Sweeney: With the third and final book now behind us, it’s time to take one last, overarching look at just how stupid it really was, from the insane word counts produced by ELJ’s limited grasp of the English language, to the nonsensical pacing in a book originally written as serialized fanfiction by someone without a proper understanding of “plot” or “reality.”
Lorraine: We often marveled at how much bad E.L. James managed to stuff into her series, but because we spread our recaps out over so many weeks, we’re afraid our readers lose sight of just how horrible this material really is. Count on us, however, to reel it all in and put 579 pages into full, terrible focus.
Sweeney: Just to make sure you’re all paying attention — THAT’S 579 PAGES WE READ. Just seeing that number makes me queasy. I should get used to it, though, because this whole post is a dedication to ELJ’s failure count.
Broken, Broken Record
The characters in this book, recognizing that it’s all a sham, are not particularly fond of enunciating or speaking up. The word murmur appears a total of 293 times and whisper makes an impressive 380 appearances. Yes, that is just the count for this one book, not the full trilogy. Here’s a look at some of her other favorite words:
Jokes on You
When you think of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, I’m pretty sure their senses of humor don’t immediately come to mind. In fact, I bet you didn’t even know that they could joke. They can’t, but that sure didn’t stop them from trying in Fifty Shades Freed. Here’s a sampling of the comedy gold that came from the minds of everyone’s least favorite couple:
- Grey jokes that he will staple Ana’s bikini to her body after she went topless sunbathing. (It’s not funny because we all believe he will.)
- Grey jokes that shaving Ana’s vagina turns him on. (It’s not funny because ew.)
- Ana jokes that the camera she bought for Grey is a symbol for women’s oppression. (It’s not funny because she’s referring to the time Grey took naked pictures of his subs for blackmail.)
- Grey jokes about Ana gaining back all the weight she lost post-abuse break-up. (Ana is alarmingly thin he alternates between ordering her to eat and fat shaming her. Also, no references to the abuse break-up are ever funny.)
- Grey jokes that she dents his car, he’s going to beat her. (Again, we all believe he will.)
- Grey jokes about Ana being useful. It’s a joke because he doesn’t really think that she is.
- Ana jokes to herself about having a safeword for when her husband is an asshole.
- They laugh about his hilarious ability to make women angrily leave the room.
- They joke that their fetal daughter is already way into sex, because it’s good to get your lifetime as a sexual object started as early as possible.
Freed. For real, for real.
There you have it, Traumateers. A quick look at the final book in the Fifty Shades trilogy. It’s also our final joint post on this subject. Lorraine will vlog her year-and-a-half of trauma when she feels up to it. Right now we’re still healing. Thank you for taking this crazy ride with us.
♥
The Snark Squad