“Suddenly, he sits up and tugs my panties off and throws them on the floor. Pulling off his boxer briefs, his erection springs free. Holy cow!… He kneels up and pulls a condom onto his considerable length. Oh no… Will it? How?”

To put it charitably, Fifty Shades Of Grey author E.L. James is not the greatest writer in the world. But her lumbering brand of erotic prose, simultaneously shocking in its deviancy and embarrassingly naïve, inspires rarely seen levels of contempt in her audience. (And her non-audience; it sometimes seems that the people willing to spew the most vitriol about the threat Fifty Shades poses to Western society have neither read the books nor seen the movie.) Some of that ill will comes from a well-intentioned place, with activists speaking out against the book’s poorly handled portrayal of BDSM culture, a depiction that irresponsibly conflates romantic domination with full-on abuse. Others loathe this woman for all she represents—it does feel a little unfair that a woman who loosely adapted Twilight into her deranged personal psychosexual playpen has met with fabulous fame and fortune.

James’ choice yesterday afternoon to open herself up for questions from the public on Twitter, then, might seem like she was asking for trouble. And indeed, she was. Deep down, the noted English author knew an open Twitter Q&A session would bring only punishment, and yet she needed it. The sting of cruel, sarcastic put-downs from hundreds of anonymous users frightened her a little, but it also excited her. The understanding that hundreds of egg-avatar trolls across the globe were working up a sweat trying to think of the perfect insult, all for her, turgid with rage for her… holy cow!

James learned the hard way what her beloved protagonist Anastasia Steele learned in the first installment of the sexy, awful franchise of novels: While a little pain might be fun, everything hits a point of diminishing returns, and when it does, you damn well better have a safe word. But this is not rough sex, this is Twitter, and to quote the immortal words of A League Of Their Own, “There’s no safewords on Twitter!” Most of the users who turned out for James’ Q&A were not fans of the author or her works, but detractors come to lob a softball at one of the year’s easiest targets. Mean-spirited as the questions may have been, some of them were still pretty funny (and, to be fair, not inaccurate). Some turned out to take the author to task over her unsavory treatment of the submissive-dominant relationship:

Some zeroed in on the Fifty Shades novels’ marked similarity to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books:

Some came to James in search of hot tips to spice up their own love lives:

Some came to the Q&A in search of clarification on pressing concerns:

But the lion's share of users wanted nothing more than to remind James of what a bad, bad writer she's been:

E.L. James’ finger trembled. Did she dare to click “refresh” again and meet the fresh torrent of pain that it would undoubtedly bring? She knew what awaited her. It sent shivers through her nervous system, heightening her senses. She could still feel the rawness left by hours of sustained punishment. Her inner goddess danced the cotton-eyed joe, inviting more anonymous hate. Bring it, she thought. Holy cow.