#Sarah discussing important issues on her rp blog | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

resurgemus-hprp · 5 years

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So this is seriously not something we as admins have ever wanted to do, and we tried to avoid putting attention on one person’s unsubstantiated claims for as long as we could, but we see now that they are on an irrational crusade and will attempt to bring down anyone they can to support the idea that somehow, a canon character that only belongs to Joanne Kathleen Rowling, is actually exclusive to her. We tried to keep her name out of it, we tried to keep our name out of it. But this person has not extended this courtesy to us and so we feel it’s impossible for us to no longer say something when it’s being implied that plagiarism is something we tolerate in our roleplay.

For anyone who is blissfully unaware — and Lord, do we admins wish that we were too — our player Nina (@villainrps), who is our Lily Luna Potter, has been accused of plagiarizing her character from someone named Sarah (@marvolo, @lilys).

I would like to make one thing very clear. We admins did not know Nina or Sarah prior to this week. We are a new rp and we decided to create Resurgemus after taking a break from a different rpc because we wanted to play our favourite canon next-gens. We have no stake in taking a side in this battle. Protecting Nina does nothing for us. We were not Nina’s friends before she joined our RP and frankly, we only really became friends after the absurdity of this entire situation brought us together. We would not be bending over backwards to protect someone we barely knew if we did not honestly, fully believe that she had done nothing wrong.

When Sarah initially approached us with these accusations, we took them very seriously. I (Admin S) discovered one of my OCs had been plagiarized this week as well, and Admin L has had this happen to her before too, so we know the severity of plagiarism and how awful it can feel to see your hard work stolen.

We initially assumed that Sarah was approaching us about an OC, because no one but the creator of a canon character can claim ownership over them, but we kept open-minds because Sarah said she had damning evidence that would prove Nina’s Lily was a carbon copy.

She shared these proofs with us, we both examined them carefully, and even had other people — outside of the rp community mind you, and people who don’t know Sarah or Nina — take a look as well.

We all came to the same conclusion: that while their portrayals of Lily were somewhat similar (as many next gen characterizations tend to be), there was nothing close enough to suggest paraphrasing, let alone straight up plagiarizing.

I (Admin S) am a journalist. Plagiarism is an extremely important part of my job, and I have a very critical eye when it comes to it. But the only commonalities were a generic fanon portrayal of Lily — yes of course, she always knew she was going to be Gryffindor, everyone writes Lily as the most Gryffindor to ever Gryffindor — and similarly flowery writing styles. Many rpers have that writing style. Personally, I do not, because again — as a journalist — flowery writing has been cut out of me in exchange for concise, snappy phrasing. I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain that people can have similar writing styles unintentionally. You develop your writing style based on the writing you read, and it’s not hard to imagine that many people in the hprpc read the same types of fiction.

In our eyes, this situation is as equally irrational as claiming that a Ben Barnes fc for Sirius Black that likes to cause trouble and flirt and has a headcanon about him going to muggle clubs and/or smoking or something belongs ton one person and anyone else who writes the same type of thing is copying. They’re common portrayals. More than one person is bound to have the same idea because everyone is picking from the same source material.

Another point I would like to address is this idea that as admins we handled this “irresponsibly”. Sarah never told us she wanted to remain anonymous until after we told her we disagreed with her interpretation of the situation. After the fact, she got upset and claimed that we should have told her. I don’t know how she expected us to address this without giving Nina a fair chance to defend herself — that’s not how life works. If you make massive, severe accusations like this, the accused gets to know what’s going on. We weren’t just going to kick her out willy nilly. We also gave her the screenshots she demanded to further show that we had nothing to hide.

Sarah claimed she wanted to be anonymous to protect herself from harassment when she was the one that on her own admission said she would follow Nina from blog to blog to keep an eye on her Lily. She was the harasser in this situation. I hope I don’t need to tell you that that is creepy. If she’d suspected this for so long, she could’ve said something much sooner. Watching someone for years is stalking, no matter how you slice it.

Furthermore, the way she is handling the situation is immature and irresponsible. She blocks anyone who tries to reason with her, and frankly has made both admins feel gaslit and has done the incredibly manipulative move of threatening to harm herself because of how this is making her feel. We’ve read her “evidence” over and over trying to figure out if we’re missing something with how convinced she is that something has been stolen from her, and we’ve noticed nothing. It’s getting to the point where we’re starting to doubt ourselves because of Sarah’s obsession with victimizing herself, and so this is going to be the only thing we say on this topic. We wanted to post this to defend ourselves, and to defend Nina, and while I’m sure Sarah will find a way to warp this to make us seem like the bad guys, we want to make it clear: the only person in the wrong here is her.

We tried to help her sort through this by letting her know that Nina was happy to discuss the issue with her — since Nina knows she’s done nothing wrong — but in that conversation she also gaslit Nina, accused her of lying over and over, and then had the audacity to imply that Nina stole her Lily characterization for a different, canon character in an entirely different fandom.

The self-absorption is staggering. The implication that her Lily is memorable enough to be used as the basis for a Shadowhunters character (Emma Carstairs) instead of Nina just making her own character and then using her own character as basis for her Lily is laughable at best. It’s always nice for people to connect with fictional characters, but when it gets to the point that you’re tossing out baseless accusations, that’s the point where it gets unhealthy.

We don’t like being threatened, and we stand by our players 100 percent.

However, Sarah, as I said, has been posting some concerning content so I want to reiterate that no one should be harassing her, and I encourage her to reach out to people she trusts for support if this situation has made her mental health deteriorate. RP is supposed to make you feel better, not worse.

This is the last we’ll be saying about the matter. To all our players, we’re sorry about this and we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled activity now. Heads up, a plot drop is coming soon!

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