It's Monday and I had a pretty crappy weekend. I also had a pretty weird dream last night where I was in the middle of the
Rent, but Roger got AIDS from a bear bite. My sister wondered if I had been watching
Colbert Report before bed, but nope, my subconscious just has a weird fear of bears, I guess. So weird dreams, crappy weather, and bad weekend, but there are no bosses in the office today and my co-worker and I have decided to ingest a whole lot of sugar for lunch (milkshakes from Wawa that she's picking up and this chocolate brownie cake from Shoprite that I'll pick up). Needless to say the day might shape up to be a decent one.
Also in the plus category, the stories for
Multiverse 2006 are up. Not only did I hear from the person I wrote for, who thankfully enjoyed the story, but I got a great story of my own,
Three Men and a Jail Cell, which features John Cricthon, John Sheppard, and Mal Reynolds. I haven't read any of the other stories yet, but I hope to get to those later today. Definitely wonderful.
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In other news, I've succumbed again to the wanks 'o past by reading about
Cassandra Claire's plagiarism. I'm so glad that I never participated in the Harry Potter fandom overall, that I just sorta read random stories that I liked and didn't care about the who and what of it all. I did read the Draco Trilogy for awhile, but there were a lot of quotes from Buffy that would distract from the flow of the story. I'd be reading and then my brain would go, "I love Xander" and I'd be thinking about Xander while trying to read. I'm a very ADD sort of girl, people.
My thoughts on this whole thing are very limited to what I read because not a part of the fandom and I don't the people involved. The author of this "history" admits that it's quite biased, so we know we're not getting the full story, probably never will.
Anyway...I didn't know the extent to which she had taken chunks of writing from other people...and wow. It's insane that she thought it was okay. And that so many people defended her over it, that basically inteliigent people defended what she did. It's one thing to unintentionally take a line or two (brains work in strange ways), but to take whole passages from a book and then act as though you don't know the name of the author you're borrowing from? That's a bit weird. Either she had a photographic memory or she was copying right from the book.
The thing about this wank that upset me the most while reading though was the argument that fanfiction is already plagiarism. That's ridiculous to me, though I could see how it could only make fanfiction, on a whole, look worse to those who didn't like it to begin with. Fanfiction, you're crediting the creator of the world all along, and while you're using the characters and that world in your stories, the writing and the story are original. It's not like someone is taking book six of Harry Potter and making a chapter fanfiction out of it. It's not okay to take large chunks of someone else's writing and pass it off as your own. I mean, I have great issues with writing really good description and settings...wouldn't it be lovely to have insta-help from a book in my library...but I don't use it.
And I guess I don't see the benefit. In that why would you want credit for something that's not yours? Wouldn't it eat at you to get accolades on something that you know isn't yours? And how does your writing ever improve if you're stealing from other people whenever you need "inspiration."
Eep. That's all I've got on the topic. The more of these fandom wanks I read from days of yore, the happier I am that I'm not a part of that kind of stuff. Hopefully, I never will be.
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I'm almost done by Supernatural 50 States story. Well, the first draft anyway. It's going to need a bit of work before I even send it to betas. But I'm slowly getting caught up on things. I'm hoping things will be much easier come September when things slow down a bit in my personal life.
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Finally, I've told Steph that I want a Sheppard/McKay/Ronon story for my birthday. She laughed, but said she might try it. Woo-hoo. I can't believe I'm going to be starting my thirties come August 28th. When did I get old, people? I sure don't act my age.
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Alrighty, off to read friends list, multiverse, and enjoy lots of chocolatey goodness with my co-worker.
Ciao.