How to know you've arrived in fandom...

[alyse]

So, today started well. Was on my way to a breakfast seminar when someone ran into the back of my car. I was stationary, waiting for the lights to change, and apparently she had her head in the clouds. Thankfully no one was hurt, and there doesn't appear to be any damage to either car - not even a scratch on my bumper - but it didn't half give me a shock.

Then I come home and find an e-mail informing that I've been plagiarised. Yep. Someone took my story, Silence (which was written in 2001 or 2002 - in any case, it was nominated for an SG Fan Award for Best Story in 2002) and filed the numbers off, reposting it as a Torchwood fic.

I only read the first couple of paragraphs - I couldn't bear to read any more even though I'm not particularly precious - and it is literally a word for word copy/paste job from what I can see.

Just in case she deletes it now that I've posted, I've saved it to my hard drive and here's a comparison of the first few paras of the two:

Silence by alyse

Warmth sank into him, soaking into his very bones. The water he floated in cushioned him, isolating him from the environment around him. From outside, from distraction, from the 'real world'. From everything that mattered.

He let his head slide underneath the surface, leaving only his face exposed to the cool night air. His ears filled, muffling the sounds around him, blanketing him from it all. The steady plink plink of the tap as it dripped into the bath. The groaning of the pipes. His own heartbeat. They were the only noises he could hear, and even then not clearly. Everything else was distant, drowned out by the silence.

He needed that.

He let his limbs float, heavy in the water, the feeling strangely disjointed. His eyes were tightly screwed shut. It wouldn't have mattered if he'd opened them, not really. He'd turned off the lights as soon as the door closed safely behind him and it was late now, very late, the only illumination coming through the small frosted window, dim and soothing. He was eight floors above the streetlights, and the sound of what little traffic there was at this hour was as dimmed by distance as anything else.

Soothing silence, blackness held him, cradled him as gently in its grasp as the water around him.

It should have left him terrified, fearing for his sanity, his very soul following recent events. That darkness shouldn't have been welcome - he should have craved the light, longed for it with the same intensity as he'd longed for other things in his life. Love, happiness, peace. He'd craved it once - an eternity ago. Before that eternity, when minutes, hours, days had stretched forever and he'd been lost. Isolated. Cut-off. So terribly, completely alone. Deaf, blind, numb - on the outside at least. The inside was different. He'd never been anything less than utterly petrified, silent screams echoing in the vaults of his own mind. Oh yes, this darkness should have left him with that same sense of fear.

Isolation, nominally by wickedplotbunny but also by alyse

Warmth sank into him, soaking into his very bones.

He let his head slide underneath the surface, leaving only his face exposed to the cool night air. His ears filled, muffling the sounds around him, blanketing him from it all. The steady dripping of the tap into the sink, the groaning of the pipes beneath him, his own heartbeat; they were the only noises he could hear, and even then, they were muffled and distorted. Everything else was distant, drowned out by the silence.

He needed that.

His eyes were tightly screwed shut, although it wouldn’t have mattered a great deal if he'd opened them, not really. He had turned off the lights as soon as the door closed safely behind him and it was late now, very late, the only illumination coming through the small frosted window, dim and soothing. He was six floors above the streetlights, and the sound of what little traffic there was at this hour was muted by distance. He thought of the whirl of activity outside, even at this hour; clouds rushing the sky, frenzied traffic dipping in and out of the motorways, the sun plummeting below to the horizon, with another day over. Time rush. Blood rush.

It should have left him terrified, fearing for his sanity following recent events. That darkness shouldn't have been welcome - he should have craved the light, longed for it with the same intensity as he’d longed for happiness, peace, redemption. He'd craved it once - an eternity ago. Before that eternity, when minutes, hours, days had stretched forever and he'd been lost. Isolated. So terribly alone. Deaf, blind, numb - on the outside at least. He'd never been anything less than utterly petrified, silent, harsh screams echoing wildly in the vaults of his mind. Yes, this darkness should have left him with that same sense of fear.

Yep. The bold bits were written by yours truly. And I have erred on the side of caution - the only things bolded should be direct lifts. I haven't bolded anything that's paraphrased rather than word for word, even though in many cases there's very little difference.

Honestly. What's the point in ripping off someone else? Apart from anything else, every single complimentary comment must ring hollow and it's not like you can tell anyone who says they didn't like it that that's okay. You didn't bloody write it!

ETA: And, lo, she hath deleted her LJ. Because that's the sign of a clear conscience.

ETA2: But, lo, because I am an ex-archivist and therefore sneaky as a sneaky thing, I have the html page and lots of lovely screencaps:

http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism1.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism2.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism3.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism4.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism5.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism6.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism7.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism8.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism9.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism10.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism11.jpg
http://www.alyse.info/plagiarism/plagiarism12.jpg

ETA3: From ljseek: the cached version of the post and a list of places that linked to it.

Comments

[miera-c.livejournal.com]

Bastard.

Not you, obviously.

Will go spread the news. Who knows who else this twit has stolen from?

[alyse]

Yep. If she's done it once, and so blatantly, you can guarantee that I'm not the only one - it pretty much means that everything she's written stands a good chance of being lifted from somewhere else.

[shetiger.livejournal.com]

The fuck?

I'm going to blatantly steal one of kuwdora's comments: May I please puke in this person's shoes?

[alyse]

Feel free ::g::

[rhianne.livejournal.com]

Oh, typical. ::rolls eyes:: I never understood why people do this! Where has she posted it, honey? I'll go and make snarky comments.

I'm glad you weren't hurt in the crash this morning. ::hugs::

[alyse]

It's linked from the post above :)

And I think davechicken may have beaten you to the snarking and, apparently, been banned from commenting on this person's LJ. Because that's going to make it go away (and Emma was very, very polite - all she did was point the people saying how much they loved it to my story and mention that perhaps they might like to give their praise where it was due).

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness you weren't hurt in the accident. She was probably on her cell phone. Grr.

You should report the plagiarism to stop_plagiarism

[alyse]

I don't think she was on the phone. I think she just wasn't paying attention and thought I was going to move forward (the lights were still on red, but there was a hatched 'do not pull into this space' no waiting zone in front of me so that traffic could still turn into the side road from the other direction).

I think she was mortified to be honest. So after making sure that she was okay and reassuring her that I was okay and the cars seemed to be, there wasn't much point in making a fuss. I felt a bit strange, though.

And I've already reported it to stop_plagiarism, thanks :) It's weird. I've dealt with it from the other side - I've been running archives since 2000 and it crops up at least once a year - but never from this side.

I think I must have 'made it' ;)

I'm going to use my Connor icon, because Connor makes me happy :)

[davechicken.livejournal.com]

*purrs like a contented evil dragon*

Glad you weren't injured, and we'll see the little shit chased well out of fandom. For now, anyway.

[miera-c.livejournal.com]

*applauds* that was an awesome way to handle the situation. I loved the passive level of the snarking in those comments. :)

[thecomfychair.livejournal.com]

I will never understand stupid people on the internet. Sorry it happened to you D:

Interestingly, I also recognize another story in among her stuff... a story in her "Snapshot" series (http://wickedplotbunny.livejournal.com/24469.html#cutid1) versus Chapter 1 of A Life in Ruins (http://www.geocities.com/sazz27/a_life_in_ruins.html) by sazz27 and pough. But WPB's author notes seem to imply that she wrote this as SG-1 first and changed it to TW? Given the benefit of the doubt and my lack of knowledge of spazz or pough outside their fic I'd say same author/different pseud, but with her plagiarism of you it seems suspicious. Hmm.

But her recent entry states she's leaving livejournal because of nasty accusations so it's probably a good thing you saved a part of the story.

[thecomfychair.livejournal.com]

nvm, looks like she deleted her journal. I did save a copy of the fic though, for further perusal purposes.

[kageygirl.livejournal.com]

Omg, skank ho loser! I'm glad to see she scurried off like a frightened cockroach when the lights came on...

[alyse]

They always do, although I'm not at all surprised that she was whining about 'nasty attacks' in her LJ before she did so. I suspect that after that, she'll have realised that I did a line by line comparison and there ain't no arguing with the bold, baby.

Ph34r m3 and ma html tags of dooooooooooooom.

[strangecreature.livejournal.com]

Oh, fandom. The username sounds familiar enough that I suspect I've read at least something of hers and quite enjoyed it. And now I'm kinda wondering who actually wrote it. *facepalm* Maybe it was you! I like Alyse-writing! *g*

[alyse]

Hee! It may well have been Alyse-writing, but it stands a bloody good chance of being someone else's instead.

As long as that 'someone' wasn't wickedplotbunny.

[stasha2g]

I started googling when I first saw this post in stargate_search.

Here's what I found:

Dealing With Popular Opinion is Contrary to Popular Belief by Pewter

Bearable is a snippet from Buddies by Quinn

Justification is Daniel by Jennifer Lyon

And You'll Never Really Know and Take it all away are from And You'll Never Really Know by Meredith Bronwen Mallory, aka garnettrees

Utility Cupboard is Bruised by theemdash

Of Quantum Theory and Jack Harkness is Constants by tripoli8

Watchman is Guard by Corby

Comfortably Numb is And The Cold Will Numb Me No More by by Yum@

All the links to wickedplotbunny are dead now of course, but I saved as I went so here's the files.

[alyse]

Thank you!

I'll let stop_plagiarism know.

I knew my story was going to be the tip of the iceberg. It always is ::sigh::

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Hrrm. would it be...justice to go and spread the word about she who has deleted her journal in the TW comms?

(never bothered to read anything of hers due to, oh, the really bad summaries and the username. You know my prejudcies against usernames)

[alyse]

It would be great justice indeed. I did consider it, because ljseek told me she posted to Torchwoodcoffee, but as I'm not in the fandom, I felt a bit weird. Plus, I couldn't find my plagiarised fic.

[01100100.livejournal.com]

0.0 /boggles/

[alyse]

Dude. I R Internet Famous(ly ripped off)!

[tarlanx]

WOW! And she'd been quite the busy little thief at that! No wonder she has done a runner!

[aithine]

JHC, people never cease to amaze me with the depths of their stupidity and gall and asshattery.

*hugs*

[splash-the-cat.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I link this in sg1_debrief this week?

[alyse]

That's fine.

[temaris.livejournal.com]

Dude. Wow. U R *proper* fen now. Plagiarised an' everything.

I'm amazed no one spotted her sooner, looking at the list of people she'd ripped off.

*hugs*

[alyse]

I know!

Mind, I don't think I'd have recognised the story as mine when I wrote it six or seven years ago, so maybe the fact that she ripped off the older stuff from a large fandom covered her tracks.

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

What Tem said.

But at least she has good taste in her plagiarism. *g*

[alyse]

::curtsies::

I have made it, dahling. I am... one of the few, the proud, the plagiarised. ::g::

[moonlettuce.livejournal.com]

Dude! You has arrived...

[alyse]

I would like to thank the Academy...

[averysmallthing.livejournal.com]

*headdesk* The dumb, it burns us.

May your plagiarist's cat forget where the litter box is and only eat the really expensive tins of food from now on!

[alyse]

::snerk:: I do so love that curse. I may have to remember it ::g::

[annajaneclare.livejournal.com]

Good lord. Talk about blatantly obvious!

[cedara]

Congratulations to being plagiarized. Have some ice-cream. *offers*

[damerel.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you're okay after the car accident.

As for the plagiarism, I'm really very confused because I've read some of her responses to comments (davechicken absolutely *rocks*), and I don't understand how she can take any pleasure in the comments, and as for claiming to be stretching herself... *headdesk* I bet the person for whom she 'wrote' the story as a present feels really special now.

I'm really pleased you caught this and that her serial offences are being brought to light. And yay to being found worthy of being plagiarised. ;)

[love-jackianto.livejournal.com]

Hello. You don't know me, but I came over from stop_plagiarism after seeing a post at torch_wood and would just like to say how bad I feel for you and how angry I'm at wickedplotbunny. I had read several of 'her' stories and really liked them, now I feel lied to.


I really like *your* story Silence, it has some great imagery in it.

[trialia]

Thank you for letting me know about mine!

As I said... I've never been plagiarised from before, in five years. I don't know quite how to feel about it, though I'm pissed she's been stealing fic from other people...

Do you know what the email address with her FF.net account was? I'm minded to go looking...

[spiralleds.livejournal.com]

It's not wickedplotbunny. It may be odetospot - I haven't been able to verify that they are one in the same, though. It appears that there is only one fic there - a Star Wars one, I believe. But yes, odds are good that if it is here, the fic is originally another fandom.

[jutwfiniei.livejournal.com]

I came across this from Stop_plagarism

and I have to say the way she SQUEES! at "her" work is just scary. I'm glad you caught this

[hellenebright.livejournal.com]

******! That girl was a friend of mine.....allegedly!!! I was even in the throes of interviewing her as an exciting young author for one of the TW comms. Needless to say, *that* just went in the trash.

Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!

[spiralleds.livejournal.com]

Hi there. I'm one of the mods on stop_plagiarism and I'm sorry that you were deceived by her as well. I'm trying to collect more information about wickedplotbunny, and I'm hoping you might be able to provide me with contact information for her - email, IM ID, ISP, etc. If you don't wish to post that as a reply, you can either PM me via LJ or email me at spiralled at yahoo dot com.

Thank you.