I'm feeling slightly jipped and extremely guilty.

A couple of days ago a link exchangee of Dreamscape emailed me about an old Xanga layout I had on Skye Sanctuary.  It was extremely similar to one of the premade layouts on her site, and she asked for me to remove it.

To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about the layout because let's face it - how long has it been since I made anything for Xanga?  I had used her layout for "inspiration" (I know it now as "jocking," to put it kindly) - of that I was guilty.  I didn't take her images or anything like that, but I remember trying my best to replicate that particular layout because I liked the style, the image, the feel, everything about it.  It ended up being almost the same, with just a few differences.

So I deleted the layout and emailed her back explaining, and hoped against hope that she wouldn't remove me from her link exchange list because she was - is - a great designer that I really admired. (She still hasn't replied yet.)

Today I went and visited my neglected site and clicked around my link exchanges, just to see what I'd missed.  I came across one link exchangee who had updated with a new site layout that seemed....... very similar to Dreamscape's current.  One of the images was the same, and the affiliates display was extremely similar, and this line thingy to separate the header from the content that I spent days thinking up (unoriginal as it may be) was also very familiar.

My first reaction was, of course, anger, because that was just so unfair.  Then I was torn - should I email her about it and ask her to take it down, or not?  I've known this designer for a long time, back from when I still made Xanga layouts (on a regular basis, anyway), and it just felt wrong to call her out on it.  I mean, the similarities are there, but small, and I'm sure she knows what jocking is and just might not see it as such.

I kept being indecisive and second-guessing myself when it hit me - what I'd done to the first link exchangee (the one who emailed me) was a hundred times worse than what this second link exchangee had done to me.  What right do I have to ask that something that vaguely resembles my work be taken down when I myself am guilty of practically copying someone else's work?

In essence, I'm just a big, fat hypocrite.