My Vizionz mail is full of people that want to know why I hate the 50 Shades of Grey series.

I thank you for reading but I’m not gonna adjust my position on this issue.  The books are not good.  The story is sophomoric.  The writing is bad.  The BDSM is not realistic.  The love story is whack.  The books are just no good, and I will not pretend that they are, and you will not change my mind.

What I will do though is go more in depth about the 50 Shades and explain the story (and all of its 50 million flaws) so that I will hopefully spare someone from wasting time they can never get back by reading this crap.  Yes I said crap.

So I deliver to you 50 Shades condensed-50 Shades the Short Bus version-50 Shades the CliffNotes

 

Anastasia Steele is a 20 year old college senior at a school in the Pacific Northwest days away from graduation.  Her roommate is Kate and Kate is sick so she drafts Ana to interview billionaire Christian Grey for the student newspaper.

We are going to suspend our disbelief that a billionaire mogul would take the time to give a nowhere college newspaper an interview while he avoids every other major television and news outlet.

So Ana goes to the interview, literally falls at Christian’s feet and this 30 year old billionaire is at once captivated by this 20 year old virgin.

Because that is what happens in life, billionaires that buy women by the dozen always fall in live at first sight with 20 year old virgins that have not learned to walk properly. 

A day or so after the interview, and after a thorough background check on virgin Ana, Christian makes a special trip alllllllllllllll the way to the tiny mom and pop hardware store that Ana works at to see her.  She watches him buy masking tape and rope and she is at once so fascinated with him based on these purchases that she at once agrees to go out to eat with him.

Christian the billionaire grows even more fascinated with Ana the virgin over the next 4 days as they figure out ways to spend time together, because apparently he is not running a multi national corporation and apparently it is not finals week for her. During that first week he reveals to her that he is a Dominant in the long tradition of Dominants in the BDSM world.  He can prove this because he has all the expensive toys that can be sold and put them all into a room.  He calls it the playroom she calls it the red room of pain.  He explains to her that he wants her to be his submissive and presents her with a contract (and a non disclosure agreement).  Her response is something along the lines of Holy Fuck! She says jeez, holy fuck, holy shit, and gee quite often in this book.  She says it so much that I suspect I will never use any of these phrases again, in my life, or my next 23 lives.

For the remainder of book one, Ana & Christian wiggle back and forth over if they are going to be together, if they are going to be *just* lovers or if they will enter into a D/s relationship.  We know that they are negotiating this because they discuss it in emails.  Yes! Emails!

Well that is when Christian is not acting at all like a dominant man and loses his mind and self control when Ana does things like bite her bottom lip.  Because YES! in this lifestyle what you want is to be with someone that can not control their emotions.  or their actions. and acts on impluse all of the time.  YES!  that is what we are looking for!  …. or not.

Back to the negotiations though, or what passes for them.  Christian presents Ana with his standard BDSM submissive contract and she agrees to virtually none of it.  When faced with Ana’s refusal to even consider the terms of the agreement, Christian does his best impression of Gilda Radner

 

 

At the end of book one when Ana purposely defies Christian, and then asks him to show her what a punishment would be like her response is:

“I wanted the dark, to explore how bad it could be — but it’s too dark for me.”

That was her response to getting six swats with a leather belt for the incredible sin of rolling her eyes.

 

I almost stopped reading the books then,  right then and there.  I have had to endure a punishment before for a violation.  It was not something that I did on purpose but I did it none the less.  Allow me to explain to you constant reader that in my world six swats with a leather belt is not dark.  In my world it is foreplay.

For you though I plowed through the next two books.

In Fifty Shades Darker Ana and Christian find a way to make things happen because apparently in that first month of knowing one another they fell beyond hopelessly in love with each other and realized that the pain of being apart was greater than the pain of trying to fit their love into the BDSM box.  The solution to that was to ignore the BDSM box and have a real relationship.

The evolution of the two of them as a couple didn’t bother me.  As a young girl I read enough of the romance genre to know the formula.  Perfect man + woman unaware of  her beauty and sexuality + man who is alpha and always gets his way  + this one woman on the planet who refuses to concede to him + until the fire in her loins over takes her and she is suddenly compelled to fuck him like a porn star = happily ever after.

What bothered me about the second book was the constant reinforcement of the idea that BDSM was warped, fucked up, deviant, and that no otherwise normal couple could possibly want when there is regular, traditional, what we’ve been taught is normal that you could have.

I grew additionally bothered by the sex in the book.  The sex toys of the books were meh, it was the sex that bothered me.  Once more I get the formula.  Virginal woman + man who’s had lots of sex but never love = the couple each having one orgasm that they have together and then collapse in the arms of the other.

What bothered me about the sex in the book, was that it was first not realistic.  It was written by a woman that I am convinced has had neither sex, nor orgasm, nor given a blow job ever in her life.  If you’ve done any of the above and then read a sex scene from this book you realize what I mean.  Sex, net even kinky sex, happens in the fashion she describes.

At the end of book two Ana & Christian get married. Well of course they do!  It could not possibly ever be true that a woman could live her life without being married.

Fifty Shades free is the wrap up of the love story, and it is the worst of the bunch. The sex gets worse. The author tosses into the equation every kinky sex toy that should could Google.  She invented scenarios for the couple to have sex so that she could mention the sex toy, as if each company had paid her for placement in her novel.

There is a ridiculous story of Ana’s former boss being historically linked to Christian that results in a pregnant Ana being kidnapped.

Ana of course is rescued, the couple have a son and she is pregnant with a daughter as it ends….with happily ever after.

Sure it sounds romantic, yet it is not.

 

This story was first created to be Twilight fan fiction.  It still reads in that way even though it was “converted” into a novel.  It is a disconnected series of events filled with typos and Holy Fucks!

Now you can read the books, but please don’t say that I didn’t attempt to warn you.  When you look like this after:

 

 

 

I will be saying I told you so.