The World's Least Powerful Man
- Good story: Rips off everyone
- Bad story: Only rips off one source
It depends on how many other sources you "took inspiration from"
edited 12th Jan '15 8:06:07 PM by dvorak
Now everyone pat me on the back and tell me how clever I am!
Well, thing is, only thing that might mirror something else is the elemental piece. Otherwise it's a story about a werewolf in an Anachronism Stew type world with a lot of 40s-futuristic type technology and magic everywhere. I mean, i took small things from many sources, but mostly minor stuff people wouldn't notice, like some ideas from the Prophecy I drew on, some Naruto, western type themes. I mentioned Avatar because that was the only thing that may look specific.
This shall be my true, Start of Darkness
Elementalist
I'll just say, for as long as it feels different, it's fine.
If your story and the mechanics of whatever you included stand on their own, make sense rather than being a mish-mash of whatever you found appealing that is absurd, and has its own quirks that are not found in any series you found inspiration for it in, then even if anyone accuses you of ripping Avatar off people aren't going to treat them seriously.
Taking inspiration is normal. The point is to "be inspired" rather than plagiarise. And as far as what you wrote goes, it seems that this is indeed the case with your work, that you took inspiration and did something with it. Well, that's it from me.
Elemental Magic is well known enough to be its own trope so not unique to Avatar. As you don't go all the way with having there be one guy every generation who controls all elements, you should be good.
Another good series that heavily uses Elemental Magic is Codex Alera.
Basically, I wanna make a story, and the main character is a mage. In my story, there are three magical arts, elemental magic that humans use, spiritual or pure magic that elves and orcs use, and beast magic (alchemy is pseudo-magic). In it, elemental magic takes the form of Full-Contact Magic (that much was inspired by Avatar) with the different elements having different styles (the styles, again, are similar to Avatar because I thought the way that show did it looked the most sensible). I did make a new style for lightning users made up of mostly arcs and sweeps. Considering this does all sound a bit similar to Avatar, is that a bad thing?
This shall be my true, Start of Darkness