When Professionals Writers Engage with Internet Fans Things Go Wonky

[shadowkat]

Inspired by recent rants about professional writers who have engaged in snarkfests with fans, pissing off some of them. I thought I'd give you some of the best and most noteworthy, not to mention blood pressure inducing fan and professional writer fights online. I'll let you choose the worst.

1. David Fury in a 2001 post on Bronze Beta in direct response to fans who were critical of his episode "CRUSH" in S5, Fury wrote the following classic line:


Fury says: (Tue Feb 13 09:48:23 2001 216.186.167.140) "...To those who feel my conviction that Spike can never be redeemed and cannot someday end up with our heroine, shows a lack of imagination of my part, I say you're right. It is beyond my limited imagination to see a strong, independent, female character end up falling for a murderer who would be killling innocent people were he not suffering from chip affliction.

I regret I don't have the creative mind that, say, Thomas Harris has when he saw fit to sell out the character of Clarice Starling by having her become lovers with a cannibalistic psychopath, charming and brilliant as he may be.

That's just one of my many weaknesses as a writer.

For those of you who fault my thinking, I can only say I'll try to be more openminded in the future. In the meanwhile, S/B shippers, you can go back to writing your penpals, Richard Ramirez and the Hillside Strangler, and I hope they finally accept your marriage proposals..."

2. Anne Rice Bites Back at Reviewers on Amazon.com

Amazon.com’s policy of allowing readers to post reviews of books might be a helpful feature for consumers, but for bestselling vampire author Anne Rice, it’s been a pain in the neck. Rice was so outraged over the vitriolic response to her latest book, Blood Canticle—apparently the final installment in her bestselling Vampire Chronicle series—that she posted a 1200-word response that requested that unsatisfied readers mail her back the book for a refund. Baring her own fangs, Rice blasted the readers, saying "your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander…you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehoods and lies." While admitting she reads Amazon.com’s reviews for other author’s works, she criticized the site’s "willingness to publish just about anything." Some posters found the book so unlike its predecessors they doubted Rice wrote it, while others carped about her needing an editor. The author countered saying she wrote "every word of it" and has "no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate" her sentences. "I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status," she said, adding "every word is in perfect place." Rice further asserts that the Chronicles, which began in 1976 with Interview with the Vampire, is an "unrivalled series of books." She, however, praised the positive reviews.

3. Elizabeth Moon's controversial post and fight with people on Islam. The end result was - the author was asked not to be the guest at Wiscon next year. She never submitted an apology. And deleted all the comments to her blog and disabled.
But people kept an archive. The fight is still going on.

4. Aaron Sorkin vs. Fans of the West Wing on TWOP - Sorkin was a frequent poster on TWOPY during the West Wing, posted as Benjamin. Around emmy time, he failed to acknowledge a co-worker, fans commented on it - and Sorkin did not take it at all well. He later enacted vengeance by writing it into a West Wing episode.

And of course there are the ones I remember but can't find - Whedon's numerous snarkfests with fans,
Deknight, Petrie and Fury's on BronzeBeta, notably around the airing of Seeing Red. Marti Noxon's fight with fans. One smackdown between Whedon and a fan regarding Marti's writing of a Mad Men episode on Whedonesque (I think it was MAD MEN, it might have been earlier than that). Notably - Damon Lindenoff's rant against fans of LOST, accusing them of not really being "true Lost fans" if they didn't like the finale.

Sigh late and must get to bed. I think fighting with fans of one's work is a post-modernist thing.
We couldn't do it in the dark ages before the internet and twitter and facebook and fan boards.
Is it a good thing - to be able to converse and interact with the readers and watchers of your work?
I don't know. I think it has it's peaks and valleys. While it's great when people love you, there's always that one person who comes along and kicks you where it hurts and for some reason I've never understood that's the person I remember, not all the raves, the one who sticks in the head.

Writers are a wrecked lot. I think. Human and vulnerable. We're also so critical. Everyone of the writers listed above has written critical reviews and ripped things they loved or disliked apart critically. Whedon certainly has. As has Fury, and Sorkin and notably Lindenof on the Harry Potter film.

Comments

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Heh! Anne Rice loonieness! And they're missing some of the best bits with her declaring "you're offending my Dickensian principles." And the ever classic "you're interrogating the text from the wrong perspective..."


And the Neil Gaiman reaction win:
I think Anne Rice going on Amazon and lambasting her critics was undoubtedly a very brave and satisfying thing for her to do, every bit as sensible as kicking a tar baby, and, if ever I do something like that, please shoot me.

[enisy.livejournal.com]

HAHAHA OH NEIL.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

And never forget Neil's admonition:

George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.

(heh) That bit of fannish history is here:
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman seems like an awesome person.

[elisi]

George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.
Oh I remember that one! *is still cheering*

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Didn't know Neil's reaction. I do remember everyone else's.
That's hilarious!

The ones I kept hunting for and could not find was Ursula Le Guin's fight with fanfic authors and Anne McCaffrey's fight with fans.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I happened to bookmark the Rice Wank at the time it happened (because it was so flipping hilarious). Also notable in the hilarious online meltdowns were Laurel K. Hamilton and Poppy Z. Bright. Notable for witty entrance in various online kefuffles with comments made of win is Nora Roberts (who has weighed in on a few of them in amusing and sane fashion).

I don't know much about the Ursula Le Guin one, but I've heard bits and pieces about McCaffrey's. Might try the Fandom_Wank archive. They're a treasure trove of some of the alltime WTFs. And professional wank is usually the best wank of all. :)

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I wonder what Nora Roberts had to say. Sometimes I think we should have a day to remember all the ridiculous wank. Just to laugh it off.

And professional wank is usually the best wank of all. :)

Ha! True.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I'll look to see if Nora Roberts has a tag. She has developed a fine repuation online for being sane and witty about stuff.

Meantime, have fun with Rice Wank from Fandom_Wank.

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/181602.html

RICE: After the publication of the The Queen of the Damned, [which is, what? Her third or fourth book?] I requested of my editor that she not give me anymore comments. I resolved to hand in the manuscripts when they were finished. And asked that she accept them as they were. She was very reluctant, feeling that her input had value, {...} I felt that I could not bring to perfection what I saw unless I did it alone.

No Ego on Rice.

Rice: "People who find fault and problems with my books tend to say, 'She needs an editor,'" Ms. Rice said. "When a person writes with such care and goes over and over a manuscript and wants every word to be perfect, it's very frustrating. When you take home a CD of Pavarotti or Marilyn Horne, you don't want to hear another voice blended in. I feel the same way about Hemingway. If I read it, I don't want to read an edited version."

And Laurel K. Hamilton!
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1041659.html

I'm sure there are other books out there that will make you happier than mine. There are books with less sex in them, God knows. There are books that don't make you think that hard. Books that don't push you past that comfortable envelope of the mundane. If you want to be comforted, don't read my books. They aren't comfortable books. {...}If that's not want you want, then stop reading. Put my books away with other things that frighten and confuse or just piss you off. {...} For those of you who say this is nothing but a Praise Board. Fine, it is. Feel free to run up and down the street screaming "I was right!" with my blessing. Personally, I am tired of listening to you whine

(Pretty balsy for a writer where many of her [more recent[ book summaries could go [Anita Blake] and/or [Fairy character] has sex with various supernatural creatures. The End.>:)]

http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/698174.html

Do I really have to share details of my life that only my friends deserve to know to keep some of you from being cruel? {...} Is this what some of you want, my pain? Not happy that I don't share my innermost torment?{...}You tell me that there's too much sex, and part of me thinks, you ain't seen nothing yet...
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/627121.html

Oh, and Diana Gabaldon has had her share of online hissyfits (can't imagine how I forgot those):
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1246633.html

And Comic Book Wank that isn't Buffy Comic Book Wank:
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1213357.html

[angearia.livejournal.com]

WANK OVERLOAD

:p

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Do you remember the coining of the term "femnazi" by Bill Willingham who got into a fight with female fans of the Jack of Fables tales - and accused him of being anti-feminist or something like that. And he called them "femnazi's"? It was actually worse than his behavior on IDW.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

No but given what he wrote in the Angel comics, I can't help but believe it (and of course the best way to combat being called a misogynist is to call women feminazis!)

I did see Brad Meltzer tonight on some conspiracy theorist "History" channel episode. LOL.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I think he's hosting that series.

(As an aside, I think he said after the whole Buffy issue 34 bit, that he regretted doing it and wouldn't do it again, but now have changed his mind?)

Willingham and Williams got in a heap of trouble with IDW on their boards. I think Ryall, Lynch, and Mariah came in at different points to put them in their place. And Whedon even popped up to defend Allie. Twilighgate was the most hilarious professional comic book writer/editor wankfest that I'd seen. Everyone came out of that one with egg on their face...LOL!

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Oh, that "troll feminists and then accuse them of being censorious when they react" is standard policy for Willingham. The same thing happened over Snow swearing to "obey" Bigby when they got married in the main Fables series.

[rahirah]

I've never heard anything about ursula LeGuin, but the Marion Zimmer Bradley biz was epic. Pre-internet, mostly. (And pales beside the way-pre-internet brouhaha involving her husband the pedophile, but that's another story...)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

So there were a few pre-internet brouhahah's? Interesting.
Hadn't heard the one about Zimmer Bradley.

[rahirah]

Yep. The MZB thing occurred in the 80s - she had encouraged her fans to write fanfic set in her Darkover 'verse, using her characters and original characters, and had edited and published several anthologies of the best Darkover fanfic - I may still own a couple. At some point a fan wrote a take on some of the canon characters that MZB liked well enough that she wanted to use it in a novel and make it canon. As best I can gather from the he-said-she-saids I've read, she and the fan could not agree on compensation. Things turned acrimonious, the proposed novel was shelved, and MZB stopped approving of fanfic.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ah, the dangers of authors reading fanfic! I remember someone online trying to sue Mutant Enemy or Fox - claiming they used his teleplay for one of the S7 episodes, can't remember which one.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Jim Butcher seems to have one of the most sane fanfic policies:

Rather than upholding the awkward “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy towards fanfiction he used in the past, Jim [Butcher] is embracing the Creative Commons. Now, fanfiction is to be licensed as derivative, noncommercial fiction under the Creative Commons umbrella.
What does this mean?
A) You can’t make money from fanfic based on Jim’s work.
B) Jim still isn’t going to read it. Do not send Jim your stories or story ideas.
C) You need to post a disclaimer on your fic, like this handy example: “The Dresden Files/Codex Alera is copyright Jim Butcher. This story is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, noncommercial fiction.” In doing so, you waive any rights to that work–-you can’t sue Jim for compensation if he writes something similar.
D) Fanfic can now be talked about in places that had previously been off-limits, like our forum. We’ve created a separate “Fan Creations” section of the forum for for this purpose.
E) Ponies and ice cream for everyone!*
* This is not actually a byproduct of the new policy. Sorry

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oh, I remember the Poppy Z. Brite one. That was around the time I first came online.

But those are tame in comparison to the Elizabeth Bear (the writer of Whiskey and Water, Carnival, and several other sci-fi novels) kerfuffle that resulted in a professional sci-fi writer revealing the actual name of one of the fans critiquing his work, and outting her to people online. This resulted in journals being deleted, flocked, filtered and names changed. IT was truly horrible. I think it was the second RaceFail! And it went on for weeks. The kerfuffle to end all kerfuffles. Everyone wrote about it. And you had to go to a specific site to follow all the links. If I remember correctly it was about how the writers wrote minority characters and how in it offended many of the fans of their writing.

Don't have the links.

Ursula Le Guin's was basically from an FAQ interview she did where she said bluntly that fanfic was something she was blatantly against. It wasn't quite so bad as the one about McCaffrey - which made it impossible for me to read McCaffrey again.

[rahirah]

Decent overview of Racefail here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/RaceFail_%2709

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I couldn't find the whole link, that was the only one I could find. So thanks for providing some of the better bits!