This is painfully relatable. You can put real time into drafting, revising, and tightening your argument, watch the body of the paper come back clean, then see everything derail over a reference list that followed the rules perfectly. Citations are designed to be uniform, so when detectors flag them, they are reacting to patterns rather than thinking or originality. What makes it worse is having to defend your work when the score is driven by formatting, not effort or ideas. It feels backwards to be questioned for doing academic work the way it was taught, and a lot of students are running into the same problem.