You see, while some people are very much excited for a new show about our pompous king of the assholes (and I say this as a term of endearment, having loved Lestat since I was a depressed teenager living in New York, shuffling through my mom’s fiction section) we need to pause and remember this:
Anne Rice does not support fan fiction or anything that is not glowing praise.
Read it again, slowly.
Anne Rice does not support fan fiction or anything that is not glowing praise.
This is difficult for younger fans to understand, but let’s take a walk down memory lane.
She has threatened to sue writers in the past. She is one of the most prolific writers of our generation, and she does not support people using her characters for their own work.
In fact, in 2000 she went on a binge-attack against her fans. She threatened legal action against fans who wrote or drew her characters, but especially those who wrote with them. She sent them weeks of harassing letters and doxxed them on the internet.
Let me repeat that.
She doxxed people who wrote fan fiction.
She harassed them online and threatened to contact employers.
She used her fans to outright attack other fans.
This isn’t even something she can just shake off now, with the comment of “It was so long ago” because she did this to a writer who wrote commentary on her story in 2013.
In 2013.
While it was not that she wrote fan fiction, she still shows that she has no respect for people who are in fandom.
Remember those disclaimers used in fan fics, at the beginning? “I do not own …. ”? Yeah, a lot of that has to do with the fact that Anne Rice and others like her would attack fandoms and threaten them, and was in hopes that they would just leave us alone. She didn’t.
In short: Do not trust Anne Rice. I love her writing, I have read every book she has even written, but I do not trust her.
You shouldn’t, either.
Anne Rice was and still is a bully. Don’t support her work.
She’s been like this since Geocities was the big place to have spec (that’s what fics used to be called, specs, as in speculative fiction) pages back in the mid 90s.
She use to threaten to sue anyone she found posting specs anywhere, and there was a whole underground network of people to share specs and fan art (which she also would threaten to sue over).
Anne Rice has always been kind of a twat about fan works based on her mediocre writing.
She’s harassed people quite recently. @jennytrout Wanna gossip?
What was that? “Raise your hand if you were ever personally victimized by Anne Rice?”
DISCLAIMER: this is not about fanfic, but it is about what she can do to you.
So, I totally idolized Anne Rice. Fully and adoringly so. One day, she shared one of my HuffPo articles with her “people of the page” and it was probably the greatest day of my entire career.
But she has this thing where she’s OBSESSED with bad reviews. At one point, she complained about a bad review she got for Interview from the New York Times or some such thing like forty years ago. She used it as an example of how reviews can hurt authors. I was like, seriously, lady, you have how many millions of copies of your books sold? How many movies have been made from them? *People try to find your house to take pictures of themselves in front of it.* But okay, everybody has their quirks. I just kind of rolled my eyes over it.
Not long after that, she made a post about this website that was made by a writer who apparently wasn’t getting the sales numbers or accolades they so richly deserved. The problem wasn’t like, the nature of the business or anything, nay, my friends, nay, but the fact that people–BULLIES!–left mean reviews on Amazon. So these people whom Rice so admired would make posts where they would reveal Amazon/GoodReads reviewers names and home addresses and such. One post even mentioned something like, “Between this time and that time every weekday, they go for a walk by the sea wall.” Scary, scary shit. And Rice LOVED these people.
I don’t know why I took it upon myself to argue with her. I really don’t. Maybe because I respected her so much and her support of the site was so disappointing? This was the result.
So, I’m a bully. Big whoop, right? And my feelings were a little hurt, but hey, never meet (or follow on social media) your idols, right? Lesson learned, and it wasn’t like this could destroy my fond memories of how much I loved her books, right?
So, fast forward, I think it was the next year, or at least a few months later, when I wrote a post about a dumb $0.99 Kindle book about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings in a BDSM relationship. A pathetic little troll with too much hair gel and not enough parenting ran to his goddess Anne Rice to tell her how mean, mean, mean I was being. She posted a link to a blog post made about me on the reviews-are-bullies site and said something to the effect of someone needing to teach me a lesson or someone needed to show me how it feels or something like that. To THREE. MILLION. PEOPLE.
As a fan of Anne Rice, I am confident in stating that many of her fans are not okay people. And they heeded the command of their “queen.” Yes, they referred to her as such, flooding me with emails, tweets, FB messages, anywhere they could reach me. They posted my address, screenshots of google earth images of my house, they threatened to kill me, they made graphic threats against my children, one charming gentleman on parole from his assault sentence offered to make a necklace of my teeth to present to “my queen.”
When confronted about the fact that she had unleashed all of this on me, her response was basically: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
She insisted she hadn’t done anything wrong, she couldn’t control what people were doing, and oh yes, it’s terrible that people are saying this, but she NEVER. ASKED. THEM. TO. STOP. In fact, she joined her “people of the page” in mocking my appearance, mourning the horrible lives my children must have, and continuing to insist that my “prison tats” indicated that I was a member of a gang (I have “TIME LADY” tattooed across my knuckles in the 11th Doctor era Doctor Who font). Egging them on with this coy, “Well, we shouldn’t say things like that, we’re better than that, BUT” bullshit.
This all went on for weeks. Some of these people still occasionally pop up to threaten/antagonize. So, yeah. Steer clear. She holds a grudge, she can and will mobilize her fanbase against you, if she dislikes you she will ruin you, and she doesn’t care if her readers literally kill you.
Men Are Stupid About Emotions, Women Are Stupid About Everything Else
[…]
Men Are Sex Psychics, Women Are Unconscious Dick-Exploders
[…]
Men Are Terrifying and Women Have No Idea What A Healthy Relationship Looks Like
By far the worst part about bad romance novels is what they think is romantic. In these stories the couple-to-be usually starts off with some sort of conflict between them so that there’s tension to overcome before they get together. The trouble with these conflicts is that they lead to the men doing terrifying things to the women. I’ve seen the women in these books get kidnapped, held hostage, be psychologically manipulated, forced away from friends and family and even their whole culture, forced out of career opportunities, forced into sudden engagements, manipulated into sex, accused of attempted murder, and set on fire, all by the men they are destined to fall in love with. Most of the time the men never even apologize for these actions and it’s passed off as more silly shenanigans. By the end of the book Male Hero and Female Hero are still happily in love, joking about the odd circumstances that brought them together. You know, all that quirky abuse.
And the worst of it is the rape. You wouldn’t think it. You’d really think that romance novels would be a place generally free of rape scenes, particularly between the romantic leads, but they aren’t. In fact, rape scenes in these books are depressingly common, so much so that it’s noteworthy when there aren’t any.
[…]
This is where bad romance novels cross a line. They go from being misinformed and silly to being visibly dangerous. When I read a bad romance novel, I do so because I think a lot of them are funny. I like to laugh at the impossible sex positions, the contrived plots, and the ridiculous characterization. But the fact is I can’t open any romance novel without a hint of dread. I know with each book that there’s a high chance that I’m about to read something horrifying that will be passed off as romantic.
do older generations not get fatalistic humor?? like the other day my friend’s parents were hanging around and we were joking and i was like “well no matter what i can always fling myself off the nearest cliff” and they didn’t laugh then later the mom pulled me aside and was like “maybe you should get some help, sweetie” like stfu?? help? in this economy? i don’t think so, debra
I honestly don’t think they get it as a coping mechanism, they think it’s a cry for help rather than actually helping.
i’d even say it’s past just coping and is also now a category of Stuff Kids Got Used To When No One Was Looking; not everyone using that humor is even covering up something bigger, we just stopped thinking fatalistic = taboo/unspeakable somewhere along the line, and most parents don’t seem to know why or how ~
My boss opened a door and missed me by inches, he said “whoops, almost killed you there!” My result of “Oh, if only.” Led to an awkward end of shift debrief.
This generation shares the same humor as the goddamn Addams Family and the previous generation is the White Sixties Family™ that lives next door and runs away screaming at the end of the episode
I will say that it’s interesting because this kind of humor is very, very prevalent somewhere else…
the military.
Which is honestly a place you would expect fatalistic humor to be common and used as a coping method. You’re one “oops” away from death on the flight deck, one inch to the left and you don’t have a head anymore because the jet that just landed now owns it as a wing-tip decoration. So you joke about it because lowkey you’re fucking terrified it’ll happen, but you’re also desensitized to the danger itself because you face it every single day for 12 hours at a time.
Anyway so we all know the mindset you adopt in the military because of the danger, so to realise that an identical sense of humor has been adopted by normal people should probably tell you something very important about the amount of stress modern young folks experience in daily life.
As someone who’s been in the military, this is a solid reality. As someone who spent 6 months in a medical squadron, I can also tell you it is painfully obvious who still has self worth and thinks death is the worst possible outcome, versus those who have resigned themselves to a tolerance between breathing and not.
It really isn’t surprising that the majority of this generation has these behaviors either, given that Baby Boomers berate/motivate the generation in a similar manner to drill sergeants and also abuse the shit mentally out of them as well.
I love Dungeons and Dragons prestige classes like there’s a kind of Blood Mage that has the power to teleport by CRAMMING THEMSELVES INTO SOMEBODYS WOUND EVEN A PAPERCUT WILL DO AND POP OUT OF SOMEBODY ELSES WOUND THATS THE SAME BLOOD TYPE REGARDLESS OF DISTANCE.
Can you imagine it you get a PAPERCUT and some some unkempt wizard just stumbles out of it?
No but you’re missing the best part of that class they can LITERALLY MAKE YOU EXPLODE by popping out of you like say the big bad is the same blood type as one of your buddies you can just be like “hey fred give yourself a small cut on yer arm” and fred can and then you just cram yourself into fred’s arm and fucking six seconds later then bigbad just fucking EXPLODES IN A SHOWER OF BLOOD AND GORE AS YOU POP OUT OF THEM BEING ALL “SUPRISE MUTHERFUCKER BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING”
There’s also
The Acolyte Of The Skin; who replaces his entire skin with a
demon. Like, a whole fucking demon.
The Green Star Adept who just fucking eats a whole bunch of
fucking expensive space-metal to turn himself into space-metal; just
shoves it all in his facehole.
The Squire of Legend; which is literally a class training to be
the best second-banana to the actual heroes you can be.
The Ghost-Faced Killer, an actual fucking prestige class named
after a Wu-Tang Clan member
The Vigilante, a class notable for the main fact that its sample
character is a fucking hobbit-Batman named fucking Beasley Biggums
The Rage Mage, who improves her spellcasting by getting really
fucking angry.
The Flayerspawn Psychic, who is a psychic who gets their powers
from having a Mind Flayer (IE, those squid-headed guys) in their
family tree, despite the fact that Mind Flayer reproduction involves
a worm eating your brain from the inside out and using your body as a
host, which is one of the many reasons the book it comes from is
considered one of the worst in 3.5E
The Vassal of Bahamut; who literally has a class feature of “gets
a shit-ton of money” at certain levels
The Impure Prince, who fights Lovecraftian abominations by turning herself into a Lovecraftian
abomination, which seems both ill-advised and severely
badass at the same time.
The Master of Masks; which allows you to make Majora’s
Mask-style masks that give you various powers and is actually
legit-cool fluff-wise despite actually being not-very-good gameplay
wise
The Thrall Of Orcus; whose requirements bizarrely specify doing a
dark ritual “atop an altar made of at least thirty skulls.”
The Lord of Tides; which specialises in getting water in the
desert and has an ability that allows you to extract water forcibly
from a person Tank Girl-style. And if you kill somebody with it, the
water turns into a magical water imp for about a minute!
The Divine Prankster, who plays April Fools-style practical jokes
in the name of the Gods and literally has an ability that’s pretty
much the World’s Deadliest Joke from that one Monty Python sketch.
The Primeval, who literally slowly becomes a fucking Caveman as
she gains levels and has the ability to turn into prehistoric
megafauna as one of its primary class features.
The Cancer Mage, who can literally turn into a flying disease at
its highest level, has a sentient tumor as a familiar; can make armor
out of garbage, and is actually-pretty-terrible gameplay-wise unless
you get the right diseases; in which case it becomes unspeakably
broken
The Ashworm Dragoon; which is pretty much a literal specialized
Sandworm-rider class. SHAI HULUUD!
The Renegade Mastermaker, who is literally a magical cyborg
dedicated to physically emulating a specific player race of magical
robots (Yes, D&D has that), who has a magic cyborg arm called a
BATTLEFIST as a class feature.
The Risen Martyr who is literally Jesus-come-back-from-the-dead as
a prestige class.
what she says: anders deserved better
what she means: anders had to take a hard decision and, while everyone can see it differently depending on personal ethics, his development and moral dilemmas from that point were disregarded because, in the narrative thats being pushed onto us, the ‘angry fighter for freedom’ character has no place. Its not surprising that in the default world state, the mage hawke has not only killed anders but he also violently despises him; and several times we are reminded of how he ‘single-handedly’ started the war. Never mind the inherent abuse in the circles or the straight slave work that its presented in the kirkwall circle; good mages would have never rebelled, good mages seek help from the merciful chantry, good mages stay quiet until… until a /bad mage/ seeks answers through violence. Anders’ life is nothing but the tale of the nice opressed, who smiles and gently corrects; and the mean opressed, who speaks up and ACTS. Once he becomes the Mean Opressed, his narrative ends. Theres nothing else to his character, he is Done, he will not evolve past that. In Dragon Age 2, most characters become, at some point, a monster: fenris and his markings, merrill and blood magic, isabela and her stolen book. Anders’ monster is not being an abomination: is daring to fight with the same violence that was shown to him, to his people. We aren’t shown any more of his development because right after his stand, we can kill him. We can abandon him. We can kill him, again. We end the game. His storyline has no closure; its made so we can comfortably hate him and never get to see his real drives and ethics. And thats why he deserved more.
what she also means: my son….. my be aut iful feli ne son……….
*parts a bead curtain as i enter the room, carrying a glass of lemonade*
hey….
nothing you ever read, watch, or participate in will be ideologically pure and without its problems. your quest to consume the most unproblematic material will be, in the end, fruitless. your enjoyment of anything will be sapped away, leaving you a husk starved for media.
it is okay to enjoy things that have problems to them, so long as you do it critically and with an open mind, and take care to consider others.
*leaves the way i came*
This is possibly the healthiest post I’ve seen on this site
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