Fifty Shades of Grey and Fandom; a study of popularity
Fifty Shades of Grey author EL James is planning to publish a writing guide
A person at litreactor wrote an article lamenting this fact but also questioned whether it should be more telling that a book that's largely thought to have be poor quality nonetheless sold 70 million copies worldwide. The question was whether the world is changing and those of us who feel like the quality isn't that great just aren't with the times anymore. On that post there were several reactions in the comments. Most were of horror at the idea of EL James telling anyone how to write, but some people thought anyone who was down on EL James was just jealous or snooty.
I wrote a long reply to it, examining the role I feel that concepts of fandom played in the popularity of this even outside of fandoms, but the site went down before I could post. Luckily, I saved the comment. So as not to lose it, I decided to paste it over here, and try to remember to post it there when the site is back up later.
I was linked to this from somewhere else and made an account just to be able to comment on this, because I think it's interesting to consider. Here's the way I see it:
As most people know, 50 Shades originated as Twilight fanfiction. I was never in the Twilight fandom, however I've been in many others for many years, and I've seen the way different fandoms work. I've been a fan of very popular pairings or series that you can find anywhere with all sorts of interesting different ideas, and I've been a fan of extremely obscure pairings or series where I can't find anything at all or I have literally one or two stories as options. My main interest lies in a relatively popular genre (gay male stories, called m/m for the rest of this comment) that is nonetheless looked down upon by some subsections of readers. In general, if you tell a "normal" person that you're into fandom, they won't know or understand what fandom is, and they might even look down on you for it, because they have preconceived notions of the quality of writing found in it or who should be in fandoms and who should not.
I know this comment is long (sorry) but I couldn't help giving my own personal perspective on what happened/why this series is so popular despite the generally accepted lack of quality in the writing style itself. I also wasn't trying to over-explain but in my experience not everyone understands the terms used so I figured I'd explain if I mentioned one.
I discovered m/m accidentally, however I also quickly realized that it was something I really liked and really connected with. When I first discovered it, I was so happy to have found a genre that I liked that I would read ANYTHING in it. No matter the quality, no matter if I disagreed with what the author wrote or the plot devices, no matter the incomprehensible grammar and spelling and terrible characterization and boring dialogue, no matter how banal or unimaginative everything was. I thought it was the only option I had, and so I read anything and everything, and I ignored the parts I didn't like because I didn't think it could be any other way.
However, as time passed, I grew to realize that actually the genre was much larger and more diverse than I had first understood. And through that I started to have access to variety, and through that I became more discerning, and eventually it got to a point where the stories I first read because I had no other choice were now the stories I skipped or stopped immediately upon starting because the quality was not nearly up to par with other options out there.
I can tell you right now that in the fandoms I've been in, there are some writers who are on par with published authors, and sometimes they're even better than just about anything published I've ever read. There are a number of people who have gone from fandom into original series and have been published. There are some incredibly thoughtful, well written, well researched stories that, at times, may as well be original fiction themselves for as little as the story connects with the original premise of the world. (In fandom, we call that AU-- Alternate Universe, when someone takes the characters and divorces them from the original setting. 50 Shades, for instance, is an AU fanfic of Twilight. It's why she was able to auto-replace names and pretend it wasn't all about Twilight, because the setting wasn't the same.)
But as a fandom person of many years, I can also tell anyone who asks that the writing quality of 50 Shades is precisely the quality of the stories I first found in the m/m genre. It's unimaginative, simplistic, and if you really dig into a lot of different parts of the plot or the writing style, it doesn't actually make sense. For instance, the main character's a college student who's not only never had a computer but never had even an email address? That right there is unrealistic in the setting. However, in defense of the characterization in other ways, some people take issue with her having been completely asexual into her early twenties but actually that can and DOES happen and I wish fewer people would try to say that just because they were sexually awakened earlier that clearly no one else could have been delayed an extra set of years. But that's beside the point.
The point I'm trying to make is that I think the reason for the popularity of this story is not actually the story itself, or the quality of it. I think it was a case of timing. I think there are a lot of people (primarily women) who feel repressed in their daily lives or don't feel they have lived up to the level of a fantasy they wished to attain, and I also personally know a number of middle aged women who thought that Robert Pattinson is super cute/hot but they felt a bit uncomfortable with lusting after someone so young.
So my belief is that in essence what happened here was a bunch of housewives and working women discovered fandom through 50 Shades, and like happened with me when I discovered it myself, they were so excited by the idea that something like this existed that they ignored anything related to quality.
I think the similarities to Twilight which were not bothered to be edited out aided the popularity of the series for the women who wanted to lust after Twilight but didn't know how or thought that fandoms were beneath them if they DID discover them. I think the BDSM aspect (which is not at all accurate in any form to real life BDSM) made them feel tantalized by the idea that they were delving into something "naughty" and "forbidden". I think the fact that the sex scenes weren't actually descriptive for the most part aside from a bunch of "oh my"s let them feel, again, that they were dipping their toes into something naughty while at the same time not being thrown off by something more graphic that might have embarrassed them to admit to reading. (Because if they'd really wanted a well-written sex scene, there's already a lot of erotica out there that's probably written much better but isn't as popular)
Also, there's a lot to be said about the idea of being able to read a book that doesn't make you think-- there are plenty of people who pass on more well-thought-out affairs to opt for a quick and dirty read, and I certainly can't say I've never done the same myself. For some people, after being stressed out by daily life, reading something that isn't thought provoking is quite welcome.
Then, add in that some people reacted excitedly to this book the way I did to the first fanfics I found, by recommending it to anyone who would listen simply because I didn't even know I'd wanted something until I found it. You then have a lot of people buying a book based on a recommendation. However, of the people I personally know who bought the books because they kept hearing about it, they all thought they were awful, and finished the first book only because they'd spent money on it and they were waiting for it to get better. But one of them has a sister who loved the series, bought all three, and tried to convince her husband to do some of the sex acts with her.
The reason I go into this whole long thing is because, personally, I think the 50 Shades books are terrible, but I can't necessarily blame all the people who got so excited about it because it puts me so strongly in mind of my first naive fandom moments. I think they're going through the same process I was, only they don't realize they're doing it. Fandom people like me look at 50 Shades largely aghast, because we feel like people who don't belong to any fandoms but who learn that 50 Shades is a Twilight fanfic will henceforth believe that all fanfic is that quality. Trust me. It isn't. However, to be fair, 50 Shades is probably the lower to mediocre quality of fanfics out there-- it's readable and has a plot that more or less at least attempts to connect across the series-- but it is by no means the pillar of fandom. It is by no means a good example of the quality that can be found in some fanfiction.
But precisely BECAUSE I think all the above reasons are the reason for the popularity of the series, I shudder at the idea of her writing a How To guide, because honestly, if a bunch of people emulate what she did, they on their own would never be able to get anywhere. If they have any popularity at all following her process, it will only be for the people who want to read more stories like 50 Shades. In essence, they will be creating fanfictions of her fanfiction.
So maybe people following her tips will sell a lot of books, I don't know. But it's interesting because I don't think it's her tips that will help them sell it per se, I think it will be them trailing along in the wake of her story, and should 50 Shades ever lose its popularity entirely, so too would they lose their chance. Because even the most popular of fandoms have a shelf life. They may be insanely popular with tons of great new stories coming out one moment, but after a point no matter its previous popularity, it dies down into obscurity, and all those stories which emulate it from its heyday remain loved and remembered only by the most devoted of fans.
Those who aren't from fandoms who are looking at the series, aghast, wondering how it could possibly be so popular, are in fact not far from the way more established, better quality fanfic writers might look aghast at the popularity of overly simplified, poorly characterized fanfiction that panders to the newly initiated. Basically, EL James brought fandom to the real world and didn't bother to tell anyone it was happening, and those of us from fandom can more clearly understand what's happening, but those who are unfamiliar with the entire concept might still be wondering when everything changed so dramatically around them.
This, at least, is my theory.
A person at litreactor wrote an article lamenting this fact but also questioned whether it should be more telling that a book that's largely thought to have be poor quality nonetheless sold 70 million copies worldwide. The question was whether the world is changing and those of us who feel like the quality isn't that great just aren't with the times anymore. On that post there were several reactions in the comments. Most were of horror at the idea of EL James telling anyone how to write, but some people thought anyone who was down on EL James was just jealous or snooty.
I wrote a long reply to it, examining the role I feel that concepts of fandom played in the popularity of this even outside of fandoms, but the site went down before I could post. Luckily, I saved the comment. So as not to lose it, I decided to paste it over here, and try to remember to post it there when the site is back up later.
I was linked to this from somewhere else and made an account just to be able to comment on this, because I think it's interesting to consider. Here's the way I see it:
As most people know, 50 Shades originated as Twilight fanfiction. I was never in the Twilight fandom, however I've been in many others for many years, and I've seen the way different fandoms work. I've been a fan of very popular pairings or series that you can find anywhere with all sorts of interesting different ideas, and I've been a fan of extremely obscure pairings or series where I can't find anything at all or I have literally one or two stories as options. My main interest lies in a relatively popular genre (gay male stories, called m/m for the rest of this comment) that is nonetheless looked down upon by some subsections of readers. In general, if you tell a "normal" person that you're into fandom, they won't know or understand what fandom is, and they might even look down on you for it, because they have preconceived notions of the quality of writing found in it or who should be in fandoms and who should not.
I know this comment is long (sorry) but I couldn't help giving my own personal perspective on what happened/why this series is so popular despite the generally accepted lack of quality in the writing style itself. I also wasn't trying to over-explain but in my experience not everyone understands the terms used so I figured I'd explain if I mentioned one.
I discovered m/m accidentally, however I also quickly realized that it was something I really liked and really connected with. When I first discovered it, I was so happy to have found a genre that I liked that I would read ANYTHING in it. No matter the quality, no matter if I disagreed with what the author wrote or the plot devices, no matter the incomprehensible grammar and spelling and terrible characterization and boring dialogue, no matter how banal or unimaginative everything was. I thought it was the only option I had, and so I read anything and everything, and I ignored the parts I didn't like because I didn't think it could be any other way.
However, as time passed, I grew to realize that actually the genre was much larger and more diverse than I had first understood. And through that I started to have access to variety, and through that I became more discerning, and eventually it got to a point where the stories I first read because I had no other choice were now the stories I skipped or stopped immediately upon starting because the quality was not nearly up to par with other options out there.
I can tell you right now that in the fandoms I've been in, there are some writers who are on par with published authors, and sometimes they're even better than just about anything published I've ever read. There are a number of people who have gone from fandom into original series and have been published. There are some incredibly thoughtful, well written, well researched stories that, at times, may as well be original fiction themselves for as little as the story connects with the original premise of the world. (In fandom, we call that AU-- Alternate Universe, when someone takes the characters and divorces them from the original setting. 50 Shades, for instance, is an AU fanfic of Twilight. It's why she was able to auto-replace names and pretend it wasn't all about Twilight, because the setting wasn't the same.)
But as a fandom person of many years, I can also tell anyone who asks that the writing quality of 50 Shades is precisely the quality of the stories I first found in the m/m genre. It's unimaginative, simplistic, and if you really dig into a lot of different parts of the plot or the writing style, it doesn't actually make sense. For instance, the main character's a college student who's not only never had a computer but never had even an email address? That right there is unrealistic in the setting. However, in defense of the characterization in other ways, some people take issue with her having been completely asexual into her early twenties but actually that can and DOES happen and I wish fewer people would try to say that just because they were sexually awakened earlier that clearly no one else could have been delayed an extra set of years. But that's beside the point.
The point I'm trying to make is that I think the reason for the popularity of this story is not actually the story itself, or the quality of it. I think it was a case of timing. I think there are a lot of people (primarily women) who feel repressed in their daily lives or don't feel they have lived up to the level of a fantasy they wished to attain, and I also personally know a number of middle aged women who thought that Robert Pattinson is super cute/hot but they felt a bit uncomfortable with lusting after someone so young.
So my belief is that in essence what happened here was a bunch of housewives and working women discovered fandom through 50 Shades, and like happened with me when I discovered it myself, they were so excited by the idea that something like this existed that they ignored anything related to quality.
I think the similarities to Twilight which were not bothered to be edited out aided the popularity of the series for the women who wanted to lust after Twilight but didn't know how or thought that fandoms were beneath them if they DID discover them. I think the BDSM aspect (which is not at all accurate in any form to real life BDSM) made them feel tantalized by the idea that they were delving into something "naughty" and "forbidden". I think the fact that the sex scenes weren't actually descriptive for the most part aside from a bunch of "oh my"s let them feel, again, that they were dipping their toes into something naughty while at the same time not being thrown off by something more graphic that might have embarrassed them to admit to reading. (Because if they'd really wanted a well-written sex scene, there's already a lot of erotica out there that's probably written much better but isn't as popular)
Also, there's a lot to be said about the idea of being able to read a book that doesn't make you think-- there are plenty of people who pass on more well-thought-out affairs to opt for a quick and dirty read, and I certainly can't say I've never done the same myself. For some people, after being stressed out by daily life, reading something that isn't thought provoking is quite welcome.
Then, add in that some people reacted excitedly to this book the way I did to the first fanfics I found, by recommending it to anyone who would listen simply because I didn't even know I'd wanted something until I found it. You then have a lot of people buying a book based on a recommendation. However, of the people I personally know who bought the books because they kept hearing about it, they all thought they were awful, and finished the first book only because they'd spent money on it and they were waiting for it to get better. But one of them has a sister who loved the series, bought all three, and tried to convince her husband to do some of the sex acts with her.
The reason I go into this whole long thing is because, personally, I think the 50 Shades books are terrible, but I can't necessarily blame all the people who got so excited about it because it puts me so strongly in mind of my first naive fandom moments. I think they're going through the same process I was, only they don't realize they're doing it. Fandom people like me look at 50 Shades largely aghast, because we feel like people who don't belong to any fandoms but who learn that 50 Shades is a Twilight fanfic will henceforth believe that all fanfic is that quality. Trust me. It isn't. However, to be fair, 50 Shades is probably the lower to mediocre quality of fanfics out there-- it's readable and has a plot that more or less at least attempts to connect across the series-- but it is by no means the pillar of fandom. It is by no means a good example of the quality that can be found in some fanfiction.
But precisely BECAUSE I think all the above reasons are the reason for the popularity of the series, I shudder at the idea of her writing a How To guide, because honestly, if a bunch of people emulate what she did, they on their own would never be able to get anywhere. If they have any popularity at all following her process, it will only be for the people who want to read more stories like 50 Shades. In essence, they will be creating fanfictions of her fanfiction.
So maybe people following her tips will sell a lot of books, I don't know. But it's interesting because I don't think it's her tips that will help them sell it per se, I think it will be them trailing along in the wake of her story, and should 50 Shades ever lose its popularity entirely, so too would they lose their chance. Because even the most popular of fandoms have a shelf life. They may be insanely popular with tons of great new stories coming out one moment, but after a point no matter its previous popularity, it dies down into obscurity, and all those stories which emulate it from its heyday remain loved and remembered only by the most devoted of fans.
Those who aren't from fandoms who are looking at the series, aghast, wondering how it could possibly be so popular, are in fact not far from the way more established, better quality fanfic writers might look aghast at the popularity of overly simplified, poorly characterized fanfiction that panders to the newly initiated. Basically, EL James brought fandom to the real world and didn't bother to tell anyone it was happening, and those of us from fandom can more clearly understand what's happening, but those who are unfamiliar with the entire concept might still be wondering when everything changed so dramatically around them.
This, at least, is my theory.