I've Arrived! (Also, Plagiarism)

[akashathekitty]

I've today been contacted by a few people telling me that allegedly a story titled Completely and Utterly by Tragic Disposition on FFnet has content directly lifted from bex-chan's Isolation and my own In the Darkness All Cats Are Grey

Comments

[meganmurphy1977]

I wish I could help with the Isolation part, but I've read that story just once.

Maybe some people could work together? I do know a lot of the In the Darkness stuff can be found in Chapter 9.

So sorry you have to deal with this. Why are people so stupid?

[akashathekitty]

Thank you for alerting me in the first place and giving me some idea where to look. :) If nobody else steps up, I'll try to make my own s_p report next week and I will look in the chapters you mentioned but ugh, damn, been years since I wrote that story so may have to do a loooot of document searching. :)

[meganmurphy1977]

I'll do the c/p comparison for it and post it here if you want. Then someone else can add the Isolation stuff. I can message the Twitter person and ask if she remembers what chapter the Silencio stuff was in.

[akashathekitty]

I think they'll need screenshots of the passages from the original vs plagiarised story, though. But that in itself will be easier when it's known what passages to look for. :) Not sure she can remember. It sounded a lot like it was a long time ago she read it. I suppose I'll have to actually skim the story. >_>

[mazvn]

Well that's one way to get a lot of empty hits on a story I guess. I have to agree with meganmurphy, why are people so stupid? It's not like it's going to go unnoticed when you rip off some of the most known stories or if not most known, at last by most known authors. Itøs just going to make them look incredible stupid, rude and ...asshats. And you must assume they like the work of those authors since they chose that to steal. But this wil ljsut make sure the authors don't like THEM and, as kitty say, take away time that should be spend creating new awesome stories.

...just so stupid.

[everafter13]

I breezed over it and while it is terribly written, so much so that I couldn't bear to do a detailed reading. From the scanning, I didn't pick up anything that I recognized to be you're work regarding plot and storyline. Bexchan's Isolation has some plot points that may have been used and reversed so Hermione was placed in Draco's position and vice versa. But no one could ever mistake Tragic Disposition's work in term's of story for yours... trust me. But I can't comment on details since I only did a quick skim. I know you're stories and writing style pretty well. I think the closest I could relate as far as plot goes was Hermione and Draco screwing in secret, but that isn't a unique plot point. She did brazenly lift some direct lines for intimate scene's

[akashathekitty]

So she lifted bits of my sex scenes and then rewrote them to make them worse? LOVELY.

But unfortunately that may actually mean that S_P will dismiss the case. Asking if a girl (especially a virgin) if she's had an orgasm is fairly standard formulaic romance stuff and the other bit is also vague enough that the case isn't solid.

But indeed, it's a rude move. I'm all for being inspired by someone else, but to simply take a scene and rewrite it like that (especially without "inspired by" credit or something to acknowledge people) is... not something that'll make you any friends.

[eevilalice]

She does have both you and Bex-chan listed as favorite authors as well as Isolation and Silencio as favorite stories...

[akashathekitty]

I saw that too. But if what everafter13 quoted is the general level of what she's done, then we're rather talking about a bad incorporation of generic elements that she's made too recognisable from our works than out and out plagiarism.

I don't even know if that sentence made sense. It boils down to: I don't think we have a case.

[eevilalice]

Ugh. That's even more frustrating.

[akashathekitty]

It is. It's not acceptable to rip others off like that. There are so many ways she could've used those same elements without stepping on anyone's toes if she'd tried.

But oddly, I'm far less upset about this whole thing than I thought I'd be. I suppose that's good (for me).

[savymusic]

Plagiarism is very serious and it should be brought to everyone's attention. The story, "Completely and Utterly" has a rather unoriginal plot but I've only found very one mild case of plagiarism when she uses the dialogue from In The Darkness ACaG. It's already been written above in another comment but quite frankly, it's not very much to go on. I'll continue analyzing in depth though.

[akashathekitty]

Don't we all have rather unoriginal plots. ;) But yeah based on the snippets I've seen, it's more a case of not absorbing plot elements into her own style well enough.

[slytheringurrl]

I read a lot of the story and it seems like she didn't mean to intentionally copy your work... Yes, some parts were obviously based off Darkness and Iso but it's not a direct copy-paste. She was more clever. I think Megan overdid her statement. I agree that the author of this story should have said that her story was inspired by yours and bex-chan's.
Coincidentally, someone actually accused me of doing plagiarising, when my story drew a conection between Ian Kabra and Draco in a Drabble form, and theirs was an actual story where they meet and such, and that never even happened in mine, and also, I had never even read their story!
I think you should continue to do some research on the author and maybe contact her and talk to her. Being polite is the way to go... In short, the story may not pass for being an actual plagiarised story.
Just to make it clear, I in no way support plagiarism.

[slytheringurrl]

This isn't ovbious plagiarism to be exact. It's more like she wrote something bad, and to spice it up, she paraphrased parts of Iso and Darkness. Which is soo cheap. If you're not a writer, you're not one! So thats what I mean when I said that Megan kinda over did her statement. Yes, the author blatantly tool some of your work, but it might be hard to really make a case of this. I'd keep reading the story and keep tabs on it! Don't fret about it way too much!