When I was a kid, it wasn’t uncommon for my school projects to incorporate video games in some way (I was am a huge nerd), but I never went as far as to try and pass off something from a video game as my own. It seems that “Lucas” didn’t get the memo that plagiarism is bad though. The student was caught by his English teacher, Jennifer, using the entirety of the Destiny lore as his “journal entries” (presumably a class assignment). She emailed Ishtar Collective about the plagiarism, who then posted the whole funny story for us to enjoy.
I think this might be the best email we’ve ever received at the Ishtar Collective.
If anyone asks we are now called Lucas. pic.twitter.com/T81IPcrxDl
— Lucas (@IshtarColl) April 4, 2019
Ishtar Collective is a site that collates all of the Destiny lore into one place. There’s a good chance that the English teacher isn’t even aware that the lore entries are from Bungie and Destiny, but rather found them posted on Ishtar Collective by googling specific phrases and passages from the text. It doesn’t seem like this was just a few lore entries either. Per her email to Ishatar Collective, “essentially, [the] entire website was turned in…as journal entries,” which makes me really curious just how far Lucas went and just how extensive this assignment was.
“May I confirm you are not a boy named Lucas,” the teacher asks. Whether that was a rhetorical question or if “Lucas” was claiming he wrote the Destiny lore found on Ishtar Collective isn’t entirely clear, but I’m leaning on it being rhetorical. Either way, it doesn’t look like this kid will be getting away with it. One of the Ishtar Collective admins confirmed that they replied “in a normal boring way. Because I am no fun.”
What is a convenient, centralized, and easily searchable Destiny lore encyclopedia for the rest of us ended up being Lucas’ downfall. It’s a good lesson to learn early in life, not to try and pass someone else’s work off as your own. The lore teams over at Bungie have given us a ton of great stories and history in the lore that flesh out the world within the game, but apparently they were a little too good to be the work of one student, catching the keen eye of this educator who wasn’t about to let Lucas slip this one past her.
Despite outing the kid to his teacher, Ishtar Collective has briefly changed its name on Twitter to “Lucas” and many of the replies to the tweet stand in mock solidarity, saying “We are all Lucas.”
We’ve reached out to both Ishtar Collective and Jennifer the English Educator for comment.
Have you ever used video games in your schoolwork?
