More Authors Who Think Fanfic Is Teh Evil
Some authors seem to really hate fanfic. They just don't dislike it or respectfully request their fans please not write it, but they frothing foamingly despise it with a passion, and anyone who writes it is one of the lowest forms of reprehensible life out there. I'm not exaggerating.
Last month author Diana Gabaldon -- whom I'd not heard of before -- created a kerfuffle by comparing writing fanfic to breaking into someone's house,
Well, see, this is where “illegal” comes in. You can’t break into somebody’s house, even if you don’t mean to steal anything. You can’t camp in someone’s backyard without permission, even if you aren’t raising a marijuana crop back there. [1]
writing about sex between your child and neighbor,
But…imagine opening your daily mail and finding a letter detailing an explicit sexual encounter between, say, your twenty-one-year-old daughter and your forty-eight-year-old male neighbor---written by the neighbor. At the bottom it says, “Fiction! Just my imagination. All cool, right?” This would perhaps prevent your calling the police, but I repeat…ick.
I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family-why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality? [1]
fantasizing about your husband, because her Jamie character is partly based on her husband,
Weeeelll…let us just say that there’s a difference between someone dating red-haired men, and the same someone trying to seduce my husband. [1]
and selling your children into white slavery. (her word choice makes me wonder, "Why white slavery?" Is it better or worse than "black slavery" or something? Why not just "slavery".)
A good bit of my objection to fanfic (aside from the copyright issues--and I'm not sure how these apply when you take characters from one medium and implement them in another; particularly when one medium is TV, in which episodes may be written by a lot of different people) is that 99% of it is Just Awful, and it's revolting to see your characters being made to do and say idiotic things, or be forced to enact simple-minded sex fantasies (which is what most fan-fic that comes to my unwilling attention is). Like someone selling your children into white slavery.[2]
Not to mention that because some of it is porn, it's all porn. This argument is known as Converse Fallacy of Accident or Hasty Generalization.
While not all fan-fic is pornographic by any means, enough of it _is_ that it constitutes an aesthetic argument against the whole notion. [1]
And porn is immoral. Those "simple-minded sex fantasies" are "awful" and "revolting"... unless the author herself is penning it.
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. [3]
Examples from the Fandom Wank thread include:
Also, point of note - he (Jack) takes the nail out of Jamie's hand before he rapes him. Jack nailed Jamie's hand to the table as an added precaution to make sure he stayed put while Jack escorted Claire out of the prison. It was in the first book, Outlander. *
So searing touches, silky thighs, and ecstasy are bad, but Jack Randall nailing Jamie Fraser's hand to a table, then orally and anally raping him are okay? Thanks, Diana, glad to know that. *
No, seriously. Follow me closely here: Jack Randall, who happens to be the forefather of heroine Claire's 20th-century husband, has captured her and... has some reason to turn her over to the authorities, I forget. Her 18th-century hubby Jamie offers himself to Randall in exchange for Claire's freedom, knowing that he will be sexually tortured because Randall is a bisexual sadist with a particular yen for Jamie. Some weeks after his (of course) rescue (which IIRC involves letting a herd of Highland cattle into the prison), Claire wrings the story out of him. There's penetration, hand-nailing, branding, and the extra humiliation of being made to climax.*
And she used the sex as healing from rape trauma trope TWICE! *
Except she forgot the part where Randall ALSO branded Jamie (on the thigh?) with his signet ring, and after Jamie was rescued, pretty much the first thing he did was take a knife and just cut out that whole area.
(Also the part where Claire was threatened with rape by some freakishly large minion if Jamie didn't take her place.) *
I haven't finished the latest book yet... but no. Four, [are raped] so far. Jamie, then Brianna, then Ian (Geilis Duncan made him her love slave in the third or fourth book, I forget which. So actually he might have beaten Brianna) then Claire. *
Gabaldon's rage is even more amusing when you learn that her character Jamie Fraser is based -- or "inspired" -- on one of the companions in the original Doctor Who, James Robert McCrimmon, aka Jamie, played by actor Frazer Hines. Oh, she also based parts of him on her husband. Let this be a lesson not to base your characters too closely on real people if you can't distinguish between the two.
Not ONLY was Diana Gabaldon inspired to write Jamie Fraser by Frazer Hines' character Jamie MacCrimmon on Doctor Who, but once she had finished writing Jamie Fraser--who gets, as you may know, tortured and sodomized in the grand finale of the story--she packed up a couple of copies and mailed them to Frazer Hines. To... thank him. [4]
Though this topic made the rounds in May, I wrote nothing since the window of drama had mostly past, but this month another author decided to make her opinion known in a poorly worded way. Then, angered, shocked and/or offended that people posted their own opinions, many contrary to her own, in her public blog, she committed a series of deletions, follow up posts, and more deletions. It’s like these people are new to the internet. They seem to think fanworks never existed pre-net and deleting their post will make the matter disappear. If anything, it makes them look like the guilty party. Repeated deletions make you look even worse.
Kerr, though, doesn’t just hate fanfiction. She hates anything derivative, despite being editor of “Weird tales of Shakespeare”, a transformative works anthology, and author of Dungeon and Dragons “inspired” novels.
If someone can think of no better idea than to take a classic kid's book series and try to wring a few more bucks out of it, like the whole 'Wicked' series, then they should get a real job.
Fanfic is also like using embroidery kits, something only the untalented hacks would do.
They are in the same boat as embroiders who buy pre-cut yarn, pre-painted canvas needlepoint kits.
To which one FW commenter had this to say. She also hates Weird Al, but filk is okay.
Second loaded question: what do you think of Weird Al?
Second answer: as little as possible.
:-)
[...]
I think the best filks are the humorous ones, which puts them into the realm of Satire. I guess.
Only regular readers and those who agree are welcome to her Livejournal, by the way.
However, the mobbing was rude to all the regular readers of this space. It bored them, it cut off their right of discussion, and I suspect it convinced some of them that my original post's opinion of fanfic writers was in the main correct.
She ends, for now, with a “you’re a bunch of meanies who won’t listen” post and the belief that the fanfic community is conspiring against her.
I think the goal of this small number of fanfic people is to drive me off LJ, ultimately. Their lack of ability to sustain an argument would prove my original point if I thought I everyone who writes fanfic is like them. As soon as someone resorts to an ad hominem attack, they are admitting that they have no real argument to give.
It’s hard to sustain an argument when she keeps deleting posts. I find people overuse and abuse the words “ad hominem” too, or perhaps I don't understand the definition of the word myself. Because people are not a regular reader of her or her books - i.e. “If you don't read my work, you can't write about it.” (Her work? Fanfic based on her work? Fanfic in general?) -- has no bearing no their opinion on or expertise regarding fanficion.
Thankfully some authors, even a few who were previously against fanfic, are not nearly as hateful. I don't know their reasons why -- perhaps they saw it was a losing battle or realized that it's a great way to get engage existing fans and win over new ones -- but Jim Butcher and even Mercedes Lackey don't care if you write it as long as you don't try to profit from it. Authors like Scalzi, Gaiman, and Charlie Stross have similar policies of "I don't care as long as you don't profit, but I'd rather you don't send it to me for legal reasons". Jim Hines also doesn’t have a problem with fanfic, and he commented in one of Kerr’s now deleted threads, which led to some backpedaling on her part in an attempt to say “oh but you’re different”.
Last month author Diana Gabaldon -- whom I'd not heard of before -- created a kerfuffle by comparing writing fanfic to breaking into someone's house,
Well, see, this is where “illegal” comes in. You can’t break into somebody’s house, even if you don’t mean to steal anything. You can’t camp in someone’s backyard without permission, even if you aren’t raising a marijuana crop back there. [1]
writing about sex between your child and neighbor,
But…imagine opening your daily mail and finding a letter detailing an explicit sexual encounter between, say, your twenty-one-year-old daughter and your forty-eight-year-old male neighbor---written by the neighbor. At the bottom it says, “Fiction! Just my imagination. All cool, right?” This would perhaps prevent your calling the police, but I repeat…ick.
I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family-why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality? [1]
fantasizing about your husband, because her Jamie character is partly based on her husband,
Weeeelll…let us just say that there’s a difference between someone dating red-haired men, and the same someone trying to seduce my husband. [1]
and selling your children into white slavery. (her word choice makes me wonder, "Why white slavery?" Is it better or worse than "black slavery" or something? Why not just "slavery".)
A good bit of my objection to fanfic (aside from the copyright issues--and I'm not sure how these apply when you take characters from one medium and implement them in another; particularly when one medium is TV, in which episodes may be written by a lot of different people) is that 99% of it is Just Awful, and it's revolting to see your characters being made to do and say idiotic things, or be forced to enact simple-minded sex fantasies (which is what most fan-fic that comes to my unwilling attention is). Like someone selling your children into white slavery.[2]
Not to mention that because some of it is porn, it's all porn. This argument is known as Converse Fallacy of Accident or Hasty Generalization.
While not all fan-fic is pornographic by any means, enough of it _is_ that it constitutes an aesthetic argument against the whole notion. [1]
And porn is immoral. Those "simple-minded sex fantasies" are "awful" and "revolting"... unless the author herself is penning it.
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. [3]
Examples from the Fandom Wank thread include:
Also, point of note - he (Jack) takes the nail out of Jamie's hand before he rapes him. Jack nailed Jamie's hand to the table as an added precaution to make sure he stayed put while Jack escorted Claire out of the prison. It was in the first book, Outlander. *
So searing touches, silky thighs, and ecstasy are bad, but Jack Randall nailing Jamie Fraser's hand to a table, then orally and anally raping him are okay? Thanks, Diana, glad to know that. *
No, seriously. Follow me closely here: Jack Randall, who happens to be the forefather of heroine Claire's 20th-century husband, has captured her and... has some reason to turn her over to the authorities, I forget. Her 18th-century hubby Jamie offers himself to Randall in exchange for Claire's freedom, knowing that he will be sexually tortured because Randall is a bisexual sadist with a particular yen for Jamie. Some weeks after his (of course) rescue (which IIRC involves letting a herd of Highland cattle into the prison), Claire wrings the story out of him. There's penetration, hand-nailing, branding, and the extra humiliation of being made to climax.*
And she used the sex as healing from rape trauma trope TWICE! *
Except she forgot the part where Randall ALSO branded Jamie (on the thigh?) with his signet ring, and after Jamie was rescued, pretty much the first thing he did was take a knife and just cut out that whole area.
(Also the part where Claire was threatened with rape by some freakishly large minion if Jamie didn't take her place.) *
I haven't finished the latest book yet... but no. Four, [are raped] so far. Jamie, then Brianna, then Ian (Geilis Duncan made him her love slave in the third or fourth book, I forget which. So actually he might have beaten Brianna) then Claire. *
Gabaldon's rage is even more amusing when you learn that her character Jamie Fraser is based -- or "inspired" -- on one of the companions in the original Doctor Who, James Robert McCrimmon, aka Jamie, played by actor Frazer Hines. Oh, she also based parts of him on her husband. Let this be a lesson not to base your characters too closely on real people if you can't distinguish between the two.
Not ONLY was Diana Gabaldon inspired to write Jamie Fraser by Frazer Hines' character Jamie MacCrimmon on Doctor Who, but once she had finished writing Jamie Fraser--who gets, as you may know, tortured and sodomized in the grand finale of the story--she packed up a couple of copies and mailed them to Frazer Hines. To... thank him. [4]
Though this topic made the rounds in May, I wrote nothing since the window of drama had mostly past, but this month another author decided to make her opinion known in a poorly worded way. Then, angered, shocked and/or offended that people posted their own opinions, many contrary to her own, in her public blog, she committed a series of deletions, follow up posts, and more deletions. It’s like these people are new to the internet. They seem to think fanworks never existed pre-net and deleting their post will make the matter disappear. If anything, it makes them look like the guilty party. Repeated deletions make you look even worse.
Kerr, though, doesn’t just hate fanfiction. She hates anything derivative, despite being editor of “Weird tales of Shakespeare”, a transformative works anthology, and author of Dungeon and Dragons “inspired” novels.
If someone can think of no better idea than to take a classic kid's book series and try to wring a few more bucks out of it, like the whole 'Wicked' series, then they should get a real job.
Fanfic is also like using embroidery kits, something only the untalented hacks would do.
They are in the same boat as embroiders who buy pre-cut yarn, pre-painted canvas needlepoint kits.
To which one FW commenter had this to say. She also hates Weird Al, but filk is okay.
Second loaded question: what do you think of Weird Al?
Second answer: as little as possible.
:-)
[...]
I think the best filks are the humorous ones, which puts them into the realm of Satire. I guess.
Only regular readers and those who agree are welcome to her Livejournal, by the way.
However, the mobbing was rude to all the regular readers of this space. It bored them, it cut off their right of discussion, and I suspect it convinced some of them that my original post's opinion of fanfic writers was in the main correct.
She ends, for now, with a “you’re a bunch of meanies who won’t listen” post and the belief that the fanfic community is conspiring against her.
I think the goal of this small number of fanfic people is to drive me off LJ, ultimately. Their lack of ability to sustain an argument would prove my original point if I thought I everyone who writes fanfic is like them. As soon as someone resorts to an ad hominem attack, they are admitting that they have no real argument to give.
It’s hard to sustain an argument when she keeps deleting posts. I find people overuse and abuse the words “ad hominem” too, or perhaps I don't understand the definition of the word myself. Because people are not a regular reader of her or her books - i.e. “If you don't read my work, you can't write about it.” (Her work? Fanfic based on her work? Fanfic in general?) -- has no bearing no their opinion on or expertise regarding fanficion.
Thankfully some authors, even a few who were previously against fanfic, are not nearly as hateful. I don't know their reasons why -- perhaps they saw it was a losing battle or realized that it's a great way to get engage existing fans and win over new ones -- but Jim Butcher and even Mercedes Lackey don't care if you write it as long as you don't try to profit from it. Authors like Scalzi, Gaiman, and Charlie Stross have similar policies of "I don't care as long as you don't profit, but I'd rather you don't send it to me for legal reasons". Jim Hines also doesn’t have a problem with fanfic, and he commented in one of Kerr’s now deleted threads, which led to some backpedaling on her part in an attempt to say “oh but you’re different”.