Monday, April 29, 2013

i am utterly disgusted with the path you trek

instead of finishing up the last of my semester work over the weekend, i read through the history (or, part of the history) of the early harry potter fandom, and let me just tell you, that was some crazy stuff. i'm not going to get into all of it here because it was really long and had a million characters and if you're really interested (though i think most people have more of a life than i do and don't have time to read about the shenanigans of online harry potter fans in the year 2001) you can find comprehensive biographies written out by people who "don't want the history to disappear." suffice it to say that there was major bullying, stalking, getting people thrown out of colleges, fake harassers, hacking, and lots of threats to sue. what sent me on a semi-educational search for fandom history that happened before i was using the computer for more than playing oregon trail? (like, seriously, this was even before my sisters and i each got fifteen minutes a day on the computer to check email. this was back when yahoo lists were where fans got together.) cassandra clare. remember when i first said i wanted to read the mortal instruments? a friend had told me about clare's fanfiction plagiarism debacle and how the series was pretty much the fanfiction minus the plagiarism. since i finished the fourth book of the series and didn't get the fifth one yet because the world seems very confused about when it came/comes out in paperback (i need to get to a library), i went to read up more about that and try to find her original fanfiction trilogy. (which i downloaded and will start reading as soon as i finish the fifth in the tmi series.)

i am very against fanfiction being published as original fiction. (see all my rants on fifty shades of grey). people have said that although she recycled a couple of scenes and can't seem to write original characters (which is admittedly hard when you've been working with the same set for six years so i'm willing to forgive her a little there), tmi is not the draco trilogy repurposed. i think i need to see for myself, though. (there were quite a few parallels to harry potter that i found in the book.)

regardless of that, what i don't get is clare's choice of name. cassandra clare is a pen name derived from cassandra claire, which was her name in the harry potter fandom. i get that using the same name that made you famous with harry potter and lord of the rings fanfiction is securing you a reader base, but still. the name also connects her with some really bad cyberbullying (which she allegedly still does), plagiarism, and just overall childish pettiness. (she was one of those harry/hermione shippers who was ready to kill fans that thought harry and ginny should end up together around the time of the third book.) personally, i would want to distance myself from all of that, but what do i know? i'm not a new york time's best selling author. 

oh, and also, i find it ironically hilarious that clare's group of friends in the fandom were referred to as the Inner Circle and in her book, the evil death eater equivalents are called the Circle. it makes me chuckle. 

(so the title is a little harsh, but that's the song that came to mind... so yeah.)

***UPDATE***
in case you, too, want to read about cassandra clare and early hp fandom psychosis, check out the following links (the first and third are super long, with chapters and everything):

the cassandra clare plagiarism debacle (also includes basic fandom pettiness)
cassandra clare is a massive bully this is the other side of the cc trying to kick a girl out of college story, and in this case i'm going to have to side against the girl accusing clare.
cassandra clare, ms scribe, and the sock puppets
the problem with cassandra clare's writing

*Dutch Courage - The Spill Canvas

5 comments:

  1. i want to read this stuff, could you link it, thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yes of course. i've updated the post to include the links to a bunch of it. i'm sure i forgot some, but that's the main stuff.

      Delete
  2. anonymous hippopotamusApril 30, 2013 at 1:42 AM

    I've been deceived. Your title had me prepared for a very angry ranting post and then the entire time i kept looking for the anger....the disgust and couldn't find it. And i was concentrating soo hard on finding it that i barely understood the post. and then i get to the last sentence and am like really? couldn;t have started with that?! now i'm confused. loool

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. lool i would've have voiced my disgust more, but from what i've read, you never know when cassandra clare's groupies will pop up and call the police on you for harassment and/or sue you for libel. couldn't risk it.

      Delete
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