First of all, stuff like this is why I have a huge internets-crush on you. As if being a boy-feminist-femslasher wasn't enough, you quote Fish and Foucault in the same paragraph. ♥ Being a wank historian, however, I do feel compelled to comment on this:
She could have misjudged her audience, and expected they would, say, recognize Buffy quotes in a Harry Potter fic, when it turns out they actually don't (what's wrong with them?).
The author you are alluding to was criticized for the Buffy stuff, but the stickiest cries of "plagiarism" are related to her having lifted passages nearly verbatim from a few of Pamela Dean's novels. These books were were, I believe, out of print at the time, so she could not have had a reasonable expectation that her readers would recognize that; nor was it an obscure reference adding allusive meaning for those in the know. (Apparently, of course.)
And this is where the reader's supposition of intent comes in. Did she mean to pass off superior prose as her own creative insight? Is her claim of an eidetic but scatterbrained memory plausible -- do we believe that she "accidentally" reproduced passages of a book she read and reread as a young woman? How would you "prescribe" that we judge her? And do you think the strange social nuances of fandom, wherein BNFs are often deemed patently untrustworthy schemers, should factor in?
no subject
She could have misjudged her audience, and expected they would, say, recognize Buffy quotes in a Harry Potter fic, when it turns out they actually don't (what's wrong with them?).
The author you are alluding to was criticized for the Buffy stuff, but the stickiest cries of "plagiarism" are related to her having lifted passages nearly verbatim from a few of Pamela Dean's novels. These books were were, I believe, out of print at the time, so she could not have had a reasonable expectation that her readers would recognize that; nor was it an obscure reference adding allusive meaning for those in the know. (Apparently, of course.)
And this is where the reader's supposition of intent comes in. Did she mean to pass off superior prose as her own creative insight? Is her claim of an eidetic but scatterbrained memory plausible -- do we believe that she "accidentally" reproduced passages of a book she read and reread as a young woman? How would you "prescribe" that we judge her? And do you think the strange social nuances of fandom, wherein BNFs are often deemed patently untrustworthy schemers, should factor in?