For the past… month or so, let’s say, my fanfics have been consistently plagiarized word-for-word by a user (or users? I’ll get into this a little later) who has gone by the usernames of peachyoongi9, agustchim93, agustchim39, and most recently btsarelife on AO3.
I’m tired of being silent in hopes that the thief will stop because I realized that whether I’m silent or loud, rude or polite, my stories are going to continue getting stolen and I figured that everybody should know about it.
I think this drama started around August 17 – three days after my birthday, yay :/ – and the thief posted some comments, first in English and then in Arabic (which made no sense when I translated them), on my most popular story Love Can Make The Darkness Sing accusing me of stealing my own story! I have screenshots of the comments that were written in English but unfortunately, did not have the foresight to screenshot the ones that were in Arabic. I guess I was just thinking that they had given up and weren’t going to bother me anymore.
Not only were they accusing me of stealing my own story but they also were claiming that somebody else – a male writer??? – wrote LCMTDS. Get the fuck out of here. I shouldn’t have to “prove” anything to anybody, especially when that story is and always has been my creation goddammit.
And at first, I simply thought that this person was trying to “promote” my stories by posting them on a different site because it’s happened before with people on Wattpad and I figured that if I posted the whole thing, it would stop. So I sent them this:
I wrote a blogpost on AsianFanfics calling them out for having stolen my story and yes, I got quite nasty with my wording but when somebody refuses to stop their behavior after I’ve asked them nicely, I’m not so nice anymore. What makes you think I have the patience for that? Now, they weren’t threats or anything of that magnitude but it was enough that I pretty much royally pissed them off and this is what I got:
So… yeah, that scumbag basically got off to seeing me angry and congrats, house-laurie, you’ve got yourself a stalker. :/
And so, I reported her (them?) to AO3′s Abuse Team and they eventually got back to me with a response. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but for a little while, it really felt like a victory. I finally had some peace and quiet and I thought that maybe all the drama was finally over. I could look forward to writing again without having to have those awful thoughts swimming in the back of my head that somebody was against me and had targeted me for no reason at all.
AO3′s advice wasn’t exactly helpful, either, but it was better than nothing that the time, I guess? That is, until the thief came back under the username btsislife after what seemed like no time at all and I was back in the same cycle as before.
But if you think it can’t get worse, it has.
Yeahhhh… just because somebody else posted it first means that they’re the rightful owners! /sarcasm
I’ve gotten a lot of support from people who read and enjoy my stories but I’ve also gotten a lot of undeserved opposition and it frustrates me to hell and back. And since AO3 is doing jackshit nothing, I don’t even want to be on that site anymore but I have to be in order to deter plagiarism.
Also, I didn’t hide any usernames because if you’re gonna be a shitty person, people should know who you are, m’kay?
annaxmalina