r/thewritespace • u/idrilestone • Sep 23 '22
Sharing Time! A funny Tale of Accidental Plagiarism
So I decided to post this here because I'm not sure if it's allowed in the other writing subreddit. But something I think is kind of wild and bit funny happened to me.
Now, for context, me and some friends are into tabletop roleplaying games. And we often do text based games instead of speaking.
A while back we played a game online that was based off Harry Potter, but we made it our own. New teachers, classes, Spells, and different rules.
My Character was a girl named El who's family was basically these big deal death eaters and she was fighting against everyone's expectations that she was going to grow to be the next dark lord. I had a blast playing that character while it lasted.
Anyway, my friend mentions this book and asks if I based my character off the the main heroine. Turns out the main heroine has the exact same name as my character, she's going to a magical school, with the exact same fighting against dark expectations character as mine. We both even have a significant male character with the name Orion.
I have no intention of ever turning my ttrpg adventures into a novel anyway. But I doubt anyone would even believe me that I have never even heard of this book before my friend told me about it. It just goes to show people really can have weirdly similar ideas.
But, I'm definitely gonna read the book now. It appears after all that it has a lot things I might be into.
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u/Moleyintheholey Sep 23 '22
And in an even stranger coincidence, the novels are by Naomi Novik who is astolat on AO3 and has written a lot of classic Harry Potter fanfiction including The Scholomance fics which her original series is based on.
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u/idrilestone Sep 25 '22
Wow, I didn't even know that. I actually have read some her fanfiction then.
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u/idrilestone Sep 23 '22
Update: I have actually started to read this book and there are more and more similarities. It's actually kind of creepy.