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 bellatrys | |
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In the course of the mega-meta-fanfic-rights discussion sparked by the Star Wars amateur tie-in novel, which is still going strong at Making Light, someone named Laura posted this in response to questions of how, really, nonprofit fanfic can hurt authors other than in the feelings. John Norman has been rather pooh pooh on fan fiction based on his Gor novels. (The prevailing theory from people I've discussed this with is that fan fiction would be able to readily compete with his product based on quality of the fiction produced.) Still, the fandom surrounding his Gor books is a real potential turn off for fen. Knowing what the fen do, I and a number of others are not as willing to just pick up one of his novels to read and buy.Um. John Norman. That John Norman. The problem is his creepy fans. Uh-huh.... Seriously. John Norman???(You know, if I refused to read any authors based on the [real or presumable] existence of creeps among their readership, I don't think there's anyone I could read. Not even myself. Name me one fandom that doesn't have its bonkers fans - and that includes every genre, every century. Have you ever been to an English Dept. colloquium? And who really reads or doesn't read books based on who else might be reading them?) But come on - John Norman!?!? I'm trying not to make the obvious snark, but wotthehell - The only creepy fan who's offputting readers is John Norman's #1 fan, John Norman... Full disclosure: I read about a third of one John Norman novel - Dancer of Gor, when it first came out, before throwing it against the wall in disgust, and skimmed through others, while working in the library as a teenager. It was very instrumental in preparing the groundwork for my protofeminist consciousness-raising...Tags: fandom, feminism, humor, sexism
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From: bellatrys |
Date:
April 27th, 2006 07:10 pm (UTC)
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well, I didn't read it, but I *suspect*
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that I would agree with matociquala in specific as I do in general with this statement: Feminism is never an excuse for laughably bad prose. To which I would add, "forgettably bad prose," because there have been a number of would-be Edifying Feminist Fantasy books that I have read, but can't remember anything about other than the general experience which can be summed up as as much fun as chewing stale bread, and then are the pseudo-feminist ones that weren't quite laughably bad in their prose, but generally-nausea-inducing, foremost in my recollection being the Stardoc series by Viehl, in the gag-want-those-hrs-back way.
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From: bellatrys |
Date:
April 28th, 2006 11:06 am (UTC)
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seem to be two sorts of fans
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One, the "guy's guy" who like the sword-n-sorcery atmosphere and the idea of loads of Nubilian women lolling around in silk waiting to furnish them pleasure, not too sophisticated taste-wise, thinks that Boris Vallejo is a Great Artist and finds the increasingly-long Randian tracts about the Nature of Women to be annoying rather than inspiring.
The other are the ones who think that Norman is a prose stylist rivaled only, perhaps, by Ann Rice, and his weltanshauung The Truth Of The Ages upon which they model their lives. Some are men, and some are antifeminist women (although some of the latter *claim* to be feminist, and then go on to generic sister-bash, proving they're not) but of the ones writing on the 'net, they seem to be extraordinarly humorless & preachy RL BDSM practitioners - not just bondage practitioners who want a more exotic and aesthetic experience than the incredibly tacky black-leather and latex 20th century sphere, which would be kind of cool. (I don't think people realize how laughably tacky the black plastic and studs stuff really is, esp when you have "Death of Sardanapalus" Gilded Age decadence to compare it to.)
Like Randian Objectivists who think the Middle Ages were all about the Triumph of the Will, Individualism as Embodied In The Warrior Ethos, and turned SCA-only-not-really, because they insist on mixing in fantasy straight from Conan the Barbarian, refusing to hear that no, you can't mix in "Cimmerians" and drow and still be part of the Society for Creative Anachronism and then get kicked out of the Barony and get all pissy about it and rant forever about how they don't care about canon, they have Truth...
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| From: (Anonymous) |
Date:
April 28th, 2006 06:37 pm (UTC)
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I read one of the Gor books way back when, and I used to entertain myself with what I would have done differently if I'd been in the "heroine's" place:
1) Upon waking up and finding myself branded, I would NOT have fainted. I would have reported the incident to the police-- if I thought they would have been sympathetic, and not have simply asked me how drunk or stoned I was.
2) I would have driven to the largest city near me (Baltimore) and stayed there for a few days. It's not easy to kidnap somebody if they're surrounded by other people 24/7.
3) If that failed and I was taken captive, I would have simply laid low and tried to learn the lay of the land, learn the language, and so forth. I would not have done anything to make the slavers restrict my freedom even further.
4) I would have been NICE to my fellow slaves, and not been a bitch like Elinor. They're natives and they can tell me useful things. I'd have also tried to learn as many skills as possible. Youth and beauty only last so long, and if I failed to win my freedom, I didn't want to end up the local equivlent of a plantation field slave.
5) In Captive of Gor, Elinor begs the Amazonian Panther Girls to let her join them, so she can be free again. The leader agrees to do so-- if Elinor beats one of them in a hand-to-hand. Elinor, of course, wusses out and claims she is "too delicate" for that. (She also claims she is too delicate to be beaten.) Screw that nonsense. I'd have agreed and chosen to fight the Amazon nearest me in age and overall physical condition-- and given it my all.
--Architeuthis
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