(Untitled)
Homecoming
Matt shows up at Janice’s house at seven on the dot. He has to make small talk with her parents for fifteen interminable minutes, like he was Ricky Nelson picking up Mary Lou for the big Homecoming dance, but that didn’t matter because this was Janice Murphy and he’d been in love with her since seventh grade and this was their FIRST DATE ( Read more... )
A timeline:
October, 2007 -- ilsaluvsrick plagiarizes a story by yahtzee63, turning a Syd/Weiss story in Alias fandom into a Matt/Mohinder story for Heroes fandom. A reader noticed the similarities and spoke to Yahtzee privately about it.
From Yahtzee's post: Because this was not outright copying, I thought it might be accidental. I emailed her privately and asked her about it; she swore it was accidental and that she would edit the story. I believed her, more fool me. She didn't edit her story, either. (I didn't check on it because this was in that three-week period between my moving apartments and having surgery, when I was not exactly awash in either free time or energy.)
Because she apologized and said she'd correct her mistake, Yahtzee didn't pursue it further. (As I said in comments, I think probably most of us would have done the same, relieved that this wasn't going to turn into a massive flamey flamewar.)
January, 2008 -- ilsaluvsrick plagiarizes a JD/Perry Scrubs story by randomslasher and thuri, again turning it into a Matt/Mohinder story for Heroes.
Within a week of the story being posted, randomslasher and thuri contact stop_plagiarism, and a mod contacts ilsaluvsrick. She responds with another very sincere apology, including posting an apology to one of the communities where she posted the story, matt_mohinder.
Words can not express how sorry and ashamed I am of my behavior. Even if all of you here are able to look past this, I can not. I'm going to be leaving the fandom to do some serious soul searching on why I would ever choose to lie to people that I respect, admire, and consider real friends.
Again, unsurprisingly, the tone of the comments was unanimously supportive and forgiving -- "Aww, don't abandon us! You said you were sorry, stay!" and "Aw, what a good person you are for owning up to your mistake!" -- and so on. She deletes the story and is allowed to remain as a member of matt_mohinder.
February, 2008 -- ilsaluvsrick posts a story called Fumble to her own journal and presumably to the other Heroes comms she's still a member of. No one notices anything odd about it until...
April, 2008 -- ilsaluvsrick plagiarizes a story by thisisbone, turning a Dom/Brian story from The Fast & The Furious into, again, a Matt/Mohinder story for Heroes.
Again, within a week of the story being posted, the plagiarism is reported by a sharp-eyed reader to the original author, and due to this being a repeat offense (the report from last time hadn't even vanished from the front page of the comm yet!) it is reported to stop_plagiarism.
In the comments, sheafrotherdon notes several phrases in "Fumble," describing Matt's mother, that ping her as similar to descriptions of the mother in "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn," but doesn't have a copy of the book handy to check further. Something to look into.
* * *
At this point, what to do? Who knows how many other authors have spoken to ilsaluvsrick privately and recieved one of her specially sincere "apologies"?
Tracking down this sort of plagiarism is tough; she's been clever to draw from slightly more obscure fandoms, like Alias, Scrubs and The Fast and the Furious, in order to post in a more popular fandom. If you're an omnivorous reader, consider checking out the memories of some of the comms ilsaluvsrick belongs to-- these include heroes_fic, heroes_rps, heroes_slash, matt_mohinder, mylar_fic, mytwoheroes, psych_slash, psychfiction, rome_slash, shawn_lassiter and tds_rps.
And if you are the mod of one of these comms or know any of the mods of any of these comms, consider speaking to them about allowing a three-strikes plagiarist to post her fic there.
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