A Series of Obsessions...with Series

In the wake of some things I’ve been dealing with lately, I feel compelled to say this: not everything is plagiarism. Using the same font is not plagiarism. Writing in a similar style is not plagiarism. Being inspired by another writer, admiring their work, or unknowingly arriving at similar imagery is not plagiarism. Art is, and always has been, a long conversation between creators. We read each other, we move one another, and pieces of what we love inevitably find their way into our own work.

That is very different from repeatedly taking someone’s original ideas, wording, concepts, or creative identity and presenting them as your own.

I worry that we’ve become too comfortable using words like copying and plagiarism whenever we see resemblance. If we throw those accusations around carelessly, they begin to lose their meaning and severity. Then, when genuine plagiarism does happen to someone, it becomes easier to dismiss, minimise, or overlook. Nuance matters. Discernment matters. Similarity does not automatically equal theft.

As writers and artists, I think we owe one another both protection and generosity: protecting creators when real harm is being done, and extending grace when what we’re seeing is simply influence, coincidence, or the natural ways art echoes itself across people.

>looks inside

my world's on fire, how 'bout yours?

You assess it. If you have a nut allergy, you ask yourself if this looks like a nut. If you have a shellfish allergy, you ask yourself if this smells like seafood.

Then you test it. You touch your tongue to it and wait a couple minutes. If you feel okay you take a very small super tiny piece and chew it a couple times and tuck it in between your gums and your lip and leave it in your mouth for several minutes while paying close attention to your body, and see how you feel. If you feel okay you swallow that tiny piece, and you wait about 20 minutes and you see how you feel. If you feel okay you eat a more normal size bite and you wait a couple hours and you see how you feel.

If at some point in this process you start to feel nauseated, or headache-y, or ill in any way, you decide not to eat that thing.

OR. You don’t eat it until someone you know and trust has consumed it and tells you it doesn’t taste of nuts or shellfish. And even then. You proceed with caution.

You decide for yourself. You exercise care in what you consume. You don’t walk up to an unfamiliar plant and scarf down a handful of leaves then scream that it should have had disclaimers and warnings all over it when it gives you diarrhea.

Trigger warnings and tags and ratings on art or entertainment are a nice thing to do for people. I try to do it. But we are all responsible for our own immediate safety. We are also social creatures who depend on each other, so maybe that means you don’t read or watch something until someone you trust has vetted it, that’s a great way to handle that. So is finding authors whose labels and tags you trust. But when it comes to fiction and the communication of ideas, there are a billion things that are fine for most people but bad for some, and no way to get a billion labels on it, so… you still have to find your own way.

But then my husband and I got curious and decided to look up the history of wheelbarrows, and we both thought it was surprisingly interesting.

The very next day, we were visiting a thrift store with family and my sister spotted a toy wheelbarrow for her son, and my husband said, “Did you know that Jesus was older than wheelbarrows? They weren’t invented until around 100 CE.”

I don't believe in any state's right to kill their citizens.

I don't believe in the death penalty.

I'm pro-abortion in the specific way that stems from a belief no one has the right to another person's body, even if it would save lives.

I mentioned Abby "PhilosophyTube" Thorn's "Abortion and Ben Shapiro" video before, but short version: say, hypothetically, the world's most gifted and important violinist is going to die due to needing a kidney transplant. By some weird fluke of medicine and genetics, your kidney is the only one that will work. There isn't time to find another rare donor. Your sacrifice will save this important, 'valuable' person's life... but you'll be on dialysis daily for the rest of your life.

Believing in absolute autonomy means no one can force you to agree to that. Even if it will result in someone's death, you cannot be compelled to give up your body for a righteous enough cause. In the same way, no one should be compelled to give up their body to a fetus, thus pro-abortion. (The reason you abstract it this way is to side-step the ingrained misogyny of "well you had sex so really this is your fault.")

Anyway. Eva Stratt is a much worse version of this. Grace was asked to sacrifice himself. He said no. She overruled him and in fact was always going to overrule him. The security people with the sedatives were ready to go before Grace even gave his answer. Making it a question was a polite fiction to spare Eva the trouble and trauma.

By doing it, she saves not just Earth but another populated planet altogether.

Grace said no. And he fought. He ran for his life. He was terrified. In the book, he calls it murder. In the film, he's begging them not to do it. In the book, the flashback happens as Grace-in-the-present wonders about how he must've known he could pull this mission off, he volunteered after all!

Then remembers: no he explicitly didn't.

In some way, it works better for me than Omelas. In that parable, the sacrificial child has no concept of why its happening. In PHM, Grace does know, and makes the informed decision to say no, and is overruled.

Does it stop being a fundamental, foundational wrong because it saves Erid and Earth?

How about the fact that Grace lives, does that make it less wrong?

Does the threshold change based on if Grace dies as expected or not?

Was it the only option or if they spent two weeks on the issue would they find a replacement and make up for lost time?

What projected death toll do you have to meet before Eva's decision becomes the Right Thing To Do?

Where do the scales tip?

Did the scales ever actually tip?

Other people may think they did. But for me and the absolutism I (try) to maintain about life and autonomy... I don't think they ever did. But I have to ask myself to really contend with that question.

And in the film, she did all that, and I still feel tremendous sympathy for her.