I don't understand (an AB post)

[mhalachai]

This is a post about the Anita Blake fandom. Just so you know ahead of time.

I made the mistake (yes, I'm considering it a mistake now) to sign on for the new Laurell K. Hamilton forums as I wanted to track the fanfic thread (There is an empty forum on the boards entitled "fanfic" and I was ever-so-curious as to what that was all about). I then started reading some of the other posts, and quickly remebered why I'm not on any AB communities on LJ or the like.

Why does one spend so much time trashing a book that one hates? Villifying a) the characters, b) the author and c) the people who read the books? I myself have grown away from series in the past, when the author goes in a direction I find annoying or 'wrong' in my mind... I move on.

So, gentle reader, I ask you these simple questions:

1 - Do you understand the vitriol among the "fans" against people who still like the books?
2 - Do you get why anyone would spend the energy slagging a book they profess to hate?
3 - Is there any place on the net where a discussion on the books are presnet in a pleasant and construtive format? I know I may have asked this before, but I seem to have forgotten.

Thanks.

Comments

[mlady-rebecca.livejournal.com]

I think it makes peope feel self-righteous to rail against things that the general populace would dislike. It makes them feel like "good" people. I don't honestly think it's for anything other than "hey look at me I'm such a good person and these books are naughty".

I can understand that attitude, in general, not that I support or like it. But I don't see where a person like that would ever be drawn into a series like "Anita Blake" in the first place. Did they put this filter over Anita and re-imagine her as some holy crusader ridding the world of the "monsters"? An illusion like that would only stretch to "Circus of the Damned" at the latest.

[taligator.livejournal.com]

Oh they always justify their reading by saying that "she is Catholic and she's a good person inside, she's just being led astray". ;)

I certainly don't support their self-righteousness either but I can see where they come from.

For example, there is this website that allows people to put comments about their products up online. They have two categories, negative and positive and the negative one is just bursting with good cheer. It has comments like, "these publishers should all get cancer and die in agony", "you all will burn in hell and I hope it hurts", "you are evil satanic people and may God cause you and all your friends and family pain". It's really obnoxious but these people "fell" for their marketing in the first place and spend hundreds of dollars on their books. Yet if you read even more of these you'll see, "I refuse to even let people see that I own this book. I'm so ashamed", "I would burn this book if I could". But none of them get rid of the books. They keep them and my guess re-read them over and over to remind themselves of what "good" people they are for not buying into it. *shrug* People are weird creatures. They justify it by saying they need to be open to the world around them to educate others against wrong doing. But they avidly and voraciously read and re-read this "satantic crap" and rail against it. ;)

Thing about Anita is that a lot of the bashers are huge Richard fans and even if he was technically a monster, he was human and real and he was a poor boy who got dealt a bad hand of cards. I think they kept reading because they view (or viewed) Richard as a knight in shining armor. That one day he would rescue the misguided Anita from the awful monsters. He didn't choose to be a monster and he didn't participate in their monsterly acts so he was redeemed in some ways.

I'd also liken the AB books to car wrecks .. you can't help but gawk when you come across them. Morbid fascination.

A lot of people who dislike the AB books for the sex don't mind it in the Merry Gentry books because she started out that way. She was a sexual creature from the start.