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ETA: Unpublished author Eddie Louise (who cannot write the word "shit" and seems to fail spectacularly at reading comprehension) offers fanfic writers A CHALLENGE!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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agilebrit
2010-05-08 08:52 pm UTC (link)

Well...it's not that anymore, although you might be able to see the original characters running around in there if you squint really hard. Tony and Pepper are pretty recognizable, maybe, if you know who they're based on (although Tony is a pharmaceuticals magnate, and not a superhero, and Pepper is a werewolf in addition to being his PA).

The KKBB contingent has gotten pretty far from their origins, though--the only resemblance Ben bears to Harry anymore is that RDJ plays him in my head and he calls his girlfriend "honey." He's blond, short, ex-Army, and actually competent when he's not in the throes of a panic attack.

Perry is now played by Queen Latifah and voiced by Wanda Sykes (yeah, I don't know either), and Harmony is her daughter and is played by Sophina Brown.

And it all started out as casefic--Tony hiring Perry to look into some industrial espionage. I was at WorldCon bitching I didn't want to write fanfic anymore, and some kind soul pointed out that I'd already written a story that scraped the serial numbers off Tony and Pepper so why didn't I just plug it into that 'verse? There was a panel on pharmaceuticals, and I was off. And am now in the middle of a sequel that is playing like "Escape from New York" with vampires and werewolves. Or maybe "Oz," I dunno.

Which is probably way more info than you want, and is background to: If you really want to read the silly thing (the first novel; the second one is incomplete and is in no way ready for public consumption), I will be more than happy to email you a Word doc.

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