#pccp

[bookshelfdreams]

no, I'm gonna say it out loud actually:

Cliques and circles forming in fandom is normal. People with similar tastes and opinions will naturally flock together.

This is because for most people, fandom is a fun and relaxing thing they engage with in their limited spare time. Most people do not want to spend that free time obsessing over things that annoy, anger, or upset them.

It might therefore seem like something is uncontroversial when it in fact is not. But, again, most people do not spend their days endlessly complaining about things they hate because, to most people, this sort of constant negativity is draining. It is much more fun and rewarding to engage with things or people we like.

Eventually, most people will develop a tendency to simply ignore, filter out, and block the things/people that annoy them, because engaging with those things very quickly gets frustrating.

Yes, that does create an environment where a certain type of fraudster can thrive. This is not a flaw; this is every human community ever. Unless, of course, you are surrounded by people who are extremely hostile towards and suspicious of everyone around them. That wouldn't be much of a community though, would it?

Because, and I cannot stress this enough, most people do not go around scrutinizing the backstory and personal life of everyone they meet. We generally believe each other, and not doing so, as default, is deranged. Suspecting everyone who writes fic you find distasteful or has opinions you dislike of being this much of a fraudster is not a healthy attitude to have. Extending goodwill and grace towards your friends is normal.

Again, yes, liars and manipulators will exploit that. But that's not the fault of the people being lied to.

If you perceive only yourself and the people you like as individuals with nuanced opinions and everyone else as a hostile hivemind out to get you, you might have a tiny bit of a persecution complex going on.

If you make this situation about your silly little shipwar, then idk what to tell you.

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

"well you see when I copied that passage word for word it was an honest mistake due to my bad memory" is not a new excuse btw

From The Cassandra Clare Plagiarism Debacle, Part V

nor is "but I thought citing it as 'inspiration' would be enough!"

From The Cassandra Clare Plagiarism Debacle, Part XI

[bougiebutchbitch]

Fucking hell. How many fans of colour did that PCCP loser harrass out of the fandom for the sin of liking Izzy? And he was race-faking all along, while levelling ridiculous accusations of racism against everyone who liked a fictional character and making people doubt the authenticity of actual people of colour's experience because they disagreed with him?? My heart goes out to all the victims, especially those of colour. You deserved so much better.

[wearfinethingsalltoowell]

VERY DORUNK and very pissed off. Bit can i say. who the FUCK thinks racefacking is OKAY. what the FUCK clout do you think your crazy ass is getting compared to the harm you’re doing you BASTARD. You fucking RAT. Now I didn’t know you that well personally but I thought you posts were fire. but I don’t matter here. YOU. HURT. MY. FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[xray-vex]

maybe this is a bit petty of me but can i just say that it pisses me off that pccp even ripped off the idea that Ed is into sharks from other people in the OFMD fandom? normally i don't mind one bit that several of us have similar head canons about Ed, but i'm salty af that pccp shares that particular head canon. he doesn't deserve it. i'm gatekeeping Ed and his love of sharks from pccp and all of his sock puppet accounts forever

[three--rings]

Okay so I haven't been in OFMD fandom effectively since the end of S2 and shortly thereafter. But for reasons I'm going to comment a bit on the PCCP thing.

(I'm not explaining this to anyone who doesn't know what's going on, there's not any good explainer posts I can find. People seem to mostly be treating this as In The Know information for in groups so whatever. Like I said, this isn't my fandom anymore.)

I didn't know PCCP, he joined the fandom basically as I left it, and he also ran in much different parts of the fandom than I ever did. I was never part of the Izzy Canyon, Izzy was not My Dude, but I was sympathetic to their cause and contemptuous of the drama caused by people attacking them for enjoying something differently.

But I was contacted by a friend to point out similarities between the last OFMD fic I wrote and one that he did.

There's apparently a lot of evidence of him stealing ideas from others and entire scenes/phrases.

I read his fic and I skimmed back through mine and it's certainly within the realm of plausible deniability. Like, people can get the same idea and write it, and his was very different from mine in very distinct ways (which I will get to). So if I encountered it without being told there is a pattern of behavior, I'd really never think much of it.

As it is, well it's certainly similar, especially one scene in particular (though I think I wrote it a lot better.)

But what is interesting is the content of the fic. See, my fic is set immediately post S2 and is about Ed's grief for Izzy and him being driven to digging up his grave to make sure he's still dead because he's afraid he's buried alive and then Stede comforts him. It's really just about grief and the complicated relationship those two men had. (It's not, note, explicitly shippy for anything other than blackbonnet.)

But PCCP's fic...well it's about how Ed is just so incredibly traumatised by all the abuse that Izzy put him through that he can't believe he's actually dead and is afraid he's gonna come back to life. And he digs him up and then breaks down and Stede comforts him and says how "he can never hurt you again" "that monster is gone" and "you're free now Ed" while Ed just cries and acts like the weakest most traumatized victim ever.

And like okay, the fic standing alone is pretty ugh and eye-rolling because it's a fic with a political agenda about fandom morality. But the idea that he saw/read my fic and then took the idea to turn it into the actual opposite emotional purpose?

Took something I wrote very quickly in the week after the finale, in mourning for a character's death and then a full year later went and said "ha, but Izzy was evil and mean and it's super good he's dead actually and also Ed is a victim only." Yeah, it's nasty work. And it feels...pointed.

Obviously I can't actually know if it was intentional plagiarism. Fandom is vast and concepts are not unique. I would not be at all surprised if you told me other people had written fics where Ed insists on exhuming Izzy's grave. And they almost certainly never saw mine. But I'm pretty sure I WAS the first to do it at least.

Anyway, I did post in the thread about this on Bsky, so IDK I might be on the official google doc of stolen work. But I felt I should say something ftr.

OFMD is a fandom with a lot of wonderful people and I know some of you have found wonderful communities within it. But it also has always been incredibly nasty and cliquish. I found it impossible to hang out in that fandom without seeing people attacking fellow fans. I didn't see any reason to stick around when my personal inspiration fled after S2.

And that's an environment that WILL IN FACT attract scam artists. People will see those hot button issues and see an opportunity. And you get PCCP.

Anyway, that's it on this topic from me.

[dizzy-izzy-in-a-tizzy]

@pccp-apology

I can't speak for everyone but I really do hope you learn from this, and choose to be a better person in the future.

I'm not here to give you absolution: What you did wasn't fucking okay, and you can never take it back. There are creative, beautiful, wonderful people that left the ofmd fandom due to harassment you helped incentivize with your tokenizing rubber stamp. Some of those people were poc. None of them deserved it.

You used a race you didn't belong to in order to paint a target on people doing fandom the 'wrong' way.

Ironically, some of this harassment was the "papers, please," that has now been brought back up due to your discovery. People literally didn't believe that poc were poc because they disagreed with you. And now, poc in the fandom have to do the emotional labor of explaining why you don't question people's identities without cause.

You aren't going to hear that it's okay. It wasn't, and it won't be. You're going to have to live with that.

What you can do is change.

What you can do is never do the shit you did to poc in this fandom ever again.

[babykittenteach]

A couple extra notes about the theft post, and then I kinda hope to be done making any posts. I swear this is not a drama blog. I'm Todd in the Shadows taking a break from music videos to well actually James Someton and then hopefully never doing it again. Cut for length, no reblogs because I'm not trying to get anywhere with this except explaining some thoughts.

No one's really brought this up in reply to me, but just to be clear in case anything sounds like claiming ownership over ideas: being inspired by other people is normal and good. You are supposed to be, I would argue. Particularly, when we're in fandom and these are all transformative works. When I've made a piece of art, if it was inspired by someone else, I am going to be mentioning them. I ask authors if they don't mind art, I tag people who inspired things and link to their posts, etc. etc. I'm happy to do that. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but I actively enjoy getting to use art as part of an ongoing media conversation. I like getting positive attention and little numbers that go up for my work, yeah, but that's not why I'm driven to draw or write. I'm trying to express something in me to other people, and I hope they respond. I can't imagine trying to hide that conversation. Especially if it means I can foist off blame for something cursed onto someone else. Helpful guide by unadulteratedkr here, btw. See, this is a very easy thing to do, linking.

Further, I make art. Occasionally. Allegedly, I even write. I am 100% certain something I've made has been similar to something that already existed that I just wasn't previously aware of. That happens. It's normal. I accidentally did that with my username. I don't think random coincidence things like that are plagiarism or even necessarily a bad thing. If you find out later that someone had already done something and you want to be clear about it, just add like a little note? But most of the time it's obvious people just had similar ideas. It's not, for instance, an ongoing behavior stretching months and at times being "literally saw the original 11 minutes ago" or "kudos'd the original last night."

Like, for real, fuck this guy. I glossed over this in the post, but reaching out to me like that privately when he found out I also write was almost certainly groundwork. If I may explain: I talk to people a lot about things I make because they come say hi. That's normal, it's lovely, it's good, it makes me happy. Please do not for one second get suspicious of normal people who are, even when the world is this fucked, by and large good. I promise most people are good. This guy used a good and normal thing for another purpose, like someone hiding a hand buzzer in a handshake. People are good; that guy's an asshole. I don't think for one second that normal human interaction was why Atticus reached out to me the way he did. Given what I know about how he talked to other people and how he justified his bad behavior to them, with more and more examples of this popping up from newly revealed private interactions, he was using the access and the good faith of apparent friendship to get things and get away with things. After almost a year of my being in the fandom, that was the first time he'd slid into my private messages and it was probably to test the waters. See if I was going to gush back, see if I was hungry for approval, etc. because then I'd be easier to jerk around. You make excuses for people you look up to; you make excuses for people who give you something you need. That's what he did, and I'm not saying that to lecture anyone; the opposite. It's why he got away with things, because people want friendship and approval. It's why, even after one of the most frustrating fandom periods of my life, I genuinely am sorry for people who got jerked around even when they didn't want to hear me out.

If someone hurts you and tries to guilt you into forgiving them with shit like "our friendship means so much to me" and [insert medical or mental health reason here] instead of just admitting they fucked up, please please please please please pleasepleasepleasePLEASE be careful with them. When I hit the block button on him, I even sent the prediction that he would make a post about it to friends. He hit the "i thought we were friendly" and the "I'm so stressed about--" points real quick. If I had bothered to explain it to him, it would have looked like all the other Didn't Mean Tos he's been revealed to have done. Please have more respect for your feelings than he did.

tl;dr-- okay but no, really, honestly, truly fffffffffffffffuck this guy. I hope to not make another post about this. If you need to, you can dm me here or on Discord, babykittenteach there too.