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insignificant other ([info]snacky) wrote in [info]fandom_wank,
@ 2010-05-03 10:09:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
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ETA: Unpublished author Eddie Louise (who cannot write the word "shit" and seems to fail spectacularly at reading comprehension) offers fanfic writers A CHALLENGE!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: [info]kate_nepevu has screencaps and the text of Gabaldon's posts here. And via [info]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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[info]vitalitat
2010-05-03 05:09 pm UTC (link)
One real easy way to find out. Write anything you want, using Jamie Fraser, Edward Cullen, Harry Potter _and_ Dr. Who….and then change the characters’ names before you post it. Simple. Find All: “Jamie Fraser”. Replace with: “Joe Kerastopolous”. No problemo, all your own work, and any praise you get is duly earned.

Only, not.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]alexa
2010-05-03 05:14 pm UTC (link)
No see, because when you write fanfiction, it's like you're stealing the entire thing directly from her brain.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]vitalitat
2010-05-03 05:16 pm UTC (link)
Dun, dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]cyndra_falin
2010-05-03 05:35 pm UTC (link)
http://www.dramabutton.com/

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]kylenne, 2010-05-03 07:48 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]eleutheria, 2010-05-03 11:28 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]elfy, 2010-05-04 02:39 pm UTC

tetradecimal
2010-05-03 05:28 pm UTC (link)
Original fiction, just add water file off the serial numbers!

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]vitalitat
2010-05-03 05:44 pm UTC (link)
It's easier thank you think!

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]beccastareyes
2010-05-03 05:28 pm UTC (link)
If I wrote a fic about John Smith, a seventeen year old British wizard whose best friends are Jane Doe and Bob Jones, and he has a crush on Bob's younger sister, Mary, while dealing with school and the fact the evil wizard Anagram wants to kill him because of a prophecy, etc. etc., even if the story was focused on John and Mary's relationship post-Anagram, or twenty-years-later John deciding to cheat on Mary with Jane or his schoolmate, Pyxis Evileye...

... then I'd bet half the people who found it would just tell me to stop ripping off J K Rowling and go write Harry Potter fanfic.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]starlady42
2010-05-03 07:19 pm UTC (link)
If there was an evil wizard Anagram who, in fact, spoke only in anagrams, I'd read that story no matter what it was based on or how many Mary Sues he banged. :D

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]beccastareyes, 2010-05-03 07:28 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tofuknight, 2010-05-03 10:27 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]innocentsmith, 2010-05-04 03:08 am UTC

[info]doyle
2010-05-03 05:48 pm UTC (link)
Having never read her books, I'm not exactly filled with confidence in her writing abilities if she believes the single most defining thing about a character is their name.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]beccafran
2010-05-04 03:05 am UTC (link)
Which is interesting... given that her Scottish time-travel epic stars a character with the same names as a Scottish character from a time-travel tv show, and the actor who played him.

I'm so glad she's here to show us the moral problems with fanfic being uncreative.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]vorpal_blade, 2010-05-04 04:44 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]nyoda, 2010-05-04 07:54 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]cesare, 2010-05-05 02:00 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]cesare, 2010-05-05 02:10 am UTC

[info]duende
2010-05-03 06:13 pm UTC (link)
Actually, I would argue that this can sorta work in some instances, but you have to be REEEEALLY clever about it. And it has to be an AU. And... well, I would say that you have to just really spectacularly suck at keeping your renamed stolen characters IC but you know what... most of the characters people seem to want to bother stealing and renaming are so bloody fucking bland and generic nobody's actually going to notice even if you write them as well as the original author did, because they're just going to be ANOTHER one of those formulated fuckers.

I actually used to do this when I was in middle-school for creative writing assignments. If my teachers ever noticed that my characters were derivative (of celebrities, actually, not other fictional characters -- I was writing Seekrit RPF), they never said anything. I doubt they ever DID notice, because, being 13-15 years old, I was really into writing what really was fanfiction about my favourite celebrities and doing shit like giving them magical powers and sticking them in some wacked-out fantasy universe based largely on dreams I'd had.

I think, however, the really crucial part of that anecdote is when I was in MIDDLE-SCHOOL. Regardless of how well that little trick CAN work if it's done right, it's still... 99% of the time, something you do when you're riding the tidal wave of puberty and totally batshit anyway. There really is not, in my experience, any significant middle ground between sucktastic teenlit starring Edward Cullen wearing a metaphorical Zorro mask and really genuinely good and interesting retellings like The Lion King or even better works that don't even bother changing the names and identities of their "stolen" characters but they do it so damn well, they really DO make it their own... like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead and Dante's Inferno.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]brennalarose
2010-05-03 06:57 pm UTC (link)
Goodness knows, I was only one of two who used Sailor Moon characters in 5th grade. Well, okay, the names. But, I was 10.

See, there's the sticking-point about fanfic. People can clutch their pearls and stick their noses in the air all they like. Fanfic happens. Even for people who say "no fanfic plz, kthnx" (though I don't hold with that, usually), it'll happen. People will change the names or the places or the species or whatever, but swooning and denouncing from the pulpit is just going to a) piss off your fans, b) divide your fans, c) make other people who may or may not have read your books giggle into their milkshakes, or d) some combination of the above.

*mops up after herself*

Makes me want to make up a bunch of t-shirts with a strand of "Pearls" at the neckline and a list of "derivative works" (Wide Sargasso Sea, A Study in Emerald, R&G Are Dead, etc.), then on the back: "Fanfiction: It happens." I'd make an effing mint.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]brennalarose, 2010-05-03 06:59 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]eleutheria, 2010-05-03 11:36 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tarash, 2010-05-04 01:28 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]justira, 2010-05-04 07:45 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]tarash, 2010-05-05 11:04 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]brennalarose, 2010-05-04 04:47 am UTC
(no subject) - helenvalentine, 2010-05-04 06:13 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]nyoda, 2010-05-04 11:38 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]brennalarose, 2010-05-12 02:22 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]banerry, 2010-05-03 07:00 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]catmoran, 2010-05-03 09:47 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]cinnamonical, 2010-05-04 01:38 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sistercoyote, 2010-05-04 09:11 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]lysana, 2010-05-06 05:20 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]trialia, 2010-05-08 01:52 pm UTC

[info]misachan
2010-05-03 06:36 pm UTC (link)
Dude, it's not like she did that when she lifted Jamie from Doctor Who, so why should her fans?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]brennalarose
2010-05-03 06:58 pm UTC (link)
...Oh my god, you're right. *sporfle*

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]eleutheria
2010-05-03 11:38 pm UTC (link)
Wait, her character is ripped off from Doctor Who?

Amazing, how hypocritical the pearl-clutching anti-fanficcers always seem to be.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]amy_wolf
2010-05-04 01:01 am UTC (link)
So the novels she's so worried about other people violating are Jamie McCrimmon rapefic with the names changed?

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]kattahj, 2010-05-05 08:32 am UTC

ealusaid
2010-05-04 01:26 am UTC (link)
I just read up and... holy CRAP. We got a hypocrite extraordinaire, here!

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]rushikayu13
2010-05-04 01:48 am UTC (link)
...It's funny you should say that, because I actually misread Jamie Fraser as Jamie McCrimmon and assumed that this was about Doctor Who. I'm not sure if I've even ever heard of the actual author, but I was hoping it was Two-based companion wank. You know, of the "Ben and Polly are better than Jamie" kind. Never seen it before, and I thought that it'd be hilarious. *looks a little ashamed of herself*

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]palabradot
2010-05-04 01:19 pm UTC (link)
Really for true? You're kidding!

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]mochibuni
2010-05-03 08:32 pm UTC (link)
HAI GUYS, I totally wrote this story about this girl named Horna Duck who falls in love with a vampire named Kain and a werewolf named Able. Am going to make millions!

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)


[info]sistercoyote
2010-05-04 09:12 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, but we all know how that one ends, and it's not good for Able.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]tehrin
2010-05-03 09:44 pm UTC (link)
Those are the only characters anyone ever writes about!

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]ekaterinv
2010-05-03 10:32 pm UTC (link)
How I wish it were that easy.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]the_sun_is_up
2010-05-04 08:27 am UTC (link)
If that's how she writes her books, then color me disturbed.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


sorion
2010-05-04 11:33 am UTC (link)
That claim pissed me off :/
Some fanfic writers actually know how to do a characterisation. I can only assume, that if it's possible with her characters, that she doesn't know how to do that...

(Reply to this)(Parent)

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