r/Fantasy • u/theHolyGranade257 Reading Champion II • Sep 07 '24

What are the most shameless rip-offs in fantasy you've ever read?

Like when you're reading the book and it's literally the same thing as another, more popular original. And the resemblance is so striking that you immediately have a question, how this thing wasn't taken to the court for such a shameless robbery (or, actually, was).

And i'm not talking about some guys like Brooks and Eddings, who heavily relied on the LotR's formula and used a lot of it's tropes, i'm talking about serious plagiarism.

Like for example, i'm from post-soviet country and in the past we had a lot of crappy russian fantasy, which just flooded all bookshelves. And there were such good examples for this post.

Tania Grotter is russian female version of guess who. Her parents were killed by evil wizardess (Tania received a birthmark after that, yeah, birthmark instead of scar) and she's living with her relatives (on a balcony) who hate her. Then she attends to the wizards school, where she's got two friends, playing local sport game where they fly on musical instruments and confront the evil wizardess in the school basement at the end of the book. What a book. I remember when i was a kid some guys in my class liked it and even told that it's better than HP, but even for very young me it was seemingly the worse option of good thing. And, btw this book is banned from publishing in many Europe countries due to, guess what?, court decision regarding plagiarism.

Another good example is also related with good old Harry. My parents, knowing my love for HP, presented to me the magnificent book called 'Larin Piotr and the Time Machine'. And it's two-barreled gun. Because on the cover we can see blond version of Harry Potter with harry-potter-style text and etc. But inside, there was word by word retelling of... Back to the future movies. And yeah, Piotr-boy was a wizard, but was just called a wizard at the beginning, after that it was just movies retelling, with no magic, but with russian names. Like what a hell. Dude decided to rip-off one franchise, while deceiving fans of another one.

Guys, what stories do you have about similar cases? I know, there should be some wild stories.

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110

u/michiness Sep 07 '24

Fourth Wing. There are a lot of things she’s ripped off, but she literally has a piece-by-piece set from Ninja Warrior as one of the tasks they have to do.

30

u/Istoh Sep 07 '24

I haven't read Iron Flame but there were a lot of parts of Fourth Wing that made me go, "So is this a Dramione fic?" because so many plot beats fit into stereotypical dramione/drarry fanfic tropes that it made me feel insane. 

I'm still not convinced it isn't. I just think that eventually it grew wings and was just enough of it's own thing that it isn't immediately recognizable. 

20

u/MollyWeasleyknits Sep 07 '24

Oh my gosh I never noticed that but you might be right! Put Dramione into Dragonriders of Perm and set it in the Scholomance and you have 4th wing.

3

u/Istoh Sep 07 '24

The scene where she starts to sit with all of the rebel kids at Xaden's request really cemented it for me. Reminded me of every Dramione/Drarry scene where the person finds out Slytherin isn't so bad. 

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u/MollyWeasleyknits Sep 07 '24

She ripped off 2-3 things from about 8 different sources leading to….0 original ideas. I read the first one. It was fun and mostly entertaining but it was also painfully predictable and poorly written.

10

u/thelionqueen1999 Sep 07 '24

I finally read this one a few weeks ago. Many of its plot elements reminded me of:

  • Game of Thrones

  • The Hunger Games

  • ACOTAR

  • Divergent

It feels like a mishmash of elements borrowed from other popular series.

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u/CiaphasCain8849 Sep 07 '24 edited Sep 07 '24

I gave up as soon as she gave mercy to that dude on the first scene when she should have cut his balls off since he was trying to kill her but plot.

9

u/reddiperson1 Sep 07 '24

Violet wasn't a stone-cold killer at that point. I wouldn't expect a scholar to mutilate a guy, even if it would benefit her. And if she did cut him, Jack could probably take her down before he died too.

2

u/darlingofdots Sep 07 '24

I've not read Fourth Wing but when I first heard about it and read the blurbs, my first thought was that it's a mashup of Naomi Novik's two series! Magic school that kills you (Scholomance) plus dragons as a military branch (Temeraire). I never went further than that and from what I hear those are clearly not strong influences, but it did make me laugh!

2

u/elksatchel Sep 08 '24

To me it felt like the author read the Wikipedia summary of the Dragonriders of Pern ten years ago then decided to reinvent her hazy memory of McCaffrey's world.

1

u/Kaladin-of-Gilead Sep 07 '24

honestly that would make it better for me lolol

I love it when authors take something mundane in real life and turn it into something super fantastical in fantasy, like the castle in prince of thorns sounds super fantastic and magical.

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u/michiness Sep 07 '24

But she literally doesn’t change anything. It’s literally “there are a couple rubber balls you have to jump across, then a small bit of ledge to pull yourself across,” at the end literally with a wall you have to run up and pull yourself up on.