–E.L. James’ Twitter Q&A Gone Wrong: Fans Slam Author With Hilarious Tweets
-‘Fifty Shades’ author E.L. James’ Twitter Q&A didn’t go exactly according to plan
-50 Shades of Grey author EL James’s #AskELJames Twitter chat is a fiasco
–E.L. James event backfires when critics of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ air grievances using #AskELJames
–50 Shades of Grey author’s Twitter Q&A goes horribly wrong as readers question her on rape and abuse
–‘Fifty Shades’ author E.L. James’ Twitter Q&A didn’t go exactly according to plan
–EL James Did a Twitter Q&A and It Was a Giant Disaster
Just a really quick word about that Twitter explodey-fest. If E.L. James wasn’t seriously promoting an abuser as he ideal man to the point of putting this book in sex kits, and if she wasn’t so rude and mean and condescending to everyone from mild critics to abuse-survivors to her own early fans, I wouldn’t have been okay what happened in the #AskELJames hash convo today. But since survivors and concerned people around the world have gotten nowhere by trying to talk civilly, unless you count getting sent to the Banhammered Club, there have been few options left. This was a time when she wouldn’t ignore the concerned voices since they were too numerous, and about a very important topic that needs to be heard.
Read the rest of this post, and ask yourself at the end just how the ever-loving hell James can possibly stand behind this creep as a romantic man, and no care that she supports young women and teens hearing over and over again how Grey is the ideal man.
Jumping right in today:
“Hey.” My voice is gentle and encourages her to peek up at me. “Anastasia, you’re a very beautiful woman, the whole package. Don’t hang your head like you’re ashamed. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s a real joy to stand here and look at you.” Holding her chin, I tip her head back.
From any other character, I’d think this was sweet. From a man who calls what’s happened with here “merely a means to an end,” no. So I’m going to call this manipulation.
He washes her body with the goal of getting her aroused, but not letting her orgasm. Then he tells her:
“I want you to become well acquainted, on first-name terms, if you will, with my favorite and most cherished part of my body. I’m very attached to this.”
To my disappointment, we aren’t told its name. Since he doesn’t tell us, I think we should give it a name. What do you think?
Herpes (link is safe for work, and funny):
Or Syphilis:
I like Herpes because it makes fun of their burning crotches. But Syphilis is otherwise called Pox, and I can joke about a pox on the house of Grey. Whatever we name his penis shall be how I’ll refer to it from now on. Comment with your choice.
Ana gives him the most boring blow job in the history of erotica, or what’s meant to pass, in this case, yet, despite never having seen a penis before, she’s such a professional that Grey thought his couldn’t really be her first time. Yet just the page before he was turned on by her inexperience with blow jobs. Yeah, yeah, she’s supposed to be a natural at it, we get it…. She’s also got no gag reflex. So a sexual savant in all ways, perfectly built for his pleasure.
Back in his room, and he tugs on her hair, which is in braided pigtails.
“Gently I tug both her braids. “You look so young with these.” But they’re not going to stop me.
So pedophilic. Ana constantly sees him as a child, and calls him her “lost boy,” so maybe they’re just both mentally kids into kids. I don’t want to think about that, considering what gets them off when Ana’s pregnant the second time. Hint: They think their unborn baby likes sex already, and that gets them turned on. It’s gross.
He gives her oral sex, and she orgasms pretty quickly, and then he plunges himself into her (yes, with a condom, but only because she’s not on the pill, not out of worry he’ll get an STD since he’s probably already crawling with them all), and she orgasms again, but on command.
Before they can do anything else, Grey hears Taylor and his mother outside. Haha! I’m sorry, that amuses me. Want some TMI? That happened to me once, only the guy’s mother walked into his room, had a conversation with us, and left, as if nothing was going on. You try holding a natural-ish conversation while clutching a sheet to your chest.
I’m not going to feel bad for Grey. He could have Ana wait in his room while he tells his mom he had a late night. Instead he wants Ana to meet his mom. Ana’s mortified, but all Grey can think is,
My mother is going to be thrilled.
Translation: “Lookie, Mommy! I’m having sex! With a GIRL! I’m a big boy!”
Ana not wanting to doesn’t matter since she doesn’t matter. She exists now to validate Grey and that his penis works and can get an erection. Quite the feat, considering it happens to corpses too.
I slip on a white T-shirt, and when I turn around she’s sitting up, hugging her knees. “Perhaps I should stay here.”
“Oh no you don’t,” I warn. “You can wear something of mine.”
I like her wearing my clothes.
Her face falls.
“Anastasia, you could be wearing a sack and you’d look lovely. Please don’t worry. I’d like you to meet my mother. Get dressed. I’ll just go and calm her down. I’ll expect you in that room in five minutes, otherwise I’ll come and drag you out of here myself in whatever you’re wearing. My T-shirts are in this drawer. My shirts are in the closet. Help yourself.”
Her eyes widen.
Yes. I’m serious, baby.
Cautioning her with a pointed look, I open the door and exit to find my mother.
First, and minorly, do you see what James did in that first shouldn’t-have-be-a-paragraph? Grey’s actions, Ana’s words. James does that a lot. When something should be separated into a new paragraph, she doesn’t do it. When sentences should be combined, she doesn’t do it. Her editors have been instructed, at least in the past, to not actually edit since it makes her feel bad.
He leave Ana to do as ordered, and meets his rather childish mother.
“I was shopping downtown and I thought I might pop in for coffee.” She stops. “If I’d known you weren’t alone…” She shrugs in an awkward, girlish way.
She has often stopped by for coffee and there was a woman here…she just never knew.
“She’ll join us in a moment,” I admit, putting her out of her misery. “Do you want to sit down?” I wave in the direction of the sofa.
“She?”
“Yes, Mother. She.” My tone is dry as I try not to laugh. And for once she’s silent as she wanders through the living room.
If I were to make a drinking game out of how many times characters in this book may gay jokes or references, I’d die, and I’d rather drink myself to death for a worthy cause, like funding some courses on how to not be a hypocrite like Bristol Palin.
Right after his mother and Ana meet, her phone rings, and she answers. It’s Jose, and rather than focus on his mother while she’s talking, Grey obsesses over Jose and what he wants.
Conversation wraps up, and Grace is out the door with a “grateful” smile to Ana.
My mother’s always thought I was gay.
And that’s why this can’t be a drinking game.
Taylor mentions a problem with the Darfur shipment, and there’s another failed attempt at making Grey look good. Since a mysterious “they” can’t guarantee crew or shipment safety, the US State Department won’t…. Forget it. Grey doesn’t care, and Ros is the one working on it anyway. That’s all you need to know. She just checks in with him from time to time, and she deals with it, while he gets all the credit for her work. The most Grey does is threaten to call the politician in his pocket to make some orders. Of course he’s not going to follow through.
He shoves the contract paperwork at Ana, and tells her to research it on the internet, and they’ll discuss is the next weekend. Too bad she doesn’t have a computer. As in, she doesn’t own one at all. In the movie, this was changed to her computer was broken, but in canon, she just plain doesn’t have one.
No computer? How can a student not have a computer?
One of those rare moment where I agree with Grey since he’s right.
“I’ll just make a call,” she says, her voice soft and hesitant.
“The photographer?” I snap. She looks guilty.
What the hell? “I don’t like to share, Miss Steele. Remember that.” I storm out of the room before I say anything else.”
You know how people usually put their best foot forward when they’re just meeting someone they hope to take to the next level somehow? If this is Grey’s best foot, I don’t want to see his other. He’s also pissed since he thinks maybe she’s just after his money even though he’s the one trying to use it to impress her.
He retreats into his bedroom so she can make her call, and he packs a bag since there’s no way in hell he’s going to stay anywhere but Portland until she’s heading back to Seattle with him. Well that’s not stalkerish of him, or anything, right? He makes sure to pack condoms because he’s not waiting until the weekend. Between him saying they’ll discuss is the next weekend, and packing condoms for during the week, it’s clear he’s going to have sex with her, whether or not she wants it.
Among other things, Grey tells Taylor to call Audi because he may need the new A3 sooner than he thought. Uh…hm. You know, he bought that car for Ana. He doesn’t get to think she’s after his money when he’s shoving it at her.
He also calls Bodyguard Barney since he’ll surely have a ew laptop laying around, and guess what. He does. Two brand new Apples. And they can’t exist. Know why? Because it’s 2011, and the Macbook Pro he is going to give her has 1.05TB hard drive and 32GB of RAM.
That computer STILL doesn’t exist, and it’s 2015. Here is the MacBook Pro with EVERY upgrade, as of this minute:
You might notice that, while it does have a terrabyte of storage, it’s got 16GB for RAM. If this machine could go to 32GB, I would know because I would have it. (I got really lucky in December, and my husband surprised the hell out of me with the above computer, intentionally with the specs maxed.) And you know what? There isn’t space in these cases to add the extra RAM.
James doesn’t know technology. She doesn’t know a lot of things, like the meaning of consent. But who am I to split hairs?
Grey also has Barney set up an email account. Ana doesn’t have one of those either, even though WSU requires one. In fact, they require you to have two of them, and if you do not have them, they will set them up for you. And you much use them. One of them is the main method of contact between students and professors. There’s literally no way Ana got through school without at least one, considering the school’s requirements.
And Barney’s to arrange delivery to Ana’s home.
Again, Grey doesn’t get to suspect her of being a gold-digger when he’s giving her pricy stuff she’s not asking for.
So out they head, and he tells her to stop biting her lip before he fucks her in the elevator, no matter who sees. Nope, he didn’t say he’d want to. He said:
“Stop biting your lip, or I will fuck you in the elevator, and I don’t care who gets in with us,” I growl.
So threaten her with sex even if she doesn’t want it. FOllowing through it called…
You guessed it. Rape!
“Christian, I have a problem,” she says.
“Oh?”
In the elevator I press the button for the garage.
“W-Well,” she stutters, uncertain. Then she squares her shoulders. “I need to talk to Kate. I’ve so many questions about sex, and you’re too involved. If you want me to do all these things, how do I know—?” She stops, as if weighing her words. “I just don’t have any terms of reference.”
Not this again. We’ve been over this. I don’t want her talking to anyone. She’s signed an NDA.
Isn’t it getting even clearer how much he wants to control her? At least he does tell her okay, as long as no one else knows. And…
Her roommate would have my balls if she knew my real intentions.
If this guy was after my daughter, he’d wish I would only rip his balls off.
Once they’re in they car, he heads to Portland to take her home. See that little town name just north of Portland?
Geography. It’s hard. Just head to Vancouver.
So far, this weekend has been unexpected. But what did I expect? I thought we’d have dinner, discuss the contract, and then what…? Perhaps fucking her was inevitable.
Yeah, since NO really wasn’t going to be an answer.
I hope I can see her before next weekend.
Even when she tells you it’s over tomorrow night, you’re going to have sex with her anyway. Begins with an R. Ends with Ape.
Since he’s pissed the property he pissed on still has no appetite, we’re going to have a moment out of Twilight. Chedward takes Anabella to a little restaurant where she’ll want a Die Coke. Only Bella, unlike Ana, got what she wanted. Grey orders wine for them both, and Ana openly doesn’t want it. Tough, Chica. What Grey wants, Grey gets.
While waiting for food…
“She’s always thought I was gay.”
Regarding his mother. This book is one of the most anti-gay books I’ve seen in a while.
He tries to make it sound like it was a weekend of firsts too, like he’s also a virgin. Liar. I don’t believe for a second he’s never had sex without toys.
“What’s vanilla sex?” she asks.
I laugh at her unexpected question and complete change of topic.
“Just straightforward sex, Anastasia. No toys, no add-ons.” I shrug. “You know—well, actually you don’t, but that’s what it means.”
How do you get to be 21 in the US, and not know what vanilla sex is? How can she consent when she doesn’t know what this stuff is? By virtue of watching National Geographic programs on animals, I think my five-year-old knows more about sex than Ana. Animal sex is still sex, and what cheetahs do would probably give Ana a heart attack.
He reveals to Ana that one of this mother’s friends seduced him when he was fifteen, and it went on for six years. He doesn’t see any issue with this. In fact, Ana actually having a problem with it was a source of fights between those two.
“Eat up, Anastasia.”
“I’m really not hungry, Christian,” she says.
I narrow my eyes. “Eat.” I keep my voice low, as I try to check my temper.
That, and Ana really doesn’t like to be bossed around.
“Is this what our, um…relationship will be like?” she asks. “You ordering me around?”
She scrutinizes the plate of food in front of her.
“Yes.”
And he knows, HE KNOWS, she wants more, and he knows she’s overwhelmed by everything.
“Do you want to come in?” she asks, after I’ve switched off the engine.
“No. I have work to do.” I know that if I accept her invitation I’ll be crossing a line I’m not prepared to cross. I’m not boyfriend material—and I don’t want to give her any false expectations of the kind of relationship she’ll have with me.
Playing games like this isn’t fun. It hurts people. It’s going to hurt and change Ana in bad ways.
After Ana goes into her apartment and Grey’s had some time to pretend to do work while drinking some more, James shows us how she likes to mess up research.
Picking up my latest read, I settle onto the sofa. It’s a book by two renowned economists who examine why the poor think and behave the way they do.
That book is called Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty.
Look again. The date of this chapter is May 22nd, 2011. That book wasn’t published until the following year.
Time travel!
As he prepared to read, something happens.
An image of a young woman brushing out her long, dark hair comes to mind; her hair shines in the light from the cracked, yellowed window, and the air is filled with dancing dust motes. She’s singing softly, like a child.
I shudder.
Don’t go there, Grey.
These are the kind of memories that are soooooooooo traumatizing to him. I’d give almost anything if all my memories of my mother we “bad” as his.
He shuts the memory off, and starts to read the book he can’t have yet.
Aaaaannnddddd….SCENE.
This was surprisingly hard. Between the anti-gay stuff, another memory that’s supposed to make is feel bad for his childhood, and all the controlling of Ana, it’s really not surprising.
Anyway, remember to vote for your favorite STD name for Christian Grey’s penis! Winning name will be revealed on Friday, and I’ll reward one random person with the honor of dishonoring the person of their choice, by first name, but dedicating Saturday’s recrap to them!
Alys Marchand 
I vote Pox for the Christian Grey dick name, and because I’m easily amused, I plan on reading future excerpts with a sort of mental find-and-replace when he starts going on about his penis acrobatics. (And come to think of it, wouldn’t references to his “pox twitching” make it sound like there’s some kind of curse on him that acts up whenever he’s being a horrible piece of human garbage? That’s a story I’d rather be reading.)
(Also, hi! First time commenting here. I just binge read all of these recaps because I had to know if this book was as awful as I thought it would be. Somehow, it’s worse! Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing such a detailed write up!)
I’d go with Trichomoniasis or Trich for short. According to the CDC website, symptoms in men include itching or burning after ejaculating or peeing and it causes extreme discomfort during sex.
A bit off topic, but Have you see this:
A few ones that commenters on Vimo came up with a few more scenarios that they suggested would be good to add:
If someone is dressed for a tea party and they say they don’t want tea, don’t force them to drink the tea.
Another one would be if they don’t want/not sure if they want tea, then you push/guilt them to eat cake(alcohol) instead since they don’t want tea.(and you feed them cake because you want them to agree to having tea) Then when they had enough cake to bring up suggesting or forcing they should have tea now, that people who consumed a lot of cake cannot consent to drinking tea afterwards.
I came across it yesterday when skimming the #AskELJames tag. I’m not on twitter so I didn’t post, but was skimming because I had some FB posts show up on my feed of ‘fans’ that were accusing of James being attacked on the tag and I was curious. For the most part it seems the questions were polite and well worded with a handful of people picking apart the bad writing, or the coping off of twilight, but the relevant questions asking about the abuse in the books appeared to be all polite and then people asking tongue in cheek questions about ‘how if they track her(james) phone and show up at a bar that she is at, just to make sure she is ok’ according to her books and what james claims, that behavior/actions is ok to do.
I’ve seen that video. It was based on a post about not forcing tea.
Quite a few people think that picking apart the bad writing and the abuser are equivalent to bullying her. I disagree. An author needs to be able to defend her work, and if she can’t, then admit it. An author also needs to use proper writing. Some leeway can be had for some sentences when it’s in first-person narration, but that doesn’t excuse having one person’s speaking tagged with the actions of the other. Any high school English teacher would mark you wrong on that. I don’t fault her editors since they’ve been told to go easy on her, and the final decision lays with her. She can, and probably does, disregard every single editing suggestion made to her. Having anyone bother to edit is more or less just to say there’s an editor, even though it’s a farce when all input will be ignored. So the public pointing these things out to her is entirely fair.
It’s rumored that she got death threats on Twitter, but I haven’t seen any of them, and I’ve looked! Nothing. I wonder if some people think those tongue-in-cheek remarks (which are fair game, since they both point out problems with what James defends as romance as well as aren’t seriously about about any person) are taking them to be threats against her royal delicate highness.
I love that video. Thanks for posting it!
I vote pox.
Sometimes it’s super sweet when a man tells an insecure woman (or vice versa) that she has nothing to be ashamed about, because she is beautiful. One of my favourite examples of this is Bright’s speech to Hannah on Everwood. (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeAD_nnoZsw)
With Christian it seems less like he’s trying to make her feel better and more like he’s just telling her how to feel. ‘You are not allowed to be uncomfortable with your body, because I think you’re hot.’ Ugh.
(Thanks for fixing the link, so I can enjoy your spot on criticism of this awful book)
“Look again. The date of this chapter is May 22nd, 2011. That book wasn’t published until the following year.”
The paperback version wasn’t published until 2012. The hardcover was published April 2011.
TRIGGER WARNINGS AND STUFF, NOT-SUPER-GREAT CHILD STUFF I GUESS?
I agree, lady. I mean, I don’t believe in mocking the triggers of real life people, but there’s stuff like this:
An image of a young woman brushing out her long, dark hair comes to mind; her hair shines in the light from the cracked, yellowed window, and the air is filled with dancing dust motes. She’s singing softly, like a child.
and there’s real-life stuff from my normal, non-crack-addicted, white-girl suburban not-really-all-that-violent childhood stuff? as follows, take care, honest depiction of kids getting spanked, i grew up in a really religious household, people who know what that means already know what this is about:
“i ran screaming down the hallway, slammed the door to my room, and dove under the bed, shaking and crying in the corner. my mother slammed the door open and cracked the tree branch against the lintel: “come out NOW,” she said. “how dare you RUN FROM ME.”
i cringed back against the bed.
she dragged me out from under the bunkbed by the ankle, and then i got beat with a tree branch until I stopped crying, because she hadn’t given me something to cry about. i was just being wicked and manipulative, and there were probably demons in me.
i think I was eight.”
real fucking suburban childhood…like. “discipline,” again, not even that bad, not even that traumatizing, I had it waaaaay better than a bunch of people I knew.
like. el james, shuuuuut the fuck up bout your idea of fictional childhood trauma, please. *rolls eyes forever*
It sounds like you grew up in a household that abided by some of the Pearls’ To Train Up a Child abuse. I’m so sorry you went through that.
Grey’s most traumatic dreamory is coming up in chapter 11, and even it’s not that bad. Basically he was home alone without a lot to eat while his mom was out working. That makes him wake up in a cold sweat.
My mother grew up in a southern household with a step-dad who thought it was character-building to have his wife prepare only enough food for half of the kids, so that they’d fight over it and find their own alpha. They were switched every night because he said that the kids deserved to be punished even for their misbehaviors that weren’t caught. If they actually were caught, being whipped would have been getting off easy. My mother was forced to give her step-dad sexual favors in a hotel for forgetting to fold a load of laundry. Her mother was so love-struck over this guy that she hit the kids who begged her to leave. She eventually did leave him when she found out he cheated on her. By that time, she had a couple more kids. She married someone else, and when that guy died, she remarried that abusive prick and said she lost a lot of years with the love of her life because of the kids (see, he only cheated because her body looked like someone who’d given birth eight times, and that was the kids’ fault somehow).
So…Christian’s Grey’s so, so awful childhood of a loving mother who bought him toys, made him birthday cakes, made him his favorite breakfasts, never hit him, and did all she could to support him, is far from the worst in the world, despite the one time her john burned his chest a few times with a cigarette. We never, ever hear about that john hitting him or anything else other than that one time he burned Grey. Doesn’t make it all right, but it’s so far from a terrible, traumatic childhood that I think having him so broken up over a life with a loving mother that led into a financially privileged life belittles real survivors of child abuse and neglect.
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“Yes, Mother. She.” My tone is dry as I try not to laugh. And for once she’s silent as she wanders through the living room.”
~ So it’s okay for his mom to insinuate that he’s gay, even laughable, but if Ana innocently asks because it’s her job to, it’s so horribly offensive that he wants to beat and rape her to prove he’s straight? Wow. -_-
“How do you get to be 21 in the US, and not know what vanilla sex is?”
~ I don’t know, but I’m an American and 35 years old, and I’d never heard the term “vanilla sex” before I started seeing it mentioned in blogs like this and Jenny Trout’s a couple of years ago. :p
“These are the kind of memories that are soooooooooo traumatizing to him. I’d give almost anything if all my memories of my mother we “bad” as his.”
~ I got the impression that these non-traumatizing memories were actually the author’s way of showing us that Grey actually misses his biological mother, loathe as he is to admit it. When you think about it, would he really act like he hates her so much for simply dying on him when he was so young? It sounds to me like he is merely mad at her for abandoning him, and that he really did love her, but he just refuses to come to terms with it.