The Curious Kinky Person’s Guide to Fifty Shades Darker: Chapter 12

Ana doesn’t step out when Elena visits Christian. Instead she sticks around so she can passive-aggressively seethe at Elena. Elena tells Christian that someone is blackmailing her. Does this book really need another subplot?

Ana steps out to go to bed, but eavesdrops on Christian and Elena anyway.

“It’s in the past, Elena, and why would I want to taint her with our fucked-up relationship? She’s good and sweet and innocent, and by some miracle she loves me.”

This suggests that Christian idealizes Ana and their relationship, and still regards his relationship with Elena, and perhaps with kink in general, as fucked up.

Elena flirts with talking about Christian’s playroom, and Christian shuts her down. The whole scene is pretty inconsequential.

Despite Elena acting in a pretty reasonable manner, Ana still thinks of her as a “bitch-troll”.

“I loathe her, Christian. I think she did you untold damage. You have no friends. Did she keep them away from you?”
He sighs and runs his hand through his hair.
“Why the fuck do you want to know about her? We had a very long-standing affair, she beat the shit out of me often, and I fucked her in all sorts of ways you can’t even imagine, end of story.”

This repeats Ana’s pattern of seeing Christian’s flaws as the fault of the previous women in his life, and particularly of Elena, forgetting Christian’s horrible childhood or the possibility that if Christian does things she doesn’t like, it’s his own fault.

Christian and Ana have the usual “She’s my past, you’re my future” conversation. Elena apparently persuaded Christian to fly to Georgia to stalk Ana. Ana, of course, interprets that as a sign of love.

Perhaps she’s not so bad. I shake my head. I don’t want to accept his relationship with her. I disapprove. Yes, that’s what this is. She’s an unsavory character who preyed on a vulnerable adolescent, robbing him of his teenage years, no matter what he says.

We get a bit of the Christian-Elena backstory (fanfiction writers take note).

“She taught me a great deal. She taught me to believe in myself.”
Oh.  “But she also beat the shit out of you.”
He smiles fondly. “Yes, she did.”
“And you liked that?”
“At the time I did.”
“So much that you wanted to do it to others?”
His eyes grow wide and serious. “Yes.”
“Did she help you with that?”
“Yes.”
“Did she sub for you?”
“Yes.”

As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a lot going on in this book, with at least three subplots only vaguely related to the Christian-Ana plot, but there’s very little actual progress on any of them. Our leading man and lady are stuck in their own holding pattern.

I smile when I see that the ruler is still on the floor. Picking it up, I swat my palm. Ow! It stings.
Why can’t I take a little more pain for my man?

This is a dangerous line of thought for a sub/bottom, letting the desire to please override the need for staying within limits. It’s something a lot of rookies subs can get into, especially if they measure themselves against the dom’s previous partners.

The Elena-blackmail plot does turn up later, apparently it was Elena’s submissive Isaac playing a prank on her. The plot continues to spin in place, with dull stuff about Christian’s brother Ethan coming back and so forth, until finally Ana goes back to her apartment for the first time in days and finds Leila there with a gun. Finally!