the mortal instruments is coming out soon, so letâs have some fandom history, yes?
[snip]
in summary: CASS CLARE IS THE WORST
Things that are not true:
1. âHer books are reworking of her own fanfiction.â This is not true. You may think itâs true because Tumblr repeats this lie over and over, but *it is absolutely not true.* Her books are original and, with the exception of a 3-page word-for-word recycled backstory for Dracoâ>Jace, do not contain plot points used in the DT. Gav detailed this in her article. I donât know how many other ways we can say it; itâs not fucking true.
2. âShe was involved in H/Hr ship wars.â No, not really. She shipped Harry/Hermione but she had an equal number of friends from the Harry/Draco side of the fandom, and she *got* involved in the widespread war on Gryffindor Tower because the husband of one of its moderators allegedly stalked and threatened her. She was really snarky and superior about her ship just like everyone else, but she was never involved in any âwarâ apart from the business with MsScribe, whichâŚ
3. âShe played an integral part in the biggest wank in historyâ â she played her part in a number of them, but the MsScribe wank was not something that Cassie, or any of the rest of us, had any control over, since Cassie along with everyone else was being manipulated by Dionne.
4. âThat she was a rampant cyberbully who attacked people online, and even went so far as to involve the police and try to get someone she disliked kicked out of their university?âÂ
okay, so. This is the thing. The post that everyone uses to retroactively declare CC a cyberbully has been deleted and has never been sourced. It has, however, been refuted in a number of places, and the actions that were allegedly ascribed to Cassie have been, by the own admission of one of the mods, claimed as action taken by members of the HPFGU mailing list after Sinead (the author of the Tumblr post) hacked their account repeatedly.
I know that that post went viral and everyone now takes it as gospel truth, but *at no time has any part of it been substantiated, and its author deleted her post,* which is as close to a retraction as you can get on Tumblr. So this is THE main evidence that people are using to declare CC a cyberbully, and itâs just not based in fact. (Though I will say that given the widely substantiated reports that, at the time, Sinead, the author of the Tumblr post, was stalking and harassing CC, the likelihood of CC telling her that her mother should have aborted her is extremely high.)
I have no idea why the nastyclare/clarewitchproject journals were deleted because I only saw one of them before they were removed and I saw nothing objectinable; but what we do know is that Tumblr considered them to be forms of harassment and they were subsequently suspended. Since weâre only getting one side of the story, I would be extremely hesitant to list them as a part of the evidence of âabuse.â Evidence that CC canât take criticism? Absolutely.
At this point the only verifiable, fact-checked source I know for the claim that CC mistreated her friends in HP fandom is my own post from 2006, and while I think I was and am pretty damn objective, at no point in it do I call her a cyberbully.
If you want to dislike CC for plagiarism that she engaged in 13 years ago and has, despite the internetâs constant scrutiny, never repeated, go ahead. If you want to dislike her because sheâs mean, or because you think her books are terrible, go ahead.
But donât hate her because you think she plagiarized all 7 of her enormous books, because she didnât. I was there, I saw the kind of writing ethic she had. I saw her writing at home and on the bus and on the subway and every chance she got, and I know that you all hate to admit it, because a large part of fandom culture has defined itself around being antithetical to the BNF worship that CC engendered; but the truth is that she worked hard, she wrote constantly, and she wrote books people like to read, and she didnât fucking plagiarize the Mortal Instruments series.
And donât hate her because she allegedly got someone kicked out of college, because, again, THAT NEVER HAPPENED.
So judge her based on the things sheâs actually done, instead of constantly exaggerating the myths and rumors about her, and giving her way more credit and way more powerâstill! after 10 years!âthan she deserves.
As someone who has plenty of reason to dislike CC, I should not be in the position of having to defend her by pointing out that half the things people say about her are complete bullshit. And yet here I am, because really, Tumblr, we can all do so much fucking better than this.
Top-posting to note that my post below (far, far below) is long and most of you are probably utterly disinterested in all of these stories from 2001 and 2002 and 2006.
But the thing is, earlier this summer when Aprikiâs and alli6âs post were going around on tumblr, and I wasnât home for more than three or four days at a time, I wanted to write a response to all of Sineadâs lie-riddled claims from over a decade ago, and I really did not have the time, or the interest in dealing with it again.
But it came up at Comic Con, and again at DragonCon, and even though Iâve said all these things before, many, many times (as has Kelley from HPFGU who does not know Cassie but does know what Sinead did) I think itâs necessary for me to say them again. So two weeks ago I wrote it up, and resolved to post it again the next time (a) the allegations crossed my dash and (b) I was actually home. So keep reading or scroll pastâŚ
Iif thereâs one thing Iâve been told and tried to listened to for years and years, it is this: do not feed the trolls. I also tend not to address every single mention of me, no matter how critical and how veiled. I want to be pretty zen about all the nonsense online about me because if I wasnât I wouldâve left fandom with a broken heart years ago and thus wouldâve missed out on (a) knowing many of you (b) seeing so much awesome created by many of you and Š participating in something that is very important to me. And of course, (d) giving back to fandom in whatever ways I can (usually answering IP law questions and making slightly cracky fanvids). In other words, no matter how much certain people have wanted me out of fandom, and have tried to chase me and scorn me out of fandom, Iâm still here. I was at Comic Con waiting for the Supernatural panel to begin about a month ago, and left my friend at our seats so I could go to the loo. When I came back, she told me that the women sitting behind us recognized me (names are on badges at SDCC so they mayâve seen my name, Iâm not sure) and were talking about how I was Cassieâs lawyer, that BNF, etc.  So I turned around, said My friend says you know who I am - so if you have any questions, feel free to ask me anything! (Btw, this applies online too.) One of them asked me about early Harry Potter fandom days and we chatted a bit about HP for Grownups, the first HP fancon in 2003, etc - and I talked a little about the same sorts of things Iâm going to address here. [through here] Iâm snipping to just one section of [to] keep this from becoming impossibly tl;dr. alli6:    Okay, everyone, gather around. Itâs time for some schooling on the Harry Potter Fandom and some of the greatest fandom wank in its history (and considering that this is the HP fandom, thatâs saying something).    For someone who was praised for a post on cyberbullying (read here: http://cassandraclare.tumblr.com/post/33442496804/october-is-anti-bullying-month-on-hiatuses-and-hate, and ho boy will I be getting back to this little bit of bull shit later), she seems to have conveniently forgotten some of the crap she pulled back in her fandom days. Bullying that included having her lawyer pal threaten anyone who dare call her out on the plagiarism, calling the police on people who disagreed with her, TRYING TO GET A GIRL KICKED OUT OF HER UNIVERSITY, and just a lot of her âfansâ harassing others with death threats and such. And even with all that, Iâm sure Iâm leaving out some other notable details. Unfortunately, I canât give you sources to everything because like I said, a lot pages have been removed recently, but here are some related links:    [x] Hi, Iâm the âlawyer palâ that Alli is referring to. I never threatened anyone who accused Cassie (or me) of plagiarism. Cassie never called the police on people who disagreed with her. The girl who claims that Cassie tried to get her kicked out of her Uni is named Sinead; Cassie was not involved in anything regarding the aftermath of Sineadâs hacking (alongside her then-boyfriend and possibly others) into a mutual friendâs Yahoo account (yes, they admitted to it) or the subsequent deletion of the main Harry Potter for Grownups list. Oh and by the way - all of this happened in December of 2001 through the spring of 2002. You can read all about it in HPfGU Mod Kelleyâs posts here on JournalFen - she wrote all about it in 2006, but Sinead, I assume, thinks that nobody has read that far into the comments. Hereâs what Kelley wrote back in 2006:    For some weeks, we didnât have evidence of who it was that hacked Pennyâs account and deleted our group. As people had been growing more and more frustrated with Sineadâs presence in Sunday chat, a couple folks found a new room we could use, a room which would allow people to be booted; one of the means the chatters used to keep out Sinead was that they would require  people wanting in to chat to send an email to a certain account. The person watching the account would then check the IP. They were able to keep Sinead out this way, along with a friend of hers, someone calling himself âthepalestinianrockthrowerâ and âpsycho_dracoâ. Records of the IPs were kept.    Eventually they were able to trace the IP of âpalestinian / dracoâ and learned this was a teenaged boy who was a friend of SineadâsâŚÂ Penny also eventually learned that he and Sinead hacked Pennyâs account the same way she and Dai had hacked Johnâs, and they then deleted any groups Penny owned. After having evidence of two hacking incidents, we did file a complaint against Sinead with Boston University (she was attending there and used her student account both times).    Far as I know too, Sinead still denies the hacking; heh, she even claimed in one of those Sunday chats that what they did wasnât illegal, and that itâs not illegal when one has a paid account like AOL (that was Daiâs ISP). Sigh, whatever. Iirc, one of the things that pissed me off most re her posts on Writerâs U was that I (though she doesnât name me) âfabricatedâ the IM conversation she and I had, to frame her, I guess.    Anyway, after we reported her to BU, weâve not heard from her since.
That was in October of 2006. More from Kelley:    [S]he must have had the idea that Cassie had any pull with the HPfGU mods; she did not. Again, she had no role in what happened between Sinead and HPfGU other than being a friend of John, Heidi, etc. Personally, Iâm thinking Sinead was trying to link Cassie to all this because she wanted to ingratiate herself with the people at WU, as she had made herself unwelcome at HPfGU.    âShe once told someone to IM me and she said that she had my phone number and would tell my parents what a bad person I am.â    I think I know what sheâs talking about here, and that wasnât Cassie.    âShe usually does this to get people on her side (ie my OWN parents) and the University Iâm at as well.â    Again, not Cassie. To my knowledge, Sineadâs parents werenât contacted by us over the hacking incidents; we did file a complaint with her university, though.    âI have another point to say: the clubs I was in have kind of a Jekyll/Hyde personality. They may seem nice at first, super friendly and all. Later, like I said about the âwrong step,â they become supremely nasty and almost petty. Have you experienced that?â    Kind of amusing. People had no reason not to like her. âWrong stepâ â hacking two accounts, deleting some groups, and sheâs surprised people were angry and turned against her?    As to all her general Cassie comments, Iâm really at a loss. What happened between Sinead and HPfGU had absolutely nothing to do with Cassie. ************** Now, me: Sinead is lying about Cassie (and about me) to try and get attention. She gets it from people who already donât like Cassie, and/or donât already like me; they reblog her baseless, debunked accusations and spread them around until they become part of the mythology about Cassie and âher lawyer palâ Heidi. I havenât spoken with Sinead, directly or indirectly, in over ten years. The lies she told about me were the basis for a screed posted on Bad Penny in late September of 2006 by a longtime multifandomer who used a range of fandom names including Michela and various others that included the terms Purple, Bouncy, Partly and Popple. I discussed a little bit of Michelaâs first post on my LJ at that time but at some point on October 1, 2006, Michela pulled down everything sheâd written on Bad Penny and posted this there instead:    In light of the comments I have received regarding my current draft and citations, I have decided I was less ready to begin posting this account than I thought I was. I will take all of the comments I received on bad_penny and my journal into account, and work on revising this from start to finish.    It was never my intention to post something inaccurate. I was trying to be as accurate and as neutral as possible. Based on reader reactions, I have not succeeded. When things are completely revised, I will be reposting. She never did. She never, ever did, at least not publicly. All the comments to her tale were deleted or hidden when the post was pulled down - and even the quote above isnât on the B_P journal anymore; thereâs something else there at September 29, 2006 if you want to read it for yourself. I wonât try and categorize it since anyone can see it if they want to. The thing is, thousands of people had already read it! Dozens if not hundreds had been told bits and pieces of it for years, and I had no idea, In august of 2006 when a friend told me that Bad Penny was about to go live with a post detailing phone calls I had made to parents of kids who had written bad reviews of Cassieâs and my fics, I told her that never had happened. I learned later that Michela had been circulating drafts of her screed and that so much of its content was based on Sineadâs baseless tales. I donât have all of what Michela posted back in September of 2006, but I do have this paragraph which I addressed in my own LJ that week: > It is also about this time, in the spring of 2002, > unsubstantiated rumors circulated saying that Heidi Tandy was going after > an adult woman who had left Cassandra Claire negative feedback. Along > with Stacey and with Cassandra Claireâs involvement in helping with IP > information, they tracked down the woman and her employer. Supposedly, > one of them contacted the employer and informed the employer of the > womanâs fannish activities. This led to the woman being fired. This story > cannot be verified and the truthfulness of it is almost not important. > What is important is that people heard this story and believed it to be > true. The story helped stem a great deal of criticism regarding Heidi and > Cassandra Claireâs actions out of fear that the duo would do similar > things to the unfortunate person who crossed them. âThis story cannot be verified and the truthfulness of it is almost not important.â Michela, if youâre still around, this was as honest a thing as I have ever read anywhere. The story cannot be verified. The truthfulness of it is almost not important. The posts that go around on tumblr these days donât even try to include proof of anything - itâs just Sineadâs complaints, which of course have been completely debunked by Kelley and others. And she can try to justify it however she wants, but everyone who was a mod on HPfGU in the spring of 2002 has given the exact same information every time theyâve been asked. None of them are on tumblr, afaik, but everyone who was on HPfGU in the spring of 2002 knows what happened.
The thing is, the posts are all publicly accessible.
So I am asking you, if you read someoneâs allegations that Cassie and her friends were mean to her for no reason and resulted in her being kicked out of a group, or if youâre thinking of reblogging it, or if you already have, then please at least go and read Kelleyâs story, too. If you believed Sineadâs story, Iâm sorry. Youâve been conned, and it might be because Iâve been too scared to talk about it for the last five-plus years. Iâve enjoyed an awesome fannish experience in so many fandoms since 2006 (well, and before too!) and I havenât wanted to get into the middle of this again, to be criticized and to jeopardize any of the projects Iâve worked on or ruin any of the friendships that I now have. Sinead just had to post something here, knowing or assuming that I was too afraid to answer back. But I canât let that feat continue to stop me from answering posts when people are repeating things about me that are just not true.
I never knew the whole story behind this because I was never in the HP fandom and met you [Heidi] through the SPN/Crowded House fandoms. I wondered if this ancient history wank was going to be resurrected due to the enormous popularity of the series and the movie coming out. It might be TL:DR, but probably important that it gets clarified. What I know is true: Heidi has always been a good friend to me and I value her honesty and knowledge.
Does anyone ever come across something so ancient, and has nothing to do with you personally, and then suddenly something in you clicks?
Came across a YouTube video explaining a person called Ms Scribe, and the sockpuppets. Then found this entire thing...and suddenly, 2008/9/10 Harry Potter roleplay invisionfree boards makes a lot more sense, now. You don't get a lot of the drama when you're young, just starting out, and you're around older fandom people lol.



















