Now despite the fact that Original is right there in the name of Original Characters that doesn't mean we aren't allowed to take inspiration for them, whether it be from people/things we know in real life or characters from other media.

But there's a fine line between being inspired by something else and flat out ripping it off.

The line admittedly can be moved by peoples opinions, what some people call inspired by others will call a rip off but there are some basics to adhere to:

- You can take a concept from another story and apply it as a plot point in your own story but be sure to DO something different with it rather than just going through the motions; for example many stories have the plot point of a friend dying, this obviously is far from unique and is in countless stories but the way you get to be unique with it is the reactions to the death. If you've developed your characters well and have built up the death we should be able to see some really unique and heart-wrenching reactions.

- Taking inspiration character wise is also fine. Though one thing I must add; just ponifying something does not make it original, that's a different thing altogether. If you want to be able to take ideas just be sure to add onto the ideas you take inspiration from, if you want a character to have the same occupation and skillset as a character you like give them a different personality so that we can still enjoy the reference/shout out while having a character to enjoy.

That's just two examples. Please share below if you have taken inspiration from other sources for your stories/characters and let us know what you did to differentiate them from the inspiration source, or if you have further ideas about ways to avoid simply ripping off another source.

2352982
Well... I'm not sure whether this counts as inspiration, since I actually didn't even realize there was such a character until some time ago, but Oathbound is similar to Nightwolf from Mortal Kombat, in that he also uses weapons that are conjured from thin air.

2353069 Maybe just one hell of a coincidence?

2352982 Well, my main character is a bit weird with this. He's inspired by three things - first, Jax the Grandmaster - at - Arms from League of Legends, second, me as a person, and third, the Kindly Ones arc of the Sandman comics. I think what really allows me to be different from the original are the minor tweaks and reinterpretations, not just the add - ons. And it's really quite impossible to come up with something that hasn't been done before; after all, nihil novi sub sole.

The concept of my main guy, Lamplight, started with me playing one day and thinking how cool it was to have an unconventional weapon. I began with that in mind - a guy who had a strange weapon or a quirk to identify himself with. He originally was a guy who would carry around a small girder and use it as a weapon. Then I began to develop his character, and who else would I draw on but myself? This was, after all, the first time I tried to flesh out a real person.

So I put myself in front of a mirror, analyzed myself, boiled myself down into as condensed a framework as possible, and then worked based on that. My OC is essentially me if you boil him down right, though the tiny changes and details made all the difference. I stretched some characteristics to their limit, such as his bitterness, while some others I softened, like my normal shy awkwardness. All the small differences added up and made him very different from me. I put him then to the test by placing him in the worst possible scenario he could ever be in.

When there's a character already, that character has to be consistent, but not rigid. I did that (or tried, no one gives any comment on whether I did it right or not) with a trial - and here's what I think is ignored a lot nowadays - that ended in failure. Most I see have guys who keep winning, and I used to have that as well. I changed because that is absolute nonsense. No one wins forever, and sometimes losing is the best way to develop a character. In my case, it was the only way to be consistent with him, and his attempts to recover fueled his growth.

The only way for his characterization to be consistent with his reaction to losing all his friends (basically the only ones he has in his life) was for him to go insane; there I drew on the Kindly Ones arc for ideas. He shares a psychological and spiritual insanity - fueled journey, but I didn't parallel it completely. I subverted it by removing any supernatural and magical matter in it - he simply saw the world as such because of his crippling inability to cope with the loss of almost everyone he cared about. Tons of other little things were changed as well, and ended up with something I'm pretty satisfied with.

TL;DR for you guys: the details often make a bigger difference, because sometimes even if two things are completely unrelated, they have the same essence. Don't copy the thing blatantly, but don't just switch one or two things either. Nihil novi sub sole, but you can still work on something worked on already and make it good. It's all in the details.

2352982
Saw this title.
Only thought.

Then I read the this. Eeyup. Spot on.