Cassandra Claire

Cassandra Claire was a BNF and fanwriter in the Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings fandoms.
Has since retired from fandom and taken her fanfiction offline as she launched her profic career, writing professionally as a author of young adult fantasy series The Mortal Instruments under the name Cassandra Clare.
==As a Fan==
She is often considered to be one of the Harry Potter fandom's first Big Name Fans after gaining popularity (and notoriety) for her epic fanfiction series The Draco Trilogy and its resulting plagiarism controversy.
The majority of her fanfiction was written as the fandom was rapidly gaining popularity and played a major role in shaping Draco Malfoy's fandom characterization.
Her fans were extremely numerous. Mailing Lists and rec lists had MANY references to "her genius," writing skill, and humor. It wasn't unusual for fans to refer to her as a "goddess" and the like.One such example, out of hundreds, is "I swear to God, [Draco Dormiens] is one of the most humorous, most dramatic, and most poignant fics up there, and C.C. must be some sort of genius." -- comment at Harry Potter for Grownups by Alicia/Sue Spinnet, September 3, 2000
A fan wrote in 2001: 
She was formerly a member of the group of Harry Potter some fans collectively referred to as "The Inner Circle."
Outside the Harry Potter fandom, Cassandra Claire wrote The Very Secret Diaries, which was wildly popular in The Lord of the Rings fandom.
==Interviews==
* Slashcast Insider Interview with Cassie Claire
==Notable Fanworks==
For a complete list of Claire's fanworks, see Cassandra Claire/Fanworks.
* The Very Secret Diaries (Lord of the Rings) - 2001-2002
* The Draco Trilogy (Harry Potter, Harry/Hermione) - 2000-2006
*# Draco Dormiens - c. August 2000
*# Draco Sinister - August or September 2000 - July 2001
*# Draco Veritas - August 2001 - August 2006
* A Season in Hell (HP, Harry/Draco) - November 2002
** Sequel: After the Flood - December 2002
* Written (HP, Draco/Ginny) - February 2003
* Something Impossible (HP, Harry/Draco) - April 2003
* How To Disappear (HP, Harry/Draco) - July 2003
* A Lot to Be Upset About (HP, Draco/Ginny) - July 2003
* Mortal Instruments (HP, Ron/Ginny) - April 2004
==Early Screenshots of Cassandra Claire's Fic Summaries==
File:cassc-1.jpg|screenshot of content as it was posted at FictionAlley
File:cassc-2.jpg|screenshot of Draco Dormiens as it was posted at FictionAlley
File:cassc-3.jpg|screenshot of Draco Dormiens as it was posted at FictionAlley
File:cassc-4.jpg|screenshot of Draco Sinister as it was posted at FictionAlley
File:cassc-5.jpg|screenshot of Draco Sinister as it was posted at FictionAlley
File:cassc-6.jpg|screenshot of Draco Veritas as it was posted at FictionAlley
File:cassc-7.jpg|screenshot of Draco Veritas Alternate Scenes as it was posted at FictionAlley
==Controversies==
See LaptopGate.
See CharityWank
See The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle.
Cassandra Claire has been involved in a lot of controversy in Harry Potter fandom. In 2004, a fan, Aja, asked: "Okay, yes, this is wanky, but. I just have to ask. Is there a jurisimprudence corrolary [sic] to Darwin's Law that says that the longer a Harry Potter wank lasts, the greater becomes the probability that someone will bring up Cassandra Claire, thereby extending the wank by no less than 300 comments? Because. Damn. *bangs head on desk*"., March 9, 2004
These controversies include, but are not limited to, the subjects of plagiarism, bullying, and profiting from fandom.
===Plagiarism===
Over the years various fannish circles noted with distaste the similarities between portions of The Draco Trilogy and various science fiction television and print sources, resulting in flare-ups of plagiarism accusation (and debate, and wank) on a regular basis between 2001 and 2006. Locations of this discussion include the Glass Onion mailing list, Fanfiction.net, and several HP venues.
On June 22, 2001, Cassandra Claire was blacklisted from FanFiction.Net for plagiarism.
In 2006, Avocado wrote a lengthy exposé of the plagiarism in Claire's writing for Bad Penny, providing evidence of (and a venue for) many more observed instances of plagiarism than had previously been counted.The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle in Journalfen's bad_penny community, posted 2006-08-04 by avocado. Accessed 9 December 2008. WebCites: Post 1, Post 2, Post 3, Post 4, Post 5, and Post 6. This effort also chronicled the timeline of obfuscations and rationalizations Claire provided when readers queried her about unsourced and uncredited quoting. See The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle.
====Censored and Deleted: Fannish Voices Silenced, History Erased====
The most organic, primary sources of 2001 fannish discussion are mostly gone. They were deleted by the community mods where the comments had been posted. The posts were probably deleted in a mixture of embarrassment, loyalty, protectionism, and legalisms. In any case, their removal erased a massive amount of fannish history, and was a form of censorship and silencing voices. What remains on these lists are bits and pieces of benign comments, scattered about with little context.
===Profiteering and Bullying===
Claire has also been accused of profiting from fandom In this tumblr post, for instance, which cites several other examples (links near the bottom). (see LaptopGate) as well as cyberbullying other fans and taking fandom squabbles offline.For example, see Sinéad (finnyrachel)'s and Aja's Me & CC; or, BNFs do not have more fun (2006, updated August 2011); reference link. and the of the Tumblr post (now removed), which detailed the fan's recollection of Cassie using IP addresses to call her LJ critics on the phone or report them to the police. The Tumblr also described the fan's own experience nearly getting kicked out of university after her boyfriend used someone else's login to troll the "Harry Potter for GrownUps" (HP4GU) Yahoo mailing list, and she was blamed for it. Sinéad suggested that Cassie either fabricated the transcripts or falsely confessed while pretending to be her:
However, others contest the extent of Cassie's involvement in the incident: see one HP4GU mod's 2006 version of events (reference link), as well as Aja's (reference link) and Heidi's responses to Sinéad's Tumblr post.
In 2018, Flourish Klink explained the beginning of one incident: 
===Kenyon Copyright and Trademark Violation Lawsuit===
On the 5th of February 2016, American sci-fi and fantasy author Sherrilyn Kenyon sued Clare for alleged copyright and trademark infringement, seeking damages for the same and an injunction against Clare publishing any further works in her profic Shadowhunter series.Cassandra Clare sued for copyright infringement, The Bookseller February 9, 2016. In the suit, Kenyon alleges that Clare's series is so similar to Kenyon's own Dark Hunter novels that Clare's publisher once mistakenly printed 100,000 copies of a Shadowhunter book referencing the DarkHunter logo on its cover.SHERRILYN KENYON V. CASSANDRA CLARE, a/k/a JUDITH RUMELT, a/k/a JUDITH LEWIS and DOES 1 through 50, inclusive, February 5, 2016. Kenyon also alleges that Clare originally used Kenyon's trademark term 'darkhunter' in her works to refer to her protagonists, and then continued to use and eventually give great prominence to the similar term 'shadowhunter' despite assurances she would not.Copyright Clash Over Demon-Fighting Stories, Courthouse News Service, February 08, 2016.
== Fannish Retirement ==
In early 2005, shortly before announcing that she had sold her profic series The Mortal Instruments, Claire deleted her NC-17 rated fanfiction from all sites except the Restricted Section.Her NC-17 fics were linked on the front page of her LiveJournal through February 2005. The links were still up as of February 26, 2005, but deleted as of March 1, 2005. She wrote in March 2006 (WebCite):
:"I took down all of my NC-17 fic about a year and a half ago because there'd been some legal trouble in fandom with people's NC-17 fic being accessed by readers under 17, so I deleted them all. There's still some on the restricted section, which is very careful about age limits and passwords"
Claire also changed her Restricted Section account name from "Cassandra Claire" to "epicyclical", and only three of her stories were archived there (see Restricted Section: Authors C, archived 03 July 2004 by the Wayback Machine; WebCite). She announced The Mortal Instruments series on April 6, 2005 (see this thread at ParadigmOfUncertainty; WebCite).
On August 6, 2006, Claire announced that she would be taking all her fanfiction offline in an author's note at the end of Draco Veritas, the last chapter of which had been posted August 4, 2006.
August 4, 2006 was also the same day Avocado published The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle.
Cassie wrote in "Draco Veritas'" end notes:
Claire's work was removed from fic archives and mailing lists in mid-August.ParadigmOfUncertainty post #27171: Re: PoU Draco Series, quoting a message from Cassandra Claire made on her Yahoo! group. 17 August 2006. (Accessed 08 April 2013; WebCite.) The Draco Trilogy, A Lot to Be Upset About, and Something Impossible were made available for download as PDF files from August 2006 through March 2007.www.heidi8.com/dt/. (Archived 22 March 2007 by the Wayback Machine.) With the announcement, fans scrambled to save and share copies of Claire's other works before (and after) they were deleted.
== Profic Career==
Claire published her first profic novel, City of Bones, in 2007 under the name "Cassandra Clare".Wikipedia page about Cassandra Clare Accessed December 10, 2008; See the (reference link for the Dec 2008 version of the page. Since then, the page has gone through significant edits including removing a list of CC's other fan fiction titles as being "unsourced". See ). It is part of an urban fantasy series known as The Mortal Instruments, which shares the same title as a Ron/Ginny fanfic she wrote in 2004 (but is otherwise unrelated). As of 2013, Claire has published eight books and has several more in the works, and a film adaption of City of Bones was released on August 21, 2013.
Though Mortal Instruments and the Draco Trilogy do not share a plot, some fans believe that Clary and Jace are based on Claire's fanon versions of Ginny and Draco. Additionally, one passage from Draco Veritas, which tells the story of Draco's pet falcon, appears word-for-word in City of Bones; the only differences are minor punctuation changes and the amendment of "Draco" to "the boy" (now referring to Jace).
Wank about the fan did occur when the published author put out her first novel, which involved both media fandom and science fiction fandom, but in general the allegations of plagiarism and bad behavior against the fan are not well known among people who interact with the published author.John Scalzi. Crimes of Fanfic. Whatever blog post 8 August 2006. (Accessed 10 December 2008.); (reference link). See comments by Barry Goldblatt (August 10, 2006 12:23 AM)--Her sale has nothing to do with her fanfic reputation. Her publisher doesn't have a clue what fanfic is. The book was bought off the strength of the writing, plain and simple.--and Justine Larbalestier (August 12, 2006 04:51 PM). Larbalestier reported asking a roomful of publishing people, If you were publishing a book and it was revealed to you that the author had been well-known as a fanwriter who had plagiarised some of their fan writings how would you respond? The responses were either: "What's fanfic?" or, "Well, it's fanfic isn't that all plagiarism?".In conjunction with the film's release in 2013, a few non-fan online media outlets reported on the plagiarism incident (at Flavorwire = (reference link) and The Daily Dot) (reference link), and sometimes wildly exaggerated rumors circulated among Twitter users. Business as usual.
==Cassandra Claire: Featured in Fanworks==
From 2002:
==Further Reading/Meta==
* , thread at FictionAlley Park, December 2002
* A beginner's guide to Cassandra Clare and her "Mortal Instruments" at The Daily Dot, by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw on August 2, 2013, WebCite
* (2013)
* reports of a series of negative twitter exchanges between a fan who linked to an article about Cassandra Clare and Clare supporters; (archive link) and Does anyone remember when Cassandra Clare; (archive link) (2013)
* The Shadowhunters vs. the Dark-Hunters: A lawsuit between two best-selling authors involves fantasy, romance, charges of plagiarism, and fan fiction gone mainstream. by Laura Miller, "Slate" (February 16, 2016)
* Cassandra Clare Created a Fantasy Realm and Aims to Maintain Her Rule by Penelope Green, "New York Times" (April 23, 2016)
* Fandom Wank posts related to CCWebCite.
* Fan History Wiki: Cassandra Claire; Archive
** 
** 
** 
* Fan History Wiki: Heidi8; Archive
* (unknown date)
* by Sabrina Rojas Weiss for "Refinery29" (January 13, 2016)
* Transcript: Episode 84: Purity Culture; archive link, transcript of a podcast by Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel (October 3, 2018)
* meta and discourse at LaptopGate
* meta and discourse at The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle
* Talk:Cassandra Claire/Archive 1, Wikipedia (includes a statement by Heidi Tandy) (2005)
==Notes & References==
===Notes===
===References===
Category:People Category:Science Fiction Authors Category:Professional Authors