I have several stories in the works based on books/shows I watch, and they sort of evolve over time into something very different from the original. So I thought it'd be fun to see if anyone else does the same thing, and maybe we can try to guess which fandom your story comes from based on the world/premise? All stories are welcome (AUs and all). I plan on sharing one of mine too, but only if people are interested.
The Marked probably fits. Group of teens fight monsters and ancient enemies. Each of them has a magic power that is not like the traditional powers one commonly sees.
Not sure what the original origins of "The Marked" are, but depending on what "ancient enemies" are I might have an inkling.
Godseed was originally a crossover AU of two incredibly unrelated video games. Red-haired dragon-themed boy, blue-haired bird-themed singing girl are stuck in a tower until girl's cursed sleep brings boy on an adventure with a blind angel and a weird magic doctor.
A Place in the Sun also came about while brainstorming a supermassive video game crossover AU, but all the games involved were from the same series. It's a story about someone trying to save a tidally-locked planet from collapse due to waning sunlight. It's quite far removed from the original games, so I doubt anyone would guess it unless I tell you the main character has short mad scientist pink hair and she/they have a masculine name.
Rise/SOL is also a crossover of two unrelated games (gosh, this is a theme) … one of the games is one from the Godseed crossover, though! Basically, in this story, humanoids are dealing with a machine/synthetic organism uprising. A group of human freedom fighters have built an AI who can insert themselves into machines, take them over, and even retain some of the capabilities from these forceful occupations upon removal. However, the AI has a personality like a young pacifist, and they're rather worried about the future of humanity and synthetics. Meanwhile, a blue-haired (but not quite singing) synthetic humanoid is captured by the synthetic uprising because her psychic powers are a threat to them.
I definitely do this. You won't be able to guess this: a world with witches, who have magic and familiars, and non-witches, who don't but have several traditions of their own.
It might help if I say that two of my main characters, witches, regularly practice their magic by fighting one another.
I haven't done this yet, but I'm actually writing a fic based on another fic for something completely unrelated lmao. Minecraft mob(plus demons and sirens and angels, oh my!) hybrid AU. What are the characters being thrown into this from? Another AU! Linked Universe, which is an AU of the Legend of Zelda series.
The original fic that I'm basing this on is called Run Boy Run on AO3, it's by SilverWolfCub and it's a pretty cool Dream SMP/Minecraft Manhunt fic
Basically a world where ghostly contractors meet gay space rocks and several other people.
Basically a world where ghostly contractors meet gay space rocks and several other people.
And don’t forget my favorite trope: ANGST WITH FLUFFY MOMENTS
oml i actually do this all the time. basically all of my stories are just evolved AUs lol. My kinda apocolypse type story was inspired by a video game, the current concept i'm working on developing was inspired by an anime. I only have one concept rn that i didn't take any inspiration for and i've honestly kinda abandoned it.
Do historical fantasy AU's involving real-life historical figures count as fanfiction? Or is it only then just historical fiction or historical fantasy.
OOH OOH
My main story is a spinoff of a Zootopia fanfic series that went into superhero territory on the 2nd installment
I want to make a game called Dusk some day, which is about the afterlife on another planet after Earth has been destroyed where God (ah, yes, this is a Christian story, did I forget to say? but it never actually mentions God by name, it just calls Him “The Creator”) decided to try something different for His next world.
When someone dies, they turn into a ghostlike “soul,” and are found and brought back to the Kingdom of the Dead by these things called Soulguiders (which are what you play as). There are different types of Soulguiders, but most are animalistic, for example, a lantern wolf is a bipedal will-o-the-wisp wolf, a fowlcloak is a big owl, a bogeymander is a flat black lizard with deer antlers, etc. Each of them have some part of their body (for the lantern wolves, it’s their palms; for the fowlcloak, the inside of their wings; the bogeymander, their antlers) that will, on contact with a soul, transform said soul into a glowing orb, which will be golden for a lantern wolf, orange for a fowlcloak, and lime for a bogeymander. After this, they will be sucked into the Soulguider themself, appearing as a faint glow inside one of their body parts. Each Soulguider has a specific body part for this. The lantern wolves’ collected souls go into their stomach area, which is a translucent purple; the fowlcloaks’ appear inside their inner wing and in the center of their chest; the bogeymanders’ barely visible through the green of their thick, foggy horns. They then have total control of the soul — at least, they can control when they come out into a physical form and how far they can travel away from the Soulguider, and can recall them back into their bodies at any time.
The duty of a Soulguider is to bring souls back to the Kingdom of the Dead, where they will be reunited for eternity with their dead loved ones — at least, until The Creator (God) comes to claim them. There is no prejudice between those who do wrong and those who do right — the Bloodbird (the king of the Death Kingdom and an angel) is just housing them here for the time being and he says that they will get their due punishments when He comes to bring them to His kingdom (Heaven). There is one exception, however. Murderers and anyone directly responsible for the death of another are imprisoned in the Death Kingdom prisons for any amount of time the Bloodbird deems suitable of the crime, because God lets him rule the kingdom as he wants and that’s how he chooses to run it. In the Kingdom of the Dead, your assigned Soulguider brings you to this big clearing, you wave goodbye and they’re off to collect some other fresh soul from the living world. Now you’re free to go wherever you’d like, seek out your relatives, blah blah blah until you get bored of life as the dead and go to the Bloodbird to be “reset.” Being reset preserves your personality and name and whatnot, but it completely erases your memory and gives you a new ghostly body so you can start anew. Once it’s done, he’ll tell you what happened, then gently bring you back into the Land of the Dead (and probably reintroduce you to your family members, provided they weren’t who caused you to reset in the first place) so you can find a home for yourself, get a wife, whatever your new self wants to do. You can get your old life identified if you wish, though, through a unique marking on some part of your body that the Bloodbird gives you whenever you reset (you can reset multiple times). Most people who have been reset don’t do this, though, because obviously if they felt the need to leave their old life behind, it must have been horrible and they don’t need that kind of negativity in their lives.
Now, there is a Kingdom of the Living, too, and the ruler of that is a super mega jerk who straight-up steals people from the Death Kingdom and brings them back to life when they were probably having a happier life with the dead, but other than that I haven’t really developed anything about the leader or the kingdom yet. The people in it don’t know that it or the Death Kingdom exists, but there are rumors and legends, just like modern-day (or past-day to them!) religions here on Earth. The Kingdom of the Living is also obviously much more boring than the Kingdom of the Dead (everyone here knows what it’s like to be alive, duh, death’s the main theme and most interesting part of this story).
The Soulguiders live on the outskirts of the Kingdom of the Dead in small towns (which are most definitely called “ghost towns,” you’re welcome) made up of only other Soulguiders. These towns are protected via the Bloodbird’s magic so that no living folk can come in — to prevent their precious lives from being traumatized by postmortal ghosts, no doubt. These villages have been systematically positioned so that the magic forcefields around them shelter the entire Kingdom of the Dead from being poked into by nosy mortals. Soulguiders are created by the Bloodbird himself, prodded into existence through the same genre of magic that the forcefields were generated by. They are placed into families (yes, Soulguiders can get married) handpicked by him through lists of volunteers. The Bloodbird is, for the record, a very nice bird, who cares very much for the Soulguiders that are so fundamental to his kingdom and is known to personally check in with any that are feeling down. When a Soulguider is deemed mature enough by the family (after receiving a relatively normal childhood and education for someone who was spouted out of existence from nothing), which usually comes around the age of 7 (it fluctuates between species), they are taught how to fight, how to get past the forcefields into the living world, and, eventually, how to find a soul that needs to be brought to their new post-mortal home in to the kingdom. A Soulguider can move out as soon as they have caught and successfully brought back their first soul (who they may visit later in the Kingdom of the Dead if they feel like it and if they think they would make a good friend(/love interest, there definitely probably are some that have fallen in love with a ghost)). Most of the time, though, they stay until they’re around 15 (they age a little differently from us, lol, and this also fluctuates between species) and then move out, get a house of their own, and start bringing back souls full-time.
Not all Soulguiders have to, though! Some run businesses in their towns, some dedicate their time to raising their kid (if they’re chosen by the Bloodbird to do so), and really just do relatively human things. Soulguiders can visit both kingdoms at any time, but the living folk (with the exception of souls) can’t see them, and some angry ghosts in the Death Kingdom hate on them because they don’t want to be dead. There is one downside to being a Soulguider, though, and that’s that once you die… you don’t go anywhere. You just fade out of existence forever. Thankfully, Soulguiders can’t die of age or sickness, but there’s a reason why they’re trained to fight, and a reason that the Bloodbird treats them so dearly while they’re alive — he knows that if something happens, he’ll never see them again. The reason that Soulguiders aren’t brought into the Kingdom of the Dead for real is because, well, they’re just creations, aren’t they? They’re here to serve the Living and the Dead, not to have a life of their own. Sure, some definitely do, and it’s honestly quite unfair to them (as they have personalities and stories just like anyone else), but that’s just how things work. They’re also treated as lower than society, for the most part — another reason the Bloodbird cares for them like he does.
So… why exactly am I mentioning this here? This is a thread for stories based off of fanfictions. Here’s the thing: This was originally going to be a highly modified Pokémon Moon nuzlocke comic. The main character was a Pumpkaboo named Norton, a Soulguider, who would stumble upon a Pikipek named Nubby (sound familiar? maybe someone who should get in the bag, pew pew?) who is very curiously alive, which definitely does not mean anything good, because she can see him and talk to him and exist in the Death Kingdom, all of which are things that the living folk cannot do. Hau was a Golett named Ollie (Hau -> Hau’oli City from the games -> Oli -> Ollie the Golett) who loved to eat Old Gateaus (because, while a ghost eating malasada is a funny image, it’s definitely not thematic).
Lusamine and Gladion had a whole story of their own — the comic would begin with a “long ago, in a village far away from here” story told by Ollie’s dad, and clever viewers would realize that the story was very much about everyone’s favorite dynamic family trio (unfortunately just a duo this time, I couldn’t figure out a way to include Lillie in a way that’s not just a straight rip-off of Faba (BUT I DO PLAN ON WRITING A FANFICTION FOR HER AFTER THE EVENTS OF POKÉMON SUN AND MOON (USUM ruined her lol) SO YES VERY HYPED FOR THAT)). Lusamine here was a Soulguider Gourgeist named Enimasul (Lusamine’s name backwards, very creative of me) whose husband (Nome, again a very very totally creative distortion of Mohn) got stolen away by Mrs. Jerkface, Prime President Leader Ruler Queen Empress Of The Life Kingdom (a very cool Xerneas) and so she went insane and started hording souls alllll for herself. She horded so many inside her body, that she even grew extra arms to hold them all. Eventually, Zio (a shortened version of everyone’s favorite edgy boi’s Japanese name), one of the souls inside of her, rallied up a group of souls, and together they broke out. But since they all broke out together, their bodies were mixed and matched until they became something reminiscent of a chimera, with the main brain and actions being headed by Zio himself. Enimasul was overcome by rage and tried to stop them, but Zio and the others were too clever, and together they escaped. In the current time of the original story, the legend of Zio was regarded as a folktale designed to scare younger Soulguiders away from going out of the village until they were ready to catch a soul on their own (because if they didn’t stay put all snug with their parents, then ROAR THEY’D BE SNUCK UP ON AND EATEN BY THE LEGENDARY ZIO!!!!! BEWARE THE LEGENDARY ZIO!!! NEVER GO OUTSIDE WITHOUT YOUR PARENTS KIDS!!!), but in reality, Zio and Enimasul and everyone else are very much real, very much alive, and very much dangerous… and they’re both probably looking for Nubby for a very specific reason.
The ending had… no real specified plot? I don’t know, I didn’t get very far with the actual story before saying “wait a second, I could make money off of this if I made it a game.” But it did end in Norton (a Gourgeist by that point) dying and fading away into dust, while Nubby (now a Trumbeak) cries and screams his name in a desperate hope that he’ll return. But then next to her flies down the Bloodbird (who is, plot twist plot twist, an Yveltal, totally unexpected!), a very solemn expression on his face. Then he starts to cry. He does a very very ugly cry. His tears splash on the ground. Then they start to float up and turn into a very pretty gold. Nubby watches in wonder as — no way! Norton has become a soul! The first ever Soulguider not die permanently, am I right? Anyway, this is because Norton has done “what no Soulguider has ever done before, and far exceeded any of my expectations for your life” according to the Bloodbird, and that it would be “a shame to society if someone like you was left to the grave forever.” Anyway, Bloody’s all ready to take Norton back to the kingdom himself (surprise surprise, Bloody’s no Soulguider but he can definitely use their powers), but then Nubby steps up and asks him how Soulguiders come to be. Bloody tells her that they’re created out of nothing. Nubby asks him if she can become one and bring Norty back herself. Bloody’s not surprised, but asks her why. Nubby replies that she doesn’t belong to the living or the dead (it’s complicated and hard to explain) and neither do the Soulguiders, so why not take her position a bit further? The Bloodbird thinks about this, then laughs and uses his magic. She becomes a Soulguider. Then she looks to Norty, takes em into her body, and flies away with Bloody and him (her first soul!!!) towards the Death Kingdom. It’s very sentimental with everything else that happened before it, but probably cheesy here separated from all the context.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the read! I definitely didn’t mean to write this much, lol, but you know, everyone here gets passionate about their stories. I’ve never really gotten to share all this with anyone (I only came up with it in the last three months, though, so that’s understandable) and I appreciate the chance to do so now. I sincerely hope you all like my story concept and stuff here :)
Yeah kinda. I wrote a bunch of Kirby fanfiction back in the day, and that has evolved into multiple reoccuring personality types and general theming around Star magic systems.