Degrees of plagiarism: where do we draw the line?

[trinityofone]

I really don’t want to make this post. I’m not a big fan of fandom politics, mostly because fandom is my escape from real-life politics—both the big D.C. headache and the everyday social kind. But as I am oddly in a position where a lot of people read this journal and (I assume?) care about what I have to say, I feel it’s my…responsibility, I guess, to say something about this. Everyone’s favorite topic: plagiarism.

I’ll admit, I’ve been reading the latest incarnation of the Cassandra Claire plagiarism debacle over at bad_penny. Like the whole Ms. Scribe saga, I find it fascinating the way I find most human drama fascinating. However, there are some issues related to the various plagiarism charges that make me uneasy, and that’s what I want to talk about.

From the account, I think it’s clear that Cassandra Claire plagiarized Pamela Dean, and I think that’s pretty inexcusable, and made worse by how badly she handled it. My opinion on this is meaningless; I’m not even in Harry Potter fandom. But it’s the issue of the other quotes she used that has me worried.

My previous experience with the Draco Trilogy was that a few years ago (2002, I think) I read “Draco Dormiens” and enjoyed it, and started “Draco Sinister” and got bored pretty quickly and didn’t finish it. By the time I started reading it, the disclaimers regarding the Buffy quotes, etc., were already in place—which was good, because I recognized a lot of them (the Red Dwarf stuff too—yay Red Dwarf!). I had mixed feelings about them being there: some of them were fun, even—or especially—when I recognized them; others seemed out of place. Whatever. To each his own.

What’s bothering me now, however, is how angry people are getting about the “plagiarism” of those quotes. I’m sure in some sense it’s a matter of degree: Cassie Claire clearly plagiarized a ton from Pamela Dean, and on top of that, each of those borrowed Buffy quotes must seem like a slap in the face. Especially if her fics are praised for their witty dialogue and none of what’s being quoted is hers—the semi-recent incident with the American President fic in SGA fandom springs to mind. Anyway. I want to make it clear that I am not defending Cassie Claire.

But. I have now started seeing people leveling accusations of plagiarism against her specifically for her use of phrases like “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake” or “Daylight’s burning”—attributing those quotes to Chuck Palahniuk and Veronica Mars, even though neither of those lines is unique to those sources (I can still very clearly hear AD Skinner saying “Daylight’s burning, agents” to Mulder and Scully). And even if they were, I would argue that some level of quotation has to be allowable without obsessive, scary attribution. I mean, “real” authors do this all the time—for them it’s called allusion. But where is the line? When does something stop being allusion or fun, in-jokey reference—and become plagiarism?

I think this is an important issue for fandom to address. I think this is an important issue for me to address, because I am an author who loves allusions. My fics are full of them. And just like the American President mini-scandal, which broke right before my reel_sga fic was “released,” made me nervous, this makes me nervous, too. Am I doing something wrong?

I want to clear the air about the references I have made in my fics. Call it a preemptive strike—hopefully a completely unnecessary one, but I want to give us a springboard to discuss this. I also want to be honest. And if I am doing something wrong, I want to know.

The following list is from memory, so please feel free to point out anything I have missed. It is also not meant to be completely comprehensive; if I included every “And here I alluded to T.S. Eliot”-type reference, we’d be here all week. These are just the ones I feel might be potentially controversial. Again, if I’m missing something really obvious or bothersome to you, please tell me.

•The U.S.S. Indianapolis contains dialogue (and singing!) direct from the movie Jaws. This may be inappropriately attributed. My only author’s note is “Jaws is one of my all-time favorite movies, so: a little tribute. *g*” The characters in the story also make references to the book and the movie, although they don’t specifically mention the title. When they speak the borrowed lines of dialogue, they could be construed to be quoting.

•Little Things was thought, by many people, to have been inspired by episodes of both The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, neither of which I have seen. It was actually inspired by a short story by Aimee Bender in her collection Willful Creatures. Looking back, I see that I did not mention this; I probably forgot. The inspiration didn’t extend any farther than the idea of tiny people being held prisoner by big people, which was also apparently utilized by the TV episodes. Nothing was quoted, but Bender still possibly deserved a mention—if for no other reason that she’s an awesome author, and you should read her book.

•Dissonance contains an unattributed line from the movie The Goonies; Rodney says Chunk’s line about pushing his sister down the stairs and blaming it on the dog. I left this unreferenced on purpose; I wanted it to be a fun in-joke for other fans of that movie. At the time, I thought that was no different from having John say, “The truth is out there!” and freaking Caldwell out in Coming Soon to a Galaxy Near You! Now I’m not so sure.

•Human Vacillation marks the only time anyone has actually raised the plagiarism question to me. A reader, who I won’t name unless she wants me to, asked me why I hadn’t cited Neil Gaiman’s story “Changes” for the concept of “Reboot,” which in that story is a drug that alters your sex. Gaiman’s story is without a doubt an inspiration for “Human Vacillation,” as Gaiman himself is an inspiration for much of my work. However, it had been a long time since I’d read “Changes” (I last read it in 1998, the year Smoke and Mirrors came out—and frustratingly haven’t read it since, as I can’t find my damn copy!); I didn’t consciously use the reboot metaphor previously used by Gaiman, but the fact remains that I did use it. I quickly added an author’s note citing Gaiman as inspiration (as well as Virginia Woolf, because it never hurts to be thorough). I don’t see any problems with “Human Vacillation” now (except that the middle sags a bit and I can’t finish the damn sequel!) but in the interest of fairness and completeness, I thought I should mention this.

•Blow the House Down is, as I say in the author’s notes, “heavily inspired” by David Rakoff’s book of essays, Don’t Get Too Comfortable. Here is my note in full: “This is heavily inspired by David Rakoff’s book Don’t Get Too Comfortable, especially the essays “Beat Me, Daddy” and “Love It or Leave It.” Some of the things Julian says in this story were quoted or paraphrased from the actual Log Cabin Republicans Rakoff spoke to.” I am now not sure that this disclaimer is complete enough. I mean, I don’t specifically cite the whole “I can change him” idea, which comes direct from Rakoff—or is that covered by “inspired”? I don’t know.

•A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours is my reel_sga fic, based on The Searchers. By their very nature, reel_sga stories were meant to be inspired by films. So much (if not all) of the plot of this story is taken from The Searchers; I borrowed quite a bit of dialogue, too—certainly the classic lines, like “That’ll be the day!” and the “Don’t ever ask me!” speech, are not mine. But a person unfamiliar with the film (and many of my readers said that they hadn’t seen it) might not realize that. This was my note on the subject: “A heavy, heavy debt is of course owed to the film The Searchers—director John Ford, who made the west glorious and gave us one of the most iconic opening and closing shots; writer Frank S. Nugent, who wrote dialogue equally iconic (some of which I borrowed—the really good stuff, probably *g*); and John Wayne, who gives an absolutely incredible performance. The film just came out in a beautiful new special edition DVD—at the very least, you should all rent it!” Short of attributing every line of dialogue that I used (which still leaves the paraphrased bits—and the plot?) I’m not sure what else I could do. Yet this still feels uncomfortable close to the American President situation.

Is the answer, then, that this sort of fic shouldn’t be written? Or that allusions to other works shouldn’t be used at all? Or that even the slightest reference or quote should have to be cited? I hope not, but having some flexibility unfortunately makes large-scale and much clearer cases of plagiarism easier to ignore, or excuse—maybe even easier to exist. I’m not going to psychoanalyze Cassie Clare, but I do think that the person who wrote the American President fic, for example, honestly did not realize that she was doing something wrong. But she was.

So how is what I am doing different? Is it different? Please feel free to tackle any of the examples listed above, or any examples from other fic of mine, or (making an effort to please be polite, please) other fic. Where do we—as a fandom, as Fandom—draw the line? No one is going to make up rules for us. What are our own?

Comments

[whiskeypants.livejournal.com]

people are being awfully wordy in their replies to this. i probably will be, too.

for me it comes down to a certain dichotomy, and it's not even necessarily whether it's credited or not. it's whether it's a tribute to cleverness or the very substance of cleverness.

the thing is, if it's the first, it usually gets credited, and thus is not an issue.
plagiarism is the realm of the lazy, the untalented, and the unaware. whether it is fanfic or a history exam, it's usually the same kind of people doing it--they want easy credit for work they almost did and they think they are smarter than their readers. sometimes they are.

it's also a matter of awareness, i suppose. when i am writing i am always, always aware of my influences. but i take those influences and make the end result mine. the majority of writers out there don't know how to do that. influence becomes the substance of a given story, and we all know about substance abuse [D.A.R.E. to keep crappy writers from writing fic!].

i would say that coming up with a fanfic code of ethics is a worthy goal, but it is something that will be difficult to do. everybody knows how difficult it is to do anything by a committee of hundreds of people on computers around the world, the minority of whom are bright enough to understand the necessity of it and are stable enough to avoid the inevitable flame wars that would ensue.

shunning/ignoring those who are guilty of it is only partially helpful; there will still be armies of ignorant readers who jump up and down at the crappiest fanfic, there will still be "writers" who think they can get away with it.

the issue, as ever, with ethics, is that they have to be personal and while we don't have to accept that for every talented, careful, honest writer out there, there are hundreds of assholes, that's really the case.

you are and will always be in that first group.