Cerulean Sins Chapter Twenty Four part one

Anita is about to have a SIGNIFICANT DREAM.

Full disclosure: I have written these sorts of scenes myself. It's a thing that happens. But it's like whenever LKH doesn't know what to do next, she drops another one of these in to the mix. For example this one is about Belle Morte.

Belle Morte is not in any sense of the word an effective antagonist. She's too removed from Anita's daily life. She never does anything particularly clever. It's not that I mind her style of attempting to manipulate from the shadows. She is an ancient vampire, after all. It's sort of their thing. But even her direct agents are idiots, easily defeated by bullshit like a knife in the ribs or a cross on the door. See, in Anita's world magic and magical creatures have always existed, so you'd think by now the humans and the vampires would have a hojillion ways to get around each other's protections and traditions. 

Belle Morte has beautiful black hair, "honey brown" eyes, and "moist red lips." She's wearing a gold dress and it brings out the color in her eyes. 

Belle Morte beckons to Anita, probably because she wants to get bisexual cooties all over her. I am in support of this because it would probably make Anita spontaneously combust. Turns out that Anita is wearing a fancy dress similar to Belle Morte, and despite not having a mirror and never wearing this type of getup before she knows exactly how it affects the look of her hair and eyes. Of course it makes her sexier. 

Belle refers to Anita as ma petite and tries to boss her around, because "everything that belongs to Jean Claude is mine." I can understand Belle Morte being rather old fashioned and eccentric, but I don't understand why a vampire so interested in the outside world is so completely ineffective. There's being anachronistic and there's being pathetic. Don't the vampires in this series know how to use the Internet? 

Belle Morte has a bowl of "old fashioned roses" at her elbow. What in the hell is an old fashioned rose? Does she mean a cabbage rose? Also these roses are named after Belle Morte. I want us all to commemorate this moment, because it is one of the only times LKH has gotten a detail like this even remotely close to right because according to Wikipedia: "the forerunner of the rose garden as we know it today was planted by empress Joséphine de Beauharnais at Malmaison, France in the years between 1799-1814." 

So fine, LKH you win this round. It's sad that in the span of almost three books now, this is one of the only details that is even remotely plausible.

Things in Anita's body tighten so I assume this means she either thinks Belle Morte is hot or she has appendicitis.

Belle's breasts are "mounded" which makes me think they're made of mashed potatoes (my partner said "mounded? That makes me think one breast is stacked on top of the other one."). Her skin is "gleaming" which means she's an animate Thanksgiving dinner from the Twilight universe. 

"I took two handfuls of the long skirt..."

As opposed to what? Does Anita only have one hand since the other one seems inexorably drawn to whatever faintly penis shaped object drifts by? Are there tentacles coming out of her vagina? I guess those would technically count as hands. 

And hey wait just a goddamn minute. Remember the beginning of this book? When Harlan the hitman comes to hire Anita so she'll raise his ancestor? What the fuck happened to that plot?

If that gets answered by the end of this book I'll have a goddamned heart attack. 

Anita is running in high heels (!) down a dark darkity dark hallway filled with monsters, except they're not monsters, they're a bunch of vampires fucking. No, seriously.

"Breasts like ripe fruit..."

"Flesh pale and dark..." (I thought only white people get to be vampires?)

Now if those examples aren't bad enough, shit gets truly incomprehensible immediately thereafter:

"Blood gleamed down the pale flesh, vampires raised fangs to the light, and humans clung to them, begging for more."

The thing that sticks out the most for me is that the construction of this ahem, 'sentence', makes it seem as if the humans are clinging to the fangs themselves, not the vampires attached to said teeth. Also staccato information like this can really work when properly used. Spoiler alert: it isn't properly used.

Anita is wearing a "tight, upright" corset that is hard to run in, and the skirt makes her "struggle" against. You know, unlike the famous floppy sideways corsets popular at the Ministry of Silly Walks.

So, Anita again describes her plight to run from Belle, past all of these "carnal nightmares." The scene is complete with a door at the end of the hallway that never seems to get closer. Yet the next paragraph? Opens with this bullshit:

"There was nothing too terrifying happening in the alcoves."

So all that shit she just described to me as psycho sexy is now not at all scary, she just doesn't want to be touched.

She gets to the door and it's locked. By the way, can I just take a second to point out that this is THE most generic nightmare I have ever fucking read about?

Belle Morte asks Anita to come to her willingly, which is really rich considering Anita is obviously not interested. Belle's voice is like "sex sliding across my skin." What the hell does that feel like? All I can imagine is a sort of primordial slime.

Belle's voice is so good Anita "spasm" s against the door. It makes me sad that Anita doesn't understand the difference between a spasm and an orgasm, which I presume she's currently having. Belle Morte says some bad guy stock dialouge about how Anita will "feed them" whether she wants to or not.

Anita turns around and Belle Morte is standing there, backed by all the naked vampires. There's some writing that makes this sound sort of scary I guess. Belle delivers some cheesy bad guy lines about how Anita can choose whether to feed her willingly or not. Anita quite reasonably points out that choices offered under duress aren't really choices. Belle says, "then your choice is pain!"

The naked flesh mob rushes Anita and she wakes up. She is gasping "in to" poor Nate's face.

Guess what? CAN YOU GUESS? THAT'S RIGHT. This entire dream is an excuse for the ardeur to rise. She wants to eat Nate's energy so bad and he almost touches her. She tells him to stop before it can happen, and muses that Nate is the only one of her lovers who would obey a direct request to not touch her. 

Anita employs some truly awkward language in an effort to communicate that Nate's dick isn't hard, but she'd greatly prefer it if it was.

For once I would just love for Anita to say, "his dick wasn't hard yet. What a disappointment. I like it if my lovers are always ready to give me the kind of dicking I can feel two days later." God, that would be so refreshing. That would be like a cold shower after Burning Man.

Belle is still influencing Anita and thinks one of Nate's positive qualities is that he is young.

Jason shows up as Anita tries to fight the desire to eat Nate up like a bowl of Ben and Jerry's. Jason is wearing a pair of jeans. These jeans are not buttoned or zipped, but because this is fantasy land they just stay up, and their only purpose is to reveal a glimpse of his blue silk underwear. It's as if all the strippers in the AB world are the sexy porn kind that always have perfect makeup and always slink around with their clothes barely hanging on.

Anita banishes Nate from the room since if she feeds off of him again she might kill him. Her only option is Jason, who to his credit is quite sanguine (heh) about the whole thing. And weirdly? It makes me like him. He's a pig at best but when the chips are down and Anita asks to feed from him, all he says is "blood, flesh. or sex?"

She tells him she wants sex, but then thinks that she wants to "avoid intercourse."

WHY?

Look you know what? Sometimes telling is a good thing. I know that as authors we are constantly told show don't tell, but telling has its place. Why Anita wants to avoid banging a perfectly willing partner like he's a screen door in a hurricane would be one of those times.

Anita crawls over and licks the top of his foot. Seriously.

He likes it.

"I used my hands to crawl up his legs..."

As opposed to her mouth, like she's the front segment of the human centipede.

Anita spends a full paragraph trying to say that she can see the outline of Jason's dick in his blue silk underwear, without ever using a euphemism for penis that isn't "him" or "himself." A man is not his penis. Whenever I see a man buying in to this crap I have to wonder why he prefers to be nothing but a set of swinging genitals. Plus, Anita, you are almost thirty and you can't say cock or penis or dick? I mean really. This is a little bit like if you can't accept that eating meat requires killing animals, maybe you shouldn't eat meat. If you can't accept that in order to have sex genitals will often times be involved and the writer controlling you will have to describe them, well...I am sending Anita AND LKH to the time out room.

Anita refers to Jason's ass as his "butt." Any time a grown person uses the word butt in a sex scene I immediately lose respect for them. You are an adult. It's an ass. Not a butt. Not a no no pillow. Not a marshmallow delight.

Anita is trying to control herself for some stupid reason even though she has a perfectly healthy willing male to feed from.

"I wanted to beg him to take me." 

"There was that look that comes on a man's face when he's sure of you, sure of what will happen."

Huh? Is it the same look he gets when he sees a rack of ribs?

She launches in to a prudish speech about Jason's dick. Let's see if we can condense this, shall we?

1) Jason's dick is like, good looking and stuff.

2) She mouths his dick through the silk so that the silk is all slobbery.

3) He likes it.

4) He slides his jeans and underwear off and reveals his dick in all its "graceful, straight, fine" glory.

Anita "spills" her mouth over "the head of him." She then slides her hand in to "cup lower things." This is like the erotica I wrote when I was twelve.

Anita decides to lick "that thin strip of skin between testicles and anus."

So let me drop some sex scene knowledge here, because this took me forever to figure out: the type of language you, as an author, use in sex scenes is entirely dependent on the personalities of the characters involved. It's not out of character for Anita to say testicles and anus given how hung up on sex she is, but it doesn't work for me because I am still shouting WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS. She has NO REASON to be like this, because let's be real she's not a character, she's a paper doll.

Jason picks Anita up and there's some truly gross nonsense about how when they kiss Jason is trying to eat her and he eats her sounds and tastes her screams and excuse me a second---

I hate it when authors describe the mechanics of kissing. Like, it's fine that the characters are kissing but I don't need to hear about their wrestling tongues and stuff. Ugh.

MOVING SHARPLY ALONG.

Jason's hair has "baby silkiness"

Jason starts to fuck Anita while he's still holding here up, then takes her to the bed and starts to fuck her there. This SO BADLY wants to be hot and it almost is. Lines like "most of my lower body still held in his hands" kill it dead.

Anita is a screamer. I think this would be legitimately awesome and hilarious if this were an actual book and Anita were an actual character, instead of a jerk off journal entry scrawled desperately between um, jerks.

LKH hits me with what is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever read in a sex scene. Keep in mind this is trying to be sexy. It's not horror or comedy.

"He found a rhythm that was fast, and deep, and hard, as if he were trying to shove himself out the other side of me. He beat his body in to mine with a thick, meaty sound."

OH MY GOD ANITA SAID ORGASM.

I think this is the first time in two books that she's used a grown up word during sex!

And I am stopping there, because this piece of shit took me THREE DAYS and I am still only halfway done with this NEVER ENDING CHAPTER.

Cerulean Sins Chapter Twenty Three

Dottie's chapter here

"I didn't so much wake, as come to the surface of sleep..."

I don't mean to tear down every effort to use figurative or embellished language here. For awhile there was an Internet backlash against Mary Sue characters to the point where it became the same issue through a mirror darkly; suddenly everyone's main fanfic character was a pimpled slightly overweight girl with brown hair and brown eyes, all described in about the manner I just employed. But I can't help but nitpick because "coming to the surface of sleep" is just another way of saying waking up.

Micah and Cherry are here. You might remember Cherry from Narcissus in Chains. She's the wereleopard who used to be a nurse until she was outed. Anita always makes comments about how silly and slutty she looks. So, she pretty much gets the same treatment every female who isn't Anita gets. She was also one of the people being tortured by Chimera during Anita's big battle scene, a scene full of wasted potential and gratuitous torture.

Two things. I hate seeing a good action scene wasted. Writing these types of things is something I really enjoy (I really like to write fighting and fucking and honestly they are not that dissimilar). Seeing and/or imagining things so epic that they make my heart beat faster is awesome. The first twenty minutes of The Dark Knight Rises comes instantly to mind. The "ride out to meet them" scene from the Lord of the Rings trilogy (hell, most scenes from the LOTR trilogy). The scene from Game of Thrones (which I ultimately don't like, yes I know) where Dany takes control of the Unsullied. That's the good shit right there.

And if LKH's fight scenes were just straight up terrible this would be so much easier on me. But the last scene in Narcissus in Chains had all the right elements. A bad guy that, given proper development, could have been amazing. He had relatable motivations buried in there somewhere. A pitch black room. The sound and smell of torture. Him and Anita stalking each other, Anita with a big fuck off machete as her only weapon. FUCK YEAH. But much the way an unskilled baker (such as myself) can put together the right ingredients yet come out with an inedible end product, the scene merely turned in to a clumsy vehicle for showcasing Anita's supposed badassery. Do you see the worst part? It could have been amazing. 

Second thing. Adding gratuitous torture, molestation, and rape for the sole purpose of darkening up your world in the biggest, clumsiest strokes possible is gross.

Anyway Cherry is here. Micah asks her what Gregory said. Gregory is the wereleopard the wolves tortured in one of the novels preceding this. Now his child molester father has tried to contact him and his brother, Stephen.

Okay so...what is the plot of Cerulean Sins? Let's see what I can recall.

1) A guy who unwisely tells Anita he's a hit man within minutes of meeting her wants someone raised via her animator powers. Turns out it's his ancestor, and he needs this for family line purposes. Anita reminds us she's the evil doer for Richard's pack, a leopard queen, and part of the shapeshifter coalition.

2). After tons of build up the first animating she does is at a scene completely unrelated to the first guy. Asher turns up at this scene and communicates to Anita that something is very wrong.

3). Musette, Belle Morte's vampire liaison, shows up. She dicks over Asher and J.C. because Belle Morte is trying to assert her dominance.

4) Anita does a lot of whining about how she's a good girl and dating two people (Micah and J.C.) is soooo weird. Anita moans and bitches about how Richard is such a meany head and like, soooo stupid you guys because he wants different things from her in life. She never mentions having assaulted him, either; rather his rejection of her is all to do with how badly he wants to be normal.

5) They meet Musette.  Rather than allow Asher to be tortured, Anita intervenes. Only after a whole lot of nothing, of course. And it turns in to another metaphysical slap fight that I don't care about. A bunch of random characters turn up, including Damien, Anita's vampire servant. In case you were wondering, it is now many chapters in the future and Damien hasn't reappeared. Anita takes like FOUR FUCKING CHAPTERS to have pity sex with Asher that will keep him from being Musette's chew toy for the rest of the book . There is unfulfilling dry humping and Asher feeds on her, causing basically no reaction from her even though being fed from has been her hard limit for like ELEVEN BOOKS NOW. Jason has to rescue her because dawn comes and both Asher and J.C. become unresponsive, trapping her.

6). Jason and Anita go to a random series of crime scenes where we meet Tammy Reynolds (who randomly accuses Anita of being pregnant), Anita is manhandled by Dolph, and nothing new is learned or resolved. Anita faints approximately eleventy billion times.

7). Anita wakes  up from one of her many fainting spells to find herself in a tub with Micah. Their beasts rise and somehow this enables Anita to see Belle Morte's shadow trying to feed from J.C. She casts it out with her ill defined sex powers.

And now Anita wakes up only to find that three characters who haven't been in this book at all so far are here with another sharp turn in to Nonsensical, U.S.A.

Fuck it, pass the gin.

So this is the twenty third chapter and there's nothing to work with except for a long series of unrelated threads. We haven't even heard from Musette in several chapters, who apparently just waits around until Anita is done fucking and fainting and doing whatever else. My, Musette is awfully considerate for a murderous pedophile vampire sent by their greatest enemy.

Anita didn't know about Gregory and Stephen's abuse history. I could swear she did given the events of Narcissus in Chains, but I'll be damned if I'll go wading through that crapsack of a book to find out. I hope they don't mind their extremely personal business being revealed to everyone in this room, because too late now.

Zane, Cherry's lover, comes in with Nathaniel in his arms. Anita thinks about how stupidly long Nate's hair is. Zane immediately reassures her that Nate has undies on, because the rule is no one can sleep naked in Anita's bed. Nate is Anita's pomme de sang! She literally feeds on his energy to keep herself alive, but he can't have his dong out in her bed? Of course on the surface of the issue Anita has the right to ask for what makes her comfortable, but her rules are so arbitrary and weird that I can only conclude that Anita is not only a narcissist and a sociopath, but that she is suffering from obsessive personality disorder too. Other people must be controlled down to the slightest detail and when they're not, she freaks out and everyone she's abusing crowds in to smooth her moods and peace keep.

Micah gets out of bed but hides his dangly bits. Anita is grateful because "I think I was too tired to be tempted, but I knew I was too tired to want to be tempted."

I had to read that three times before it started to make any kind of sense.

Micah's hair is "dark, dark"

Cherry and Zane tease Anita about her admiring Micah, which Anita refers to as an inside joke despite it being really fucking obvious what the joke is.

Anita realizes she is naked and asks for clothes. Micah grabs one of his shirts from the chest of drawers nearby. Anita tries to convince me that this shirt fits both her and Micah. Does Micah have watermelon sized tits all of a sudden? Because even if their shoulders are the same dimensions, that shirt will definitely not fit them both properly.

Anita wants to do something for Gregory because he's hers--ugh--but Micah assures her he'll take care of it. He suggests bringing Gregory over so Gregory's father can't "find him through the phone book." If you have an abusive father why the fuck do you have a listed number?

Nathaniel gets in to bed with her and she falls asleep again. Her last thought after all of that is about how she's getting more comfortable being nude, and how it's due to the werelopard's bad influence. Sorry Gregory, I guess your awful family situation is only a mild annoyance.

Cerulean Sins Chapter Twenty Two

Anita is too special to float in water that is merely warm. No, it must be "warm, warm."

Anita wakes up in a bathtub with Micah holding her.

Micah not only has a tragically huge penis, but a pair of "kitty-cat eyes."

In fact:

"I'd originally thought they were yellow green, but they were yellow, or green, or any combination fo either, depending on his mood, the light, the color of shirt he wore."

So I know a lot of people look down on those of us who spork the books of popular authors because hell, who do we think we are? After all I'm just an independent author with a single boo to my name, while LKH has a veritable empire at her fingertips. But you know what? I can safely say on my worst day on this fucking earth, I could do better than that.

This is one of those sentences that has so much wrong with it, I'm not even sure where to start. First we once again have blatant comma abuse that would probably get you killed in prison. Secondly, she says initially that she believed Micah's eyes were yellow green, implying that she then realized his eyes are some other color. And yet "or any combination of either." You know what that makes them? YELLOW GREEN.

Also Micah is just a walking dick with a big mood ring for a head.

Anita and Micah manage to inspire some writing that isn't totally without merit. As much as Micah is a rapist (of course, so is Anita for that matter), they're the only couple that feels as though they actually like each other. Birds of a feather, eh? Anita even says that Micah is the only man in her life that she truly wants to be with.

Anita has at least three lovers at this point, and Micah is the only one she's sure about? If you don't feel confident in your first relationship, adding more people will not improve on that situation.

Damn you, Anita.

There's some awful writing about Micah and Anita's beasts.

"They moved in our separate bodies like two swimming shapes..."

As opposed to the single body they like to use for special nights out.

Anita's beast suddenly helps her see that Belle Morte is trying to feed on Jean Claude. J.C.'s "failsafes" have kept him from harm, but it has backlashed on to Anita and probably Richard. Her beast has risen several times today so I am not sure why this is happening now, but whatever. Micah and Anita's beasts attack Belle Morte's shadow and it flees back in to Musette.

This is supposed to be an attempt at plot, but the problem is it just happens  to Anita. She didn't find out this information through something special or competent she did. She just happened to get lucky when Micah kissed her and their beasts showed up, and I am still not sure how that enabled her to see Belle Morte in the first place. Anita is supposed to be such a badass, but stuff just happens to and around her all the time. She's not the author of her own destiny.

Sure you will.

Micah and Anita talk about what to do and Anita asks for her cell phone, which Micah gives her. This isn't exactly riveting stuff, but it tells me something very important:

"Micah didn't make me waste time explaining myself."

So basically, she loves Micah the mostest because he never questions her or asserts himself or puts his needs before hers.

Anita calls Bobby Lee and tells him to put crosses on all the doors so the visiting vampires can't use their powers. Is it just me, or didn't they do something like this in the beginning after Anita stabbed Musette? If they did, this is annoying repetition. If they didn't they're all fucking idiots.

Bobby Lee protests because in this world you need to wrap a vampire's coffin in crosses to keep them from using their powers, but Anita says a room is really like a big coffin so it will work. That is the most incredible ass pull I've ever seen. Her vagina was already a veritable cornucopia; now her ass is a vast garden of wonderment and atrocities as well.

Micah tries to tell Anita that she shouldn't keep acquiring dudes if she can't see them as people with emotional needs, even when she doesn't need them to feed the ardeur. 

Did...did he just call her on her shit?

Oh but don't worry, instead of Anita gaining any self insight she'll just devolve in to Richard bashing instead. You see, Richard is a meanie mean poopy head who dumped her because she's "...more comfortable with the monsters than he is."

YOU RAPED HIM. RAPE.

You are a psychopath. Your emotional responses are all blunted, you have no sense of guilt or remorse, you are the center of the universe and it is rightly so in your mind. People exist to fulfill your needs right up until they can't anymore, at which point you callously discard them.

Even in the rape scene, she immediately started blaming him for not fighting her hard enough. 

I can't. I just can't with this character.

What disturbs me even more is that LKH doesn't realize that she's writing rape. Many of her major players have committed sexual assault and she doesn't even fucking know it. That is honestly terrifying.

Also, Anita, stop talking about Richard's dreams like they're idiotic just because they're conventional. Plenty of people want marriage and a family and a house, and that's no better or worse than wanting your lifestyle.

Anita luuurves Micah because his balls are firmly tucked in her purse. He doesn't argue or challenge her in any way. He is Anita's perfect lover, because he has almost no personality and just exists to nod his head.

Somehow the rest of this chapter devolves in to Anita angsting about whether she'd take Richard back if he showed up. I don't even know.

Fifty Shades of Grey the movie

What did you think of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie, Tiger?

I will tell you, audience.

Oh and also if you're looking for a thoughtful balanced social justice-y thing like I usually try to provide, this...is not that thing. You have been warned.

First, the movie is a thousand times better than the book because they had the ability to cut away great swathes of really shitty writing. So all the holy craps and all the shit about the inner goddess and so forth are gone, save a single "holy cow" shout out which was rather charming. All the major scenes are there--the bit with Jose, the dinner with Christian's parents, Ana's graduation, the interview--without all the filler. Also just in case you were wondering, the infamous tampon removal scene does not make an appearance. I know we're all sad about that, huh?

However, consent is portrayed very well. I can only imagine that this has been added to the movie, since from what I hear the book is terrible on this point. (whenever she tells Christian no he respects it, for one thing).

The first big question:

Is it abusive?

The short answer is that overall it is not outright abusive but it is highly questionable. Both of the major players have poor boundaries and in some instances, no boundaries at all. But a curious thing happened to me about halfway through; I started to empathize with Christian over Ana. This is because Christian has some understandable motivations. He was raped as a child (I'm sorry, but a much older woman getting sexually involved with a fifteen year old boy is rape), repeatedly molested by a woman Ana callously refers to as "Mrs Robinson."

The reason I started using gifs with my Anita reviews is that there were so many things I came across that were literally so awful I had no words to describe my reactions. A picture is worth a million words, right? Suffice to say I do not find Ana's attitude about Christian's 'dominant' amusing, and her referring to this woman as a child abuser about three fourths in does nothing to erase her casual attitude towards the situation.

Ana also has almost no personality. She is as bland as Bella Swan. (more about the Twilight connections later)

Anyway, back to my analysis of Christian. He is obviously emotionally unavailable and doesn't have much personality, or rather he doesn't let people see anything about him that might be considered characterizing. He tries to make up for this by essentially love bombing (more like money/attention bombing, since Christian doesn't do love) Ana, taking her on fancy plane rides, buying her clothes and cars, and otherwise overwhelming her with luxury. I enjoyed the way the movie underscored the fact that these things can't make up for emotional availability. Christian, while he is not in my view abusive, is a questionable person. He and Ana have a big power differential between them, and he clearly thinks that he ought to be able to purchase her or win her over the way he might do with a fine antique or a client at work.

1). Shows up at places she is without being invited. I especially dislike when he comes to her job at a hardware store and buys a bunch of bondage items. He's involving her in his fantasies without her consent and it's weird.

2). Saves her from an assault only to wisk her away himself. To his credit he didn't take advantage of her drunkenness.

3). A TON of mixed signals about how he doesn't do love, yet he's constantly treating her like a lover even from the beginning and then acts surprised that she's confused.

4). Parts of his BDSM contract are ridiculous. Controlling what she eats? I mean I'm not saying that this is inappropriate in and of itself. Lots of people live in 24/7 scenarios that are this restrictive. But to start with? (I have to say though the scene where they discuss the contract and Ana's limits is really good)

5). He does like ZERO aftercare. You can't just spank the woman and then leave her there, man! Shit's not cool!

6). He strikes her (on the ass) out of anger at one point. NO. Do not do this. Punishment is not the same as hitting someone because you're angry. Punishment is part of BDSM for many, many people. Hitting someone because you're pissed off and out of control is abuse.

But as much as the abuse angle has been discussed, I don't see that in the movie to an overwhelming degree. What really enrages me is how BDSM is portrayed.

Look, I like edge play. This would be basically anything you might need to sign a waiver for. Knives, needles, suspensions, hard whippings, whatever. When it comes to writing well, I like to write the same thing. Yesterday I wrote a scene that included the sentence "roll over, pretty whore. I want to see that come filled asshole for myself."

Yeah so thing one, the BDSM in this movie is really fucking tame. But it is hot! Somehow they managed to achieve almost Secretary level greatness in some areas. And here's the weirdest thing, I liked this movie. What I HATED is how Christian's totally run of the mill BDSM tastes have to mean that he's an abused emotionally constipated pervert. He spends almost the whole movie dicking around with feathers and soft rope and ice cubes (which I consider to be quite vanilla) which is totally fine, but it's certainly not 120 Days of Sodom. 

So he's easing her in to the lifestyle as he should, but Ana can't deal with that. And here's the thing. Yes, she's the submissive, but dominants have boundaries and hard limits too. People have this idea that BDSM is about a long suffering submissive just taking the big bad dominant's abuse, but that's very much not the case. Both parties have responsibilities and power and things they love and hate. Christian is very clear with her that he doesn't like to be touched, that he doesn't want to do romance, and that he doesn't want to sleep next to her. She makes the classic mistake of agreeing to things that she ultimately doesn't want because she has stars in her eyes over how handsome and rich he is. When she realizes that his boundaries are real, she freaks out. She's constantly pressing him to let her touch him, to talk to her, to date her, to do all the things he said he didn't want to do. And yet, this is okay because Ana is the one doing it? If Christian were acting the way she does in this movie, people would be shitting on him from here to next week for not respecting what she wants.

In short: this shit is not okay. It's not okay just because Ana is the submissive, or because Ana is a woman, or because Christian obviously needs help. Forcing him won't heal or help his wounds. It's also not responsible BDSM. It's good that she states outright that she eventually wants more emotional connection. It's not good to whine about it, to pressure him, to withhold from him in order to get him to do what she wants. They're both making serious mistakes here. On Christian's side of things he ought to realize that it's really hard to consistently practice power exchange with someone without developing feelings. Fine, they're flawed people and that's realistic enough, but at least when she says no it stops him in his tracks. At least he doesn't constantly keep trying to do something to her that she doesn't want (she constantly tries to touch him in ways he expressly does not want). At least he doesn't ask her intrusive repeated questions about the scars on her body and where they came from and whether his adoptive family really loved him.

Then the part that made me hate Ana with a fiery passion.

After all of this pushing, after two hours of the two of them clearly being terrible for each other, she asks Christian to really let loose on her in the red room of pain. He asks her repeatedly if she's sure. He makes sure she knows her safe words. He tells her what he's going to do with her before he does it. 

And what is all this build up about? He hits her hard with a belt six times and this is enough for her to treat him like he just raped her. So for this entire fucking movie she's been begging for him to show his feelings, his wants, his desires. She's begged and pleaded and manipulated. They did a really good job of showing her as having power over him (given the old saw about how subs have all the power), but now unfortunately it makes her look terrible. She consents to the entire thing. She never once uses her safeword or communicates that she doesn't like what's happening. Yes, she cries but that's a normal part of a BDSM scene for a lot of people. He makes her count the blows, which she does. Only to have her completely and utterly reject him afterwards because he's a bad person. BECAUSE ONLY BAD PEOPLE LIKE BDSM. She demands to know why he likes this in the first place and why he wants to do this to her. MAYBE BECAUSE HE JUST DOES? You DO NOT have to have an abuse history to be in to BDSM. Plenty of people do, and a fair amount of those use BDSM for therapeutic purposes related to their abuse, but is it a  requirement? NO. And that is what disgusts me the most about this movie. I'm clearly supposed to empathize with Ana, because she's 'normal.' She wants hearts and flowers and dates and I am supposed to root for her because that's what normal sweet good girls want.

FUCK THAT.

Fuck this movie, fuck the book, fuck the idea that you have to be abused and/or an abuser to be in to BDSM. Fuck Ana and her boundary crossing manipulative bullshit.

THE END

P.S. it's a beautiful movie. The sets are breath taking. The BDSM scenes are gorgeous. Eye candy. They go a little overboard with everything literally being a shade of grey though.

P.P.S. How does EL James get away with this massive obvious Twilight rip off? Some lines and scenes are lifted whole cloth from Twilight.

Cerulean Sins Chapter Twenty One

Dottie's chapter is here 

How many times has Anita fainted in the span of twenty very short chapters? At least twice, I think, because I'm pretty sure she also fainted after Asher bit her. This is just laziness. It's the sort of thing an author uses when they don't know how to close a scene. I mean, sometimes sure. People pass out. It's a thing that happens. But this often? I'm giving your skills the side eye, LKH.

Tammy Reynolds is here. She's a witch. In a very superficial way she was the inspiration for the urban fantasy I'm working on now. Because, come on! Isn't that a cool idea? A witch who works in law enforcement! Rest assured it will be squandered here.

There's some bullshit about how Tammy is tall and works out so the other cops "read: male" won't give her grief. I think we all know that patriarchy is a thing, but assuming it's usually displayed with all its flags flying is naive at best. Patriarchy is often subtle which is what makes it so pernicious. If it were that easy to identify at all times, we wouldn't have half the trouble we do with getting rid of it. The fact that neither Tammy nor Anita can ever interact with law enforcement without some hideous man child waving his dick around strikes me as unrealistic, even if they do live in a crapsack world. It's lazy and childish.

So Tammy has been putting cold rags on Anita's head to make her feel better, since Anita is sick. But Anita "heals like a lycanthrope now" so she runs hot when she heals. Cooling her off messes up her healing. Wat.

Tammy is pissed at herself for passing out, since only she and Anita did at a scene full of men. This I find sort of realistic, compared to Anita's clumsy attempts to discuss sexism. Anita manages to take a shot at her faith though, because it wouldn't be an Anita book without a tall glass of haterade to drink with the meal. See, Tammy is a follower of The Way, a Christian witchery path. They're all zealots for some reason, even though I have known a fair number of Christian witches in my life, none of whom felt the need to prove their piety.

Tammy thinks now is the perfect time to tell Anita she's pregnant.

For some reason Tammy then assumes that because Anita vomited and passed out, she too is pregnant. 

Anita doesn't know how to explain that her beast and Asher's bite are fucking her up, even though this is a world where supernaturals have always been a known quantity. Despite Anita being an animator and a supposed vampire expert. Despite Tammy herself being a fucking witch. 

Tammy is super pissed because she thinks Anita is lying to her about being pregnant. What the hell?

Tammy walks out. Anita obviously needs help but nope, Tammy takes complete leave of her senses and punishes Anita for 'lying' to her. I am having real trouble wrapping my mind around this one. Does Tammy live in a weird shadow world where every time a woman gets sick and faints, she's pregnant? Anita did just see a human being put through the biggest Vitamix in the world. Just maybe that's the more likely reason?

Jason shows up to carry Anita outside and presumably take her home. Once again, Anita wonders what's wrong with her even though we've established that it's her beast and the reaction to Asher's bite. She even thought this exact thing not three paragraphs ago!

The crowd of reporters "closed like a fist around us" because this is one of the only analogies LKH knows.

Oh something extra special is wrong with her. Of course. Jason takes her towards wherever the oard is. Anita faints for the third time in as many hours.