~The Return of Plagiarist-chan.~

[askerian]

So there was this girl, who copypasted The Night's nc-17 version on ffnet and affixed it with the astoundingly witty summary "Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto go drinking at night, just for naruto to spike their drinks with viagra. What happens when three's company? Threesome the fun! Also... They went UNPROTECTED! R&R or no cookie 4 u!"

She pretended her classmate did it, I sent her an email with a sigh-y, "yeah right, just write your own stuff and I'll crit it for you, hopefully you'll improve or stop writing" tone. My plan was to be smiling, fair, and helpful, preferably until she choked on it.

Instead she deleted all of her stuff, changed her name, and disappeared. Okay. If you insist.

Until today, where I received a PM from a name I don't know. ("Fallen Uchiha Angel", except with creative punctuation. *rolleye*) The entirety of the email: "do you beta?"

And then I get an author alert for the same chick, who went ahead and posted her first chapter, and I realize that she didn't even change her profile and OH RIGHT so that's why I have her on alert! bleh.

... it's so utterly horrid I don't know where to start. It's mostly spelled fine, I can give her that much. But that's it. It's like a bad, childish fanfic summary of every characterisation I hate. It doesn't make any. ANY. sense. And it has ANs in the middle of the story, and weird paragraph breaks, and of course which fanfic would be complete without the author having a chat with her character. =____=;

Also, it's ItaSaku, and the way I hate the most, IE: "well Sasuke sucks, Itachi is better, I'm going to Akatsuki for no reason because Konoha sucks". THE INTARNETS ARE LAUGHING AT ME. T__T


So it looks like I have three choices.

-be polite, fair and helpful but it looks like I'll choke first,

-reply to her PM with "don't you mean 'Hello, how are you, I hope I'm not bothering you, I'm sorry I stole your story, would you mind taking a look at my story?'" and then see what to do from there -- only problem, if she apologizes then I'll feel forced to help her and it's visible that she has no earthly clue of how a good writer works or what IC and believable mean,

-IGNORE. But then I go back on my word.


...DILEMMA.

Opinions? ;_; (oh and if you happen to find her on ffnet, feel free to offer concrit, but stay polite please. I don't condone flaming. Besides it would be rather like shooting fish in a barrel. It's not sporting. XD)




edit: what do you people think of "That depends. Are you going to take the comments I make seriously, or are you going to play the "but my classmate wrote it so it's not my fault" card whenever I say something you didn't want to hear? Because I don't want to waste my time giving you concrit you're not planning to use." ?

Comments

[lukita.livejournal.com]

Make her work for it, you might have offered to beta for the 'original' girl, but not this 'Fallen Uchiha Angel'. You can claim you have no idea who she really is because of the interweb. XD

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

Pretend to have fallen for her name-change trick -- she might actually be ashamed of herself for the plagiarism. Unlikely, but might.

Inform her that polite requests get one freebie beta (ONE), but you ARE going to be as harsh on her as you would be on yourself. Repeat the warning several times, with various humble phrases, and provide ample space for her to click out no-harm-no-foul.

Beta. Be as free with scathing commentary as you want. Spork the basic scenario, the characterization, the spelling, the grammar, the A/N's, the pointless self-insert chat. REVEL IN YOUR EVIL AND HARD-WON GOOD WRITING SKILLS.

If she returns to ask for a second beta, she's a masochist.

[runespoor7.livejournal.com]

Tell her that ItaSaku is one of the things you won't beta.

Pro: you won't waste your time on it.

Con: ...it lacks style, funny and possibilities for future gloating.

[freaky-zero.livejournal.com]

Well, since she played the "my buddy card" you could always tell her that you're too busy to beta, at the moment, but you could pass it along to "your friend" who loves to and has no purpose in life other than beta-ing. Say that your friend is kind of harsh, but an awesome beta and then if she gives it to you to pass along, rip it to shreds?

I mean, I don't read much Naruto fic or write it at all (though I am following the translated manga ♥) but, ignoring the spelling errors, the characterization alone from the excerpt above is enough to make me wince.

Uhm. Yeah. *goes back to lurking, now*

[questofdreams.livejournal.com]

I guess number 2 would be the best way to go. Also, apologies don't always fix things. I'm not so sure I'd be so nice to someone who blatantly stole my fic and pretended it was hers before throwing excuses at me when challenged. But remain polite, if nothing else, but turn her down b/c she certainly hasn't extended the same gesture to you.

[crazy-toffee.livejournal.com]

Er... tell her you think the story 'needs tweaking' and the characters 'seem off', but her spelling is good. Recommend that she joins a beta-ing comm because you are too busy with your regular betas *cough cough* real or not. XD

In other words: WEASEL out of it.

[drich.livejournal.com]

*delurk*

Asuka, YOU are an internet weirdness magnet. And you entertain in so many strange and wondrous ways. *sporflesnort*

Please don't ever change. ^_^

[elict.livejournal.com]

I'd say to go for the second option. She's been incredibly rude to you, and even if it would make you feel like you're going back on your word, I still don't think that she decerves to get away with it that easily. Nope.

[des-butterfly.livejournal.com]

Make her go here: brutal_critters and then watch the lulz. XD

[bunnynumber13.livejournal.com]

I would go for the honest approach. It sounds like you don't want to do it. You lose nothing by being straight with her -- just be polite about it.

[qem_chibati]

"That depends. Are you going to take the comments I make seriously, or are you going to play the "but my classmate wrote it so it's not my fault" card whenever I say something you didn't want to hear? Because I don't want to waste my time giving you concrit you're not planning to use." ?

Sounds awfully tempting. Doo et!

[aelinasongmaker.livejournal.com]

Flame.

[forbiddenartist.livejournal.com]

can i just say i took a look at it i was going to struggle through the whole thing but i didn't really get past the first few line paragrapgh things, i shouldn't really say anything as i'm a pretty shit writer myself, but if i was betaing it i wouldn't know where to start, it would probably take several hours to get through, and when u end up sending the edit she probably wont learn from it, and will give you more of the same, only for you to try and piece it together in something that remotely regards a good fan fic, or u could just try to explain to her that her story line doesn't make sense and maybe she should try some original writing first (so basically she actually knows her characters) rather than taking a couple of characters from a story she thinks she knows well, and completly destroying them. (that might be a bit harsh but it's kind of true)