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ETA: Unpublished author Eddie Louise (who cannot write the word "shit" and seems to fail spectacularly at reading comprehension) offers fanfic writers A CHALLENGE!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

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

cesare
2010-05-05 02:26 am UTC (link)

I think both your points here are good ones. The case of Anne Rice is really instructive here, imo. She was okay with fan fiction in the '90s and iirc either her webmaster or her publisher even linked to some fanfic forums from one of her official sites.

Then as her books got hackier and her critical reputation frittered away to nothing, she became hostile to fanfic. Her lawyers sent out C&Ds and Rice publicly stated that fanfic pained her and she absolutely forbade it.

At around the same time, she stopped letting her publisher edit her books, leading to some memorable slips, like a minor character in one book changing names halfway through the story, or my favorite, a typo on the cover of one of her books: Blood and Gold, A Noval.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cesare 2010-05-05 02:30 am UTC (link)
	Oh, and also, to your second point about genre... after writing Memnoch the Devil, Rice started comparing her work to Milton and Dickens. I'm sure her inflated self-regard also contributed to her change of heart. She seemed to decide that her works aren't mere supernatural romances, and so ought to be immune from fanfic. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	dragonfangirl 2010-05-06 08:33 pm UTC (link)
	And that actually went to print?! Ok, LOL. (Reply to this)(Parent)

(Read comments) -