So I was cruising the internet for Witcher videos (as I do) when I came across this particular gem. You may or may not be familiar with a youtube user who goes by the name Razorfist. He has posted a couple of comments on Archengeia's videos and has been cited a few time on this forum (in particular the gaming journalism101). I was at one point subscribed to this ranter/reviewer and while I unsubbed a while back I still held him in high enough esteem (in less obtuse terms I believed he was a reasonable if somewhat histrionic person). Since the guy has been generally in the know when it comes to companies screwing over gamers I was curious about why he would boycott CDPR's Witcher series. DRM? Micro-transactions? Did Sapkowski beat seals to death with is fist? Then these preconceived notions melted away as the horrific mass of ignorant garbage flooded my computer screen.

The Video (the horror): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVe-CeThGug (AKA No More Witcher for Razorfist).

I will try and calmly deconstruct the arguments presented in the video (as calmly as possible) and try to segue it into a larger discussion about plagiarism in general (very poorly).

1. Elric and Geralt are entirely different characters: Besides some superficial aesthetic similarities and a troubled political backstory these two characters are almost entirely different in terms of motivation, characterization, and personality the are almost antithetical .

A guy on the Witcher forum did a really good comparison between the two so here is a nice, fat quote for you

Elric of Melnibone:

Rightful emperor of Melnibone, and thus most powerful individual in all the Young Kingdoms.
Elven.
Albino.
Weakling who needs to sustain himself with either drugs or stolen souls.
Mightiest mage in all of the young kingdoms.
Worshipper of the chaos gods.
Frequently stupid.
Bound symbiotically to a soul eating sentient sword.
One aspect of the champion eternal, a multiversal hero.
His people have ruled the world for ten millenia.
Rides Dragons and sometimes even weirder craft.
Has few friends or acquaintances, mainly Dyvim and Moonglum.

Geralt of Rivia:

Orphaned child without family or fortune.
Human.
White haired and cat eyed due to witcher mutations.
Superhuman, immune to disease and the ravages of time.
Knows a few witcher tricks, the signs.
Agnostic, with a certain distaste for fate.
Clever, know his craft like the back of his hand.
Bear two mundane sword, one silver and one steel.
Is not sure whether fate exists, certainly does not like to think of himself as a pawn of it.
Witchers are few and rapidly dying out, at their height they were reviled freaks.
Rides a horse that he calls Roach.
Has many friends.

Yeah they are so similar that they almost have 4 unifying character traits *rolls eyes in irritated contempt. And considering Moorcock openly acknowledges that Elric was widely inspired by Kullervo (a figure from Finnish folklore) the archetype was already established in fantasy far before Moorcock even penned his stories.

2. Moorcock's Lawsuit means absolutely nothing: Let us all excuse the fact that Moorcock has been considered a joke amongst the fantasy community for a while now (see Epic Pooh) to focus on a little history lesson. Way back in 2008 many Moorcock fanboys were telling their diety that Geralt was "totally a rip off of Elric". These being fanboys they had no idea what they were talking about. So Moorcock; being the asinine troll he is, decided to sue just for the sake of it. He himself admitted that he didn't even read Sapkowski's novels. Yet Razorfist uses this lawsuit to substantiate his argument. The Lindsey Lohan-Pitbull lawsuit held more weight than this dross. Did he even slightly research this? Really. REALLY!?!?!

And the sad part is these are his only two arguments. The rest of the video is essentially just:

1. Refuting arguments no one has made yet (with sweeping generalizations)

2. Trying to justify his boycott by stating that the entire Witcher brand is built around plagiarism (even though the Witcher games are penned by CDPR).

3. Snipes at Cyberpunk and the Witcher 2's ending

This argument is so paper thin it is nearly air. The baffling levels of misinformation, Heavens to Metroid Caliber pseudo-intellect, and downright ignorance that pervades every facet of this video makes me nauseous. The really sad thing is not only that his video has likes in the majority (hurray for overly verbosified lies over cold hard fact) is that when people tried to refute his arguments he (let me just make this large for emphasis) deleted their comments. That is one small step above just removing the comment section in general. For a guy with the tag line "Reviews with Balls" he sure as hell did not have the testicular fortitude to converse with people that tried to give their perspective.

With all that ranting out of the way I will now pose the question; What is plagiarism?

In my opinion plagiarism is when somebody essentially steals the entirety of another persons story. There is a difference between a story being hackneyed and plagiaristic. For example Avatar is hackneyed. The narrative is essentially a conglomeration of tropes and beats (character, thematic etc.) from films like Ferngully, Dances With Wolves, A New World, Pocahontas, even other James Cameron movies like Aliens and Titanic. But it isn't plagiaristic. It is more just a collection of familiar cliches than outright regurgitation.

Conversely, someone like Carlos Mencia is a plagiarist in every sense of the word. Someone who outright steal and regurgitates jokes from other comedians without an iota of originality. He doesn't even re-contextualize a punchline as an homage he just steals the joke in its entirety and passes it off as original material.

When someone outright steals another persons work and passes it off as his own then it can be considered plagiarism.

Plagiarism is not a collection of similarities (especially not superficial ones); nay, it is an outright ctrl+v.

So your thoughts on the video? Your thoughts on plagiarism? Let the intellectual discourse begin because God knows it won't happen in the comments section of the video itself.