Stuck on a scene? Just plagiarize!

[lovecraft68]

Please explain to me, how is it possible that someone who claims to be from the sticks and stones generation and a fan of metal, passionately watched this entire series of disgustingly nerdy films – I always knew that there was a pathetic nerd hiding under the mask. Do you also knit sometimes?

If you were in high school with me, you would have lost a few vertebrae in your neck from the amount of slaps you would have received from me.

I owned a comic book store, of course I'm a pop culture geek.
And don't talk about slapping people from across the keyboard, it reeks of little man syndrome.

 

[SimonDoom]

I hate calling the originals 4-6, like BS that was how it was going to be all along, he made a fortune and wanted to keep going.

Agreed. Part of the joy of that first trilogy is it stood by itself just fine, and there was no need for more, and it was never meant to be taken that seriously. Then the prequel trilogy rolled along and the whole thing was taken way too seriously, and at the same time the quality was nowhere nearly as good.

 

[lovecraft68]

I was just saying what I would have done in high school. Today I am a civilized person. I would never dare lay a hand on a nerd. It may be contagious.
I have some good friends from the world of metal, and dark psychedelic trance – they didn't run a comic book store.

Listen, you're something special...

I'm a hybrid and I don't fit into boxes. I have Cradle of Filth on the same playlist I have The Drifters on.

 

[lovecraft68]

Agreed. Part of the joy of that first trilogy is it stood by itself just fine, and there was no need for more, and it was never meant to be taken that seriously. Then the prequel trilogy rolled along and the whole thing was taken way too seriously, and at the same time the quality was nowhere nearly as good.

I was 9 when it first came out and the word that came to mind seeing it in the theater was wonder. Rewatched them with my grandson and of course now they seem cheesy, but they're a lot of fun.

Empire Strikes Back was amazing to me because the bad guys won, Luke got his ass whipped, Han sold out and Frozen...ever since then I refer to books or movies where the bad guys win as "This is the empire strikes back edition!"

 

[lovecraft68]

Sweets for My Sweet is one of my all-time favorites. But don't quote.

Quote what?

 

[lovecraft68]

On the topic of this thread I would be remiss if I didn't drop this in

 

[MillieDynamite]

I hate calling the originals 4-6, like BS that was how it was going to be all along, he made a fortune and wanted to keep going.

Star Wars 7, 8, and 9 had no input from George Lucas, and the scripts, story outlines, and suggestion notes from him were thrown out. There is no Lucas in the final three big screen incarnations, no Lucas a'tall. All they had was JJ and the greed of Disney. Disney has the propensity to destroy their own franchises draining the blood from the carcasses as they go.

 

[Voboy]

Star Wars 7, 8, and 9 had no input from George Lucas, and the scripts, story outlines, and suggestion notes from him were thrown out. There is no Lucas in the final three big screen incarnations, no Lucas a'tall. All they had was JJ and the greed of Disney. Disney has the propensity to destroy their own franchises draining the blood from the carcasses as they go.

It's obviously debatable, but as flawed as 7-9 were? They were far better movies than the Lucas prequels. Lucas, IMO, had one stupendously awesome idea, and he made that into a movie in 1977. The rest of them have not really been necessary... but he convinced himself, and others, that his later ideas were still just as good. "Me-sa" say NO.

I think it's outside the scope of this thread, but what happened to the Star Wars franchise has a lot of parallels in other creative endeavors.

 

[SimonDoom]

I was 9 when it first came out and the word that came to mind seeing it in the theater was wonder. Rewatched them with my grandson and of course now they seem cheesy, but they're a lot of fun.

Empire Strikes Back was amazing to me because the bad guys won, Luke got his ass whipped, Han sold out and Frozen...ever since then I refer to books or movies where the bad guys win as "This is the empire strikes back edition!"

Since we're on the subject of plagiarism, the original Star Wars movie was based significantly on the Kurosawa film, the Hidden Fortress. I believe Lucas admitted as much, but if I remember rightly there was no legal dispute. The plot and character details were different even though there were many broad similarities.

Sergio Leone didn't fare so well when his first Spaghetti Western, Fistful of Dollars, blatantly borrowed plot concepts from another Kurosawa movie, Yojimbo. That time, Kurosawa sued, and he got a percentage in a settlement.

Kurosawa was involved in a lot of remakes/ripoffs. His movie Ran remade Shakespeare's King Lear. The movie The Magnificent Seven was based on Kurosawa's movie The Seven Samurai. In that case, though, the Americans paid $2500 up front for the rights. That was an investment well worth making.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Is there a rule that the longer any AH thread goes on, the chance that Star Wars will be invoked approaches one?

Cos if no-one's already pointed that out, I'm calling it Kumquat's Law.

 

[Euphony]

Is there a rule that the longer any AH thread goes on, the chance that Star Wars will be invoked approaches one?

Cos if no-one's already pointed that out, I'm calling it Kumquat's Law.

Meesa thinka you be onto sumpthin.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

No one has an exclusive right to words, but they MAY have an exclusive right to certain word combinations. Think of it statistically, like rolling a series of dice. It only takes a few die roles to get to a combination of rolls that, statistically, is unlikely to be reproduced in a purely coincidental way. If you are plucking, word for word, sentences that combine more than four words from another author's work, and you put them in different places in your own work, there's an excellent chance nobody will catch you without careful analysis. But it's still willful copying, and it's still a bit icky, isn't it? There's nothing at all wrong with saying to yourself, "I really like the way they used the word 'radiant' in that story! I'm going to do something like that in my story." Perfectly fine. But if you're lifting entire sentences, that's not fine. It's lazy, it's unoriginal, it's cribbing from other's work, and it's misleading readers into thinking YOU are the one who came up with those clever word combinations, not someone else.

It can be subtle, admittedly, but the comparison done in this thread demonstrates a case that's not subtle at all. Doing a close comparison, like the one above, usually will show whether it's OK or not. That's what I meant by what I wrote above: I think most of have read enough that we know it when we see it, even if we have a hard time defining it.

I believe we are on the same page and that my poor example earlier implied that stringing a combination of another writer's words together was acceptable to me. It isn't, especially if it does as you mentioned and misleads readers or disrespects the work of that writer.

My point is that words and phrases taken as individual descriptors are not the sole property of any one person. Maybe I was going to describe some feature (eye, hair, smile) as "sparkling, but when I saw another writer use the term, "radiant", I chose to use that instead. I could have obtained the same inspiration from a thesaurus. The fact that the source for that one-word inspiration was another writer doesn't make it unethical.

 

[jsmiam]

Is there a rule that the longer any AH thread goes on, the chance that Star Wars will be invoked approaches one?

Cos if no-one's already pointed that out, I'm calling it Kumquat's Law.

I second that.

 

[KeithD]

Is there a rule that the longer any AH thread goes on, the chance that Star Wars will be invoked approaches one?

Cos if no-one's already pointed that out, I'm calling it Kumquat's Law.

Right. And it almost always flips off into a medium other than writing--into film or music.

 

[lovecraft68]

Star Wars 7, 8, and 9 had no input from George Lucas, and the scripts, story outlines, and suggestion notes from him were thrown out. There is no Lucas in the final three big screen incarnations, no Lucas a'tall. All they had was JJ and the greed of Disney. Disney has the propensity to destroy their own franchises draining the blood from the carcasses as they go.

Yeah the last three made the prequel three look Oscar worthy. Karen Kennedy destroyed Star Wars and the rumors circulating around Indiana Jones 5(cause we needed that) all point to it being just as bad.

Lucas sold out and this is what the fan base got for it.

 

[lovecraft68]

Is there a rule that the longer any AH thread goes on, the chance that Star Wars will be invoked approaches one?

Cos if no-one's already pointed that out, I'm calling it Kumquat's Law.

Two months from now.

"Kumquats law dictates I need to mention Han Solo right now"

 

[SimonDoom]

Is there a rule that the longer any AH thread goes on, the chance that Star Wars will be invoked approaches one?

Cos if no-one's already pointed that out, I'm calling it Kumquat's Law.

I suppose that says something about the cultural literacy of this place. I'm as guilty as anyone.

It's an improvement, at least, over Godwin's Law: the rule that given sufficient time an online discussion inevitably will invoke comparisons with Hitler and Nazis.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Yeah the last three made the prequel three look Oscar worthy. Karen Kennedy destroyed Star Wars and the rumors circulating around Indiana Jones 5(cause we needed that) all point to it being just as bad.

Lucas sold out and this is what the fan base got for it.

Spielberg's more of the blame on Indi. Lucas, from what I've heard, only gave money for the start-up of the franchise, and his contribution was minimal. But Spielberg was involved in the Crystal Skull project. Spielberg and Katsman had to give the thumbs up on it, don't think Lucas had any say. I could be wrong, but probably not. For the next one, they de-age Harrison Ford by many, many years. I'm sure it will suck, big green donkey dorks.

I found episodes 2 and 3 of star wars okay, not great, not all that good, but not bad. Episode 1, forget about it, I'm trying to.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I suppose that says something about the cultural literacy of this place. I'm as guilty as anyone.

It's an improvement, at least, over Godwin's Law: the rule that given sufficient time an online discussion inevitably will invoke comparisons with Hitler and Nazis.

Less rancour in the debate, anyway.

I probably notice because I've never watched 3789, fell asleep in 1 and possibly 2, and only watched 4 and 5 in fragments a few years ago. For some reason, 6 was on every Christmas growing up.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Less rancour in the debate, anyway.

I probably notice because I've never watched 3789, fell asleep in 1 and possibly 2, and only watched 4 and 5 in fragments a few years ago. For some reason, 6 was on every Christmas growing up.

But what did you really think bout the sequels and prequels? HUM...

 

[Euphony]

Less rancour in the debate, anyway.

 

[lovecraft68]

I suppose that says something about the cultural literacy of this place. I'm as guilty as anyone.

It's an improvement, at least, over Godwin's Law: the rule that given sufficient time an online discussion inevitably will invoke comparisons with Hitler and Nazis.

That should be renamed the snowflake law....people who have all the traits of fascists squealing and calling everyone else one.

 

[Blind_Justice]

[Edit: though I'm also finding that Google is not returning some pages with exact matches - even when I'm pasting directly from 8letters' story, the search doesn't always find that story.]

If somebody did this to one of my stories, I'd be reporting it.

Google seems to ignore Lit in their search results as of late. I've tried to search for my author name and story snippets (to see where my stuff may have ended up) and Lit doesn't show up in my search results. Try Bing or DuckDuckGo for these kinds of searches instead.

And yeah, if I catch someone spare-parting my stories like that...

 

[Kumquatqueen]

That should be renamed the snowflake law....people who have all the traits of fascists squealing and calling everyone else one.

Nah - Mike Godwin's confirmed he's quite content with his law being invoked when describing actual fascists. The corrollary that whoever calls Nazi first has lost the argument is often but not always true.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

View attachment 2198519

I was not familiar with these creatures. I don't think my life missed anything with that...