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.
We’re all selective as to what canon we’re willing to accept anyway so even those who have read TOBT and/or MTD don’t necessarily accept one or both as canon. Some ppl insist that everything published is canon. But here’s the thing, there’s “the two crossover novels Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle, which Rice herself has now disavowed,” (X@sanguinivora) so like, even AR doesn’t demand that we accept everything as canon. At least that’s my own take on it.
TOBT: No spoilers. I don’t think Armand or Daniel are even mentioned in TOBT (I don’t have a copy nearby to check). But in their absence, it would appear that they were either A) unaware of what was happening w/ Lestat, or B) unwilling to help him. I don’t remember that ever being really developed, but Lestat does mention sometimes how it seemed like no one was WILLING to help, that they all were aware and left him to fend for himself.
HUGE SPOILER IN MTD under the cut, you have been warned.
MTD has alot of baggage bc there were those negative reviews that came out about it, and tbh I didn’t read them bc there was an avalanche of them, so I don’t know if any of them were fair or not, but I remember that AR made alot of fiery public response about it (to put it lightly) and was using her FB POTP army against any critical reviewers, it was a dark time, so that may have soured the fandom on that book a lot.
MTD was published in 1995 and it was supposed to be the LAST book in the series. 3 years later we got The Vampire Armand, because…………….
*****HUGE SPOILER*****
*****YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*****
At the end of MTD, Armand believes that Lestat really went to Heaven and Hell when shown a particular piece of evidence, and Armand chooses to go out into the sunlight, and die:
“I will bear witness. I will stand here with my arms outstretched,” [Armand] cried, “and when
the sun rises, my death shall confirm the miracle.”
I think some ppl have forgotten how to fandom or never knew, it’s not like there’s a manual of etiquette. That’s the short answer. And hasn’t this all been said in infinite variations?
Isn’t fandom about making/keeping friends who can revel in your deepest desires with you? Who can respect the fantasy world you want to live in, and go there with you?
Unfortunately, thanks to Tumblrland Hyperbole™ – which seems to have escalated exponentially in the past year – there are now:
Winner-take-all SJW attitudes about one-up-man-ship (”YOU ARE SO WRONG ABOUT YOUR HEADCANON AND IT OFFENDS ME GRRRR”; you can respectfully disagree, but do you need to take every opinion posted on someone else’s blog as a chance to soapbox?), or
Unnecessary competitions for popularity (”THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE RPer FOR THIS CANON CHARACTER”; no, they’re fictional, the internet is big enough for everyone to play with them, too).
There’s a daily parade of Real Life ppl who call us “creepy” for loving vampires, robots, thawed-out super soldiers, billionaire playboy philanthropists, aliens, women warriors, etc.
I’ve been called “creepy” at work. I tend to wear alot of black bc I don’t want to spend alot of money on work clothes, and sometimes I let my “macabre” interests slip out, seeking to make a connection; I shared a picture of Halloween makeup (Redditor Specialxk’s zombie walk face-and-throat trompe l’oeil makeup job) with someone at work I thought might be as impressed at the artistic skill as I was, and that person still won’t talk to me, some 3 weeks later.
Fandom, for me, is about making/keeping friends who can – and want to! – revel in our deepest desires, who can – and want to! – respect the fantasy world we want to live in, and go there together!
Specifically, currently, there are ppl in the fandom who seem to thrive on drama, and I considered answering this privately bc I don’t want to encourage it, but I’m going to take this as an opportunity to pay tribute to the one – yet another among MANY over the past several years that I’ve witnessed – who’s been pushed out because of it.
I don’t know what their public participation will be like in the future, I for one hope that the mun will take time off, and the fandom can collectively welcome them back, or the fandom can fracture, and let those who want to fandom with the mun do so, and those don’t should ignore ppl they don’t like, and invest the time and effort spent anonhating in more positive ways.
It seems like we’ve lost another RPer (merciful-death-archive), and what’s especially sad is that this RPer had been active for 3+ yrs, responding #ic and #ooc to all kinds of fandom topics, and these responses were often so well done that the mun was often complimented as sounding like the canon character! For their writing and all the mun did to encourage building friendships and welcome new people into the fandom, bringing ppl together to squee and critique and all the fun stuff we like to do about this series and its characters, this RPer was nominated as the fandom “Mom” figure, and it stuck.
This RPer was popular. Maybe it was the mun’s popularity that drove a group of ppl to try, time and time again, to tear the mun down with anonhate. They have their reasons. Supporters of the mun rallied time and time again to try to solve the issues as they arose, both privately and publicly, with little success, although there were periods when the anonhate tapered off.
This RPer was greatly appreciated by the fans in fandom who want to participate and actually make friends, isn’t that what fandom is about? The mun was someone who tried to promote building relationships in fandom, through fandom positivity. With the positivity blog, they did it anonymously, on their own time, spending tireless unpaid hours on it, so it wasn’t for self-promotion. It was for actual love of the fandom and the ppl in it who make it worth the effort by giving that love back through responses and fanworks.
We’ll miss merciful-death-archive, and I for one will welcome the mun (and all who have been pushed out) back when/if they are ready to return.
//Im out if i see one more hate anon about the pacific rim au. I thought you people would get your shit together for 5 seconds so we could have some fun but I guess not.
//Shocking notion to the haters out there; if you don’t like it, no one is forcing you to follow or participate.
Filed under: #OH BUT THEY ARE #U HAVE TO PLAY WITH ALL THE KIDS IN THE SANDBOX, #THE INTERNET IS #A VERY SMALL PLACE #AND EVERYONE THERE HAS TO PLAY WITH EVERYONE #AND GET ALONG #AND NO ICEPOPS FOR #PPL #WHO #DONT ##LIKE ###TO ###S#HAR#E ###BLARGHLARRARGHLERARGGGHLE
… seriously I don’t even know what’s going anymore, but that gif is so perfect, like, dramatic zoom on confused bird is pretty much the best response to anonhate that we have. Clearly:
Positivity is considered hypocritical at worst, and fluffy at best (whatever, I still like it and will promote it, I still have a bunch of it in my queue),
and rational arguments against anonhate have done little to reduce it,
Awwww *u* such high compliments! Much thank. Very appreciate. THIS IS FOR YOU bc u know they totally roleplay too:
gairid‘s headcanon is the inspiration for the shoes ;]
The short answer is:
Which includes RP. You wanna RP? DO IT. We can always use more canon (and OC!) VC characters. Join in! I’m so sporadic with it, I wish I could devote more time to RP than I do but I have this daily chore thing i do called a “job,” very time-consuming, really cuts into my fandom experience grrrrrr…
I have to clarify one thing – she HAS unfortunately had issues with RP in the past; when she found out about an RP forum a few years back, she had a cease and desist letter sent out (which I remember well because one of my best friends was wrongly blamed for having instigating that) to the domain owner. So, you know, enjoy VC RP cautiously, and let’s not give her reason to change that convenient policy of ignoring fic…
I hate to post this again, but this is another reminder to please keep our ask box free of gossip, hatred, or anything regarding rumors of who runs this blog.
//Seriously, guys. If you can’t keep yourself from sending hate or gossip or rumors to a POSITIVITY BLOG, maybe like.. put some tabasco on your send button or something so you learn.
I find it pretty ridiculous that people would send negativity to a positivity blog, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Has vcpositivity ever condoned or offered to investigate or encourage gossip, hatred, negativity, etc? No? Then why send it to them?
There are people who need to hold grudges and be negative, maybe it’s a shield against further hurt? Is it fun? I can’t understand it. Don’t really want to.
Why not keep private matters private, forgive ourselves for our trespasses (we’re imperfect! Stop expecting people to be some idealized version of perfection! I’ve definitely done this myself and I still feel bad about it, but I’m a work in progress, too), forgive those who have trespassed against us, knowingly or not (the Lord’s Prayer is actually a pretty decent serving suggestion for life in this regard), and promoting positivity. And THAT is incomprehensible to some people.
Carrying a grudge is heavier on the carrier than the person the grudge is against, but that’s just been my experience. Do you really need someone to kill themselves for you to feel better? Really? Do you think you can remove anyone from the face of the earth who has ever wronged you? People who have felt that way have been considered, historically, to be the real bullies.
Why waste these feelings on those people who have upset you? When you could be writing angsty fanfic we could all enjoy, or making a playlist of the angriest music (may I recommend NIN? Try “Burn,” I’m sure Louis would approve), doing some angry fanart… If you’re doing it for popularity, rather than try to cut someone down to make yourself feel bigger, try channeling these feelings into something you can release back into the world.
Maybe you’ll even get more popular for this constructive approach ;]
Even if it doesn’t lead to popularity, it’s amazing how being creative can relieve the anger.
No one ever deserves to be sent anon hate. NO ONE. EVER.
The responses to this have already said what I would have said, had I seen this earlier.
I’m not adding any graphics to this, I don’t have a WTF graphic that would accurately express how disappointed I am that anyone would send a message like this to anyone, ASIDE from the fact that this recipient has done nothing but promote VC fandom love and been considerate to everyone they interact with. I watch. I see it.
None of us are perfect, some further from it than others, but hateful messages like this one are revolting and have no place here. This should be our escape from the harsh unfairness of reality, a chance to relax and have fun with eachother.
TL;DR, Anyone who sends hateful messages like that is cordially invited to Unfollow and Block this blog.
It’s not Social Justice to bully someone relentlessly FOR YEARS, whether they are guilty or innocent.
PS. This is not open to discussion, I won’t entertain any arguments regarding my opinions on this because it’s not Social Justice to bully someone relentlessly FOR YEARS, whether they are guilty or innocent.
PPS. I went back and edited this bc I shouldn’t be a 3rd party either. Comment respectfully withdrawn.
CloudFlare has responded to a number of people that they are only a “pass through” – basically, they do host ebooks-tree’s content but only for brief times, and we believe that ebooks-tree has been using CloudFlare to mask where they are truly hosted.
However, per CloudFlare’s policy, they have passed on to us information about where ebooks-tree is actually hosted, and here it is:
Hosting Provider: —————– DFW Internet Services Inc. NET-DFW1 Webzilla Inc. WEBZILLA-US-204-155-148-0-24 root@dfw.net
By some crazy random happenstance (to quote Doctor Horrible), Webzilla’s US address listed on its domain name registration page happens to be only a few blocks away from FYC’s Heidi’s favorite Lush store, and she may swing by that building later this week to see whether it’s an office with people working on stuff, or a maildrop. Webzilla’s Terms of Use say that “pirating” content is a violation of their Acceptible Use Policy (and so are schemes to defraud) so ebooks-tree is in violation of their contract with Webzilla.
However, Webzilla doesn’t seem interested in DMCA safe harbor provisions, because they don’t adhere to them per their Terms of Use, which say:
Webzilla Limited is willing to consider, of the company’s own volition, complaints sent to a designated email address or sent in writing to the appropriate street address, that appear to be genuine and meritorious; but any such complaint may be considered to be prejudiced if it does not contain the name, address, telephone number, and an appropriate email address of the complainant.
DMCA submissions do not need to include a name, address or telephone number; there’s nothing barring you from letting Webzilla know that ebooks-tree has infringed on your work, though, and you can still use the template below. However, Webzilla hasn’t actually designated any specific email address or street address to receive such missives; you can find various snail mail and email info on their website. They have a contact form there, too.
If you hear back from anyone at Webzilla, please drop us an Ask and let us know what they said.
Also, we’ve had a bunch of Asks on this topic. here’s some answers on:
We’ll share more as we have it, and thanks to all of you for sharing so much info and support for fandom!
Yay AO3! Our tiny (but vocal) fandom titles are now off the ebooks-tree site!
Huzzah! So are our Hannah’s! (Heidi couldn’t find any of her fics, but there are so many allowed-under-law-because-it’s-public-domain copies of the novel Heidi up there that it was hard to find anything.)
Has anyone received an email response from ebooks-tree, or Webzilla? Drop us an Ask if you have!
We’ve been getting pings and @’s all morning about ebooks-tree.com who seem to be scraping/taking stories off of AO3 and hosting them as PDFs and mobi downloads on their site; the site seems to be pulling from UrBookLibrary as well. They’re not reading your “do not copy/duplicate” notes on your AO3 fic; their bots are pulling things directly from AO3, without AO3′s authorization or assent. It looks like they are pulling from Wattpad too, again without authorization or assent.
While the Ebooks-Tree DMCA page seems to imply that you need a lawyer or other “authorized person” to submit a takedown notice, you don’t; you can do it yourself.
As we’ve posted before, fanfic writers hold copyright in their stories, although not in lines/quotes from the works they’ve been inspired by, and because of that, fanfic writers can submit DMCA takedown notices, or have someone do it on their behalf. While this post isn’t legal advice (none of our posts on FYC are), you might want to consider using this template (well, the bolded bits) in telling ebooks-tree to take down your content:
Your Name and/or Pseudonym as an e-signature (or the name of the person you’ve authorized to submit this request, with a slash before it and after it): Link(s) to the unauthorized works (link to the pdf, the mobi and the page hosting all of it): Link(s) to an authorized version of your work (whether on AO3, tumblr, LJ or somewhere else): An email address of the submitter (include it again even if it’s in the header): This statement: I have good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. This statement: The information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.
(Fwiw, even though they claim that they comply with the Copyright Act, they aren’t compliant with the DMCA Safe Harbor rules, as they aren’t listed on the copyright.gov list of agents.)
You can also submit a complaint about ebooks-tree to CloudFlare, who hosts the site. Their DMCA page is at https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form – as a matter of law you do not need to include the legal name of the copyright claimant/the fanfic writer, but you should include the pseudonym that the fic was posted under if you don’t want to include a legal name or address.
Hey, folks. Just so you know, the OTW is aware of this, and we’re working on deciding what action we might take as an organization. For now, here are some instructions on how to request that your writing be taken off the site.
You guys, they took one of my fics ;A; I’ll be pursuing them. To check to see if they took one of yours, copy the url below and replace my pseud with yours.
Fight the theft of fanfic! I’m going to send them DMCAs complaints as shown above.
Sent my DMCA’s as well. Seeing as they have also pilfered the works of many published authors (including Anne Rice, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and more) I’m thinking they might be in for a world of hurt. I hope so, anyway. Thanks for letting me know so quickly yesterday- you are indeed Fabulosa!
You’re most welcome! I didn’t realize that they had published authors on there as well. It’s reprehensible to steal fanfic, but it takes massive balls to attempt to steal published work, too.
AR hasn’t mentioned it on FB, does anyone think she should be made aware? She’s supposedly got the best, most vicious lawyers…
I-want-my-IWTV 