silkenphoenix

[silkenphoenix]

First Christmas parade of the year. I've got my beat up, school - owned baritone all dressed up in garland, lights, bells, and bows (not like it isn't heavy enough already). We're marching with the middle schoolers, which almost doubles our band in size (the high schoolers alone count 130, so I'm thinking it's about 230 total). Anyways, wish us luck! We're gonna need it if we don't want to trip all over the littles.

[silkenphoenix]

please read. and please reblog.

Please, please read.

3 years ago I wrote a very personal prose piece titled The Morning After I Killed Myself, about a young woman who commits suicide and looks back on the impact it has on her family and friends and ends up regretting her decision. I posted it on my writing blog 3 years ago and it went viral, shared over 300,000 times on my blog and almost a million times on Imgur/Reddit. 

So many people have told me it’s saved their lives.

But I almost wish I hadn’t written it. Because, despite all the good it managed to do, it’s been plagiarized over a hundred times, probably several hundred. I’ve seen dozens of cases of it being stolen and retitled with someone else’s name as the author, cases of it being published in someone else’s book under their name, cases of it being used as song lyrics by a band who claims they wrote it, cases of it being posted nearly ten times on the same website alone and because the website is so enormous they didn’t catch each instance of plagiarism…

Once a girl based her senior art thesis off of my piece…only she accidentally based it off of a plagiarized version of my piece and had no idea. She called me, a complete stranger, in tears, begging me to forgive her for something that was not her fault at all, but the fault of the person who plagiarized me. She had to redo portions of the thesis she worked so hard on.

I’ve had cases of it being submitted to writing contests under other peoples’ names and them winning awards for it. One girl submitted it to the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and won a gold key for it, coincidentally the same contest I submitted some of my work to in high school and won awards for. What was her excuse? She said she read the piece awhile ago, liked it so much that she saved it to her computer, and when the time came to submit to the contest, she “forgot she hadn’t written it” and sent it in under her name.

I had a case of a stranger who posted it on their blog under their name and when I asked them, politely, to provide me with credit and remove their name, they claimed they’d “written the piece 10 years ago in their private journal and that I was the one who plagiarized them.”

I’ve had cases of people messaging my writing blog and accusing me of plagiarism…of my own piece, because they saw plagiarized versions of it going viral and had no idea I was the original author.

And finally, a few weeks ago, a girl submitted it to a contest under her name and won $100 for it. Now she’s apparently denying plagiarism.

This piece of mine was intended to help people. It’s a very very personal piece and always will be. I’m glad it’s helped so many people. But something that is so personal and painful for me has been twisted and manipulated and stolen and published for profit and taken away from me so many times I’ve lost count. I don’t care about money. But when I saw this girl win $100 for a piece about suicide that I wrote, that is the last straw.

Please, for the love of god, don’t steal from artists and writers. Don’t steal something and claim you wrote it. Write and create your own work. If you see a piece of art or writing floating around with no source or a mis-attributed source, tell the original author. Spread the word. Don’t share artworks without sources on them. 

You might think that it’s not a big deal, that it doesn’t matter, that it only happened once.

But it happens all the time. All the time. This is exhausting and artists deserve credit. They deserve respect.

I’ve considered deleting the writing blog I’ve had for 5 years because of how often this piece is plagiarized.

Don’t let it get to that point, where someone considers getting rid of something they love because it’s hardly theirs anymore.

Thanks for reading.

[silkenphoenix]

Slip of the Tongue

[silkenphoenix]

[silkenphoenix]

"Go Down!"

When we're supposed to say "first down!" and half the band remembers that in the middle of "go dogs!" 

[silkenphoenix]

transforming a popular pop song to sound like it’s their own, gosh they’re so talented

[silkenphoenix]

recorded this today :-) sorry about my really awful guitar playing (my piano is broken ooooooooooops) hope u enjoy

love u all

(◡ ‿ ◡ ✿)

[silkenphoenix]

Sophomore euphs sight reading sixteenth notes at 156... oof

[silkenphoenix]

is this what the kids are listening to these days?

[silkenphoenix]

do you ever just do that glance that turns into a mini stare at someone because they’re so beautiful you can’t turn away and think, “you look like a mistake but goddamn you still make my heart stutter” ???

[silkenphoenix]

The derivative of velociraptor is acceleraptor

[silkenphoenix]

recorded this today :-) sorry about my really awful guitar playing (my piano is broken ooooooooooops) hope u enjoy

love u all

(◡ ‿ ◡ ✿)

[silkenphoenix]

Reblog if you think marching band is a sport

or at least should be considered a sport

i mean really

we compete against other schools/bands

we do strenuous physical activity

we hold try outs for placements

it requires a certain skill (which can be taught)

it’s like one big giant team!!

have you even seen colour guard? they can double toss you

i don’t see whats so hard about marching band being a sport

[silkenphoenix]

That moment when the band director thinks Toto sings about Alaska

[silkenphoenix]

213

a

[silkenphoenix]

Do y'all remember being a kid and trying to read in the car while it was dark outside and your parents wouldn’t let you turn on the light so you would try to grab snatches of sentences when you passed by street lights

[silkenphoenix]

Both bands (Symphonic and Wind Ensemble) got overall superiors. We're going to state!

Music Performance Assessment

FBA Concert MPA is today. Wish us luck.

(We got straight superiors for Marching MPA, even with the new band director. Hoping our luck lasts)