From Fan Work to Original

[sei_gogone]

Honestly, this crossed my mind recently, but I was wondering what stories or characters people have that they've turned into original stuff. On the flip side, how do you feel about people turning their fan fiction into original stories or fan characters into original characters?

There are a couple of stories that I'm writing now that are fan fiction, but I'm in love with their original premises, so I've been toying around with doing something with them later in life.

And of course, I've a tonne of fan characters that I've turned into my own. Like my most recent "transformation" was turning my Kingdom Hearts OC (I know, shh) into the protagonist for a video game I'm conceptualising.

[Testaccount]

When I first started writing, I wrote a lot of Attack on Titan fanfiction. Many of the AU stories I had planned, I turned into original work. Of course, I created all new characters, but I just used the premises from my old, planned fanfictions.

[XzynderVexymous]

I think a lot of our tapastic OCs aren't fully original, but the awesome part about it is that we all put our spin on them and that's what makes them OCs

[emkay]

I think people turning fan stuff into original stuff is awesome! My entire comic idea came from reading someone's LOTR fan comic (and I'm not even a LOTR fan, but Phob's art was too compelling), then using that idea to create an Avengers AU, and finally using that Avengers AU to create original characters, an original world, and the completely different comic idea it now is today. I just went through my old art of it yesterday and it's incredible to see how much it's evolved; it may have started as a fanwork idea, but now it's entirely my own.

[shaylafarley5]

I think 50 shades of gray was a twilight fan fiction until she changed some things around and made it her own. I've read a few people did that so its fine. Just as long as you make it original and not to much on the fandom!

[UzukiCheverie]

Time Gate: Reaper (and all following stories) actually started off as a Legend of Zelda fanfiction. Though a lot of original characters were already a part of the fanfiction (including Uzuki, Mitsuhiro, Yashiro, and Shuto) more original characters were added and the plot went under a lot of maintenance to phase out the fanfiction elements. Though it was sort of hard to cut out the fanfiction parts when I had been working on it for so long, so there are still a lot of LoZ elements in the story, without being LoZ (Hale, who makes an appearance later and plays the biggest role in Books 2 and 3, is the biggest giveaway that it used to be a fanfiction lol).

Some of my fanfiction readers from the old days have even started reading the original comic version, which is neat ^_^

[gateofselidor]

Honestly, a lot of fanfic is so out of character that people often won't even realise they weren't conceived as original characters. People are writing what they wanted to see, playing with a particular trope or dynamic between the characters, which is often very different to the source material.

I find it a little jarring when it's something I've been reading, but I don't mind. I'd never do it myself because I'm just not invested enough in fanfic in the first place.

[sei_gogone]

@UzukiCheverie
Man, I was trying to think of where I clicked on that, but as I commented before, I ended up binge reading this entire thing, and this is a very fine example of turning fan fic into something of your own. It really grew into its own, and I've found myself really getting deep into the overall plot. So many questions; can't wait to see it all though.

@shaylafarley5
You're right; it was. And while 50 Shades and that whole line of work isn't the best, it absolutely does embrace the premise of taking something fan related and turning it into something more.

@emkay
Thanks for that recommendation honestly. I feel like I've seen that person around, but I'ven't been on dA in such a long time, it's hard to keep up with. But I'm glad you get to see progress in your art.

@Xzynder
Right? Hahaha. I do know people who end up just making OCs off the cuff, and I do that myself as well. But it's always interesting to hear about where people came from, what their inspirations were, and how they've evolved from that point.