AUTHOR'S NOTE/PLAGIARISM SHOWDOWN
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Hi again, you guys :) I'm so, so sorry for the recent influx of author's notes, but this has to be done before things escalate – that is, if they even can.
Some of you may not have gotten the previous A/N, so here's how it goes: Basically, I've been receiving several notifications of plagiarism over the past two or three weeks or so – not a new issue to me, sadly. The repertoire right now looks like this: They Call it a Cliché has been plagiarised five times – yes, FIVE –, and Rain or Shine, A Little Bit Surprised, and Maybe You Were the One once each. God knows how many more there are floating out there.
Now, I decided on leaving all my works posted before the 29th of May this year up here for you guys to read, and to stop posting on FP altogether save for collab work (that includes Remission, my ongoing fic with aiur). That was before, thanks to the kind of really awesome LJ community fpwatchers (all you FP writers, I strongly urge you to visit it or watch it should you have an Livejournal to know if your work ever gets plagiarised – it's unbelievably thorough!), I found out that MYWtO had been plagiarised too.
This is how everything happened in chronological order:
The first instance was two years back, when someone blatantly ripped the first chapter of TCC off and, changing the names in place of hers, put it up on FP. After the reader who contacted me about it tore her a new one, she took it and her account down.
The second instance was when a girl decided that Edward and Bella evidently made better characters than Devon and Reese, and in keeping with that, plagiarised TCC in a Twilight fanfic. I contacted her through email and she replied saying she'd take them down, and she did.
The third one, quite cleverly, I might add, melded both elements of TCC and a different story into one story. The names, settings, even the dialogue, were all either from TCC itself or said other story. (Yes, even the names.) This went on for 8 chapters or so before two readers of mine told me about it, and even after that. What's worse is that she abandoned her first attempt, keeping it up on FP, and proceeded to 'write' a whole new different version, which essentially meant that she plagiarised twice and put two copies of 'her' work on FP. A friend of mine left a particularly nasty review on one of them, and after a period of time and my reporting the stories to the FP maintainers, the account was deleted.
The fourth plagiariser definitely had the smarts in the wrong way too. She plagiarised the first chapter of TCC, then proceeded to 'edit' it when a couple of my readers realised how similar it was to my story. Not that it turned out at all different. Then, she continued posting chapters that had no relation to the rest of TCC. After leaving a polite review and contacting the maintainers, I believe the story has been taken down.
The fifth and sixth times were both perpetrated by the same person. Rain or Shine and A Little Bit Surprised were literally copied word for word, excepting names and such, and plopped into Twilight and Digimon fanfics respectively. I emailed the plagiariser both times it happened (she had both stories on two different accounts) and she took them down.
The seventh time involved TCC again. L.J. Smith fanfic. You get it. To her credit, she took bits of the story and melded them into a single one-shot – I mean, how she managed to do that I really have no clue, but everything added up. It was a hell of a long one-shot, too, of course. The funny thing is, after contacting her about it, she accused me of plagiarising her. What?! We exchanged some pretty heated emails before she owned up and took the entire thing down, deleted her account, and evidently fell off the face of the earth as she never replied my last email to her.
The eighth and final (hopefully) time, someone, evidently some sort of a Japanese celebrity fanfiction writer, plagiarised Maybe You Were the One on an external writing site by breaking it up into four different parts, corresponding to my line breaks, and changed the names to suit said Japanese celebrity names. Not only that, she also plagiarised Dillusional's one-shot Faces and angels and airwaves (who I happen to have talked to before – we both live in the same country and are of the same age)'s one-shot Pest Control. I don't know what's going to happen, but I've left a comment on her page and asked her to take everything down before people continue thinking she wrote something she didn't and praising her for it.
Obviously, things right now are at its ultimate breaking point. I honestly cannot abide people who find it a right out thrill copying someone else's work, substituting names for their own ones, and slapping their own name on it. IT IS NOT ETHICAL. It's not even the act of a sane human being, alright? So here's a big shout-out to all your plagiarisers out there: GROW UP. Write your own stuff. Get some C&C. For everyone's sake, and most importantly your own, leave others' works alone. Because not only are you digging your own grave, others will pitch in for that too. With heavy-duty shovels, I might add.
I think this proves that by leaving everything up here, plagiarisers will continue doing what they do. That does NOT sit well with me at all. Whatever they've been doing has to end RIGHT NOW.
With that, I am officially taking every single piece of writing ever posted here, with the exception of How to Write a Summary and The Little Red Dot (if those ever are plagiarised, we'll all know who the ridiculously desperate one is out there). I will also be keeping MYWtO up for a short period of time as proof to the person who plagiarised it that she did rip it off from the timestamp. All other works will never see the light of day again. Not even on my LJ community (more to come on that). Apologies if you were just getting into this or any of the other stories/one-shots, and if you wanted to read any of them soon too. Robbing you guys of future material to read isn't my intention, I swear. :( If you have a copy of any of my works, either keep it strictly to yourself or trash it immediately, and please contact me if you do have one, too. I'd be very grateful for that!
Also, do not ask me for a copy of anything. I will not oblige. I'm honestly really upset that it has to come to this, but I'm not risking another case just to make a reader happy. Of course, I'd send it if I could, but I hope you guys understand how things have to be now!
I'm so sorry if this came out particularly confrontational or conceited or anything along those lines – rereading it, it seems that way :S – but this has dogged me so much I've literally grown sick of it. Not only has this kept me up at night more times than I can count, it's also robbed me of the inspiration to write. I can only hope my message has gotten across, and that none of this will ever happen again. Sadly, the latter probably is just that – a hope.
A few more notes: I've created a personal Livejournal community for my writings, but that will be reverted to a new community thought up by SamanthaNicole and Myrika. All three of our Twitters crossed and I was interested in the idea, too, so created it was. :) The link can be found at my profile page. What it does is that it allows all of us writers who've been plagiarised before to write in a controlled environment. Requests to join will be moderated to minimise plagiarising, and plagiarism checks by Googling etc. will be done every week or so. There still aren't any substantial details about it to talk about, so watch out for them to come on the comm. itself or on my profile page.
As for Mercy, Reason, Hope and the sequel to TCC (They Call it an Accident), I'll probably will be discontinuing the former and starting on the latter on the group LJ comm. All this frustration and pure anger at this entire shebang has caused me to lose faith in everything literary right now. I'm also keeping MRH strictly private between myself and a trusted circle of friends, so it officially is discontinued to the general public. Hopefully, TCA will finally get some airtime!
Another reason why I chose to post this note here (the other being that a large number of you guys still have this on story alert and I wanted to get this out there): a new version of the playlist for TCC is up! Procrastination does pay off, baha. Some songs do repeat from the previous playlist, but the new one is substantially larger than it in that it's made up of 33 songs in total. Yup, you got it. Download and listening links are on my profile under the 'stories' section!
Thank you so much for reading this and for having stuck by me all these years. All the gratitude in me can't possibly make up for your support and guidance. It really amazes me how much FP has helped me grow both as a writer and as a person. That's all because of you. It tears me apart to have to take down everything, but this is for the greater good, and I hope you guys can understand that. -hugs everyone-
And plagiarisers, listen up. You need to drop whatever you're doing and stop. Fucking. Plagiarising. You do not flatter us writers at all with your actions. Please, for the sake of the FP community and for your sanity, please quit copying off others. Look at how many works have been taken off the site now because of you. Think about that. Really think about that.
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With that, I think I've exhausted my daily quota of ranting.
I love you guys (not the plagiarisers, obviously, but everyone else reading this!), and thank you once again for sticking till the end with me. Muchas gracias x infinity beyond. (heart) Have a great rest of the year, and if you have any questions, please feel free to PM or email me! I will get back to you in a day or two. I also do have a Twitter and Livejournal, so feel free to follow or add me respectively there too! Links are, as always, on my profile page.
xoxo
-Louisa