June 2013
33 posts
I fully believe in ELJ's literary yogurt stand, she tops it with "dark melted chocolate fudge caramel."
This is the best ask I have ever gotten. That’s not hyperbole. Put it on the record. This is my favorite.
This might be a little strange, but didn't Kate make Ana shave her pubic hair before she went over to Christian's? Did it mysteriously grow back overnight or am I remembering this wrong?
Ana only mentioned Kate shaving her legs and armpits, I believe.
E.L. writes the same sex scene multiple times, not by copy-pasting, but because the idea "sex scene" in her brain stimulates exactly the same neurons every time, causing the exact same words to come out.
I am slowly growing convinced that E.L. James is a robot designed to look like a middle-aged woman.
Personally I love being called 'good girl' in a D/s context, because it's a very simple way to combat my particular self-hatred issues. Y'know, because I have a kink for that and it is not universal to all lady subs who have ever subbed and therefore shouldn't be assumed to be okay to throw around without prior discussion. To assume makes an ass out of u and me, Mr. Grey.
The majorly important phrase here is ‘prior discussion’. The issue with Fifty Shades is not Christian calling Ana a good girl, nor any of the other kinky things he and she get up to; it’s that Christian does these things without talking to Ana about them first or finding out if she’s all right with them.
Did you know...
… that you actually only have to describe hair color and eye color once? You don’t have to say “her blue eyes looked at him” or something of the sort every ten sentences. Your readers will remember. If a pressing need comes up (like describing how much a character’s appearance has changed or examining a certain feature for plot reasons) then go ahead. Just don’t put a color adjective in every time your character enters a room.
(That’s literally what this story I’m reading is doing and it’s driving me bonkers)
Have we ever heard Ana describe her genitals as anything other than "down there"? She could be a transwoman. They had penetrative sex, but, again, it's pretty much all just "down there" and there are a few things "down there". This might be my new headcanon.
Ana’s mentioned her vagina (in the sentence “[H]e inserts his thumb inside me…stroking the front wall of my vagina”), so it seems unlikely that she currently has typical maab genitalia. That doesn’t rule the possibility out entirely, as Ana could be post-op.
That said, I doubt that E.L. intended the Ana character to be interpreted as trans, given how stodgily, stalwartly conservative she (E.L.) is. It is interesting to think about, though.
Actually, (assuming I haven't lost track of their relative positions - she's lying on her back and he's giving her head, right?) I find it quite easy to make eye contact with someone when I go down on them. (disclaimer: it's more difficult if the person I'm sucking off has a penis, but still quite possible. and I hope we would have noticed by now if Ana was a transwoman...)
Beats me…it’s probably different for different people.
I love this blog -- You might find it ironic that I follow it, but in all seriousness, I think people can be fans of the plot and characters but agree that the writing is total shit. lol, so thanks for telling the people that say 'The book is so well written!' that they're completely and utterly wrong.
A Fifty Shades blogger who agrees with me? Now I’ve seen everything.
If ELJ uses the phrase "deep in my belly" one more time, even to describe hunger pains, I might just die.
Don’t die! Instead, get angry and write your own bestselling novel. Show E.L. who’s boss.
re: towel size conundrum - there are actually different sizes of bath towels. your average size bath towel will wrap around your average sized human at the chest and cover probably right about to their ass, your avarage sized bath SHEET however, which is simply a designation for an extra large bath towel, will cover about one and a half times as much.
That makes sense, I guess. Why would Christian have some of each, though? Wouldn’t you want all of your towels to be the same size?
Donation!
Someone named Curtis just generously sacrificed some of his money in the name of Fifty Shades of Why. Thanks, Curtis!
Re: 'issues with wasted food', hasn't Christian ever heard of this marvelous thing called Tupperware? It's this miraculous invention that allows one to actually STORE left over food, to be consumed later, without needing to worry about the food spoiling in the meantime. Someone should really send him the memo.
I think the fundamental difference between Lolita and 50 Shades is that it's clear that the relationship is wrong in Lolita (and society largely views it as such), whereas Christian and Ana's relationship is lauded as being super hot and awesome, and their many problems are painted as at best inconsequential and at worst healthy. And if you call the book out on its problems, people retort with, "It's just a book." Yeah, no.
I’ve seen quite a few people who entirely missed the point of Lolita and thought it was about ~forbidden love~ instead of the skeevy sexualization of a child. Otherwise, I agree with you.
When my husband and I are doing D/s stuff, he sometimes does call me "good girl" - in part because it's demeaning. Which means it's another thing he probably should have discussed with her first, and therefore totally in character. But she doesn't even have a gag reflex, so why would she have inconvenient opinions and preferences?
Gosh, yeah. Imagine if Christian asked for consent before he did something. That would be shocking.
May 2013
48 posts
An entire year
I started this blog on May 24th of 2012. I managed to run Fifty Shades of Why for more than a year without noticing how long I’d been doing so.
Syftningsfel is very close to 'ambiguous reference' or 'dangling modifier' in the English language.
I think that when she says "the last word, and my name", E.L means both please and Anna. It's completely wrong though. Don't know the literary term for this mistake in English but in Swedish we call it 'syftningsfel'.
There’s a special name for screwing up your grammar in Swedish? That is the coolest thing I’ve heard all day.
Now that there's sex scenes I'm almost thinking about unfollowing but really don't want to. It's not the blog at all - it's a wonderful blog! You're a wonderful person! It's just. SHE JUST BIT HIS PENIS. Why am I reading this!?
I as myself that every day, anonymous. Why are we reading this?
The Writer's Coffee Shop editor, Tish Beaty, had this to say:"James had a huge following of readers prior to publishing Fifty Shades of Grey, and this helped in initial sales. It also made the task of editing the book and keeping it true to James' intent very important. We knew that James and her readers would not take kindly to an editor coming in and red-penning her story, and I was advised by TWCS to handle James and Fifty Shades with kid gloves."
And there we have it. Thanks, Tracey!
The "Christian Grey-flavored Popsicle" bit came from the fanfic version, Master of the Universe. I quote: "My tongue swirls round the end… he‘s my very own Edward Cullen flavor Popsicle, I suck harder and harder." The comparison made a little more sense when E.L. James was writing about Bella Swan sucking Edward Cullen's icily cold, undead dick. (And yes, James DOES keep sucking harder and harder. No argument there.)
This is hands-down one of the best asks I have ever received. I applaud you, ma’am.
I'm probably not the best person to ask but I'm pretty sure whenever editors edit their client's work they only suggest what to change - what's put in the final draft is ultimately up to the author.
Of course! One would think, though, that authors are reasonable enough to listen when their editors point out that they’ve made egregious grammatical mistakes or factual errors.
Partner or no partner, you can't do salsa moves while dancing merengue. They're two completely different dances! Salsa's all about the moves, but to dance merengue, you move very little (compared to salsa I mean). To do both makes no sense. Did she even have editors?!
E.L. had an editor, but I don’t know how much they did to improve the story. Vintage was in a hell of a hurry to get the story out.
