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 Apriki’s and alli6’s post were going around on tumblr, and I wasn’t home for more than three or four days at a time, I wanted to write a response to all of Sinead’s 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 I’ve 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 it’s 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 past…
Iif there’s one thing I’ve 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 wasn’t I would’ve left fandom with a broken heart years ago and thus would’ve missed out on (a) knowing many of you (b) seeing so much awesome created by many of you and © 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, I’m 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 may’ve seen my name, I’m not sure) and were talking about how I was Cassie’s 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 I’m going to address here. [through here]
I’m snipping to just one section of [to] keep this from becoming impossibly tl;dr.
alli6:
Okay, everyone, gather around. It’s 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, that’s 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 “fans” harassing others with death threats and such. And even with all that, I’m sure I’m leaving out some other notable details. Unfortunately, I can’t give you sources to everything because like I said, a lot pages have been removed recently, but here are some related links:
[x]
Hi, I’m the “lawyer pal” 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 Sinead’s hacking (alongside her then-boyfriend and possibly others) into a mutual friend’s 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 Kelley’s 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.
Here’s what Kelley wrote back in 2006:
For some weeks, we didn’t have evidence of who it was that hacked Penny’s account and deleted our group. As people had been growing more and more frustrated with Sinead’s 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 ‘thepalestinianrockthrower’ and ‘psycho_draco’. Records of the IPs were kept.
Eventually they were able to trace the IP of ‘palestinian / draco’ and learned this was a teenaged boy who was a friend of Sinead’s… Penny also eventually learned that he and Sinead hacked Penny’s account the same way she and Dai had hacked John’s, 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 wasn’t illegal, and that it’s not illegal when one has a paid account like AOL (that was Dai’s ISP). Sigh, whatever. Iirc, one of the things that pissed me off most re her posts on Writer’s U was that I (though she doesn’t name me) ‘fabricated’ the IM conversation she and I had, to frame her, I guess.
Anyway, after we reported her to BU, we’ve 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, I’m 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.
“She 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.”
I think I know what she’s talking about here, and that wasn’t Cassie.
“She usually does this to get people on her side (ie my OWN parents) and the University I’m at as well.”
Again, not Cassie. To my knowledge, Sinead’s parents weren’t contacted by us over the hacking incidents; we did file a complaint with her university, though.
“I 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 “wrong step,” they become supremely nasty and almost petty. Have you experienced that?”
Kind of amusing. People had no reason not to like her. “Wrong step” — hacking two accounts, deleting some groups, and she’s surprised people were angry and turned against her?
As to all her general Cassie comments, I’m 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 don’t like Cassie, and/or don’t already like me; they reblog her baseless, debunked accusations and spread them around until they become part of the mythology about Cassie and “her lawyer pal” Heidi.
I haven’t 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 Michela’s first post on my LJ at that time but at some point on October 1, 2006, Michela pulled down everything she’d 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 isn’t on the B_P journal anymore; there’s something else there at September 29, 2006 if you want to read it for yourself. I won’t 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 Cassie’s 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 Sinead’s baseless tales.
I don’t 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 Claire’s 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
> woman’s 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 Claire’s actions out of fear that the duo would do similar
> things to the unfortunate person who crossed them.
“This story cannot be verified and the truthfulness of it is almost not important.”
Michela, if you’re 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 don’t even try to include proof of anything - it’s just Sinead’s 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 they’ve 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 someone’s 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 you’re thinking of reblogging it, or if you already have, then please at least go and read Kelley’s story, too.
If you believed Sinead’s story, I’m sorry. You’ve been conned, and it might be because I’ve been too scared to talk about it for the last five-plus years. I’ve enjoyed an awesome fannish experience in so many fandoms since 2006 (well, and before too!) and I haven’t wanted to get into the middle of this again, to be criticized and to jeopardize any of the projects I’ve 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 can’t let that feat continue to stop me from answering posts when people are repeating things about me that are just not true.