Why plagiarism is wrong: The long version
Feb. 23rd, 2010 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficSo I've been reading the infamous Cassandra Claire's Draco novels. I know, I know. They're well-written to a point... they're intended for Draco fangirls, and those who aren't into Tom Felton can't be blamed for not seeing what's so great about passage after passage about silver hair and pale skin. And there's a kooky overreliance on super-special bloodlines (just about the entire cast is the Heir of something or other), plot coupons, and our intrepid heroes receiving superpowers. Oh, and if you're not a Draco fan, the redemption and subsequent heroism of Draco is really frickin' weird. Given that he's a bullying racist prat, it doesn't take that much time for him to not only turn on his (abusive, natch) father, but to enter into a love triangle with Hermione. You know, the girl he reduced to tears by calling a magic mandingo, then she slapped him? Oh, and the way the character of Fleur Delacour is sexualized and exoticized for the sole purpose of drawing attention to Draco's attractiveness is also, uh, weird.
But most interesting to me is, obviously, the plagiarism. I mean, what could make her think it was acceptable to take someone else's story, in fact stories from multiple people, put it in a genre setting, and profit from that?
Before I begin, a sidenote. Given that Supernatural fan comics tell me the worst thing one can do in fandom is to out someone else, how do we justify me Googling her name and coming up with a Fandom Wank page all about who she is and why she's a nogoodnik? Is it her fault for not using a pseudonym? How long do people intend to punish her for this? I mean, it's not like she did anything really evil, like badmouthing chan.
But questions of guilt and retribution aside (sorry, Marty Scorsese, I know you were interested), her stories actually provide a pretty huge argument against plagiarism... not intentionally, though. Take this excerpt, obviously "influenced" by a Halloween episode of Buffy.
I bet they think they´re so great just because they´re demons, Harry said, looking resentfully across the room. Well, they´re not so great.
Don´t mock the demons, Potter.
Why not? Do you think they can hear us?
No. It´s just...not very classy.
What's this? The snide, acerbic Draco telling someone not to be mocking? The guy who, as characterized by Claire herself, mouths off to everyone from dark wizards to his love interests (yes, plural... sigh)?
You see, originally, that dialogue was between Xander and Giles, where it makes sense. Xander is irreverent, but also scared that the demon might be able to attack him, whereas Giles is prim and proper. It's an exchange that fits into their characters, their relationship, and even the world that Joss Whedon has created, being an irreverent take on mythology. Ripping it out of that universe and shoving it into another is not only wrong, but poor writing.
For the first thing, it's inorganic to the writing. Picture every conversation as a river, with a natural ebb and flow between two points, guiding the reader downstream until he or she has absorbed all the necessary information and development the author wants to convey. Shoehorning any ol' quippy remark in there is like putting in a dam. It takes longer to flow, and the flow is interrupted. I have a tendency to be self-indulgent with my own writing and needing to cut it down to size... I can't imagine cramming in someone else's too. You have to keep up that tension, bam bam bam, not elongate it just to show the reader how clever you are (or, rather, Joss Whedon and his writing staff is). Brevity is the soul of wit, after all.
Not only that, but it doesn't fit the characters. And so it becomes generic wittiness, when we (presumably) want Draco And Harry Wittiness. Other exchanges are similarly inorganic. There's a very tense scene where a "homage" to the hilarious Douglas Adams is placed.
He looked up. His father and Voldemort were staring at him, Voldemort with curiosity and Lucius with an expression that said that all his worst nightmares had just come true in one horrible moment.
"Isn't that your son, Lucius?" the Dark Lord said.
"Hello, Father," said Draco.
Lucius was still looking like someone had force-fed him a lemon that happened to be taped to an enormous brick. "Draco?"
Worst nightmares... horrible moment... force-fed a lemon... one of these things is not like the others... As Mark Twain said, the difference between the right word and almost the right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. If you want to come up with a description like what Douglas Adams used, but relevant and contextual, then put in the hard work and come up with a line that's dramatic. It's not that hard to do. I mean, she was a BNF? Couldn't she just call up her clique on her red phone made of chocolate and chat with them about what line she could use?
There's the aristocratic, refined Draco saying "And if that doesn't work, then ass-kicking makes a solid backup plan." And of course, Draco regularly quotes his father, who seems to quote Al Capone and some e-mails I got back in the 90s.
"For some reason, the only one of my father's sayings that seems to be sticking in my head right now is when he told me 'There's always a light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, it's usually an oncoming express train.'"
How would Lucius Malfoy even know what an express train is? Plus, they used that in the Daredevil movie. When you're cribbing lines from a Ben Affleck vehicle about him romancing Greek Jennifer Garner, something's gone horribly south.
And cribbing lines from Buffy and Blackadder? How do you not think people will notice that?
So, kids, don't plagiarize. Even if you don't get caught, your writing will suffer. Also, never do drugs.
And if you are going to plagiarize, make sure it's something so obscure that no one will ever notice. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go write query letters for my book, Big Barda In Sexy Town. Or, as it will be known in bookstores, Passion Under The Full Moon. With Vampires.
But most interesting to me is, obviously, the plagiarism. I mean, what could make her think it was acceptable to take someone else's story, in fact stories from multiple people, put it in a genre setting, and profit from that?
Before I begin, a sidenote. Given that Supernatural fan comics tell me the worst thing one can do in fandom is to out someone else, how do we justify me Googling her name and coming up with a Fandom Wank page all about who she is and why she's a nogoodnik? Is it her fault for not using a pseudonym? How long do people intend to punish her for this? I mean, it's not like she did anything really evil, like badmouthing chan.
But questions of guilt and retribution aside (sorry, Marty Scorsese, I know you were interested), her stories actually provide a pretty huge argument against plagiarism... not intentionally, though. Take this excerpt, obviously "influenced" by a Halloween episode of Buffy.
I bet they think they´re so great just because they´re demons, Harry said, looking resentfully across the room. Well, they´re not so great.
Don´t mock the demons, Potter.
Why not? Do you think they can hear us?
No. It´s just...not very classy.
What's this? The snide, acerbic Draco telling someone not to be mocking? The guy who, as characterized by Claire herself, mouths off to everyone from dark wizards to his love interests (yes, plural... sigh)?
You see, originally, that dialogue was between Xander and Giles, where it makes sense. Xander is irreverent, but also scared that the demon might be able to attack him, whereas Giles is prim and proper. It's an exchange that fits into their characters, their relationship, and even the world that Joss Whedon has created, being an irreverent take on mythology. Ripping it out of that universe and shoving it into another is not only wrong, but poor writing.
For the first thing, it's inorganic to the writing. Picture every conversation as a river, with a natural ebb and flow between two points, guiding the reader downstream until he or she has absorbed all the necessary information and development the author wants to convey. Shoehorning any ol' quippy remark in there is like putting in a dam. It takes longer to flow, and the flow is interrupted. I have a tendency to be self-indulgent with my own writing and needing to cut it down to size... I can't imagine cramming in someone else's too. You have to keep up that tension, bam bam bam, not elongate it just to show the reader how clever you are (or, rather, Joss Whedon and his writing staff is). Brevity is the soul of wit, after all.
Not only that, but it doesn't fit the characters. And so it becomes generic wittiness, when we (presumably) want Draco And Harry Wittiness. Other exchanges are similarly inorganic. There's a very tense scene where a "homage" to the hilarious Douglas Adams is placed.
He looked up. His father and Voldemort were staring at him, Voldemort with curiosity and Lucius with an expression that said that all his worst nightmares had just come true in one horrible moment.
"Isn't that your son, Lucius?" the Dark Lord said.
"Hello, Father," said Draco.
Lucius was still looking like someone had force-fed him a lemon that happened to be taped to an enormous brick. "Draco?"
Worst nightmares... horrible moment... force-fed a lemon... one of these things is not like the others... As Mark Twain said, the difference between the right word and almost the right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. If you want to come up with a description like what Douglas Adams used, but relevant and contextual, then put in the hard work and come up with a line that's dramatic. It's not that hard to do. I mean, she was a BNF? Couldn't she just call up her clique on her red phone made of chocolate and chat with them about what line she could use?
There's the aristocratic, refined Draco saying "And if that doesn't work, then ass-kicking makes a solid backup plan." And of course, Draco regularly quotes his father, who seems to quote Al Capone and some e-mails I got back in the 90s.
"For some reason, the only one of my father's sayings that seems to be sticking in my head right now is when he told me 'There's always a light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, it's usually an oncoming express train.'"
How would Lucius Malfoy even know what an express train is? Plus, they used that in the Daredevil movie. When you're cribbing lines from a Ben Affleck vehicle about him romancing Greek Jennifer Garner, something's gone horribly south.
And cribbing lines from Buffy and Blackadder? How do you not think people will notice that?
So, kids, don't plagiarize. Even if you don't get caught, your writing will suffer. Also, never do drugs.
And if you are going to plagiarize, make sure it's something so obscure that no one will ever notice. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go write query letters for my book, Big Barda In Sexy Town. Or, as it will be known in bookstores, Passion Under The Full Moon. With Vampires.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-23 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-23 10:43 pm (UTC)I am so ashamed that I'm so fandom-saturated that I recognized that, even before you mentioned it. Buffy isn't even one of my fandoms.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 12:05 am (UTC)I think a lot of the punish aspect comes down to this. Not only was she plagierizing, she lied about plagerizing, created a massive huge wank in the Harry Potter fandom, and participated in events that ultimately hurt a lot of people,and for what? I mean, the big giant diatribes written about her on the internet aren't occuring because she treated everyone so well and nicely and a perfect, innocent little dear.
She also has never really admitted to plagirizing, or acknowledged her lifting of diologue is not homage etc etc.
I wouldn't say, run over her dog, and I don't seek out venues to be shitty to her, but frankly the way she handled it really reflects poorly on her.
I'm sorry to be ranty. In fairness I was always a looky loo lurker in HP fandom and the "love cassie or we all hate you" crazy crap was a huge part of why.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 12:39 am (UTC)It can also be argued she was stealing livelyhood from the author she ripped off in the endless Draco tales (I forget the author's name but the salient point was that she was a published author and several pages of her work was used almost word for word.
On the other hand, I personally don't run to the media and decry her as a plagarist either - I jus give my honest opinion of her books, which is that they aren't very good and highly derivative. WHich, when you read City of Bones, isn't me being wanky for the sake of it.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 01:02 am (UTC)Harry Potterfandom. What can't start a wankstorm?no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 01:19 am (UTC)But it geniunely got far more ugly than anything I have ever seen. I don't say that easily.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 06:44 pm (UTC)This isn't always the case. Sometimes one side can just be dedicated to making things ugly. Left in a vacuum, they will still seek out a way to make all the trouble they can, with no response or reprisal from outside necessary to set it off.
However, in this case all indications are that practically everyone involved was trying to make this as ugly and vicious as possible. You've got one group following a little cult of personality, another group that just could not and would not leave them alone to wallow in their crap and instead kept rushing in screaming with the fire hoses, and another who's egging everyone on for their own amusement while simultaneously getting just as pettily involved and entrenched as everyone else.
In other words, I highly doubt Little Miss Claire would have just spontaneously turned into the perfect storm of flame wars if she'd just been left the fuck alone. This is not to defend her, but rather just a statement of fact, much as "It wouldn't have blown your leg off if you hadn't kept stomping on it for fun, you idiot" isn't actually in defense of a land mine.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 07:34 pm (UTC)More accurately, there would have been nothing to leave her the fuck alone about if she hadn't been plagirizing to begin with. That particular landmine wasn't hidden by a layer of dirt, it was on display with a sign saying "landmine here, don't jump on it".
I agree, once she stepped on the landmine, everyone came running to flame the fire, but the initial start point was that she was plagarizing the works of others. Now, based on the extremely high rage quotient of the HP fandom, I am sure they all would have found something to bitch about... but she wasn't an innocent maiden who did nothing werong and just wanted to be left alone.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 08:02 pm (UTC)Nor was I claiming she was. But I have to call a bit of BS on the whole "She needed to be struck down for her plagiarism!" thing. Not because she wasn't plagiarizing, which she clearly, obviously, blatantly was, but I call BS that it was the real reason that people declared Internet War on her.
Calling her out on plagiarism as if it was a strong moral imperative to defend badly-done quotes of Buffy and so on seems on all counts to have just been to give those attacking her an air of righteousness. "We're trying to bring attention to the transgressions of a plagiarist!" sounds a lot more noble than "We hate her because of her shitty fanfics!" And it's almost certainly a better salve on the conscience of anyone that thinks they went too far.
That Cassandra Claire was arrogant, untalented, unintelligent, confrontational, and yes, a plagiarist, is not in question. That does not, however, mean that the people going after her were noble, upright, conscientious individuals just doing what had to be done to right wrongs and triumph over evil. That she lied doesn't mean they were truthful, that she was confrontational did not mean that they were peaceful, and that she was petty did not mean that they were elevated.
(I also find it rather ironic that a large number of the people involved in this are outraged that America would ever dare to be less than superhumanly moral in the war on terror, but consider plagiarism in fanfic to be a fitting reason for the gloves to come off and numerous immoral actions to be justified.)
In short, it's quite possible for someone to be a bad writer/fan/person and still unfairly persecute them.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 11:02 pm (UTC)Oh, I agree with you there. The wank in that fandom was always out of control and people on the "we hate plagarism!" bandwagon were nursing grudges over *other* wanktastic issues that revolved around Cassie Clare. The laptop scandal, Msscribe, etc etc.
On the other hand, as you imply, Cassie was dishing it out just as hard. Admittedly I was just watching on the sidelines, but I often wondered, since it is really pretty clear that she did plagirize, if she had simply apologized (it was in a fanfic after all) if things might have not gotten so ugly? I honestly think a lot of the blow up occured because people were being called liars etc for saying she was plagirizing.
That said, there is a point where you do have to stop and remember that it *is* about HP fanfic and not about murdered abused kids, or drug cartel participants getting off. The Cassandra Clare expose that took place on about the time her book came out was excessive and was clearly someone's bittercakes. There's a point where you have to move on.
Which is why my review of City of Bones is about how it's just not well written and very derivative, and not about how Cassie stole Buffy diologue in her Draco stories.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-24 06:29 pm (UTC)