As if the fact that Twilight fan fiction and cringey novel Fifty Shades of Grey has sold more copies than undisputedly great novel The Catcher In The Rye didn’t provide a solid enough argument against fan fiction, Game of Thrones tormenter George R. R Martin’s first appearance in Australia, held in Brisbane yesterday, saw the author taking aim at dubious fan fiction penned by the souls of the untameable, the passionate, the persistent.
According to The Brisbane Times, George R. R Martin’s media conference held ahead of this weekend’s Supanova steered towards the polarising topic of fan fiction — how endearing, but ultimately awful it usually is, and how writers should stop it, quickly. George R. R Martin discussed the phenomena of fan fiction, by criticising the unoriginality associated with lifting pre-packaged characters, emotions and narrative nuances into your own flawed prose: “It’s a lazy way to go when you’re just taking my characters.” Lazy? Hm, try telling that to “Winterfell.Cullen” who wrote a 4,600 word epic about Bella Swan marrying Jacob Stark.
Martin went on to assure fans that he gets the flattery, but, no really, you shouldn’t have: “I recognise that it’s an act of love …[but] I would rather they make up their own characters and their own stories and not just borrow my world.” He persisted in saying that the characters fan fic authors aim to paint with their own words are destined to lack accuracy: ““I know what they would do and what they can’t do, and some fan writers take over them and make them do things to my mind that are wildly out of character.” Case in point, the fan fic that has Catelyn Stark as Westeros‘ resident latte-sipping PI…. :/
Martin also commented on Australia’s extraordinary talent for pillaging the torrent shop come Game Of Thrones time: “In one sense it shows a tremendous interest in the show…but if people were actually paying for the show, all that money could go into the show, we could have more special effects and more dragons and more actors, that would be good.” Holy shit. You had me at ‘more dragons’. <3
George R. R Martin will be similarly making fan fic connoisseurs feel guilty about their obsession in his talk held at The Opera House next week.
Via The Brisbane Times.
Title photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez via Getty.
