Dragonriders of Pern wank
Hi, obligatory mouthings about first post, many thanks to amasaglajax for giving me a code, etc., etc.

This wank is a couple of weeks old, but it's still a good one, and it's guaranteed to flare back up again. I was hesitant to post it because Pern fandom has a few solid decades of wank behind it, and there's no way I can adequately sum up to the uninitiated just how much spooge has been flung around this fandom.

Why am I still in it? First, I like to think that I inhabit the mostly sane corner, and second, there's an unending supply of dancing monkeys to entertain me.


A quick run-down of some of the points that make Pern the hellhole that it is:

1.) The wank starts at the top. The author (and since she's getting old, her children are stepping up to bat) insists on overseeing fannish activities to make sure they're doing it right. I think everyone can appreciate what this leads to.

2.) Many fans use religious terms to discuss the author, her "inner circle," and her writings. There's a scary cultish streak here.

3.) The books themselves started out as moderatively imaginative romance novels with an interesting but under-explored fantasy/psuedo-scientific setting and rapidly went downhill.

4.) The author in her position as cult leader has made some rather ... interesting unscientific, unPC statements that are still getting debated Because Anne Said So (I swear to god that BASS is an acronym in common use), which means it must be true. A famous example: getting fucked up the ass once makes you smell gay. FOREVER. And not just gay, girly-gay. Moving on ...

5.) This is the most pertinent one for this wank. Merchandise and multimedia tie-ins for Pern have been handled abysmally, forever. The author has a history of pitching fits at people who "do things wrong," thereby sinking many a project, and those that have been completed have pretty much blown. (The suck that is the Pern Dreamcast game ...) A few years ago, a deal was made to make a Pern television series for the WB. That fizzled pretty much at the eleventh hour for reasons that I don't fully understand and don't have time to go into. Since then, the fans, especially the psycho cultists among them, have latched on like pitbulls to the idea of a Pern movie. That is where our wank opens.

EDIT: I wrote this in a hurry before a class, accidentally posted it in my journal instead of here, and just now posted it here without elaborating on stuff I could elaborate on. So. The t.v. series. I don't remember everything that happened; like I said, it was a few years ago. The series was being funded by the WB and directed by Ron Moore of Star Trek TNG and DS9 fame. Supposedly, the set was built, the cast and crew was hired, everything was ready, and then Moore pulled the plug the day before filming was to start because of artistic differences among his vision, McCaffrey's vision, and the WB's vision-- mostly the WB's. Supposedly. I've heard explanations ranging from "The WB was insisting it be like Xena and Moore wouldn't go for it" to "McCaffrey threw a fit because they weren't doing it right." That project had been bounced from studio to studio for a few years prior, too, so it was probably a big combination of things.



http://forum.annemccaffrey.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12849

Alec is Anne McCaffrey's oldest son and business manager. In what I assume is an attempt to demonstrate to potential buyers that there is a significant fanbase which will see a movie, he asks for people to write posts addressed at a theoretical producer.

Watch fans make demands. We can't have any old producer or director on this-- we must have QUENTIN TARANTINO.

Watch fans insist that the half-senile author who changes her canon with every book be the ultimate word on everything.

Watch fans promise to harass the director who should dare to "do it wrong."

Watch Nefret invoke one of the Endless Wanks of Pern, the question of dragon colors and human genders.

Watch Anareth say something sensible that most people don't get.

Watch mikesdragon bring in an argument about an unrelated lawsuit (which deserves a wank thread of its own, probably) for the sole purpose of adding to the wank.

It's a circus, and it's free!