Thread:Zillafire101/@comment-2081141-20120904084059

The rest of us spent a long time working on our fiction, making it unique, giving it our own twists. Naturally it annoys us when someone comes along and brings in close recreations. Furthermore, IRC is a public chatroom, in which we are free to express our opinions, whether you like it or not. To be perfectly honest, we probably would have said exactly what we said even if you were there (or similar).

Many of us have had parts of our fiction inspired by other sources. It happens. The thing is, we couldn't help but see parallels between what you had created, and what already existed. It soon became hard for us to see them any other way. While I admit prejudice set in very early, part of the blame is on you for simply tweaking names, instead of spending a little time and effort to come up with your own.

As has often been discussed in tropes conversations on the IRC, there are many common themes that surface in fiction. It's inevitable that two honour-oriented militant races, no matter how distinct in the minute details, will look similar superficially. The difference between common tropes and creating expys is that the former still leaves room for originality.

For example, let's take Batman. He's a martial artist, with a strict code of conduct, and whose alter ego is a wealthy playboy. Now say I wanted to capture the feel of Batman, but I didn't like the alter ego element. So, I mix the two together. Admittedly, now I just have a disciplined Iron Man that knows kung-fu, but it's a start towards making an original character. Now I just add in a new name, some fresh back-story, and tweak the character to suit what I want to do with him/her. I still have a disciplined, martial-artsy, rich playboy crime-fighter, I can throw him in as many Gotham-like settings as I want, and he'll still feel unique, even though he's basically a painted-over Batman without the identity crisis.

Now I know that you can't access IRC, but the message walls are open if you want to talk more about this. 