Surprisingly Similar Stories - Writer's Block edition

Courtesy link.

Yes, it's another one of those quasi-forum games where you apply a Just for Fun "trope" to your works. For the record, as the page says,

so you don't have to use a work with any real similarity to yours. But still, I thought this might be interesting to see.

For instance:

• An amusing-but-sociopathic, card-carryingly evil archmage of questionably living status, and his sarcastic green-skinned underling with an agenda of his own, plot to Take Over the World by means of a convoluted plan involving an Eldritch Abomination imprisoned inside of a planet (or so everyone believes). The only thing standing in their way is an eclectic and somewhat dysfunctional band of heroes. And everyone is a stick figure.
  • Order Of The Stick, or my currently unpublished and untitled comics (or at least one plotline/genre thereof)?

edited 12th Nov '11 8:42:39 PM by nrjxll

The most important character in this story—not a protagonist, but the character without whom the plot would not have happened—possesses very strange, very powerful abilities that might as well be called magic. She openly admits that some of the things she's done with these abilities have earned people's hatred, but she claims that she wants to repent for this, and offers to fulfill the female lead's greatest wish. After doing so, she takes on something of a sinister cast, using both seduction and transmogrifying magic to manipulate characters and events to her own ends. Ultimately, the male lead is the one who kills her.

When I realized just how many parallels my story Dulling the Pain had to The Little Mermaid, I gave each chapter a description taken from the song "Poor Unfortunate Souls" (e.g. "What is idle babble for?") Amusingly, there's one huge difference—unlike Ursula, Flora genuinely wants to repent, so long as repentance doesn't get in the way of her continued survival.