You know... if there's a thing I loath with a passion besides the stupidity of mankind and my Chinese studies, it's plagiarism.

And this is something that has been on my hate list ever since I've been a child and my sister used to copy pretty much everything I took on as a hobby. Now while this has probably taken its origin as infantile selfishness and a natural animosity towards that other bloodline popping up suddenly and taking the attention away from you, I came to understand a little later, that it was only a phase when one looked up to an older sibling and attempted to get their attention with something - this feeling of childish contempt has bridged my growing consciousness into adulthood where it bloomed into ravaging hatred towards copy-cats.

I'm not quite sure about the reason why and I'm sure shrinks would have their pleasure analysing it, since it's one of the few things that can drive me wild in a matter of seconds, when usually I am very mild-tempered and rational, bordering on indifferent towards most things - I'm not trying to get there, since it'd only throw me off track from what I want to talk about right now.

So, I know there's a lot of plagiarism going on online (duh!), especially in the fanfiction community and all - so I get why most people's reaction and attitude towards this can be blasé. It happens all the time, sometimes in such colourful variation, you can hardly pick out the original source and you can do nothing about it, since that's the risk you're running once you publish something, especially if the media you're using is the internet.
Still - and I might slip into my seldom conscious but nevertheless existing naïve-self when I think that you should be respectful enough of other people's works when you copy them and even post it online, for whatever reason, as your own artwork, to give them enough credit for something they were originally responsible for; especially if the only thing you did, was trace the original work line by line and changing such minor things, it still looks a hundred percent like the original.

And if a person doesn't do it, I get pretty pissed off about it. Especially when it's from my own stock.



So this is what happened:

I went to 4chan and found a picture in a thread of - what was it.. ah, Shego, that looked suspiciously like one of my own and could track it back to deviantart, since the picture's name was one that dA usually uses for pics you save.
And the plagiarized picture is this [link] , whereas my original scrap is here [link] ( I posted on my LJ, way before I uploaded it on dA, but the pic link is invalid now, I think ).
So while trying to tame my rising anger, I skimmed through several pics and 'artist's' comments, to see whether there are appropriate credits or not. And there were none. Instead, I found a variety of familiar-looking artworks seemingly all ripped-off from different artists.

The thing that made me even more suspicious about the ill nature of the copy-cat was the fact, that the copies seemed to be systematically ripped off of other fandoms ( especially the Mai Hime one ) without any mention of this process whatsoever.
So I decided to write a comment regarding my feelings upon discovering this act:

[link]

I tried to be nice to a certain point, but things like this just piss me off too much, to still be reasonable.

So... maybe this kind of reaction might still be a remnant of those once upon infantile feelings ( since you know, old habits die hard ), but I'd like to think that I'm completely entitled to be feeling this way since - if you're not a professional artist earning money with it for a living and therefore use your free time showing people your capabilities and share it with the world without asking for or receiving anything in return, simply because you want to, it's much worse than just sliding the knife and twisting it. It's running away with it.

And it's nothing more but cowardice.

If the reason you're doing this is just a cheap way to gain attention in order for your low self-esteem to feel like you're someone special, well let me tell you, that's pathetic - and you're not.
It just shows how dysfunctional your ego is.

Neither one of us.. 'honest', purely fanart-oriented people are really anything special - there are thousands of us out there. We just might have crafted a certain level of skill to be able to show off a little something. Real artists are above that.

So if you want to be able to call yourself that, fucking move away from copying and do your own stuff!



I can't blame any artists wanting to take their work down, keep it private, or worse, stop doing creative work completely because of this, since really, what is the point of doing this when you're getting ripped off anyway?
And admittedly, it has crossed my mind.
Now you could say I'm making mountains out of molehills here, since no matter what you do, as long as creativity will exist in mankind, there will always be parasites leeching and you won't be able to detect every single one of them - and yeah, you're right, I probably am.
But as it was of my own decision to put things up and make it accessible to everybody, it also lies in my hands to shut it down completely.


Keep that in mind, parasites, next time you think about pretending other people's works to be your own:
What if all your resources are drained, because your host refuses to put up with this shit once and for all?


There are other sources, yeah... but one thing: don't underestimate the efficiency of a chain reaction; stranger things have happend.




Now, in the meantime, I got a reply back from this person, apologizing for what she did - which is okay, I'm glad she realized the mistake she made. I just hope she's learned for the future.

So people, be fair - once you copy, credit!

Though the best and fairest thing would be to NOT COPY AT ALL. Do your own stuff for a change!!!