50 Shades of Shit
Okay, so I tried to forget about this, but it just keeps cropping up and pushing my buttons.
I did my best to ignore the existence of E.L. James's 50 Shades of Grey, even when drama first started cropping up about it online however many months ago (I vaguely remember reading something about it before its publication), but I can't do it anymore after getting a copy of TIME magazine in the mail and finding this.
Really? Out of the billions of people on the planet, she is one of the 100 most influential people for the year? What the shit, TIME. Now I know for sure that my suspicions about your credibility are absolutely true. Yes, this novel is (somehow) incredibly popular. Yes, there's (unfortunately) a movie in the works for it. Yes, it brings to light that women read porn (though seriously, that would have been obvious to men if they bothered to skim through one of the books directed at a female audience, most notably the Harlequin romance novel, which is a fucking genre specifically devoted to porn).
Why is this considered influential? And really, who the fuck cares what women read to get their rocks off?
Whatever. The things that really piss me off, however, are one, the deplorable writing quality of the book and two, how James and her people continue to bring up the fact that it was originally published as fanfiction.
Yeah, that last one makes my blood boil.
People outside of fandom tend to look at us like we're some sort of exotic tribe of weirdos speaking a language they don't understand. We appear to lust after fictional characters and become more invested in their imaginary lives than in our own. I firmly believe that everyone has, at some point or another, expressed some sort of fannish behavior be it for a sports team, a political official, a singer, or, yes, a book or a television show. We all get invested in something, and we want to be connected to whatever that is. Some of us write about it. This is what E.L. James did: she wrote fanfiction for Twilight.
I'm no fan of the Twilight series, but hey, to each their own. However, James took the online popularity of her story and decided, hey, why not make some money off of it? She managed to find an agent and get the thing published after doing a find and replace for the names. It's no longer Bella and Edward fucking in a bathroom. No, it's, uh, Anastasia and Christian! This story bears no resemblance to Twilight. Who told you that? Okay, I'm sure lots of people do this, right? What's different about this situationare the facts that this book somehow became popular and that she doesn't hide the fact that her fucking story was originally published as fanfiction. If you are going to publish and/or profit from fanfiction, why the hell are you not hiding the fact that it's essentially stolen goods?
Fanworks already hang in a strange grey area of legality as it is, and openly celebrating the fact that you are making millions of dollars off of someone else's intellectual property is so incredibly frustrating that I can't even find words to express my rage. There's a reason a lot of us include disclaimers at the top of our stories - because we don't want to get sued on the off-chance the original creator(s) lash out against fanworks because they believe (or know) that money is going to fans creating stories/art/whatever instead of them. What makes it even worse to me is that the writing quality of 50 Shades of Grey is absolute shit. Here, have some quotes from Goodreads.com:
"Why don't you liked to be touched?"
"Because I'm fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia."
“Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?” Holy shit. Did I just say that? His mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly.
“No, Anastasia it doesn’t. Firstly, I don’t make love. I fuck… hard. Secondly, there’s a lot more paperwork to do, and thirdly, you don’t yet know what you’re in for. You could still run for the hills. Come, I want to show you my playroom.”
My mouth drops open. Fuck hard! Holy shit, that sounds so… hot. But why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified.
“You want to play on your Xbox?” I ask. He laughs, loudly.
“No, Anastasia, no Xbox, no Playstation. Come.”… Producing a key from his pocket, he unlocks yet another door and takes a deep breath.
And here is a lovely dramatic reading of the infamous tampon sex scene:
What the fuck is up with all of the ellipses?
Now people outside of fandom are looking at this bullshit, thinking this is the best we have to offer in terms of fanfiction. Fuck. That. This is the stereotype we try so hard to get away from, is it not? The image of a thirteen-year-old with poor grammar skills writing his or her erotic fantasies about Character X and Character Y (who is absolutely, one hundred percent not a self-insert, they will vehemently protest) down and sharing them online with the world? Now this woman is going ahead and making assloads of money off of something that is either a) not entirely hers or b) a really shitty example of fanfiction (seriously, you shouldn't be able to replace the names in a story and have the characters appear to be entirely different people in an unrecognizable setting from the original work), possibly giving fandom an even worse image than before.
Thanks, E.L. James. Now I'm even more embarrassed when people offline find out about my fannish activities.
I did my best to ignore the existence of E.L. James's 50 Shades of Grey, even when drama first started cropping up about it online however many months ago (I vaguely remember reading something about it before its publication), but I can't do it anymore after getting a copy of TIME magazine in the mail and finding this.
Really? Out of the billions of people on the planet, she is one of the 100 most influential people for the year? What the shit, TIME. Now I know for sure that my suspicions about your credibility are absolutely true. Yes, this novel is (somehow) incredibly popular. Yes, there's (unfortunately) a movie in the works for it. Yes, it brings to light that women read porn (though seriously, that would have been obvious to men if they bothered to skim through one of the books directed at a female audience, most notably the Harlequin romance novel, which is a fucking genre specifically devoted to porn).
Why is this considered influential? And really, who the fuck cares what women read to get their rocks off?
Whatever. The things that really piss me off, however, are one, the deplorable writing quality of the book and two, how James and her people continue to bring up the fact that it was originally published as fanfiction.
Yeah, that last one makes my blood boil.
People outside of fandom tend to look at us like we're some sort of exotic tribe of weirdos speaking a language they don't understand. We appear to lust after fictional characters and become more invested in their imaginary lives than in our own. I firmly believe that everyone has, at some point or another, expressed some sort of fannish behavior be it for a sports team, a political official, a singer, or, yes, a book or a television show. We all get invested in something, and we want to be connected to whatever that is. Some of us write about it. This is what E.L. James did: she wrote fanfiction for Twilight.
I'm no fan of the Twilight series, but hey, to each their own. However, James took the online popularity of her story and decided, hey, why not make some money off of it? She managed to find an agent and get the thing published after doing a find and replace for the names. It's no longer Bella and Edward fucking in a bathroom. No, it's, uh, Anastasia and Christian! This story bears no resemblance to Twilight. Who told you that? Okay, I'm sure lots of people do this, right? What's different about this situationare the facts that this book somehow became popular and that she doesn't hide the fact that her fucking story was originally published as fanfiction. If you are going to publish and/or profit from fanfiction, why the hell are you not hiding the fact that it's essentially stolen goods?
Fanworks already hang in a strange grey area of legality as it is, and openly celebrating the fact that you are making millions of dollars off of someone else's intellectual property is so incredibly frustrating that I can't even find words to express my rage. There's a reason a lot of us include disclaimers at the top of our stories - because we don't want to get sued on the off-chance the original creator(s) lash out against fanworks because they believe (or know) that money is going to fans creating stories/art/whatever instead of them. What makes it even worse to me is that the writing quality of 50 Shades of Grey is absolute shit. Here, have some quotes from Goodreads.com:
"Why don't you liked to be touched?"
"Because I'm fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia."
“Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?” Holy shit. Did I just say that? His mouth drops open slightly, but he recovers quickly.
“No, Anastasia it doesn’t. Firstly, I don’t make love. I fuck… hard. Secondly, there’s a lot more paperwork to do, and thirdly, you don’t yet know what you’re in for. You could still run for the hills. Come, I want to show you my playroom.”
My mouth drops open. Fuck hard! Holy shit, that sounds so… hot. But why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified.
“You want to play on your Xbox?” I ask. He laughs, loudly.
“No, Anastasia, no Xbox, no Playstation. Come.”… Producing a key from his pocket, he unlocks yet another door and takes a deep breath.
And here is a lovely dramatic reading of the infamous tampon sex scene:
Click to viewWhat the fuck is up with all of the ellipses?
Now people outside of fandom are looking at this bullshit, thinking this is the best we have to offer in terms of fanfiction. Fuck. That. This is the stereotype we try so hard to get away from, is it not? The image of a thirteen-year-old with poor grammar skills writing his or her erotic fantasies about Character X and Character Y (who is absolutely, one hundred percent not a self-insert, they will vehemently protest) down and sharing them online with the world? Now this woman is going ahead and making assloads of money off of something that is either a) not entirely hers or b) a really shitty example of fanfiction (seriously, you shouldn't be able to replace the names in a story and have the characters appear to be entirely different people in an unrecognizable setting from the original work), possibly giving fandom an even worse image than before.
Thanks, E.L. James. Now I'm even more embarrassed when people offline find out about my fannish activities.