I couldn’t help but post my thoughts about some recent revelations via the FanHistory Wiki and a new JournalFen blog by Charlotte Nox. There’s so many links to so many people involved in this "story" that you can spend an entire weekend reading about it and still only touch the surface - and I am not a fanfic participant nor do I like it, but I do respect the rights of others to do what they wish and what makes them happy. That said, someone who is looking to write an thesis for their sociology or pyschology Master’s degree in this case has a plethora of documentation with which to work, and then wonder why the hell they were all so gullible as to believe a virtual individual whom they had never seen, nor had a cup of joe with? What IS it that people on the Internet trust each other in such a blase manner? We teach and repeatedly tell our children who have interaction online to be careful, but we certainly don’t seem to take the same advice as adults.
The saga (which apparently is not a work of fan fiction) centers around a budding fanfic writer who, by all accounts, manipulated her way to the top of the exclusive fan fiction writers circle - people who have not been published by any other means than their own online creations about characters in Harry Potter books. These same want-to-be writers, and their virtual friends/fans, frequent such forums as The Sugar Quill and FictionAlley, among others. Her main obsession? Get close to Cassandra Claire, writer of the Very Secret Diaries, a popular and funny mock set of diaries of the Lord of the Rings characters. Cassandra herself is an enigma - while she attended Nimbus 2003 and apparently got a free ticket to The Witching Hour in 2005, she’s known for her fanfiction and that’s about it. According to her blog, she’s a professional writer now and is about to publish an original work in 2007, albeit not under the pen name of Cassandra Claire; a not too shabby an accomplishment for someone who has written slash about other published authors’ characters. (Slashfiction, BTW, has been around for quite a while and is not limited to just the Harry Potter fandom.) She’s also popular enough that when it was stated by a close inner circle friend that she and her roommates had gotten robbed and her computer stolen, fans contributed to purchase her a replacement laptop. (I’ve been unable to find where they posted a police report for that - I am wary when "donations" of this sort are taken.)
The main antagonist in this real-life online soap opera uses deception, manipulation and the online tools of the day ( instant messaging, blogs, forums, email) to establish bogus online personalities and fans to create controversy (in effect, her interacting with herself) for attention and sheer mayhem. She even resorts to a fake hospitalization and claims of being stalked to gain the sympathy and support for her readers, who soon outnumber the fabricated fans with which she began. Once that’s effectively done, she proceeds to hook up as an admin for a popular forum, and pit that forum and the others against each other with accusations of trolling, spying, and just utter meaness overall. The forum she’s an admin for supported her, and wouldn’t hear anything damaging about her from anyone even though the other admins at the competing forums do discover what she’s doing. Shockingly, this didn’t go on for a month or 2- it went on for what appears to be at least 2, if not 3, solid years! When all starts to be revealed, hell breaks loose - the fandom comments each time a new revelation gets blogged; members of the exclusive fanfic group, fans and supporters of the antagonist offer what can be perceived as half baked and not very sincere apologies. Ultimately, it makes you very happy you never entered that particular virtual world in the first place.
The most astonishing thing is how this has spread throughout the Internet, and the almost vehement reactions from fans and participants alike - thousands of comments, replies and posts. The second most astonishing thing is how completely the antagonist used technology to keep the deception complete for so long. And the third astonishing thing? That anyone believed her in the first place. Anyone can be anybody on the Internet and don’t you forget it.
Technorati Tags: Books, Web, Tech, Blog, Blogging, Cassandra Claire, Laptopgate, CharityGate, MsScribe, Harry Potter, Fan Fiction, Slash Fiction
