Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2018: Week 25

Filing off the serial numbers is a common fannish term for the act of taking a piece of existing fanfiction and removing any details that tie it to a copyrighted source. At the very least this involves renaming places and characters or replacing them with analogues.

Fans may decide to do this when they try to turn pro and sell the work as a piece of original fiction. Filing off the serial numbers is not always easy or successful, as fanfiction often depends a lot on the audience's shared knowledge of canon and thus elides a lot of information integral to plot and characterization.