The Fifty Shades of Grey Hater quiz
Happy Fifty Shades of Grey readers are all alike; each Fifty Shades of Grey hater is a hater in his or her own way. Well, not quite. I’ve identified at least five species of Fifty Shades Hater and classified them here on the basis of the argument at the core of their hate. So haters, go ahead and take the quiz: what type of Fifty Shades of Grey hater are you?
1. If you argue: “Fifty Shades is poorly-written pablum,” you are a SNOBBY HATER
You read dense, difficult works, but you do it very ostentatiously (what’s the point of making it through Ulysses if you don’t tell everyone about it?). You judge people who read for anything other than intellectual stimulation and have a deep suspicion of enjoyable books, particularly those with plots. Right now, you are thinking, “Books aren’t enjoyable unless they are intellectually stimulating.” You are wrong.
2. If you argue, “Fifty Shades is perverted and/or mommy porn,” you are a SELF-RIGHTEOUS HATER
If you are female, you’re a martyr. A typical day involves four or more Facebook posts describing childcare disasters and how you are praying for either drugs or death, followed by a picture of sleeping toddler faces captioned “My angels. So blessed.” You have at some point asked, unironically, if someone would please think of the children.
If you are a male, you watch porn regularly. You do not see this comment as hypocritical.
3. If you argue, “Fifty Shades doesn’t reflect the real BDSM lifestyle,” you are a SMUG HATER.
You wish to be perceived as intellectually superior, but you are liberal, and therefore must avoid implying a lack of open-mindedness. You are fully in favor of women having sexual fantasies, provided that they do it properly. You are about to tell me that fans should consume a different work, such as Secretary. You are not BDSM yourself.
4. If you argue: “Fifty Shades is just Twilight fan fiction,” you are a JEALOUS HATER.
You also write fan fiction, but only the good kind, like Spock/Kirk slashfics. You do not object to fanfics by authors like Neil Gaiman, John Scalzi, or Laurie R. King, and you do not realize that Wicked is a fanfic, and so is Sherlock. You have not read Twilight either. You write original stories, but they have not been published.
5. If you argue, “Oh, sexually unfilled virgin in thrall to a powerful, wealthy man. How enlightened. And can’t you see that he’s abusive?” you are an OBLIVIOUS HATER.
You consider yourself a feminist, and as such, it is your job to protect feeble-minded women from the perils of novels which will ruin them for healthy real lives. If you don’t point out that a twenty-something billionaire who writes a sex contract with a shy college student and flies her around in helicopters is unrealistic, they will never be able to figure it out, and then they’ll all move to Seattle to try to land billionaires of their own, and you’re going to have to wait FOREVER in line for your latte. You also complain about BDSM inaccuracies.
So these are the five main species of hater I’ve spotted in the wild. What haters am I missing?
I loved all three books and I’m not ashamed to say it. Christian Grey is handsome, wealthy, powerful, in control, and the secret fantasy of many women. He is simply the typical alpha male hero from most romance novels, taken to the nth degree. If you read the last book in the series, you’d find out that he reforms his controlling ways and falls head over heals in love Anastasia.
I think everyone should chill and not take it all so seriously!
This made me laugh.
Personally, I’d rather spend my time reading the hilarious 1 star reviews of 50 Shades than the actual book. They’re more entertaining.
I’m not so much a hater as a can’t-be-bothered-er. I’ve read so many reviews saying how badly these books are written and how annoyingly dumb the heroine is, that I really have no interest in reading them. I thought about it, for the same reason Mary read them, so that I’d know what the fuss was about, but I have so many things I’d rather read that I decided not to bother.
And FWIW, I think this post is funny :)
Exactly! You captured my thoughts perfectly too!
This is a hilarious quiz.
I’ve read the FSOG series and loved it:)) When I read the venom especially from romance readers heaped on this series it does make me chuckle since so many other romances have been as popular.
I’ll be a sanctimonious hater – I think while a book’s in copyright, you don’t get to be paid for playing with the characters.
(I do read the sort of published fanfic you talk about: the difference in my head is that it’s usually out of copyright, or authorised by the author’s estate, and it doesn’t pretend not to draw on the original work – it’s not like Laurie R King’s Mary Russell marries Shylock Hermes, who lives at 133b Baker Road.)
I have not read the book, as it didn’t sound particularly interesting to me, but I am a bit curious about the movie. I really like Jaime Dornan, especially from _The Fall_, and so I might see the FHoG movie depending on reviews.
I don’t quite buy into the stereotypes of readers posted above. I could well be the literary snob given that I’m a literature professor, but that’s a bit easy. I agree with the earlier respondent who wrote about romance readers responding to nicely written *genre fiction, and so I don’t think good writing is only synonymous with literary fiction. From word of mouth, I’ve read so many accounts of FSoG being poorly written and so I’m inclined to think there may be some truth to these reports. Overall though, I don’t have particularly strong feelings one way or the other.
See, I only made it through the first two books (was howling with laughter at the end of the second) and that’s almost WHY I want to see the movie. The previews are hilarious.
Sounds like a case of “”it’s so bad that it’s good””! I’m intrigued :)
O.K. I read all three books, but it really was a close thing to have even finished the first one. I started Twilight several times, but just could not stomach it, so I do not discuss that book. Because of the hype with FSoG, I wanted to know what the big deal was with these books and so I could enter into discussions about them. I trudged through 75% of the first book before I could even give a rip about what happened to the characters. At that point, a tiny spark of interest entered and I felt invested in finding out what happened. The second book was better and the third was the best of the three. What I thought after reading all of the books was: the underlying story was really not bad. The problem was the books should have been condensed by 60-70%. Someone needed a LARGE RED PEN. That would have taken care of the repetitiveness. The books to me, resembled more of a rough draft than a finished work. For a book supposedly dedicated to BDSM, there was really a lot of talk about it and little action. I do not resent E.L. James in the least. More power to her for finding success with her books. Writing 3 huge books took a lot of time and commitment and love her or hate her…she did it.
I’ll second this. It actually could have been stronger condensed into one book. There’s very little plot so the idea of three books seemed like a financial ploy.
I never read Twilight or saw the movies, so I wasn’t aware of the commonalities or differences between FSoG and Twilight … other than no vampires! I read FSoG out of curiosity, and frankly, I thought the writing was pretty pedestrian. Not horrific, just not enough to keep me interested in reading more. The whole “”inner goddess”” thing was funny for about two seconds and than got old and made me think the heroine was not using it to be funny, but because she *really* did think that immaturely. The best part of the story was the ending. I thought it ended as it should have. This is one of the few times where I felt the “”hero”” and “”heroine”” did not belong together at all and, in fact, the hero shouldn’t have been with anyone at all until he got his head examined.
I feel like by saying that people who criticize the writing are literary snobs you’re insulting so many genre writers who can write significantly better. I’m sorry but the writing is bad. I read mainly romance, genre mystery and maybe half a dozen literary fiction books (out of about 400 books read a year) and the vast majority of genre fiction I read was written better. If I’m going to read erotica I don’t want the writing level to be at a middle school level (which is probably an insult to so many ya authors) and the characters to act like they’re 14.
I guess I have a pinch each of smug hater and snobby hater. What I hated was that the book didn’t live up to the hype and so didn’t deserve the attention (and riches) it received. Now I know everyone has their own measure of what’s hot or sexy or whatever, but being a long time reader of EVERYTHING, my bar is set pretty high. I didn’t find the book hot or sexy at all and I believed there were so many more deserving (and hype-meeting) books out there which didn’t have some marketing genius behind them. And that people who don’t normally read that type of book now believe that FSoG is the standard. And it’s not.
And it’s poorly written.
And people who say ‘This book does not reflect the actual BDSM lifestyle’ who do practise BDSM fit in… where exactly?
There is probably a support group for Italian tycoons, sheikhs, virgin mistresses, and other inaccurately represented archetypes. If not, you could start one!
You know, I’m okay with being a snobby, smug, jealous, oblivious hater ^_^
I tried to read it, multiple times – I’ve never gotten past pg 40. I’m done trying – there are too many other things I want to read to waste my time on FSoG.
I won’t read the book because it pisses me off that some marketing genius (and I mean that with all due respect and unironically) figured out how to market a Harlequin romance as “”literature,”” thus making it respectable for everyone to read. I knew that marketing person was a genious when my 65-year old, Baptist church going, Black sister-in-law handed me this “”amazing”” book and told everyone in her church circle read it and loved it and I had to read it right away. Believe me when I tell you, they wouldn’t be caught dead reading “”trashy romance.”” So out of a misplaced sense of outrage for all the wonderful, talented romance book authors out there who’ve had to suffer through terrible romance covers and incompetant, if any marketing, I won’t read Fifty. Something tells me I’m not missing anything. So I guess that makes me the worst hater of all, the hater that hates the book she’s never going to read!
I think most FSoG haters have not and do not intend to read the book.
I’m so with you on this. I think there are romances and authors more deserving of the attention that Shades got.
I found this funny so maybe I’m a FSoG hater hater? :-) I just recently read the book for the first time myself and it took me a looonnnggg time to get into it. I can’t say that it will make my top anything reading list. I also didn’t find it that sexy but maybe I have just been reading romance too long and have a been there, read that attitude.
I can understand people not loving the book. I don’t love it. I am surprised by how many seem angry that it is so successful.
How about the reader who didn’t like FSoG because she found the heroine to be a milquetoast who had zero personality, the hero to be overbearing and controlling in an unhealthy way, the plot to be derivative, the writing to be sub-par for a published work, and the hype by the media and the eagerness of Hollywood to jump on the bandwagon to be disappointing? Perhaps that puts me in the first group, although the last piece of pretentious literature I read was probably back in my World Literature class in college. I know this is all in good fun, but to be honest, I think there are many reasons not to like this book that are truly legitimate and don’t qualify the reader to be any sort of dysfunctional hater.
I agree!
I didn’t like FSoG, I thought it was poorly written with too much repetition to lengthen a already seen plot, but I only read romance, no Ulysses nor other highly “”intellectually stimulating”” books. Where am I in your quizz? (which by the way has got only numbers 1).
I read a paragraph in Target one day in the middle of the book…I laughed so hard I had to run to the bathroom. Needless to say I have not read nor will I read these books nor will I see the movie…period!
Um …the person who just didn’t like it? yes it’s disappointing and unfair that someone judges other people’s choices but why do we have to be as nasty about them as they are about us?
A disliker is not a hater. Therefore this quiz is not for you.
I’m with what Yuri said. Ans a reply to that making a “”distinction”” between a “”disliker”” and a “”hater”” seems merely a weak cop-out to me.
I think CelineB hit it exactly–On The Nose–when she said “”. . . by saying that people who criticize the writing are literary snobs you’re insulting so many genre writers who can write significantly better. I’m sorry but the writing is bad. “”
Unlike some others, I didn’t find this blog at all hilarious, nor is venom from either side about this book attractive.