Inspiration/Plagiarism

I’m taking a pause from the Fantastic Bestiary this week as I haven’t been my best healthwise lately. Also lately I’ve been distracted by something that has left me with this question poppin’ into my mind, And so this sunday I'm posting this question that perhaps anyone of you can answer:

Where thus the line between inspiration and plagiarism go?

See, these last days I’ve been going down memory lane. The first finnished story I ever wrote from start to finnish back in elementary school was pretty much the plot to a video game I enjoyed playing at the time. I copied down the whole template of it, merely changing the names, the looks of the characters and changed and added a few scenes here and there. If you read through the full plot synopsis of that game, which was Megaman Legends for those who wonder, and then read through this script I wrote (and lost) you’d find very little that seperated the two plots.

And I was thinking of this as I found myself trying to get back to writing my comic scripts only to suddenly jump on this writing tangent, where I was scribbling together the basic framework for a series of stories that wasn’t just taken from the plot of another game, but two series of games. The games in question were Galerians and its sequel Galerians: Ash along with Condemned and it’s respective sequel Condemned 2. I took the plots of these games and spliced them together, switching out certain elements and changing the names and terminology that were being used.

Instead of having kids with psychic powers - that were enabled by drugs - created by an evil supercomputer, there would instead be a race of alien-looking females with an aesthetic reminiscent of jellyfish - having an epidermis that looks like a bride's veil and an elastic anatomy - that had these pearl-looking pores from which they’d emit these beam tentacles - also enabled by drugs - all born from a Queen that is being kept captive by a secret society - reminiscent of the one found in Condemned - wanting to harness their power and control the human population with drugs made from the microorganisms that the beam tentacle race thrives on (Might perhaps create some concept art of this just for the heck of it).

The story would combine the dark, gothic cyberpunk environment of the Galerians games with the psychological, mystery horror of the Condemned games. Now, this is as of now just some scribbling of disconnected plot points and elements that is probably gonna amount to just a for-my-eyes-only little side project, if it even gets that far that is (it wouldn't be the first time I've started writing a story only to abandon it). I could of course have done a crossover fanfic instead, but there’s always been this undeniable urge in me to make whatever I write into my own. And for my comics and their plots I feel like I’ve done my best to make them as inspired as I possibly can. To seperate them from their source inspirations as much as possible.

It is important to me that what I put out isn’t just someone elses work, which is why I don't think I'll ever publish this other story I’ve been scribbling on lately. But on the other hand I don’t really have anything against plagiarism over all as long as it's honest, and as long as it comes with a creative enough initiative. If for example someone publishes a story that is the spliced together template of more then one story with some changes of their own it could still be an intriguing story. Just as long as the creator admits that it is ripped from other sources. I don’t think it counts as theft if the original creators are credited right at the gate.

Then of course if the original creator/creators still have a problem with their work being copied it might be a different matter. Still, I can’t help but think that if you plagiarised several sources at once it could somehow end up coming up as something different. Kind of how some stories that started off as fanfics eventually would transform into their own thing. I feel like that is something that could eventually happen to this side project of mine – maybe. So that has gotten me thinking. Where thus plagiarism end and inspiration start and vice versa. Where thus the line between the two really go?

Let me know what you guys think? Have you ever had a creative venture where your plagiarism of something suddenly became inspired? What are your thoughts on plagiarism over all? What are the dos and don'ts?

Comments down below. And take care of yourselfs, ducks.

Helixfinger out!