Fifty Shades Darker Chapter 12 – This is a stick up.

Previously: Grey flexes his newly acquired I-own-the-company-you-work-for muscles and keeps Ana from going on a business trip. It’s okay, though, because Grey asked her to move in with him.
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Lorraine: I hope you all watched our chapter 11 vlogs, in which I talked a crap ton and Sweeney tried to not die.

We ended that chapter with some major dramz- Taylor announced that Mrs. Rape was on her way up. Grey previously told Mrs. Rape that Ana didn’t want to see her at all, ever, so it’s kind of weird that she’s showing up.

Sweeney: Before we get to the poor excuse for “plot” in this chapter, we have an update on E. L. James not owning a face and a fun Mr. Potato Head play-along-at-home description: Grey’s mouth “flattens to a crooked straight line.”

Lor: I didn’t even notice that. A crooked…straight… but it’s crooked… NEVER MIND.

Taylor comes in and announces Mrs. Rape and Ana immediately gets her low self-esteem on and notes how pretty she is.

“Why is she so damned attractive? She’s dressed entirely in back: tight jeans, a shirt that emphasizes her perfect figure, and a halo of bright glossy hair.”

This is more evidence that sometimes I’m so busy being angry at the plot and characters, I forget to be angry at the terrible writing. She’s dressed all in black, says EL and then offers us a list: dressed in black jeans, dressed in a black shirt, dressed in black… hair? NO. Because that doesn’t make sense, and not only because her hair is blonde.

Mrs. Rape apologizes because she expected Grey to be alone, on account of him not usually having his submissives around on Mondays. Grey offers, “girlfriend,” by way of explanation and Mrs. Rape answers with a slow smile, so maybe that’s where he learned it from.

Sweeney: I’m really glad everyone now has a nightmarish image of me enacting the slow smile. Sorry I’m not sorry for wanting all of you to be a tiny bit traumatized too.

Lor: Mrs. Rape apologizes again, saying she knows that Ana doesn’t want to see her. Ana tries to grow a back bone, but she just ends up saying two words quietly and Mrs. Rape is kind of just like, STFU, I’m not here to see you anyways. See, she has a big problem and she needs Grey’s help. He’s all, “well in that case! Let’s have drinksies,” and this entire thing is really awkward. Mrs. Rape is twitchy and uncomfortable and Ana wonders if it’s because she’s in the room. She doesn’t for a second think that maybe it’s about the big problem Rape announced having when she entered the fucking room.

Anyways: Mrs. Rape is being blackmailed. She pulls out the blackmail letter and Grey refuses to touch it because of “fingerprints.” That’s the most murder-y reaction one could have in this situation. If your BFF came over all, “look at this blackmail letter,” you’d probably be all, “OH SHIT. LEMME SEE!” Not Christian Grey. He’s worried about fingerprints.

Also, I really want to ignore this whole blackmailing subplot because another subplot? REALLY? So much shit happens in this book in which nothing happens.

Sweeney: It’s so frustrating to constantly have to introduce subplots when they ultimately lead nowhere. It’s like the most anticlimactic soap opera ever. Mrs. Rape Blackmail sounds like it would be outlandish but interesting except that I know better by now to expect that.

Lor: We at least learn our lessons.

After Grey and Rape start tossing around names Ana doesn’t recognize, she says she’s tired and goes to bed. What she really does, though, is conveniently leave the room and eavesdrops, so that the conversation can turn to her and can still be related to the audience. Because, “Hey, I’m being blackmailed- NO WAIT LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR GIRLFRIEND” is a thing that would absolutely happen in this world.

Sweeney: Because everyone finds Anastasia Steele SO. INCREDIBLY. FASCINATING. They can think about / discuss nothing else.

Lor: Mrs. Rape is happy that Grey is happy, though he self-deprecates that he doesn’t deserve to be. He claims Ana knows him better than anyone and Mrs. Rape balks at this because while Ana has been fucking him for 5 weeks, she was fucking him since pretty much the day after his voice changed. You get to know a person, you know?

Sweeney: A+

Lor: Then, she asks if he misses his playroom and that sets him off. Grey makes it clear that Mrs. Rape is his past and raping Ana is his future. Something like that. She says she doesn’t want to lose him and Grey says he wasn’t hers to lose. They bicker a bit more and Grey even calls her a “mother hen” just so we’re all sufficiently weirded out.

Sweeney: That comment, like so many other things, had a real ick factor to it.

Lor: When Ana hears Mrs. Rape leave, she runs into the room and waits for Grey to enter. Ana asks Grey to please explain to her how Mrs. Rape helped him, because she hates her and thinks she caused untold damage. Grey has a little tantrum:

“Why the fuck do you want to know about her? We had a very long-standing affair, she beat the shit out of me often, and I fucked her in all sorts of ways you can’t even imagine, end of story.”

Pro-tip: if your SO asks you to tell them about your ex, try not to lead off with all the sex the two of you used to have.

He yells at her some more about how it’s all over but then calms down and asks Ana what she wants to know. Of course at this point Ana is all, “yeah. Nevermind.” Grey says that he’s never had to explain himself and now his past and future are colliding and it’s weird. He starts talking about how much he loves Ana and how they have a future together to distract her.

Sweeney: It’s really funny when Ana lets this go because part of Mrs. Rape’s little chat about her with Grey was pointing out that Ana is strong and will be able to stand up to him. I love when they share these fun descriptions of this character that are so hopelessly inconsistent with everything we’ve actually seen from her. Ana makes Bella Swan look like the portrait of a strong woman.

Lor: That’s a scary conclusion.

Ana admits that she was eavesdropping and decides that Mrs. Rape clearly cares for Grey. He admits he cares for her too, but nowhere near as much as he loves Ana. He says he’s loved her since Georgia, and that it was actually Mrs. Rape who encouraged him to totally disrespect Ana’s space and follow her there. That isn’t difficult for me to believe.

We get some more back and forth about how Grey thinks Mrs. Rape taught him valuable stuff, then he “fondly” remembers the times she beat the shit out of him. Ana tries to play the “how about if it were your son,” card but she basically gets a “der?” reaction. He claims that it was his decision to stay in the relationship too.

She asks about those people they were talking about. One was Mrs. Rape’s ex-husband and the other, Isaac,  is her new submissive. Ana is mildly horrified and Grey clarifies: He’s in his mid-twenties, Anastasia. You know- a consenting adult.”

WHICH IS FUNNY THAT HE KNOWS THE TERM.

Grey finally announces that he’s “bored of the subject” so they are totally not going to talk about this issue anymore. He’s off to do some work, but first he remembers that her new car came in a day early. Buuut, she can’t drive it because if you’ll recall sub-plot #36, the Ghost of Submissives Past is still trying (and miserably failing) to kill them. (S: ALL THE BEST SUB-PLOT IDEAS GO NOWHERE!) Sawyer is going to continue to follow Ana around, and she has to call Grey any time she wants to leave the building. Grey says he can’t trust her and Ana says she can’t trust him and he’s all, “really? YOU WANNA GO?” Ana says they aren’t fighting, they are communicating, and that’s his cue to exit.

Ana plops down onto the bed. 

“Can we ever have a normal conversation without it disintegrating into an argument? It’s exhausting.”

It is, indeed, exhausting.

Sweeney: Mostly because it gives me all the fucking rage and I am worn out from trying to keep from exploding.

Lor: It’s not even a good ab workout or calorie burner. Or, wait, maybe it is, but all the booze counteracts that.

Ana thinks that maybe they just don’t know each other that well. She doesn’t even know whether to make him  her tea or coffee while he works! And CLEARLY that is the type of vital information that is lacking in this relationship.

After a bit of dramatics, Ana decides to call her dad. I’m not sure why we’re told this because exactly nothing happens during this phone conversation.

Next, Ana decides to shower, dress for bed and go grab a book from the library. Apparently, the library is actually where the pool table was, so when we were guessing that it was the Red Ranger in the Billiard Room, we were all a little off. Darn.

There, she remembers about their pool table romp, and even sees the discarded ruler he was hitting her with. She picks it up, hits her palm with it and thinks, “why can’t I take a little more pain for my man?”

Anyrage, she finds a book and settles in.

We cut to Grey finding her asleep and carrying her to bed.

We again cut to Ana waking up from a bad dream and guess who is playing the middle-of-the-night-piano AGAIN. Bonus points if you can guess who promptly “clambers” out of bed to go investigate. This of course leads to the requisite sex scene.

“Why do we fight,” Grey asks Ana as he kisses her and I’d like to say that it’s because, beyond being two highly incompatible, immature and emotionally stunted people who have no idea how to properly communicate with each other and who constantly let their willy nilly desires dictate their choices, it’s because the bitch who wrote you two forgot to also write a plot and constantly makes you two bicker to connect one sex scene to another, with random subplots sprinkled in between.

Whatever- Ana says it’s ’cause they’re getting to know each other. Then they start having sex on top of the piano, in which Grey says he won’t bring her to climax right away because that is his “revenge.” To be honest, we get a few details about how he goes down on her, and then we cut away from the actual intercourse portion of this.

Sweeney: Sorry, can we back up to the part where he elaborates on the revenge? This, ladies and gentlemen, is the amazing Christian Grey that women everywhere are so obsessed with: “Argue with me, and I am going to take it out on your body somehow.” SUCH A GREAT RELATIONSHIP. And, to be very clear, this is no longer fake BDSM; they are supposed to be in a non-dom/sub relationship now. Except for the part where they’re not. So, that’s cool.

Lor:  We join them back again, laying on the piano, which causes Ana to oh my. She asks him about that whole tea-or-coffee-in-the-evenings question, and he’s all, “water or wine,” because of course. Then he says he loves her.

Sweeney: Also, remember how just a few pages ago Grey was telling Mrs. Rape that Ana knows him best? They both now agree that they still know so little about each other. This bitch’s inability to keep her story together for more than a couple pages is so annoying.

Lor: We cut again to the next morning.

The alarm goes off with the six a.m. traffic news, and I am rudely awakened form my disturbing dream of over-blond and dark-haired women.

RUDE, alarm. She was having disturbing dreams which she did not appreciate being woken up from, duh.

She wakes Christian and immediately starts questioning him about his nightmares, wondering what they could possibly be about. Shock, his early childhood. She asks if he has any happy childhood memories and he says the crack whore baking him a cake, his sister Mia coming home and piano lessons. Also, he’s never cried ever. EVER.

Sweeney: “I recall the crack whore baking” is another one of those giggle-worthy statements that I dearly appreciate.

Lor: The crack whore is always good for a laugh.

Ana asks how Mama Grey saved him and he gives her a, “SRSLY?” look. “She adopted me,” he says and then promptly says it’s too early in the morning to be talking about such things. And honestly, you should probably brush your teeth before delving into childhood traumas. Grey changes the subject to sex and we thankfully cut away. Again.

It’s breakfast time and I’m not even sorry that I’m going to skip their entire damn exchange because its sole purpose it to inform us that Grey didn’t used to have sex on weekdays, on account of only seeing his submissives on the weekends. This makes Ana super happy because LOOK AT HOW SPECIAL SHE IS.

Sweeney:

Lor: We move to the car on the way to work. Grey reminds Ana that Kate’s brother will be arriving in town, because she forgot on account of being the worst friend of all time. It’s decided that Sawyer will drive Ana to the apartment with Ethan, because she has to be baby-sat at all times now. Grey gets a phone call and it’s clearly Mrs. Rape. Look:

“You’re kidding… For a scene… When did he tell you this?” Christian chuckles, almost reluctantly. “No, don’t worry. You don’t have to apologize. I’m glad there’s a logical explanation. It did seem a ridiculously low amount of money… I have no doubt you’ve something evil and creative planned for your revenge. Poor Isaac.”

See all those clues there? Like the fact that we were told earlier that Isaac is Mrs. Rape’s new consenting-adult-sub? Still, Ana asks who it was because she’s an idiot. Grey wants to know if she really wants to know. That’s when she figures it was Rape. She says no and sulks. Grey turns the manipukiss on and kisses her knuckles and sucks on her pinky finger. Meanwhile, Taylor considers driving the car into a nearby wall and ending it all.

Also, so we’re clear, the blackmail sub-plot ends with a huge “jaykay!” BECAUSE THIS BOOK CONTINUES TO SUCK.

Ana gets to work and Jack’s a little crabby with her when she stops to chat during her quest to fetch him coffee. He’s worried about something happening in the senior management and asks Ana to keep her ear to the ground. She makes no mention of actually having her mouth to the dick causing all the ruckus.

Back at her desk, Ana exchanges a few pointless emails with Grey about how he likes waking up to her and she likes going to sleep with him. Later, Jack asks Ana to fetch him lunch so she immediately calls Grey to inform him she is leaving the building. Grey calls Jack a “lazy bastard” for having Ana get him lunch, because Christian Grey, hotshot billionaire CEO definitely always gets his own lunch.

Ana asks if he’s alone and he replies, “no, there are six people staring at me right now, wondering who the hell I’m talking to.” I’d put money on the fact that they were more wondering what they did to deserve having to sit around and listen to Grey chat with his girlfriend. Ana jokes that they all probably thought he was gay, and they both laugh because being gay is funny.

Sawyer walks with Ana over to the deli. During that time she remembers her friend Kate, who despite how it feels, has only been in Barbados for two week. TWO WEEKS. I can’t even.

Sweeney: I AM SO JEALOUS OF HOW MUCH KATE HAS MISSED.

Lor: Anyhow, after Ana asks, Sawyer tells her that he spends his days in the coffee shop across the street just staring at Ana’s building, which I’m sure makes her feel snuggly and safe. Sawyer also says he has the Ghost of Submissives Pasts’ face committed to memory. This inspires Ana to ask Grey for a picture of the GSP “before she became Ghost Girl” and she’s sure Grey will give it to her, so this all makes her super pleased with herself.

Ana brings back Jack’s lunch and he’s super creepy with her some more. She freaks out about what she’s going to do about him.

Next, Ethan calls and arranges to pick keys to her apartment (remember? She has one of those?) Also, Ethan says, “laters” on the phone and it’s a BFD because hey! That’s what Grey says! But they all got it from Elliot and I’m just so happy we’re spending time reading about the thrilling evolution and contagion of the “laters” catchphrase.

She tells Grey about Ethan’s arrival and they agree to have dinner and drinks with him later.

Ethan arrives and he and Ana have a mutual, “you are hot,” “no YOU are” moment. Also, Ethan notices that Ana looks differently, more worldly, and it’s on account of now she’s had sex, see? Also, she let her boyfriend hit her and stuff. She’s seen things, experienced terrifying, tampon-removing types of things.

Actually, maybe it’s just because she’s wearing something that isn’t Kate’s plum dress.

He leaves with two more laters, and we then cut to the end of the day and Christian picking up Ana.

The Audi is parked at the curb, and Christian climbs out as I approach. He’s taken off his jacket, and he’s wearing his gray pants, my favorite ones that hang from his hips – in that way.

Aw, his hip hanging pants! He hasn’t worn them in that way for a while. He’s probably been walking around with his pants on his hips in the way that 100% of all other human beings wear their pants on their hips.

The ride over to Ana’s apartment, and as they get there, Grey gets a phone call. Ana offers to head up and get Ethan, and I’m amazed that Grey lets her, on account of that meaning she has to be out in the open air all by herself.

Ana gets upstairs and she finds Leila in her apartment, and she’s holding a gun.

Sweeney: AND THEN SHE DIES!!

Lor: I’m not gonna lie- it’s kind of tempting to just stop reading here. That way, in our heads, and in our hearts, the story will forever end with a crazy bitch perpetually holding Ana at gun point.

Alas.

Murmur Count – 9
Whisper Count – 5

Favorite comment last post: I rode up and down all day today in the elevator full of hopefullness for sexy times. And I even work in the same building as my husband. Nope, nada, nothing. However, he really didn’t care whether or not I went outside, so I suppose that is a bonus. – Buttercup

Next time of Fifty Shades Darker – Ana probably doesn’t die. Cry with us and see how she’s saved in Chapter 13.

Marines (all posts)

I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.

Nicole Sweeney (all posts)

Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.