Someone stole my shit

I've seen it happen to other people, but nobody has ever liked one of my stories enough to try and claim it as his own work. I am torn between flattered, annoyed, and appalled. It was "no-pics Thursday" in the MLP sub-Reddit, and somebody posted a very reasonable text-based request:

"Can someone point me to some happy/funny short fanfics?"

To which I replied:

'I cannot think of any off the top of my head, so I will try my hand at writing a short story here."

And then I proceeded to hammer out a short, 1000ish word vignette.

It was a story idea that has been percolating around in the back of my brain for a while, but without enough flesh to warrant writing a full-length fan fiction. The original poster liked the story, and suggested that I should post it on Fimfiction.net - a repository for MLP:FIM fan stories. I didn't really want to post it over there because it was just an unpolished first draft, and I told him as much.

So imagine my surprise when I was reading Reddit today, and he posted a new story he had just written.
( It looked vaguely familiar... )

I called him on it, and then mentioned it to atara, who took it much less calmly than I, though she addressed him quite politely about it. She suggested that he remove the story and issue an apology to me for stealing my shit. Then the pure gold happened. When atara and I had been discussing it in email this morning, my exact words were:
I still have it in my “sent” folder in Reddit anyway, so even if he deletes his post, I have a time-stamped copy.

I actually have an account on FimFiction – I created one some time back in case I wanted to comment on peoples’ stories, also because I was toying with the idea of this one as a full-length story at one point. I did not think it had enough plot potential for a full-length though, but it fit the “slice of life” genre perfectly.

I noticed that you were very calm and polite. I expect that at best, he will probably just quietly delete both posts and pretend nothing happened. At worst, he will get defensive and maybe even try to claim that I copied him.

That might be the at best situation actually, because that could turn kind of fun.
( It looks like I got my wish. This is pure gold. )