I could swear I've seen that basic outline (Rose -> Timelady) before. I don't honestly think it's intellectual property thieving.

Have you worked out the details of how the TARDIS can somehow turn Rose into a Time Lady? Given that whole thing where, y'know, Time Lords are the ones that have graduated from the academy on Gallifrey and all that. To be a Time Lady she'd have to have all the knowledge a Time Lord would pick up at the academy, and that seems remarkably similar, to me, to the season four finale, and the thing where you can't have a Time Lord consciousness in a human brain. So you'd be having to change her biology to make her into a Gallifreyan, and, alright, the chameleon arch can be used to do the process the other way around, but then you'd need a specific reason why chameleon arches or something like them to turn non-Gallifreyans into Gallifreyans would have been invented and installed in TARDISes.

Short version: how on earth is this going to work? What are your ideas so far?

Sporked a story and then wrote my version of it. I did give credit where the idea came from. The only people who didn't like what I had done (or at least the only people to tell me so) were the original authors. Other people have complimented me on a well written story.

Anyway, authors can't actually claim ownership to ideas. Except if the idea is very, very specific. Which may or may not be the case here. I haven't read Lady Clark's fic (not do I tend to; she leaves raving reviews for fics I intend to spork), but I have come across several fics that had elements of the plot she used way back in that short period of time that I still read Whofics.

I've seen a few where the Doctor gets stuck in the other dimension leaving Rose with the TARDIS (heck, one of those even inspired me to write a short fic about Rose trying to get out of the building before it colapsed). There are many other fics where Rose in one way or another becomes a Time Lady (if not the mother of one). And of course there are many, many fics that do a character replacement for series three, though usually of Martha.

But I like your approach to it: Rose will react to changing into a different creature; she will respond differently to things that the Doctor would. I'd say go for it. Good plot ideas deserve good stories.

If you're going to post the spork and your version of the story in different locations very few people are going to notice and/or take offense that you have done both.

It wasn't a badfic, persay, but it definently wasn't good. I could think of a thousand things I would have done differently and made it better. But like Sedri said, you can't just steal someone's idea.

The best thing to do, would be to as Lady Clark-Weasely if you can write your own version of her idea, making sure to say you're doing it differently, and if she gives you permission you can run with it. The downside to this is that you really really shouldn't spork any of her work afterwards. That's just rude.

...and they all boil down the point that deliberately taking someone else's idea without their permission leaves me so sick with guilt that I couldn't do it. It's not right. Just because it's fanfic doesn't mean we shouldn't respect someone's idea. I would be deeply wounded if someone pinched my 'original' (as much as fanfic can be) plotline - that is, after all, why some disclaimers include things like "but so-and-so IS mine".

That said, I know how you feel. There are some stories - fanfic and published - that I look at with longing, going, "I could do SO MUCH better! I could FIX that!" But I can't, and it's frustrating.

All this applies doubly if the rest is spork-worthy. It's painful, but that's life. The only chance I think you'd have of getting to write that story is if the author gives up, stops writing, and you ask if you can use the idea. But that's not likely.

Sorry. :(

Meant to include this in the original post but forgot. In case you're wondering what A Different World (the fic in question) is like, here's a link:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4543231/1/ADifferentWorld