Christian Grey Vs Seto Kaiba or How an Action-Anime for Kids Did It Better!

Previously: Ana Steele VS The Modern Virgin

So Christian Grey is a dream boat, right?

Well, no, not really. But for the sake of this game, let's go with what the books tell us about him, rather than what they show:

- Christian is very successful and self-made
- He is intimidating
- He likes fast and expensive cars
- He likes big displays of wealth, social status and ego-strokes
- He is selfish, a bit of a jerk and certainly a control freak
- He has a broken childhood and a dead parent-figure
- He is amazing at his job and has cartoonish bodyguard(s)
- He loves his sibling
- He is incredibly young, hot and is into BDSM

Hmm, I can think of one very prominent character a bit like that. He's not from any erotic fiction, but I remember him being my sexual awakening, you might say. Ok, not really obviously, since I was around eight or nine when I watched the show for the first time, but... he was so just so cool...

Sorry, I got distracted for a second. Anyway, here he is:

Oh, snap!

Yu Gi Oh is an action anime targeted towards kids and teens. It's about adults playing a children's card game. Really, I can't explain it any better. Seto Kaiba (or Kaiba as the show referred to him) is a kind of an antagonist, although he would often help the heroes, even if it's for a selfish reason. He is basically everything that I said about Christian Grey and more. Well, except for the fact that he is a sub and on the asexual and aromantic spectrums... but that's a topic for another time,

Unlike Grey, however whose personality is the color of his name, Kaiba is um... how do I say this? Interesting.

Besides the things I already pointed out, he:
- is also a genius
- can pilot planes and helicopters
- is a world-class hacker
- is a bit of a pick-pocketer,
- is pretty proficient in martial-arts
- is a great escape-artist, amazing chess player and world-chapion of that damn card-game
- is incredibly badass

Not to mention, that what we are told about Kaiba is the same as what we are shown. This guy was a workaholic! And not a made-up workaholic like Christian, who can blow-off important business meetings on a whim; never ever works on a weekend; has all the time for lavish vacations; and basically makes his business decisions based on who he is currently fucking. We are actually shown how invested Kaiba is in his work. Also, the reason Kaiba he is so ridiculously successful is not only because he was a kid-genius, but he also had his adoptive father's money and his company that he re-build and was basically trained to be this by his father from an early age. Also, while he is a chaotic neutral, possibly chaotic bad (though sometimes - chaotic good) and an egotistical jerk, he also loves his brother more than anything. He isn't abusive either. Mostly, he just desperately needs a hug.

Also, did I mention that he was really hot!

Basically what I'm saying is - when a kid's show centered around adults playing a children's card game, a show that included NO ROMANCE (even by kids' shows' standards) has a sexeier, more realistic enigmatic-CEO-jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold, than the most successful book ever, something is terribly wrong.

Ana Steele VS The Modern Virgin or Why Ana Sucks

For the record, I would like to start off by saying that I don't believe in the concept of "virginity" as such. I find it extremely heteronormative, I think it devalues types of sex that don't include a penis, and I find this "lose/give" language kind of creepy. I'd like to think of having sex as sharing an experience and I don't think it starts and ends with dick.

That said however, I've noticed a disturbing trend in romance fiction lately. There's this particular type of protagonist a lot of writers seem to gravitate towards. You see, it's not just that she (or he, as the trope so,metimes extends to gay pairings as well) has never had sex (which is perfectly fine on its own, of course!) She's also never dated. She's never wanted sex. She's never felt arousal. She's never masturbated. She's never tried alcohol. She's never gone to a party. She doesn't know what a "butt plug" is, despite the self-explanatory name. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that she is naive practically to the point of ridiculous.

And you know, it's fine to be introverted. It's fine to be a virgin and even slightly, naive, but the way these protagonists are written is completely unrealistic. And 50 Shades is probably the worst offender here.

1. Not having a smart-phone, laptop or email.

There is no WAY in hell Ana didn't have an email before Christian bought her that Mac. You literally need one, so you can apply to university and then you need it for various assignments.

Not having a personal laptop can happen, I guess, but from the moment you arrive at university, you are told you can do everything online and it will definitely make your life harder. Hell, when I was studying in Edinburgh, I even had to go online to do my laundry! Not kidding - you get a card, then you register to this website, put money in your card and then you can do laundry.

Smartphones you can go without fine, but people do use them a lot! Also, I'm sorry but I refuse to believe that Ana has spent four years in university and never learnt how to google stuff. I wouldn't have survived high school without that ability, let alone uni! You realize that doing research is like Academic Skills 101, right?

So then why has EL James made our heroine so detached from the world? Well, see... the internet is a place of all information. Ana with an internet connection will not be that same ridiculously-innocent Ana that we all know and hate.

2. Never having mastrubated/had any sexual fabtasies and desires of any sort:

Again, I feel the need to point this out: asexuality is a thing. There are people who don't feel sexual attraction and while that doesn't equate to arousal, there are plenty of sex repulsed and sex neutral aces that just don't care about sex or even mastruabting.

That said, this isn't the case with Ana. I cannot explain this better than the ladies at 50 Shades of Green. As Nella explains: "The reason why Ana has never had any sexual fantasies before she meets her Twu Luv is not so people would relate to that, because no one would. It's that they'll relate to the fact that they think that's how it should be."


3. Not knowing basic things about sex:

There's a lot of time you just have to roll your eyes at how clueless Ana is, but as Erika points out, there's no way she'll be that clueless after four years in university. The reason EL James wrote her this way, is because she needed someone really "innocent" to be the foil of Grey and his "dark" ways.

Except... James has a very broken idea of innocence. She thinks that being innocent means a naive, conservative, clueless idiot. Ana can have no experience and still be at least a little street smart, confident and aware of her own fantasies and limitations (aka the way Dakota Johnson attempted to portray her.)

And just for funzies: here's the chapter where Ana and Christian have sex for the first time, re-capped by the awesome Jenny T, and an audio version, read by Kate Davidson.

Coming Up Next: Christian Grey VS Seto Kaiba or How Yu Gi Oh Did It Better.

Marked, Chapter 1 - Meeting two horrible people

We start off meeting our heroine and first-person-narrator Zoey in school with her friend Kayla. She sees a 'dead guy' by the lockers  that no one else seems to see, except... wait a minute! Vampyres aren't dead. They are Changed. And it's not like humans don't know in this universe? Did this book have an editor?

Kayla is talking about this guy named Heath, who apparently didn't get that drunk after the game and Zoey is being harsh on him (spoiler: Heath is Zoey's no-good almost-boyfriend.) Except our heroine isn't really listening but thinking that she is feeling out of sorts.

 Then I coughed. Again. I felt like crap. I must be coming down with what Mr. Wise, my more-than-slightly-insane AP biology teacher, called the Teenage Plague. 

If I died, would it get me out of my geometry test tomorrow? One could only hope. 

One third into the first page and Zoey is already being horrible. Dying is better than geometry?! Well, ok, I might have said the exact same thing to myself once or twice. Teenagers are idiots. Moving on.

Next there's some drama, the only important detail of which is that Zoey doesn't like her step-father, who she calls Step-Loser. She and Kayla keep talking about how Heath only got drunk because he was celebrating his win in American football. Also, yes I'll keep calling it American football. I'm European and I believe that for a sport to be called 'football'  it should include FEET and a BALL. so yeah, suck it, Americans!

Zoey hates the fact that Heath drinks so much, but Kayla defends him. Apparently Kayla is shallow though, because she thinks Heath is hot. OH, THE HORROR! Surely no teenage girl has ever been into a guy simply because he is hot! What a shallow bitch! /sarcasm

Unfortunately, Kayla is just our token shallow-frienemy to show how deep, smart and incredible our protagonist is. But what's important to remember for now is that Zoey thinks this is shallow. I promise it'll come in play later.

Then I saw him. The dead guy. Okay, I realized pretty quick that he wasn't technically "dead.” He was undead. Or un-human. Whatever. Scientists said one thing, people said another, but the end result was the same. There was no mistaking what he was and even if I hadn't felt the power and darkness that radiated from him, there was no frickin' way I could miss his Mark, the sapphire- blue crescent moon on his forehead and the additional tattooing of entwining knot work that framed his equally blue eyes. He was a vampyre, and worse. He was a Tracker. 

Yeah, there's no darkness. At all. Ever. From anyone. Except villains. And not even all of them. I...

This guy is a Tracker. Trackers are the Hunters, who "mark"  teenagers for the vampyre school and turn them into fledglings (students, vampyre-trainees). One day they will turn into full vampyres or die, which happens quite a bit fyi.

Anyway, the Tracker marks Zoey with the vampyre mark (for a fledgling that's the outline of a dark blue crescent moon on their forehead, for a vampyre it's filled in.) Also, we find out that Zoey is a bit of a random idiot, but in a cute way? This is basically just  the verbal equivalent of 'clumsy.' It's a flaw that's not really a flaw. Oh, I forgot - Zoey is bad at math too. If you guessed that we have a Mary Sue on our hands, my dear, you'll most certainly be right!

Kayla is very upset that Zoey has been Marked. So much that Zoey has to be the one to calm her down, and I have to say, I really hate Kayla here. She is not being a friend; she is being a selfish jerk.

And she automatically cringed, and moved away from me. 

I couldn't believe it. She actually cringed, like she was afraid of me. She must have seen the hurt in my eyes because she instantly started a string of breathless K-babble.
"Oh, God, Zoey! What are you going to do? You can't go to that place. You can't be one of those things. This can't be happening! Who am I supposed to go to all of our football games with?”

I noticed that all during her tirade she didn't once move any closer to me. I clamped down on the sick, hurt feeling inside that threatened to make me burst into tears. My eyes dried instantly. I was good at hiding tears. I should be; I'd had three years to get good at it. 

I mean, Kayla is pretty terrible, but Zoey isn't exactly any better. You don't have to hang out with Kayla, if you don't liker her you know!

Anyway, Zoey is definitely Marked now and has to go to the vampyre school or she'll get progressively sicker over the next couple of days and die. Also she has a stupid Barbie-clone sister. Is her sister really stupid and a Barbie-clone? I don't know! We never meet her and after this chapter she seems to drop out of existence, because she's never mentioned again. Was she taken by the aliens, who also deleted everyone's memory of  her? Well, it's as good of an explanation as any.

Zoey is also afraid that  she'll become a stereotype.

Do vampyres play chess? Were there vampyre dorks? How about Barbie-like vampyre cheerleaders? Did any vampyres play in the band? Were there vampyre Emos with their guy-wearing-girl's-pants weirdness and those awful bangs that cover half their faces? Or were they all those freaky Goth kids who didn't like to bathe much? Was I going to turn into a Goth kid? Or worse, an Emo? I didn't particularly like wearing black, at least not exclusively, and I wasn't feeling a sudden and unfortunate aversion to soap and water, nor did I have an obsessive desire to change my hairstyle and wear too much eyeliner. 

Don't worry, Zoey, you are already your own stereotype. You are the perfect-in-everything protagonist that everyone likes and is attracted to, even though she is actually awful.

Oh, Kayla's here. Hi, Kayla, I had forgotten you about you! Actually that may have been for the best, seeing as how Kayla continues to act horribly. She doesn't even try to hide that she is afraid of Zoey now and leaves her in her time of need to go home with her boyfriend.

And the Award for the worst person ever goes to...

Really, Kayla, the elitist-Zoey, who is already well on her way of becoming the biggest Mary Sue in published fiction since Bella Swan is nice compared to you! Come to think of it, that was probably the point... Well, to her credit she does ask Zoey to 'call her later,' but she might as well be saying 'we'll never talk again'.

Zoey starts contemplating her choices:

The problem, of course, was that turning into a monster was the brighter of my two choices. Choice Number 1: I turn into a vampyre, which equals a monster in just about any human's mind. Choice Number 2: My body rejects the Change and I die. Forever. 

Yes, Zoey that's how dying usually works. I mean personally I believe in rebirth, but since you have no memories of previous lives anyway, it's all the same.


Now... oh, the hell with it.

          So the good news is that I wouldn't have to take the geometry test tomorrow.

The bad news was that I'd have to move into the House of Night, a private boarding school in Tulsa's Midtown, known by all my friends as the Vampyre Finishing School, where I would spend the next four years going through bizarre and unnameable physical changes, as well as a total and permanent life shake-up. And that's only if the whole process didn't kill me. Great. I didn't want to do either. I just wanted to attempt to be normal, despite the burden of my mega-conservative parents, my troll-like younger brother, and my oh-so-perfect older sister. 

I swear I am not kidding, but I had no idea Zoey even had a brother and I've READ THE BOOKS BEFORE. If Zoey's sister is mentioned twice, that'll be the only time we'll ever hear of her brother. And I am tempted to meme again.

Now that was being taken away from me, too. 

Wait is that a protagonist complaining for NOT being able to live xir horrible life?! I don't even... WHERE DID THIS TROPE EVEN COME FROM?!

Seriously, correct me if I am wrong, but if you lived in a horrible and/or abusive environment and had to deal with awful and boring stuff all the time and then something/someone changes that, will your first reaction really be: 'Oh, gosh golly, I can't live out my extremely boring and horrible life?! I hate you, magical life-changer that all ordinary people dream about!' I mean, maybe it's just my genre-awareness speaking, but am I really the only one who thinks this is stupid?

Anyway, Zoey rushes towards her car.

But I stopped short of going outside. Through the side-by-side windows in the institutional-looking doors I could see Heath. Girls flocked around him, posing and flipping their hair, while guys revved ridiculously big pickup trucks and tried (but mostly failed) to look cool. Doesn't it figure that I would choose that to be attracted to? No, to be fair to myself I should remember that Heath used to be incredibly sweet, and even now he had his moments. Mostly when he bothered to be sober. 

I actually like this. I mean it's somewhat of a stereotype, but I think everyone who's attracted to men can attest to the fact that they've had at least one moment, when they've realized that their crush is a bit crap and went, 'oh, why do I have to be attracted to that guy?' Also, as someone who's read the other books, I can account to the fact that Heath is actually not at all a bad guy. Also, he is definitely somewhere in my top five characters.

Then we get some slut-shaming, which is super uncool and Zoey says she is afraid of judgement over her scar, so she can't go past her almost-boyfriend and his clique to her car. Because in high-school, having no nasty rumors about yourself floating around is more important than literally staying alive.

I just... no, I am not going to touch this one.

I already knew too well what they'd do. I remembered the last kid a Tracker had Chosen at SIHS. 

It happened at the beginning of the school year last year. The Tracker had come before school started and had targeted the kid as he was walking to his first hour. I didn't see the Tracker, but I did see the kid afterward, for just a second, after he dropped his books and ran out of the building, his new Mark glowing on his pale forehead and tears washing down his too white cheeks. I never forgot how crowded the halls had been that morning, and how everyone had backed away from him like he had the plague as he rushed to escape out the front doors of the school. I had been one of those kids who had backed out of his way and stared, even though I'd felt really sorry for him. I just hadn't wanted to be labeled as that-one-girl-who's-friends-with-those-freaks. Sort of ironic now, isn't it? 

No, not even tempted to go over all the aspects of elitism, stereotyping and typical not 'what-actually-happens-in-high-school', but 'what-everyone-who-isn't-in-high-school-thinks-happens-high-school' of that quote.

Or maybe it does happen. Maybe I am just more open-minded than most people? But it still sucks! And our heroine sucks for buying into all of that bullshit. However, she is Marked now, so I guess this is her journey to enlightenment and open-mindedness? Well, let's see how that goes for her then.

Zoey goes to the bathroom and stares at her scar, feeling like she's looking at a stranger. Oh, hi, overused trope! I didn't expect you until at least the  next chapter.

Finally, we get a physical description of our narrator. Basically, she's pretty but not too pretty, brunette and part Cherokee. Which I don't mind, except it's used more for "cool points" than representation.

From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment―just an instant―I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother's people rejoiced. 

I... am not sure if this racist or not? It sounds a bit off to me though. Why would the blood of your grandmother's people rejoice, Zoey? Also, no none of the other books answers this either.

So, that my dear two readers, is chapter one from book one of The House of Night. Basically all that happens is that we meet one horrible character. Oh, and a title drop. There's a lot of those. I hope you like this re-cap and I guess I'll do another one soon, if I see any interest at all. The best way to that - comment!

                                                                                                 Have a great weekend!