Entry tags:

author entitlement, authors, creator wank, doesn't mean what you think it means, fanfic, suck it up and deal, writers are often pompous douches, your kink is not okay

Diana Gabaldon, author of the wildly popular Outlander series, has an opinion on fan fiction: I think it’s immoral, I _know_ it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.

Highlights include:

Writing fanfic is just like breaking into someone's house.
Fanfic is WAY WAY WAY TOO PORNY omg ick people have sexual fantasies!*
What to do about an auction offering fanfic to raise money for a cancer patient? She doesn't want to "seem heartless"! So she seeks advice in the comments. Which are mostly full of "Fanfic? I have never heard of such a despicable load of garbage! Also, CRUSH THAT CANCER PATIENT!"

ETA: Unpublished author Eddie Louise (who cannot write the word "shit" and seems to fail spectacularly at reading comprehension) offers fanfic writers A CHALLENGE! Accept it if you dare, sniveling pedo thieves!

ETA 2: Previously, Ms Gabaldon has said fanfic is like selling your children into white slavery. Well. Now. I don't even know what to do with that.

ETA 3: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has some discussion on the topic.

ETA 4: And bookshop on LJ/DW has a rebuttal.

ETA 5: See what happens when I leave the sweet embrace of the internet for a few hours? Ms. Gabaldon updates her blog!

ETA 6: Evidently Ms. Gabaldon deleted all evidence of her hissyfit, but some wankas have screencaps in this thread.

ETA 7:

kate_nepevu has screencaps and the text of Gabaldon's posts here. And via

alchemynerd, more screencaps available here:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/tiz4vp
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ibidpj
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r6zik6
http://www.sendspace.com/file/hlknqo
http://www.sendspace.com/file/d9alsh

Thanks for all the links! :)

MOD REMINDER: Remember, my little wankas, we DO NOT troll the wank. Nor do we write fanfic after the author has specifically requested people not and post it in the comments here, no matter how tempting it may be. Carry on. oh god my inbox ow ow

*Just as a point of interest, I was a bookseller for 12 years, and had several customers tell me about the sex scenes in her books. Some were pro ("My friend told me to read these books for the sex scenes, and she was totally right, they are so hot, this is best thing to happen to my sex life in years!") and some were con ("What is up with all the sex all the time? Where's the story?"), but one thing you can't say about her books is that they're sexual-fantasy free. :D

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oxfordcomma
2010-05-03 04:39 pm UTC (link)

I gotta say, I love a good sex scene as much as your next wanka might, but when a book is 900 pages long I'd prefer for the ratio of plot to sex to be somewhat higher than it is in the Outlander books.

Also: About that “privacy of your own imagination” thing….[cough] While not all fan-fic is pornographic by any means, enough of it _is_ that it constitutes an aesthetic argument against the whole notion.

WHAT. I mean, just... WHAT.

ALSO ALSO: But…imagine opening your daily mail and finding a letter detailing an explicit sexual encounter between, say, your twenty-one-year-old daughter and your forty-eight-year-old male neighbor---written by the neighbor. At the bottom it says, “Fiction! Just my imagination. All cool, right?” This would perhaps prevent your calling the police, but I repeat…ick.

I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family—why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality?

FANFIC: JUST LIKE BEING A CREEPY STALKER!

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	the__ivorytower 2010-05-03 04:53 pm UTC (link)
	"You know, not all of them are into that." "No, only most of them. And all it takes is most of them." The quote might be mangled, but it's from South Park. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	anonyrat 2010-05-03 08:13 pm UTC (link)
	You know, I love the characters I've created as much as the next never-to-be-published writer. I talk about them like they're real, even. But you know what? THEY'RE NOT. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ekaterinv 2010-05-03 10:17 pm UTC (link)
	So much this. (Though I hope to be published someday, but don't we all.) I get super-attached to my characters. But if I were so lucky as to be published, then popular enough that people wanted to write down their sexual fantasies about my characters? I wouldn't read them. But I would be ecstatic. Even though I'm sure many of them would make me go D:. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	eleutheria 2010-05-03 11:19 pm UTC (link)
	I'd read them! I've already tried in my back brain to imagine "what kind of wacky pairings would some fanfic writer make with these people?" Someday I want to write the book in my head, get it published, and have enough people like it that I can read their badfic aloud to my husband. :D (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	anonyrat 2010-05-03 11:46 pm UTC (link)
	My boyfriend originally got in my good graces by writing slash fic of my NaNo novel. I'm not sure if he was just doing it to get my attention or what, but I was definitely charmed. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	adverb 2010-05-04 01:12 am UTC (link)
	He is definitely a keeper! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ealusaid 2010-05-04 01:19 am UTC (link)
	In several of my stories, I've already figured out what fandom's OTP would be (or made a good guess) and like to use the story to fuck with the shippers. Because I'm mean like that. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	beejium 2010-05-04 05:17 am UTC (link)
	Me and a friend of mine used to spend a lot of time imagining the sort of cracky pairings that my fandom would write about using my characters. Ooooh, how we would screw with the fandom... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	polarisnorth 2010-05-05 08:40 am UTC (link)
	This, exactly! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lyssa 2010-05-03 10:58 pm UTC (link)
	Plus, the reader forms a relationship to the characters in a beloved novel or work of fiction that's waaay different than the ones they form with real people. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	maverickz3r0 2010-05-04 07:53 am UTC (link)
	Yes. Exactly. And honestly, I would be kind of flattered if someone liked my characters enough to write fanfiction of them. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	blackmamba 2010-05-03 09:51 pm UTC (link)
	I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family—why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Someone's either way undervaluing their family members or way overvaluing their fictional creations. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	talec 2010-05-03 10:28 pm UTC (link)
	While not all fan-fic is pornographic by any means, enough of it _is_ that it constitutes an aesthetic argument against the whole notion. This somehow reminds me of the games=art argument. Since there is so much pornfic, that means they can ALL be considered that, right? :V (Reply to this)(Parent)

	souris 2010-05-03 11:25 pm UTC (link)
	I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family Did she just curse Diana Gabaldon RPF into existence? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	msilverstar 2010-05-03 11:54 pm UTC (link)
	Hmm, Rule 34 comes into play. What if Diana Gabaldon's daughter had a wonderful torrid affair with the neighbor who loves oral sex (giving)... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tangentialone 2010-05-04 01:40 am UTC (link)
	So you... use rpf to punish people for being bothered by it? What? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	msilverstar 2010-05-04 04:11 am UTC (link)
	No, we use RPF as a fandom, and make jokes a lot. We also disclaim strenuously any possibility that what we are writing is true. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tangentialone 2010-05-04 04:43 am UTC (link)
	I guess the "having rpf written about you as punishment for not liking it" is a common joke, then. Fun! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cesare 2010-05-05 03:53 am UTC (link)
	Yes, it is a common joke, since it's the most obvious parody of Gabaldon's nonsensical analogies. People are also joking about seducing Gabaldon's husband and then planting some marijuana in her backyard in mockery of some of the other analogies in Gabaldon's post. See also: satire, hyperbole. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tangentialone 2010-05-05 04:56 am UTC (link)
	Well, shit! bobafeis is actually in a fandom that's all about breaking into people's houses, etc? There really is a fandom for everything. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) -

cesare, 2010-05-05 06:17 am UTC

librarianmouse
2010-05-04 03:49 am UTC (link)

But…imagine opening your daily mail and finding a letter detailing an explicit sexual encounter between, say, your twenty-one-year-old daughter and your forty-eight-year-old male neighbor---written by the neighbor. At the bottom it says, “Fiction! Just my imagination. All cool, right?” This would perhaps prevent your calling the police, but I repeat…ick.

LIKE CRAP IT WOULD PREVENT MY CALLING THE POLICE! I would be looking into a restraining order posthaste.

But again, fictional people are not actual people, so the analogy doesn't even work.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	brown_betty 2010-05-05 10:40 pm UTC (link)
	Word. I would be calling the police like woah. (Reply to this)(Parent)

vorpal_blade
2010-05-04 04:37 am UTC (link)

I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me

I read this aloud to my partner and his immediate reaction was, "But now that she's said she doesn't want this, it's exactly what they're going to do!"

I agree with him and eagerly await my first Diana Gabaldan/Anne Rice femmeslash fic. :D (Or a threesome with the two of them and Robin Hobbs.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	funwithrage 2010-05-06 11:42 pm UTC (link)
	Well, um, that's why we don't send fanfic to you, Diana. And if someone has been sending it to you, that's creepy and wrong. Otherwise, STFU. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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