Fanfiction gone wrong and youthful mistakes (Not a story)

[Fig]

Well, since this is a french Québec publishing story, I guess you guys won't hear much about it, but I figured I'd pass it along.

So, recently we had this novel published here, you know, youthful modern fantasy, all that jazz. The one distinguishing feature about it being its author, a twelve years old high-schooler, who of course became a (haughty) media star overnight.

That was a few weeks ago.

THIS was last sunday, as part of a larger piece in The Gazette (our french media had FAR more, but I'm guessing most of you wouldn't particularly care for the french version :

"Oh-oh: Publishing house Les Intouchables may regret touching Laura L'Immortelle by Marie-Pier Cote. It was released to much fanfare because Marie-Pier is 12. However La Presse offered a list of nine hard-to-ignore similarities between the tike's opus and the film Highlander. Said one editor, "It's a little troubling." What? That the kid might be a plagiarist or that the house is full of cultural ignorami?"

The girl passed it away as one of her friends suggesting such additions, etc. Generally, people were a bit dubious about it, but no one was quite ready to fall on the girl ; it was all original characters, and Highlander can hardly claim to have invented either the concept of immortality or this quaint little novel setting otherwise known as "Earth".

THAT was last sunday.

This was the front page of today's La Presse (translated ; the original was of course in french) :

"Once Upon Plagiarism (Arts and show, page 1)

"De Cendre et de Vent", fanfiction written in 2001
"Sebastiao pays the taxi bringing him back from the airport, take his bags out of the hatch, and rummage through his pockets looking for his keys. In front of his place, he stops. The lock has been forced and the door has remained ajar."

"Laura l'Immortelle", novel published in 2007
"Sebastiao pays the taxi bringing him back from the airport, take his bags out of the hatch, and rummage through his pockets looking for his keys. In front of his place, he stops. The lock has been forced and the door has remained ajar."

That's all on the frontpage ; reading the Arts and show section reveals that the fanfiction, by a french computer engineer, can be traced easily as having been completed by 2003 at the latest ; and is 99% identical to the published novel.

As of the latest, the girl has apologized and admited to lying to just about everybody ; the parents are trying to explain why they didn't get suspicious when their daughter's habit of writing four-page short stories suddenly turned a 210 page behemoth including technical discussions on programing and biking ; the publisher is trying to explain why he didn't catch that it was Highlander fanfiction OR plagiarism (and demanding the parents pay back all the publishing fee, plus reparations, mounting up to 30K), and offering all profits to the original writer, who says he doesn't want the profits, just to give the girl a lesson...

And the girl, of course, will probably get all the lesson anyone could wish for. I don't like plagiarism (ok, I fricking hate it), but I can't help but feel bad for her ; she's probably going to have a very, very rough next couple years.

And "next couple years" could wind up being "the foreseeable future". I think "ruined her life" isn't too far off the mark here.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

One would *think* that a 12-year-old would know not to do something so rock stupid, but I have a tendency to overestimate people.

 

[Habunake]

She must of seen Ricky Bobby, cuz Highlander is the best movie ever.

 

[Barb]

A student at a prestigious university here in the States (Harvard, I think) was recently accused of plagiarism after her first novel was published. This is really getting ridiculous.

 

[The Incarnation ポケモン]

^ I think I know what you're trying to say, but your phrasing is ambiguous in that it could be interpreted as being fed up with innocent people getting accused of plagiarism.

That being said, this incident reminds me of a thing I saw where someone had taken their InuYasha fanfiction and changed the names of all the characters and maybe some of the InuYasha-specific references (but even then it was barely tweaked) and made it into "original fiction" which they were planning to sell. I do believe they had quite a website built up for it, but I don't remember what the name of the site/series is called. At least they didn't take someone else's fanfiction and try to pass it off as their own original fiction, but still...

 

[Barb]

I meant "ridiculous" in the sense that people are plagiarizing others' work and selling it. The student in the U.S. was found guilty, as was the girl in Damian's story. It's bad enough that college students can buy and sell essays on the Internet. Seriously, people, start learning to think (and, in turn, be creative) for yourselves. It's not that hard.

 

[Dragonfree]

I have to feel a little sorry for that girl. How she managed not to think this through at least to the point where somebody might recognize it, I'll never know. Plagiarizing is one thing in itself; if she had just posted it online or something, I wouldn't feel sorry for her at all. But somehow she managed to be stupid enough to get it published, which of course ended with her plagiarism in the press, and that's just... ouch.

She deserves it, really, but I'm feeling sorry for her for being that stupid.