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.
Israeli youth in America don’t want to hear anything about how Israel is problematic but I was suspended from school as a child because I came to school with a shirt that literally just said “Palestine” and had the flag on it and the reasoning was because like it was a “terrorist” organization. Palestinians literally can not exist without being told their existence is problematic and somehow everyone of us at any and every age is a terrorist. But no :( poor Becka don’t wanna hear about how the IDF is bad.
This comic began in spring of 2007. It was two short months after the death of my father. I was shocked and lonesome, and wished to fully dedicate myself to something. If that’s all it had given me, it would’ve been enough. The ways in which this comic has opened up my life to new people, places, skills and ideas are endless. No form of expression could’ve changed my world so much. I can never fully express how grateful I am.
Thank you to Valerie Halla for bringing her incredible vision to this series. I knew her talents would be on display. I couldn’t have anticipated how much of a voice she’d lend to the story, or how far her work would push me in my own pursuit of the craft. I think we did something very special together, in a place and time that won’t soon be replicated. If you haven’t yet, go follow Valerie’s webcomic, Goodbye to Halos. I know she’ll be making incredible work for years to come.
Thank you to the many collaborators who’ve touched OP with their talent over the years. To Sloane Leong for her dazzling color work when the whole process was terrifying to me. To Gisele Jobateh for their unseen but absolutely essential color flatting work. To Lacey Micallef for her brilliant nostalgic animation, and choices that always inspires me. To Jonathan Gran for his 3-D contributions and for frequently animating my dog. To Kou Chen for his assistance in much necessary shipping, office and website work. To the many guest artists who gave me time off from a brutal schedule in the early years.
Thank you to Mike Holmes, my editorial companion and love of my life. For constantly assuaging my fears, cheering me on, and moving to the US from Canada to marry me.
Thank you to Judith Hansen for her dedication in finding Octopus Pie a home in the publishing world. Thank you to Jon Rosenberg, perhaps my earliest mentor in comics. Thank you to Rich Stevens for years of encouragement and support. Thank you to Jeffrey & Holly Rowland for delicately balancing merchandise fulfillment and friendship. Thank you to Andrew Bell, John Allison, Stephen Cloud, Sam Brown, and Chris Yates for their advice and companionship in Dumbrella. Thank you to my early and sustained voices of encouragement: Vera Brosgol, Kate Beaton, Hope Larson, Raina Telgemeier, Jen Wang, Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, Carly Monardo, Chris Hastings, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Gary Tyrrell, Steve & Leslie Wolfhard, Jason Fischer, David McGuire, KC Green, Kate DeNeveu & David Murray, Becky & Frank, Evan Dahm, Ryan North, Christopher Butcher, and Scott McCloud. Thank you to Lisa Hanawalt, Sarah Glidden, Domitille Collardey & Julia Wertz for the fond memories of Pizza Island. Thank you to my salty Twitter friends for their daily love and snark. Thank you to my good pals in Brooklyn who inspired many of the tales in this comic, and continue to be an uplifting presence in my life.
Thank you to the readers who’ve offered financial support for Octopus Pie over the years, either through Patreon, purchasing of merch + art, or donations. You’ve not only allowed me to create the thing I wanted to create, but for others to read it for free. Thank you to everyone who told their friends to read the comic, or just read it themselves and felt something. Connecting with you through these stories has been a pleasure and a source of strength.
Thank you to my family for loving me in ways no one else can. Thank you to Heidi, who is my dog.
It’s been a decade and my memory could be better – if I haven’t mentioned you here, please know your support has been meaningful.
———-
What’s next? I don’t know for sure at this time. OP has occupied so much of my mind that I haven’t figured out the next stage. I can assure you there will be something new, and you will hear about it from me. You can follow me on Twitter (or just check back here) for comic-related updates.
If you are a Patreon donor and have the means to keep giving, I would certainly appreciate a bit more of your gratitude while I figure things out. I will post an update in 2-3 weeks, when I have a better idea of what’s to come. There will absolutely be some incentive for your ongoing contributions.
The 5th (and final!) Octopus Pie print collection will be out this summer from Image Comics. Right now I’m anticipating a late June/early July release date, and will have the specifics – and a preview of the cover – very soon.
I wish there were more things to say, but that’s it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you wish to restart the webcomic on difficult mode, click here and begin reading from right to left.
(they blocked me before i could give the response in the last two images)
hey are we gonna get a callout for @celestialfairyrings, who accused a black woman of perpetuating white supremacy? a black woman who’s had the absolute crap beaten out of me by white supremacists for daring to be black and queer and unapologetic in public?
like i’m literally shaking right now. to have the most painful, terrifying, traumatic thing that’s ever happened to you dismissed by some bigoted fuck because they “disagree” with you, so your experience can be tossed to the wayside? fuck that shit. this was some antiblack fuckery, and instead of apologizing for it, they cowardly dismissed all of my experiences because they preferred not to acknowledge them.
you terfs sick of being called white feminists? clean up your antiblack garbage.
I do find it funny that lesbians are perceived as man-hating but gay men are not perceived as woman-hating, and in fact are often illogically shielded from accusations of misogyny simply by being gay
