With apologies to Monty Python.

Jaina: Trouble at Fanficrants.
Kutsuwamushi: Oh no - what kind of trouble?
Jaina: Ona trlls 's rilin' up the 'mmunity.
Kutsuwamushi: Pardon?
Jaina: Ona trolls 's rilin' up the 'mmunity.
Kutsuwamushi: I don't understand what you're saying.
Jaina: [irritated] One of the trolls is riling up the community.
Kutsuwamushi: Well what on earth does that mean?
Jaina: *I* don't know - Theo Harrison just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at Fanficrants, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Wankish Inquisition.

[JARRING CHORD]

[The door flies open and Wanker Izzanami enters, flanked by two junior wankers, Jinxy-sama and Ravyn Skye]

( NOBODY EXPECTS THE WANKISH INQUISITION! )

ETA!

Izzanami: Wankers, we are being mocked!
Jinxy-sama: What?! No one mocks the Wankish Inquisition!
Izzanami: Ha! Ha! Ha! I have the perfect plan.... Wankers, fetch... the EMPTY THREATS OF DOOMY DOOMINESS!

[JARRING CHORD]

ETA 2:

We have contact. Always happy to entertain, thank you for the compliment.

Pop Quiz:

You are R. Malone, a new author who has a book out that is predominately getting reviews in the four to five star range when someone gives your book a review a one or two star. Do you. . .

A) Post an attack on the review (NEW WITH SCREEN CAPS!)
B) Post an article attacking the reviewer on authorsden.com ETA: DELETED NOW WITH SCREENCAP!
C) Send nasty comments and later delete them off of Goodreads (see second edit at the end of this post)
D) Openly declare war on anyone who rates your book poorly
E) Do all of the above until readers are afraid to post reviews DELORTED TOO! ALAS, SCREENCAPS: REBECCA, WE WEILL PROTECT YOU!!

BONUS WANKERY IN SCREENCAP FORM!!!


Credit given when credit is due: Copypasta directly from sf_drama

( THE OTHER 7,256/SCREENCAPS/NAME-CALLING/ACCUSATIONS EDITS BEHIND THE CUT NOW )


EDIT, YET AGAIN:
And what's a wank without sock-puppetry? God I love this woman. Keep up the crazy, please. The lols are great. Where we're been mentioned.

First attempt at posting, although I've been barracking from the sidelines for about a millennium now ...

astolat posts A Matter Of Inconvenience, which is American Idol slashfic (Kris/Adam) with a 'Regency' setting. At least, that's the general idea, and harmless enough you would have thought - assuming that AI AU RPS is your thing. (Alphabet soup!)

zvi, however, takes exception. Amongst other objections, A Matter of Inconvenience is not about race, thoughtlessly invokes colonial issues, and just doesn't put up any warning flags for those who are about to read it. Also, apparently, this is a thing Astolat fucked up. Everybody, please to endeavor not to fuck up like that with your next happy fun sexytimes historical.

What starts off as moderately polite discussion about historicity in slash fanfiction is, however, quickly derailed by willow who offers the following reasoned evaluation: In the middle of the cuppa tea, the empire waist dresses and the ass-sex of your AU Regency - please to be remembering the hydra heads of colonialism and imperialism and what that means for and about your whitey white penis salt lick fan thought of the moment.

liviapenn tries to calm things down a bit with some entertaining stuff about plumbers and blow jobs but this only serves to upset willow further. Why is it that everytime I see you lately, you're happily shoving your foot into your mouth via your hindquarters? ... You keep claiming to understand your privilege and say you're reflecting on it and then you start chomping that feces encrusted shoe leather again. willow's User Info states "'M brown and I have an attitude." No kidding.

astolat's attempt to explain herself gets stomped on, and the desirability of historical accuracy in a Kris/Adam Regency alternate universe is lathered, rinsed and repeated for those who missed it the first time.

Small, but strangely vitriolic given the subject matter. It's difficult to imagine why people are getting quite so over-excited about one piece of costumed fluff in a universe of lesbian cars and tentacle porn, but it may keep us entertained while we're waiting for next incarnation of VB.

ETA: Okay, I get the message, I got it wrong - or maybe I just don't have a sense of humour? Either way, it was obviously a bad call. Lesson learned.

Meet Lironess, a person of such stunning perfection that she feels confident, nay obliged, to point out the shortcomings of others. Constantly.

When she's not diagnosing diseases over the internet, she's apparently advocating approaching strangers at cons with skin diseases to ask them:

"OMG What the hell is wrong with your skin?"

Yeah, not even kidding*.

Unfortunately no one told betnoir that icky diseased people exist solely as teaching moments for the beautiful people, and that she better learn to live with it or else spend the rest of her life in misery. Luckily for her then, that lironess is here to explain it to her.

The spat lands in sf_drama, where lironess baleeted her most offensive comments (though considering what's left - just WOW) and apparently whole threads if bizarro goodness like handing out condoms to furries, and horse sex, and her inability to spell freak. she then demonstrates her utter lack of getting teh internets, as well as proving that there really isn't a maximum fail quota per post.

After calling like, everyone, a coward or accusing them of hiding (for commenting in an unlocked post in a very public community? huh?) lironess prepares her flounce by calling betnoir (and everyone else) out. As in, *cue scareh music* she can FIND people:

"It has been fun to watch you all hide on a community and make your statements thinking I would not see and reply. However, I can find all of you, any where."

betnoir names a place and time.

but yanno, it's waaaay to far, plus it'd be a hassle and betnoir's fucking parents would sue and it would be a big mess and lironess doesn't care enough to bother. Or something.



*I debated if this should be in UNF because disability!fail = so fucking unfunny, plus there's bonus!fail on both sides, but for sheer overwhelming WTF wankiness I think it belongs here.

snatched from wank_report

"Someone" posts a secret (#114 now bahleeted--caps?) on fandomsecrets and the image is stored on her easily identifiable photobucket account. She claims to be lonely and not have any friends and she wishes the Avatar characters were her RL friends. But she means local friends, not imaginary intarweb bitches her LJ friends.

Responses are mostly of the "Oh, snap!" variety except for the "What am I? Chopped liver?" one. It's really a very mild response though yukinoomoni is outed by name.

( She doesn't overreact at all: )

eta: F_W is not your therapist. If you can't lol at a wank maybe you need to go for a walk. I thought this was funny. lol sociopath.

A Slytherfan terri_testing writes an essay The Wizarding World and the Otherworld, where she argues that Harry Potter books are horror, not fantasy and that Hogwarts is like the school where the Native American children were brainwashed:

( Read more )

The essay provokes a chorus of "I agree"s and complaints about JKR's treatment of Snape:

mary_j_59 (see "Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!")

This is brilliant, Terri! And absolutely consistent. You know, my sister and I went to hear Rowling, Irving and King in NYC, and we both liked John Irving (reading from Owen Meany) best. Now the reason is clear. Rowling is actually a horror writer, like King, and I do not like horror. Still less do I like horror disguised as a children's fantasy quest. Irving, on the other hand, was writing in the great tradition of picaresque novels - a tragicomedy with a moral core.

But what I still wonder is: did (and does) Rowling know that she has actually written a dystopion/horror story? Somehow I don't think she realizes this.

condwiramurs/00sevvie

I second the 'brilliant' comment. And I highly doubt Rowling is aware of what she has actually written. She is too utterly blind to the reasons we like Severus, for example, to have any clue that she may have written something different from what her perfect picture of her work in her head is. I'm sure she thinks we're just getting it 'wrong.'

oryx_leucoryx (see Cry the Beloved Slytherins)

So if Severus Snape actually survived Nagini's bite, returned to the Muggle world and became some kind of counselor to delinquent youth or someone who runs an anti-bullying program (by working both with victims and perpetrators) he would be a hero with a rather protracted but complete journey? Starting out as the victim of neighborhood bullies (I doubt Petunia was the only one who knew that the strangely dressed kid was the Snape boy from Spinner's End) who must have dreamed that magic would solve his problems, learned that magic simply gave bullies more dangerous/'interesting' ways to hurt people, played a key role in getting rid of the biggest bully in the magical playground and came home to use non-magical ways against bullies?
***
bohemian_spirit has some fics in that general direction - in her 'Light Between the Cracks' series Severus Snape of canon years was secretly married to a Muggle school teacher and while at his Muggle home watched over the neighborhood children. And in her 'Professor Grunge' Severus immigrates to the US instead of joining the Death Eaters. He studies at a wizarding university and becomes a teacher who fights bullying and uses music to assist in magical healing.

But the real fun starts when night_train_fm decides to argue with terri_testing and says, among other things:

'Hermione exiling her parents to Australia'
She did that because she was terrified (with good reason) of the DEs coming after them: Voldemort was taking over the government, had already ordered several public mass-Muggle-killings, and anyone remotely connected to Harry was a potential target. According to Jo, Hermione reversed the spell ASAP once the threat was over. For that matter, is it ever outright stated that she didn't sit down and discuss it with them first?

That doesn't go well.

( Hermione is teh ebil! )

In Part III, we saw what happened when Lady Sybilla tried to tangle with the Twilight Lexicon mods for the last time (they banned her), and watched in awe as Wikipedia users worked "around the clock" to get her Russet Noon article deleted. You can still find "The Wikipedia Wars" linked on the Russet Noon website, but you'll have to scroll down past...

The FanHistory Wars.A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away....

Artistic revolution (who, for reasons which will become blatantly obvious, is a suspected sockpuppet of Lady Sybilla) edited the shit out of the Russet Noon fanhistory page. Artistic revolution has a pretty one-track mind, it would appear. Or two-track, if you count Lady Sybilla as a separate topic.

In the midst of all those edits, there was no shortage of information about me, Sybilla's own favorite "stalkarazzo." (I know I'm her favorite, she says so herself on the Russet Noon website.) The following information is culled from the Revision as of 00:27, 21 April 2009 version of the page.

Although Caito posted the email text on one of her many Journalfen pages, her only acknowledgment of Sybilla's concerns was: "I'm totally over this email business. I have a spam filter and I intend to use it. If someone wants to continue discussing this shiz, she can do so in the comments like everybody else." Strange reaction given that Caito's Whois record for her site openly discloses her gmail address:

At this point, Artistic revolution somehow thought it was appropriate to include my mailing address and contact information. Yes, in the middle of the article for Russet Noon. But that's not all! She did go on. I bolded my favorite parts!

More recently, Caito provided us with a video example of how the attention-whoring for which she mocks Sybilla is more contagious than a disease. Ironically, while she spends her valuable time making fun of the ''Russet Noon'' author for trying to exploit Stephenie Meyer's popularity, Caito, too, seems to be riding the wave of the ''Russet Noon'' obsession. And she does so quite gracefully. If it weren't for Caito, ''Russet Noon'' would have never achieved taboo status.

... On April 3, 2009, LadySybilla emailed Caito and asked her to stop her "online stalking activities." On this email, Sybilla warned, "If you don't, I will notify as many administrators as I have to until they take action." Sybilla then contacted the Journalfen technical support team to ask how she could contact an administrator in order to report libelous accusations posted by some of their users. But, instead of responding to Sybilla's concerns, the JournalFen support team (if, in fact, there is one) forwarded a copy of the email to Caito. This incident may or may not prompt internet users to wonder about the legitimacy of Journalfen. Is Journalfen an actual company? If it is, who are the tech support staff and/or administrators behind it?

... Judging by the look of things, it won't be Sybilla who will be profiting off of ''Russet Noon'' sales after all. Let's see what happens when Caito and her BFFs at Twilight Lexicon get their hands on a copy of the novel in September.

All that has since been nuked from the actual FanHistory page, and replaced with more evenhanded material. People here at FW went a little flaily for a bit, as a software snafu made it appear as though FH mod Sidewinder had been the one to add my personal info when she'd really just meant to take it down.*

Then the mods brought the hurt down on Artistic revolution, who has been banned from editing the wiki for two whole weeks! She's really sorry, though, guys. Please stop throwing stones at her, and let her catapult boulders at others in peace.

But it's not like Artistic revolution has been the only one tooling with it, either. Some anons got in and tweaked it ever so slightly, like changing the story summary simply to "OH JOHN RINGO NO!" Editing the Russet Noon article is temporarily locked to admins, due to anon vandalizing and a neutrality dispute.

Personal notes:

1. I do not know what end anyone would hope to achieve by posting my address.
2. I'm not BFFs or even BFs or even just Fs with the TwiLex mods, but I sure do like them more than I like Lady Sybilla.
3. I have no clue how I would stand to profit from anything having to do with Russet Noon.
4. I have no idea who Lee Thomas even is.

*Aside to FanHistory folks: Thanks. I really appreciate what you did. Do me one more solid? I did respond to Lady Sybilla's concerns about my "accusations", but I guess it got lost in the epic wave of comments. Like I said before, Lady Sybilla is welcome to come engage me in comments, but as far as I know she has yet to do so. Muchos gracias.

ETA: Artistic revolution rides forth on teal deer to appeal to Laura's professionalism.

ETA 2: Laura responds!

ETA 3: The Russet Noon website is now basically a hate shrine dedicated to me and FH mod Sidewinder, complete with Photoshopped screencaps of me interacting with people I've never actually interacted with. Oh, and also my contact information.

You know, I'm starting to get the feeling that she doesn't take criticism very well.

ETA 4: From Artistic revolution's usertalk page:

I'm not interested in antagonizing you. You have been objective, but I still have to insist that Sidewinder, whoever she is, hasn't been. She might not have the same IP address as Caito, but her editing patterns are dubious. I have listed the evidence on my website because I'm blocked from doing so here. If I'm not allowed to edit the article, then at least Sidewinder should also be prevented from tampering with it any further.

All in all, as I said before, I'm not interested in antagonizing you. Based on your reasons for why Wikipedia blacklisted FH, I know you can understand how I feel in regards to Russet Noon. I have seen that your procedures reflect professionalism. This is why I appealed to that.

I sincerely apologized to both you and Tikatu, but never received a reply. At least at Wikipedia they lifted the ban. Sure, they deleted the article, but they were reasonable enough to lift the ban. I'm sorry if the procedure I followed to try to negotiate with you guys was not what you expected.

I would much rather have you delete the Russet Noon article altogether than to continue with this conflict. Once again, it is not my intention to antagonize you.

So, yeah, Artistic revolution is almost certainly Lady Sybilla.

ETA 5: The hate shrine is now down from the Russet Noon site. It's been replaced with a paragraph about how "the wars have ceased" and the rest is now ostensibly about the fanfic again.

ETA 4-24 7:22am Tokyo time: In case anyone was wondering how Lady Sybilla was taking the news about Peter David's community parody-in-progress, here's the reaction from her twitter:

# it's an honor even though it's a satire, because Peter David is a very seasoned writer
4 minutes ago from web

# many fanfic writers of the net will be uniting to write Potato Moon. The creator is comic book author Peter David
4 minutes ago from web

# let's hope this communal novel will inspire many more to come. I'd love to see a serious thriller or drama like this
7 minutes ago from web

# communal novels are a new genre, there are not many of them that I know of. I'm very curious to read Potato Moon.
8 minutes ago from web

# I'm very proud to announce that Russet Noon has inspired a very unique parody, Potato Moon. It's a communal novel
8 minutes ago from web

The Russet Noon website has also changed. It no longer makes mention of any "wars" whatsoever.

ETA 7: "You are invited to read our latest press release, "Lady Sybilla: The Darth Vader of Fandom."* It appears that Russet Noon has already achieved taboo status without having even been released yet. That's what happens when a Darth Vader figure like Lady Sybilla is created. And now she's found a worthy opponent: Peter David."

*That link goes to a c&p in my journal. To view the original (and give LS more hits) click here.

ETA 8: Her tweeting continues, c&ped here.

ETA 9: The first part of Potato Moon is up... I have a FanHistory page now, and actually I kind of like it, especially the graphic and its caption... and yes, my little lolcats, you can has more ONTD.

ETA 10: She just updated the Russet Noon site again (screencapped here), linking to the articles that appeared on Comicmix and IMDB. (Except her IMDB link actually goes here, where you have to scroll down halfway down the page the relevant blurb.)

ETA 11: Peter David's Potato Moon has its own Wikipedia page! It is a thing of true beauty and you will never, ever guess who started it. But to avoid the situation that occurred the last time she wrote articles on Wikipedia, she's asked another user to edit the Potato Moon article for her. And he is (adding links to the Potato Moon blog entries, at least)! He just wants to know more about who AV Paranormal is. This should go well, I think.

ETA 12: She's linked to something on the Wall Street Journal site now. What the lemonfresh hell?

Lady Sybilla put out another press release. She also showed up at the Twilight Lexicon again, since that went so well the last time. (When the formatting gets hard to read, check it here.)

(Fanhistory links are all nofollow.)

After her Wikipedia article was deleted (you can go to the Russet-Noon webpage for more information), Lady Sybilla edited the shit out of the Russet Noon Fanhistory page all by her lonesome (despire Laura Hale asking around on Bebo whether anyone else had anything to contribute).

And in case your blog entry about the whole affair shows up there, I'm sorry. Lady Sybilla farmed the Russet Doom Supplementary Links Collection and changed my format a little to make the attention seem less wholly negative.

Oh also I put together an entry in my journal with links to screencaps and transcriptions and things, for quick and easy reference. 

Taking your children to see Watchmen is child abuse? -found at wank_report

Conservative blogger's "review" starts:

"If you take your kids to see "Watchmen," you're a moron.

If you see it yourself, you're also probably a moron and a vapid, indecent human being. The movie arrives in theaters at Midnight, Thursday Night. It's rated "R"--which should kinda sorta be a hint--but it really deserves an "NC-17," at the very least. And plenty of clueless parents brought their young kids and kept them there for the entire almost three hour "experience" at the screening I attended."

She can't stop bitching that it is somehow being marketed to children because there are people in superhero costumes. Or something. Are there like happy meals with these characters or something? I honestly don't have a clue about the marketing and am curious now. There's a video game--but like the movie it is rated for Mature Audiences Only.

There are comments over and over that Debbie doesn't get it. SHE DOES THOUGH! IN ALL CAPS! AND WE'RE ALL MORONS IF WE DISAGREE WITH HER!!

My favorite comment:

"Its not enough to feed children to Molech to satisfy depraved adult desires. No we must show children what adult desires are like when they are young enough before they are fed to Molech."

Yesssss, it makes them more tender to traumatize them first.

Also her photo scares the bejeezus out of me. Instead of ponies with hateful eyes watching me sleep, I am sure I will now see her in my nightmares.

ETA:
She posted about Watchmen again and the screed is even less comprehensible. One of her commenters calls himself "Uncle Joe McCarthy." D: The Godwins breakage is coming up like kudzu.

I'm going to rip this straight from wank_report   because the Mouse summarized it perfectly:

"Small wank so far, but I'm sure Chancery won't disappoint us.

After Stone's debacle on the Amazon romance forums, Chancery discovered Nora Roberts. And immediately finds her so silly and her writing so horrible, she can't HELP but write a big long post on just how LITTLE Chancery thinks of la Nora.

http://danny.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/09/12/bleedin-nora.html#comments

Also, in the comments, to prove to everyone that she really DOESN'T CARE AT ALL about Nora, Chancery goes to her local library for some of Nora's books. Because she COULD REALLY CARE LESS. The butthurt is continued in her next blog post, wherein Chancery cares so little about Nora and her success that she psychoanalyzes Roberts' home life, motivations, and lack of strong female influences in her life.

http://danny.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/09/19/romancing-la-stone.html#comments

It would have just been left at that, perhaps, if Karen Knows Best, the former blog that complained about the Amazon wank, hadn't picked up on it and posted their own butthurt on behalf of Nora. Now that people are paying attention to her tantrum, Chancery will inevitably ascend to the peaks of Mount Wankalaya never before scaled.

http://karenknowsbest.com/2008/10/01/can-you-smell-the-desperation-from-here/#comments [ETA: Karen's account seems to have been suspended for some reason.]"


*applauds mousie*
The only things I'll add to this is that Chancery added another post in which she tries to spoof Nora's writing, with hi-fucking-larious results, and she found that last link the mousie gave.

I would've put this in clairvoyantwank  , but Chancery trying to spoof Nora's writing just put this one over the top.

Edited again to fix wacked-up HTML. GODDAMN RICH TEXT TAB.

Bride of ETA: There's now some bonus wank/rage in the comments of Chancery's post on being spotted by Karen. I don't know if it's related to Karen's blog going down or not, but some people clearly think so.

Son of ETA: Karen's blog is now back up. Leading theories are lasers, monkeys, space lasers, space monkeys, or space laser monkeys or us wankas overusing metered bandwidth.

Bride of the Son of ETA: What the shit? (from a new comment, made today, in CS's first post)

Revenge of the Bride of ETA: Speaking of batshit comments, there is now delightful catfighting in Chancery's post about Karen. Particularly beautiful (emphasis mine):
ItsASecret, why do you all have an obsession with me changing? Do you have problems with people changing on you? Is this a fear of werewolves, vampires? Did your mother have a sex change and become your dad? And there is no facility to screen comments on Blogspirit. All I can do is delete them. Would you like me to delete yours? Would that help you feel more special? Try not to look so paranoid. It's an ugly trait, and you're already trying too hard. You can't win, you know.

Don't worry, I have screencaps in excess should CS go on a deleteathon.

ETA with a twist of lemon (i couldn't resist): I think this deserves an ETA of its own for sheer fucking irony. Chancery's latest comment on this post:

Of course you "don't have an obsession with anything" about me, ItsASecret. And of course you "are not trying to win". And we do know why you keep posting "stupid comments". That, we do. However, maybe you want to try and learn not to "protest too much." Fails to convince.

And does anyone "disagree with me on the internet"? All I hear is the same sad assortment of 'insults' followed by "oh Chancery, never change", all the time, every time, over and over, endlessly. Not an 'argument' in sight.

Lastly, in the wild, giddy impossibility of one of you actually managing to think up something resembling a "disagreement" - why would that damage my "sparkling reputation"? (Thanks, by the way)

Do you ever think before you speak?

many bothansquotation marks died to bring us this ETA.

Dearest, beloved, Fandom Wank.

I know you were looking forward to great excitement today. Some of you said words to me that indicated you anticipated fiery 'judgement' upon those who remained fresh and dewey white, those you call n00bs.

Anyway, you got today instead.

Stop anticipating things, we'll just break your hearts.

Sincerely,

Sepia P. Magpie, Esq.



PS: Use this post to reflect on how you could be better people. Or just fuck around in the comments.

Previously on The Hundred Years' Wank: RDR demands to see JKR's notes, judge lols; RDR files its response; the NYT weighs in; grudgepuppet accuses TLC's Melissa of tax fraud, recipes ensue.

Leaky grudgewank hits the Times Union. Key sentence: "Fansites such as The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet have been selling ad space on their sites for years and some have cried fowl."* Includes wank in the comments.

* Which fowl? "TURKEY! PHEASANT! CHICKENNNN!"

And then: JKR/WB Respond in Lexicon Suit. From TLC: "This is the last filing before a hearing on March 13 to determine if a preliminary injunction will be granted. After that there still may or may not be a trial to determine if infringement has taken place." ( Key points )

Whew. *goes to have a lie-down*

ETA: From karintheswede, "Methuen, the British firm set to publish the Lexicon if RDR/SVA win, is ' "fairly confident" the court will rule in RDR's favour,' according to The Bookseller."

ETA 2 from TLC: "Harvard Law Wayne State University faculty and copyright/IP professor Derek Bambauer says that a recent NYT article on the case "Foul[ed] Up Fair Use" and contains an "embarassingly simple mistake of copyright law."

ETA 3: The filings are finally up at Justia.

ETA 4: Most viewed new story on Yahoo News: Rowling bashes 'Harry Potter Lexicon.'

ETA 5: RDR Books speaks. ( Read more... )

ETA 5b: The Lexicon story hits Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

ETA 5c: From ravenbell: an article from Cinematical: "Discuss: When Fans Go Too Far." Includes wank in the comments; I'm not really sure what's going on with the "bright shiny snowflake" comment.

ETA 6: Nora Roberts speaks:

Fan fiction doesn’t copy the author’s story and call it their own, but uses it or the characters, as a springboard for another story. And not for profit. Much different, to my mind, than what Edwards did over many years and with many sources.

But this suit seems to involve someone who IS taking the author’s words, without her permission, and trying to sell it for profit. I’d sue, too.

I don’t mind fan fiction (understand those authors who do), but when I find my work on the internet--for profit or not--copied and claimed by someone else, I shut it down.

NORA ROBERTS HAS SPOKEN.

This wank report owes its existence to a request from the lol_meme. I hope you all find it full of LOL.

There's no wank like author wank, as we've seen before from Anne Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton. Now throw some zealous fans into the mix, and you get Terry Goodkind's wikipedia page.

For those of you not familiar with his output, Terry Goodkind writes novels (don't call them fantasy!) in the 'Sword of Truth' series, beginning with Wizard's First Rule and now up to I don't know what. They've garnered comparisons with Robert Jordan in terms of size and the tendency to go on and on and will probably eventually sell for $2.99 a pound. He's also a serious devotee of Ayn Rand, works grand philosophical insights into his books, and is very insistent that he's not writing fantasy--the nasty publishers have just miscategorized his books:

( Terry Goodkind Speaks! )