During the summer months, while you gentle Athenians were left without my column’s brilliant and insightful smart words writing thing, you may have found yourselves turning to other avenues for your weekly dose of literary genius. Like helpless baby kittens abandoned by their mother, you scrounged in whatever dank alley would shelter you from the cold. And the dankest and seediest of those alleys had a name: 50 Shades of Grey.
Now, to be fair, I have yet to actually read Shades; I’m a busy man, and these columns don’t write themselves yet. (Side note: Why do we even still have science if it can’t give me a self-writing column? God.) By way of research, I instead asked my roommate Chad to read the book for me. When he gets out of the asylum, I’ll let you know what his impressions were.
I’ve read plenty of reviews, though, and they all seemed to say the same thing: that 50 Shades of Grey was originally a Twilight fanfiction, and like its predecessor features physical and emotional abuse played off as a torrid romance. The age-old “bad-boy romance” trope has reached a new low.
I couldn’t help but ask myself: Is this what we as readers have been reduced to? Have we fallen so far that we’re willing to allow a book about two pasty rich people spanking each other to outsell Harry Potter? Have we, as a literate society, lost all shame?
Because if so, I am completely in. I’ve been writing erotic fanfiction since I first saw Napoleon Dynamite in high school, and I haven’t seen a freaking dime! That changes right now. Feast your eyes, Athens, on my literary tour de force, currently undergoing treatment:
“Take off your pants,” whispered Captain Kirk D’Artagnan lustily. “I wanna put a baby in you.”
“But Captain darling!” protested Spock Christine. “We’re about to enter Romulan territory attend my best friend’s wedding! Surely we don’t have time for such brazen transgressions!”
“The Romulan fleet Clarabell’s wedding can wait,” said Kirk D’Artagnan, or as his friends called him, “Dar-tag.” His hand gently caressed her pointed ears cheek or whatever. “You’ve been a bad girl, and you need to be punished.”
The lascivious moment was interrupted, however, by the deadly blasts of inbound Romulan phasers I don’t know, like a phone call or something?
“Very well,” growled Captain James T. Kirk, as portrayed by William Shatner Dar-tag. “Let us abscond to my starship, the USS Enterprise, pride of the United Federation of Planets car. But when this is over, I want you all to myself.”
Leonard Nimoy Christine opened her mouth to reply, but before she could say anything she was interrupted by the ZZZSHOOW! of a lightsaber being drawn. It was none other than the dastardly DARTH MAUL, terror of the-!
That’s about as far as my editing’s gotten, anyway. If any publishers are reading, I accept payment in the form of cash, checks and Fun Dip.
Ryan McAndrews is currently secluded in his panic room while he finishes his manuscript. You might be able to reach him at rm287608@ohiou.edu
