Community Chat

[SnowPink]

Fifty Shades of Gray started as Twilight fan fiction?

Twilight was told from the perspective of Bella Swan, a shy and awkward teenage girl who, without even trying, attracts the attention and eventual obsession of Edward Cullen, an inhumanly attractive classmate with superpowers and a dark secret: he’s a vampire, and even though he is desperately in love with Bella, he struggles with his innate desire to hurt her.

In Fifty Shades, we have Ana Steele, a shy and awkward college girl who, without even trying, attracts the attention and eventual obsession of Christian Grey, an inhumanly attractive (he’s repeatedly described as an “Adonis”) man with incredible power and a dark secret: he’s addicted to violent sx, and even though he is desperately in love with Ana, he struggles with his innate desire to hurt her.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Same basic storyline -- just tweaks in characters.

[SnowPink]

To truly understand the success of Fifty Shades, one first has to revisit the book’s roots. Despite a determined campaign of internet scrubbing by author E.L. James and her publishers, it’s still relatively common knowledge that Fifty Shades began its life as an online Twilight fan fiction serial called Master of the Universe.

Then going by the pen name “Snowqueen’s Icedragon,” or “Icy” for short, James (real name: Erika Leonard) published the story online as an X-rated reimagining of the blockbuster series about a teenage vampire and his obsession with an ordinary human girl. Master of the Universe transformed sparkly vampire Edward Cullen into a young billionaire entrepreneur (think Mark Zuckerberg with sx appeal and a sadistic streak), and mousy high school student Bella Swan into a mousy college co-ed who stumbles – literally – into Edward’s world and immediately captures his attention.

At the time, Twilight fan fiction had become so popular that entire small publishing houses were set up to “file the serial numbers off” the most read stories and republish them as original works. (Publishing fan fiction for profit is widely considered a violation of copyright law, so removing all reference to characters owned by other authors is a necessity if one wishes to sell a derivative work.)

[september]

I have heard the reference to the Twilight series, but knew nothing about them before 50 Shades was published.

[september]

And as far as 50 Shades goes...I listened to a radio talk show today about the early reviews of the movie, and they aren't good at all. As in.....very bad! No chemistry between the main characters, and the overall sense was that it was painfully slow.

But at the same time....the reviewers could see that the movie might become very popular just because it was kind of campy and awkward. Who knows?