In the rough draft of my book, chapter 13 was the one where things went to hell. This was totally unintentional and incredibly appropriate and I'm a little sad that once the editing is done it will almost definitely no longer be chapter 13. I half suspect that there was so much time spent on the boat because EL James wanted this chapter to be chapter 13. It is however a blissfully short chapter!
So we open with Leila hanging out with her gun and Ana, rather than running the fuck away, trying to talk to her. Admittedly Ana does read as someone who is scared and thinks immediately of Ethan (her questions are tying to figure out if he is in the apartment or not) and comments that Leila looks a lot like her.
I've mentioned playing Call of Cthulhu before, a Lovecraftian table top game set in the 1920s. It's not uncommon to run into people who have gone absolutely insane because of Eldritch horrors. Looking into the fabric of the universe and/or watching someone get turned to beef jerky will do that to a person. I'm going to be honest with you guys: Ana's conversation with Leila is reminding me of one I've had with NPCs in that game. She doesn't quite make sense and she gets derailed by little things. I don't mind the portrayal of the mentally ill like this in a game like Call of Cthulhu because there are over the top mind breaking dramatic things pushing the person to it. Leila has been through a lot but she reads like what a movie would expect the "creepy mentally ill" person to look like, not someone who actually is sick. Leila was able to get a gun, able to break into Grey's home (unnoticed) and watch Ana sleep before escaping again. Yet it looks like she has been a great deal of time without a shower and is malnourished. I feel that she probably would have collapsed and either died or been shipped off to a hospital by now. Ana and Grey are being shown to be soft and benevolent by trying to be kind to her (Ana tries to calm her down and get her to set the gun down, Grey has refused to involve the police even though that would be best) and it all just makes my skin crawl.
So, we get Leila lamenting "alone" a whole bunch, Ana panicking/offering to make tea, Leila not talking in full sentences (she sounds like a very young kid) and her body language being described as "inhuman". THANKS EL JAMES BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ENOUGH STIGMA AROUND MENTAL ILLNESS ALREADY! Oh, and Leila tells us that she plans to "join her love" and we're not sure if she's talking about her lover who died in an accident or if she's planning a murder-suicide, but there are a few things I just need to put up here.
“Why does Master like us like this? It makes me think something . . . something . . . Master is dark . . . Master is a dark man, but I love him.”
No, no, he’s not. I bristle internally. He’s not dark. He’s a good man, and he’s not in the dark. He’s joined me in the light. And now she’s here, trying to drag him back with some warped idea that she loves him.
Yes, because it is all about how Ana is rescuing Grey from the dark, not the fact that there is someone with a gun in the room who wants to shoot herself and probably Grey as well. Also being "dark" in this instance means "troubled" and I don't know what being troubled has to do with being "a good man". I guess it's fine so long as he's been redeemed by Ana's magic healing snatch though! SO MUCH RAGE.
I realize I’m holding my breath. What will she do? What will he do? But they just continue to stare at each other. Christian’s expression is raw, full of some unnamed emotion. It could be pity, fear, affection . . . or is it love? No, please, not love!
SWEET JESUS FUCKING SHIT ANA I HOPE LEILA SHOOTS YOU
It's all okay though because Grey uses his warlock powers and Leila drops to her knees and the gun goes skittering away! He is in Dom mode! So Ana agonizes over the two of them staring at each other for a bit before he orders her to her knees (which works?) and then boots Ana out of her own apartment. Ana is, reasonably, still confused and flustered and not so okay with this, and her first question is to ask about Ethan, but...
“For the love of God, Anastasia, will you do as you’re told for once in your life and go!” Christian’s eyes lock with mine as he glowers at me, his voice a blistering cold shard of ice. The anger beneath the quiet, deliberate delivery of his words is palpable.
Angry at me? Surely not. Please—No! I feel like he’s slapped me hard. Why does he want to stay with her?
He's been trying to hunt her down so he could "talk" to her since the last book, this is his chance. He isn't going to fuck her on your kitchen island. I mean, he'll probably dump you for a few chapters so he can "save" her but don't worry it's all to protect you! And you'll have Ethan to snog for a bit before you get back together!
I glance down at Leila and notice a very small smile cross her lips, but otherwise she remains truly impassive. A complete submissive. Fuck! My heart chills.
This is what he needs. This is what he likes. No! I want to wail.
“Miss Steele. Ana.” Taylor holds his hand out to me, imploring me to come. I am immobilized by the horrific spectacle before me. It confirms my worst fears and plays on all my insecurities: Christian and Leila together—the Dom and his sub.
How the hell can she honestly be thinking that when she just had a gun pointed at her? How is she so worried about this right now instead of the anything else? So Taylor has to physically grab Ana and carry her out (although not kicking and screaming) and the last thing she sees is Grey stroking Leila's hair. The thing that really pisses me off about all this is she's right- he's totally going back to Leila to "save" her (although not because he needs a sub but because he's such a giving man). Didn't I call this in chapter 3?
So Ana meets Ethan in the lobby (he was running late and not home yet) and he figured getting the obviously upset Ana AWAY from the apartment building where shit is going down is a good idea. Taylor isn't thrilled because he was supposed to take her back to the apartment, but Ana makes a good point in that 1) they are going across the street, and 2) they know where Leila is now so why all the security? Taylor lets that be. So, Ana tells Ethan what she can (because NDA).
“And what’s Christian doing with her now?”
The blood drains from my face and bile rises in my throat. “I don’t know,” I whisper.
Ethan’s eyes widen—at last he’s got it.
This is the crux of my problem. What the fuck are they doing? Talking, I hope. Just talking. Yet all I can see in my mind’s eye is his hand, tenderly stroking her hair.
So they watch the front of the building, Dr. Flynn and someone in scrubs turn up to get Leila (who Grey carries out, wrapped in a blanket) and Taylor drives after them. No one touches in with Ana, and I think Ethan might be my new favorite character in this book (yes, guy with dreadlocks from chapter 1 has a contender!)
Ethan places a large brandy in front of me.
“Come on, Steele. Let’s get drunk.”
Sounds like the best offer I’ve had in a while.
He later walks a drunken Ana back to Grey's and doesn't lay a hand on her. Ana goes up to Grey's where she is greeted with so much anger. Ana is, reasonably, not thrilled with this. Grey had tons of ways of finding out where Ana was (like Taylor, and I'm sure he could have gotten Ethan's phone number in seconds since Ana didn't have her phone on her through his brother) but is freaking out that she wasn't home waiting by the phone for him. Ana is also totally awful about his taking care of Leila.
“Why do you do this to me? This is not about you, Ana. It’s about her.” He takes a sharp breath, running his hand through his hair again. “At the moment she’s a very sick girl.”
And he's right that it isn't about her, but I find it telling that he asks why she does this to him. It isn't about him either, but at the same time, she is his girlfriend who has been stalked and threatened repeatedly because of him/his ex. Ana is confused and hurt and just saw her boyfriend being intimate with another woman in a way she feels she can't be with him. I don't think she's wrong to be upset, but I do think she's approaching it wrong. She is drunkenly telling him that she's no good for him and can't fulfill his needs and is about to ask for some space to think about all the shit that has gone down (so she can talk to him with more coherent thoughts). Grey starts to panic and beg, not letting Ana finish a sentence. She'll get maybe two words in before he cuts her off with "NONONO I LOVE YOU YOU CAN'T LEAVE!"
“No,” he breathes, his eyes wide with panic, and suddenly he drops to his knees in front of me, head bowed, long-fingered hands spread out on his thighs. He takes a deep breath and doesn’t move.
What? “Christian, what are you doing?”
He continues to stare down, not looking at me.
“Christian! What are you doing?” My voice is high-pitched. He doesn’t move. “Christian, look at me!” I command in panic.
His head sweeps up without hesitation, and he regards me passively with his cool gray gaze—he’s almost serene . . . expectant.
Holy Fuck . . . Christian. The submissive.
The many faces of Christain Grey also include: The stalker, the sailor, the creepy guy in a clown costume...
So, this seems like a terrible idea. I mean, BDSM is supposed to have a huge element of "we will discuss what we do first" because consent is important! Throwing Ana, someone who has never expressed a desire or want to be a Dom into that role without her consent seems like a terrible idea. That said, the Dom/Sub dynamic has been a stand in for larger power within the relationship, and so this could also be read as Ana having equal power within the relationship (even if she doesn't around her individual actions).
I also suspect that Elena if/when she hears about this will not be so thrilled to hear Grey was subbing again because they both seemed to recognize that him being a sub wasn't great for him.
And that is chapter 13! If all the chapters were this short I might not hate this book so much! So tune in Sunday for a DOUBLE UPDATE with the FIRST MEETING of the Something Short and Snappy book club where we will discuss chapter 1 of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle! There will also be the next installment of Will's Ender's Game series! Sound off in the comments on what you think of this mess of a chapter!
Also for those of you worried by the lack of whatnapple, don't worry, I've read the next chapter. He'll be back next week.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Thoughts on Ash in Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2
Warning: So many spoilers
There are a bunch of posts about the new Evil Dead movie,which I have not seen yet (and having read some of these reviews I am unsure I want to see) but when I first heard it had absolutely no CGI and a female Ash I had wanted to. I also wanted to see it with The Boy because I get jumpy and need someone to cling to and cower on and he finds it endearing while my other friends make fun of me. There was just one problem, he had never seen the first three.
"I'm pretty sure you don't need to. It's basically taking the concept of the first movie, which is really just a cabin in the woods flick, and trying to do what it failed at. Making it actually scary."
He shook his head, determined, "We can see it, but I wanna see the original ones first."
Fine. So we've been working out way through them and as we watched the first one, I was stunned. Not by the treatment of women, and not even by the actually pretty good gore. I was stunned that I was being given a white male hero who was freaking the fuck out. We see Ash be cute and romantic with his girlfriend, and loving to his sister. We see him do the "wrong" thing when he can't cut up his dead girlfriend's body because it will probably come back to try and kill him because he loves her and can't. We see him actually stop to dig a grave in all this mess to bury her, even. We then see him get the shit beat out of him, we see him powerless, we see him cry, we see him get scared senseless. We are given a hero who is weak and flawed and still heroic and I loved it. I saw the movies for the first time years ago, and I was not as aware of things like tropes then as I am now. I don't remember being shocked by Ash being allowed to be weak and still manly. It seemed... progressive, really.
Then we get Evil Dead 2. The movie where they realized how silly this series could be and no one ever breaks their neck and we see where The Thing from the Adam's family came from. Evil Dead 2 is a fun movie, and it quickly recaps the events of the last movie in the intro (although it cuts it down to just Ash and his girlfriend, his girlfriend dies, and he can't chop her up still) before getting on with the ancient evils and such.
The Evil Dead 2 is a fun movie and I have pages of snarky notes* (which were helped by The Boy, Will, and another friend) but the thing that really impressed me about Evil Dead (Ash's character) was just totally mutilated. In the second movie we see him getting possessed, and when the new female lead starts attacking him with an axe, he snaps out of it. Shockingly, she isn't convinced and keeps trying to axe him (I'm on her side here). Ash's response is to grab her, shake her, and scream a bit. Because that worked before. For some reason it does work, which I think is kinda BS. We see the often pants-shittingly scared Ash from the first movie become a one-line spitting bad-ass action hero. His character is still fun, and since Evil Dead 2 is self aware of how absurd it is not the same old same old (dude has a god damned chain saw arm, after all). Still, as much fun as Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness' Ash are, I was sad to see Ash from Evil Dead 1 get replaced by him. I felt he was a much more unique and interesting character.
When they re-made the movie and I heard of a female Ash, I admittedly thought of the more iconic Ash in the later movies, but the remake is trying to be the first movie only. Which means we have taken a very progressive character (pants shittingly scared man) and swapped that over to a woman. The pants shittingly scared woman isn't nearly as interesting. Mostly because women are often expected (or at least certainly allowed) to be scared and irrational on screen while men rarely are and that was what made Ash so interesting to me to start with (there's a lot more to be said but I have yet to actually see the movie myself and that would be ALL the spoilers) however if they were to remake the whole trilogy and have female Ash swap into the more over the top character that we see in the later Evil Dead movies, we'd loop around to progressive and interesting character again.
*Enjoy some of my notes:
"Did he just have a stroke or an orgasm?"
"Horror rides a vespa."
"He needs sunshine to protect him. Why is he driving into the dark forest?" "Because he's being chased by a shakey camera"
"They had sharpies 4000 years ago?"
"Such welcoming music! It's like faeries are playing harps! Made of human hair."
(On the naked zombie) "Worst wetdream ever."
"Dude, you're safe. She's stop motion."
"Wait, which part of the chair is the structurally important mouth?" (This is an on-going joke with my Call of Cthulhu group when discussing how to kill the monsters)
"Did Bruce Chinbell just grope a ghost?"
"So, there's two of him now. Think he'll make out with himself?"
"So he has a zombie demon hand. That's like The Stranger, but better."
"Oh, so that's where The Thing came from" "Go home Thing, you're drunk."
"I think this movie is really about man VS self." "Really? I think it's man vs house."
"I'm just saying, being out of frame does not make you invisible."
"Oh, sure, hit the disabled guy with both your hands."
"Does it still count as a unibrow if it's half blood?"
"If I take my glasses off, the camera work gets better."
"Are all trees into bondage or just evil demon trees? I think this has some negative implications about bondage."
"LOOK AT ME I. AM. EMOTING."
"You take the thing you just used to stab a guy, and then you stab another guy!" "It gets easier after the first one."
"She screams like she forgot to scream."
"See? Even as a zombie Ash is sensitive."
"Car=Smashed. Ankles=Fine."
There are a bunch of posts about the new Evil Dead movie,which I have not seen yet (and having read some of these reviews I am unsure I want to see) but when I first heard it had absolutely no CGI and a female Ash I had wanted to. I also wanted to see it with The Boy because I get jumpy and need someone to cling to and cower on and he finds it endearing while my other friends make fun of me. There was just one problem, he had never seen the first three.
"I'm pretty sure you don't need to. It's basically taking the concept of the first movie, which is really just a cabin in the woods flick, and trying to do what it failed at. Making it actually scary."
He shook his head, determined, "We can see it, but I wanna see the original ones first."
Fine. So we've been working out way through them and as we watched the first one, I was stunned. Not by the treatment of women, and not even by the actually pretty good gore. I was stunned that I was being given a white male hero who was freaking the fuck out. We see Ash be cute and romantic with his girlfriend, and loving to his sister. We see him do the "wrong" thing when he can't cut up his dead girlfriend's body because it will probably come back to try and kill him because he loves her and can't. We see him actually stop to dig a grave in all this mess to bury her, even. We then see him get the shit beat out of him, we see him powerless, we see him cry, we see him get scared senseless. We are given a hero who is weak and flawed and still heroic and I loved it. I saw the movies for the first time years ago, and I was not as aware of things like tropes then as I am now. I don't remember being shocked by Ash being allowed to be weak and still manly. It seemed... progressive, really.
Then we get Evil Dead 2. The movie where they realized how silly this series could be and no one ever breaks their neck and we see where The Thing from the Adam's family came from. Evil Dead 2 is a fun movie, and it quickly recaps the events of the last movie in the intro (although it cuts it down to just Ash and his girlfriend, his girlfriend dies, and he can't chop her up still) before getting on with the ancient evils and such.
The Evil Dead 2 is a fun movie and I have pages of snarky notes* (which were helped by The Boy, Will, and another friend) but the thing that really impressed me about Evil Dead (Ash's character) was just totally mutilated. In the second movie we see him getting possessed, and when the new female lead starts attacking him with an axe, he snaps out of it. Shockingly, she isn't convinced and keeps trying to axe him (I'm on her side here). Ash's response is to grab her, shake her, and scream a bit. Because that worked before. For some reason it does work, which I think is kinda BS. We see the often pants-shittingly scared Ash from the first movie become a one-line spitting bad-ass action hero. His character is still fun, and since Evil Dead 2 is self aware of how absurd it is not the same old same old (dude has a god damned chain saw arm, after all). Still, as much fun as Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness' Ash are, I was sad to see Ash from Evil Dead 1 get replaced by him. I felt he was a much more unique and interesting character.
When they re-made the movie and I heard of a female Ash, I admittedly thought of the more iconic Ash in the later movies, but the remake is trying to be the first movie only. Which means we have taken a very progressive character (pants shittingly scared man) and swapped that over to a woman. The pants shittingly scared woman isn't nearly as interesting. Mostly because women are often expected (or at least certainly allowed) to be scared and irrational on screen while men rarely are and that was what made Ash so interesting to me to start with (there's a lot more to be said but I have yet to actually see the movie myself and that would be ALL the spoilers) however if they were to remake the whole trilogy and have female Ash swap into the more over the top character that we see in the later Evil Dead movies, we'd loop around to progressive and interesting character again.
*Enjoy some of my notes:
"Did he just have a stroke or an orgasm?"
"Horror rides a vespa."
"He needs sunshine to protect him. Why is he driving into the dark forest?" "Because he's being chased by a shakey camera"
"They had sharpies 4000 years ago?"
"Such welcoming music! It's like faeries are playing harps! Made of human hair."
(On the naked zombie) "Worst wetdream ever."
"Dude, you're safe. She's stop motion."
"Wait, which part of the chair is the structurally important mouth?" (This is an on-going joke with my Call of Cthulhu group when discussing how to kill the monsters)
"Did Bruce Chinbell just grope a ghost?"
"So, there's two of him now. Think he'll make out with himself?"
"So he has a zombie demon hand. That's like The Stranger, but better."
"Oh, so that's where The Thing came from" "Go home Thing, you're drunk."
"I think this movie is really about man VS self." "Really? I think it's man vs house."
"I'm just saying, being out of frame does not make you invisible."
"Oh, sure, hit the disabled guy with both your hands."
"Does it still count as a unibrow if it's half blood?"
"If I take my glasses off, the camera work gets better."
"Are all trees into bondage or just evil demon trees? I think this has some negative implications about bondage."
"LOOK AT ME I. AM. EMOTING."
"You take the thing you just used to stab a guy, and then you stab another guy!" "It gets easier after the first one."
"She screams like she forgot to scream."
"See? Even as a zombie Ash is sensitive."
"Car=Smashed. Ankles=Fine."
Thursday, April 11, 2013
50 Shades Darker Chapter 12 in which the book pretends to have a plot.
I'll open this decon with a bit more of an in-depth recap than previous chapters because I know there's recently been a bit of an explosion of new readers here thanks to Will's Schrodinger's Closet and Ender's Game posts (all of which are excellent and you should go read with your face orbs).
So for those of you stopping in for the first time, here's what's up in the book so far!
In book one, Christian Grey, the pinnacle of manly beauty and sexy prowess, powerful CEO, super duper sexy sexing BDSM enthusiast, and owner of a TRAGIC PAST (TM), meets our narrator, the totally bland, innocent, and younger-enough-to-be-creepy Anastasia Rose Steele. Yes, that is her real name. After a book's worth of "will they/won't they" Ana decides that yes, she will be his sub! Then at the end of book 1 they break up because Ana just can't do it! At the start of book two they get back together, but this time they're just dating, none of the sub/dom stuff that we spent a whole book hearing about in painful detail.
Book 2 has inflicted upon us more controlling rage and a crazed ex trying to maybe kill Ana? Oh, and Grey's ex of significance, an older woman often called Mrs. Robinson, has started trying to befriend Ana in the most hilarious and awkward ways possible.
Last chapter I finally figured out that Grey isn't a warlock (the only way to explain how any woman would want to be in a relationship with him) but is probably a necromancer. There were some "soul stirring orgasms" and, although this is supposed to be a sex- and BDSM-positive book, Grey declared that BDSM isn't for people in committed relationships. Grey also fucks around with Ana's career (having bought the company she works for) to "protect" her, and after 5 weeks of dating they have decided to move in together! The chapter finished up with Mrs. Robinson turning up despite both Ana and Grey telling her that Ana wanted nothing to do with her! Let's see what EL James has in store for us this week, shall we?
And here she is . . . Why is she so damned attractive? She’s dressed entirely in black: tight jeans, a shirt that emphasizes her perfect figure, and a halo of bright, glossy hair.
I'm really unsure of why Ana keeps obsessing over how blond Elena is; almost every female character in this book is blond. Grey's sister, Ana, Leila (Grey's gun-toting ex-sub) and the black woman Ana works with are the only non-blonds in the book, counting every waitress, receptionist, and secretary that we've met. I also burst out laughing here. Grey is always wearing gray, from head to toe, and last chapter we saw Ana doing the same. This is one of the many ways the author beats us over the head with the moral and emotional ambiguity around him. Now we see Elena dressing entirely in black. I can only assume this is meant to reassure us that despite Grey claiming she's an old and dear friend, Ana is right and she is totes evil. I don't know WHY this bothers me so much. I should be used to EL James' ham-fisted writing, but on average, people tend to avoid wearing all one color. It's boring and rarely a good look. Sort of something you mostly do at funerals--oh my god, you guys, Elena is totally just coming from a funeral, a sexy funeral!
Elena is surprised to see Ana there, as Grey only used to have his subs around on weekends. She tells Ana point blank she didn't think Ana'd be around and apologizes, she gets that Ana wants nothing to do with her. It's all super awkward, but it does a pretty decent job of underlining that yes, Elena has been in Grey's life for a long time and yes, she is comfortable with him and his home. Elena explains (in front of Ana, at Grey's insistence) that she's being blackmailed. Ana is, reasonably, filled with glee because clearly she deserves it. It is at about this point that Ana realizes she really shouldn't be there and skitters away--only to eavesdrop on their conversation once she's gone. No, really.
So what does Ana hear? Naturally Elena asking Grey about how things are going, scolding him for being too hard on himself, telling him he deserves to be happy. You know, the normal day-to-day conversations you have with friends. There are a few things I want to highlight, though.
“Does she know how negative you are about yourself? About all your issues.”
“She knows me better than anyone.”
“Ouch! That hurts.”
I am actually kind of on side with Elena here. She's been the only one to put up with Grey's BS for many years now. Suddenly he's dating some new girl (for all of five weeks) and he's saying she's the stars and the moon and really gets him more than anyone else ever. If I were in Elena's position, yeah, that would sting. However Elena's dialog is given no tags, so I assume this is meant to be taunting him (because that's the only not horrific way to say it) but I could be very wrong. As this next bit might suggest I am.
“What is her problem?”
“You . . . What we were. What we did. She doesn’t understand.”
“Make her understand.”
“It’s in the past, Elena, and why would I want to taint her with our fucked-up relationship? She’s good and sweet and innocent, and by some miracle she loves me.”
Again, I'm still kind of sympathetic to Elena here. I have a lot of dude friends, and have always had more dude friends than girl friends. I also fall somewhere on the scale of "conventionally attractive" and so (especially when I was younger) when my guy friends got girlfriends, they'd often vanish. I figured out early that this wasn't really about me as a person but the idea of a pretty girl who had known her boyfriend longer and was maybe closer to him. Once I wrapped my head around that, I realized that if I made an effort to actually get to know these girls they'd probably return the favor. More often than not, that worked out wonderfully for me and there are some cases where I've stayed friends with the girls long after the break up with my friends.
Ana is 21, which is still very much in the age bracket of this being a problem. Grey is closer to 30, but this is his first relationship so no surprises that he's acting like an overeager 14 year old about it. I think it is a safe assumption that Elena has other friends besides Grey (we know she first met him because she was friends with his mother) so I'm not surprised that Elena tries to befriend Ana; she's probably been through the paces. What I am surprised by is her first interaction with Ana involving saying "If you hurt him I will find you" BEFORE she gets into the "we should do lunch!" part. I get that she is supposed to be protective of Grey, but she is bad at it. If Grey is in his late twenties and Elena is older by enough that it was rape she would have to be at least 10 years older, if not more, so that'd put her in her late thirties/early forties. So you are telling me that Elena is going to think the right response to a girl almost half her age, who she's never met, getting a bit spooked by Grey being Grey is to threaten her? And then be surprised why she doesn't get it? I'm authentically uncertain what I'm supposed to take away from this book about Elena. Is she supposed to be "Grey's dearest friend" who is just too protective and who he seems to treat like shit, or am I supposed to see her as an evil meddlesome seductress? Because there's evidence to support both of these things.
One of the other things I want to draw attention to in that exchange (there's a lot to unpack here) is the "make her understand". Elena is supposed to be nearing 40, by my estimation (and according to the 50 Shades wiki). You are giving me a 40 year old woman who is acting like she's 19, and I don't understand why, EL James.
Lastly before we can move onto a new expert is Grey's continuing fertilization of Ana's innocence. When we first met her she had never been kissed or dated. Grey is her first everything; she hadn't even masturbated (and still hasn't, by his orders). I'm still not sure why. The target audience for this book is women who are Elena's age or older, so I can understand them being uncomfortable with someone their own daughter's age being self-possessed and sexually experienced and confident. The flip side is: I can't imagine reading an erotic novel and drawing any parallel between my own daughter and the woman being hammered away on and finishing the book. I don't think Ana is supposed to be a reader insert character, she's too young and too inexperienced for women who are wives and Mother's to picture themselves as her. Or I would assume so. I am not yet either of those things so if someone wants to correct me on this one, by all means. Perhaps the goal is to sell "the good old days" but not like they happened at all, but for many people their twenties was when they started to figure their shit out and branch out and experience freedom. There's some very real confusion there, but many people look back at the adventures and debauchery fondly (I know my parents do). EL James is stripping a lot of that away by making Ana so innocent, so it seems unlikely to me that she's supposed to be a reader insert.
Elena asks Grey about his relationship/if he misses his play room/etc when we get this:
“Elena, we have a business relationship which has profited us both immensely. Let’s keep it that way. What was between us is part of the past. Anastasia is my future, and I won’t jeopardize it in any way, so cut the fucking crap.”
[...]
“I don’t want to lose you, Christian.”
“I’m not yours to lose, Elena,” he snaps again.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” He’s brusque, angry.
“Look, I don’t want to argue with you. Your friendship means a lot to me. I’ll back off from Anastasia. But I’m here if you need me. I always will be.”
And this is basically why I sympathize with Elena. She loves Grey, even if it isn't romantic (although I am a firm believer that you can love someone in more than one way at once, so I do think it is in part romantic) and values his friendship immensely, and has for many years. If one of my best friends was suddenly vanishing after 20 years, I'd voice concern over losing them, too. However because Ana is our narrator, this isn't about friendship, this is about Elena being in love with Grey and trying to take more than what is her's to take. I think this exchange is meant more to be about how much Grey loves Ana and that their love is twu and nothing will ever come between them.
I'm gonna be honest here. I think that's bullshit. I was a weird kid: at 15 I realized that while I enjoyed dating and having a boyfriend it was super important that I have a friends and life outside of that boyfriend because odds were one day he would no longer be my boyfriend and then what? This has been something I've carried with me my entire life. I'm getting married in the fall and I still think it's important to have friends that are mine and not ours. It helps keep me centered and grounded and offers a sometimes much needed change of pace. Besides, there's only about half overlap in tastes for movies/music*, and I need people who are not him to go to the movies with in these instances. Since I have always made an active effort to maintain my not romantic relationships during the times when I have a romantic one, if my friends start to voice concerns that "hey, something seems off with you and your SO, and I'm concerned"** I'm going to give that some very serious thought, not assume that they are trying to destroy my relationship because... seriously, why do people think someone would be out to destroy their relationship? I can see parents or close friends stepping in when there are things like abuse happening, but that's about it. Then again, I live in a world where I am surrounded primarily by reasonable and well-meaning people, and I suspect this statement reflects that.
So Elena leaves after agreeing to have one of Grey's guys look into who's blackmailing her, and Ana has to scuttle to his room to avoid being caught eavesdropping. To her credit, she will admit that she did so, and this is more of a panicked move than a premeditated one.
I gaze up at him, trying to frame my question. “Will you tell me all about her? I am trying to understand why you think she helped you.” I pause, thinking carefully about my next sentence. “I loathe her, Christian. I think she did you untold damage. You have no friends. Did she keep them away from you?”
He sighs and runs his hand through his hair.
“Why the fuck do you want to know about her? We had a very long-standing affair, she beat the shit out of me often, and I fucked her in all sorts of ways you can’t even imagine, end of story.”
I pale. Shit, he’s angry—with me. I blink at him. “Why are you so angry?”
“Because all of that shit is OVER!” he shouts, glowering at me. He sighs in exasperation and shakes his head.
I blanch. Shit. I look down at my hands, knotted in my lap. I just want to understand.
Ana has been pretty awful about Elena so far, so I want to try to give Grey some credit about being tired of going over it. At the same time, he is being such a cantankerous ass about it, any credit I can try to scrounge up is just lost. Ana is trying to understand, and all of the concerns she voices are valid, but Grey's responses are just... cruel, frankly. "We did the BDSM thing and had crazy wild sex" and he will go on to say he used to think he loved her but with Ana he realizes what love really is and so no, he never loved Elena! Remember what I said earlier about believing that there are many ways to love a person, and you tend to love them in more than one way at once? Grey will also insist that it wasn't rape because he consented and could have broken up with her at any time when they had their thing going on, and discusses how she's helped him come to terms with his feelings for Ana.
What do I make of this? Maybe she is on my side and just worried that I’ll hurt him. The thought is painful. I would never want to hurt him. She’s right—he’s been hurt enough.
Perhaps she’s not so bad. I shake my head. I don’t want to accept his relationship with her. I disapprove. Yes, that’s what this is. She’s an unsavory character who preyed on a vulnerable adolescent, robbing him of his teenage years, no matter what he says.
Super torn on this, to be frank. I agree with Ana in that what Mrs. Robinson did was wrong, but if Grey, the victim, doesn't think so, is it still okay to insist it is? Doesn't he get to be the authority on that one? It's the flip side of someone telling a woman she wasn't really assaulted because he didn't jump out of the bushes at her. Things then segue into Ana not being perfectly compliant with being monitored all the time.
“Do you want to fight about that, too?” he snaps.
“I wasn’t aware we were fighting. I thought we were communicating,” I mumble petulantly.
He closes his eyes briefly as he struggles to contain his temper. I swallow and watch anxiously. Jeez, this could go either way.
His response is to storm off to go work. I've commented before that any time Ana tries to talk about something that's upsetting her Grey's response is anger. Last chapter, when she literally begged him to be allowed to go to work without a security guard, she had to wait until a super relaxed calm point to do so. Grey acts like Ana has him whipped but restricts her from doing things like leaving her office or going home alone. He bought her a new car that she isn't allowed to drive because it might be dangerous. Everything he does he does in the name of her safety, but it is still taking away agency and choice and it is still terrifying. After Grey storms off, Ana is left to her own devices.
We just don’t know each other that well. Do I really want to move in with him? I don’t even know if I should make him a cup of tea or coffee while he’s working. Should I disturb him at all? I have no idea of his likes and dislikes.
According to Grey, Ana knows him better than anyone else in the world and he has asked her to move in with him after five weeks of dating. Ana feels they keep fighting because they're still getting to know each other and that this is normal for new relationships. It's been a while since I've done the "new relationship" thing, but in my direct and indirect experience, if you're fighting this much this early you fucking bail. The first bit is all about getting to know each other and fun and adventures! You're in the honeymoon phase, not the "I am afraid to ask to go to work alone" phase! THAT SHOULD NOT BE A PHASE YOU GO THROUGH!
So Ana will putter around a bit, call her Dad, and go read before Grey finds her dozing in the library and puts her to bed. She wakes up in the middle of the night to find Grey playing piano in his bubble of isolation (again).
“Why do we fight?” he whispers, as his teeth graze my earlobe.
Holy cow. My heart skips a beat, then starts pounding, coursing heat throughout my body.
“Because we’re getting to know each other, and you’re stubborn and cantankerous and moody and difficult,” I murmur breathlessly, shifting my head to give him better access to my throat. He runs his nose down my neck, and I feel his smile.
“I’m all those things, Miss Steele. It’s a wonder you put up with me.” He nips my earlobe and I moan. “Is it always like this?” he sighs.
“I have no idea.”
Grey has two moves, intimidate and seduce. If we look at a more typical abuse pattern, it's the charming husband and the horrible abuser (or the early stages there of). We saw the abuser earlier, now he's being charming (or in his case sexy because the man doesn't have enough personality to be charming). I've commented before on Grey derailing Ana with his black-magic sex powers when she tries to ask questions, and it is one of the few consistent behaviors he exhibits.
In his usual form, he starts to get handsy and because black-magic sex powers Ana is right into it. So they start fooling around on the piano.
“Oh no, baby, not yet,” he teases, but I feel myself quicken as does he, and he stops.
“No,” I whimper.
“This is my revenge, Ana,” he growls softly. “Argue with me, and I am going to take it out on your body somehow.” He trails kisses along my belly, his hands traveling up my thighs, stroking, kneading, tantalizing.
Okay, I talk about sex being different for everyone no two vaginas are the same often, but seriously, how the hell can he have that level of knowledge to actually keep her on the cusp and not just accidentally shoving her over to a shitty orgasm consistently? INTERNET HELP. Also, he even fucking admits to using sex to punish her. I mean, there are worse punishments, but he clearly and repeatedly says "If you fight with me there will be consequences." ANA YOU ARE COVERED IN SLIPPERY STAIN USE THIS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE TO THROW YOURSELF OFF THE PIANO AND SKID OUT THE DOOR!
Lifting my feet off the keys, he pushes me; and suddenly, I’m sliding effortlessly up the piano, gliding on satin, and he’s following me up there, briefly kneeling between my legs to roll on a condom. He hovers over me and I’m panting, gazing up at him with raging need, and I realize he’s naked. When did he take off his clothes?
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HE WAS PLAYING HIS EMO PIANO IN HIS CIRCLE OF LONELY LIGHT NAKED!
Also where the hell did that condom come from? Does Grey have Summon: Condom? He's naked and nowhere near a drawer; this is raising a lot of questions. Did he store one in Ana's cooter for later? Is that one of his black powers? Is the piano in fact made of condoms?
So they bone (off page, tragically, because I rather enjoy these purple sex scenes) and the next morning they wake up and Grey makes an off hand comment about not having nightmares when Ana is around. This leads her (innocently enough) asking what those nightmares are about which leads into talk of his TRAGIC PAST (TM). So, to save you all the groaning, Grey talks about how the dreams are flashbacks (though doesn't tell us what they are, we did see one at the start of this book) and Ana, frantic to not set him off so early, asks him for happy childhood memories. He comments on the crackwhore (the charming nickname he has for his birth mother) baking him a birthday cake, his baby sister, and his piano teacher before they start fooling around.
No really, that is the progression of events. I know I like to get my bone on right after talking about my childhood!
Skip ahead a few pages, Ana has gone to work, mentioned Kate's brother Ethan will be back in town today and she should go by her apartment to help him settle in, gotten a few e-mails via Blackberry with Grey about spankings and given him the heads up on "hey leaving the office now just FYI" because he must be kept aware of all her movements and now we're onto her boss leering at her some more.
“Would he object to you coming out for a quick drink tonight? To celebrate all your hard work?”
“I have a friend coming in from out of town tonight, and we’re all going out for dinner.” And I’ll be busy every night, Jack.
“I see.” He sighs, exasperated. “Maybe when I’m back from New York, huh?” He raises his eyebrows in expectation, and his gaze darkens suggestively.
Oh no. I smile, noncommittal, stifling a shudder.
“Would you like some coffee or tea?” I ask.
“Coffee, please.” His voice is low and husky as if he’s asking for something else. Fuck. He’s not going to back off. I can see that now. Oh . . . What to do?
This is all so, so creepy. This is the third or fourth time he has asked her out for a drink. The hint: take it. So Ethan gives her a call and is all "SOON I SHALL BE UPON YOU CAN I HAVE KEYS TO OUR NEW APARTMENT PLEASE?" and when he turns up to see Ana at work this is his first response.
“You look . . . wow—different. Worldly, more sophisticated. What’s happened? You changed your hair? Clothes? I don’t know, Steele, but you look hot!”
I blush furiously. “Oh, Ethan. I’m just in my work clothes,” I scold as Claire looks on with an arched eyebrow and a wry smile.
Every single dude wants in Ana's pants, even her BFFF's brother. We have also been told that he's just kinda like this though, so... not sure. He at least seemed authentically enthusiastic about the idea of going out to dinner with Grey and Ana later.
“Yeah. Laters.” He leans over and kisses my cheek.
“Elliot’s expression?”
“Yeah, kind of grows on you.”
“It does. Laters.” I smile at him as he collects his large shoulder bag from beside the green couch and exits the building.
When I turn, Jack is watching me from the far side of the foyer, his expression unreadable. I smile brightly at him and head back to my desk, feeling his eyes on me the whole time. This is beginning to get on my nerves. What to do? I have no idea. I’ll have to wait until Kate is back. She’s bound to come up with a plan.
I like that Ana is remembering Kate exists, and that she is enthusiastic about her return. I like that her thought is "Kate will understand how to better cope with lechers and help give me strategies" as opposed to running to Grey who will DESTROY Jack. By the same token, this is an interesting thought. When I had the owner's brother in law pinching my ass at an old job, I was afraid to step forward because what if he got fired and this caused a huge rift and he has kids! I was worried about my abuser's well-being. I don't think this is uncommon, women are often made to feel responsible for the abuse they get, and it's on us to fix things and take care of everyone. It's bullshit, and I wonder if EL James has considered that when she wrote this.
So Grey picks Ana up from work and they're all cute and bubbly and SO TOTALLY IN LOVE. Which means something horrible is about to happen.
“Hi, Ethan, it’s me. Let me in.”
The door buzzes, and I head upstairs to the apartment. It occurs to me that I have not been here since Saturday morning. That seems so long ago. Ethan has kindly left the front door open. I step into the apartment, and I don’t know why, but I freeze instinctively as soon as I step inside. I take a moment to realize it’s because the pale, wan figure standing by the kitchen island, holding a small revolver is Leila, and she’s gazing impassively at me.
Told ya. Think she shot Ethan? We haven't seen him enough for me as a reader to give much of a crap about his character, but I can see how Ana and Grey will be affected. And that, naturally, is the end of the chapter because these books were initially fan fiction and will end on cliffhangers as often as possible!
Tune in next Thursday to find out what happens next! And Sunday for--I'm not sure what's running this Sunday yet. TUNE IN SUNDAY FOR A SURPRISE OF SOME SORT! As always, comments make this hurt less, and if you don't want to check the blog to see when we update you can also follow me on Twitter @SnappyErika!
Till next week my dear readers!
*HE DOESN'T WANT TO SEE ARETHA FRANKLIN WITH ME THIS SUMMER WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM?!
**One of these conversations happened right after I got engaged because there was a rapid turn-around on "Erika is scared of the concept of marriage" to "So I'm engaged now". The friend in question was one who I don't see often but am close to, making sure I wasn't doing it because I felt I was supposed to or anything. It led to the most stereotypical drunk "YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND I LOVE YOU" conversations I have ever had and it was magical, warm fuzzy, and hilarious.
So for those of you stopping in for the first time, here's what's up in the book so far!
In book one, Christian Grey, the pinnacle of manly beauty and sexy prowess, powerful CEO, super duper sexy sexing BDSM enthusiast, and owner of a TRAGIC PAST (TM), meets our narrator, the totally bland, innocent, and younger-enough-to-be-creepy Anastasia Rose Steele. Yes, that is her real name. After a book's worth of "will they/won't they" Ana decides that yes, she will be his sub! Then at the end of book 1 they break up because Ana just can't do it! At the start of book two they get back together, but this time they're just dating, none of the sub/dom stuff that we spent a whole book hearing about in painful detail.
Book 2 has inflicted upon us more controlling rage and a crazed ex trying to maybe kill Ana? Oh, and Grey's ex of significance, an older woman often called Mrs. Robinson, has started trying to befriend Ana in the most hilarious and awkward ways possible.
Last chapter I finally figured out that Grey isn't a warlock (the only way to explain how any woman would want to be in a relationship with him) but is probably a necromancer. There were some "soul stirring orgasms" and, although this is supposed to be a sex- and BDSM-positive book, Grey declared that BDSM isn't for people in committed relationships. Grey also fucks around with Ana's career (having bought the company she works for) to "protect" her, and after 5 weeks of dating they have decided to move in together! The chapter finished up with Mrs. Robinson turning up despite both Ana and Grey telling her that Ana wanted nothing to do with her! Let's see what EL James has in store for us this week, shall we?
And here she is . . . Why is she so damned attractive? She’s dressed entirely in black: tight jeans, a shirt that emphasizes her perfect figure, and a halo of bright, glossy hair.
I'm really unsure of why Ana keeps obsessing over how blond Elena is; almost every female character in this book is blond. Grey's sister, Ana, Leila (Grey's gun-toting ex-sub) and the black woman Ana works with are the only non-blonds in the book, counting every waitress, receptionist, and secretary that we've met. I also burst out laughing here. Grey is always wearing gray, from head to toe, and last chapter we saw Ana doing the same. This is one of the many ways the author beats us over the head with the moral and emotional ambiguity around him. Now we see Elena dressing entirely in black. I can only assume this is meant to reassure us that despite Grey claiming she's an old and dear friend, Ana is right and she is totes evil. I don't know WHY this bothers me so much. I should be used to EL James' ham-fisted writing, but on average, people tend to avoid wearing all one color. It's boring and rarely a good look. Sort of something you mostly do at funerals--oh my god, you guys, Elena is totally just coming from a funeral, a sexy funeral!
Elena is surprised to see Ana there, as Grey only used to have his subs around on weekends. She tells Ana point blank she didn't think Ana'd be around and apologizes, she gets that Ana wants nothing to do with her. It's all super awkward, but it does a pretty decent job of underlining that yes, Elena has been in Grey's life for a long time and yes, she is comfortable with him and his home. Elena explains (in front of Ana, at Grey's insistence) that she's being blackmailed. Ana is, reasonably, filled with glee because clearly she deserves it. It is at about this point that Ana realizes she really shouldn't be there and skitters away--only to eavesdrop on their conversation once she's gone. No, really.
So what does Ana hear? Naturally Elena asking Grey about how things are going, scolding him for being too hard on himself, telling him he deserves to be happy. You know, the normal day-to-day conversations you have with friends. There are a few things I want to highlight, though.
“Does she know how negative you are about yourself? About all your issues.”
“She knows me better than anyone.”
“Ouch! That hurts.”
I am actually kind of on side with Elena here. She's been the only one to put up with Grey's BS for many years now. Suddenly he's dating some new girl (for all of five weeks) and he's saying she's the stars and the moon and really gets him more than anyone else ever. If I were in Elena's position, yeah, that would sting. However Elena's dialog is given no tags, so I assume this is meant to be taunting him (because that's the only not horrific way to say it) but I could be very wrong. As this next bit might suggest I am.
“What is her problem?”
“You . . . What we were. What we did. She doesn’t understand.”
“Make her understand.”
“It’s in the past, Elena, and why would I want to taint her with our fucked-up relationship? She’s good and sweet and innocent, and by some miracle she loves me.”
Again, I'm still kind of sympathetic to Elena here. I have a lot of dude friends, and have always had more dude friends than girl friends. I also fall somewhere on the scale of "conventionally attractive" and so (especially when I was younger) when my guy friends got girlfriends, they'd often vanish. I figured out early that this wasn't really about me as a person but the idea of a pretty girl who had known her boyfriend longer and was maybe closer to him. Once I wrapped my head around that, I realized that if I made an effort to actually get to know these girls they'd probably return the favor. More often than not, that worked out wonderfully for me and there are some cases where I've stayed friends with the girls long after the break up with my friends.
Ana is 21, which is still very much in the age bracket of this being a problem. Grey is closer to 30, but this is his first relationship so no surprises that he's acting like an overeager 14 year old about it. I think it is a safe assumption that Elena has other friends besides Grey (we know she first met him because she was friends with his mother) so I'm not surprised that Elena tries to befriend Ana; she's probably been through the paces. What I am surprised by is her first interaction with Ana involving saying "If you hurt him I will find you" BEFORE she gets into the "we should do lunch!" part. I get that she is supposed to be protective of Grey, but she is bad at it. If Grey is in his late twenties and Elena is older by enough that it was rape she would have to be at least 10 years older, if not more, so that'd put her in her late thirties/early forties. So you are telling me that Elena is going to think the right response to a girl almost half her age, who she's never met, getting a bit spooked by Grey being Grey is to threaten her? And then be surprised why she doesn't get it? I'm authentically uncertain what I'm supposed to take away from this book about Elena. Is she supposed to be "Grey's dearest friend" who is just too protective and who he seems to treat like shit, or am I supposed to see her as an evil meddlesome seductress? Because there's evidence to support both of these things.
One of the other things I want to draw attention to in that exchange (there's a lot to unpack here) is the "make her understand". Elena is supposed to be nearing 40, by my estimation (and according to the 50 Shades wiki). You are giving me a 40 year old woman who is acting like she's 19, and I don't understand why, EL James.
Lastly before we can move onto a new expert is Grey's continuing fertilization of Ana's innocence. When we first met her she had never been kissed or dated. Grey is her first everything; she hadn't even masturbated (and still hasn't, by his orders). I'm still not sure why. The target audience for this book is women who are Elena's age or older, so I can understand them being uncomfortable with someone their own daughter's age being self-possessed and sexually experienced and confident. The flip side is: I can't imagine reading an erotic novel and drawing any parallel between my own daughter and the woman being hammered away on and finishing the book. I don't think Ana is supposed to be a reader insert character, she's too young and too inexperienced for women who are wives and Mother's to picture themselves as her. Or I would assume so. I am not yet either of those things so if someone wants to correct me on this one, by all means. Perhaps the goal is to sell "the good old days" but not like they happened at all, but for many people their twenties was when they started to figure their shit out and branch out and experience freedom. There's some very real confusion there, but many people look back at the adventures and debauchery fondly (I know my parents do). EL James is stripping a lot of that away by making Ana so innocent, so it seems unlikely to me that she's supposed to be a reader insert.
Elena asks Grey about his relationship/if he misses his play room/etc when we get this:
“Elena, we have a business relationship which has profited us both immensely. Let’s keep it that way. What was between us is part of the past. Anastasia is my future, and I won’t jeopardize it in any way, so cut the fucking crap.”
[...]
“I don’t want to lose you, Christian.”
“I’m not yours to lose, Elena,” he snaps again.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” He’s brusque, angry.
“Look, I don’t want to argue with you. Your friendship means a lot to me. I’ll back off from Anastasia. But I’m here if you need me. I always will be.”
And this is basically why I sympathize with Elena. She loves Grey, even if it isn't romantic (although I am a firm believer that you can love someone in more than one way at once, so I do think it is in part romantic) and values his friendship immensely, and has for many years. If one of my best friends was suddenly vanishing after 20 years, I'd voice concern over losing them, too. However because Ana is our narrator, this isn't about friendship, this is about Elena being in love with Grey and trying to take more than what is her's to take. I think this exchange is meant more to be about how much Grey loves Ana and that their love is twu and nothing will ever come between them.
I'm gonna be honest here. I think that's bullshit. I was a weird kid: at 15 I realized that while I enjoyed dating and having a boyfriend it was super important that I have a friends and life outside of that boyfriend because odds were one day he would no longer be my boyfriend and then what? This has been something I've carried with me my entire life. I'm getting married in the fall and I still think it's important to have friends that are mine and not ours. It helps keep me centered and grounded and offers a sometimes much needed change of pace. Besides, there's only about half overlap in tastes for movies/music*, and I need people who are not him to go to the movies with in these instances. Since I have always made an active effort to maintain my not romantic relationships during the times when I have a romantic one, if my friends start to voice concerns that "hey, something seems off with you and your SO, and I'm concerned"** I'm going to give that some very serious thought, not assume that they are trying to destroy my relationship because... seriously, why do people think someone would be out to destroy their relationship? I can see parents or close friends stepping in when there are things like abuse happening, but that's about it. Then again, I live in a world where I am surrounded primarily by reasonable and well-meaning people, and I suspect this statement reflects that.
So Elena leaves after agreeing to have one of Grey's guys look into who's blackmailing her, and Ana has to scuttle to his room to avoid being caught eavesdropping. To her credit, she will admit that she did so, and this is more of a panicked move than a premeditated one.
I gaze up at him, trying to frame my question. “Will you tell me all about her? I am trying to understand why you think she helped you.” I pause, thinking carefully about my next sentence. “I loathe her, Christian. I think she did you untold damage. You have no friends. Did she keep them away from you?”
He sighs and runs his hand through his hair.
“Why the fuck do you want to know about her? We had a very long-standing affair, she beat the shit out of me often, and I fucked her in all sorts of ways you can’t even imagine, end of story.”
I pale. Shit, he’s angry—with me. I blink at him. “Why are you so angry?”
“Because all of that shit is OVER!” he shouts, glowering at me. He sighs in exasperation and shakes his head.
I blanch. Shit. I look down at my hands, knotted in my lap. I just want to understand.
Ana has been pretty awful about Elena so far, so I want to try to give Grey some credit about being tired of going over it. At the same time, he is being such a cantankerous ass about it, any credit I can try to scrounge up is just lost. Ana is trying to understand, and all of the concerns she voices are valid, but Grey's responses are just... cruel, frankly. "We did the BDSM thing and had crazy wild sex" and he will go on to say he used to think he loved her but with Ana he realizes what love really is and so no, he never loved Elena! Remember what I said earlier about believing that there are many ways to love a person, and you tend to love them in more than one way at once? Grey will also insist that it wasn't rape because he consented and could have broken up with her at any time when they had their thing going on, and discusses how she's helped him come to terms with his feelings for Ana.
What do I make of this? Maybe she is on my side and just worried that I’ll hurt him. The thought is painful. I would never want to hurt him. She’s right—he’s been hurt enough.
Perhaps she’s not so bad. I shake my head. I don’t want to accept his relationship with her. I disapprove. Yes, that’s what this is. She’s an unsavory character who preyed on a vulnerable adolescent, robbing him of his teenage years, no matter what he says.
Super torn on this, to be frank. I agree with Ana in that what Mrs. Robinson did was wrong, but if Grey, the victim, doesn't think so, is it still okay to insist it is? Doesn't he get to be the authority on that one? It's the flip side of someone telling a woman she wasn't really assaulted because he didn't jump out of the bushes at her. Things then segue into Ana not being perfectly compliant with being monitored all the time.
“Do you want to fight about that, too?” he snaps.
“I wasn’t aware we were fighting. I thought we were communicating,” I mumble petulantly.
He closes his eyes briefly as he struggles to contain his temper. I swallow and watch anxiously. Jeez, this could go either way.
His response is to storm off to go work. I've commented before that any time Ana tries to talk about something that's upsetting her Grey's response is anger. Last chapter, when she literally begged him to be allowed to go to work without a security guard, she had to wait until a super relaxed calm point to do so. Grey acts like Ana has him whipped but restricts her from doing things like leaving her office or going home alone. He bought her a new car that she isn't allowed to drive because it might be dangerous. Everything he does he does in the name of her safety, but it is still taking away agency and choice and it is still terrifying. After Grey storms off, Ana is left to her own devices.
We just don’t know each other that well. Do I really want to move in with him? I don’t even know if I should make him a cup of tea or coffee while he’s working. Should I disturb him at all? I have no idea of his likes and dislikes.
According to Grey, Ana knows him better than anyone else in the world and he has asked her to move in with him after five weeks of dating. Ana feels they keep fighting because they're still getting to know each other and that this is normal for new relationships. It's been a while since I've done the "new relationship" thing, but in my direct and indirect experience, if you're fighting this much this early you fucking bail. The first bit is all about getting to know each other and fun and adventures! You're in the honeymoon phase, not the "I am afraid to ask to go to work alone" phase! THAT SHOULD NOT BE A PHASE YOU GO THROUGH!
So Ana will putter around a bit, call her Dad, and go read before Grey finds her dozing in the library and puts her to bed. She wakes up in the middle of the night to find Grey playing piano in his bubble of isolation (again).
“Why do we fight?” he whispers, as his teeth graze my earlobe.
Holy cow. My heart skips a beat, then starts pounding, coursing heat throughout my body.
“Because we’re getting to know each other, and you’re stubborn and cantankerous and moody and difficult,” I murmur breathlessly, shifting my head to give him better access to my throat. He runs his nose down my neck, and I feel his smile.
“I’m all those things, Miss Steele. It’s a wonder you put up with me.” He nips my earlobe and I moan. “Is it always like this?” he sighs.
“I have no idea.”
Grey has two moves, intimidate and seduce. If we look at a more typical abuse pattern, it's the charming husband and the horrible abuser (or the early stages there of). We saw the abuser earlier, now he's being charming (or in his case sexy because the man doesn't have enough personality to be charming). I've commented before on Grey derailing Ana with his black-magic sex powers when she tries to ask questions, and it is one of the few consistent behaviors he exhibits.
In his usual form, he starts to get handsy and because black-magic sex powers Ana is right into it. So they start fooling around on the piano.
“Oh no, baby, not yet,” he teases, but I feel myself quicken as does he, and he stops.
“No,” I whimper.
“This is my revenge, Ana,” he growls softly. “Argue with me, and I am going to take it out on your body somehow.” He trails kisses along my belly, his hands traveling up my thighs, stroking, kneading, tantalizing.
Okay, I talk about sex being different for everyone no two vaginas are the same often, but seriously, how the hell can he have that level of knowledge to actually keep her on the cusp and not just accidentally shoving her over to a shitty orgasm consistently? INTERNET HELP. Also, he even fucking admits to using sex to punish her. I mean, there are worse punishments, but he clearly and repeatedly says "If you fight with me there will be consequences." ANA YOU ARE COVERED IN SLIPPERY STAIN USE THIS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE TO THROW YOURSELF OFF THE PIANO AND SKID OUT THE DOOR!
Lifting my feet off the keys, he pushes me; and suddenly, I’m sliding effortlessly up the piano, gliding on satin, and he’s following me up there, briefly kneeling between my legs to roll on a condom. He hovers over me and I’m panting, gazing up at him with raging need, and I realize he’s naked. When did he take off his clothes?
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HE WAS PLAYING HIS EMO PIANO IN HIS CIRCLE OF LONELY LIGHT NAKED!
Also where the hell did that condom come from? Does Grey have Summon: Condom? He's naked and nowhere near a drawer; this is raising a lot of questions. Did he store one in Ana's cooter for later? Is that one of his black powers? Is the piano in fact made of condoms?
So they bone (off page, tragically, because I rather enjoy these purple sex scenes) and the next morning they wake up and Grey makes an off hand comment about not having nightmares when Ana is around. This leads her (innocently enough) asking what those nightmares are about which leads into talk of his TRAGIC PAST (TM). So, to save you all the groaning, Grey talks about how the dreams are flashbacks (though doesn't tell us what they are, we did see one at the start of this book) and Ana, frantic to not set him off so early, asks him for happy childhood memories. He comments on the crackwhore (the charming nickname he has for his birth mother) baking him a birthday cake, his baby sister, and his piano teacher before they start fooling around.
No really, that is the progression of events. I know I like to get my bone on right after talking about my childhood!
Skip ahead a few pages, Ana has gone to work, mentioned Kate's brother Ethan will be back in town today and she should go by her apartment to help him settle in, gotten a few e-mails via Blackberry with Grey about spankings and given him the heads up on "hey leaving the office now just FYI" because he must be kept aware of all her movements and now we're onto her boss leering at her some more.
“Would he object to you coming out for a quick drink tonight? To celebrate all your hard work?”
“I have a friend coming in from out of town tonight, and we’re all going out for dinner.” And I’ll be busy every night, Jack.
“I see.” He sighs, exasperated. “Maybe when I’m back from New York, huh?” He raises his eyebrows in expectation, and his gaze darkens suggestively.
Oh no. I smile, noncommittal, stifling a shudder.
“Would you like some coffee or tea?” I ask.
“Coffee, please.” His voice is low and husky as if he’s asking for something else. Fuck. He’s not going to back off. I can see that now. Oh . . . What to do?
This is all so, so creepy. This is the third or fourth time he has asked her out for a drink. The hint: take it. So Ethan gives her a call and is all "SOON I SHALL BE UPON YOU CAN I HAVE KEYS TO OUR NEW APARTMENT PLEASE?" and when he turns up to see Ana at work this is his first response.
“You look . . . wow—different. Worldly, more sophisticated. What’s happened? You changed your hair? Clothes? I don’t know, Steele, but you look hot!”
I blush furiously. “Oh, Ethan. I’m just in my work clothes,” I scold as Claire looks on with an arched eyebrow and a wry smile.
Every single dude wants in Ana's pants, even her BFFF's brother. We have also been told that he's just kinda like this though, so... not sure. He at least seemed authentically enthusiastic about the idea of going out to dinner with Grey and Ana later.
“Yeah. Laters.” He leans over and kisses my cheek.
“Elliot’s expression?”
“Yeah, kind of grows on you.”
“It does. Laters.” I smile at him as he collects his large shoulder bag from beside the green couch and exits the building.
When I turn, Jack is watching me from the far side of the foyer, his expression unreadable. I smile brightly at him and head back to my desk, feeling his eyes on me the whole time. This is beginning to get on my nerves. What to do? I have no idea. I’ll have to wait until Kate is back. She’s bound to come up with a plan.
I like that Ana is remembering Kate exists, and that she is enthusiastic about her return. I like that her thought is "Kate will understand how to better cope with lechers and help give me strategies" as opposed to running to Grey who will DESTROY Jack. By the same token, this is an interesting thought. When I had the owner's brother in law pinching my ass at an old job, I was afraid to step forward because what if he got fired and this caused a huge rift and he has kids! I was worried about my abuser's well-being. I don't think this is uncommon, women are often made to feel responsible for the abuse they get, and it's on us to fix things and take care of everyone. It's bullshit, and I wonder if EL James has considered that when she wrote this.
So Grey picks Ana up from work and they're all cute and bubbly and SO TOTALLY IN LOVE. Which means something horrible is about to happen.
“Hi, Ethan, it’s me. Let me in.”
The door buzzes, and I head upstairs to the apartment. It occurs to me that I have not been here since Saturday morning. That seems so long ago. Ethan has kindly left the front door open. I step into the apartment, and I don’t know why, but I freeze instinctively as soon as I step inside. I take a moment to realize it’s because the pale, wan figure standing by the kitchen island, holding a small revolver is Leila, and she’s gazing impassively at me.
Told ya. Think she shot Ethan? We haven't seen him enough for me as a reader to give much of a crap about his character, but I can see how Ana and Grey will be affected. And that, naturally, is the end of the chapter because these books were initially fan fiction and will end on cliffhangers as often as possible!
Tune in next Thursday to find out what happens next! And Sunday for--I'm not sure what's running this Sunday yet. TUNE IN SUNDAY FOR A SURPRISE OF SOME SORT! As always, comments make this hurt less, and if you don't want to check the blog to see when we update you can also follow me on Twitter @SnappyErika!
Till next week my dear readers!
*HE DOESN'T WANT TO SEE ARETHA FRANKLIN WITH ME THIS SUMMER WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM?!
**One of these conversations happened right after I got engaged because there was a rapid turn-around on "Erika is scared of the concept of marriage" to "So I'm engaged now". The friend in question was one who I don't see often but am close to, making sure I wasn't doing it because I felt I was supposed to or anything. It led to the most stereotypical drunk "YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND I LOVE YOU" conversations I have ever had and it was magical, warm fuzzy, and hilarious.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Ender's Game, chapter 2, in which the villainous Peter Wiggin fails to be as horrifying as our hero
(Content: violence, death threats, abusive family environment.)
Chapter Two ("Peter") begins again with the Unlabelled Unset Dialogue of the Powers That Be, who have observed the brutality that Ender just unleashed and are trying to decide what it means. They were, apparently, still observing this happening, but the analyst protests that he can't be sure what to read into it since he doesn't have the spinal monitor dealy. Also, worldbuilding name-drop:
"He was thorough. He didn't just beat him, he beat him deep. Like Mazer Rackham at the--"
"Spare me. So in the judgment of the committee, he passes."
"Mostly. Let's see what he does with his brother, now that the monitor's off."It's a bit of a clunker, that reference to Mazer Rackham, but it could probably be much worse. We'll find out shortly that Mazer saved humanity in the last war with the aliens, and is essentially the inspiration for this whole 'perfect general' system they run. More terrifyingly, they don't think they know why Ender killed Stilson, but they're pretty sure they're cool with it, and now want to see what happens when he goes home to his volatile and violent brother. But first, this boggling passage:
"I went back through the tapes. I can't help it. I like the kid. I think we're going to screw him up."
"Of course we are. It's our job. We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive."So: they can look at one child murder another and their response is not merely 'Huh', but in fact 'Gosh, he's so innocent and we're really going to ruin him'. I don't--
How does--
What in--
Ender is at home; Valentine is expressing sympathy that he's apparently been kicked out of the military screening program, and Peter arrives munching PB&J and looking like every grown-up's idea of a "beautiful ten-year-old boy". Ender doesn't notice his brother's perfectly-shaped features, we're told, because he's only ever interested in identifying anger or boredom in Peter, "the dangerous moods that almost always led to pain". So, for whatever reason, apparently Ender has been getting tormented for quite some time now by his brother, and there has been no intervention from anyone. I'm not sure how that meshes with the earlier implication that the bullies at school wouldn't touch Ender for fear of soldiers appearing out of nowhere, but this is what we're told. I guess the totalitarian military government does rank familial privacy over the salvation of the entire species, which is in turn ranked over the lives of random children. Anyone is welcome to try to figure out how this is consistent.
Peter is angry that Ender kept his monitor until age six (he lost his at four; Valentine at three). He notes that he's not being monitored anymore for pain or threats; I'm no longer sure what this means, but presumably he feels free to do worse than he's done before. Peter cheerfully suggests they play 'buggers and astronauts' and digs out the toy masks and rayguns, telling Ender he'll have to be the bugger. Valentine nonchalantly suggests she's going to try to contact their parents, and Peter counters that neither of them are near home or going to answer the phone, which--okay, apparently parents in this world really just don't take any kind of precautions, since even if no one in the house was a nascent killer, the implication is that if anything else goes wrong, all three kids are without any assistance.
Ender briefly recollects that their mother wasn't happy about the toys, but their father had successfully argued that the war wouldn't go away if you didn't play war games and that playing these games might give them a better chance of surviving invasion. There are a variety of reasons this is stupid in the specific (yes, let's simplify the realities of logistics and morality in engaging in what might be a war of extinction with an entire civilisation down to 'shoot the bad things'; clearly this can't harm anything and will teach valuable life skills) and so I think it's safe at this point to conclude that the parents of these three genius children are themselves as sharp as a bag of hammers.*
Ender puts on the alien mask and immediately starts trying to get into character. He wonders if alien children on their world put on human masks to play games, and wonders what they call humans. Humanity calls them buggers because they look like bugs, with their exoskeletons; he decides that they call us soft and oily folk 'Slimies'. Points given for consistency: Ender's signature move is trying to understand how the aliens think, right from the start. Points withdrawn: he didn't do a damn thing trying to understand how Stilson was thinking prior to their fight. Ender doesn't appear to try to understand what's going on inside any human's brain (I'm thinking ahead here of many, many failures in this area) but he's obsessed with the aliens' minds. I hadn't noticed that until just this moment, and I'm not sure if it's a consequence of the other themes or something entirely new. Neat. (And more than a little disturbing.)
He manages to get into character and call Peter a 'Slimy' once before Peter decks him and declares that, having caught an alien alive, they must now vivisect him for science. He quickly drops the facade of the game and whispers to Ender--trapped on his back with Peter kneeling on his chest--about how he could just keep pressing down and let Ender die and claim it was an accident. Valentine says she'd tell; Peter threatens her too; Valentine declares that she has secret computer programs set up so that in the event of her death they will automatically send letters to various people stating that her accidental death was in fact Peter's doing. She's implied to be making this up, but that's a pretty good improvisation on the spot.
So, obviously this family is fucked in all of their heads. More to the point, this is the best chance we have to explain Ender's bizarre mindset: he defaults to fighting for his life because his brother makes death threats, and he assumes no one will come help because, well, no one ever comes to help. This isn't the perfect explanation that it might be--if the monitor really was making Peter hold back, then he presumably hasn't been making death threats until now--but maybe it explains why Ender is convinced he's alone: no one has ever stopped Peter. Ender knows that the military has been listening in on his life, and apparently Peter has been allowed to continue with minor torments at a whim. Maybe this isn't some kind of inborn trait; maybe this is what the monitor has taught him. Top notch job, faceless military tyrants! Are you familiar with the Heisenberg Principle?
Peter abruptly lets Ender go, moves like he's going to attack Valentine, and then falls over laughing at his own joke. Well:
"Not a joke, a game. I can make you guys believe anything. I can make you dance around like puppets." In a phony monster voice he said, "I'm going to kill you and chop you into little pieces and put you into the garbage hole." He laughed again. "Biggest suckers in the solar system."Peter's argument is that he's not doing it for the violence, but for the fun of exerting power. Ender and Valentine insist that they (and only they) know that Peter is "a murderer at heart"; I'm not sure if that's agreeing or not. This comes up again later in the Shadow books, the idea of being "a murderer at heart", and that might be an interesting philosophical discussion except ENDER LITERALLY MURDERED A KID LAST CHAPTER. I don't even know how to begin parsing the cognitive dissonance and the hypocrisy here, for Ender to be sneering at his (total jackass, no question) older brother for having an impure soul while Ender himself still has a dead boy's blood on his shoes. (He does; he tries and fails to intimidate Peter with it.)
Their parents arrive and commiserate with Ender for having been kicked out of the program and gush about how wonderful it is that they now get to keep all three of their kids, causing Ender more Third Angst. That night, Ender lies in bed and Peter stirs, wanders to Ender's bedside, and Ender fears that Peter's about to kill him, but instead he whispers:
"Ender, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know how it feels, I'm sorry, I'm your brother, I love you."And then goes back to bed, and Ender cries himself to sleep. When I first read this, I was totally on board with Ender's side; I was convinced that Peter was a terrible monster and that this last outpouring was some kind of playacting--not precisely a lie, but a futile attempt to pretend to be a better person. Looking back, Peter is still awful, but he seems a lot more sympathetic, given that he too has grown up in this deeply awful society and family environment, trying to manipulate everyone to either adore or fear him. It's bad enough feeling like the new baby will replace you in your parents' eyes; it's got to be worse when the new babies might grow up to be the salvation of the entire world.
Nothing excuses Peter's actions, but like Ender, he mostly seems like he desperately needs some kind of therapy. (And indeed that's sort of what his plotline will be about in this book. Ender, not so much.) It's very hard to see him as the biggest monster in the room, even when he's tormenting and torturing his siblings, when Our Hero murdered someone that afternoon. The implication it seems like we're left with is not that Peter is too violent, but that Peter wants to be liked, while Ender just wants to be left alone. Peter has social skills (in the way that sociopaths do) while Ender can't tell the difference between someone pushing him around for fun and someone trying to kill him. Of the two of them, Peter actually seems much more normal to me, a conflicted mess, and that apparently makes him useless as a heroic general.
Our agreeing with this depends on us caring more about Peter's cruelties (mostly off-page, even later in the book) than Ender's actual atrocities. And I'm more than a little freaked out that Card thinks he can sell this. Protagonist-centred morality is one thing in a narrative and another when it apparently permeates the entire world and affects interplanetary military strategy.
Tune in next time to see one of the Faceless Nameless Voices show up in person, Ender's mother be the only reasonable person in the room and so automatically shushed by the menfolk, and basically everything continue to be awful forever. I promise to find some way of making it more entertaining by then, because the stark horror is kicking is way earlier than I expected.
In the meantime, have a corgi in a scarf.
---
*Card eventually noticed the same apparent contradiction, and the Shadow sequels will retcon/explain that their parents are in fact similar calibres of geniuses but played daft for their kids, both to make them feel better (I have freedom because I can outsmart my guardians) and to make the kids underestimate them, thus retaining some advantage. This family is messed.
Book Club Reading!
So, the votes are in! And because my Dad was in town yesterday like a good little blogger I totally forgot to announce this yesterday. My bad! Still, now, IT IS TIME!
We'll be reading Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Since Will didn't get his Ender's Game post up on Sunday, it will run next week, so the first book club post will be on the 21st! So you've got two weeks to get your hands on a copy and read chapter one!
We'll be reading Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Since Will didn't get his Ender's Game post up on Sunday, it will run next week, so the first book club post will be on the 21st! So you've got two weeks to get your hands on a copy and read chapter one!
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Schroedinger's Closet
The blogqueen and I have an ongoing discussion about closetedness--we're both bisexual (Erika has apparently made it a life goal to start a flibbertigibbet), which is an interesting mix of privileges and disadvantages. It's super-easy for us to pass as straight if we want to (I've only dated women so far; she's happily engaged to a dude) but bisexual erasure is a thing and it can come from any side and in many forms. Women get told they're all basically bisexual and that they should be exhibitionist about it to attract men, men get told that if they ever fail to find other men sexually disgusting for even a moment then they are gaaaaaay. We all get told that we're in denial about our homosexuality, or that we just want to seem chic and liberated from social norms. And a lot of the time, people just forget we exist: I've been looking into some online dating stuff recently and found that it's surprisingly uncommon to be able to identify as interested in both men and women. (eHarmony only supports male/female couples and has a separate-but-obviously-still-equal-I've-never-heard-of-this-Jim-Crow-fella site called Compatible Partners that's only for same-sex couples. But that's not surprising since this guy Warren who started the place sounds kinda homophobic.)
I clicked to the realisation that I'm bi about a year ago, in a sequence of events that was weirdly understated (nothing happened that would make for a particularly good anecdote) given how abrupt and conclusive it was inside my head. This post isn't really about that, or the internal debating and rationalisations for years prior to that which had allowed me to continue assuming I was straight. This post is about what's happened since then.
Erika knows I'm bi (she was the first person I told, but wouldn't it be kind of hilarious if this post was the first place she heard about it?), and for months she was the only one. The next step was referring to myself as bi on internet forums where I used a screenname and no one there ever had or will meet me personally. Next was a post on my old personal blog, just a few months ago, which most of my meatspace friends and relations know nothing about. A couple of days ago I told another friend who lives in another country (our in-person contact has mostly been through globetrotting adventures, because obviously that is the best kind of contact). And now there's this.
People who still don't know I'm queer: my parents, my brother, my closest friends from school and university, my co-workers, and basically anyone I hang out with on a regular basis. And this is where I start to get tangled up, because I can't decide whether I want them to know or not. I can't decide whether I think it's important or necessary or even just more convenient.
No one ever has to come out as straight. No one ever says "OMG, you never told me you were a hetero!" That seems fine to me; by the same token, I don't think there should be some kind of obligation on people who aren't straight to just inform others of that particular facet of their identity. And for a variety of reasons I've hardly ever told my parents about anything going on between me and girls, unless it took the form of "I can't join your plans because I have a date tonight"*, so I don't feel like I should need to just announce that the scope of potential partners now includes guys.
On the other hand--I live in Canada, I easily support myself, and I work and hang out with good people, so in practice I have very little to fear in regards to homophobia. Certainly a lot less than some people do. And normalisation is good: the more straight (or straight-identified) people are familiar with queer-identified people, the less they see us as alien, outsider, unreal, invalid. We're practice--have a queer friend and improve your ability to think compassionately, to support equal rights, to reject harmful stereotypes.** (And, possibly for some of those straight-identified people, help them figure out their options and their actual identity a bit better.) There is real value in being 'out', not just for me, but for other people, and if I'm privileged enough that it's not going to cost me anything, I should be trying to help people, right?
(Plus, as friends have observed while helping me cope with Pointless Crushes On Straight Boys, being out makes it easier for those dudes who might be actually be interested to determine whether they should make a pass at me or not. This is a reasonable point, although eyebrow waggling can reduce its credibility.)
I filled out a hilariously bad survey for some politically conservative US organization the other day, and when it got to orientation, I was given the options of Straight, Gay, Bisexual, Do Not Wish To Disclose, or In The Closet. It was great. 'In The Closet' is an orientation now? (Observation from Erika: "More of a dedication to fashion, really".) Truly these people are on the cutting edge of social analysis.
Am I closeted? I don't exactly hide that I'm bi, but I don't volunteer it any more than other people are all "Why yes, I'm very hetero today, thank you for asking". If I am closeted, when did it happen? Was it when my brain was all you should go up to that guy and put your mouth on his mouth and I was all "Well, that pretty much settles that question" but I kept it to myself, or was it years earlier, when I first started finding ways to ignore or explain away the less-blatant hints I was giving myself that I liked guys as well as gals? If I start letting people know more often that I'm bi, at what point will I stop being closeted? Who needs to know? Parents are generally a big deal, but if I tell them and no one else, that's not exactly a major life change. No one I work with knows, but to my knowledge it wouldn't affect anything anyway. (It was a couple of years before I found out one of our stats guys is gay, and then only because of an offhand reference to going somewhere with his boyfriend. He is pretty campy, but I try not to assume--for that matter, I still can't be 100% sure he's gay and not bi. Bisexual erasure: just for the record, we bi folk can make the same foolish assumptions.)
Being in the closet is a weird idea at its root. It makes sense on the surface, in that it involves people hiding 'themselves', but it also starts from the assumption that other people are entitled, or at least can expect, to know what the thing being hidden is. (There's a wonderful RiffTrax of a short film on making friends in high school, where the shy (white) hero pauses at the door before a party and they narrate for him "What if they find out I'm black?!") When I saw a co-worker on the bus reading A Song of Ice and Fire, she surreptitiously joked to me that she is 'a closet nerd'. Closeting seems to me like if it's not about protecting yourself from harm (and I don't think I'm in danger of harm), it's about hiding something shameful, and I am by no means ashamed to be bisexual. Some ladies are hot. Some dudes are hot. It's not complicated. I just also don't feel like random strangers have a right to expect that I inform them "By the way, I'm totally going to queer this place up".
So I think I'm in Schroedinger's Closet, in a state of being simultaneously out and closeted until I observe whether there's a particular reason for me to go out of my way to tell the person I'm talking to that I am bisexual and the waveform collapses. Also there's a zombie cat in here? It's pretty cool. But I wonder sometimes if it's enough.
---
*I don't date much and I've never paid a lot of attention to following gender roles, so I've always kind of wondered if my parents suspect I'm gay. Part of me wants things to work out so that one day I can go up to them and say "Mom... Dad... I think it's time I told you the truth. I'm bisexual. THIS IS MY GIRLFRIEND AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME OUR LOVE ISN'T REAL." I aspire to be an entertaining son; my track record is pretty solid.
**My favourite stereotype right now is of course that bisexuals are promiscuous sex-mad fiends, because I am feeling quite comfortable here in the exact centre of the Kinsey Scale, and I am so far from promiscuous that the light reflecting off promiscuous won't reach me before the sun expands and consumes the world.
---
[Edit to add]: Also! There are only two days left to vote if you have any interest in or opinion on the Book Club's first book. Candidates were listed in this post here.
I clicked to the realisation that I'm bi about a year ago, in a sequence of events that was weirdly understated (nothing happened that would make for a particularly good anecdote) given how abrupt and conclusive it was inside my head. This post isn't really about that, or the internal debating and rationalisations for years prior to that which had allowed me to continue assuming I was straight. This post is about what's happened since then.
Erika knows I'm bi (she was the first person I told, but wouldn't it be kind of hilarious if this post was the first place she heard about it?), and for months she was the only one. The next step was referring to myself as bi on internet forums where I used a screenname and no one there ever had or will meet me personally. Next was a post on my old personal blog, just a few months ago, which most of my meatspace friends and relations know nothing about. A couple of days ago I told another friend who lives in another country (our in-person contact has mostly been through globetrotting adventures, because obviously that is the best kind of contact). And now there's this.
People who still don't know I'm queer: my parents, my brother, my closest friends from school and university, my co-workers, and basically anyone I hang out with on a regular basis. And this is where I start to get tangled up, because I can't decide whether I want them to know or not. I can't decide whether I think it's important or necessary or even just more convenient.
No one ever has to come out as straight. No one ever says "OMG, you never told me you were a hetero!" That seems fine to me; by the same token, I don't think there should be some kind of obligation on people who aren't straight to just inform others of that particular facet of their identity. And for a variety of reasons I've hardly ever told my parents about anything going on between me and girls, unless it took the form of "I can't join your plans because I have a date tonight"*, so I don't feel like I should need to just announce that the scope of potential partners now includes guys.
On the other hand--I live in Canada, I easily support myself, and I work and hang out with good people, so in practice I have very little to fear in regards to homophobia. Certainly a lot less than some people do. And normalisation is good: the more straight (or straight-identified) people are familiar with queer-identified people, the less they see us as alien, outsider, unreal, invalid. We're practice--have a queer friend and improve your ability to think compassionately, to support equal rights, to reject harmful stereotypes.** (And, possibly for some of those straight-identified people, help them figure out their options and their actual identity a bit better.) There is real value in being 'out', not just for me, but for other people, and if I'm privileged enough that it's not going to cost me anything, I should be trying to help people, right?
(Plus, as friends have observed while helping me cope with Pointless Crushes On Straight Boys, being out makes it easier for those dudes who might be actually be interested to determine whether they should make a pass at me or not. This is a reasonable point, although eyebrow waggling can reduce its credibility.)
I filled out a hilariously bad survey for some politically conservative US organization the other day, and when it got to orientation, I was given the options of Straight, Gay, Bisexual, Do Not Wish To Disclose, or In The Closet. It was great. 'In The Closet' is an orientation now? (Observation from Erika: "More of a dedication to fashion, really".) Truly these people are on the cutting edge of social analysis.
Am I closeted? I don't exactly hide that I'm bi, but I don't volunteer it any more than other people are all "Why yes, I'm very hetero today, thank you for asking". If I am closeted, when did it happen? Was it when my brain was all you should go up to that guy and put your mouth on his mouth and I was all "Well, that pretty much settles that question" but I kept it to myself, or was it years earlier, when I first started finding ways to ignore or explain away the less-blatant hints I was giving myself that I liked guys as well as gals? If I start letting people know more often that I'm bi, at what point will I stop being closeted? Who needs to know? Parents are generally a big deal, but if I tell them and no one else, that's not exactly a major life change. No one I work with knows, but to my knowledge it wouldn't affect anything anyway. (It was a couple of years before I found out one of our stats guys is gay, and then only because of an offhand reference to going somewhere with his boyfriend. He is pretty campy, but I try not to assume--for that matter, I still can't be 100% sure he's gay and not bi. Bisexual erasure: just for the record, we bi folk can make the same foolish assumptions.)
Being in the closet is a weird idea at its root. It makes sense on the surface, in that it involves people hiding 'themselves', but it also starts from the assumption that other people are entitled, or at least can expect, to know what the thing being hidden is. (There's a wonderful RiffTrax of a short film on making friends in high school, where the shy (white) hero pauses at the door before a party and they narrate for him "What if they find out I'm black?!") When I saw a co-worker on the bus reading A Song of Ice and Fire, she surreptitiously joked to me that she is 'a closet nerd'. Closeting seems to me like if it's not about protecting yourself from harm (and I don't think I'm in danger of harm), it's about hiding something shameful, and I am by no means ashamed to be bisexual. Some ladies are hot. Some dudes are hot. It's not complicated. I just also don't feel like random strangers have a right to expect that I inform them "By the way, I'm totally going to queer this place up".
So I think I'm in Schroedinger's Closet, in a state of being simultaneously out and closeted until I observe whether there's a particular reason for me to go out of my way to tell the person I'm talking to that I am bisexual and the waveform collapses. Also there's a zombie cat in here? It's pretty cool. But I wonder sometimes if it's enough.
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*I don't date much and I've never paid a lot of attention to following gender roles, so I've always kind of wondered if my parents suspect I'm gay. Part of me wants things to work out so that one day I can go up to them and say "Mom... Dad... I think it's time I told you the truth. I'm bisexual. THIS IS MY GIRLFRIEND AND YOU CAN'T TELL ME OUR LOVE ISN'T REAL." I aspire to be an entertaining son; my track record is pretty solid.
**My favourite stereotype right now is of course that bisexuals are promiscuous sex-mad fiends, because I am feeling quite comfortable here in the exact centre of the Kinsey Scale, and I am so far from promiscuous that the light reflecting off promiscuous won't reach me before the sun expands and consumes the world.
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[Edit to add]: Also! There are only two days left to vote if you have any interest in or opinion on the Book Club's first book. Candidates were listed in this post here.
50 Shades of objective beauty
This week has been filled with migraines and that is shockingly effective in keeping me from making much progress on a post. Luckily for you, I am not totally empty handed.
Amazing, isn't it? I mean, I'm sure the dude was adorable in his youth, but that isn't exactly what I would call a Greek God and objectively sexy. Admittedly, I've been struggling to summon any picture of Grey in my mind simply because for all the fawning description, there is no character there. He has sculpted lips/jaw/cheeks and eyes that can shoot lasers of contempt and rage and he's kinda fuzzy? He can also look super preppy and kind of bad-ass? But those (to me) are largely carried by the personality so how does this- augh.
Any mental image I can summon of him are kind of hazy poster-boy type things. Seeing this picture made me realize why I've had such a hard time picturing him.
See the dude in the first half of the picture? My brain recognizes he is conventionally attractive, but thinks he looks kind of weird and alien. I am repeatedly being told I should find Grey super-sexy but I'm a little strange, I can't find someone super sexy on the outside unless I think they're funny. No, that isn't a joke or an exaggeration. That isn't to say I'm into anyone who I think is funny (I would be unable to be monogamous and have friends if I was) simply that humor and personality play a big role in my attraction to people.* I struggle to summon a picture of Grey's face, I do not struggle to picture his personality. Which is where the divide comes from (for me). I struggle to find Grey's personality anything but awful, which means I'm just not going to be into it.
Which brings me onto Grey being Objectively Beautiful. I just don't think there can be such a thing as objective beauty, and what EL James is trying so forcefully and desperately to portray is conventional beauty, which is a very different thing, and still changes drastically from one period of time and place to another.
Also don't forget to cast your vote for what you'd like to see the Something Short and Snappy book club to read!
*This has served me so well.
Amazing, isn't it? I mean, I'm sure the dude was adorable in his youth, but that isn't exactly what I would call a Greek God and objectively sexy. Admittedly, I've been struggling to summon any picture of Grey in my mind simply because for all the fawning description, there is no character there. He has sculpted lips/jaw/cheeks and eyes that can shoot lasers of contempt and rage and he's kinda fuzzy? He can also look super preppy and kind of bad-ass? But those (to me) are largely carried by the personality so how does this- augh.
Any mental image I can summon of him are kind of hazy poster-boy type things. Seeing this picture made me realize why I've had such a hard time picturing him.
See the dude in the first half of the picture? My brain recognizes he is conventionally attractive, but thinks he looks kind of weird and alien. I am repeatedly being told I should find Grey super-sexy but I'm a little strange, I can't find someone super sexy on the outside unless I think they're funny. No, that isn't a joke or an exaggeration. That isn't to say I'm into anyone who I think is funny (I would be unable to be monogamous and have friends if I was) simply that humor and personality play a big role in my attraction to people.* I struggle to summon a picture of Grey's face, I do not struggle to picture his personality. Which is where the divide comes from (for me). I struggle to find Grey's personality anything but awful, which means I'm just not going to be into it.
Which brings me onto Grey being Objectively Beautiful. I just don't think there can be such a thing as objective beauty, and what EL James is trying so forcefully and desperately to portray is conventional beauty, which is a very different thing, and still changes drastically from one period of time and place to another.
Also don't forget to cast your vote for what you'd like to see the Something Short and Snappy book club to read!
*This has served me so well.
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