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1. Currently reading a professional novelist's take on the same story that EL James did with 50 Shades. Silvia Day's Contemporary Novel - Bared to You, is not as good as Shades, which is odd, considering she's a professional novelist who has written more than 20 books. But like a lot of professional novelist's in this genre, regrettably has a somewhat dull boilerplate style, weak dialogue, and conventional sentence structure. Doesn't take a lot of risks. That said - she does write hot sex scenes. Actually the dialogue during the sex scenes isn't bad.
I'm learning more and more what Ursula Le Guinne meant when she said there's a difference between a well written tale and one "rightly told" or that is compelling and brings you into the story - so much is in the how, but not necessarily in the craft.
I rather like pulp for what it is. I don't need it to be more. I find the people trying to make The Avengers into more than it is - rather funny. People, can't you admit you like a comic book movie? It's okay. We won't think less of you. Sigh. People forget back in the day, Shakespeare and Dickens were pulp novelists and dramatists. Marlow was the literary guy. And look how that turned out? Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino is pure pulp, but hey it's fun and memorable and great. Granted I tried to...ahem...rise Buffy the Vampire Slayer above the level of pulp, and yes, several episodes were quite amazing, it's still pulp but great pulp and lasting. Literary can be overrated.
2. Speaking of Buffy...Mark Watches ...is a bit clueless. Poor dear was completely confused by the episode Crush. His first question was - "Who killed all the people on the train? It doesn't make sense it was Drusilla? They never say." Uhm...yes, they did. There's a shot of her doll, Miss Edith, in the overhead bin. Not that most observant bloke on the planet, Mark, which does explain the insane X-Files love or not as the case may be.
Also he completely missed why Buffy asked Willow to rescind Spike's invite...what did he think the focus of the scene between Joyce, Willow and Buffy was about??? Hello, Spike.
Not surprised he hates Spike in this episode or is repulsed by Spuffy...admittedly Spike creeped me out when I initially saw the episode when it first aired ...over ten years ago.
It was in 2000, I think. Now, I see the episode in a completely different way. I was a lot younger back then (around Mark's age actually 28-35), and a bit dumb. The whole series sort of gets turned inside out after you see certain episodes. That's why I fell head over heels in love with Buffy, because you see it one way...before you watch an episode, then suddenly a completely different way after you watch an episode, and if you re-watch, it's like wait, oh I don't remember seeing that...and you are seeing the show in whole new light. Few shows change that much each time you see it. Few things do. The tv shows and books I love are the ones that I find new things in each time I read or watch them. It's also why it is sooo entertaining to watch new viewers watch these shows, unspoiled, because you think - you poor stupid fool, you have no idea, your opinion about these characters, this series, everything is about to change completely.
Some day, I'll write a long rambling meta post about the ups and downs of shipping a highly controversial and at times fandom splitting character in a diverse multi-fandom. It's not fun. Well it is...in a way, or at least interesting, but also highly frustrating. I don't recommend for the faint of heart. Unless you stick purely to character specific fansites with like-minded folks (which is sort of dull from a meta perspective), and even then..
3. Good work day. Got out early. Have a much needed three day break. Been killing myself work-wise. And not getting much sleep. Feel wrung out and fat or just bloated. But today, accomplished a few things - negotiated a big structural design contract, and I think it went rather well. And set up a site tour. Yay me. On a less optimistic front...I still haven't heard back from friend on the second part of my book or the email response that I sent her. Which I guess means I can kiss that avenue goodbye. My flirtations with publishing always end in the same result: You're a really really great writer, but we want a page-turner like Stephen King or John Grisham! Change your story! Hmmm...maybe I should check out e-publishing.
Also
I'm learning more and more what Ursula Le Guinne meant when she said there's a difference between a well written tale and one "rightly told" or that is compelling and brings you into the story - so much is in the how, but not necessarily in the craft.
I rather like pulp for what it is. I don't need it to be more. I find the people trying to make The Avengers into more than it is - rather funny. People, can't you admit you like a comic book movie? It's okay. We won't think less of you. Sigh. People forget back in the day, Shakespeare and Dickens were pulp novelists and dramatists. Marlow was the literary guy. And look how that turned out? Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino is pure pulp, but hey it's fun and memorable and great. Granted I tried to...ahem...rise Buffy the Vampire Slayer above the level of pulp, and yes, several episodes were quite amazing, it's still pulp but great pulp and lasting. Literary can be overrated.
2. Speaking of Buffy...Mark Watches ...is a bit clueless. Poor dear was completely confused by the episode Crush. His first question was - "Who killed all the people on the train? It doesn't make sense it was Drusilla? They never say." Uhm...yes, they did. There's a shot of her doll, Miss Edith, in the overhead bin. Not that most observant bloke on the planet, Mark, which does explain the insane X-Files love or not as the case may be.
Also he completely missed why Buffy asked Willow to rescind Spike's invite...what did he think the focus of the scene between Joyce, Willow and Buffy was about??? Hello, Spike.
Not surprised he hates Spike in this episode or is repulsed by Spuffy...admittedly Spike creeped me out when I initially saw the episode when it first aired ...over ten years ago.
It was in 2000, I think. Now, I see the episode in a completely different way. I was a lot younger back then (around Mark's age actually 28-35), and a bit dumb. The whole series sort of gets turned inside out after you see certain episodes. That's why I fell head over heels in love with Buffy, because you see it one way...before you watch an episode, then suddenly a completely different way after you watch an episode, and if you re-watch, it's like wait, oh I don't remember seeing that...and you are seeing the show in whole new light. Few shows change that much each time you see it. Few things do. The tv shows and books I love are the ones that I find new things in each time I read or watch them. It's also why it is sooo entertaining to watch new viewers watch these shows, unspoiled, because you think - you poor stupid fool, you have no idea, your opinion about these characters, this series, everything is about to change completely.
Some day, I'll write a long rambling meta post about the ups and downs of shipping a highly controversial and at times fandom splitting character in a diverse multi-fandom. It's not fun. Well it is...in a way, or at least interesting, but also highly frustrating. I don't recommend for the faint of heart. Unless you stick purely to character specific fansites with like-minded folks (which is sort of dull from a meta perspective), and even then..
3. Good work day. Got out early. Have a much needed three day break. Been killing myself work-wise. And not getting much sleep. Feel wrung out and fat or just bloated. But today, accomplished a few things - negotiated a big structural design contract, and I think it went rather well. And set up a site tour. Yay me. On a less optimistic front...I still haven't heard back from friend on the second part of my book or the email response that I sent her. Which I guess means I can kiss that avenue goodbye. My flirtations with publishing always end in the same result: You're a really really great writer, but we want a page-turner like Stephen King or John Grisham! Change your story! Hmmm...maybe I should check out e-publishing.
Also
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*This reviewer much like the others...appears to be critiquing the novel for not being "literary" or "more meaningful" or something to that effect. She wants to make the novels into more than they are.
Deeper, more meaningful. Instead of just a bit of fun. Sort of like the people feeling the need to compare The Avenger's to opera.
* Also, it doesn't appear that the reviewer likes or has read much in this genre? She's not an erotica fan or really into romance novels, she is reading it because it is popular, for much the same reason she read Twilight. Her review smacks of NY Times and Salon's reviews of the Avengers. (ie. "I'm not a fan of superhero films because they are conventional and empty-headed fair. Then in the next paragraph.. why isn't the Avenger's deeper? Shouldn't it go deeper? Shouldn't it be more?")
It's almost as if it's a crime to have brainless fun at the movies or reading a book for that matter. As one commentator stated in response to another similar reviewer of 50 Shades?
"Lighten up - it's just a fun sexual romp".
What leaps out to me when I read these reviews is the reviewers don't know or appreciate the genre they are reading or watching for that matter. When I saw Avengers - it was fun. What was different about it - was that it was fun. There were jokes. It was tongue in cheek. And when I read 50 Shades? I had the same reaction - this is fun. There are jokes. It is tongue in cheek. James makes fun of the genre in places, but does so in a way that is a homage to it - much like Whedon does in The Avengers...but you can't see that if you don't know the genre. If you haven't read a lot of these books.
TBC
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2. The other thing that popped out is the reviewer seems to think the book would have been better if Ana submitted to Grey, and became his submissive - which is actually what usually happens in these novels and this trope. There is a dark erotica trope - where the virginal gal submits or the experienced one does. (Here's a list of books: Beautiful Disaster, Dom of my Dreams, Bottoms Up (Dom gal becomes a bottom to tortured guy), Aprodite's Iniation Series, Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty, Story of O, Anais Nin's diaries, the Marquis De Sade's Justine...) In some respects what is unconventional about the book is how Ana handles BDSM - which is actually more realistic than most of the genre (just read how many women reacted to the books).
And how she finds a way to navigate a course that works for her.
It's...in an odd way, not the plot that intrigues, but how the plot unfolds and is told ...or the techniques the writer uses. There is a battle of the genders in the novel. Ana fights Christian with words not fists. She negotiates a real relationship with him and not a purely BDSM one - which is just sex. She questions him constantly - pushes, and through conversation manages to get him to confide in her.
At one point - she states - "You fuck me into submission...you use sex to get your way, Christian." To which he responds, "yes, of course, it's what I know." She fights back by withholding herself, threatening to leave...and actually leaving at one point. She has all the power, he believes..because she can go and leave the relationship and he can't. Which isn't true.
A lot of this is standard trope in the genre. As Jeffrey Eugendies points out with a fiendish smirk in The Marriage Plot. Marriage solves the problem. Except in 50 Shades - not so much. She still struggles with him. The plot itself is fairly standard, conventional romance fair, better than some, worse than others. But...there are things James does here that are different, much like there are things that Whedon did in Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers that are "diifferent" but you only pick up on if you are familiar with the genre.
Such as the fact that the lead characters talk to each other and work out their problems through conversation. The plot does not revolve around insane misunderstandings. The heroine...can protect herself, which while true in some tropes, not so much in this one. And of course the negotiating of the terms of the contract, the details on BDSM, the text messaging back and forth...yes, that gets old after a while (the text messaging) but it is hilarious at first.
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Is actual BDSM really about sex or is it about power and control? None of those things being mutually exclusive of course, but it seems like Rosenberg is arguing for the novel to look at BDSM instead of the romance novel trope. It's impossible for me to discuss since I haven't read 50 Shades, but I am curious: since this is famously an AU of Twilight, does BDSM stand in for vampirism? In which case, following the books, the heroine would eventually embrace the lifestyle and in fact excel at it (Bella as the most awesome vampire ever), but it seems like here she's rejecting it?
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Obviously not - considering I wrote 400 essays on it. LOL!
But I do question it...thinking you know, maybe I just had too much time on my hands (which is true, I did and apparently still do...since I have analyzed 50 Shades, the Avengers and Cabin all within the last few months and various romance novels...LOL!). Most people who watch this stuff are just having fun. They don't think about it. Which is the appeal - basically of novels like Twilight, 50 Shades or flicks like the Avengers - they are a fun brainless time.
Is actual BDSM really about sex or is it about power and control?
It's about power and control in the novel. He uses the BDSM to control sex and to control the women he has sex with. He can't bear to be touched anywhere, except of course his penis and lips, face. (Be sort of hard to have sex otherwise). So yes it is definitely used as a metaphor for power and control and delved into in that manner.
It's impossible for me to discuss since I haven't read 50 Shades, but I am curious: since this is famously an AU of Twilight, does BDSM stand in for vampirism?
BDSM does in some respects stand in for vampirism. It's quite obvious in a few places. His "hunger" for it. So yes, I'd say that it does stand in for vampirism - which is actually what makes 50 Shades different from most of the BDSM books that I've read - ironically. LOL!
In which case, following the books, the heroine would eventually embrace the lifestyle and in fact excel at it (Bella as the most awesome vampire ever), but it seems like here she's rejecting it?
I haven't read the Twilight books (well except for excerpts and the first 50 or so pages)...so I'm guessing on those. For the most part, the heroine in 50 Shades rejects it. A better way of stating it? Is they negotiate a middle ground. Occasional kinky sex play. But only at her urging. No canes, no floggers, no whips (except for one riding crop), no sex toys she doesn't like. So she definitely doesn't "embrace" his lifestyle, but I wouldn't say she rejects it either...so much as they find a compromise. Also unlike Bella who appears to let Edward take her over and her life over, Ana seems to fight back...she saves him, he never saves her. She saves herself. She shoots the bad guy and saves his sister. He hates guns. She kicks the bad guy in the balls when he tries to rape her. In this book - the heroine has a lot of power...more than they usually do in these sorts of novels. Which I found surprising, considering it was a Twilight fanfic. You'd think it would have been the opposite?
So, I'm guessing much like Buffy fanfic, 50 Shades is a reaction to Twilight or the writer fixing the things she didn't like about Twilight?
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