GRRM's VC Andrews' Fanfics

Note: This post is intended in good humor and not meant to be taken seriously. 

You know, it's always bothered me that George R. R. Martin is uncomfortable with fanfiction about his work. On just a general level, I think this is a mistake because fanfics, even the bad ones, are an avenue to inspire readers to keep with your story. They can also help to hone the skills of people who will one day become writers themselves.

In GRRM's case though, I'm even more confused. How can a man claim to hate fanfiction, when part of the very foundation of his most famous work has its roots in fanfic. After all, if it was not for VC Andrews and GRRM's very evident love for her psychosexual young adult horror novels, A Song of Ice and Fire might not exist.

 Don't believe me? 

Okay, I want us to examine what we see in these two pictures. The first picture is the inside cover of VC Andrews' book Petals in the Wind.  In this picture, we see three blonde people. One is a little person who is rather unhappy about the whole situation. Then there is a plotting and scheming pretty girl who seeks vengeance against her enemies. She has many enemies. She will do whatever she has to in order to make her plans work. There is also a beautiful male who loves her more than anything . . . and just happens to be her brother. 

In the second picture, we see an Entertainment weekly pic of characters from Game of Thrones, the HBO show adapted from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Although the show has dulled the men's hair out, what we should have here are three blonde people. The first one is a little person who is rarely happy about any situation. There is a plotting and scheming beautiful woman who seeks vengeance against her enemies. She has many enemies. She will do whatever she has to in order to make her plans work. There is also a beautiful male who loves her more than anything . . . and just happens to be her brother. 

What does all this tell us, oh my brothers and sisters?  Why, it tells us that GRRM is a great fan of the Flowers in the Attic stories.  He felt inspired by the story of the earnest and lustful Chris Dollenganger, the angry and revenge driven, yet motherly and graceful Catherine Dollenganger, and the dark plight of the tragic twins Carrie and Corey.

Big fat tears of sorrow must have rolled down his cheeks and into his beard as he read how they were trapped in that attic and poisoned by their own mother. Like all of us, he felt confused by the fact that even though Chris rapes his sister in the first book, we're all very happy when they marry at the end of the second book (because yeah, that's a twisted damned feeling). He felt so much injustice over the fact that Carrie lost her twin, never grew any taller, and died a very broken woman.

Conflicted by all of these fucked up emotions, he decided to right the wrongs . . . or rather, he decided to WRITE the wrongs. And in this moment, the Lannister family was born.

It was horrible that one twin would be lost, so instead of having the younger children be twins, he assigned the twinship to the older two and just cut Corey out completely. Instead of making Carrie a sad victim of circumstance, he transformed her into Tyrion, a wisecracking, well-read, complex man who is one of the main protagonists of his series.

Despite his rapey and incesty nature, Chris Dollenganger was a fairly flat and goody-twoshoes character (yes, I'm not sure how that works. Andrews is twisty like that). GRRM wanted him  to have more complexity, so he created Jaime, a man blessed with looks, talent, and riches. Then he marred the character with a complexly conflicted sense of honor and a tainted past. He left the incest part though, because as Chris main motivation for life was his sister, so would be Jaime's . . . at least for a while.

His greatest tribute is with Cersei Lannister, his very own Catherine Dollenganger.   He blessed Cersei with the one thing Cathy never had, her brother's children. Cathy had three kids, but two were from other men and the girl was adopted. He kept the same ratio of kids though. One girl, one boy, one badshit evil child so horrible no one could ever redeem him.

Like Cathy, Cersei is desired by almost every man who sees her. When the need arises, she uses this lust to her advantage. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Cathy and Cersei are both wronged as young women and put into situations where they are basically prisoners. Once they are free, they use their minds and charms to find as many ways to gain justice as they can. In the end though, both of them make some missteps and it almost proves to be their undoing. No one is perfect.

In my mind, I can so clearly see George R. R Martin back when he was a 13 yr old girl. He would be sitting on his bed, wearing his pink pjs and purple mules, listening to NKotB as he reads tattered old paperback copies of VC Andrews' work.  He would bite his lip as he wrestles with his feelings about why rape is wrong by fucking Andrews manages to make seem OKAY when Cathy realizes that her brother's destructive sexual obsession for her is the purest form of love she will ever know.

I can see him toying with a pigtail as he pulls out his pink glittery notebook and starts writing his own version of the story. Instead of an attic, they're in a castle.  Instead of an evil old grandma and a slutty widowed mother, there is a honorbound  Hand of the King and a drunken fat monarch. Instead of being poisoned, it just so happens that their captors are the ones who get poisoned.

At this point, GRRM smiled to himself and knew his story would grow. Maybe he would even have some racy scene IN an attic . . . no, better yet, a TOWER. Once he threw some kid out the window for good measure, he knew the whole thing was golden.