50 Shades of Grey trilogy goes from fan fiction to Random House

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fireluxlou

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The sad part is, even without the fanfic background, it's a poorly written book. It reads more like a parody of a BDSM relationship, tbh. While even I can sort of understand the appeal of twilight, I don't get the appeal of this. Is it the "sexy" tampon scene or the "I was molested and turned into a dom" backstory? :rolleyes

Also, call the hunger games fanfic ripoff this -- Fifty Pangs of Hunger. Peeta is the sub, Katniss is the dom. And Peeta makes subs with bread, so you can have a lot of bad puns with that.

eesh the bit that squicked me out in 50SoG was how they talk of their children quite sexually and he whips her pregnant belly too.
 

Mustafa

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this FSOG thing has me wondering if I shouldn't swap in twilight names into my original manuscript, throw it up on a fanfiction site, and then pull it down and change the names back to their original state when the books get attention.
 

Alitriona

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this FSOG thing has me wondering if I shouldn't swap in twilight names into my original manuscript, throw it up on a fanfiction site, and then pull it down and change the names back to their original state when the books get attention.

I presume this is sarcasm. Anyone who thinks this way or thinks its a good idea knows nothing about the fandom.

There are almost 200,000 twi fics on ff.net alone, added to that private blogs and other archives. Only one has made it this big, under circumstances it would be impossible to replicate. It's not as easy as putting it on line and waiting for the fans to push it big. That's if a story even gains significant readership. If it doesn't, the story will always be previously fanfiction. It's not a good idea to put in the minds of any writers who might see it as an easy road to the kind of sales 50 has.
 

Mustafa

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I presume this is sarcasm. Anyone who thinks this way or thinks its a good idea knows nothing about the fandom.

There are almost 200,000 twi fics on ff.net alone, added to that private blogs and other archives. Only one has made it this big, under circumstances it would be impossible to replicate. It's not as easy as putting it on line and waiting for the fans to push it big. That's if a story even gains significant readership. If it doesn't, the story will always be previously fanfiction. It's not a good idea to put in the minds of a any writer who might see it as an easy road to the kind of sales 50 has.

HA! Um, yeah, it was sarcasm. I wouldn't waste time with FF and I sure wouldn't put something original on there.
 

thebloodfiend

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I'm going to write 50 Shades of Black -- African-American SF porn.
Come to think of it -- that IS a great title.

Brilliance. If it ever gets to big screen, I see Wesley Snipes and Halle Berry (or Rosario Dawson) as the stars. It'd be weirdly creepy and awkwardly sexy.
 

bearilou

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I understood it was sarcasm.

Sadly, what makes it hard to determine is that there are fanfic writers out there who believe it would work. Certainly not on this forum, right?

There are fanfic authors who most likely rushed to their harddrives, scoured through their fanfic, looked for the AUs that they could scrub and then rush out the door to start the submission...or start self-publishing.

:/
 

Phaeal

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I understood it was sarcasm.

Me, too.

And I get "Fifty Shades of Puce," a stirring saga about an interior designer imprisoned in his employer's pleasure dungeon until he finds her exactly the right shade of brownish purple for her tufted velvet racks.
 
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skylark

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Sadly, what makes it hard to determine is that there are fanfic writers out there who believe it would work. Certainly not on this forum, right?

There are fanfic authors who most likely rushed to their harddrives, scoured through their fanfic, looked for the AUs that they could scrub and then rush out the door to start the submission...or start self-publishing.

:/

I know several fanfic writers who've taken the serial numbers off fanfic and published it.

None of them have become household names.

And, I'd have to say, I'm heartily sick of almost every post from Mustafa being a sideswipe at people who write fanfic. I'm a fellow writer. I'd like to be respected too.
 

Filigree

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Hey, I'm a fanfic writer. I just know the difference between fanfic and original stuff. The fanfic was play, exploration, and character study, in an environment that let me use pre-made templates instead of lots of worldbuilding. I wrote fanfic for around 4 years in the early 2000's. I have always made certain to keep a creative firewall between my fanfic and my original works. I'd never bother to file off the serial numbers.

For one thing, my original pieces are worlds better. I've written original fiction since 1987, and I'm selling it now, after taking a decade or so off for a non-writing career.

My main gripe with FSoG isn't that it was originally fanfic. I loathe it because it's so badly written.
 

Silver-Midnight

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Hey, I'm a fanfic writer. I just know the difference between fanfic and original stuff. The fanfic was play, exploration, and character study, in an environment that let me use pre-made templates instead of lots of worldbuilding. I wrote fanfic for around 4 years in the early 2000's. I have always made certain to keep a creative firewall between my fanfic and my original works. I'd never bother to file off the serial numbers.

For one thing, my original pieces are worlds better. I've written original fiction since 1987, and I'm selling it now, after taking a decade or so off for a non-writing career.

My main gripe with FSoG isn't that it was originally fanfic. I loathe it because it's so badly written.

Excluding the specific years and the part about actually getting published, the same applies to me.

When I started writing, I originally wrote fan fiction. Then I broke into writing original fiction, and now, I kind of write both sometimes. I'm not really talking bad about "Fifty Shades" because it was originally fan fiction, not really anyway. I mean yes, I do feel a bit on the fence about the whole situation. But legally, there isn't anything anyone can do. It's technically not plagiarism because it was an AU fic. But my thing again against "Fifty Shades" is because it is kind of badly written, in my opinion anyway. That's basically it really.
 

Mustafa

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I know several fanfic writers who've taken the serial numbers off fanfic and published it.

None of them have become household names.

And, I'd have to say, I'm heartily sick of almost every post from Mustafa being a sideswipe at people who write fanfic.
I'm a fellow writer. I'd like to be respected too.

Give me a break, Skylark. I've posted quite a few posts in this thread and most of them have NOT been about my dislike of fan-fiction. In fact, several of them have been in defense of FSOG (like when I said it looked 'edited' to me).
 

James D. Macdonald

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As I understand it, the only similarities between Master of the Universe (original title of Fifty Shades of Gray) and Twilight were the names of the characters (no vampires, sparkling or otherwise, etc.)

Now that the names have been changed with Global Search and Replace, there are, as I understand it, no similarities at all.
 

Pinguicha

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As I understand it, the only similarities between Master of the Universe (original title of Fifty Shades of Gray) and Twilight were the names of the characters (no vampires, sparkling or otherwise, etc.)

No, there are more similarities. For instance, Christian's adoptive family is a blatant rip-off of the Cullens: all very beautiful, very polite people. His sister is exactly like Alice (minus the whole "I can see the future" thing), his brother is clearly Emmet, who Anastasia's best friend starts dating. Also, like Rosalie, Kate (Anastasia's aforementioned best friend) opposes their relationship.

Then, there's Anastasia's and Christian's relationship. She is frequently dazzled and rendered speechless by him, not to mention she sees him as an Adonis (yes, this is in the book). She is so completely entranced by him that no one else matters (à la Bella Swan) and it takes someone stupidly handsome to make her want to date and have sex. Christian, like Edward, is also frequently borderline stalking her.

Also, let's not talk about the whole misogynist theme going on in Twilight - but suffice to say, it's present in FSoG as well.

So, the resemblances between Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey go beyond character names that ended up being changed for publication. The main relationship, the relationship between Anastasia's and Christian's family, the characters themselves... they obvious belong to a fanfic, not to an original novel.
 

BenPanced

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It was either on this thread or another where somebody linked to an article that found enough similarities between Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey to warrant a possible lawsuit, should Meyer choose to pursue it.
 
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