Anne Rice did initially release a statement to this effect, and threatened legal action against fanfic writers, but has more recently retracted this statement! I have a citation for this somewhere in my notes that I could get, but I’m on my phone and it would be later!
She retracted because she realized modern fandom would throw her into a woodchipper if she tried to doxx them into submission like she used to try and do when she sent her fans after anyone who posted negative reviews or fan content she didn’t like. Real piece of work that one.
I didn’t know this. I grew up reading her books. Excuse me while I go scream at her books.
Yea. Same. I had the same kind of reaction when I found out that Marion Zimmer Bradley was a raging asshole to fans. And also y’know, the whole child sex abuse scandal. I’m not normally one for burning books, but that one was cathartic.
You didn’t even need to write fanfic or post a negative review to call on one of Anne Rice’s shitstorms - all you had to do was say something even slightly negative on one of the forums (such as ‘I’m not sure it’s fair to be that nasty to a teenager’) and all of her fans would come after you. She’d act like it had nothing to do with her, but she always made comments that encouraged her fans to do that sort of stuff - if she wasn’t doing it herself.
She was a legitimate piece of shit to a lot of people, and partly why Ao3 is such a big thing with it’s entire fucking legal team that protects transformative works from people like her. I very much doubt that she changed her mind with how she regards fanfic or how she treats people online (her most recent bullshit regarding harassing people online was in 2015) it’s simply that her bullying and harassment was so well documented we gave her nowhere to hide and she had to back down or face the consequences of being a horrible person.