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dangermousieReading (or actually skimming) all the stuff on "bad_penny" which rehashes in detail the whole Cassandra Cla(i)re plagiarism scandal was quite interesting.
For those few lucky ones who never came within shooting distance of the Harry Potter fandom, CC was the BNF to end all BNFs in the Potter fandom a few years back. She wrote a fanfic known as the 'Draco Trilogy' (Draco Dormiens, Draco Sinister and Draco Veritas), which is very long, very-Draco centric, and is without doubt the mot famous HP fic ever (or at least was a few years back when I even lurked in HP fandom. For all I know, something else is more famous now). Also, apparently, she lifted uncredited (or improperly credited) a variety of quotes from a variety of sources, from Buffy to published fiction. Actually a bunch of you might know her because she also wrote the Lord of the Rings 'Very Secret Diaries.'
Reading all the stuff on bad_penny (offspring of journalfen's FW) left me with the following thoughts:
1. Harry Potter fandom is the scariest there is. Really. It's the creepiest dreadfulest fandom there is, and not just because there are people who like Giant Squid porn.
2. I am so glad that the most I eved did in that fandom was post a bit on Sugarquill a few years back. Because, see point number 1.
3. I read DT around 2000-2001. You couldn't be in the HP fandom back then and be unaware of the story. I confess to enjoying it at the time, even though its ships were completely not mine. It had a complicated consistent plot (which is very rare in fanfic, no matter how good otherwise) and characters that were (I thought at the time) well-written, even if nothing like HP canon characters.
Looking back at it, I think she way overdid on the emo and the gorgeous aloofness of Draco descriptions. If I reread it now, I'd probably find it overwrought (though hey, I see that same problem in books often enough) and I did lose interest around 2002 because the updates were taking about seven million years and the story kept getting longer and longer without need (if she was a real author, I'd say she needed a good, mean editor). I am actually pleasantly surprised to discover that she's just finished DT because I know of too many long popular fandom stories that the authors never complete and thought it would be another one like that. Basically, DT is not in my top 10 fanfics or anything, but I did enjoy what I read of it years ago.
4. OK, this one might be unpopular. But unlike that stuff about msscribe (another HP BNF) posted on bad_penny before, where the woman went to horrifying degrees of psychosis nad crazy scary actions, my reaction to the CC stuff is...so? So she lifted a number of lines (or chunks of text) or plots or whatever. It was for fanfic. Which is, in itself, a violation of someone's copyright (I am no copyright lawyer, but I know that making no profit off it is unlikely to make a difference. I know in computer crimes, if you make no profit from distributing software/songs etc which you shouldn't, the fact that you made no profit doesn't make it not a crime). Fanfic is, by its very definition a derivation of someone's idea. It's derivative and unoriginal by its very definition. It's plagiarizing the chracters or situations of canon, if you will.
I love fanfic. I read fanfic. I write fanfic. But the fact that a fanfic author *gasp* put lines in her fanfic without credit or the author's knowledge does not seem to bother me any. Is it a good thing to do, to credit lines? Yes, of course. But being 'OMG noez! she didn't' when the medium in question is itself fanfic, seems a bit odd. Yes, of course everyone reading a HP fanfic knows that the author is borrowing from the HP world so credit to JKR for 'Harry Potter' is not explicitly necessary to put the readers on notice of the borrowing, unlike with CC's borrowing from Pamela Dean or Buffy. But still, other than thinking that crediting is a good thing to do, I guess finding that a fanfic or a piece of it is derivative in more than one way, not in just being HP, doesn't dampen my enjoyment any. What I am reading is derivative anyhow. I think it might be different if I was either a CC fangirl who loved DT with a great degree of love and found my goddess had clay feet, or was involved in HP fandom and had to put up with constant CC mentions and BNF status stuck in your face, but as someone outside the fandom, my reaction to the CC thing is largely 'oh well. That's not so surprising. Now, where is my Veronica Mars DVD?'
For those few lucky ones who never came within shooting distance of the Harry Potter fandom, CC was the BNF to end all BNFs in the Potter fandom a few years back. She wrote a fanfic known as the 'Draco Trilogy' (Draco Dormiens, Draco Sinister and Draco Veritas), which is very long, very-Draco centric, and is without doubt the mot famous HP fic ever (or at least was a few years back when I even lurked in HP fandom. For all I know, something else is more famous now). Also, apparently, she lifted uncredited (or improperly credited) a variety of quotes from a variety of sources, from Buffy to published fiction. Actually a bunch of you might know her because she also wrote the Lord of the Rings 'Very Secret Diaries.'
Reading all the stuff on bad_penny (offspring of journalfen's FW) left me with the following thoughts:
1. Harry Potter fandom is the scariest there is. Really. It's the creepiest dreadfulest fandom there is, and not just because there are people who like Giant Squid porn.
2. I am so glad that the most I eved did in that fandom was post a bit on Sugarquill a few years back. Because, see point number 1.
3. I read DT around 2000-2001. You couldn't be in the HP fandom back then and be unaware of the story. I confess to enjoying it at the time, even though its ships were completely not mine. It had a complicated consistent plot (which is very rare in fanfic, no matter how good otherwise) and characters that were (I thought at the time) well-written, even if nothing like HP canon characters.
Looking back at it, I think she way overdid on the emo and the gorgeous aloofness of Draco descriptions. If I reread it now, I'd probably find it overwrought (though hey, I see that same problem in books often enough) and I did lose interest around 2002 because the updates were taking about seven million years and the story kept getting longer and longer without need (if she was a real author, I'd say she needed a good, mean editor). I am actually pleasantly surprised to discover that she's just finished DT because I know of too many long popular fandom stories that the authors never complete and thought it would be another one like that. Basically, DT is not in my top 10 fanfics or anything, but I did enjoy what I read of it years ago.
4. OK, this one might be unpopular. But unlike that stuff about msscribe (another HP BNF) posted on bad_penny before, where the woman went to horrifying degrees of psychosis nad crazy scary actions, my reaction to the CC stuff is...so? So she lifted a number of lines (or chunks of text) or plots or whatever. It was for fanfic. Which is, in itself, a violation of someone's copyright (I am no copyright lawyer, but I know that making no profit off it is unlikely to make a difference. I know in computer crimes, if you make no profit from distributing software/songs etc which you shouldn't, the fact that you made no profit doesn't make it not a crime). Fanfic is, by its very definition a derivation of someone's idea. It's derivative and unoriginal by its very definition. It's plagiarizing the chracters or situations of canon, if you will.
I love fanfic. I read fanfic. I write fanfic. But the fact that a fanfic author *gasp* put lines in her fanfic without credit or the author's knowledge does not seem to bother me any. Is it a good thing to do, to credit lines? Yes, of course. But being 'OMG noez! she didn't' when the medium in question is itself fanfic, seems a bit odd. Yes, of course everyone reading a HP fanfic knows that the author is borrowing from the HP world so credit to JKR for 'Harry Potter' is not explicitly necessary to put the readers on notice of the borrowing, unlike with CC's borrowing from Pamela Dean or Buffy. But still, other than thinking that crediting is a good thing to do, I guess finding that a fanfic or a piece of it is derivative in more than one way, not in just being HP, doesn't dampen my enjoyment any. What I am reading is derivative anyhow. I think it might be different if I was either a CC fangirl who loved DT with a great degree of love and found my goddess had clay feet, or was involved in HP fandom and had to put up with constant CC mentions and BNF status stuck in your face, but as someone outside the fandom, my reaction to the CC thing is largely 'oh well. That's not so surprising. Now, where is my Veronica Mars DVD?'
