To my knowledge, we don’t really have a name, like the Potterheads for HP or the Hiddlestoners for Tom Hiddleston 😦
We’re just “VC fans.” If I’m differentiating between different vampire media, I’ll say “Ricean vampires” or “VC vampires.”
It’s an old fandom, so old that I’m pretty sure it predates fandom being the recognized thing it is today. We were also strongly discouraged from creating fanfic, so maybe that’s why we don’t have a name. VC fanfic was underground, the fandom was in hiding, we didn’t want to draw unwanted attention by having a name. The Talamasca slogan might as well be our fandom’s slogan, too: We watch and we are always here.
Sometimes I refer to us as “People Off the Page,” to differentiate us from the VC Facebook fans who Anne Rice calls her “People of the Page.” More on that here. They used to be a formidable army she could sic on other fans/reviewers/etc., but things have been peaceful for awhile now, thankfully.
I used to refer to us tumblr fans as “fanged little trash kittens” or “fanged little trash monsters” more frequently than I do now. Probably had to do with the fandom trend at one point of saying “I’m such X-trash!/I’m trash for X!” meaning that you loved X thing/character. Seemed only natural that we would be fanged trash creatures. And it’s gender-neutral.
Any variation on the words Vampire and Chronicles doesn’t wholly work for us, since there are so many other Vampire series and Chronicles series.
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.
I’ve seen this post going around and yes, I agree, do not trust Anne Rice. I get no satisfaction from adding to this post, I get no pleasure in Call Out culture, but it’s important information that needs to be shared.
The way AR sicced her zealous fans on these reviewers, her behavior was most unfortunate and beneath her. I hope it’s behind her now, but with the new series coming (maybe. *rolls eyes* it’s been 84 years) there will inevitably be less-than-glowing reviews and those reviews have a right to exist.
Another example of AR siccing her fans on a reviewer was the Punishing Pandora fiasco, in which Kayleigh Herbertson, a blogger, tore up her own physical copy of Pandora and made it into other art, which, hey! It’s her copy of the book, she should be allowed to do as she pleases with it! AR was Not Impressed with any of this project, and sicced her fans on the blogger. As
Herbertson wrote:
Edit: It has come about that this post has been shared by Anne Rice herself, leading to a lot of angry comments (though also some very thought provoking ones). Please note that I am a small scale blogger, with less that 100 followers. Whilst I’m sorry to offend the masses of Anne Rice fans now flooding my page, please keep this in mind. My original intention was to buy a beaten up book second hand to turn into craft once reading it. This happened to be Pandora. I’m sorry for not mentioning this from the word go but I can’t believe that Anne Rice has been so affronted to share this to her Facebook Page knowing how biased her fan base would be when reading my post and the result that this would cause.At this time I choose not to remove this post or the comments, the only difference is that a well-known author has singled out a single post from a tiny blog for her followers to demonize. Thank you for your time.
In my opinion, it is never acceptable to threaten to or cause real harm to real people over fictional works. We have a right to review works put out into the public domain and an author should know that they risk criticism. We have a right to buy a copy of their book and turn it into f*&’ kitty litter if we want to. That’s among our rights as a consumer of the book.
This is a VC fandom blog and I try to accentuate the positive, and encourage fanworks, etc. I try not to criticize AR herself, but this is a very important thing to inform new fans about and to keep in mind, if you lived through these times. I’ve also mentioned the war on fanfic she waged on her fans in the 90s. Not a pretty part of our fandom’s history but it happened and we should be mindful of it.
It seems like she has stopped encouraging this kind of behavior, and I hope for the sake of the fandom she will keep in mind the influence she has over her more zealous fans and continue her current attitude of ignoring what she doesn’t approve of.
The VC Fandom on FB: OH MY GOD ALIENS, ATLANTIS & VAMPIRES, IT’S THE BEST COMBO EVER, THIS BOOK IS GOING TO BE THE BEST IN THE SERIES. ANNE YOU DESERVE A NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE!! YOU’RE THE BEST WRITER EVER!!!
The VC Fandom on Tumblr: What the actual fuck Anne? Have you ever heard of an editor? We love you, but you’re scaring us here… look at us, we’re desperately clinging to the idea of mermaid vampires to cope.
(½) I was… not expecting such a response to my POTP question. I want to clarify first that I am grateful for your response. That I mean sincerely; I harbor no ill-will towards you, and nothing in this response is sarcastic. I’ve always had issue with anyone saying “People from X group are [negative remark here]” if I belong to said group. Thank you for reminding me that such statements can be general, rather than applying to everyone in said group. And I only knew about the fanfic thing –
(2/2) – and the fact that negative reviews of her work were brought up on her page; I didn’t know there were fans who attacked reviewers. The bullet point about the “Beauty’s Release” review sounds like she was being sincere that she didn’t want fans to attack the reviewer, and I don’t see any rabid rage in the comments, but I don’t doubt they did attack the reviewer in place(s) I didn’t see. I was completely unaware of the vast majority of what you included in your response. Sincerely, I thank you.
You are very welcome! What a gracious reply. Anon is referring to this post about the history of the People of the Page that I wrote (with the help of some fandom friends who did not want to be credited for obvious reasons) recently.
I’m very happy to answer questions when they are asked in a respectful manner, as this Anon did, and it’s even better when I have successfully convinced them of my point(s) let them draw their own conclusion(s) based on the information that I have, or what I can gather from the fandom at large who see/reblog-and-add-to my posts.
Heartfelt Thanks~*
…to all who saw that post and liked/reblogged, just to be supportive or to have that post available in case they needed to Explain Someone A Thing at some point. It touches me when you do that; it makes it worth the time and effort I put into gathering the facts and answering such delicate questions ^_______^
I struggled with this answer, because, while it would be diplomatic to simply apologize, I won’t apologize that it was hurtful, because, as you’ll learn in this post, that group of “more obsessive” people have been and are much crueler to their victims than I was with that one word about them.
~Here is a picture of Our Lady of VC for the more obsessive fans to frame and worship~
Side note, before we go any further: Anon, why do you care who I lump anyone in with? I could say everyone who follows X is “a gullible baby,” and everyone who follows Y is “a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world,” but that doesn’t make either true. Obviously, if you don’t think you follow AR “slavishly,” then you don’t! Take a breath, this is tumblrland, this blog is for VC fandom love and fanworks (and fandom etiquette and education sometimes), it’s meant to be an outlet, an escape from reality, so don’t take things personally.
This is actually a great opportunity to educate you, Anon, and anyone else who might not be aware of the history between Anne Rice, her “People of the Page” (her phrase, not mine. ”POTP”) followers, her fandom outside of POTP, and outside people who have had opinions on her works. I could write a dissertation on this topic but it’s not worth the effort; this post will be TL;DR for most people. I’m doing this so I can tag it and use it again the next time this topic comes up.
The short answer is: In the beginning, all of AR’s FB followers were POTP. No distinction needed to be made, because they were ALL highly obsessive to the point that they were her online army she could rally to attack people/reviewers who dared to have an opinion on her works. There have been many instances in which something critical to AR came along – or something that she INTERPRETED as critical – and AR makes a statement on her FB page about it, which is a thinly veiled order rallying her troops to inundate that source with their “discussion” on that review. Sometimes her POTP simply made so many personal attacks in the comments on the offending critical post that the victim is forced to withdraw/delete their review. This whole cycle has happened too many times. In fact, AR has recognized this pattern and actually said that she will no longer link to negative reviews of her works (½/14):
“Guys, I am always open to publishing negative reviews of my work for consideration, to balance the many positive reviews to which I link. But the negative reviewer must bring the review here and request it. When I’ve linked to negative reviews for discussion, some of the reviewers in question have felt that they were unfairly targeted; and they have objected to some of the comments made on their reviews. It just doesn’t work. So I no longer volunteer any negative review, no matter how well written, for discussion. Again, reviewers are welcome to bring their reviews to the page, and post links and offer them for discussion. Same with blog posts. I might not repost every single one; but I’m happy to see them posted on the page and to read them and consider them for reposting.”
“… if I link to them for discussion, some of these people get very upset. They accuse me of “demonizing” them. They call the People of the Page “hell hounds” for their comments. And admittedly, some people do make very unpleasant comments…”
She has 1.1 million followers as of this posting, and I, myself, am one of them. So, of all 1.1 million, at least one of her followers is not an obsessive “hell hound,” as described above.
I actually think she has moved past much of the drama, and now her POTP (both our kind, Anon, and the “more obsessive” kind) are more focused on news items, poetry, VC adaptations & casting ideas, headcanons/canon requests for AR, and other good things she likes discussion on. I enjoyed her #Fan Questions for Lestat, and the 15 yr old inside me still gets excited when she posts something about “Where are they now?” like Lestat doodling on a napkin, or the whole coven all flopped together on a couch watching Hell on Wheels, that’s good stuff *u*
Hit the jump for links to examples of POTP vs. reviewers clashing, etc.
1. War on Fanfic
So this is before the POTP’s time, but it’s worth noting that Anne Rice waged a War on Fanfic in the 1990′s. She had every right to do so, but it destroyed the fandom. She sicc’d her pack of lawyers on all VC fanfic authors, and forced speculative fiction (old-timey-wimey word for “fanfic”) sites to shut down. The fandom was driven underground; fanfic could only be shared very privately, possibly through email exchanges or carrier pigeons.
This experience taught AR a valuable lesson: Anything that she didn’t approve of could be shut down by forces she could marshal. Lawyers cost money, and take on only legitimate legal cases, and legal battles can get messy (she’s had other legal issues but I won’t go there, you can use your newfangled googley-woogly machine for that).
Here’s where the POTP became AR’s army, and they didn’t cost a penny, and there were no legal ramifications in sending them forth on her behalf.
“Kayleigh Herbertson found Pandora to be a poorly written novel where the vampires didn’t act like vampires… after Herbertson was done writing the review she took the book, which was already falling apart, and turned it into decoupage.”
“[AR] chose to respond by posting a link on her Facebook page (where her 740 thousand Facebook followers could find it) and appended the invitation: “Comments most welcome.”.“
Her POTP left an enormous amount of harassing comments on that page, and eventually, it was taken down. Here are my two favorite POTP comments from that article:
HOW DARE YOU EVEN COMPARE SHITTY ASS STEPHANIE MEYER TO THE QUALITY WORK THAT IS ANNE RICE HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU FUCKING HAG, I HOPE YOU GET HERPES
Aaaaand here’s AR’s call to action discussion on Knights’ review: “… I stumbled on this amazing negative review of my erotica, “Beauty’s Release,” … I would honestly welcome opinions on this review. Please understand: I am not trying to incite “fans” to pile on this reviewer. Not at all. What I welcome here is honest discussion because the review puzzles and baffles me. This is perhaps the longest negative review I’ve ever seen of my erotica, and I’m somewhat, well, stunned, by the tone, intricacy, and length of all this… Your comments are most welcome.”
Hope this helped! I think we’re all coexisting pretty well these days, her People Of The Page and her – what I like to call ourselves – People Off the Page. Let’s just all take a chill pill and enjoy this series together, and if not, let’s just do it in our own way. Live and let live.
“People of the Page” is how AR addresses all the people who follow/comment/Like her FB page, but more specifically… it’s her army.
Hold up, let me clarify. I, for example, “Like” AR’s FB page, so I see her posts on my FB feed. I like to read them, and sometimes I Like them, or comment.
The difference between me (i.e. part of the non-PotP VC fandom) and the real “People of the Page” is that they are fervently devoted to her and defend her at the slightest provocation w/out question (sometimes that’s good). For example, the big Amazon review conflagration. I actually haven’t read up on that whole thing so I don’t know exactly what happened.
ANYWAY, the bottom line is that these PotP often side with her on the NO FANFIC issue (and other issues that AR holds dear), which comes into direct conflict with the rest of the VC fandom, who DO support fanfic, etc.
So we might never reconcile our relationship w/ the PotP but we can coexist with them. Hope that helped!
ooc; I think the thing that bugs me the most about the “People of the Page” is how quick they are to become an army of actual bullies? Once upon a time, when Mater got bad reviews, she’d actually go on Amazon herself and throw a tantrum. She’d attack her own fans if they did something she disagreed with (ie: fanfiction). More recently, she’s tended to not be the aggressor herself. She’d post “look at this negative review” and encourage “discussion.” Many of the “People of the Page” would then jump to her immediate support.
An example that comes to mind is this time she linked to an independent blogger’s page. The blogger had not fancied Pandora, so rather than waste the book, she made the pages into paper crafts. I can’t remember the exact wording, but Mater said something to the extent of, “This person disliked Pandora so much that they found it necessary to cut it to pieces. Comments most welcome.” Tons of people flooded this indie blogger’s page and left her disgusting comments about how she was not enough of an intellectual to “understand” AR’s writing and comparing the reviewer to a Nazi. Rather than, idk, stop the bullying since AR now claims to champion anti-bullying, she applauded the “discussion.”
Legit the People of the Page sometimes act like the Cult of AR or something.
Wow.
I….
Wow.
YES, thank u for the excellent addition, merciful-death. I’d forgotten about the Pandora thing, which is a much better example. I was putting it very delicately, but yes, the real terror is the sense that they are her unquestioning army of minions and can do damage by the sheer amount of them. Now I can really use this post as a resource in the future when anyone asks the difference between PotP & the rest of the VC fandom.
I-want-my-IWTV 