this breaks my heart and pisses me off, all at the same time

[mickeym]

You all know how much I love Diana Gabaldon's writing, and her Outlander series. I adore Jaimie and Claire. I've been reading her books for as long as she's been writing them, about 18 years, now. I have recced her to friends and family; I've given her books as gifts; I wrote her this long, rambly, gushing email and squealed like a little kid when she wrote me back.

Then today I see this:

Diana Gabaldon on fanfiction: "I think it’s immoral, I _know_ it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters."

It's not so much that she's against fanfic -- everyone is entitled to their own opinion/thoughts/feelings on stuff. But it's how she compares fanfic authors to thieves and rapists, or the creepy, stalkery, pervy neighbor who writes dirty emails of his fantasies with your daughter.

I really feel kind of betrayed here, which is all kinds of silly. I don't know the woman, she doesn't know me. But she's coloring all of us with the same crayon/paintbrush, equating us with plagiarists and worse, and it just really hurts.


Link by way of azephirin and gweneiriol.

Comments

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

*blink* How on earth is fanfic immoral? It's difficult to even argue it's illegal - people use fictional characters in other fictional works constantly. Fanfic or otherwise. And people use non-fictional or mythological characters constantly, such as Greek gods, presidents, kings, etc. I'm really not all that aware of what OTW is up to lately, but maybe they'd have more info on the legalities of fanfic-writing.

Fuck her. I hope she barfs a lot and destroys her esophagus.

In my opinion it's incredibly stupid of an author to denounce fanfic based on their work or their characters. Fanfic can keep a series popular that would have died forever ago. And if you say fanfic's illegal, what about meta? What about artwork based on someone else's characters? What about songs written about the characters? People do that all the time, both for fandom purposes and professional purposes (e.g., the 9,000 songs mentioning comics superheroes by name or deeds).