Lost Legacy · 12:22am Oct 10th, 2020
So, at Estee's suggestion, I took a look at the referrals of my stories. All of my stories.
It took a bit.
The usual suspects showed up in spades: Equestria Daily, Louder Yay, Spacebattles, Sufficient Velocity... but there were some oddballs as well. Ars Technica. GameFAQs. Joann Fabrics. I go into greater detail in my comment on Estee's blog, but there's one bit I briefly mention there that I'd like to focus on here.
See, among the referrals to The Implicit Neighs was a specific Tumblr blog. One managed by someone who, as it turns out, rather likes Elementals of Harmony, or at least they did back in 2013.
Consider this a call to one who may not be here to hear it anymore: Is this your blog? Please do let me know.
(Yes, I know I could ask her on said blog, but that would require making an account, and if you had some rando pop in your asks and claim to be a fanfic author who just happened to find your six-year-old posts about their work, how would you react? Besides, I kicked my Tumblr addiction almost a decade ago now; I'm not getting sucked back in.)
I saw that post too. Had a quick glance at my most recent fics, and gamefaqs came up a few times, as did plagscan. Nothing much on the weird end of the scale yet: just the usual search engine websites and any sites where my fics have been featured conventionally (e.g. Equestria Daily and Louder Yay blog).
The Plagscan ones are the weirdest... like "Why is a plagiarism scanner looking over my works?" Like... did a student/other author try to post my work as theirs? Unfortunately, it's a subscription service, and quite an expensive one.
I did a lookie-loo a while back and yeah, there's some real head scratchers. My oddest pair are that one of my stories has two weirdos - one from a British cybersecurity firm and a second from a Hong Kong cybersecurity firm. (The story is not cybersecurity relevant at all.)
5374773
Speaking from experience, it’s someone reading fanfic at work during their downtime and telling their coworker about this cool thing they read.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Etsy/comments/9fv3ui/has_anyone_seen_plagscancom_show_up_under_other/
Joann Fabrics??
Plagscan popped up under some of mine, but the one that has been irking me for a while is TV tropes. I must be terrible at searching their forms, cuz I still can’t find it.
But, for real, who’s plagiarizing fanfiction!?
One of the things I miss about the old system is you used to be able to directly click on the links to follow them and see who is talking about you...
Also, wow, Spacebattles. I went on there a lot in high school, that's an old-ass name for me.
I’ve had a few odd referrals myself. I have no idea how the system works. But hay, whatever gives the pony fics moar love, right?
Plagscan count: 11 fics
I would say my most unusual referral is www.vecchiasignora.com, which appears to be an Italian language discussion forum for the Juventus soccer club.
Other notable referrals:
A couple of webcomics I've read in the past
cgi2.nintendo.co.jp
www.tripadvisor.com.sg
www.propublica.org
I wish the actual link was still present when you look at referrals.
I took a look. The only thing that really stood out was some referrals to The Marriage of Cadance from a DeviantArt user, whose gallery is so large that I don't even know how to begin looking for where they might have come from and now it nags at me. Could there be fanart of my story somewhere in there that nobody ever told me about?
Yeah, I used to have a lot of fun with the referrals back when they still gave direct links. I have most the usuals here, and a few stranger ones I have a limited ability to investigate. A few plagscan hits. Some links from 4chan, plus a few on deviantart or reddit that I can't track down. One story showed up on tripadvisor, apparently, and another on what appears to be a baptist ministry's forum. Though I think my favourite was a very brief discussion I found on some Naruto forums, where someone made a versus thread discussing who would win in a fight between the antagonist from one of my stories and the entire Narutoverse. Most of the OP was just listing all my character's most ridiculous feats, and the only response in the thread was from someone evidently baffled by what was being described. Hilarious, and also a real eye-opener.
Cisalphasport.it. Apparently they're interested in Ponyville's Warrior Meets for some reason. Zobobat.at, a zoology database, has some interest in my 'Scootaloo can fly' fic nr. 352 for some reason. Couple of people in China are looking for my 'Site-wide first!' M-rated story that shall remain nameless, so here's hoping they don't get arrested for it. It also got referrals from an NBA reporting site, which is... concerning? I don't want M-rated stories to show up in child-friendly places; I keep that stuff under wraps where it belongs.
And finally, 80 hits off the story that got a reading on YouTube. Which is not bad for a Magnum Opus Dissonance story.
Okay, let's just go with the interesting-ish ones here...
Plug.dj, whatever that is, for TLH.
Muv.uio.no for DS.
Adguard.com for MHE.
Jurispro.com and newsblur.com for EH.
Adguard.com again for TCatM.
prod.uhrs.playmsn.com for US.
And a few scattered hits from baidu and from yandex.ru.
I was once told that someone used one of my early fanfics (cringe, the writing level) as the basis of their doctoral thesis on derivative literature.
I've also been told that there are people who work on Kerbal Space Program, and who work for NASA, who are fond of Changeling Space Program and the Maretian, but their links don't pop up on the referrals list.
No, the weirdest referral is also on one of my least popular fics: a website for booking campgrounds in the European Union, which somebody, somehow, used once to look at a fic mocking nature documentaries.
(Runner up is the nightclub or hotel or whatever, Europa in Kyiv, but they link to the Maretian somehow, my most-read work here, so that's less surprising.)