while reason isnt embarrassing , i dont want to sound like im putting any writer down, but i didn't like how in ya fantasy mc always has ...weird partner? like mc is around 17-20 and lover is 1000+ , also they tend to be pretty toxic, while my novel isnt all sunshine and rainbows i dont think any shio ( that will be canon ) is toxic
I've taken, borrowed, and stolen from pretty much everything under the sun, but can't think of anything I'd be embarassed to admit, honestly 
The two main characters of my work are based off secondary characters of my previous work of which one was kidnapped by the other and has stockholm syndrome.
Hey Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog is good fun! Sure SaTAM gets all the glory, but there's something simply entertaining about Sonic dunking on Robotnik and his two dumbass bots 
Haha I found out about it because a family friend gave me a home VHS tape full of stuff ripped from TV that had a few episodes on it. I unfortunately never got to see it while it was on the air.
But I watched those few episodes over and over again.
Mig looked up a list of occupations on the internet (might have been jobs from the ancient world or something like that) and picked one then made up a story around it 
. It's not that embarrassing as much as it is kind of random and arbitrary. I don't think either of us expected to spend over a year on this though, to be fair.
Mine is probably one of the worst ones of this thread haha: my novel Fair, No Fair is based on a mlm RP that I did a while ago. The main plot, including some events that happen were taken directly from it. Worst part is that that RP was not exactly SFW...
Mine's based on an old fighting game by SEGA called Last Bronx. If you see gameplay of it, it's kinda obvious.
Lmho! I’m not even making an Isekai story, but ticked off a few of these.
Except for the modern amenities. Genii’s gonna regret skipping school when he has to dig his own poop hole in the woods.
I won't say I'm embarrassed about it, but several characters (including my MC, who I think was the first) were spawned from the time I went to a Renaissance faire wearing leather and a black cloak. I felt like a total badass assassin or something, and no fewer than three characters came out of that moment.
...I wonder if I have any photos of that outfit...
My comic story was inspired from a dream that I had and from there, started working on it. It seems there are inspiration from plenty of things. I think, there's a One Piece inspiration from there.
The other inspiration recently from a lower-tier Anime called "Ore dake Haireru Kakushi Dungeon" especially on drawing the eyes for the females:
The eyes look really cute so, why not.
I wouldn't say I'm embarrassed to admit it, but one of the more indulgent inspirations for my novel is a set of nsfw Reaper (Overwatch) x Reader fanfics I wrote a few years ago. I carried some of his bedroom traits over to my main monster in Secunda.
The original draft for "Godswater" was almost straight up "Ranger's Apprentice" fanfiction. It's gone through so many iterations that you can't tell, now, but there's definitely still some influence, there.
For "Project: Achilles", a couple characters are based on characters from broadway musicals. I will give a virtual crisp high five to anyone who correctly guesses which characters, lol
Not for my comic, but for my novel...
I'm not so much embarrassed of it, but it is kinda funny. In 1923, after the Bolsheviks won the revolution, they commissioned a children's author to write a series of children's books about the victory. They were, obviously, pretty uhhhhh full of ulterior motives, but they were also actually legitimately fun books. I really enjoyed them as a kid. It centered around a trio of characters - a brother and a sister, and then a friend they met, who was Chinese. They joined up with the Red Army and fought against the White Army, blah blah.
Now it was great that there was a Chinese character in a 1923 Soviet book but he was, uh... Well. Not the most interesting character, let's just put it that way.
So when I was working on my sci-fi Russian Revolution-inspired story, I kinda took the three character archetypes and rewrote them completely, with more focus on the Asian-descended character, who became the protagonist for the anti-imperial rebel side. The early days of the revolution were crazy intersectional and a whole bunch of different cultures and groups contributed to it (which makes how it all turned out in the end all the more heart-breaking), which is something I wanted reflected here, and it seemed right to revive the ghost of that poorly written character to do it.
My comic is set in the early 80s and it starts with a guy going to a gay bar... So yeah, disco music played a big role in terms of where I got the inspiration from I love 70s and 80s music a lot, and while researching the gay scene from between those two eras, disco music cannot be avoided.
Here's my comic by the way!
Okay. I've think I've mentioned this before but I left the driving factor. My series, The Guild of the Maltese Falcon took inspiration from the classic Mange/Anime series, Cat's Eyes.
They're were a lot of reason why I chose this to be the backbone of my series. The storyline, The characters, The art style. But here is what really drove me to make this series a reality.
Nuff said. 
