Shades of anonimity

So, I am a bit late to the issue, but I recently found out about 50 Shades of Grey (how is even a longer story that may or may not be addressed in a future post). For those who do not know about it, it is a bestselling erotica novel that was originally a Twilight AU... the mere idea is bizarre, not because I do not think that people read erotica (or plain PWP) but how the hell did something like this happened?

However, I am not going to criticize 50 Shades because I haven't read it (and probably never will, there it too much sex in it for me to be interested). So I am just going to talk about the writing and fandom issues combined with it.

First of all, I do not believe that fanfiction is a stepping stone for being published. And least of all if you are just going to take fanfiction (AU or not) and just change the names and make it original fiction. One thing is to do what Cassandra Clare did (as far as I know Jace is based on her headcanon of Draco Malfoy), or what Virgil did to some extent in the Aneid. Another completely different thing is to publish fanfiction (I am not really concerned with the actual copyright issues because if it is an AU, then what?) under the pretence that it is not. One of the greatest things about fanfiction (and why enjoy AUs) is that you are looking at characters you already know and love. Like knowing Eames (from Inception) is an interesting character but then, bam, turns out he was born a girl and forgery is a way of telling the truth. Or what if Tony Stark was actually Toni Stark (or Natasha Stark, which is actually Marvel-cannon).

Issue number b (that has more to do with reading than writing but whatever, this is my rant blog). How e-readers give you anonimity, I mean, you could be reading Dramione fanfiction (not that I would ever do something like that) and tell people that you are reading Ulisses. I mean, that gives you as much anonimity as just reading online as Ag.

Aliens and Not Believing in Things.

When people tell me that they do not believe in aliens, I mentally scoof at them; how can someone believe that they are the only living thing in an ever expanding (sort of) infinite universe? I mean, could it get more egocentric? The universe is big, bigger than anything anyone has ever imagined before, so if it is just us, it is an awful lot of space (quote totally ripped from the movie Cosmos based on Carl Sagan's book).
Extraterrestrial beings might have come to our planet, that I have no idea, mostly because if they were able to come here it probably means that they have a way to enter hyperspace or making wormholes (which makes them technological smarter than us). Thus I dobut that they would just leave stuff unatended, it's not like Earth is a turist destination but a scientific one in any case.

And what does that have to do with anything? Yesterday... or two days ago... or something, I was talking with my mum who said she didn't believe in bisexuality. WTF. I didn't know someone could just not believe in bisexuality (or any other sexual or gender identity), I scoof at people who don't believe in aliens but not believing in something like bisexuality just left me flabbergasted (mostly because I believe that the least common sexual orientations are Kinsley 0 and Kinsley 6). She said that bisexuality were just hormones speaking, I didn't feel like starting a discusion without anywhere to run to (we were in the car), but what about biromantic aces?

Maybe this is one of those topics in which I have discovered that my mind or opinion is not like most people. Perhaps I will stop believing too, stop believing in humanity.

Off to procrastinate on homework,

                       Lily and Ki