User hamatoanne's fic plagiarism
Hello, Iām the author of The Android, an AO3 Robot OC x Reader fic that was plagiarized by hamatoanne on Tumblr in her Aemond x Reader story, System Error. You can read my AO3 post for more info about the issue. As you can tell by the timestamps on AO3 and the screenshots of her now-deleted story, mine was posted months before hers. I didnāt want to make this public, but it appears Anne has not learned her lesson and is grasping at straws to keep her readers in the dark. Sheās been deleting her stories to hide evidence of her plagiarism. I think you deserve to know who your beloved writer gets her words from.
I donāt know this fandom, but Iāve heard you guys can get pretty crazy. Control yourselves. The only one who needs to take responsibility is Anne. Donāt send hate to her mutuals. Donāt send hate to her followers. Donāt stalk or harass or dox anyone. Read through this post and form your opinion.
First bunch of screenshots: A side-by-side comparison of her story (now deleted) and mine (still up and linked above). I took screenshots in advance in case something like this happened so Iād have proof if I needed it. I decided to compare the first chapter of my fic with the first part of hers. I could do the whole thing, but Iām a busy college student and I think just a quick skim of the pictures below is enough for people to see the extent of her plagiarism.Ā
I have screenshots of her entire post, but I donāt want to make this too long to scroll through and Tumblr posts cap at 30 pictures. Iām assuming some of you have already read her story multiple times, so youāre familiar with the words. If you havenāt, then I should warn you that the fic that she plagiarized is very not SFW. Iāll let you know where the not SFW content starts so you can skip it.Ā
On the left is my story. On the right is what Anne posted (and took down).
Not SFW content starts here.Ā
Not SFW content over.
Finally, I DMāed her. This was just before I posted to The Android on AO3 about the situation. To summarize, I wrote about how I would go about the situation and how hurt I was about a bigger creator stealing from me. I admit, I was too kind and too much of a pushover. I just wanted things to go quietly. She later replied with this and deleted her fic immediately.Ā
āI was completely stupid for not giving your creditā Why do they always play dumb? You copy that much and canāt even think to put my name there? You credit the artist but not the person who basically wrote your whole story? The story that gave you over 3k notes, so much more clout than any of your other stories has earned you? Total BS.
āI had every intention of giving credit where it was dueā¦But I forgotā Right. Sure. Of course. If she felt guilty about plagiarizing, she would not be so shameless to accept praise like she did. I have examples of where she happily thanked people for complimenting "her workā, but didnāt want to bring other blogs into this, especially since they were none the wiser to her plagiarism. Ironically enough, someone even gifted her a badge for being a good writer the day she replied to my DM. She tagged that post ā#a breath of fresh air on a horrible dayā. I wonder why her day was horrible. Whoever gifted her that badge deserves their money back.
My thoughts when approaching her DMs were:
If she wants to keep up the story? Fine, just edit the post to say that it was heavily influenced by my story and leave a link to the original. I donāt mind. The readers will see that, click my story, compare the two, and think, āHey, thatās not just inspiration! She plagiarized!ā and her downfall would start from there without me having to do anything.
If she ignored me and didnāt fulfill that request, i would take matters into my own hands and expose her on her own post. Even more damaging.
In the end, she chose to delete the post entirely, getting rid of the evidence and her clout. I actually didnāt expect this outcome since I thought sheād like the clout too much, but I guess she decided this route would be the least damaging to her reputation. Everything was swept under the rug for now.Ā
And like a fool, I said thanks and went on with my life. But I decided to keep track of her. Because while I was too cowardly to do anything, I knew there would always be someone in the crowd who would take action. And it seems like people did.Ā
After reading the supportive comments from readers of my fic, I started to regret how lightly I handled it. I wanted to be mature even though I wanted her entire blog to fall and her reputation taken away. But I didnāt want to be a ābad personā. I wondered if I should keep pursuing the issue. I realized that my overly-people-pleasing behavior might lead her to continue her ways. I decided to speak out because others mightāve had their works taken by her and that my silence wasnāt helping.Ā
Next is her post, now deleted (I wonder why), about how sheās been so sad and how sheās going to be deleting her old stories and starting over. Iām likely not the only one sheās plagiarized from if sheās deleting other stories. At the time, I only saw supportive replies and reblogs on it, but maybe she deleted it after people started calling her out? Idk.
Sheās playing the victim game pretty hard. Acting as a kind underdog even though sheās the big creator who stole from a nobody like me. I know I said on my AO3 update that people shouldnāt send hate to her (and even censored her name after she deleted her story) but I guess Iām a little happy that people sought to call her out on her shit. I wish I was as brave.Ā
Later, a nice person (weāll call her Bob because she asked to remain anonymous) DMāed me directly with a kind message. After seeing this, I decided I should take action and expose all of this since Anne obviously hasnāt learned and wants to keep it all hidden. Bob confirmed that Iām not the only victim of Anneās plagiarism either.
Bob asked that I not use screenshots of our DMās so here is a transcription of the important parts:
āHey! I just found out that one of your fics had been plagiarized by someone in the HOTD community. First of all, I am tremendously sorry that happenedā¦ā
(For Bobās privacy, I wonāt explain her relation to Anne. Just know that Anne has refused to message her back).
āI definitely think you should make a blog post. with side by side comparison. I am still completely gobsmacked that she pilfered your entire story word for word and changed a few things. We found evidence that she had plagiarized multiple stories. Not just yours. We found out her mermaid!aemond fic was entirely stolen as well as a few others. She has quietly deleted them and hasn't spoken on them since.ā
āWe surmised that she takes āunderratedā fics from different fandoms and changes the name and that's it. It's almost like she believed that stealing from other fandoms was going to draw less attention than stealing directly from the HOTD fandom.ā
So if you noticed that one of your favorite Aemond fics is gone, now you know why.
āBut benny, she still wrote her own sentences and just changed it around to fit aemond!ā
Fanfiction is transformative. You know what the source material is and who created it. You know youāre not reading a copied and pasted text with maybe some words and sentences switched around. This wasnāt fanfic. According to Google, plagiarism is defined as, āthe practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.ā (See what I did there? I credited Google. Is it so hard to give credit where credit is due?) She copied people's work, didn't give credit to the source material, and claimed it as her own. That's plagiarism.
I wouldnāt have had a problem if she properly credited me and linked the original story. I wouldnāt have had a problem if she didnāt blatantly copy and paste the entire text and premise. I wouldnāt even require getting permission to write a story based on my fic if she had satisfied those conditions.
Sheās a 27-year-old grown-ass woman with enough free time to simp over some blond guy with an eyepatch. Iām a 21-year-old college student who only posts fics during the summer and winter because thatās when schoolās on break. Iām too busy writing lab reports and essays to be an active writer online. The fact that she can disrespect smaller writers so tremendously should not be acceptable. The fact that she also deceived her devoted readers and friends about her "works" is also unacceptable.
What can you do about this? To be honest, I donāt know what to do. Iāve never had to deal with this before. I want to be a good person and say, āDonāt send any hate to Anne, donāt harass her. Just unfollow her and stop supporting her.ā But that obviously hasnāt taught her anything. Sheāll just make a half-assed apology, maybe go on hiatus, maybe disappear, and then pop up again under another name to steal from another creator. If you have any ideas on how to deal with this, please tell us.Ā
She can try to block me or delete her posts, but the evidence is out and the damage is done. Anything she does to hide this mess will only make it worse for her. Iād appreciate people bringing more awareness to this issue, especially if it can reach the eyes of others sheās taken from.Ā
Thanks for reading.
