BattlePope said:
IF YOU'VE NEVER, EVER, READ OR HEARD OF OR HAD, THE ENDING TO 'FIGHT CLUB' SPOILED FOR YOU, DON'T READ IT. but in all fairness, book's pushing 14 years old and the movie's pushing 11 now, so if you were, are, or will be interested in them, you probably already know what I spoil, if it can be asserted as such....
Hell, I came up with an idea for a story today and slowly, very painfully, my left and right brain hemispheres had a meet and greet to relay the info that it was basically Bill Willingham's graphic novel Fables without the whole multiverse angle and a slight shift on what types of fictional characters would be used.
To be fair, mixing public domain characters, even fairy tale characters together isn't something new. Which is something Willingham is probably aware of. Even in comics, if that was the only similarity there's always Neil Gaiman's Sandman as another example.
BattlePope said:
I know what you're saying about plotline similarities being the crux of the difference between one piece of perceivable art and another being xeroxes of each other. As an amateur (at best) cartoonist, my goal is to try for something that's not purposefully taken from something, and much to my chagrin Robert Kirkman made a new series of graphic narrative that shared a main plotline similarity, but I wasn't working on mine when his was freshly solicited, I was quite angered by how he'd come up with an idea similar to mine and as far as I had cared, mine was the predecessor.
Unfortunately for you, your plot, whatever it was, wasn't in print. (Without specifying it, somehow I'm thinking you mean, Walking Dead (which I'm guessing you don't), and the combination of Fables and The Walking Dead has me giddy with possibilities.)
The point is this was in print. Your work was not. It is an unfortunate coincidence for you, but unless someone reads your work, they can't steal it. Hell even if it was just themes not always theft, for instance the suit over God of War by a pair of disgruntled screenwriters a couple months back.
BattlePope said:
I'm quite certain if I came up with an idea for a book or television series about a man who has the ability to give someone a fatal aneurysm at will I wouldn't think that I was ripping of anything else, especially if MY idea had it that he didn't have control over who the target was. Though if you google something like "telepathic aneurysm" you find out about all these comics and characters in things like TV shows where someone can do just that.
Babylon 5. Good call. Good show. It certainly isn't the only thing there. And while we're on the subject Babylon 5 gleefully absconds with some of Alfred Bester's work for it's show. But it isn't a theft, in this case it's pretty clearly an homage. And, at that, a cited homage.
BattlePope said:
The bit about uncontrolled or aimless telepathy killing is, in a sense, 'Lullaby' by Chuck Palahniuk, author of 'Fight Club' the novel, not the movie. He got hate mail about how "fight club was my idea" and his response is the forward to the editions printed after the movie came out. His reply was a simple "it was done before you were even born. Did you, however: go out, become an insomniac, meet a woman, wanna do her, make up an imaginary friend to deal with the insomnia, start an underground proto-mixed martial arts club with said friend, then let your imaginary friend take over, start an anarchist revolution and try to make a symbolic statement about how we have control of the future, so the past can just deal with it, then kill your imaginary friend by killing yourself? No?! Then I guess not much of it was your idea then." I'm paraphrasing, of course.
You're paraphrasing sort of. The introduction to Fight Club has Palahniuk waxing philosophical about how he had an encounter with someone after the film came out that had no idea there was a book and was blindly ripping off "the first rule of" meme.
Now, from a cursory examination of the plot of the book in question, that does appear to be exactly what's happened here. There are some changes, and probably enough to protect them from a copyright infringement suit, but there's enough plot points to say, yes, they may have swiped this wholesale.
BattlePope said:
I do believe that ME and Dragon Age Origins are basically the same game-different timezone, but I haven't gotten that far into either, an I couldn't really stand most of ME for making me feel like mineral deposits and other exploring subpoints mattered more than shooting things in the face and/or vital thought process centers of the nervous system. Both facets of the game felt like Bioware gave up making fluid, ergonomic controls after a while.
I'm sorry, you lost me here. What are you arguing again? How do game controls relate to narrative?
BattlePope said:
Though another thing to ponder (which was a point of discussion between a creative writing professor here in the States what referred to the original trilogy as the greatest, most perfect and original storytelling ever and I) is that Star Wars was Lord of the Rings in space in the sense that the Force was the One Ring with its capability of corrupting anyone who used it, Ben Kenobi was Gandalf, Luke was Frodo, Han was something of an Aragorn, and the robots were Pippin and Merry. Then we have 'A New Hope' specifically which established that the other two in that trilogy were 'Seven Samurai' while Episode 4 was 'The Hidden Fortress' which were both excellent, epic films from Kurosawa.
Not to nitpick too horrifically, but: A New Hope references 'The Hidden Fortress" visually. It's the Phantom Menace that lifts huge chunks of its plot structure and escapes with it.
BattlePope said:
Some people know that first film's Western reiteration dubbed 'The Magnificent Seven' which kinda stings for some people to stew over as both are superb films and held in high regards.
No offense but Kurosawa may be a poor choice here. Bringing his work is a little like complaining that Last Man Standing ripped off the plot of Yojimbo. (Which, like The Magnificent Seven is explicitly a remake.)
It would be one thing if Bioware had gone the route of Babylon 5 or Last Man Standing, and nodded to the original work, but they don't, they claim this is their own original work, their own original world, and their own original concepts. When, it really starts to appear that they simply swiped it and ran.
BattlePope said:
And on the last note: the Jedi are somewhere between Buddhist Monks and Samurai with almost negligible clairvoyance and mild telekinesis in a deep space, fantasy Sci Fi setting or as Jerry Holkins of Penny-Arcade.com put it: "space wizards from the past-future." Apologies if I don't scurry to find the url for the specific comic.
Okay, great, and that has relevance to what?
As advice to an amateur writer, I would advise you to start to cull your arguments down. If you're going to try to persuade people don't bring in external examples unless they can solidly support your argument. You brought in about five, and aside from the quote from Palahniuk, none of them really help your argument.
Kirosawa brings in a new debate entirely, and threatens your entire topic with derailment.
Star Wars has little to no relevance the way you're presenting it. If you play up the Campbell angle, then you've got some room to maneuver and make a convincing argument. The thing to remember and plain for as a counter argument if you want to go that route is, Lucas has always been very up front about how he was creating a new mythology based on Campbell's work. There's also a Jungian argument about Star Wars that can derail it as an example here.
Fables is a hodgepodge of things brought together in a mixing bowl and is, as an example, very difficult to use effectively in an argument about plagiarism, because it brings in so many different sources.
And finally, without identifying which Kirkman series; what you have is, no offense, not evidence, just an anecdote. Which is great to add emphasis, but without more information there to flesh out how Kirkman's work relates to what you were working it doesn't really support your argument. A one paragraph abstract/synopsis would have probably done the trick.
