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.