The Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon is refusing to go away and well-read people of the world are still wondering why it ever got popular to begin with. Detailing the relationship of sweet, innocent, virgin Anastasia and dominant Christian Grey, the book has everyone suddenly obsessed with smut. At least, the non-internet nerds of the world are. Hidden in the Internet is the secret of fan-fiction, stories written by fans for fans on anything to Harry Potter to Sailor Moon. It is the fan’s version of their favourite stories and originally Fifty Shades of Grey was fan-fiction based on the dubious topic of vampire-crazy series Twilight.

What is unclear is how out all the thousands upon thousands of well written fan-fictions, in regards to both prose and smut, did Fifty Shades of Grey become the choosen beacon to be published. The general consensus on a social networks like Facebook is ‘These books are brilliant and addictive’ but on Tumblr, where fans particularly interested and dedicated to their favourite subject post,  the response is more along the lines of ‘Let’s take this book series and make fun of it because it’s so bad’ and ‘I’ve read better fan-fiction written by fourteen year-old girls’. Is the general public not aware of what they missing out on? Great fan-fictions with credible writing and sex scenes which would delight Fifty Shades of Grey fans. All for free, too.

There is a lot of fiction out there to explore, even if readers are just looking for something racy.

The smut is one thing but have people forgotten what good books are? Sure, she may be a guilty pleasure but Jilly Cooper has been the queen of racy chick-lit for years and authors like Jo Carnegie and Lisa Jewell can fit a filthy scene into their books with ease. All of these authors are regarded as chick-lit and used to be the embarrassing pleasure of the reading world, and the quality of Fifty Shades pales in comparison to these so called ‘chick-lit’ books which are often well written and original. Chick-lit aside, there are millions of books far superior to the current choosen favourite which sadly aren’t getting the recognition they deserve.

Perhaps the general public should stick with funny videos on YouTube and badly written best-sellers, and let us in the fandom crowds keep Tumblr and well written fan-fiction in our world, which hopefully will never be punctured if the smut newcomers find  ‘their’ phenomenon has been our little secret all along.