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ETA: Unpublished author Eddie Louise (who cannot write the word "shit" and seems to fail spectacularly at reading comprehension) offers fanfic writers A CHALLENGE!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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	biichan 2010-05-04 07:09 am UTC (link)
	I would be terrible and make up a new screenname and write fanfiction of my own original fic under that screenname. And then trollishly go around proclaiming my fanfic to be as canon as canon. Because I am a very naughty person. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	maverickz3r0 2010-05-04 08:12 am UTC (link)
	You are brilliant, I would so do this too. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	the_sun_is_up 2010-05-04 08:34 am UTC (link)
	OH GOD YES THAT WOULD BE AWESOME. This almost makes me want to become a professional author just so I can indulge in that level of lulz-making. (Reply to this)(Parent)

librarianmouse
2010-05-04 08:46 am UTC (link)

My life's dream is as follows:

1. Get very, very famous.
2. Register 2 screen names at a popular community in my fandom.
3. Make it clear through interviews and posts at my personal website that screen name #1 is the really real me.
4. Log in as screen name #2, claim to be my own next door neighbor, and proceed to tell the entire internet very terrible things about me ("She doesn't recycle!" "She lets her dog poop on my lawn!)
5. Log back in as myself, and insist that screen name #2 is not my next door neighbor (a sweet old Jewish lady who doesn't even know how to turn on a computer), and is therefore a dirty, dirty liar and a faker.
6. Proceed to have a flamewar with myself.

(Is it a bad thing that I've planned this out so thoroughly?)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	big_bad_wolf 2010-05-15 04:43 am UTC (link)
	It is a bad thing that you made me choke on a Pringle because of unexpected laughter. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	librarianmouse 2010-05-15 06:55 am UTC (link)
	That, I'll apologize for. The dream, however, remains close to my heart. (Reply to this)(Parent)

amy_wolf
2010-05-04 10:45 am UTC (link)

That's brilliant.

I'd write really bad fic that treated romance as the most important thing in the world, trivialized all of the social justice aspects, made all of the characters motivated by genuine malice into tragically misunderstood woobies who didn't actually do anything wrong ever, viciously bashed random characters, featured a bunch of male OCs or crossover characters who instantly became the center of all the female character's lives, and instantly and clumsily broke up all of the female/female pairings, then whine "If people can do slash about people who aren't gay in canon, then no one should ever complain about me make all of the lesbians straight!" And if anyone complained, I'd tell them they just didn't understand the author's genius the way I did.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	were_lemur 2010-05-07 01:17 am UTC (link)
	Both of the books I'm submitting, and most of the ones I'm in various stages of working on, I have a crack!pairing for. Mostly determined by the greatest level of potential badfic. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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