Monday, August 3, 2009

Oh, god no

So, in a recent post, Bill pointed out how similar my Malthus Kale story was to Firefly. I defended myself, thinking that the main similarity was in Malthus and Mal's names. Upon further reflection, I realized how similar they were.

Malthus and Charlotte - a guy and a chick with a dark past. Charlotte is basically the poor-man's Zoe - I realized I even was starting to make her violent in the story, with her whole shotgun-thing, even though I hadn't planned that out in advance.

David Abbot, being a supernatural psychopathic ace-in-the-hole, is the poor man's River Tam.

I still don't feel that I was ripping off Firefly, and more that I was just pulling from the same template, but that doesn't make me feel any better. Fuck it! I'm trashing it all!

5 comments:

  1. i never said i thought you were ripping off firefly. i just meant that i thought it had the same kind of vibe as the show. that is a good thing, since i think that show is excellent. of course, on the whole, the characters and archetypes in firefly arent completely original anyway. it doesnt matter, because it works. dont get sensational.

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, I didn't think that you were accusing me of plagiarism. I just rather that my writing is a beautiful, unique snowflake. Though, granted, since you can identify it as a snowflake, it's not really that unique, in the sense that it bears the same, you know, template of a snowflake...Fuck it! I'm banning winter!

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is exactly the way one becomes that writer that has one promising complete book, and 1500 incomplete ones.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about how much you cribbed from the writing style of Cormac McCarthy in the opening paragraph. Yes, my copy of Blood Meridian came in the mail today.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Yeah, well, Cormac McCarthy was openly cribbing from the style of William Faulkner, so it's like I'm joining into a literary ripoff orgy.

    ReplyDelete