You wrote a novel about a demon falling in love with a human. Then, you summon a demon in order to get “real” feedback and constructive criticism. To your surprise, the demon laughs at your work.
You told me from the start that you couldn’t love.
But still my heart yearned for some response.
My hand reached out in the dark, hoping to touch you.
But only emptiness was there to meet it.
I danced around the fiery pentagram, chanting in Latin while
dripping blood from a small cut on my finger into the center of the drawing
made of grave dirt and bone, all the while keeping an eye out on the clock on
the mantel.
I only had 15 minutes before my casserole was done.
Finishing the chant with the ease of years of practice, I leaned back to avoid the plume of Hellfire that spewed from the portal that opened up. Changing out of my ceremonial robes, I got back into my comfy pajamas and checked on my casserole while the new arrival was settling in.
She stood about eight feet tall, her head brushing the light fixture on the ceiling in my living room. Her four arms ended in long claws that dripped venom, making me glad that I thought to put a stain resistant rubber mat underneath the summoning circle. Her eyes burned with the flames of Hell, the fire that continuously lived within her, the source of her power. She grinned at me when I walked in with a bowl of my freshly made casserole, showing rows upon rows of pointed teeth.
“Hey Kara, is there any casserole left for me?”
I waved with my spoon before sitting down to dig into my meal.
“Hey Baph, help yourself, it’s in the kitchen. I couldn’t remember whether or not Satan still had you on the meat ban so left side is vegetarian.”
“Nah he forgot all about that six months ago.”
“Probably shouldn’t scare the tourists by pretending to be him next time though.”
Baphotera, the sixth highest lieutenant in Hell, sat down across from me, laughing as she began to eat the casserole as well.
“Yeah, but it was too funny showing up at a Satanist meeting and telling them to “Go out and do good deeds.” She shook her head. “They were so confused!”
“Yeah, and Satan was pissed.”
“Ugh, I had to be a vegetarian for a year, don’t remind me.” She chewed the pasta with obvious relish. “Either way, Kara, I’m sure you didn’t summon me to help you eat your dinner, much as I appreciate the home-cooked meal. What’s going on?”
I stared down at my bowl, a little unsure of how to begin. “So… your brother may be a little pissed at me come tomorrow.”
“Valaac?” She cocked her head to the side, confused. “What did you do to piss him off?”
“Well… remember when we stopped talking last year?” She nodded to my question, obviously still confused. “I was really mad… and kind of drunk… and I maybe just sorta…” I paused and spoke out the rest in a quiet rush. “Wrote a book using him as the main character.”
Baph laughed loudly, one of her hands slapping her knee. “Okay, that sounds pretty funny, but why…”
“I finished it in the same night, and submitted it to my best friend Alice who’s in publishing. She thought it was hilarious that I drunk emailed her a book manuscript, and got the whole dang thing published and only told me today.”
“That’s… weird… but why would…”
“Look at it.” I handed it over to her, shuddering at the picture of a handsome, passionate looking young man with computer drawn devil horns added on that graced the cover. Baph glanced at the picture on the front with a chuckle, and then read the back cover, her green face turning more and more blue and she did.
“This… is a crappy teen romance novel.”
“Yep.”
“You made him into an intense brooding romance lead paired with the most Mary Sue female lead ever.”
My head ducked down. “Yep.”
“You used his real name?!!!”
“Umm… only the first half. They can’t forcibly summon him without the second half.”
“But he’ll still hear it when they try. There’s going to be so many teenage girls trying to summon him once they read this… it will drive him insane!”
I scraped the bottom of my bowl with my spoon, but it was empty. “I realize that. It was the point of writing it… I think. I was really, REALLY drunk when I wrote this.”
Baph finally broke. She laughed, so hard that she fell out of her chair and rolled around on the floor. I let her go on, having time to do the dishes and put away the leftovers before she finally calmed down.
The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.
I made myself breakfast in bed. I added salt and pepper to my eggs and used my toast for a cheese and bacon sandwich. I squeezed a grapefruit into a juice glass. I scraped the ashes from the frying pan and rinsed the butter off the counter. I washed the dishes and folded the towels.
The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love. Not with the boy down the street or the middle school principal. Not with the everyday jogger or the grocer who always left the avocados out of the bag. I fell in love with my mother and the way she sat on the floor of my room holding each rock from my collection in her palms until they grew dark with sweat. I fell in love with my father down at the river as he placed my note into a bottle and sent it into the current. With my brother who once believed in unicorns but who now sat in his desk at school trying desperately to believe I still existed.
The morning after I killed myself, I walked the dog. I watched the way her tail twitched when a bird flew by or how her pace quickened at the sight of a cat. I saw the empty space in her eyes when she reached a stick and turned around to greet me so we could play catch but saw nothing but sky in my place. I stood by as strangers stroked her muzzle and she wilted beneath their touch like she did once for mine.
The morning after I killed myself, I went back to the neighbors’ yard where I left my footprints in concrete as a two year old and examined how they were already fading. I picked a few daylilies and pulled a few weeds and watched the elderly woman through her window as she read the paper with the news of my death. I saw her husband spit tobacco into the kitchen sink and bring her her daily medication.
The morning after I killed myself, I watched the sun come up. Each orange tree opened like a hand and the kid down the street pointed out a single red cloud to his mother.
The morning after I killed myself, I went back to that body in the morgue and tried to talk some sense into her. I told her about the avocados and the stepping stones, the river and her parents. I told her about the sunsets and the dog and the beach.
The morning after I killed myself, I tried to unkill myself, but couldn’t finish what I started.
Please, please read.
3 years ago I wrote a very personal prose piece titled The Morning After I Killed Myself, about a young woman who commits suicide and looks back on the impact it has on her family and friends and ends up regretting her decision.
I posted it on my writing blog 3 years ago and it went viral, shared over 300,000 times on my blog and almost a million times on Imgur/Reddit.
So many people have told me it’s saved their lives.
But I almost wish I hadn’t written it. Because, despite all the good it managed to do, it’s been plagiarized over a hundred times, probably several hundred.
I’ve seen dozens of cases of it being stolen and retitled with someone else’s name as the author, cases of it being published in someone else’s book under their name, cases of it being used as song lyrics by a band who claims they wrote it, cases of it being posted nearly ten times on the same website alone and because the website is so enormous they didn’t catch each instance of plagiarism…
Once a girl based her senior art thesis off of my piece…only she accidentally based it off of a plagiarized version of my piece and had no idea. She called me, a complete stranger, in tears, begging me to forgive her for something that was not her fault at all, but the fault of the person who plagiarized me. She had to redo portions of the thesis she worked so hard on.
I’ve had cases of it being submitted to writing contests under other peoples’ names and them winning awards for it. One girl submitted it to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and won a gold key for it, coincidentally the same contest I submitted some of my work to in high school and won awards for. What was her excuse? She said she read the piece awhile ago, liked it so much that she saved it to her computer, and when the time came to submit to the contest, she “forgot she hadn’t written it” and sent it in under her name.
I had a case of a stranger who posted it on their blog under their name and when I asked them, politely, to provide me with credit and remove their name, they claimed they’d “written the piece 10 years ago in their private journal and that I was the one who plagiarized them.”
I’ve had cases of people messaging my writing blog and accusing me of plagiarism…of my own piece, because they saw plagiarized versions of it going viral and had no idea I was the original author.
And finally, a few weeks ago, a girl submitted it to a contest under her name and won $100 for it. Now she’s apparently denying plagiarism.
This piece of mine was intended to help people. It’s a very very personal piece and always will be. I’m glad it’s helped so many people. But something that is so personal and painful for me has been twisted and manipulated and stolen and published for profit and taken away from me so many times I’ve lost count.
I don’t care about money. But when I saw this girl win $100 for a piece about suicide that I wrote, that is the last straw.
Please, for the love of god, don’t steal from artists and writers. Don’t steal something and claim you wrote it. Write and create your own work. If you see a piece of art or writing floating around with no source or a mis-attributed source, tell the original author. Spread the word. Don’t share artworks without sources on them.
You might think that it’s not a big deal, that it doesn’t matter, that it only happened once.
But it happens all the time. All the time. This is exhausting and artists deserve credit. They deserve respect.
I’ve considered deleting the writing blog I’ve had for 5 years because of how often this piece is plagiarized.
Don’t let it get to that point, where someone considers getting rid of something they love because it’s hardly theirs anymore.
Thanks for reading.
Important.
Chat Noir: I’m probably one of the smartest, most skilled people in this building
Marinette: … is your hand stuck in that vending machine?
Chat: I paid for mY SKITTLES, I’M GETTING MY SKITTLES
-An article is written in a newspaper about Why Paris needs Ladybug. It comes off initially as a fluff piece. It starts getting a lot of attention and even the news starts covering it, having the writer do interviews. Because a lot of people think it is amazing.
-Marinette has yet to actually read the piece, but had heard about it, thinking it is very sweet. She doesn’t get why it is getting so much attention though.
-Marinette asks alya about it, since she didn’t post it in the Ladyblog. Alya asks her if she read the article. Marinette says she hasn’t.
-Alya, who looks very disgruntled, shows her the piece. Based on her reaction, Marinette thought it would turn out to be a slam piece on Ladybug. But as she read it, it didn’t seem that different then most articles that talked about her superhero alter ego, high praise, much respect. But then Marinette gets to a section of the article that was quite startling. It was a section trashing Chat noir. Or more specifically, why chat noir was not needed.
-To top it off this person stated statistics of how often Chat noir was either, Incapacitated, taken over, changed, or turned against ladybug in anyway. And the number was vast with specific examples to show it wasn’t all fluff.
-Marinette was absolutely disgusted with this. How could this person trash Chat noir like this? They didn’t know what he has dealt with.
-Alya explained that a poll was taken and 58% of Parisians that took the poll felt the same as the author. She refuses to cover it because it is a slam piece.
-Adrien was hearing Marinette criticize the work, (having not read it yet, because he has been busy) asks her why she is upset.
-Marinette and Alya explain what happened. Adrien manages to keep calm about it. “I disagree with her opinion, but thats no reason to let an article make you mad. It isn’t the first article that doesn’t like chat noir.” Adrien explains. (He was internally very pissed.)
-Later Chat noir is on the rooftops, moving a long, he saw some people throwing out some chat noir decorum. A bit hurtful to his ego, but nothing he can’t shake off.
- The author starts getting asked to come on late night shows and their comments start really hurting Chat noir’s image. Whats worse is that the person speaks highly of the other heroes. Just not chat noir. But one comment the writer makes was really controversial.
-”It feels like he is just one more akuma attack away from being a villain.”
- That really got the news going. (Much like with Copycat,) People started turning against Chat noir like crazy. Even most of Bustier’s class was not a fan of him anymore.
-Adrien, was annoyed and hurt that his hero status was basically buried in the dirt, but he knew those people’s opinions didn’t matter. He was a hero. Thats what he needed to be.
-Marinette was absolutely livid about all of this. She knew Chat noir was a good person, and that this writer obviously had no idea what kind of person he was. She defends him when the class makes comments about chat noir, which Adrien appreciated. (Adding more to the Adrien Relationship bar)
-Ladybug asking chat noir about it. Asking if he was angry. Chat noir answers. “It only matters what you think My Lady.”
-Ladybug could tell it was hurting him. But he kept himself controlled and calm.
-Ladybug showing up to one of the night show interviews of the writer.
-The writer was happy to see ladybug. “Did you read my article?”
-Ladybug answered that she did. And she just TORE IT APART! Went point by point, countering every single argument the writer wrote against Chat noir. Just decimating it.
-Then ending with. “If Paris doesn’t need Chat noir, thats fine. But Ladybug sure does.” Tears up the article and walks out like a boss.
-That went viral. The writer got dragged through the mud. People started buying new chat noir merchandise. Alya posted that video on the Ladyblog.
-The writer gets akumatized, but the writer loses so doesn’t matter.
-Chat noir thanking Ladybug for what she did. And of course more cheesy flirting
What i really freaking hope happens tonight….
HOLY CRAP 6 HOURS UNTIL THE SEASON FINALE GUYS THIS IS NOT A DRILL
So what happened? Anyone got an update
That’s exactly what I was wondering
Nothing yet but the girl has a sense of humor
it happened !!!!
