I feel like there's a lost hold on the concept of nuance lately, and since I see it most in fandom spaces with creative endeavors, that's the version of it I want to talk about right now.
There is a large difference between:
Inspired By, and Plagiarism
And I need both my creative folks, and those enjoying those creative works, to understand this deeply.
There are things about living that are going to prompt people to have similar ideas. Shared culture, religion, trauma, joys, holidays, media, tropes, etc. When you start talking about fandom spaces, then those points of inspiration are going to have a lot more overlap.
Because all the works are coming from the same source material, and while your lived experiences and your ideas are going to shape that source material as you see fit, you're still coming from the same starting point as everyone else.
So your ideas are going to be similar.
And in this day and age of call out culture bullshit, and people deciding to forego all sense nuance and case-by-case, I feel like creatives are afraid of writing something similar to one of their peers, for fear someone will scream at them and call them awful, irredeemable things for daring to have an idea that someone else "already did".
Look, listen to me, it's complicated. It really is. For one, creative people themselves are varied, individual persons who have different lived experiences. How one person reacts to being a source of inspiration, and how another person reacts to it could end up being very different things for a myriad reasons I could not hope to adequately list in 250-page thesis paper, never mind in a tumblr post.
Things are complicated like that, it's part of life, and because of that it is also a part of creativity.
I cannot speak for everyone out there, but to me, the greatest result of sharing my stories and art with a community, is seeing someone else get inspired by it.
I've been inspired by so many others. My friend created the Matchbook AU and shared that space with me. Another friend helped me develop the sweet intricacies of "Mean Marco". Dozens of friends have helped me shape, develop, and refine headcanons, ideas, plots, thots, and more.
I might be putting words to paper, but I am not doing it in a vacuum. I am five feet of blood and bone and flesh that is powered by support, friendship, community and a consuming desire to write. Without any of these pieces, I would not be doing what I am doing the way I am doing it.
I guess what I'm saying is that you have to try and be brave. You're never going to please everyone, and some people on the internet are going to be painfully, blessedly wrong, and you just need to block them and move on.
Unless you're lifting entire paragraphs from someone, and doing little more than changing the names and "correcting" the details, you're NOT plagiarizing someone else's work. Having the same idea is NOT the same thing.
I want to see it, okay? I want to see your take on that idea. YOUR version of it. Messier, cleaner, bloodier, angrier, happier - I don't care how you see it, I want to see how you see it. Toss in incest for the hell of it, let the villain win because you didn't want them to die, even if it spells doom for everyone else.
When you're working with the same cast of characters and you're putting them into similar AUs and Situations™ and tropes, you're going to see a lot of results that have similar vibes.
The difference, the joy - the reason to write it - is buried in the details.
I went left, you went right. I fell into despair, you decided to jump over the puddle. I wrote a happy ending, you resolved it in blood and anguish.
You did not plagiarize me.
I inspired you.
You danced with me through my story, and then said, "okay, but what if this?" and stepped away and I got to see something I wouldn't have seen otherwise, and now writing that story has given me even more than I had before.
Even if you went all the same directions I did, the imprints of your takes aren't going to fit into mine. Just because your footsteps go down the same path doesn't mean you're hitting the same stones and beats I did. The differences can be subtle, it's still two different cakes.
The point is that you wrote it from a blank page. You did not copy paragraphs and paste them onto the page and change a few things. You can have the Exact Same Idea as someone else, and write your own thing.
You're allowed to do that, it's okay. If you tell that person you were inspired by them, I think most people would be overjoyed to know it. Some might not. Some people might be sour about it, there's just too much variance in the world for absolutes, but you do your best, and you move on.
You can't shout out everyone who helped shaped a given creation, because your works are shaped by your years of lived experiences. But if you were largely inspired by one or two people, or a particular fic, or piece of art, then by all means, share that.
Maybe what inspired you, will inspire someone else, and maybe the person who created the thing that motivated you will be pleased to know that they helped light someone else's torch.
But that's just my take on it, and I wanted to share it because I see a lot of young writers fretting over fears of plagiarizing someone just because they ended up inspired by something they saw or read.
Start with a blank page, and just start typing, and you'll be fine. ^_^
