Micole posts here occasionally, and she went through a CC story and catalogued its textual similarities to a novel whose title I've forgotten. (It was a relatively obscure [published] fantasy novel, or obscure enough that I, not really a fantasy reader, had never heard of it.) I saw the two texts side by side, and it sure looked like plagiarism to me. I don't know if Micole's around and is willing to bring back fond, bilious memories of it all, but her research was some pretty damning evidence.

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I think Jintian also went through a chapter or two of Draco Dormiens and pulled out all the references she recognized from TV shows like Buffy.

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Incidentally, the Gray Day site seems to have been reorganized a little. The Wall of Shame is gone, unless I'm blind, and there's a message board instead to talk about various thing, including instances of stolen stuff.

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all the references she recognized from TV shows like Buffy.

Are the references a bad thing? From a story universe point of view--I'm assuming it's an HP story--I doubt television in general and Buffy in particular are particularly well known in the wizarding world, but a wizard with a great deal of Muggle contact could know TV shows. What's the line between a reference and plagarism? The characters don't exist in a vacuum.

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I'm not talking about mentioning that the show exists. I'm talking about lifting lines of dialogue.

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Oh, OK, more than a reference, then.

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She had, for example:

Character A: And if he gets hurt before we get there, I'm pulling out your ribcage and wearing it as a hat.

Character B: He'll be fine. And, nice imagery!

which is, of course, directly pulled from

Buffy: I have had a *really* bad day, okay? If you have information

worth hearing, then I am grateful for it. If you're gonna crack jokes, then I'm gonna pull out your ribcage and wear it as a hat. (lets go)

Whistler: Hello to the imagery! Very nice.

in a way that really can't be read as a homage but as, really theft; and even if she had acknowledged the use of the specific lines, it would have still been overwhelming authorial laziness on CC's part.

People in HP fandom who had no familiarity with the BtVS canon would have almost certainly read that quip, and any others, and ascribed the wit to CC instead of to ME where it came from.

I mean, I don't get the CC thing. I think she's a fairly boring writer. But.

t edit bit of an xpost there

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Jintian was the one who put together the list of plagiarized passages in one chapter of Cassandra Claire's Draco Veritas here; I helped by identifying various obscure fantasy novels (that is, works by Pamela Dean and Elizabeth Marie Pope) as sources, as well as some of the Buffy quotes Jintian didn't recognize. Jintian doesn't cite it, but there's a two-page section in another chapter of the novel lifted directly from Pamela Dean's The Hidden Land.

For what it's worth--and here we are passing from the realm of concrete evidence--there were several other passages that seemed extremely familiar to me, but whose source I could not identify.

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I should warn you, prolonged discussion of this topic in public almost always results in CC's fans popping up to defend her (and occasionally abuse her critics). Jintian's blog got a lot of anonymous comments, not all of them positive, after she went through that exercise.

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So, rapidly changing the subject...

Err...

Serious question here...

How do you all define "plotty"?

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