vintage highlander wank
My first wank post! I'm so pleased.

This one's pretty old, but it's on my list of wankiest wanks of all time. And the first time I realized Some Fen Are Just Batshit Crazy (And Not in the Fun Way.) (Yes, I know, I'm slow.)

The wank took place on the yahoo!groups list critical_edge, a list for 'serious' Highlander fanfiction discussion. It gets on the wanky side regularly, but the real fun happens when the list is trolled into oblivion. It can be found in the group's message archives - practically all messages between 5164 and 5328 are related to it. I think you have to join the list to read the messages in their entirety, but I'll post the juiciest parts here anyway. *g*



It all starts when somebody posts a now-defunct link to a story's foreword (it's a genfic called "Mutant", I believe, and amusingly enough is a Highlander/X-Files crossover) that's almost as long as the story itself. It rambles on about how slash is EVOL and spews bitterness in the general direction of all slash fen. Here's a really choice quote: "Second: There is NO slash. It does not exist, either in my real world or in my fictional universes -- it is not truth. Don't look for it, don't expect it, don't try to see what's not there. Look up the word 'agape' -- ah-gah*-pay -- in the dictionary and don't darken my door again until you know what it means. End of subject."

Oh, and this bit from the same author (who goes by "judith hill") reminds me of the reaction to this group a bit, actually: "For the flamers in the crowd -- you know who you are, and so do I. ...the ones with the stones in your hands, the ones crying, "Burn the witch!" ...You revel in the travesty of slash but wouldn't say 'shit' if your mouths were full of it. ...I am a shark. If you badmouth me, I WILL know about it. And I write better than you do -- flame me and the blood in the water will be yours."

There is a brief debate about whether the message is funny or frightening. (I'd say a little of both, personally.) The author steps in to say she "doesn't get into pissing contests" and discussion wanders off in another direction for a while.

But then a list member accuses the list of bias against any stories that aren't slash: "You're getting just a little taste of the backlash. If you don't like it that hot, then you shouldn't have boiled the water before you jumped in." She also questions why people are spending so much time discussing the zero post, my favorite hallmark of self-eating wank. The same poster also misses the "wank is its own reward" memo and complains that story discussion without the author present isn't constructive. People pretty much just mock.

Then the story's author compares the listmembers to chickens with their feathers flying, and like all angry fanfic authors, says that the discussion has been "very entertaining!" to her and tells the other posters to grow up. She also pulls the classic wank prop of anti-crit people everywhere: you're not writers! How dare you critique *me*?

She also takes exception to crit because it's rude to complain about "a gift." in the words of the author herself: "Don't we call the ability to create 'a gift'? Do you think that means a gift only to the 'gifted'?" She also claims she's gotten *many, many* private e-mails from lurkers on the list that agree with her. Funny how that works out...

Oh, and she then claims that slash is an "insult" to not only a character's creators, but also to the *actor* that plays the character. I'm sure you can imagine how well that went over.

After a (very brief) period of calm, the author lets loose a truly classic list-quitting bitch-fest that personally insults pretty much everyone that argued with her, from the mods to people who posted one-line questions. There's even a veiled death threat: "You quoted the Talmud to support your views on slash?! How dare you! Don't go quoting the Torah as well, now! You do remember the old punishment for blasphemy, don't you? I'll be tossing the first rock! And about slashing Joe: You bitch! Joe is a creation of Jim Byrnes. You insult the haracter, you insult the creator of that character and thus the man -- or woman."

I'm all nostalgic now. *sniff*