Seeking help - Fic Plagiarism/Fic Borrowing.
Alright - I’m going to try and keep this as short as possible.
September 2016, I found a fic called The Emerald Rose. The fic is a Harry Potter/One Piece crossover about the Donquixote Family. The fic’s scenes involving Dellinger bear surprising resemblance to my fic, Thicker Than Blood, published April 2016. The author would later publish a fic in April 2017 called Blooming Family, which likewise contains similarities. (Blooming Family is an anthology about the Donquixote Family….so is Thicker Than Blood.) Granted, it’s not the whole fics - just all the scenes with Dellinger. I’ve compiled a list of these similarities and their corresponding chapters, which I would encourage people to read. These similarities include but are not limited to:
- Dellinger being found by a henchman of Doffy’s who makes a Fishman identify him as Fighting Fish - who then calls Dellinger an abomination -Thicker Than Blood Ch1 // Emerald Rose Chapter 4 // Blooming Family Ch 5
- Dellinger rapidly regrowing and losing his teeth, biting and breaking people’s fingers (right down to the specifics of the executives pulling their hands away at how strong he is) - TTB Ch1 - Ch2 - Ch3 // ER Ch4
- Dellinger trying to eat food off Vergo’s face - TTB Ch2 // ER Ch5
- Dellinger picking up cannonballs as a toddler and thinking they are balls, throwing them at people - TTB Ch4 // ER Ch6 // BF Ch2
- Dellinger running around naked after a bath and interrupting Doffy meeting with weapons trafficker, (right down to the Family members being ready to take out their weapons) - TTB Ch4 // ER Ch6 // BF Ch7
- Small details such as Dellinger having a toy shark, Dellinger being shortened to “Dell” as a nickname. (Such details by themselves are totally not a big deal, but when combined against all of the above…is rather disconcerting)
- Overarching themes of the Family being misfits who support and care for each other. Again, by itself not problematic, but when combined with all of the above…
- Vocal quips that I invented for Jora
A minor a detail as these are - these vocal quirks of Jora are what end up being the particularly noteworthy. Whenever Jora has one of her moments of “Who are you calling a supermodel?!” - she never receives a reciprocated response. It’s usually “Not you!/Nobody said that!” Anyone can watch the anime and script a scene like this with Jora. However, in Thicker Than Blood, Dellinger does reciprocate these moments with Jora, telling her “You are, Jora!” Therefore, to continue the gag, I came up with a little response for Jora of “Stop that, I’m too old for such nonsense/It will go to my head!” These are lines I invented, and are not part of any scripted interaction that Jora has ever had in One Piece. So why does the author use these particular lines whenever Jora has one of her ‘supermodel?’ moments? She certainly wouldn’t have gotten them from the anime. (To say nothing of ‘ocean goddess vs sea goddess.’ Come on.)
So when I found The Emerald Rose in September, I messaged the author asking where she got her ideas. I didn’t tell her why I was messaging her. She made a lot of contradictory statements - first claiming that she had never read any fanfics about the Donquixote Family, later recanting saying that she had read some. She said that she was not caught up with the manga/anime and got all her information from the One Piece wiki. When I asked her general questions about stuff that would have been on the wiki (i.e. the SBS regarding Jora raising Dell) she was completely unaware of these facts, and then went on to say her computer had trouble accessing the OP wiki and she just had to make assumptions. Assumptions that looked a lot like my fic. (I do not feel comfortable posting our conversation without her consent.)
So when I finally told her why I was messaging her because I was concerned how similar our content was, she suddenly had all these elaborate stories about random vague people in her life inspiring her for all this content in her fic. (Her boss’s granddaughter throwing ornaments. Her cousin’s little brother. Her co-worker’s children.)
She claimed it was coincidence. She swore up and down we just had “similar ideas.” I wasn’t sure that I really bought it - I can buy people coming up with similar ideas about Dellinger’s heritage and themes surrounding his family relationship, but when there are whole scenes straight out of my fic, its fishy. (no pun intended.) But she then put an “apology that our ideas are similar” in her fic. She straight up wrote an apology in her fic saying she was sorry we had similar ideas, and that she didn’t know about my fic, and she was sorry. So I bought it. I really did.
And then she took some those lines from Jora in her next few chapters, and continued to use them.
At that point I said, fuck this, I have a Masters thesis to write. You win.
So April 2017, Blooming Family comes out, and the Dell and Jora scenes are still being swept right from my fic. (I will give her that this fic focuses more on the Harry Potter side of the lore, but the Dell scenes are still damning.)
I messaged her expressing concern that while I wanted to believe her that it was coincidence - Thicker than Blood is essentially a “Family Anthology” and so is her new fic, and she continues to use these scenes with Dellinger, when I pointed out how problematically similar they were. She ignored the message, and continued to post Blooming Family in all its glorious copied scenes of Dell throwing cannonballs, Dell running around after his bath, and Jora reflecting on themes of family etc. and needing a place when you’re a half-breed abomination.
I had neutral parties who had never seen my work compare my fic to hers. They agreed the copying was blatant. I mean, I want more people to write about Dellinger! But not when its barely re-worded scenes out of my fic.
I really don’t know what to do - as she has ignored further attempts to contact her. I wanted to believe this was all coincidence, but the evidence just kept stacking up. I don’t want her harassed, I just want her to actually admit what she did and not try to pass it off as “coincidence.” It’s only the Dellinger scenes, but granted, it leads me to wonder who else she might be conveniently borrowing from throughout her fics. She writes HP crossovers so she has a big following that a niche author like me who writes about side characters can’t compete with. It really hurts to see someone with a huge following lift from someone who can’t do anything about it, because nobody reads Dellinger fics obviously.
I don’t want her harassed, I just want her to own up to it and fix it. To anyone who has read Thicker Than Blood and liked it, or anyone who takes an interest plagiarism - any help in the matter would be appreciated. I posted all those chapter links for a reason, so people can see the similarities for themselves.
I don’t want this blog to become the center of any controversy - this has been a post I’ve been putting off making because I don’t want to be calling anyone out or perceived as accusatory. :( I just don’t know what to do. If anyone wanted to reach out to her after reviewing the links in this post, I would just ask that you please not harass or bully her. Just, stress that the similarities are too much to be just a coincidence, and while the “apology” was nice - honesty and action are what’s needed from me. I just want to run my tiny One Piece blog and write about Dellinger and Alvida without anybody copying me. That’s all.
