silversolitaire

Current Mood: annoyed

A rant

A rant on the unforgivable sin that is Evil Plagiarism ^TM

Having listened to all this bitching to and fro over the last couple of hours I feel like I just have to say something about this plagiarizing panic. I really don't know where the fanfiction writing world is heading. Ever since this deplorable incident where a certain BNF got caught copying three whole pages of a book and put it into her own work, later claiming this was meant as an homage to this author, the whole community is in a total frenzy.

I just would like to say, plagiarizing does not equal plagiarizing. You can copy whole passages from someone else, be it a professional writer or a fanwriter and incorporate it into your own work. That's definitely plagiarizing. You can use someone else's ideas or theories in your academic paper and pass it off as your own. That too is plagiarizing, but on a different level. And you can be inspired by a song, poem etc. and use it as a basis of your fic. That is NOT plagiarizing, IMO. Granted, you're advised to say in your header that you're using a song or poem as the basis of your story, but still, it's not like you're using someone else's words or ideas to upgrade your own story, you rather build your own creative content around someone else's inspiring words. This has a long tradition in the fanwriting history, it's called filking or songfics.

In those good old days you could just write a story called "Your Song" and have Character A say all these romantic things to Character B and make a nice story of it and nobody would have leapt at you with pointed finger and yelled " DIRTY PLAGIARIZER!!!!!!" No, everybody would have had the same fanfiction experience as anybody else and they would have understood it as a songfic. Nobody would have honestly believed that you actually intended to make anybody think you wrote the words of "Your Song".

I really don't understand how all this witch-burning came about. Suddenly the slightest failure to cite a source results in people condemning you to the darkest realms of hell, cursing you to all eternity and ensuring you that you will never be forgiven under any circumstances whatsoever. Where is your common sense, people? Don't you see that there is a huge difference between copying whole passages and incorporating a song or poem into your story and even calling the story after it?

I'm not apologizing plagiarism. I'm not saying plagiarists should be forgiven merely on the account of their nice face / talent / sweetness / popularity. I'd be just as pissed if somebody stole parts of my stories and put them into theirs, even though they're not making any money from it and neither am I. It doesn't make it any better. And yet I have enough common sense not to equate this with an act of plagiarism that you could commit when writing an academic paper. A fanfiction has no academic claim whatsoever. What you're stealing when plagiarizing a story is someone else's creative talent. When you plagiarize in an academic paper, you actually steal someone else's research or ideas, trying to upgrade the academic content of your own research. It has a lot more impact on your life than some story does. It's not the same.

So yes, you really should state the song or poem you used for your filk and not assume everybody would be able to tell just by the title. It's just a precaution to prevent all this witch-burning. But really, isn't this just going over the top? It really makes me weep for the future. What will happen? Will some day people come rushing up to me and call me a plagiarizer because I didn't quote the exact page and line complete with bibliographical information when I used a line from a Petronius poem as the title of my story?

So yeah, this is MY opinion. Feel free to disagree, I don't care much either way.

/rant.

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In those good old days you could just write a story called "Your Song" and have Character A say all these romantic things to Character B and make a nice story of it and nobody would have leapt at you with pointed finger and yelled " DIRTY PLAGIARIZER!!!!!!" No, everybody would have had the same fanfiction experience as anybody else and they would have understood it as a filk.

Uh, not really. A filk is a song parody (like Weird Al, only he gets paid for it). What you're describing sounds more like a "song fic."

Here via metablog.

Really. Now that is strange. In Henry Jenkin's "Textual Poachers" he talks about filks as such. And so far I've always read the word filk used in this context, too. Maybe we're getting fanfic specific terms mixed up with how other people use it? Lemme look it up...

This is what my companion says:
filk
a fic inspired by a song or songtext; sometimes the storyline follows the lyrics, sometimes lines from the songtext will appear or characters will say/sing them; rarely, the characters listens to the song and realizes all of a sudden that all his/her feelings are epitomized by this song; also commonly called songfic.

And this is the entry at the Writer's University's dictionary:
http://www.writersu.net/?link=term&id=182

Hm... I think filk is rather like songs about the fandom, such as "The Boy called Harry Potter" or so and the other one is called songfics. Yeah, I see your point.

In the science fiction community, which actually has filking conventions, filking always refers to actual songs. Usually at a con, there will be a filking room and someone will play guitar and lots of people will sing the well known popular filks. And since SF fandom is basically the grandfather of fandom, that's the definition I would go by.

The thing is, it's always good to cite your sources. It really is pretty much an accepted practice. It's not much different from having a disclaimer and not acknowleding the source is just sort of sloppy. It makes life easier, why not do it?
If you're putting forth a factual argument, it's de rigeur. You have to do it. Other people might very well interpret the facts differently than you do, and in that case, it really is unavoidable to cite page and so on.
The final thing is, what is you've inspired your readers to want to read more of your source? What if you've infect them with the love of Petronius? It's much easier for them, then, if you cite the source exactly.

I'm not saying nobody should ever cite sources. The argument I have is that it's stupid to start witch-burning just because someone assumed that putting the title of the song / poem into the title of the story would be enough. Of course those things usually go into the disclaimer, but it's by no means to be equated with someone copying whole parts of some book for some academic paper to gain a personal advantage of it.

Just out of curiosity, how come you're commenting on this post now?

I stumbled onto at a board that I simply cannot now name. I'm puzzled by the reference to witch burning; is this a specific incident?

O.O;;; a board???

And yes, it was a specific event, but I won't warm it up again. It was just a case of carelessness that was turned into a huge plagiarizm debate even though I thought this was absolutely not the case in this particular example.

Huh. Well, perhaps you should consider this; if you used a well-known song, and some twit didn't recognize it, perhaps you should consider the IQ level of the person you're dealing with. I once wrote a sexually explicit scene where the male character made it perfectly clear that he was going to, ah, perform a certain sexual act on his female partner. When she somewhat nervously asked him what he was doing, this being her first experiance with this particular act, he responded sarcastically: "I'm making a collect call, what do you think?"
I had someone email me seven times to ask what the bit with the phone was about.
They thought there was an actual phone or something involved. I finally had to gently tell them that perhaps my story was not for them, if I had to footnote the sarcasm.
Anyway, if you used the song title as the story title, and it was a pretty well-known song, maybe you should just slap a sign on your fic that says, "Your IQ must be THIS HIGH to read this."
Just a thought.

Exactly my opinion. IMO, some things don't really need that much explanation. And sure, you're always better off saying in your disclaimer "Inspired by XY's song etc." But it's not really plagiarism if you don't do it. Just my humble opinion. I spiked a story with quotes of a movie once and wanted people to find it out themselves. I certainyly don't need or intented to plagiarize that certain movie. That's just ridiculous.

Btw, I'd still like to know how you got here. I think it's kinda rude to link to other people's LJ without telling them. Not that I mind you being here, of course.

I didn't even realize it had been without your permission. Shows how naive I am. Hang on. I'll see if I can find it.

http://pub29.ezboard.com/ffandominationnetfrm23.showMessage?topicID=1.topic

This isn't a link to the actual discussion; the livejournal links occurred elsewhere in the fanfic topic. There's three quoted.

Aha! Thanks, I found it! ^.^

No, those meta-blogs have the bad habit of never asking the originator of a post whether it's okay to make the link public. I was just wondering, since I didn't really think I was saying such a stupid thing that it'd make people post the link to publicly make fun of it or so ^.^;. Since it's just a heads-up I can live with it. Thanks for clearing that up!

I don't think they were making fun of it, per se. It seemed to me to just a sort of, 'This is interesting, have a look.'
If they ever discover all the rants and bitches about badfic in my LJ, I'll be besieged.
You list Lord Byron as one of your interests, as well as quoting Lady Caroline Lamb. Have you read, Child of Fortune, Fool of Fame yet? Byron simply would not happen today. If he lived today, the standards of the time would reduce him to being, 'not yet taking Prozac, mediocre, and inconveniant to associate with,' instead of 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know'.
I'm stuffing a sock in my mouth now.

Heheh that's okay! It's nice talking to you! "Child of Fortune, Fool of Fame" doesn't ring a bell right now... What is it? (you must know I have a horrible memory for names and titles, despite studying literature for four years now...)

And yes, I agree. Most brilliant minds nowadays wouldn't have happened. With a couple of exceptions, of course. I don't know, that description of Byron by Lady Caroline Lamb just seemed to be so accurate for myself ever since I read it for the first time. I [heart] it ^_^.

Child of Fortune, Fool of Fame just came out in sofcover. It's a pretty unvarnished look at his life, and it confirms for me the impression I've always had of him: He needed me to kick his butt, frankly. Someone needed to take him in hand, but no one ever did. He surrounded himself with syncophants and dilattentes, when what he needed was discipline to shape that ferocious intellect.
I've been collecting books and movies about him for quite some time, and comparing him with Alexander Pushkin---the famed Russian poet of the same era---makes for fascinating reading. But Byron was definitely larger than life, and characters like that simply cow other people. Funny how it's his name that is recognizeable, but almost no one who criticized him has attained the same degree of recognition? The same thing could be said of the hacks who keep trying to 'prove' that Shakespeare didn't write his own plays.
Ahem. I'm ranting again, aren't I?

*searches on Amazon...* OOOOOOOH! That one! I got it from the library once but then I had to return it before I got to read it >_<. They've put it out as paperback! Excellent! Now I'll get it ASAP! ^_^!

I'm not very familiar with Pushkin, I must admit.

I'm interested in Byron's relationship to the Shelleys. I thought it's so heart-breaking... ^.^; I'm such a sap.

I've always despised Percy Shelley, frankly. He's always annoyed me, and it bugs me that I can't quite figure out why. His poetry, I think, suffers from comparison to Byron's; Byron's seems more spare and quick moving compared to the drama of Shelley's. And I've always thought that Mary Shelley would have been quite a better match for Byron than Clair Clairemont, but then again, a poodle was better than Clairemont.

Hahahah poodle! XD!!!!

But I like Shelley! T_T I think he was spiffy and it's so sad that he had to die at such an early age. And even more so, it pains me that Byron never got to write a eulogy for him since I'm sure it would have been beautiful...

Poodle... *gets dirty ideas* I seem to remember something involving Byron and a goat... XD

Snerk. Well, they did refer to Lady Oxford as 'the spider' because of her malice, but that's not quite the same thing as a goat.
Shelley does not come across well in the letters that survive; he seems to me to be rather whiney and manipulative, and he may very well have resented Byron's status as peer of the realm. Shelley was impoverished all his life, and he abandoned his pregnant wife to run away with Mary. His first wife killed herself. He simply seemed to consider morals inconveniant, whereas Byron at least devoted some thought to them. When I read my first biography of Byron, and of course they mentioned Shelley's death, I have to say, my first response was, "Oh, thank God!"
I was eleven. I was an evil little sprog, even then. If the good die young, then one has to speculate on the fate of the mediocre. Maybe they just die stupid deaths, which I have to say, would gratify me immensely.

If the good die young, then one has to speculate on the fate of the mediocre. Maybe they just die stupid deaths, which I have to say, would gratify me immensely.

Heeeeh... that's a very good way to put it! So, the good die young, the mediocre die stupidly and the bad... die painfully? XD Meesa like you, I shall add you. *does so*

Anyway, most geniuses were stupid pricks, really. Look at Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud... they all were insufferable jerks and yet nobody ever got near them in their brilliance. So, I'm willing to give Shelley that. I like the letters he wrote. I have this book with a correspondence between him and Shelley and it moved me. I liked the "Gothic bohemian" lifestyle he, Mary and Byron created. Besides, I (usually) try to look seperately at an artist and his / her work. I hate it when people say "I don't get "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"... oh Coleridge did opium? Aaah that explains it all." That's silly, IMO. An artist can create beautiful things, no matter what kind of person he or she is.

Quite frankly, I think I could tolerate a lot more artists if they did take opium. Then again, maybe I should take some and that would make them tolerable.
I don't find drug-taking, alcohol abuse, or things of that nature to be so much revolting as they are sympathy-inducing. And Oscar Wilde was tremendously witty, whereas James Joyce was tedious, and I've never, ever, been able to slog through anything of his without feeling I was being punished. I think, too, that one can make a pretty good case for Rimbaud having mental illnesses. My unscientific definition of genius also refuses to classify somebody as a genius if they suffer from self-pity, self-importance, (as opposed to arrogance, which is fun to puncture)and terminal boringness.
I've actually had encoutners with some ...genii? Great, now I'm thinking of "I Dream of Jeanie." Anyway, I'm willing to grant people who are great artists a lot of slack, as long as their jerkhood takes the form of eccentricity or arrogance, and not actual crime. Someone like Roman Polanski, who raped a thirteen-year-old girl, and then fled the country, deserves to be punished by me till I'm tired of wapping sense into the stupid little wanker.
I personally think that Byron pretty much spoiled me for modern-day geniuses. He was good-looking, articulate, and was the original tortured artist, and bastard all in one. By all reports, he was tremendously witty. Unlike today's artists, he didn't makes excuses, or whine, he just lived life at full tilt, as only someone could in an era without antibiotics. That's exactly what we need today. I personally think the last heroic, flawed character we had this century was Winston Churchill. He was indeed a genius with deep flaws, but what a lot of people don't stop to realize is that his flaws, like Byron's, came from having an excess of character in a world full of people lacking enough character.
I keep running into these pallid little people who criticize people like Churchill or Byron(Christopher Hitchens,criticizing Churchill for his drinking!) as if by doing so they can reduce these larger-than-life charcters to mere mortal. That's why we just don't have interesting, flawed people in politics anymore; they'd be surrounded by numbers crunches, eager to drown them with stupid stuff.
Anyway, geniuses should be like Buffy's Spike---smart, tortured, a little evil, very witty, and possessed of great cheekbones.All others need not apply.

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A rant

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