(no subject)

[mari4212]

Hogsmeade is over. I'm relatively proud of myself for the work I put in. Of course, H_E voting being what it is, that probably means I won't win anything.

But why, if I finished all the work I was going to be able to do about six hours before the end, and I felt so calm about everything, am I still unable to stop my brain enough to go to sleep?

I've been trying to distract myself by reading over the Cassie Claire wank report over on bad_penny. I joined the fandom late enough to have never really heard much about her or to have read her stories, so while I knew that she'd done something wrong, and I might even have known it was plagiarism, I didn't know how bad it was. Yeesh. Copying that much and integrating it into your own story must take more effort than just writing your own words, was she that insecure about her writing talent that she felt she had to compensate?

And also, apparently she's responsible for introducing or popularizing leatherpants!Draco? If her other crimes weren't bad enough, that alone should have resulted in her being forced to give up her status as a fanfic writer. *shudders*

I'm thinking of dropping hogwarts_harmony. I'm not actually participating in it, aside from occasionally remembering to post some fanfic in the library, and I don't want to be dead weight in the house. I'll see how I feel once I'm recovered from Hogsmeade.

Comments

[thaliontholwen.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the only time I heard of her was when she did "The Very Secret Diaries" for LOTR, which borrowed heavily from Bridget Jones Diary.

However, if you go over to deu_sex_machina, they take apart one of her fics really mercilessly. Quite rightly, too, but it's merciless in it's amusement.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Is that the one where they write the sporking as the characters themeselves reacting to the bad characterization and writing? It might be fun to check out sometime, if I'm bored.

I'm so glad I joined the active fandom late enough to miss these wanks. And now I stay in my nice little protective pocket of fandom, and I can still ignore the crazies.

[thaliontholwen.livejournal.com]

That's the one :)

DSM is probably the most amusing thing I've found in fandom, but it has the converse affect of making me not write a lot of fanfic. I put more focus on my original works, though, so I suppose it's not all bad.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Ah. See, as a result of reading badfic, I try to be very picky about my own characterizations. So far it seems to have worked, as that is the one thing I am most consistantly complimented on in writing.

I have problems with writing original fiction, because my strongest trait as a writer is getting into a character's head, but I have to have seen enough of that character to do so in the first place. Original fiction means I'd first have to come up with characters that are fully fleshed out human beings, and then I'd need to get to know them enough to get inside their heads. I'm still lazy enough to not want to bother with that.

[thaliontholwen.livejournal.com]

For me, the opposite is true. Fanfic really is too limiting for me. I find it really hard to get into the head of a character not my own. I tend to overthink actions of the characters, trying to figure out if it's in character or not. When I do write fanfic, it's only when I feel like I have enough space in the character to be original that I can actually write them freely.

Even though I do original fiction, the characters I write usually come fully formed into my head, and I know everything about them from the start.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Wow. I envy you that talent. Me, I just get Minerva McGonagall talking in my brain at weird hours of the night.

[alphamatrix.livejournal.com]

You're not a deadweight!
I can understand that it'd probably be exhausting being in more than one hogwarts community, but I don't think anyone thinks you're not pulling your weight.

Stay? Please? :-)

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

I'll stay a bit longer, if only for you. I'm just getting to be really bad at doing classes or participating in other activities.

[alphamatrix.livejournal.com]

Yay!
Seems like most of the classes have had low participation this week. i had to postpone my class for it, nobody did their homework!

Mind you, I caught the 'flu and can't complain about not having to write up a new lesson ;-)

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

As soon as I actually wake up enough to be more coherent, I'll have to go check it out.

[svimmelhet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, ilu. I'm also lazy. ♥

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

My mother has this concept called creative laziness. It means figuring out ahead of time that it's easier to do it the right way the first time, instead of having to go back and fix it three times over. I think CC doesn't quite get that idea.

[svimmelhet.livejournal.com]

Definitely not, haha.

[catyuy.livejournal.com]

unable to stop my brain enough to go to sleep

I know how you feel.
I never seem able to get my brain to slow down enough to go to sleep.
Most times my body takes over and shuts down but my brain is still running.
Guess what that means.
Really weird dreams.

If you can't sleep I recomend doing memes.
I can Tag you for one if you want.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I should probably be getting to bed sometime soon.

[your-downfall.livejournal.com]

All I've ever read of CassieClaire's was the Very Secret Diaries for LotR and I thought they were hilarious. What exactly did she do?

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Back when she was pretty much the only big name fan in Harry Potter, she started writing a trilogy of stories known as the Draco Trilogy. In there, she copied large amounts of quotes from about ten different sources without citing them well or at all in most cases. Then a sharp reader who was a particular fan of a book series noted that she had also lifted at least one entire scene from one of her favorite books, cut it a bit, rephrased a few sentences, and changed the character names. What little citation there was for that scene says that it was inspired by the professional author's series, but listed the wrong book title and did not mention the author's name. (Her excuse was that she'd read it a long time ago and forgot the author's name and the correct book title, but the way that scene was lifted, she would have had to have the book out in front of her and been copying it straight from the book.

The person who was reading it was suprised and annoyed, especially at the lack of citation. She didn't want to provoke anything, so in her comments she mentioned the author's name and the correct book. Nothing happened. Later, when this person came back, she had the book with her at the time and saw exactly how bad the plagiarism was, and that the author's notes still had not been corrected. She approached the mods at ff.net, who looked into the allegation, saw the texts side by side, and agreed that plagiarism had taken place. CC was immediately banned from ff.net and her stories were erased there.

There was a big kerfluffle in the hp mailing lists at the time, CC lied several times about what had happened, making up several different stories over the course of the kerfluffle. Many people defended her, saying that it was all a misunderstanding, or that the plagiarism was okay or not actually plagiarism. This died down arround 2001, with most of the camps still convinced of their own opinion.

This week on the journalfen site bad_penny, one of the participants in the wank, the girl who had first noticed the plagiarism, wrote up her account of it. She also included several other instances where CC had lifted scenes, concepts, or dialogue without proper citation. It's stirred up a lot more contrversy, because many people in the fandom now weren't aware of what had happened and are now shocked at the lies and the plagiarism of someone who used to be one of their favorite authors.

Whew! And that was the condensed version of events.

[your-downfall.livejournal.com]

Wow... that is really... something. And I was completely oblivious.