Radioactive Adventures With Fallout 4 - Part 2

Radioactive Adventures With Fallout 4

Part One

Part 2 - Life or Death Sartorial Choices

So the outside world looks...nice...?

That's a landscape indicating good times ahead...

Unsurprisingly it seems that having a nuclear bomb dropped on it did not do my little town a lot of good. It looks pretty much dead, and all I can hear is wind. Which is pretty disheartening. Luckily, there's a radio on my Pip Boy and miraculously it's still able to pick up some stations, which is indicative of some life somewhere at least. I tune in to the first one and set about carefully exploring this desolate hellscape I used to call home. It doesn't seem so awful with a jaunty 50s soundtrack in the background. In fact it seems damn near cheerful, and the paranoid sense that I am about to be ambushed by crazed mutants at any second lessens the closer I get to the town, where I realise that there is literally no one here but me. Oh, and Codsworth.

YOU RUSTED SON OF A GUN :D

Turns out this endearing hunk of junk has been hanging out at my dilapidated house this whole time, waiting for me and my husband to come back. That's adorable. This floating robot butler is adorable. Also slightly unhinged, as I gather from gently interrogating him about what the diddly happened around here. Information gleaned thus far: it's been roughly 200 years, the geraniums are dead, and it's impossible to polish rust. Oh, also there's a holodeck for me from Nate that he recorded before the whole 'mushroom cloud of death' thing happened. I figure I should probably watch that, seeing as he's tragically passed now. That would be the appropriate thing to do.

"Hi, honey!" my sweet dead husband says from beyond the grave. He goes on to tell me how kind and loving and funny I am, which is lovely, and then he waffles on about how hard it was adjusting to life outside the military but he's glad to have me and Baby Jack and yadda yadda yadda. All very heartwarming. Not very useful. I have learned nothing from this, and time's a-tickin, so I do what any grieving widow would at this point and loot the fuck out of the house.

A veritable treasure trove...

This turns out to be an even more depressing endeavour than I anticipated. Partly because it involves rummaging through the shattered husk of Jack's nursery, but also because the coolest thing I find is a suit and bowler hat, which obviously I change into immediately. It's not exactly an outfit guaranteed to strike fear into my enemies, but it's less dorky than the hazmat suit that the scientists stuffed us into for cryo, so it'll do for now.

Pictured: swag?

As a mark of respect for the dead husband, I take an in-game hour to sit on that mouldy sofa and reflect on our short, but apparently blissfully happy life together. Then, having done that, I decide to get to work. First order of business: grilling the robot butler. He is very upset about Nate being definitely dead (yeah me too Codsworth...) and very insistent that Jack could still be alive maybe, and suggests that someone in Concord might have answers on that. He also warns me that the residents are a bit...rough. I recognise this as video-game speak for 'will fucking murder you on sight' and file that away for future reference. Now it is time to loot the neighbours!

Codsworth speeds off ahead and very helpfully dispatches all the GIANT FUCKING MOSQUITOES that have apparently infested the neighbourhood. So. Radioactive mutant bugs are going to be a theme, then. That's fantastic. At least it's not spiders...
It turns out Codsworth is actually really adept at killing shit considering he's a robot butler. Apparently a buzzsaw and a flamethrower were vital tools for the sentient metal domestic help? Anyway, there's not a lot of bugs left for me to take care of by the time I catch up with him. All the rifling through the neighbours' cupboards slows me down a bit. I find more clothes, bottle caps, various centuries-old foodstuffs, gun ammo (yay!) and just...so many miscellaneous household items. Seriously. So many. I've got cups for friggin' days. Turns out this is all kind of useful, because there's some kind of crafting/engineering station nearby that lets me convert this random junk into things. Furniture. Weapons. Vehicles. I can build a settlement here, if I so choose. That's pretty cool. I look forward to doing that, although evidently I'm gonna need much more stuff. Which I will probably find in Concord...

I tell Codsworth to hang back at the house and wait for me. This robot butler is my only friend in the world right now, I don't want him getting dinged up just yet. So, I head over the bridge out of Sanctuary Hills, and straight away I am greeted by a very good omen indeed.

This welcome party sucks...

Two fresh dead bodies strewn across the path - that's not creepy at all. I inch closer, waiting for something to jump out and get me like it got these suckers, but it seems safe for now, and closer inspection reveals these to be the corpses of two raiders. They don't look like they would have been friendly had they not been deceased, so I quickly scavenge their stuff and move on. Almost immediately I am set upon by a strange furry beast that comes out of nowhere.

OH HAI THERE!

That's right, all I've done is wander around and squish a few bugs and already this game has gifted me with a loyal dog companion. A loyal dog companion who...probably killed those raiders, come to think about it...

I'm gonna call him Sergeant. I hope he likes roach meat.

Sergeant is very eager for me to follow him, and I figure he knows what's going on better than I do, so I dutifully follow him. He leads me right to this place:

Looks...lovely?

This turns out to be a dick move on Sergeant's part because as soon as I move towards it I'm attacked by a horde of giant mutant rats. Molerats? Whatever. They're ugly and mean and they're faster than the bugs. Luckily, Sergeant helps me out and we take them down without sustaining too much damage. I gain more yummy irradiated meat for my stash, and then it's time to look around this place. There is loot galore, not to mention a note mentioning disposing nuclear waste in some caves underneath the shop. Which sounds...safe? But also interesting! I figure that might be worth checking out, so I start searching for wherever the secret entrance to the secret cave is. Sergeant helps me out by very subtly running up to the entrance and barking. Turns out it's a little bit south of the station and I probably would have missed it on my own as I was sticking too close to the building itself. I really like this dog. He makes life easy.

Nothing bad has ever come from crawling into random holes in the ground...

The cave itself is completely infested with molerats. Oh, god, so many... They are dispatched quickly and with minimal panicking, and I look around the place. Predictably, there's a whole ton of nuclear waste lying around. I can also see a chest/safe nestled in front of a particularly big leaky barrel, which I thoughtlessly blunder towards like a trusting baby deer tottering into a lush green meadow. Straight away some kind of scary-looking counter goes off and my health starts dropping, and I realise I may have been overlooking a vital bit of gameplay here. Rads. Still not entirely sure what 'rads' exactly are - I breezed over the game's attempts to teach me back in the facility, but obviously this is a post-nuclear wasteland and radiation might be an important thing to worry about, doofus!!! I'm wandering around without any protection against radiation, because I didn't want to wear the dorky hazmat suit. Idiot!

Begrudgingly, the dapper suit comes off and the hazmat suit goes back on, though I refuse to relinquish the bowler hat. 

Style AND practicality!

I consider it a lesson learned and reward myself with the contents of that safe, although the fact that apparently I can't heal the lost health without a doctor is concerning. Can't afford that kind of slip up again, that's for sure.

By the time I exit the cave, it's dusk, but there's still enough light to see some buildings in the distance. This, I presume, must be Concord.

It looks beautiful...

I am 100% certain that it's zombie-infested and do not want to go there. But, of course, I must...

Eventually...

Radioactive Adventures With Fallout 4 - Part 1

Radioactive Adventures With Fallout 4

Part 1 - Nice Knowing You, Nate!

I want to start this entry by saying that I am an obsessive gamer. By this I mean that when I buy a game, I play it obsessively until it's pried from my withered, gnarled hands and I'm forced by those who love me to acknowledge the outside reality once more. So for those thinking 'wow she's late to the Fallout 4 party', you are correct, I am, and there's a reason for this. That reason is Skyrim. I have literally been playing Skyrim too much for anything else to get a look in until now. I regret nothing.

Anyway, my friends managed to go on about Fallout 4 enough for me to finally buy it, and I'm chronicling my first play-through here so I can pretend that this is a constructive, somewhat-adult use of my time. It should be noted that I've never played a Fallout game before. As mentioned above: too busy playing Skyrim.

Opening cut-scene:

'War never changes...' says a very tired-sounding dude over some flash-back footage of his grandfather fighting in a conflict that literally changed the face of warfare forever. I'm not sure if this grizzled dude is supposed to be me? Anyway, he's from the year 2077, when America has embraced the wonders of nuclear power and this has kept society frozen in some kitschy 1950s aesthetic for some reason. Also there's robots, and that's cool. But unfortunately all is not well in retro-nuclear America. Apparently even though everyone has robot butlers, social unrest still rears its ugly head, and uh-oh! The threat of atomic warfare is on the horizon...

I spent about thirty minutes in the character creation screen, carefully bringing my scrappy post-apocalypse adventurer to life. Meet Jinks:

Life goals or wife goals?

Jinks has seen shit. Jinks lived through stuff you couldn't even cook up in your wildest, most underwear-soiling nightmares. She's ex-military. She's part-cockroach. She's the bastard love child of the Artful Dodger and one of those badass old lady bikers from Mad Max: Fury Road. She's also apparently married to a wholesome young man twenty years her junior who keeps complimenting her on her nose, which is nice...

Anyway, once I'm done crafting my new persona, my nice trophy husband (apparently he is called Nate) demands his primping time too and I'm left to explore our house. I count one baby, one affable robot butler and one tasteful family board game:

Hey kids! Isn't trivialising mass murder fun!

My robot butler invites me to drink some coffee it made and then goes to comfort my screaming child for me. Nate ambles in to the kitchen and stands there looking pretty for a while, and I have to say that this is a very comfortable slice of domestic pie. But alas! Even in an atomic Utopia there is no escape from nuisance callers...

Hi! Can I interest you in some plot advancement?

This salesman is not at all put off by the grizzled face of pain and world-weariness that greets him at the door, and this endears him to me, so I end up being quite receptive towards his spiel about underground nuclear bunkers and the coming end of times. I give him my name and my stats (sank most of my points into intelligence, perception and endurance - we'll see how that pans out) and then he's off again, and I'm left to get back to domestic bliss. Except this is when I notice something that horrifies me to my very core, and brings everything I thought I knew crashing down around me. 

It's a law diploma. 

MY law diploma. 

This game is trying to tell me that Jinks is a mere lawyer?????

LIES!!!

I'm still recovering from this bombshell when it turns out that the news is now on in the background, announcing the dropping of actual atomic bombshells all over the country, and now I've got to run screaming for the hills to get to the bunker that I literally just signed up for. Nate remembers to grab the baby (which is lucky because I forgot he existed) and then we're running along with the rest of the townsfolk towards apparent safety. No one seems to want to respond to my attempts at friendly conversation. They all choose screaming and incoherent gibbering instead, which is fair, I suppose, but I'm still offended.
After a bit of panicked running, the hubby and I have reached what looks like a military compound. The salesman is there getting turned away by guards, which seems pretty dickish of the company he's been so desperately shilling for, but they let me in so I don't really care.
We get directed towards a platform, and it starts taking us underground just as everything goes KA-BOOM, which is very dramatic. Nate reassures me that we're all okay (I mean, that was a lot of radiation that missed us by a nanosecond but fine?) I think he's doing that for his benefit more than mine because I definitely didn't ask, but whatever, it's time to suit up and settle in at our new underground bunker. Except...this apparently involves getting shoved into cryogenic freezing chambers. That seems suspicious? Whelp, no time to question it as I'm getting all frozen, so that's happened now, I guess. Me and my little nuclear (heh) family are officially human popsicles...until I conveniently wake up an undisclosed amount of time later just in time to helplessly watch some mysterious workers kidnap my baby and murder my husband!!!

Literally fridged, my poor sweet Nate...

So I guess that's the big quest, then. But first: escape! Unfortunately I get re-frozen before I can bust out of my pod and dole out some sweet, sweet vengeance on those spouse-killing baby-nappers, and another indeterminate amount of time passes before I'm finally freed. I go over to Nate's pod and loot his body like the respectful widow I am (hopefully his wedding ring is useful) and then it's explorin' time! Attempts to open the other pods and free my neighbours prove fruitless, and apparently they're all dead anyway so my hopes of finding allies so soon are quickly abandoned in favour of scavenging. I pick up coffee cups, clipboards, and other useless items that my hoarding tendencies will not permit me to leave behind, until finally I find a baton. This is conveniently just before I encounter GIANT MUTANT COCKROACHES which apparently I can loot for gross cockroach meat after I've successfully smashed them to pieces. So that's a food source locked down, at least.

Accessing various computer terminals reveals the shady corporate experiment it turns out I unwittingly signed up for, as well as giving me the chance to alleviate some of the stress of witnessing my husband's murder and the nuclear apocalypse by playing videogames.

This is definitely the time to be going for a high score...

Once I've had enough fun playing a game inside my game I go back to looking around. The logs revealed some kind of rebellion happening here while the rest of us popsicles were sleeping, but judging by the skeletons I'm finding, this was a while ago. Or the roaches picked the bodies clean, I don't know. Anyway, eventually I find a gun and ammunition. This is good. These are Jinks' tools. Now the roaches really don't stand a chance.

Soon enough, I'm back at the entrance of the compound, armed and ready to get the fuck out. One of the lab coat-wearing skeletons relinquishes his Pip Boy to me, and once I strap it on I can finally open an inventory, which is a profound relief because the fact that I couldn't until now was really starting to irritate. I have a quick flick through to check that my collection of coffee cups and cockroach meat is as bountiful as expected, and then apparently I'm officially ready for the outside world. So. I hop onto the platform, press the appropriate button, and am gradually reintroduced to the surface. But what, exactly, will I find up there?

I hope those cockroaches weren't babies...

Part Two

Fifty Shades of Grey: The Highlights - Part Two (NSFW)

(PART ONE)

Chapter Fourteen

I don't want to lose him. But I'm not sure I have the stomach to be his submissive – deep down, it's the canes and whips that put me off. I'm a physical coward, and I will go a long way to avoid pain. I think of my dream...is that what it would be like? My inner goddess jumps up and down with cheerleading pom-poms shouting yes at me.

See, these books were marketed as a story about a young woman discovering her latent, kinky tendencies, but what we actually have is a story about a young woman falling desperately in love with a man who coerces her into the lifestyle. She only puts up with it in order to keep him interested. Any affirmation that she might actually be enjoying the BDSM elements comes through her 'inner goddess' rather than her conscious thoughts. Consciously, she is actually thinking about how much she doesn't want the pain. It's almost as if the enjoyment of it is too shameful for her to acknowledge herself, so she has to attribute it to this fucking alternative personality which is really weird.

It's also feeding in to the infamous 'she says no but she really means yes' bullshit. Ana just needs a little convincing, because deep down she wants it really...for fuck's sake...

Chapter Fifteen

Boy, he's angry. He grabs my hand and leads me back into the apartment and straight into my bedroom...no passing go. My subconscious is behind the sofa again, head hidden under her hands. He switches on the sidelight and halts, staring at me.

"Please don't be angry with me," I whisper.

His gaze is impassive; his eyes cold shards of smoky glass.

"I'm sorry about the car and the books..." I trail off. He remains silent and brooding. "You scare me when you're angry," I breathe, staring at him.

How romantic...
This time Christian is angry because Ana has had the audacity to refuse his sudden gift of a brand new car. She previously asked him not to buy her a car, because she was uncomfortable with such generosity and she was pretty attached to the car she already had, but he went ahead and did it anyway. And now he's angry because he's only managed to convince her to take it as an indefinite loan rather than a gift, and obviously such disobedience is infuriating. 
Anyway, they then proceed to have sex. Because, obviously...


Chapter Sixteen

I hang up and face Kate, who glares at me. 

"Has that obscenely rich fucker upset you again?"

"No...sort of...er...yes."

"Just tell him to take a hike, Ana. You've been so up and down since you've met him. I've never seen you like this."

Kate's literally the only sane person in this entire book. 

Christian bursts into my bedroom and unceremoniously switches on the overhead light, making me squint [...] Kate comes and stands in the doorway.

"Do you want me to throw this asshole out?" she asks, radiating thermonuclear hostility.

Christian raises his eyebrows at her, no doubt surprised by her flattering epithet and her feral antagonism. I shake my head, and she rolls her eyes at me. Oh...I wouldn't do that near Mr. G.

"Just holler if you need me," she says more gently. "Grey - you're on my shit list and I'm watching you," she hisses at him. He blinks at her, and she turns and pulls the door closed but doesn't shut it.

I LOVE KATE SO MUCH

KATE FOR PRESIDENT 

God, why couldn't this book have been about Kate and Christian's brother Ethan? I would have loved that book...


Chapter Twenty

"No one's ever said no to me before. And it's so - hot."

His eyes widen, filled with wonder and lust. It's a heady mix. I swallow instinctively. His hand moves down to my behind. He pulls me sharply against him, against his erection. 

If you listen very carefully, you can maybe hear my eternal silent screams of horror because I don't think you can more blatantly perpetuate the mentality of rape culture unless you go around wearing a t-shirt that says 'I like it when they run'. But wait, it gets better...

"I want you, and I want you now. And if you're not going to let me spank you - which you deserve - I'm going to fuck you on the couch this minute, quickly, for my pleasure, not yours." [cue yet another sex scene in which Ana marvels at just how wonderful Christian is at sex, except this time Christian denies her one of her improbable, instantaneous orgasms]

All of a sudden, he withdraws, leaving me aching and hungry for more. He glares down at me.

"Don't touch yourself. I want you frustrated. That's what you do to me by not talking to me, by denying me what's mine." His eyes blaze anew, angry again. 

Oh, by the way - the thing she said 'no' to? Yeah, that was him moving his hand inappropriately up her thigh beneath the dinner table. Where the rest of his family were also seated. During dinner.


Chapter Twenty One

I scuttle off toward the study, mortified. Why does Christian only have attractive blondes working for him? And a nasty thought comes involuntarily into my mind: Are they all ex-subs?

Why the hell would that be your first assumption? In what universe would anybody exclusively employ ex-lovers? I can't even begin to understand this woman's thought process, I really can't...

He moves with ease, luxuriating in me, enjoying me, his lips slightly parted as his breathing increases. He twists his hips from side to side, and the feeling is exquisite.

How is he twisting his hips from side to side? I mean, logistically, how is that working? It sounds really awkward. I mean, is she talking about a corkscrew kind of motion? I'll accept diagrams...

He seemed fine when I went into his study. We had sex...and then he wasn't. No, I don't get it. I look at my subconscious. She's whistling with her hands behind her back and looking anywhere but at me. She hasn't got a clue, and my inner goddess is still basking in a remnant of post-coital glow. No - we're all clueless.

Oh my god, she's actually seeing manifestations of her separate personalities now. She is actually physically looking at her subconscious. That's a hallucination. Oh my god, this woman isn't just horribly naive, she's actually mentally ill. 

"How did they go?" she asks, excited. Only Kate can look gorgeous in an over-sized shirt, tattered jeans, and a dark blue bandana.

Yes. Only Kate can look good in such a horribly unflattering outfit. Only Kate. No one else...


Chapter Twenty Two

I don't know how to answer your comment about feeling like a whore. I know that's not what you've written, but it's what you imply. I don't know what I can say or do to eradicate these feelings.

I mean, he could always stop treating her like one? That might help. Just sayin'...

This is not something I wish to discuss via email. 

How many Cosmopolitans are you going to drink? 

Christian Grey
CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.

Holy fuck, he's here.

Oh my god, he's stalked her all the way to Georgia!?!? He couldn't even give her four days of space. With her mother. Who she barely sees. After he specifically agreed to give her the space to mull over signing that soul-destroying 'contract'. WHAT. THE. FUCK.


Chapter Twenty Three

He reaches between my legs and pulls on the blue string -what?!- and gently takes my tampon out and tosses it into the nearby toilet. Holy fuck. Sweet mother of all...and then he's inside me...

I have no words. None.

Although, let's talk about the fact that he's taken her being on her period as a green light to forego the loathsome experience of wearing a condom, and how that's totally not going to result in a surprise pregnancy later on...

He's standing there, gloriously naked, with my blood on him...

AND JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I WAS SAFE...


Chapter Twenty Four

I shake my head at his largesse, and I frown as a scene from Tess crosses my mind: the strawberry scene. It evokes my dream. To hell with Dr. Flynn - Freud would have a field day - and then he'd probably die trying to deal with Fifty Shades.

Yes, an orphaned, sexually dominant heterosexual male who was heavily influenced by an adolescent relationship with an older, matriarchal figure. That's exactly the kind of thing that would blow Freud's mind, like woah, that is just so outside of his remit, he would definitely not be able to handle how complex it all is...

Plus, we have another casual comparison between Christian and Alec D'Urberville. Fan-fucking-tastic! (I'm awarding bonus creepy-points for using the word 'largesse' in association with the scene where Alec essentially force-feeds Tess strawberries. Yep, there's nothing more than Alec's generosity implied in that scene, definitely...)


Chapter Twenty Five

I [...]make my way upstairs toward my room [...] I console myself with the thought that at least I have somewhere to escape from him. 

Examining the door, I find that it has a lock but no key. I wonder briefly if Mrs. Jones has a spare. I'll ask her.

FOR FUCK'S SAKE ANA! LOCK BUT NO KEY??? SERIOUSLY??? SERIOUSLY???

Closing my eyes, I try to calm myself down, to connect with my inner sub. She's there somewhere, hiding behind my inner goddess.

No no no no please do not add another personified aspect of Ana's personality to the roster! It's full, I swear, we've got it all covered between her inner goddess and her subconscious. No more!


Chapter Twenty Six

"I do it for you, Christian, because you need it. I don't. You didn't hurt me last night. That was in a different context, and I can rationalize that internally, and I trust you. But when you want to punish me, I worry that you'll hurt me."

His eyes darken like a turbulent storm. Time moves and expands and slips away before he answers softly.

"I want to hurt you. But not beyond anything that you couldn't take."

Fuck!

So Ana basically says that she trusts Christian not to hurt her apart from all the times where she doesn't trust him not to hurt her, and his response is to say that he really does want to hurt her, but not, like, too much. So that's cool, right? That's not horrifyingly fucked up in any way. And I mean, wanting to cause substantial amounts of physical pain to someone you're in love with is absolutely fine. Like, I get that. Everyone gets that. It's totally normal.
And it's completely understandable why this fucking cesspit of abuse and sexual trauma has resonated so profoundly with the world. I'm definitely not absolutely terrified by the armies of women who devoured these books and bought their 'Where's my Christian Grey?' merchandise. It's totally fine, it's fine, I'm fine, we're all FCUKINg fine...

"This is what you really like? Me, like this?" I use the sleeve of the bathrobe to wipe my nose.

He gazes at me warily.

"Well, you are one fucked-up son of a bitch."

"Ana," he pleads, shocked. 

"Don't you dare 'Ana' me! You need to sort your shit out, Grey!" And with that, I turn stiffly, and I walk out of the playroom, closing the door quietly behind me.

Oh, thank god...

Deep down, a nasty, unbidden thought comes from my inner goddess, her lips contorted in a snarl...the physical pain from the bite of a belt is nothing, nothing compared to this devastation. I curl up [...] and surrender myself to my grief.

They were together for just under three weeks. Allow me to remind you of that.

Also any relief I feel at Ana finally seeing the light and breaking up with the creep is immediately squashed by remembering that there's two more books so of course they're going to get back together...


So, that's it. Fifty Shades of Grey, done and dusted. I think I am genuinely changed forever by this nightmare, and I haven't even finished the trilogy yet. Lucky me...

And yes, I have heard about the new book that's basically this one but from Christian's perspective and let me tell you I am just...far too fragile to read that. Maybe next year, or something. When I've had time to prepare myself. With a hammer. And a nail to the skull.

Fifty Shades of Grey - The Highlights: Part One (NSFW)

This took me far longer than I'd hoped, mainly because it was such a struggle to actually finish the book. I was warned that it was bad, but...damn...

I've decided, in lieu of lengthy analysis, to just pick out passages of note and present them with my increasingly horrified commentary. Also, in order to keep the post length down, I've split it into two halves. The first part will cover the first thirteen chapters, and I'll post the second next week with the rest.

So here it is - my thoughts on Fifty Shades of Grey, chapters 1-13...


Chapter One

Kate is my roommate, and she has chosen today of all days to succumb to the flu. Therefore, she cannot attend the interview she'd arranged to do, with some mega-industrialist tycoon I've never heard of, for the student newspaper. So I have been volunteered.

Apparently no one else works on the newspaper with Kate...

He's tall, dressed in a fine gray suit, white shirt, and black tie with unruly copper-colored hair and intense, bright gray eyes that regard me shrewdly.

So...many...adjectives... 


Chapter Two

"I could always take [my clothes] off." He smirks.

"Um." I feel the color in my cheeks rising again. I must be the color of The Communist Manifesto.

Okay, I'll hand that one to E.L.James - I have never seen the flush of someone's embarrassment be likened to Marxist theory before. I feel there's a good reason for that, but still...points for originality there.


Chapter Three

I pop the teabag into the teapot and almost immediately fish it out again with my teaspoon. As I place the used teabag back on the side plate, he cocks his head, gazing quizzically at me.

"I like my tea black and weak," I mutter as an explanation.

That is such a waste of a teabag. There is no point to that. She made a point of declaring the particular brand of tea was her favourite but I have no idea how she's distinguished it from others because she has never actually tasted it properly oh my god why am I so angry about this?

I have to try to reassemble my thoughts. I have to get away from him. I walk forward and I trip, stumbling headlong into the road.

This is the second time she's fallen over in three chapters. This woman is a danger to herself.


Chapter Four 

"How did you find me?" 

"I tracked your cellphone, Anastasia."

Oh, of course he did. How is that possible? Is it legal? Stalker, my subconscious whispers at me through the cloud of tequila that's still floating in my brain, but somehow, because it's him, I don't mind.

No. No, it is definitely NOT legal, what the fuck? 
Also, her subconscious...well first of all, her subconscious sounds an awful lot like actual conscious thought. But her 'subconscious' is absolutely correct to point out that Christian's a stalker. He's literally just tracked her down like he would a lost pet - all because she drunk-dialled him? 
But of course, she doesn't mind! Why would she mind? It's a handsome rich guy stalking her, so it's fine.

I can't decide whether I'm more disturbed by his lack of boundaries or Ana's lack of self-preservation instincts, tbh...


Chapter Five

He's not a dark knight at all but a white knight in shining, dazzling armor - a classic romantic hero - Sir Gawain or Sir Lancelot.

A classic romantic hero??? This girl has spent the last four years studying English literature, and Christian 'I tracked your cellphone' Grey is what she considers to be a classic romantic hero? 
There are not enough desks in the world for me to bash my head against, I swear to god... 

I climb out of the shower and grab two towels. I put my hair in one and wrap it Carmen Miranda style on my head.

So...did she put fruit in there or something?

Christian is sitting at a dining table on the other side of the room reading a newspaper. It's the size of a tennis court or something...

Wait, so is it the newspaper, the dining table or the room that's the size of a tennis court?
I hope it's the newspaper...

"Because I'm not going to touch you, Anastasia - not until I have your written consent to do so." His lips hint at a smile.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that he's probably going to touch her without written consent...

"Eat what's on your plate. If you'd eaten properly yesterday, you wouldn't be here, and I wouldn't be declaring my hand so soon." His mouth sets in a grim line. He looks angry.

My favourite part about this one is the way he's making his behaviour sound like her fault, it's really great. Super great. Not at all a red-flag in terms of emotionally abusive tendencies... 

"Oh, fuck the paperwork," he growls. He lunges at me, pushing me against the wall of the elevator. Before I know it, he's got both of my hands in one of his in a viselike grip above my head, and he's pinning me to the wall using his hips.

WHAT DID I SAY???
(also 'viselike' isn't a word.)


Chapter Six

I have to convince Kate that this is what I want to do. For some strange reason, she doesn't trust [Christian]...

Kate has good instincts. I like Kate. 

"Do you want to sit?"

I nod, and he takes my hand and leads me to the large off-white couch. As I sit, I'm struck by the fact that I feel like Tess Durbeyfield looking at the new house that belongs to the notorious Alec d'Urberville. The thought makes me smile.

Why? Why does that comparison make her smile? That's not a positive thing???

"Why did you give me Tess of the d'Urbervilles specifically?" I ask.

[...]

 "It seemed appropriate. I could hold you to some impossibly high ideal like Angel Clare or debase you completely like Alec d'Urberville," he murmurs, and his eyes flash dark and dangerous.

"If there are only two choices, I'll take the debasement," I whisper, gazing at him. 

OH GOD IT GOT WORSE...
Fun fact: the 'debasement' they're so flirtatiously referring to is what's widely interpreted as a motherfucking rape scene!!!


Chapter Seven

I wander to the far corner of the room and pat the waist-high padded bench and run my fingers over the leather. He likes to hurt women. The thought depresses me.

No shit, it depresses me too!

"You're a virgin?" he breathes. I nod, flushing again. He closes his eyes and looks to be counting to ten. When he opens them again, he's angry, glaring at me.

"Why the fuck didn't you tell me?" he growls.

She just did? That's the first time her level of sexual experience has come up in conversation. Why is he so angry? What, was she supposed to just announce it at their first meeting as a preface to the rest of their interactions? What the fuck does it matter anyway? Her stunning levels of naivety should be of more pressing concern, and she's shown ample examples of that already. Jeez...


Chapter Eight

"Aargh!" I cry as I feel a weird pinching sensation deep inside me as he rips through my virginity.

Oh good, we're finally at the awful, awful sex scenes! I'm assuming the 'virginity' that's being ripped through is her hymen. Which is just such a delightfully violent way of describing it.

"See how you taste," he breathes against my ear. "Suck me, baby." His thumb presses on my tongue[...] I taste the saltiness on his thumb and the faint metallic tang of blood. Holy fuck. This is wrong, but holy hell is it erotic.

Wow. So. First of all: I will never feel clean again. Second of all: I'm not appreciating the association between her bleeding and the eroticism of the situation. At all. Also, thanks for the reminder of the whole 'rips through my virginity bit'...

[Edited 13/5/15 - it was pointed out to me that my initial reactions to these sex scenes were misinformed. I originally suggested that bleeding after first-time sex is not supposed to happen to girls and that its' normalcy is a myth. This is untrue. The myth lies in the idea that a girl should bleed after having sex for the first time, and that if she doesn't then she is not a virgin. Bleeding is not as commonplace as popular attitudes suggest, however it is not uncommon or unnatural, either. The entry has been amended to reflect this.]


Chapter Nine

I find two welcome hair ties at the same time in my bag and quickly tie my hair in pigtails. Yes! The more girly I look perhaps the safer I'll be from Bluebeard.

Right, so we've already compared Christian to the obsessive rapist Alec d'Urberville, and now he's being likened to a pirate famous for murdering all of his wives??? 
Also don't even get me started on the pigtail thing. I mean there's being naive and then there's being wilfully stupid...

He gently pulls my pigtail.

"I love these," he whispers. "They won't protect you." Hmm, Bluebeard...

This isn't even funny any more.
Seriously, for those unfamiliar with the tale of Bluebeard, just skim the Wikipedia entry and see how fucking monstrous he is as a character. Or 'sexy in a bad boy way' apparently, if you're E. L. James???


Chapter Ten

"I'll just make a call," I murmur. I just want to hear Kate's voice. He frowns.

"The photographer?" His jaw clenches and his eyes burn. I blink at him. "I don't like to share, Miss Steele. Remember that." His quiet, chilling tone is a warning, and with one long, cold look at me, he heads back to the bedroom. 

This is scary. This is a scary reaction. Possessive, irrational jealousy is not a good thing. It's a precursor to abuse. There is nothing romantic or healthy about a guy who wants you all to himself. Also no one made any mention of José whatsoever. Ana just wanted to call her best friend after an emotionally intense experience, which is perfectly natural. There was no reason for Christian to turn it into some aggressive display of marking his territory.

My subconscious glares at me, wagging her long, skinny finger, then morphs into the scales of justice to remind me he could sue if I disclose too much.

Ah, it's that 'subconscious' again. I am beginning to suspect that Ana has some kind of personality disorder, because this 'subconscious' is beginning to sound an awful lot like a separate voice within her head. Also the whole 'shape-shifting into the scales of justice' thing is just making me picture a tiny cartoon version of Ana narrating events like in Lizzie McGuire.

There's also the reminder that Christian has managed to make her feel legally pressured into not talking to her friends and family about him. Which is super great...


Chapter Twelve

"I wondered what your bedroom would look like," he says.

I glance around it, plotting an escape route. No - there's still only the door or window. 

For context, I should mention that Ana has sent Christian an email where she 'jokes' that she's seen enough and that it was nice knowing him. (I know - she's hilarious.) Christian didn't understand that it was a joke - he thought it was her genuinely saying that the whole arrangement was too much for her and she was backing out. So of course instead of respecting that, or even sending an email back to check that she meant what he thought she meant - his immediate response was to turn up at her house uninvited and scare the crap out of her by appearing suddenly in her bedroom doorway.

You can tell how calm and collected he is by the fact that Ana is actively checking for escape routes. This is the girl who up till now has displayed the self-preservation instincts of a drunk lemming so you know shit's getting serious...

He bends and starts undoing one of my sneakers. Oh no...no...my feet. No. I've just been running. 

"No," I protest, trying to kick him off.

He stops. 

"If you struggle, I'll tie your feet, too. If you make a noise Anastasia, I will gag you..." 

Okay, see, this bit really fucking bothers me. She's protesting because she doesn't want him to smell her sweaty feet, but he doesn't know that. As far as he's concerned, she's saying 'No - I don't want to have sex any more' and he is ignoring that. He's carrying on regardless. He's effectively threatening her with further restraints - because her wrists are already immobilised at this point - if she doesn't shut up.
Do you know what that looks like to the casual observer, ladies and gentlemen?
That's right, it's fucking rape.

He's also angry. He's angry because of the email - which he still doesn't know was a joke. He's angry with her for having the audacity to try and break up with him. Essentially, he's fucking her back into line.

I actually feel a bit sick reading this now.

I've shocked Kate. I didn't think that was possible. I shrug apologetically. 

"He uses sex as a weapon."

"Fuck you into submission?" [Kate] shakes her head disapprovingly.

KATE GETS IT!!!


Chapter Thirteen

"You know this contract is legally unenforceable."

"I am fully aware of that Miss Steele."

"Were you going to tell me at any point?"

He frowns. "You'd think I'd coerce you into something you don't want to do, and then pretend that I have a legal hold over you?"

"Well...yes." 

I like how innocent he's playing it here. Why the hell would you refer to it as a contract if you weren't trying to imply some kind of legal binding?
Also props to Ana for working out that the contract is bullshit.

"Good." He smiles. "Now term. One month instead of three is no time at all, especially if you want a weekend away from me each month. I don't think I'll be able to stay away from you for that length of time. I can barely manage it now."

Oh my god, they haven't even known each other for a week and already he's dictating how much time she gets to spend away from him. 

But the thought of not seeing him again is agonizing. How has he gotten under my skin so quickly? It can't just be the sex...can it? I dash the tears from my eyes. I don't want to examine my feelings for him. I'm frightened what I'll uncover if I do. What am I going to do?

Well, that sounds healthy...
I would also like to reiterate that they haven't even known each other for longer than a bloody week... 

(Continued in PART TWO)

LXG - A Comparison

This post contains spoilers for the 2003 movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and for the comic book series of the same name by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.

I loved The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when it first came out on VHS. I was 14 years old and a huge fan of explosions and Shane West's face, so I was more or less the movie's ideal audience. I was so into it that I even read all the related fanfic (and wow, the Tom Sawyer/Dorian Gray pairing was an eye opener at the time) but it wasn't until very recently that I got around to reading the comic book series that inspired it. I'd never read anything by Alan Moore before, and I think it's fair to say that the movie did not prepare me at all for what it was going to be like. My expectations were for a more violent and adult tale, naturally, but…wow. Just wow.

The Allan Quatermain of Moore's interpretation is introduced in an opium den: emaciated, broken and - most significantly - a wasted shadow of the adventurer he used to be. Compared to Sean Connery's crotchety-yet-still-charming Quatermain, he is quite a shock. 
The movie version is reportedly the way he is because Connery refused to play a drug addict (although I've long lost any source to back that up), but I suspect there was far more ego involved than that. Moore's Quatermain is frail and pathetic, with his opium addiction placing higher than anything else on his list of priorities - heroics included. His poor health proves a considerable hindrance, and he is far less useful to the League than Nemo, Hyde and their invisible man Griffin. 
He is not even the leader of the League - that honor is given to Mina Murray. So I would argue that Connery's more capable and commanding Quatermain is the result of professional vanity more than anything else. ‘I hate getting old’, he remarks as he has to pause to put on glasses, before shooting down a fleeing attacker from a seemingly impossible distance. Meanwhile Moore’s Quatermain can barely hit anything due to the shaking of his hands from opium withdrawal. A tragic figure of spent glory Connery’s Quatermain is not. He’s James Bond still, with considerably greyer hair and less gadgets.

If movie Quatermain benefits a little from his Hollywood makeover, then it comes at the expense of Wilhelmina Harker. As already mentioned, Connery's Quatermain receives the mantle of leadership that was given to Mina (or Miss Murray, as she is more frequently addressed) in the comics. Moore's Mina is a woman traumatised following the events of Bram Stoker's Dracula. She is divorced from her husband and disgraced by the assault she suffered at Dracula's hand, and yet she stands tall, confident in her ability to manage the team of monsters and criminals she has been asked to assemble. She is brave, proud, and parries every misogynistic remark Quatermain makes with wit and gusto. Her response to Henry Hyde is to stand her ground and scold him like a misbehaving child...and that actually works! She takes absolutely zero per cent of anyone’s nonsense and she will get shit done regardless of society’s notions regardingthe capabilities of her gender, and I absolutely adore her. 
In the film, however, she first suffers a demotion from leader to token female character (because of course a leading woman will never fill as many seats in the cinemas as Sean Connery smirking his way through the script.) She then receives a far more 'sympathetic' back story: instead of suffering disgrace through divorce, she is now a widow, and her presence in the League is justified not by her experiences and character alone, but through her new status as a vampire. 'Vamp' is unfortunately the summation of her characterisation in the movie, as her significance is reduced down to a leather-clad lust object for Tom Sawyer and Dorian Grey to compete over. Yes, she kicks more butt (or should that be 'eviscerates more throats'?) but she's not a character. She's a male fantasy.

Actual scene from the actual movie. Yes, she's making the noises you think she is.

(Credit has to be given to Peta Wilson, though - she brings as much dignity to Mina as possible, and her Sean Connery impression remains one of the film's comic highlights.)

Interestingly, despite being key characters in the film, neither Tom Sawyer nor Dorian Grey appear at all in Moore's League. It's reported that Sawyer was added to the film to give American audiences someone to identify with, in case they felt alienated by all these stuffy English literary icons. He pretty much gatecrashes the plot and cowboys his way through the rest of it, hooting and shooting and giving Shane West all the opportunities in the world to sullenly pout from beneath his perfectly feathered blonde mop. He also provides Quatermain with an extra character arc of fatherly redemption as he succeeds in saving Sawyer where he failed to save his own son. It's very moving. And also very, very cliché. 

Dorian Grey, on the other hand, acts as a slippery, cynical foil to Saywer's gung-ho earnestness. Like the original character from Oscar Wilde's novel, he is a man at the mercy of his greatest, darkest secret - the portrait that takes all physical evidence of his sins upon itself and allows him to remain untouched by the ravages of time. Unlike in Wilde's novel, this has been translated into some kind of superpower-level of invincibility. Wounds magically disappear from his body. There is one particularly memorable scene where his is Swiss-cheesed with gunfire, purely so the camera can linger on his naked chest as he calmly waits for the bullets to pop back out again.

You're welcome.

He also, for some reason, has an unexplained but much-played-upon romantic history with Mina. This adds nothing to the plot other than weird sexual tension and an instant rivalry with Sawyer. I will, however, limit my complaints about it as in the comics Mina strikes up an affair with Quatermain which I neither understand nor appreciate and frankly, feel a little ill just remembering it.
Yet Dorian's addition in terms of the film's plot serves as a nice contrast to that of Saywer's. Where Sawyer provides a solid vein of plucky young heroism and some heart-warming father/son moments for Quatermain, Dorian Gray is the other side of the coin, as he ultimately betrays the League in exchange for the safe return of his legendary portrait. Readers of the graphic novel would have expected their invisible man Skinner to be the viper in the nest, as Griffin was in the comics, and indeed the film plays up to this, so when it is revealed to be Dorian who betrayed them it is genuinely a surprise.

One character who does remain remarkably similar to their graphic novel counterpart is Captain Nemo. Both incarnations are steadfast, serious and scientifically brilliant. They both retain a prickly attitude towards Allan Quatermain and his colonial exploits, having personally suffered at similar hands, and both keep the protection of innocent lives at the foreground of their motivations. The movie version is far more versed in martial arts than Moore's incarnation, but then it is Hollywood. At least he didn't get the Mina Harker treatment of a sexier costume.

Character consistency!

I also discovered while doing some background research that in keeping Captain Nemo much the same as he was in the comics, and by reflecting that in their casting, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen made cinematic history. Naseeruddin Shah, from what I can tell, is so far the only Indian actor to play Captain Nemo on-screen. He is also only the third non-white actor to play him. This might not seem like that big of a deal, apart from the fact that before he renounced all human society and became Captain Nemo, he was Prince Dakkar, the son of an Indian Raja. The adjective 'dusky' aka 'that word they used in the 19th century to mean definitely-not-white' is used in the books to describe him. His hatred of imperialism, inspired by his suffering at the hands of the British Empire, is a pretty big driving force of his character. So it's noticeable that Captain Nemo has appeared on-screen a total of seventeen times and the only time they accurately portrayed his race was in this big dumb Hollywood ensemble.

Anyway, the role as provider of the League's breathtaking modes of transportation is carried over from page to screen, and Nemo's famous vessel the Nautilus is key to this. I remember being thoroughly impressed by the movie's beautiful, sleek design. 'The sword of the ocean' is how Nemo introduces her, and it's an apt description. She's elegant, ornate and cuts through the sea like a blade. I imagine bringing it to life must have been where the majority of the film's budget went (after Connery's salary, of course).

However, I've now seen the Nautilus as envisaged by Kevin O'Neill, and that version is so much cooler!

I'm not as familiar with Jules Verne's original tales of Captain Nemo as I am with some of the other characters, but I do recall that the Nautilus is attacked by a giant squid and that Nemo loses crew members to that attack, for whom he grieves. Bearing that in mind, I think it's such a statement to have the Nautilus look like that which its crew fears, and this version is more at one with the ocean, as Nemo considers himself to be. It is fearsome before it is beautiful. Also, you can't see it in the picture, but this version has prehensile mechanical tentacles. I feel that needs no further explanation, because that's just awesome. 

In essence, the two different versions of the Nautilus symbolise the difference in spirit between the film and the original comics. The film is slick and slightly sanitised, but ultimately concerned with showing off and leaving the audience entertained. It gives the people what it thinks they want, and that's fun. The comics are a darker beast, wanting to expose an ugly, visceral underbelly to all these classic characters. Its monsters are more monsterous - Henry Hyde in particular is a more prominent and repulsive figure, having all but completely consumed Jekyll under Moore's handling. The scene where he takes vengeance on Griffin for his betrayal of the League is particularly harrowing, as Hyde cheerfully brutalises and rapes him and then calmly sits down to dinner with the others. Griffin's blood begins to slowly bloom across his shirt as the visibilty begins to return, indicating that he is finally dead. Compare this to the Hyde of the film, who is implied to have murdered a few prostitutes off screen but ultimately just verbally abuses Dr Jekyll a bit, still needs the formula to make an appearance and just uses his strength to save others in a way that can almost be recognised as heroic. The two are almost completely different characters, in very different worlds, and that's the very crux of the comparison. 

In the film, you cheer. In the comics, you flinch. I found I didn't enjoy one above the other, as the experiences were of entirely different natures - it would be like enjoying a Twix bar more than an expertly grilled steak. There are issues with both, but they are products of their medium. A Hollywood blockbuster was never going to have the same scope as a graphic novel, just as the comic series was never going to be as unapologetically dumb as the movie. I would recommend checking out both, though. Just choose appropriately according to your current mood...

2015 Reading Challenge - Fifty Shades of Grey

I finally picked my first fill for this challenge and it's this one:

I figured, what with the film coming out and stirring up all the hype again, I should probably bite the bullet and finally read this goddamn book from start to finish. The last time I tried I couldn't get past the first page, hence it being at the bottom of my to-read list, because I do not actually want to read this. I will never get that time back. However, I'm a firm believer in not smack-talking a thing unless you've actually read the thing, so I'm going to read the thing. So. Expect a summary of my thoughts and reactions on Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L.James.

Ughhh....

I'm not looking forward to it...

2015 Reading Challenge

One of the things I've stopped doing as much since work took over is reading, which has sucked, because I've always thought that reading was awesome. I've thought that since before I could even read:

Proof!

Luckily I found this little diamond floating around Tumblr. As reading challenges go, it looks pretty interesting and I've decided not only to take it up, but to post reviews of the books I read on here. I'm going to try and read one book for every item on the list (apart from the trilogy one, for obvious reasons.) So I won't pick a book and use it to check off three different items, even though it might qualify, because I feel like that would be cheating.

Hopefully this gets me back into actually reading books, as opposed to just going on shopping sprees in Waterstones and then abandoning my purchases on already groaning bookshelves.