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I've been musing on this subject, not for the first time, since my post last night about wanna be X writers. When is plagiarism not plagiarism or rather when is it acceptable to recycle the ideas of others in writing and at what point do you cross the line from being influenced by to ripping off?
Plagiarism - true plagiarism as I think of it - is easy to define:
a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own.
So, it's easy to identify where someone, within the fanfiction world, has taken someone else's words and presented them as their own. As an archivist I've had the unpleasant task of dealing with this kind of plagiarist, one who took paragraphs and sentences from a variety of online works, changed the names, cobbled it together and posted it as her own. It's pretty clear that this was a) plagiarism and b) intentional, no matter how the author tried to explain it away. (As it turned out, even the 'author' was a fabrication, someone who 'died' on being confronted with the evidence that I drew together and yet, when I discovered how to track IP addresses I also discovered that they didn't exist - at least not where they said they did, and the 'friend' who reported the 'death' to me also, strangely enough, had the same ISP and location.)
But I digress. What I'm really interested in is the second part of that definition:
taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own
So, given that definition - taking someone's ideas as if they were your own - at what point does the spread of fanon become plagiarism? At what point does Daniel in jammies, or Jack's parents cooing over Daniel and their son's new discovered 'gayness' stop being a matter of influence of a well known and oft imitated writer and cross that line from imitation to stealing? I should be clear that I'm not suggesting in any way, shape or form that the writer of the story that started these musings is a plagiarist - they just had the unfortunate luck to be the story that crystallised my thoughts. In the fanfiction world at least, I tend to apply the first definition of plagiarism, the one concerning use of words, and ignore the second. Someone famous and pithy once said that there are only 10 basic plot ideas and all stories are based, to a certain extent, on one of them. I wish I could remember who to attribute that to. I think that's true to a certain extent, and, when writing fanfiction, we're even further constrained in that we're all working from the same canonical base. There may be 10 basic plots, but probably an infinite number of ways of presenting those plots through original characters. When you're limited to presenting it through a set number of characters who have their own defined personality quirks that pool of ideas becomes much smaller. That doesn't mean, however, that it's impossible to produce fresh and original works, but if my Daniel is like X's Daniel how much of that is due to us interpreting Daniel in the same way from canon and how much is that due to us subconsciously picking up trends from other writers, including each other?
The fandom world is a small one. No one can say with hand on heart that they haven't been influenced, whether good or bad, by another fanfiction writer - even if that influence is negative. With Words, for example, I'm very clear that one of the reasons I wrote it was because I had real problems with the characterisation of both Daniel and Jack in some of the stories I'd read with a similar premise. However, I also don't think that anyone could say that Words was plagiarised, even in the second sense of the word. I may have been 'inspired' to write the story but that's because one of the reasons I write fanfiction is to investigate the things I know will never be explored in canon, and now it appears that I will also write fanfiction to explore the things I don't believe have been explored in other fanfiction stories either, at least not the way I wanted them explored. But the premise behind Words was nothing new - I didn't take it from one author's stories; it's a cliched plot device, used in a multitude of fandoms, and my problem was not with the idea behind it but the execution.
So no one is immune to that kind of influence, certainly not me. If we were immune we wouldn't be subject to fanon. In fact, if we were immune we wouldn't be writing fanfiction.
But at what point does that unconscious influence and writing it into your own stories stop being the proliferation of fanon and becomes something else? And at what point should or does an author start to take offence?
I think a lot of writers see similarities between their stories and others. As writers we tend to read with both the intention of being entertained and to learn from others. Maybe we don't set out to consciously mimic the style of others, but we do pick up tips and tricks from one another, at least if we write with any attempt at improving. But at what point does that 'seeing similarities' become 'seeing plagiarism'? And at what point do those similarities cross the line? I suspect that depends on the author who sees the similarities in the first place. As an archivist I've received complaints from an author about plagiarism of her stories by X when neither I, or anyone else, could see any similarity. I suspect that's due to a combination of touchiness about your own work anyway and a basic personality conflict, even if the accusation wasn't meant as malicious. So was she right to make a big deal of it? With my archivist hat on my answer is an unequivocal 'no'. With my author hat on, I'm not so sure.
You see, I've not been immune from being subject to 'plagiarism' in its myriad forms myself (and I use the quotation marks deliberately). I've had sentences from my stories appear in stories by others, including our later unmasked plagiarist. That actually lead me to second guess myself and wonder whether if in that case I had gone with my temporary pissed offness and made an issue about it rather than simply getting pissed for 30 seconds then deciding that it wasn't worth bothering about would have nipped the problem in the bud. Given that our plagiarist wasn't 'real' I suspect not. In other cases I've had people mail me and say 'this is slightly similar to X of yours, do you mind?' In those cases the answer is 'no'. In fact, I've been obscurely flattered. I suspect that it's a question not only of 'intent', as in delibereately recycling someone else's ideas and words without considering any questions of morality, but also of respect. The very fact of acknowledging the source, of considering the feelings of the author in question, has to have an influence on how the similarities are perceived. Politeness and consideration act as the oil on the wheels of the fandom machine.
A case in point - I've also had the idea from one of my PWPs recycled into someone else's story, handed to me with a rather cryptic 'you're going to like this one'. When I got to that scene, I wondered whether this was what I was supposed to like? What if it wasn't? What if I mentioned it and the author got all sniffy about it? As it was, when I rather tentatively mentioned 'I notice that you had this...' I got a 'Yes, I knew you'd like it! It's a homage.' I told myself I shouldn't get pissy about it, that it was a homage, that I should be flattered and that if I was really that bothered I should have pursued it even though I knew it would get unpleasant.
And then the story was posted with no mention of 'homage'.
The problem, of course, was the lack of 'respect'. Instead of being asked if I minded I was placed in the position of supplicant. I had to read it, and thought I was reading it because the author thought I would enjoy it. Coming across the scene in question was therefore an unpleasant surprise, hence all of the angsting on my part about whether to raise it at all. And my first, tentative attempt to raise the issue was dismissed which lead me to dropping the subject while feeling obscurely resentful about it. It's just a PWP, I told myself. It shouldn't matter. But, of course, it did.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that if I'm going to be a coward about these things, I should have to live with the consequences. I strongly suspect, as well, that I'm overreacting and being touchy. Again, there was no malice in it - it was just thoughtlessness.
So, is that all this recycling of ideas are? Simple thoughtlessness on the part of the author, or even an unawareness of the fact that they are recycling? A bleeding of ideas from one author to another, consciously or not? And given that we're writing fanfiction, and therefore recycling ideas and characters anyway does anyone have the right to get upset? Be pissy? Do we have any right whatsoever to anything other than our words and screw the idea of 'plagiarisim of ideas'?
In all of my musings, I haven't come to a conclusion on that one. One thing I have noticed, however, is that the comfort level for other writers and other fandoms seems to vary considerably. In some fandoms it seems to me that nothing is thought of writing a sequel to someone's work without asking whereas in others work is scoured for the slightest similarity and then rocks are thrown. I think if nothing else this ramble has shown me that I fall somewhere in the middle. I've realised that for me personally my comfort level is only messed with when it's an obvious reference to someone's work rather than vague, and for me personally that means specific ideas and images that are obviously inspired by a work rather than superficial similarities - I'm not claiming everyone has the same measure, but then that's part of the problem, isn't it - and that inspiration doesn't even merit the basic respect of an acknowledgement. I don't need to give 'permission' but I would like to know about it. And that's the route I've adopted as an archivist. It's called 'politeness' in my book. As an archivist it's how I square writing fanfiction at all with showing other writers at least the same respect shown the writers of the show I archive for, in acknowledging the source. On a personal level, and again I'm emphasising this is my personal comfort zone and I don't expect everyone else to feel the same way, I'd ask first probably. But, then, hell, I'm the person who acknowledged the author who first included 'red speedos' in New Pros fic even though the idea came up in chat when a lot of us were there so I probably err on the side of caution. And one thing I don't want to see is disclaimers coming out of the wazoo. As I've said, I think some element of cross pollination of ideas is inevitable within a fandom community. We feed off each other almost as much as we feed off the show, or we wouldn't be in these communities.
But I think that still leaves the basic question unresolved. When is 'plagiarism' not?
[Edit: I should also clarify that the reason I think more 'courtesy' as it were is owed to fanfiction authors than, say the owners of the show, is that because I'm not in the habit of sending my stories out to places where they could, to my knowledge, end up in the inboxes of the Powers that Be. Not saying it couldn't happen, of course, but that's one of the reasons I personally would ask if I felt I'd crossed the line. There's a big difference between being a writer on a show and knowing that fanfiction exists and being on a mailing list, opening up a story by someone else and seeing an idea of yours staring you right in the face. That's just my opinion, of course, but it's how I live with myself :)]
Plagiarism - true plagiarism as I think of it - is easy to define:
a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2: the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own.
So, it's easy to identify where someone, within the fanfiction world, has taken someone else's words and presented them as their own. As an archivist I've had the unpleasant task of dealing with this kind of plagiarist, one who took paragraphs and sentences from a variety of online works, changed the names, cobbled it together and posted it as her own. It's pretty clear that this was a) plagiarism and b) intentional, no matter how the author tried to explain it away. (As it turned out, even the 'author' was a fabrication, someone who 'died' on being confronted with the evidence that I drew together and yet, when I discovered how to track IP addresses I also discovered that they didn't exist - at least not where they said they did, and the 'friend' who reported the 'death' to me also, strangely enough, had the same ISP and location.)
But I digress. What I'm really interested in is the second part of that definition:
taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own
So, given that definition - taking someone's ideas as if they were your own - at what point does the spread of fanon become plagiarism? At what point does Daniel in jammies, or Jack's parents cooing over Daniel and their son's new discovered 'gayness' stop being a matter of influence of a well known and oft imitated writer and cross that line from imitation to stealing? I should be clear that I'm not suggesting in any way, shape or form that the writer of the story that started these musings is a plagiarist - they just had the unfortunate luck to be the story that crystallised my thoughts. In the fanfiction world at least, I tend to apply the first definition of plagiarism, the one concerning use of words, and ignore the second. Someone famous and pithy once said that there are only 10 basic plot ideas and all stories are based, to a certain extent, on one of them. I wish I could remember who to attribute that to. I think that's true to a certain extent, and, when writing fanfiction, we're even further constrained in that we're all working from the same canonical base. There may be 10 basic plots, but probably an infinite number of ways of presenting those plots through original characters. When you're limited to presenting it through a set number of characters who have their own defined personality quirks that pool of ideas becomes much smaller. That doesn't mean, however, that it's impossible to produce fresh and original works, but if my Daniel is like X's Daniel how much of that is due to us interpreting Daniel in the same way from canon and how much is that due to us subconsciously picking up trends from other writers, including each other?
The fandom world is a small one. No one can say with hand on heart that they haven't been influenced, whether good or bad, by another fanfiction writer - even if that influence is negative. With Words, for example, I'm very clear that one of the reasons I wrote it was because I had real problems with the characterisation of both Daniel and Jack in some of the stories I'd read with a similar premise. However, I also don't think that anyone could say that Words was plagiarised, even in the second sense of the word. I may have been 'inspired' to write the story but that's because one of the reasons I write fanfiction is to investigate the things I know will never be explored in canon, and now it appears that I will also write fanfiction to explore the things I don't believe have been explored in other fanfiction stories either, at least not the way I wanted them explored. But the premise behind Words was nothing new - I didn't take it from one author's stories; it's a cliched plot device, used in a multitude of fandoms, and my problem was not with the idea behind it but the execution.
So no one is immune to that kind of influence, certainly not me. If we were immune we wouldn't be subject to fanon. In fact, if we were immune we wouldn't be writing fanfiction.
But at what point does that unconscious influence and writing it into your own stories stop being the proliferation of fanon and becomes something else? And at what point should or does an author start to take offence?
I think a lot of writers see similarities between their stories and others. As writers we tend to read with both the intention of being entertained and to learn from others. Maybe we don't set out to consciously mimic the style of others, but we do pick up tips and tricks from one another, at least if we write with any attempt at improving. But at what point does that 'seeing similarities' become 'seeing plagiarism'? And at what point do those similarities cross the line? I suspect that depends on the author who sees the similarities in the first place. As an archivist I've received complaints from an author about plagiarism of her stories by X when neither I, or anyone else, could see any similarity. I suspect that's due to a combination of touchiness about your own work anyway and a basic personality conflict, even if the accusation wasn't meant as malicious. So was she right to make a big deal of it? With my archivist hat on my answer is an unequivocal 'no'. With my author hat on, I'm not so sure.
You see, I've not been immune from being subject to 'plagiarism' in its myriad forms myself (and I use the quotation marks deliberately). I've had sentences from my stories appear in stories by others, including our later unmasked plagiarist. That actually lead me to second guess myself and wonder whether if in that case I had gone with my temporary pissed offness and made an issue about it rather than simply getting pissed for 30 seconds then deciding that it wasn't worth bothering about would have nipped the problem in the bud. Given that our plagiarist wasn't 'real' I suspect not. In other cases I've had people mail me and say 'this is slightly similar to X of yours, do you mind?' In those cases the answer is 'no'. In fact, I've been obscurely flattered. I suspect that it's a question not only of 'intent', as in delibereately recycling someone else's ideas and words without considering any questions of morality, but also of respect. The very fact of acknowledging the source, of considering the feelings of the author in question, has to have an influence on how the similarities are perceived. Politeness and consideration act as the oil on the wheels of the fandom machine.
A case in point - I've also had the idea from one of my PWPs recycled into someone else's story, handed to me with a rather cryptic 'you're going to like this one'. When I got to that scene, I wondered whether this was what I was supposed to like? What if it wasn't? What if I mentioned it and the author got all sniffy about it? As it was, when I rather tentatively mentioned 'I notice that you had this...' I got a 'Yes, I knew you'd like it! It's a homage.' I told myself I shouldn't get pissy about it, that it was a homage, that I should be flattered and that if I was really that bothered I should have pursued it even though I knew it would get unpleasant.
And then the story was posted with no mention of 'homage'.
The problem, of course, was the lack of 'respect'. Instead of being asked if I minded I was placed in the position of supplicant. I had to read it, and thought I was reading it because the author thought I would enjoy it. Coming across the scene in question was therefore an unpleasant surprise, hence all of the angsting on my part about whether to raise it at all. And my first, tentative attempt to raise the issue was dismissed which lead me to dropping the subject while feeling obscurely resentful about it. It's just a PWP, I told myself. It shouldn't matter. But, of course, it did.
Of course, the truth of the matter is that if I'm going to be a coward about these things, I should have to live with the consequences. I strongly suspect, as well, that I'm overreacting and being touchy. Again, there was no malice in it - it was just thoughtlessness.
So, is that all this recycling of ideas are? Simple thoughtlessness on the part of the author, or even an unawareness of the fact that they are recycling? A bleeding of ideas from one author to another, consciously or not? And given that we're writing fanfiction, and therefore recycling ideas and characters anyway does anyone have the right to get upset? Be pissy? Do we have any right whatsoever to anything other than our words and screw the idea of 'plagiarisim of ideas'?
In all of my musings, I haven't come to a conclusion on that one. One thing I have noticed, however, is that the comfort level for other writers and other fandoms seems to vary considerably. In some fandoms it seems to me that nothing is thought of writing a sequel to someone's work without asking whereas in others work is scoured for the slightest similarity and then rocks are thrown. I think if nothing else this ramble has shown me that I fall somewhere in the middle. I've realised that for me personally my comfort level is only messed with when it's an obvious reference to someone's work rather than vague, and for me personally that means specific ideas and images that are obviously inspired by a work rather than superficial similarities - I'm not claiming everyone has the same measure, but then that's part of the problem, isn't it - and that inspiration doesn't even merit the basic respect of an acknowledgement. I don't need to give 'permission' but I would like to know about it. And that's the route I've adopted as an archivist. It's called 'politeness' in my book. As an archivist it's how I square writing fanfiction at all with showing other writers at least the same respect shown the writers of the show I archive for, in acknowledging the source. On a personal level, and again I'm emphasising this is my personal comfort zone and I don't expect everyone else to feel the same way, I'd ask first probably. But, then, hell, I'm the person who acknowledged the author who first included 'red speedos' in New Pros fic even though the idea came up in chat when a lot of us were there so I probably err on the side of caution. And one thing I don't want to see is disclaimers coming out of the wazoo. As I've said, I think some element of cross pollination of ideas is inevitable within a fandom community. We feed off each other almost as much as we feed off the show, or we wouldn't be in these communities.
But I think that still leaves the basic question unresolved. When is 'plagiarism' not?
[Edit: I should also clarify that the reason I think more 'courtesy' as it were is owed to fanfiction authors than, say the owners of the show, is that because I'm not in the habit of sending my stories out to places where they could, to my knowledge, end up in the inboxes of the Powers that Be. Not saying it couldn't happen, of course, but that's one of the reasons I personally would ask if I felt I'd crossed the line. There's a big difference between being a writer on a show and knowing that fanfiction exists and being on a mailing list, opening up a story by someone else and seeing an idea of yours staring you right in the face. That's just my opinion, of course, but it's how I live with myself :)]
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