#ngl i'm fully prepared to possibly lose some followers over this but that's ok

[voidthewanderer]

I was gonna do this under a read more, but fuck it. You get to deal with me now.

Nothing is truly original and people need to get over this fact.

Yes, you can make original work, but someone, somewhere is going to find a correlation to an existing thing. It doesn't matter if the original work's artist has never seen what they're referencing, it came from somewhere.

The last truly original thing I have ever seen be created was the Cannonball Loop in Action Park, NJ. And you wanna know something about this monstrosity?

This thing never opened to the public because it was too dangerous even for the testers. Gene Mulvihill was apparently trying to pay people to try this death trap. His own son was even hesitant to try it. The last truly originally creative thing I've ever seen was a death trap waiting to happen.

Human creativity builds off of what it sees; changing it into something for an individual's own palette. A good portion of the time, it's a subconscious thing, you don't even realize that you create something that's similar to something else. It could be something even as simple as "I saw this thing a while back" and just forgot until you see it again.

I linked this before, and I'll link it again. TomSka's video on plagiarism in the arts. He talks specifically about his own experiences with plagiarism (both actual and not actual plagiarism). In all honesty, I do urge every creative to watch.

I shared this a while back specifically for his "Somerton Scale". Here it is typed out.

No Correlation -> Parallel Thinking -> Subconscious Appropriation -> Inspiration -> Influence -> Reference -> Allusion -> Derivative -> Imitative -> Cloning

So, obvious, the first point (no correlation) and final point (cloning) are straightforward. No plagiarism and blatant plagiarism. It's those in between points that I see far too many people get their fucking panties in a bunch. Most specifically, the two points I want to talk about; parallel thinking and subconscious appropriation.

The first two points kind of go hand in hand. Parallel thinking is the process of two unrelated people having the same idea. Now, why do I personally say that this goes hand in hand with subconscious appropriation? Well, there's a reason why certain riffs in music are called earworms or why an idea might sometimes be called a brainworm. You get an idea from somewhere that you love and you make it your own.

Let's take, for example, I dunno... Counting freckles on your partner. I can't begin to tell you how many times I have read this, quite frankly trope in free harlequin ebooks on Amazon. I used to have time to read a lot when I was younger and I didn't care what it was, as long as it was reading material. Did they all steal that idea from one another? No, they didn't. It's honestly a very human thing that actual real humans do. A person doing something to create a mental image of their partner; wanting to engrave every little detail into their minds. That is an adorable thought and a lot of people do it. I know I would.

It's these two points that I always see people throw the biggest, most absolute infantile tantrums. And, almost 98% of the time, it's always the only correlation between two pieces is the same idea. Yeah, you know my "Elect Death for President" art I recently did? I highly doubt I'm the first person to make art of such a dark concept. Especially since I even got the idea from the Wednesday 13 song of the same name. I'm also writing a fic based off the Creature Feature song A Gorey Demise, which was based off of The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Just because I'm using the lyrics of the song for the chapter titles, it doesn't mean it's plagiarism. Now, if I used the lyrics for the chapter titles, didn't tell anybody that it was based off of a song, and possibly changed the name of the story? Yeah, that might be a different story. But even then, that would more fall into the category of allusion (thinly).

As I previously mentioned, we see and hear things we like, it doesn't matter what the media is. Music, stories, movies, tv shows, even just the world around us, and locks it away into a place that we call our own. We make up our own little ideas based off of these things our minds take in; it gets twisted into our own personal tastes. Sometimes people just don't remember where they might get an idea from. Or, they do know, but it's just a small thing, it's not worth mentioning. That doesn't make an idea plagiarism.

Now, I wanna swing the topic slightly for a moment. Character creation and theft. I'm gonna be blunt with you guys, some of my characters are stolen... to a degree. What do I mean by this?

Savino and his brothers; they were all my and an ex-friend's rendition of The Midnight Crew from an old roleplay we'd had going on for like two years. Yes, Homestuck Midnight Crew. By the time I actually took control of the lot of them, they were shadows of their former selves; the only thing distinguishing them from what they were originally being that I hadn't actually made them human at that point or changed their names. If I'd never said anything, there's literally only like two people who would've known that they were originally a roleplay version of the homestuck characters.

The same thing with Jason. He's my former Turbo from my Wreck-It Ralph rp blog days. Now, granted, my Turbo was already pretty disjointed from WiR even in his initial creation, but once I left that era of my life, I didn't want to just throw him into the pit. I still wanted to use him for something; I loved him too much to do that. A fresh coat of paint, a new backstory, and he's now a part of my Fallout line up. Doesn't negate where he came from, however. But, again, if I hadn't said anything, only maybe two or three people would have known.

However, these characters are so disjointed from their original content that they're not that anymore and haven't been associated with their former selves for a long time. Without mentioning anything, most people would be none the wiser unless you previously knew me from those eras of my life. And I am still further developing these characters to further disjoint them from their origins. Vague references at best (Savino and his brothers initials being the same, as well as their crew still being called the Midnight Crew or Jason still sporting the facial markings I'd originally given my Turbo).

There's no real excuse to steal another person's character, however. Outright laying claim or using another person's character for any reason, especially without doing any sort of changes is no different than plagiarism. And, quite frankly, you must be quite the miserable person to do as such. Kinda makes me wonder, what else are you hiding.

Sure, it's possible to have a character that's similar to somebody else's without realizing it until someone points it out. It does happen, quite a lot. However, I also see it more often than naught someone just sees a character, hates how the original creator is portraying them, and then steals it. When they're called out about it, they throw a temper tantrum, claiming that it's totally their own character for sure. Some people are just cheeky cunts and extremely blatant about it.

Theft/plagiarism isn't something that should be taken lightly. Nor is it something that you should just throw around willy fucking nilly. It's a serious claim. And to claim something that you know doesn't actually fall under plagiarism/theft, honestly makes you a shit human being. It's time to learn that not everything you do isn't actually original.

I'll be the first to tell you, just because I ran my shit through a plagiarism checker and got 100% original content? Doesn't mean that I'm not the first person to come up with a brothel in a church or a scummy bad guy kidnapping someone for leverage to rule something. I'm not the first person to write two friends having drunken sex. And I know I won't be the last. You certainly aren't going to be the first to create your ideas either. But you also won't be the last, either.

Just, sit in your little bubble and create. And stay in your own goddamn lane. Unless it's actually, legitimately a beat-for-beat recreation of your work; just shut up. It's not as original as you might think it is.

#shut it void #ngl i'm fully prepared to possibly lose some followers over this but that's ok