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ANNE RICE: FANFICTION'S TERRORIST
September 6, 2007

In all the years that we have been writing fanfiction, in all the years that we have perfected and imperfected the craft of the writing of characters that we may or may not have public access to, but we would anyway under Nominative use, there has been very few people who have objected to this free publicity and outreach of fan support for the creations being presented. In fact, so many have accepted it with open arms, and actually encouraged it in recent years. All one has to do in order to prove that statement true is to search for “The L Word” on The Google to find out a sort of contest they were doing about the show and it's fanfics. And those that do not accept this flattery are seen as either outright idiotic, insane, or so cruel that they cannot seem to find their own soul in the process of finding ways to make sure their immediate wishes are kept.

We can only come to the conclusion that Anne Rice has officially met all three of those prerequisites. That, and then some.

In case anyone in the fanfiction world has just crawled from under a rock, Rice is, all things considered, the go to woman when it comes to fanfiction opposition. She released a statement on her website in 2000 that stated that her works were copyrighted and that fanficiton was not permitted. That in itself, even if she had that right and even if she could go above the reasoning and United States law of fair use and of Normative use, which permits the usage of otherwise copyrighted material for purposes of education, parody, and for certain uses, all of which are nearly ignored by critics of peer to peer programs and torrent sites, even if she was able to do that, she would have been fine, if she would have stopped there. If she knew that what she would do next would damage her already tarnished reputation from the former alone, then she would have still done the latter. This is, in short, threatening e-mails, not by her publishing company, but by her own hand. She had threatened to take legal actions for the authors of the fanfiction she saw, but not just of her own characters, but of ANY fanfictions that she saw, even if that has nothing to do with her own characters, on the author page or site. One can safely assume, as well, that these were threatening in the nice way. We could be all but guaranteed that these could've been laced with profanities and laced with crude and uncalled for comments, that no one in their right mind, on their worst day, could fathom up to even think of saying, much less utter. Take it from someone who knows what words can do to a soul of not only the receiver, but the deliverer, some things are better left unsaid.

So now it is 2007. There is, sadly, no relax in her opinion and statement, or at least we do not see any, as there is little to no Rice fanfiction anywhere on the internets. There is still opposition to how she conducts herself, and she still writes reviews for Amazon.com, something that anyone may have thought she would've stopped after the entire fiasco that occurred with her and the site back in 2004. But now, according to her, she is a bornagain Christian. Read, found God! And she has written new books, more or less from a Christian standpoint. And to further her Christian standpoint, she has laid out support for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and is now pro-life (anti-abortion). One could say that she is a changed woman, and that she is truthful in her attempts at solidifying herself as who she says she now is. They have the right to believe her.

But if she is right, and everything that she says is true, then she has never once considered what or who she would side with. For one, she has endorsed a conservative Democrat, who was one of the original instrumental Senators that approved of a war that has gotten well over 3,500 of our men and women killed in Iraq over whatever the hell President Bush's excuse is this given week. She has endorsed a position on abortion that has included burning down abortion clinics and has outright ignored any condition of rape, incest, or both, or anything that would make a woman pregnant against her will. She has endorsed an empty effort to help the needy. One that would do so would not try to brag about it and make it cover three fourths of the web site that you run. You would not talk, you would do. Give blood, endorse the American Red Cross, start a protest of how poorly the effort TO do anything went down there. Activists are gettting all the rave these days, especially celebrity activists. So why did she not do any of these things, or at least not outright publicize that she was doing any of the above things?

But back to this “found God” claim. Anne, you are far from the holy land, and even though, by the rule of the Bible, God forgives everyone, even the almighty one should have a sick feeling in His stomach for having to do so. Not for creating vampire stories, I consider myself a Christian and I have a vampire fetish like you would not believe, but for your terrorism on the fanfiction community. Yes, terrorism. You had, in the span of a month, went from just a nutcase, to a cruel, heartless, evil nutcase with a sprinkle of cowardness mixed in there for good measure. You have done what not even the MPAA hasn't been able to do: Get away with idle threats in the sickest of ways. You had tried to kill what you could not, and then never looked back. Anne, you are not against fanfiction. This is not the issue here, if it was just that, you would not use your stance to make idle threats against fanfiction that was not even in your own fandom. No, this is not against fanfiction, but against inferiority. According to many reviewers on many sites, you have a tendency to be stubborn on your way of writing, and it is not a good one. Some of the reviews are very unflattering. Take in these reviews from the masses, and then add in Anne's fans who wrote this fanfiction, that probably has ten time the talent and ten times the skill than she would ever hope to have. Jealousy reaps a heavy reward, and before we all know it, here we are. Anne, using whatever weapon she can to make sure she is the only one that is known for anyone, quote-on-quote, good. There would be no one to compare her to, since she would've been the only one that you had.

Found God?

The hell you did, Anne.

If you found God, then the very least that you could be doing right this second, when you finish hearing these words, is to write a formal apology to your fans and to the people that you made threats to in this childish act of jealousy and cowardness. Make sure they know that God is all about forgiving and all about knowing when you are wrong, which you were, and still are today.

For if we to delve into this issue further, we would have to get into fair use. While I personally touched up on Nominative use before in another issue, fair use is, in fact, in play. For one, the fanfiction did nothing to imply sponsorship by Anne or her publishing company. Two, as I have stated before, we could label ALL fanfiction, whether or not it is meant as humor or not, a parody of a created work. Third, I don't recall Anne losing anything because of the said fanfiction. Even if she still had a legal case, the odds of her winning any case is slim to none because of fair use, nominative use, and there is no punitive damages being had here. Plus, any bet that fanfiction writers are under the protection of these laws could be won easily.

And there it is, Anne, your “Coup de grâce”. Whatever you thought you could do against us, the very people who you claim are making your working habit a living hell, the very people who you terrorized to the point where they disappeared from the fanfiction world, just for your own sick pleasure, are the very same people who didn't need to take it from you. The websites which you harassed were the same websites who could've taken you on, and not only won the case, but made you fit their bill for the court costs and any counter suit they could bring up against you.

Basically put, I'm speaking for the rest of the fanfiction world that has had it with you. We have had it with you, the copyright police that ignore any law that puts them in the disadvantage, your threats, lies, deceit, and of you claiming to found God when the god you found is certainly not the same God we would be believed to think you found. You need to make apologies and you must make them today, while there is still breath in your fading career, before your god falls, and before someone can take that final stake to the heart of your heart has the opportunity to finally put you to rest. Either give us the right to defend ourselves and give your so-called fans the respect they really deserve, or just go away.

Us fanfiction writers have more important things to worry about, more important things to give our love to, more important things to perfect our craft on, than you.

Good night, and good luck.