A Fool's Goldmine

Did you know that Fifty Shades of Grey, E. L. James' cringeworthy BDSM wish-fulfilment shitfest, began life as a piece of Twilight fan fiction? Not satisfied with the spectacularly terrible story of a century-old undead guy and his insatiable lust for teen flesh as written by Mormon housewife Stephenie Meyer, James decided Bella and Edward's relationship could be improved upon, and wrote far more than anybody should about an effeminate vampire and beige personified getting freaky with each other. And then she decided other people needed to read it, too. She called it Master of the Universe, though it contained disappointingly little of He-Man, and published it online.

Did you know that Fifty Shades of Grey, E. L. James' cringeworthy BDSM wish-fulfilment shitfest, began life as a piece of Twilight fan fiction?

The final version of Fifty Shades is revised – impossibly handsome billionaire Christian Grey and naïve grad student Anastasia Steele replace Meyer's totally copyrighted characters, for starters – but it wears its fanfic roots on its sleeve, which perhaps it can't help, on account of the remedial prose and dearth of synonyms… down there. It's like the book's editor got through a chapter and just went “screw it”, decided that grammar and a varied vocabulary are for pussies, downed a shot or six and waited for the cash to roll in.

And roll in it did. Make no mistake, you made this possible. Well, not you, but people – the buying public. You snapped it up faster than the Harry Potter series, vociferously purchasing 70 million copies' worth of mangled trees to devour the literary equivalent of a 15-year-old narrating a porno, and now it's being turned into a goddamn movie. Fan fiction (or work that had its genesis in fan fiction) has become a credible source for movie ideas. It's the beginning of the end. The well, for better or worse, has been sprung.

Fan fiction, if you're unaware, is the collective name for works of fiction written by fans. Fans of TV shows, movies, anime, manga, books, plays, bands… you name it – it's been written about by people who love it in ways that only the most stringently socially just could reconcile in their own brains. Fanfic is a wildly varied movement, running the gamut from 300-word, harmless stories about the time One Direction went to the mall all the way up to 60,000-plus-word epics about the time One Direction went to the mall and then went home and had a five-way. There's literally something for everyone, including the kind of people you had no idea even existed. People who would write an Emperor's New Groove/Star Wars mash-up and call it The Empire's New Groove, or spend 10,000 words detailing John McClane's  (Die Hard) adventures on the Enterprise-D (Star Trek: The Next Generation).

And then there's the disturbing stuff. Stories that would make David Lynch's hair turn jet-black and then white again…

"Bastard!" Piglet pulled out his sword.

"No, Piglet. Death is too easy. I want to savor my revenge. I'll have my revenge! Tigger, bend him over!"

"That's what tiggers do best!"

"Afraid of me even now, Pooh? Why don't you fight me, single combat? Too cowardly to fight a cripple?"

"No..." Pooh pulled down his breeches. His magnificent golden penis stood in the air like a golden statue. It made his golden hand look like dull copper. "I prefer to make you suffer!"

Hey, do you remember the time Game of Thrones' Jaime Lannister met and was raped by Winnie the Pooh? Because Master_Jay, the guy that wrote the text from which the excerpt above is taken, apparently does.

Hey, do you remember the time Game of Thrones' Jaime Lannister met and was raped by Winnie the Pooh? Because Master_Jay, the guy that wrote the text from which the excerpt above is taken, apparently does. It gets much worse, really quickly. Those are the depths (or heights, depending on your perspective) to which fan fiction sinks (rises), sometimes. Honestly, My Little Pony fans are responsible for some of the most aggressively insane narratives ever written such as the horrifying Sweet Apple Massacre and the truly gut-wrenching Cupcakes, in which Pinkie Pie dismembers and devours her friend Rainbow Dash, because bronies (Google it) are clearly psychopaths.

Pinkie selected a large butcher knife and walked behind the blue pegasus. “Hope you don't mind, I think I'm gonna wing it now,” Pinkie laughed.

That's not even the worst of it – but it's just not the sort of thing you subject someone to involuntarily. Consent should absolutely be required. Speaking of, do not look up Agony in Pink. Do you understand? Aside from massive trigger warnings, all you need to know is that it involves the pink Power Ranger, the villainous Lord Zedd and someone called Tortura (“torturer”). Written and uploaded in 1994, it's become one of fanfic's most infamous – if not the most – and was considered so offensive by the Australian government that in 2000 its existence was specifically cited as justification to block access to the alt.sex.stories newsgroup on proto-forum Usenet. You can find it now with ease, though. But don't. Seriously.

It's worth noting that this isn't a condemnation of fan fiction in general as a form of artistic expression. On the contrary – it's an incredibly vital and valid outlet for people's personal, sexual and creative impulses. There are some tremendous, genuinely astounding end results: for example, the world's longest piece of literature is a piece of Super Smash Bros Brawl fan fiction. Really. It's more than three million words – eclipsing even War and Peace, the Bible and Atlas Shrugged put together, and then some – about Nintendo characters who sometimes fight each other. Presumably. But, even so, some fan fiction is terrible. And some of it is messed up. And some of it, as you've seen, is completely baffling.

Then again, source material being terrible, messed up or baffling has never stopped Hollywood before, and it's certainly not going to stop it when it comes to mining fan fiction for ideas – especially now that there's high-profile precedent and they can basically pass it off as crowd-sourcing. Jack Sparrow vs Jaws: The Movie: in a cinema near you soon.