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If you're reading this, I assume you know what plagiarism means. If not, please go back to junior high school and remain there until you graduate. If this does not apply to you, please read on. I didn't worry very much about plagiarism among fanfiction writers until an incident last year in which a friend of mine had one of his fanfics stolen. The person responsible then put it up on his own page, with a few modifications, and claimed it as his own work, despite the fact that his page demonstrated a fifth-grade level of writing proficiency at best. I hope I speak for the vast majority of fanfiction writers when I say our general consensus on such people is that they ought to be covered in raw meat and thrown to a horde of big mean dogs-- especially since we have no legal defense against them, since the legality of fanfiction itself (at least in the U.S.) is still questionable. However, there's unfortunately a far more subtle form of plagiarism which runs rampant in the fanfiction community: intellectual plagiarism, or, to put it in less polite terms, leeching plot and character ideas from other writers. I see this so often among fanfiction writers-- at least anime and game fanfiction-- that it isn't even vaguely amusing. One example in particular sticks in my mind right now. Some time ago, my friend Alanna wrote a FF7 fic in which she gave Hojo a first name, which was Simon. Now, nowhere in FF7 does it actually say that Hojo's first name is Simon; in fact, he is given no first name to speak of. Since he wasn't given one, Alanna made one up for him. This is one of the things that fanfiction is for: improvisation and filling in gaps. When you want to write about a character with blank spots in their personal history, you invent your own. However, since she initially wrote that fanfic, I've seen more than a few people referring to "Simon Hojo" in their fanfics-- despite the fact that they weren't even writing within her FF7 continuity. Moreover, not only were they using the name, but her entire concept of the character-- his history, his personality, ad nauseum. To me, that's just contemptible and utterly debasing-- not only is it an insult to the person who put their time, effort, and intellectual energy into filling in those gaps, it speaks very ill of the person who leeches off their work. Is it that bloody hard to make up an original name, for God's sake? Being influenced by a particular author's depiction of a character is one thing; ripping that depiction off wholesale and plunking it down into your own fanfic is another thing entirely. My own concept of Krelian was influenced by conversations I had with a friend of mine, but I certainly didn't just take her Krelian, the personal history she had invented for him, and the quirks she had fitted him with and stick that into my own work. As far as I'm concerned, if I sunk low enough to do that, it would be as good as saying my own ideas were worthless and that only hers were deserving of respect. Anime fans seem, as they are in many other ventures, to be particularly bad about this. I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of Slayers fan writers are either too stupid or too lazy to distinguish between character facts established in the original source material (the anime, novels, and manga) and those invented by other fan writers. I've actually seen a few concepts which were introduced in Slayers fanfiction become disseminated as rumors or even actual "facts" throughout the fan community, and it's ridiculous. Not only do they not bother to do a bit of research on these supposed "facts," they're also quite wont to rip off each other's ideas outright. When someone has to resort to stealing chapter titles from another author's fanfic, I'm forced to conclude that whatever talents they might possess would be better employed in scraping dead animals off the road than in penning fanfiction. Ultimately, I almost feel sorry for people who do this sort of thing on a routine basis. I may not be the most sterling example of self-esteem and feeling good about one's own work, but at least I'm not desperate enough for attention to humiliate myself by leeching ideas from other authors. If you like a particular concept, theory, or character idea so much that you really do want to use it in your own work, at least have the dignity to /ask/ the author for permission, and credit them if it's granted. I can respect that-- especially when the person in question is a good friend. But simply taking without even granting so much in the way of "I really liked that idea" to the original author is utterly contemptible. It only shows that you're a mindless, lazy parasite who lacks even the initiative to come up with your own decent ideas. And for god's sake, people, if you've come across a "fact" or "rumor" you plan to use in a fanfic, check your sources. I've run into at least one FF7 fanfic writer who was completely unaware that "Simon Hojo" was a name invented by Alanna and had used it in her work only because so many other people seemed to be doing likewise. All it takes is one moron ripping off another writer's ideas without credit for those ideas to be duly spread across the Internet, touted as uncredited rumor or even official information. If it wasn't hinted at in the original source material, DOUBLE-CHECK YOUR FACTS. It may very well turn out to be official information (something mentioned in Perfect Works, for example, in the case of Xenogears, or the novels in the case of Slayers), but it's more likely to be an unbased fan rumor with its source in a fanfic someone decided to rip off. Fans generally revel in gossip and rumors, and information gets around fast online. There are decent informational pages out there for almost any game or anime series; it's not too difficult to find them. It's certainly easier than dealing with the resultant mess if you find out you inadvertently plagiarised another author's ideas. I'd like to think that I'm not alone in believing being original is a good thing. It certainly isn't wrong to share ideas with another author-- IF you ask their permission and credit the specific idea or concept to them in your resultant work. I've done that with friends before when we came up with theories together. Unfortunately, that's not what I see in 98% of the cases where borrowed ideas pop up in fanfiction. The only reason most fan authors plagiarise ideas, it seems, is because they aren't creative enough-- or willing to spend a minimal amount of time and energy-- to come up with their own ideas. If you're really serious about being a writer, you'd bloody well better learn to give credit where credit is due, because in the professional world you can be hauled into court for snitching someone else's ideas. (I don't approve of the lawsuit mentality myself, but nonetheless, there are many professional writers out there who will jump to sue you if they think you're stealing their stuff.) Get the picture, people? Fanfiction authors already take enough flak from the general public, on principle, for writing stories inspired by others' creations. We don't need lazy morons who out-and-out steal others' ideas to worsen our reputation. While I'm of the opinion that fanfiction in and of itself is no more plagiarism than is writing a story based on mythology-- fanfiction is private work, while its original source is public (not to mention that using ideas created by specific, non-public individuals is quite a bit different than using ideas copyrighted to giant, multi-billion-dollar corporations)-- there are still quite a lot of people out there who are looking down their noses at us for not writing 100% original material, and I, for one, do not appreciate those among us who do make fanfiction writers look like a seething mass of slackers. I personally can't understand how people who clearly put next to no thought into their writing can bring themselves to display it at all, but apparently taking pride in one's work isn't an issue for every writer. And I don't know about anyone else, but it's just more interesting to read an original interpretation or plot device rather than one pilfered, consciously or not, from a fellow writer. I should also probably add that if I see one more non-Xenogears fanfic in which a character quotes the Bible, I am going to hunt down the author responsible and bite them until they need rabies shots. This goes for Shakespeare as well. There is no Shakespeare in the Final Fantasy 7 world. I fail to see how this concept is difficult to grasp. No, it doesn't make you look sophisticated; it's just silly. Big words doth not a story make, especially when they're someone else's. And that's about all I have to say about that. |