As if real life is not handful enough…

I decided to take that edited part out of my previous post, because it’s an anniversary post, and it’s wrong to have something bad attached to it. My terrible mistake on that part and I’m truly sorry for spoiling the mood.

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Let me state my thoughts so I can get this done and over with. I will not talk about this again as it’s not worth my time and sanity.

NO. I do not want credits to myself. If I’m that shallow and only need credits, I wouldn’t go all the way out to register a new domain and upgrade my server to accommodate this project. Don’t play clueless on me and try to be a victim. Go read the project email and stop saying that we didn’t contact you directly because we did.

Looking at the reply we got back (which pissed Kiwi off to Pluto. Handling emails while trying to explain things repeatedly is not an easy task, I’m telling you), I don’t think this person will understand our point. If someone feels like giving a proper credit is the same as slitting one’s arm or cutting it off, then there’s nothing more to talk about.

And there’s a difference between ‘being pissed’ and ‘hating’. Even with English as a second language, I’m pretty sure of that. Don’t put those words in our mouth. That’s really unfair.

I know our ideas are not copyrighted and a fanbook can happen all the time, but I’d never expect it to be this much alike. You cannot deny that that post sounds very much like our original project post, of course, with more details, but the execution is simply the same.

We felt like being slapped.

It’s not about praising our project, but it’s about respect.

At least, that person could have contacted us either by email or leave a comment for us to know that their group wants to borrow our ideas prior to doing this. It’s just like a courtesy call. And it’s not like Wribbit, Kiwi and I would say no. We would have been supportive as we know how hard it is to organize a project like this.

Why is it so hard to understand this simple logic?

Why can’t people admit when they didn’t do things the right way?

Being ripped off, that’s how we felt when we first saw that post. Had I not looked at my blog stat, I wouldn’t see traffic from that post, and we wouldn’t even know about their project.

I don’t think it’s that difficult to link to our main page and let people see our entire project. Instead, do you think it’s proper to use my Seattle photo page as an FAQ when we clearly stated on all our gallery pages about NO hotlinking? A disclaimer is there for a reason, right?

Try think of it this way.

If this is a project that you hold dear to your heart because it came from your love and admiration, because you’ve been working really hard on it to make everyone proud of our unity, and simply because you want the best for someone you truly admire, and someone else comes along and does this to you, will you just sit there and accept it?

You may think that it’s not a big deal since you submitted your photo and got the complete project. But I’m not an expert nor a magician. If you know how many programs I’ve tried, how many hours I’ve put into this project, or how many frustrating moments I’ve struggled through, maybe you will be able to see where I’m coming from.

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I was born and raised in a culture where respect is a big part of our lives.

And it should be the same for everyone’s.

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:’(

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