Erm, help?

[loaded_march]

I've been recently contacted and informed that someone is writing a Merlin fanfic that is structurally similar to the Loaded March series and that there are some parts that were lifted directly from Loaded March itself.

The fanfic is posted as a series, though only a few chapters of the first part are available.  I skimmed through it, but as far as I can tell, the story itself is completely unlike Loaded March to begin with, the writing style is vastly different to mine, and I can't pick out anything specific that might have been lifted from Loaded March itself.

To be honest, I haven't looked at Loaded March since it was posted, so I'm not even sure if something would stand out to me right now.  I'm wondering if anyone knows of any plagiarism software that could do the checking for me?  Also, what would you do if you were in my shoes?

Comments

[loaded-march.livejournal.com]

!! So they've got a track record? Wow. I should look for that comment.

I'm the same way. I have no objections to inspiration, because where would we be without inspiration. But following the story structure almost exactly (starting with a fight and a lot of yelling, for example) and directly lifting dialogue from another text? I don't know, man. It's a fine line between fanfiction (because who hasn't lifted dialogue from the show?) and plagiarism and I'm not sure I'm best qualified to know where it is.

[elirwen.livejournal.com]

yeah, if there's actually dialogue lifted from your work, it's totally not okay. It would be okay only if it was a fanfiction of your fanfiction. :D But it's obviously not because it's not mentioned anywhere.

And if they're deleting negative comments, as the comments below say, there's no reason to play nice. Reporting is totally an okay thing to do.

[loaded-march.livejournal.com]

After doing a comparison check, they're lifting and rewriting entire passages from two parts of Loaded March, though some of the text remains the same.

*sigh*

[elirwen.livejournal.com]

Ugh, that's horrible. I don't understand how can anyone get any joy from getting so many nice comments for something they didn't really write.

[loaded-march.livejournal.com]

Neither can I, but I was raised on Catholic guilt, so I'm predisposed to that, heh.