We Need To Talk... About Plagiarism

When you get down to it? That setup is just "Indecent Proposal" mixed with "Honey, We Need To Talk" and a pinch of a couple of additional spices. That's it. Pretending it's any more complicated than that is being far too precious about the concept. The idea that two contemporaries, both reading the same set of Loving Wives stories, could never reach the same point independently is ludicrous, even if they reach or a year or more apart.

How many times have we seen two movies come out within a year of each other with the same premise? It happens so often there's a name for the phenomenon, "Twin Films," with a list on Wikipedia as long as my arm. Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down, The Raid and Dredd, 27 Dresses and Made of Honor. The list literally goes back to the 1910s.

If you broke each of those pairings down to a blurb and their attendant tropes, some people would scream "plagiarism!" However, plagiarism usually isn't the cause. Sometimes a similar movie gets rushed into production because a competitor is making a film that's getting a lot of buzz, but more often two writers or directors found inspiration in the same set of films or books, and two executives at two different studios go looking for the next big thing, and suddenly you have twin films.

Yes, we each come from different backgrounds, but we're all stewing in similar sets of influences. Two separate writers independently coming up with a similar idea-especially one so obvious in hindsight as "What if 'Indecent Proposal' but also 'Honey, We Need To Talk?'"-is going to happen. And, again, we only saw the first chapter of the later story, so who knows where it was going to go? Only the writer.

I'm not immune to this. "Philanthropic" was an intentional nod to all the other "Indecent Proposal" stories in Loving Wives, but I thought I'd come up with a fairly novel idea in "Unwanted Memories," a story about a husband nursing his wife back to health after a car accident that took her memory, and what they discover about each other.

Then, in the comments, people started saying, "Hey, it's like Regarding Henry!" I read the synopsis for that movie, sat back in my chair, and sighed, "Shit." I'll admit, I got a little annoyed, both at myself and the situation. I'd never seen the movie, but I'm sure I must have seen trailers for it in the 90s. Had I accidentally stolen the idea?

I eventually realized, though, that it didn't matter. The story had a similar synopsis: asshole spouse gets injured, loses memory, goes through life changes, and comes out the other side with a different, happier life.

But that synopsis doesn't tell everything. The movie's POV character is the formerly asshole spouse; mine is the long-suffering one. The couple in the movie have a daughter, and she's a major aspect of the film; there are no children in mine. And, while the movie is about Henry's entire life and how it changes, "Unwanted Memories" focuses tightly on the couple's relationship.

Focus. Story beats. Characterization. Writing style. Themes. All of these trump tropes. Tropes are a dime a dozen; go to TVTropes, pick a bunch, and mash 'em together. That mash still isn't a story until someone turns it into one. The meal you'd make from that mash and the one I would are likely to be vastly different, even if they might look the same at first glance.

So, please, give each other grace. Don't assume someone's stealing from you just because their story looks similar to yours. Don't assume that someone comes from the same places, with the same values as you, just because you happen to share a hobby. Don't assume that your ethics are universal just because they've become deeply ingrained within you.

And don't assume that just because you hold tightly to those ethics that you're acting within their bounds, either. You just might not know that you aren't.

In that discussion about "February Sucks," I brought up nici and "Something We Have To Talk About," and people sort of skipped past it. I want to give the benefit of the doubt on that, as I'm suggesting we all do with each other. I try to not assume bad intent, and I genuinely don't believe it existed there.

But the simple fact of the matter is that everyone involved in that discussion with more than ten stories in Loving Wives had a "Honey We Need To Talk," and none of them, myself included, gave credit to nici in our story. Most of us have an "Indecent Proposal," too, and a "Strange Car in the Driveway." I wouldn't be surprised if we have more tales where, if we took the effort, we could find the story that originated the trope and give credit to an unheralded hero.

We don't, though. And, sometimes, that's okay. It's good to give credit to those that influence us, but just like my experience with Regarding Henry and "Unwanted Memories," we may not realize we might have been influenced. Hell, I didn't know where HWNTT came from until a few months ago. I had no idea that we could point at a single story and say, "That's the one!"

But maybe, arguably, we can't even do that.

In searching for "something we have to talk about," the first story that phrase comes up in hails from 2001, in a story named "Three Day Husband" by suegsusan. It's presented in a similar manner-a conversation with a husband, threatening to destroy him if he doesn't allow an affair to continue-but its role in the narrative is different.

In this earliest case, it's the affair partner threatening the husband, albeit with the wife present, and it's used to further a cuckold/crossdressing porn story, not to create the starting point of a marital drama one. The emotions involved are different. The outcomes, too. But that one plot point is the same.

Was nici referencing that story, or maybe a similar one? Without her input, we can't know. What we do know is that, by taking that setup, changing the focus, point of view, and, yes, the preceding and following story beats, she gave us something that other writers have since benefitted from, acting as midwife to dozens of diverse, innovative stories that tens of thousands of people have enjoyed.

Where would Loving Wives have been without that? If you don't care about Loving Wives, think about your favorite trope in your favorite category, whether because it's so universal or because it's so bizarrely specific (looking at you, "mom sits on son's lap"), and excise that one instead. What does the site look like if people are so reflexively protective of their creations as to deny both that others could have come up with elements of them on their own and that, perhaps, a better story exists that combines those same elements in different ways?

Give thanks to nici and GeorgeAnderson and all the other people who've made the stories that came before. Give credit to them and be honest about your influences. But also be humble enough to admit that you weren't the only one influenced by them, and be magnanimous enough to give others the benefit of the doubt. The community and the stories we all tell will be better for it.

But I swear to God, if one of you apes finishes "Cultural Exchanges" before I find the time to...