Once upon a time, I began writing a short story that involved a Harry from the future sending an enchanted diary back in time to his younger self. The diary allowed them to write to each other using a matching set, which allowed the older future Harry (in an assuredly shitty future world) to help the younger Harry manage his life and avoid the pitfalls that doomed the world older Harry is from.

Some random person from DLP said the story was okay, but they were honestly pretty disappointed that the diary in question wasn't the Riddle diary, because they thought that would have been a more interesting idea. I said piddly tosh, because it went against the spirit of the idea I was going for. Then Enembee acted like a bitch about my sense of humor or something, and I stopped.

Now I acknowledge that a grizzled, battle-weary, and out-of-options Harry Potter surviving in the ruined post-apocalypse of an alternate universe and casting a functional Riddle diary backwards through time at himself in a desperate attempt to avert this future in some manner no matter the eventual cost to himself is honestly a fucking sweet idea, and my whole concept about a Protean diary was pretty shit, comparatively speaking.

One day, I'm going to rewrite that short. But that's not the point. The point isn't whether or not you were once shit. Everyone was shit once.

The point is whether you stay shit, or if you realize and acknowledge that you are shit, and make an active and continuous effort to be less shit.

This is why authors like Lionheart or Shadows are shit. It's not that they can't write. They most certainly can. It's that they make no effort to remove themselves from the disgusting mire of shit-tier that everyone starts out in, because a 100k word fic that's shit-tier gets them more views and reviews than a 4k fic that's had effort and thought put into it.

If Shadows allowed himself to be beaten with a stick every time he starts veering off into the territories of theft and madness, his stuff would be a lot better than it is. And I've argued repeatedly that Lionheart's beginnings are all pretty fucking solid. He can write the beginning of a story. He can do it well. He just can't stop himself from going completely off the rails and turning Naruto into a Kitsune Sidhe Prince with nine jet black tails and lust powers that give Tonks quadruple-D sized tits and let him learn every profession in the world overnight while Sasuke gets kicked in the crotch repeatedly in the background, Snape and Dumbledore have evil greasy homosexual intercourse in public, and Draco Malfoy is forced to genderswap into a girl and make babies to make ends meet while dwarves and talking frogs build an almighty city state with anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic soapbox propaganda playing in the background.

If he could fucking regulate this impulse to go completely off the fucking rails, he'd be a solid writer. But he makes no effort to do so, and that above all else is what condemns him.

Look at Shadows. In one breath, he apologizes for plagiarizing, and in the other, he condemns Dark Lord Potter for daring to have the balls to call him out on it, and tries to justify what he did as being acceptable because of extenuating circumstances that aren't extenuating at all. It's obvious he's not actually sorry about what he did. He's just afraid that if he didn't do something, his massive fic would get pulled and he'd lose all his views and upvotes and favorites and internet handjobs. He didn't actually learn anything from this, and he's only doing the barest unacceptable minimum he thinks he can get away with to 'fix' it. And that's why he remains shit.

It's not where you're at. It's what you're doing to move yourself to a higher point from where you are now.

Also, we're basically done here. The fic got pulled in the one place it was going to get pulled from. The ff.net mods a shit and will forever be a shit, so he can get away with whatever he wants there. We struck a blow for integrity and honesty, he failed to get away with it in the only venues that matter, and he publicly displayed that he refuses to learn his lesson, so now we all know he's a lost cause to ever not being shit, so there's no need to waste more time on him by giving him the attention he obviously craves.

Mission accomplished, thanks for participating. Pack your bags. Pool's closed.

I tried looking up some sort of victory pic to post along the lines of "we're assholes, but we're the best assholes you'll ever see." I image searched those words without thinking about it beforehand. I immediately regretted the decision.

 

Still should have posted one and then just captioned it with that. Just make sure it's a pretty asshole.

 

How's that?

 

Meh, what's the point of publishing more words than someone else, if the real meat of your story only occurs in thousand-word chunks that you cherry-picked from other people's stories?

blackshadow111 may have published more than the average DLP user, but that doesn't mean he's doing something to be proud of.

Besides, word-count is a bit overrated. It's important, sure, and a lot of really shitty 'stories' are to be found among the miniscule one-shots, which boast the majority of fandom's godawful songfic and such. However, I'm sure DLP could point out many stories that rambled on for hundreds of thousands -perhaps even millions- of words, that only add up to a big steaming pile of nonsense. Lord Raine mentioned one author, in particular, who would perhaps be doing himself and everyone else a favor if he learned an ounce of restraint... or how to quit while he's ahead.

I'd prefer quality over quantity any day (both, if my greedy ass can find them in the same place), and I'd certainly take people who have the wisdom not to publish something they don't think is up to snuff or know not to clumsily force a story when inspiration is in short supply, over someone who doesn't need inspiration because they just fill out their hack writing by stealing other authors' hard work.

Didn't even take balls, really, just a sense of right and wrong...which is nothing to sneeze at, I suppose, since it's something blackshadow111 clearly lacks, or at least successfully ignores in favor of nurturing his ludicrously enormous sense of entitlement.

Yeah... I'll continue to send abuse reports, now and then, in the hopes they're just backlogged. FFN, after all, is a pretty big site. What I won't do (and haven't done) is give this willfully ignorant bozo any reviews.

I prefer to think of us, on average (since DLP isn't the unified hive-mind its detractors like to pretend we are), as being, "Harsh, but fair," rather than assholes...

 

Well, we call ourselves harsh, but fair, while people like blackshadow111 call us assholes.

 

Ding ding ding.

Of course there's elements of a hive-mind here. It's a community. Communities exist because of like thinking at some degree. I mean, think of the response for stories with slash, Ginny, and/or a will-reading at Gringotts. (Unless of course, it's a "Ginny got slashed into pieces for suggesting that Gringotts would do a will-reading." That just might fly around here.)

 

Har har har.

 

...the fuck? This was quite literally the only fucking post I made in that thread.

Sort your facts out.

EDIT: Huh, apparently 4 years ago I didn't know what an adverb was.

 

I did. Kitsune lust powers and Fairy Prince Harry totally happened, and I can provide citations for all of those things I said if I need to. I read both of those stories multiple times. I didn't make up any of those details.

 

I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about and, apparently, neither do you.

 

Reported the idiot, and reported one of his other stories, a Percy Jackson fic that I found, while short, was also full of plagiarism. Very horrible behavior overall, and I completely agree with reporting the shit out of the guy. What an asshole.

Also, if I might ask, why hasn't he been banned from this site?

 

Somehow I don't think that would stop anyone. I don't personally want him banned, but I'm not buying your reason.


Now if you said 'For the lulz' I'd believe you.

 

Also, as long as he's not banned, there's a chance he'll post here and who knows what magical things might happen then.

 

Why ban him from here? His plagiarism was on another site. Now, if he had posted that idiocy in the WbA, something tells me the Banhammer would have shown up, but only after others here exacted a bloodletting.

 

While it's true that he is a plagiator, I wouldn't entirely condemn him because of that. He has a right to be part of this forum when he wants to. Who knows, maybe he will read something interesting and it will inspire him. I am sure that if he will violate some rules, someone will ban him or something. If we will start banning people based just on their opinions and story preferences, we could just as well start propagating racism, or fascism.

Just a note, I am not defending plagiarism, but his right to be a part of this community.

 

Wut? I'm pretty sure if someone on DLP started promoting racism/fascism, they'd get banned. What does having opinions on story preferences have to do with that?

 

I'm talking about the information about what Lionheart wrote, which I admittedly did not take the time to cite. I can only assume you are doing the same.

Because you obviously can't be talking about the joke I made. I know you can't, because you've used far cruder and crueler barbs against others for no reason beyond innate spite, and justified them as jest. You've made posts that were literally just a single non-contributing sentence that personally attacked someone, and passed it off with the label of 'joke.'

You can't possibly be talking the passing joke I made about you, because that would make you a hypocritical vagina that walks like a man. It would mean you believe how you treat others and the way you feel you should be treated are unconnected variables in the equation of social interaction, which is typically a fine way of determining whether or not someone is a narcissistic ass or raging sociopath.

Since I didn't want to believe that you hold your own ego in the same regard as most radical feminists hold their privilege, I made the assumption that you were referring to the remarks I made about Lionheart. In that regard, you would actually be technically correct, because I don't believe Snape and Dumbledore ever actually had greasy evil homosexual intercourse 'on screen' so to speak, but rather merely referenced having done so in the past. Also, I'm not completely certain Naruto's kitsune tails were black. They might have been golden. Everything else is citable, but you've got me on those points.

If, on the other hand, you truly do believe that the golden rule does not apply to you, and that you should be allowed infinite liberty to mock others with not a word of jest to be breathed that involves your name, then I sincerely apologize. I will endeavor to walking on eggshells when in your presence, I will not dare to whisper your name in any manner that does not stroke your ego, and I will dedicate myself to treating you with the kiddie gloves you so dearly seem to desire.

No. Shadows doesn't deserve one here, because he has done nothing to warrant it. He has not posted plagiarized material on this site, nor has he broken any of the forum rules.

To persecute people for what they do elsewhere in the internet lies the path of tyrannical Big Brother moderation that SpaceBattles has chosen to walk.

If he wants to post here, he retains that right. He may not be welcome. We may call him many rude things. But until he breaks the rules here, he has as much right to be here as anyone else does. It is not the job of a moderator to ban people they do not personally like. It is the job of a moderator to ban people for breaking the rules. Shadows has not broken any rules, yet, so he gets to stay.

And in that regard, I'm actually honestly surprised he resisted the urge to ride to his own defense, but regardless, that was perhaps the smartest move he could have made.

 

Sorry, I believe what we have is a case of miscommunication.

I wasn't offended, I was merely under the mistaken belief that you were talking out of your arse. Mostly on the understanding that jokes have to have context, a punch line and, y'know, be funny.

Now that it's evident that you crack jokes at the same level you write fiction, everything has become crystal clear.