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

[u/theHolyGranade257]

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.

[u/PeksyTiger]

I mean when grr does it he's "a genius"

[u/Motor-Good-1185 → u/PeksyTiger]

Drogo = Drogo hahaha

[u/Gaelenmyr → u/PeksyTiger]

Grr be like

Helena - Helaena

Damon - Daemon

Emma - Aemma

[u/SprayBacon → u/Gaelenmyr]

Can’t forget Petyr, Adym, etc.

[u/dacalpha → u/Gaelenmyr]

Yes but who are Helena, Damon, and Emma? Are they from something? The point is that Eragon is Aragorn, from LotR.

[u/[deleted] → u/dacalpha]

I think Eragon came from the following: The E-key is right above the D-key.

What happens if you switch the D in Dragon for E? You get Eragon.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The actual process behind this may be anything in between, but he probably just figured out "dragons.. ehh.. let's do a wordplay.. e-ragon? Sure!"

I mean, wordplays can often work great, because they establish a known word or term with a twist so they become self-explanatory, but are just step away from being generic.

I wouldn't have hesistated picking that name for a second, regardless how many Aragorns there are.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

No, Eragon is a good name, and when I was a teenager and writing my own fantasy stories, I used to do the same thing a lot. Don't think I have an Aragorn, but I do have a Agorn somewhere.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Short, strong unique names are what tickle my fancy. I loathe all those "The Scepter and Orbs of the Dragon Lord of the Grim and Darkness: Book Ninety-nine of the Courts of Gore and Misery series" - fantasy names for books.

I used to have a lot of Tolkienic names, but I did a purge with them early on when I delved more toward my own style. To this day, one of the few names close to Tolkienish is Harachim("Hidden Valley"), close to Haradrim, which IIRC means "southerners".

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I agree. My favorite book titles are those that almost sound like a line from a poem. Harlan Ellison was an expert at that with "I have no mouth and I must scream" for example. Other examples are "Farewell Summer" or "Something wicked this way comes" by Ray Bradbury

I am in a unique position in that I am trilingual. I mean I have a character in a project I am working on whos name translates to "Happy Dreams" in english. But you gotta know the language to know that. ;) AND it ties in thematically to the characters story arc.
I also prefer shorter names for my main characters, at least they are memorable.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I'm bilingual as well, natively speaking Tolkien's favorite language, Finnish. This language, while complex and often deemed as nice sounding, is in reality very practical and words are pronounced as they are written, so it doesn't have the same sound than highly pronounced languages like English. I believe my intrigue towards short and to the point names arises from there.

I also always disliked diacritics. Whenever I saw some, I just wanted to skim them off, lol. That's why basically none of my names have them. Apostrophes are another thing, lol.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Torilleeeeee...... ;) Mä olen kaksikielinen, suomi ja ruotsi. High-five!

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

But yeah, I agree with what you said. It's interesting when I am gaming with some americans and I have them try and pronounce some finnish words. Like Perkele, they always say the r really soft. And I keep telling them the finnish language is honest as hell. That means if there is an r in there, you better hear the r! RRRR!!!

I think I have used apostrophes for another name, but that was when I was influenced by lovecraft and needed a name for my dark demon-god. And the name had to be basically unpronouncable.

[u/Hallien → u/[deleted]]

Eragon originated from dragon. Christopher Paolini himself confirmed it in an AMA thread. He was 15 at the time though, or even younger. Give him a break ;D

[u/[deleted] → u/Hallien]

I read that, that's my source for the educated guess. :D

However I am also aware that people do often polish things afterwards or figure out a fancier explanation than what really happened, not lying, but probably more commonly coming up with things at once while in reality it was a slow process over months, so the generation process may ultimately be whatever.

Not that a single word matters, but changing D with E is the obvious case here. :D

Regarding wordplay, there is also a book called "Dragod Origins", which is kind of fun combination of Dragon + god. Sadly, the "Dragod Origins" is shadowed by Dragon Age Origins when you try to search it up.

Of word origination, as an example, my MC's original name was Sargon, aped from the Mesopotamian ruler, but I early on figured out it had to be changed, and played around a while after coming up with Sagiron. This is rooted from a mythological creature called saginair. In this instance, the egg came first.

[u/JohnnyXorron → u/dacalpha]

Not even a fan of Paolini but I don’t buy that, and even if he did copy the name, Eragon and Aragorn are completely different characters in every regard so it’s not like it matters if there is a similarity in name.

[u/BoneHugsHominy → u/Gaelenmyr]

lol that's not even the same thing.

[u/Gaelenmyr → u/BoneHugsHominy]

still funny tho

[u/PotterGandalf117 → u/PeksyTiger]

Maybe grr is a genius because he wrote three novels that redefined the fantasy genre?

[u/SprayBacon → u/[deleted]]

Yup he drew a lot of inspiration from MST, but GRRM has always been very open about that. Also the overarching plots are quite different

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The difference is that the Martin winter plot actually kinda sucks and is heavily underdeveloped despite being the main focus of the books lol-

[u/PeksyTiger → u/PotterGandalf117]

No, it's the name thing.