Warning: This Midnight Musings is going to be about sex, rape, rape culture, and will also contain cussing. Also this is all of the top of my head and my own opinion.
Hi! Welcome to Midnight Musings brought to you by insomnia and depression. So I was scrolling on my phone and I decided that I was going to watch some Netflix, as one does, cause I was obviously not sleeping anytime soon. So I popped on Netflix and decided to watch 365 Dni (365 Days), because I have heard so much about and it and well I was… I would really like to say disappointed but I knew going in that I was most likely not going to like it… really I was just flabbergasted. The whole movie is just a high budget porno with better acting and no “money” shots. The plot, the term plot is used very loosely here, is that Massimo is a mafia boss who has an obsession with Laura and kidnaps her and gives her 365 days to fall in love with him before he will let her go. This movie started as a Wattpad book and really the only Wattpad trope that this movie is missing is that Massimo isn’t a werewolf (honestly would have made the movie better). The first 20 minuets or so of the movie is just really filler cause it sets up absolutely nothing other then to say why Massimo is the boss. After having a fight with her boyfriend on her birthday vacation to Sicily, Italy, Laura runs away to the streets and eventually gets kidnapped by some of Massimo’s men. When she wakes up she is in a extravagant room that is eventually unlocked and as she is trying to find the exit she turns to see a huge ass portrait of her and she is caught off guard and then Messimo is behind her saying “Are you lost, Baby Girl?” (Also I would like it known that there is one man and one man only that is allowed to call me Baby Girl and that is Shemar More.) She faints, cause duh, and when she comes to he explains that he has been obsessed with her for 5 years and basically stalking her and he has now kidnapped her and is giving her 365 days to fall in love with him. Which is just so fucked up. Like if you want someone to love you maybe… I don’t know… try asking them on a fucking date first?! Like Massimo his fucking HOT he could have just asked her. Anyway I digress, after she understandably tells him to fuck off he spends the next 10 minuets being VERY rough with her telling her that “he won’t touch her without her permission,” which he TOTALLY does like a lot. Like he’d fondling her breast .5 seconds after saying that. He’s also like “don’t provoke me. I don’t know how to be gentle.” Of course she is feisty and what I assume the author imagines a bratty submissive to be like. Really she is just really hot and cold one second she’s all up in his business and the nest shes telling to get fucked. She makes one VERY WEAK attempt to escape and eventually submits to him. Laura claims to be in love with him even though they have known each other for 2 months and have really haven’t have any kind of conversation that doesn’t involve some kind of twisted foreplay. He also refuses to tell her exactly what it is he dose and keeps her in the dark about basically everything.
Most of the sex scenes in this movie are graphic and rough. They are a distorted image of what it means to be a Dominate/Submissive relationship. At one point he chains her to a bed, with out her consent, and has another women preform oral sex on him as she is forced to watch. There are also several scenes where he says things along the lines of “I am going to fuck you when I want, where I want, whether you want to or not.” The whole thing is sick and twisted and a perverted view of what it means to be a part of the BDSM community. Yet a quick scroll through any social media under the hashtag 365 days and you will see hundreds if not thousands of women and young women (15-17) that are absolutely in love with Massimo and think his treatment of Laura is perfect and that’s the kind of relationship they want to have. When as a society have relationships and dating become so fucking toxic that we look to things like 365 Dni or even 50 Shades of Grey and go “you know what that relationship is better then the one I am in/have been in and that’s really hot.” Like I get wanting to have really hot sex. I do. I too want to have earth shattering sex, I just want to do it with someone who loves and respects me enough to not only have conversations about what gives us BOTH gratification but also the limits of those gratifications and the tolls they can take.
The BDSM community is one of constant communication. Partners have to communicate what they are and are not okay with, what their safe words are, what are hard limits and what are soft limits. BDSM sessions can be mentally, emotionally, and physically taxing and thus after care for both Dom and Sub is incredibly important to keeping communication, trust, and love in the relationship. I am so sick and tired of seeing people take this and turn it into some toxic ass fetish. Movies and books like 365 Dni and 50 Shades of Grey take the rough sex of the BDSM world, but none of the communication or after care. Hell in 50 Shades, Christian ignores her safe words entirely, is unnecessarily rough taking her virginity, and leaves her alone after a particularly violent session to crash. All of that is some toxic ass bullshit. I can also not stress this enough, YOU CAN NOT SIGN AWAY YOUR CONSENT! I will never understand why movies like these, that perpetuate toxic stereotypes, rape, and unwanted violent sexual acts, become so popular and women find them so “hot” and “sexy”. I know healthy relationships that function aren’t always the sexiest thing, but they can be.
A Court of Thorns and Roses spoilers ahead.
Take Rhys, form A Court of Thorns and Roses, for example. I will have a comprehensive review of A Court of Mist and Fury and A Court of Wings and Ruin up in July, but Rhys and Feyre’s relationship was so beautiful to read and MY GOD WAS IT HOT AND STEAMY! Chapter 48 and 55 told me I was single in about 65 different languages. Rhys respects Feyre and lets her do things on her own terms. He never forced her to do anything and always let her make her own choices. He treats her with such love, respect and humanity. He knows hes in love with her and that she is his mate really early, but because of that bond all he wants for her is to be happy. He is willing to let her marry Tamlin because he thinks it will make her happy. It isn’t until she asks for help that he comes to her aid. So not only is their relationship built of friendship, trust, mutual respect and constant communication, BUT they have some of the smuttiest sex I have ever read and I have read A LOT of fanfiction. There is a way to present healthy relationships in media with out loosing any of the steamy factor and yet screenwriters and authors alike choose to perpetuate toxicity instead. In a world of Christian Greys and Massimos be a Rhys. Find a Rhys. Cause ladies we don’t have time for this toxic bullshit anymore.
The Ethereal Journey 