Generalising

From the Guardian:

Last weekend The Observer revealed that Philippa Stroud, the head of a thinktank set up by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith (the Centre for Social Justice), and the Conservative candidate for Sutton and Cheam, has been trying to drive demons out of lesbians, gay men and transsexuals. (…)

Question one: Why hasn’t Cameron asked for Stroud to be deselected and distanced himself from her thinktank?

Last week, the Tory leader said that he decided to suspend Philip Lardner, the Conservative candidate for North Ayrshire and Arra, “within minutes” for writing on his website that he thought homosexuality was “not normal”. Lardner also opined that “most people” consider homosexuality to be “somewhere between unfortunate and simply wrong”. A hate-soaked, erroneous diatribe, but compared to Stroud he looks like Peter Tatchell. Why the discrepancy? How can abusing young people with extremist religious practices be less incriminating than words?

I fear the answer to that one is cynically pragmatic: the Conservative candidate in Sutton and Cheam needs a mere 3,000 votes to take the seat from the Lib Dems. (Electoral Calculus give her about a one in three chance)

Meanwhile, the erstwhile Conservative candidate in Ayrshire North would have needed to take about 11,000 votes from Labour – and not lose any to the SNP, who were neck and neck with him. (Electoral Calculus gives him about a one percent chance)

Far be it from me, of course, to say that whether or not David Cameron gets distressed by bigotry has anything at all to do with whether it’s likely to cost him an extra seat…

I think it’s immoral, I _know_ it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.

It’s illegal, see. It’s illegal because of International Copyright Law. This has initial caps so those of us who aren’t lawyers may sit back and go “oooh! ahhh!”, except, not. I could go into the whole doctrine of fair use, of parody, and could discuss the simple fact that copyright law is certainly not international – it’s different by jurisdiction, but I’m sure you knew that and, let’s be honest, I could probably write my entire thesis on the subject of fanfiction and the law and oh, look, OTW already have.

But, I don’t know, it just seems to me that Gabaldon’s major gaffe here is very much commercial. As someone comments on fandom_wank, what’s she gonna do? Chase down every instance of fanfic on the internet and thus implicitly condone the ones she misses? And of course, telling her fans, who buy her books, the fact of the wee stories they wrote on the internet makes her want to throw up is very sound commercial sense, oh wait I might be lying there.

Then there’s this:

While not all fan-fic is pornographic by any means, enough of it _is_ that it constitutes an aesthetic argument against the whole notion.

As I say, I’ve unwillingly read a certain amount of fan-fic involving my characters, and about three-quarters of it is graphic, badly-written (of the “his searing touch blazed its way up the silken skin of her thigh to the secret depths of her ecstasy” type) masturbatory fantasy. I mean….ick.

She said that. I mean, seriously, seriously, she actually said that.

From Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, pg. 237 [British edition]:

Percy’s own cold hand slid down between them, grasped him. Cold as the touch was, it seemed to burn. He felt the seam of his breeches give as Percy shoved them roughly done and wondered dimly what he would tell Tom. Then Percy’s prick rubbed hard against his own, stiff, hot, and he stopped thinking.

From pg. 294:

“Did you ever wonder what it’s like?” [Percy] asked suddenly. “To be flogged?”

Grey felt a clenching in his stomach, but answered honestly. “Yes. Now and then.” Once, at least.

Percy had been kneading one of the red baize bags, like a cat sharpening its claws. Now he let it fall to the floor, and took up the cat o’nine tails itself, a short handle with a cluster of leather cords. “Do you want to find out?” he said, very softly.

“What?” An extraordinary feeling ran through Grey, half-fear, half-excitement.

“Take off your coat,” Percy said, still softly.

I don’t, alas, have my copies of the other books, or I could treat you all to more in the way of sexual fantasy. Believe me, there’s more.

Also? She writes books, right. Enormous doorstops of books about Love! And Time-Travel! And Men In Kilts Called Jamie Fraser!

Poor, dear, Jamie McCrimmon. S’all I’m sayin’.