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Here’s the start of a short story. Can you tell what the inspiration was?
The sound of pinball bells, video game bleeps, and muted cheers and groans came from the arcade next door as Harry studied the broad-shouldered man standing in front of the mirror. “We can take in the waist on both the jacket and slacks, sir.” As he watched his customer’s movements and frown, he caught a glimpse of a tweed sleeve waving on a mannequin. He ignored it, as usual.
The big man frowned more deeply and turned left and right. “Do that. What about the sleeves?” He shot the cuffs on his creamy yellow shirt.
Harry beckoned, and Charlie hurried up, armed with pins, tape measure, and chalk. Charlie murmured to himself. He looked up from the jacket cuff. “Do you want to keep the buttons on the cuff, or will two suffice?”
“Hmm?” The man studied the end of the sleeve as Charlie turned it in and up. “Two, and make a false third above them.”
“Yes sir. Is the trouser length correct?”
“Yes, but I want a West Point break, not a big cuff.”
Harry left them to it and went to check on the tweed jacket. It had stopped flapping. He didn’t bother glaring any more, just adjusted the collar of the shirt under the jacket and moved on. Someone had put a moderately-cheap polyester jacket in with the mid-range wool. Harry pulled it out, checked it for wear, and hung it back where it belonged. It was an easy mistake to make if you didn’t know fabric.
The front door chime sounded, and he went to meet the newcomer. A teenager, or a young man who looked like a teenager, slouched in with a woman. She wore an off-the-rack dress from one of the nicer department stores in town. “Good morning. Can I help you?”
“I need a suit,” the youngster grumbled. “The counselor says grey or blue. I hate ties.”
“This way, please.” Harry led the pair to what he thought of as starter suits. Maria eased out from behind the tie counter and joined him as he said, “These are all polyester gabardine, well made, and washable. Are you interviewing with a law firm or a bank?”
“Not yet.”
The woman considered the teen and the suits. “You can wear these with a mock-turtleneck or mandarin collar, Cal.”
“I can?”
Harry nodded and gestured to Maria. “Yes, sir. These are a more relaxed look. Is there a particular shade or pattern you would like?”
He waited until the trio began comparing shades of blue and grey, then made his way back to the clearance section. The tweed jacket rustled again, and he ignored it again. Tweeds … he couldn’t keep them in the center of the store. If he did, they moved around, distracting both customers and staff alike. But if he didn’t have at least a knit tie or jacket there, the place went nuts. After this long he’d given up trying to sort out why. Harry frowned at a catalogue of school uniforms and whisked it off the counter, then tucked it back on the shelf where it belonged.
Solly emerged from the back with an armload of trousers. “I can’t believe anyone wears these still,” he muttered from behind the double-knit pants. “Clearance table?”
“Yes.” Harry followed the tailor to the arcade-side of the store and helped him arrange the pants. Double-knit polyester kept trying to die off, but a new generation kept rediscovering them. “The ’70s look is in again.”
Solly muttered something about goyim, college students, and what-next-paisley under his breath as he deftly folded and arranged the pastel and darker slacks.
So, did you guess the inspiration? The arcade and the fabrics should be the clues. If you didn’t suss it out, then it is not a copyright or IP violation, but a legitimate borrowing, with the numbers filed off. The original is far from the Urban Fantasy setting of this story. That also helps with legality. The original source isn’t quoted directly. At most the setting is the same, a clothing store beside an arcade. Everything else is brand new, so there’s not a problem. That said, I will give credit to the inspiration when I publish this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl1vulzQDwU
Songs tend to kick off the muse, at least for me. And then I take what I didn’t like about the video, or song story, and run with it. A novella started with me being irked by the middle of a rock video, went in a new direction with two more songs from that same album, and voila, The Wolves and the Ice Lion came into being. (The album is Berserker by Beast in Black). An album inspired by a video game spawned a novella set in the Vosges during the early Ottonian period. That’s about as legitimate of a switch as you can get.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “Borrowing or Stealing: It Depends on What You File Off”
Bad stories are often a good source, not only because of the “I can do it better” reaction but because things have to go for the improvements.
I only had one strong song inspiration–Audioslave’s “Like a Stone”–but “I am the Highway” tempts me every time I hear it. Books and Movies that miss what I think would be a better twist? Yeah. Regularly.
*snicker* I “borrowed” the whole concept of the Lone Ranger western adventure saga for my own “Lone Star Sons” series – it was after the disaster of the Armie Hammer/Johnny Depp movie, and hey – no one else was doing any good with it! I ditched the mask, the silver bullets and the magnificent white stallion, kept the central figures of a single Texas ranger survivor of an ambush, and his Indian sidekick/blood brother, racked the setting back half a century, and changed the names slightly.
Just buff out the obvious bits … it’ll be fine!
Always change the names.
Not only to avoid issues, but it produces the oddest knock-on effects.
Fanfic or even original fic quoted at the author’s blog seems to have “song-tracks” a lot more often these days. I kind of like it, even though I seldom ‘feel’ the connection between the song and the story– I’ve found some great music that way!
Nope! I can’t tell at all but then, I don’t get out much.
Last week I commented on Sarah Hoyt’s blog about a TV show, Queen of Swords, that crossovercreativechaos had recommended. It took less than a minute of watching to realize that the show was basically a gender-flipped version of Zorro. It was so obviously inspired by Zorro, in fact, that the copyright holder of the Zorro movies sued the producers. (They lost because the character Zorro was in the public domain by that time).
Thing is, there’s nothing wrong with a character being based on another one. Zorro was based, in many ways, on the Scarlet Pimpernel, though the plot point of “wife who doesn’t know her husband’s secret and therefore accidentally endangers him” wasn’t used so it wasn’t an exact copy. Most of the time you don’t want to make the parallels obvious, but sometimes that’s exactly what you want.
And I had not realized how many “Scarlet Pimpernel” books the Baroness had put out.
There’s a reason for that. . . nothing quite catches the first zing again.