Keira Marcos

There is a certain kind of writer who attaches no value to their own work on an emotional level. They write for attention. It’s the same kind of “writer” who dreams of writing a book so they’d be rich and famous. This is also the kind of “writer” who wants to write a book about their life because apparently, we ALL want to read about it and just don’t know it. This attention-seeking writer actually taints the fandom, and readers, with their pathological need for attention. They encourage readers to offer them suggestions for future plot developments, character arcs, and even pairings. Then when they write themselves into a hole because of they actually listened to all the crap they get back—they blame their “muse” for not being inspired to complete the story.

Of course, the worse part of an attention-seeking writer are the readers they leave in their wake who feel entitled to intrude on the process of other writers because they felt validated by a previous experience. They are utterly comfortable providing a list of wishes and wants to other writers in their feedback. If they want a certain pairing in a story—they demand it and will abuse a writer if they don’t get it.

I’ve said before that reader entitlement is the ugliest part of fandom. I’ve been threatened with rape and murder for not updating when a reader felt I should. There have been times when readers have essentially had screaming fits on my contact form or in an email because I didn’t write the pairing they wanted or I chose a Stargate project over a Harry Potter one for Rough Trade.

Some readers take my decisions regarding my own writing as a personal insult and have no problems letting me know that I’m ruining their life by not writing what they want me to write.

Recently, I had a reader send me a single sentence email, and it was:

“I was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, I hope you finish Phoenix before I die.”

At first, I was outraged, but I wasn’t particularly surprised since I’ve seen this kind of emotional blackmail in fandom before. I deleted the email without a response, and I put the sender on a filter in my email that automatically trashes any email she sends me in the future. Because I want no part of her bullshit but I do wonder how many other writers she’s approached with this disgusting tactic.

Those who only read in fandom don’t genuinely understand the creative process. They don’t understand the intimacy of writing or the emotional risk of posting it in public. They never will understand, really, and investing yourself in trying to make them is just intellectual masochism.

1. Your deep, personal investment in my work makes me really uncomfortable.

2. Sometimes your feedback is phrased in such a way that I worry the line between fiction and reality is pretty much nonexistent for you.

3. I hate it when you read between the lines of my story and make up shit that didn't actually happen then make it seem like you're really unhappy with your assumptions and blame me. It's not cool.

4. Your homophobia makes me deeply uncomfortable. (Every single time someone emails me asks me what the pairing is going to be for Lord of the High Elves because they'll be so upset for wasting their time reading it if it's Harry/Draco)

5. Being a Big Name Fan isn't something I strived for, I hate being called one, and it's not contagious so stop trying to rub yourself all over me. It's weird.

Recently, I became the fandom Agony Aunt against my will. This is absolutely not a complaint so if you've written me for advice and gotten it, don't think I'm being an asshole about it. In fact, this post isn't even a complaint about that aspect--it's about the subject of the last FOUR emails I've gotten.

You see, four different authors in multiple fandoms have come to me in the past month to discuss plagiarism. They've had their work taken, sometimes reworked and posted publicly with little or no credit. One was so outrageous and blatant that I could do nothing but stare at it in shock. I have a pretty strict rule on remixing my work -- the answer is always no. It's always going to be no. Explore my ideas and themes your own way-- yes. But I find it offensive as fuck that anyone would take my work, edit it to suit themselves (like my work is inferior and needs to be fixed) and claim it for themselves.

I gave each of these authors the same basic advice: You have every single right to be unhappy and say so. Also, I've got your back if shit gets ugly.

Yes, we can be inspired the work of others--that's the basic foundation of fandom but don't take other people's works for your own. Remixing should never, ever be done without permission. And really, most of these people aren't even "remixing" in the true sense of the word. They're just taking someone's story and changing it to suit themselves because the author did something they didn't agree with or whatever. It's extremely ugly fucking behavior and posting it online is just another layer of disrespect.

Let's just be good citizens and remember -- don't be an asshole.



Got a fandom problem you'd like me to answer in public? It can be as anonymous as you'd like -- Fill out a contact form and choose the subject "Fandom Agony Aunt": http://keiramarcos.com/contact-me/

I asked the Minions on my website to ask me questions. I expected ten or so. I got... quite a bit more than that:

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There are those of you don't write for whatever reason and that's cool. I do wish everyone wrote. Wouldn't that be awesome if we could just bombard the world with lots of amazing writing?

I'm approaching 2 million words of posted fan fic. My current total is: 1,682,530

Let's say I write between 800 to 1000 words an hour. Middle ground -- say, 900 words an hour. At that rate, I've dedicated to 1869 hours to just writing fan fic since basically 2007. That doesn't count editing, beta, plotting, or haphazard research. I looked at a few documents and this is what I got on a few of my projects writing/editing/beta only:

Old Black Magic - 133k - 455 hours

Serpent King - 105k - 496 hours

No Enemy Within - 55k - 130 hours -- this is not including the first two drafts of this fic.

Ties That Bind - 353,049k - 734 hours -- this number isn't accurate because I can't find the first file where I wrote what was basically the first 150k of this series as one story.

I might have a few... issues.

I'm all bitchy. No, really. I'm sure it's probably related to the fact that I'm on my period (sorry for the TMI but not really I mean, you're reading my journal so you get what you get).

A few weeks (months?) back CP did an epic rescue of a box of discs I had of old stuff I wrote and I found some Harry/Hermione fan fiction that I wrote in college. I've been playing with it, shaping it up and what not. None of it is finished and one of them as 180k (so far). I found a Wesley Crusher fic (Star Trek) that will never ever in a million years see the light of a day AND a Sam/Jack (SG1) that is even worse. I have discovered, however, that following Wil Wheaton on Twitter has ruined my adolescent fantasies about him because he's really rather a dork. A funny dork but a dork nonetheless. His bromance with John Barrowman (which he ships, I do not) is pretty funny.( Read more... )

You know, just remember-- I'm just a girl. Standing (sort of) in front of a reader. Not giving a shit if you like me or not.

Anyone have any information on Area 52?

It's been down over week for me.

I have a family FULL of ungrateful bitches so I didn't need any more in my life. My limit has been reached. Sorry if you wanted a slot -- one of my aunts is old as fuck so when she kicks it -- we'll have a lottery to see who gets to take her place.

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