#How to Stop Plagiarism

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

This Bizarre Situation Might Shock You — But It’s True

An overt plagiarism case that raises serious concerns. This story is a bit sensitive, so I’ll write it anonymously to protect the identities of those involved. My goal is to share this as a lesson for writers and readers — not to sensationalize the situation, but to emphasize its seriousness and discuss what we can do collectively to address it. Plagiarism has been an issue for ages. While…

[peachcitt]

punches you in the face. don’t use ai for stupid shit. hey. look me in the eyes. anything you want to ask gemini meta mr beast look-alike whatever the fuck you can just google. please just fucking read. is it that bad to think for yourself. is it too much to ask for you get your wrong answers and shitty party ideas from friends and family and strangers on the internet like god intended. jesus christ

[mercymaker]

ah yes, who doesn't love pouring hours into snapping photos, then editing them for twice as long, coming up with something a bit more interesting than *insert generic trope 5479* only to then *checks notes* get downvoted on reddit?!

[sadkachow]

how the fuck did my english class manage to take a semi-positive stance on generative ai

[notagaslightingcat]

correct me if i’m wrong: just learnt that there’s people putting AI generated fics on ao3 ITS FANFICTION?????????? YOU'RE NOT CHEATING FOR A GRADE?????????????????????????? AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO GENERATE AN ORIGINAL STORY AND TRY TO SELL IT FOR MONEY BECAUSE THAT WOULD ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE BECAUSE

YOU'RE USING AI. TO GENERATE. A FANFIC. YOU SAD LITTLE MUPPET HACK???????????????????????????????????????????????

go and gain some self-respect because you clearly do not have any if you’re using AI to generate a fic because where do you think the AI learnt how to write stories brother?????? BY STEALING ACTUAL AUTHORS WORK WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION AND THE SAME GOES FOR AI GENERATED ART TOO

[gibbearish]

ive seen ppl saying smth in the wider plagiarism discussion to the tune of "don't worry anxious people, it's impossible to accidentally plagiarize!" and i feel like that lacks a lot of nuance that anxious brains like mine latch on to to just dismiss the possibility outright, as well as a lack of life experiences fueling it.

it is possible to "accidentally plagiarize" in that you can read something, forget about it, then a while later have your brain spit the ideas back out without telling where it got them. so of course you just assume they're yours and share them as such, because That's Where Most Of The Thoughts In Your Head Come From! and it both is and isn't plagiarism, you weren't /intending/ to pass someone's else's work off as your own, i'd even say in a way you were just as much a victim of misinformation as your audience. but you very much so did still resuse the work of someone else, even if you don't remember it.

but in my experience, this kind of thing also happens to a lot of people. you tell a friend a joke then wake up in a cold sweat two days later realizing the reason they didnt laugh was because they'd told you that joke a month ago. you reply to a friend's text and after sending you realized you ended it with the same exact phrase as theirs. you're writing edgy poetry and write a line you really like only to see it in a text post two days later saying youve already liked the post. like, it happens. so if it DOES happens and you're just honest and explain, people will understand. something like "oh shit im sorry, i totally have read that, i mustve forgotten and only remembered bits and pieces and just thought they were mine. thank you for letting me know and for the source" works wonders.

people know you can forget things. people won't automatically doubt your apology just because all true plagiarists say it was accidental. HOPEFULLY people can understand the nuance between a genuine remorseful explanation, and a thief who hoped no one would find out scrambling for excuses for why they did it. and those who can't, that's a them problem, not a you problem, you've taken responsibility for your actions as much as you can. they think the answer is simple, that the only thing stopping you from saying "yes i did it on purpose, i knew the whole time and deliberately copied them" is shame/inability to admit to your actions. but sometimes things AREN'T that simple, so imo ppl who are shitty to you for not following the script they made up for you in their head should be ignored

[miraphoenix]

Right off the bean, this is not a callout post. I'd talk to the person this is about 1-on-1, but a) he's had me blocked for 4 years, and b) it's mutual. This is me venting on my personal blog, something that he decided to vague about me doing back when I had my first blog.

With that out of the way. I'm really fucking tired of people stealing from Valenth/Revecroir, and from its creator.

Years and years ago, when they were a literal child, my bff/queer life partner--for the purpose of this post, their name is Leupai--made lizard-critters with hands on their tongues and called them leupaks. Eventually, they ended up splitting off from Subeta where they worked at the time, making an affiliated petsite called Valenth where the leupaks featured quite prominently as creatures in a fantasy-meets-steampunk world.

Unfortunately, their boss was a piece of work, and following a rather large kerfluffle involving another petsite lifting other elements of my partner's work (namely, a dragon concept and a companion concept), my partner was fired by the Subeta head boss. The leupaks were renamed into leupai, and Valenth expanded into Revecroir. This was in 2014, give or take a few months.

Through about half of the Valenth era and into the Revecroir era, Leupai was dating someone else, who went by Sixar at the time, later Kismeti, and the two had a long-distance open relationship. Kismeti also did a fair amount of site art for Valenth, and described himself as Leupai's biggest fan; when he'd met Leupai originally, his username referenced leupaks, he had a bunch of leupak characters, and a leupak sona. I met both of them in 2013-2014, right around the close of Valenth, and started chatting with them both. Leupai was more responsive, Kismeti was more reserved, but I did the best I could.

Over the years, I kept trying to reach out to Kismeti, but found that Leupai was honestly more willing to talk with me, so I did become better friends with them. Note that I was friends with Leupai, and trying to be friends with Kismeti. We chatted, we sent memes, we played World of Warcraft, I bought folks pizza across the Pacific Ocean, you know the drill.

Through this, I became really familiar with Leupai's world, at that point named Revecroir. I got to know their lore, their worldbuilding, their current projects, and the leupai creatures themselves.

The leupai were--and are!--still fat lizards with paws on their tongues, who can open portals between worlds with acid in their claws, who transfer their consciousnesses to other bodies if one is destroyed, and whose strength comes from the realm of dreams and creativity. In the early days, in lore that wasn't publicized, leupai were roaming around to find a world to live on after Valenth. This was a project that was supposed to be worked on with Kismeti, but nothing really ever came of it. Eventually, Leupai kind of moved on from that storyline to write more about Revecroir itself.

At the same time, I tried asking Kismeti about his worldbuilding, because he had characters and allegedly a world of his own, but didn't really get a lot in the way of answers. I saw a lot of Sonic fanart, I saw a lot of homestuck, I saw a lot of MLP:FiM, I saw a lot of Captain Planet. Eventually, I kind of... Gave up asking? And that's on me, but frankly, if you ask someone to share their stuff and they don't share their stuff, I figure that's the signal to stop asking.

As time went on, though, I was seeing some cracks forming in the 10-year relationship between the two, and I was helping Leupai through a lot. I watched as he yelled at my best friend for not responding to messages fast enough. I watched as he made plans with Leupai and then fucked off to do other things for hours, leaving Leupai in the lurch and worried about his physical safety. I watched as he gaslit Leupai about their ability to use a computer. On one memorable instance, when Leupai's internet was unstable while we were all playing WoW together, Leupai left the voice call to go reset the router, and Kismeti decided that it was a great time to shit-talk Leupai's intelligence to me. For a half hour straight. Until Leupai rejoined the call.

Eventually, I visited Leupai in person and watched as they were broken down to tears by Kismeti failing to respect their boundaries for literal hours, until Leupai caved to Kismeti's preferences. That was a rough night, and I remember wondering why the fuck my best friend's partner was treating them so badly.

About a month and a half after I visited Leupai, they decided to break up with Kismeti, because they'd had enough of him verbally berating them for not responding fast enough to memes sent over instant message, among so many other things. He, to put it mildly, lost his shit.

(For the record, I know what went down, because Leupai had me read the messages sent back and forth, to make sure they were grounded, and were reading things right. I've seen logs going back 10 years. His original vague accused me of not knowing what I was talking about, but boy howdy I was either there, or have read the raw logs.)

Anyway, he begged for Leupai back. Leupai gave him a chance that he fucked up within a day. Leupai said goodbye and blocked him. He then started messaging me about this on discord, clearly trying to use me as a go-between to get to Leupai.

At the time, I was going through some Complex Feelings about my own abuse by various people in my life, triggered by his behavior, so was reblogging a lot of support stuff on my original blog. I guess he decided this was vaguing about him, because he made a vaguepost accusing me of not knowing all the details (unbeknownst to him, I'd read everything) and finally blocked me.

I figured this chapter in my life was done at this point, and moved the fuck on. Made a new blog because I didn't feel like getting all his shit off my old one, moved across the country, got a new job, the whole shebang. Leupai and I entered our odd QPP/partners/bffs/???? phase, and I genuinely didn't think much about him, unless I was helping listen to Leupai talk about stuff they'd gone through with him.

Until this year. When I saw some comment of his break containment and end up on my dash, under the name "riftclaw". I had a bit of an inkling, so I broke my "don't look" rule and looked at the linked toyhouse to confirm it was really him.

Turns out, riftclaws are... Lizard creatures. Who open portals between worlds with acid in their claws. Who are looking for a new world to call their own. And who have some divine properties, that may involve body switching.

And all of Kismeti/riftclaw's old leupai characters are now riftclaws.

Oh, and he was planning to make them into a closed species. To make money off them.

Now, leupai were decently popular back in the day. I still have leupai characters, and make some periodically from time to time. There's a tag on tumblr and everything; if you're reading this, there's a decent chance you remember Vee yourself, as a fair number of my followers were there too. People still talk about Valenth from time to time. Leupai still has a folder of old fanart from back in the day with some 800 pieces of art in it. They were, by all accounts, successful until they weren't.

But the height of popularity was back when Vee was still around, in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The only new stuff in the tags is from an archive blog of old Vee assets.

Despite that, though. And I know this from messages between the pair, I know that Kismeti tore into Leupai repeatedly for "being more popular" and "having more eyes on their work". Even though "those eyes" didn't keep Leupai fed or housed, or really give them any income. Even though "those eyes" meant getting 50 notes on a tumblr post as opposed to 20. Even though "those eyes" just increased thievery and the constant pressure to be a Content Creator(tm), and were a major part of what drove Leupai off the internet entirely starting in 2018.

So imagine. Imagine for a moment. Being so hungry for clout and attention. That you steal your ex-partner's species concept that they've had since they were literally 8 years old, barely file off the serial numbers, and then make that your entire online persona four full years after your partner broke up with your ass twice for being an abusive piece of shit over a 10-year timeframe.

To borrow my own tags from this post, which got me thinking about all of this again?

#This is all to say; if you're jealous of someone else's success? Fine. Go have your emotion. But don't lift their shit.#Your emotions are valid; your actions aren't.

(Oh, and this is the smallest thing in the world, the least important piece of this? Riftclaws are already a thing from a game released in 2016 called Grim Dawn.)

[charlieisacastle]

okay but why did the internet historian change 25 hours to 23??????? why????? why??? im going insane

[itzphynix]

I think somebody needs to take the AI that runs the YouTube rec algorithm out back & shoot it

[astranauticus]

idk what is it about that one throwaway line from han sooyoung about her writing 10 chapters in one day that finally broke me but oh my fuckin god i love her so much

[arviyya]

Hi, I've written to you before (I'm the greedy for ATOS Anon) idk if you remember.

But don't you think that marauders fandom is going in a really weird direction? Like, everyone criticizes each other lately, whether it's about fanarts, or ships, or not shipping specific couples or about whatever reason there can be.

I saw you re-blogged this Jegulus fanart and the comment section there is just disgusting. Why fans are doing this to each other, like, what's the problem with imagining NON-EXISTENT characters the way you want? Where this fandom heading to?

I once on tik-tok said I prefer Remus as a single man and I was literally eaten alive in comments, they said I'm homophobe, intolerant, transphobe etc etc. What happened to this community? It once was a safe space for anyone who needed and now I'm not sure anymore... I hope it's not too excessive of me to asking you and ranting about this, but I really wanted to know your opinion. If not, that's ok, don't feel forced to answer this and just ignore. Take care xxxx

Uhhh, and if anyone who spread this bulls**t comments and insults toward writers, art creators etc, is reading, I beg of you, hit your head with something heavy and try to think about being a better person.

Omg, hi 'greedy for ATOS' anon, of course I remember you. I'm gonna tell you something, writers who pay attention will always recognize the people who keep coming back, the usernames or in this case an identifier. We remember the readers who are gobbling up our work because you mean the world to us. Also, I just want to say I'm so happy there's at least one person out there who's greedy for tos. That story is so near and dear to my heart. I love rosekiller so much.

Anyway, to the matter at hand. This is going to be longer than I meant it to be, but that's okay. So before I go too deep into it, I dunno if you're a writer or a reader, or both, but before I say anything else, I just want to say there are definitely still safe spaces in fandom. They can be hard to find but they exist and persist. I'm very lucky to have found a good community of people who remind me everyday that fandom is still fun and silly and free. People who adhere strongly to the classic etiquette, such as 'ship and let ship' and 'you're kink is not my kink and that's okay' type of stuff. People who don't judge, and stick up for fellow creators, and don't put up with fandom bullying (which we've seen alot of in the last year).

So to answer your question, for the reasons listed above, I don't think the marauders fandom at it's core is going anywhere. Shitty people will come and go, and with the popularity of jegulus, it was inevitable to attract discourse like it has. That's human nature though, from what I've come to find. People like to argue, or stir the pot, or create contention. They like to get a rise out of people; but more than anything, I think some are just so angry in their heart - and they will find any excuse to unleash it. It's like a boiling pot and the steam just needs somewhere to go. There's truth in that saying - that misery loves company. And it's not just readers who do this - it's writer on writer - artist on artist. I'm not gonna lie to you anon, I've felt quite discouraged myself over the last several months too. It's hard to see the bullying and keep a good head in fandom sometimes. But you know what, despite all that, it's people like you who keep fandom alive and lovely, people who spread positivity and understand fandom etiquette. The more of us who give up on it, the less positivity fandom will have.

On a more specific level regarding that art, it does blow my mind that people are so bent out of shape about fictional characters. Here's the thing. Every. Single. Representation. Matters. Because humans aren't meant to be shoved into a box. And alot of people don't understand that. I'm a huge Jegulus fan even though I mostly write Rosekiller. My longest ongoing wip is a Jegulus wip. I love ALL jeg representations. Trans Reggie? yes please. Amab Masc Reggie? yes please. Cis straight Reggie? Absolutely. Poly jeg, yes. Tall James, yes. Short James, yes. Top James, yes. Switch James, yes. Bottom James, yes. All are just as valid as the next, and it's all of these interpretations (like you said) that makes fandom so rich. The thing is? that artist is a human being. People also forget about the person behind the screen, and their feelings were probably hurt and that's not fair to them. They're just doing what they love, and they're a really sweet person who didn't deserve that.

I'm sorry you had that experience on tiktok :( I can't say I'm all that surprised though. Tiktok isn't what I would consider the safest space. There are alot of people on there that just don't understand the rules of fandom etiquette, and are just so harsh to people in general. It's honestly a bit of a cesspool (I do use tiktok but I just don't interact a whole lot there)

Like I said, I have had similar worries and doubts as you do. But there are people who make it worthwhile, and I think the longevity is stronger than the hatred. My advice to you or anyone reading this is to curate your spaces. There's nothing wrong with doing this. Leave those servers, unfollow those people, block those posts, do whatever you need so that you can have a place that feels safe for you. Don't let anyone tell you not to do that. In fandom, there's no reason not to. This is supposed to be a place of enjoyment so you're within your right to keep it that way.

Safe spaces in fandom will always be there for those who need it; sometimes it's just about weeding out where those safe spaces are and being ruthless about it.

Anyway, thanks for asking anon, I know I'm preaching to the choir with alot of this, but hopefully some of the advice was helpful, and hopefully it gives you some hope about fandom <33

[northwestofinsanity]

I remember the days in which Citation Machine wasn’t owned by Chegg and swamped with AI features… when I could run my sources through to double-check that I cited everything in the correct format, and I didn’t have ads running over half my screen, and I didn’t have to either pay up or watch a two-minute sponsored message blocking my entire screen to make more than two citations.

[transfemgabriellamontez]

You willing to bet his next grift will be to become a Homofascist (in the Ernst Rohm way)?

I’m sorry if this is how you found out

[lifeofmarvvel]

why do all the laptops with features I want have AI installed onto them to the point they're making keys for them :/

[ddevil-decay]

my mom has been having the time of her life since i showed her how to watch concerts on youtube

[doomdoomofdoom]

Some more from the notes because this is the funniest shit I've ever seen

from @fennel-tea:

from @peachcat14:

from @aierie--dragonslayer:

from @thelealinhypehouse: