Fifty Shades of Grey

I don't know. As I said before, I don't think people are as easily influenced as some would like to believe. Most people can distinguish between fantasy and reality. Most people know that romance novels aren't real. I don't think anybody's about to go buy handcuffs and handcuff their partners without consent.

It's a two way street. The media influences us. A LOT. Like, a lot a lot. At the same time, it isn't what exactly causes shootings in the streets. So really, it could go either way on stuff like this.

Well I think two good things be taken from 'the success of  'grey'' at least.

• 1 The grenral populous no longer sees practitioners of BDSM as inherently bad people. This is despite the fact Grey is an terrible human being by an sane standard.

• 2. There is a viable market for eBooks.

edited 11th Aug '12 12:31:26 PM by joeyjojo

Which should be taken to mean: If any of you people here defending BDSM from a (fake) attack by some of us on this thread fancy yourselves writers, get to creating counternovels that show the proper way of doing things. After all, you could get rich and help people find the resources to do it right without any permanent harm. Two birds with one stone and all that.

@wuggles: things that influence peoples' perception of what's normal and acceptable can be troublesome, though. A woman who's read and been excited by this book may let that fake familiarity lead her to ignore warning signs about an abusive man, and abusive would-be dominants will most likely abuse the shit out of the influence this book is having.

edited 11th Aug '12 4:04:48 PM by Morven

Oh - this has even been discussed in the Guardian, now... :D :D http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/13/fan-fiction-fifty-shades-grey

The person I sat next to on a plane ride was reading this and I took a look. When you said Christian is "fifty shades of fucked up", I never realized that that was the actual phrase the book used to describe him. And there are sequels.

I was looking at some reviews of Fifty Shades on Goodreads. They provide some interesting insight on what people like in the books, and whether they are actually being influenced by it:

How "I-don't-take-no-for-an-answer" can be a good quality is a mystery to me. It's curious that people seem to like Christian's awful personality, and are annoyed when it changes (this is from a review of the third book). There are also a lot of comments in the vein of Christian being a hard man but one you'll "fall in love with".

The thought of someone getting into BDSM through these books is rather terrifying.

An exact case of what I dislike: People learning the wrong things and spreading the misinformation around because they don't know any better.

Indeed. As for D/s relaonships . . . D/s itself covers everything from the perversion that is this book down to the couple of switches who take turns controlling each other. Hell, your conventional Conservative household where the father rules everything is a form of D/s itself. And vice versa, with a mother in charge. So most people have already been introsduced to D/s, now they're just getting abuse lopped right in with it. -_- -Self-censored profanity ensues-

Its kind of worse than that, the BDSM in that damn book is just unsafe and inacurate.

I should probably try reading one of them, just to see what I'm bashing. I'll admit to not reading Twilight while bashing the hell out of it, but I need to make sure my claims are fully backed up. No matter how sure I am, I can't base my opinion unless I know for sure.

To The Pirate Bay!

I can't believe that you are openly endorsing piracy.

I don't like having to pay for things either, but ripping off the works of another writer is wrong you know.

I do have a code of ethics, you know. I have a full response and explanation typed out if you want to read it, but I'll keep this short: I do not condone all piracy. I adhere to time factors, EG if something cannot be found in most shops due to its age, or if the platform it uses is dead. Some things I do download ahead of time, but I usually pay for them afterwards.

This is just a fraction of my response, and it doesn't convey everything. but this is the wrong thread to be posting this in anyway. We should keep this as short as possible.

What? Oh I was making a dig at Fifty Shades Of Grey's copy paste 'inspiration' from another novel.

No, don't worry you're cool. You can't steal from a theft after all.

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:46:20 AM by joeyjojo

Ahh, k. My bad :/

Technically, it's not necessarily a theft of Twilight. Plenty of people write fanfiction with characters having fairly different personalities. Some even completely change the personalities to fit their own story plan, while some at least hide personality quirks in to distinguish the character as the original.

Again, I can't be sure because I haven't read the books. But at least the Bella expy wakes up to herself at the end of the first book and gets out. I think that's infinitely more sensible than Bella would have ever done in Twilight, even if she does end up going back. That alone seperates the characters: The author's "Bella" has more common sense (at least temporarily) than the original.

If this is wrong, than it's more of an excuse to pirate the book and read up.

(...Plus, my mother has a copy of the book. I'd read that, but if I was caught I'd just die. Either way, I'd be reading for free)

So according to our page on the books, at one point Christian rapes Anastasia after she tells him that she is not in to BSDM. This is treated as romantic. And here I thought that Rape Is Love (yes, I know its now a redlink) was a dead trope outside of fanfi- oh, wait.

edited 23rd Aug '12 7:18:25 AM by lrrose

Dead trope? Dude, it was in Anita Blake just a few years ago.

Looks likes one person/organisation wants to burn them all

Yeah, Rape Is Love is not dead, even if it should be. It's a lot less common than it was.

Cosmo sex quiz, sweetie.

See how far you can get before you burst into laughter. I was able to hold it together until #13, then I totally lost it. Nos. 14 and 15 (“Amazeballs?!?!!”) did not help.

The fak.

Females really do that shit because Cosmo tells them to?

Odd.

Soz, double post. On the Night Shift strand on STV (Scottish independent television station) the female voice over person who talks above the pictures of the Scottish landscape and stuff has recommended that people read this thing.

What? No. This crap doesn't need to invade the land of my ancestors. Is no place safe?! DX