A Message for FiMFiction's Staff... · 5:06am February 18th
To the staff of FiMFiction:
- knighty
- Xaquseg
- DumbDog
- Eldorado
- JackRipper
- Majin Syeekoh
- Meeester
- Perfectly Insane
- ROBCakeran53
- Spacecowboy
- Wanderer D
- Benman
- EverfreeNorthwest
- PresentPerfect
- RBDash47
After yesterday's fiasco regarding Blaze-saber's MLP Ninja-go series and other crossover stories being deleted, I've come to believe that the rules on this website are WAY too strict and should be changed; not outright deleted, mind you, but be more flexible and compromisable so that everyone wins. You see, after a long time on FiMFiction, I've noticed that many of the stories here are similar to or are the same format as Blaze-saber's stories. One story is a crossover between Spider-Man: No Way Home that takes place immediately after My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Episode 65) Magical Mystery Cure, another is Sonic the Hedgehog in My Little Pony: The Movie, and then there's Sunset Shimmer playing a role in the events of My Little Pony: A New Generation. There's even a story that has the events of Godzilla (2014) occur in Equestria. They did the same thing as MLP Ninja-go series, and yet they showed off a good balance of originality and copy-and-paste plagiarism! They even wrote how the other source material(s) aren't their property, showing how they weren't that stupid to claim an already owned thing.
I guess all I'm saying is that creativity is not always original ideas. Plagiarism is okay as long as the writer/author balances out what's theirs and what's not, and giving a shout-out to the creators of the source material(s). If anything, fanfiction writing is another form of rote learning when you think about it. If you staff administrators disagree with what I said, reply to me in full detail why! Everybody here deserves to know! Thank you for your time.
Edit: Based on what I've seen, the staff of this website follows this mindset:
For Want of a Nail = Good (Scrub)
In Spite of a Nail = Bad ("Stop Having Fun" Guys)
The only stories that were revoked yesterday were the Ninjago copypastes.
If other stories do the same thing, I'd love actual links to them instead of just vague descriptions of what they are.
5768735
Please don't delete the ones that MLPfollower listed either.
5768754
Surely you realize that the only reason these things still keep getting made is because other people see the ones already on the site and assume it's acceptable. Had Blaze's been reported right away, it would have been easy to work with him to make them somewhat original, and more than likely we wouldn't be talking about revoking eight huge stories from the site. He'd have superior versions of them that actually showcased his creativity instead of his ctrl+c skills, and as such would be allowed to stay here.
You're actively hurting other people by trying to hide these, and essentially guaranteeing that more people have their "hard work" removed because they misunderstood what is and isn't writing. This is the exact attitude that led directly to where we are now.
5768782
Oh, now you're blaming me? What did I do?
5768871
Whenever I revoke a story like this, people come out of the woodwork to go "yeah but what about the other stories doing the exact same thing? Those came first and inspired him to make his version!" or something to that effect. The fact that those other stories exist encourages other people to do the same thing.
So much of the discourse around this Ninjago thing is something like "how else could he write it?" — fans of this stuff literally cannot conceive of a world where people write their own stories using existing characters. Consuming and participating in this copypaste trash actually stunts your potential creative development. It becomes the only way to write fanfiction; just copy something else and swap the names around.
By not reporting these stories when they get submitted, you harm the people who write them. Not only are you setting them up to have their own stories revoked when they're eventually found, but you're also preventing them from being forced to actually use their brains to generate ideas. Everyone loses.
5768873
Well, other people heavily disagree with that.
5768875
I love how your response isn't anything to do with what I actually said, just, "other people disagree." As if I'm suddenly going to say "man, I've got this whole rational basis for why I believe what I do, but a couple people I've never heard of don't like it, so, I guess into the dumpster it goes!"
5768876
I'm just stating some truth and facts here that a lot of other commenters disagree with what you said.
I was mostly in the "sidelines", only reading all the comments talking about this so far. And most of them didn't like that MLPFollower caused this mess, and your "decision" as well.
5768882
MLPFollower didn't cause this mess. Blaze-saber caused this mess by writing stories that are expressly forbidden by Fimfiction rules. All of Blaze-saber's fans contributed to the scale of the mess by not reporting the stories far earlier in their development.
By whining about the prospect of me revoking other rule-breaking stories, you are contributing to the scale of the inevitable mess that will result whenever they actually are reported and revoked.
If that makes me unpopular amongst the small subset of people on this site who like to read stories stolen wholesale from other sources, I'll just have to find some way to go on living anyway.
5768883
Okay then, you do you. Good bye for now.
5768873
What if folks WANT to have stunted creativity? Have you thought about THAT?
5769704
You're still mad about this?
What's the point of fanfiction if not to showcase what ideas you have, to elaborate upon and expand the universes you love? Why would anyone want to engage in soulless, mindless copypasting until their ability to generate original thoughts atrophies from disuse to the point of nonexistence? Why would anyone want to turn into the fanfic-writing equivalent of the human characters in Wall-E?
I can't wrap my head around it, personally. I can understand the urge to fart out zero-effort copypastes because it's so much easier than actually inputting any level of creativity of your own, and I pity the people who train themselves to walk with that crutch for so long that they can't use their legs properly anymore. But the idea of knowing the end result and wanting that is such an anathema to anything I can even fathom that I really don't know how to answer you.