Remember that dumbass Anastasia Steele?

Because I do.

Back in the mists of time, about four thousand years ago, (i.e. 2012) I wrote a series of blog posts recapping Fifty Shades of Grey. People liked reading them and thought they were funny, Marian Actual Keyes used to talk about them on Twitter, (can you imagine!? I DIED) the first post was even nominated for a blog award (remember those? I did not win) so I kept going and recapped the next two books in the series AND the first film.

This was mostly just because I enjoyed the attention from commenters, as reading the books themselves was tough fuckin’ going, and then having to spend lots of time detailing all the idiotic things that happened and chronicling my ever-escalating annoyance was definitely energy that could have been better spent doing literally anything else. But sure look, that’s what happened. I’m much more of a ‘let people enjoy things’ type of person now, but at the same time… damn those books were stupid.

When the How Did This Get Made podcast discussed the three films earlier this year, I had a great time listening and I swear to god I have no memory of anything that happened in the second and third books/movies. It was all brand new information even though I wrote very detailed (and increasingly unhinged) posts about them. It must have been an automatic self-preservation measure or something.

At some point over the last few years I took them down from my now-defunct blog, because of a span where I kept getting emails from the hosting site due to some nerd reporting the posts for breaching guidelines or containing mature content, so the site was going to put a warning message on them or something like that. I don’t remember the exact details other than being exasperated by these suddenly frequent emails about something I hadn’t updated in forever so I was like ‘fine, nerds! You win! Leave me alone!’

HOWEVER, smash cut to 2024 and here I am with a Substack, which let’s face it, is just Blogging 2.0. So I’m resurrecting the Fifty Shades of Tedious Fuckery posts, (as they were titled) and have made a little section just for them here. A little something from the snarkives, you might say! I’m trusting you all to be cool and not find some reason to report them though, alright? Even though they were written at a time when compound swearing was funny, and ‘ermahgerd’ was the height of online humour. (It really was, I swear.) 2012 was a different country lads, Taylor Swift’s Red era, Grumpy Cat, Clint Eastwood arguing with an empty chair at the Republican convention and remixes of viral news clips, like the ‘Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That’ lady? Who even were we??

I’ve transferred them all over in pretty much their original form, although not all the reaction gifs and images made it because some were broken links at this stage and I simply couldn’t be fucked with tracking them all down again.

So for those who want to read, or indeed reread the many, many recap posts, this is where they live now, all three books and a movie. Please forgive the deeply 2012-coded humour. This is just what we were like back then.

Godspeed.