Pissy Fans
Some fans do have a tendency to forget that the creative folks they love are not simply black boxes, who produce desired product at regular intervals. They’re actually real people who do other things than just what the fans want them to do, because humans from time to time want to do the things they want to do, not the things other people want them to do. Yes, some fans don’t like that, but you know what, screw the type of fan who thinks a writer (or musician, or actor, or whatever) exists only to provide them with the entertainment of their choosing.
John Scalzi discusses angry fans who are hounding George R. R. Martin because he is taking forever to finish the next book in his Song of Ice and Fire series. They want it now — certainly before anything happens to GRRM, like it did to fellow fantasy author Robert Jordan, who was rude enough to die before he finished his last book. Of course Scalzi is right. I love that series, and the one thing I want that GRRM can give me is the rest of the books in the series. I don’t care about tv series, other books, or any other projects he may have lined up. But since when did fans own the authors they admire? More Scalzi:
I have fans who are annoyed that I have no OMW books in the pipeline, but he has legions of fans enraged that he’s not finished with his book. And I guess my question for them is: Well, do you want the book now, or do you want the book that GRRM is happy with? I suppose we could shove GRRM into a room with a word processor and put him on the Brian Wilson diet, in which we all give him a cheeseburger only after he’s completed a new chapter, but the book you’d get isn’t the book those fans would want.
Excellent points, all. My favorite comment about the whole thing is on metafilter, and it goes:
I think it’s partly that GRRM isn’t really part of the Internet generation and finds it hard to understand why everyone’s so rude all the time.
That’s funny, because I’m pretty sure I’m part of the internet generation and I don’t understand it either.
