|

|

Rockslash plagiarism/identity wank
At rockfic.com, Gino di Luca makes a confession (scroll down a little).
The pictures that I posted claiming to be of me, are in fact of the immensely talented and very underrated actor Skeet Ulrich. They are fake.
Why did he do this? Because:
When I was a kid I had some unusual pastimes – one of them was the phenomenon called joyriding. We would steal a car and drive wherever, preferably at dangerous speeds. One night the guy who was driving lost control of the car; it crashed against a tree and after some time exploded. The guy behind the wheel and the one in the front seat, who also happened to be my boyfriend of the time, were killed instantly. To make a long story short, I survived, but the left side of my face and body were burned, permanently destroyed. If you want to put it the way some kids I bump into on the streets do, I look like a freak.
Sad. Tragic. The group rallies round and offers sympathy and hugs.
But wait. A couple of days later, a mod makes this announcement. Not only is Gino not Skeet Ulrich, Gino is not even Gino. Gino is, in fact, a sockpuppet belonging to Angie79 -- one of the most popular authors on the board. And Angie had been plagiarising her rockfic stories from *all* over. Popslash, LotRiPs, Harry Potter and other fandom stories have been transformed, via the magic of search and replace and a few judicious edits, into slash featuring Guns n' Roses, Motley Crue and others. The plagiarist is immediately banned and her stories taken down. Hands are wrung. Authors are contacted.
As often happens, the plagiarist cunningly decided to cover her tracks by choosing well-known stories by popular authors, in many cases not even changing the titles.
Merryish is highly amused to find that her *NSYNC story Wolves and Boybands Mate For Life was seamlessly transformed into Wolves and Rockers Mate For Life, a Guns n' Roses slashfic featuring 'the cute kid' Axl Rose playing the part of JC Chasez. It garnered glowing reviews, especially from two of Angie79's sockpuppets. Rhys (confusingly sharing a name with one of Angie79's socks) was another popslash author selected for the JC=Axl makeover.
[ETA: And a Spike/Xander story also gets the treatment.]
Unusually for a plagiarism case, everyone is handling the situation with intelligence and calm, even the rockfic.com people who feel understandably that their trust has been abused.
(Read comments) Post a comment in response:
|
|