Fifty Shades of Grey/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Author Avatar: Not necessarily Ana. The real initials of "Mrs. Robinson", the friend of Christian Grey's adoptive mother who made him her sexual submissive when he was fifteen, are E.L. and her actual first name is ELena. E.L. James also has two other characters whose names begin with E.L.--Christian's adopted brother ELliot and Christian's biological mother ELla.
  • BDSM: It's promised, talked about, but not really delivered. As a matter of fact, as the story goes on, it's implied that hardcore BDSM is bad; Ana keeps talking about "helping to bring [Christian] into the light" through love and conventional penis-in-vagina sex.
  • Date Rape: In Chapter 16 of Fifty Shades of Grey, Christian hits and then has sex with a drunken Ana for the terrible crime of rolling her eyes at him. In Ana's point of view, it's clear that she's afraid that if she doesn't obey, the relationship will be over--but she also tries to wriggle away, speaks of "enduring" the spanking and the sex, and horrified when her "traitorous body" orgasms. Despite James' attempts to make the scene sound like Ana is a willing participant, Ana's behavior and thoughts make it clear that she did not consent to any of this (and is inebriated, so she couldn't legally consent anyway) and that she is shocked that he would hit her, never having been struck by anyone before.
  • Domestic Abuse: At the end of Chapter 19 of Fifty Shades of Grey, Christian, angered by Ana's refusal to let him finger her at the dining room table in front of his parents (and claiming that no one has ever said no to him before), carries her off to his parents' boathouse to, in his words, "fuck [Ana] on the couch this minute, quickly, for [his] pleasure, not [hers]." In Chapter 20, Ana herself calls it "a punishment fuck" and tells him to his face that having sex with him was her best defense against "[y]ou and your twitchy palm." Because he also informed her that he wanted to hit her and that she deserved it.
  • Fetish Retardant: The tampon scene. Also, the way Christian speaks of Ana's virginity like an obstacle to be removed.
  • Freud Was Right: To quote a line of Christian's from page 329 of Fifty Shades Darker: “I’m a sadist, Ana. I like to whip little brown-haired girls like you because you all look like the crack whore—my birth mother.”
  • Narm: Plenty of it, particularly in sex scenes. For example: "You. Are. So. Sweet," he murmurs, each word a staccato. For the rest, see this tumblr, this one and this one. And in Grey, Christian, while having sex with Ana, goes one better than enunciating each word; he thinks each separate letter. His line is literally "F.U.C.K."
  • Plagiarism: Even though supernatural elements are removed, character templates remain mostly the same. Which is okay for fanfiction, but not really when it's done for profit. Opinions vary on whether Stephenie Meyer should have sued.
  • Serial Numbers Filed Off: Averted in that E.L. James didn't do a very good job of filing off the serial numbers; the origin of her series is still very apparent. According to Dear Author, when Master of the Universe (the fanfic) was compared to the Fifty Shades trilogy on Turnitin, the similarity was 89%. On many pages, the only differences are name changes. There's an extended discussion on the similar characters, plot threads and events in both books over on Goodreads. And Bustle.com points out that the movies based on Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight are so similar that the dialogue of one could be dubbed over the footage from the other..


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