I'm in love part 495023
Okay, I know at this point no one will believe that I really really don’t care about Cassie Edwards—or whether she plagiarized or not—but I swear I don’t. (Don’t look at me like that I REALLY DON’T!)
Yet I have no idea why I’m knee-deep into the whole thing at the moment. My only excuse is that any link I click takes me into CE territory! There’s a fucking outbreak of this thing; it’s like a bout of shingles at a geriatric home.
This is the last I’m saying on this issue. (Please don’t hold me to that, but I sweah’ I will do mah’ beri best this time!)
I’m in love with:
Yet I have no idea why I’m knee-deep into the whole thing at the moment. My only excuse is that any link I click takes me into CE territory! There’s a fucking outbreak of this thing; it’s like a bout of shingles at a geriatric home.
This is the last I’m saying on this issue. (Please don’t hold me to that, but I sweah’ I will do mah’ beri best this time!)
I’m in love with:
- Mrs. Giggles. I think she rocks big time. I agree with everything she has to say in this post. God bless her unpopular opinions.
- Gennita Low, who I’d never even heard of before this but who I’m so buying now. *g*
Cassie Edwards fans trolled the different boards, mostly telling off a bunch of people about their need for a job and to go read something else. Academics are pulled in, wandering and wondering (who’s Cassie Edwards again? Will she fund our future research?). Lawyers circled around the stage. Experts torpedoed onto the stage.
Authors and would-be writers on other boards are horrified at the SB’s blog name. "Our image! They done destroy our image!!!! They should have kept all this undercovers, like a Sekret Trial!!!!!!! Wahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!"
Chorus: Oh NOoOOoOOes!!!!! She plagiarized a Pulitzer Prize novel!!!! WTFBBQ?
The Ghost of Sinatra appears in corner of stage, stage-whispersinging: And now, the end is near....)))
Clap of thunder. It’s raining heavily. Wind. Rain. Woooooooooshhhhhh. Manuscript pages flying in tornado like pattern. Spotlight follows a lone black-footed ferret slinking by.
End result so far:
- Plagiarism is bad.
- We are all individuals.
- Cassie Edwards is a 71 year-old woman.
- Mean girls have no reason to invoke the Oracle of Google unless it’s to be mean.
- Someone ran over someone’s dog.
- Jenny Crusie taught me a lot.
- Diana Gabaldon not so much.
- The fear of making fun of CE books is on me. No more making fun of CE books, except with some kind of asterisk ***.
Labels: bibliophile’s affair, romance baby
LOL!! That is hilarious! I couldn't stop laughing. A truly accurate description of the situation ;)
1/17/2008 08:20:00 PM
Am I going to regret asking... What does Gabaldon have to do with the CE wank?
1/17/2008 10:23:00 PM
Dance, I really don't know.
What I gathered was she wrote a post about it. I think on CE's side? I understood (and I could be totally wrong here) that she said romance authors didn't have to credit their sources (which seems kinda fishy to me, but what do I know?)
1/18/2008 12:27:00 AM
I must have missed it. I do recall some other authors and readers discussing that issue, though.
For me, I think it would depend on how they're using their sources. I'm not talking about copying paragraphs nearly word for word, but stuff like historical or medical or whatever type research. Or for House to say where their medical research, such as it is, came from. ;)
I wouldn't expect a (romance) author to cite their sources (other than maybe make an acknowledgment if someone in particular was of great help or they had to take some liberties) any more than I would expect Joss to, for all the pop culture (and beyond) references he has, for example.
I think I also wouldn't want footnotes or some citation every time a writer "borrowed" a phrase or line from someone else, poems and songs aside, as I believe the copyright with those are a bit different. Part of the fun of reading, for me, is to be able to spot those references, or come back to them later with greater understanding of where they came from. That type of borrowing/cumulative knowledge adds layers to the writing, imo.
1/18/2008 01:34:00 AM
Ok, i'm trying to find what Jenny posted about this but i missed it and now can't find it. Did she erased it or something? Though there were people who quoted her like Mrs. G and Gennita Low.
As for what Diana Gabaldon said, i can't find her post either. But unlike Jenny's, the only thing i can find about it is a comment from someone who didn't directly quote DG. From AAR forum:
"When Diana Gabaldon commented somewhere that you can't plagiarize a source in the public domain, it made me realize that there are some BIG misunderstandings about what plagiarism is and how it relates to copyright infringement."
I can't find where that so-called DG comment came from. Or perhaps she was mistaken and it wasn't DG but Signet who said it:
"The copyright fair-use doctrine permits reasonable borrowing and paraphrasing of another author’s words, especially for the purpose of creating something new and original. Also, anyone may use facts, ideas and theories developed by another author, as well as any material in the public domain."
1/18/2008 06:20:00 AM
Hilarious summary!
I didn't know Cassie Edwards is 71 years old already. Or that's a joke?
1/18/2008 08:57:00 AM
Jenny Crusie's post about it is here.
Hmm. So there's 2 issues (or 3, I guess)? 1. copyright (stuff in the public domain is ok to use, and "fair use" material), 2. plagiarism (using Shakespeare's words or a guy writing about a ferret, for example, and passing them off as your own), 3. "Mean" Bloggers (picking on poor, old authors).
1/18/2008 01:26:00 PM
Thanks for the link Dance. I couldn't find that last night. Will read.
1/18/2008 03:36:00 PM
"But I read it and thought, “Are they ever going to leave this woman alone?” and posted the run-over-your-dog comment, which was taken as a refutation that plagiarism is a serious thing, and which I deserved because I was, once again, going for snide-and-derision instead of making myself clear. So I went back in and said, “Plagiarism is bad, but what you’re doing to his author is a crime, too,” or words to that effect."
"The drubbing Clinton took from the press was ridiculous, the glee they took in her “downfall”was obscene. And I think a lot of people went to the polls and essentially voted against S&D because it’s not the way intelligent, insightful political commentary is done."
I can't quote everything LOL. I like Jenny Crusie. Like Trollop said, she's true, dude.
Wonder how many people see me and Trollop as "mean bloggers"..
1/18/2008 04:32:00 PM
I don't know if we're mean, but I really hope we're not cruel.
I would agree with JC on the "mean blogger" thing. Say what you have to say and move on. Which is what I do (I rarely even comment on my own posts to clarify stuff or to debate things).
You have thoughts/opinions? You write them down, you let others read them and say/think whatever they want on the subject. Problem is when you become like a dog with a bone b/c then you lose all objectivity on the issue.
You don't like a book? That's fine, say anything that comes to your mind about it; just don't get mad if the author/fans come defend her work. You said your piece, let them say theirs and move the fuck on. Because really, how much free time do you really have on your hands? LOL
What seems to happen a lot in romance land is that bloggers ALWAYS need to be right. They'll fight with other bloggers, authors, people that comment in their blogs, hell they’ll fight with their own grandmas to prove their point.
If you're smart, and know you are right, you don't need to convince EVERY single person and you sure as hell don't need to fight with everyone who disagrees with you, because lets face it, smart people don’t waste pearls on pigs.
So either you’re not giving out any pearls or you don’t mind rolling around with the pigs *wink*
1/18/2008 05:25:00 PM
Re: Clinton/JC/obsene glee
Again: Make your point and get out, or else you make your public pitty your target (what happened with Clinton and CE).
1/18/2008 05:28:00 PM
I guess I took JC's post another way. I thought it was rather holier-than-thou in tone, and I don't see how picking on the SBTB (why doesn't she just name them in her blog; everyone knows who she's talking about) is any different or not worse than picking on CE.
And if nothing else, imo, her timing sucks because it does seem like she's on CE's side or wanting to sweep the whole mess under the rug, which I don't think does much for the credibility of the romance genre.
There's a lot of "shoot the messenger" going on with regards to this latest uproar, I'm finding. And it turns the discussion/flaming on them instead of the issue, which I do find interesting, personally. Not CE, but the line between plagiarism and using someone else's fair use or public domain words to enhance one's own writing. And whether or not to cite.
I also don't think what happened to CE is anything like what happened to Hillary Clinton, who as far as I know didn't do anything wrong when the media pounced.
As for not letting go... well, that's why I like the internets. It provides a forum for discussion that one might not find elsewhere, and because it's not face-to-face or even in real time sometimes, one can also choose how much to be involved. The cyclical nature of the internets also tend to be pretty fascinating to me.
1/18/2008 11:01:00 PM
Re: And it turns the discussion/flaming on them instead of the issue, which I do find interesting, personally. Not CE, but the line between plagiarism and using someone else's fair use or public domain words to enhance one's own writing. And whether or not to cite.
Very true. That's why I found what Mrs. Giggles had to say so interesting. If someone else besides the SB's had made this public people would be concentrating more on what CE did (which was v. wrong) and not on who made it public. But two things come to play here:
A) It seems (though I never saw anything b/c I'd never even heard of CE) that the SB's have been attacking CE for a long time and took it to a personal level (again, no idea if this is true; never read anything).
B) a lot of the people that are flaming/trashing SB's are doing it b/c they are popular and it's probably out of envy or a similar emotion (My humble opinion).
I honestly hope we wont be seeing footnotes/bibliography on romance novels after this.
In Non-fiction/biographies -even maybe historical fiction- I could take it, but interrupting my romance reading to tackle footnotes on ferrets (or anything else) will drive me nuts! LOL
1/19/2008 12:01:00 AM
I think it's more B than A. I've had SBTB on my RSS feed for a long time and their level of "attack" on CE is about on par with, say, some of the Gabaldon comments here. ;) (The difference is that I am a Gabaldon fan/fangirl and not a CE one. :D)
I do realize I'm beating the dead horse here, but I remembered this post from a while back -- nothing to do with CE; rather, it's about fandom and the inevitable plagiarism kerfuffles that spring up. It's related, though indirectly (more about what is fair use instead of what is plagiarism). :)
1/20/2008 12:13:00 PM
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