Links which caught my eye recently

[erastes]

Thanks to Gehayi for this one: Wow. Diana Gabaldon’s frothing tirade on fanfic.  Goodness. She must have a lot of readers if she doesn’t care about offending many of them. That’s a whole lot of Speshul, right there. That’s me done with her books. I only read them because of Lord John (never bothered with Outlander, don’t like Mary Sues, don’t like rape = love) and poor LJ was never allowed to be happy because he was gay.

An Excellent rebuttal

Wonderful Radio 4 Programme on about Duels “Pistols at Dawn” – it’s hugely amusing that the settling of grievances has “evolved” from sword to pistol to… the civil courts. How banal!

Also this. Why “LITERACHOOR” makes this columnist head for the Penguins.  I agree with absolutely everything he says here. I don’t know when “literary fiction” became the by-word for “incomprehensible stream of consciousness” with stupid similies and airy-fairy imagery.  Once upon a time there were real literary novels which weren’t just passive and descriptive. Why can’t “genre” be literary?

Porn for the blind. All I can say – Poor Blind.

Comments

[aigooism.livejournal.com]

Oh god, that Diana lady's blog post gave me a headache.

I don't know about most people, but I am one of those who actually will not read an author if they are actually against the fanfic community like that.

Hence why after years of trying to read Anne Rice's Vampire Books, I thoroughly gave up after I found out how she was against the fanfics based on her stuff.

Anyway, the first link to the rebuttal is great. I hope Diana read it.

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

Amen, B.R. Meyers, Amen!

Where does one draw the line between prize-winning and pretentious nonsense?

I'll stay in genre where I belong, thankyouverymuch.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you so much for linking to that rebuttal post for this Diana Gabaldon fiasco. The original post made me so incredibly angry and I don't even read her books (I think I read the first two and the first Lord John book but lost interest afterward).

Once upon a time there were real literary novels which weren’t just passive and descriptive. Why can’t “genre” be literary?

Well, for what it's worth, the last creative writing class I ever took had a professor who forbade any of his students from writing what he termed 'genre fiction' (which included sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and historical!). It's a self-perpetuating system run by a collection of pretentious hacks that love to hear themselves talk.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I don't write fanfic in book universes unless the author is (a) dead or (b) unequivocally through with the series. I see it as a courtesy. Then again, I always thought GB's adored Jamie was a bully and a boor, and I agree completely with your comments on Lord John (the only character of hers that I really liked) so there's no danger of me transgressing in that universe. And, honestly? It's a fair objection. If someone wrote a fic where Will and Davy suddenly get whapped by the Hetero Fairy and start chasing girls, I'd be royally pissed (in the US sense, not the Brit.) And what, dog forbid, if a fanficcer started writing my characters better than I do?

TV universes? Not the same critter as far as fanfiction is concerned. Any video 'universe' is a collaboration of writer, producer, actor, and so many other people that any fan fiction--besides being unmarketable--is not going to make any difference to the existing work, and writing a 'spec script' for a show that's been off the air for 20 years? Rather pointless, I think.

I'll take a possibly unpopular stand and say that I think fanfiction overall--the stuff people actually saw, not the personal, unpublished fantasy sort--was better written when we didn't have the instant-gratification of the Internet - when it took work, and a publisher, to get a story out there. People were choosier because they had to pay for the zine, and there was no entitlement issue of "It should be FREE because I WANT it." But that's true of just about everything on the Internet. You can find text and photos of just about anybody doing just about anything, but with luck you can also avoid it.

I do think a writer should have the right to say that she does not want fanfiction written in her copyrighted universe, and have that honored. As a courtesy--a foreign concept to the entitlement generation.

But... fanfiction has been around at least since the days of Sherlock Holmes, so I doubt Ms. G's disapproval is going to make a whole lot of difference. And having seen the hypocrisy of the 'ooh, e-book piracy is awful' posts vs the way illegal downloads jump when someone complains about a site... I have to wonder how many of the sycophantic posters on GB's blog are busily ficcing away behind her back. Because you could put money on it, some of them are.

[antychan.livejournal.com]

I'm so lame, I posted there three times, throwing around things like, "I bet you and Marion Zimmer Bradley would not have got along then."

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Well, Bradley co-opted the fanficcers by publishing stories written in her universe. Clever, if you've got the time and energy to deal with the really awful stuff.

But didn't she have trouble with someone who had come up with a plotline similar to what she herself was working on, and the fan author accused her of plot-theft? I think that's why many authors don't want fanfiction in active storylines (and really, a storyline is not deactivated while the author is breathing.)

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

That literature post was enlightening! I've never read any of these books (I'm too much of a narrative junkie to even try non-genre fiction). So I admit I'd had the impression that at least in 'literature' the prose style had to be good. But some of the stuff they quoted was appalling. My flabber is officially ghasted.

As for Diana Gabaldon's position, it strikes me as funny that she's so queasy about sexually explicit fanfic, when her own books are as X rated as they come.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Well exactly. There's rape rape rape rape rape - how can she object to other people raping her characters when she has created the precedent? I totally agree with her if she wants to disapprove of fanfic - but there are ways and ways to ask fans not to do it. George Martin is professional and polite and most people adhere to his wishes - or if they don't they keep it under locked comms where it can't be generally found. She apparently is a dr who fan, and based Jamie partly on Frazer Hines - and he's a time - travelling companion, so if that's not fanfic by itself, I don't know what is.

And the literature - yes. Please feel free to brain me with my own PC (or stab my quill through my temple) if my prose ever starts talking about stuttering tulips. I have been known to go down that route at times.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely with her right to state that she'd prefer not to have fanfic written, but to compare it to rape and burglary and showing ignorance of the difference between a criminal act and copyright law was amusing - it just made her look an idiot. If I was writing a series, I'd be concerned about plot lines moving in the same way i was writing - but in this day and age that's so easy to prove that you DIDN'T take the idea from that person, because it can be easily proved that you never looked at that person's site, or that you wrote your story before they did. If I found fanfic in that instance, I would never read it. (I would if I found any of mine, because I don't write series).

If someone were to het up one of my characters I wouldn't give a stuff - after all, I've been making Snape and Lucius gay for years. I'd find it amusing that anyone could find any of my characters heterosexual. HOWEVER - if Hollywood were ever to do it, there'd be trouble! :) (chance would be a fine thing)

There are ways to say "I'd prefer you didn't write fanfic of my characters" and that really really wasn't it.

[antychan.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. xD

I meant that she probably would not have taken kindly to the accussation that she's an unoriginal writer incapable of creating her own characters. Since, you know, her main work is basically a fanfiction version of Thomas Malory.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

She was unbelievably rude. It's all very well to ask people to refrain from fanfic, and many people will take notice if you ask nicely, but that attack will just make more people write it.

That's a very good point. Depressing ain't it?

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Well, her fiction does tend to wax fulsome, so why not her prose? (Though her research is usually excellent--it's odd that she didn't do her homework on this.) However, without even trying, I could name half a dozen writers, yourself among them, who would do a better job with Lord John. (First step: Get over JF.) so if somebody did a fannish spin-off that gave him a better life, I'll bet it would surpass the popularity of her own series. That's a fic I would read.. but I don't have time to write it.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

My tulips don't stutter, but the tomatoes are conspiring to take over. I've had to move them out to a plastic greenhouse on the porch...

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

In view of the tomatoes conspiring to take over, you really need to see this intro. It's beautifully demented.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that I always thought she'd deliberately written some of those Jamie/Villain of the week rape scenes with the deliberate intention of creating fanfic - they are *so* squarely within the typical fanfic dark kink trope. I actually assumed, on the basis of her writing, that she had come out of fanfic writing herself, so it surprises me to find out otherwise.

That's interesting about Jamie being a bit of a Who companion clone. I wonder if she does literally think that changing the name is enough to make a character your own. There's certainly a sentence where she says

"Write anything you want, using Jamie Fraser, Edward Cullen, Harry Potter _and_ Dr. Who….and then change the characters’ names before you post it. Simple. Find All: “Jamie Fraser”. Replace with: “Joe Kerastopolous”. No problemo, all your own work, and any praise you get is duly earned."

Who would have thought it was that easy?!

LOL! My tulips have been known to stutter at times too (and my Russian Vine gets at the vodka at night and shouts Как она меня достала!)

[belluthien.livejournal.com]

Aside from my own issues with DG, I have never liked the way she deals with fans. This is a case in point.
And I agree with you, it's the way she makes her point that grates, not so much her position on the issue of fanfic.
y

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Awesoem counter post. I'm afraid I'm not going to go over and read DG's post, don't have the spoons to spare for getting that mad tonight. Was up eating breakfast for a trip at 3:30 am, so not real patient with other people's epic mental discontinuities, and I do not wish to be rude.
I totally agree that there's professional ways to ask people not to dress your characters in funny clothes and have them kissing the wrong body parts.
I would add that's it's not always a flattery when people want to write fanfic in your universe--it may be much more a fannish sense of incompleteness there which makes them itch in that horrible place between the shoulder blades until they must *DO SOMETHING*

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Great counter-argument link there. Do not have the spoons tonight to endure the rant, knowing (as from so many others like Anne Rice and etc) what the arguments will be about the squikkie squikkieness of other people dressing their dollehs funny and making them kiss all the wrong body parts, whether they like it or not.
I tend to regard fanfiction as a high flattery, actually, and I agree that there's polite and professional ways to ask people to knock it off.
Most of these rants reek of attention-seeking to me, and therefore I tend to deny it to them. And perhaps one even wonders if a publicist wrote it, trying to generate attention?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

What intro?

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

You can't see it? Go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfm3_BMinhg&feature=player_embedded

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

I doubt it. Apparently this is the third time she's said something of the sort. There's also a link to a post she made on a forum for books and writers where she compared fanfic to selling your children into white slavery.

She's since updated her blog, apparently shocked that fanfic writers know the difference between fanfic and plagiarism, as well as things like copyright infringement, disclaimers, fair use, derivative and transformative works and the complete lack of any international copyright law (which she was claiming existed).

She's also apparently dumbfounded that people are actually telling stories based in her universe out of love of her universe and her characters. As near as I can tell, she had only run into the more grotesque stories--the kind that used to show up on the Godawful Fan Fiction boards--and had no concept of any other kind of fanfic existing. I think that she thought that such things were being written out of pure malice. I'd still bet that she doesn't know that genfic exists.

She still doesn't LIKE fanfic, that's for sure, but I think that the sheer wrath in her own blog, on Fandom Wank, on Twitter, on Smart Bitches Trashy Books, and in various journals and blogs made her decide it would be better to back down.