Maybe it's nothing more than accidentally spending a bit of extra time with a particular character - the point is, if you break it down far enough, you begin to see little hints that the writer has an attachment to his story. Your writing, on the other hand, always feels detached in this way, is what I mean by it.
Wonder if this means that, on some level, I truly don't care about my stories. Hm.
...should I be worried about Vanya's stuff getting plagiarized, come to think of it?
I wouldn't really worry about any of the stories here. They're basically fanfics that only really make sense in the context of one specific thread on one forum. Vanya can sort of stand on its own, but it still loses a lot of its value if separated from the thread it was originally linked to.
According to the wikipedia page on copyright,
"Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights."
I dont know how that applies to forums, but you should automatically have a copyright claim to your material. Which, I think, means that copying the work you've put into these stories is in fact illegal.
I am not a lawyer, or an expert on copyright law in any form. Personally, I would really like to see this story of Mr Frog's and as far as I can tell it would be protected from plagarism by international copyright law, so there's that.
I think this is really naïve. Laws only provide protection to the extent that those who break them can be caught, identified, and prosecuted with hard evidence, all of which is difficult on the Internet. For all you guys know, I could have already ripped off the entirety of Vanya's journals and posted it under my own name in dozens of places across the Internet, and you guys simply haven't found it yet. Even if you did, all it takes is a missing timestamp and I can easily claim that I posted it first and it was Talvi who plagiarised me (I'm completely-serious here -- I think this actually happened to the guy who writes the Oatmeal).
E: Just to make it clear, I'm not an expert either. I just like to pretend that I am.
E2: Talvi, please continue your story. The main LP didn't get a proper ending, nor did the Mr-Frog-On-Eris story. I want something in this thread to be wrapped up properly.
First, I think you care very much about your stories or else you wouldn't be worried about plagiarism.
Second... I think it's pretty much impossible that anyone's ripped off Vanya's stuff, simply because there are a great deal of unique phrases in it that I ought to be able to find with a quick search, such as (just grabbing one at random) "I fled down the stairs, past the coffins", and if you look it up on Google, you get only one hit.
Third, the main issue with my story is that it's going to be insanely huge (about 40% of the length of Lord of the Rings when complete). I have a book and a half to finish, and that means around thirty chapters, and that means around two hundred hours of work.
That's why I put a new poll up in
the "A Skulker's Tale" thread - to see how many people actually wanted me to finish it. So far? Not many. :\ Only 40% of everybody who's voted wants me to finish it (and one of them was me, making it technically 25% instead). More alarmingly, 67% of people who've voted and weren't me, and who also have read all of it, don't really care to have me finish it. That's not exactly encouraging.
edit: I'll write up a summary for what I'd planned to happen for the rest of the Vanya story (keep in mind that what I plan and what I write often becomes wildly different), and if you guys still want me to finish it... I will.
re-edit: Also, if I remember right, I made the Parasol higher-ups assume that Silena, everyone's favorite blue-tentacle-hair-girl, was actually incredibly important at Eris. lol Kind of a shout-out to your series.
triple edit: It's three to one against me finishing it now... that's actually kind of depressing.
Poll
55 (71.4%)
Author
Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2258773 times)