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"An Open Letter to Mr. Jordan"
**For those who don't know, Robert Jordan is the author a fantasy series called the Wheel of Time**
**For those who don't know, Robert Jordan is the author a fantasy series called the Wheel of Time**
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"An Open Letter to Mr. Jordan"
**For those who don't know, Robert Jordan is the author a fantasy series called the Wheel of Time**
<In a December 2002 interview with the fan websites wotmania.com and dragonmount.com, Robert Jordan said, “The one thing I do try to keep an eye out for is slash or KS fiction using my characters… if you write erotica using my characters and post it, I WILL find you and I will come down on you like the Hammer of God. I’ve found some very raunchy, and very badly written, examples of that, and I don’t like it a bit.”>
Dear Mr. Jordan, Hammer of God,
I would not consider most online, sexual fanfiction to be genuine erotica—that is, fiction with the intent to arouse. Nor would I call it badly written, but perhaps that’s just the defensive author in me. What must of it is, is something between a joke and a little tease, sometimes personal fantasies and scribblings that someday might take on the flesh and colour of an original character or novel. They are to most a passing fancy, and to some something more serious, something in them taken from your work or the work of another published author and given a new light. In other words, crude though some fiction might be, it is inspired by you, ready to inspire another, quickly forgotten as a new idea comes along.
In your defense, I should find erotica difficult to write in the WOT as you have written it, and feel that anyone who did write it would have missed the point. Thus I can understand your dislike of the whole genre where your books are concerned. But there are also two things you must understand; fans will do what fans will do, (and think, and feel), and legal action will only stop it from being discussed (and dismissed) openly. Legal action be damned, I tell you now it persists, a little virus floating around in your system, waiting for its moment. And most importantly, you must see…Mat…is…a…sexy…beast. For his very presence in the series, I denounce you, sir, as a writer of erotica, for a single utterance of his name instills wicked thoughts in the minds and bodies of every fangirl (and some fanboys) on the web. He is perhaps your only truly sexual character and he is all the more attractive for it, in a world where everyone blushes at the slightest hint of misconduct and the only human body part with an actual name is the breast. But he came from you, this puritanical and, yes, sexist universe came from you, and what fans see in it they must also see in you, and perhaps that is your true problem with fiction of this type.
Do their fantasies go too far? Perhaps. Should you find it offensive? Probably, I certainly would, if they were my creations. But would I act like an asshole about it? Probably not. It was said that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was even amused at the rumours and jokes that floated around even then, about Sherlock and his loyal Watson. You are not Sir Arthur. You are not even an asshole. You are a man who (blatantly) used another writer’s characters for his own purpose and is now offended that someone would do the same to him.
Attacks on erotica tend to center on its being ‘badly written’. Most of it is, but I generally wonder if that really is the problem. People will suffer horrific prose if it gains them even a glimpse of an idea or a character or a situation that inspires them. Look at your fans for example; they’ve suffered through your last three books. For what I can only assume is a profit based motive, you’ve wasted your fans’ time and money with muddled, needlessly complicated plots, superfluous characters, ridiculous romantic pairings, and a severe lack of editing. All of this isn’t even taking into account the problems that have always existed with the series, such as idiocy of your female characters, which I hinted at before. (Here’s a hint, try making them intelligent, sexual, and actually in a position of real authority all at the same time without having them deposed or dishonored for their desires… Berelain, you’re our only hope). Keep things going in this way and you’re going to seem more and more like a RPG geek in the back room of a gaming store, head up high for a hostile and yet intent glare at whatever female passes your way before dropping back down to an imagined neo-medieval world where you are some sexy, dangerous general with a gambling problem and an eye for the ladies.
Oh wait… *cough*
You might be wondering why I would read your books at all if that is my attitude. So I’ll tell you, I don’t just read your first books, I reread them. They’re badly battered copies at this point. The ideas in those first five are pretty wonderful; funny, frightening, lovely, tragic, even inspiring (not as much as in Tolkien, or the legends of Arthur, but each one seemed to get a little bit better, the tension spiraling a little bit higher…) But overall, so limited. So out of touch, even for fantasy novels. Now I see that maybe that comes from you.
As a letter asking you to lighten your stance on erotic fanfiction (if that is indeed the case, and it’s not only the homosexual nature of the slash that’s really bothering you) this probably fails big time. Eh. What can I say? I don’t really want to convince you, so much as I want to smack you upside the head for being such a tightass. I won’t do that either, so this is the best I can do. More of a declaration of frustration really, that you can’t or won’t ignore fan communities like other writers do, and just be pleased that you have fans. I was, and still am, a fan, but Hammer of God statements are testing my limits.
Thank you for your time,
A Fan
**For those who don't know, Robert Jordan is the author a fantasy series called the Wheel of Time**
<In a December 2002 interview with the fan websites wotmania.com and dragonmount.com, Robert Jordan said, “The one thing I do try to keep an eye out for is slash or KS fiction using my characters… if you write erotica using my characters and post it, I WILL find you and I will come down on you like the Hammer of God. I’ve found some very raunchy, and very badly written, examples of that, and I don’t like it a bit.”>
Dear Mr. Jordan, Hammer of God,
I would not consider most online, sexual fanfiction to be genuine erotica—that is, fiction with the intent to arouse. Nor would I call it badly written, but perhaps that’s just the defensive author in me. What must of it is, is something between a joke and a little tease, sometimes personal fantasies and scribblings that someday might take on the flesh and colour of an original character or novel. They are to most a passing fancy, and to some something more serious, something in them taken from your work or the work of another published author and given a new light. In other words, crude though some fiction might be, it is inspired by you, ready to inspire another, quickly forgotten as a new idea comes along.
In your defense, I should find erotica difficult to write in the WOT as you have written it, and feel that anyone who did write it would have missed the point. Thus I can understand your dislike of the whole genre where your books are concerned. But there are also two things you must understand; fans will do what fans will do, (and think, and feel), and legal action will only stop it from being discussed (and dismissed) openly. Legal action be damned, I tell you now it persists, a little virus floating around in your system, waiting for its moment. And most importantly, you must see…Mat…is…a…sexy…beast. For his very presence in the series, I denounce you, sir, as a writer of erotica, for a single utterance of his name instills wicked thoughts in the minds and bodies of every fangirl (and some fanboys) on the web. He is perhaps your only truly sexual character and he is all the more attractive for it, in a world where everyone blushes at the slightest hint of misconduct and the only human body part with an actual name is the breast. But he came from you, this puritanical and, yes, sexist universe came from you, and what fans see in it they must also see in you, and perhaps that is your true problem with fiction of this type.
Do their fantasies go too far? Perhaps. Should you find it offensive? Probably, I certainly would, if they were my creations. But would I act like an asshole about it? Probably not. It was said that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was even amused at the rumours and jokes that floated around even then, about Sherlock and his loyal Watson. You are not Sir Arthur. You are not even an asshole. You are a man who (blatantly) used another writer’s characters for his own purpose and is now offended that someone would do the same to him.
Attacks on erotica tend to center on its being ‘badly written’. Most of it is, but I generally wonder if that really is the problem. People will suffer horrific prose if it gains them even a glimpse of an idea or a character or a situation that inspires them. Look at your fans for example; they’ve suffered through your last three books. For what I can only assume is a profit based motive, you’ve wasted your fans’ time and money with muddled, needlessly complicated plots, superfluous characters, ridiculous romantic pairings, and a severe lack of editing. All of this isn’t even taking into account the problems that have always existed with the series, such as idiocy of your female characters, which I hinted at before. (Here’s a hint, try making them intelligent, sexual, and actually in a position of real authority all at the same time without having them deposed or dishonored for their desires… Berelain, you’re our only hope). Keep things going in this way and you’re going to seem more and more like a RPG geek in the back room of a gaming store, head up high for a hostile and yet intent glare at whatever female passes your way before dropping back down to an imagined neo-medieval world where you are some sexy, dangerous general with a gambling problem and an eye for the ladies.
Oh wait… *cough*
You might be wondering why I would read your books at all if that is my attitude. So I’ll tell you, I don’t just read your first books, I reread them. They’re badly battered copies at this point. The ideas in those first five are pretty wonderful; funny, frightening, lovely, tragic, even inspiring (not as much as in Tolkien, or the legends of Arthur, but each one seemed to get a little bit better, the tension spiraling a little bit higher…) But overall, so limited. So out of touch, even for fantasy novels. Now I see that maybe that comes from you.
As a letter asking you to lighten your stance on erotic fanfiction (if that is indeed the case, and it’s not only the homosexual nature of the slash that’s really bothering you) this probably fails big time. Eh. What can I say? I don’t really want to convince you, so much as I want to smack you upside the head for being such a tightass. I won’t do that either, so this is the best I can do. More of a declaration of frustration really, that you can’t or won’t ignore fan communities like other writers do, and just be pleased that you have fans. I was, and still am, a fan, but Hammer of God statements are testing my limits.
Thank you for your time,
A Fan
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