Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2012-06-13 07:01 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-06-13 07:01 pm
[ SECRET POST #1989 ]
⌈ Secret Post #1989 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 048 secrets from Secret Submission Post #284.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
no subject
Read her fanfiction. It's better than her published work. And no, not because of the plagiarism. When you realize how much of her fic there is, the "borrowed" passages are really just a drop in the bucket. And you know, maybe it's because I'm fairly lax on plagiarism anyway (as long as it's not for profit I fail to see how it victimizes anyone) but it didn't bother me. She took passages and turns of phrase and ideas from a lot of sources, and she transformed them into something new that was more than the sum of its parts. She did also cite quite a few of her quotes--not all of them, and a few times she had to be prompted, but I do remember seeing tons of citations.
I also don't recall any plagiarism wank with her oneshots, which I personally liked very much. I don't think she's a writer who actually needs to plagiarize, since she can get the job done fine.
I admit I'm probably seeing it through the haze of nostalgia, because I was a teenager when I first read her fic, and it was my first serious encounter with fanfiction, and I'm sure if you go into it expecting to hate it, there's lots to pick apart. I've never actually claimed her writing is all that IC, for example. (I can like things that are OOC, what.)
I read City of Bones, and felt let down. Her fanfiction had felt like she had a burning story to tell, something she was passionate about. City of Bones felt like she realized she'd spent years of her life writing a massive complete work of fiction and not gotten any money for it, and had set about really thoroughly filing the serial numbers off. It isn't a simple find/replace job (with the exception of one character's backstory, which is lifted word for word) but it really did feel like the Draco Trilogy made more mainstream, more like a commercial product. I've heard that the series gets better, but never got around to picking it up again.
So yeah...read her fanfic, see if you like her style, I guess. The Draco Trilogy didn't get really good for me until later (the first part is an older work, and it shows) but maybe the twoshot A Season in Hell/After the Flood? That was always one of my favorites. I know people are going to be like, "What, that crappy OOC Drarry fic" but w/e, I like what I like.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-06-14 03:28 pm (UTC)(link)I suppose if you mean someone directly paying her for the writing, no she didn't profit. If you mean gaining influence, crazy popularity, using that influence and popularity to gain power and actual objects (con tickets, laptops, etc) then yeah, she profited.
But I do agree that her fanfic is actually much better than her published work. And I actually think it has a lot to do with the plagiarism. The fics weren't 100% all other people's work, but I think the snappy dialogue and really memorable descriptions are mostly what she copied and really added to the overall feeling to her works. So yeah, if you're looking for something fun to read and don't mind the wank associated with it, I'd definitely recommend her fic.
no subject
But the writers of Friends, Monty Python, et al, did not actually lose anything because Cassandra Claire got a laptop as a gift.
My morality is harm-based; I don't care if people didn't work hard enough according to some arbitrary standard to get what they got (whatever else you may say about her, CC had ridic wordcounts, and most of it was not plagiarized--I say the girl earned her laptop, and the person who bought it for her liked her and wanted her to have it, but whatevs) it's based on whether there's actual, demonstrable harm caused. I can't find any harm in CC borrowing lines from sitcoms in her fanfiction, or even much of a moral distinction between borrowing lines and borrowing characters, which is what all fanfic authors do.
I also don't take well to people trying to trump up harm to justify their own, different moral system's condemnation of things in harm-based morality, like people who have tried to tell me that it's morally wrong to not wear a seatbelt because the human body could become a projectile in an accident and hurt someone. (By the same logic, your car itself could fucking hurt someone in an accident, and you shouldn't drive it. Also, what about, say, carrying unsecured heavy objects in the back/passenger seat, which I've done many times and no one bats an eye at, because seatbelt usage really comes down to society's desire to protect its members from harm whether they wish to be protected or not.) Basically, my morals don't perfectly match up to what society thinks morals should look like, and I think a bunch of things are fine that society gets its undies in a wad over. Plagiarism is one of them. I'm not saying anyone else has to agree with me. I'm saying that's my opinion.
FTR, I have never intentionally plagiarized anything, unless we're counting fanfic itself as plagiarism (as some do). It's more a matter of...not seeing the point, really. My only external reward for writing is being praised for it, and that praise would ring kind of hollow if I knew they weren't even my words. I do wonder sometimes what goes through a plagiarist's head. But I don't think they're awful people or need to be shunned.
Also, there's a lot of really nice prose in CC's work that I don't believe was ripped off anything. Maybe I'm just not well-read enough to recognize it, I don't know. I think she's actually a good enough writer that she can hold her own just fine; I just thought she didn't have her heart in her original fiction the same way as she did with her fanfic. I could be wrong. I don't know her or anything.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-06-15 01:25 am (UTC)(link)Wowwwwww. How about the unpleasant, cheap feeling of violation and disappointment and/or futility an author feels when they realize some creep stole what they worked really hard on and slapped their own name on it like a gross, inconsiderate hack?
But seriously, the 'plagiarism doesn't count as long as you have talent!' thing has been done to death in her defense and it...still doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. If someone works to create something and somebody else takes it and claims they did the work, you might not always be able to arrest them, but it still makes them an ass.
no subject
I know this is a slippery slope, that some things it's common sense to feel harmed by, and some things it would be absurd, and it's really hard to untangle what falls on which side of the line, especially when dealing with people who have been raised on other moral systems.
This is why I hate arguing harm-based morality with people, because people can, for example, argue for the death penalty on the grounds that the family of the victim would be harmed every day by knowing that the convict is still alive, or say that society is harmed when people do drugs or when poor people collect government assistance. People will reach for any imaginary scrap of harm to justify what they actually believe. It's much more difficult than you'd think to step back, let go of what you feel should be considered wrong, and look for the actual harm.
You believe that plagiarism is wrong. That belief is the only thing causing the harm when you find out you've been plagiarized. And I mean, violating? Dude, rape is violating. Having someone copy words from a book you had published and sent all over the world or a script that was broadcast on national television and went into syndication and DVDs and OMG you didn't have perfect control over how people interacted with your words, someone used your punchline in a fanfiction, that's not really violating, get over yourself.
And arrest them? Seriously, do you hear yourself? Arresting is something that's used far too much anyway. You seriously want to take away someone's freedom of movement, restrain them like they are a danger to society, put them in a box and put their entire life on hold, because they dared copy your precious words? I...I can't even.
A plagiarist may well be an ass. But them being an ass in a way that honestly, seems to hurt themselves more than anyone else (by stifling their creativity and damaging their reputation, as well as probably lowering their confidence) does not entitle you to cry violation and take away their personal liberties, Jesus Christ.
(And since I know someone is going to just read this comment and take things out of context, no, I am not saying all plagiarism is always okay, I gave an example in my other comment about how plagiarism could cause harm, and it's wrong when it does.)
Also, I am not saying that CC having talent invalidates her plagiarism. She has talent, in my subjective opinion. She's been widely shown to borrow passages from other works in her free, not-for-profit online writing. It's surprising that she chose to do that considering she had talent anyway, but I don't view the morals of her choice any differently than I would if I thought she was an untalented hack who couldn't string a single sentence together on her own. Nor do I believe talent can be erased by also doing something someone might have a moral problem with. Even if she were a serial killer, I'd still think she was a pretty good writer.