I've sent a report, also explaining the thing about you giving conditional permission to use your work for the first 4 chapters provided the plagiarism stops thereafter, which it didn't.

In the event an FF Nazi contacts you just verify what I said, if you haven't already reported this too.

 

I have read both stories, and the first few chapters were eerily similar. Now that you have pointed out other similarities I must say Kurinoone plagiarized your work. I have reported it and hope the problem gets solved for you.

As for the angst lover fanbase; use your Author CP and stop them from reviewing your stories or contacting you at all.

Also I liked the ending of your story completely ignoring Chapter 24 that is. It's one of the few fics out there that Harry did not betray Voldemort and join the light. As an added bonus we had the Dark Side finally win, it was quite refreshing to see.

Homer

 

Thanks, the reason I went with 24 for the sequel is b/c it made for another great story. But for those, who wanted the darkside to win they need only read to 25 and the story is over for them... though one person accused me (oh, what did they say... rats can't remember) but in jest of being a cop-out, weak, and not having planned out my piece b/c I created an alternate ending. Shrugs... just can't please everyone.

I should search my email account to find that original exchange between Kurinoone and myself... I kept it, foreseeing such a time as this.

 

I had sent her a, um, strongly-worded mail after reporting her, and the above is her reply. What I would like to ask PDO is if what she said is true- that she offered to take her story down, but you were fine with it.

If so, I don't see why you would want to take action now. Granted, I still hate plagiarism, but why stir things up now when you could have simply asked her to remove her fic ages ago? If this is true, I highly doubt her fic will get taken down by the admins.

If what is bothering you is simply the hatemail sent by her fans, why not approach the root of the problem and just ask Kurinoone to calm her rabid flock, as opposed to trying to get her fic removed? Because you would probably still get harrassed by Kurinoone's fans.

Also, from her profile:

 

As for my sudden change of heart as I have informed Kurinoone when she came to my livejournal was that she violated my trust. It is true that I allowed her to continue under two conditions as I have stated in a post mentioned above: 1) she give me credit for the portions that she "borrowed" and 2) that she barrow no further without asking. And only recently have I heard of the violation almost both of these conditions.

A Minor Infraction of condition 1, which has led to much misunderstainding) There have been translations made of her story (which she claims she as stated on my livejournal that she had nothing to do with those). However, these translations give no credit to me for the text that was borrowed, and as thus the multilingual readers are finding mine and attacking me.

As for Part Two: as had been pointed out to me in a PM by someone, who was listing all the ways I plagiarized Kurinoone there were still similarities after our agreement at Chapter Four that I had not know about until they sent that private message.... as I have not read more that to Chapter Four of "A Darkness Within," nor have read her sequel. I was content to allow her to continue in peace and leave things be as I told her in the PM correspondence sent between us back in April of '05... or '06. In which I stated that as long as she went on her own path and DID NOT borrow further from my story. However, there was a scene involving broom riding, in which Harry is asked if her knows how to fly. The only difference between our two scenes is that my Harry says no, while hers says the opposite. Then we have the younger brother (Mine=Dorian; Hers=Damien) suddenly giving Harry a gift at roughly the same time, the Hogwarts escapes as I am told were similar and occurred roughly at the same time, the appearance of a little boy character at the same time (Both of our characters roughly the same age, even though in her story the Parents of the boy are the Longbottoms, who at this time seem to be a little too old to be having a child so young), and now she has a copy-cat assassin, who is very similar to my own, Cree, who appears later on in "A Shattered Prophecy"... and is going to be a major part in my sequel.

According to her response on my Livejournal, she claims all these examples to just be "Coincidental" and that she had stopped reading my story after our correspondence. It is possible, I will give her that. However, that broom scene, in itself, just felt too close to coincidental.

In hindsight, I probably did not handle this situation to my best ability. I was just pissed (a state that is hard to get me into and in that state I do not always think it out properly) that she had violated the trust I had put in her. I had trusted her enough to not even read her story to make sure she was sticking by our agreements, because I simply trusted her.

In truth, I do not know if I can believe her in her argument that the incidents afterwards were simply incidental, or that she had stopped reading altogether, especially with that one scene. She says she is going to rewrite the whole first few chapters to prevent the confusion, and it does gladden me to know that she is trying to make the effort.

This whole episode has been stressful... and it came at me all in the space of a month, just digging into old wounds that had healed. For the past years, I had felt no resentment for Kurinoone, if only annoyance at the first transgression. Though before this month there were always frequent accusations, but not to the point of what they were this month. To be truthful, I have already cooled down quite a bit... and once again don't know what to do about this situation, which has left such a bad taste in my mouth. I just don't know, if I can trust her.



EDIT: I have entered into conversation with Kurinoone and am waiting for her response now... I have finally calmed down greatly so the talks should be civil. I explained more throughly to her why I am angry and why I have acted now, explaining to her about the email I had received with the descriptions of certain things that were too similar after our April 05/06 agreement. I am still upset about these continued similarities, but feel/know that I went about this the wrong way. I am human, and I will admit mistakes. I think Wednesday was the angriest I have been in a long time... and it is not easy to get me to that point, but once I pass that point I usually calm down immediately. So I will see where this goes. Though for those who have already read her story I free the revisions won't help, as they will still make the assumptions. Sigh... I wish I had been gifted with foresight around my Freshman year.

 

PDO~

First and foremost, you asked for people's help on the forum and we are giving it to you. So I ask that now that you are not sure of what you want to do, you stay committed to the action against her that you wanted to take, and respect the supporting emails that have been sent by the board members defending you.

Secondly, I have read your work when you began posting it the first time. Oddly enough I read your story because of Kurioone posting that her story was inspired by yours. I liked the level of your writing much better, and at the time was sort of daunted by how well you wrote, when I was starting my own fic. So please have faith in your own writing and storytelling, ignore the flames the 'hate PMs.' Just report them, and do not let that get to you. I understand that you have a bad day and can't let that roll off your back, but you should. It is just stupid to get taken under by those kind of messages, come to irc, post some of the ridiculous stuff you get and we can all laugh over it. That is a much better way of dealing with those things. Hey, we can even share the worst flames we've gotten.

Finally, good luck with your story. Stick with the action you have taken, let's put this plagiarizer down, and laugh at the flames.

 

Thanks for clearing things up, PDO, but still, I'd like to know why didn't you get her to pull her fic when she offered to (unless she is lying about this). Especially since she reneged on her agreement not to plagiarize any further.

I have my doubts on whether the nazis will take any action, but DLP is with you regardless. We should probably be able to get more members to report her, unless she manages to edit out all the plagiarized stuff in time.

 

PDO, I sent off a pm as soon I saw your post- I'd wait a day to see if she replies, then send a ban request. Meanwhile, her profile shows that she has a yahoo!group here. Any bets on whether this says anything about her plagiarizing? If she's so sincere about this, she should've said something at the front page imho (which she doesn't).

 

I didn't want to crush an aspiring writer. I like encouraging people to write, though of course, to be original. I should have listened to my roommate, a fellow writer, who tried to convince me to report the story instantly, but I didn't. Kurinoone did offer, but at the time (just out of high school... not yet cynical) I didn't see any harm, as long as she remained on her own path. In the end, I did her a great disservice by allowing her to continue to think that what she had done originally was alright.

 

I'd pm-ed her the politest way I could, and she responded with flat-out lies (blocks are, obviously, mine). Banning request needs to be sent, methinks... but is she really "in the process of working things out" with you?

 

Here is what she has sent me so far:

I was looking for the scene where Harry was asked if he knew how to fly, but my browsing couldn't find it right away, and I have run out time to look, because have to meet with a partner b/c of the crazy PW project where we are doing quick revisions to our catalogue before it is due. If anyone has time to find that scene plus other similarities and make list I would be grateful. I won't be able to respond to her until tomorrow anyways. I also know the gift scenes were very similar as well, though different objects were given. Tell me, what y'all think about this situation. Sorry, but I have to jet, or my partner is going to kill me.


EDIT: Never mind we finished earlier then I thought we would, and I found the section.

 

Pfft, she calls what I sent her hatemail? If so she ain't seen real hatemail before.

While it was strongly-worded, I felt I was quite civil in my message. I can't even imagine what PDO must be getting.

Edit: Get her to change all the scenes that you think has been plagiarized, or try to get the fic pulled. Sounds to me like she had gotten cold feet at all the PMs or threats to notify the admins, and is afraid to see her wonderful work with over 5000+ reviews getting deleted, and so is trying to make it up to you. Well, don't cut her any slack, make sure everything that is yours remains yours, and make sure she says her fic is heavily inspired and influenced by you. That is, providing the admins don't delete the fic first, which honestly, would be quite awesome and would show that even the most popular of fics are not above the rules.

 

The good thing is is that she acknowledged the issue on her FFnet profile.

As for her declining to admit the truth on her Yahoo group, I think that I can understand her to an extent. It's her true fanbase. They would either leave in a surge of haitmail, or wouldn't care.

I wonder if someone is thinking of signing up there and showing them the truth, and see how they handle it...

 

On Saturday, I sent her a list of all the things she needs to change and/or get rid of. She seemed very willing to do them all. So all that remains is to wait and see.

The one good thing that did occur through this is that the hatemail suddenly came to an abrupt halt, which makes me happy, because I was seriously rached my limit with those rejects... though I think all the blocking really helped that. Hopefully, it remains that way, but I won't hold my breath.

 

While we're on the topic of plagarism, I found a HP/LOTR cross today that has been copied entirely from Sanctuary of Arda.

This is the story: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3673220/1/

The wording is his own, but the plot, characters, events, names...everything, is copied from Sancuary of Arda by Keiran Halcyon, the same author as Harry Potter: An Ancient's Journey, possibly the best HP/Stargate cross around.

DLP thread on SoA:

http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=1570&highlight=Sanctuary+of+Arda

The story can now only be found at his Yahoo group though:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/girlwholived/

Edit: Turns out the wording isn't his own after all. He's just C&P'd the whole thing. The only bit of originality it has are the placement of the chapter breaks.

 

RAPERS... Unite!

Yes, I might have been waiting a while for the chance to say that. So what?