🎙️So because I like to think about Trash Media(I'm a raccoon, it's a whole thing) I've been... for some inexplicable reason punishing myself by actually attempting to read Fifty Shades Of Grey. What I'm finding is that this series is fascinatingly godawful in like, really novel ways, because it is supposed to be about a BDSM relationship that is written by someone who... doesn't seem to understand what BDSM is but insists on using it as a plot device in the most absolutely bizarre ways.
It is... absolutely buckwild all the twists and turns this takes, but I kind of want to concentrate on the prose and characterization because they're sort of the structural failure-point everything else collapses under. To be clear; I want to say none of this comes from a place of misogyny or disliking bodice-ripper novels. Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with romantic thrillers for a primarily-female audience and there's nothing I object to about the... underlying genre Fifty Shades exists in or the intentions behind it, it's just that it happens to be a spectacularly bad example of that genre whose poor quality made it a springboard for misogynistic dudebros to deride the idea that women should have any sexual existence outside them.
I'm gonna be talking about this from a perspective of both, like, being someone who writes a fair amount and is, uh, bluntly, into BDSM and the kink scene in a pretty big way as both a switch and a semi-regular domme with my partners. I don't really intend to analyze every minute detail, because I just... don't have the time or energy to do a complete sporking, and it's already been done before in MUCH more detail by other people. But I have a ton of thoughts about this that I still need to just... put somewhere so they aren't rattling around our skull.
[CWs behind the cut: discussion of abuse, shitty boyfriends, and also just generally a lot of tacky stuff but nothing really actually all that sexually-explicit because these books are about as objectively erotic as a tea cozy with 'BUTT STUFF' on it]