walkitout | read the book, glanced at the tumblr you point to (Reply)

From:

I'm having one of those "we must have read different books" moments. I don't get it. At all.

"He refuses to let her get information about BDSM (if she could, perhaps she would realize what a deeply abusive relationship she’s trapped in). She is encouraged to look it up online, despite the fact that she’s absurdly computer-illiterate and the internet is not exactly full of super-reliable information about BDSM. She literally cannot even speak to her best friend about it."

It's not hard to make the case that there's a lot better information available via the internet than there ever has been through any other sources, community groups included. Of course, there's a lot more _crap_, too ...

Anyway. Christian send a guy with a laptop to Ana's door. The guy sets up the laptop. Christian then nags at her via e-mail to insist that she find answers/do research on BDSM online. The research Ana does is actually not bad, altho obviously there's a limit to the amount of detail that is covered. Christian _does_ insist Ana not talk to Kate about anything she does with Christian, which is a problematic artifact of being closeted -- and a serious concern with the relationship. But Ana fully independently refused to tell Kate about what Jose does to her and that's got nothing to do with Christian.

You can do similar things with virtually every other point in that list. There _are_ problems with the characters and the relationship. But they are believable problems typical of 20something people attempting to have a close relationship when they have little practice with it, complicated by the emotional complexity of the power dynamics they are exploring.

I am exasperated by the low quality of the commentary on these books.