Braaaaaains. Neeeeed braaaaaains.

[apocalypsos]

My favorite thing about the new account of the Cassie Claire debacle is that her new book features a teenage vampire slayer named Fray and "Darkhunters".

I just ... I can't even. *dies giggling*

I have a feeling that if there is an original idea there, it is lonely and in desperate need of friends.

Comments

[strippedpink.livejournal.com]

Darkhunters? Please tell me you are fucking kidding.

That kind of makes me want to vomit.

[katbcoll.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling that if there is an original idea there, it is lonely and in desperate need of friends.
*cackles* and it got there by accident!

Fray? Well, at least she isn't named "Muffy".

[3jane.livejournal.com]

The comic about a future slayer that Joss wrote is called "Fray" (as is the girl).

[offtheceiling.livejournal.com]

Dude. Just when I thought that I could not roll my eyes HARDER at her.

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

I'm just waiting for Cassie Claire to hit Newsweek with her professional plagiarism debacle. She clearly has not learned from the amateur one.

[rowanberries.livejournal.com]

...*Facepalm*

Y'know, someone should perhaps give that girl a dictionary. I could almost understand the fanfiction thing - it's hardly a huge deal. But that's... special.

[iseult-variante.livejournal.com]

Ohhhkay, I had been ignoring that, but seriously? That is both sad AND hilarious.

[phillyexpat.livejournal.com]

I am completely new to the Cassie Claire debacle. Can you give me a short summary?

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

There really isn't one. Go to www.journalfen.net/community/bad_penny for a long summary, but basically:

Cassie Claire is a BNF who wrote a major important fic in the HP-verse. Huge chunks of the dialog that are quoted as "OMG! Cassie's so clever!" are from Buffy, Red Dwarf, Blackadder, stuff like that. And large descriptive scenes are culled from other sources. There is no credit for vast amounts of this.

[idadebeautreux.livejournal.com]

I'm new, too - never heard anything about it until now! I just spent about an hour reading up on some of the summaries. I'm not big in FanFiction, but somewhere along the line - probably via Cassie Claire's very popular "The Very Secret Diaries of the Lord of the Rings" in which she covers the events of LOTR in a "Bridget Jones' Diary" manner - I came across 3 pieces of Harry Potter fanfic she wrote: Draco Dormiens, Draco Sinister, and Draco Veritas.

When I started reading her fanfic, she had notes at the bottom of each chapter citing sources of many of the dialogue and quotes she used (Buffy, Angel, Red Dwarf, Monty Python, etc.). She evidently did not already have all of this. However, a few LARGE segments of the Draco works seem to have been lifted directly from a fantasy trilogy by an author named Pamela Dean. These books were out of print and fairly obscure at the time when Cassie posted her fanfic. One reader, however, did pick up on the familiarity of it, and when she dug out her copy of Pamela Dean's "The Hidden Land," she found word-for-word duplicates in Draco Sinister (I know this is insanely long, but if you go here (http://www.journalfen.net/community/bad_penny/8985.html#cutid1) and scroll down to about 1/3 of the page, you can see a text comparison). The reader sent this information to the maintainers of the fanfiction community, pointing out that Cassie had, indeed, blatantly plagerized - more than just a single sound bite, quote, or quip. The copying involved large portions of text, and on top of that, there was no citation or credit given to Pamela Dean. The fanfiction community maintainers banned Cassie (who, incidently, is a journalist and professional writer - you think she'd have learned a thing or two about plagerism!).

Fangirls and fanboys came streaming out of the woodwork, as you can expect. After that, much of what happens seems to get into legalese (one of Cassie's defenders was her friend Heidi who is a lawyer, and seems to have no issue with Cassie's plagerism), flame wars, he said/she saids, snits, and drama, so I kind of stopped reading after a bit of that.

Now, it sounds like Cassie's professional book is going to be just another case of plagerism. Why doesn't she just go ahead and call her lead "Buffy" and market it as fanfic?

[astaria51.livejournal.com]

This is, I'm convinced, because she saw Shattered Glass and thought "I really want someone pretty to play me someday! :D!"

*facepalm*

[theotherej.livejournal.com]

I JUST LOL'ED SO MUCH AT THAT

you win.

[killerweasel.livejournal.com]

Wow.

She wasn't even trying to hide it.

*shakes head*

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Wow, she is so going to get the Lawyer SMACKDOWN. (For those not in the know, Joss Whedon himself writes a comic book called 'Fray' about a vampire slayer).

[notaclue911.livejournal.com]

I think it's one thing to plagiarize in fanfic, because a lot of people do it with random quotes here and there, and even though she took huge portions of real literature, it was still only fanfic.
Now she wants to publish (or is publishing, rather) a book to be placed alongside the ones she's copied, and it's just moronic, really. You'd think she would have enough sense to keep the plagiarism in the neighborhood of "NO LAWSUIT!!" but uh... clearly the property market is better in that of "SUE ME I'M STUPID". Oh, well. She'll have plenty of neighbors.

[lost-erizo.livejournal.com]

Sorry to jump out of the woodwork here (especially since we substantially agree with each other), but that argument "it's just fanfic" drives me up a wall.

It's MORE important that fanfic authors cite their sources because the work is derivative by it's very nature. It's already walking a shaky ethical line by violating copyrights left and right. Showing utter disrespect by not only elaborating on the copyright holder's material but stealing the actual material and presenting it as your own is reprehensible regardless of the literary quality or publishability. Dismissing it as "just fanfic" doesn't cut it. The only difference is in the degree and professionalism of the editing, not the author's responsibility.

~cough~

Ahem.

I'll...go crawl back in my hole now...

[palmetto.livejournal.com]

From the DragonCon guest list:
Cassandra Clare was born overseas and spent her early years traveling around the world with her family and several trunks of books. She's worked as a bookseller, an event planner for a children's bookshop, a freelance writer, an entertainment journalist in Hollywood, and a copyeditor for The National Enquirer, among other odd jobs. She lives in Brooklyn with her boyfriend and their two cats. City of Bones is her first novel, and the first in the upcoming Mortal Instruments Trilogy, a dark young adult fantasy series set in New York and published by Simon and Schuster. The next two books will be City of Blood, coming in 2008, and City of Glass, coming in 2009. You can email her at cassandraclare@gmail.com.

That would be the person we're talking about, correct? Does anyone have uncomfortable questions to ask this individual? ;) I was going to try to make one of the panels she's going to be on, provided it didn't interfere with anything big/cool like the parade or Firefly panels.

[callmesyd.livejournal.com]

Hark, another DragonCon attendee. Sup. :>

Now, if you REALLY want to make her uncomfortable, you track down the various Firefly guests, tell them about this, and bring them to the panel so that THEY can ask her questions about it.

[saturnalia.livejournal.com]

Urgh. Urgh, urgh, urgh. This whole thing makes me feel dirty; I'm going to have to go hug my copy of Fray and listen to Tom Lehrer's Lobachevsky several times over to make it go away.

On the plus side, this whole debacle makes me feel so glad that when I was in HP fandom, I never actually bothered reading her fics. (Possibly the only fangirl of the era who didn't, but hey, when have I ever been one of the in-crowd?)

[ampersand.livejournal.com]

I recently heard that she's taking her trilogy fic down, and went to read it, just so I could say I could. I didn't make it through Chapter One of the first one. It's just - well. Stunningly mediocre is the best term I can think of for it.

It ain't badfic, but neither is it any good.

[sweill.livejournal.com]

**I have a feeling that if there is an original idea there, it is lonely and in desperate need of friends.**

That is the best quote about this whole thing!!!!

SO sad.

[miladygrey.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to sit back and watch the fur fly. I mean, stealing from one incredibly popular writer with a distinctive writing style is one thing, but two? I don't read the Dark-Hunter books any more, but CC should know that between them, Joss Whedon and Sherrilyn Kenyon (who writes under at least one other pseudonym) have about eight hundred lawyers, and they are going to end her. And if the lawyers don't, outraged Joss and Dark-Hunter fangirls will.

[jay-peregrine.livejournal.com]

Wasn't JKR sued for plagerism?

[flossums.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Nancy Stouffer claimed that JKR stole the term 'muggle' from her. Can't remember the exact details, but the courts ruled in favour of JKR and said that Nancy Stouffer had falsified evidence, etc. It was kind of weird, really.

[mylenn.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* Some people NEVER learn. Seriously. Did she think no one would notice?


Silly, silly girl.

[heyorion.livejournal.com]

She made me feel bad about my name. I am called Clare (with no i, thanks). Now whenever I read about her I am all... "That's my name you're making look bad!"

Not that I really loved my name in the first place.

[septembergrrl.livejournal.com]

...I'm not sure she would know what an original idea WAS, seriously.