People: "Fifty Shades depicts an abusive relationship" E. L. James: "OMG no it doesn't and saying that actually trivializes what _real abuse survivors_ go through!!!" Real Abuse Survivors: "What I went through was pretty much this." E. L. James: "Shut the f*ck up."
It makes me wonder if she has been so extremely abused and gaslit that she thinks of this as normal... or if she herself has been the abuser and refuses to see her own actions as such.
@@Rose-ef2cm well, considering Dan's conclusion in the latest video that Christian, not Ana, is her self-insert character, I guess we can infer the later.
@@Rose-ef2cm I suspect it has more to do with the wind tunnel that can form when one never hears outside criticism (something that happens with a lot of fanfiction). They are only fed worshiping praise and any honest criticism is just people being "haters". You see it in other areas, for example George Lucas and Micheal Bay.
Rose first I’ve seen that suggested, but I can definitely see my ex thinking this is a great romance purely in an attempt to excuse his behavior, which is his favorite thing to do.
@@qazwsx6340 I mean ye that part is impressive, I don't agree with many of her stances she takes in and out of her story but she did indeed make the biggest profit on the smallest budget
IIRC, there’s a moment in the original where Bella tearfully says “You are the Master of your Universe, Edward!” The most natural dialogue ever written
@@anthonythompson6053 plot twist, this is actually true and this is some kind of horrific 'enchanted' style real would au where price Adam has to learn a lesson about true love
My roommate in uni referred to his bed as the Lovemaking Chariot. Different vibe but same power level. (He was entirely monogamous his entire time in uni, and his partner would stay the night every Thursday. This made it much funnier.)
Oh god... When he quoted that I just wanted to call the cops to the writer. Did she NOT proof read this and not think this sounds like something a pedophile would say???
@@Starmadien2019 this is why i get weirded out when people refer an adult as a man/woman and someone whos age is not revealed as boy or girl Its just creepy. (Btw, im talking about fanfics where they fuCK like most)
How is not completely exhausting to read a book where the narrator’s reaction to every single occurrence is “Holy craparoni!!! What in the fricking heckballs is going on????”
I shit you not, the book contains Ana rhapsodising about how amazed she is that Christian can fly a helicopter at night, "OMGWTFBBQ but it's DARK!", apparently not realising headlights exist.
But seriously, how great would it have been if Christian was like "through here is my playroom" And Ana was like "what, like your xbox?" and Christian was like "yeah" and they just played Jet Set Radio Future the rest of the movie.
I would absolutely watch a movie length JSRF let's play featuring Dakota Johnson and a nude Jamie Dornan. Over the opening titles they could both be doing the various character dances. Jamie busting out the Roboy and Dakota doing an absolutely perfect Gum
Can we get a spin-off where Ana and Christian become TH-camrs that bond over their love of classic videogames and not this crappy classless work of bondage? (No offense, to the movie. All intended offense to the author and all the bastardizations of literature she's spawned that shackles a great concept to shit source material.)
"Anna tries to sex him back to happiness by letting him tie her up and blindfold her, but it doesn't work, because it's not extreme enough, so he's sitting, up late at night, playing sad piano." xD
Well. I have now watched an hour of analysis into a movie I have never seen, a book I've never read, and fanfiction I barely knew existed. It was worth it.
Oh but he *loves* her and *knows what's best*. /sarcasm I wish there was better erotica/porn out there for women that people felt comfortable talking about openly. Women deserve better than this...
Bibliophile_Writer What? Are you saying women consider sex to be a titillating experience? I would have never have guessed from male erotica that women did the sex.\s
When she wakes up after he takes her back to his hotel (after she gets drunk and assaulted by José) Ana is shocked that Christian didn't have sex with her while she was passed out, and she's sad and offended because she wonders if that means he's actually not into her. So in a way, Christian gets points from the story for not straight-up raping her (what a gentleman!), but simultaneously we find out that Ana equates rape with sexual interest...?
Lets not forget that he give Ana a whole lot of alcohol and blinds her with goodies before he makes a preposition or wants her to sign something Like before she signed the NDA he gave her a wine , in the boardroom meeting for the contract he had also some wine, when he broke into her house though in the book its like he became( harry potter and popped into her apartment) he came with wine . He always fixes issues with sex . He broke into her apartment she wanted to argue it was wrong of him but she was sooo horny (according to the book") they had sex, every time they had sex and he would always fantasize punishing her . In reality abusers always rape their victims "to feel the issue is solved and "calmn the victims" What El fuckery did was she turned a rape domestic abuse stalker boyfriend into a romantic tale. I guess in that universe Ted Bundy was the Pope and Charles Manson was the president .
"Grimacing, agonized face" is even more fitting, both because of the dialogue played over the clip being god awful, but also because Robert Pattinson once said in an interview that he based his facial expressions on how uncomfortable his colour contacts were making him. It's not him not being able to act, that is a genuinely agonized man.
@@Shadowlegendlover And Pattinson also said that he could not understand the character and is kept being told to tone down his expressions to the point of not having facial expressions at all. So being uncomfortable is pretty much all that left. LoL
@@kd0079 Pattinson is actually a pretty good actor and I like that we have gotten to the stage where most people are able to recognize that Twilight being his first really big role was kinda unfortunate. He did good with what he got, but it wasn't exactly easy to salvage.
@@dig8634 I agree. I know a lot of male movie fans that thought he is "that pretty face from twilight that can fool chicks only", but is very pleasantly surprised by his role in Tenet.
Gilda Hobbs - I started the rabbit hole. This was the hundredth time I’ve seen this fanfic mentioned and finally decided to look into it. It has its own Wikipedia page. I feel the need to read it. Just for the lols if anything. Is it really that bad?
Well...it is so bad it is funny. Personally I would recommend looking up a commentary of it. There is an absolutely hilariously one of AO3. I was in the same position as you and I would not have been able to finish it without that sarcastic side notes!
HC Iapetus- also if you are looking for so bad it’s good HP fanfic Hogwarts School of prayer and miracles is my personal favorite, i especially love peculiar banana’s commentary on AO3
Well My Ghost Won’t Associate With Your Ghost - thank you for the feedback and advice. I think I will check it out, especially if I can get some sarcasm attached to it. Would you say it’s like The Room of fanfics? (If you haven’t seen The Room, it’s the ultimate “so bad, it’s good movie”, along with any movie done by Neil Breen) I haven’t read a fanfic in a long time. Unless you count me reading some chapters of my best friend’s fics before she posts them. Used to read a lot of DC Marvel crossover fics, some Heroes fics. Actually never read a HP fanfic, but that’s mostly because by the time I got massively in love with HP, I got busy with work and stuck with audiobooks. But I’m going to check this one out. Lol
that whole " 'Ana go away, Ana come back, Ana lets get coffee' " scene with Christian was genuinely funny and im mad that even after seeing like a trillion people mock this movie they never point it out
If you ever wanted to know how genuine your support is, ponder this: out of 1k upvote, either no one had enough brain to reply anything to you, or it's all bots supporting some agenda. Either way, you're on the losing side of mankind, clapping at your own funeral.
Dakota Johnson really did a great job in this role, and I think the moments of good filmmaking and adaptation are the moments where that shines through the most
It was such a cute scene, and honestly, if I think fondly of the film at all, it's for the few moments like that that it had. It feels much warmer and more human.
In a vacuum, this is a movie about a woman figuring out that a man is pushing her into being something she doesn't want to be and, the man suffering because of his actions by losing her, which is what that scene foreshadows. Unfortunately, the rest of this series appears to be designed to undercut that message.
From everything about Anna, we can match it to Erika being prickly, and infer she is a genuinely unpleasant person, perhaps even a terrible person. I've kvetched hardcore about Stephanie Meyer, but at least she isn't an unbearable killjoy.
@@brianmead7556 From all I've heard, Stephanie Meyer seems like a decent person. No saint, but nicer than a lot of authors. Helps that the first comparison to come to mind is ELJ, of course...
I'd love for her to find out that "After" by Anna Todd is partially 50 Shades fanfic (it's under the One Direction category and based on One Direction Fanfic, but it actually incorporates a lot of plot points, including the main romance dynamic, from 50 Shades of Grey)
@@Tareltonlives i also read somewhere about a comparison like that that it did start as a oneD fanfic but the author really wanted it to be a fiftyshades kind of fanfic but because of being slapped with a lawsuit she opted its better it was a one direction fanfic
It was really interesting to hear about how the original serialized format influenced the structure. I've heard about these books starting out as fanfiction, but usually just as an insult, not as a neutral variable that impacts them in a specific way.
The problem with fanficnet format is that even with subscription format for each fiction it's pretty hard to compete since the fic list always set to "Newest First" so if you as a writer can only churn a chapter slowly (for example, once a week) that fic of yours will be buried deep in page 3 or more in a day or two (in a popular fandom, in VERY popular fandom it will be buried in matter of hours) and in that kind of environment quality tend to take backseat for the sake of churning as many chapters as they can so visitors can notice the fic. Also don't forget the short attention span, forcing the writers to make each chapter having a certain impact even when it means sacrificing the entire narrative for the sake of bombastic event or revelation.
stellvia hoenheim Fanfics? For attention and popularity. There's only so much fic readers might be inclined to read from time to time, and readers feel validated if the one thing readers pick is their story.
@@GigawingsVideo At least new chapters get you back up on that site, if I understand you right. I’m more familiar with (though long since off) FiMFiction, where the “newest first” sorting was by story. Basically, once you posted part of a story, that was it, its spot in line was set in stone. Any further chapters would just be an extra listing within the story, without boosting its traffic in any way. Serialization is still possible, but not advised: by the time you’re on Chapter 5, your story will probably be on page 8 or beyond, and simply can’t go anywhere but deeper into obscurity. On the other hand, serialization had value in that you were banking on readers catching you early on and waiting eagerly for new chapters; getting new ones after a certain point still probably wasn’t happening, though. Personally, though I wrote a couple serial fics there myself, I simply didn’t care about schedules, posting chapters whenever I wanted. I do want people to read my work, but I write for me first and foremost.
"That's what a submissive would do." That's the exact opposite of what a submissive would do. Like, what the submissive would do is so diagonally opposed to the entirety of the "deal with it" mindset, I don't even know where to begin.
@@MaticTheProtoBut even then, like, don't have Ana be her roommate - have her be a classmate or something! Why would you trust your roommate, who's probably not also a journalist and apparently has never interviewed someone before, with this job!? It's madness!
Mike Rugnetta deserves some kind of award for his performance as Christian Gray. He completely nails the sexy-dangerous tone and delivers the insane dialogue in a believable way.
Man, for someone who was so willing to take and transform a piece of work into her own, Mitchell sure does freak out a lot when somebody would do the same to her own work.
That little "yee-ap" by Dakoda Johnson (31:37 and 55:07) is great, as is her little glance down back at her notes in disbelief to see if she read the "are you gay?" question right. Dornan is not bad, but he dosen't seem to care either, but Johnson is like "This is some premium grade shit and i am going to roll up my sleeves and work it!" I admire actors like that.
Aurelia Verity Dakota Johnson took this movie the same way I took all of my high school projects: the desire to make something laughably great out of the most useless subject. I’d willingly pick the stupidest of topics to work on, because you could incorporate humour and satire into in an unconventional way. She did a good job, I think, with what she could work with. It takes either good talent or sheer luck to be a good enough actress to fine tune comedy when you’re not in a comedic role, and play it off as innocence. Considering her parents are quite successful, I’m hoping it’s the former.
Okay, without context, I seriously thought "i've never taken anyone in the helicopter" meant "I've never fucked anyone in the helicopter" and I was like "weird flex but okay". It took three damn rewatches of this video series to finally put together "Oh, he literally meant 'I've never taken anyone FLYING in my helicopter'... yes that's what he meant".
As a submissive myself, I REALLY wish they would have had Christian violate the safe word like they wanted. It would have made such a strong point about the safe sane and consensual side of BDSM and drawn the line between kink and abuse. Instead, we got the version we did.
Rinoa Page Also, as Dan says, this would have been a great way to SHOW us exactly what Mitchell herself tried to TELL us in Darker about Christian as a “dominant.” But Mitchell has such a terrible understanding of her own story that she didn’t see that!
Oh my god, right? The tale of Mr. Grey interfering with this girl's life, claiming to be a dom, but ultimately proving he lacks the strength, restraint, or leadership ti takes to earn the gift of her submission, could be one of the best stories in BDSM, instead of this.... ugh, it's so horrible it just.... is the word for this kind of trash now. I can't call it anything else, it IS the thing bad kink should be called.
This movie could've been so interesting if Mitchell had given up control and the writers and directors were allowed to a explore a dysfunctional bdsm relationship and ultimately show that Christian is not capable of the responsibility that comes with being a dom with that scene, but instead we get this shit. The one thing that almost redeems it is when Anna says "No!" Before she leaves and he looks taken aback, it seems like he almost expects to be able to lure her back (which sadly he does in later movies) and is actually surprised that she has the strength to turn him away and leave him.
@@asherael We probably wouldn't have gotten exactly that, but something way closer had Mitchell not been on set screaming like a banshee if they wanted to add some (character-I mean-style-I mean-..) difference to her precious Edward-I mean-- Christian. The actually artistic ladies on set/great director were squandered.
On further reflection, I can't believe people openly asked "Why does Mitchell conflate BDSM and kink with abusive and controlling behavior" and "Why does Mitchell think you have to be sick or damaged to enjoy BDSM" and never thought to connect the dots.
Once again an example of the filmmakers knowing the character better than the actual writer. When is Christian ever outdoors in this series, other than his beach honeymoon and the helicopter crash? His whole life is business meetings which require, y'know, business clothes.
TheBananamonger except she isn't talking about communism and it's symbolic colour; it's talking about "The Communist Manifesto", a piece of print media that usually comes with a white-paper cover lol
I'm fairly certain that it was more about bewilderment at the line itself rather than a genuine question about the color of the communist manifesto. Then again, it is edited and this is youtube so everything is possible.
Someone's probably already commented about this, but Ana being perpetually bewildered by literally every sexual encounter is another form of double wish fulfilment, just in a slightly less obvious way. With Christian's gifts, it's easy to see where the double fantasy is: Christian gives her a gift, Ana refuses because she's a "good girl" that isn't greedy or a gold digger, but gets them anyway, allowing her to have her cake and eat it too. However, Ana's sexual ignorance is also a double sided fantasy. By having ignorance about sex, Ana retains her sexual "purity" -- after all, a woman that knows everything about sex is a dirty slut, and a woman who knows about BDSM and is *gasp* excited about it is clearly psychologically troubled. But Christian gives her "good" and "kinky" sex anyway, letting her have the satisfaction of being seduced and pleasured sexually in a "BDSM" lifestyle. It's a way to keep her perpetually virginal and "innocent" which has all sorts of messed up ideas about sexuality and BDSM wrapped into it. But that's to be expected with 50 Shades.
@@maddieb.4282 I actually haven't! This was mainly just me spotting a pattern lol. I read/write a lot of fanfic, have also dabbled into romance lit, and the sexual double standard trope is very common. The male lead needs to be sexually experienced so he can "wow" the female lead, show off how good he is in bed, etc. Female lead is very often virginal or had lousy experiences in bed so she's stunned by male lead's virility, etc. I've seen fics that explore it being the other way around, which I think is really great. But the double standard trope is still way more common. Just think about all the period pieces where the male lead is a "reformed rake" -- slept with every girl in town, but captivated by the female lead, especially if she's virginal and pure lmao. E.L. James just takes it one step further and wants to indulge that moment of pure virgin being wowed by sexual expert over and over again, to the point where it's not just boring, it's sad.
@@chronoxtreme2427 Yes, really great points -- thank you! 🥰 You also explain how her terrible-in-every-way writing can still be really popular -- by scratching a (common but rarely fulfilled) itch really well -- better and more directly than other books.
Honestly, this is a really good point that I feel like a lot of people miss - myself included. Thanks for putting this into words that very few people could have. It's something that's bothered me for a long time, but I never knew how to say it.
The little double take that Dakota Johnson does at 31:45 is great. Given that she’s the last minute fill in for the interview, I like Johnson playing it like she’s seeing these questions for the first time and just now realized what she said out loud. It basically allows the source material to be there while also making fun of it. I think she played that moment perfect.
honestly this lukewarm defence series really opened my eyes to Dakota Johnson's acting! she has some really good comedic timing, i'd love to see her in a competent comedy flick
@@seth5143 suspiria is definitely not underrated with the right people. Even more so the original. Certainly doesn’t have the audience of 50 shades but it’s very well regarded by serious viewers
@@lassielyra ikr? one of the first scenes we're shown of the movie (i haven't watched it) and he leaves Ana alone during a sub drop? girl should've turned tail and RUN
I don't even engage in BDSM, and even I know that aftercare is important. And like Dan said, it's okay for Christian to be a bad guy, so it makes sense he wouldn't engage in aftercare at first, but we should've seen that change over the course of the books
@@sludgeparty not just a sub drop, but I think it's her FIRST sub drop. I was COMPLETELY emotionally unprepared the first time I inadvertently experienced it and was really embarrassed by how I acted for a long time after, despite my partner repeatedly assuring me it was completely okay. Maybe she's tougher emotionally than me, but based the writing I doubt it.
I’m a fan fiction writer, and the clumsy Jacob problem I can totally relate to. I’m in a fandom that has six to nine core people. All the god damn time I find myself clumsily adding characters in to places they should not be just to be like “look, he’s here, look at him being part of this story”.
HA this is super relatable, all the easter eggs it's so hard not to add as a fanfic writer. Actually, one of the things I think is great about Dan's analysis is that he doesn't use the fact that 50 Shades originated as fanfiction to berate it, more to explain why it is the way it is. So like, yeah, it makes sense that Jacob was there throughout Master of the Universe when he didn't serve the story directly, because he *did* serve the story in the sense that he served a purpose for the readers to recognize a character and a character relationship they enjoyed from the original. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it served a perfectly valid function, it's just that it's something that needed to be better handled for the story to have been adapted well. It's not the *fact* that it was fanfiction that's the problem, it's that there are things that work in that medium that don't work for a novel, and lots of those things weren't properly adapted.
The problem is you end up not sure where to place the character especially if its a fan fic , you you begin yo wonder if you should kill the character in a car accident or he just got sick or got deported etc. I also write but one advice people always give me is stick to what you can eat and finish even if its a fanfic just have characters you can handle , you dont need all characters just the main ones only
About the first three minutes: It’s a little sad that they chose such a poorly written fan fiction. I’ve read honest to goodness well-written stories from some people who only have a dozen of comments. It’s a shame.
Yesssss, I still think about this HP fanfic called the Apartment, about Tonks and Lupin meeting when they live in the same building. It's short but really good 👌🎉🎉
@hyrulphicsound 16,000 is a wild underestimate. Forum and blog posts indicate that it broke 50,000 reviews within seven months, far more than any fic still on the site, and eventually reached 56,000. (Sources can be found in question details at bitly/MOTUpopular.)
@hyrulphicsound Indeed. MOTU didn't quite update every day, it seems -- judging from old tweets, I think it updated weekdays for a month or two, then slowed down as is fanfic's wont -- but pretty much any popular Chinese webnovel on Qidian and suchlike will. Some even do twice a day. (Also, MOTU apparently wasn't even very original by Twilight fic standards! Supposedly it took a lot of influence from "The Office" and "The Submissive".)
Some of favorite stories are fan fiction. I've laughed, cried, and everything in between. Fifty shades and after are part of the reasons people believe all fanfiction is terrible. That and the fact that they cater to women's sexual, romantic, and emotional desires.
Comparing Fifty Shades to abuse doesn't demonise women in the community, the book demonises the community. Also, never use zip ties, that shit's dangerous.
Random side note, Anastasia is weirdly naive in 50 shades but with Twilight, although Bella is a virgin and new to romance, she is much more mature. The whole thing about Bella's character is that her mother is super flighty and all over the place, which made Bella grow up young. She was oddly a maternal figure to her mother and was always taking care of things. Bella wasn't super naive. Whereas Ana is weirdly childlike frequently and that makes the "kinky" sex thing all the more un-sexy.
I mean, Bella is still immature, but the ways in which she is immature versus how Ana is immature are very different. Ana is immature in the sense that she is, like Dan says, naïve to the point of farce. She's often confused and overwhelmed to the point where she kinda comes across as being a bit dumb. Bella, on the other hand, is immature in the sense that she's a massive brat. She's still not all that smart, but she is very manipulative and can and will throw what are essentially tantrums if things don't go her way. As for her mother, a lot like the main character in The Book of Henry it's not so much that Renee and Charlie can't take care of themselves, but that Bella self-martyrs because it makes her look good.
Bella is a total brat who throws a ridiculous, months-long tantrum because her boyfriend broke up with her (and then manipulates another boy, stringing him along for purely selfish reasons). She ignores her friends, really hurts her dad, and keeps forgetting her mother (whom she constantly belittles) even exists. That is not what anyone should call mature. Meyer tells us one thing but shows the complete opposite.
So because her mom is "flighty" and she's not that makes her mature? Because judging from her actions, she sure as hell was not. Where does she show any signs of maturity, other than her establishing in the beginning that she "takes care of her mom" or is more of the adult than her mom is? Bella is like that 10 year old girl who wants to only hang out with the bigger kids and thinks she's more "grown up" than her peers because she reads seventeen magazine and watches shows like Gossip Girl and Riverdale lmao. Weird comparison, but still.
What impresses me most is not the quality, depth and excellent structure of your analysis. It's that you presumably had to read all of Fifty Shades and Master of the Universe to bring us this fantastic video. Now that's some goddamn dedication. If people submitting themselves to intense pain by eating a cactus or chugging hot sauce get millions of views, you, my good man, deserve at least twice that amount for the mental and emotional trauma you've endured in the name of entertainment and education.
"Chapters were coming out every two days" I've watched this video multiple times and only now after having started my own web serial, can I say how immensely insane that speed is even if the actual content is pretty low-tier
I'm sure it was made easier by the fact that Mitchell was cribbing straight from Meyer's work, and even when she went off-script she wasn't worrying too much about stuff like structure, foreshadowing and payoffs. Also the fact that you don't have to worry too much about characterisation when the only card in your deck seems to be "Inner Monologue".
Also if I remember correctly she wrote most of her stuff on a Blackberry? I mean I'm a bit of a writer myself but I couldn't imagine writing 3 novels at that speed on the old physical keyboard of a Blackberry.
"I must be the colour of the communist manifesto" The main character briefly mentions communism. Her name is Anastasia. This woman sounds like a naughty little spy to me.
Maria M this is a super old comment, but I really agree. The first movie was awful, but it had some really good camera work because of the director. Christian’s shots are all dark, grey, and desaturated, while what’s-her-face’s scenes are much brighter and better saturated. It’s a visually interesting movie, even if the story was boring and the dialogue was clunky.
Still baffles as to how she retained so much power in the editing process let alone the making of a theatrical movie. I'm a creative writing major and basically the last two years of school taught me "publishers hold the fate of your novel in their hands and if you won't make changes they won't publish you".
The sad thing is that with a few changes Christian could have actually had an arch. When he asks Anna out have him seem a little reluctant like "I never really do this but would you like to get some coffee or something?" Then you could show him hesitating outside the coffee shop, maybe he has to steel himself before he goes inside. Just little things that show the audience that this sort of thing is difficult for him! Maybe you could have the pilot of the helicopter remark on the fact that he's usually the only one in there It's not that hard!
And just like Dan said, just having Anna be the more-so instigator, even as a virgin less reluctant than him, would mean a lot. Its not hard, and Im sure from the other work smoothing this film, it couldve been done, but having him say those things or these implications would mean changing his character a bit, and ohhh boy, mitchell having a conniption fit. The other wonderful ladies on set who worked their damnedest to make it palatable can only do so much, lol. And I think thats kinda the summary of this video.
That moment where Ana says "No!" at the end and Christian stops and makes that "oh shit" face would have led so well into a sequel in which Ana discovers her dominant side and shows Christian how a real dom behaves. Christian learns he's a sub and loves being not in control, leading him to realize how he doesn't know who he is and how much therapy he needs.
@@myettechase honestly, I wanna write a fandfic where after their first breakup, they get separate arcs, where Christian has a breakdown, gets therapy and admits that he was sexually abused, and Ana explores bdsm outside if Christian and finds out she's a dominant. Then they get back together with her as the dom, and Christian learns to trust and be intimate through submissive bdsm play. Bdsm play can actually be really therapeutic for sexual trauma ifs it's done right. Sadly, EL james doesn't understand bdsm enough to write a story about that
Why is it so difficult to have Christian just say, “I like to whip people, it arouses me. It helps me get off. If you’re not comfortable with that, that’s okay. We’re just not compatible.”
Really after watching Lindsay Ellis' Stephanie Meyer video and this, I've come away with respect for Stephanie Meyer. She could have been awful, she could have sued this women but instead she just let her be, that takes a fairly big person in my opinion. Especially considering that she made Twilight to be fairly non sexual. By all accounts she is a pretty nice mum who never berated editors or got upset with fans writing fanfiction. Part of me wishes she weren't so chill, just because E.L kinda deserved to be taken down a peg.
Especially when EL turns around and goes after people for doing the exact same thing. Definitely gives me a lot more respect for how Stephanie Meyer has handled her situation, even if her writing isn't to my taste.
EL James was the best gift anyone could have given Stephenie Meyer. That woman was toxic waste before EL James came along and ripped her off. Once I found myself defending Twilight after the fact I had to take a good hard look in the mirror, lol.
We all complained about Twilight until it's shittier, even more tone deaf cousin came along and showed that 'hey, in retrospect, maybe Twilight wasn't that bad.' Although, as someone who was in the target demographic at the time of the books release, I was not part of the hate brigade. I thoroughly enjoyed being "pants" when reading the novels (kudos to those who get that reference.) That being said, I did not watch the movies, because at that point I was both fed up with the hype and I had come to realize that it's more interesting to BE the vampire than to be the one the vampire is interested in. (I'd rather be Spiderman than Spiderman's Girlfriend.)
Sierra Southwell I still have problems with Twilight, mainly because I attempted to read them. There’s serious problems with the writing , plot, and characters. That something much worse came along, doesn’t make those books good.
Jordan Tullis I feel so sorry that this is the first movie she’s gonna be known for since from all accounts, her acting did the best it could to lift the material.
If it helps, she was in The Social Network. So, if you bump into Dakota Johnson walking down the street, just say "You were awesome in The Social Network!"
@@SamaritanPrime She was also great in _Bad Times at the El Royale_ . I'd recommend it (if you haven't seen it or it's still showing in your local cinema).
jose sexually assaulting her but her still staying friends with him would've made sense as a twilight fanfic because that literally happened with bella and jacob in twilight.
I’m so glad that someone else agrees that what Jacob did constitutes as assault. Bella’s even described as going numb and just waiting for him to be done. And we’re supposed to keep liking him/accept that he and Bella are still friends after this? The Jose plot line in 50 Shades highlights how problematic that dynamic was to begin with.
@@geniehossain3738 exactly! doing anything without someone's consent is assault, even in romance novels, which set a dangerous example for readers. we should hold both meyer and james to that standard.
@@geniehossain3738 I agree as well that what Jacob did should absolutely be seen as assault, pure and simple. She said no SO MANY TIMES, and Jacob just keeps gaslighting her and telling her that she's just fooling herself, and Bella's response to his kiss (freezing) is a very well-documented response to assault that even I have experienced multiple times, unfortunately. Meyer literally describes a trauma response. And after she punches him, he STILL doesn't back down. If you drive someone to the point of getting physical with you to express their nonconsent, you've crossed the line like millennia ago. Some people blame Bella for staying friends with him (and in all honesty, it would have been better if she turned tail and ran), but they don't understand how abuse dynamics work. There's a reason people stay with their abusers and it's not because they secretly like the abuse. It's the opposite; their body and mind go into ultimate defense mode which means not angering the person who is physically stronger than you or has more power/status than you or who can in other ways destroy you or your life. It means shutting down, freezing, and living life on constant alert. The fact that you can be incredibly dependent on someone (either financially, or because of job security, or because you have children together, etc etc) makes it even harder for someone to leave. And the saddest thing is that somehow, people frame Bella staying with Jacob and Edward as "love" and "loyalty", not just excusing that depiction but even idealizing it, making it even MORE difficult for people in those situations to leave, because they're afraid they'll be seen as selfish or disloyal. It's a giant clusterfuck if you ask me.
Yeah because this movie appears to have been made by people who hate the source material and took every possible chance to have fun at it and it’s author’s expense
Honestly, I think Kelly Marcel, Sam Taylor-Johnson and Dakota Johnson all did a fantastic job with the movie. Obviously the movie is still not good, but Dakota Johnson's performance is excellent, especially considering how little Jamie Dornan is bringing to the table, and the writing is excellent considering how awful the source material is.
Abigail Agreed, Johnson did a very good with playing a character as bland and unlikeable as Ana. And I quite liked Taylor-Johnson’s cinematography in the first film. It made the story that much more pleasant to endure. However Dornan seemingly decided, that staring intensely into everyone’s eyes constituted being charismatic and enticing.
I take the biggest issue with this book/movie because, as counter-intuitive as it seems to be, the sub in a *healthy* relationship actually has more "power" than a dominant. Sure, in a scene, episode, encounter, or whatever a couple wants to call it, the dom obviously has full control over the sub in that moment, but only to her (or his!) own boundaries. Subs determine and relay what they are comfortable with before even entering a kink setting with a dom or if they're exploring new things there are safe words, and the dom HAS to respect those boundaries. Most importantly is that the sub should be enthusiastic and want to engage in the things they have submitted to, instead of feeling coerced into doing them by fear that their partner won't want them. Christian never respects Ana's boundaries and doesn't take the hint that she's not into it, which is why I consider their relationship abusive rather than kinky.
Shani D I agree with almost everything you said, except I’d argue that the submissive and the dominant/trix both have the same amount of power; either of them can use their safeword at any time and both of them decide what their soft and hard limits are. It’s more nuanced than that, of course, but I just wanted to point out that even though the safeword is usually seen as something useful only for the bottoms/subs, in a healthy BDSM scene or relationship the dom/top has an equal right to call a stop to the fun times. :)
Most of this fetish-y stuff is just about giving the participants the feeling of [intense experience]. Like, for example, simulating the feeling of breaking into an attractive person's house with the intent to ravage them; simulating the experience of being forcibly restrained and commanded around sexually by a still attractive burglar and kidnapper; while still being able to press the pause button with the safe word if something outside your game of "kidnap" needs attending to. Christian Grey actively dances around with the question of whether he actually means all of his domineering and controlling behavior. Anna certainly is never entirely sure whether it is all "just a sexy game" to him, and this is the core of his BDSM sins.
Research goes a long way, my friend. Unfortunately, Mitchell's ego and fantasies were so beyond herself that she couldn't give a shit about what inconsistencies people point out to her.
@@haggisa I would say in theory the power is even, but what people dont realize is that, to be a dom in a healthy BDSM relationship ok nship requires one to be the giver. In a non-BDSM relationship, there is always a giver and a receiver, in vanilla relationships that role needs to cycle through both parties to maintain balance because Givers burn out. It is the weaker role and it genuinely places the majority of the effort on that individual. In most BDSM relationships, roles rarely if ever change. So the Dom is the Giver with the Sub being the Receiver. It gives the easier job to the sub. Subs have the ultimate power in a relationship because of their position in the cycle of the relationship.
I see the title, and I immediately picture the following scene. Lindsay: Bet you I can make a compelling defense of the "Twilight" books. Dan: Oh, there's no way. No freaking way can you do that. If you can write a defense of Stephenie Meyer and "Twilight" and make it compelling, I will spend an hour defending the 50 Shades movie. Lindsay: **drops "Dear Stephenie Meyer"** Dan: .................. shit.
I feel like there are a lot of words used in these books that fall under the 'I don't think it means what you think it means' category for ELJ. Like, why dubiously? What exactly is dubious about the soup? Or is the soup incidental and the dubiousness is supposed to apply to them, their stares, the convo? There is no context provided that actually makes sense with this quoted sentence's setup.
Electric Boogaloo Fucked up gender dynamic that was too much for my 15 years old self to notice or object to + yes, blandness, that I did not notice because I was too busy mentally getting off on how hot Edward was - besides this, it is not a bad read. I still maintain that. Her work significantly expanded my vocabulary, lol that girl likes fancy words. Its atmosphere was quite yet obessive, it was boy crazy as fuck, it romanticized the supernatural - perfectly designed for teen me. That's got to take some talent, no? I'd still reread it for the memories.
And I liked Bella. Did not think she was as void of personality as everyone around me thought. She was a distinct character to me. I never 'blended' myself into her. She was way too emo and intense and academically gifted for me to relate lmao
"...this engagement was further lubricated by..." You had too much fun writing this script. Edit: and another one I just caught: "...with that as foreplay..." U so sneaky Dan
I have watched this so many times and just now caught that the 7 minute mark he also drops a pun on the name of the title. Can't even tell if it's intentional or not because what he says is such a natural thing to say.
31:00 killed me, because Edward and Bella had sex for the first time, and he accidentally hurt her, and then he got incredibly depressed and refused to have sex with her again. On their honeymoon. Because he refused to have sex with her until they were married. And yes, fanfiction can have a lot of character flexibility, but I'm fairly sure EL James doesn't understand the characters in Twilight. Like, at all.
Actually they didnt really have sex until they both married, they both get into the steaming stuff but Edward stop before it reach to anything, because he says that he feared hurting her, the real reason never the less, is that Meyer is a Mormon and put her dogma into the books, because Meyer is a Mormon and Mormonism forbid people to have sex prior marriage is the reason why Edward and Bella never do it, it a bullshit excuses, because after they marry, they have sex, no issues there.
@@TheKeyser94 I'm really confused by this, because you started out that comment with "Actually", and then said everything I already said? Like, I know.
I'm sure she actually understood Edward's character just fine, it just didn't matter. A huge part of every fandom is made up of stories where the characters have literally nothing - often not even circumstances or setting - in common with the actual source material. Think of things like the millions of words expended on Naruto and Sasuke and crew as normal people in world without magic attending an American high school together. All fanfiction basically exists on a continuum between the original source material with the wording changed a in a few places to things like this. There is probably less fanfiction out there where all of the main characters actually accurately recreate the characterization they possess in the source material than there is successful published fanfic-with-the-serial-numbers-scratched-off out there. Most writers really only want a handful of canned character dynamics, names and the appearances and positive feelings / readerbase associated with them, and possibly the setting. Often not even that much. A lot of the time fanfiction is the way it is because people like the setting and want to play around in it by altering key events, basically doing the equivalent of those 'marvel what if' comics, except those same people have almost certainly spent a few hundred times as much time with the distorted fanfic version of those characters as the original, and in a lot of fandoms the thing they really care about most with that change is getting the main characters to be different - naruto that's hard and edgy and talented and serious like Sasuke, Harry Potter with...basically the same characterization, etc. The reason these characters all inevitably end up not just distorted caricatures - which makes sense for the above reason - but this one specific character over and over again is that they prove to be empty spaces for people to project their power fantasy on top of. They're self-inserts, and even when people aren't doing that on purpose, they come to associate this bland amalgam of others' self-inserts with the character's name and space in the setting more than the character himself. For other people, it isn't about the setting at all but shipping, and they tend to do the exact same thing, except often jettisoning as much of the setting as is necessary to play into their own fantasy - settings come with a lot of pre-established baggage and complexity that can get in the way of you but in a hot younger body and some hot actor getting their fuck on. TL;DR: She might have actually known Edward perfectly well but did not care because she was just far enough down the fanfiction spiral that it was easy to shove her own malformed fantasies into the skins of someone else's characters without second guessing it. She might have never even read the novels (you'd be surprised how many people in various fandoms only know them through the fanfic and have 0 familiarity with the source material) and was always just writing her own original fiction for an audience she knew would have lower quality standards the same way tens of thousands have written a quarter of a shitty original fantasy novel but placed Harry Potter but gay, blonde, and a master of karate in it.
The problem with Christian is that Edwards "dark desire" i.e. lust for Bella's blood was turned into a dark desire" to "punish" and "posses" Anastasia (based on a misinterpretation of BDSM). While in Twilight Edward is self-hating because of his vampiric desire that is in opposition to his love for Bella, Christian has all the possesive and creepy elements of Edward without a real justification for it
Theres no justification for a 100 year old man to try manipulating a teenage girl. Tf are you on? 50 shades being worse doesnt make twilight better. Let's stop that shit.
@@mechamahou8467 but.... In the lore of twilight despite him being well over 100 years old, he's mentally and physically stuck at 17 years old I'm guessing he's a quite bit more mature having gone through 100+ of teenage hormones, but at the end of the day he's still an eternal teenager
@@FIRING_BLIND -I don’t understand how you can be “mentally seventeen” if you’ve lived a hundred years. Your mind doesn’t stay seventeen if your biological clock stops at seventeen.
@@mechamahou8467 -“50 shades being worse doesn’t make Twilight better”-I get that that’s somewhat metaphorical, but one, it’s a definite contradiction, and two, I feel like OP wasn’t really trying to defend Twilight, just point out that Twilight has one redeeming quality to Edward’s behavior while 50 Shades had a wholly different dynamic. One piece of bad media being better than another does not mean that piece of media is good, I agree with you on this, but I don’t think OP argued that to begin with.
@@cthulhutheendless1587 well the idea seemed to be that edward was "justified" in his actions in retrospect when comparing him to a worse individual like christian grey. So it seemed like an attempt at absolving or reframing the character.
I think that the dubious consent situation where book-Anna is perpetually scared and confused about kink and sex actually has some appeal for the target audience. It's like a darker version of the whole "omg I would never want expensive gifts but he just won't stop forcing me to have nice things" fantasy. It's a fantasy for sexually repressed readers where they get to imagine *having* all the "kinky" sex they want without facing the shame of admitting that they *want* to be having that sex.
I mean in some places of society, instead of kink being taboo people will go in the extreme opposite direction instead which is also harmful, where they wanna push kinks on everyone and insist people have to have the exact same ones as them. So there's harm on both "sides" unfortunately. #weliveinasociety lol
"His voice was warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel... or something." Nothing could have prepared me for this. I died laughing here. Someone come pick up my body.
I feel that it hasn't been pointed to enough that this is a book about an English major written by a woman whose whole writing style is "If I use big words, they'll think I'm smart". Maybe it's just the fact that I'm actually an English major, but that's hilarious to me.
OmegaFoxxtrot Well it fits the theme around here. A love story lifts up domestic abuse, a kinky erotica kink shames, an inarticulate hack has an English major as a main character . . . Maybe we should rename this series to Fifty Shades of Tragic Irony.
The virgin sex scene and the 'ive never done...' scene could've been compounded with them laying in bed after sex and him saying, to himself, that he's never done that before. Anna can ask what he means and he can just respond "Have sex in my own bed." and just.. leave it there. Anna could mull over her confusion of the meaning. Shows a mutual exchange of newness and firsts. Or something.
This is a really interesting deep dive. I feel it's likely that the reason she didn't want to have Christian violate Anna's safe word (and got so angry about it) is because then she wouldn't be able to pretend that it's all just healthy consensual kink and not actually abuse.
I don't get the problem. I've read the book and it's very consensual. Christian always asks for consent from her and when she feels disrespected she puts him in his place.
@@cutienerdgirl Consent is a tricky thing, especially in the circumstances in the book. Anna is incredibly childish, and Christian is absolutely aware of it. That's why he manipulates her into giving him what he wants, with alcohol, money, being hot and cold all the time... In the book, it's explicitly stated that Anna doesn't want to play the bdsm thing (she doesn't even call it bdsm, she calls it beating) but she feels like she needs to do it so that Christian will stay with her
Curly Brace Mitchell more than likely made it one of the conditions for her signing over the rights, Universal probably weren’t entirely happy with this, but figured that some 50 Shades has such a late and devoted fan base of the books, they’d still be able to make large amounts of money, despite the wider detracting of the book in popular culture. Which turned out to be right
The work they were adapting was a phenomenon even tho it was absolutely awful, they probably just didn't care, it was gonna make money regardless of quality
I think I heard (or he mentions) that since she had fairly good contact with her fanbase she threatened to tell them not to see the movie, so maybe they gave her the power to make sure she'd go around and tell everyone to see the movie
Explains why the sex scenes in the second and third movie looked like two cousins fucking , like you could see how Jamie and Dakota were so bored , like there was no chemisty in the sex scenes nothing just a married man escaping pregnant wife hormones in Ireland and a single girl with the voice of a fourteen year old single and searching
Quite honestly, he sounds extremely creepy. But that was probably the intent. Doesn't help that the dialogue he's reading sounds like it was being spoken by a serial killer. So yeah, accurate to the character. 👍🏻
As a fanfic writer with many writer friends I cannot stress how annoying EL James is to pretty much everyone in the fic writing community. None of us could think to respond to criticism the way she did, it's frankly embarrassing. Fanfiction already gets a bad rep in mainstream media and her attitude and the work itself aren't doing us any favours. Of all the fanfics there are, including some genuinely good ones which actually stick with people for years just like any good novel would, it's a shame that MotU was chosen to be adapted despite its weak prose and the fact that it's just a lazy, worse retelling of the source material. And the fact that James was such a nightmare to work with is probably going to deter people from wanting to adapt fanfiction in the future - which is a shame, because some of it is genuinely fantastic and deserves to be seen outside of fandom circles.
ActuallyAnanya I desperately hope that does not happen. So much talent out there on the internet deserving of appreciation. And those who dismiss fanfiction out of hand have us to consistently object to their assumptions, do they not?
i honestly cant tell you how much i appreciate and enjoy fanfiction. there are so many beautifully written fanfics i've read whether it be about the harry potter universe or any other fictional universes.. stories that took me on a journey just as good as the original content did. it's just such a shame that it has such a bad rep. there's some amazing authors out there who are exceptionally good at what they do, who on top of everything let people read their work for absolutely free! it's just so unfortunate that it's brushed aside and mostly only taken as a joke.
Loser ??? Why would I be jealous of someone on the receiving end of so much vitriol? I'm not interested in ever getting any of my fanfiction adapted and frankly I don't think any of my work is good enough to warrant that anyway, but I do think it's unfair that fanfiction as a whole is viewed under a specific lens, partially due to her impact. I'm more upset for the sake of my favourite fanfic writers than I am for myself.
Might be interesting to see what they could do with an historical romantic drama or even an erotic thriller. Has there ever been an erotic thriller with female director and writer?
Something that kind of seals the deal on how awful Fifty Shades is for me is the fact that Erika Mitchell seems like a genuinely unpleasant human being. Thin-skinned, belligerent, full of herself, and ignorant in all the worst ways a person can be. She refuses to learn from her mistakes and only comes across as nasty and unprofessional from everything I've heard about her, which honestly makes her creation a little worse for me because you can't even say "I'm sure the author is a nice person but-".
Same, I honestly don’t want to give the series the benefit of the doubt just cuz of Erika Mitchell. She just sounds like the least deserving person possible of her kind of success
@@ailma0400 It's frustrating, honestly. I would say at least Stephanie Meyer comes across as nice enough, but there was that time for the first Twilight movie she got really mad when they casted a black guy as one of the vampires because "Twilight vampires are all pale and white" which is- You know.
@@regularshowman3208 stephanie meyer seems nice enough but she's definitely quite racist/misogynistic between the messages of her book & the way she treats the Quilete, but she doesn't seem as openly unpleasant & awful to be around as mitchell. she's just very mormon
i love how you adress what i hate about the criticism 50 shades faces: the mocking of "mommy porn". I don't get why society wants so desperately to assume that just because a woman is older she can't feel sexual desire. It's like whenever you have kids or are a certain age where women no longer are deemed "attractive", they become immediately totally undesirable and incapable of feeling it
Our culture loves to mock things teenage girls love, and mock things moms love, and mock things young women love. Maybe... our culture just kinda dismisses women altogether 🙃 (along with may other, oppressed groups)
But you also have to seperate that mocking. That mocking can also come from the point that the same people that fully embraced the book and movie did before look down on people living more sexually open lifestyles than them. And it's that hypocrisy that many people mocked. That the thing they'd frequently have to hide was suddenly mainstream, and in such a bad and creepy form at that. So it isn't about them liking erotica. It's about the neighbour speaking down on you because you've had two different guys over two following nights. The ones that's spread rumours about you being a prostitute.
Emily Chb you said exactly what I was coming here to say. I think the issue isn’t so much that it’s “mommy porn” and more that the demographic that ate this schlock up were the same ones that would be clutching their pearls at any other sort of mainstream portrayal of sex in media. The cognitive dissonance of the suburban mom who would scowl at you for cursing in public but then would give EL James’ poorly written rape fantasies a free pass because it’s “hot.”
You know what really grinds my gears? When my boyfriend doesn't let me do things on my own! I mean holy crap guys, I just want to go out with my friends and he tells me I hafta go and have really kinky sex with him. Honestly, it's crazy!
Best you can say is that it helps with writer's confidence. When you doubt your skills as a writer just remember: 50 shades got published 50 shades was a best seller 50 shades was made into a movie.
Does the direct opposite for me, honestly. There's this feeling among mobile game development, where no matter how well planned, well crafted, well built a game is, nothing can predict what the next big hit will be. With comic books, movies, writing, all ending up down the same path, the feeling that even such technically, mechanically poor material can be thrust to such great heights, is really disheartening. Why struggle to create a skilled work when the next success might as well be chosen by lawn darts, you know? And I know the answer is "Do it for yourself, not for the money" but still, it's quite the blow to the motivation. Why struggle to be the wheat, when the bread is made of chaff.
I would like to remind myself of the encouragement in this line of thinking but I still have such a problem with believing I can write good stories, but thank you for the encouraging words 😊
The prose in Fifty Shades is unintentionally peak comedy. Anna’s reaction to everything is “Gee whiz! Ah shucks! Wowzers!” I feel inspired to read it in its entirety
It's very very funny to read in a group. Drinking game for every interjection from Ana! Or any time there's a food smile. Or anytime Christian "glare/glowers/stares" at Ana
I always see comments saying the books are better, when the books give very weak characteristics to the characters. Ana is still rather bland, but at least she has a backbone in the films and is willing to give her opinion whether Christian likes it or not. I loved the scene when she told Christian that she would more than happily leave him just to have that baby due to his immature reaction. The scenes where she basically tells him to fuck off are much more convincing than the scenes they have when they're being romantic and that says a lot.
Okay deviating from the point of the video because he is so right about fanfiction, "literary version of childhood play" is SUCH a good description, I can't believe I never thought of it like that. We're playing with our toys and making them deviate and tell stories that WE think are cool, interesting, and fun. I had three different toy castles sets when I was a child. I would take all of them out at once and have warring factions, or maybe two sets of knights would attack a wizard, or maybe the princess doll would save the day by killing the king. That's... kind of what happens in fanfiction. Only instead we do heart-breaking angst and tooth-rotting fluff and tropes that everyone makes fun of but, at the end of the day, we all have a vague liking for. You read fanfiction? You have read AT LEAST three coffee shop AUs, don't fucking deny it. Maybe you didn't like it, but you did it, because other elements were good. The author invited you to play and you did because it was fun. Canon is a playground and fanfiction is kids playing at recess.
I def agree, fan work is a way for you to still stay in a world you love, with characters you love, doing things you wouldn't/ haven't gotten to see them do. I've only read on fanfic, a RWBY WhiteRose manga. I don't read fan works normally, because for me it doesn't really scratch the same itch as the source does. But I just need White Rose to happen already, so fucking badly!!! So I sought out a fanfic to help deal with that craving. Sometimes you just got to see to characters date, even if the source hasn't given you that yet lol
There is a fanfic of FairyTail that completely revamps the world and only keeps the characters that I absolutely fell in love with for a while. But I started this message to say that when I was younger, I used to play pretend with a friend that an evil version of the Prince from Cinderella was forcing us to clean the tables after school. Guess that was technically my first fanfic on hindsight. And here I thought I had no interest in it till 2014-2015 ish.
@@RickJaeger Coffee shop AUs are basically what they are. The canon crew either owns, works, and/or visits a Coffee Shop. If you have a ship, they'll also meet in a coffee shop if you're referring to Coffee Shop AU. Most of them are wholesome but I've read one or two that has darker themes.
In defense of how much of a mess book Ana is, as a writer myself who did a lot of serialized fanfiction when I was younger, whenever you get a sad scene there's this desire to escalate it to its highest emotional peak. Because of how the story is doled piecemeal and not taken into consideration as a cohesive and flowing narrative, it's probably easier to imagine that the author came into each chapter wanting to deliver the next emotional gut punch, not realizing that when read as a full work it comes off as writing a character to be debilitatingly emotional. Not to say that this is a good thing, but I can see how it might've played better on fanfiction forums back when this was being updated.
Yeah i feel this. I read an older fanfic of mine a couple days ago. At one thing i would critic the most is the narrator speed (in every "chapter" is often "one Big thing") which portrayed the characters as if there are always changing their mind:D
That’s probably why I love writing reaction fanfics, you don’t really have to worry about the rhythm, since it already exists That being said, even then you do have to balance the rhythm of your fic with the pace of the original story
I really dislike fanfics that are like that, and I'm glad they're seemingly falling out of favour, but I do think that it's funny to think about.... That kind of story writing is 100% how a lot of newspaper serials were, where everything had to end with a twist or a death or something, and now is commonly seen in soap operas.
Y’know what? Not only are you absolutely right, but that’s exactly the kind of insight that a FICTION EDITOR would’ve provided. You’ve further proven how much of a preventable mess this all was, simply because Erika Mitchel is the worst.
I have the opposite problem. I want my scenes impactful, but I don't want my characters to suffer. So I have a tendency to 'skip' the pain. Good news is that I no longer publish stories unless the chalters can function as standalone stories while I work on writing the rest of it. More time to work through that problem and give the writing the emotion it deserves.
Wow. she can't take criticism and immaturely replies to people who give her negative reviews. *She seems like a lovely person* Stephanie wasn't the best author, I wouldn't even go as far to say she's a good author--though the films are a guilty pleasure even if I always criticize it while watching--but Erika took a not-good author's work and plagiarized it to be worse, lmfao.
No, I'm going to have to contradict you there. Meyer isn't a great writer, but she is good. That's not to say she's anything to write home about, but she is competent. Her dialogue through the serious is mostly human, save for Edward who's a hipster-emo vampire and not even born in the same generation as most of his current peers, you have a good feel of Bella and how her mind works by the end of basically the first page. Given that it is a first person perspective narrative, we're generally aware of the flow of events and Bella's thoughts on the goings on, and very little of it drags with no aim or purpose, the first book was well written and competent. That's not to say none of the following books dragged. New Moon dragged significantly after Bella's "I don't want to age spiel" and Edward leaving, but she exhibited all the signs I could think of for depression, including strange eating/sleeping habits, receding from social obligations, avoiding friends, and reckless behavior. So for events to drag or be blurry is quite accurate, speaking from experience. And seeing as Eclipse is my favorite movie I'm not going to speak of its predecessor. I will say, as a whole, a lot of Breaking Dawn drags out in a very unattractive manner, and the wedding should've just been tacked on to Ellipse with the reveal of maybe pregnant Bella as the cliffhanger climax. Then breaking dawn could've focused on its main two archs of making sure Bella survived the pregnancy and the confusion of whether the volturi would or wouldn't kill the lamp... I mean child.
you have interesting observations and points. though speaking from personal taste, I don't think of the books very highly and Stephanie as a good author, and if not for watching the films when I was younger--thus making it apart of my childhood--I wouldn't have liked the films in the first place and be a little more lenient on my opinions. the idea of her story was *creative* however it seemed poorly executed with the sparkling vampires, the pregnancy between mortal and undead when Edward's blood is frozen... as is his sperm. She did open up a new perspective of the supernatural and creatively so by making the bad boy a vampire and making the "bad boy - good girl" genre more interesting (I think it was mentioned in a video about the vampire myth in films by Now You See It) and if she wasn't the first, she sure did make it very popular. the books and films became a pop culture phenomenon, and I can guarantee that in ten more years, it'll essentially become a cult classic because people have called the films "so bad that it's good."
RAEBELE like I said. Meyer, as an author, is noting to write home about. But she is competent. She had a fun idea, and managed to create characters that were actually characters. In the first book, you get a good sense of the characters. Bella is definitely a teenager with a big thing for her school's local vampire bad boy. Edward is definitely a hipster-emo vampire who at points enjoys and mocks his own immortality. Alice is a manic pixie type with a thing for fashion. Jasper is a very young vampire still struggling to open up. Meyer didn't execute her ideas perfectly, or even all that well, but she can write a character piece, and do so well enough. Because her characters are characters, unlike James' copy and paste cut outs. And that is me being generous describing the characters in 50 Shades. As Anna has so little character, it's hard to imagine what she'd do if she hadn't met Christian Grey. You're very right about the films though, because I was in middle school when the first Twilight film came out, parts of it have a special place in my heart and I imagine Twilight might eventually become a household name much like Harry Potter is already starting to, and some of my personal favorites, the Princess Bride and Willy Wonka.
Lol, it came out when I was 6 and my mom had to cover my eyes for basically half of the movie but growing up with older sisters made me fall into the giggly schoolgirl hype of the franchise. Twilight, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Hunger Games basically sum up of my childhood franchises. But between guilty pleasure films, it's; Twilight, Aquamarine, White Chicks, Mean Girls, Bratz Movie, etc. so I will give Meyer credit because her work has become a household name. You think "Twilight" and you think of a sparkling vampire.
RAEBELE Yeah, in my opinion, Stephanie had a couple somewhat interesting ideas that were just poorly executed. But if this video did one thing, it caused me to have more respect for her. Stephanie seemed to genuinely enjoy taking part in the process of creating the Twilight Saga (whether it just be for the money or not) with those involved. And while I’m sure there were creative differences and arguments that took place, I don’t recall every hearing about Stephanie being rude, disrespectful, or just human garbage in general like this wreck of a person seems to be. Literally every tidbit I’ve heard about this wannabe “creator” has been negative. Plus, Twilight introduced us to Robert Pattinson who is showing his growing strength in acting as his resume builds and the soundtracks were pretty awesome so I can never hate Stephanie.
there seem to be two possible good stories in this soup of a source material, neither of which we actually got to see -option one: the story of a young woman who gets thrown into an abusive relationship the second she gets out of college, eventually realizes what's up, and gets out. it's a story that's grounded and serious and makes all the creepy shit christian does serve a narrative purpose. it also fits with how the final scene of the movie is put together. -option two: the story of a young woman who's kinda sexually repressed meeting a young man who's kinda emotionally repressed, and over the course of their relationship they thaw each other out a bit and do almost a full role reversal, where christian finds that his faux version of dominance wasn't a good coping mechanism and he actually rather likes mushy romance, and where anastasia finds that she actually rather likes bdsm and her purely, as it were, vanilla lifestyle wasn't really doing for her. it's a lighter story with serious beats that has a rather fun resolution and deals with the poor portrayal of bdsm by eventually having ana, the "undamaged" one, be more actually into it than christian, and deals with the abusive elements by just having christian be softer from the start
Or option 3 : the story of a young goldigger woman willing to take whatever rich dorky guy gives her abuse or not as long as she gets to wear gucci and ride in lambo shes all in
Honestly, there's probably at least three in there. I mean, maybe it's only obvious to me because I kind of spent my late teens and early 20s pretty repressed about my own very specific BDSM fetish (not kink), but it seems pretty clear what threads from twilight she was drawing from here when writing the original fanfic. Christian Gray being a sadist was meant to be directly equivalent to Edward Cullen's thirst for human blood...except a massive part of that character is that fact that he's so massively repressed and self-hating over it (for good reason, given that it's homicidal literal bloodlust). It required a serious amount of incompetence or just as likely a deliberate decision to excise the essence of the character for Christian Gray to wind up the way he is, so you wind up with a version of Twilight that is about Mina Harker dating Vlad Dracula as he drains her half to death nightly and convinces her this is just the price of admission for staying in his rad castle. It would probably have been just as easy if not easier to keep the deeply-repressed ashamed of his desires side of the character there with the Disgustingly Confident Swaggering Billionaire interpretation she decided to take the rest of the character in and turn it into an even less traditional romance where in addition to being a sexual coming of age story for Anastasia, through the relationship she helps him come to terms with and accept the side of himself that can't help but be really, really into sexual dominance play and stop seeing it as a type of damage or perversion. Like...you basically just keep the parts of the character that people find sexy, excise the parts that people find scary, and replace them with the parts of the original character she deconstructed to make him that made an actual vampire that spent like a century murdering people into a relatable sad puppy. Hell, you could even keep some of the slightly fucked up shit that has people involved in the community seeing Manifesto Colors - him just fucking off after a session and leaving her crying, some amount of the creepy controlling-ness that have been part of the character since he was written by Meyer, etc - except address it as the big deal that it is, show him learning from it, trying to make up for it, and actually making progress towards being a more well-rounded human being as part of their mutually struggle to fumble in the dark towards making a healthy relationship work within the limits of who they are. There are definitely lots of moderately competent stories buried in there. Given that it's basically just the author's weird noncon/dubcon fantasy injected into the bones of a still-kinda-fucked-up but nonetheless *much* healthier romance story, there are probably a dozen or so buried in the infinite gradients between the two. But yeah, any version of this that ends up being played as an actual romance would have to have Anastasia in a role with a lot more agency, ultimately proving the one more in control of the relationship's contents and its pace than the ostensibly dominant one. You know, like real life. Otherwise its a Too Real horror story. There's definitely something deeply fucked up about me being able to say that this would be a healthier, more acceptable romance story if the male lead was more ashamed of himself, though.
As a person who is heavily involved in kink lifestyle, I did not expect to encounter the most succinct description of my problem with 50 Shades in this video. "It's not merely that Master of the Universe and 50 Shades wander into areas of dubious consent. It's that Erika Mitchell as a writer doesn't seem to be entirely aware that that is the territory she's in." BAM. That's it. That's the problem. I read and write dubcon/noncon fanfics, and 50 Shades utterly fails to frame itself as escapist fiction. It comes across as idealized to a point of being actually aspirational. What's so crazy about it to me is that I'm honestly not even sure how to quantify where exactly it goes wrong with the framing, or how to fix it. Even divorced from the author's attempts at defending it, the problem with the framing just beats you in the face if you've ever read actual dubcon/noncon stories. It doesn't go far enough to tip itself into the realm of escapist fantasy, yet still goes too far into the realm of problematic behavior to be considered an actually healthy relationship (by the standards of a reasonable person). 50 Shades exists in a weird, moral limbo that feels almost in denial of itself.
This also illustrates one of the main strengths of AO3 as a fanfic platform over FFn-the fact that it has detailed genre and trope tags means that not only can I easily *find* non- and dub-con fic to read, I can also be pretty sure the author *knows* that's what they're writing.
exactly, in fiction i like a lot of stuff that ranges from questionable to straight up illegal irl, but if it's any good you can always tell the author of the story is aware of what they're doing, even if within the context of the story it's portrayed as ok. and that awareness makes it easy to context switch. i'd argue that's one of the reasons (besides all the ugh bdsm parts) 50 shades is so much worse than twilight. twilight may have shown unhealthy relationships but fundamentally everyone knows that vampires and werewolves are fiction and a situation wherein you date a 100 y/o vampire boy as a teenager will never ever happen in real life so it's not that big a deal. 50 shades is intentionally written as wish fulfillment for real people, with the rich hot guy sweeping the average shy girl off her feet and falling in love with her. you're supposed to identify with it and want this for yourself, not in a "then the cute vampire bad boy takes you because you're so special" way but in a "this is how a relationship should be" way.
It’s funny: out of all the garbage I’ve seen people like Dan bash, 50 Shades is one of only two things where I feel the material speaks to some really f$&@ed up values from the creator in real life. Like “I don’t want to be in the same room as Erika Mitchell and will book it if we ever meet” f$&@ed up.
Did anyone else notice Dakota Johnson's subtle acting when she's forced to ask "Are you gay?" You can sorta catch at the very tail end of the clip he uses, how she asks the question and then does a kind of double-take down at the paper like, "Wait, what?"
Right away, I hope that Dan won't keep his hand up for the whole video. We are ok. Ok, that was so good. I know that Dan does not consider himself a movie critic, but surely he is better than the vast majority of the ones we have on youtube.
Hey, Jack! Dan is one of my favorite youtubers, so I am always here. :-) Brazz, I love to talk culture and consider myself a movie buff. I probably watch too many movies. :-)
I feel like the biggest problem is that Mitchell clearly wrote a book about an abusive relationship and then instead of acknowledging that and saying that it's purely meant as erotica, she acts like what happens in the book is just fine which is worrying because it absolutely is not.
The abuse is the point. Mitchell's original fic has Christian (Edward) as the focal figure. Her fantasy is being the abuser, but that would be harder to sell to a wide audience than simply shitty BDSM.
Mitchell can't ever be wrong, or incorrect, or misinformed, or anything other than perfect. She'll argue for the sake of arguing. The successful way to handle trolls is to ignore them and exclude them from the discussion, but Mitchell just kept getting handed tickets to the party where she proceeded to shit on everyone. Predictably, her first work not Shades related was panned because it was worthless tripe. So she'll likely return to the old well and keep writing Shades material because otherwise her unreadable tripe won't sell and she'll be unable to pay her bills. Hopefully she continues to be a contained cyst which simmers along without affecting anyone else.
Can we please talk about the six strikes with the belt? Like- if you're in the BDSM community, six strikes is not a lot. Also, Christian has riding crops, whips and floggs in his play room. The belt could still work, if one goes with the actual abuse angle. When Christian is given the option and opportunity to do whatever he wants he does not work to put her in the right headspace for it to be pleasurable to her and he does not utilize anything from his actual kink arsenal, he uses something as primitive and blunt as a belt, something more associated with physical abuse, more than BDSM. In that case changing it so that Christian keeps going despite Ana using the safeword could work really well. E L James is just too much of an idiot.
Also it’s common to try and get used to something before just jumping into it, like most people wouldn’t go to a belt, maybe a riding crop or a wooden spoon or something…not right to a belt. I feel like that would totally overwhelm someone who’s A) never had vanilla sex with anyone else before B) barely had any kinky experiences. Christian is a totally irresponsible Dom and and idiot. You can’t just thrust someone into such a delicate emotional and physical state you need trust.
I'm not even in the kink community but I've seen some girls/guys into getting their genitals flogged like insane that whipping her ass with a belt is the worst she could imagine literally just look up ANY bdsm porn
Dear lord I know it is the stupidest thing ever but I forgot E.L. James calls Sriracha 'rooster sauce' and nothing has triggered my fight or flight response like that
Wait, I assumed that "rooster sauce" was some Canadian thing that Dan was referencing (like poutine or the North American house hippo). But it's actually referencing a dumb thing that E.L. James says? 😱
@@jacksobrooks But if you don't want to refer to it as the branded product, just... call it "hot sauce?" "Rooster sauce" sounds like a goofy themed item at a child-oriented restaurant and that's not what anyone wants to think about while reading erotica.
I think one issue I have is that this is the only exposure a lot of people have to "BDSM," and read this as an accurate portrayal. Yeah, I guess scenes of actual sober negotiation, safe words, discussions of SSC (safe, sane, and consensual), and aftercare aren't titillating, but if you neglect them, you're not allowed to call that BDSM. BDSM is inherently consensual, in many ways even more so than vanilla relationships, because pushing the boundaries can be dangerous, so both partners have to know what's happening and be fully consenting at all times. Ana is 100% being abused, and that's not in true BDSM. Any power exchange has to be consensual, otherwise it's literally just abuse by means of exerting control.
Dont forget him using hardware cable ties to tie her up . Like that scene alone was mortifying . They also made the same mistake in the movie and used actual real hardware store cable ties on Dakota , no one realised they were endangering the life of Dakota ???
It's honestly frustrating because when written and acted out well aftercare, discussion of boundaries, etc can be very powerful and emotional scenes, especially in the context of a story about boundaries and emotional intimacy, which the much better version of 50 shades theoretically could be.
@Lex Bright Raven I know this is five months old but W/e. Cable ties are bad for bondage scenes because there's no way to make them less tight. The only thing you can do is pull them tighter. If you pull too much on the first pull you can seriously hurt them.
@@danielbelkin4652 I'm seconding this ^^ if anyone's curious, the webcomic Sunstone did an *excellent* job depicting the ins and outs of a BDSM relationship between two women exploring their sexuality and their feelings for each other. It spent lots of time establishing and exploring the important safety aspects (never leave the sub alone, always have a safeword/gesture, aftercare, etc), while also not shying away from the danger that happens when you don't take the proper precautions (there's a character who decides to tie herself up for her bf, but he ends up coming home later than she expected... it's a chilling and heart-wrenching scene). Also it's very queer and sweet and I love it.
i know it's kinda removed from the video's contents, but whoever did the captions did a really good job. the clear differentiation from movie dialogue, book narration, and commentary really helps to make the captions clear and understandable (as well as a great use of parentheses to show sentence structure)
@@meganvincent5381 this is why it generally sounds like bdsm is an absolutely horrible idea behind incredibly light bondage play maybe. That that scenario is even possible if someone doesnt follow some codified rubric of ethics is a problem in and of itself. If I need a fucking universally agreed upon code of ethics for sex(meaning lots of shit has happened to lead to these rules being made in the first place), it's probably best we dont do it lol. Like I never heard the word "aftercare" until researching BDSM. That one literally has to check if their partner isnt a *crying mess* or scarred emotionally from the sexual encounter(and are considered assholes if they dont do this) and literally invented a name for the practice makes sex so damn contractual and stressful. How tf does anyone do this shit? Why even RISK my partner feeling that way? Why risk how that would make ME feel as her partner?
@@mechamahou8467 It sounds like BDSM just might not be for you, and that's totally okay and valid af. But I'd imagine there's at least one area of your life where you take risks that another person might find unacceptable. And maybe you (rightly) think that many of those risks can be dealt with just by knowing what you're doing and doing things right, and that a lot of those fears are attributable to misunderstandings. This is just you being on the other side of that situation.
@@mechamahou8467 Do we need the "sex itself needs consent" talk again? Do we need to detail the ways vanilla sex also risks physical, mental, and emotional vulnerability? Do we need to list the ways that any sexual partnership risks leaving one or more parties temporarily or permanently traumatized or triggered from past trauma? "If I need a fucking universally agreed upon code of ethics for sex" Yeah, apparently we do. Short version: Stay the hell away from everyone else until you stop assuming your version of sex is universally acceptable and any partner you choose would be fine with it because you yourself are fine with it. That's a rapist's mentality.
I just love how the... was it director and screenwriter? Tried really hard to make a decent movie out of the absolute trashfire that is the source material, did pretty good at it, and got fired for it. Iconic lmfao
yeah like something that I see a lot in reviews for fifty shades is specifically how the first movie is actually decently well shot and does some interesting things with the cinematography. And then we never get that again.
I really enjoyed his analysis. This one was more nuanced, I think and demonstrates the critics familiarity with derectorial and literary conventions as well as quality storytelling and correct structure of plot and grammer.
Here's The Dom's video about Fifty Shades for anybody who's too lazy to google it: th-cam.com/video/Ze9iikBabns/w-d-xo.html I've only seen one of his videos, and I didn't watch much more because of how he framed it as adaptations "getting stuff right" and what "mistakes they made"--buuut, judging from literally the first seven seconds of that Fifty Shades video, it sounds like he evolved his stance on that, so maybe I'll check it out after the essay I'm supposed to be writing is done!
@@Flowtail Just for clarification for those who haven't watched The Dom's channel: Dom compares and contrasts books with their film adaptations. It's less about whether the book/film itself is good or not, but more about how faithful a film adaptation is to its source material. So the "getting stuff right" is being faithful to the source material, whereas the "mistakes" are things that are changed in the film for no good reason. (Although there have been some book-to-screen changes that Dom has approved of). Having said that, he does go more in depth with the problems of the Fifty Shades novels as well as the films, because man are there some serious issues. If you're just starting out with his channel, I'd start with the Fifty Shades playlist, they're pretty good.
Glad you addressed the fact that fiction is a good place to explore dangerous, unsafe scenarios. I've seen quite some discourse where people say you can't enjoy fiction with elements of danger or illegal activity such as rape, murder, or incest, because in that way you condone those things. But really, fiction is a place where you can explore those ideas, emotions, and scenarios without hurting anyone but being able to still "feel" its danger or taboo. Humans are curious creatures; no matter how taboo, illegal or immoral something is, we still are curious about it and there's nothing wrong with it. And like you mentioned, it can have danger if written incorrectly though, but that comes with almost anything. You need to take care with what you say, do, write, act, etc., because otherwise it does have genuine risk.
dearestloverboy I also feel like porn (especially written erotica, with no actors) should get a little extra leeway. There is absolutely zero accounting for what turns you on. A lot of the stuff I read when I’m polishing I would feel a great deal of shame if others knew about. It’s the extreme shit that tantalized the most.
I know this is an old comment but I wanted to express my appreciation. Someone finally gets it. You could amuse yourself with fantasies of being a sword-fighting assassin but that doesn't mean you want to be one in real life, because you acknowledge that your fantasised scenario isn't reality. No-one is getting hurt; you're having harmless fun. It's also why I'm not convinced by the video games causing violence argument. Any reasonable person knows there's a difference between pressing buttons and pulling an actual trigger.
@@wheeliebin1791 Can I also add that I think one of the main problems with Fifty Shades is it fundamentally doesn't work as an erotica. It's a bdsm fantasy in the context of bdsm (which isn't even an accurate portrayal of bdsm, but that's besides the point I'm trying to make.) There's already a power dynamic between the two characters, and that on its own is a pretty common foundation for erotica. But because the story is written as them doing bdsm, it removes the safety net of fantasy, and brings it far enough into reality that it becomes a story of domestic abuse. Essentially, it breaks the fourth wall and any suspension of disbelief, and erotica is a genre where those things are especially important.
That's why i'm glad I see movies/TV shows/books exploring topics that are considered weird, unrealistic, and forbidden. (Example: The Shape of Water and Lolita). Sure, it may make people feel offended but if you're wise enough then you can know how to separate it from fiction to real life.
Ugh, his lack of aftercare after her first spanking drives me insane. Like Jesus Christ. I hate this movie/book. As a 24/7 sub- communication is key. To just up and leave after your subs first play session (even experienced subs require heavy aftercare when trying to new type of play) is just insane. She needs to be able to think through and talk through what they have thought and felt. They need to be told that they done nothing wrong and that they aren’t broken or weird. It just drives me insane that this is the way that a lot of people are introduced to BDSM. It’s how I was and it completely threw me off. I was later introduced by actual BDSM players and I found that it was incredibly different than what was shown. If I had never met bdsm players and was open to learning- I would never be as fulfilled (not just sexually but in all aspects of life) today.
Aftercare is everything! I'm a switch myself and I've never read it but James did NO research whatsoever. She didn't even try, and the people who read it are so ignorant they don't care. Speaking of, my Dom mom always gives me tea and biscuits! And cuddles,of course
I am a virgin that has no desire (as of yet) to engage in BDSM and even I know that whatever the fuck this woman was trying to write has NOTHING to do with BDSM. I have literally not even researched it that well but with the limited knowledge I have, I still know that BDSM is not about fucking beating a person and getting off on it, while they are scared shitless. If it were like that I doubt that so many people would be into it and happy in their relationships. That last point seems like just common sense (again, I know nothing)
@@Yawyna124 The idiom is that your heart "jumps into your throat," as in, from where it is within you. "Slams into your mouth" is a somewhat different image: ❤➡💥👄
@@jacoblessing7929 Yeah, and it's figurative language for when you're stressed and you can palpably feel your pulse internally, and it's hard to breath, not literally "Man, my heart is now in my throat."
You can't just swap vaguely similar words into and out of figurative expressions (especially traditional set phrases,) and expect the meaning or force to be preserved. If a person looks gloomy, you wouldn't, for instance, ask them "Why are you in a chocolate scrutiny?" The reason is that figures of speech evoke very particular images (whence _figurative._ ) As you say, when one is nervous, one might feel a quite particular feeling, not easy to describe, but very like not being able to breathe,and a metaphor of something obstructing your windpipe does very well. "Slams into your mouth" is more like a description of being hit in the face by an external force, and is a much less effective metaphor. I would have thought this would be a plainly evident fact to anybody...
I read the first book only, in which the most common phrase in Anna's internal dialogue is "Oh, my." All it takes is once -- just once! -- imagining that phrase delivered in George Takei's voice: "OH, Myyyyyy!" And the entire book becomes an irrevocable comedy.
Clara Kolterman Do it then!! There are 10,000 resources out there to help aspiring writers like yourself make better romance, better erotica, better kink, better mystery, just better everything. So go for it!!
@@lamia4511 It makes you wonder if James lived an insanely massively sheltered life somehow if she thinks it is believable for young adults to not understand sex
"There's potentially a decent erotic thriller or even erotic horror buried somewhere in the experience." You have piqued my interest. I didn't know "erotic horror" was a recognized _thing,_ and that sounds like something that has the potential to be _staggeringly_ horrifying.
I guess you could put tentacle p0rn into the „erotic horror“ section. Anything that is nightmare fuel, but at the same time makes you curious and intrigued, because „how would that even WORK???“ 😂
@@ArDeeMee I guess that works, but for different reasons. While tentacle porn seems to come up a surprising amount, especially in anime (supposedly, I haven’t watched too much anime), from what I understand it’s seen as a generally negative thing by most, rather than most kinks naturally having their fans. A big part of that, and the true horror, is that tentacle porn is not merely erotic, but often violation. Likewise, I think an “erotic horror” would be something along the lines of if Fifty Shades was aware of the abuse issues and doubled down. Have the erotic aspects be a medium for the horror. Given the bit Dan mentions about Ladykiller in a Bind, I’m willing to bet the disturbing scenario he brought up was along these lines.
People: "Fifty Shades depicts an abusive relationship"
E. L. James: "OMG no it doesn't and saying that actually trivializes what _real abuse survivors_ go through!!!"
Real Abuse Survivors: "What I went through was pretty much this."
E. L. James: "Shut the f*ck up."
TRUTH. She's honestly the worst and the only person trivializing abuse is her.
It makes me wonder if she has been so extremely abused and gaslit that she thinks of this as normal... or if she herself has been the abuser and refuses to see her own actions as such.
@@Rose-ef2cm well, considering Dan's conclusion in the latest video that Christian, not Ana, is her self-insert character, I guess we can infer the later.
@@Rose-ef2cm I suspect it has more to do with the wind tunnel that can form when one never hears outside criticism (something that happens with a lot of fanfiction). They are only fed worshiping praise and any honest criticism is just people being "haters". You see it in other areas, for example George Lucas and Micheal Bay.
Rose first I’ve seen that suggested, but I can definitely see my ex thinking this is a great romance purely in an attempt to excuse his behavior, which is his favorite thing to do.
"I was drafted. She's not well." Anastasia sounds like a soldier from WW2 being forced to go in place of her sick mother.
I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE
The plot of Mulan, but bad
@@nanhty8321 Still more interesting than the actual 50 Shades!
Like a gender-swapped Mulan.
@@reginaldbarclay1637 ...did you watch Mulan?
A fanfic writer calling other fanfic writers 'parasitic' is certainly something
she wrote like, two twilight fics b4 50SOG no?
@@alicemadness999 on her blackberry which is another reason why she did zero to no corrections
@@razagan1343 oh my god,,,,,
@@razagan1343 gotta respect the hustle tbh
@@qazwsx6340 I mean ye that part is impressive, I don't agree with many of her stances she takes in and out of her story but she did indeed make the biggest profit on the smallest budget
Alternate Title: Your PhD-having uncle teaches you about smutty fanfiction
i feel like i’ve definitely watched an asmr or joi video with that exact title ;)
Im more interested why its called like that? Didnt she heard of HeMan, or is it deliberate?
IIRC, there’s a moment in the original where Bella tearfully says “You are the Master of your Universe, Edward!”
The most natural dialogue ever written
@@anthonythompson6053 You have the Poweeeeer!
@@anthonythompson6053 plot twist, this is actually true and this is some kind of horrific 'enchanted' style real would au where price Adam has to learn a lesson about true love
"Designated Sex Bed" is a killer name for a punk band.
Lol not really
A gay punk band, I think.
My roommate in uni referred to his bed as the Lovemaking Chariot. Different vibe but same power level. (He was entirely monogamous his entire time in uni, and his partner would stay the night every Thursday. This made it much funnier.)
Now i need to listen to them
Hear, hear! Eyy oi, we're Designated Sex Bed and this is our new single "F*** my heart hard, garbage person"
if i hear the phrase "little brown-haired girls" one more time i will cringe myself off a cliff
Oh god... When he quoted that I just wanted to call the cops to the writer.
Did she NOT proof read this and not think this sounds like something a pedophile would say???
If you haven't already done so, I would advise against watching the rest of this series of videos
if you have watched them, are you okay?
Also the way he says girls. Not women, girls.
@@Starmadien2019 this is why i get weirded out when people refer an adult as a man/woman and someone whos age is not revealed as boy or girl
Its just creepy.
(Btw, im talking about fanfics where they fuCK like most)
Or "Oh My." 😑
"I could feel the color of my cheeks rising again. I must be the color of the communist manifesto." - Stalin
*Stalin x Christian fanfic has entered the chat*
Damiana Dimova God I wish this existed.
@@damianadimova3546 the unshaking will of the proletariat demands that fanfic
@@adeer87 There's Jesus x Hitler fanfic that may tickle your fancy
Floris Bordewijk
I’m disturbed and intrigued.
How is not completely exhausting to read a book where the narrator’s reaction to every single occurrence is “Holy craparoni!!! What in the fricking heckballs is going on????”
+
I shit you not, the book contains Ana rhapsodising about how amazed she is that Christian can fly a helicopter at night, "OMGWTFBBQ but it's DARK!", apparently not realising headlights exist.
this comment made my day
@@chelonianmobile Headlights are not the reason helicopters can fly at night
@@JimboRustles Helicopters fly by pushing light out of the way so at night you need headlights to point at the rotors so the can still work
But seriously, how great would it have been if Christian was like "through here is my playroom" And Ana was like "what, like your xbox?" and Christian was like "yeah" and they just played Jet Set Radio Future the rest of the movie.
Yeah that's how you fix that story
Sounds like someone needs to right a fanfiction.
We could call it, "Fifty Colorful Playthroughs".
Literally my life
I would absolutely watch a movie length JSRF let's play featuring Dakota Johnson and a nude Jamie Dornan.
Over the opening titles they could both be doing the various character dances. Jamie busting out the Roboy and Dakota doing an absolutely perfect Gum
Can we get a spin-off where Ana and Christian become TH-camrs that bond over their love of classic videogames and not this crappy classless work of bondage?
(No offense, to the movie. All intended offense to the author and all the bastardizations of literature she's spawned that shackles a great concept to shit source material.)
"Snowqueens Icedragon". Somehow that explains everything.
I've seen a lot of fanfic author names but that is just... WHEW
Hey, that's a totally valid nickname.
You know, if you're 13 years old and designing your own myspace page.
Yep. And she was 46 years old when she came up with that name.
Huh. I actually like the name, it's got kind of a rhythm to it.
"You will never save prince Horace."
"Anna tries to sex him back to happiness by letting him tie her up and blindfold her, but it doesn't work, because it's not extreme enough, so he's sitting, up late at night, playing sad piano." xD
Alexa play sad piano
@@damn_son9683
th-cam.com/video/nqvh0NSBkB4/w-d-xo.html
...Is your profile picture the queer anarchist flag?
@@Whaylie indeed, it is
@@justiziabelle there's a flag for that?
"I'm a sadist, Bella" hit me with the same energy as the "I'm weird. I'm a weirdo" line from Riverdale.
Dylan Sprouse would've been a much better Christian Grey
@@Tanuki-cl7qi underrated comment
@@nana-rt6zt Y'all here from the NFT video too?
@@zamap4278 This comment makes me feel unclean.
I’m a loner, Dotty. A rebel.
Well. I have now watched an hour of analysis into a movie I have never seen, a book I've never read, and fanfiction I barely knew existed. It was worth it.
Tobias Melin I'm so lazy that I rather watch reviews of movies than watch them, just to keep up pop culture.
I usually try to slot in a movie if there's some kind of discussion about it, but I had up to this point managed to expertly evade the 50 Shadesverse.
Totally worth it
I refused on principle to or read 50 shades of gray once I knew it was twilight fanfic. The extra BS was just icing on the top
Me too, this channel is dope
I really like that when Jose gets Anna drunk to take advantage of her the story dings it as a sexual assault, but when Christian does it it's cool
DStecks huh, cool seeing you here, though im a bit late on the draw regardless
Oh but he *loves* her and *knows what's best*. /sarcasm
I wish there was better erotica/porn out there for women that people felt comfortable talking about openly. Women deserve better than this...
Bibliophile_Writer What? Are you saying women consider sex to be a titillating experience? I would have never have guessed from male erotica that women did the sex.\s
When she wakes up after he takes her back to his hotel (after she gets drunk and assaulted by José) Ana is shocked that Christian didn't have sex with her while she was passed out, and she's sad and offended because she wonders if that means he's actually not into her. So in a way, Christian gets points from the story for not straight-up raping her (what a gentleman!), but simultaneously we find out that Ana equates rape with sexual interest...?
Lets not forget that he give Ana a whole lot of alcohol and blinds her with goodies before he makes a preposition or wants her to sign something
Like before she signed the NDA he gave her a wine , in the boardroom meeting for the contract he had also some wine, when he broke into her house though in the book its like he became( harry potter and popped into her apartment) he came with wine .
He always fixes issues with sex .
He broke into her apartment she wanted to argue it was wrong of him but she was sooo horny (according to the book") they had sex, every time they had sex and he would always fantasize punishing her .
In reality abusers always rape their victims "to feel the issue is solved and "calmn the victims"
What El fuckery did was she turned a rape domestic abuse stalker boyfriend into a romantic tale. I guess in that universe Ted Bundy was the Pope and Charles Manson was the president .
The 'I don't make love' line put to Edward's grimacing, agonised face is the most side-splittingly hilarious thing to come out of 50 Shades ever.
+++
"Grimacing, agonized face" is even more fitting, both because of the dialogue played over the clip being god awful, but also because Robert Pattinson once said in an interview that he based his facial expressions on how uncomfortable his colour contacts were making him.
It's not him not being able to act, that is a genuinely agonized man.
@@Shadowlegendlover And Pattinson also said that he could not understand the character and is kept being told to tone down his expressions to the point of not having facial expressions at all. So being uncomfortable is pretty much all that left. LoL
@@kd0079 Pattinson is actually a pretty good actor and I like that we have gotten to the stage where most people are able to recognize that Twilight being his first really big role was kinda unfortunate. He did good with what he got, but it wasn't exactly easy to salvage.
@@dig8634 I agree. I know a lot of male movie fans that thought he is "that pretty face from twilight that can fool chicks only", but is very pleasantly surprised by his role in Tenet.
"And you’re reticent, like your stepdad," is a truly bizarre thing to say to someone in the middle of a sex contract negotiation
With the context provided here that’s one of the funniest lines in the whole video
"did you fuck my stepdad christain grey?"
Just the quotes in this video are one "sir, this is a Wendy's" kind of line after another
Drunk Ana imitating Christian was the only good part of any of these movies.
I would happily watch that for an hour but not fifty shades itself
Fifty Shades of Mocking Gray?
What about the vaginal fisting line?
The best part was the song by Ellie Goulding which is oddly unrelated for supposedly being made for the movie.
"LeT'S gO fOr CoFfEe aNA"
truth be told, I'd rather see My Immortal turned into a major movie trilogy
I'd watch a mockbuster of that
Gilda Hobbs - I started the rabbit hole. This was the hundredth time I’ve seen this fanfic mentioned and finally decided to look into it.
It has its own Wikipedia page.
I feel the need to read it. Just for the lols if anything. Is it really that bad?
Well...it is so bad it is funny. Personally I would recommend looking up a commentary of it. There is an absolutely hilariously one of AO3. I was in the same position as you and I would not have been able to finish it without that sarcastic side notes!
HC Iapetus- also if you are looking for so bad it’s good HP fanfic Hogwarts School of prayer and miracles is my personal favorite, i especially love peculiar banana’s commentary on AO3
Well My Ghost Won’t Associate With Your Ghost - thank you for the feedback and advice. I think I will check it out, especially if I can get some sarcasm attached to it.
Would you say it’s like The Room of fanfics?
(If you haven’t seen The Room, it’s the ultimate “so bad, it’s good movie”, along with any movie done by Neil Breen)
I haven’t read a fanfic in a long time. Unless you count me reading some chapters of my best friend’s fics before she posts them. Used to read a lot of DC Marvel crossover fics, some Heroes fics. Actually never read a HP fanfic, but that’s mostly because by the time I got massively in love with HP, I got busy with work and stuck with audiobooks. But I’m going to check this one out. Lol
"in a society that sees 'porn for women' as both setup and punchline" great line great video
it's mostly nutty college hipsters and predatory 30 year olds
that whole " 'Ana go away, Ana come back, Ana lets get coffee' " scene with Christian was genuinely funny and im mad that even after seeing like a trillion people mock this movie they never point it out
If you ever wanted to know how genuine your support is, ponder this: out of 1k upvote, either no one had enough brain to reply anything to you, or it's all bots supporting some agenda.
Either way, you're on the losing side of mankind, clapping at your own funeral.
Dakota Johnson really did a great job in this role, and I think the moments of good filmmaking and adaptation are the moments where that shines through the most
I guess because it's not that funny. The movie isn't good and that scene doesn't rise that far above it.
It was such a cute scene, and honestly, if I think fondly of the film at all, it's for the few moments like that that it had. It feels much warmer and more human.
In a vacuum, this is a movie about a woman figuring out that a man is pushing her into being something she doesn't want to be and, the man suffering because of his actions by losing her, which is what that scene foreshadows. Unfortunately, the rest of this series appears to be designed to undercut that message.
A lady who became famous for making a shitty fanfiction doesn’t like it when people make derivatives of her work?
Well, that’s just pleasant.
From everything about Anna, we can match it to Erika being prickly, and infer she is a genuinely unpleasant person, perhaps even a terrible person. I've kvetched hardcore about Stephanie Meyer, but at least she isn't an unbearable killjoy.
@@brianmead7556 From all I've heard, Stephanie Meyer seems like a decent person. No saint, but nicer than a lot of authors. Helps that the first comparison to come to mind is ELJ, of course...
I'd love for her to find out that "After" by Anna Todd is partially 50 Shades fanfic (it's under the One Direction category and based on One Direction Fanfic, but it actually incorporates a lot of plot points, including the main romance dynamic, from 50 Shades of Grey)
She gives actual good fanfic writers a real shitty name.
@@Tareltonlives i also read somewhere about a comparison like that that it did start as a oneD fanfic but the author really wanted it to be a fiftyshades kind of fanfic but because of being slapped with a lawsuit she opted its better it was a one direction fanfic
It was really interesting to hear about how the original serialized format influenced the structure. I've heard about these books starting out as fanfiction, but usually just as an insult, not as a neutral variable that impacts them in a specific way.
The problem with fanficnet format is that even with subscription format for each fiction it's pretty hard to compete since the fic list always set to "Newest First" so if you as a writer can only churn a chapter slowly (for example, once a week) that fic of yours will be buried deep in page 3 or more in a day or two (in a popular fandom, in VERY popular fandom it will be buried in matter of hours) and in that kind of environment quality tend to take backseat for the sake of churning as many chapters as they can so visitors can notice the fic. Also don't forget the short attention span, forcing the writers to make each chapter having a certain impact even when it means sacrificing the entire narrative for the sake of bombastic event or revelation.
stellvia hoenheim Fanfics? For attention and popularity. There's only so much fic readers might be inclined to read from time to time, and readers feel validated if the one thing readers pick is their story.
@@GigawingsVideo At least new chapters get you back up on that site, if I understand you right. I’m more familiar with (though long since off) FiMFiction, where the “newest first” sorting was by story. Basically, once you posted part of a story, that was it, its spot in line was set in stone. Any further chapters would just be an extra listing within the story, without boosting its traffic in any way. Serialization is still possible, but not advised: by the time you’re on Chapter 5, your story will probably be on page 8 or beyond, and simply can’t go anywhere but deeper into obscurity. On the other hand, serialization had value in that you were banking on readers catching you early on and waiting eagerly for new chapters; getting new ones after a certain point still probably wasn’t happening, though.
Personally, though I wrote a couple serial fics there myself, I simply didn’t care about schedules, posting chapters whenever I wanted. I do want people to read my work, but I write for me first and foremost.
"That's what a submissive would do."
That's the exact opposite of what a submissive would do. Like, what the submissive would do is so diagonally opposed to the entirety of the "deal with it" mindset, I don't even know where to begin.
Username checks out
I take it you have some personal experience.
My username has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my username.
Absolute king.
Like seeing the title PhD on the author of a medical paper, all is in balance. As it should be.
I just can't get past the unrealistic concept of "I'm sick, so I'm going to ask my roommate to interview some rich guy for me".
You can‘t have her schedule the interview herself. After all, she‘s supposed to be shy and vulnerable for him to abuse
I hate the book
@@MaticTheProtoBut even then, like, don't have Ana be her roommate - have her be a classmate or something! Why would you trust your roommate, who's probably not also a journalist and apparently has never interviewed someone before, with this job!? It's madness!
The voice actors you have reading the text are doing a GREAT job with some HEINOUS prose
I'm pretty sure that one of them is Mike Rugnetta, but I don't know who the lady is. Anyone know?
@@_LocalGhost_ Voice actors are listed in the ending credits of the video
Does he share them with Lindsay Ellis? Is it a co-op situation?
@@WontonTV is
Mike Rugnetta deserves some kind of award for his performance as Christian Gray. He completely nails the sexy-dangerous tone and delivers the insane dialogue in a believable way.
Man, for someone who was so willing to take and transform a piece of work into her own, Mitchell sure does freak out a lot when somebody would do the same to her own work.
That little "yee-ap" by Dakoda Johnson (31:37 and 55:07) is great, as is her little glance down back at her notes in disbelief to see if she read the "are you gay?" question right. Dornan is not bad, but he dosen't seem to care either, but Johnson is like "This is some premium grade shit and i am going to roll up my sleeves and work it!" I admire actors like that.
Aurelia Verity Dakota Johnson took this movie the same way I took all of my high school projects: the desire to make something laughably great out of the most useless subject. I’d willingly pick the stupidest of topics to work on, because you could incorporate humour and satire into in an unconventional way. She did a good job, I think, with what she could work with.
It takes either good talent or sheer luck to be a good enough actress to fine tune comedy when you’re not in a comedic role, and play it off as innocence. Considering her parents are quite successful, I’m hoping it’s the former.
I like Johnson’s take in the second film: “No! You’re not puttin’ those in my butt.” That was really funny and well performed.
They both hated this series and probably fired their agents. They don't even like each other that much.
How kinks are introduced in media: "I have...a dark secret"
How I got introduced: "Hey, could I tie you up?"
So like, no BS, running around in circles nonsense? Just right to the point? Not a bad way to find out what they're into.
Mine was way too much access to Internet, and then meeting people who were introduced to it in the same way
@@gaspardp7314 Still a better intro than these books.
Don't leave us in suspenders. How did you reply?
@@tsukishiro70 suspenders? I think he meant rope
"book ana is confused by everything"
I think you mean bEwiLdErEd
Pukadon 😂
Ah I see we’ve got another paperbookdreams fan
@@foxfyre9908 It's really a shame those videos appear to be gone :(
The classic “oh is better use my fancy vocab to impress the -English teacher- editor
Okay, without context, I seriously thought "i've never taken anyone in the helicopter" meant "I've never fucked anyone in the helicopter" and I was like "weird flex but okay". It took three damn rewatches of this video series to finally put together "Oh, he literally meant 'I've never taken anyone FLYING in my helicopter'... yes that's what he meant".
*sounds of moaning through the helicopter's telecommunications*
Thank goodness I'm not the only one who thought that lol
Yeah that would be an actually cool "first" to talk about.
I have this vision of a helicopter, hovering in mid air with nobody at the controls. Just ... bouncing slightly. Up and down. Up and down.
@@laurendearnley9595 And you would be correct.
As a submissive myself, I REALLY wish they would have had Christian violate the safe word like they wanted. It would have made such a strong point about the safe sane and consensual side of BDSM and drawn the line between kink and abuse.
Instead, we got the version we did.
Rinoa Page Also, as Dan says, this would have been a great way to SHOW us exactly what Mitchell herself tried to TELL us in Darker about Christian as a “dominant.” But Mitchell has such a terrible understanding of her own story that she didn’t see that!
Oh my god, right? The tale of Mr. Grey interfering with this girl's life, claiming to be a dom, but ultimately proving he lacks the strength, restraint, or leadership ti takes to earn the gift of her submission, could be one of the best stories in BDSM, instead of this.... ugh, it's so horrible it just.... is the word for this kind of trash now. I can't call it anything else, it IS the thing bad kink should be called.
just curious if you've seen Secretary and if so what'd you think?
This movie could've been so interesting if Mitchell had given up control and the writers and directors were allowed to a explore a dysfunctional bdsm relationship and ultimately show that Christian is not capable of the responsibility that comes with being a dom with that scene, but instead we get this shit. The one thing that almost redeems it is when Anna says "No!" Before she leaves and he looks taken aback, it seems like he almost expects to be able to lure her back (which sadly he does in later movies) and is actually surprised that she has the strength to turn him away and leave him.
@@asherael We probably wouldn't have gotten exactly that, but something way closer had Mitchell not been on set screaming like a banshee if they wanted to add some (character-I mean-style-I mean-..) difference to her precious Edward-I mean-- Christian. The actually artistic ladies on set/great director were squandered.
On further reflection, I can't believe people openly asked "Why does Mitchell conflate BDSM and kink with abusive and controlling behavior" and "Why does Mitchell think you have to be sick or damaged to enjoy BDSM" and never thought to connect the dots.
“How dare he, looking all outdoorsy”
The shot: ken doll goes to the GAP
Once again an example of the filmmakers knowing the character better than the actual writer. When is Christian ever outdoors in this series, other than his beach honeymoon and the helicopter crash? His whole life is business meetings which require, y'know, business clothes.
"I must be the color of _The Communist Manifesto._ .".... come again ?
TheBananamonger except she isn't talking about communism and it's symbolic colour; it's talking about "The Communist Manifesto", a piece of print media that usually comes with a white-paper cover lol
Yames, Comrade Anastasia.
She did, I'm assuming
I'm fairly certain that it was more about bewilderment at the line itself rather than a genuine question about the color of the communist manifesto. Then again, it is edited and this is youtube so everything is possible.
Izzy Lebreux you are correct. I had to edit it because the italics didn’t work the first time
Someone's probably already commented about this, but Ana being perpetually bewildered by literally every sexual encounter is another form of double wish fulfilment, just in a slightly less obvious way.
With Christian's gifts, it's easy to see where the double fantasy is: Christian gives her a gift, Ana refuses because she's a "good girl" that isn't greedy or a gold digger, but gets them anyway, allowing her to have her cake and eat it too.
However, Ana's sexual ignorance is also a double sided fantasy. By having ignorance about sex, Ana retains her sexual "purity" -- after all, a woman that knows everything about sex is a dirty slut, and a woman who knows about BDSM and is *gasp* excited about it is clearly psychologically troubled. But Christian gives her "good" and "kinky" sex anyway, letting her have the satisfaction of being seduced and pleasured sexually in a "BDSM" lifestyle. It's a way to keep her perpetually virginal and "innocent" which has all sorts of messed up ideas about sexuality and BDSM wrapped into it. But that's to be expected with 50 Shades.
Great insight, damn!
Have you read the purity myth by Jessica valenti or any other feminist texts about sexuality? You’ve really nailed some really interesting points!
@@maddieb.4282 I actually haven't! This was mainly just me spotting a pattern lol. I read/write a lot of fanfic, have also dabbled into romance lit, and the sexual double standard trope is very common. The male lead needs to be sexually experienced so he can "wow" the female lead, show off how good he is in bed, etc. Female lead is very often virginal or had lousy experiences in bed so she's stunned by male lead's virility, etc. I've seen fics that explore it being the other way around, which I think is really great. But the double standard trope is still way more common. Just think about all the period pieces where the male lead is a "reformed rake" -- slept with every girl in town, but captivated by the female lead, especially if she's virginal and pure lmao.
E.L. James just takes it one step further and wants to indulge that moment of pure virgin being wowed by sexual expert over and over again, to the point where it's not just boring, it's sad.
@@chronoxtreme2427 Yes, really great points -- thank you!
🥰
You also explain how her terrible-in-every-way writing can still be really popular -- by scratching a (common but rarely fulfilled) itch really well -- better and more directly than other books.
Honestly, this is a really good point that I feel like a lot of people miss - myself included. Thanks for putting this into words that very few people could have. It's something that's bothered me for a long time, but I never knew how to say it.
The little double take that Dakota Johnson does at 31:45 is great. Given that she’s the last minute fill in for the interview, I like Johnson playing it like she’s seeing these questions for the first time and just now realized what she said out loud. It basically allows the source material to be there while also making fun of it. I think she played that moment perfect.
honestly this lukewarm defence series really opened my eyes to Dakota Johnson's acting! she has some really good comedic timing, i'd love to see her in a competent comedy flick
She also does the double take in the book (I know that because that's about how far I got when attempting to read it)
A severely underrated actress who has a starring role in a severely underrated film called Suspiria.
Lmao never actually paid attention to that clip, she did great
@@seth5143 suspiria is definitely not underrated with the right people. Even more so the original. Certainly doesn’t have the audience of 50 shades but it’s very well regarded by serious viewers
I'm pretty sure you did more aftercare on this video by showing us a picture of a cat over the credits than what happens in any of the books.
Right? Aftercare is so important for scenes.
@@lassielyra ikr? one of the first scenes we're shown of the movie (i haven't watched it) and he leaves Ana alone during a sub drop? girl should've turned tail and RUN
I don't even engage in BDSM, and even I know that aftercare is important. And like Dan said, it's okay for Christian to be a bad guy, so it makes sense he wouldn't engage in aftercare at first, but we should've seen that change over the course of the books
@@sludgeparty not just a sub drop, but I think it's her FIRST sub drop. I was COMPLETELY emotionally unprepared the first time I inadvertently experienced it and was really embarrassed by how I acted for a long time after, despite my partner repeatedly assuring me it was completely okay. Maybe she's tougher emotionally than me, but based the writing I doubt it.
Folding Ideas shows pussy in a video about 50 Shades of Gray, causes an uproar in the community.
I’m a fan fiction writer, and the clumsy Jacob problem I can totally relate to. I’m in a fandom that has six to nine core people. All the god damn time I find myself clumsily adding characters in to places they should not be just to be like “look, he’s here, look at him being part of this story”.
HA this is super relatable, all the easter eggs it's so hard not to add as a fanfic writer.
Actually, one of the things I think is great about Dan's analysis is that he doesn't use the fact that 50 Shades originated as fanfiction to berate it, more to explain why it is the way it is. So like, yeah, it makes sense that Jacob was there throughout Master of the Universe when he didn't serve the story directly, because he *did* serve the story in the sense that he served a purpose for the readers to recognize a character and a character relationship they enjoyed from the original. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it served a perfectly valid function, it's just that it's something that needed to be better handled for the story to have been adapted well. It's not the *fact* that it was fanfiction that's the problem, it's that there are things that work in that medium that don't work for a novel, and lots of those things weren't properly adapted.
What fandom?
The problem is you end up not sure where to place the character especially if its a fan fic , you you begin yo wonder if you should kill the character in a car accident or he just got sick or got deported etc.
I also write but one advice people always give me is stick to what you can eat and finish even if its a fanfic just have characters you can handle , you dont need all characters just the main ones only
Fair enough. But you’re not a published author, are you? Mitchell doesn’t get that excuse anymore.
The One and Only Michael McCormick oh no her shit blows I wasn't making excuses for her. Honestly, I think I was just complaining lol
About the first three minutes: It’s a little sad that they chose such a poorly written fan fiction. I’ve read honest to goodness well-written stories from some people who only have a dozen of comments. It’s a shame.
StarryNight1313 RIGHT
Yesssss, I still think about this HP fanfic called the Apartment, about Tonks and Lupin meeting when they live in the same building. It's short but really good 👌🎉🎉
@hyrulphicsound 16,000 is a wild underestimate. Forum and blog posts indicate that it broke 50,000 reviews within seven months, far more than any fic still on the site, and eventually reached 56,000.
(Sources can be found in question details at bitly/MOTUpopular.)
@hyrulphicsound Indeed. MOTU didn't quite update every day, it seems -- judging from old tweets, I think it updated weekdays for a month or two, then slowed down as is fanfic's wont -- but pretty much any popular Chinese webnovel on Qidian and suchlike will. Some even do twice a day.
(Also, MOTU apparently wasn't even very original by Twilight fic standards! Supposedly it took a lot of influence from "The Office" and "The Submissive".)
Some of favorite stories are fan fiction. I've laughed, cried, and everything in between. Fifty shades and after are part of the reasons people believe all fanfiction is terrible. That and the fact that they cater to women's sexual, romantic, and emotional desires.
Comparing Fifty Shades to abuse doesn't demonise women in the community, the book demonises the community. Also, never use zip ties, that shit's dangerous.
The community, perhaps, deserves to demonize itself a bit more... It's the first sign of civilization after all.
Thanks andy
yeah thanks
thank you sir
I will refrain from such restrain
There's an abuse community now?
Random side note, Anastasia is weirdly naive in 50 shades but with Twilight, although Bella is a virgin and new to romance, she is much more mature. The whole thing about Bella's character is that her mother is super flighty and all over the place, which made Bella grow up young. She was oddly a maternal figure to her mother and was always taking care of things. Bella wasn't super naive. Whereas Ana is weirdly childlike frequently and that makes the "kinky" sex thing all the more un-sexy.
what's weird is that Ana still has that dynamic with her mother
I mean, Bella is still immature, but the ways in which she is immature versus how Ana is immature are very different. Ana is immature in the sense that she is, like Dan says, naïve to the point of farce. She's often confused and overwhelmed to the point where she kinda comes across as being a bit dumb. Bella, on the other hand, is immature in the sense that she's a massive brat. She's still not all that smart, but she is very manipulative and can and will throw what are essentially tantrums if things don't go her way. As for her mother, a lot like the main character in The Book of Henry it's not so much that Renee and Charlie can't take care of themselves, but that Bella self-martyrs because it makes her look good.
A lot of people think that "childlike" is more sexy...which is why I can't watch a lot of the anime that's out there
Bella is a total brat who throws a ridiculous, months-long tantrum because her boyfriend broke up with her (and then manipulates another boy, stringing him along for purely selfish reasons). She ignores her friends, really hurts her dad, and keeps forgetting her mother (whom she constantly belittles) even exists. That is not what anyone should call mature. Meyer tells us one thing but shows the complete opposite.
So because her mom is "flighty" and she's not that makes her mature? Because judging from her actions, she sure as hell was not. Where does she show any signs of maturity, other than her establishing in the beginning that she "takes care of her mom" or is more of the adult than her mom is?
Bella is like that 10 year old girl who wants to only hang out with the bigger kids and thinks she's more "grown up" than her peers because she reads seventeen magazine and watches shows like Gossip Girl and Riverdale lmao. Weird comparison, but still.
I can not stop thinking of He-man every time you say Masters of the Universe
Oh good. I'm not the only one replacing Christian with Skelator. It's more fun to imagine all his dialogue in Skelator's voice.
Replace Christian with Skeletor....and maybe Ana with He-Man?
Juan Luis Vargas Pareja Hahaha me too😂
I'm surprised this isn't a robot chicken skit yet.
True. And it's quite ironic that He-Man looks like a gay bondage slave XD
What impresses me most is not the quality, depth and excellent structure of your analysis. It's that you presumably had to read all of Fifty Shades and Master of the Universe to bring us this fantastic video. Now that's some goddamn dedication. If people submitting themselves to intense pain by eating a cactus or chugging hot sauce get millions of views, you, my good man, deserve at least twice that amount for the mental and emotional trauma you've endured in the name of entertainment and education.
You should watch the Dom review of the book, movie and adaptation of it. I never felt so sorry for a youtuber. And the name is freak coincide.
+++++
Yup.
"Chapters were coming out every two days"
I've watched this video multiple times and only now after having started my own web serial, can I say how immensely insane that speed is even if the actual content is pretty low-tier
To be fair she could have finished writing everything else before publishing.
I'm sure it was made easier by the fact that Mitchell was cribbing straight from Meyer's work, and even when she went off-script she wasn't worrying too much about stuff like structure, foreshadowing and payoffs. Also the fact that you don't have to worry too much about characterisation when the only card in your deck seems to be "Inner Monologue".
Can you write a few pages of the absolute worst-quality stream-of-consciousness bullshit before bed every night? You too could be a successful author!
Also if I remember correctly she wrote most of her stuff on a Blackberry? I mean I'm a bit of a writer myself but I couldn't imagine writing 3 novels at that speed on the old physical keyboard of a Blackberry.
I planned to do once a week updates… it has not happened that way. My goodness.
"I must be the colour of the communist manifesto"
The main character briefly mentions communism.
Her name is Anastasia.
This woman sounds like a naughty little spy to me.
SHE DID SURVIVE!
Oh yeah, it's all coming together
Eugenia Bukhman yes, it wouldn’t be surprising if it was true.
This is 100% canon and no one else can tell me otherwise
Call Joe McCarthy
Holy shit, if only the director and the screenwriter had more control, the movie would've been so much better
Maria M this is a super old comment, but I really agree. The first movie was awful, but it had some really good camera work because of the director. Christian’s shots are all dark, grey, and desaturated, while what’s-her-face’s scenes are much brighter and better saturated. It’s a visually interesting movie, even if the story was boring and the dialogue was clunky.
Yeah...that's been happening a lot. Don't go see the Crimes of Grindlewald, btw.
DAEsaster Wish I had seen this comment sooner lmao. I can’t agree more
Still baffles as to how she retained so much power in the editing process let alone the making of a theatrical movie. I'm a creative writing major and basically the last two years of school taught me "publishers hold the fate of your novel in their hands and if you won't make changes they won't publish you".
Well, it might have been less bad but I doubt it would cross over to be good.
The sad thing is that with a few changes Christian could have actually had an arch.
When he asks Anna out have him seem a little reluctant like "I never really do this but would you like to get some coffee or something?"
Then you could show him hesitating outside the coffee shop, maybe he has to steel himself before he goes inside. Just little things that show the audience that this sort of thing is difficult for him!
Maybe you could have the pilot of the helicopter remark on the fact that he's usually the only one in there
It's not that hard!
Ad Lockhorst
Well, there are still coffee shops that bring coffee out to you table so it’s not unviable just yet
And just like Dan said, just having Anna be the more-so instigator, even as a virgin less reluctant than him, would mean a lot.
Its not hard, and Im sure from the other work smoothing this film, it couldve been done, but having him say those things or these implications would mean changing his character a bit, and ohhh boy, mitchell having a conniption fit. The other wonderful ladies on set who worked their damnedest to make it palatable can only do so much, lol. And I think thats kinda the summary of this video.
I believe you mean Steele himself
@@user-fm9cl8ck1t *Rim shot*
I think if that were the case, ELJ has to be a good author first, which is such a stretch.
That moment where Ana says "No!" at the end and Christian stops and makes that "oh shit" face would have led so well into a sequel in which Ana discovers her dominant side and shows Christian how a real dom behaves. Christian learns he's a sub and loves being not in control, leading him to realize how he doesn't know who he is and how much therapy he needs.
I hate this franchise but I would read the *hell* out of this fanfic.
@@myettechase honestly, I wanna write a fandfic where after their first breakup, they get separate arcs, where Christian has a breakdown, gets therapy and admits that he was sexually abused, and Ana explores bdsm outside if Christian and finds out she's a dominant. Then they get back together with her as the dom, and Christian learns to trust and be intimate through submissive bdsm play. Bdsm play can actually be really therapeutic for sexual trauma ifs it's done right. Sadly, EL james doesn't understand bdsm enough to write a story about that
@@CharlieViola100 why do i want to write this it would’ve been 10x more compelling
I want to read that!
@@LisaBrock5883 you and me both dear! I would honestly read the books as long as i knew that that aftercare fic was waiting for me 😪😅
Why is it so difficult to have Christian just say, “I like to whip people, it arouses me. It helps me get off. If you’re not comfortable with that, that’s okay. We’re just not compatible.”
Because he's written by someone with absolutely no understanding of what people into BDSM are actually like.
@@calemr Don’t forget that it’s ALSO written by someone who seems to find all the abuse perfectly fine, at least in that she’d absolutely do it all.
The character nor the writer has the emotional maturity to understand how to have a proper conversation about sex and consent
Damnit I meant to say "nor the writer." Has been edited 🙃
It would make for a very boring film.
Really after watching Lindsay Ellis' Stephanie Meyer video and this, I've come away with respect for Stephanie Meyer. She could have been awful, she could have sued this women but instead she just let her be, that takes a fairly big person in my opinion. Especially considering that she made Twilight to be fairly non sexual. By all accounts she is a pretty nice mum who never berated editors or got upset with fans writing fanfiction. Part of me wishes she weren't so chill, just because E.L kinda deserved to be taken down a peg.
Agreed
Especially when EL turns around and goes after people for doing the exact same thing. Definitely gives me a lot more respect for how Stephanie Meyer has handled her situation, even if her writing isn't to my taste.
EL James was the best gift anyone could have given Stephenie Meyer. That woman was toxic waste before EL James came along and ripped her off. Once I found myself defending Twilight after the fact I had to take a good hard look in the mirror, lol.
We all complained about Twilight until it's shittier, even more tone deaf cousin came along and showed that 'hey, in retrospect, maybe Twilight wasn't that bad.'
Although, as someone who was in the target demographic at the time of the books release, I was not part of the hate brigade. I thoroughly enjoyed being "pants" when reading the novels (kudos to those who get that reference.) That being said, I did not watch the movies, because at that point I was both fed up with the hype and I had come to realize that it's more interesting to BE the vampire than to be the one the vampire is interested in. (I'd rather be Spiderman than Spiderman's Girlfriend.)
Sierra Southwell I still have problems with Twilight, mainly because I attempted to read them. There’s serious problems with the writing , plot, and characters. That something much worse came along, doesn’t make those books good.
Dakota Johnson’s delivery of “yup” is genuinely hilarious
Jordan Tullis I feel so sorry that this is the first movie she’s gonna be known for since from all accounts, her acting did the best it could to lift the material.
If it helps, she was in The Social Network. So, if you bump into Dakota Johnson walking down the street, just say "You were awesome in The Social Network!"
At least she is in the suspiria remake, should give her another chance to get a new reputation
@@SamaritanPrime She was also great in _Bad Times at the El Royale_ . I'd recommend it (if you haven't seen it or it's still showing in your local cinema).
Oh don't worry, it won't be the last movie she's known for 😅
jose sexually assaulting her but her still staying friends with him would've made sense as a twilight fanfic because that literally happened with bella and jacob in twilight.
Jacob assaulted bella? Why dont I remember that?
@@mechamahou8467 it's when he kissed her and she broke her hand punching him in the face
I’m so glad that someone else agrees that what Jacob did constitutes as assault. Bella’s even described as going numb and just waiting for him to be done. And we’re supposed to keep liking him/accept that he and Bella are still friends after this? The Jose plot line in 50 Shades highlights how problematic that dynamic was to begin with.
@@geniehossain3738 exactly! doing anything without someone's consent is assault, even in romance novels, which set a dangerous example for readers. we should hold both meyer and james to that standard.
@@geniehossain3738 I agree as well that what Jacob did should absolutely be seen as assault, pure and simple. She said no SO MANY TIMES, and Jacob just keeps gaslighting her and telling her that she's just fooling herself, and Bella's response to his kiss (freezing) is a very well-documented response to assault that even I have experienced multiple times, unfortunately. Meyer literally describes a trauma response. And after she punches him, he STILL doesn't back down. If you drive someone to the point of getting physical with you to express their nonconsent, you've crossed the line like millennia ago.
Some people blame Bella for staying friends with him (and in all honesty, it would have been better if she turned tail and ran), but they don't understand how abuse dynamics work. There's a reason people stay with their abusers and it's not because they secretly like the abuse. It's the opposite; their body and mind go into ultimate defense mode which means not angering the person who is physically stronger than you or has more power/status than you or who can in other ways destroy you or your life. It means shutting down, freezing, and living life on constant alert. The fact that you can be incredibly dependent on someone (either financially, or because of job security, or because you have children together, etc etc) makes it even harder for someone to leave.
And the saddest thing is that somehow, people frame Bella staying with Jacob and Edward as "love" and "loyalty", not just excusing that depiction but even idealizing it, making it even MORE difficult for people in those situations to leave, because they're afraid they'll be seen as selfish or disloyal.
It's a giant clusterfuck if you ask me.
"Strike out vaginal fisting as well"
"Are you sure?"
"Yuuuup"
Legitimately laughed out loud for that.
Yeah because this movie appears to have been made by people who hate the source material and took every possible chance to have fun at it and it’s author’s expense
@@patrickhughes9304 Mitchell, is that you?
Honestly, I think Kelly Marcel, Sam Taylor-Johnson and Dakota Johnson all did a fantastic job with the movie. Obviously the movie is still not good, but Dakota Johnson's performance is excellent, especially considering how little Jamie Dornan is bringing to the table, and the writing is excellent considering how awful the source material is.
Abigail
Agreed, Johnson did a very good with playing a character as bland and unlikeable as Ana. And I quite liked Taylor-Johnson’s cinematography in the first film. It made the story that much more pleasant to endure. However Dornan seemingly decided, that staring intensely into everyone’s eyes constituted being charismatic and enticing.
@@patrickhughes9304 for good reason
I take the biggest issue with this book/movie because, as counter-intuitive as it seems to be, the sub in a *healthy* relationship actually has more "power" than a dominant. Sure, in a scene, episode, encounter, or whatever a couple wants to call it, the dom obviously has full control over the sub in that moment, but only to her (or his!) own boundaries. Subs determine and relay what they are comfortable with before even entering a kink setting with a dom or if they're exploring new things there are safe words, and the dom HAS to respect those boundaries. Most importantly is that the sub should be enthusiastic and want to engage in the things they have submitted to, instead of feeling coerced into doing them by fear that their partner won't want them. Christian never respects Ana's boundaries and doesn't take the hint that she's not into it, which is why I consider their relationship abusive rather than kinky.
Shani D I agree with almost everything you said, except I’d argue that the submissive and the dominant/trix both have the same amount of power; either of them can use their safeword at any time and both of them decide what their soft and hard limits are. It’s more nuanced than that, of course, but I just wanted to point out that even though the safeword is usually seen as something useful only for the bottoms/subs, in a healthy BDSM scene or relationship the dom/top has an equal right to call a stop to the fun times. :)
+++
Most of this fetish-y stuff is just about giving the participants the feeling of [intense experience].
Like, for example, simulating the feeling of breaking into an attractive person's house with the intent to ravage them;
simulating the experience of being forcibly restrained and commanded around sexually by a still attractive burglar and kidnapper;
while still being able to press the pause button with the safe word if something outside your game of "kidnap" needs attending to.
Christian Grey actively dances around with the question of whether he actually means all of his domineering and controlling behavior. Anna certainly is never entirely sure whether it is all "just a sexy game" to him, and this is the core of his BDSM sins.
Research goes a long way, my friend. Unfortunately, Mitchell's ego and fantasies were so beyond herself that she couldn't give a shit about what inconsistencies people point out to her.
@@haggisa I would say in theory the power is even, but what people dont realize is that, to be a dom in a healthy BDSM relationship ok nship requires one to be the giver. In a non-BDSM relationship, there is always a giver and a receiver, in vanilla relationships that role needs to cycle through both parties to maintain balance because Givers burn out. It is the weaker role and it genuinely places the majority of the effort on that individual. In most BDSM relationships, roles rarely if ever change. So the Dom is the Giver with the Sub being the Receiver. It gives the easier job to the sub. Subs have the ultimate power in a relationship because of their position in the cycle of the relationship.
I see the title, and I immediately picture the following scene.
Lindsay: Bet you I can make a compelling defense of the "Twilight" books.
Dan: Oh, there's no way. No freaking way can you do that. If you can write a defense of Stephenie Meyer and "Twilight" and make it compelling, I will spend an hour defending the 50 Shades movie.
Lindsay: **drops "Dear Stephenie Meyer"**
Dan: .................. shit.
God damn it, Dan and Mike, I'll never be able to watch Crash Course Mythology again.
Is this the next fan-fic saga?
Yeah, this reads like a fanfiction I would for sure read xD
"the waitress brings us soup. We both stare at it rather dubiously."
I know! Aren't they at a nice restaurant?
I'm imagining that one meme of Lisa Simpson staring at her plate but like, mirrored with the soup in the middle.
Honestly I could easily see that line in a fanfic. But I guess it’s worth more criticism if it’s a published work.
...
I read that as soap.
Like, a restaurant that serves soap.
It took me several seconds to realize it wasn't the setup for a skit.
I feel like there are a lot of words used in these books that fall under the 'I don't think it means what you think it means' category for ELJ. Like, why dubiously? What exactly is dubious about the soup? Or is the soup incidental and the dubiousness is supposed to apply to them, their stares, the convo? There is no context provided that actually makes sense with this quoted sentence's setup.
Poor, poor Stephenie Meyer.
Twilight isn’t that bad. It’s just bland. I’d say Romeo and Juliet is far worse yet somehow it’s still famous.
Electric Boogaloo Fucked up gender dynamic that was too much for my 15 years old self to notice or object to + yes, blandness, that I did not notice because I was too busy mentally getting off on how hot Edward was - besides this, it is not a bad read. I still maintain that. Her work significantly expanded my vocabulary, lol that girl likes fancy words. Its atmosphere was quite yet obessive, it was boy crazy as fuck, it romanticized the supernatural - perfectly designed for teen me. That's got to take some talent, no?
I'd still reread it for the memories.
And I liked Bella. Did not think she was as void of personality as everyone around me thought. She was a distinct character to me. I never 'blended' myself into her. She was way too emo and intense and academically gifted for me to relate lmao
Oh lmao hi
Amy Lorenzo romeo and juliet isnt meant to be a love story, it's a satire on romance and family.
"...this engagement was further lubricated by..."
You had too much fun writing this script.
Edit: and another one I just caught: "...with that as foreplay..."
U so sneaky Dan
You can never have too much fun writing a script.
Yoy missed the "limp"
Matthew Morris +
Well now I know what to keep my ears open to :P
I have watched this so many times and just now caught that the 7 minute mark he also drops a pun on the name of the title. Can't even tell if it's intentional or not because what he says is such a natural thing to say.
31:00 killed me, because Edward and Bella had sex for the first time, and he accidentally hurt her, and then he got incredibly depressed and refused to have sex with her again. On their honeymoon. Because he refused to have sex with her until they were married. And yes, fanfiction can have a lot of character flexibility, but I'm fairly sure EL James doesn't understand the characters in Twilight. Like, at all.
Actually they didnt really have sex until they both married, they both get into the steaming stuff but Edward stop before it reach to anything, because he says that he feared hurting her, the real reason never the less, is that Meyer is a Mormon and put her dogma into the books, because Meyer is a Mormon and Mormonism forbid people to have sex prior marriage is the reason why Edward and Bella never do it, it a bullshit excuses, because after they marry, they have sex, no issues there.
@@TheKeyser94 I'm really confused by this, because you started out that comment with "Actually", and then said everything I already said? Like, I know.
She probably marked Edward as OOC
Also she writes Edward as a top, EDWARD MASON CULLEN (I thinj that's his name) a straight up DOM, like girl 😂
I'm sure she actually understood Edward's character just fine, it just didn't matter. A huge part of every fandom is made up of stories where the characters have literally nothing - often not even circumstances or setting - in common with the actual source material. Think of things like the millions of words expended on Naruto and Sasuke and crew as normal people in world without magic attending an American high school together. All fanfiction basically exists on a continuum between the original source material with the wording changed a in a few places to things like this. There is probably less fanfiction out there where all of the main characters actually accurately recreate the characterization they possess in the source material than there is successful published fanfic-with-the-serial-numbers-scratched-off out there. Most writers really only want a handful of canned character dynamics, names and the appearances and positive feelings / readerbase associated with them, and possibly the setting. Often not even that much.
A lot of the time fanfiction is the way it is because people like the setting and want to play around in it by altering key events, basically doing the equivalent of those 'marvel what if' comics, except those same people have almost certainly spent a few hundred times as much time with the distorted fanfic version of those characters as the original, and in a lot of fandoms the thing they really care about most with that change is getting the main characters to be different - naruto that's hard and edgy and talented and serious like Sasuke, Harry Potter with...basically the same characterization, etc. The reason these characters all inevitably end up not just distorted caricatures - which makes sense for the above reason - but this one specific character over and over again is that they prove to be empty spaces for people to project their power fantasy on top of. They're self-inserts, and even when people aren't doing that on purpose, they come to associate this bland amalgam of others' self-inserts with the character's name and space in the setting more than the character himself. For other people, it isn't about the setting at all but shipping, and they tend to do the exact same thing, except often jettisoning as much of the setting as is necessary to play into their own fantasy - settings come with a lot of pre-established baggage and complexity that can get in the way of you but in a hot younger body and some hot actor getting their fuck on.
TL;DR: She might have actually known Edward perfectly well but did not care because she was just far enough down the fanfiction spiral that it was easy to shove her own malformed fantasies into the skins of someone else's characters without second guessing it. She might have never even read the novels (you'd be surprised how many people in various fandoms only know them through the fanfic and have 0 familiarity with the source material) and was always just writing her own original fiction for an audience she knew would have lower quality standards the same way tens of thousands have written a quarter of a shitty original fantasy novel but placed Harry Potter but gay, blonde, and a master of karate in it.
The problem with Christian is that Edwards "dark desire" i.e. lust for Bella's blood was turned into a dark desire" to "punish" and "posses" Anastasia (based on a misinterpretation of BDSM). While in Twilight Edward is self-hating because of his vampiric desire that is in opposition to his love for Bella, Christian has all the possesive and creepy elements of Edward without a real justification for it
Theres no justification for a 100 year old man to try manipulating a teenage girl. Tf are you on? 50 shades being worse doesnt make twilight better. Let's stop that shit.
@@mechamahou8467 but.... In the lore of twilight despite him being well over 100 years old, he's mentally and physically stuck at 17 years old
I'm guessing he's a quite bit more mature having gone through 100+ of teenage hormones, but at the end of the day he's still an eternal teenager
@@FIRING_BLIND -I don’t understand how you can be “mentally seventeen” if you’ve lived a hundred years. Your mind doesn’t stay seventeen if your biological clock stops at seventeen.
@@mechamahou8467 -“50 shades being worse doesn’t make Twilight better”-I get that that’s somewhat metaphorical, but one, it’s a definite contradiction, and two, I feel like OP wasn’t really trying to defend Twilight, just point out that Twilight has one redeeming quality to Edward’s behavior while 50 Shades had a wholly different dynamic.
One piece of bad media being better than another does not mean that piece of media is good, I agree with you on this, but I don’t think OP argued that to begin with.
@@cthulhutheendless1587 well the idea seemed to be that edward was "justified" in his actions in retrospect when comparing him to a worse individual like christian grey. So it seemed like an attempt at absolving or reframing the character.
I think that the dubious consent situation where book-Anna is perpetually scared and confused about kink and sex actually has some appeal for the target audience.
It's like a darker version of the whole "omg I would never want expensive gifts but he just won't stop forcing me to have nice things" fantasy.
It's a fantasy for sexually repressed readers where they get to imagine *having* all the "kinky" sex they want without facing the shame of admitting that they *want* to be having that sex.
The book was popular for sexually-repressed middle-aged housewives precisely because the kinkyness was so tame.
@@asddsa8203i.e. it’s just vanilla enough to be as mainstream as playboy.
Yeah. I hate our society. Kink is cool, why is it taboo?
I mean in some places of society, instead of kink being taboo people will go in the extreme opposite direction instead which is also harmful, where they wanna push kinks on everyone and insist people have to have the exact same ones as them. So there's harm on both "sides" unfortunately. #weliveinasociety lol
@@_noctivagus_ kinks are fine and normal. You missed the point entirely
@@MaticTheProto no, I didn't, but I probably didn't word it well tbf so I just edited it
"His voice was warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel... or something."
Nothing could have prepared me for this. I died laughing here. Someone come pick up my body.
I feel that it hasn't been pointed to enough that this is a book about an English major written by a woman whose whole writing style is "If I use big words, they'll think I'm smart".
Maybe it's just the fact that I'm actually an English major, but that's hilarious to me.
OmegaFoxxtrot Well it fits the theme around here. A love story lifts up domestic abuse, a kinky erotica kink shames, an inarticulate hack has an English major as a main character . . .
Maybe we should rename this series to Fifty Shades of Tragic Irony.
She also adopts the writing style of "an adjective isn't enough. Every description needs to be a contrived metaphor/simile"
The virgin sex scene and the 'ive never done...' scene could've been compounded with them laying in bed after sex and him saying, to himself, that he's never done that before. Anna can ask what he means and he can just respond "Have sex in my own bed." and just.. leave it there. Anna could mull over her confusion of the meaning. Shows a mutual exchange of newness and firsts. Or something.
This is a really interesting deep dive. I feel it's likely that the reason she didn't want to have Christian violate Anna's safe word (and got so angry about it) is because then she wouldn't be able to pretend that it's all just healthy consensual kink and not actually abuse.
Absolutely true
Yup
I don't get the problem. I've read the book and it's very consensual. Christian always asks for consent from her and when she feels disrespected she puts him in his place.
@@cutienerdgirl consent and boundaries go beyond just sex. Especially in a bdsm context
@@cutienerdgirl Consent is a tricky thing, especially in the circumstances in the book. Anna is incredibly childish, and Christian is absolutely aware of it. That's why he manipulates her into giving him what he wants, with alcohol, money, being hot and cold all the time... In the book, it's explicitly stated that Anna doesn't want to play the bdsm thing (she doesn't even call it bdsm, she calls it beating) but she feels like she needs to do it so that Christian will stay with her
I have to wonder why Universal agreed to let Mitchell have such strong creative veto power. It sounds like a really unusual agreement.
Curly Brace Mitchell more than likely made it one of the conditions for her signing over the rights, Universal probably weren’t entirely happy with this, but figured that some 50 Shades has such a late and devoted fan base of the books, they’d still be able to make large amounts of money, despite the wider detracting of the book in popular culture. Which turned out to be right
The work they were adapting was a phenomenon even tho it was absolutely awful, they probably just didn't care, it was gonna make money regardless of quality
I think I heard (or he mentions) that since she had fairly good contact with her fanbase she threatened to tell them not to see the movie, so maybe they gave her the power to make sure she'd go around and tell everyone to see the movie
TL;DW The book was awful, the movie was better but still bad mostly because EL James screamed at anyone who wanted to make improvements to the story.
Cool. I guess
Explains why the sex scenes in the second and third movie looked like two cousins fucking , like you could see how Jamie and Dakota were so bored , like there was no chemisty in the sex scenes nothing just a married man escaping pregnant wife hormones in Ireland and a single girl with the voice of a fourteen year old single and searching
This movie hurt more than a conservative having a gay son
No one is talking about how after becoming drunk Anastasia says "hmm alcohol"
*h m m*
_a l c o h o l_
It gets lost when 90% of the character's thoughts or speech are "Hmmm" and/or "oh my".
I noticed that too. An awful author
That is an amazing line, I've been quoting it for years.
what do you mean, I always say that when I'm drunk. How else would people know I'm drunk?
Also, to be fair, Mike Rugnetta's voice IS warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel or something.
I thought I was the only one who was kinda "excited" hearing his voice. Who Is he?
Oh boy. Do yourself a favor and look up Idea Channel on youtube, or his podcast Reasonably Sound. Both of them great, he's a real treasure :)
Thank you - Lovely voice lol.
Quite honestly, he sounds extremely creepy. But that was probably the intent. Doesn't help that the dialogue he's reading sounds like it was being spoken by a serial killer.
So yeah, accurate to the character. 👍🏻
Good to see I am not the only one crushing on the guy. I approve.
Have been half in love since the Idea Channel's early days
As a fanfic writer with many writer friends I cannot stress how annoying EL James is to pretty much everyone in the fic writing community. None of us could think to respond to criticism the way she did, it's frankly embarrassing. Fanfiction already gets a bad rep in mainstream media and her attitude and the work itself aren't doing us any favours. Of all the fanfics there are, including some genuinely good ones which actually stick with people for years just like any good novel would, it's a shame that MotU was chosen to be adapted despite its weak prose and the fact that it's just a lazy, worse retelling of the source material. And the fact that James was such a nightmare to work with is probably going to deter people from wanting to adapt fanfiction in the future - which is a shame, because some of it is genuinely fantastic and deserves to be seen outside of fandom circles.
ActuallyAnanya I desperately hope that does not happen. So much talent out there on the internet deserving of appreciation. And those who dismiss fanfiction out of hand have us to consistently object to their assumptions, do they not?
i honestly cant tell you how much i appreciate and enjoy fanfiction. there are so many beautifully written fanfics i've read whether it be about the harry potter universe or any other fictional universes.. stories that took me on a journey just as good as the original content did. it's just such a shame that it has such a bad rep. there's some amazing authors out there who are exceptionally good at what they do, who on top of everything let people read their work for absolutely free! it's just so unfortunate that it's brushed aside and mostly only taken as a joke.
crossfires ❤
ActuallyAnanya i don't even like 50 shades but it's so obvious that you're jealous of her
Loser ??? Why would I be jealous of someone on the receiving end of so much vitriol? I'm not interested in ever getting any of my fanfiction adapted and frankly I don't think any of my work is good enough to warrant that anyway, but I do think it's unfair that fanfiction as a whole is viewed under a specific lens, partially due to her impact. I'm more upset for the sake of my favourite fanfic writers than I am for myself.
So what I'm getting from this is that we need to give Sam Taylor Johnson and Kelly Marcelle an original erotica movie.
With Dakota Johnson pegging men and women pls thanks
Might be interesting to see what they could do with an historical romantic drama or even an erotic thriller. Has there ever been an erotic thriller with female director and writer?
@@michiganscythian2445 Trouble every day by Claire Denis? hahaha
@@michiganscythian2445 In The Cut.
Honestly, that would be epic
Something that kind of seals the deal on how awful Fifty Shades is for me is the fact that Erika Mitchell seems like a genuinely unpleasant human being. Thin-skinned, belligerent, full of herself, and ignorant in all the worst ways a person can be. She refuses to learn from her mistakes and only comes across as nasty and unprofessional from everything I've heard about her, which honestly makes her creation a little worse for me because you can't even say "I'm sure the author is a nice person but-".
Same, I honestly don’t want to give the series the benefit of the doubt just cuz of Erika Mitchell. She just sounds like the least deserving person possible of her kind of success
@@ailma0400 It's frustrating, honestly. I would say at least Stephanie Meyer comes across as nice enough, but there was that time for the first Twilight movie she got really mad when they casted a black guy as one of the vampires because "Twilight vampires are all pale and white" which is-
You know.
@@regularshowman3208 stephanie meyer seems nice enough but she's definitely quite racist/misogynistic between the messages of her book & the way she treats the Quilete, but she doesn't seem as openly unpleasant & awful to be around as mitchell. she's just very mormon
i love how you adress what i hate about the criticism 50 shades faces: the mocking of "mommy porn". I don't get why society wants so desperately to assume that just because a woman is older she can't feel sexual desire. It's like whenever you have kids or are a certain age where women no longer are deemed "attractive", they become immediately totally undesirable and incapable of feeling it
Yeah,I don't get it either-it befuddles me,dude..
Yes, totally!!!
Our culture loves to mock things teenage girls love, and mock things moms love, and mock things young women love. Maybe... our culture just kinda dismisses women altogether 🙃 (along with may other, oppressed groups)
But you also have to seperate that mocking.
That mocking can also come from the point that the same people that fully embraced the book and movie did before look down on people living more sexually open lifestyles than them.
And it's that hypocrisy that many people mocked.
That the thing they'd frequently have to hide was suddenly mainstream, and in such a bad and creepy form at that.
So it isn't about them liking erotica. It's about the neighbour speaking down on you because you've had two different guys over two following nights. The ones that's spread rumours about you being a prostitute.
Emily Chb you said exactly what I was coming here to say. I think the issue isn’t so much that it’s “mommy porn” and more that the demographic that ate this schlock up were the same ones that would be clutching their pearls at any other sort of mainstream portrayal of sex in media. The cognitive dissonance of the suburban mom who would scowl at you for cursing in public but then would give EL James’ poorly written rape fantasies a free pass because it’s “hot.”
Ana says “Holy crap” so much in these sections you chose that I’m convinced she was supposed to be Peter Griffin.
or Strong Bad
This is worse than that time I was seduced into a kinky BDSM relationship with a weirdo billionaire psychopath who's also a total hottie
@@IsaacMayerCreativeWorks "Deeear Anastasia, how do you type with fuzzy handcuffs on your wrists? Sincerely, Barry McOckner, South North Dakota."
Holy crap Lois Christian Grey has asked me to go for coffee with him
You know what really grinds my gears? When my boyfriend doesn't let me do things on my own! I mean holy crap guys, I just want to go out with my friends and he tells me I hafta go and have really kinky sex with him. Honestly, it's crazy!
Best you can say is that it helps with writer's confidence. When you doubt your skills as a writer just remember:
50 shades got published
50 shades was a best seller
50 shades was made into a movie.
Does the direct opposite for me, honestly. There's this feeling among mobile game development, where no matter how well planned, well crafted, well built a game is, nothing can predict what the next big hit will be. With comic books, movies, writing, all ending up down the same path, the feeling that even such technically, mechanically poor material can be thrust to such great heights, is really disheartening. Why struggle to create a skilled work when the next success might as well be chosen by lawn darts, you know? And I know the answer is "Do it for yourself, not for the money" but still, it's quite the blow to the motivation. Why struggle to be the wheat, when the bread is made of chaff.
@@TheOtherCoinflipper truth
All that means is that you better lower your standards because the money is in mediocrity.
I would like to remind myself of the encouragement in this line of thinking but I still have such a problem with believing I can write good stories, but thank you for the encouraging words 😊
@@TheOtherCoinflipper Yeah exactly, it's that whole "capitalism drives innovation" meme, but for art. It's basically all up to random chance.
The prose in Fifty Shades is unintentionally peak comedy. Anna’s reaction to everything is “Gee whiz! Ah shucks! Wowzers!” I feel inspired to read it in its entirety
It's very very funny to read in a group. Drinking game for every interjection from Ana! Or any time there's a food smile. Or anytime Christian "glare/glowers/stares" at Ana
in conclusion: the books are worse.
For once, the "books are always better" rule is not in effect. ….That's kind of scary.
+CleverCover you also can't say "Still a better love story than Twilight" because... it isn't.
I always see comments saying the books are better, when the books give very weak characteristics to the characters. Ana is still rather bland, but at least she has a backbone in the films and is willing to give her opinion whether Christian likes it or not. I loved the scene when she told Christian that she would more than happily leave him just to have that baby due to his immature reaction. The scenes where she basically tells him to fuck off are much more convincing than the scenes they have when they're being romantic and that says a lot.
Okay deviating from the point of the video because he is so right about fanfiction, "literary version of childhood play" is SUCH a good description, I can't believe I never thought of it like that. We're playing with our toys and making them deviate and tell stories that WE think are cool, interesting, and fun. I had three different toy castles sets when I was a child. I would take all of them out at once and have warring factions, or maybe two sets of knights would attack a wizard, or maybe the princess doll would save the day by killing the king. That's... kind of what happens in fanfiction. Only instead we do heart-breaking angst and tooth-rotting fluff and tropes that everyone makes fun of but, at the end of the day, we all have a vague liking for.
You read fanfiction? You have read AT LEAST three coffee shop AUs, don't fucking deny it. Maybe you didn't like it, but you did it, because other elements were good. The author invited you to play and you did because it was fun.
Canon is a playground and fanfiction is kids playing at recess.
I def agree, fan work is a way for you to still stay in a world you love, with characters you love, doing things you wouldn't/ haven't gotten to see them do.
I've only read on fanfic, a RWBY WhiteRose manga. I don't read fan works normally, because for me it doesn't really scratch the same itch as the source does. But I just need White Rose to happen already, so fucking badly!!! So I sought out a fanfic to help deal with that craving.
Sometimes you just got to see to characters date, even if the source hasn't given you that yet lol
There is a fanfic of FairyTail that completely revamps the world and only keeps the characters that I absolutely fell in love with for a while.
But I started this message to say that when I was younger, I used to play pretend with a friend that an evil version of the Prince from Cinderella was forcing us to clean the tables after school. Guess that was technically my first fanfic on hindsight. And here I thought I had no interest in it till 2014-2015 ish.
I've read fanfiction, but I don't even know what a "coffee shop" fic is. I may have accidentally read one, but irdk what was, if any.
@@RickJaeger Coffee shop AUs are basically what they are. The canon crew either owns, works, and/or visits a Coffee Shop. If you have a ship, they'll also meet in a coffee shop if you're referring to Coffee Shop AU. Most of them are wholesome but I've read one or two that has darker themes.
@@quitegauche oh, i see. then no, I've never read one of those.
In defense of how much of a mess book Ana is, as a writer myself who did a lot of serialized fanfiction when I was younger, whenever you get a sad scene there's this desire to escalate it to its highest emotional peak. Because of how the story is doled piecemeal and not taken into consideration as a cohesive and flowing narrative, it's probably easier to imagine that the author came into each chapter wanting to deliver the next emotional gut punch, not realizing that when read as a full work it comes off as writing a character to be debilitatingly emotional. Not to say that this is a good thing, but I can see how it might've played better on fanfiction forums back when this was being updated.
Yeah i feel this. I read an older fanfic of mine a couple days ago. At one thing i would critic the most is the narrator speed (in every "chapter" is often "one Big thing") which portrayed the characters as if there are always changing their mind:D
That’s probably why I love writing reaction fanfics, you don’t really have to worry about the rhythm, since it already exists
That being said, even then you do have to balance the rhythm of your fic with the pace of the original story
I really dislike fanfics that are like that, and I'm glad they're seemingly falling out of favour, but I do think that it's funny to think about.... That kind of story writing is 100% how a lot of newspaper serials were, where everything had to end with a twist or a death or something, and now is commonly seen in soap operas.
Y’know what? Not only are you absolutely right, but that’s exactly the kind of insight that a FICTION EDITOR would’ve provided.
You’ve further proven how much of a preventable mess this all was, simply because Erika Mitchel is the worst.
I have the opposite problem. I want my scenes impactful, but I don't want my characters to suffer. So I have a tendency to 'skip' the pain.
Good news is that I no longer publish stories unless the chalters can function as standalone stories while I work on writing the rest of it. More time to work through that problem and give the writing the emotion it deserves.
This is some good ass content. It slaps my whole bod. 1/10 book turned into a 4/10 movie turned into a 11/10 criticism
I found your comment more erotic than the entire 50 Shades franchise.
I’m sorry, it what?
@@elladnhm4324 It makes crustacean's ass content, and their bod hole got slapped (I think this is a good thing, from what I'm gathering)
Wow. she can't take criticism and immaturely replies to people who give her negative reviews. *She seems like a lovely person*
Stephanie wasn't the best author, I wouldn't even go as far to say she's a good author--though the films are a guilty pleasure even if I always criticize it while watching--but Erika took a not-good author's work and plagiarized it to be worse, lmfao.
No, I'm going to have to contradict you there. Meyer isn't a great writer, but she is good. That's not to say she's anything to write home about, but she is competent. Her dialogue through the serious is mostly human, save for Edward who's a hipster-emo vampire and not even born in the same generation as most of his current peers, you have a good feel of Bella and how her mind works by the end of basically the first page.
Given that it is a first person perspective narrative, we're generally aware of the flow of events and Bella's thoughts on the goings on, and very little of it drags with no aim or purpose, the first book was well written and competent.
That's not to say none of the following books dragged. New Moon dragged significantly after Bella's "I don't want to age spiel" and Edward leaving, but she exhibited all the signs I could think of for depression, including strange eating/sleeping habits, receding from social obligations, avoiding friends, and reckless behavior. So for events to drag or be blurry is quite accurate, speaking from experience. And seeing as Eclipse is my favorite movie I'm not going to speak of its predecessor.
I will say, as a whole, a lot of Breaking Dawn drags out in a very unattractive manner, and the wedding should've just been tacked on to Ellipse with the reveal of maybe pregnant Bella as the cliffhanger climax. Then breaking dawn could've focused on its main two archs of making sure Bella survived the pregnancy and the confusion of whether the volturi would or wouldn't kill the lamp...
I mean child.
you have interesting observations and points. though speaking from personal taste, I don't think of the books very highly and Stephanie as a good author, and if not for watching the films when I was younger--thus making it apart of my childhood--I wouldn't have liked the films in the first place and be a little more lenient on my opinions. the idea of her story was *creative* however it seemed poorly executed with the sparkling vampires, the pregnancy between mortal and undead when Edward's blood is frozen... as is his sperm.
She did open up a new perspective of the supernatural and creatively so by making the bad boy a vampire and making the "bad boy - good girl" genre more interesting (I think it was mentioned in a video about the vampire myth in films by Now You See It) and if she wasn't the first, she sure did make it very popular. the books and films became a pop culture phenomenon, and I can guarantee that in ten more years, it'll essentially become a cult classic because people have called the films "so bad that it's good."
RAEBELE like I said. Meyer, as an author, is noting to write home about. But she is competent.
She had a fun idea, and managed to create characters that were actually characters. In the first book, you get a good sense of the characters.
Bella is definitely a teenager with a big thing for her school's local vampire bad boy.
Edward is definitely a hipster-emo vampire who at points enjoys and mocks his own immortality.
Alice is a manic pixie type with a thing for fashion.
Jasper is a very young vampire still struggling to open up.
Meyer didn't execute her ideas perfectly, or even all that well, but she can write a character piece, and do so well enough. Because her characters are characters, unlike James' copy and paste cut outs. And that is me being generous describing the characters in 50 Shades. As Anna has so little character, it's hard to imagine what she'd do if she hadn't met Christian Grey.
You're very right about the films though, because I was in middle school when the first Twilight film came out, parts of it have a special place in my heart and I imagine Twilight might eventually become a household name much like Harry Potter is already starting to, and some of my personal favorites, the Princess Bride and Willy Wonka.
Lol, it came out when I was 6 and my mom had to cover my eyes for basically half of the movie but growing up with older sisters made me fall into the giggly schoolgirl hype of the franchise.
Twilight, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Hunger Games basically sum up of my childhood franchises. But between guilty pleasure films, it's; Twilight, Aquamarine, White Chicks, Mean Girls, Bratz Movie, etc. so I will give Meyer credit because her work has become a household name. You think "Twilight" and you think of a sparkling vampire.
RAEBELE Yeah, in my opinion, Stephanie had a couple somewhat interesting ideas that were just poorly executed. But if this video did one thing, it caused me to have more respect for her.
Stephanie seemed to genuinely enjoy taking part in the process of creating the Twilight Saga (whether it just be for the money or not) with those involved. And while I’m sure there were creative differences and arguments that took place, I don’t recall every hearing about Stephanie being rude, disrespectful, or just human garbage in general like this wreck of a person seems to be. Literally every tidbit I’ve heard about this wannabe “creator” has been negative.
Plus, Twilight introduced us to Robert Pattinson who is showing his growing strength in acting as his resume builds and the soundtracks were pretty awesome so I can never hate Stephanie.
there seem to be two possible good stories in this soup of a source material, neither of which we actually got to see
-option one: the story of a young woman who gets thrown into an abusive relationship the second she gets out of college, eventually realizes what's up, and gets out. it's a story that's grounded and serious and makes all the creepy shit christian does serve a narrative purpose. it also fits with how the final scene of the movie is put together.
-option two: the story of a young woman who's kinda sexually repressed meeting a young man who's kinda emotionally repressed, and over the course of their relationship they thaw each other out a bit and do almost a full role reversal, where christian finds that his faux version of dominance wasn't a good coping mechanism and he actually rather likes mushy romance, and where anastasia finds that she actually rather likes bdsm and her purely, as it were, vanilla lifestyle wasn't really doing for her. it's a lighter story with serious beats that has a rather fun resolution and deals with the poor portrayal of bdsm by eventually having ana, the "undamaged" one, be more actually into it than christian, and deals with the abusive elements by just having christian be softer from the start
MarinaO
I’d love to see both
Or option 3 : the story of a young goldigger woman willing to take whatever rich dorky guy gives her abuse or not as long as she gets to wear gucci and ride in lambo shes all in
Honestly, there's probably at least three in there. I mean, maybe it's only obvious to me because I kind of spent my late teens and early 20s pretty repressed about my own very specific BDSM fetish (not kink), but it seems pretty clear what threads from twilight she was drawing from here when writing the original fanfic. Christian Gray being a sadist was meant to be directly equivalent to Edward Cullen's thirst for human blood...except a massive part of that character is that fact that he's so massively repressed and self-hating over it (for good reason, given that it's homicidal literal bloodlust). It required a serious amount of incompetence or just as likely a deliberate decision to excise the essence of the character for Christian Gray to wind up the way he is, so you wind up with a version of Twilight that is about Mina Harker dating Vlad Dracula as he drains her half to death nightly and convinces her this is just the price of admission for staying in his rad castle.
It would probably have been just as easy if not easier to keep the deeply-repressed ashamed of his desires side of the character there with the Disgustingly Confident Swaggering Billionaire interpretation she decided to take the rest of the character in and turn it into an even less traditional romance where in addition to being a sexual coming of age story for Anastasia, through the relationship she helps him come to terms with and accept the side of himself that can't help but be really, really into sexual dominance play and stop seeing it as a type of damage or perversion. Like...you basically just keep the parts of the character that people find sexy, excise the parts that people find scary, and replace them with the parts of the original character she deconstructed to make him that made an actual vampire that spent like a century murdering people into a relatable sad puppy. Hell, you could even keep some of the slightly fucked up shit that has people involved in the community seeing Manifesto Colors - him just fucking off after a session and leaving her crying, some amount of the creepy controlling-ness that have been part of the character since he was written by Meyer, etc - except address it as the big deal that it is, show him learning from it, trying to make up for it, and actually making progress towards being a more well-rounded human being as part of their mutually struggle to fumble in the dark towards making a healthy relationship work within the limits of who they are.
There are definitely lots of moderately competent stories buried in there. Given that it's basically just the author's weird noncon/dubcon fantasy injected into the bones of a still-kinda-fucked-up but nonetheless *much* healthier romance story, there are probably a dozen or so buried in the infinite gradients between the two.
But yeah, any version of this that ends up being played as an actual romance would have to have Anastasia in a role with a lot more agency, ultimately proving the one more in control of the relationship's contents and its pace than the ostensibly dominant one. You know, like real life. Otherwise its a Too Real horror story.
There's definitely something deeply fucked up about me being able to say that this would be a healthier, more acceptable romance story if the male lead was more ashamed of himself, though.
@@laureenambani8739 but that's not a fun or interesting story
@@laureenambani8739 Yes, the Jenny Nicholson option!
As a person who is heavily involved in kink lifestyle, I did not expect to encounter the most succinct description of my problem with 50 Shades in this video. "It's not merely that Master of the Universe and 50 Shades wander into areas of dubious consent. It's that Erika Mitchell as a writer doesn't seem to be entirely aware that that is the territory she's in." BAM. That's it. That's the problem. I read and write dubcon/noncon fanfics, and 50 Shades utterly fails to frame itself as escapist fiction. It comes across as idealized to a point of being actually aspirational.
What's so crazy about it to me is that I'm honestly not even sure how to quantify where exactly it goes wrong with the framing, or how to fix it. Even divorced from the author's attempts at defending it, the problem with the framing just beats you in the face if you've ever read actual dubcon/noncon stories. It doesn't go far enough to tip itself into the realm of escapist fantasy, yet still goes too far into the realm of problematic behavior to be considered an actually healthy relationship (by the standards of a reasonable person). 50 Shades exists in a weird, moral limbo that feels almost in denial of itself.
This also illustrates one of the main strengths of AO3 as a fanfic platform over FFn-the fact that it has detailed genre and trope tags means that not only can I easily *find* non- and dub-con fic to read, I can also be pretty sure the author *knows* that's what they're writing.
I had no idea you were into that kinky lifestyle
exactly, in fiction i like a lot of stuff that ranges from questionable to straight up illegal irl, but if it's any good you can always tell the author of the story is aware of what they're doing, even if within the context of the story it's portrayed as ok. and that awareness makes it easy to context switch.
i'd argue that's one of the reasons (besides all the ugh bdsm parts) 50 shades is so much worse than twilight. twilight may have shown unhealthy relationships but fundamentally everyone knows that vampires and werewolves are fiction and a situation wherein you date a 100 y/o vampire boy as a teenager will never ever happen in real life so it's not that big a deal. 50 shades is intentionally written as wish fulfillment for real people, with the rich hot guy sweeping the average shy girl off her feet and falling in love with her. you're supposed to identify with it and want this for yourself, not in a "then the cute vampire bad boy takes you because you're so special" way but in a "this is how a relationship should be" way.
@@erraticonteuse THIS. YOU PUT IT INTO WORDS. EXACTLY
It’s funny: out of all the garbage I’ve seen people like Dan bash, 50 Shades is one of only two things where I feel the material speaks to some really f$&@ed up values from the creator in real life. Like “I don’t want to be in the same room as Erika Mitchell and will book it if we ever meet” f$&@ed up.
Did anyone else notice Dakota Johnson's subtle acting when she's forced to ask "Are you gay?" You can sorta catch at the very tail end of the clip he uses, how she asks the question and then does a kind of double-take down at the paper like, "Wait, what?"
Right away, I hope that Dan won't keep his hand up for the whole video.
We are ok.
Ok, that was so good. I know that Dan does not consider himself a movie critic, but surely he is better than the vast majority of the ones we have on youtube.
fuzzy handcuff + 1:05:32 = kink as numbness
i am so conflicted seeing Kings and Generals commenting on a Folding vid with stuff on fifty shades.
Hey, funny seeing you here
Hey, Jack! Dan is one of my favorite youtubers, so I am always here. :-)
Brazz, I love to talk culture and consider myself a movie buff. I probably watch too many movies. :-)
I mean, I probably wouldn't describe myself as a movie critic, but if someone called me a movie critic I wouldn't feel compelled to correct them.
I feel like the biggest problem is that Mitchell clearly wrote a book about an abusive relationship and then instead of acknowledging that and saying that it's purely meant as erotica, she acts like what happens in the book is just fine which is worrying because it absolutely is not.
The abuse is the point. Mitchell's original fic has Christian (Edward) as the focal figure. Her fantasy is being the abuser, but that would be harder to sell to a wide audience than simply shitty BDSM.
Mitchell can't ever be wrong, or incorrect, or misinformed, or anything other than perfect. She'll argue for the sake of arguing. The successful way to handle trolls is to ignore them and exclude them from the discussion, but Mitchell just kept getting handed tickets to the party where she proceeded to shit on everyone.
Predictably, her first work not Shades related was panned because it was worthless tripe. So she'll likely return to the old well and keep writing Shades material because otherwise her unreadable tripe won't sell and she'll be unable to pay her bills. Hopefully she continues to be a contained cyst which simmers along without affecting anyone else.
@@googiegressher bs books and movies already did harm to the bdsm community
Can we please talk about the six strikes with the belt?
Like- if you're in the BDSM community, six strikes is not a lot. Also, Christian has riding crops, whips and floggs in his play room.
The belt could still work, if one goes with the actual abuse angle. When Christian is given the option and opportunity to do whatever he wants he does not work to put her in the right headspace for it to be pleasurable to her and he does not utilize anything from his actual kink arsenal, he uses something as primitive and blunt as a belt, something more associated with physical abuse, more than BDSM.
In that case changing it so that Christian keeps going despite Ana using the safeword could work really well.
E L James is just too much of an idiot.
It's almost like E.L. James did next to no research on her subject beyond looking up a list of various kink/BDSM items...
I could have sworn he used a cane on her in the book (that I read the smutty parts of, from a library copy)
Also it’s common to try and get used to something before just jumping into it, like most people wouldn’t go to a belt, maybe a riding crop or a wooden spoon or something…not right to a belt. I feel like that would totally overwhelm someone who’s A) never had vanilla sex with anyone else before B) barely had any kinky experiences. Christian is a totally irresponsible Dom and and idiot. You can’t just thrust someone into such a delicate emotional and physical state you need trust.
@@AleksandarBell THIS, also he just does not give aftercare, at all. Even Sadist doms give aftercare
I'm not even in the kink community but I've seen some girls/guys into getting their genitals flogged like insane that whipping her ass with a belt is the worst she could imagine literally just look up ANY bdsm porn
Dear lord I know it is the stupidest thing ever but I forgot E.L. James calls Sriracha 'rooster sauce' and nothing has triggered my fight or flight response like that
That's... infuriatingly stupid.
Not the fact it bothers you, the fact she calls it that.
Wait, I assumed that "rooster sauce" was some Canadian thing that Dan was referencing (like poutine or the North American house hippo). But it's actually referencing a dumb thing that E.L. James says? 😱
I mean, it's got a rooster on it.
@@jacksobrooks But if you don't want to refer to it as the branded product, just... call it "hot sauce?" "Rooster sauce" sounds like a goofy themed item at a child-oriented restaurant and that's not what anyone wants to think about while reading erotica.
@@drpibisback7680 Rooster Sauce is what u get when u put a whole chicken in a juicer
I think one issue I have is that this is the only exposure a lot of people have to "BDSM," and read this as an accurate portrayal. Yeah, I guess scenes of actual sober negotiation, safe words, discussions of SSC (safe, sane, and consensual), and aftercare aren't titillating, but if you neglect them, you're not allowed to call that BDSM. BDSM is inherently consensual, in many ways even more so than vanilla relationships, because pushing the boundaries can be dangerous, so both partners have to know what's happening and be fully consenting at all times. Ana is 100% being abused, and that's not in true BDSM. Any power exchange has to be consensual, otherwise it's literally just abuse by means of exerting control.
Dont forget him using hardware cable ties to tie her up . Like that scene alone was mortifying . They also made the same mistake in the movie and used actual real hardware store cable ties on Dakota , no one realised they were endangering the life of Dakota ???
@Lex Bright Raven i think because on a emergency, like a fire, it is much hardee to get out. Also, it can cut your circulation
It's honestly frustrating because when written and acted out well aftercare, discussion of boundaries, etc can be very powerful and emotional scenes, especially in the context of a story about boundaries and emotional intimacy, which the much better version of 50 shades theoretically could be.
@Lex Bright Raven I know this is five months old but W/e. Cable ties are bad for bondage scenes because there's no way to make them less tight. The only thing you can do is pull them tighter. If you pull too much on the first pull you can seriously hurt them.
@@danielbelkin4652 I'm seconding this ^^ if anyone's curious, the webcomic Sunstone did an *excellent* job depicting the ins and outs of a BDSM relationship between two women exploring their sexuality and their feelings for each other. It spent lots of time establishing and exploring the important safety aspects (never leave the sub alone, always have a safeword/gesture, aftercare, etc), while also not shying away from the danger that happens when you don't take the proper precautions (there's a character who decides to tie herself up for her bf, but he ends up coming home later than she expected... it's a chilling and heart-wrenching scene).
Also it's very queer and sweet and I love it.
i know it's kinda removed from the video's contents, but whoever did the captions did a really good job. the clear differentiation from movie dialogue, book narration, and commentary really helps to make the captions clear and understandable (as well as a great use of parentheses to show sentence structure)
Yea I agree it's very well done
29:40 YOU'RE A DOM. IT'S YOUR JOB TO MAKE SURE YOUR SUB ISN'T A CRYING MESS BY THE END OF IT. This line actually made my blood boil 😡
Uhmm dont safe words exist for this reason?
@@mechamahou8467 it's more than just safe words
@@meganvincent5381 this is why it generally sounds like bdsm is an absolutely horrible idea behind incredibly light bondage play maybe. That that scenario is even possible if someone doesnt follow some codified rubric of ethics is a problem in and of itself. If I need a fucking universally agreed upon code of ethics for sex(meaning lots of shit has happened to lead to these rules being made in the first place), it's probably best we dont do it lol.
Like I never heard the word "aftercare" until researching BDSM. That one literally has to check if their partner isnt a *crying mess* or scarred emotionally from the sexual encounter(and are considered assholes if they dont do this) and literally invented a name for the practice makes sex so damn contractual and stressful. How tf does anyone do this shit?
Why even RISK my partner feeling that way? Why risk how that would make ME feel as her partner?
@@mechamahou8467 It sounds like BDSM just might not be for you, and that's totally okay and valid af. But I'd imagine there's at least one area of your life where you take risks that another person might find unacceptable. And maybe you (rightly) think that many of those risks can be dealt with just by knowing what you're doing and doing things right, and that a lot of those fears are attributable to misunderstandings. This is just you being on the other side of that situation.
@@mechamahou8467 Do we need the "sex itself needs consent" talk again? Do we need to detail the ways vanilla sex also risks physical, mental, and emotional vulnerability? Do we need to list the ways that any sexual partnership risks leaving one or more parties temporarily or permanently traumatized or triggered from past trauma?
"If I need a fucking universally agreed upon code of ethics for sex"
Yeah, apparently we do. Short version: Stay the hell away from everyone else until you stop assuming your version of sex is universally acceptable and any partner you choose would be fine with it because you yourself are fine with it. That's a rapist's mentality.
I just love how the... was it director and screenwriter? Tried really hard to make a decent movie out of the absolute trashfire that is the source material, did pretty good at it, and got fired for it. Iconic lmfao
yeah like something that I see a lot in reviews for fifty shades is specifically how the first movie is actually decently well shot and does some interesting things with the cinematography. And then we never get that again.
Ahh, a high quality, non-ranting critique/disection of Fifty Shades. Looking forward to your following videos on this topic. Wonderful work.
The Dom (That's literally his channel name. No pun was intended.) also has a three-part review and a mini-analysis on the series that's pretty good.
Oh yes, he is also excellent!
I really enjoyed his analysis. This one was more nuanced, I think and demonstrates the critics familiarity with derectorial and literary conventions as well as quality storytelling and correct structure of plot and grammer.
Here's The Dom's video about Fifty Shades for anybody who's too lazy to google it: th-cam.com/video/Ze9iikBabns/w-d-xo.html
I've only seen one of his videos, and I didn't watch much more because of how he framed it as adaptations "getting stuff right" and what "mistakes they made"--buuut, judging from literally the first seven seconds of that Fifty Shades video, it sounds like he evolved his stance on that, so maybe I'll check it out after the essay I'm supposed to be writing is done!
@@Flowtail Just for clarification for those who haven't watched The Dom's channel: Dom compares and contrasts books with their film adaptations.
It's less about whether the book/film itself is good or not, but more about how faithful a film adaptation is to its source material.
So the "getting stuff right" is being faithful to the source material, whereas the "mistakes" are things that are changed in the film for no good reason. (Although there have been some book-to-screen changes that Dom has approved of).
Having said that, he does go more in depth with the problems of the Fifty Shades novels as well as the films, because man are there some serious issues. If you're just starting out with his channel, I'd start with the Fifty Shades playlist, they're pretty good.
Glad you addressed the fact that fiction is a good place to explore dangerous, unsafe scenarios. I've seen quite some discourse where people say you can't enjoy fiction with elements of danger or illegal activity such as rape, murder, or incest, because in that way you condone those things. But really, fiction is a place where you can explore those ideas, emotions, and scenarios without hurting anyone but being able to still "feel" its danger or taboo. Humans are curious creatures; no matter how taboo, illegal or immoral something is, we still are curious about it and there's nothing wrong with it. And like you mentioned, it can have danger if written incorrectly though, but that comes with almost anything. You need to take care with what you say, do, write, act, etc., because otherwise it does have genuine risk.
dearestloverboy I also feel like porn (especially written erotica, with no actors) should get a little extra leeway. There is absolutely zero accounting for what turns you on. A lot of the stuff I read when I’m polishing I would feel a great deal of shame if others knew about. It’s the extreme shit that tantalized the most.
I know this is an old comment but I wanted to express my appreciation. Someone finally gets it. You could amuse yourself with fantasies of being a sword-fighting assassin but that doesn't mean you want to be one in real life, because you acknowledge that your fantasised scenario isn't reality. No-one is getting hurt; you're having harmless fun. It's also why I'm not convinced by the video games causing violence argument. Any reasonable person knows there's a difference between pressing buttons and pulling an actual trigger.
@@wheeliebin1791 Can I also add that I think one of the main problems with Fifty Shades is it fundamentally doesn't work as an erotica. It's a bdsm fantasy in the context of bdsm (which isn't even an accurate portrayal of bdsm, but that's besides the point I'm trying to make.) There's already a power dynamic between the two characters, and that on its own is a pretty common foundation for erotica. But because the story is written as them doing bdsm, it removes the safety net of fantasy, and brings it far enough into reality that it becomes a story of domestic abuse. Essentially, it breaks the fourth wall and any suspension of disbelief, and erotica is a genre where those things are especially important.
This comment words thoughts I couldn't quite put to words myself, precisely ^^
That's why i'm glad I see movies/TV shows/books exploring topics that are considered weird, unrealistic, and forbidden. (Example: The Shape of Water and Lolita). Sure, it may make people feel offended but if you're wise enough then you can know how to separate it from fiction to real life.
Ugh, his lack of aftercare after her first spanking drives me insane. Like Jesus Christ. I hate this movie/book. As a 24/7 sub- communication is key. To just up and leave after your subs first play session (even experienced subs require heavy aftercare when trying to new type of play) is just insane. She needs to be able to think through and talk through what they have thought and felt. They need to be told that they done nothing wrong and that they aren’t broken or weird. It just drives me insane that this is the way that a lot of people are introduced to BDSM. It’s how I was and it completely threw me off. I was later introduced by actual BDSM players and I found that it was incredibly different than what was shown. If I had never met bdsm players and was open to learning- I would never be as fulfilled (not just sexually but in all aspects of life) today.
Aftercare is everything! I'm a switch myself and I've never read it but James did NO research whatsoever. She didn't even try, and the people who read it are so ignorant they don't care. Speaking of, my Dom mom always gives me tea and biscuits! And cuddles,of course
I am a virgin that has no desire (as of yet) to engage in BDSM and even I know that whatever the fuck this woman was trying to write has NOTHING to do with BDSM.
I have literally not even researched it that well but with the limited knowledge I have, I still know that BDSM is not about fucking beating a person and getting off on it, while they are scared shitless. If it were like that I doubt that so many people would be into it and happy in their relationships.
That last point seems like just common sense (again, I know nothing)
“If this guy’s over 30, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle”...and if you’re under 72, I’ll be a something more current that means ‘shocked’
"My heart slams into my mouth."
What a hilariously bad metaphor.
@Eddie at The LMV Really? I've heard "heart in my throat," but never that. I guess it's an exaggeration of that.
that's funny, that's what I feel like reading excerpts from these books.
@@Yawyna124 The idiom is that your heart "jumps into your throat," as in, from where it is within you.
"Slams into your mouth" is a somewhat different image:
❤➡💥👄
@@jacoblessing7929 Yeah, and it's figurative language for when you're stressed and you can palpably feel your pulse internally, and it's hard to breath, not literally "Man, my heart is now in my throat."
You can't just swap vaguely similar words into and out of figurative expressions (especially traditional set phrases,) and expect the meaning or force to be preserved. If a person looks gloomy, you wouldn't, for instance, ask them "Why are you in a chocolate scrutiny?" The reason is that figures of speech evoke very particular images (whence _figurative._ ) As you say, when one is nervous, one might feel a quite particular feeling, not easy to describe, but very like not being able to breathe,and a metaphor of something obstructing your windpipe does very well. "Slams into your mouth" is more like a description of being hit in the face by an external force, and is a much less effective metaphor. I would have thought this would be a plainly evident fact to anybody...
I read the first book only, in which the most common phrase in Anna's internal dialogue is "Oh, my."
All it takes is once -- just once! -- imagining that phrase delivered in George Takei's voice: "OH, Myyyyyy!" And the entire book becomes an irrevocable comedy.
According to Dominic Noble from Lost in Adaptation she says “Oh My” 72 times which is both horribly sad and kinda hilarious too 🤨🤣
Now I want that joke version of 50 Shades read by Gilbert Godfrey interspersed with George Takei.
I like to read all the "oh my"s in the overexcited voice of Michael Cole from WWE "OH MY! it's the monster, KANE!"
I wanna hear it in Mettaton from Undertale's voice: ohhh myyyyy
@@kellanlevi5663 I was just thinking that lol
I, a seventeen year old virgin, could write a better version of 50 shades of grey.
Clara Kolterman Do it then!! There are 10,000 resources out there to help aspiring writers like yourself make better romance, better erotica, better kink, better mystery, just better everything.
So go for it!!
You're a virgin? WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME!?!
@@lamia4511 It makes you wonder if James lived an insanely massively sheltered life somehow if she thinks it is believable for young adults to not understand sex
@@lamia4511 I lost my virginty 10 years ago, and I still do not understand why it is supposed to be fun.
Im legit 13 and I could do it more accurately than E.L James
"There's potentially a decent erotic thriller or even erotic horror buried somewhere in the experience."
You have piqued my interest. I didn't know "erotic horror" was a recognized _thing,_ and that sounds like something that has the potential to be _staggeringly_ horrifying.
I guess you could put tentacle p0rn into the „erotic horror“ section. Anything that is nightmare fuel, but at the same time makes you curious and intrigued, because „how would that even WORK???“ 😂
@@ArDeeMee I guess that works, but for different reasons. While tentacle porn seems to come up a surprising amount, especially in anime (supposedly, I haven’t watched too much anime), from what I understand it’s seen as a generally negative thing by most, rather than most kinks naturally having their fans. A big part of that, and the true horror, is that tentacle porn is not merely erotic, but often violation.
Likewise, I think an “erotic horror” would be something along the lines of if Fifty Shades was aware of the abuse issues and doubled down. Have the erotic aspects be a medium for the horror. Given the bit Dan mentions about Ladykiller in a Bind, I’m willing to bet the disturbing scenario he brought up was along these lines.