Fifty Shades of Awful

In a bid to see what all the fuss is about the Fifty Shades trilogy (by E.L. James) without spending any money, I have read a variety of reviews, excerpts, quotes and interviews.
What I can conclude is that I made the right decision in not flushing my money down the toilet by buying this horrible excuse for 'erotica'; also known as literary chick-porn. As I have not read the books in their entirety - which I am going to avoid lest it force me to claw my eyes out and engage in book burning - I will refer you to the best review of all time. Seriously. Read it, and the two follow-ups, and then come back here.
Read it? Good. Then you're up to speed and I don't have to rehash all its literary deficiencies, as I doubt I could do it any funnier than Katrina Lumsden did.

She is obviously one of the 'con' side, which broadly consists of people who find it obscene and unfit for any audience, people (women) who find it misogynist and/or a misrepresentation of BDSM culture, and people who merely find it a badly written, sexed-up Harlequin novel with vapid characters and non-existent plot.
Of course, if your main aim is good old pr0n, then who cares about misogyny, fake BDSM and a story that's just as cliché as the pizza man with extra pepperoni. Case closed, enjoy the thrill of the 'mommy porn' and giggle about it with your friends at the knitting club.

But, that's not why the 'pro' side is professing to love these books. No, they wax on poetically about the liberation of female sexuality, the blossoming of the innocent heroine, and the ultimate fantasy that true love can overcome sexual pervertedness caused by childhood trauma. Not to mention that to them, this is a pioneering work in the field of women's fiction, and is breaking age old taboos.
Excuse me while I go vomit.
Erotica has been around for a long time, even when it was not labelled as such. Anyone ever read the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel, just to name one? Sexual awakening right there, and lots of 'primitive' sex to follow, though I admit that these novels were not branded erotica. Then let me refer you - though I haven't read these, tbh - to the Sleeping Beauty trilogy by Anne Rice: written in the '80s, and apparently widely read in the BDSM community.

So how is Fifty Shades pioneering or liberating? If women want to, they need only Google and there it is, ready for Amazon order. Also, the 'true love overcomes all'-fantasy is as old as time. Though this particular brand of vapid heroine and remote, dangerous (but rich and handsome) bad boy is much more reminiscent of another literary endeavour of questionable quality: the Twilight series.
Surprise, surprise: in interviews E.L. James has said that her story originated as Twilight fanfiction. Kill me now. I have nothing against fanfiction, being that for me it is an exercise everyone engages in whenever they watch a film or read a book - whether they write it down or not. Whenever you finish a work of fiction you always wonder what happens next, or what you wish had happened differently, or what might have happened had a certain character not died (Sirius in HP, anyone?). The only difference with fanfiction writers is that they take it one step further and publish these derivative stories on the internet, sometimes with surprisingly well-written and engaging stories as a result.
But the fact remains that these works are strongly derivative, and are never supposed to be turned into an 'original' work of fiction. Additionally, I personally think that the fact that E.L. James engaged in writing Twilight fanfiction at all does not evoke the image of a woman who knows quality fiction of the kind her heroine ironically enjoys, let alone one who is more emotionally mature than a 13-year-old. It does however lend strength to the characterization of Fifty Shades as the Twilight for 35+.

But maybe that's it: the women who read this tripe and call it the "best book they've read all year" have the emotional maturity of a pre-teen princess, and only call it that because it is the only book they've read all year - or, excuse me Audible, listened to all year. To be honest, I'm guessing the lack of linguistic virtuosity should be even more apparent when you're listening to it and can't skip, but that's just me. And I've tried, but I can't find any reason for almost 20 million sold copies other than awesome marketing and repressed, bored mommies whose last foray into literature was the required kind in high school or college.
Simply put: if you enjoy Fifty Shade of Grey/Darker/Freed for anything other than its (repetitive) raunchy sex scenes, then you are not qualified to judge the literary merits of anything ever again. Ever.

To illustrate I present the "inner goddess", a concept of an inner consciousness that Ana - our 'heroine' - uses frequently to express some form of emotion. The term is used throughout the trilogy no less than 58, 58 and 33 times, respectively (thank you Katrina Lumsden for counting so I don't have to), and results in brilliant sentences such as:

"My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves."
"My inner goddess sits in the lotus position looking serene except for the sly, self-congratulatory smile on her face."
"My inner goddess jumps up and down with cheer-leading pom-poms shouting yes at me."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
All the inner goddess does for me, is remind me of the Gillette Venus slogan: "Reveal the Goddess in You". I also find it the most ridiculously narcissistic, "girl power!"-esque description of some fictitious representation of yourself, illustrating your hidden emotions with cartoony actions.
And most importantly: NORMAL PEOPLE DO NOT TALK LIKE THIS! If I had read the book, the main character would have lost all my sympathy the moment this preposterous contraption reared its head. I almost feel personally offended that this contrived Bella Swan knock-off non-character wears Converse sneakers. I friggin' love Converse! It's bad enough that I have to share them with an army of hipsters, but not this vapid wench.

But back to the "inner goddess" (my inner goddess is seething and stamping her little foot) - see how absurd it is when regular people do it?!
What astounds me the most about this phrase, is how it is seemingly universally accepted and goes unquestioned by almost every reviewer I can dig up on the internet. Even the reviewer for the Guardian newspaper (thankfully sensible) only mentions the inner goddess as an example of bad writing. Which it is, of course, but why does no one ask where this monstrosity comes from? Apparently it's not an exclusive idea, because I found this. An honest to god guide to "Finding your inner goddess", available on Amazon. It almost makes me feel ashamed to be a woman.

I hope that the hype about this trilogy will die down soon, and that E.L. James proves to be a one hit wonder and will stick to fanfiction from now on. Though even if you're into fanfics, you don't have to resign yourself to her either; there are many fanfic writers who are much better - though I'm iffy about the Twilight section.

Lastly, a bit of food for thought: I'm guessing half the copies of Fifty Shades that are sold serve to fuel a night of hilarity reading it with friends. Once you get over the absolute stupidity, I suspect it can be extraordinarily funny. I don't think E.L. James meant it that way, though, but who cares.