The last original idea
I've been thinking a lot about plagiarism these days. It started off with a conversation with my dad about reading habits and writing. My dad and I have had many of these kinds of arguments fights screaming matches discussions about this subject over the years. He maintains that the books he reads are more "valuable" because they discuss "real issues" rather than the "frivolous, time-wasting" novels that I read.
He doesn't actually use those words, usually he's speaking in Chinese.
Our last talk derailed into one about intellectualism in general. He told me about how his column writing (for an architectural journal) has really helped to organize and clear his mind of minutiae and irrelevance. He said he could now more easily express himself in other forms and do his work more efficiently. He urged me to write something everyday, and I am trying that. He'll probably read this eventually so, thanks dad!
After we had this conversation, I started wondering about what I could even come up with to write every day. I thought about different formats I could try. A journal of lists? Linkage to other sites and articles? Actually go back and review the many, many books I've read? What could I do that was interesting, not too derivative, and worthy of someone reading? I don't have an answer yet, obviously. This is still an experiment. Maybe I'll try one of those "30 days of ____" memes, but I don't want my entries to solely consist of that content.
Oops, diverged a bit from my original point. Back to it.
So yesterday I was speaking to one of my colleagues and he mentioned that he'd caught most of his students plagiarizing. He'd assigned them a research assignment (for many of them, it was their first such assignment) and quite a few of them lifted text straight from textbooks, online journals that he'd read, and wikipedia. Being a nice guy, all he did was take off a significant portion of their grades. He also gave a big speech to all of his classes, naming the biggest offenders. I honestly hope they learn from their mistakes. Our school specializes in sending students to prestigious universities. If they try to pull that shit over there they'll be ripped to shreds.
Now to this morning. Quite inadvertently, while skipping around the TV tropes wiki (I won't link because it is a major black hole of time wasting, and even going to its home page will prompt me to start reading), I stumbled on to a page about Cassandra Claire's "Draco Trilogy". Having been a crazy HP fangirl back in my day, I had, of course, read about half the series. I ended up losing interest halfway through "Draco Sinister" as I felt it had gotten too soap-opera-y (or possibly I got distracted, it was a long time ago, and I think that was the year I found Anne Rice).
The page mentioned a plagiarism scandal and linked to an article written by one of the major players, Avacado. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and spent the whole morning completely engrossed in the long, long article. Tl;dr version, Avacado discovered Claire had taken entire chunks of prose from a series called The Secret Country by Pamela Dean, only changing minor details like character names and adding lines to make the stolen text fit her story. She also failed to cite correctly, and when blacklisted for plagiarism tried to backtrack and claim she was in the process of asking Dean for permission.
In addition to the blatant theft of Dean's work, Claire also ripped lines and entire dialogues from TV shows. These she vaguely credited, saying that she enjoyed using lines from her favorite shows, and wasn't the point of fanfiction to take inspiration from elsewhere and mishmash things together?
This is where it gets a little fuzzy in my mind. I'm always terrified of accidental plagiarism, that I'll half-remember a story or a line from something and attribute it to myself. While I acknowledge the fact that hardly anything is completely original anymore, I'd like to think that I'm clever enough to come up with my own words.
The funny thing is, what I found most offensive about Claire's plagiarism was not how shamelessly she pulled it off (and how the fans reacted, saying she was so witty for coming up with her sparkling dialogue), but how badly she did it. I reread a bit of "Draco Dormiens" and was disgusted by how OOC some of the characters were. Whenever she used a quote from a TV show or movie, it was jarringly obvious. It was clear that did not put much thought into mishmashing the quotes into comprehensible dialogue.
There was a lot of kerfuffle about legal ramifications too. I can't claim to have any expertise on that stuff. I honestly can't say whether or not plagiarism is illegal when it comes to fan fiction. I do know that, for me at least, plagiarism is unethical under any circumstances. I would be just as mad if someone stole my review of a book on goodreads as I would be if I were a published author who'd had months of my work and words re-purposed in someone else's oeuvre.
Yeah, I said oeuvre.
LMAO a colleague just came in and reminded me of room 101 in 1984, which is, consequently, the room in which I work.
He doesn't actually use those words, usually he's speaking in Chinese.
Our last talk derailed into one about intellectualism in general. He told me about how his column writing (for an architectural journal) has really helped to organize and clear his mind of minutiae and irrelevance. He said he could now more easily express himself in other forms and do his work more efficiently. He urged me to write something everyday, and I am trying that. He'll probably read this eventually so, thanks dad!
After we had this conversation, I started wondering about what I could even come up with to write every day. I thought about different formats I could try. A journal of lists? Linkage to other sites and articles? Actually go back and review the many, many books I've read? What could I do that was interesting, not too derivative, and worthy of someone reading? I don't have an answer yet, obviously. This is still an experiment. Maybe I'll try one of those "30 days of ____" memes, but I don't want my entries to solely consist of that content.
Oops, diverged a bit from my original point. Back to it.
So yesterday I was speaking to one of my colleagues and he mentioned that he'd caught most of his students plagiarizing. He'd assigned them a research assignment (for many of them, it was their first such assignment) and quite a few of them lifted text straight from textbooks, online journals that he'd read, and wikipedia. Being a nice guy, all he did was take off a significant portion of their grades. He also gave a big speech to all of his classes, naming the biggest offenders. I honestly hope they learn from their mistakes. Our school specializes in sending students to prestigious universities. If they try to pull that shit over there they'll be ripped to shreds.
Now to this morning. Quite inadvertently, while skipping around the TV tropes wiki (I won't link because it is a major black hole of time wasting, and even going to its home page will prompt me to start reading), I stumbled on to a page about Cassandra Claire's "Draco Trilogy". Having been a crazy HP fangirl back in my day, I had, of course, read about half the series. I ended up losing interest halfway through "Draco Sinister" as I felt it had gotten too soap-opera-y (or possibly I got distracted, it was a long time ago, and I think that was the year I found Anne Rice).
The page mentioned a plagiarism scandal and linked to an article written by one of the major players, Avacado. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and spent the whole morning completely engrossed in the long, long article. Tl;dr version, Avacado discovered Claire had taken entire chunks of prose from a series called The Secret Country by Pamela Dean, only changing minor details like character names and adding lines to make the stolen text fit her story. She also failed to cite correctly, and when blacklisted for plagiarism tried to backtrack and claim she was in the process of asking Dean for permission.
In addition to the blatant theft of Dean's work, Claire also ripped lines and entire dialogues from TV shows. These she vaguely credited, saying that she enjoyed using lines from her favorite shows, and wasn't the point of fanfiction to take inspiration from elsewhere and mishmash things together?
This is where it gets a little fuzzy in my mind. I'm always terrified of accidental plagiarism, that I'll half-remember a story or a line from something and attribute it to myself. While I acknowledge the fact that hardly anything is completely original anymore, I'd like to think that I'm clever enough to come up with my own words.
The funny thing is, what I found most offensive about Claire's plagiarism was not how shamelessly she pulled it off (and how the fans reacted, saying she was so witty for coming up with her sparkling dialogue), but how badly she did it. I reread a bit of "Draco Dormiens" and was disgusted by how OOC some of the characters were. Whenever she used a quote from a TV show or movie, it was jarringly obvious. It was clear that did not put much thought into mishmashing the quotes into comprehensible dialogue.
There was a lot of kerfuffle about legal ramifications too. I can't claim to have any expertise on that stuff. I honestly can't say whether or not plagiarism is illegal when it comes to fan fiction. I do know that, for me at least, plagiarism is unethical under any circumstances. I would be just as mad if someone stole my review of a book on goodreads as I would be if I were a published author who'd had months of my work and words re-purposed in someone else's oeuvre.
Yeah, I said oeuvre.
LMAO a colleague just came in and reminded me of room 101 in 1984, which is, consequently, the room in which I work.