on the issue of plagiarism
If most of you guys have forgotten me, that’s fine. I RP a Composer variation of Neku Sakuraba, and I’ve been on hiatus for a long time, trying to get an issue cleared up. But it’s clear that the other involved party isn’t going to cooperate unless I give him a bit of incentive, so I’ve decided. It’s high time I took this to a public medium.
The short of it?
Tumblr user wakelessdream, formerly known as sakuraba—neku, plagiarizes writing.
I’m not going to keep this under a read more because I have kept my mouth shut on this for months, hoping for a private resolution and for him to privately take down the work he has plagiarized from me. So sit tight; you’ll be in for a bit of a ride.
I’ll try keep this organized, so here goes.
PART I
All right, first up, I had a thread with Tumblr user theflowerfield a long time ago, sometime in January. But roughly three months ago (with today being November 25th, that means sometime in August), wakelessdream created a starter with almost exactly the same wording as that of my first reply to theflowerfield. See below:
In case you’re wondering about the Japanese time stamp, here:
But his post mirrors mine from January:
Notice that his post is more or less a copy-and-paste of mine. If you’ve noticed anything about his writing, it’s that he rarely uses present-tense writing like I do; rather, he sticks with past tense. If you need any evidence of that, just read some of his other posts. Or hell, just read the parts I haven’t underlined in his post. He hasn’t even taken the trouble of adjusting tenses to make it seem like he originally wrote this. Imagine my shock when I first read his post, thinking he’d decided to try something new, only to get stricken by déjà vu because that is my writing.
If you’d like original links to the posts or larger versions of the screenshots, here:
My original post / screenshot
The post in which he plagiarizes / screenshot
PART II
If you still don’t believe me, there are more instances. Next up is a thread I had with valiantsky, and wakelessdream pulled a paragraph from my post and made minor edits and simply called it his own. Here’s his post:
Again, there’s the “POSTED 3ヶ月前” thing, which just means “posted 3 months ago” if you care to recall the Google Translate screenshot. And now, here’s mine:
Wakelessdream has changed some of the wording, sure, but this writing is indubitably mine. The majority of it is exactly the same. And for the record, wakelessdream, look, it’s great that you care about the quality of your starters, judging by how you wrote “hope this is okay” in your tags, but considering that this is my writing, that’s just uncalled for. How dare you say that as if it’s your writing.
For the skeptical, here’s the time stamp of my post.
And for those who think I’ve pulled that time stamp from an older post, here are the original posts, for those who want to see for themselves.
My original post / screenshot
The post in which he plagiarizes / screenshot
PART III
Here’s another example, except this time, he’s synthesized pieces from two of my posts, both from the same thread with slantslide, for one of his replies. See his post:
That first underline segmented, he plagiarized from this post of mine:
The second segment, he plagiarized from here:
If you’ve noticed, wakelessdream’s reply has that same inconsistency with past and present tense because he didn’t bother making the writings blend in his post. It was simple copy and paste, with a few minor word swaps. And for those who want the time stamps? His post was three months ago, in August. Mine? March 15th for that first post, March 26th for the second. Still don’t believe me? Have some links.
My first post / screenshot
My second post / screenshot
The post in which he plagiarizes pieces from both of the aforementioned / screenshot
PART IV
Yeah, not done yet. No worries, I promise this’ll be the last, thank god.
In one more starter, wakelessdream takes little pieces of another post of mine, this time from the same thread I had with theflowerfield, mentioned earlier. Again, three months ago. My post was from January 27th. Here’s his post:
Now here’s mine:
And again, for the skeptical:
My original post / screenshot
The post in which he plagiarizes / screenshot
Afterword
Before you ask, yeah, I’m mad. I’ve contacted him twice already, only to have both of my asks ignored. I’ve received no replies—nothing, nada, zip. Here’s one of the asks I sent:
I’m not going to turn a blind eye on this. As a roleplayer and writer, my writing is precious to me. I put time and effort into all of my posts, and to see them carelessly plagiarized like this makes me seethe. What self-respecting writer wouldn’t be mad, especially after being ignored subsequent to repeated attempts to contact the other party to politely ask him to take the plagiarized content down? No, I’m done waiting. What I don’t get the most is why a roleplayer would even bother plagiarizing—what is even the point of roleplaying if you don’t write your own work?
So, wakelessdream.
Take down the stuff you plagiarized.
If you were so stressed about producing starters for people, maybe you should reconsider why you’re even roleplaying. And for starters, I guess this goes to show that even the seemingly nicest people ever can go and do things like plagiarize.
What the actual fuck, man.
If anyone actually thinks I’m wrong after all this, come at me. Anon disabled because if you don’t have the balls to show your URL, you don’t deserve the chance to message me in the first place.
