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ETA: Unpublished author Eddie Louise (who cannot write the word "shit" and seems to fail spectacularly at reading comprehension) offers fanfic writers A CHALLENGE!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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vorpal_blade
2010-05-04 04:53 am UTC (link)

I have a friend who just did that--read some fic for a show she doesn't watch (it's been canceled on broadcast but picked up by cable) and got into the universe, and now she's bought the DVDs that were released of the two seasons the show was on and she's got me watching it too.

She BOUGHT AND PAID for the DVDs after reading FANFICTION and is pulling in other people WHO ARE NOW FANS.

So THERE, Diana Gabaldan.

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quantumreality
2010-05-04 05:07 am UTC (link)

You know what got me interested in the 1970s Colditz TV show? Fan fiction. Specifically, slash fan fiction. I don't even remember how I first stumbled across it, but having already read Pat Reid's book on the castle, it was a fun read without ever having seen the TV show.

Recently I got my mitts on DVD transfers off the VHS tapes :D

The fic is called "The First Duty". :)

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mydarkstar
2010-05-04 09:26 am UTC (link)

That's exactly what happened with me and Supernatural - I stumbled across some fic, was so sucked in by the idea of the show, started watching, and ended up buying the entire series (well, what's currently available) on DVD. Then I started converting others, who also bought the DVDs. All told, me reading one fanfic story means that the producers of SPN have at least an extra $1000 that they otherwise wouldn't. So suck it, Gabaldan.

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	frequentmouse 2010-05-04 07:32 pm UTC (link)
	See: me and SGA, me and due South, and, I'm willing to bet, most of the C6D fandom, at least in that one hears of Wilby Wonderful Hard Core Logo, Twitch City, H2O, etcetera and so on ad infinitum in comment threads on due South meta, or on fics linked in related communities... (Reply to this)(Parent)

the_labrat_army
2010-05-05 06:42 am UTC (link)

This. Truth be told, that's exactly how I got into watching most of the tv shows I now watch on a regular basis -- before the fanfic, I only paid peripheral attention to them.

I definitely think fanfic benefits TV shows more than books in this particular way (because it's possible to watch an episode from a tv show and not really be interested in it until you've read a fanfic, but I likely wouldn't read a book-fanfic unless I've read the book first. Just because unlike with the TV show I'd at least be somwhat familiar with, I wouldn't have any idea who is who and what's going on in the book-fic). But I've always found that the the sheer amount of fanfic in the fandom of anything, is the strongest indicator of the level of investment fans have in that thing. Which is just good, free publicity for that thing (makes a casual viewer want to know what all the hubbub's about).

Why Gabaldan wouldn't want to take advantage of that is just...*shrug* [/tl;dr]

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