musings on anti-fanfic histrionics

[deaka]

There must be something fairly significant in the fact that some of the most hysteria-level crazy tirades against fan fiction come from authors whose work boasts qualities that might be mistaken for fanfiction-like, surely? Robin Hobb springs to mind, and while I've never read the work of the latest author to spray the fanfic-writing portion of her

Comments

[tabacoychanel]

You may be onto something when you bring up the possibility of genre embarassment. I mean, I can't help but think that some of Diana's naivete stems from the fact that she's not usually billed as a SF/F author so she's not accustomed to the kind of dedicated fandoms that spring up around works of speculative fiction. Which obviously doesn't excuse Robin Hobb, who knew damn well what she was getting into. It may be that the same impulse that drives people to argue that The Road is not science fiction is at work here, because if you write good stuff it is suddenly not speculative it is "mainstream" or "genre" or "literary"? To be fair, I don't actually think Diana's stuff can fairly be classified as SFF - it's much closer to historical fiction, the fantastic elements notwithstanding. And I don't think she's a bad writer, gratuitous sex scenes notwithstanding.

But for the record I am less inclined than you to give her credit, since her follow-up post smacks of "damage control," in addition to which she does not once address the fact that she has compared fanfiction to

(a)lying
(b)stealing
(c)seducing someone else's husband

and fanfic writers to

(1)pedophiles
(2)rapists
(3)slaveowners (wtf?)

A simple "My bad, there was no call for that kind of hyperbole" would have sufficed.

Oh and sorry for dropping in without notice, I'm a random passerby who read (and admired) your Jacen fic on TFN. I've seen this discussed elsewhere but until now the genre angle hadn't occurred to me.

[deaka]

Her rhetoric is all kinds of crazy. She obviously has no understanding of what fanfic is, which isn't new, but the levels she takes her reviling to are extraordinary. Absolutely with you on the fact that she (still) hasn't acknowledged that her 'analogies' are completely inappropriate.

(And drop by, by all means! Glad you enjoyed the Jacen fic.)