Wow.

[yendi]

I only first heard mention of this yesterday, and a post today by laurel pointed me towards more information over at JournalFen's Bad Penny community:

A relatively significant* fanfic writer named Cassandra Claire (one who has now landed a professional contract, although with a slight change in spelling to her name) plagiarized major chunks of her works from Pamela Dean's The Secret Country trilogy, as well as from the works of Zelazny, Stoker, Tanith Lee, Blackadder, B5, Buffy, The Tick, and possibly every other work this side of Shakespeare.

You can read the first post (which links to the others) here. Warning: there's a lot of reading here. Reading the full saga is like watching a train wreck. A really, really, really, really long train wreck.

Interestingly, folks participating in the Amazon forums on her upcoming "original" novel already are noting plot similarities to the works of Sherrilyn Kenyon and Joss Whedon.

And I suspect that the audiobook version, if it exists, will contain an "original" beat suspiciously similar to Bowie and Queen's "Under Pressure."

*Understand that I don't really follow the fanfic communities, so I'm basing this on what others say.

Comments

[irana.livejournal.com]

This is one of the reasons why I am very glad I'm not a known writer in fandom. Not because I plagerise, but because this way I get to avoid the wank that follows something like this around, and now several other BFN's (big name fans) in fandom have been linked to this mess. Interestingly enough, I think I actually only managed to make it through the first few chapters of her first fic before I stopped reading.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. I am so very glad I'm a Harry Potter fan, not a Harry Potter Fan. Actually, I'm finding my reactions kind of interesting. My first thought was "It's just fanfic--it's not REAL writing, so who cares?" Eheh. I try not to be a snob, but sometimes I fail. And it's still not a good excuse for plagiarism. :p I really, really enjoyed her LotR Very Secret Diaries, though. I hope for her sake that she's taking her fiction contract more seriously than her fanfic. (I imagine pameladean hopes that too.)

[irana.livejournal.com]

I'm not so certain she is given the comments about the first novel thus far.

[ydnic.livejournal.com]

What irana said.

And she's going to be at Dragon*Con. Just what we need there; more potential Drah-Ma. :P

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

If there's no drama, is it really a Con? *Grin*

Gessi

[ydnic.livejournal.com]

Well, you have a point there...;)

[ckd]

Maybe her "bodyguard" will be attacked by the Invisible Documentation-Immune Death Ninjas; isn't Dragon*Con about due for another incident like that?

haha

[ydnic.livejournal.com]

Maybe she'll rent a scooter like certain unnamed fantasy authors and try to run folks down? The mind boggles.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Many fanfic people have quoted their favorite lines from shows, etc, over the years--i remember Trek fics back in the seventies that had quotes embedded from Alias Smith & Jones, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, UNCLE, Rocky and Bullwinkle, etc. I strongly suspect that these writers grew up thinking it perfectly okay in fic.

I notice that CassandraClare has since gone through her fic trilogy and cited all the quotes she can find, and if an unconscious one got by, she asks for readers to provite attributes. This suggests to me that she did not willfully "steal" at all, but came to writing thinking it was okay to bring in refs. (After all, James Joyce made a career of it!)

[ydnic.livejournal.com]

Well, my problem with CC is not that she threw in the occasional Buffyverse line or Red Dwarf quote...because, as you say, most fic writers do so. I've done it; a few sly allusions for those in-the-know make for fun reading. It's that CC built a reputation as a clever writer by relying on other people's creativity (entire paragraphs, not just quotes, and not just JKR's characters, either) and has now become a "professional" writer using, it appears, the same modus operandi...and her citations in the Draco Trilogy came only *after* she was called on it.

Not knocking you; this is just IMHO. ;)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't want to get into any kind of hassle--hopefully her talent will shine in the book, sans others' words, and the kafuffle will die down.

[ydnic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the HP fandom has certainly never been short of kerfluffles, that's for sure. :D :D

[amokk]

That'd be fine if it was a line here or there, but the evidence given is entire paragraphs, word for word. Even cryptomnesia, it's altered to a degree (more than editing out a sentence or two and everything else is word-for-word).


I think it's a general lack of education about what plagiarism is, what copyright is, and what the difference is.

[thejunebug.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! And certainly the first I've heard of it. She has an LJ that I keep up with, and she's apparently good friends with Holly Black (of spiderwick fame). I know her HP fanfic is really excellent. If it's true she's plagiarized, it's really sad. She has good talent. She shouldn't waste it by becoming a fraud.

[darth-spacey.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Now I've got that bloody song stuck in my head.

The whole mess is tl;dr, but I may take a look over it when I get home.

[unwilly.livejournal.com]

What else would a fan fic writer do?

[yendi]

Honestly, although I'm not a fan of fanfic, the general and accepted "sin" of fanficcers involves potential copyright and trademark issues, not plagiarism. I would expect that a fanfic writer would still stick to original words -- otherwise, I don't see the point at all.

[pulzella-gaia.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I've never read any of Cassie's fanfic aside from The Very Secret Diaries, as I'm not really much interested in fanfic, but the number of passages that had quotes identified left me feeling a little ill. (I mean, one or two little quotes might be ok, but whole passages? And the volume of them, from such a large variety of sources -- just, wow. Frightening.)

[unwilly.livejournal.com]

Mmm, that was overly harsh, on my part.

One of my basic problems with fan fic is that you are relying on, and occasionally stealing from, the works of someone else.

Thus, I think you can get into a lazy habit, of relying on the other persons ideas, and instead of writing all your own stuff you use that kind of crutch and are tempted to keep borrowing from others.

It sounds like this person is either lazy or when push came to show she panice and grabbed up works by others to make herself appear to be a good writer.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's about right.

(I never laughed at anything in an interview so much as the "no, mine is different" crap Ice tried to hand us.) (Sorry, Ice, you got PWNED by Bowie and Queen.)

[yendi]

There was a wonderful piece going around an Atlanta radio station in '90 that had Ice claiming to have written a ton of other classic rock pieces, from the Stones to Led Zep. One of the best radio spoofs I can remember.

[amokk]

You mean if you add an extra beat that no one can hear but you, it's still stealing?

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

I dunno...that Holly Black quote on her website seems fishy, too. Holly Black is full of envy of /Cassandra Claire/? Her talent is "just dangerous"? Sounds a little...off. Especially when the protagonist's surname is fucking FRAY. How obvious could it be?

[yendi]

Agreed about the "Fray" part, but from what I can tell (and it is most certainly a long, convoluted web), Black and Claire do seem to have some sort of legitimate friendship; at the very least, blackholly lists her as an LJ friend.

[amokk]

No offense to other fanfic people out there, but this is the kind of things I expect from them, to be honest. Sure some are honest and just steal the characters and make up their own little fantasies with them, which is fine. No biggie.

Just.. yeah. I don't know. Personally, if anything I ever write gets that popular that people are ripping it off, personally I'm going to be annoyed at the least, and take legal action at worst. It'd depend on what level of theft occured.