If you spent any time online during the release of 50 Shades of Grey you were likely witness to the glorious shitstorm or turd tornado that was fuck book aficionados everywhere dumping on the book from lower orbit. In part, because it was an obvious, admitted rip off of Twilight. Something the book’s author E.L. James has since tried to downplay to the point she’s had the gall to threaten people for ripping off her idea.
For anyone unfamiliar with the authorship of 50 Shades of Grey, it began life as a couple hundred thousand word long self-insert wank-a-thon called Master of the Universe written by a lady called Erika Mitchell under the pseudonym, we shit you not, Snowqueens Icedragon.
Loosely based on Twilight, by which we mean an almost word-for-word ripoff with more poorly described fucking, Master of the Universe is, well, it’s embarrassing. Like, Twilight isn’t exactly masterful prose but it’s at least entertaining and Mitchell somehow made it worse despite only changing about 11% of the book’s content. If you’re currently wondering how we arrived at such an exact figure, a blogger once ran Master of the Universe through a plagiarism checker and found that it was about 89% identical to Twilight.
In the years since Mitchell has desperately tried to erase any evidence of Master of the Universe from the internet to the point she even had early drafts removed from the Internet Wayback Machine and has repeatedly tried to downplay any association with Twilight or fan fiction in general. With Mitchell going as far to claim she had no idea what fan fiction was prior to writing the fan fiction that inspired 50 Shades of Grey. Something we’d be inclined to believe if Mitchell didn’t decide to call herself fucking Snowqueens Icedragon. Because lets be honest, that’s not a name people pick for themselves unless they’e deep into that shit.
But here’s where things get kind of fucked up because after becoming a millionaire off the back of someone else’s work, Mitchell started acting like she was, well, the Master of the Universe.
To explain, since 50 Shades of Grey was released, became a cultural phenomenon and helped her become a millionaire she’s turned into, or rather felt emboldened to act like a raging arsehole. For example, during the production of the first 50 Shades of Grey movie Mitchell would routinely get into screaming matches with the director. A director it’s worth noting she used her clout to get fired from working on the sequels despite them having a handshake deal with the studio to work on all three. Mitchell also threw out numerous scripts because and please hold onto your sides here folks, the writing wasn’t up to her standards.
By far the most baffling thing Mitchell did though was have her agents send cease an desist letters to people trying to profit off her work by evoking the imagery of 50 Shades of Grey. Which would be fine if it was stuff like posters or merch or some shit but no, she decided to target people throwing 50 Shades themed sex parties. Meaning Mitchell seems to honestly think she invented the concept of fucking someone in a mask.
