Queen's Clock

the mortal instruments is coming out soon, so let’s have some fandom history, yes?

[snip]

1. “Her books are reworking of her own fanfiction.”  This is not true. You may think it’s 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 Draco—>Jace, do not contain plot points used in the DT. Gav detailed this in her article. I don’t know how many other ways we can say it; it’s not fucking true.

2. “She was involved in H/Hr ship wars.” 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 “war” apart from the business with MsScribe, which…

3. “She played an integral part in the biggest wank in history” — 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. “That 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?” 

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 it’s 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 we’re only getting one side of the story, I would be extremely hesitant to list them as a part of the evidence of “abuse.” Evidence that CC can’t 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 internet’s constant scrutiny, never repeated, go ahead. If you want to dislike her because she’s mean, or because you think her books are terrible, go ahead.

But don’t hate her because you think she plagiarized all 7 of her enormous books, because she didn’t. 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 didn’t fucking plagiarize the Mortal Instruments series.

And don’t hate her because she allegedly got someone kicked out of college, because, again, THAT NEVER HAPPENED.

So judge her based on the things she’s actually done, instead of constantly exaggerating the myths and rumors about her, and giving her way more credit and way more power—still! after 10 years!—than she deserves.

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.

that one where some girl claimed people thought her car was the tardis, so she leapt out of it and looked at her boobs like “wow that’s a development” and ran off

 hipster blog vs. fandom blog in a starbucks

people singing “let it go” on a bus???

that student who looked into the security cameras in their school’s classroom whenever something stupid would happen and then the security guard thanked them personally

some guy fixing the lights in a store by holding up a sonic screwdriver

homestuck updates, a girl screams, the police come, one of the officers also reads homestuck, he starts freaking out, the other officer gives him a shock blanket

a girl has a joking argument with a police officer who’s a “mei main”

every time a waiter comes back to the table, they say a different supernatural/sherlock/dr. who pun, and the poster continues to fall out of their seat because they’re laughing so hard

someone catches someone on a bus says “i think you fell for me” and the entire bus applauds

a girl wants to buy a led zeppelin cd and the cashier wants her to buy a one direction cd then the manager comes out and yells at the cashier and thanks the girl for having awesome music tastes

boyfriend and girlfriend walk into store, girlfriend complaining that books are horrible, boyfriend breaks up with her

female student: *says something bitchy*                                                      nerd student: *calls her a slut*                                                                    teacher: *laughs*

girl says alohamora to open locked door, it opens, classmates cheer

AND MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE

JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE GOES TO PRIVATE SCHOOL DOESN’T MEAN THEY ARE RICH

However, it does mean that those families in question are better well-off than those who are not.

Classism isn't a narrow line of who is poor and who is rich. Everyone has some advantage over another when it comes to Classism.

Not ever kid who attends the private preschool where I work comes from a rich family. We have upper class people but we also have lower middle class people. But the thing is that they are all relatively better off than other families who couldn't afford preschool and/or a private one.

And then more Hebrew!! Like baruch!!

And then more Hebrew!! Like baruch!!

arakawa: and the ishvalan massacre

Oh hello Taurus Lilith unite 🙈

💄 Materialistic

💄 “As long as I’m stable and secure I’m fine.”

💄 A bit vain at times, “Having this feels so good, what else could I need?”

And peahens. This one sleeps on a fluffy rainbow unicorn stuffed animal:

Her name is Artemis and she’s allergic to food.

This is Stan. His color morph is called Cameo so I named him Stan Lee:

He’s Artemis’ boyfriend.

One day in my early twenties when I was full of hubris, I thought “man, I need peacocks.” So I went on eBay and bought a styrofoam incubator and 4 Peafowl eggs to go into it, and hatched them in my closet. And then I realized Oh no, I have peacocks, I did not think this through at all… But I had peacocks now (well technically one peacock and one peahen), so I was going to have to get my life together because they could not live in the closet of my room in my mom’s house.

So I talked to a friend and boarded them at her farm for a year while I got a job and bought a hobby farm and built them a living space in my backyard. I don’t have them anymore, although I have three of their descendants, plus nine others I’ve acquired along the way.

or: no one SHOULD be talking about it bc it’s not fucking true

He completely ignored my hard-limit with me shouting—”that’s thuddy! That’s thuddy!” as he was standing next to me with an implement.

Thuddy pain/sensation is my hard-limit and it is something that I tell to everyone I play with when we go through negotiations. So, when I entered a D/s relationship with my ex, I made sure that he knew. Fast forward a few months and I’m strung up, my dress ripped from me and I see him holding a fiber-glass crop as he’s about to hit me. So I start shouting, “That’s thuddy! That’s thuddy!”

Because I know my body and I know what my body reacts to—Mother fucker proceeds to still hit me with it.

But...that wasn’t exactly the most terrible part. The worst part is that when I spoke with other Tops to understand more and I guess, vocalize the complete disregard of my limits I was told “Well, that wasn’t a safe word” to “But did you red?” Upset and red-faced I decided to go home alone without my ex-dom, without anyone. I wish I could go back with the knowledge that I have now and tell those Tops that, “yeah, it wasn’t a red, but it was still a line of communication which my dominate crossed”

So, two days pass from the incident and I’m over my ex-dom’s house because I wanted to talk to him about the scene, about how he disregarded my hard-limit, about how he refused to listen to me while I was shouting my hard-limit. To which he replied with (while interrupting me) “Yeah, sorry, I was in my head, I didn’t hear you clearly enough, I didn’t think that it was a big deal” (all without dropping his Xbox controller).

The “big deal” was in reference to—because he thought that something is normally stingy would register stingy on me—well, my body is weird, my nerves are odd, and that’s why I know my body better than anyone else, including my ex-dom who should be on the same wave-length as me as I should be with him but clearly, none of that happened.

my mom was 17 and my dad was 27 when they got together and they’re still together now after almost 40 years and they love their life and raised me and my sister in the best way ever!

and my whole life my parents told me that my mom was very mature and my dad even says that he never felt as sure of a relationship, he knew he could trust my mom and he asked her for advice and he treated her with the utmost respect. mom always says they were deeply in love and she had never wanted ANYONE before my dad but he just stole her heart since they were so in harmony together.

no

no 

nonononono oh my fucking god

no

For starters, I’m happy your mom and dad and you and your sister are happy, that’s fantastic, I’m glad it worked out.

but this is seriously fucked up

GROWN-ASS MEN. SHOULD NOT. BE ATTRACTED. TO TEENAGERS. NO. NO. NO.

I’m a 17 year old dude and I physically can not be attracted to someone more than a year younger than me, because they are immature, they just are, no matter how ‘mature’ they are, they. are. fucking. CHILDREN. I AM A CHILD. I have changed so, so much since just last year, and I know I will change even more this year. Teenagers ARE CHILDREN. They are STILL going through puberty, they are still growing, their minds are NOT adult yet. Even if they are 18, they’re still trying to find their way in the world and their brains STILL AREN’T MATURED. You ask ANY 30+ year old about their 18 year old selves and 99% of them will say how naive they were or how they wouldn’t make the same choices they made then, now.

The fact that your mom ACTED mature as a kid and had her head screwed on straight is great, but that makes it even worse to think that she could handle that kind of relationship. That’s like saying the 12 year olds that are super precocious and intelligent are ready for a relationship, just because they’re ~so mature.~

What if she was 16. What if she was 15. What if she was 14. What if, what if. She’s still mature for her age, right? What makes those ages any less okay?

NO 27 YEAR OLD GUY SHOULD BE ATTRACTED TO A FUCKING MINOR. NO 27 YEAR OLD GUY SHOULD WANT TO DATE A MINOR. NO 27 YEAR OLD GUY SHOULD ACT ON THOSE URGES. BECAUSE YOUNG GIRLS ARE RAISED TO BE INSECURE AND HAVING A MATURE MAN TELL THEM THAT THEY’RE DESIRABLE IS A HUGE CONFIDENCE BOOST AND IS MANIPULATION WHETHER THEY KNOW IT OR NOT.

It is an adult’s RESPONSIBILITY to say no. If a minor likes them, or if they happen to develop feelings, even if they shouldn’t. Just don’t act on them. It is very, very easily to not act on feelings. It is your job to not be a creep and take advantage of a naive child.

IT IS NEVER OKAY FOR ANYONE TO DATE/COURT/INTERACT WITH A MINOR IN ANY SEXUAL OR ROMANTIC WAY. EVEN IF THEY HAVE ~NO BAD INTENTIONS.~ IT’S MANIPULATIVE AND A BIG SHIFT OF POWER EVEN IF IT’S ~EVEN~ AND IT’S SO SO SO CREEPY.

PLEASE DON’T PUT THIS OUT THERE FOR YOUNG GIRLS, OR BOYS, OR NON-BINARY KIDS TO SEE.

My dad didn’t want to get into a relationship with an adult, and made an exception for my step mother because she was “so mature”. He wanted a teen. Specifically a teen. He only dated teens. So he could raise them into the wife he wanted. It was totally calculated.

This is why they’re still together this day. She dress like he wants, lost weight like he wanted, She became as racist and conservative as him. She does all the houses chores, sometimes even late at night, while he watches tv, like he wanted, and then tells everyone around him she’s a clean freak and makes fun of her. He forced her to get an abortion, for a child she wanted. She still talks about it. She never forgot, never forgave him. And still, she stayed. Because she has no prior experience, and has no idea how bad their relationship is.

When an adult say that a teen is “mature” enough for a realtionship with him, he means she’s submissive. He means she listens to him and is easily convinced by his opinion. He means she’s calm and easy to deal with.