Because we need a little controversy…
Here’s the tea. As fanfic became more and more public, not everyone was like Gene Roddenberry. Some authors got, well, a nice way to put it is protective of their work. What this means is that some authors came right out and said they didn’t like fanfic, and some authors did more than that. Enter Interview With the Vampire’s Anne Rice. I really enjoy Rice’s work and her energy was really next level, but in 2000 she began threatening fic writers with legal action. What happened next is going to take up 4,000 words (I’m working on it), but essentially, fandom became tainted by her shame-and-blame letter campaign. She adopted a scorched-earth policy and drove her fandom underground, and this affected fandoms for literally decades. Regardless, fandom survived. Enter… the modern age.
