Alright listen up guys because I am really pissed off right now and I have something that needs to be said.
Everyone’s always talking about how fucking horrible it is to have art stolen and reposted and that if you repost art you are a shitty person and the scum of the earth. Now, while I agree that reposting art is a pretty shitty thing to do, there is something else that people tend to overlook a lot that is just as bad, if not ten times worse.
Writers are constantly thrown under the bus. People fawn over fanart and commission people for prints and worship fanartists and get so fucking pissed when their favorite artists’ work is reposted. But writers don’t get that kind of attention. Writers slave for weeks and months and years to write long and intricate stories that will get 1,000 views IF THEY’RE LUCKY. They’ll get a few comments IF THEY’RE LUCKY. No one wants to pay for fanfiction. Only a select few writers are worshipped for their fics that are known throughout the entire fandom. Writers are so under-appreciated, and unfortunately, that means that their problems get swept under the rug as well.
Writers have their work stolen too. I know three people including myself who have been plagiarized within the past year or so. People copy fanfiction. They copy/paste fics from one site to another or sometimes they copy someone’s fanfic idea exactly and only change the dialogue and descriptions slightly so that it looks vaguely different. Let me tell you something. One of my best friends was plagiarized recently, and she has also had art reposted before. She said having her writing plagiarized hurts a lot worse than having art reposted.
A lot of times, when art is reposted, it’s an honest mistake by the person who reposted it. They didn’t know they were supposed to ask permission before reposting. A lot of times, people are very apologetic when reposting art and take it down if it is asked of them. I’m not saying that this is the case in EVERY situation, but the majority of the time, it is.
With plagiarism, THERE ARE NO FUCKING HONEST MISTAKES. TO PLAGIARIZE SOMEONE, YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY TAKE THE TIME TO COPY/PASTE SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK AND CHANGE IT SLIGHTLY IN HOPES THAT YOU WON’T GET CAUGHT, AND PASS IT OFF AS YOUR OWN ORIGINAL WORK. THAT IS NOT FUCKING OKAY. YOU DON’T TO THAT TO SOMEONE, DO YOU EVEN KNOW HOW MUCH OF A SHITTY PERSON THAT MAKES YOU!?
Plagiarism is a lot harder to deal with than reposted art is. It’s easy to prove that you are the artist of your drawing if it gets stolen because most likely you will have other art pieces with the same style, and you’ll have a watermark on it. Those things prove that the art belongs to you, and if someone isn’t cooperative in taking the reposted art down, it’s easy to report it or have a swarm of people sending comments to take it down.
With plagiarism, it is a lot harder to get that sorted out. Writing styles are so different even when it comes to one author. It is very rare that you can tell who an author is just by reading their writing. I’ve read some fics that are so good and in character, you’d think the author of the original book wrote it. Most people reading a plagiarized fanfic won’t even know that it’s been stolen. I’ve actually been accused of having plagiarized my own story before, just because someone had read the copied fic before they read my original fic!! Whats worse, a lot of plagiarists will defend themselves to the death and try to make themselves look like the victim!!!
And it’s harder to find plagiarized fics, especially for me, because I don’t check the tags on ao3 and every other fanfic site to see if my work has been stolen. I don’t have the time to go through every fanfic in every tag for every shp that I’ve ever written for every day to make sure that my work wasn’t copied!!!
Do you even understand how stressful it is, how upsetting, to have your writing stolen!? To have spent days and weeks on writing something, only to have someone else post a fic that’s almost exactly the same!? Especially if it ends up getting more views or comments or kudos than yours!? It’s one of the most horrible experiences that I’d ever been through!
When I was plagiarized, I didn’t want to write anything for weeks. I was so afraid that it would happen again. To this day, I am still afraid that it will happen. I am so, so afraid. I don’t know what I would do if I found out that one of my series was being copied. My fic that was plagiarized was a oneshot. If I had an entire series stolen, I may never write a fanfic again.
Please don’t act like this isn’t a big deal, or something that doesn’t happen often, because it does, and it hurts a lot. Please give fic writers the credit they deserve and please, for the love of God and all that is good in this world, DO NOT EVER STEAL SOMEONE ELSE’S WRITING. AND IF YOU SEE A FIC THAT YOU THINK IS BEING PLAGIARIZED, GET ALL THE FACTS FIRST. FIND OUT WHICH FIC WAS POSTED FIRST. TELL THE ORIGINAL POSTER THAT THEIR WORK IS BEING COPIED. HELP THEM REPORT IT. DON’T JUST LET IT SLIDE.
TREAT PLAGIARISM THE SAME WAY YOU WOULD TREAT REPOSTED ART, BECAUSE BOTH OF THEM ARE EQUALLY UNACCEPTABLE AND WRITERS DON’T DESERVE TO BE SLIGHTED LIKE THIS WHILE THEIR ARTIST FRIENDS ARE PROTECTED
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