The Parting of the Ways

[dweomeroflight]

WARNING: To my friends who like Katharine Kerr, you might not want to read this. Really. You really, really don't. You have been warned :P (But dw I still love you all!)

I suppose I should have seen this one coming really. I mean Al Zorra made it pretty clear during 15 Days of Deverry that she was an elitist git when she likened a post I made asking fellow Kerr fans about other fantasy books they liked to me stealing Kerr's wedding march. I am not joking. This really did happen. I was kinda like, totally gobsmacked at the time, but you know I just kind of put it to Kerr having elitist friends, rather than her being elitist herself.

And then there was the incident with brendanpodger and that feminist snark over nothing which kind of made me a bit afraid of Kit. And then you know, The Silver Mage sucked. I suppose it wasn't really going to take much else to completely disillusion me about her.

So when she wrote this stunningly idiotically, unprofessional entry, I was one of the many people asking myself wtf is your problem? (I wasn't the only one! Professional writer Jim Hines wrote some snark basically saying wtf too. I kind of wanted to marry him when I figured out who he was lol)

A number of people on LJ have been expressing their views on fanfic, so I thought I'd add mine. I despise it. It
shows a paucity of imagination, especially mainstream published and deified fanfic like WICKED and all the "Pride
and Prejudice" rip-offs. That kind of fanfic is to original work as Hamburger Helper is to meat.
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.
Fans who write non-porn stories about TV shows are a different kind of writer. If they love the shows, which are
a group production to begin with, that much, what the hell, they probably don't have the taste and imagination
to write anything original anyway. They are in the same boat as embroiders who buy pre-cut yarn, pre-painted
canvas needlepoint kits. It's a nice hobby, and who am I to complain -- just as long as they leave my work alone.
Porn is porn and will always be so. Nothing to say there.

Yes, apparently Kit is an elitist snob after all :( I would explain all of the reasons why this entry makes no sense, but I'm assuming that my flist is intelligent enough to figure it out themselves.

However, as annoyed as I was at the time, in hindsight this is so idiotic that its quite funny.

Especially when Kit is essentially saying that;

a) everyone who writes fan fic is unoriginal, lazy at writing and unimaginative
b) all scriptwriters for TV are shameless hacks
c) Television writers only want money so its ok to write fan fics about tv (at least I *think* thats what she was claiming)
d) she claims that everyone who happened to disagree with her was a troll (yes, yes I know there were trolls involved, but I saw plenty of pissed off deverry fans in the mix too).
e) She tells transformative professional writers to get a real job
f) An apology consists of her insulting at the same time as she apologises

Fail. Just wow. Total facepalm fail :P I think I read a grand total of three comments that were actually rude without cause.

I also really enjoyed this quote from someone on fandom wank who managed to screen cap the whole mess (those evil, evil people). I admit to choking with laughter at university and freaking the guy out on the computer next to me. I couldn't help it. Seriously.

So fanfiction is like doing predesigned needlepoint? Er, what?

To which someone else replied with

With pre-cut "yarn" (it's embroidery floss, not yarn), no less. As opposed to, I don't know, spinning it yourself from cotton you picked yourself and then dyeing it yourself from dye you made from walnut hulls, berries, and tree bark. Yourself.

And this comment had me nearlly crying with laughter, coz you know, I have to admit that I was one of the ones who may have done this and fuck its just a funny metaphor.

Kerr's take on her readers' reaction is so far gone into denial that she's past the crocodiles, out of the water, and slogging dazedly through the Ethiopian desert. And when she finally makes it into Addis Ababa and checks into an Internet cafe to ask folks to wire her money to get home, her email is still going to be filled with comments saying, "DUDE. WHAT THE FUCK."

So yep, I'm done with Ms Kerr. I'm done with her books and her blogs and her Deverry 15 community lol. Someone who had that little respect for her fans apparently doesn't need readers.

Though I cannot tell a lie and say that some of the shit she was writing was some of the funniest stuff I've seen on the net in a long while :) Maybe I should thank her for that :P And you know, I don't mind if other people want to be her fans, but ya know, a girl's got to rant somewhere, or what else is a blog for?

Comments

[brendanpodger.livejournal.com]

To be fair to Kit, she was I thought a voice of reason in the fiasco you mention on my blog.

To a large extent I think this whole controversy is an generational thing. Most of the authors getting upset have been in the business for a long time and the attitudes they portray are from that era.

When people like Katharine, GRR Martin and Diana Gabaldon said they wouldn't dream of writing Fan Fic when they were beginning as writers they are talking about submissions to professional or semi-pro fan-zines. Of course I think it took George three posts before he made it clear that was what he was speaking of so a lot of fan-fic writers saw him as sneering at them with what seemed to them as a "I didn't need to write Fan-Fic - LOSERS!" attitude. And given that he later admitted that as soon as he was 'officially' invited to write about someone else's characters he jumped at the chance, this perceived attitude them seemed hypocritical.

My favourite slap in the Fan-writers face from Kit was where she accused them of being lazy since they didn't do their own research into the era they were writing about. To me that was a classic "I had to this so you have to too". It reminded me of a Marion Zimmer Bradley comment in one of her anthologies where she spoke of not approving of calls for Positive Discrimination since, to get where she was, she had to work as hard if not harder than the male authors, and she saw PD as allowing mediocrity to flourish amongst female authors(By the way, notice Sex-Fail is back on the agenda?)

Here is a big BUT!: That if people are haranguing Kit outside of posts in which Fan Fic is a subject or getting abusive in any way, I do NOT approve. Looks like she has had to delete posts about her new cat so I presume there was spillage from the fanfic posts. Definitely not on, no matter the provocation.

[dweomeroflight.livejournal.com]

I agree about the trolls that you speak of. They were rude and uncalled for and dumb and I already assured Kit that she was correct to be upset by them in a private email. I want you to know that i do not approv of that sort of behaviour, and I commented on her first entry and havn't commented on anything since. I do not condone cyber bullying. But I also do not condone authors writing unprofessional, insulting bullshit. Either way, it is over and hopefully it will stay over, but I just wanted to vent on the safety of my own blog.

[dweomeroflight.livejournal.com]

And the honest truth is I didn't see the trollish comments, I evacuated the building and din't read what went down with them.

To be clear, the comments I posted on here were on someone else's blog, not at Kit's blog. I agree with them because

a) the embroidery metaphor made zero sense
b) the problem I had with all of this was the fact that Kit didn't acknowledge that she had made some pretty insulting remarks herself and some of these reached actual Deverry fans.

I repeat I really, really do not like the trolls. Ever. Ok? Seriously I really, really wouldn't like you to think I'm like them

[travertineskies.livejournal.com]

-rubs back- It's okay, just let it be, and this will be the end of that, no? :)

[dweomeroflight.livejournal.com]

lol yep ;) Just wanted to end with a post... and come on, you have to admit that those last comments from others are pretty funny... especially the one about the Ethiopian desert. Seriously. I lol'd out loud :P