Matou Shinji and the Broken Chains (HP/FSN CYOA)

[mr_Trickster]

Just to be clear, this isn't a dream she has over the holidays/Christmas. Its a dream before she meets with Shinji to talk/resolve things (hopefully), and might indeed shape her reactions a bit.

Taking this into account and the fact that the relationship she had with Sakura wasn't exactly the best, we might want to look into an option that is more likely to cause her to react to us favorably. After all, we do want what is best for Rin, yes?

[skulkidcachi90]

Mmmm i do not remember Sakura being in good terms with Shinji.
Maybe vote for her could difficult Shinji's chance resolve things with Rin.

[Myrmeleo]

You ever find an author whose work you really enjoy, so you spend an evening bingeing their work? And then you notice that, in their stories, there's a phrase they seem to use a lot, a certain description that pops up repeatedly in their work? And then you google that phrase because you think it'd be funny to see how many times they've used it, only to find that the first hits on google aren't actually them but are in fact another author who they've lifted it from word-for-word and now you can't help but wonder what other bits of beautiful prose they've stolen whole cloth what the HELL alfheimwanderer?

The hush of it was enough; the smell, the heavy spicy aroma of slowly, imperceptibly decomposing leather and paper, of hundreds of tons of dry ink.

Not a centimeter went unused – the walls themselves were bookshelves, and every meter of every shelf was full. Creamy spines, leather spines, knobby and ribbed spines, jacketed and bare, gilded and plain, blank spines and spines crammed with text and ornament. Some were as thin as magazines, some were wider than they were tall.

In three or four places, perhaps, a book had been taken down and the one next to it was left slightly aslant, leaning its head against its fellow, as if in silent mourning for its neighbor.

The smell hit him first: the heavy, spicy aroma of slowly, imperceptibly decomposing leather and paper, of ton after ton of dry ink.

And all around him, there were books. The walls themselves were bookshelves, with most of the shelves crammed full of tomes – most quite ancient – with windows set high above.

Creamy spines, leather spines, knobby and ribbed spines, jacketed and bare, gilded and plain, blank spines and spines crammed with text and ornament in languages older than Shinji knew, and mostly beyond his ability to read. Some were as thin as magazines, some were wider than they were tall.

On the shelves, he could see creamy spines, leather spines, knobby and ribbed spines, jacketed and bare, gilded and plain, blank spines and spines crammed with text and ornament. Books as thin as magazines, some were wider than they were tall.

Google Books.

It was a library, maybe the grandest one Plum had ever seen. She would have known it was a library with her eyes shut: the hush of it was enough, like a velvet nest in which she'd been carefully nestled, and the smell, the heavy spicy aroma of slowly, imperceptibly decomposing leather and paper, of hundreds of tons of dry ink. Every square foot of the walls was bookshelves, and every foot of every shelf was full. Creamy spines, leather spines, knobby and ribbed spines, jacketed and bare, gilded and plain, blank spines and spines crammed with text and ornament. Some were as thin as magazines, some were wider than they were tall.

She ran her fingers along them, one after the other, as if they were the long back of some giant, friendly vertebrate that she was petting. In three or four places a book had been taken down and the one next to it was left slightly aslant, leaning its head against its fellow, as if in silent mourning for its absent neighbor.

[apsalar]

While I understand that some people would have an issue with that, Myrmeleo, I don't. Firstly, Alf isn't making money off of this (as far as I'm aware). Secondly, this entire work is, to a certain extent, cribbed from other authors; we've all identified quite a few lines, and no one has voiced a problem with it until now. What Alf is doing is linking together these otherwise unrelated things (be they specific lines, plot elements, characters, etc) with original content, creating something new; something that is, ideally, more than the sum of its parts. If creators weren't allowed to use anything another had made, we would have a lot less creativity in the world.

[alfheimwanderer]

Mind you, this is Fanfiction, which is already a self-referential medium, with characters, settings and dialogue taken from the work of other authors (in our case, Nasu and Rowling, with leavening of homages to other works - Lev Grossman's The Magicians Land in this case. These homages don't appear often, with the examples cited here being limited to the bookshop called The Dust Pile.

Further, I will note that films and games often borrow scenes and settings from other works, and music (especially classical) steals outright as well, using the same rhythms and melodies and such - the great composers, directors, playwrights have all done it, after all.

It is, in fact, accepted practice, even tradition, for authors to use lines or turns of phrase from others in fiction, with or without attribution, under the assumption that an intelligent reader knows who originated the words, or can find them.

In Fanfiction, where so much of what we do is already built around the work of others, is this not even more so? In addition to FSN, Kara no Kyoukai, Harry Potter (and Pottermore), there have been references to Star Wars, xxxholic, Spice and Wolf, and more, all meant to amuse, thrill or interest readers - especially those who recognize the origins.

If I was making money off of this fanfic, or claiming everything in it was my original creation (when instead, I make it clear I do not hold a claim to anything I reference), I could see a reason for outrage. As it is, if I can borrow a turn of phrase in very specific circumstances to evoke a feeling, and point people to other works in the process (and please, do read the Magicians Trilogy, if you haven't), I don't see that I've done anything wrong - at least not beyond writing Fanfiction without the approval of the original authors in the first place!

What I do claim credit for is weaving everything together into a new whole, and I think I've done a creditable job of that.

[Kotonoha]

Okay Cassandra Claire

[Skull Leader]

It isn't considered classical unless someone has used the work somewhere else. The fact that the plots and words of Shakespeare are used as much as they are is a testament to how classic the work was. And there is a difference from using small turns and phrases like is being done and using large blocks of text straight from the source with no changes.

Really its more of a sign of how well read/verse Alf is that so many variable sources are used as well as they are. Its one thing to make use of something from just one source but to grab things from a multitude of places such as anime, video games, music, books, etc is not a easy thing to do. Its even harder to blend the moments to have a point to them that fit the moment of use then it is to just add them in willy nilly for a Look At Me Making this Reference WINK WINK WINK moment.

The best part of all the references is that someone will catch it because they love that reference source and usually they will make a comment about it which alerts others to the reference that they might of missed which may or may not then cause that person to go looking into the original source material. I know that just off the top of my head of at least five times where a reference was made from a source I have not seen that introduced me to something that I found that I like while reading this story.

I mean how many people have heard of the play Arcadia before we choose to have Shinji take Ilya to the play during last year? Gasp I might have even learned something in reading this.

[Kotonoha]

The difference is that Shakespeare is public domain.


If you really can't write without taking large chunks of prose out of people's books then at least be clear exactly which parts of the text are not yours, don't just place the onus on the reader to pick out what's stolen. That's absolutely plagiarism dude

[neophyte]

If you really can't write without taking large chunks of prose out of people's books then at least be clear exactly which parts of the text are not yours, don't just place the onus on the reader to pick out what's stolen. That's absolutely plagiarism dude

Mhm. So, six lines describing bookshelves are the large chunk of someone else's prose now. That really makes me wonder - is it the first easter egg you've managed to find in the series (there were dozens of them already) or was it the last straw to a camel's back?

[Kotonoha]

You'll have to ask Myrmeleo but they seem to have read all the way through the fic and only become aware of one instance by going out of their way to look it up (and only noticed it because Alf used it three separate times???), which suggests that Alf has not called attention to the text that has been lifted and is content to let people assume he wrote it.

Again, that's just plagiarism.

[Snow]

Mind you, this is Fanfiction, which is already a self-referential medium, with characters, settings and dialogue taken from the work of other authors (in our case, Nasu and Rowling, with leavening of homages to other works - Lev Grossman's The Magicians Land in this case. These homages don't appear often, with the examples cited here being limited to the bookshop called The Dust Pile.

Further, I will note that films and games often borrow scenes and settings from other works, and music (especially classical) steals outright as well, using the same rhythms and melodies and such - the great composers, directors, playwrights have all done it, after all.

It is, in fact, accepted practice, even tradition, for authors to use lines or turns of phrase from others in fiction, with or without attribution, under the assumption that an intelligent reader knows who originated the words, or can find them.

In Fanfiction, where so much of what we do is already built around the work of others, is this not even more so? In addition to FSN, Kara no Kyoukai, Harry Potter (and Pottermore), there have been references to Star Wars, xxxholic, Spice and Wolf, and more, all meant to amuse, thrill or interest readers - especially those who recognize the origins.

If I was making money off of this fanfic, or claiming everything in it was my original creation (when instead, I make it clear I do not hold a claim to anything I reference), I could see a reason for outrage. As it is, if I can borrow a turn of phrase in very specific circumstances to evoke a feeling, and point people to other works in the process (and please, do read the Magicians Trilogy, if you haven't), I don't see that I've done anything wrong - at least not beyond writing Fanfiction without the approval of the original authors in the first place!

What I do claim credit for is weaving everything together into a new whole, and I think I've done a creditable job of that.

I think it is important to note that there is a rather large difference between the practices in bold and what seems to be going on here. The mediums mentioned differ vastly from literature, both in artistic language and devices used and how the observer (reader, listener, viewer, player) interacts with them and interprets them.

For example, the film equivalent of copying sentences from another author's work into your own would be taking a scene from a film, copying everything exactly as it was in the original, and having your actors wear facial prosthetics to make them look like the original actors. This is where self aware homage would end and self aware parody would begin, but in this particular case it'd go a step further and out of parody land. Image that, on top of everything else, the fake actors were credited as the original ones.

The musical equivalent would be recording someone's symphony with your own musicians, calling it a different name, and distributing it with you as the apparent author. It's obvious, I hope, how this can be seen as a problem, even if no money whatsoever is made in the process.

When writers do this, the polite thing is to switch to italics or quotation marks, and attribute the author in parentheses or in some other clear way of referencing. This preserves your intention, gives context, pays respect to the original author, and gives readers a chance to discover something new. Borrowing without attribution isn't referencing or quoting, it's at best copying and at worst stealing, and is bad practice for authors, IMO. It damages your personal style and thwarts your learning process.

[alfheimwanderer]

I think it is important to note that there is a rather large difference between the practices in bold and what seems to be going on here. The mediums mentioned differ vastly from literature, both in artistic language and devices used and how the observer (reader, listener, viewer, player) interacts with them and interprets them.

Yes and no.

For example, the film equivalent of copying sentences from another author's work into your own would be taking a scene from a film, copying everything exactly as it was in the original, and having your actors wear facial prosthetics to make them look like the original actors. This is where self aware homage would end and self aware parody would begin, but in this particular case it'd go a step further and out of parody land. Image that, on top of everything else, the fake actors were credited as the original ones.

Or using the same style of shot or scene. The classic example often used is the shootout on the steps at Union Station in The Untouchables, which certainly is heavily influenced by the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potyomkin, among others. In this case, I use the recurring description to describe one place - and only one place - a vast repository of books with magical properties.

The musical equivalent would be recording someone's symphony with your own musicians, calling it a different name, and distributing it with you as the apparent author. It's obvious, I hope, how this can be seen as a problem, even if no money whatsoever is made in the process.

Except that it is nothing of the sort. The musical equivalent would be borrowing a portion of another composer's signature phrases or theme and incorporating it into one's work, and distributing the subsequent work as one's own. Or are you going to call Grieg a plagarist for borrowing from Mozart, Strauss from Beethoven and Stravinsky from Schubert, without attribution? Or hell, one could also argue that the 1 minute of silence in The Planets (being a reference to John Cage's 4'33") is plagiarism of a sort in that sense?

When writers do this, the polite thing is to switch to italics or quotation marks, and attribute the author in parentheses or in some other clear way of referencing. This preserves your intention, gives context, pays respect to the original author, and gives readers a chance to discover something new.

In non-fiction, certainly this would be cited, as that is part and parcel of the practice. In fiction, its a very different sort of thing all together. In this case, putting in quotations or italics would unnecessarily break the flow of the story, and as such, would be bad writing.

Borrowing without attribution isn't referencing or quoting, it's at best copying and at worst stealing, and is bad practice for authors, IMO. It damages your personal style and thwarts your learning process.

Except again, this borrowing is part of the creative process. Can one claim to never borrow, intentionally or unintentionally? Are the styles of musicians and writers damaged by being familiar with a larger body of work than their own, even if reading or listening influences their personal styles?

You'll have to ask Myrmeleo but they seem to have read all the way through the fic and only become aware of one instance by going out of their way to look it up (and only noticed it because Alf used it three separate times???), which suggests that Alf has not called attention to the text that has been lifted and is content to let people assume he wrote it.

I do not call attention because its a minor scene, set in one location. I also do not call attention to the use of Star Wars lines every so often, but no one assumes that I came up with those, do they?

Again, that's just plagiarism.

Its an homage. Just because you didn't get it doesn't change the intent, so have a care not to throw insults around like "can't write without taking large chunks of people's text", with its assorted implications.

[Prix with a Silent X]

Typically, rather than doing in-line citations, one might choose to put a small footnote without a textual reference at the bottom to generally acknowledge a source of phrasing. Alternatively, on this website, you could make a blog post of sources from which you drew phrasing and simply changed the wording for your fic. It is true that you do not 'gain' anything but a readership for fanfiction, but a reluctance to acknowledge directly lifted phrasing does seem like an intent to claim it as one's own. Furthermore, certain kinds of sampling in music actually are considered plagiaristic, while others require the payment of royalties, so your argument here is not entirely accurate. It is not "bad writing" to acknowledge when your phrasing was almost word-for-word lifted from somewhere else. Using another text as an interesting madlib format is called a 'pastiche' and I can think of at least a couple of fics where I have seen that acknowledged in author's notes, too.

[Leftovers]

Is "a powerless corpse pretending to be alive" still a mainstay in Alf fanfics, or do weeb media not count?

[alfheimwanderer]

Is "a powerless corpse pretending to be alive" still a mainstay in Alf fanfics, or do weeb media not count?

I still use it. We all know where it comes from, and I already make it clear that I hold no claim to the works I reference, whether Type-MOON, Potterverse or otherwise.

Is that not in the bloody disclaimer at the beginning of each FF.net chapter? To claim I am trying to claim the work of others for myself when I explicitly state otherwise is not only bad form but insulting besides.

(And of course, if we want to talk plagiarism, Shakespeare's descriptions of Cleopatra are pretty much lifted straight out of Plutarch, without attribution, so by those standards is he claiming the work for his own...or is he making a reference people are supposed to recognize?)

[just Beamu]

comparing yourself to Shakespeare makes you seem so very self aware

[Leftovers]

It doesn't bother me in moderation, as there certainly is a pleasure in incorporating references in your work even if only you will ever know and appreciate them, not can I say anything about a fanfic I don't read. My curiosity has to do with the fact that such appropriations - either as straight quotation or in more oblique forms - from a number of media have been present in your fanfics since as long as I can remember reading them; but that was mainly weeb media, so perhaps taking a couple of lines from a young adult novel is different in some intellectual property kind of way. In fanfiction.

What I'd say I actually find a worse offence is that you used the same description three different times. Unless it's some VN-esque "You've read this scene before, would you like to skip it?" thing.

- - - Updated - - -

on second thought, the worse offence is actually that you're writing this instead of eternal geass moon or recollections of pain

[alfheimwanderer]

comparing yourself to Shakespeare makes you seem so very self aware

I'm hardly comparing myself to Shakespeare, either in quality or quantity of creation. I am simply mentioning that he did this sort of stuff, and for pay, as opposed to fanfiction - which is explicitly not done for pay (unless someone is running a patreon or something, which I'm not). As such, I'm just asking for a bit of consistency towards how the issue is treated, especially as...

My curiosity has to do with the fact that such appropriations - either as straight quotation or in more oblique forms - from a number of media have been present in your fanfics since as long as I can remember reading them; but that was mainly weeb media, so perhaps taking a couple of lines from a young adult novel is different in some intellectual property kind of way. In fanfiction.

...I've always incorporated a few bits here and there as references and easter eggs for those who recognize them, as do quite a few other authors, with the understanding that discerning readers will know where they come from, and the rest will not have their experience disrupted. Hence part of the reason I grew out of the habit of author's notes, as it let people see the piece on its own (and to enjoy the realizations or sense of discovery on their own).

Having someone who claims to enjoy my work spend their first post publicly accusing me of stealing other people's work - instead of, oh, I don't know, bringing it up in PMs, asking if I am borrowing from another source (and it would delight me quite a bit to introduce someone to a new series or writer), or acknowledging the long-running tradition of borrowing (especially in fanfiction), with others who don't read this story subsequently jumping into the argument and offering advice more suited for an academic paper, is actually quite offensive.

Especially when they try to claim there's something quite different between me having Shinji speak a bit of Lelouch's dialogue from Code Geass, as a nod to the people who enjoy such things (and know my history writing CG fanfiction), and something like this, which is a nod to those who have enjoyed Lev Grossman's Magicians series.

on second thought, the worse offence is actually that you're writing this instead of eternal geass moon or recollections of pain

Well, you'll be delighted to know I'll get back to those after this series is done.

---

Choice 119: Sakura.

[Five_X]

Except that it is nothing of the sort. The musical equivalent would be borrowing a portion of another composer's signature phrases or theme and incorporating it into one's work, and distributing the subsequent work as one's own. Or are you going to call Grieg a plagarist for borrowing from Mozart, Strauss from Beethoven and Stravinsky from Schubert, without attribution? Or hell, one could also argue that the 1 minute of silence in The Planets (being a reference to John Cage's 4'33") is plagiarism of a sort in that sense?

I don't really care about the rest of your post because it's basically just ~author opinions~ and every writer is going to defend the dumb things that they do. But if you're going to justify yourself with references to an entirely different medium - something that I fundamentally disagree with, but okay, you do you - you could at least do your research. Instead of, you know, just dropping a bunch of famous names with only a superficial argument, if any, to how they add to your defence. There's something else that I'll get to afterwards that's especially dubious, but first I'm going to educate you on Classical and Romantic music.

First, you make reference to Grieg borrowing from Mozart, and Stravinsky doing the same with Schubert. Did you actually rationally think about those comparisons? I can't help but doubt it. Mozart died a half-century before Grieg was even born; what this means is not only are they from vastly different periods of society and culture, Grieg was composing so far in time after Mozart that any cultural contribution Mozart made to music would have disseminated into the mainstream. There's an incredible difference between plagiarism and the natural trickling down of cultural influence; there's a reason why, as an example, the chord sequence in Pachelbel's Canon in D is used, and part of that - part I'm not going to even get into - is because music is an entirely different discipline and art from prose. Different history, different milestones, different influences, different creative processes. Schubert's influence on the music of the 19th century is just as considerable, and many composers specifically noted him as an influence. The emphasis here being that they very clearly made mention of that fact, even going so far as to celebrate it. No one has ever said that the famous 19th century composers of the world are all plagiarists riding on the coattails of Mozart and Schubert, now have they?

On to the last pair, Strauss and Beethoven. This comparison is just kind of nonsensical, really. This time there's the better part of a century between Beethoven's death and Strauss' birth, but more importantly, they're two entirely different composers. Are all orchestras the same to you? When you listen to Tritsch-Tratsch Polka does it bring to mind Beethoven's Symphony No. 6? If you wanted to be really clever, you should have compared Beethoven with Haydn - his teacher - rather than a composer best known for his pleasant waltzes. Beethoven was a composer from an era that was just starting to see the end of primarily Christian influence on music in what we call the "Classical" period. Strauss, however, was composing in a time and place that instead favoured his famous light music, along with intentional inspiration from folk traditions. This is typical of the Romantic movement, with its emphasis on the national and relatively secular, rather than the religious. It's also funny to me that you pair Beethoven with Strauss, of all people, but for an entirely different reason: because there are many composers who have made direct reference to Beethoven's work, and Strauss is indeed one of them! Strauss and Schubert both wrote their own music for Friedrich Schiller's famed Ode to Joy. This is what Schubert did, and here is Strauss' composition. All three composers never once claimed An die Freude as their own, and their interpretations of the poem are all beautiful and varied; you can tell without doubt that all three are done by different composers, writing music in different eras and for different audiences.

Last of all, your reference here to "The Planets." Kind of oblique, really; at first I wasn't sure if you were trying to claim that Gustav Holst's use of a dramatic fade-out in his famous The Planets (as in, the one people think of when you're talking about music and say "The Planets") was in reference to a composer who had just been born when it was written. But no, you're just making a reference to the obscure UK classical-ish band called The Planets, which is certainly an homage I'm sure everyone here reading understood. To explain, a guy wrote a song called "A One Minute Silence" and partly credited Cage, meaning John Cage. Then there was a manufactured legal dispute for publicity, and it's all very sad and kind of pathetic but I guess that's what happens when you're the guy who unironically did The Wombles. The key point of difference you'll note here is that Cage was, in a sense, attributed. The whole point was to draw attention to the conceptual similarity, even if there wasn't actually a legal dispute over it. What you've done is the opposite: you never once mentioned anything you've referenced, not attributing anything, not even saying "I was influenced by such-and-such" or "I used [this line] as an homage to [this book]." That's the particularly sad part. You can't really expect people to catch such a bizarrely obscure reference; that defeats the purpose of making an homage, if no one notices it - until someone did, of course, and to your misfortune found it in bad taste.

See, the thing here is, I realize that you don't believe you're plagiarizing. I don't think you're trying to defend plagiarism itself; you're saying what you did isn't plagiarism to begin with. That much - thankfully - you've made clear. The issue is that what you're doing is wrong and you don't understand or accept why. You don't see how it's a pointless thing to do, to start, because almost no one but you will notice, and those people who do notice get upset because apparently stating outright that you're making an homage to something will make blood flow from your palms or something. You don't see how, by not making it obvious that you're referencing something, that is in effect claiming ownership of it.

You claim to be a writer, and you say that there's no way to make it somewhat clearer that it's a reference that wouldn't be bad writing? That seems to me like the source of the bad writing is in the writer, rather than the prose, I'm afraid. And, to add to that, your bad pastiche of classical and Romantic-era composers didn't even make sense. I feel that reflects, as a whole, on your arguments here: words, just empty words, made to create a hollow impression without really saying anything. But I suppose by using a certain line as a title, Faulkner was committing the sin of plagiarism, wasn't he? Everyone today believes, of course, that he's the real source of that phrase: 'sound and fury...' after all.

If you genuinely wanted to make a reference to plagiarism in music, you could've cited a whole better argument just by looking away from classical and towards blues; the genre evolved through generations by way of different musicians listening to each other, hearing riffs they like, and incorporating them into their songs, all placed in the typical setting of the twelve (or eight) bar blues rhythm. Even then, though, it'd still be an empty argument, because you'd be arguing with ideas you probably don't actually know all that much about. Even blues players, taking cues from one another, change up riffs they hear, stylize them to their liking. They don't take a few certain notes in a specific pattern and timing and play them the exact same way, which is really the closest general comparison I can make to what you've done here.

My point here is: you're just taking lines from things other people have written. You're not changing them, you're not attributing the original writer, you're not putting your own zest and spin to it. You're just placing them in there with some vague sense of satisfaction that someone might notice it and, for a brief moment, recognize it and be marginally pleased because they see something they've seen before. Why is that interesting? How? Wouldn't it be better to, instead, write a description or dialogue in your own words that inherently doesn't carry the baggage of strictly being something someone else came up with? If you're going to catch someone's interest or make them feel something, what value is there in giving rise to those emotions with the exact same set of words used in the exact same context by someone else before you? Surely there's more to be gained, for the reader and the author as well, in eschewing what you're calling an "homage" and instead expressing a similar sentiment but with your own feelings, experience, and personality behind it.

That's how you become a good writer, or a good musician, or a good poet: not by precisely restating something someone has already said, but taking the same idea or feeling and expressing it in your own words. Even if it's fanfiction, it's still your writing, and it reflects on your skills and outlook in general. If you're going to directly lift words someone else wrote, even if it's internet fanfiction in the absolute second-nerdiest subsection of this forum, you might as well just be honest and say in your chapter notes or wherever you want what you're "paying homage" to.

This was just supposed to be a rant about you being badly educated at musical history, but okay, I guess it became a bit more than that. My main point still stands, though. You should actually, you know, listen to classical music instead of dropping a bunch of famous names in an inexplicable order just to look vaguely smart and knowledgeable to someone you're arguing with.

[Leftovers]

also if you notice, septette for the dead princess sounds like the third movement of beethoven's pathetique, but they lived like 200 years apart on opposite sides of the world and one is japanese, so it isn't a viable example of plagiarism