Discover Top Posts Tagged with #onthelosingside

are you trying to ruin my life

a bit

#that got so many notes so fast holy shit #lmao #onthelosingside #replies

sherlock is so soft and tiny on the tarmac, he's like a stuffed animal version of himself, we need to cuddle him

i want to cuddle him and also puncH HIS FACE,,,,,,,,,HOW DARE HE DO THIS

I just have to say, as a fic writer, I have read so many fics and so much meta, and I don't really do a good job of keeping track of all of it. I will remember scenes or ideas in great detail but have no idea where I read them. And often, those scenes will inspire other scenes, and sometimes those inspirations lead to fic.

I try to be very conscious of this and alter as much as I can or give credit if credit is due, but sometimes it's a bit silly. For example, I once read a fic by TSylvestris (I believe) where John did some work for Mycroft. I took that idea for my own fic because I liked it--just a brief reference to it, it wasn't a major plot point really--and gave her a shout out in the comments. But other ideas just seamlessly merge together, or circulate in fandom so much that they're nearly impossible to trace. As another example, relevant to tonight's firestorm, the idea that Mary is from Eastern Europe. I originally got that idea I believe from a meta (maybe from thefinalproblem?) that analyzed the languages of the wifi hubs on Sherlock's computer in TRF and determined that the sniper assigned to John might be Czech or something similar. In my own mind, I have tossed around the idea of that person being Mary. I don't think I have yet read a fic where she actually is. Turns out, there's at least two, and had I written my post-S3 fic, there would be at least 3, but I don't feel like that means I'm stealing the idea?

I am all for treating fandom authors with respect, and that means treating their stuff the way you would treat other writers' work--not just appropriating it without permission. But I also think there are a thousand fics that are extremely similar, in part because we're all working with the same source material, and in part because some ideas are just better--we're not all plagiarizing the first person to think David might be the father of Mary's baby, that's just a good idea and one a lot of people run with. We're not all writing the same story.

Bad poets borrow, good poets steal, right? Not that we steal whole plots or whole lines, but ideas? Authors steal those literally all the time. Fandom authors are bound to do it too (and I'm not even saying that's what's happening in this situation, I'm just saying it's bound to happen). Authors should tread carefully, but readers should consider these things before making accusations.

#ugh #i'm so sorry #onthelosingside #this is in support of you #but i'm talking about my own writing habits #not trying to speak for you