unhealthy for two partners to watch p0rn and say “let’s try that”? No it isn’t.
Dennis SGMM
Well thank ya’ll for making me feel so out of it. I had never even heard of the book until this thread. I’m busy reading Herodotus Histories (Macauley trans.) and thinking that I’m well read.
Robin G.
@Steve: *eyeroll* I detest Twilight, and when I make an argument against something, I like to make certain I genuinely know what I’m talking about before I start dismantling it.
daveNYC
@Tom Levenson: Maybe something along the lines of Frozen Time Machine would have been better.
Peter
@Peter: Oh here, I’ll do myself one better: ‘Fantasies of unhealthy sexuality’.
different-church-lady
@Robin G.:
Maybe it’s so bad even the editors couldn’t finish reading it?
Bob In Portland
My sister in Florida was privatized out of a state job by Jeb Bush six months before her retirement. She’s a breast cancer survivor and is paying through the nose for health insurance.
She believes we are in a Communist dictatorship and no children in the US are starving.
It’s sad to see flesh and blood so willfully ignorant.
CarolDuhart2
@The Moar You Know: At least its just between the pages of a book-that’s one good thing about a literate nation. We don’t have to actually hire gladiators and mop up the blood.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Brachiator:
The first movie you ever watched as an adolescent that had sexytime. There’s 40 somethings who still think Body Heat is hot, hot, hot.
Peter
@Cassidy: And if you think that’s what I’m saying, then you at the one who missed the context. Or are willfully misinterpreting my statements. Since that meaning would not gel with a single other thing I said in that comment.
Rosalita
@Marc:
that’s what I thought, it’s a modern day bodice ripper, a word-twinkie.
Robin G.
@different-church-lady: I believe her copy editor was her husband. Random House bought the book from Writer’s Coffee Shop (vanity publisher) whole-hog and didn’t run a check through it themselves. They ought to be embarrassed, but I’m guessing the money makes them feel a wee bit better.
Cassidy
@Peter: I see what you’re trying to do and your falling into the problem that many moralists fall into: you’re trying to draw a line between what is acceptable and unacceptable sexual behavior. You can’t do that. Just because you are not aroused by something doesn’t mean you can decide it’s unhealthy. That’s like saying homosexuals are gross because they’re having icky buttseks. So, if it’s unintentional and innocent, I understand, but you really can’t tell other people what is okay and not okay for sexual behavior. It is not your place to judge.
Comrade Mary
@Tom Levenson: Strangely enough, I have also just started drinking for work-related but non-porn reasons. Will check back in the thread once I get a draft (scribed with my own heart’s blood) out to a client.
catclub
@Dennis SGMM: I was not able to get into Lucretius, but am told it is about the most highly revolutionary stuff from the Romans. Banned by the RC church.
On the other hand, Divine Comedy I could read again and again.
(Maybe I should try Virgil)
Jericho
No idea if the book is terrible or not, but that article certainly is. Porn makes more money than all the largest tech. companies combined? No. And she pulled the figures from some lunatic unsourced website.
lamh35
I am a big e-book, erotic fiction reader. I must have close to a 1000 books spread across all of my book reading machinery (compute, kindle, ipod, ipad…all bought at different times, so don’t judge me). I’ve never been into the BDSM fiction, in fact, I tend to stay away from it, just not my bag of tea.
So I’ve been reading erotic fiction for a while now so the “erotic” bits are nothing new to me, but I do laugh my azz of at how “titillated” surburban moms are by this book. I’ve seen women at work reading this book who are so uptight, that they probably poop out diamonds, and yet they have this book because…IDK Oprah told them to or US Weekly or whatever. I have absolutely no interest in reading it.
BTW, Agree with those who can’t stand the Twilight books. I’ve said before, I’m a fan of the True Blood books and series and I like my vampires bloodthirsty and grown adults (ala Angel or Spike on Buffy or Eric on True Blood) and I live my werewolves built like male gods (ala Alcide from True Blood) and not teenage boys pumped up on steroids.
catclub
@Bob In Portland: “She believes we are in a Communist dictatorship and no children in the US are starving.”
So you tell her to be glad the Communists are so competent at keeping people fed?
Brachiator
@Robin G.:
Not really true. A lot of Victorian porn is pretty good, but has terrible spelling because the publishers could not get professional editors to go over the work.
Pulp porn from the 1920s on is often worse. And some readers were so forgiving (or desperate to get some porn) that they were not bothered by all kinds of print errors.
@Cassidy:
There is a shitload of Harry Potter fan fiction that features both of what you call “unhealthy fantasies.”And lots of “etc.”
Don’t you people know about slash fiction? Don’t you really relax during downtime from politics with a little tentacle porn?
Cassidy
@Peter:
1) You’re insinuating that p0rn aimed at males keeps the unhealthy fantasies in check. I’ll be a little more blunt. If some dude wants to pull out and let loose on his partner’s face, and said partner consents, then it’s not an “unhealthy fantasy”. If a woman decides she wants to be “airtight” and her committed SO is okay with it, then it is not an “unhealthy fantasy”.
2) You’re wrong in drawing the conclusion that women want to be dominated by an abusive partner. Maybe some do, but that’s not important. The argument to be made, in relation to 50sog, is that women who have a fantasy of being a sub are reading this because it’s acceptable and getting a terribly ignorant picture of what dom/sub means.
Robin G.
@Brachiator:
Fair enough. I amend my statement to say that most books feature correct spelling and complete sentences since the advent of spell- and grammar-check.
1badbaba3
Re: 50 shades…Ewwwwwwwwwwww!
That is all.
Cassidy
@Brachiator: Dude, one of my favorite websites has FFF…Fan Fiction Friday. It’s usually a fisking of really bad fanfic. I’m familiar with more than I want to know. I tend to avoid FFF, myself, but it’s kind of an MST3K moment for others.
ETA: I’ll stick with the Shep/Miranda/Ash stuff, thank you.
Emma
@Suffern ACE: Ah… there was nothing sexy about what happened in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was horrifying, and terrible, and somehow empowering but it was not sexy. I don’t know anyone who read the book who found it sexy.
Robin G.
@Cassidy: TELL ME YOU’VE READ THE SLAVE BEAR OF CARE-A-LOT. That was the best FFF ever. I laughed until I cried.
Brachiator
@Robin G.: Secretary.
Yep. Good call.
Cassidy
@Robin G.: My laptop has been down and while I saw it mentioned on FB, I haven’t had the chance, and TR acts funny on my Iphone. Some days it’s full site, others it’s a mobile site. Once my laptop get’s fixed, though, I plan to.
scav
@WereBear: I was wondering when someone would finally bring up the Story of O. Then there’s 9 1/2 Weeks and that even had the movie.
Maxwel
My first thought was that 50 Shades of Grey was about the color palette of new cars.
scav
@scav: Meaning, this seems a poorly written example of a repeated phenomena.
RareSanity
@Laura:
I call bullshit on this one…
I’m assuming that by “sad”, you mean a “sad excuse for a man”, not “distraught”. Why does the the husband have to be “sad”? What if the wife isn’t satisfied, because her head filled with glamorized rape fantasies that her husband finds inappropriate, and refuses to participate in? Is he still “sad”?
What if the wife is unsatisfied because she doesn’t ever communicate, what exactly it is that she “likes” to her husband? Does it make him “sad” because he can’t read her mind?
Sure there could be enough blame to go around to both parties. But as a (happily married) man, I am offended that you would think that anytime a wife isn’t “satisfied” it’s the simply the man’s fault. That fault being that he is just a sad excuse for a man. Also that you think there would be a large enough number of men, that would think that the solutions to these issues, could be found in that kind of book.
Just how ignorant/stupid/sad do you think men are?
Pinkamena Panic
My problem with FSoG isn’t that it’s Twifail schlick-fic with the serial numbers filed off, nor that it’s a ruinously bad read, nor even that it’s life-destroyingly anti-GGG. No, my problem is that it’s “mom porn”, mindless, soulless, quality-free trash pumped out of the book mills for frustrated, repressed suburban housewives who wouldn’t dare ask for a little variety in the bedroom and so have to satisfy their kink vicariously, in a way that doesn’t control how far it goes or even what it is, really.
The worst part will be the inevitable movie. Toned down to an “R” for mass comsumption, but it’ll still sell tickets like crazy. The theaters will have a hell of a time after every show. (The following phrase has been encoded in ROT13 to avoid offending those who might find it disgusting – decode it at your own risk) Vg’yy or svsgl funqrf bs tenl chovp unve naq abg n qel frng va gur ubhfr.
Darkrose
Here’s my Unpopular Fannish Opinion for the day:
I admire EL James.
She had the nerve and the drive to file the serial numbers off of her idfic and publish it and sell it. I’m jealous. My wife and I have a meticulously-researched, centuries-sprawling gay vampire RPF saga that we’ve talked about turning into original fic. I can honestly say that the quality of the writing is orders of magnitude better than Stephanie Meyers on a good day. But we’re lazy, and trying to publish means we’d have to actually finish it, and not get distracted by the next fandom shiny to come along.
From the little I’ve read of it, 50 Shades has nothing to do with real-life BDSM. That’s only problem if the author is actually holding it up as a model. I don’t believe that kink writers must always portray BDSM as appropriately Safe, Sane and Consensual. What bothers me is when authors try to elevate their kink meme fills into how-to manuals, or worse, to presume to give advice as though writing a BDSM AU gives them any expertise in the actual scene. The thing that bugs me most about 50 Shades is when it’s held up as an example of What Women Want, rather than pure fantasy that has little to no basis in the real world.
TL; DR version: I’m jealous as hell because I haven’t published my porn.
R-Jud
@Dennis SGMM:
Herodotus, fine– just as long as you’re not into that copycat Thucydides with his “Fifty Shades of Peloponnesian War”.
Cassidy
@Darkrose: Don’t feel bad. I tried my hand at sci fi, inspired by Richard Morgan’s style, and couldn’t get myself past the first chapter. The reality is that While I may think I have a couple of neat ideas, I’m a crappy writer.
Arclite
@ooparts:
You sir (or madam), win the internets for today.
Robin G.
@Pinkamena Panic:
Side note: I hate that it’s called “mommy porn” and “housewife porn”. (Not attacking you for referring to it as such, mind; you’re using the current widespread terminology.) The implication is that mothers and housewives are inherently unsatisfied with their lives, and are so stupid — and so desperate for escape — that they’re incapable of recognizing good writing from bad. I don’t much care for society’s suggestion that because I’m a housewife I can’t tell the difference between “your” and “you’re”.
Ergo
Apology – tried to be brief but failed. tl;dr at end.
Disclosure – did not read the book. However, am kinky, active in my local community, know and date kinksters and practice many violent or consensual nonconsent scenes; additionally am keeping up on feminist writing, rape culture and sex positivity. So I have some ability to guess what kind of trashy book this is, and some ability to talk about it.
Yes, kinksters get off on lots of storylines that would be unhealthy if they were enacted in full for real; scenes and play can be a way to act these out with negotiated consent and boundaries and trust, while allowing titillatingly realistic make-believe. So porn that expresses the storylines, even in raw form, has its use.
However.
Where us kinksters, and/or us feminists, get justifiably annoyed is in mainstream portrayals of kinky sex and kinky relationships themselves. It would be one thing if the book featured some scenes of manipulative behaviour that were sexy – perhaps some narration of the point of view of each character, the abuser/commander getting off on the other’s vulnerability and the obedient/submissive getting off on being in thrall. It is another thing entirely to depict this as a standard relationship, showing “this is what kink is, this is what BDSM-ers are like, or what the truest of them aspire to.” That’s wrong, and stupid, and misses the point entirely – it would be just as wrong as a movie or book that confused duels to the death with fencing.
That would not be a problem, though, if it weren’t for the fact that this is how most mainstream media – books, movies, tv shows and others – nearly *always* depict kink. It projects an image of dangerous deviants, often to score cheap moral ambiguity points. At the same time, it blurs the boundaries between forms of recreational sex and rape, because the dominant kinky characters are always rapists: they never actually obtain consent, and usually just start with the abuse.
Oh, for one hit movie that showed characters *negotiating a scene*, *setting hard boundaries* hell, even having tops make mistakes *and own up* immediately, instead of being all-powerful sociopaths – at the rate we are going, that would be more transgressive than the kiny sex scene itself, even if the sex included simulated murder and necrophilia. Because “She’s in the thrall of a beautiful, mysterious monster” is still a more accepted reason to have sex in our damn sex-negative culture than “They’re attracted to each other and have freely consented to do their thing, whether or not they fantasize about the former story.” Beacause no-one would freely consent to ouchy stuff, right? So she’s got to be seduced, or hyper-sexed or tricked or whatever euphemism for “raped, but wanted/deserved it too” is being used to blur the line.
As it is, even the cult classics of the genre suffer from this stuff, from vampire romances to Secretary. We still watch them, love them, and get turned on by them. But because of this layer of falseness, works don’t become long-lasting cult hits unless they are very, very well done and sexy. It seems that, from what I’ve heard, 50 Shades is not. So it will lead to a quick fad of “fake” kink in pop culture, and hopefully pass.
tl;dr: mainstream media with abusive storylines can be wank-material to kinky people who are not rapists, but common representations of kink relationships make the sexy parts no different than abuse and rape, leaving out the important consent stuff, so real kink relationships are misrepresented. Kinksters are annoyed by this kind of thing, so 50 Shades will have to be much better than its reputation to overcome annoyance at rape-culture-ness enough to be at all embraced by the community. Hopefully the fad will be short.
Brachiator
@Cassidy:
No.
A lot of people have fantasies about things that they clearly reject and would never tolerate in real life.
Yep. You are absolutely right here.
cckids
@Suffern ACE: Yes, I remember those too, and awesome crap they were. (not in a good way) Did they make the NYT lists? Probably. Along with “The Amityville Horror”.
Oy. Makes you sigh for humanity.
Valdivia
Late to the thread and with no time to read but it sounds to me like a poor attempt to have a modern American version of The Story of O.
Jager
The young women Mrs J works with all love 50 Shades of Grey. Her good right hand, a lovely young(20)Latina, gave her a well thumbed copy of the first book. I read it and couldn’t get the image of Mrs J’s assistant, ball gagged, tied down on her bed getting spanked by her sweaty construction worker boyfriend,with her Mom making chicken empanadas just down the hall in the kitchen.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
We use a large vibrating egg.
Darkrose
@Robin G.: I can’t comment on how good a job she did–it certainly sounds like the answer is “not very–but I still think the cost/benefit analysis for Meyers wasn’t good at the time it started. Now, it would be a legal battle with a major publishing house, and I suspect she doesn’t think it’s worth the time she could be spending rolling around on her piles of Twilight money.
I’m more upset that Cassandra Claire, well-known plagiarist, has a publishing contract and a movie deal.
Mnemosyne
@Marc:
Ironically, there aren’t really many romance genre books like that being published anymore — most romance novels have matured beyond the Rosemary Rogers “he raped me because he loves me!” days and actually have fairly realistic (if idealized) relationships.
There are some romance writers that are more edgy (ie BDSM) like Robin Schone but even then they’re more about consent and trust than having your very own creepy stalker.
Basically, Fifty Shades is what people who are completely unfamiliar with romance novels assume romance novels are like, sort of like how people who are completely unfamiliar with vampire novels assume Twilight is representative of vampire fiction.
Brachiator
This is the perfect place for this, from a wonderful British Comedy Show, spoof of Dating Agency videos.
Smack The Pony: The Perfect Man
Darkrose
@Cassidy: I don’t really feel bad. I’m confident in my writing, but I also know that I’m the ADD poster child, and I rarely stay interested in a fandom long enough to finish any of my WIP’s. Seriously sitting down and treating it as work would cut into my gaming time.
It’s more of a “Hell, if that’s all it takes to get a fat publishing contract, I should get off my ass and–oooh, shiny!” thing.
Robin G.
@Darkrose: Do NOT even get me started on Cassie Claire. Do NOT. I haven’t read TMI, and I have no intention of doing so. That drama queen will not get one red cent from me.
(By the way, with regards to SQID/ELJ: when you’re less talented than Stephenie Meyer and less classy than Cassie Claire, you need to rethink your life.)
hep kitty
@Robin G.: UGH! No thanks. Isn’t it popular with women, btw? I don’t know anything about it except what I read here and that it’s a bestseller
different-church-lady
@Pinkamena Panic: rjjj…
Arclite
@Robin G.:
It could just be that she has more money than Mitt Rmoney and couldn’t be bothered enough to care. I’ve not read either, but I’m familiar enough with the premises of each book to think that it would be a hard case to win.
Mnemosyne
@lamh35:
Yep. As others have said, this is “erotic fiction” for people who are completely unfamiliar with actual erotic fiction and want to feel a little naughty.
IMO, that’s one reason why the creepiness of the “hero” is a feature, not a bug — they know they’re supposed to feel guilty for reading a “dirty” book.
Cassidy
@Darkrose: I wasn’t insinuating you were a bad writer, just commenting on my own flirtations/ delusions of writing. If it sounded otherwise, I apologize. I really wish I could write. Way back when I graduated HS, I wanted to go to film school and had directed scenes and a one-act my Senior year. My teacher thought that I had a future in film and was very supportive. So, when I get an idea, I can see the scenes, make the dialogue, but I can’t translate it to paper. I know that sounds dumb, but oh well.
Robin G.
@hep kitty: It’s selling with a) women who I assume have never read real erotica in their lives, and get hot and bothered by the word “cock” even when that cock is raping someone in a sentence that makes no sense, and b) people who heard it was popular, went “I wonder what all the fuss is about!”, bought a copy, and after ten pages went “OH DEAR GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THIS”.
joes527
@RareSanity:
Absolutely. Finding that your sexual fantasies are not a match for those of your life partner.
That’s a major bummer there.
Pinkamena Panic
@Robin G.: FSoG’s lack of copy-editing is probably the exception and not the rule. Beyond that, I think we’re on the same side here – this stuff’s insulting, full stop.
Robin G.
@Arclite: I think the biggest basis for the lawsuit would be behind piggy-backing off Twilight’s popularity. 50SoG got a deal with Random House because it was a Twific with 20k+ review on FanFiction.net which then pulled to publish with a vanity press and sold several thousand copies. Without Twilight it would never have made it to print. Given that there’s no legal precedent on the subject of fanfiction, there’s a decent chance that could have done the trick on its own. (There’s also good cases as far as the direct lifts, such as early plot events and even names, but that would admittedly be harder.)
Robin G.
@Pinkamena Panic: No, I agree, we are. :) The word usage just happened to touch a nerve. (Obviously this entire post touched a nerve, but I figure I’m not the first person on Balloon Juice to hijack a thread over a subject that makes them rage, and I probably won’t be the last, so… yeah.)
And before 50SoG made zillions, lack of copy-editing was the exception. Now, I suspect, it won’t be. 50SoG has proven that unedited crap can still sell, so why should the publishers bother paying a copy editor if they don’t have to?
hep kitty
@Mnemosyne: Doesn’t sound erotic to me at all! Not my idea of erotica, anyhoo. Ball gags for the suburban housewife?
TooManyJens
@Cassidy: You read skewerings of bad fanfic on a regular basis, so you know about fanfic? That’s like saying you know all you need to know about movies from watching MST3K. You can if you want, but it sounds a little silly.
I’m annoyed about 50SoG because it’s such bad fanfic. I’ve read much better (and hotter).
Darkrose
@Cassidy:
I find that argument to be rather condescending. It assumes that the readers aren’t savvy enough to understand that fantasy != real life. I also dislike that argument as a writer because it implies that I have a Responsibility To The Community to portray it in an accurate, positive light regardless of whether that’s the story I want to tell.
If I had to pick a given story arc as the best writing my wife and I have done, it would be the series about the completely fucked up, unsafe, insane, and of only vaguely consensual relationship between a bitter, self-loathing alcoholic and his arrogant, professionally closeted sub with anger management issues. We started writing it in part because we were tired of being upstanding and responsible kink writers and we wanted to write the kind of stuff that really worked for us as porn. I firmly believe there’s a place for that.
different-church-lady
@Robin G.: And Miles Davis never would have made it if he hadn’t replaced Dizzy in Parker’s quintet, attempting to play in his style. I’m not sure piggybacking is against copyright law.
Darkrose
@Robin G.:
/dies laughing
This needs to be a .sig file.
RareSanity
@joes527:
I guess you’re right…finding out that my lack of desire to “rape” my wife, is actually a bad thing, would be quite the bummer.
Touché…
hep kitty
I don’t get the vampire thing at ALL – do they suck neck blood in Twilight? I don’t even know. That shite be nasteh.
Darkrose
@Cassidy: Oh, no apology needed! I was responding to the “don’t feel bad” part. I don’t feel bad as much as “damn why didn’t I think of that first?”
hep kitty
@RareSanity:
But hey, I hear it’s an awesome form of birth control!
hep kitty
If you’ve been awake the last 12 years you know that real life is much stranger than fiction anyway.
Srsly, does anybody disagree that you canNOT make this stuff up. Who needs fiction?
Robin G.
@different-church-lady: But Parker’s quintet would still have existed. 50SoG would not have existed without Twilight. I have no idea whether it’s against copyright law, because there is no copyright law precedent with regards to fanfiction. The general opinion is that most fanfic is a violation, but as long as it doesn’t make any money, the majority of authors leave it alone. (Why alienate your fanbase when they’re not doing any harm?) But with alternate-universe fanfic cashing in, sooner or later someone’s going to take it to court, and the exact lines of legality will be drawn. It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens.
joes527
@Cassidy:
I think it is interesting to start from the assumption that dom/sub is hunky dory — just a part of the human experience, but then going all church lady because someone is doing dom/sub wrong.
Culture of Truth
1 in 4 books sold in America is “50 Shades”
Darkrose
@Robin G.: I can’t help but giggle about this a little as someone who writes RPF.
Cassidy
@TooManyJens: Don’t read into it. I know about fan fic. I’m familiar with many different kids and have probably never heard of others. I know that there is some really good stuff out there and a lot of terrible shite.
Now, as to the MST3K reference, I am a lover of all things B movie related and have seen many, many horrible films without the aid of MST3K, to include that pretentious crap from Wes Anderson. But, MST3K does make it a little more fun. So yeah, I guess that would be an apt metaphor for my fan-fic knowledge.
@Darkrose: I’m sure there is a market for it. There is a market for everything.
I think the assumption that the average vanilla person isn’t really aware of the reality of certain kinks isn’t a controversial position. Like anything the fantasy is always different from reality, but for many just exploring on ye old internet box is a shame causing activity. It isn’t a matter of being saavy, so much as being comfortable enough to explore what floats your boat.
Secondly, I don’t think portraying something in a positive light is necessary, but if you’re going to write a book about a sub/dom relationship, I think you do have a responsibility to do your homework and try to be accurate, being that the sub/dom relationship is the centerpiece of the story. For me it’s no different than writing a book about Thermopylae: use some accurate maps, call the weapons by accurate names, and be accurate in your description of fighting formations. It doesn’t mean you have to make combat a “positive” thing, but accuracy helps.
RareSanity
@hep kitty:
But if, in essence, she wants/likes it…I don’t think it would be considered “legitimate” rape, so I’m not covered.
Did Akins mention if there was a manual, or pamphlet, that would clear up this confusion?
Tom Levenson
@Comrade Mary: That sounds like a truly horrible story in the making. To be shared over scotch.
Robin G.
@Darkrose: O_O Since we seem to be the primary fandom peeps here, I’m going to refrain from expressing my squicks on the subject of RPF. (That being said, I write exclusively for subject matter that makes me side-eye to the point I run the risk of cornea damage on a daily basis, so I’m not without my issues.)
Side note on the subject: Most overused phrase in Romney/Ryan slashfic? “He slowly removed his magic underwear.”
different-church-lady
@Culture of Truth: Don’t make me resort to xkcd.
joes527
@RareSanity:
Swwwwoooooosssssh!
That sound was the point. Passing you by.
I was talking about a man’s desires not matching his wife’s desires. I wasn’t labelling particular desires “good” or “bad”
You seem to have more a need to be right than to be compatible.
different-church-lady
@Cassidy:
Rule 34 of the internet.
Anna in PDX
@Valdivia: Um, if this stupid writer had ever read or even heard of the Story of O, which is similar in terms of the kink only, not in terms of the writing, she would have done a better job. The thing is just really badly written. The free “erotica” all over the Internet is better written.
I was happy to see this thread here because we’ve been discussing why this book is so popular on the Library Thing literary snobs list for the past couple of months. Apparently it’s not only us Americans who like badly written porn and pay for it even though it’s available free – it’s Britain’s best seller – EVER. Weep, Charles Dickens.
My theory is that a lot of people are not internet savvy and will read porn that is not too obviously porn (e.g., this book on an ereader where no one can tell what you’re reading). Probably a lot of those people, maybe even a majority, are women, but I bet there are a fair number of men reading this book too. I have not read it, ick, the bad writing alone would just not do it for me.
Darkrose
@Robin G.: I get that people have RPF squicks. From a purely legal standpoint however, RPF is on much more solid ground in the US than FPF is.
And thanks SO MUCH for that image of Romney/Ryan UGH! What has been seen cannot be unseen!
Robin G.
@Darkrose: I JUST CLICKED THROUGH TO YOUR SITE. YOU WRITE DA FIC. ALL THE FEELS.
Brachiator
@Anna in PDX:
Funny, I remember when Story of O or Histoire d’O (no The) was considered degrading, obviously written by a man, and “trash pretending to be literary.”
Now, it’s an erotic classic.
Who knew?
No, it’s just cheaper.
R-Jud
@Anna in PDX:
On Amazon. Only on Amazon. Settle down.
Randy P
Every few years a fairly ordinary piece of porn is “discovered” by the mainstream and distributed in mainstream channels for some reason. And then it’s briefly wildly popular. For no particular reason except that the distribution outlet makes it ok to have on your shelf or something.
Back in the 70s it was the movie “Deep Throat”. More recently was Madonna’s SM photo shoot. Then “The Story of O”. Now these things. Not sure what triggers the mainstream crossover.
Haven’t read one, don’t plan to. But my impression of the general content is you could find much better stuff, also semi-mainstream, in Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty story. Didn’t read that either, this stuff doesn’t do anything for me. But I read enough glancing through it at the bookstore to get the picture.
PNW_WarriorWoman
Doug…honey…you’re just learning about this 50 Shades crappy crap now and the ongoing glorification of rape culture? Honey…you gotta develop more close relationships with women. Just for kicks spend some time researching the mansplaining away rape and other coercian articles that people have been writing, especially Newsweek and Kate Rophie. The whole 50 Shades thing is old news. These books were shitty writing by a woman far too many women were raving about back in April – May. This kind of cultural oppression moves very fast against women, especially when it’s a woman writing it. Suddenly there’s all this commentary to me by some women I know that “it’s ok because it’s written by a woman for women.” May I suggest for you a wing woman? She can keep you current.
PNW_WarriorWoman
Doug…honey…you’re just learning about this 50 Shades crappy crap now and the ongoing glorification of rape culture? Honey…you gotta develop more close relationships with women. Just for kicks spend some time researching the mansplaining away rape and other coercian articles that people have been writing, especially Newsweek and Kate Rophie. The whole 50 Shades thing is old news. These books were shitty writing by a woman far too many women were raving about back in April – May. This kind of cultural oppression moves very fast against women, especially when it’s a woman writing it. Suddenly there’s all this commentary to me by some women I know that “it’s ok because it’s written by a woman for women.” May I suggest for you a wing woman? She can keep you current.
Anna in PDX
Yeah, DH Lawrence was also considered trash pretending to be literary, as was Fielding and a lot of others who wrote about sex slightly more explicitly than the mores of the day demanded… it does not mean 50 Shades is well-written, it’s not. I am not into the whole BDSM genre, and would find Story of O deeply creepy and disturbing if I tried to read the whole thing, but have read excerpts that seem to me to at least be well-written.
Amazon only? Really? Hm, I have been lied to once again by the Grauniad.
Peter
@Cassidy:
Oh, I get it. You’re not an idiot, you’re just making a series of assumptions about my position that are completely unfounded and make you look like an idiot.
(Whether making those assumptions in the first place makes you an idiot or not, I leave as an exercise for the reader)
Here’s a hint for you: cumshots, anal beads, nipple clamps, handcuffs, ball gags, a variety of bizarre sexual positions, watersports, and all the other things from porn you seem to think I’m describing as ‘unhealthy’? I’m not talking about at all. Those are all perfectly healthy sexual fantasies. They don’t even hit my radar. As you said, between two consenting adults, let your freak flag fly.
But there are also unhealthy sexual fantasies evident in porn. Things like rape, coercion, subjugation of women by men, humiliation, abuse of authority. Almost all mainstream pornography contains these to a certain extent. If it’s not in the work explicitly, it’s there in the incredibly unsubtle subtext. Anyone who has ever looked at pornography with anything remotely resembling a critical eye can tell you that. This is unhealthy sexual behavior: a lack or loss of consent, or an abusive power imbalance within the relationship.
(They like to play around with underage, too, by having actresses dress up and act younger, but legal restrictions make this kind of a dicey field so it’s less common)
And before you climb back up on your moral high horse and start pointing out that consenting adults play out these sorts of scenes all the time and there’s nothing wrong with that – yes. They play it out. All legitimate sexual play involving loss of control or consent is roleplay. That is, after all, the function of a safeword; it creates the illusion of a loss of control, without actually losing that control. In other words, the unhealthy sexual relationship, the loss of consent and the power imbalance remains a fantasy. It does not become reality. And there’s nothing wrong with a fantasy – any fantasy – but with some fantasies, there’s a very real problem if it becomes real, as opposed to played out. Because the subject of those fantasies are unhealthy sexual relationships. If you don’t understand that (and comment 92 suggests that you don’t, I really don’t see how you could write that comment if you did) not only do you have no business lecturing anybody about the playing out of fantasies, you have no business performing it either since you clearly can’t separate fantasy from reality. This is elementary shit.
Oh, and as for your second point? I’m not assuming anything. Studies have shown that more than half of adult women have sexual fantasies involving rape and coercion. If you think that statistic has nothing to do with the fact that women are trained from birth to defer to masculine authority, and sold on controlling fantasies like Edward Cullen as romantic, you’re fooling yourself.
PNW_WarriorWoman
Doug…honey…you’re just learning about this 50 Shades crappy crap now and the ongoing glorification of rape culture? Honey…you gotta develop more close relationships with women. Just for kicks spend some time researching the mansplaining away rape and other coercian articles that people have been writing on these books, especially Newsweek and Kate Rophie. The whole 50 Shades thing is old news. These books were shitty writing by a woman far too many women were raving about back in April – May. This kind of cultural oppression moves very fast against women, especially when it’s a woman writing it. Suddenly there’s all this commentary to me by some women I know that “it’s ok because it’s written by a woman for women.” May I suggest for you a wing woman? She can keep you current.
hep kitty
@RareSanity: No but he’s talked to some “doctors” who remain nameless.
Marc
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not that I’m assuming all romance novels are like 50 Shades; I simply view it as more of a continuum with an established category that has sold well and appeals to a certain audience.
Not all fantasy novels involve heroes slaying monsters, but some do, and this has been true from the ancient Greeks to Beowulf and the modern era.
Dreggas
As someone who’s been in and out of the fetish/BDSM community it’s trash, plain and simple.
hep kitty
Wasn’t Ayn Rand into the whole rape thing also?
JustMe
@Robin G.: SQID is obviously a bad writer, but it seems that the problem is more of a culture clash where SQID was unapologetic about selling her work for money while the rest of the fanfic writers have spent so much time identifying with being poor that they consider someone who leverages their writing into a way to make money to be abhorrent.
hep kitty
I grew up in the 70’s and we were schooled to understand that women’s bodies were not sex objects. Funny, sounds old-fashioned now.
Robin G.
@JustMe:
I consider it abhorrent to exploit the fandom, yes. I don’t like pulled-to-publish fanfiction. I think that offering something for free to the public, generating a huge fanbase, and then removing that free item and telling the people who love it that if they ever want to see it again they’re going to have to pay you, is classless. People did buy it, and that’s their right, but I don’t think it’s anything other than a cynical money grab, and I don’t like cynical money grabs of any kind, really.
different-church-lady
Oh dear, once again we’ve reached that point where someone unnecessarily reveals FAR too much about their personal life, and finds out the hard way it will be used as a cudgel for the next three years.
Bex
@Brachiator: That movie was the biggest piece of crap I ever walked out of. Got my money back.
different-church-lady
@Peter: In other words, nipple clamps don’t degrade people: people degrade people.
Greyjoy
I’ve read FSOG and I think people are overblowing the “rape culture” ideas in the book and blahblahblah. The sex in the book is always consensual, most of the trilogy centers around how mentally screwed-up Christian is and whether the protagonist wants to stick around to deal with it (and at one point she doesn’t) and the sex isn’t even particularly kinky. He uses a tie once, a buttplug another time, and a pair of handcuffs at some point, and there’s a lot of sex on furniture that isn’t a bed, but that’s about it. Sure, there’s some noise in the first book about all kinds of BDSM equipment, quickly followed by “But I really don’t want to do anything with that stuff” and then you never hear about it again.
This is a badly-written romance novel, just like every other damn romance novel, where the guy is invariably rich and gorgeous and successful, but internally screwed up and seeking his One True Love, and the girl is always younger, always a virgin, always incredibly beautiful yet totally unaware of the fact, and always gets some huge sexual awakening right from the start, after which point she becomes a nympho and they spend the rest of the book screwing like bunnies. I have never read a romance book that WASN’T like that (and thus I haven’t read many romance books) and it’s just trite garbage. I guess it’s no fun to read a romance novel where the guy’s broke as a joke, both people are pretty-average looking, and the sex sucks the first couple times. That would require a plot and character development, and let’s face it, people don’t read romance novels for the plot.
Cassidy
@Peter: Once again, nothing unhealthy between consenting adults. But keep explaining jackass.
Let me be more blunt because you’re clearly too stupid to get it: you don’t get to decide which fantasies are okay and what are not. I actually made the same error earlier when I described things involving children and non-consent as unhealthy, but as far as fantasies go, that is all they are. I personally find them repugnant, but oh well. As far as enacting those fanatsies, that’sa different story, but as long as they stay as fantasies, then that’s the end of it. It’s not your place, or mine, to judge. Dipshit.
NancyDarling
@Cassidy: Amen to that, Cassidy. As long as there is no coercion and no one is getting hurt, what two adults do together (or alone with two wetsuits and a dildo) is nobody else’s business. I remember a lovely line from “Night of the Iguana” delivered by the lovely Deborah Kerr (who played the spinster traveling with her poet father) to Shannon (Richard Burton) who was shocked that she took off her underwear at the request of some lonely soul and gave them to him. She said, “Nothing human disgusts me.”
Givesgoodemail
@Valdivia: Wanna guarantee that 50SoG is an “O” ripoff? Does she show just a bit of independence at the end of the stories? (In O, she brands him with her cigarette holder.)
No, I’m not reading the book to find out. If I want that level of time-waster in my life, I’ll bury my face in the dirt and count the worms.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
Sometimes, if they’re doing it right, and it’s what everyone wants.
@Peter:
Why only two?
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Mae West.
roc
The cat’s out of the bag: people have ‘deviant’ sexual fantasies. Normal people. Good people. Those fantasies aren’t axiomatically reflected in how they value and interact with people who are not their sexual partners. And consensual adults getting together to write, read and participate in these fantasies isn’t hurting a soul.
So there’s zero chance the rest of society is going back to guiltily suppressing their erotic thoughts in deference to some would-be morality-in-sexual-fantasy crusaders taking to the fainting couch.
Get over it.
daize
@Andrea: Andrea, thanks for your rant! It’s one of the best 50 Shades reviews I’ve read.
Cassidy
@roc: I think the opposite is true. Our society would rather get all hot and bothered over bad writing and barely passable erotica than just look up their particular kink on the internet. Hell, there are so many “tubes” out there for all your deviant needs, but people want to buy shit. I don’t get it.
Cassidy
@Cassidy: And to expand further, I think sexual fantasies involving children are gross and betray some very serious mental issues. I think in some intances, coercion as a fantasy is acceptable, but that goes back to the consenting adults thing. BUt in the end, what’s inside a person’s head doesn’t mean bad or good. It’s just there.
Mnemosyne
@Marc:
But that’s my point — like Twilight is to the horror category, 50 Shades actually exists outside of the romance category and has very little connection to it, but because it has some superficial resemblances (vampires! sex!), people assume that it’s representative of the category.
The women that 50 Shades appeals to are primarily women who have never read a romance novel in their lives, just like Twilight appealed primarily to people who had never read a vampire novel in their lives. People who actually read those categories will tell you how much these hanger-on pieces of crap suck, how different they are than books in that genre, and how much they resent having people lump them in with a category that actually makes their favorite genre look poorly written and slapdash.
Or, to use a different example, The Bridges of Madison County made lots of people who’d never read literary fiction in their lives feel like they were reading “literary fiction,” because it had some superficial similarities to literary fiction.
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ (formerly IrishGrrrl)
I must admit that I read the book and you’re spot on. I hear women raving about it all the time and I just don’t get it. Not only is the story offensive (in multiple ways)…it is very poorly written. The metaphors are ridiculous, the dialog banal and the sex-talk, boring and repetitive. Blech!
Mnemosyne
@roc:
Oh, sweetie. That’s what people said when Emmanuelle came out, and The Story of O, and Nancy Friday’s books. Hell, they probably said it when Fanny Hill was first popular.
Sorry, but this is just a passing fad, and most of the women reading these books will go right back to their moral crusades as soon as they close the cover.
Cassidy
Oh, and lsightly on, but OT. I’m getting tired of decpetive covers and summaries of books. I don’t read urban fiction anymore because I’m tired of being tricked into buying a fucking romance novel that might have a vampire/ghosthunter/werewolf/etc.
Robin G.
@Greyjoy:
In Chapter 12 it is not — or Christian Grey is not aware that it is. He believes Ana Steele has just told him to go away and never come back. He breaks into her apartment, hides in her bedroom, and ties her to the bed. When he starts to undress her she says “No” and kicks out. He tells her that if she tries it again he’ll gag her. He proceeds to molest her, the entire time throwing her words back in her face about how she didn’t want to see him again.
There is no point in this scene, none, that the male protagonist isn’t under the impression that the female protagonist wants nothing to do with him. I call rape.
Mnemosyne
@Greyjoy:
Yes, I thought it was totally trite in Mary Jo Putney’s Dearly Beloved when the hero had to deal with the aftereffects of having been molested as a child, didn’t you? Or when the heroine of Jo Beverley’s The Shattered Rose has to try and repair her marriage after she went out and had sex with another man to get back at God after her baby died and ended up getting pregnant? I mean, really, what a cliche that was.
Also, all science fiction sucks because I read some bad science fiction books by Harry Turtledove, so don’t even talk to me about how “some” science fiction is supposedly good. I know it all sucks because I read some that was bad.
ETA: Though I really had to laugh at the whole “the heroine is always younger and always a virgin” part. You really haven’t read anything published after 1985, have you?
roc
@Cassidy: I was speaking to whether the author of this article has any reasonable expectation that they’ll stop, or moderate what private behavior with their intimate partners is appropriate based on what’s acceptable social behavior in public with strangers.
And as bad as Grey appears to be, I’ve never read a line that was notably worse that what I’ve seen from other online erotica. So I can’t find any reason to care that people are paying for a given piece of bad erotic fiction instead of reading some other piece. (The money is nothing compared to the time they’d lose trying to find anything worth a damn online.)
And I also don’t see erotica this as a replacement good for other literature. So I can’t find any reason to care that people are buying this instead of reading something more ‘worthy’.
Honestly, I’m more annoyed at the people who think success is a zero sum game and that a ‘bad’ work finding success is somehow depriving more-deserving creators.
Everlos
anyone who has ever read a harlequin romance knows that rape is a fairly common occurence and that the rape is committed by the hero of the novel.
roc
@Mnemosyne: I’m not saying these people are going to march in parades. And they may well make socially-acceptable noises and denials when they pick up their kids at soccer practice.
But if reading Grey gave them a thrill, they’re gonna read more like it. And books like this will keep selling.
Brachiator
What this thread obviously needs
GANGNAM STYLE
joes527
@Robin G.: She never said “green balloons.”
Actually, I haven’t read it, so for all I know, she did say green balloons.
Thatgaljill
Whoever wrote that piece didn’t read all three books and doesn’t know a damn thing about series romance novels. If the writer had read all three books (s)he would note a marked character shift as the books go along. And at no time is there a rape in the books… there are two acts of violence committed, but neither are rape and neither are by the main male character.
It’s not Pulitzer Prize worthy, but they are harmless, escapist reading… I heartily enjoyed them…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@hep kitty: With steam locomotives too. Nothing kinkier than locomotive rape.
Liberty60
@Darkrose:
No erotic fiction is like real life BDSM, if only because no romance novel is like real life courtship.
I didn’t care for 50 Shades if only because the BDSM genre has plenty of other, much better written erotics- the Sleeping Beauty trilogy, Story of O are the classics, but there are others as well.
Don’t know if Nerve is still online, but they had a lot of well written stuff.
Liberty60
@Everlos:
If men can fantasize about war and killing, why can’t women fantasize about rape?
Our fantasies are kept as such, precisely because they are taboo, and filled with dark primal anti-social thoughts.
Greyjoy
@Mnemosyne: Well, I haven’t read any ROMANCE novels since 1985, except for this one, and another batch that made 50 Shades a contender for the Nobel Prize in literature in comparison. Maybe you like reading shitty books, but I don’t, so I don’t waste my time on romance novels. Which is not to say that there isn’t plenty of crap in the genres I do prefer, but at least the crap I read is simply preposterous and unrealistic, as opposed to a bunch of dreary stereotypes whose sole purpose is to fill pages in between boring and repetitive descriptions of fucking. If I wanted to read that, I’d go back to Jean Auel.
And by the way, Christian Grey was molested as a teenager and had repressed memories of abuse from when he was a toddler. That didn’t make the books any good, or the subject material even remotely worthwhile. Not even close.
joes527
@Liberty60:
Or at least yours are … evidently.
Joel
Somewhat related: I would watch this movie.
Mnemosyne
@Greyjoy:
In other words, you’re speaking out of total ignorance of the genre and going from your almost 30-year-old memories to judge what the current genre is like.
Hey, I hate science fiction because it’s all about guys shooting bug-eyed monsters in their rocket ships and mystery novels are so stupid and unrealistic. I mean, seriously, we’re supposed to believe that Miss Marple just happens to accidentally stumble across crimes that need to be solved? Are there no policemen in England who would do a better job than she would?
In other words, the genres you read are Manly Books about Important Manly Things, not books about girly shit like love and relationships and all of that BS. Remind me again how bug-eyed monsters are, like, totally superior to human relationships?
Pen
You’ll have to forgive me for skipping the rest of the comments (on lunch break. And all that), but I absolutely hate 50 Shades. Not only is it terribly written and morally dubious, but it, of all things, had to be what pushed “fanfiction” into the spotlight… There’s so much better out there. Ie of my favorite series, of all time, is a fan written novilization of Mass Effect. It’s as good as anything you’d find in hardcover and now it’s tarred wth this shit? Great.. just great.
Next time some piece of fanfiction makes it big is it too much to hope that the author at least has a passing familiarity with. How to write?
Mnemosyne
@Everlos:
Anyone who read a Harlequin romance 40 years ago, sure. But, like the rest of the world, the romance genre has moved on and grown up. There was this little thing called feminism that happened that you may have missed that had a broad cultural influence on popular culture, including romance.
Please let us know which of these books sold in this month’s lineup from Harlequin involve the heroine being raped by the hero. We’ll wait here for you.
(BTW, I ain’t defending Harlequin romances as high literature. They’re quickly written, disposable crap, which is why they release 6 of them a month. But they haven’t featured rapist heroes for at least 25 years now, FFS. You guys sound like the people who insist that 21st century science fiction is still John Carter running around with a raygun.)
Pen
Please excuse the editing errors. My iPad and Cole’s comment edit system get along about as well as my iPad keyboard and I do.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
The first thing published on the printing press in Europe was the Bible. The second thing was porn. That’s how we roll.
Frankly, 50 Shades is a fad — it’ll sell like hotcakes, a dozen (or more) imitators will be published, and it will fade out again. My main annoyance here is that people who are completely ignorant of the romance genre insist that the archaic gender shit in 50 Shades that would get you tossed into the “no” pile at Harlequin or Zebra or Avon or Mira is totally representative of the current state of the genre.
Tony J
I don’t think I’ll be reading ’50 Shades of Gor’.
Just doing my litle bit.
Jay in Oregon
@Brachiator:
I’m Jay in Oregon, and I approve of this message!
LanceThruster
@Mnemosyne:
I hate it when people have their priorities mixed up.
4jkb4ia
@Darkrose:
You, sir, have won this generally terrific thread, and I can go back to Murray-Cilic.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I doubt that most readers of the book care one way or another. It’s just a little naughty fun.
I’m waiting for the movie. Will the marketers call it “the feel good movie of the year” or “the hurts so good movie of the year.”
Dave
The Sexual Life of Catherine M > 50 Shades of Grey
4jkb4ia
Cilic looks like he has utterly collapsed, so I suppose I have to offer an opinion about this series.
What I have seen of it is so unreadable and so not what I have ever thought I could be interested in that I despise the idea of it with the hatred of a thousand burning suns. With occasional exceptions like The Shell Seekers my mom taught us to use thrillers and spies for mindless reading.
newtons.third
@Violet: A few weeks ago I did this diary at dailykos It is just right wing porn, not the good kind.
Greyjoy
I’m female.
And reflecting back, virtually all the sci-fi and fantasy I have ever read, and for that matter all the horror, all the thrillers and all the contemporary fiction I have ever read, all have relationships as a major component of their characters. Dan Simmons, for example, does an absolutely incredible treatment of such in his books.
Just for you, I’m looking at Barnes & Noble’s site right now at the romance section, to see if indeed romance novels have changed in the last 30 years. These are all staff picks:
From “A Night Like This” by Julia Quinn (pub 5/29/12):
“Anne Wynter might not be who she says she is…
But she’s managing quite well as a governess to three highborn young ladies. Her job can be a challenge—in a single week she finds herself hiding in a closet full of tubas, playing an evil queen in a play that might be a tragedy (or might be a comedy—no one is sure), and tending to the wounds of the oh-so-dashing Earl of Winstead. After years of dodging unwanted advances, he’s the first man who has truly tempted her, and it’s getting harder and harder to remind herself that a governess has no business flirting with a nobleman.
Daniel Smythe-Smith might be [summary cuts off here]
But that’s not going to stop the young earl from falling in love. And when he spies a mysterious woman at his family’s annual musicale, he vows to pursue her, even if that means spending his days with a ten year old who thinks she’s a unicorn. But Daniel has an enemy, one who has vowed to see him dead. And when Anne is thrown into peril, he will stop at nothing to ensure their happy ending…”
Wow, look at that. A young virgin and a handsome rich dude. Let’s try another one.
“The Proposal” by Mary Balogh (pub 5/1/12):
“Gwendoline, Lady Muir, has seen her share of tragedy, especially since a freak accident took her husband much too soon. Content in a quiet life with friends and family, the young widow has no desire to marry again. But when Hugo, Lord Trentham, scoops her up in his arms after a fall, she feels a sensation that both shocks and emboldens her.
Hugo never intends to kiss Lady Muir, and frankly, he judges her to be a spoiled, frivolous—if beautiful—aristocrat. He is a gentleman in name only: a soldier whose bravery earned him a title; a merchant’s son who inherited his wealth. He is happiest when working the land, but duty and title now demand that he finds a wife. He doesn’t wish to court Lady Muir, nor have any role in the society games her kind thrives upon. Yet Hugo has never craved a woman more; Gwen’s guileless manner, infectious laugh, and lovely face have ruined him for any other woman. He wants her, but will she have him?”
A young, beautiful non-virgin and a handsome, rich dude. Well, I guess you got me there.
Let’s try one more.
“A Lady Never Surrenders,” by Sabrina Jeffries (pub 1/24/12):
“Lady Celia Sharpe hopes that if she can garner offers of marriage from several eligible gentlemen and show her grandmother she is capable of gaining a husband, she can convince Gran to rescind the marriage ultimatum for her. And if that plan doesn’t work, at least she’ll have a husband lined up. But Bow Street Runner Jackson Pinter seems determined to ruin her plans by disapproving of every suitor she asks him to investigate. It’s only when she and Jackson work together to solve her parents’ murders, plunging them both into danger, that she realizes why–because the only man he wants her to marry is himself!”
Personally, they lost me right at the title (talk about stereotypes) but at least the summary went on to describe a perfectly normal cliche where someone has to get married in order to stay rich.
One last one:
“Lethal Rider”, by Larissa Ione (pub. 5/22/12):
“Thanatos, the most deadly Horseman of the Apocalypse, has endured thousands of years of celibacy to prevent the end of days. But just one night with the wickedly sexy Aegis Guardian, Regan Cooper, shatters centuries of resolve. Yet their passion comes with a price. And Thanatos must face a truth more terrifying than an apocalypse-he’s about to become a father.
Demon-slayer Regan Cooper never imagined herself the maternal type, but with the fate of the world hanging in the balance she had no choice but to seduce Thanatos and bear his child. Now, as the final battle draws closer and his rage at being betrayed is overshadowed by an undeniable passion for the mother of his child, Thanatos has a life-shattering realization: To save the world, he must sacrifice the only thing he’s ever wanted-a family.”
Are you seriously fucking kidding me?
I rest my case. I looked at about a dozen summaries from the staff picks, and if these are supposed to be hallmarks of the genre then I feel completely comfortable in concluding that romance novels are as ersatz and cliched as they have ever been. You can have them all.
Darkrose
@JustMe:
DING!
Fanwriters do it for LOVE, dammit!
Though in this case, I think it’s specifically the serial numbers filed off badly part that upsets a lot of fanwriters. Fanfic writers who “make it” with purely original fic tend to be fawned over. When you’ve read the predecessor fic in 125 parts on an LJ kink meme, seeing a thinly-veiled copy getting optioned for a movie deal can be irritating.
Darkrose
@Robin G.:
I have no problem with pulled-to-publish fic. I don’t think it’s entirely a cynical money grab, either. For the people I know who’ve done it, it’s more, “People pay money for stuff that’s not as well-written as mine.” There’s also the aspect of constantly being told that you shouldn’t “waste your time” on fanfiction. I think the bigger problem is the way people in fandom devalue our own work.
Darkrose
@4jkb4ia:
Thank you, though it’s ma’am.
Darkrose
@Robin G.:
:D
At the moment, I’m working on a fill for the Skyrim kink meme, but I do intend to go back to my DA stuff, especially the DA/Finder crossover.
…which makes me think that people who are worried about the sociological implications of 50 Shades should stay far away from yaoi.
Mandarama
Oh my Lord, yaoi just got mentioned at Balloon Juice. Worlds are colliding! Yup, many interesting sociological implications, though Viewfinder’s never been my fave b/c of the dark and non-con elements. But the artwork…whew, she’s great. For storyline, give me Sakuragi Yaya or Yoneda Kou.
Like everyone’s said before…the E.L. James stuff is marketed to folks who don’t know where good erotica (or manga, if you like the visuals) can be found. Which is pretty much lots of places, but not in Kroger. Huge 50 Shades display right by the checkout. So I’m trying to be a Pollyanna in the face of crimes against the English language, and thinking maybe having erotic, explicit texts with female desire be so mainstream is a positive? I know, I wish it wasn’t tied to crappy patriarchal Twilight stuff. Or horribly written. OK, forget Pollyanna. I tried though.
Darkrose
@Mandarama: Inorite? I’m blown away that you immediately got the Finder reference. (Totally OT: Apparently, the first Finder piece was written as a one-off for an SM-themed yaoi anthology. Once the mangaka decided to write more, she was faced with the problem of writing a relationship that started with rape.)
I think that ultimately, having female sexuality becoming mainstream is a good thing. An Atlantic piece I just read quoted staff at Good Vibrations saying that they’re getting women coming in and asking about stuff like ben-wa balls, because they read it in 50 Shades, and their husbands asking about beginner level kink toys, saying “I don’t want to scare her; I just want to surprise her because she keeps talking about this book.”