the thing about CC is that she did plagiarize. she was found guilty of plagiarism and banned from fanfiction dot net! she plagiarized pamela dean, among others, and lied about it repeatedly! it happened! and regardless of whatever else she writes, regardless of whether the publishing industry and her fans trust her not to do it again, regardless of how many times her wikipedia page gets scrubbed clean, that will always have happened! so it is not in fact cruel gossip, but a factually true statement, to say that she plagiarized and i’m not interested in supporting her or giving her the benefit of the doubt because she plagiarized and lied about it repeatedly! fuck!
what really incenses me about cassandra clare — and forgive me for bringing this up again, but i don’t think i’ve articulated this point yet — is not that i believe she is currently plagiarizing. any accusations i’ve seen about recent work seem to me to be superficial. but even if one could prove that she never plagiarized again once she started publishing, it wouldn’t matter to me, because she chose to capitalize on her fandom history. while trying to distance herself from what she did, she made a brand out of the fanfic pen name “cassandra clare” and continues to profit off the reputation and fanbase that she amassed while she was, provably, a plagiarist.
you don’t get to do that and bury the things that made you famous. as an individual, as a human being, she is capable of change and any other good qualities you may want to ascribe. but she built her career on lies. professionally, i don’t understand why she gets to move on.
the thing about CC is that she did plagiarize. she was found guilty of plagiarism and banned from fanfiction dot net!...