plagiarism and the Book In The Wall!

[rivendellrose]

So, several years ago my friends (including theladyfeylene, nekokoban, zinjadu) and I found a book in this little cubby-hole in the wall of the house we were renting at the time. Alas, it was not an exciting and ancient tome that did anything wonderful, as it would have been if my life was the fun little urban fantasy I occasionally wish it would become, but was rather a dull and embarrassingly twee romance novel called something like Savage Winds. Or maybe it was Savage Promise. Or something like that. Something was Savage, anyway, you can be sure of that, because the writer in question has made a career out of writing tedious, sententious and entirely mind-numbing romance novels meant to Honor the Native People of the United States. No, really - she went on at length about this in the author's notes and in her bio.

I wanted to spork my eyes out at all of this, but I was too busy laughing until tears ran down my face because the writing was THAT BAD. Especially the sex. We had a few Read Aloud sessions around the dinner table (because that's how great my friends are - they make me read aloud from bad porn at the dinner table!), and then tucked the thing carefully back into the wall for the next group of people, who presumably are even now wondering why the hell there's a romance novel tucked into the wall next to the basement staircase. Or possibly why the toilet seems to be on a little throne. Anyway.

Come to find out today, that horribly boring writing? Not even hers! Sure enough, Cassie Edwards has been outed as a plagiarist, causing a delightful storm of wank around the internet in the manifold groups of people who somehow haven't yet discovered that they can get better, more interesting porn for free on various fanfiction sites. It's fantastic!

Edited to Add: Incidentally, according to the office health fair lady my blood pressure is 127 over 80 (good, apparently), and, nothing to do with the health fair, I had another weird Buffy-related sex dream last night. Except this time it wasn't Xander. It was Anya. ...The Doctor was there, too, but of course my brain latched onto Anya for the smutty bits. *Sigh* Whatever.

Comments

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Hilarious. I always love seeing plagiarists outed, and the tinny whining of the diehard fans that can't conceive of their favorite author doing any wrong whatsoever just makes it more amusing.

There's something so very... schadenfreudalicious about it.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Schadenfreudalicious is my new favorite word, I think. ♥

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you like it. Though I wonder in retrospect whether it ought to be "schadenfreudelicious" - the original German word ends in -de, and picking that up as the beginning of "delicious" is awfully tempting.

It can be one of those multiple-spelling words, I guess. :D

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

Oh, the romance community is always a keg ready to explode about something. (Put less delicately, as a friend said 'they bring all the wank to the yard'.)

I like many romance novels, even some of the badly written ones, but I avoid the online community.

Then again, I can say that for pretty much everything. Haha.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I rather like Smart Bitches, which was the site that broke this news. Other than that, yeah, I ignore romance genre altogether, except to laugh at them.

Incidentally, Jennifer Crusie? Being a total twit in this whole thing, unfortunately. She's throwing a fit about people making a "scapegoat" out of Cassie Edwards, which kind of makes me wonder whether she's defensive about plagiarism in general, or if she for some reason actually likes the tripe Edwards writes. Pity. I'd had her pegged until now as a decently intelligent writer for her genre, from what I'd heard about her.

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

Huh. Yeah, Crusie is usually pretty reasonable and smart.

It might be that she's more upset about the wank it's turned into. I mean, people are quick to jump into the wank and explode everything. Look at Anne Rice wank or JK Rowling wank. It's not necessarily that what they are doing isn't silly, but that it's getting sensationalized everywhere and people get all RARH I SMELL BLOOD LET'S CRUCIFY THE AUTHOR.

(And I'll admit I'm saying this without actually getting involved or reading much of what's happening, because I don't want to get too dragged in myself.)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

See, as far as I'm concerned, once someone has plagiarized in a published work, they deserve to be wanked. They deserve to have the fact that they plagiarized announced from rooftops, and I expect the other writers not to defend them. It's not okay. It shouldn't be accepted. The fact that I already hated Edwards for various anthropological and writing issues (namely that she was fetishizing a minority, and that her writing sucked) is just the icing on the "watching someone who's done a bad thing get her due" cake, as far as I'm concerned.

The mature response from the writing community should be something along the lines of what Nora Roberts said - effectively "I won't bash her, but plagiarism is very very serious and bad." I don't expect to see writers standing up and yelling at the people who've posted what looks to me like entirely justified evidence.

I agree that this kind of thing has an element of sharks circling at the scent of blood, but in the case of plagiarism I'm happy to spread the smell around and try to stir things up as much as possible. It gets neglected and condoned way too much, as far as I'm concerned, and the more fuss a case like this causes, hell, maybe it'll be less likely to happen again.

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that plagiarism shouldn't be condoned and certainly it should be made known (although, in my opinion "informing the masses" and "wank" are two differen things). It's that sharks circling thing that makes me avoid communities and such.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Fandom_Wank does indeed purvey the sharky variety of this whole issue, and I occasionally have issues with that... while other times I forgive them because it's funny. *Shrugs* This time I'm on the funny side of the fence. The original post over at "Smart Bitches" is much less of that and more of notifying people, from what I've seen, although they do their fair share of mockery as well.

[reve-lucide.livejournal.com]

Entirely too funny. In this Google-infested day and age, how does anyone honestly think they'll get away with plagarism, particularly pro writers? *boggles*

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I have no idea. I get it with high school students, largely because they're lazy, don't care, and don't think their teachers are smart enough to catch them as well as thinking they won't get any repercussions if they are caught... and from some things I've heard, they're right, which pisses me off to no end. Plagiarism should be explained on the first day of a class in no uncertain terms, and after that anyone caught plagiarizing for a paper should fail that assignment. Personally I feel that if they do it again, they should fail the class, no exceptions.

As for a professional... damn, I don't even know what to think. I hope her publishers take serious action with this.