Today's Reason for Hating '50 Shades of Grey'

I'm tired of perfect characters.  I really fucking am.

I'm barely a quarter of the way into this goddamn book and I'm tired of the main character, Christian Grey. To some extent I can understand teenage girls getting all hot and bothered for over-idealized faff, because everyone in high school is a little bit lame. But women who get off on pretty boy billionaires who gently tell shy girls how really beautiful they are before soaking them in a scented bath after making love all night in only the most sensitive and wonderful ways...christ, they make me just want to vomit. It's like the lady version of trekker nerds salivating over posters of Seven-of-Nine (yes, I know who that is).

Everyone can tell why a person gets into this kind of garbage, and it isn't because it's a good story, or well-written or any of that crap (don't start with me Voyager fans). It's escapism, pure and simple, for people deeply dissatisfied with their mundane little lives.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of escapism under the right conditions, but when any characterization of a man is as shallow and utterly ridiculous as Christian Grey, we've crossed a line from pulpy fun to a weirdly neutered Ken doll. What kind of women are okay with that? When guys pull this kind of gross over-simplification of gender, it's objectifying women. Isn't Christian Grey same thing? Aren't the ridiculous proportions of a Barbie doll wrong and offensive because they reduce a person to how well they function as a catalyst for someone else's pleasure instead of an emotionally and psychologically complex individual with issues and thoughts and ideas that can all exist outside what the opposite gender fantasizes about?

I mean, how do women read this stuff without feeling like...well...total dicks?

Today's Reason for Hating '50 Shades of Grey'

I'm going to put this in capital letters in the hopes that readers of trashy romance novels might take notice, ready?

SEXUAL TENSION IS NOT THE SAME AS CONFLICT.

Let me explain to people fortunate enough not to be suffering through '50 Shades of Grey' with me. I've been reading '50 Shades' for nearly three weeks, and normally I'd be finished with a book in that time. But this one is just...at the risk of sounding repetitive...boring. God damn, is it boring. So far the only conflict introduced at all is an endless litany of he-likes-me/he-likes-me-not garbage. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has heard the rumor (which I find to be rather likely true) that '50 Shades of Gray' started as Twilight Fan Fiction. The stories are painfully similar.

The one thing that '50 Shades' has over 'Twilight' is that it drops the supernatural melodrama for straight up sex. There's nothing metaphorical or weirdly repressed going on, which might have made '50 Shades of Gray' easier to read if it didn't make the exact same fucking mistake that 'Twilight' did. Wondering if a boy likes you or not just isn't enough to move a story forward, I don't care if the protagonist is a lame-ass high school student, or a lame-ass college graduate. If all a character has to worry about is whether or not the nearest tall-dark-and-handsome wants to fuck them, then this isn't a character worth writing about.

Sorry, romance readers, that's just the cold hard truth.

Nobody cares about whether or not the popular boy in class or some pretty and mysterious millionaire wants to bone you, or your fiction stand-in. Even Cinderella had bigger problems than worrying about whether somebody wanted to go out with her. I mean, for fuck sake. A Disney Princess has more depth than the main character of a 500-page novel! Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman is a more nuanced portrayal of femininity!

I'm going to stop listing these, but not because I've run out of examples of dumb heroines who are still somehow more interesting than Anastasia Steele (main character and narrator of '50 Shades of Grey').  If I don't stop now, I'll only end up foaming at the mouth and swallowing my tongue.

So I'll leave you with this thought: I'm a little bit pissed that romance has been boiled down to what is essentially pornography for middle-aged moms. Romance used to be about heroism, about pursuing a goal in spite of obstacles, set backs and failures in order to achieve something brilliant, or beautiful, or otherwise generally worthwhile. In honor of that, I won't even call '50 Shades of Grey' a romance novel, or a romantic story.

I'm going to call it what it is.

Lady porn.

Today's Reason for Hating 'Twilight'

The relationship between Bella and Edward is entirely superficial.

I'm not sure why Bella is so into Edward. I've asked a couple people this, and all anyone comes up with is that he sure is pretty. This bothers me for a couple reasons. It's implied in the book that somehow vampirism is related to extreme beauty or the appearance of extreme beauty. Even Edward observes that it makes him a better predator. So are there no ugly vampires? Just ugly humans? Do ugly humans just get pretty if they become vampires? And if beauty is a function of vampires as predators, why isn't Bella more disturbed by her attraction to Edward. Why doesn't she ever wonder if she's only being controlled? For that matter, why doesn't Edward ever wonder if she really loves him or if she's just under the weird toxic effect of his vampire nature? 

Further more, why does Edward like Bella? I get the whole vampire blood lust thing, but why does he want to be around her and not just suck her blood? And why, when he decides to break all the rules, does he just hang out with her instead of breaking her neck and drinking her dry? Plus, if he can read the minds of everyone in the world except Bella, he literally knows everyone better than he knows her. So he's only into her because he doesn't know her very well? 

What the hell? 

What kind of relationship is that? Forget abusive, it's ridiculous! And remember one of the people in this relationship is supposed to be a hundred years old.

That's another thing, actually. If he's so much older than her, isn't he kind of a dirty old man? I mean, Bella's under the legal age of consent to begin with, but being that he's so much older than she is, isn't it kind of gross that a) he's into a high school student and b) that he isn't more emotionally mature than the high school student he's into?  It seems like Edward's got way more issues than just wanting to drink some blood every now and then. He's practically a pervert. 

And Bella? She likes Edward either because he's good looking or because he tells her how special she is for being completely incapable of taking care of herself. I'm not actually sure which is worse, but neither seems like a terribly credible reason for Bella to literally (supposing Edward is actually dangerous and not the complete panzy he appears to be) take her life into her own hands to devote herself to Edward the way she constantly explains she has.

But that's sort of the problem with this whole book. Neither of these characters functions as a believable person, they're cardboard cutouts that readers are supposed to project things onto. I guess that's okay for dumb teen-aged girls, but it doesn't explain all the women out there going ape-shit for this crap. 

Seriously...what...the...hell?

Today's Reason for Hating 'Twilight'

The events of the last quarter of the book come completely out of nowhere.

There are so many reasons I found the last hundred pages of this book infuriating. Everything after the dumb-ass vampire baseball game is completely out of (excuse the expression) left field.

I won't get into why the baseball game itself is ridiculous because I feel like the phrase 'vampire baseball' pretty much says it all. It's unnecessary to the plot of the book, and I have the sneaking suspicion that it's supposed to be profound that both Bella and her mother wind up hopelessly in love with baseball enthusiasts...but never mind about that, because there's just only so much I can think about the baseball thing without bursting a blood vessel in my brain and killing myself via aneurysm.

So instead, I'll tell you this theory I have that the addition of the bad non-vegetarian vampires at the end of the book is some editor's idea, because someone read a version of 'Twilight' that ended with vampires racing around a baseball diamond and thought maybe 'Twilight' could make a zillion dollars if ANYTHING EVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED!

Up until the baseball game, the whole book centers around what a monster Edward is, and how he will end up eventually maiming, killing, or turning Bella into a monster. Aside from the fact that Edward's whole bad-boy image comes from him telling Bella what a bad boy he is and the fact that the most subversive thing Edward is capable of is a) sniffing Bella b) stalking Bella and c) skipping class on blood-typing day (which altogether make him less of a hard ass than Danny fucking Zuko, look it up kids), and assuming for the sake of argument that Edward really is dangerous (all evidence to the contrary), the danger Edward poses to Bella is completely abandoned in the denouement of the book.

Edward's vampire family plays baseball together, and suddenly the conflict of the story isn't that Edward is a vampire in love with his next meal, it's that vampires are generally kinda bad folk. The thing is, readers already know that vampires are shit company to keep. There's no reason to point that out for us for a hundred pages. The conflict that has Edward fighting his vampire nature at least involves a reversal of expectation.  But a group of vampires appearing literally out of nowhere suddenly wanting to kill Bella to piss off Edward, even though none of them have ever met before the stupid baseball game...?

Come on.

It's all very convoluted, and contrived, and the one point when Edward has the chance to display some legitimate rage...he growls. That's it. That's all, folks. That's the monster we've been reading about for four hundred pages. And Bella faints.

And that's the climax of the story.

And then prom.

Bleck.

Today's Reason for Hating 'Twilight'

Edward Cullen is a douche bag.

He’s spent about ninety years in high school. If I spent ninety years in high school, I’d kill myself. If I met someone who spent ninety years as a high school junior, I’d probably want to kill them just for being such a waste of space and resources. I mean, god damn, ninety years!

Just from a character-building perspective, there are so many directions an author can choose for a character who has been seventeen for ninety years. For starters, wouldn't it be awful to be treated like a dumb-ass teenager when you’re actually ninety fucking years old? I’d be livid. I’d probably be a murdering blood-drinking asshole just because I was bitter about being treated like I was an idiot my whole life.

On top of that, what would you do with ninety years, if you didn't have to worry about dying...or aging...and the only thing that would eventually kill you is being torn to pieces and then burned (A good old stake through the heart just wasn't good enough for Stephanie Meyer)? I mean come on, learn a handful of languages, fight in a war, or a few wars, travel around Africa or Asia or the Amazonian Jungle or all three because shit, you've got the time!  I mean there are people who are ninety years old and not vampires who have done that much. You’d think a vampire would be an interesting person, just historically speaking, right? Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Highlander got at least that much right, and as much fun as they are, I sort of feel like if that's your high-water mark, you should really reconsider your writing career.

What the hell has Edward Cullen been doing this whole time? Playing piano? And why does he hate being a vampire so much? The only reason we know he's conflicted about being a vampire is because he fucking talks about how conflicted he is all the time. He never does anything he appears to actually regret. He only almost does things or thinks about doing things he might regret if he actually did them. What a damn nut sack.

It's like he's just been hanging around for ninety years waiting for a girl to smell good.

Seriously.

I don’t understand the appeal of this book at all.                 

Today's Reason for Hating 'Twilight'

Bella Swan sucks. Hard. Yes, she’s the opposite of a strong female character. She’s clumsy, defenseless, and constantly being told what to do by her boyfriend. But she’s also incredibly lame.

Firstly, she’s the kind of girl who thinks the word “obviously” (which ranks about as high in cleverness as “duh” or a fart noise) makes her sound incredibly witty. Normally, that sort of thing is just a little annoying, but when the whole book is written in the first-person perspective of a dumb girl, it quickly goes from a little annoying, to a lot annoying, to wanting to tear your eyes out.

Secondly, Bella Swan’s razor sharp wit seems to spring from how shitty she thinks her life is. This fucking kills me. The one thing that Bella hates more than anything is moving to a small town in the gloomy middle of rainy-ass nowhere, Forks. Fine. Why does she do it? It isn’t forced on her, no one asks or even wants her to, and yet she decides it’s a good idea.

The explanation offered in the book is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Supposedly, her mother remarried a minor-league baseball player and wants to travel with him when he’s away, but can’t because Bella is around. So Bella decides she’ll to move in with her father so her mother can travel around with her new husband. Besides the fact that I’m pretty sure minor league baseball and every other professional sport anywhere doesn't encourage wives to tag along and the fact that traveling is expensive and might require Bella’s mother to have a career and income of her own, all of Bella’s misery can be boiled down to…Bella. Plus, we’re supposed to look at Bella as generous and selfless even though she constantly complains about having done this selfless thing (which doesn’t make that much sense in the first place) for her mother.

Then there’s the fact that everyone likes Bella, is friendly to her, includes her, and asks her out constantly. It’s hard to see why she’s so miserable about being in Forks anyway. She’s big shit to everyone all the time (it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not), and she acts like she’s a fucking martyr for her mother’s happiness. Because Washington State is rainy.

What a twat.

Ultimately, Bella Swan sucks because she sort of makes me feel bad about the enormous number of teen-aged girls who relate to her. She’s boring, bitchy, stupid, and miserable all the time because of circumstances she herself created. Maybe it could have been interesting to read about someone who constantly fucks her own life up out of some delusional conception of the world, but not when she’s in high school, when she doesn’t have any problems, and definitely not in the first-person perspective of a high school student with nothing to be upset about.