Listen, y'all. I will gladly--gladly--bash her work of fiction all day long. But she can't help the way she looks and I feel really horrible snarking on her appearance. Especially since she has good hair and a really genuine smile...fuck, if I started writing shitty literotica that suddenly skyrocketed to the top of Kindle's purchase list, I wouldn't even run a comb through my hair. I'd be rolling naked in my money and cackling to the media about how there's a sucker born every day. What I'm saying is: I think we should be kind here.
Agreed. In response to everyone's revulsion to her looks, I was about to write a long winded story about this girl I went to grade and high school with who looks very similar to this author and who was mostly kind of pathetic and needy, but it didn't really have a point. I will say that not everyone can be glamorous looking. I think we are so used to rich and famous people looking a certain way that when we see a completely normal albeit unattractive and middle aged woman, we get all snarky.
Okay, fair enough. I was just making humorous social commentary. Believe me, I was relentlessly picked on as a child for the way I looked, so I am definitely not one to judge. Thanks for putting some perspective down on that, Pink.
I'm not sure whether this might be better suited for the cooking thread, but ladies like chocolate, so here goes - between the boyfriend's birthday and mother's day, I've decided to make a batch of cupcakes. Since my mom and my boyfriend share a love of peanut butter cups, I want to do a peanut butter chocolate cupcake, and I've got *most* of the details figured out. A dark chocolate cupcake with a peanut butter buttercream frosting. But for the middle, I can't decide whether to bake an actual peanut butter cup into the centre, or if I should swirl actual peanut butter through the cupcake batter. Help!
Chocolate and peanut butter is my favorite combination of any two things that can be combined in the world. The best chocolate peanut butter cupcake I've had is from Crumbs. They do chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting injected in the middle and on top, then they put chocolate chips on the frosting. It's disgustingly delicious. Out of your two ideas, while I'm not opposed to peanut butter cups entering my life in any way, I feel like having one in the center may be a textural issue, or it might get weird when it bakes. Peanut butter in the middle would probably be the way to go if you don't want to get as intense as the Crumbs knockoff. Maybe you'd want to treat it a little, like however you change it for a peanut butter pie so it's not just straight up peanut butter,
They did just come out with those tiny peanut butter cups that you could use. Same basic theory as chocolate chips, except way better. These.
Thanks for the tip Audrey! You've nailed my concern about the peanut butter cup in the middle - that it would fuck with the consistency. A further thought... peanut butter chocolate ganache filling with that peanut butter buttercream frosting? *sigh* This is not how I should spend my days at work. My Google history reads like a diabetic's worst nightmare.
50 Shades of Grey is simply a Harlequin romance novel without Fabio on the cover. It is that shitty. And, it'll be a movie soon, so we get to look forward to that as well. Do we live in this world now? Where hack "fan fiction" authors get to make millions of their dribbled dreck? Begorrah!!!!
I was going to say, the tidbits of the novels posted here read like the steamy sections of steamier romance novels. But there's a lot of power and value in a good story. The Caine's Arcade story? Over $200k raised and matching donations on the way...what would've happened if some sort of action alert went out that a young boy made a supercool cardboard arcade and has no customers and by the way, he could use funds for college? Nada. A great little documentary trailer that captures a good story? Lots. I can only guess that this 50 Shades business has a story behind it that resonates with...women like me, basically. Ok, now I'm tempted to skim it.
50 Shades of Grey banned in Florida library I think that alone is enough for me to find a copy & read it.
When you need to scrub that shit out of your brain afterward, check out Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty Trilogy - it was published under a pseudonym, but the writing is decent. The Story of O is hot, but the ending is depressing. The Gor Novels are utterly horrific. Just awful. But they're still better written than 50 shades and have some hot scenes. Laurel K Hamilton does paranormal fantasy / BDSM porn. Some of her stuff is quite readable and hot. It's just frustrating when her stories that are actually interesting stories turn into 3 books of porn with no story progression. The Fairy series is basically pure porn with a thin veneer of plot behind it. The vampire series starts off mostly plot, turns into pure porn, and then shifts back to about 50/50 plot/porn The Ties that Bind is a classic, but didn't grab me as much as The Story of O Exit to Edit is another anne rice work that's apparently not bad, I've never read it. Venus in Furs is the best known work by the guy who's name was the basis of the term masochism. It's a classic. The English translation, is kind of heavy reading, but still much better than 50 shades Marquis de Sade also wrote some famous 'erotic' works. Honestly, I never found them terribly erotic. Just disturbing. I haven't read all that much of his stuff though really - didn't grab me at all.
Talk about needing to scrub out your brain. -- edit- Just remembered I used to see a bunch of Gorean fantasy chatrooms when I...never mind. Wonder where those folks are now...
The gor stuff isn't going to win a pulitzer or anything, but if you ignore the gender politics and don't get into the internet role playing side of it - they're tolerable BDSM porn. It's just that the chatroom tards forget that it's fiction porn - not a guide to how to live your life. To be fair the chatroom tards to forget that it's fiction full stop. But assuming the people reading this aren't that stupid, read as porn, they're not terrible. I think I did specify that they're utterly terrible (I can't ignore the gender politics, or the obnoxiousness of the fanbase), and only included them because they're still better than 50 shades.
Is that list pretty much all male dominants? If so, how about some strong womens? There's a niche for someone to try and come out with a 50 Shades equivalent: a kickass, female dominant (dominatrix, whatever they're called) modern character...maybe like a Sheryl Sandberg-esque main character, set in the Valley. Maybe it's time the pendulum swings the other way....men like to give up control too. A well done story about a modern Betty Page.
The Gorean concepts are a completely different beast than 50 shades. They're much more intricate and solid, and actually constitute a unique type of literature. No matter how chilling some of the concepts are.