Oh, no -- to clarify, by itself, I don't think repurposing a fic (or something with fic-like elements) as original is a bad thing. I don't think it's at all the same thing as plagiarism, either. I think it's all in the execution.

(One of my favorite fantasy writers at the moment is Martha Wells, and several of her books feature characters who are carefully-serial-number-filed-off versions of some of her media favorites about whom she wrote fanfic. Which is a different level of the same sort of thing. It doesn't bother me at all; I think her work is good enough to stand on its own, not least because I appreciated the characters even though I wasn't really that knowledgeable about their sources.)

So yeah, it wouldn't bother me if NN's Temeraire books had started as a fanfic. (I quite enjoyed the first few, but just haven't gotten around to reading more of the series.) I was just wanting to give the factual correction, there, that they didn't develop by quite the same mechanism. I don't even think that Lawrence is specifically meant to be based on Jack Aubrey or anybody from Hornblower or anything. I think she was just a fan of those Age of Sail series, and that got reflected in the flavor of the world.

It's just that, in the case of 50 Shades, everything I've heard of it, and the few excerpts I've read, make it seem like the execution is bad bad bad, with a side of supremely bad, and a chaser of "irresponsible depiction of BDSM that unwitting readers appear to be accepting at face value" uckiness.