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Dear E.L. James:
Ugh, this goddamned book.
I’m sorry I didn’t mean to start with a vulgarity, but I just read the worst 50 pages of sentences you clearly shite directly out of your bottom onto a piece of paper.
This speaks volumes because I read Fifty Shades of Grey in its entirety and the ice-cream-in-the-vag monstrosity in Fifty Shades Darker. I’ve been slogging my way through Fifty Shades Freed, the shittiest of the trilogy, since the beginning of August. Now my grievance is not that you are a terrible writer–you are–but that you have created the two worst fictional people on the planet.
Ana and Christian Grey are just…ugh. They are just ugh. The only way this book can be saved is if they drown in their own bodily fluids. Does that happen? Please say it does.
I understand this began as fan fiction. You were reading Twilight and masturbating with a marbly, sparkling snow globe, and basically created sludge from santorum-like source material. Doesn’t excuse all the butt pluggery behavior of your two protagonists.
So I started pages 301-350, and Ana, Christian and their worshippers are at a club, and this is what I read:
And I just fill up with hate. I feel like there should be some type of reciprocity, like you should be forced to read the play I wrote in German in 12th grade or all my city council meeting newspaper articles.
Mia, Christian’s sister, wants to dance and “throw some shapes.” Yeah, that’s not a saying. Maybe in Britain, but not here, and if it is a saying in Britain, this is why America declared independence. Ana wobbles out onto the dance floor because she’s drunk the equivalent of four bottles of wine and weighs 80 pounds. Ana’s surprised she can suddenly dance since she spent the first 20 years of her life in a dog crate reading books.
Ana dumbthinks she can dance because Christian has stuck numerous objects in down there. Never let Ana be a dance teacher.
She feels hands on her and thinks it’s Christian so she grinds her butt into his groin. Nope, not Christian, just some random meathead. Ana screams and slaps him. The guy backs off and then Christian punches him after the fact. Unfortunately he is not arrested for assault.
Ana dumb wonders why she did it, and we get this chestnut:
Christian’s still mad, but he does some sensual dancing. They do everything, but peen-stick on the dance floor and Christian makes the loving declaration “No one touches what’s mine.”
Awesome.
E.L., you do realize that owning people is not considered cool? Like if any man ever said that to me, I would first laugh because obviously he had to be joking, and then I would leave because…gross.
Ana’s drunk. They leave. He takes off her make-up. They “joke” about watching her pee and I die. She’s mesmerized by his pajama bottoms.
He’s not going to bury himself in her tonight but he orders her to sleep. “‘When I come back to bed, I’ll expect you to be asleep.’ It’s a threat, a command. . . it’s Christian.” Jesus christ. Hate. Hate right now searing in my brain.
He buries himself in her later when they go through a rape fantasy sex game. Really, the worst 50 pages. Afterwards, Christian says something totally normal. “You confound me.” No one talks like this, E.L., no one. It doesn’t make him sound poetic or smart, it makes him sound like you’re a terrible writer.
At breakfast, Ana surreptitiously watches Christian walk outside with the help. He picks up a bamboo stick and swipes it. Oh…she farts out of her brain. Is this anything? Is he going to cane her or are we just wasting my goddamned time? I’m expecting the latter because you write as if you are recording the day to day events of dildos.
Ah wonderful! The motherfracking email exchange! And it’s like we’re actually at work with Ana. We get to experience her assistant coming in. Should we go over your schedule? Yes, cancel my 10:30…oh excuse me the phone is ringing. Hello? Oh hi Roach. Yes I’ll come up to your office in 20 minutes. She farts into a chair. You realize you can condense all this into: Ana goes to work. It doesn’t need to be seven pages.
Then more emails and at first I was really confused–oh excuse me, confounded— because they’re talking about events that I haven’t read about and then I realize this is how you’re showing the passage of time, and it’s just not necessary. No one gives a shit about any of this. He emails about some good time with vaginal balls at some Dipshit Association dinner, and other sexual innuendo that makes me believe you, E.L., do not understand innuendo. Pointless.
Then we get a visit from Leila the ex-sub who tried to kill Ana, and Ana’s like “What’s up dawg?” And Ana’s all confused that Christian has a list of people forbidden to see her. Really? I’m not. I’m just surprised Ana’s not stuck in some cage in his basement. The Leila visit is uninspired, and Ana has immature jealous thoughts through the whole thing and compares herself to Leila, and E.L., I’m sorry your world is so small. Lovely women exist in the world. I’m sorry you can’t see that.
Christian’s all angerball. He angrily murmurs and strokes his face with his slim-jim fingers, and pfftt. And you try to pass it off as him just wanting Ana safe. No, E.L., he’s an abusive prick.
Ugh.
Just ugh to it all.
With searing hatred,
Speaker7
P.S. Why is this book so mutherfracking long? I know it’s neat when you learn how to cut and paste, but that doesn’t mean you should cut and paste huge chunks of paragraphs and try to pass it off as something new. If I have to read one more time how Ana is spent after a bout of boring peen-sticking, I’m going to fly to England and hit you in the head with a sack of vaginal balls.
Speaker7 