#fellas is it plagiarism to cite your sources?

[succubi-tch]

Had to run my paper through SafeAssign (AI plagiarism checker) to submit it to my university on Sunday and. It told me my totally original paper I'd spent over 12 hours on was over 50% plagiarized so I scroll down to see what it marked as plagiarism. The cited references 😑

[skaruresonic]

I am a hater and therefore have no soul. Let's do this.

Okay, so for context, I heard about an online altar to Sally before, and assumed it was a small Geocities site or something, but I'm looking at it for the very first time and goddamn, is it really messing with me. People are like. Actually posting stuff to it as though Sally were real.

Folks rag on and on about the Holocaust poem - deservedly - but the fans in here warped songs and Scripture and fucking Kaddish in order to make the words somehow apply to Sally, and it's like welp no wonder nobody raised an eyebrow at Penders' horribly misappropriated Holocaust poem at the time. Monkey see, monkey do.

The most hilarious part is, literally the first thing you see on the site is the disclaimer stating that Sally didn't actually die. She's not dead! Guess all the melodramatics were for nothing xP Anyway, onto the breakdown: ---

This first post is an original fan poem written from Nicole's perspective. Honestly, it's not all that bad since it's a fan work and not a ripoff of copyrighted material or a bastardization of actual religious Scripture, and the sentiment of a grieving character writing a memorial poem is a nice concept in and of itself. Maybe if more of the messages were like this, the memorial wouldn't be quite as Yikes as it becomes later on down the line. Really giving me huge unrequited Sallicole vibes, though, especially with all that talk about Nicole wishing she had lips to kiss Sally's cold corpse mouth with. Liiiiiiittle bit creepy imo, but whatever. YMMV. "But I knew you better than some who called you their love/Though I was always at your side/I was rarely noticed" And, uhhh, yeah. It sounds like Sally really didn't treat Nicole all that great...

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This is just a direct message from a fan grieving the character. And you know what, I'm not gonna rag on this one because it's actually pretty earnest and it'd be meanspirited to dissect it just for being an honest reflection of a fan's feelings.

It's succinct, it's not melodramatic or overwrought, it doesn't plagiarize anything. I can respect that. Moving on.

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Even her enemies lost something? (cue the part where my diaphragm starts heaving from nascent laughter)

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Apparently this is to be sung to the tune of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." ...Lol.

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Another song ripoff. Celine Dion.

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why does this remind me of the scene in Gilmore Girls where Lorelei starts singing "have I ever told you that you are my heeerooo" to Rory after finding out her love interests trashed a house while fighting over her, and why am I laughing about it

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Mariah Carey song lyrics. Not even ripped off, just straight-up plagiarized lmao.

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O...kay. Gettin a little weird here, fellas

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Wasn't Brave New World like, some sort of sci-fi dystopian novel?

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Apparently this comes from a Sailor Moon audio CD. No comment.

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All of this is so overwrought that my eyes just kinda glazed over but I am vaguely wondering why Sally's hands would look "deathly-pale" if she has brown fur? kinda racist if you ask me /jk

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Motherfuckers can't even cite the sources they're ripping off in order to make their squirrel waifu seem divinely blessed correctly. smh

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Okay, so this is where I start to have to get serious and try to drill down to the bedrock of this stuff, because it gets really culturally appropriative really fast.

While I won't pretend to have anything more than the barest passing familiarity with The Tibetan Book of the Dead, from my extremely limited understanding of its general principles, it's not so much a religious text a la biblical scripture as it is a set of instructions read to a dead person, after death but before rebirth, on how to proceed through the various bardos and help them understand what they're experiencing. The experimental film Enter the Void explores the concept.

Tibetan Book of the Dead - World History Encyclopedia

As a matter of fact, it seems the earliest versions of what became The Tibetan Book of the Dead weren't written; the bardos were instead drawn as mandalas. Apparently the text itself wasn't written until the 8th century AD, though its teachings were transmitted orally, and not translated into English until the 20th century. Make of that information what you will.

It's weird because when I copy-pasted this exact quote into Google, the first result that popped up was the Sally cybershrine, followed by a Tumblr blog. So. Idk if they were copying from some old edition or what - probably - but that's not the point. My point is, I had a funny feeling they chose this quote due to a combination of Sounding Deep and for including the phrase "O nobly born," which obviously would refer to Sally being a princess. Unsurprisingly, while the poster may have assumed (as I did) that "O nobly born" means what it says on the tin, in this context, it's not actually addressing nobility as in royalty, but the "daughters and sons" of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, who in this case would encompass everyone and everything that has ever lived:

Heart Wisdom - Ep. 82 – Respect for All - Jack Kornfield

Oh, Nobly Born, you who are the son or daughter of the Buddha, (insightcolorado.org)

So, score one point for missing the point, I guess? Even outside of that, uhhh. Nobility being used as a narrative device or a stand-in for an audience for a religious tract is... actually pretty common, and not just in Buddhist texts, but in Vedic texts like The Upanishads, and even in Welsh Christian texts like the eagle that proselytizes to a pagan Arthur in the 13th-century poem The Dialogue of Arthur and the Eagle. Remember, kids: don't show your entire ass online. Knowledge is power.

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The only word in this prayer was changed from Yis'rael (Israel) to Mobius.

Necessary context:

Oseh Shalom | Michael Schachter

Oseh Shalom: A Prayer for Peace - Judaism 101 (JewFAQ)

I sincerely hope whoever changed the lyric is Jewish themselves, because if not, then that shit is just as Fucking Yikes as Penders appropriating the Holocaust poem. Yeah, no, this is starting to depress me. I came here looking for a quick laugh but now it's becoming a serious soul search into myself and my responsibilities as a person to respect the cultures of my fellow human beings over, like. Fictional blue hedgehogs. I'm thinking about how gross it'd be if someone misappropriated Skaruręʔkyéha·ʔ practices to express their grief over a fictional character that didn't even canonically die.

I feel so uncomfortable right now wtf is wrong with Sally diehards man

--- ...Anyway. That's why, for a much-needed palate-cleanser after that awful fucking taste in my mouth... Grateful Dead lyrics! Yay!

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Not sure what a Velveteen Rabbit reference is doing here but okay. I like the implication that Sonic and/or Sally fans have loved all of Sally's hair off with the presence of this quote, though.

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Which is more hilarious, the idea that Penders was ever "great," the idea that he killed Sally off for money, or the fact that Sally never actually died, you goofballs? ...Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, wasn't it Sega who ultimately had a hand in bringing Sally back? ...So why does everyone lambast them for not including her in a game? Why do Archie fans reach straight to "fuck Sega" when they already slapped Penders down and revived her for your ungrateful asses?

fuck me, dude, can't say thanks for anything you're given huh

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Yeah so more use of literary quotes out-of-context to make our shrine sound Erudite and Deep.

I have a hunch this one is supposed to allude to Sally's love for Sonic or something, but the poem in its full context is about how bereavement can have a stranglehold on people.

--- Okay, so because Tumblr is saying I'm nearing my 30-image limit for this reblog, I may have to continue this tomorrow, because apparently, a funeral song?? For Princess Diana?? Was plagiarized for this shrine???? bruh.

But, before we wrap this up, have my absolute favorite, most poignant, 10/10 part of the shrine would horribly appropriate real-world religions for sake of a fictional chipmunk again:

Reblog if you, too, are weird and perverse and other fans' mommies tell them not to play with you

I remember the early days of the Sonic fandumb on the internet. i remember all the online shrines to sally as well as the nasty earth vs Mobius squabbles as well as the "all sonic games after Sonic 3 and knuckles sux" crowd

The online Sally shrine is so funny to me lol

I normally wouldn't advocate laughing at other peoples passionate emotional response to fictional media, but there's an exception to every rule lol