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An Important Drama like Brokeback Mountain has been many things to many people since its release three years ago, but who knew it was a budding franchise? Not only is the cowboys-in-love tale going opera, but ardent internet fans continue to sequelize the film with fan fiction, side stories and improbable follow-ups. Why, even Defamer has gotten into the act — Ang, the rights for "Ennis and Jack's Outrageous UFO Adventure" (above) are still available. Call us! However, there's one person who finds these add-ons downright Jack Nasty, and she's Annie Proulx, the tale's original author. As she told the Wall Street Journal:

WSJ: What effect did the success of "Brokeback Mountain" have on your writing life, if any? Ms. Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life. There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story. They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for "fixing" the story. They certainly don't get the message that if you can't fix it you've got to stand it. Most of these "fix-it" tales have the character Ennis finding a husky boyfriend and living happily ever after, or discovering the character Jack is not really dead after all, or having the two men's children meet and marry, etc., etc. Nearly all of these remedial writers are men, and most of them begin, "I'm not gay but…." They do not understand the original story, they know nothing of copyright infringement—i.e., that the characters Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are my intellectual property—and, beneath every mangled rewrite is the unspoken assumption that because they are men they can write this story better than a woman can. They have not a clue that the original "Brokeback Mountain" was part of a collection of stories about Wyoming exploring mores and myths. The general impression I get is that they are bouncing off the film, not the story. There's more, but that is enough, ok?

OK! We can see Proulx's point; after all, it somewhat dilutes the gist of the original story if a sequel just happens to involve Ennis Del Mar meeting the slain Jack Twist's identical twin (coincidentally, also gay!). When will the internet accept that Proulx's simple, elegant tale simply can't be done justice by a poorly written Livejournal follow-up? Instead, it needs a wildly ambitious, UFO-set pas a deux that takes the cowboys to an alien world where homosexuality is the norm and instead of farming sheep, you farm gleepdorps. Annie, rights are still available!