Grey: Monday, May 23, 2011

The chapter kicks off with Christian Grey jogging to “O Fortuna”, because nothing says “eclectic music tastes” like “the one choral song literally everyone knows”. Christian gets back from his run, wondering if Ana will respond to his last email. About sex. In case you forgot the one thing going on in this story. As she has not, he writes an email to Elena AKA the older woman who seduced teenage Christian Grey with a BDSM lifestyle AKA Christian’s business partner who owns a hair salon whose motto is revealed to be “For The Beauty That Is You ™”, which is definitely the first attempt E L James made at coming up with a hair salon’s motto.

Sorry not to get back to you. I’ve been busy all weekend, and I’ll be in Portland all this week. I don’t know about next weekend, either, but if I’m free, I’ll let you know. Latest results for the beauty business look promising. Good going, Ma’am…

Yo, if any given email contains a not-subtle inside joke about your past shared sex life, I hardly think you can claim that things are just friendship and business between you two.

I press send, wondering again what Elena would make of Ana… and vice versa.

Thankfully, we break away from Christian’s idiotic inner dialogue to get… okay, I lied. It’s still his idiotic inner dialogue, but about other stuff.

There’s a ping from my laptop as a new e-mail arrives. It’s from Ana. […] “I slept very well, thank you— for some strange reason— Sir.” […] “Sir” with a capital S; the girl has been reading, and possibly researching.

Ughhhhhhhh 1) Can you really assume that just because she said “sir”, that she’s been doing research into BDSM culture? This doesn’t seem like a totally out there kind of joke to make. 2) How the fuck could “reading” and “researching” possibly entail separate things in this scenario? Christian and Ana email back and forth about whether she’ll take the laptop Christian gave her, which makes him reflect on how Leila was more willing to accept his gifts.

Ah, Leila. She was a good submissive, but she became too attached and I was the wrong man. Fortunately, that wasn’t for long. She’s married now and happy. I turn my attention back to Ana’s e-mail and reread.

What’s amazing about Grey is that it can be so misogynistic, scattershot, and boring as shit, all in such a short amount of time. Ana quips that she can’t email him all morning because “some of us have to work for a living”, which intriguingly affords an opportunity to show what impressively tiny corners E L James manages to keep writing herself into somehow. Because Christian’s response was already in Fifty Shades of Grey, but his thought process that she wrote for Grey… does not match.

[I] decide to set the record straight with Ana. […] “I work for a living, too.”

“I work too” THAT’LL SHOW HER.

Grey continues to take advantage of getting to flesh out what a great boss Christian Grey is to his (male) employees, when he suggests Taylor take the next couple days off and visit his daughter, since his schedule looks like it’ll be fairly light. Grey also adds minor details to the story’s minor characters (which is fine, but it really should try to nail down its main characters first…)

I hope his ex-wife isn’t giving him grief. I pay for his daughter’s schooling as another incentive for him to stay in my employment; he’s a good man, and I don’t want to lose him.

Yay, now we know more about Christian Grey’s relationship with Taylor. It’s like we’re reading a whole different story. The story goes back to Christian and Ana emailing each other. Ana emails Christian about doing research because she’d “like another A”, which Grey unsurprisingly finds a way to make more nauseating.

Yes. That A was something else. Closing my eyes, I see and feel her mouth around my cock once more. Fuck.

Ok, I know I toss around quite a few fucks on this blog, but surely I can still criticize how frequently E L James can’t think of a way for Christian to articulate his emotions aside from a one-word sentence that just reads “Fuck.”?

“What would you suggest I put into a search engine?” […] Shit! Why didn’t I think about this?

This book takes place in 2011. Why would you think about this? Ana sends the “Okay, I’ve seen enough. It was nice knowing you.” email that, in Fifty Shades of Grey, prompted Christian to show up in her apartment, unannounced, to seduce her into changing her mind. So it would presumably be fairly insightful to see this from Christian’s point of view. Just what was going on through Christian’s head while he was doing this?

That’s it? No discussion? Nothing. Just “It was nice knowing you”? What. The. Fuck. I sit back in my chair, dumbfounded. Nice? Nice. NICE.

Christian tries to write an email in response (with the subject line “NICE?” in all-caps, which isn’t terrifying at all), but can’t think of anything to write. And so opts for the obvious next best thing: a premeditated attempt to go have sex with her until her “no” becomes a “yes”.

She needs to look me in the eye and say no. Yep. […] From my messenger bag I take some condoms and slide them into the back pocket of my pants

Unsurprisingly, this is all way more disturbing from Christian’s point of view. Since this scene existed in Fifty Shades of Grey, maybe this could have been an opportunity for E L James to make her thoroughly-criticized Christian Grey seem, say, less manipulative. Nope.

As I pull up in the R8 outside the apartment she shares with Kavanagh, I wonder if this is a wise move.

YOU THINK?

Kavanagh answers when I knock at the door. She’s surprised to see me. “Hi, Christian. Ana didn’t say you were coming over.” She stands aside to let me enter. “She’s in her room. I’ll call her.” “No. I’d like to surprise her.” I give her my most earnest and endearing look and in response she blinks a couple of times. Whoa. That was easy. Who would have thought? How gratifying.

And that’s how you romanticize rape culture.

Ana suddenly jumps, startled by my presence. Yes. I’m here because of your e-mail.

How maybe 99% of the population would read this situation.

“Would you like a drink?” she squeaks. “No thank you, Anastasia.” Good. She’s found her manners.

Have you seen the 1989 Batman movie, with Michael Keaton as Batman, Jack Nicholson as the Joker, and Prince as all the music? You know that scene where the Joker is destroying the museum, but stops his henchman from destroying one painting, pauses to consider it, and says, “I like this one”, and he leaves only that painting in tact? You know why that scene exists? Aside from because it’s pretty funny, it’s because one trick that stories use to make their villains likeable is to make them look cultured, which subconsciously registers as a significant redeeming value. Why am I bringing any of this up? Because, as can be seen in this last quote, Grey is using the exact same trick, but with Christian Grey, the leading man in a romance novel.

Basically Christian Grey is a Batman villain. You’re welcome.

Anyway, enough about Batman. Time to talk about Christian Grey’s relationship with God, I guess.

“And you decided that it was nice knowing me? Do you mean knowing me in the biblical sense?” Her cheeks pink. “I didn’t think you were familiar with the Bible.” “I went to Sunday school, Anastasia. It taught me a great deal.” Catechism. Guilt. And that God abandoned me long ago.

The eBook of Grey could just be this gif, really

Christian tell Ana that he “thought I should come and remind you how nice it was knowing me”, which prompts Ana to jump him, because of course. And so we have our typical E L James sex scene. It has no awareness of when the events taking place stop being consensual and starts being threatening:

“If you struggle, I’ll tie your feet, too. If you make a noise, Anastasia, I will gag you. Keep quiet. Katherine is probably outside listening right now.”

It’s fucking disgusting:

[I] shift her so she’s stretched out and lying on her sheets, and not that dainty, homemade quilt. We’re going to make a mess.

It has a constant undercurrent of horror:

her breasts are pert and vulnerable, just how I like them.

And it follows some insanely alien definition of “sexy”:

Taking a sip of wine, I lean down and kiss her, pouring the wine into her mouth. She laps it up

“But wait”, you might be asking yourself right now. “Didn’t Fifty Shades have a scene where Christian interrupts their foreplay and left Ana in the room to go get glasses and ice? And didn’t we just learn that Kate is out there? What happened there?” Well, fortunately, Grey answers these questions. With Christian’s psychotic behavior.

• Kavanagh looks up from where she’s sitting on the sofa, reading, and her eyebrows rise in surprise. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a shirtless man, Kavanagh, because I won’t believe you.
• “Um. In the kitchen. I’ll get them for you. Where’s Ana?” Ah, some concern for her friend. Good.
• “Are you going to come and help Ana with the move?” Her eyes flash. She’s challenging me. […] Fuck off, Kavanagh.

I mean, I just assumed Christian disliked Kate in Fifty Shades because of his general hatred of anyone in Ana’s life who wasn’t him, and also women. But why on earth does Christian actively hate Kate so much? After sex, Ana elaborates on what her email meant, lest the book actually have us thinking she’s only still interested in Christian because he just sexed her into changing her mind after she expressed disinterest in continuing their relationship. Ana explains that she has a few questions based on her research.

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t made up my mind. Will you collar me?” Her question surprises me. “You have been doing your research. I don’t know, Anastasia. I’ve never collared anyone.” “Were you collared?” she asks. “Yes.” “By Mrs. Robinson?” “Mrs. Robinson?” I laugh out loud. Anne Bancroft in The Graduate.

How the shit is “Anne Bancroft in The Graduate” a more universal explanation than “Mrs. Robinson”? Christian continues to tell Ana that she can’t talk to anyone but him about sex, which – and I feel like I’ve said this before – is much more unsettling and also utterly disconnected from reality from Christian’s point of view.

If you’d like, I can introduce you to one of my former subs. You could talk to her.” “Is this your idea of a joke?” she demands. “No, Anastasia.” I’m surprised by her vehemence and shake my head to reinforce my denial. It’s perfectly normal for a submissive to check with exes that their new Dominant knows what he’s doing.

And this gif could be the receipt for every sale of Grey, really

“I’m not offended. I’m appalled.” “Appalled?” “I don’t want to talk to one of your ex-girlfriends, slave, sub, whatever you call them.” Oh. “Anastasia Steele, are you jealous?” I sound bewildered… because I am.

So there’s the obvious criticism here that Christian continues to only ever have self-centered misreadings of anything Ana ever says or does, but in addition to that, “I sound bewildered… because I am”. Seriously? You know, E L James, since you’re the writer, if you tell us what a character is feeling, we’ll probably believe you. Because you’re telling the fucking story. To be fair, Ana is about as amused as I am that Christian is so insanely oblivious and kicks him out. Which prompts some long-awaited self-reflection for Chr- fuck it, you know he’s being a manipulative misogynist.

• Her petulance is irritating, and were she truly mine, it would not be tolerated.
• I still want this. Why, though, I don’t know; she’s so difficult.

And a hypocrite:

• For the first time— well, maybe not the first time— I feel a little used, for sex
• “Please pass me my sweatpants,” she orders, pointing to them. Wow. Miss Steele can be a bossy little thing.

And… I don’t even know what has to be wrong with someone for them to misread this one:

“Yes, ma’am,” I quip, knowing that she won’t get the reference. But she narrows her eyes. She knows I’m making fun of her

Christian Grey: confused that other people can magically figure out that he’s being a dick to them.

Ariel says: After what I’m sure were months and months of wild speculation about what we’ll be reading next now that we’ve finally washed our hands of serums, factions, and poorly designed experiments (oh my!), we can finally confirm that we’re going back to our beloved House of Night series.

Matthew says: We’ve seen a lot of interesting suggestions in the comments for new books, but we could use some more time to look into them to figure out which ones we really wanna do next. Also, we’ve been dying to get back to House of Night, because even with all the books we read on this blog, it’s rare we encounter writing worse than that seen in Fifty Shades of Grey.

And just like that, I can’t open my Amazon recommendations page in public for a few months.

Matthew says: It’s been about a year since we put down book two, so we figured a recap was in order for all our our long-time readers and our brand new readers. So I guess that would be all of our readers.

Ariel says: In case you can’t quite remember who Zoey was dating or what new affinity she discovered she had (“I have an affinity for creating the perfect pasta sauce! And all of the elements!”) or which of her friends was now a zombie, here’s our recap of the previous books based on just our memories and no re-reading of the books or our old posts whatsoever. It will be of questionable value.

House of Night #1: Marked

• Zoey was a normal teenage girl until a vampyre showed up at her school, touched her on the forehead, “marked” her, and she became a vampyre. Which she also was because of her genes. Both of those things. We like to read very scientifically accurate books on this blog.

• Vampyres are super common in this world. All the coolest celebs are vampyres! Also we spell vampyres that way. Spell check hates it.
• Zoey’s horrible best friend Kayla and NOT-BOYFRIEND Heath are like totally freaking out about Zoey becoming a vampyre. Zoey leaves regular, boring high school to attend a vampyre high school – the House of Night.
• Before going to vampyre school, Zoey lived with her mom and stepdad. Zoey’s family is terrible except for her Native American grandmother who says spiritual things about goddesses. Which are also vampyre goddesses. Both of those things.
• Zoey makes awkward asides about everything. Most of the time they are super judgmental and laden with dated and stupid pop culture references.
• At the House of Night, she makes friends with two girls that are so indistinct that they just call each other twins and talk about how one is black and the other is white. Diversity!
• They have a gay friend named Damien, and you would think that this would not have to be pointed out every time Damien is mentioned, but it is. More diversity!
• There is also a friend from the South named Stevie Rae who is diverse because of her southern accent.
• Zoey meets Aphrodite and her posse, who have given themselves names like “Devil” because this series is not known for its subtlety. Zoey accidentally witnessed Aphrodite giving/trying to give someone a blow job, and now Aphrodite is the secondary antagonist because good girls should never do such depraved things and obviously she is evil. This is actually what happens.
• Aphrodite and her posse run some sort of sorority/cult at the House of Night and lead rituals. Everyone in this series is constantly involved in a ritual, which is somewhat preferable to reading about serums all the fucking time.
• Neferet, Zoey’s mentor and House of Night headmistress, is mysterious and has an affinity for cats. WHICH SO DOES ZOEY BECAUSE SHE IS GOOD AT EVERYTHING. Neferet is also totally not evil haha why would you even think that? That comes up later so shhh.
• Heath keeps trying to see Zoey, and she winds up imprinting on him somehow, which is a vampyre thing that happens and is sort of love but isn’t. So he’s obsessed with her and they communicate telepathically and she touches his boner sometimes with her mind. Again, this is actually what happens.
• Erik Night is the hottest guy in school (who Zoey saw getting head from Aphrodite! Awks!). He wants to be with Zoey even though Aphrodite totally wants him back, and also he’s an actor or some shit. He’s gone like the whole second book because he’s at a Shakespeare tournament or something. He doesn’t do much in the first book either. Just know that boys want Zoey. Also, even though he clearly could have stopped Aphrodite from giving him a blow job, Zoey is much more forgiving of Erik than she is of Aphrodite. Zoey always be slut shaming.
• Some students die at the House of Night due to strange, sudden circumstances. Zoey later sees weird ghost-like people in the House of Night that look like them. Zoey ignores this until book two.
• Professor Loren Blake is the vampyre poet laureate (as opposed to the poet laureate, which I guess is not the same), as well as the poetry teacher at the House of Night. Zoey wants to bone him. And he wants to bone her. It is weird and uncomfortable for all of us.
• The first book ends with Zoey stopping Aphrodite from unintentionally summoning evil ghosts – which are another thing entirely from everything you’ve read about so far – during a bad ritual (it’s bad because it’s too sexy or something). Then Neferet appears and tells Zoey that she’s special and tells Aphrodite that she isn’t special. And that was a book.

House of Night #2: Betrayed

• Since the last books, Aphrodite has been stripped of her position of the leader of the sorority/cult-thing, which is now Zoey’s role. Aphrodite has also lost her magic vampyre power of being able to see tragedies before they are about to happen. Neferet claims that the vampyre goddess Nyx has taken them aware from her, but we can totally trust Neferet about that! Haha why wouldn’t we! WHY, I ASK.
• We also start to become more sympathetic towards Aphrodite because she has really mean parents. Her dad is apparently the mayor of Tulsa or something. She also reveals to Zoey that Neferet has ignored her visions in the past when human deaths are involved.
• Back in the human world, local high school football players are disappearing. They are later found with puncture wounds and drained of blood. Suspicions naturally turn to the vampyres at the House of Night. Tensions build.
• Speaking of tensions building, Zoey is now juggling her vampyre boyfriend Erik Night, secret rendezvous to consensually drink the blood of her human ex-boyfriend (not NOT boyfriend, suddenly, somehow) Heath, and flirting with her teacher. In case this is all too subtle, Zoey is one hot commodity.
• Zoey goes into town to go shopping for new clothes that fit her “weird” and “out there” sense of fashion, and goes to American Eagle. This has nothing to do with the plot, but it still says everything you need to know about Zoey and House of Night somehow.
• Aphrodite has a vision of a bridge collapse and begs Zoey to help her. Zoey is reluctant to believe her until Aphrodite mentions that Zoey’s grandmother dies in the collapse. Zoey and her friends call in a fake bomb threat and this shuts down the city and stops the accident from happening in some way. Zoey learns that Aphrodite hasn’t entirely lost her powers, but Neferet wouldn’t LIE about such a thing!
• Zoey is in charge of the vampyre sorority thing and comes up with some ideas for community service and stuff. Neferet reveals her hand that she is totally evil by publicly claiming credit for Zoey’s ideas. For a high school club. This is the actual plot twist that happens.
• Zoey appoints all of her friends to be members of the vampyre sorority (which I now remember includes Damien, so I guess it’s not a sorority, but I’m googling it at this point), and they each have an affinity for a different element.
• Stevie Rae dies.
• Heath disappears, and Zoey uses their imprint to go find him. She discovers that he’s been taken captive in the sewers by the undead versions of the dead House of Night students, who have been kidnapping the high school football players. Among them, she finds the undead Stevie Rae, who appears to have regained none of her human personality, such as her Southernness.
• Zoey and Heath escape by subduing the undead with the power of love. I’m like 96% sure. Also people were hiding behind potted plants and revealed themselves just in time to save the day.
• Neferet tries to wipe Zoey’s memory to hide her evil army of undead before she talks to the human police about what happened with the sewers and the missing high school football players, but it doesn’t work because Zoey is too special. The book ends with Zoey telling Neferet that she totally knows she’s evil.

And with that, uh, explanation, tomorrow we go back to the House of Night for book #3: Chosen. Maybe because this is the book where Zoey finally chooses who she’s going to fuck already.

House of Night, Chosen Chapter 1:

Ah House of Night. It feels so good to be back in your warm, awkward embrace. This chapter is mainly a recap (though not as good as our very own House of Night recap). You know the type that YA books do – reminding you who every character is, what’s been going on in the plot, and it’s always off-putting because every time you see your friends in real life you’re not reminding yourself who they are like, “Oh, Ashley, my white friend from Boston who is sarcastic and likes to eat Nachos. Last week she almost got turned into a Zombie!”

We open this chapter with Zoey reminding us that she has a cat named Nala, informing us that it’s her birthday, and telling us that her birthday always sucks because it just gets smushed together with Christmas.

Matt contacted me with the sole purpose of pointing out the first two lines of the chapter:

“Yep, I have a seriously sucky birthday,” I told my cat, Nala.

(Okay, truthfully she’s not so much my cat as I’m her person. You know how it is with cats: They don’t really have owners, they have staff. A fact I mostly try to ignore.)

[Matthew says: Yeah! This was really important! One thing we criticized throughout the first two books was Zoey’s asides, which are a pretty solid contender for the worst attempt at “realistic teenager voice” we’ve ever seen. Basically Zoey’s narration CONSTANTLY pauses to go “(Okay, what I really mean…)” or “(Okay, not really. It’s actually like…)” which I guess is supposed to be realistic and funny (because Zoey’s SO RANDOM LOL), but it’s mainly annoying. And off putting, because it has this weird effect of making the story look like it’s going back on what it’s trying to communicate. And here we are, book three in the series, and it literally couldn’t go ONE SINGLE SENTENCE without doing it. This is the best kind of shitty, you guys. Projecting on the shitty creep from here, my guess is that the title of the next book will be House of Night 4: Untamed (Okay, Actually It’s Pretty Tame. We Are Teenagers And Sit Around Like Total Couch Potaterators and Zonk Out. You Know? Frizzle Shizzle.]

My heart goes out to the Casts who clearly try SO HARD to make Zoey funny and likeable but fail so very miserably.

Anyway, I kept talking to the cat as if she hung on my every word, which is soooo not the case.

I guess the cat is a stand-in for the reader in this situation?

Zoey continues to remind us of all of her loveable quirks:

“Here’s the deal,” I continued as I finished smudging a little liner on my eyes. (And I mean a little—the line-your-eyes-till-you-look-like-a-scary-raccoon is definitely not the look for me. Actually, it’s not the look for anyone.)

Oh, Zoey’s judgemental asides, how I’ve missed you. Teenage girls are most definitely reading these books for sweet makeup tips! [Matthew says: But see what I mean? The story just completely stopped so Zoey could criticize makeup habits she doesn’t like. Interrupting her story about another thing she doesn’t like. Dear God, it’s complainception.]

BWAAAAAA (okay, truthfully it’s more of a BWUUUUUUH)

Part of the time, Zoey does manage to sound like an actual teenager, but then she starts doing shit like this and I just don’t understand what the fuck kind of teenagers the Casts are basing her off of:

“You’re not like anyone else,” I whispered to my reflection. Then I cleared my throat and continued in an overly perky voice. “And it’s okay not to be like anyone else.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “Whatever.” I looked up over my head, half surprised that it wasn’t visible. I mean, I could definitely feel the ginormic dark cloud that had been following me around for the past month. “Hell, I’m surprised it’s not raining in here. And wouldn’t that be just great for my hair?” I sarcastically told my reflection. Then I sighed and picked up the envelope I’d laid on my desk, THE HEFFER FAMILY was embossed in gold above the sparkling return address. “Speaking of depressing…” I muttered.

If I’ve been making fun of a girl who has actual, legitimate mental health issues I’m going to feel fucking awful you guys. But if that’s not the case, I don’t understand why Zoey is whispering really bizarre shit to herself, then putting on an “overly perky voice” to tell herself it’s okay not to be like everyone else? Is she making fun of people who say things like that? Comforting herself? And then without any explanation she’s like, “I looked up over my head half surprised that it wasn’t visible” without specifying what ‘it’ is until later.

Zoey reads a terrible card from her terrible parents [Matthew says: And the Casts remind us that they no idea when they’re going way over the top, even when they’re writing religious zealots, which is almost impressive]:

There was a huge wooden cross on the front of the card. Staked to the middle of the cross (with a bloody nail) was an old time scroll-like paper. Written (in blood, of course) were the words: He IS the reason for the season. Inside the card was printed (in red letters): MERRY CHRISTMAS. Below that, in my mom’s handwriting, it said: I hope you’re remembering your family during this blessed time of the year. Happy Birthday, Love, Mom and Dad.

“That’s so typical,” I told Nala. My stomach hurt. “And he is not my dad.” I ripped the card in two and threw it into the wastepaper basket, then stood staring at the torn pieces. “If my parents aren’t ignoring me, they’re insulting me. I like being ignored better.”

It is pretty rude that her parents don’t even acknowledge her birthday in their card, but we can’t fault them for needing to get their point across. Zoey just isn’t more important than Jesus, and she needs to understand that.

Anyway, Damien knocks at the door, so it’s definitely time for the book to remind us he’s gay.

“Zoey, everyone wants to know where you are.” Damien’s voice carried easily through the door.

“Hang on—I’m almost ready,” I yelled, shook myself mentally, and gave my reflection one more look, deciding, with a definitely defensive edge, to leave my shoulder bare. “My Marks aren’t like anyone else’s. Might as well give the masses something to gawk at while they talk,” I muttered. Then I sighed. I’m usually not so grumpy. But my sucky birthday, my sucky parents…

No. I couldn’t keep lying to myself.

“Wish Stevie Rae was here,” I whispered

Oh wow, maybe I was wrong about this series, the book hasn’t even mentioned that Damien is gay yet! Instead, it was just a way for Zoey to both reflect on Stevie Rae’s “death” while also reminding us that she’s hiding in a sewer and that none of Zoey’s friends can know about this. Maybe the book has turned a new corner and just will trust we remember Damien’s gay all on our own!

While I hesitated, trying to figure out what I should or could say to Damien, he raised one neatly plucked brow and, in his best schoolteacher voice, said, “You know how sensitive my people are to emotions, so you may as well just give up and tell me the truth.”

Well, it was only a matter of time. I think having one whole sentence where it didn’t come up was a new record. Plus, I’m sure it won’t come up again for awhile.

I sighed again. “You gays are freakishly intuitive.”

“That’s us: homos—the few, the proud, the hypersensitive.”

“Isn’t homo a derogatory term?”

“Not if it’s used by a homo. By the by, you’re stalling and it’s so not working for you.” He actually put his hand on his hip and tapped his foot

What…what is happening? [Matthew says: No joke, Damien also gave an identical explanation in the last book. Probably because the Casts want to explain how they’re actually not being offensive, because it’s ok since their (insanely stereotypically) gay character does it! Real talk, there’s a part of me that’s terrified they’re going to do the same thing with the N word at some point.] The fact that Zoey tries to be like, “But isn’t homo a derogatory term” so Damien can have a faux-educational moment is so uncomfortable.

Zoey and Damien talk about how much they miss Stevie Rae and how southern she was.

Well, at least we’ve now moved onto other things and can just see Zoey and Damien having a nice moment without any mention about his sexual preference –

“Let’s go. I’m feeling the need to open presents,” I lied enthusiastically.

“Ohmygod! I can not wait for you to open mine!” Damien gushed. “I shopped for it forevah!” I smiled and nodded appropriately as Damien went on and on about his Quest for the Perfect Present. Usually he isn’t so overtly gay. Not that the fabulous Damien Maslin isn’t actually gay. He totally is. But he’s also a tall, brown-haired, big-eyed cutie who looks like he’d be excellent boyfriend material (which he is—if you’re a boy). He’s not a fluttery-acting gay kid, but get the boy talking about shopping and he definitely shows some girlish tendencies. Not that I don’t like that about him. I think he looks cute when he gushes about the importance of buying really good shoes, and right then his babbling was soothing. It was helping me to get ready to face the bad presents that (sadly) waited for me.

Zoey reminds us who her other friends are – like the twins who aren’t biological twins but are just both so bland and forgettable the Casts just sort of merged them into one character basically. And then there’s Erik Night who I guess doesn’t have a Shakespeare contest to be at in this book. How nice of you to join us, Erik.

“Happy birthday, Z,” said a deep, sexy voice I knew very, very well. I stepped out of the twin sandwich and walked into the arms of my boyfriend, Erik. Well, technically, Erik is one of my two boyfriends, but the other is Heath, a human teenager I dated before I was Marked and I’m not supposed to be dating him now, but I kinda sorta accidentally sucked his blood and now we’re Imprinted and so he’s my boyfriend by default. Yes, it’s confusing. Yes, it makes Erik mad. Yes, I expect him to dump me any day because of it.

UG I hate when you accidentally suck your not-boyfriends blood and then he gets all clingy and all the telepathic boner rubs in the world aren’t enough to satisfy him, and then you’ve got your actual boyfriend who isn’t into this at all! The Casts just get what it’s like to be a teen. [Matthew says: You know what’s the most amazing? How Zoey and Heath’s relationship has managed to get retconned EVERY. SINGLE. BOOK. In book one Heath was almost Zoey’s “NOT boyfriend”. Then in book two he was her ex-boyfriend, with no mention of when Zoey ever decided he counted. And now Erik knows he’s being two-timed and is putting up with it? I feel like just MAYBE that would have been a useful moment to include.]

Zoey kisses Erik which for some reason is just another excuse for the book to remind us again how Damien is gay. I’m not making this shit up, that is what 90% of this chapter is, and I will prove it.

“Hey, Erik, why don’t you spread some of that birthday sugar around?” Shaunee wagged her eyebrows at my grinning boyfriend.

“Yeah, sweet thang,” Erin said, and in typical twin fashion mirrored Shaunee’s eye waggle. “How about a little b-day kiss over here.”

I rolled my eyes at the twins. “Uh, it’s not his birthday. You only get to kiss the birthday boy or girl.”

“Damn,” Shaunee said. “I lurve ya, Z, but I don’t want to kiss ya.”

“Just please with the same-sex kissing,” Erin said, then she grinned at Damien (who was gazing adoringly at Erik). “I’ll leave that to Damien.”

As someone who has had many gay and straight friends throughout my life who hang out together, I can assure you with great confidence that you can have a conversation that is just a conversation without being like SAME-SEX KISSING, THAT SOUNDS LIKE A THING FOR DAMIEN! WHO BY THE WAY IS GAY.

But why limit yourself to just talking about how gay Damien is when you could talk about how gay his boyfriend is?

While I was seriously considering sneaking another Erik kiss, a mini-whirlwind in the form of Damien’s boyfriend, Jack Twist, burst into the room.

[…]

Erik and Jack are roommates, further proving Erik’s coolness. He’s a fifth former (in normal language that’s a junior) and he’s also easily the most popular guy at school. Jack is a third former (a freshman), a new kid, cute but kinda dorky, and definitely gay. Erik could have made a big deal about being stuck with a queer and could have gotten out of rooming with him, and made Jack’s life hell at the House of Night. Instead he totally took him under his wing and treats him like a little brother, a treatment he extends to Damien, who has been officially going out with Jack for two point five weeks as of today. (We all know because Damien is ridiculously romantic and he celebrates the half-week anniversaries as well as the weekly ones. Yes, it makes the rest of us gag. In a nice way.)

When Zoey says, “Erik could have made a big deal about being stuck with a queer” do you think she’s saying it in a way that’s making fun of guys who would say something like that or just phrasing it like that herself? I really wish that was clearer because I found that line so jarring, and as offensive as Zoey can be…I’m going to give her/the book the benefit of the doubt in this one instance.

Zoey opens her present from Jack and it’s a snow globe that plays “Frosty the Snowman” thus deeply disappointing Zoey who is sick of this shit on her birthday. Poor Zoey has to open even more presents from her friends next chapter :(

Hopefully you’re all enjoying our return to the riveting tale of House of Night, in which a girl is opening undesirable presents from her friends.

House of Night: Chosen Chapter 2

This second chapter serves two purposes. First, Zoey is still opening her friends’ totally awful birthday presents, which are all Christmas themed. Second, Zoey is summing up the entire plot for the reader. No, these two things do not go together especially seamlessly.

Much like, as Zoey would point out, the combination of birthdays and Christmas.

I stroked my hand over the folded material of the scarf, thoroughly shocked that I’d actually gotten a cool gift.
“It’s cashmere,” Damien said smugly.
I lifted it from the box [then] froze, realizing I’d been thrilled too soon.
“See the snowmen embroidered on the ends?” Damien said. “Aren’t they adorable?”

Also speaking of combinations of things that don’t quite work, how the hell are all these high schoolers affording such nice shit? Damien’s got a fucking Cashmere scarf, and then the twins (Erin and Shaunee) get Zoey fucking leather stilletto boots.

Inside was a pair of black leather stiletto boots that would have been utterly cool and chic and fabulous . . . had it not been for the Christmas trees, complete with red and gold ornaments, that were stitched in full color on the side of each boot. This. Can. Only. Be. Worn. At. Christmas. Which makes it definitely a lame birthmas present.
“Oh, thanks.” I tried to gush. “They’re really cute.”
“Took us forever to find them,” Erin said.
“Yeah, plain boots would not do for Ms. Born-on-the-Twenty-Fourth,” Shaunee said.
“No indeedy. Plain old black leather stiletto boots would never do,” I said, feeling like crying.

Wait, who gets people gifts like this even at Christmas?

And here’s another thing that doesn’t make sense about these presents that are juuuust not right. What’s the tone here? Is it supposed to be funny that Zoey’s suffering? Are we supposed to sympathize with Zoey’s plight? I mean, I think it’s hilarious, but probably not in the same way that we’re supposed to think these wacky misunderstandings are hilarious.

Wacky!

Erik presents his gift, and initially Zoey freaks out when she sees the Moody’s Fine Jewelry sticker (again, why is everyone at this school loaded?).

The first thing I saw was the gleaming platinum chain. Speechless with happiness my eyes followed the chain down to the beautiful pearls that were nestled into the plush velvet. Velvet! Platinum! Pearls! I sucked in air so that I could begin my gushing ohmygodthankyouErikyou’rethebestboyfriendever when I realized that the pearls were oddly shaped.

And, lo, we find that the gift is not quite so ohmygodthankyouErikyou’rethebestboyfriendever.

The pearls were shaped into a snowman.

Zoey, maybe your problem is really just that you have really tacky friends.

“It’s cute,” Shaunee said.
“And very expensive,” Erin said.

Case in point. And maybe it’s a bit too early for this, but I’m really hoping that one of the twins gets offed next.

It’s not illegal for us to do this for fictional characters, right?

Begrudgingly, I have to inform you that Zoey has a brief moment of maturity.

“Thanks, you guys. I really appreciate all the time and effort it took y’all to find such special gifts. I mean it.” And I did mean it. I may loathe the gifts, but the thoughts behind them were a totally different thing.

I say brief, because she totally reveals her true colors once she gets a mysterious extra present. But first, the story’s only interesting character is back! Entirely just as a forced reminder that she exists:

“Mail call came for you while you were back here with your nerd herd,” she sneered.
“Go away, Aphrodite, ya hag,” Shaunee said.
“Before we throw some water on you and you melt,” Erin added.
“Whatever,” Aphrodite said.

You know, I bet if we went back and tallied up the instances, the heroes of the story are probably being way meaner to Aphrodite now than she ever was to them. Speaking of forced reminders (seriously, why did Aphrodite, no one’s favorite person, get assigned to deliver Zoey’s mail?), this is a pretty smooth segue into Aphrodite’s entire narrative arc.

“You’d think she would have learned her lesson when you took the Dark Daughters from her, and Neferet proclaimed that the Goddess has withdrawn her gifts from Aphrodite,” Erik said.

Smooooooth.

Zoey narrates that there’s more to the story in maybe the most “let me spell out the previous book for you” way possible. By literally saying there’s more to the story.

Unfortunately, I knew there was more to the story than what everyone else believed. Aphrodite had used her visions, which had clearly not been taken away from her, to save my grandma as well as Heath, my human boyfriend. Sure, she’d been bitchy and selfish during the saving, but still.

And what the hell, let’s remind what’s going on with Neferet too!

Plus, recently I’d found out that Neferet, our High Priestess— my mentor, the vamp most looked up to at the school— was also not what she appeared to be. Actually, I was coming to believe that Neferet was probably as evil as she was powerful.

Wait, you mean that Zoey learned that Neferet is literally murdering children to raise an army of undead, which are also murdering local human high schoolers, and she’s just “coming to believe” Neferet is “probably” evil???? Also, wait, didn’t the last book end with Zoey and Neferet secretly declaring war on each other? What’s going on with that? That sounds like a big deal.

Thankfully, I also hadn’t talked to Neferet for the past month. She’d left for a winter retreat in Europe

Man, it’s convenient that Zoey’s war with the secretly-murderous head of the school she attends is on vacation for a few weeks.

Anyway, Zoey opens the mysterious extra gift, to find it is not a Christmas-themed present! She expresses her delight in the present, wondering who could have sent it, not knowing that everyone’s been passing around the card that came with it…

Oh, hell! It was from Heath. Better known as boyfriend no. 2.

Good thing the book reminded us Heath was better known as boyfriend no. 2, because as of the last book basically nobody knew that he was boyfriend no. 2.

Now, if you thought the Casts’ teenager-speak has been abysmal so far, brace yourself now. Because you’re about to get a very jarring reminder that as bad as the writing in this book is, Heath is on a whole other level.

Zo— HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! I know how much you hate those lame birthmas presents that try to mush your b-day with Christmas, so I sent you something I know you’ll like. Hey! It doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas! Duh! […] I heart you! Heath

Who says “Duh” in writing?

Unfortunately for Zoey, everyone just realized she’s been pretending to be nice about their Christmas-themed presents. For some reason, Jack is more upset than anyone else about this. Probably because, as we were all reminded last chapter, the gays are a very sensitive people. Characterization!

“I like snow globes,” Jack said softly, looking like he was about to cry. “The snowy part makes me happy.”

“The snowy part makes me happy”? Is Jack eight years old?

Erik is pissed about the reminder that Heath knows Zoey so much better than anyone else. Shaunee, much like everyone reading this blog post right now, asks Zoey why she didn’t just tell anyone that she doesn’t like Christmas-themed birthday presents. Zoey apologies, then changes it to a non-apology, then, fuck it, throws in a MY BEST FRIEND IS DEAD.

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings. I’m sorry if Heath’s note made you guys feel bad— but that’s not my fault. And I did tell someone that I don’t like it when people try to mush my birthday together with Christmas— I told Stevie Rae.”

She also leaves by telling everyone that she’s “supposed to meet my grandma at Starbucks”, which somehow manages to sound like the least believable thing in a book about vampires.

This morning I was thinking about how Christian thinks poorly of the leads of Ana’s favourite novels – you know with his, “Oh GAWD her romantic leads!” What do you think he would make of the Crossfire series? Do you think he’d be like, “Now Gideon is a man I can respect. I’d even do business with him!” Rotten food for thought.

Grey: Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Ana emails Christian a list of her issues with the contract. Christian pulls up a copy of the infamous contact “for his reference”, but since the ENTIRE contract is included, I guess it’s for our benefit as well since we only saw it a million times when we read the series the first time around. Thanks for thinking of us, James.

What we do get this time around is Christian reading all of Ana’s comments and reacting to them. It goes exactly how you’d expect:

2. Not sure why this is solely for MY benefit – i.e., to explore MY sensuality and limits. I’m sure I wouldn’t need a ten-page contract for that! Surely this is for YOUR benefit.

Fair point well made, Miss Steele! 

The bulk of Christian’s reactions are simply to to think, “Good point!” which is definitely a waste of space, but I guess it helps keep James from plagiarising herself completely. There are a few gems, though:

12. I cannot commit every weekend. I do have a life, or will have [Ariel says: Way to be optimistic, Ana.] Perhaps three out of four?

And she’ll have the opportunity to socialize with other men? She’ll realize what she’s missing. I’m not sure about this. 

Does Christian think that Ana wouldn’t have the ability to socialise with other men during the week? It’s not like from Monday-Thursday all the men go into hiding and can be found by no woman on Earth.

And then Christian has some reactions that can have no excuse for being included:

15.5: This whole discipline clause. I’m not sure I want to be whipped, flogged, or corporally punished. I am sure this would be in breach of clauses 2– 5. And also “for any other reason.” That’s just mean— and you told me you weren’t a sadist.

Shit! Read on, Grey. 

Although, its inclusion does mean that my new favourite phrase in this book is definitely “Shit! Read on, Grey.” It’s also my new encouragement of choice to keep going as this book becomes increasingly hard to read.

Christian is really happy that Ana is taking all of this seriously, and he’s excited for their dinner.

The uncertainty that I felt when leaving her apartment this evening recedes. There’s hope for our relationship, but first – she needs to sleep.

He makes my blood boil with how patronising he is. You’d think by now I’d be immune to it, and this line would be nothing, but there’s just something about the way he’s like THERE CAN BE NO HOPE FOR OUR RELATIONSHIP UNTIL LATER AFTER SHE HAS SLEPT AT MY BEHEST.

Ana and Christian email a bit about why she’s not asleep, and she points out that she was looking over the contract when he showed up to have sex with her. Fair point, Mis Steele! Shit. Read on, Grey.

Sir,

If you recall I was going through this list when I was distracted and bedded by a passing control freak.

Good night.

Ana

Her e-mail makes me laugh out loud but it irritates me in equal measure. She’s much more sassy in print and she has a great sense of humor, but the woman needs sleep.

Woman funny…but woman no sleep! Christian Grey irritated! Christian Grey horny!

I also feel like no one has ever made a joke to Christian in his life because I don’t see how anything Ana has said is that funny. She’s just saying exactly what happened in a kind of weird way. Christian wasn’t passing by at all…he deliberately showed up with the express purpose of sexing her into submission. So LOL, I guess?

To: Anastasia Steele

GO TO BED, ANASTASIA.

Christian Grey CEO & Control Freak, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.

A few minutes pass and once I’m convinced she’s gone to bed, persuaded by my capital letters, I head into my bedroom.

I wonder if Christian’s business interactions happen this way. If he will change his email signature to whatever suits his mood and resort to ALL CAPS to get his way. It would certainly explain his runaway success in the business world, that’s for darn sure.

In bed, Christian can’t sleep because he’s too busy fretting that Ana i going to get the wrong idea about their relationship because of Kate’s question about helping them move. “Kavanagh’s words remind me that unrealistic expectations have been set.”

These are some of the lowest expectations possible. I can’t remember if I told this story before, but when I was younger I was dating this guy who worked with me, and one time I asked him to drop off a sandwich from the deli after work (I lived around the corner, I am not exaggerating) and he was like NO BECAUSE YOU’LL THINK I’M YOUR BOYFRIEND. Mind you, we had been friends for like 2 years. It was weird as shit. Like I can’t imagine Ana would be like, “But you helped me move. It was a declaration of everlasting love!” He introduced her to his mother after they had sex like once. Surely that’s the thing that would send the wrong message more so than helping her move.

Christian sends Ana one final email, because even though she needs to be asleep, he can do whatever the fuck he wants. It is literally just the definition of the word submissive. Then he falls asleep and has this weird dream about when he was a kid and he first was adopted and he and Elliot didn’t get along because Christian didn’t talk and Elliot annoyed him.

The next morning, it’s time for Christian to get serious and stop thinking about Ana when he needs to focus on what’s important!

“Freddie was saying Barney may have a prototype of the tablet for you in a couple of days,” Ros tells me during our videoconference.

“I was studying the schematics yesterday. They were impressive, but I’m not sure we’re there yet. If we get this right there’s no telling where the technology could go, and what it could do in developing countries.”

I guess the right kind of Tablet is what developing countries are really lacking. How did we not realize this sooner?

Christian morphs into Cher from Clueless with no warning whatsoever:

Don’t forget the home market,” she interjects.

“As if.”

I struggle to believe that this is something Christian would actually say even though I have just been confronted with it and cannot deny its existence.

Next, there’s a gross moment where Ros asks how long he’s going to be in Portland for, and Christian says he’s working on a merger. Then this happens:

Does Marco know?

Marco is the head of my mergers and acquisitions division. “No. It’s not that kind of merger.”

“Oh.” Ros is silenced momentarily and, from her look, surprised.

Yeah. It’s private.

“Well, I hope your successful,” she says, smirking.

“Me too,” I acknowledge with a smirk of my own.

Can you imagine how ridiculously fucking weird and wrong it would be if you asked your boss when they were going to be back at work and they essentially were like, “Not sure. Trying to bang someone here in Portland. It’s private except for the fact that I just told you exactly what I’m doing, and now we’re going to smirk together like the gross fuckers we are.” MERGERS ;)

They keep talking about business, and James just losses interest at some point and abruptly changes the scene. Christian is being driven to Ana’s university to meet with the school’s president and other important people, and he gets a phone call from his mother on the way

She’s asks how Ana is, and Christian starts freaking out about now he has to manage her expectations too! Which makes the fact that he introduced her to Ana at all even more inexplicable. Grace also asks if Christian will be able to pick MIa up from the airport, which will surely be a fantastically exciting scene to read about in great detail.

As the day goes on, Christian has managed to avoid thinking about Ana allegedly, but then he comments on the fact that she still hasn’t emailed him back in the dumbest way possible, “That woman has a way with words, but so far there are no words from her today.” Coming from an author who has no way with words at all.

But, whew, Ana totally emails him back with the definition of compromise, and they eventually come to the agreement that Ana can drive herself to their dinner. Christian is not happy with this, but damn it, Ana hasn’t signed his contract yet, so he has to let her do crazy things like drive!

The chapter ends with Christian being really excited because Ana signs an email “Ana x”, and he’s like, “OMG SHE SENT ME A KISS.” Remember, this is the man who is concerned Ana is getting the wrong idea about their relationship. [Matthew says: Also remember, kisses (sending an “x” at the end of a text message) are NOT A THING in America. Where this book, written by a British author who clearly did lots and lots of research, takes place.]

Those of you who follow the little blurbs I write before the chapter summaries might have gathered that I moved recently. I love my new apartment, but I’ve built so much IKEA furniture and learned so much about dry wall in the past couple days that I’m going crazy. I live in a never-ending realm of empty boxes and unpacked boxes. Which are which? Maybe they have always been the same.

Grey: Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Those of you who follow the chapter headings, exactly two weeks and two days have passed since the beginning of the novel. Thanks for the horrifying sense of perspective as we go into yet another “why won’t you be my BDSM sex slave?” conversation, Grey!

This one is the dinner date, which is totally not a date – a theme which could be described as “fairly apparent” in Fifty Shades of Grey, and probably more like “the sky is blue” is Grey.

This feels like a first date, and in a way it is. I’ve never taken a prospect out to dinner before.

“Wait a second, Christian doesn’t do romance, but he keeps treating this like a romantic relationship anyway!” -someone, somewhere, who has not had this revelation on the 198 pages prior to this one

We also learn about Christian’s day at the office, because if there was anything the Fifty Shades fanbase was obviously clamoring for, it’s the vague minutiae of Christian Grey as a businessman.

I’ve sat through interminable meetings today, bought a business, and fired three people.

Before E L James manages to flesh out Christian Grey’s character too much – learning that his life as a businessman involves buying businesses and firing people is quite enough for one day! – Ana shows up, providing another opportunity to actually flesh out the ways in which Christian sees women as objects.

“A dress, Miss Steele. I approve.” Diamonds in her ears would complete the ensemble; I must buy her a pair.

And also that he hates women when they have any semblance of individuality.

“So, how are we going to do this? Run through my points one by one?” she asks.
“Impatient as ever, Miss Steele.”
“Well, I could ask you what you thought of the weather today,” she retorts.
Oh, that smart mouth.

Trying to set the mood for this delicate conversation about whether these two can work out a sex relationship that will work for both of them, E L James goes for metaphor, which already proves to be flying a little close to the sun for her writing abilities.

“Are you nervous?” I ask.
“Yes.”
This is it, Grey.
Leaning forward, in a candid whisper, I tell her that I’m nervous, too. She looks at me as if I’ve grown three heads.

Indeed.

Seriously. Metaphor is really hard, you guys.

“Is there a store you go to? Submissives ’R’ Us?” She arches an eyebrow and I laugh out loud. And like a magician’s rabbit the tension in my body disappears.

Yes, the famous “I will put a rabbit into my hat” magic trick.

Another thing that happens all the damned time in this book is that Christian’s narration will break for a line in italics. Which is probably supposed to be him thinking on a deeper, more subconscious (a la E L James subconscious) level, but… look, can you tell how this is a distinct voice from the rest of Christian’s narration?

Yeah, I’m human, too, baby… just.

Can you also tell if Christian is not just the moodiest sophomore in the high school? I can’t tell any of these things.

Much like in Fifty Shades, it’s the exact same dialogue that’s already happened, but with interruptions so Christian can explain the not-exactly-erudite meaning to the reader. Which sometimes only makes his understanding of the world in which he lives even more confusing.

“You know this contract is legally unenforceable.”
“I am fully aware of that, Miss Steele.”
“Were you going to tell me that at any point?”
What? I didn’t think I’d have to… and you’ve worked it out for yourself.

This bullshit happens.

“Anastasia, it doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not. […] Even if it were legally binding, do you think I’d drag you through the courts if you did decide to run?”
What does she take me for?

Says the man who, in the last two weeks, had her cell phone tracked, abducted her from a bar, and stripped her clothing off of her while she was drunk.

Guess we’ll never know for sure!

One thing that’s kind of cool about parallel novels (real talk!) is getting to see things that the reader already knows are going to become recurring, bigger deals, but the characters don’t. Although it’s only cool if it’s an actual enjoyable trait of the book, as opposed to “ah, yes, Christian Grey does hate all men who look at Ana, does he not”.

As we leave the bar, I notice admiring glances from other guests, and in the case of one handsome, athletic guy, overt appreciation of my date. It’s not something I’ve dealt with before… and I don’t think I like it.

What a wonderful formative moment to revisit. Now we’ll understand that when Christian gets jealous of other men for so much as having the same letters in their name that Ana does, it can all be traced back to this moment when… Christian was jealous. Deep.

But I digress. For the most part, this is a scene we’ve already read before (like this whole book – no, stop, Matthew! YOU’RE DIGRESSING.), so it’s not like learning that Christian is disappointed that Ana is still reluctant to dive into a sex slave partnership is a huge revelation during this scene where Ana is still reluctant to dive into a sex slave partnership. So for everyone’s sake, let’s just dart through the highlights.

Like when E L James still thinks that teeth+penises are an arousing combination, as opposed to a severely painful one:

“So, I don’t chew [an oyster]?”
“No, Anastasia, you don’t.” And I try not to think about her teeth toying with my favorite part of my anatomy.

Like how the only thing E L James can do to add depth to these scenes is to have Christian explaining his role in the story and/or just the damn story we are currently reading to himself:

• Behave, Grey. Get this negotiation back on track.
• “Obey me in all things. Yes, I want you to do that.” This is important to me. I need to know she’s safe and will do anything for me. “I need you to do that.”

Like how you could actually make a drinking game out of how many times Christian thinks to himself that Ana hasn’t said “no” yet (save for that one time, but it’s okay – he sexed her until she changed her mind about not liking him! Problem totally solved!):

• “I could try,” she says, her voice low.
  It’s my turn to exhale. I’m still in the game. “Good.”
• “We’ll see. Maybe,” she says.
  That’s not a “no.”

lol but actually

Even though he clearly doesn’t give a fuck about what she actually wants or expresses that she wants.

• I have to make this work.
  “I could make you stay,” I tell her, knowing that I could seduce her right now, in this room.
• “And please, let’s try it for three months. If it’s not for you, then you can walk away anytime.”
  “Three months,” she says. Is she agreeing? I’ll take it as a “yes.”

Actually, though, let’s consider how even in Fifty Shades, Ana was an underdeveloped blank slate of a character and Christian had the be the story’s overwhelming cornerstone of personality. So what’s interesting about Grey is that when this story is told from Christian’s perspective, Ana as a person manages to disappear almost entirely as Christian’s presence overwhelms hers. And there are brief moments of fantastic accidental self-awareness:

“You’re very quiet,” I whisper. She’s barely said a word.
“You’re very verbose,” she shoots straight back at me.

In case you forgot from the original, Christian has some success talking Ana into giving it a try.

“Do you trust me, Ana?”
“Yes, I do,” she says immediately. Her response knocks me sideways: it’s completely unexpected.

“Unexpected” is a strong word, since Ana has never responded negatively every previous time Christian has asked her if she trusts him.

Ana negotiates some of the details of the contract with Christian, like having to eat three meals a day, but meets with no success when she asks why she can’t touch him, to which Christian simply says, “Because you can’t”, which is at least par for the course with E L James’s usual level of insight into her characters’ motivations.

“Christian. You use sex as a weapon. It really isn’t fair.” […]
“Doesn’t change how much I want you. Here. Now.”

Does… does that really not matter?

Long-time readers of the blog might recall we were particularly befuddled by a Fifty Shades scene where – and if this is your first time reading about this, I shit you not – Ana sexily eats asparagus. Grey just as strangely finds Christian finding the sight the hottest thing he’s ever scene, although it does kick off with something that seems, however short-lived, considerably more on the mark:

she picks up an asparagus spear and deliberately bites her lip.
What is she doing?

Ana’s graduation is tomorrow, so she calls it a night so she can be ready for that and think things over, despite Christian’s pleas that she spend the night with him (and despite his narration pointing out “this woman needs looking after” – how can she say no to such a dreamboat???). He also criticizes expresses concern over the quality of her car (and she won’t jump into his pants?????), to which Ana immediately puts her foot down.

She’s mad.
“You are not buying me a car,” she says emphatically.

The chapter ends with Christian buying Ana a car.

In case you had somehow forgotten, Zoey is going to meet her grandmother at Starbucks to celebrate her birthday. T’was also the night before Christmas, so Zoey is sick and tired of getting Christmas themed birthday gifts from the hoards of people that apparently have never given a gift before.

House of Night, Chosen Chapter 3:

The Starbucks at Utica Square, the cool outdoors shopping center that was right down the street from the House of Night, was a lot busier than I’d thought it would be. I mean, sure, it was an unusually warm winter night, but it was also December 24, and almost nine o’clock. You’d think people would be home getting ready for visions of sugarplums and whatnot, and not out looking for a caffeine buzz.

No, I told myself sternly, I am not going to be in a bad mood for Grandma. I hardly ever get to see her, and I’m not going to spoil the little time we have together.  Plus, Grandma was totally hip to the fact that birthmas presents were lame. She always got me something as unique and wonderful as she is.

I’m glad that Grandma Redbird manages to stay up-to-date with all the latest teen trends like not buying people birthday gifts with a Christmas theme. It really helps keep her young, I think. [Matthew says: Also, good call on Starbucks for scooping up that vampyre boarding school market. They’re probably making baaaaank.]

We can’t go too long without being reassured that Zoey is the best at everything, even ageing:

She squeezed me one more time and then held me back at arm’s length. “Let me look at you. Yes, I can tell that you’re seventeen. You look so much more mature, and I think a little taller than you did when you were merely sixteen.”

I grinned. “Oh, Grandma, you know I don’t look any different.”

“Of course you do. Years always add beauty and strength to a certain type of woman—and you’re that type.”

[Matthew says: None of this makes sense. She’s seventeen, so she looks more mature than she did when she was sixteen, and also because she’s the time of woman that will age beautifully, which you can tell now that she’s seventeen? Is this the book where we find out Zoey’s grandma is going senile?]

In case that wasn’t enough, the narrative behaves like that douchebag who has to shove his way to the front of a packed club and doesn’t care if he has to elbow you in the head to get there in order to remind us that Zoey has sick tattoos and AN AFFINITY FOR ALL THE FUCKING ELEMENTS:

“I do wish you didn’t have to cover your lovely tattoos to meet me here.” Grandma’s fingers rested briefly on my cheek where I’d hastily patted the thick concealing makeup fledglings were required to wear when they left the House of Night campus. Yes, humans knew vampyres existed—adult vamps didn’t conceal themselves. But the rules for fledglings were different. I guess it made sense—teenagers didn’t always handle conflict well—and the human world did tend to conflict with vampyres. […]

“Oh, Zoeybird, it’s just so magical,” Grandma said softly. “I’m so proud that the goddess has Chosen you as special and Marked you so uniquely.”

She hugged me again, and I clung to her, incredibly glad that I had her in my life. She accepted me for me. It didn’t matter to her that I was turning into a vampyre. It didn’t matter to her that I was already experiencing bloodlust and that I had the power to manifest all five of the elements: air, fire, water, earth, and spirit.

I could see how Zoey would be relieved her grandmother wasn’t bothered by the bloodlust, but her relief over her grandmother having no issue with her affinity for the elements reeks of humblebragging. I’m so lucky my grandmother doesn’t think I’m a total freak for being the star of my school and having loads of boyfriends and being chosen by the goddess and being able to control all the elements :(((!

Zoey is just thinking how much better her grandmother is than her mother, when lo and behold her mom shows up! Man, Zoey’s birthday just keeps getting shittier. Her mom has brought her cake and Zoey hates cake! [Matthew says: Well if she doesn’t like cake, at least now we know that the one thing Zoey doesn’t have an affinity for is Dauntless.]

“Come on, let’s all sit down. Zoey, you can go into Starbucks and get us something to drink in a minute. It’s a good thing your grandma invited me. As usual, no one else thought to bring a cake.”

We sat down and Mom wrestled with the tape on the bakery box. While she was busy, Grandma and I shared a look of complete understanding. I knew she hadn’t invited Mom, and she knew I absolutely hated birthday cake. Especially the cheap, overly sweet cake my mom always ordered from the bakery.

With the kind of horrible fascination usually reserved for gawking at car wrecks I watched Mom open the bakery box and reveal a small square one-layer white cake. The generic Happy Birthday was written in red, which matched the red poinsettias blobbed at each corner. Green icing trimmed the whole thing.

That cake does sound terrible, but at least it’s not a Jesus-suffering-on-the-Cross themed cake like her birthday card. Reserve your horrible fascination!

Zoey’s mom starts talking shit about how Zoey doesn’t even celebrate Christmas anymore, so Grandma and Zoey put her in her place by telling her how Yuletide/Winter Solstice is where it’s at, and Mom can suck a dick.

Grandma gives Zoey her gifts (a lavender plant that reminds Zoey of happy childhood days gone by, and a first edition, signed copy of Dracula [Matthew says: Which she found in a used book store that was going out of business, and, uh, I can think of one way that used bookstore could have maybe not gone out of business quite so quickly].) In case you were like WAIT. Is there some sort of connection between the fact that Zoey is a vampyre and Dracula has a vampyre/vampire in it, Zoey’s grandmother will clearly explain:

“Well, I know how much you love that spooky old story, and in light of recent events I thought it would be ironically funny for you to have a signed edition,” Grandma said.

This winds up turning into a conversation about imprinting, which Zoey’s mother expresses disgust over – humans and vampires in love? The horror!

“Did you know Bram Stoker was Imprinted by a vampyre, and that’s why he wrote the book?” I gushed as I oh-so-carefully turned the thick pages, checking out the old illustrations, which were, indeed, spooky.

“I had no idea Stoker had a relationship with a vampyre,” Grandma said.

“I wouldn’t call being bitten by a vampyre and then put under his spell a relationship,” my mother said.

Grandma and I looked at her. I sighed. “Mom, it’s way possible for a human and a vampyre to have a relationship. That’s what Imprinting is about.” Well, it was also about bloodlust and some serious desire, along with a psychic link that could be pretty disconcerting, all of which I knew from my experience with Heath. But I wasn’t going to mention that to Mom.

My mother shivered like something nasty had just run its finger up her spine. “It sounds disgusting to me.”

At first, I was thinking, ‘Ug, Zoey’s mom sure is not hip to the fact that vamps and humans can totes be a way beautiful thing.’ But then my brain unfortunately found footage of Heath’s boners being telepathically communicated. so I’m with Zoey’s mom on this one.

Zoey demands her mother tell her if she’d rather see her become an adult vampyre or die in the next four years. I get that mom hates vampyres, but I really think in this one instance she was just saying imprinting is gross (I have no evidence so far that what Zoey/Heath have ISN’T gross.)

There are a few reasonable moments where Zoey and Grandma explain that Zoey’s mom hurts her feelings a lot, and her mother apologizes and says they should start over, and Zoey should open her present.

My smile held until I recognized the white leather cover and gold-tipped pages. With my heart sinking down into my stomach, I turned the book over to read: The Holy Word, People of Faith Edition printed in expensive gold leaf cursive across the cover. Another glittering of excess gold caught my eye. Across the bottom of the cover it read, The Heffer Family. There was a red velvet bookmark with a gold tassel stuck inside the front pages of the book and, trying to buy time so I could think of something to say other than “this is a truly awful present,” I let the pages fall open there. Then I blinked, hoping what I was reading was just a trick of my eyes. No. It was really there. The book had opened to the family-tree page. In the weird back-slanted left-handed writing that I easily recognized as belonging to the step-loser, my mom’s name LINDA HEFFER had been penned in. A line had been drawn attaching it to JOHN HEFFER, with the date of their marriage off to the side. Underneath their names, written in as if we had been born to them, were the names of my brother, my sister, and me.

“Mom, please don’t do this again. If you can accept me, and if you really want to see me, then call and we’ll meet. But pretending you want to see me because John tells you what to do hurts my feelings and isn’t good for either of us.”

“It is good for a wife to submit unto her husband,” John said.

I thought about mentioning how chauvinistic and patronizing and just plain wrong that sounded, but instead I decided not to waste my breath and said, “John, go to hell.”

Thankfully, we were soon beyond hearing his rant. I felt like I was going to cry until I realized what my sweet old grandma was muttering to herself.

“That man is such a damn turd monkey.”

Perhaps you remember that Stevie Rae died? Perhaps you remember that she is undead? Now let’s pretend you totally forgot about both of those things, and also keep forgetting every paragraph. That is basically this chapter.

Chapter 4

After the disastrous unplanned meeting with Zoey, her mom, and her anti-vampyre religious zealot husband, Zoey and her grandma go try to enjoy the rest of Zoey’s birthday at another restaurant.

[I had] a huge, gooey slice of devil’s food cake. (Yes, we enjoyed the irony.)

Well, I guess it’s time to sing the “Coincidence and irony are not the same thing” song.

Zoey’s grandma lays down some shit.

“Your mom’s a weak woman who can only find her identity through a man,” she said as she sipped her red wine.

True, but damn, that’s harsh. Can we get more Grandma Redbird channeling her inner Lucille Bluth?

Unfortunately, Grandma stops being caustically critical about the story she’s in (eg: fun) and instead gives her granddaughter some friendly, old person advice about the men she’s two-timing (eg: not fun. Also weird).

“You know, you’re going to have to straighten out this boyfriend issue. Heath and Erik are only going to put up with each other for about this long.” She held up her fingers, measuring out roughly an inch’s worth of “this long.”

Pro Writing Tip: Don’t feel the need to have your characters communicate in a way that doesn’t immediately translate in a text-based medium.

Zoey assures her grandma that she hasn’t been able to do anything yet since Heath was in the hospital and now on vacation, and reminds the reader that she had to tell everyone a lie about what she saved him from. And also that Stevie Rae is dead.

I’d saved him from a group of creatures that my best friend, the undead Stevie Rae, had been (and probably still was) leader of. But I couldn’t tell Grandma that. I couldn’t tell anyone that, because [if Neferet] reads his or her mind— we’re all in a lot of trouble.
Talk about stress.

Zoey leaves, but instead of going back to the House of Night, drives around downtown Tulsa looking for Stevie Rae. By the way, Stevie Rae is dead.

For the past month every night I could make a lame excuse or sneak out by myself, I’d been haunting the streets of downtown Tulsa. Haunting . . . I snorted to myself. That was an excellent word to use for me searching for my best friend, Stevie Rae, who had died a month ago, and then become undead.
Yes, it was as weird as it sounded.

We… we know it’s weird? Because the exact same thing was described less than a page ago? I shit you not, you guys, there are two explanations that Stevie Rae is undead, within no more than a page of each other.

But maybe you still aren’t sure that the problem is that Stevie Rae is undead. Good news! On the next page:

The police thought that then I’d rescued a pretty messed-up Heath from a human serial killer.
What had I really discovered?
My undead best friend and her disgusting minions.

And when Zoey isn’t explaining the same thing three times, sometimes she just gives up on trying to explain things at all.

Okay, so everyone knew we could die. What everyone didn’t know was that the last three fledglings who had died had resurrected, or come alive again, or . . . hell!

I get that she’s a teenager and flustered, but this is the writer equivalent of throwing something at someone and running away from them.

Zoey eventually also reminds the reader that Neferet is the cause of all the undead students and she doesn’t think all of Stevie Rae’s humanity is gone. The book then comes up with the worst deus ex machina ever to have Zoey find Stevie Rae.

the words roll down your window kept drifting around and around my mind, I thought they were the lyrics to a song on the radio. But my radio wasn’t on, and the words had no music with them— plus, they were inside my head and not inside my radio.

There had to be like seven million better ways to write that paragraph. Zoey smells the undead and follows the scent, and speaking of things that there had to be better ways to write, this is how the Casts choose to describe Zoey’s searching process:

sniffing like a retarded dog

In contrast, here’s how the Casts describe Zoey encountering Stevie Rae:

I realized that Stevie Rae wasn’t digging through the trash, she was biting a street person on the neck!

Cast 1: Hey, how should we describe the hobo that Stevie Rae’s eating?
Cast 2: Well, we can’t say “hobo”. That might cause offense.
Cast 1: Oh, good call. Now how do we describe Zoey sniffing around for Stevie Rae?
Cast 2: How about “like a retarded dog”?
(The Casts high five)

Zoey explains just how bad the situation is.

I was too disgusted to be scared or even freaked out. Plus, I’d just had a really terrible birthday

The gravitas, you guys.

Zoey demonstrates concern for her friend and the state she’s in. Lol just kidding, Zoey’s the judgmental asshole she always is:

“And, please, you smell really bad. Are there no showers in Creepy Undead Land?”
Stevie Rae frowned, which was actually an improvement, because then her lips covered her teeth. “Go away, Zoey,” she said.

Man, even Stevie Rae just wants Zoey to fuck off. What’s weird is that this is the most convincing thing the Casts will ever write that will convince me that maybe she hasn’t totally lost her humanity.

Zoey tries to talk Stevie Rae out of killing the homeless person and sucking her blood. Stevie Rae points out that Zoey drinks Heath’s blood. Zoey continues to go out of her way to offend everybody.

“I do not want to bite that person. I don’t even know where she’s been.” I gave the poor, wide-eyed, matted-hair matted-hair woman a weak smile. “Uh, no offense, ma’am.”

BUT WE GOTTA SAY “STREET PERSON” LEST WE BEREAVE THEM OF THEIR DIGNITY.

Zoey uses her magic wind powers to scoop up the victim and carry her away from Stevie Rae. Zoey begins filling this chapter’s “Zoey makes unfounded assumptions about another person’s experience” quota.

“I’ve been practicing. It’s really just concentration and control. You’d know that if you’d been practicing, too.”

How does she know that? How does she just know that Stevie Rae’s powers still work like this now that she’s undead?

This back and forth goes on for a long time. Speaking of making assumptions, I’m just gonna throw some dialogue in here… and we’re gonna see what it reminds us of… after the last chapter, where Zoey’s stepdad refused to accept Zoey’s condition, that it’s out of her control anyway, and that his entire rationale for opposing it is based on beliefs that aren’t exactly founded on anything.

What I am saying of is that it reminds me of that.

“It’s gone. Whatever I once had died with the part of me that was human. You need to accept it and move on. I have.”
“I’ll never accept it. […] I’m not going to move on.” […]
“There’s really no point.”
“Can you please let me decide that for myself?”

Incidentally, Zoey finding her stepdad’s behavior deplorable and then doing a very similar thing without being aware of it is ironic. In case you’re keeping score.

“And what are you wearing?” I pointed at the sweat pants and oversized shirt that were covered by a long, nastily stained black trench coat like the ones those freaky goth kids like to wear even when it’s a hundred degrees outside.

Weird though it may be that Zoey, an actual vampyre, is mocking goths, isn’t it sort of way weirder that the undead kids are acquiring trench coat uniforms somehow?

Zoey finally appeals to Stevie Rae’s deeply buried humanity and gets her to promise to meet her tomorrow. By promising her Lucky Charms, an ironed shirt, and cowboy boots. These are the points around which the narrative arc turn, you guys.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: This is a long and super off-topic one, but it’s Friday and Ariel hasn’t told me I can’t do shit like this, so LET’S GO. Last weekend my girlfriend and I were at a wine bar and played a game about MUSIC and BANDS, and went back and forth with a few questions that prompted some interesting discussion and thinking and soul searching. What are your thoughts?

1. If you could see any band/musician perform live, at any point in their career, who would you see? And when? You are not allowed to say The Beatles.
2. If you could see any band/musician perform live, BUT, unlike the first question, this would be some hypothetical reunion as they would be today (so everyone still has to be alive, everyone is as old/drugged out/whatever as they are right now), who would you see?

I went with Talking Heads (right after Speaking In Tongues) for the first one and Black Sabbath for the second one. But maybe that was stupid and I should have flipped it around? I DON’T KNOW. WE MADE A HARD GAME. What about you guys?

Thursday, May 26, 2011

We open with another of Christian’s nightmares about his childhood. I have to say, I think these scenes would have been more effective if E L James hadn’t made the choice to have Christian describe these scenes as a child. I know it’s a small thing to nitpick about, but it bothers me that 1 word out of like the whole passage will have a child-like mispronunciation out of the blue:

When she comes home she sleeps on the couch. The couch is brown and sticky. She is tired. Sometimes I cover her with my blankie. Or she comes home with something to eat. I like those days. We have bread and butter. And sometimes we have macrami and cheese. That is my favorite.

Why out of this whole scene is macaroni the only word child-Christian-who-is-actually-adult-Christian-having-a-dream doesn’t know?

I also don’t think these scenes are effective at making me more sympathetic to Christian – I already knew all of these things about his past because he told them verbatim to Ana in the original books. When I read that young Christian ate mouldy cheese from the fridge, sure I’m sad for that kid, but when Christian wakes up and is immediately a piece of shit again, I’m not like, “Oh, but he ate mouldy cheese as a child when he didn’t know any better because his mother wasn’t home to feed him, so it’s okay that he’s a misogynistic asshole.”

When he wakes up, Christian tells us that he hates these nightmares (go figure), and that they’ve been more vivid lately. Like in almost every other chapter of the book, Christian channels his anxiety into a morning run and annoyance with Ana. In this case, he’s annoyed that she hasn’t gotten in touch to let him know if she got home safely the night before.

Leave it, Grey.

Just fucking leave it!

I know I’ll see her at the graduation ceremony. But I can’t leave it. Before my shower, I send her another text.

Call me.

I just need to know she’s safe.

I have some sympathy for Christian here, it’s not completely unreasonable to ask someone to let you know they made it home safe if the weather was bad or something, and I can definitely understand being worried if you don’t hear from them. During this chapter, though, you’ll see he just keeps fixating on the fact that her car is older and thus a “death trap.” How does E L James manage to take reasonable emotions and make them so so stupid?

Nine thirty and still no word from Ana. Her radio silence is worrying – and frankly rude.

Because when it comes to manners, Christian the expert. The man who could barely stand when a nice woman working at a cafe was friendly to him.

Next up, a confusing email from Mia about when her flight gets in.

Hey, Christian, I can’t wait to get out of here! Rescue me. Please. My flight number on Saturday is AF3622. It arrives at 12: 22 p.m. and Dad is making me fly coach! *pouting! I will have lots of luggage. Love. Love. Love Paris fashion. Mom says you have a girlfriend. Is this true? What’s she like? I NEED TO KNOW!!!!! See you Saturday. Missed you so much. À bientôt mon frère. Mxxxxxxxxx

She can’t wait to get out of Paris? What exactly does she need to be rescued from, it sounds like she was having a great time learning to cook and apparently loves Paris fashion.

Also, if Christian was my brother, I’d never fly coach. At that point you have a moral obligation to leave a cheaper seat on the flight for someone else since normally the first-class spaces are just empty and wasting space anyway.

Christian has a typical reaction to Mia’s email – “Oh hell!” He can’t believe their mother’s big mouth about Ana! This would be an opportune time for Christian to reflect on the fact that it was weird he introduced Ana to his mother when he doesn’t want Ana to get the wrong idea about them, and he doesn’t want his family knowing about her. Alas, the opportunity is, of course, never seized.

Christian continues to freak out over the fact that Ana hasn’t contacted him and isn’t answering her phone. Taylor shows up to drive Christian to the graduation ceremony. There, Christian runs into Kate (she’s the valedictorian) before the ceremony begins. Kate and Christian have a really odd exchange about Ana and her car:

“Is Ana here?”

“Soon. She’s coming with her dad.”

“You saw her this morning?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I wanted to know if she made it home in that deathtrap she calls a car.”

“Wanda. She calls it Wanda. And yes, she did.” She gazes at me with a quizzical expression.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

What I find weirder than the way Christian talks about Ana’s car is the way Kate seems to take offense to it the way you would if someone referred to a baby as an “it.” UM, ‘IT’ IS A SHE AND HER NAME IS WANDA.

It’s time for graduation to begin, and Christian spots Ana in the audience:

I find her huddled in the second row. She’s alive. I feel foolish for expending so much anxiety and energy on her whereabouts last night and this morning.

Kate already confirmed that Ana is alive, you numbskull. Surely you should have felt that foolishness ten minutes ago. Damn it, she should have called! Hell! Steady, Grey! There, I basically just wrote 99% of this book on my own.

A furious Christian purposefully gives himself an erection for some reason:

She’s avoiding me and I’m pissed. Really pissed. Closing my eyes, I imagine dripping hot wax onto her breasts and her squirming beneath me. This has a radical effect on my body.

Shit.

Get it together, Grey.

It makes me queasy when Christian is furious with Ana, and the only way he can deal with it is to imagine…punishing her with sex? Channeling his anger into sex? Get it together indeed.

Because there wasn’t enough woman hating going on yet, Christian takes Kate’s valedictorian speech as a golden opportunity to hate on her some more.

Kavanagh gives an inspiring address about embracing opportunities— yes, carpe diem, Kate— and gets a rousing reception when she’s finished. She’s obviously smart and popular and confident. Not the shy and retiring wallflower that is the lovely Miss Steele. It really amazes me that these two are friends.

Let it go, Grey.

The scene progresses exactly how we remember from Ana’s point of view – Christian gives his speech, when Ana comes on stage to receive her diploma he’s like, “WHY HAVEN’T YOU ANSWERED MY EMAILS/TEXTS.” Even though they should have had all of ten seconds, Ana manages to express confusion and says she hasn’t seen his emails/received his calls. I wish she would have just quoted the lyrics of Bug-A-Boo and never spoken to Christian again.

Afterwards, Christian goes to find Ana so they can have it out, and again I don’t understand why she doesn’t realize what a nut job he is.

“I’ve been worried about you.”

“Worried, why?”

“Because you went home in that deathtrap you call a car.”

[…]

“Yes, the Beetle used to belong to [Jose’s] mother.” [Ariel says: HER NAME IS WANDA, NOT “THE BEETLE”.]

“Yes. and probably her mother and her mother before her. It’s not safe.” I’m almost shouting.

Does Christian think that Ana just didn’t exist before he came along? That she was constantly on the verge of death driving around this car that is clearly very fine and safe?

Ana introduces Christian to Ray, her step father, after Christian forces the issue. Gee, for someone who is hell bent on not letting Ana get the wrong idea about their relationship, it’s pretty fucking weird he wants to meet him.

When he first approaches Ana and Ray, they’re talking to Kate’s brother Ethan who, gasp, happens to be giving Ana a hug! Christian just cannot tolerate this kind of behaviour:

Now stop pawing my girl, you fucker. 

“Ana, baby,” I whisper, holding out my hand, and like the good woman she is, she steps into my embrace.

So E L James just…she just thought this was a good line to include in this? How? Why? FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

Christian talks to Ray for awhile about catching “mighty fine fish,” but I can’t even read any of this fucking bullshit about fishing when I’m still REELING (pun intended) over ‘like the good woman she is.” Women in real life want to meet a man like this. Not everyone who reads this passage will feel this intense fury. I don’t understand. After all this time, I still don’t understand. Like there are people out there who heal people, teach children, save the whales, AND THE AUTHOR OF THESE BOOKS IS A BILLIONAIRE?

Later, Christian and Ana talk again, and she agrees to try things Christian’s way even though she wants more. He has to the nerve to be like, “I can’t give more!!!” When he is the piece of shit who is like whispering, “Ana, baby” and all about meeting the parents.

That night, obligatory scenes of Christian doing business so we all feel confident in his business-man abilities. Then he emails with Ana and says he’ll swing by her place tonight since there’s no way in hell she’s driving that deathtrap to his place! No sir.

When Ariel and I decided this chapter was too long and we needed to split it up, we clarified that the last sentence of her section would be “I might get lucky” and the first of mine would be “The A3 is fun to drive, though it’s got less torque than I’m used to”, which are both oddly representative of how bland this book is.

Grey: Thursday, May 26, 2011 (continued)

This half of the chapter is Christian driving to Ana’s and then them discussing their arrangement. On the way he stops at “a liquor store on the outskirts of Portland” and opts to “forgo the Cristal and the Dom Perignon”, which is utterly charming that E L James assumes any random liquor store outside a major city would likely carry Dom Perignon.

[I get the] Bollinger, mostly because it’s the 1999 vintage [but] also because it’s pink… symbolic, I think with a smirk.

Symbolic of what?

“Nothing bears a good Bollinger.”
“Interesting choice of words.” Her voice is sardonic.
“Oh, I like your ready wit, Anastasia.” There she is… my girl.

You know what’s an easy way to make your story come across as a boring one-trick pony? Constantly make referneces to the one thing that could be faintly unique about the story, then have characters constantly comment on it. This is why every Star Wars movie has someone point out “It’s time to go to war… in the stars!”, and then another character says, “I see what you did there.”

The book spends some time with Ana and Christian still debating about the first edition books he gave her, to which Christian thinks, “God, this girl has me on a roller coaster”, which might be the least accurate account of a story from within that same story that I’ve ever read. Par for the course with Grey, it comes complete with details that neither add anything to the story, nor to the notion that words ordered in an intentional sequence convey meaning.

I trace her handwriting with my finger. The letters are small and neat, and I wonder what a graphologist would make of them.

Why?

Christian overreacts to Ana not wanting some books.

Here we go, another battle of wills.
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Because insisting on quoting things in the original French always makes a person more likeable.

“You see, this is what I was talking about, you defying me. […] I will buy you lots of things, Anastasia. Get used to it. I can afford it. I’m a very wealthy man.”

This is a statement that traditionally works out very well for a person’s likeability.

When it moves on from the books, Christian does the surprisingly rare thing of actually asking Ana about herself. He asks her about what she’s doing for work, and when she tells him she has some interviews, he freaks out that she didn’t tell him earlier. Even though he only just asked her right now. Which sounds about right for Christian Grey.

“Have you eaten anything?”
“Yes. I had a three-course meal with Ray,” she says, exasperated, and rolls her eyes.
Oh, Ana. At least I can do something about this disrespectful habit.

Guys, I sat staring at this line for like ten minutes trying to think of a joke, but I can’t think of anything funnier than the bitter irony that Christian is the rudest person in these books, and that’s knowing that we have an attempted murderer and rapist about to show up in the sequels.

The bulk of the chapter (before the sex, which is so common and uneventful it’s like clarifying what you did for most of the day, aside from sleeping overnight) is about Christian and Ana discussing what they’re comfortable doing sexually. Christian gets Ana to drink alcohol during this talk, which is a totally respectable move, obviously.

I fetch the champagne and refill her cup. She regards me suspiciously. She knows I’m plying her with alcohol.

Totally nothing wrong with this! It’s even got a totally not untoward “suspiciously” in there! Christian just wants to get her to talk about her limits! Which he immediately dismisses or argues with every time she actually explicitly states one.

• She swallows. “Anal intercourse doesn’t exactly float my boat.”
  “I’ll agree to the fisting, but I’d really like to claim your ass, Anastasia.”
• “You said no to the genital clamps. That’s fine. It’s caning that hurts the most.”
  Ana pales.
  “We can work up to that,” I state quickly.
  “Or not do it at all,” she counters.
  “This is part of the deal, baby.”

Christian also demonstrates that he really doesn’t get what a compliment is.

“Swallowing semen. Well, you get an A in that.” I expect a smile from her

Christian also demonstrates that he doesn’t really get what apologizing is.

“Don’t laugh at me, but what’s a spreader bar?”
“I promise not to laugh. I’ve apologized twice.” For Christ’s sake. “Don’t make me do it again.”

Ane E L James also demonstrates that she really doesn’t get safe words.

“How will I use safe words if I’m gagged?” She inquires.
“First of all, I hope you never have to use them.”

Christian has his first “romantic” moment where he throws out the possibility of “more”, suggesting that one day a week “outside of the time you’re my sub” they could do something more traditionally romantic, which makes even less sense the more I think about it, because this is the dumbest way I can think of to use labels. He likes her enough to try dating her, which he never does, but not enough to break from his sex-only partnerships, which he only does, except isn’t by definition of his new proposal?

Christian tries giving Ana a new car, which she is angry and annoyed about because “it’s too much”, which makes Christian wonder “why is she so difficult” and declare, “You are one challenging woman”. It culminates in Ana whispering, “Please don’t be angry with me,” and me checking for the umpteenth time that this book was published in 2015, not 1815.

“My word, he supplied me with spirits, and thusly proceeded, by my troth, to ignore me when I said I don’t do anal!”

So let’s just skip to the sex scene, yeah? Let’s see what those inexplicable “my panties disintegrated” scenes look like from Christian’s perspective.

I hold her steady and glance down at her panties.
Cotton. White. Easy.
I hook my fingers into them and stretch them as far as they’ll go, then push my thumbs through the seam at the back. They tear apart in my hands and I throw them at Ana’s feet.
She gasps.

Boy, I can’t wait to reread that another dozen times.

I place [her hand] over my erection, which is fighting for space in my jeans.
“This is the effect you have on me, Miss Steele.”
She inhales, hazing at her hand.

Surely by this point she is not this unfamiliar with the process that Christian still has to explain what an erection is.

The sex scene involves an infinitesimal amount of role reversal, where Christian tells Ana that she’s in charge, and he lets her… decide to please him. It can be summed up with one line of Ana’s dialogue:

“If you imagine for one minute that I think you ceded control to me, well, you haven’t taken into account my GPA.”

I mean, no one would actually say it like that, but basically.

The sex itself (ostensibly why anyone’s reading this, right?) is the usual E L James copy/paste garbage, which is only amusing when she accidentally copy/pastes the same thing onto the same page:

Her enthusiasm is disarming. […]
“Your innocence and enthusiasm are very disarming.”

Christian also explains to Ana that he doesn’t like being touched because “I’m fifty shades of fucked up” speech in this scene. It’s the same thing as it is in Fifty Shades, except you paid ten bucks to read it again.

Christian also demands that Ana go on birth control, because condoms are icky.

“When is your period due?” I ask. “I hate wearing these things.” I hold up the knotted condom […] “You need to sort our some contraception. […] Do you have a doctor?” I ask. She shakes her head.

Ana is a college graduate living in the 2010s who has never owned a laptop, so, sure, she doesn’t have a doctor either. Why the fuck not?

Ana rolls her eyes at Christian, which prompts the scene where Christian spanks her. You would think that this would be more disturbing from Christian’s point of view, but it’s mostly just boring, because E L James can’t be bothered to come up with statements that weren’t largely used already in Fifty Shades.

Her ass is pinking up nicely. It looks glorious.

Speaking of E L James’ writing, it’s been a while since we had an exceptionally stupid sentence:

She smells of Ana and apples and sex.

Like every other chapter, it ends with a contrived reason to have Christian suddenly worry that Ana’s going to call it off. Because when the reader is reading the exact same story for a second time, a good way to keep them interested is to throw in cliffhangers that they already know don’t pan out.

House of Night, Chosen: Chapter 5

At the local IHOP, Zoey reflects on last chapter’s conversation with Stevie Rae. As some of you may or may not recall, Stevie Rae is undead, Damien is gay, and Zoey is not a lesbian or a slut and is also more special than anyone else who has ever lived OR UNLIVED. These facts are important if you want to have any clue what is going on in these books!

I wondered if she’d burst into flame if sunlight touched her. Crap. That would definitely be bad, especially since we’re meeting at 3:00 A.M.,which was only a couple hours before dawn. Crap again.

Some might even say double crap. #AnastasiaSteele4Ever.

Just in case it slipped your mind,

I had to keep the knowledge that Stevie Rae was undead versus dead dead from everyone.

Zoey goes back to campus where she prays to Nyx and reminds us that she is really special:

I smiled in satisfaction. I hadn’t been exaggerating to Stevie Rae. I had been practicing calling the elements during the past month, and I was getting really good at it. (Not that my awesome, goddess-given power would help me soothe my friends’ hurt feelings, but still.)

Man, no matter how special Zoey is, she sure does have some normal girl problems! Don’t cha just wish there was an affinity for friendship womp womp. [Matthew says: Ariel, I know you’re joking, but I have a new theory that the reason everyone in House of Night is an awful person because they don’t have goddess-given affinities for friendship, for tact, for not saying offensive shit, etc. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW.]

Speaking of normal girl problems, Erik shows up and is really butt hurt, presumably because of Heath’s note that revealed Zoey hated all the Christmas/birthday presents she got. Also because she’s been distant since Stevie Rae’s death? You’d think he’d cut her some slack for that one.

“Stevie Rae’s death has really shaken you up, hasn’t it?”

I jumped and let out an unattractive squeak. “Jeesh, Erik! You scared me so bad I almost peed myself. Do not sneak up on me like that.”

“Fine. Sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you. Later.” He started to walk away.

“Wait, I don’t want you to go. You just surprised me. Next time rustle a leaf or cough or something. Okay?”

He stopped walking and turned back to me. His face was guarded, but he gave me a tight nod and said, “Okay.”

Can you imagine if every time someone startled you they acted like you’d just told them to never show their fucking face around you again? My husband would have had to move out of our apartment ages ago. Well FINE if you don’t want me to appear behind you silently and terrifyingly than I’ll just get out of your hair forever! [Matthew says: Just scatter some leaves around your apartment. That’s the Zoey way.]

Zoey apologises for not warning her friends earlier that getting her Christmas themed birthday presents would be a bad idea. Well done, Zoey! When she tries to explain how things have been hard for her since Stevie Rae, the narrative goes back to making no sense:

Then I added lamely, “Plus, you’re right. Stevie Rae has really shaken me up.” Then I clamped my mouth shut because I realized I had (again) talked about the supposedly dead Stevie Rae as if she was alive, or in her case I guess I should say not dead.

I feel like that wasn’t talking about Stevie Rae like she was still alive (I MEAN UNDEAD), that’s a completely normal way to phrase it whether you’re talking about the fact that she died or the fact that she is undead. In case you forgot she was not dead dead, but dead.

Erik offers to give Zoey some space, but she says that’s not what she wants and actually there’s a lot more stuff going on. Surely, a dead friend could be enough of an explanation here, especially when you explicitly can’t talk to Erik about the rest of the stuff.

Of course Erik implores Zoey to tell him what the other stuff is because he’s good at fixing problems, which I guess we’re supposed to believe because he’s handsome, and this somehow just leads to Zoey and Erik telling each other how intimidating and cool and perfect the other one is. It’s also the perfect opportunity for Casts to remind us how awkward they are about gay people, as though we could have forgotten:

I rested my cheek against his chest. “Are you kidding, of course you’re good at fixing problems.You’re good at everything. Actually, you’re freakishly close to perfect.”

I felt his chest rumble as he laughed. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not a bad thing—it’s an intimidating thing,” I mumbled.

“Intimidating!” He pulled back so that he could look at me. “You’ve got to be kidding!” He laughed again.

I frowned up at him. “Why are you laughing at me?”

He hugged me and said, “Z, do you have any clue what it’s like to date a girl who is the most powerful fledgling in the history of vampyres?”

The Casts must have had a scoring system they use when they wrote this shit to make sure every conversation covers as many of their favourite topics as possible. Awesome, we managed to talk about how Zoey is the most powerful and special of all the vampyres that ever existed! Now, lesbians:

“No, I don’t date girls.” Not that there’s anything wrong with lesbians.

He took my chin in his hand and tilted my face up. “You can be scary, Z. You control the elements, all of them. Talk about having a girlfriend it’d be best not to piss off.”

HOLY SHIT WE MANAGED TO TALK ABOUT LESBIANS AND HOW COOL WE ARE WITH THEM AND THE FACT THAT ZOEY CONTROLS ALL THE ELEMENTS!!

Zoey’s all-knowing “deep-gut feeling” makes a return and prevents her from opening up to Erik more. It’s a good thing it stopped her because two seconds later he’s like, “Oh, I know you’d rather talk to Neferet cause she is cool as shit and not evil at all.”

This mention of Neferet causes Zoey to pull away from Erik’s sweet sweet embrace, and this is where things go from silly bad to rage-inducing bad.

Erik immediately thinks that Zoey has pulled away because Heath is coming back in two days (I forget where Heath is off to. I guess characters in these books are just constantly disappearing off to conferences and football highlight clubs or something in order to keep them out of the “plot” for awhile. I bet Erik will suddenly announce he has a Nicholas Cage acting competition coming up in which everyone just has to recite monologues from Cage’s movies.) [Matthew says: Already sounds better than this book.]

Zoey tries to tell Erik he hasn’t done anything wrong, but he isn’t satisfied. No, he has to talk about Imprinting and sex. For some reason reading about sex in this series skeeves me out, and we’re also reading Grey. 

“I can’t compete with an Imprint. I know that. And I’m not trying to. I just thought you and I had something special. We’ll last a lot longer than some biological thing you have with a human. You and I are alike, and you and Heath aren’t. At least not anymore.”

“Erik, you’re not competing with Heath.”

“I researched Imprinting. It’s about sex.”

I could feel my face getting hot. Of course he was right. Imprinting was sexual because the act of drinking a human’s blood turned on the same receptor in the vamp’s brain and the human’s brain that was turned on during orgasm. Not that I wanted to discuss that with Erik. So instead I decided to stick with the surface facts and not get into the deeper stuff. “It’s about blood, not sex.”

He gave me a look that said he had (unfortunately) been telling the truth. He’d done his research.

Naturally, I got defensive. “I’m still a virgin, Erik, and I’m not ready to change that.”

“I didn’t say you—”

“Sounds like you’re getting me mixed up with your last girlfriend,” I interrupted. “The one I saw on her knees in front of you trying to give you another blow job.”

Leave Aphrodite out of this, you asshole. Also, being a virgin wasn’t the point at all – think of all the boner rubbing Zoey’s done with Heath! Erik isn’t way off base being insecure and worried about his place in her life. I mean, why he wants to be in her life is unclear beyond “she controls all the elements!” What Erik did before he was Zoey’s boyfriend also has a right to make her insecure, but the situations are completely different because that happened before he’d even met Zoey.

To her credit, Zoey does realize after she says it that she unfairly brought up that moment and hadn’t even known Erik then. She then claims this whole fight is actually about Erik pressuring her to have sex, which is weird because I did not get that vibe at all. Erik says he just wants Zoey to stop physically pulling away from him all the time. A man’s got cuddling needs! Erik presents some flawless logic:

I heard Erik’s deep sigh. “Well, you’ve already said you don’t date girls, so that should mean you would like it when I touch you.”

Can you guys hear my deep sigh? All that’s preventing the women of the world from liking every man’s touch is the fact that she is actually probably a lesbian because otherwise Erik’s logic is wrong, and there’s no way Erik could be wrong! He’s the hottest guy in school!

I looked up at him. “It does. I do.” Then I decided I was going to tell him the truth. Or at least as much of the truth as I could. “It’s just hard to let you get close to me when I’m dealing with, well, stuff.” Oh, great. I called it stuff. I’m a moron. Why does this kid still like me?

“Z, does this stuff have to do with figuring out how to deal with your powers?”

“Yeah.” Okay, that was pretty much a lie but not totally.

Zoey tries to convince us that everything that’s been happening is because of her powers so it’s not really a lie. Sure. But how is that the conclusion Erik jumped to and not just, “Wow, your friend just died, it must have messed with your head on top of how your life has gone through a really big change and your parents hate you.” Like it would have been way more reasonable if he was like, “Oh, is your birthday hard this year because of your awful family?”

Once Zoey has affirmed that it isn’t touching Erik that’s the problem, they have a “hot make-out session.”

We’re treated to inner-monologue gold like:

I mean, I’m no ho like Aphrodite, but I’m not a nun either.

For someone who is most definitely not a lesbian, Zoey sure does think of very sexual times to think about Aphrodite. I am fully onboard if that’s the direction the series goes.

“You feel so good,” he whispered against my lips.

“So do you,” I whispered back. Pressing myself against him I deepened the kiss. And then on impulse (ho-ish impulse at that) I took his hand from the small of my back and moved it up so that it was cupping the side of my breast. He moaned again and his kiss got harder and hotter. He slid his hand down and under my sweater, and then back up so that he had my breast in his hand, bare except for my lacy black bra.

I love how the Casts are like, “We need Zoey to be sexy but not a ho! Over the bra boob touching is the way to play this one.” I’ve tried to give Zoey’s slut-shaming the benefit of the doubt from a character perspective. [Matthew says: Which is very much not a stance I’ve taken.] I’m like, okay maybe her step-father’s insane views have gotten to her and she’s got these complicated feeling about sex that she’s not even fully aware of, and these books are her coming of age story where she’s going to just accept her desires and not have to call them “ho-ish impulses.” But then I think about the Casts’ writing abilities and there’s only so much I can polish a turd in my mind. Because this line happens next:

Okay, I’ll just admit it. I liked him touching my boob. It felt good. It especially felt good that I was proving to Erik that I hadn’t rejected him.

The Casts have given me 0 evidence that I should believe that this was a deliberate, character-defining moment. That a major part of Zoey’s pleasure in this scene is “proving to Erik that [she] hadn’t rejected him.” You know what’s better than having a guy touch your boob? Proving to him that you will let him touch your boob. [Matthew says: You know what’s better than having a guy touch your boob? Having a guy touch your boob, but not like you’re a ho or anything!]

Zoey winds up sucking a bit of blood from Erik’s lip and really enjoying it when suddenly they’re interrupted by none other than Loren Blake! The Poet Laureate and sexy professor!

One thing that came up in this chapter that I didn’t mention was that Erik is 19 – can you believe that? Zoey is 17! I keep forgetting they aren’t all 14. It’s a relief, but it was the only way I could excuse how immature all of these characters are.

We’re back reading House of Night after a year of reading other books, and it’s throwing so much of its ridiculous shit at us, it’s like we’ve never left! Damien is gay! Zoey slut shames like a motherfucker! Damien is gay! And the end of the last chapter promised the return of one of the best parts yet: the high school teacher that’s been hitting on Zoey!

fuckin’ WOO HOO, you guys!

House of Night, Chosen: Chapter 6

The hottest teacher-vampyre in the world walks in on Zoey getting to second base with the hottest student-vampyre in the world, which is definitely a situation that needs to be described with fitting gravitas.

Oh. My. God. I wanted to die.

Just in case you thought I wasn’t being serious about all that “HOTTEST IN THE WOOOORLD” stuff, once again, there is fitting gravitas:

Loren Blake, Vampyre Poet Laureate and the Best-Looking Male in the Known Universe, was standing there with a smile on his classically handsome face.

As you might know, Zoey is dating Erik Night, has – er – bloodlust with Heath, and has been flirting with her teacher/poet laureate/vampyre poet laureate. However, throughout the last two books, none of these men actually knew anything about any of this, and they moved in fairly different narrative circles anyway. Naturally, since these two have no knowledge of this, much less have ever interacted, it’s about time for Erik and Loren to start having a pissing match over Zoey anyway.

“So how was Europe?” Calm and collected, Erik draped an arm nonchalantly around my shoulders.

Although, to be fair, maybe it’s not so much a continuity snafu as it is how men actually are.

Loren’s smile got wider and he looked from Erik to me. “Not as friendly as it is here.”
Erik, who seemed to be having fun, laughed softly. “Well, it’s not where you go, it’s who you know.”
Loren lifted one perfect brow. “Obviously.”

Even taking the general pettiness of masculinity into account (which could probably be this blog’s tagline by this point), the nonsense of this exchange immediately escalates when the Casts attempt to write dialogue:

“It’s Zoey’s birthday. We were just doing the birthday kiss thing,” Erik said. “You know Z and I are going out.”

House of Night just made the idea of kissing your significant other on their birthday somehow sound like the most alien thing ever with “doing the birthday kiss thing”.

Loren wishes Zoey a happy birthday and sulks off, and Zoey lets Erik have it for actually so chill about being caught in a fairly compromising position.

“You were kissing. I was sucking your blood.” I looked sideways at him. “Oh, and there’s that little your-hand-up-my-shirt detail. Better not forget that.”
He took the lavender plant from me and grabbed my hand. “I won’t forget that, Z.”

“It’s embarrassing. I can not believe Loren saw us.”
“It was just Blake, and he’s not even a full professor.”

I love the idea that somehow it’s less embarrassing because the person who walked in on them making out isn’t tenured.

Erik suddenly wins the award for being the first person in the House of Night series to point out that, hey, has anyone noticed that Zoey’s teacher is hitting on her and this is kinda fucked up? Three books to get here, people. Three books.

“I don’t like the way he looks at you. […] Like you’re not a student and he’s not a teacher.” He paused. “So you haven’t noticed?”
“Erik, I think you’re crazy.” I carefully didn’t answer the question. “Loren doesn’t look at me like anything. […] There’s no reason for you to be jealous. There’s nothing going on between me and him. Promise.”

Man, if there were ever a sentence that could make someone suspicious, it might be saying “nothing is going on between me and him” in response to “huh, did you notice that way he looks at you?”

Zoey narrates about how stressful her situation is between Imprinted Heath and how “the last thing I needed was a secret affair with someone who was even more off limits”, and then points out that “Sadly, it seemed like the last thing I need is usually the first thing I get”, which my Kindle helpfully informed me is a commonly underlined passage among readers of these books, which makes me super nervous about what’s going on in the life of the average House of Night fan.

His masculine insecurities assuaged, they move on to discussing other matters. Like how Zoey needs a replacement for Stevie Rae in the Dark Daughters, because she represented earth in their rituals. Thankfully, Erik is willing to take her place, which Zoey agrees to, thus ensuring that none of the other students presumably at this school ever get involved in anything going on at it. This prompts Zoey and Erik to make out again, which prompts one of the few times I’ll ever agree with the Twins:

“Twin, I may vomit. How about you?” Shaunee said.
“Definitely. As in projectile,” Erin said.

I mean, I agree with the sentiment, which is buried beneath layers of how nobody in real life talks.

Having been suddenly joined by Shaunee, Erin, Damien, and Jack, the book takes the opportunity to totally naturally pair up the main characters who are currently lacking significant others.

“you wouldn’t be interested in what Cole and T. J. wanted me to pass along to you?”
“Cole Clifton?” Shaunee said.
“T.J. Hawkins?” Erin said.
“Yep and yep,” Erik said.
I watched the twinly cynical Shaunee and Erin instantly change their negative attitudes.

Do Cole and T.J. also operate as a unit, like Shaunee and Erin? And both have to get Erik to ask out a girl for them? I know I wasn’t especially social adept in high school, but, Jesus, even I think this is super weird.

After another round of nobody-actually-talks-like-this (“Does this mean you two are actually interested in some lovey-dovey stuff?”), we get some details about this absurdly convenient group date everyone’s about to go on, that will somehow appease everyone in this scenario.

“What are we gonna see?” Jack asked.
Erik paused for dramatic effect, then said, “300 is rerunning as a special holiday IMAX event.”
It was Jack’s turn to fan himself.

It does not get more believable from this point.

“You know, 300 may be the perfect movie. It has something in it for everyone,” I said. “Man titties for those of us who like that. And girl boobies for those of us who like that. Plus a very large dose of heroic guy action, and who doesn’t like that?”

A gif from an Adam Sandler movie sounded more rational than what just came out of House of Night. Let that sink in.

I’m terribly sorry to have to do this, but I think it’s really important we break down just how stupid Zoey’s explanation of 300 is. I know we don’t want to spend any more time thinking about it, but I think we just really have to process this one.

• “300 may be the perfect movie” – no
• “Man titties for those of us who like that. And girl boobies for those of us who like that.” -this is the first qualification for why this is a perfect movie? Following this logic, these kids should just all go to someone’s dorm and watch some porn. For their group date.
• “Man titties” – also, “man titties”
• “And girl boobies for those of us who like that” – I get that this book is trying to be cute and observe how, hey, it’s a great movie because it objectifies both sexes! Tee hee! But this is still a seriously depressing notion that the only way anyone could be interested in going on this date is if they can set up some good, old fashioned male gaze for their men.
• “Plus a very large dose of heroic guy action, and who doesn’t like that?” – I mean, props for House of Night for not gendering action movies as a “guy thing’, but I don’t think holding up action movies as the universal genre EVERYONE LIKES is a much better statement
• “a very large dose of heroic guy action” – furthermore, this is also every movie
• Not an excerpt from this quote, but I just read this quote to my roommate and her response was, “I just… I don’t know… How are you still reading this book?”

After they all agree to go on this date, they start… talking about how expensive Zoey’s birthday presents are?

“Yeah, you’ll be wearing those totally hot boots we spent $ 295.52 on?” Erin added. […]
“The cashmere scarf wasn’t exactly cheap, either,” Damien said haughtily. “Did I mention it’s cashmere?”

Again, why are these characters so loaded? I know, I know, they just happen to come from wealthy families, but seriously. Actually why are all of them loaded? Why are all the main characters teenagers from financially privileged backgrounds who won’t think twice about dropping a few hundred bucks on a friend’s birthday and then harping on how much money they spent? Why is this book suddenly so classist now on top of being homophobic, racist, and sexist? Maybe it’s playing bingo?

The complexities of Grey just keep forcing us to split these chapters! That or the stresses of reading lengthy chapters of drivel is just too torturous.

Grey: Friday, May 7, 2011

Christian has just received Ana’s email saying that she doesn’t like him. Christian accepts that Ana has seen that he is a nightmare to deal with and moves on with his life. The end! Of course what actually happens is that he asks why she doesn’t like him, and Ana says because he never stays with her.

Given it’s barely been two weeks since they went on their first date, ‘never’ seems like the wrong choice of words. Then again, pretty much every word in this book is the wrong choice, so at least it’s consistent?

This email gives Christian pause, and he reflects on Ana’s deep truth:

I told her that I didn’t sleep with anyone.

But today was a big day.

She graduated from college.

She said yes.

We went through all those soft limits that she knew nothing about. We fucked. I spanked her. We fucked again.

I can’t believe it didn’t hit me what a huge day this was. Like I knew they fucked and he spanked her, but they fucked AGAIN. I feel like I didn’t get that before, and quite frankly I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t realize Ana’s graduation wasn’t the biggest, most important thing that happened that day!

After realizing what a big day Ana has had what with the fucking and the spanking and the fucking again, he rushes over to her apartment. When he arrives, Kate is furious with him. I get that this is supposed to be Kate’s protective BFF moment, but it’s so over-the-top, and Christian just keeps comparing her to basically every supernatural creature he can think of.

“I’ve come to see Ana.”

“Well, you can’t!” Kavanagh stands with arms folded and legs braced in the doorway, like a gargoyle.

[…]

“You can’t come in here!” Kavanagh follows me, shrieking like a harpy, as I storm through the apartment to Ana’s bedroom.

This absolutely solidifies Christian’s pre-existing hatred of Kate.

Fuck you, Kavanaugh.

[…]

“Just holler if you need me,” Kate says to Ana, as if she were a child. “Grey,” she snaps, so I’m obliged to look at her. “You’re on my shit list, and I’m watching you.” She sounds shrill, her eyes glinting with fury, but I don’t give a fuck.

Wait. Wait. CHRISTIAN IS JUDGING KATE FOR TREATING ANA LIKE A CHILD???!?!? This from the man who is infantalizing her every chance he gets. In fact, what Kate has just offered is a very normal thing to say to someone of any age. And you know what, Christian kept judging Kate because she wasn’t a good enough friend to Ana (based on his nonexistent pile of evidence), but as soon as she’s protective of Ana he can’t stand her. Suddenly she’s this shrill harpy/gargoyle bitch.

Detective Christian says that he has a feeling Ana is upset because of what happened between them (the spanking. Big day!) He demands to know if Ana took Advil “as instructed” which is hilarious because he just bitched about Kate talking to Ana like a child.

Christian goes to get Ana some Advil and Kate is like, “Oh, you’re worried about Ana’s headache. Maybe I misjudged you.” She doesn’t say any of this but it’s all in her eyes basically.

Ana asks Christian why he liked hurting her, and he explains that he likes to have control and wants to punish her when she doesn’t act the way he wants her to. Ana rightfully asks why he wants to change her so much.

And I don’t want you rolling your eyes at me, or being sarcastic.

[…]

“I don’t want to change you.” God forbid. You’re enchanting. “I’d like you to be courteous and to follow the set of rules I’ve given you and not defy me. Simple.” I want you safe.

Call me crazy but wanting to change her penchant for sarcasm doesn’t seem to be an effective way to keep her safe unless you’re worried her sarcasm is going to affect her driving skills. We almost touch on something really interesting here, but of course the author/characters don’t pursue it. Christian absolutely doesn’t want to change Ana except that he does completely. Follow all my rules and stop thinking for yourself and always be “courteous” (even though I’m not). Christian actually reminds me a bit of Hannibal Lecter with his obsession with manners. “they were terrible rude, so I had to eat him for dinner.“

Christian asks Ana how she felt after the spanking and then proceeds to tell her how she feels:

“And you haven’t answered my question— how did you feel afterward?”

She blinks. “Confused.”

“You were sexually aroused by it, Anastasia.”

If there’s one thing people uniformly love it’s when someone else tells them what they’re thinking or feeling. Christian is like, ‘Well she was wet, so there’s no way she didn’t want it!” Which is a fucking terrible way of looking at things, because even people who are being raped can have a physical reaction that is not at all inline with their emotional reaction (EVEN CROSSFIRE FUCKING KNOWS THIS.) So to tell Ana how she is feeling because she was “wet” when she is telling you something completely different is terrible.

Christian tries to talk to Ana a little more, but quickly gives up and says that she should email him since she’s more comfortable communicating that way. He then asks to sleepover, and Ana displays more concern for what Christian wants in this situation than he ever does for her with their sexual relationship.

He growls at Ana to lie down because they need to sleep, damn it! And then he tells her that “If you are going to cry, cry in front of me. I need to know.” I don’t remember this line from the original book. The fuck? she can’t masturbate or cry on her own anymore? Ana, if you feel like you’re about to cry and I’m not around YOU MUST CONTROL YOURSELF.

That night Christian has a happy dream about running around with apples with Elliot and their grandfather. And then he wakes up smelling apples/Ana. I don’t know why Ana always smells like apples.

Christian and his cock agree that Ana is sexy, and he “teas[es] her with [his] favourite body part.” Fans, you can stop debating, it has finally been confirmed that Christian’s peen is his fav body part. Unfortunately, his favourite body part can’t be satisfied because Christian’s late for a video conference with Kate’s dad and other business folk.

I kept expecting him to be like, “Sir, I will never do business with you because your daughter is a shrieking harpy-banshee-gargoyle-wraith-phoenix-sphinx-troll from hell.” But he doesn’t. He barely pays attention to the meeting because he and Ana are emailing.

Again, I’m in the awkward position of having to recap emails that I’m 99.9% sure I recapped to you a years ago. The thing is, I barely remember these emails, so on the one hand I feel like I have to recap so we can all keep track of what’s happening. On the other hand, though, I’m like, “Whelp. I’m just gonna wind up pointing out the exact same problematic and stupid sentences all over again. Here we go!”

Remember all this? Ana says she did feel aroused but then felt shitty afterwards. One of Christian’s arguments to her well-articulated explanation is this:

Do you really feel like this or do you think you ought to feel like this? Two very different things. If that is how you feel, do you think you could just try to embrace these feelings, deal with them, for me? That’s what a submissive would do.

“I mean if you genuinely feel shitty about it can’t you just suck it up so I can keep putting my dick in you in a way that satisfies me?”

I do like that Christian tells her that she shouldn’t feel guilty for what they do behind closed doors, but I already feel like he is so dismissive of Ana’s points that I don’t think this redeems him at all. He does rightfully point out that she didn’t use the safe word, and fine, good point, but I’m surprised he doesn’t ask if she resisted using her safe word because she wants so badly to please and impress him. I feel like so many women do this, and I was super guilty of it in high school, saying yes to situations not because they actually felt good but because you think you should want them or you want other people to see you a certain way. Instead of sending Ana an email of counter-arguments about her fucking feelings, why not say, “Hey, why didn’t you use your safe word, were you not prepared to yet because you’ve had sex like twice and were confused?”

Then they just like joke and flirt about Christian being a stalker, which never actually becomes funny given the joke is just stating actual facts about who Christian is.

After the meeting winds down, Ros tries to tell Christian off for how distracted he was during the meeting. He actually mutes her before she can make that point to email Ana some more, and then he’s like, “Oh, shit, was it obvious I wasn’t paying attention.” Um, yes. He then tells Ros to look for publishing companies he can buy. Like everything else in this book, it’s all just creepier from Christian’s perspective, not more romantic

Christian heads to pick Mia up from the airport. He tells one of his minions to send Ana and Kate a housewarming gift, and thanks her when she sorts everything out. Apparently, this is fucking shocking to this poor woman who has worked for Christian for god knows how long and never received a thank you. Mercifully, this ends my portion of the chapter.

I left this out in the summary but there’s this really odd joke(???) that comes out of nowhere right before Christian gets on his conference call:

I open WebEx and Andrea is online, waiting for me. “Good morning, Mr. Grey. Mr. Kavanagh is delayed, but they’re ready for you in New York and here in Seattle.”

“Fred and Barney?” My Flintstones. I smirk at the thought.

Why do you think this was included in the story? Do you feel any differently about Christian since he made this totally hip pop culture ref?

Yes, I know we’re getting increasingly confusing with the chapter divisions, but I promise it won’t get any weirder than “Chapter 12 Part 2 and 13″. Next week won’t be, like, “Chapter 14 Part 2 Part 2b, 15-16.5, Purple”.

Friday, May 27, 2011 (continued)

Christian gets home that evening upset because he still hasn’t heard from Ana, so he leaves her a very not-murdery voicemail.

“I think you need to learn to manage my expectations. I’m not a patient man. If you say you are going to contact me when you finish work, then you should have the decency to do so.”

lol any time Christian chastises others for a lack of “decency”. Abducted any drunk women after illegally tracking their cell phone lately?

Christian goes to a charity function for a global poverty nonprofit, which sounds fairly unoffensive for a whole three paragraphs before Christian makes it all about how all women want to jump his bones.

“And thank you for your generous contribution, Mr. Grey.” His wife is cloying, thrusting her perfect, surgically enhanced breasts in my direction.

Drinking game: Take a shot every time Christian describes a woman as cloying. Anti-drinking game: Take a shot every time he doesn’t.

To be fair, this scene does also have one of the only interesting character moments we’ve gotten for Christian in Grey, which you would think there would be more of.

I look around the table at all the middle-aged men with their second or third trophy wives. God forbid this should ever be me.

Honestly? Kind of an interesting insight into the psyche of a serial womanizer. Although maybe I’m giving it too much credit, since the rest of the book doesn’t support Christian as afraid of being… shallow? Unfulfilled? Actually, I’m not even sure what conclusion I should draw from that line, and now I’m kinda wondering if it’s just more of the “Christian doesn’t do romance” angle this book is beating us over the head with. Despite being all about how Christian is obsessed with Ana, in ways that decreasingly make sense:

When I get home, I head straight to my study and switch on the iMac. […]
“Call me, or I may be forced to call Elliot.”

Eventually, Ana calls Christian. One of the plus sides of seeing this conversation from Christian’s point of view is that we can really see how he and Ana are actually having totally different conversations.

“I’m sorry I didn’t reply, but I’m fine.”
Fine? I wish I was…
“Did you have a pleasant evening?” I ask, reining in my temper.
“Yes. We finished packing, and Kate and I had Chinese takeout with José.”
Oh, this just gets better and better. The fucking photographer again. That’s why she hasn’t called.

This is great, because most of Ana’s dialogue can be described as “normal human behavior”, while Christian’s responses to it can be described as “Chris Pratt’s character explaining that the genetically-modified dinosaur in Jurassic World is such a dick because it doesn’t understand how to interact with other animals”.

Basically the same character, when you think about it.

They confirm they’ll see each other Sunday. Christian also has 7 bazillion “Oh, Ana, whatever will I do about you?” moments, but the Sunday thing is really the only thing from the rest of this chapter that moves the story forward.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Christian picks up his sister Mia from the airport, and she immediately asks him about Ana. He ignores her. She talks about Paris. Christian introduces some issues with continuity.

I’ve missed her chatter; it’s soothing and welcome. She is the only person I know who doesn’t make me feel… different.

Since when? Do keep in mind we’ve read this story before, as well as two entire books of story after it, and have never seen any signs that Christian feels this way. We immediately get a flashback to Christian’s childhood when Christian first met baby Mia and it prompted the first time he ever spoke, because all that you really need to convince the reader that something they’ve never picked up on after over a thousand pages of story is a single scene that took place decades ago.

Anyway, we haven’t had this chapter’s “Christian makes it all about how all women want to jump his bones” yet:

The only person around is my parents’ housekeeper— she’s an exchange student, and I can’t remember her name. “Welcome home,” she says to Mia in her stilted English, though she’s looking at me with big cow eyes.
Oh, God. It’s just a pretty face, sweetheart.

Their mom gets back and asks Christian to help take Mia’s bags upstairs. Incidentally, did you know that Christian Grey is a multibillionaire CEO and it is therefore funny that he would be asked to do something soooooo beneath him?

“Christian, can you take Mia’s bags upstairs? Gretchen will give you a hand.”
Really? I’m a porter now?

What a charmer <3

Christian goes back home for a little while to take care of a few things before the whole family grabs dinner. He gets a riding crop in the mail and muses on how it “will be the perfect introduction to my world”, even though this would suggest that his world never owned such an item previously. He also gets a phone call with Elena, where even friggin’ Elena points out that he doesn’t act like a person who engages in real person dialogue.

“Not tonight. Mia’s just in from Paris and I’ve been ordered home.”
“Ah. By Mama Grey. How is she?”
“Mama Grey? She’s good. I think. Why? What do you know that I don’t?”
“I was just asking, Christian. Don’t be so touchy.”

Think about it.

“I’ve met a woman who I think might meet your needs.”
So have I. I ignore her comment.
“I’ll see you next week. Good-bye.”

Jesus, I can’t understand the rationale for a single thing Christian ever does. “A person shared information with me that they typically share with me. But this time it is not relevant to my needs. Better get upset, not acknowledge what she said, and immediately say goodbye!”

Back at his family’s for dinner, Christian reinforces how much he cares for Mia, the only person who doesn’t make him feel different. Meaning he insults her just like everyone else.

My sister is back, the princess she’s always been, the rest of the family merely her minions, wrapped around her little finger.

Mia asks about Ana again, and Elliot repeats the one line of dialogue he ever says in this book:

Elliot leans back in his chair and rests his hands behind his head.
“This I have to hear. You know she popped his cherry?”

I don’t even care that it’s gross. Elliot’s supposed to be gross (I think?). What I care about is that, seriously, there are like a bajillion ways to phrase this on top of a bajillion other things to talk about and all we ever hear…

USE OTHER WORDS

Christian tries to get everyone off his case.

“I met a girl.” I shrug. “End of story.”
“You can’t just say that!” Mia objects, pouting. […]
“You’ll all meet her at dinner tomorrow, won’t we, Christian?” Grace says with a pointed smile. […]
“I can’t wait to meet her. She sounds awesome!” Mia bounces up and down in her chair.

No, Christian did not give Mia any more information than “I met a girl”, but in E L James-land, that’s plenty of information for someone to sound awesome, I guess.

Shit. It looks like Anastasia Steele is going to meet my family.
I don’t know how I feel about this.

It’s almost like that scene earlier in the book where he made Ana meet his mom and mused on how “my mother will be thrilled” is weird and out of character or something.

House of Night, Chosen Chapter 7

Erin and Shaunee can’t fathom why Zoey is up and at ’em so early, so she lies and says she has to go prepare for their ritual tonight. This excuse is believable as there is always a ritual coming up at any given time in these books. Little do they know that Zoey is actually looking for ways to revive Stevie Rae – or, more eloquently, “I was actually talking about a ritual to make poor undead-dead Stevie Rae un-undead.”

Zoey also asks the twins to let their friends know that she wants to meet before the ritual so they can practice with Erik stepping in to take Stevie Rae’s place in the ritual, representing earth. Everyone is sad about Stevie Rae until Zoey remembers happier things:

“Good, then we’ll go watch 300 after that,” I said.

That really made them grin.

Nothing takes your mind off a dead friend like 300. You know, with all the man-titties.

At the library, Zoey runs into none other than Loren. By “runs into” I of course mean he’s very clearly stalking Zoey and being creepy as fuck, except he’s hot so Zoey just swoons instead of calling the vampyre police. [Matthew says: Which is a good time to remind everyone that Loren Blake is a teacher at the high school. And a good time to remind everyone that Zoey is a student. And a good time to remind everyone that P.C. Cast has said in interviews that Zoey is based on her daughter, Kristin Cast. And that P.C. Cast is also a high school teacher. What the even fuck is going on here?]

I turned around and almost banged dorkishly right into Loren Blake. 

Who I can only assume was just standing behind Zoey, breathing heavily, waiting for her to turn around. [Matthew says: How does one dorkishly bang? There are questions here we’re not getting answers to.]

“Combating Evil, huh? Interesting choice of reading material.”

His nearness did not help my nerves.  “You know me” (which he really didn’t). “I like to be prepared.”

His brow wrinkled in confusion. “Are you expecting an attack of evil?”

“No!” I said way too quickly. So I laughed, trying for a gay, carefree tone (gay, hee-hee), but was sure I came across as totally fake.

For just one chapter can the Casts refrain from making weird comments about being gay or even just weird comments about the word ‘gay’! Zoey’s reaction to using the word gay in a completely different context doesn’t even make sense. It’s not like when you say “duty” and you’re like, “Hee-hee DOODY. Because poop!” Sexual preferences, har har!

Zoey lies and tells Loren that she’s embarrassed she’s studying for when she becomes a High Priestess.

Loren smiled. “Why would that be embarrassing to admit? I wouldn’t have imagined you as one of those silly women who think being well read and well educated is an embarrassment.”

“You don’t have any idea how special you are, do you, Zoey? You’re unique. Not like the rest of the fledglings. You’re a goddess among those who think themselves demigods.” When his hand caressed the side of my face, lingering on the tattoos that framed my eyes, I thought I’d melt into the bookshelves. “I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright. Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”

That has to be a new record – he told Zoey how special she is in four different ways. In one piece of dialogue no less!

Zoey asks what he was quoting, and Loren explains he’s quoting Shakespeare and uses this as a not-at-all-creepy segue to tell Zoey this:

“It’s from one of the sonnets he wrote to the Dark Lady, who was his true love. We know, of course, that he was a vampyre. But we believe the true love of his life was a young girl who had been Marked and who died as a fledgling without completing the Change.”

“I thought adult vampyres weren’t supposed to have relationships with fledglings.” We were so close that I didn’t have to speak much above a whisper for him to hear me.

“We’re not supposed to. It’s highly improper. But sometimes there’s an attraction that happens between two people that transcends the vampyre-fledgling boundary, as well as age and propriety. Do you believe in that kind of attraction, Zoey?”

He was talking about us!

No shit, Zoey! Also that all happened so smoothly that I feel like Loren is just manipulating the situation in any way he can to be like, “I want to bone you, girl.” Of course, Zoey is too distracted by how handsome he is to pick up on this.

He was so insanely handsome and so much older that he made me feel at the same time incredibly attracted to him and scared to death that I was playing with something so far beyond what I’d ever experienced that it could easily spiral out of control. But the attraction was there—and if he was right, it definitely transcended the vampyre-fledgling boundary. So much so that Erik had even noticed how Loren looked at me.

I think I wouldn’t be so skeeved out by all this if Zoey was a more mature person, but she thinks like a 13/14 year old still, [Matthew says: Damn, that’s generous. I was gonna go with maybe 7?] because I didn’t feel like this about Angel and Buffy even though Buffy was 16 and Angel was a vampire who was older than she was! But Loren comes across as such a gross predator. If you don’t believe me, wait till what I have in store next.

First, Zoey starts feeling guilty about Erik until she doesn’t:

“Yes. I believe in that kind of attraction. Do you?”

“I do now.” His smile was sad. It made him look suddenly very young and handsome and so vulnerable that my guilty thoughts of Erik evaporated. I wanted to take Loren in my arms and tell him it would be all right. I was just getting up the nerve to move even closer to him when his next words surprised me so much that I forgot about his little-lost-boy smile. “I came back yesterday because I knew it was your birthday.”

Aw see, he’s a little sheepish about his attraction, so everything is kosher here. And he came back for her birthday, this can’t possibly go in a creepy direction, Ariel! But wait, person who is clearly a fucking idiot, it can get worse. Because Zoey and Loren start talking about how he “didn’t like seeing [Erik’s] hands all over [Zoey].”

Damn it, Ariel, he’s just passionate and jealous, what’s so wrong with that! Well, person who probably has no place reading this blog, READ THIS SHIT:

“I know. I don’t have any right to be angry at you for being with Erik. It’s not even my business.”

Slowly, I touched his chin, turning his face back to me so that he could meet my eyes. “Do you want it to be your business?”

“More than I can tell you,” he said. Then he dropped the book—he’d still been holding it—and framed my face in his hands, so that his thumbs rested close to my lips and his fingers splayed back into my hair. “I believe it’s my turn for a birthday kiss.”

I think I can safely assume that we are all super nauseous and sad right now. I’m sorry I had to put you through reading that, but that one dick in the audience just kept pushing me.

They kiss, and it blows Zoey’s mind because he’s a man and she’s a woman now when she kisses him. Has she mentioned he’s a man and she’s a woman? Do you become more convinced of this the more Zoey says it? By golly, I sure do!

Loren says that he shouldn’t have kissed Zoey, but he’s glad he did, but things are going to be complicated. I guess technically Loren won’t be boyfriend number three, more like manfriend number 1 ;)

He then gives her fucking diamond earrings for her birthday. How funny would it have been if Zoey had squinted and it turned out the diamonds were shaped like snowmen or some shit. Not agaaaaain!

They go to stand in front of a mirror together so Zoey can admire her new earrings, [Matthew says: Which you would think someone comments on right away, since this is maybe kind of obvious, but as of tomorrow’s chapter, no one’s said shit yet.] and Loren cuts to the chase:

“I think you’ve done enough studying for one day. Come back to my room with me.”

I watched my eyes become all heavy-lidded as he kissed my neck, following the path my tattoos took down to my shoulder. Then I realized what it was he was really asking and a jolt of fright bolted through my body. He wanted me to go back to his room and have sex! I didn’t want to do that! Okay,well, maybe I did. In theory anyway. But to actually lose my virginity to this incredibly hot,experienced, man—right now? Today? I gulped for air and stepped kinda awkwardly out of his arms.

So to recap: Loren is a man, Zoey is special, Stevie Rae is undead, Damien is gay. Are you following the story so far? [Matthew says: Wait, I’m confused. Is Stevie Rae undead or undead-dead? Is Damien gay?]

Also, I know Loren is obviously terrible, but I thought he would have more tact than to immediately try to bone Zoey. I took him as more of a sleazy type who was in it for the long game. Well, the slightly longer game anyway. [Matthew says: Actually, yeah, real talk. How do the Casts actually think we’re supposed to feel about Loren at this point? Are we supposed to think he’s a manipulative pickup artist attempting statutory rape? Or are we… not supposed to think he’s that 100% literal description?]

Zoey explains she has a ritual she needs to start practicing for, and Loren believes her because 1) it’s true and 2) even if it was a lie it would be believable because rituals are happening round the clock at the House of Night. [Matthew says: I don’t know if you guys remember this from the first two books, but I honestly think we read like nine rituals in two books? It’s as repetitive as it sounds. And now I think that number might be low?]

I don’t know why, but suddenly Loren starts talking to Zoey like she’s his kid or something:

“You are a diligent little leader of the Dark Daughters, aren’t you?” […]
“Don’t worry, my little High Priestess, I will come to you.”

I’M worried! As soon as a love interest starts talking like a cartoon villain, I get a little nervous. Or maybe I’m the only one reading those last two lines in that kind of voice.

The chapter ends with Zoey telling herself she’s turning into a ho. I was all for Zoey dating different people and doing her thing, but she’s a cheating jerk at this point. [Matthew says: Also, that’s not Ariel paraphrasing. The chapter literally ends with Zoey putting “my face in my hands and [saying] miserably, ‘I think I’m turning into a ho.'” I know nobody’s reading House of Night for the pathos or anything, but Jesus H Christ.]

So has everyone recovered from Zoey making out with her high school teacher yesterday? Or is that a sore subject?

House of Night: Chosen, Chapter 8

Zoey’s cat Nala “mee-uf-ow”s like it’s good old time when Zoey hadn’t made out with her teacher, but, alas, Zoey’s cat, all is not mee-uf-ow. Because now that Zoey is hanging out with all her friends, she’s freaking out about what she just did!

Erik’s arms were around me. […] “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day.”
“Well, I was in the library.” I realized my tone was way too abrupt and hateful (in other words, guilty)

It’s like in a sitcom where someone is made to promise not to tell a secret, and they’re super obvious about it, and it’s SUPER WACKY FUNNY, like, “Coke?! Pepsi?! I don’t know what I want! I don’t know anything! I don’t know anything about your girlfriend! Haha! It’s so hot in here! I need to go walk my dog!” Except this is still Cast-quality writing, so it’s not even as good as that shit I just made up.

“Hey, Z, nice scarf,” Damien said, tugging on the end of one of the snowmen and interrupting my guilty mental tirade.
“Thanks, my boyfriend gave it to me,” I tried a lame tease, but knew that I sounded all weird and overly perkly.
“By that little comment she means her friend who is a boy,” Shaunee said, giving me an eye roll. […]
“You two are completely incorrigible.”
“Twin, I forget, what does incorrigible mean?” Shaunee said.
“I do believe it means that we’re hotter and sexier than a whole herd of corriges,” Erin said, still bumping and grinding.

Oh my God, I hate all these people. Damien won’t shut up about how he gave Zoey a present for her birthday, Zoey can’t even act weird in a way that’s even believably weird, Shaunee’s explanation of why Zoey’s acting weird doesn’t actually address what was weird about her behavior, and Erin’s fake definition doesn’t even play off of the context of the situation. She just shoehorned a compliment about herself into her joke. And speaking of shoehorning, don’t get me started on how Shaunee and Erin have to constantly address each other by their full, proper Twin titles regardless of how rigid it sounds. Can you imagine what riding the subway with these two would be like?

“Twin, I forget, where’s our transfer?”
“Why, twin, we transfer to the 6 at Union Square.”
“Twin, that can’t be right. Why would we take the local train?”
“Because it has a stop closer to the restaurant, twin.”
“But, twin, then we should take the express and transfer.”
“Then we lose time waiting on another transfer, twin!”

Otherwise no one else on the subway would know that they’re twins, so that’s PROBABLY accurate.

Even when Zoey’s narration breaks up the dialogue, there’s no escape.

And, yes, I realize how trifling and ho-ish it was that not long before this I’d been sucking Loren’s face and feeling all hot and tingly about him, but now I was practically suffocating in a wave of guilt.
Clearly I need therapy.

*nods so hard my head flies off and escapes the atmosphere*

They begin to set up for the circle, and Damien asks Zoey if she wants Jack to leave, because apparently Jack’s status as member of their friend groups was a point we were supposed to be actively wondering about.

“And,” he added in a voice that said he thought he was being totally naughty, “we’re also having imported beer.”
“Sounds good,” I smiled my appreciation at him. Yes, it sounds weird and vaguely illegal that minors were going to be drinking beer at what is basically a school-sanctioned event. The truth is that due to the physiological Change that was taking place inside all of our bodies, alcohol just didn’t affect us anymore— or at least not enough to cause us to act like typical teenagers (in other words we won’t get all wasted and use it as an excuse to have sex with each other).

Let’s talk about Zoey’s/the Casts’ hot take on debauchery for a second. Drinking alcohol and being promiscuous with potentially multiple people = bad. Being promiscuous with multiple partners = hey, have you heard how special Zoey is?

It’s important to take note that 1) Zoey’s promiscuity is not the problem, 2) Zoey’s hypocrisy about promiscuity IS the problem, 3) I have no idea what’s happening in this gif

Zoey’s friends helpfully remind the reader about long-forgotten minor details and/or ask Zoey what students she’s selecting for the Council. True facts: I can’t remember how the Council and the Dark Daughters are different. Zoey confides in the reader that she hasn’t begun to think of who she’ll chose. Her friends helpfully encourage her that they’ll support whoever she chooses, which is great, because if Zoey needs anything at this point in her narrative of personal development, it’s a team of yes men.

They begin to cast a circle. You know how a lot of people cite Quidditch as one of the most boring parts of Harry Potter, because it’s always the same thing, appears multiple times per book, and doesn’t actually add anything to the story aside from saying, “BTW MAGIC PEOPLE DO MAGIC THINGS”? The circles are like that, because they’re always the same, except imagine that there’s not even the benefit of a modicum of suspense in the game of Quidditch, because once they do the same motions every single time, it’s done.

Although the Quidditch scenes arguably still have this problem

Seriously. This shit boring:

“Water is a perfect balance to flame, just as Erin is a perfect Twin for Shaunee.” […]
“I do love me some water,” Erin said happily.

Zoey feels like something is off as she goes to light the earth candle, where Erik is filling in for the undead and gone Stevie Rae. Not content with how he’ll inevitably find out that his girlfriend is making out with her teacher as well as her ex-boyfriend, the narrative decides to further shit on Erik by deciding, nope, no elemental affinity for Erik!

I took the long match and touched it to the wick of the green candle. Erik’s reaction was instant. He cried out in pain as the green candle flew from his hand away from the circle and into the thickening shadows behind the tree.

It unexpectedly hits someone on the head.

“Dammit! Ouch! Shit! What the—”
Aphrodite emerged from the shadows holding the unlit green candle and rubbing a red mark on her forehead that was already beginning to swell.

Lest we forget that characters unexpectedly appearing out of foliage for some reason is a House of Night tradition as old as casting circles.

“Oh, wonderful. I should have fucking figured. I’m told to come out here in the”— she paused, looked around at the tree and the grass, then wrinkled up her perfect nose—“ wilderness, all surrounded by nature”

The irony is that none of this scenario feels natural.

Ignoring [my friends and Aphrodite’s] bickering I said, “Who told you to come out here?”
Aphrodite met my eyes. “Nyx,” she said.

Zoey makes Aphrodite take the earth candle and discovers that with her, she can successfully complete the circle. Which means…

Aphrodite spoke softly. “Nyx decided I needed more shit in my already crap-filled life. So now I have an affinity for earth. Ironic enough for you?”

Has anyone read more of these books? Do the Casts ever figure out what what irony is?

Grey: Sunday, May 29, 2011

The chapter opens with Christian going for a jog/brief stalking session:

I just want to see where she lives.

It’s between control freak and stalker.

I chuckle to myself. I’m just running. It’s a free country.

None of this makes any sense. Christian’s joke would work (and I use work in the loosest sense possible) if HE was the one living there. Unless his joke is actually a reference to the fact that Ana can never escape him, which LOLOLOL. Also clearly you are not “just running” given you have explicitly told us you want to see where Ana lives.

Christian and Ana email about when she’ll head over to his place. Christian also tells us about the food that Mrs. Jones has prepared for him, which is definitely what the fans are reading this book for.

When Ana comes over, she has her weird meeting with the gynaecologist in Christian’s apartment. Remember when the gyno said weird shit to Christian:

Look after her; she’s a bright and beautiful young girl.

Ah the memories. Such confusing memories.

After this, they have dinner. I would normally skip over this except we get this beautiful line:

She takes a bite, then another…and another. She’s eating!

This is a super appropriate reaction to have if you’re talking about a toddler eating a much despised vegetable, I guess. Who saw this line in the book and was like, “This cannot be cut. It’s imperative to the narrative, and not weird at all.”

A big chunk of this never-ending chapter is, you guessed it, simply the same sex scene we’ve already read that was already indistinguishable from most of the other sex scenes in the series. From Christian’s perspective, we get interesting revelations like, “I want to have sex with her vagina AND her butt!” He also reveals that his mother used to wear a braid, which solves the “mystery” of why Christian always braids his submissives hair! Did we already know that? Does it matter? It changes nothing because we already knew and were disturbed by how many of Christian’s sexual preferences were influenced by his mother.

The thing I hate most about this chapter, and this is a really hard thing to decide on, is definitely how Christian keeps saying how proud he is of Ana (and sometimes himself and Ana) for having sex. Like this gem here:

I’m so proud of her. She did it. She did everything I wanted.

Pride seems like a very strange choice of words here. I’m so proud of her for letting me have sex with her the way I wanted? Try imagining having that feeling yourself, it feels really fucking weird. It sounds like what a parent might say about a child who successfully completed all their chores. It sounds like what my husband says to me when I don’t “forget” to wash the dishes. These are both appropriate situations in which to feel pride.

After all that pride-inducing sex, Christian puts Ana to bed in the submissive room. He goes to take a shower, and comes up with his devious plan to steal her panties. Man, it’s all coming back to me now! The good times when Ana is angry with Christian for stealing her panties and teasing her while they’re having dinner with his family! But this time we got to experience Christian hatching his plan and withholding his plan from us as though we hadn’t already seen what happened in the original book. It’s a brilliant storytelling tactic. I think maybe they should remake Fight Club from Tyler Durden’s perspective and then you get to find out all over again that he’s actually in the narrator’s head – wouldn’t that be a fun romp?

The thing I hate SECOND MOST in this chapter is the fact that Christian says “mighty fine” three times. For a phrase that so clearly does not belong in this series, this is getting absurd. Why does EL James think a man like Christian would use this phrase at all let alone so. Many. Times.

The scene where they dance together happens, yay, and then they go to meet Christian’s parents, and he finally acknowledges that this is his fault since he insisted on introducing Ana to his mother in the first place. I’m glad he realizes that, but could he please explain why he did that in the first place? It’s like the one thing I actually would like an answer to. Also, Christian is absolutely enchanted by Ana when she doesn’t ask for her panties back before they leave.

She never fails to surprise, impress, and disarm me. Now I will have to sit through dinner with my parents, knowing my girl is not wearing any underwear. In fact, I’m traveling down in this elevator right now, knowing she’s naked beneath her skirt.

She’s turned the tables on you, Grey.

Did she? How did Christian think it would play out, that she’d be like, “Oh, Christian, give me my panties!” And he’d be like, “HERE YA GO.” What a jokester, that Christian.

Anyway, after worrying about introducing Ana to his parents he admits that he actually does really want to introduce them, but then doesn’t explain why. I know that we often criticise books on here (I’m looking at you Divergent) for over-explaining everything, but I think like one or two insightful lines would have been a good addition to a book that was supposed to be written for this purpose.

One interesting thing that does give us some insight into Christian is when Ana asks where he learns to dance and he remembers some of his time with Elena:

“That’s right. Again. One. Two. Three. Four. Baby, you’ve got this.” Elena and I glide across her basement. “Again.” She laughs, her head thrown back, and she looks like a woman half her age.

So THAT’S why Christian overuses the word ‘baby’! He picked it up from Elena. It all adds up now. This is quite possibly the most subtle bit of character development we’ve seen in this series – so much so that I doubt James did it intentionally at all. It’s also probably not a big enough of a character insight to warrant this story, but I will certainly take what I can get.

The conversation shifts back to their sex life (clearly),

“Why did you use a cable tie?” she asks.

Questions about this afternoon; this is good. “It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s something different for you to feel and experience. I know they’re quite brutal, and I do like that in a restraining device.” My voice is dry as I try to inject a little humor back into our conversation. “Very effective at keeping you in your place.”

HAHAHAHAHAHHAAH oh my gosh cause…cause Ana need to be put in her place. And I mean the LAYERS of the joke what with her being a woman who needs to be put in her place, like I mean this is some comedic genius here.

And Ana gets a little uncomfortable because Taylor can hear everything they’re saying.

Sweetheart, don’t worry about Taylor. He knows exactly what’s going on, and he’s done this for four years.

Poor Taylor. Not because he’s had to listen to conversations about BDSM specifically, but think about all the inane things he’s had to hear Christian say about cable ties. And also listening to Christian’s awful attempts at humour that I assume always are about him being a rapist/stalker/minsogynst. I could also imagine Ana doesn’t give a shit how many similar conversations Taylor has overheard, she’s entitled to some privacy!

At Christian’s parents house, introductions are made, and again Mia has her weird line where she tells Ana she’s heard so much about her. FROM WHO, MIA?

The most we continue learn about Christian from being in his head is that he really can’t stand Kate. When they start discussing how Elliot is going on a family holiday with her (why do all relationships progress at the speed of light in these books?) Christian reacts this way:

Dude! I stare at Elliot. What the hell happened to Mr. Love ’Em and Leave ’Em? Kavanagh must be good in the sack. She certainly looks smug enough.

Smug enough about what? I guess in that moment of discussing her trip she is meant to specifically be thinking about how great she is in bed for some reason.

This is also when Ana announces she’s going to see her mother the next day after going to some interviews, and Christian starts flipping out. Georgia! Interviews! WITHOUT MY PERMISSION? He also hates on Kate even more when she says Ana deserves a break. Any excuse to hate Kate, I guess.

At dinner, he finds even more excuses to hate Kate. This book isn’t a love story, it’s just a story about how much Christian hates his future wife’s best friend.

“What are you two whispering about?” Kavanagh interrupts.

Good God! Is she always like this? So intrusive? How the hell does Elliot put up with her?

I love how Christian’s reactions are getting increasingly hilarious the more mundane Kate’s behaviour is.

Kate asks Ana how seeing Jose the other night was, and from Christian’s perspective it seems like it’s meant to piss him off. I can understand why Kate would do this given how rude and nasty Christian has been to her, but he’s also a super unreliable narrator so it’s also possible this question was completely innocent. Anyway, Christian is furious that Ana agreed to be his and then went for a drink with Jose! Palm twitchingly mad!

Dinner is so bland that even the book’s narrator gets fed up with it and cuts the scene short. Christian is also angry that Ana won’t let him run his hand up her skirt. He’s like OH THAT IS IT. LAST STRAW. He can’t even think straight:

Panties. The photographer. Georgia.

He’s just completely losing it over a whole lot of nothing. I mean, earlier in the chapter Ana even said they don’t actually have an agreement yet (even though she agreed to the agreement? I am still unclear on all this after all this time.)

There is SO MUCH left of the chapter after this so I’m going to summarise:

• Christian takes Ana to the boat house and has sex with her for his pleasure and not hers, but he accepts that she doesn’t want to be spanked there.
• Everyone loves Ana.
• Ana expresses doubt over their relationship because she still wants more.
• The toothbrush sharing scene happens, but from Christian’s perspective Ana just looks pleased with herself.
• At Christian’s, Ana tries to get him to explain why she can’t touch him. Christian is evasive.
• The chapter ends with Christian preparing to use the silver balls on Ana. We all remember those I’m sure! Have fun with that again, Matt.

What do you guys make of Christian hating Kate so much? I really don’t get it. Was this a Twilight thing or something first?

It’s kind of old news by now, but I can’t remember Ariel or I mentioned that we were briefly mentioned in an article on Medium about the #AskELJames hashtag fiasco. It’s also a pretty great read about why E L James and Fifty Shades are so, so, so problematic, which – you’re here now – you’re probably interested in.

Grey: Monday, May 30, 2011

This chapter starts off promising:

Her sharp intake of breath is music to my dick.

You know how sometimes it’s hard to tell if E L James is trying to be sexy or silly, because her writing can be so bad it borders on self-parody? Basically I’m saying that I am fascinated by the “music to my dick” sentence.

Anyway, you might remember from Fifty Shades of Grey that there’s a chapter where Christian brings out some vaginal balls, AKA kegal balls, AKA ben wa balls, AKA the only thing in the much-discussed risqué Fifty Shades that the average person probably had to google.

These things again! Hope you’re not reading this at work!

Christian whispers an offer to Ana that she somehow interprets as enticing, not manipulative:

“We’ll fuck,” I whisper. “And if you’re still awake, I’ll impart some information about my formative years. Agreed?”

Christian “inserts both of the balls into her mouth”, which is a great time to realize you were skimming this book and that he brought out the kegal balls out at the end of the last chapter.

They’re a little big and heavy but will keep her smart mouth occupied for a moment or two.

I wonder if that upcoming formative years bit will shed any information on why Christian has to silence a woman who challenges him by literally shoving sex toys in her mouth. Is it because he had a bad childhood? Is it because he’s just an asshat? WHO CAN SAY?

What about the kegal balls scene itself? As it turns out, rereading a scene that’s entirely about Ana’s physical sensations doesn’t exactly gain anything from Christian’s point of view. Surprisingly enough. Not that this doesn’t afford E L James to write fairly confounding prose anyway:

I could look at this glorious sight for a while and imagine what I’d like to do to it. But right now I want to spank and fuck her.

That’s hardly a revelation. When does he want to do anything other than that to her?

After the sex, Christian gives Ana the first reveal into his troubled childhood, where he immediately demonstrates not really understanding the point of sharing, like a real human:

“The woman who brought me into this world was a crack whore, Anastasia. Go to sleep.” She tenses in my arms. I still. I do not want her sympathy or her pity.

There is then a flashback to his still-troubled, post-adoption childhood, where E L James immediately demonstrates not really understanding “troubled”:

“Don’t just pick the apples and throw them away, asshole!”
“Fuck off, you righteous dweeb.” […]
I jump him. Pounding my fists into his face.
“You fucking pig. This is food. You’re just wasting it.”

Guys. Teenage Christian got into a fistfight with Elliott… over wasting apples. To demonstrate that Christian’s childhood was rough and led to his obsession with mismanaged food, E L James has helpfully written a flashback to Christian’s childhood where he roughly picks a rough, profanity-laden fight over mismanaged food. Like, there’s on the nose, and then there’s “Fuck you, you fucking fuck! You’re fucking wasting fucking APPLES.”

I also can’t think of a single thing to say about “self-righteous dweeb”

Christian wakes up and reflects on the flashback, which he describes as “happy, angry days”, because all that flashback needed was one more way to not make  sense.

As Christian goes about his morning – talking to his housekeeper, getting on a Skype call with one of his employees – and it offers an interesting window into the varieties of female characters E L James has to offer. There’s “woman with womanly intuition”:

As [Mrs. Jones] watches me her smile changes from pleasant to knowing… in the way that’s feminine and secretive.

There’s “serious woman who is serious, but in a way that Christian comes closest to respecting for some super unclear reason, AKA the lesbian”:

“So when can we expect you?” Ros’s tone is sarcastic.
“Good morning, Ros. How are you?” I say sweetly.
“Pissed.”
“At me?”
“Yes, at you, and your hands-off work ethic.”

Contrast with “serious woman who is serious, which Christian chalks up to them being a harpy” aka most women who aren’t the previous two types or the next one, “Swooning, lovesick moron”:

“I’ll need an extra ticket, because I have a date,” I inform Andrea.
“A date?” Andrea squeaks with incredulity.
I sigh. “Yes, Andrea, that’s what I said. A date. Miss Anastasia Steele will accompany me.”
“Yes, Mr. Grey.” She sounds as if I’ve made her day.
For fuck’s sake. What is it with my staff?

It’s a bit weird criticizing a female author for not being able to write female characters well, but keep in mind that anyone can perpetuate reductive stereotypes. Much like how anyone can romanticize toxic masculinity:

“I’ve only got a taste for you.”
“Damn right! Only me!” […] No. She’s not doing this with anyone else. Ever.
“You. Are. Mine.” My words crack between us. “Do you understand?”

Sigh. Ok. Let’s get back on track. Any good awful prose in this scene?

Our eyes are locked, her scrutiny intense, as if she’s seeing through me. Seeing the darkness in my soul. […]
This is too much.

You said it, book.

This is what I like: our banter. It’s refreshing and fun

Footage not found.

Christian gets someone to figure out what flight Ana is on in order to upgrade her, which he refers to as a “cunning plan”, which seems like a very low set of standards for “cunning”. His secretary calls him later to give him that information and he tells her to use his personal credit card to upgrade her flight.

“Will do, Mr. Grey.” She’s trying her best to keep it professional, but I catch her smiling.
This is none of her business.

Except her boss is telling her to do this, so… this is the definition of her business?

Christian also gets an email from Elena, who has found out from his mom that he “took a young woman to dinner”, which is “so not your style”. He responds with his usual “It’s not a big deal” line (I’m so glad we got another 500 pages of this story from Christian’s perspective so that we could understand what he thought about it by reading “It’s not a big deal” over and over again to). We also get to see Elena’s email signature a bajillion times, and I can confirm that “For The Beauty That Is You” does not start sounding like a real sentence even over time.

Nothing else interesting happens, except that Christian ends the chapter in a bad mood, which feels superfluous even saying at this point.

Ready Player One

When I was in middle school, my friend and I co-wrote a story that was an absurd mishmash of our favorite video games and cartoons. If I’m remembering this correctly, it was mostly Final Fantasy characters, but it wasn’t fanfiction, because the plot had something to do with outer space and snowboarding and lightsabers or something. Basically it was just us throwing all the silly shit we liked in other stories into one story of our own. I recall it being good fun, although nowadays there isn’t anything I remember about that story aside from how it was just a collection of references to preexisting stories.

If you’re familiar with Ready Player One at all, you might have guessed where I’m going with this.

Ready Player One is a science fiction novel starting from a mildly Matrix-y place where most of humanity spends all their time plugged into a massive, virtual reality simulation. The environment, political climate, and social inequality have all gone totally, helplessly to shit. The creator of the simulation, called OASIS, has died and turned his will into a treasure hunt he secretly coded into OASIS, where whoever solves the puzzles first wins control of his company and his fortune. A madcap, planet-consuming race begins to find this easter egg hidden in the game, with a rival company taking part in the hunt too to exploit a loophole in the will and take it over. Main character Wade joins forces with his friend, two kids from Japan, and a girl he’s obviously going to get with by the end of the book to get there first.

But I was intrigued. Humanity escaping to a virtual safe space and ignoring the mass poverty and environmental crises in the real world around them? Kind of a haunting, not-unbelievable take on our own future, from the looks of things. Yet I had some qualms about the story in the back of my head. I talked with my friend about them, since he said he was interested in what I’d make of the book. And I needed to know if I was being pedantic or not.

Matthew: if Wade could scan the planet for a cave that looked like what he always suspected it would look like and found it in minutes… why exactly did no one else do that? like just scan planets for features that looked like the cave that surely someone else could have figured it might look like? I get there’s a lot of planets, but that seems way easier than the years-long physical searches the book was describing that other players were doing

Sam: Oh yeah that’s the biggest plot hole IMO
like how would you not notice the GIANT SKULL CAVE
on the SCHOOL PLANET

Matthew: where EVERYONE GOES?

Sam: I was immediately like “bullshit, that didn’t happen”

Consensus: I wasn’t being pedantic! Yay?

But then the narrative kept going. There were some briefly explored themes of existential crisis that hit me surprisingly hard, but I think it was more so because they struck some very Matthew-specific anxieties more so than Ready Player One had a particularly novel take on them. Or even continued exploring them. And that was a pattern I started noticing more and more frequently.

But before I get to that part, which was the main thing that brought down the story for me, I’d like to quickly go over the #2 thing: the obligatory evil corporation villains who do evil because… they’re… evil?

Matthew: the villains’ motivations don’t make sense to me
their whole thing is that the oasis isn’t properly “monetized”
and they want to, basically, charge a monthly fee and moderate content
so here’s what’s wrong with that
as it’s described, OASIS is basically a freemium game. which are a super profitable model these days, especially in comparison to monthly subscriptions? but, sure, they’re an out-of-touch old money tech company. they’re like, say, microsoft.
but even microsoft did a 180 on every single detail of the xbox one because of consumer discontent
I’m not buying it

Sam: I guess one could argue that these people would run OASIS into the ground for the sake of immediate profitability

Matthew: I guess
I guess that’s the big oil strategy, so it’s not like it doesn’t have a precedent
wow that’s depressing

But let’s cut to the chase.

Can You Explain It In Terms of Other Books We Read On This Blog?

You know how House of Night has these weird little details that are supposed to flesh out a fun, alternate modern day world of vampyres and humans, but these details are usually just “James Franco is a vampyre!” Which doesn’t actually say anything about the world that they live in, but instead just points at cool shit, so the reader thinks about that cool shit too, but not actually the book they’re reading? Ready Player One is that exact problem, but dozens of times per page.

And that’s what kills it. I was really interested for the first hundred pages or so, but it’s incredible how quickly and how thoroughly the novel loses interest in its own worldbuilding just to take opportunity after opportunity to simply say “Hey! The Jeffersons was a thing!”

So, yeah, I don’t think I’d recommend it. It’s a silly read that you’ll breeze through in a couple hours, but – to use a video game analogy here seems apropos – there’s a lot of grinding to get through.

Also Some Songs You Should Listen To

We threw a party for my roommate’s birthday last weekend, and played music off the TV, which was streaming YouTube through Chromecast, because this is the future we apparently live in now. One of my friends caught onto this and hijacked the playlist towards the end of the evening and put on some mildly surreal music videos to see if anyone would notice. A few people were mesmerized by Goldfish‘s “Get Busy Living”, as I’m sure that knowing I was at a party playing electronic nu jazz in Brooklyn completes whatever mental picture you have of me.

If you were hoping for an assortment of obscure song recommendations from me, I also discovered lately I really like The Clash, so, uh, sorry.

Since I last did one of these posts, I also got really into podcasts for the first time, so I get some recommendations from NPR’s All Songs Considered, which recently did a 90s episode. Yes, I’m getting into All Songs Considered now. Not when I interned at NPR. I’m not good at things. Anyway, listen to some Lauryn Hill and enjoy how wonderful this sounds. I need more female rappers in my music collection. Recommendations would be appreciated.

I also discovered a reconstruction of Weezer’s Songs From The Black Hole, which is an abandoned concept album they were working on before they shifted focus and made Pinkerton instead. Given that Pinkerton is one of my favorite albums, it’s strange to discover songs I like just as much from an album that almost existed instead of Pinkerton.

So how about you? Share any books you’re reading or music you’ve been listening to in the comments!

House of Night, Chosen: Chapter 9

Zoey’s crew, having just found out that Aphrodite has an affinity for earth, is Not Pleased with this revelation even though Aphrodite is the only character who is somewhat bearable to read.

“Oh, no damn way!” Shaunee shouted.

“Ditto, Twin! Only no fucking damn way!” Erin said.

Woah the twins are so alike except one threw some profanity in her statement! Character development. [Matthew says: Oh snap! It’s got a “fucking” AND a “damn” in it! This is one serious way!]

Zoey explains that Nyx definitely sent Aphrodite to them, and this was part of her plan. Even though there is supposed to be tension in this scene, we know that once Zoey informs everyone of the goddess’ plan, they’ll just believe her and reluctantly accept the situation. To prove Zoey’s point, Nyx apparently shows a “powerful thread of goddess-given light that bound the four of them together.” What more evidence do you need???? Checks out, Nyx.

Zoey doesn’t understand why Nyx would have chosen the most interesting character in a book filled with a bunch of fuckwits who can’t make it through even one conversation without commenting on the fact that one of their friends is gay (DO YOU REMEMBER WHO?) to be part of their circle. This doesn’t stop her from delivering one of her usual, uninspiring speeches to convince her friends of her truth. Again, the amount of tension here is akin to watching an episode of Blue’s Clues and wondering if Blue Steve will find a clue at some point. [Matthew says: Uh, Ariel, Blue LEAVES the clues? Although I guess that wondering if Blue will find her own clues is actually pretty comparable to the tension here, now that I think about it.]

[Ariel says: Damn it! I thought I remembered the format of that show so clearly. Okay. Just went back and kept my blunder in under a strike-through. SEMI-COVERING SHIT UP!]

“I don’t pretend to understand Nyx. The Goddess’s ways are mysterious and sometimes she asks really hard things of us. This is one of those hard things. Like it or not, Nyx has made it clear that Aphrodite should take Stevie Rae’s place in our circle.” I looked at Aphrodite. “I don’t think she’s exactly thrilled about it.”
“Understatement,”Aphrodite mumbled.
I continued. “But we have a choice. Nyx doesn’t force our will. We need to be in agreement about letting Aphrodite in, or—” I hesitated, not knowing how to finish. We’d tried to cast the circle with someone else, and Erik hadn’t been allowed to represent earth. Maybe it was just Erik the Goddess didn’t want standing in the circle, but I found that hard to believe. Not only was Erik a good guy and already a member of our Council, but my gut was telling me that the problem wasn’t that Nyx didn’t want Erik. The problem was that Nyx specifically wanted Aphrodite. I sighed and blundered on. “Or I guess we can start trying a bunch of different kids and seeing if any of them are allowed to manifest earth.” I looked outside the circle and met Erik’s shadowed eyes. “But I don’t think Erik’s the issue.”He smiled at me, but it was just a movement his mouth made; the smile didn’t reach his eyes or touch his face.

It is getting incredibly old that Zoey’s gut is the easy answer to everything. It makes an already dull scene arguably less interesting when you can’t even wonder if maybe part of the problem IS that it’s Erik rather than having Zoey’s gut swoop in and be like, “Nope. Nope. Erik is cool, it’s just part of Nyx’s plan.” Oh, okay, thanks Zoey’s Gut for removing any sense of intrigue whatsoever. Also, take note of the Erik stuff that just happened – I feel bad for him in this scene, but some stuff comes up with him later in this chapter that makes this worth noting.

I also find it hilarious that to make things more tolerable for her friends, Zoey pull the classic, “Aphrodite hates this as much as we do!” Which is appropriate because, again, these people are terrible.

Of course, the gang agrees to let Aphrodite become part of the circle. A crucial argument ensues over whether the twins can still call Aphrodite a hag. It’s a real nail-biter, but in the end, Zoey tells them they can’t, and says that Aphrodite has to be nice as well.

Zoey actually tells everyone to look deep down inside themselves and see what their conscious is telling them.

Aphrodite looked mockingly around like she was searching for something that might be hidden int he night. Then she shrugged. “Oops. Seems I don’t have a conscience.”

“Stop it!” I snapped, and the energy I’d evoked with the circle whipped between Aphrodite and me, snaking dangerously around her body. The power augmented my voice, making Aphrodite’s blue eyes widen in surprise and fear. “Not here. Not in this circle. You will not lie and pretend. Decide now. You have a choice, too. I know you’ve ignored Nyx before. You can choose to ignore her again. But if you choose to stay and do the Goddess’s will, you’re not going to do it with lies and hate.”

Zoey’s super, magical awesomeness just saves the day as usual. After this is settled, everyone starts to head off to go see 300, which has apparently become a legitimate plot point in the story. [Matthew says: There’s also a bit where Aphrodite tells them to “get back to your Dungeons and Dragons or whatever”, which gets some “Hey, we don’t play Dungeons and Dragons!” complaints from the group before they decide to all go to IHOP, which will certainly defend their ranking on the totally-cool-and-not-lame teenager spectrum in comparison.]  Zoey tells her friends to go on ahead because she needs to talk to Aphrodite. This is where the interesting bit with Erik happens:

“They need to talk, so let’s go,” Erik said.

I didn’t like how he sounded—almost like he didn’t care—but before I could say anything else he was walking away. Crap. I was definitely going to have some making-up to do with him.

“Erik likes things his way. He also likes a girlfriend who puts him first. Guess you’re just finding that out,” Aphrodite said.

It came up in the comments previously that Erik winds up being kind of terrible later on, and it does seem like the Casts are doing an okay job at setting this up. Dude’s got every right to be annoyed when Zoey is hooking up with Heath or Loren, but to be annoyed with Zoey for staying behind to talk to Aphrodite or bitter that he’s not part of the ritual actually makes him look like a dick in a realistic way. I think there are a lot of people that get pissy in situations like these, so very minor applause to the Casts for this.

After some banter between Zoey and Aphrodite, Aphrodite reveals that she knows Stevie Rae is undead because she’s been having visions. A big part of the vision of is Neferet dragging Stevie Rae into the light and killing her. I’m not sure if I’m paraphrasing poorly or incredibly well, but it doesn’t matter because you know Zoey will repeat all of this to us 60 times.

There’s also a really nice moment in the middle of all of this where Zoey makes Aphrodite laugh and says that when she laughs it makes her look “warm and beautiful.” So shipping these two! [Matthew says: You’d think their friends would have a hard time processing their beloved Zoey and their hated Aphrodite as a couple, but they’d have a way harder time comprehending that they have another gay friend in their group to constantly comment on.]

This by far, though, was my favourite part of the whole conversation (even more than Zoey’s love for Aphrodite!):

“That’s what she is, isn’t it. She’s turned into some kind of horrible vampyre cliché, the monster humans have been calling us for centuries.”

“Not all humans. You know, you really need to get over your completely crappy attitude abouthumans. You used to be one,” I said.

HOLY SHIT. The CASTS were actually probably responsible for #NotAllMen!!!!!! NOT ALL HUMANS BEGAN IT ALL!!

“Whatever. I used to be in love with Sean William Scott, too. Talk about old news.” She flipped her hair back. “Anyway, I saw Stevie Rae when she died. Again. This time for real. And I knew if the vision was allowed to come true that it would somehow mean all of the vamp deaths I saw would really happen. So we have to figure out a way to save Stevie Rae because Nyx is seriously not happy about a bunch of vamps being killed.”

…I…Why Sean William Scott? I get that maybe there were a few people in love with him in 1999 when American Pie came out, but Aphrodite would have been like 7 or 8 when that came out. Nothing about this adds up.

Him?

By the way did anyone else think the way Erin used the word ‘ditto’ at the start of the chapter was weird? I always thought ditto was used in place of “same,” which makes no sense in this context. Like if Shaunee had said, “I can’t believe this!” Ditto would have been an appropriate word. If someone was like, “Pizza is awesome!” I wouldn’t respond with “Ditto.” Am I wrong? Please share your thoughts on this.