Quote:
Originally Posted by Aleron Ives
As an example, if you lived under a rock and hadn't heard of Harry Potter before, and then you stumbled across some random book claiming to be part of the Harry Potter universe, it wouldn't take much effort to look up who wrote the original books and see that the book you've found is not one of them. I don't understand how you can be surprised that a book is fanfiction, unless you buy books without doing any research first.
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Have... you never heard the phrase 'with the serial numbers filed off'?
Here's Wikitionary for you:
Quote:
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(fandom slang, idiomatic) To remove the copyrighted elements from an existing work of fan fiction so that it may be commercially published as original fiction.
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It
wouldn't be claiming to be a Harry Potter novel, but when poorly done it's possible to to recognize who a character originally was, or certain other details.
Here's the fanlore article:
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Filing_Off_The_Serial_Numbers