Plagiarist Road Kill

[mark_asphodel]

OK. A few entries back I was angsting over concrit for a story that did something I didn't like to one of my favorite characters. I now have cold proof that the SSB story I had issues with basically took chunks of text from an FE8 story ("Despair" by Kanthia) and "reworked" it to ill effect. Look, fanbrats, any story in which you think you can substitute Marth for Innes is not going to play right. I didn't even think Innes was in-character in the original fic, and the hack job was even more offbase.

So, instead of feeling funny about my duty to help a poor little amateur author who hasn't developed sufficient respect for source material, I'm going to teach a sticky-fingered fanbrat a hard lesson. I'm going to give Kanthia first dibs on bagging him/her, though.

For great justice!

Comments

[hooves.livejournal.com]

:O

Really? Dear God, that's horrible. You'd think people would have a LITTLE more respect, but I guess that's hoping for too much, right? Ugh.

[writerawakened.livejournal.com]

Plagiarists should be vaporized. And then vaporized again. And then shot. And then vaporized again.

Was it as blatant as that dude who apparently ripped off ENTIRE CHAPTERS of Servant of GOD's fics? Or someone who stole someone's Ismaire-centric fic and just added one extra paragraph?

Sigh. You'd think these people would have at least ONE creative bone in their body, but nogoodniks always manage to surprise me. Ugh ._.

[hooves.livejournal.com]

[Was it as blatant as that dude who apparently ripped off ENTIRE CHAPTERS of Servant of GOD's fics?]

I never knew that someone did that! D:

[writerawakened.livejournal.com]

That's what I heard, at least. Of course, that was a couple of years ago. The guy who did it is (hopefully!) long, long gone.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

I dunno. It seemed to be a fairly typical SSB romance vignette with Kanthia's stuff interpolated at the end. But who knows what else was pilfered-- it might be a hybrid. The culprit's profile suggests accusations of theft are not new.

I'd better re-read that Ephraim/Innes/Seth duel thing they wrote to see if they stole anything of mine.

Name of culprit is "PitFTW," incidentally.

Can somebody on Kanthia's f-list warn her? I PM'd her using ffnet's interface.

[myaru.livejournal.com]

Geez. I've had people lift ideas, but never entire blocks of text so far as I know. How crappy for Kanthia.

Marth and Innes, huh. Could there be any two characters more opposed, or is it just me? Next we'll have someone ripping off a Prince Soren AU and replacing his name with Marth's.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Marth and Innes, huh. Could there be any two characters more opposed, or is it just me?

Marth and Hector, maybe. Or Innes and... I dunno, Artur. Yeah, if you're going to repurpose FE8 'fics, at least pick one starring Ephraim or something. That's SSB, though. The fanbrats there are convinced that Marth is some kind of stuck-up narcissist-- or a charming romantic. Uh, no. If you posted a story over there featuring Marth's canon personality (either one, LOL), they wouldn't know what to make of it.

Next we'll have someone ripping off a Prince Soren AU and replacing his name with Marth's.

For the love of Pete, don't give them ideas.

[gunlord.livejournal.com]

Hi Mark of the Asphodel,

Gunlord here, mod for Ms. Lemurian-Girl's FE forum. Sorry for my intrusiveness and for posting in your LJ, but when I tried to post this in the original topic I got this stupid error (Login/submission area is currently inaccessible due to a technical glitch. We apologize for the brief inconvenience.)

To answer your question, yes, posting a link to the story as a PSA would be acceptable, I believe. I'll check with Ms. Lemurian-Girl (and notify her of the plagiarism case) ASAP, of course, but IIRC you should link to the offending fic, since if the author plagiarized one story he/she may have done the same to others, so the members of the forum would find it useful if you helped give 'em a heads-up on someone who may have ripped off their writings. Also, the more I think about it the more I would actually ask you to post a link, both so the rest of us can see exactly what the offender did and to report the offending fic for abuse, since plagiarism is most definitely against the rules.

Just to make sure, I trust you and all but just checkin', you told Kanthia you also made a topic about this on the FE forums, right? If she wishes she can come over there and express her thoughts/feelings on the matter and what the proper course of punishment should be, I'm perfectly fine with it since it's her right as the aggrieved party (and possibly not the only one, if the offender in this case has done the same before). She also has a right to see the offending fic, of course.

Again, my 'pologies for intruding in here, I hope this glitch nonsense gets fixed soon, I'll try again in a coupla minutes and repost what I said here over there. Again, sorry for the trouble ^^;

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Hey, Gunlord.

NP. Everything I post publicly is free for the commenting.

OK. I PM'd Lemurian-Girl last night about it, with the link's to Kanthia's story and the copycat, so she could see I wasn't just playing games. I don't recall I mentioned the FE Forum part to Kanthia-- since I didn't know it was her 'fic when I started poking around, the topic was kind of a done deal by the time I learned it was hers. I'll correct that omission. I sent her both links as well by my initial PM. Kanthia seems to be having exams right now... I haven't heard back from her, but maybe someone she's close to can speak with her and see how she feels before this thing goes any further?

[gunlord.livejournal.com]

Okay, that sounds good, thank you. I'm not on Kanthia's FL so I doubt it would be prudent of me to send her a missive via LJ, but a PM ought to be sufficient. Thanks again! And for what it's worth, I looked at PitFTW's profile to see what I could find, and yes, the ending of that piece seems to be a rather shameless and graceless ripoff of Kanthia's "Despair." "Give me your nation and lend me your power. We shall attack when the enemy is weak. For the voice of Tabuu never dies, boy?" SURELY THE SIMILARITIES MUST BE COINCIDENTAL!! Hurr durr, indeed.

It might be prudent to give this author a chance to defend herself, particularly to Kanthia, but I can't see how much of a defense could be made...the word-for-word copying runs too deep to be waved off as just 'stylistic similarity' or something. Plagiarists...>:[ I believe I'll be sending an email to reportabuse@fanfiction.com sometime soon, surely this kind of thing can't be in accordance with the rules.

Anyways, thanks again for bringing this to the attention of Ms. Lemurian-Girl and I! If you ever see something suspicious or need to notify somebody about something funny you see on the forums or around our haunting grounds on FFn generally, please don't hesitate to drop me a line, either on my LJ or via PMs or whatever.