Herr-Wozzeck's avatar

Herr-Wozzeck

The Photographer/Composer/Writer
129 Watchers575 Deviations
60K
Pageviews
Dear :iconeclipsepheonix:,

I have every confidence you'll just scroll to the end of this letter and ignore everything I say in this letter. But goddammit, I'm writing it anyway. I'm writing this open letter, because by this point, it's less an issue of "will you listen to me" and more an issue of "you're so full of shit you don't even know how full of shit you are, and the world is never going to stop hearing about it until you stop being full of shit", and it's more for the benefit of those people who blindly assume that you've actually got literary ability. Which you don't, because you're a lazy bum who refuses to listen to criticism even when they give it to you nicely.

You know? My good friend ColonelDeFraug once told me that there were times in my life where I would have to choose who I was being an ass to. In my case? The kiddie gloves are coming off. Oh, they came off a long-ass time ago, but I just thought I'd enlighten you on that. So let's get started, right?

"Ok mate I just want to make somethings absolutely clear!"

You've been trying to make things "clear" to me for a long time, but your arguments are so disingenuous it's almost appalling. But okay, I'll humor you. What do you want to make clear?

"Fist the reason why I called you a troll was because of the fact that you didn't let go after your fist comment but I fed you which lead you to make a letter to me. Ok now I can look passed the PM's but that letter just proved to me that you are a troll."

First of all, EP, the word you're looking for is "first". I highly doubt that I left a comment to you in which I threatened to punch you in the face, though I'm tempted to make such a comment now because I'm getting pretty sick of your bullshit.

Second, if you hadn't continually ignored every criticism I leveled at you and your fic, if you hadn't done that even when I was being charitable to you, if you hadn't done the same thing to ErtTheKing (and trust me, I'll get to that in a bit), and if you hadn't acted like a baby who had spilled his milk all over the place when people did that, I would never have written that open letter! You let it get to that point, EP. Now, I'm a strict practitioner of "always give the benefit of the doubt until the person either proves they won't take your suggestions seriously, or they offend you in a deeply personal way". You proved well beyond the point you needed to that you would go to the ends of the earth if it meant protecting your precious little plagiarism from harm, and that bred a deep, deep contempt for you. 

"Next yeah I have a spelling problem and spellcheck doesn't always help let me give you an example.

'their was a bird in the forest.'

Now I know for a fact that is is the wrong spelling but there are times when I do not recognise the right spelling."

Recognize*, and that is why you use a dictionary! "Oh, but I don't want a book by my side", you might say. Um, you realize that the entire Merriam-Webster Dictionary is available online, right? You can enter something into Google and get directed to the right spelling of it in today's world. You can look up the proper spelling of things, and you can also look up which "there/their/they're" is the right one to use. You can go to merriam-webster.com and you can look up the word you want so you can find its correct spelling. All that can take ten seconds, at most!

So please shut up with your "I have a spelling problem" excuse. If there are things you can do about your spelling problems and you're not doing them, you have no room to say otherwise!

"Final thing yes I plagiarised Harms1 story but I did ask if I could use it as a template which was a bad idea."

Have you not been listening to a single thing I have been saying to you? Yes, I know you asked if you could use it as a template. Hell, I even used it in the open letter that you were so quick to not listen to!

The thing is that you're completely misinterpreting the issue! The issue is not that you're using InHarmsWay's fic as a template! Anyone can use the basic ideas of a fic and build from there! The issue is that you did not simply use InHarmsWay's fic as a template!!! You used his text too!!! To me, "using a story as a template" implies that you're taking the basic idea of the story and writing your own words and ideas around it. That's it. Just the idea. "Using a story as a template" does not imply that you're blatantly copy-pasting entire chapters of another person's work and changing up every twentieth word if it happens to be a name and then passing that up as your own work! Sure, you may have had original scenes in there, but all those scenes were drowned out by your blatant plagiarism everywhere else up until you felt you had run out of material to steal.

You. Stole. His. Material. There is no amount of permission in the world that makes stealing his words okay. Using his ideas, that's a different story. But you used his words, too, instead of putting in the effort to relate similar/the same ideas with your own fucking words. And that is not acceptable.

"But so what/ seriously I know where I went wrong I was just hoping to get it done before I could redo it."

If you do in fact know where you went wrong, you sure have done fuck all to prove it to me. And on that note...

"so if you don't believe me then your more of a fool then I thought T R O L L."

Oh, honey, it's not that I don't believe you: it's that you don't give me reason to believe anything you say. You told me you would take all the help you could get, and then you refused to take that help when someone actually tried to give it to you. By doing that, you proved to me that you're untrustworthy. 

And by the way, it's not just a question of "belief" in this case. It's a question of "you are wrong about this, and this is why you are wrong about it". Talking about something that is factually incorrect and then making it look like a question of "belief" rather than a question of "facts" is a disingenuous tactic.

So go ahead. Believe that I'm some kind of fool. I frankly won't lose any sleep over the fact that you think I'm some kind of fool considering that you are a colossal, collosal idiot.

So that's all I have to say in response to your open letter.

Oh, but I'm not done yet. See, after my open letter, you know that ErtTheKing reviewed your fic, right? Well, you left a reply to him via PM. Since you blocked him for rightly calling you on your shit, I'm going to reply for him, because he shared your reply with me.

"ok let me clear a few things up fist FAW was my fist fanfic so it's bound to be bad"

And yet every subsequent fanfic you have written since then is just as badly-spelled and just as badly-written as FAW even without the blatant plagiarism, not to mention that in some cases the moral content is even worse than what was seen in FAW. (I'm tempted to see if I can send any human traffickers in your direction: at least that way, you'd see how horrible sexual slavery really is so you will never, ever romanticize it again.) Also, I'm so glad you're using an excuse that most bad fanfiction authors claim when they try to defend their bad fic instead of, I don't know, taking advice from other readers to better their writing. Because you don't get to claim this excuse when all you've done is call people "trolls" when they try to tell you how you could be a better author.

"an i'm serously concidering rewite."

Which I don't support, for reasons I'll get to in a bit.

"now onto herr, IF HE DIDN'T DO THAT STUPIT LETTER THEN I WOULDN'T CALL HIM A TROLL! it's as simple as that!"

I already told you that I wrote that "stupid" ("stupid", not "stupit") open letter because you forced my hand. It's as simple as that, and I don't think I need to reiterate that point again, yeah?.

"in fact your friend did give me some feedback but in a NEGATIVE WAY."

First of all, the only time I was negative when I started reviewing your fic was when calling you out on your homophobia in relation to some of the things found in From Another World. That was it. I tried to be nice in every other respect. But no, you just had to stop listening to me.

"now when i read the letter i din't find anything that would surpport the idea that he would like the rewite"

Good, I'm glad you noticed that. Because I don't support that rewrite, not after you continually ignored our criticisms even when people were being nice to you. 

"and i did read his fic and found it boring."

I've read the posts of several people on the TVTropes forums that said nasty things about the "self-indulgent crap" that was Mass Vexations, so in the grand scheme of things "boring" isn't that bad. It's just hilarious that it's coming from the thief who apparently needs to steal, or else he's guilty of being really boring--well, when he's not busy being completely offensive, anyway.

"now i know you too are friends but doing this just makes me lose respect for the both of you."

You say that like you respected Ert in the first place. 'Cause let me tell you this: he told me that he actually laughed out loud when he read that sentence.

Here's the thing: you do not show respect to someone who has offered to be your beta reader by telling them to just write half the fic himself. If you had respected ErtTheKing, you would have taken his advice and fixed your fic by yourself. You were not being respectful at all, and you offer more validation of your complete idiocy if you think you were.

And as for why your approach to his criticism doesn't work... well, I'll get to that.

"I DO HAVE A LIFE YOU KNOW and that can facor in my writing but it seems that you don't know that!"

Bitch, I'm busy getting a doctoral degree in a highly competitive field where I constantly have to create new creative work on top of all my assignments and practicing instruments that I do for other things. I have a life, and I can still find time to write chapters that are sometimes 10,000+ words long and write those long-ass Library of the Damned snarkings too! Ert is busy balancing his third year in college and a job, and he's produced half a million words of fallout/ME fanfic himself, and also produced Library of the Damned snarkings on top of that! And guess what? We've both managed to produce chapters that are less full of mistakes than your writings.

So that leads me to this:

"and if you did you would think about it before doing things like this."

Right back at ya, EP. Right back at ya.

"yest i know the fic is artous and so on."

Then why are you still defending it?

"now i know i use this care"

And this is why you go to an online dictionary, 'cause I'll be damned if I can tell what the fuck you're trying to say here.

"but let me make something clear i live in a house full of women with no dad. how i got this sexist writing i have no bloody clue."

Here's a novel concept: why do you think I care where you got it from? Why do you think I care about the composition of your household? 'Cause here's a newsflash: I don't care if you came from a fucking planet that was inhabited by women! That doesn't change the fact that your writing is sexist on a deep level, and that you haven't done a single goddamn thing to fix that!

This right here should be an indication to you, and to anyone who is reading this open letter, that you don't want to fix your writing. Because here's the thing: if you really wanted to fix your writing, you would not have said "but I grew up in a house of women, I have no idea how I've got sexist writing". You would've said "how do I fix it". You're not interested in improving as a writer if your modus operandi of dealing with criticism is to hurl excuses like this at anyone who dares criticize you.

"ho and if i need to ask for help don't worry i won't ask you cos as far as i'm concerned you woun'd change anything just becuase i said you could. if that's not helping i don't know what is."

No, telling him "write this fic for me" is not helping, because you don't learn jack shit from telling someone to do your work for you! It's not just that it's intellectually dishonest. It's not just that it's bitchy as all hell to say that when he tells you how it is. No, it's also that you don't learn anything unless you do it yourself! Having him write your fic for you would not have helped you, because you would not have learned how to be a better author on your own.

So EP, just... please. Shut up. It's not that I don't believe you, it's that you don't know what you're talking about. You want me to stop being a bitch to you? Perhaps you should actually take our criticisms seriously instead of fishing for excuses all the damn time.

But you'll never change. You'll never stop fishing for excuses. You'll never stop trying to make yourself look like you're right. You'll never stop any of that, because you're too damn lazy to use the brain that God gave you. I have every confidence that everything I have just written will have gone right over your head because you would prefer to think you are God's gift to mankind instead of facing the fact that you have done some terrible, terrible things.

So kindly don't engage me on this topic again. If you respond to this open letter, I will respond so people see you for the moronic comemierda that you are.

Yours Truly,

Herr Wozzeck.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Dear :iconeclipsepheonix:,

I would just like to open this letter by telling you that the proper spelling of the second half of you username is "Phoenix". It takes two seconds to double-check that.

Now that that little pet peeve has been put out of the way, let's get to the real meat of why I'm writing this letter.

At some point before July 10th, 2012, you read a fanfic known by the name Parallel Realities by InHarmsWay/Harms1 depending on where on the internet it was posted. You know this just as much as I do\. On July 10th, 2012, you decided that the best way to show how much you liked it was to produce what you termed a "remix": it would be the same fic again, but this time, you decided to add your own little "twists" to it.

I am going to ignore the quality of InHarmsWay's original fanfic. I make no secret of the fact that I hated the original Parallel Realities, a fact that even you are aware of given that I linked you to the snarking I did of Parallel Realities over at the Library of the Damned. To me, Parallel Realities is the personification of the worst tendencies of Talimancer fanfiction, not to mention that it sported a trivialization of government takeovers that insulted me on a deeply personal level. I am going to ignore the stupidity of your "twists", which somehow manage to make Parallel Realities look logical in comparison. I will also overlook the disturbing undercurrent of sexism and homophobia that runs through the world you built in your fanfic, which becomes doubly disturbing and extremely hypocritical of you considering that you like to pull the "you're prejudiced against people with Asperger's" card every time someone dares disagree with you.

Because let's face it: at the end of the day, the part of this that draws my ire is your continual defenses to avoid facing the fact that, to remix Parallel Realities, you basically stole InHarmsWay's intellectual property.

Oh, but you didn't just steal. You made your theft blatant. I could go through your fic and point out all the times where your text lines up with InHarmsWay's text. I could point out all the times where you forgot to edit a name. I could point out how pointless some of the lifted scenes are in the new context. I could do all that, but I won't waste your time, my time, or everyone else's time with that. After all, you have recently admitted to copying InHarmsWay's original text.

This is something that you have been called out on by multiple parties, though I will admit up front that I was the most vocal of these. Many people told you that the plagiarism was bad, most of us told you it was morally despicable, and most of us did warn you that you were violating fanfiction.net's TOS by doing so. And granted, perhaps a few of us (especially myself) could have been a little less fueled by rage when we called you out on it.

But that doesn't justify the fact that you went to the ends of the world to try to make it seem like you hadn't done anything wrong intentionally. You complained. You pulled the Asperger's card. You emphasized the fact that it was a "remix". You tried to distract from it.

And most recently, in an author's note where you claimed to want to abandon your fic, you declared this:

"As you may know I tried to copy and paste the game only part but this back fired in that I accidental copped InHarmsWay story which was a big mistake on which I apologise for."

I'm going to start by giving you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you didn't realize the gravity of what you were doing until people started calling you out on it. Perhaps you didn't realize how morally objectionable plagiarism is. Perhaps you didn't realize the kind of intellectual dishonesty you were taking part in. And perhaps it took you a while to figure out that it was a mistake to attempt to do that. Fine. I'll try to accept that.

But quite frankly, that does not change the fact that your assertion that you "accidentally" copied InHarmsWay's original fanfic is, if you will pardon my vernacular here, complete and utter bullshit. It doesn't matter if you didn't know what it was you were doing: you were still making a conscious decision to go in and use the text of someone else to tell your story. It doesn't matter if you were only going for one thing and ended up doing something else: you were still making a conscious decision to use the entirety of that text. It doesn't matter if you thought you were remixing it by adding new elements: you still made a conscious decision. You made a conscious decision to do something, EclipsePheniox. There is no "accident" in your having used IHW's text. And you want to know why?

Because ignorance is not equitable to happenstance, EclipsePheniox/Pheonix.

And even if we did take that into account, there's still the fact that you made almost no effort to clear away the bits of InHarmsWay's original text. If you never intended to copy InHarmsWay's original text, then tell me: why didn't you just dispense with InHarmsWay's original text entirely when you copied his text? Even if we take into account that Parallel Realities was mostly plot regurgitation, the fact of the matter is that when he did do his own thing, that went into your fic as well. If we follow the logic of your "it was an accident" argument, then you would've culled InHarmsWay's text and left the parts from the game in. But you didn't do that. You kept InHarmsWay's original text in there. You left it in there, and you attempted to incorporate his text into your story as well if the changed names issue is anything to go by!

You stole someone's text and attempted to pass it off as your own, particularly by attempting to give that text function in your own story. That is the very definition of plagiarism according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and you did it intentionally. Even if you did it in ignorance of the consequences, that is not an accident.

Let me repeat that so you can maybe understand: because you made a conscious choice to steal text without proper attribution, your theft of InHarmsWay's text is not an accident. And no, saying "based on InHarmsWay's fic" is not proper attribution in this case.

I've made no secret of my disdain for Parallel Realities. I say that, because it should tell you something that I am willing to fight to the death if it means InHarmsWay maintains his right to his creations. I wouldn't wish the theft of anyone's story on my worst enemy: I was nearly on the receiving end of such a theft myself, and while my experience was colored by the fact that it also featured something of a betrayal I can tell you that knowing that your fic was stolen is usually very troubling for the author it happens to. Perhaps you should ask a fanfiction author who has been plagiarized what it was like for them one of these days: most people that plagiarism happens to are usually quite troubled by the fact that it happened to them, and in some cases it's to the point where they lose sleep over it. Plagiarism negatively affects the authors it happens to, EclipsePheniox. I doubt InHarmsWay knew you were going to lift a vast majority of his text wholesale when he gave you permission to make the remix, and while I may be completely wrong I have every confidence he would be at least somewhat upset about your actions if he knew the extent to which you used his ideas.

So, EclipsePhoenix, I would like you to do everyone a big favor: stop making excuses to your readers. What you did was wrong, you know that what you did was wrong, and at this stage you should not be making excuses. I badly want to accept your apology, but I am loathe to do so unless you accept full responsibility for your reprehensible actions. That is impossible to do if you are trying to pass off what you did as an accident when it was clearly anything but.

So just accept responsibility for what you did. Oh, and don't apologize to me for plagiarizing Parallel Realities: apologize to InHarmsWay. He's the one who most deserves your apology.

Yours truly,

Herr Wozzeck.

P.S. And as for the redo of From another world... I don't have very high hopes, considering the few original things that were seen in your fic. Oh, and may God help you if you treat everyone who genuinely tries to help you the way you treated :iconerttheking: when he extended an olive branch toward you by offering to be your beta.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
...namely, that I don't update to DA much anymore.

Yeah, I dunno. I just... I sort of fell out of favor with the way DA handles submissions and stuff, especially written ones. And between not being able to edit things after I post them and a few other issues... well...

I'll just say that I'm also rarely active anymore. But... well, I think I'll still check in from time to time. So... yeah.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In

News Items

3 min read
Hey guys! It's been a bit, hasn't it?

Sorry for the lack of presence here for the past few weeks or so. I'm sure you're wondering why. Well, I've been playing opera pit in a little thing for opera students in Eureka Springs, Arkansas since early June. Basically, I've been playing three operas back to back several times throughout this month, so I've been really busy. Though, the lack of internet also hasn't helped at all, so... yeah. That's why I haven't replied to any comments that were left since about June 6 I think. Pardon me on that run.

Also, I think you'll notice I haven't posted MV3 on DA for a while. Well... I dunno. I think I've gone out of favor with DA's posting little thing. I think it's just too much effort to post stuff here, since it's all so complicated and there are so many things I have to fill. And honestly, it's getting to be a chore C+Ping text from FF.Net to here since it requires so much effort for not that much pay-off. So from here on out consider MV3 a FF.Net exclusive. You know how it is.

Other articles of news... other articles of news... Yeah. You know, I once railed against a guy for plagiarism and all that, right? Well, I'm totally about to do it again. See, there's this fic out there called From another world by EclipsePheniox, and... well, it's a rip-off of a different fic called Parallel Realities by InHarmsWay. Personally, I have no idea why anyone would want to plagiarize Parallel Realities since it was a confused, plot hole riddled mess, but whatever, it happened, and... Well, guys, I think EclipsePheniox needs to be taught that plagiarism is not a good thing since someone else told him why it was a bad thing and he proceeded to keep on doing it anyway.

So here's a link to From another worldwww.fanfiction.net/s/8306591/1…
And here's a link to Parallel Realities so you can compare them (and hopefully laugh at how bad a story it is): www.fanfiction.net/s/6399402/1…

So yeah. I'll be back with more news items once I'm out of Arkansas.


Journal design by Simmemann
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In

Writing Update

3 min read
Hey guys. I actually need to make a small writing update for my edification, 'cause of stuff that just happened.

Well... see, here's a little issue I just had: I got an e-mail in my in-box about a review I got for MV3. When I opened it, though, I saw this:

"Commissar 433:The heretic has stop writing these? By the emperor, today is a glorious day, now all we need are the adepta sororitas to burn all information connected to these works and the imperium will feel joy at this revelation."

Fortunately, it was a guest review, so I was able to get rid of it, but still... Have you guys ever seen such a mean-spirited review in your lives? I mean, the fact that he's implying that a fucking religious organization from frakkin' Warhammer should come in is one thing, but the fact that it offers no suggestions on how to improve it like a negative review should?

This guy is an asshole, he really is.

Which is gonna make it absolutely hilarious when I actually update it in however long I'm going to go in with. It's just that I'm still rewriting the Tuchanka arc, and that's actually taking just a bit longer than expected. I don't actually expect to have any new MV3 chapters until next year at the earliest: I want to get the Tuchanka rewrite out of the way first, 'cause I'm especially not happy with that arc as it is now. But once we get back to new chapters...

Hoo boy. Stuff is gonna be crazy.

Journal design by Simmemann
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Featured

Another Open Letter to EclipsePheniox by Herr-Wozzeck, journal

An Open Letter to EclipsePheniox/EclipsePheonix by Herr-Wozzeck, journal

Well, guys, I've got some news... by Herr-Wozzeck, journal

News Items by Herr-Wozzeck, journal

Writing Update by Herr-Wozzeck, journal