@Silver Maelstrom  
Boxing or wrestling - that’s a really, really good metaphor, actually.
 
Sorta like, “holy freak this is Paintball, not actual war - don’t beat the other guy up in hand-to-hand combat and take him prisoner”.

@Silver Maelstrom  
A similar phenomenon occured with Da Vinci Code and Twilight, yeah? As far as I could tell, each of the three were either advertised up the arse or thought of as critically acclaimed by everyone’s mom, though, of course, not everyone’s mom is a professional critic that could recognize the stark flaws in each novel that have become common knowledge we all know in the present today.

@Cirrus Light  
from what I researched, it’s really messed up, poorly written, and can give a pretty dangerous message to anyone unfortunate enough to come across this book and has yet to go through sex ed or learn how to date properly
 
It depicts an abusive relationship and depicts BDSM in the worst misrepresentatio. bdsm as any fetish requires consent from all who participate and this is where it gets problematic. the female protagonist does not enjoy the fetish at all and only goes through with it for the other person. BDSM only works well when you have an actual sub and dom, they consent and enjoy the whole thing knowing that as they enjoy it the other person is enjoying it as well. bdsm pretty much is like boxing, if both parties are up for it, it’s a sport, if only one is up for it, it’s assault. And the author sells it as a love story when it is practically an erotic novel that has a horrifying story. I don’t know why so many people like it.

I see Twilight’s recovered nicely from her book rampage

Thing about “fifty shades of grey”, though, is that from what I’ve heard, it seems like it’s a reference to morally gray things in torture, pain and pleasure and bdsm.
 
So whenever your say “fifty shades” of something it must somehow match. Like, for example, is “fifty shades of rainbow” like someone who’s discovering they’re gay when they thought they were straight? Or “fifty shades of oatmeal” mixing in other things with oatmeal until you’re not even sure if it’s “oatmeal” any more? :q
 
(I’ve added so many fruit toppings, this is some shade of fruit salad with some oatmeal rather than oatmeal with fruit toppings - sort of thing)

@Tetrominon  
HAHA, OH WOW!
 
No, really, that just made my day.

@Tetrominon  
I have to say Sesame Street is the last place I would have expected to have something like that in it.

@Cirrus Light  
 
It was just an incidental, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it prop gag, but it was there, yep.

Wow, and no one even knew.

@Tetrominon  
Wait, what?

@Thomas_Dreemurr  
Been one for a good while, now, actually. Hell, even Sesame Street did one.

So wait, did disposing of Twi a few pages back just mean possibly rehabilitation or something else?

@Thomas_Dreemurr  
How could it be not? that fanfic itself is meme

It’s becoming a meme isn’t it ? : “50 shades of X”