JungMichan

JungMichan (also Miechan, Meichan, yiling98, midaexiu, and likely jongdaezd) was a K-Pop real person fiction fan writer, best known for her EXO and SHINee fanfiction. She was active between 2015 and 2022, starting out on AFF, later on crossposting and posting works to AO3 as well. As of 2024, she is still on AFF under the handle midaexiu.
She published over 50 stories for EXO and SHINee, with Jongdae/Minseok being the ship she was most known for. Jongdae was often a main character, as Michan was Jongdae-biasedInterview with Michan and co-author Minji, 14 February 2021. JungMichan was also a co-moderator of the Jongdae-centric fest Hail ChenHail Chen mod statement, 28 February 2022. In February 2022, it was discovered that several of her works were plagiarising traditionally published books and short stories. Upon detection, she deleted both her AFF and AO3 accounts, deleting some of the works while leaving others orphaned on AO3.
==History and methods==
On 27 February 2022, a few days after several of her plagiarisms had been anonymously reported to tinysparks and Hail Chen, JungMichan deleted all of her fanfiction accounts along with her twitter account. Despite the majority of the evidently plagiarised works being more recent works, one fic posted to AFF in 2016 also turned out to have been copied off a short story, implying that the majority if not entirety of JungMichan's work might have been plagiarised.
A medical writer by professionInterview with Michan and co-author Minji, 14 February 2021, Michan put her skill to good use. Quite a few of her works that are suspected to be original (mostly canon fics) feature medical emergency situations. Her editing skills must have been helpful to fall back on when she plagiarised books and short stories. This resulted in a—especially in the last few years of her posting works—high output of long works in a short span of time, with a wide range of styles and genres, and writing that was often perceived as high-quality, polished and near perfect. Notable is that all of these works contain parts that seem in comparison to the originals unskilled and dull, marking where Michan rewrote or inserted small passages of her own, along with haphazard adaptions of books located in the U.S. to South Korean settings. Since she plagiarised many different writers, the spelling in her fics was inconsistent and often wavering between B.E. and A.E. spelling.
Despite Michan being aroaceInterview with Michan and co-author Minji, 14 February 2021 herself, a trademark of her plagiarism was the over-indulgence in deeply traumatic experiences to the point of trauma exploitation, often related to the main character being gay, as well as the active erasure and removal of acceptance, community and comfort regarding their gayness from the original textsErasure of positive queer experiences for trauma exploitation, 2 March 2022.
Several of her works Michan reposted in different fandoms, with little more than the names (and if applicable pronouns) replaced.
==Plagiarised works==
Due to the swift deletion of JungMichan's accounts, only the at that point existing 29 AO3 works could be downloaded; half of those turned out to have been plagiarised. Although evidence suggests that most if not all of her work was plagiarised (canon fic potentially aside), sources for the other works could not be identified. Many of them had been submitted to EXO fanfiction festsList of plagiarised works, 28 February 2022. The affected fests were, besides the Hail Chen festList of plagiarised works submitted to Hail Chen, accessed 9 March 2024 JungMichan was co-modding: tinysparksStatement by tinysparks, 28 February 2022, EXO Monster FestStatement by EXO Monster Fest, 28 February 2022, Love Shot Fest, KaifectioneryStatement by kaifectionery, 1 March 2022, EXO Seasonal FestStatement by EXO Seasonal Fest, 28 February 2022, Vargavinter FestStatement by vargavinter fest, 28 February 2022, SnowSpark FestStatement by SnowSpark Fest, 28 March 2022, and Shall We Chen Fest.
=== List of plagiarised worksList of works plagiarised by JungMichan ===
Date published 	Title 	Fandom 	Pairing 	WC 	Fest 	Plagiarised sources
30 June 2016 	Still Awake 	SHINee, 2PM	Minho/Nickhun 	2.4k	 	“Stay Awake" by Dan Chaon
20 November 2016 (backdated work)	The Way We Rise 	EXO 	Jongin/Sehun 	42k 	 	"Lost in Translation" by Michael Lowenthal, "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss, "Delicate Monsters" by Stephanie Kuehn. Also contains passages from "A Blaze of White Light", an old deleted Big Bang fic by JungMichan.
9 December 2020 	Hospital 365 	EXO 	EXO/OCs 	342k	 	Chapter 3 taken from the book “When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery” by Frank T. Vertosick Jr
28 April 2021 	Maybe That's How Spring Comes 	EXO 	Jongdae/Minseok 	38k 	SnowSpark Fest 	One scene and a few scattered sentences: “(after a while) you learn” by curledupkitten (chanyeol)
May 2021 	Let Out The Beast 	BLACKPINK 	Chaeyoung/Jennie	6.5k	 	“This Whole Demoning Thing” by Patrick Ness, published in the anthology “Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales”
4 July 2021 	I Think We'll Be Shining 	EXO 	Chanyeol/Jongdae	74k 	EXO Seasonal Fest 	“Beyond the Rising Tide” by Sarah Beard
6 August 2021 	The King and the Soldier 	EXO 	Jongdae/Minseok 	1k 	tinysparks 	“The Queen and the Soldier” by Suzanne Vega (improper credit)
13 August 2021 	Great Aspectations 	EXO 	Jongin/Sehun 	11k 	kaifectionery 	“This Whole Demoning Thing” by Patrick Ness, published in the anthology “Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales” (reworked BLACKPINK fic)
21 September 2021 	Creature of Ash and Twilight 	EXO 	Jongdae/Minseok 	42k 	Shall We Chen Fest 	“The Will and the Wilds” by Charlie N. Holmberg; folktale "The Fox Bead"
9 October 2021 	More Than All the Grains of Sand 	EXO 	Jongdae/Minseok 	72k 	EXO Monster Fest 	"The Bones Beneath My Skin" by TJ Klune
10 October 2021 	Enemy of my Enemy 	EXO 	Jongdae/Minseok 	47k 	Love Shot Fest 	"Where Death Meets the Devil" by L.J. Hayward
29 October 2021 	Maybe It's Magic 	EXO 	Jongdae/Yixing 	10k 	Hail Chen 	"A Little Village Magic" by ‘Nathan Burgoine
31 October 2021 	Three Minutes and Thirty-Eight Seconds	EXO 	Chanyeol/Jongdae	6k 	Hail Chen 	"Negative Space" by ‘Nathan Burgoine
11 November 2021 	Drive Me Crazy 	EXO 	Minseok/Sehun 	1k 	tinysparks 	"Saffy's Angel" by Hilary McKay
23 December 2021 	Crush... on You 	EXO 	Jongdae/Minseok 	3k 	Whinery Christmas Exchange	"Floodgates" by Mary Calmes
25 December 2021 	Oh No, Only One Bed 	EXO 	Jongdae/Minseok 	2k 	Hail Chen 	"Trope: Only One Bed" by C.S. Poe, published in the book "Interlude (Snow & Winter)"
22 January 2022 	Deliver Us From Evil 	EXO 	Baekhyun/Jongdae	39k 	Hail Chen 	as jongdaezd: “Splintered - Criminal Delights: Obsession" by Tal Bauer
12 February 2022 	Don't Worry, Be Harpy 	EXO 	Baekhyun/Jongdae	15k 	Hail Chen 	“Wings in the Morning”, published in “Monstrous Affections”, as confirmed by the author Sarah Rees
26 February 2022 	Drawn Together 	EXO 	Jongdae/Minseok 	36k 	Vargavinter Fest 	"Mended with Gold" by Lee Welch (minor edits); this Atlantic article
==References==
Category:Fans
Category:Fanwriters