Hello guys. This might be my last forum post ever because I'm finally admitting... My first sheet,
Manhole, was plagiarized from a different person's MIDI file. And by this point, I could have totally been off the hook—I mean it's not even on the site anymore—but I don't want it on my conscience any longer, so here we go. Guys, I've got a lot to spill:
On May 31, 2018, I made my first sheet. Just, y'know, googled "Game & Watch Gallery MIDI" and picked
the first result and adapted it into a sheet. I didn't realize that those MIDI's actually took people time to make, I thought they were just ripped straight from the game. Looking back, that was a dumb thing to assume, but eh, hindsight's 2018, yeah? (Whoever even still has the archives from the Updater server, you can see in the first file I submitted for Olimar to edit has the same staff names as the MIDI file from that website.) So then, y'know, that sheet gets accepted, and that was a pretty happy day. Over the next month and change, I continued to do that exact thing for
Octopus and
Fire and
Parachute, but luckily I wasn't able to get much progress with those before:
On July 23, 2018, in the Discord server (in #submissions), Olimar, Levi, Maelstrom, Brassman, etc. had a conversation about MIDI's and plagiarism and all that. Boy, that was a scary day because then I discovered everything I did was wrong. Instead of confessing right then, I did what I could to hide it. I deleted the files on my computer, I deleted the Octopus submission that had been sitting there without feedback for a time, I edited incriminating forum posts (
these two were the only ones I can remember, but there must have been more). And then I decided I'd develop my ear training enough so that I could just redo Manhole but for real and replace the old one. So that's when:
On July 30, 2018, I decided what I had done to try and develop my musical skills wasn't working, so I created my most infamous forum topic of whole time, lol.
My new idea. For those unaware, I became a little hostile asking people to suggest me songs to arrange. This isn't an excuse for being inconsiderate of others, but this will at least explain why. Everyone was asking questions about how I arranged my first sheet and I felt like I was being attacked. That topic lasted literally only four days before I edited every post in it to the same thing and Bree locked it. Altissimo, if you're somehow reading this, I'm really sorry for how I treated you.
On June 1, 201
9, after realizing that sheet had been up for an entire year, I finally took initiative to take it down. Well, more like, I sent a confusing forum PM to Latios, not wanting to share the details of my fraudulent sheet, and then like… after two days and getting THC involved, Latios finally removed it. To both of you, that might explain why I was so
incredibly nervous to say anything, and uh yeah.
Look, I’ve spent my fair share of time feeling really bad about this and stressing over it, and I’m just done. If you want to punish me, punish me. If you want to remove the
Game Select sheet as well (even though that one was not plagiarized), go ahead. I honestly don’t know what “accordingly” and “depending on the circumstances” entail in this case, and if you think I haven’t obsessed over the exact wording of the forum rules, well think again. I’m sorry for all this, and I wish I had the courage to speak up in a matter of days instead of years after learning of my wrong-doings. I recommend you make it more clear in the rules or somewhere the exact nature of plagiarism, so that if there is another person in my situation, they’ll know exactly what is acceptable and the consequences of doing such. Finding NSM and playing its sheets is an integral part of me finding Discord and my dearest friends, and I wish the history of me appearing there was a little more pure, heh, but… it’s too late to fix that. I apologize to and appreciate all who had to deal with me in my transition period to who I am now. Thank you for reading all this. Hopefully I’ll be able to see you guys around. Guguuh!
