Lianne "Spiderbaby" MacDougall, whose writing has appeared in horror magazines including Fangoria, Video Watchdog and Famous Monsters of Filmland, is caught in a plagiarism scandal.

The prolific Canadian magazine writer and blogger, who relocated to L.A. earlier this year, also runs the YouTube channel Fright Bytes, has a book deal with St. Martin's Press, and is known to paparazzi as director Quentin Tarantino's girlfriend. Her apparent plagiarism was detailed by Mike White on his blog Impossible Funky.


"I think it’s pretty clear that my style and the complexity of my thoughts here are radically different from her writing, even the writing she uses to string together my thoughts in this piece alone," wrote Flickfilosopher's MaryAnn Johanson about the cut-and-paste job.

Accused of carving chunks of copy from Johanson and others at sites like Critical-Film.com, HighDefDigest.com, and EmpireOnline.com, the University of Toronto film studies graduate appears to have killed her website and sanitized her social media profiles. Her entries at FearNet.com, where some of the plagiarized pieces were posted, are no more.

Twitter screenshots on Defamer show Spiderbaby's account copping to the allegations before @liannespider disappeared, and reaching out to other writers to discuss the issue. "I am leaving journalism behind for awhile," reads one of the messages.

"It's the same as in any other niche or non-niche journalism. Don't steal from people. It's that simple," said Dave Alexander, editor-in-chief of Toronto-based magazine Rue Morgue, in reaction to the news. "It's too bad that it happened, and I hope that it serves as a lesson to other people who might be considering shortcuts like appropriating other people's copy," he said.

Spiderbaby is a former Rue Morgue volunteer, which is how she met fellow Canadian and future Fangoria editor Chris Alexander. According to the Toronto Star, Fangoria's Alexander said that Spiderbaby will never write for the magazine again.